Change at Jamaica Station

Chapter 20

Chapter Twenty

A Reckoning at Home Various Places in New York City

Tabetha

It's good that work keeps me busy.

On my break, I pick up a small crumbled paper on my otherwise immaculate dressing table and read it to myself.

Transgressions, connections,

Thankful to be

inclusive, open-minded

free thinker

mob mentality, throw me under a bus

but I see you-

said to me behind your back

remain open to others

uneducated emotionally

Glad for you that you have friends in so many places

I read the words on the small yellow paper I've been carrying around since Sunday morning after Andy's party. I drop it back on the vanity table in the studio dressing room, and sit down in front of the mirror, one elbow on the paper, my hands rubbing my temples. A large vase of roses from Andy sits to my right. A larger one sits at home in my kitchen, and another one in my bedroom. I was so baffled that morning I could only manage to jot down phrases to capture each new wave of questions, doubts and hopes.

In my dream that night, Matthew said I should show them all the love. It was plural. I have been given a platform, an opportunity to reach so many people and I get to have a say in the direction, the message. I can show love. I know how to do that, it's been given and shown to me so often, I've escaped so much hardship just from others giving me the milk of human kindness, and love. Pay it forward, Howard Lutnick said after 9/11. Pay the kindness forward to the next person who needs it, but in my case, I have enough to share with a lot of people and a way to do that.

I sink to the floor and go through my yoga routine to calm down. Downward dogs, upwards dogs, planks, pranayama breathing. I immediately feel better, grounded and in control. I review mindfully everything that has happened since the trip to Naples. We thanked Andy together, left for Saddlebrook the next morning, played tennis all day and took a flight home from Tampa International to New York. After work on Monday, I met with Andy briefly alone in the hallway, and told him I needed a break. He said he didn't understand, but I was too withdrawn to let him say much more. I skulked down the hallway and locked myself in my dressing room, and aside from being at home in bed, or on the set, that is where I have remained, pretty much just sulking alone in my dressing room. Now it's Wednesday. Next week will be Thanksgiving and frankly, I just don't care to do anything about that. Everything is heavy. I'm planning on spending the day in my pajamas with a bottle of wine and some baked potatoes. I want to just read and read.

I would need another year to adjust to all the newness in my life and I really just want to retreat back to bed, to my books and my tennis workouts, and a little bit of this TV stuff, which is like work, but it is not like work for me. I am starting to understand and enjoy it. OK, so, I'll give myself permission to do just that. Every time I think of the party, and all those people, obligations, and facades, I wonder why I ever went there. "Only Wednesday morning, geese, this is going to be a long week." I say to the mirror.

Gerriann

I am always at work.

Wednesday morning in midtown Manhattan, I have a written statement on company letterhead, but it doesn't include Caroline Cummings name. I sit in the conference room overlooking the Empire State building with four in-house lawyers, and John Baxter, the CEO, discussing our options.