The Man Who Could Have Bought Donahue

(I'm not sure when I wrote this, but likely sometime around 1980, well before my own divorce but at a time when our friends' marriages were beginning to go through the process. I'm not particularly satisfied with it -- and it's at best only a second draft -- but, as the young curate said, "Parts of it are excellent.")

"Six years ... seven." He squinted slightly as he thought about the question. "Seven, the beginning of September. We moved in the beginning of the academic year, right after I got my PhD.”

"Very nice.” His guest, or, rather, his wife's guest's husband, looked around once more at the yard, the split rail fence against which they were leaning, the apple trees, the neat gray house with the fieldstone chimney. "Out west, you know, everything' s either tract houses or sort of Mexican, stucco and that. Whenever I come out to the Midwest or the East Coast, I see these houses and think, well, that's more what I thought I'd end up with, you know?"

"It's you TV guys that did it," his wife's hostess's husband chuckled. “Beaver and Wally, Bud and Betty and Kathy, they all lived in houses like this. But I grew up expecting it, too. When I saw this house, yeah, it looked to me like the kind of house you'd raise a family in. We didn't have any kids yet, of course, but when Brad was born, I started pruning that tree over there so it would have the right-shaped branches to hold a tree house. See, up there? Maybe next summer, when he's six, we’ll get out here and put it up.”

"You're lucky to have your summers free. Your kids are lucky."

"Well, that thing about summers being free is kind of deceptive. People think that, but it's really the only time you have to do any kind of serious research, writing and so forth. And I’ve taught summer school every year I've been on the faculty."

“Still, you've got some time to call your own. I wish I could take off when we started reruns. Take the summer off and do the things that really mattered to me. Even if it's work, you know, it's still your choice. This is my first real vacation in five years, and if it weren't for the affiliate's meeting, I doubt we’d have left the state. And next week, I've got to be back getting set up with the new season, you know, parties and hoopla and all that.”

"I guess you don't spend your vacation time sitting around watching TV like most people."

"I can’t. I can’t watch it for fun at all. I sit there, even here where I'm fifteen hundred miles from the station, and I go, 'Oops, missed your ID' or 'They've got a cart jammed' or 'What's the matter with the network feed?' Or I watch your local news and start looking at the set or wondering why we can't find someone like that gal that does your noon news show. I have to just turn it off and get out of the house."

They stood for a few minutes, looking around at the yard and smelling the warm, moist air, listening to a cardinal calling from the top of a power line three backyards away.

Finally, the visitor broke their silence almost plaintively:

"I couldn't have bought Donahue. It wasn't my decision."

"What?"

"Last night, at dinner. Trish and Barbara were talking about joint custody of divorced kids, or, I mean, kids whose parents are divorced, you know?”

“Yeah.”

"And Barbara said she saw a show about it on Donahue. Trish said that I could have bought Donahue and didn't and the independent station in our market snapped it up. I think I've told her about forty times that it wasn’t my decision whether or not we picked it up. At that time, I wasn't program director yet, and, even if I had been, you know, you don’t function with that kind of, whatever, authority or independence, to just pick out shows like they were cans in the supermarket. All that happened was that I was assistant to the program director and he asked me what I thought about Donahue, and I said something about the phone calls. You know, the calls he takes during the show?"

"I'm afraid I don't watch it very often. I’ve seen it a couple of times, but I didn't pay that much attention. Even Barbara doesn't watch it more than a couple of times a month. Not even once a week.”

"I'm glad somebody doesn't watch it. Anyway, he takes phone calls from viewers with questions, but the shows are taped, so I just said that I thought he was a little tied into his own market too much, that people watching the show might get frustrated that they couldn't call in. The thing is, though, he didn't want to take the show, he was over budget anyway, they were asking quite a bit for it, and he sort of wanted me to  tell him not to pick it up. When you've worked with a guy for three years, you know when he's trying to get you to tell him to do something and when he's trying to get you to tell him not to, you know what I mean? You must run into that sort of thing."

"Sure, all the time."

"Sure, everybody does. Part of my job was to make him feel good about his decisions. But the bottom line was that we turned it down and the independent picked it up and it's this monster hit, you know? Trish thinks the guy can walk on water, and she isn't the only one. So I get to be program director and I bought John Davidson, you know, the show that replaced Mike Douglas when that went under. Seemed like some of the same sort of thing, and I mentioned to Trish that, you know, something about not getting Donahue but picking up Davidson. And ever since then, she's been on my case about not buying Donahue when I had the chance. Which I never had. And she's really been on me about it since I told her I thought Donahue was kind of a dork anyway."

"I guess if she’s a big fan, that wasn’t the right thing to say.”

"Tell me about it. She thinks he walks on water. I'm not kidding." He leaned over and picked up a twig, then began snapping off inch-long pieces and flicking them into the air with his thumbnail. “But, anyway, it bothers me when she says that to people who don't know me that well and might not understand or something. When she makes it sound like I don't know how to do my job.”

"Well, I can understand that you wouldn't want to have people think that.” Ray smiled, mostly to himself. "If it makes you feel any better, Marty, I wasn't paying too much attention to the conversation anyway.”

"When you think about it, I'm being pretty stupid, I guess. I mean, you're just a name on a Christmas card, you know? If I had any sense, I wouldn't give a damn what you thought. Trish is the one who's known you guys for a million years. But still ... "

"You've got your professional pride. I can understand that.”

“lt's silly, though. We've been married for eight years, and I've seen you guys, what, three times? Let's be honest, Ray. The girls have this big thing about being college roommates and all that, and you dated Barbara then, so you’re in on it, but I don't have any connection with you guys at all."

Ray chuckled. "Maybe we should be self-conscious instead of you. We must sound pretty dumb when we start talking about the Olden Days."

"No, not at all, because we're here, you know, this big four day visit, highlight of the summer, and the stuff you guys did in college is the only thing that holds it together. If you didn't sit around and tell stories about what happened when you were at Magdalen, what would we talk about? What would we be doing here?"

"We're still friends. The fact that the three of us met in college isn't that important. It just happens to be that we spent that time together, so that's what we have to talk about. I know you must feel kind of left out. Actually, I thought you might like to come out here and let them carry on about it without us for awhile. To tell you the truth, I don't know half the people they talk about, either. I didn't meet Barbara until junior year, and, even then, I wasn’t living in the dorm with them.”

"Yeah, but at least when your name comes up, it's about you, you know? Last night, I think Trish said my name three times over dinner. Once was when she said we ran into that guy you all knew, the one with hair down to here and beads and bells and all, and now he's so clean-cut that Trish didn't know who he was when he came up to her on the street. Only I wasn't part of that story. I didn't know him before, and I don't know him now. We talked for five minutes on the street and they were going to get in touch, but of course they never did. End of story, and for my part, well, if she'd been walking the dog, she'd have said his name instead of mine. The second time she said my name was to say I ran over the neighbor’s kid’s bike, which is true. I backed over the bike. But she doesn't say I spent the weekend fixing it and that I felt really bad about it or anything. And that it wasn't that bad anyway, just the back wheel. And then she told you I screwed up and didn't buy Donahue, which doesn't happen to be true. I mean, I just don't know sometimes, Ray.”

"Barbara can be pretty hard on me, too, sometimes. It's just a thing married couples do. I tell stories where she doesn't come out looking too good, either. But it doesn't really mean anything. Might get a dirty look or a kick under the table once in awhile, but that kind of thing just happens. You shouldn't take it so seriously."

"It's different. I really envy you, Ray. You and Barbara are something special. How long have you been married, ten years?”

"Eleven."

"Right. But, I mean, I don't know how you do it, but you don't seem like you've been married for a long time. Sure, she told us about how you cut the lawn a different way each time and then rake it up a different direction, you know? But she made it sound kind of cute or something. She made it sound like a little quirk, but the kind of quirk that makes her love you more. Do you know what I'm trying to say?

"I thought she made me sound a little eccentric, but the thing is, she doesn't tell funny stories very well. She'd have made it sound a lot funnier if she was a better storyteller. Trish is a terrific storyteller. She's really a very funny person, and Barbara just isn't."

"Yeah, she's a scream. It's like being married to Joan Rivers." He reached the end of the twig and began to peel the bark from the remaining inch and a half. "Look, I'm sorry to be laying all this on you, Ray. It's just something I’ve been thinking about a lot. I don’t mean to sound like ..."

He dropped the twig and let the sentence fall with it.

"You want to talk, talk. I can listen. Not that I'm going to come up with any great advice, Marty. I'm an English prof, not a psychologist. But we're friends. Go ahead."

"No, I shouldn't be saying all this stupid stuff. This is supposed to be a nice visit to my wife's old roomie. It’s just, I don't know, maybe we should have come out before the meeting, when I was fresh and maybe I'd have been in a better mood. I'm not very good company, I'm afraid, and I'm sorry."

“Now you're being silly, Marty. I like having you around. I think everything's going just fine.”

"Yeah, yeah. Last night, when we were going to bed, Trish got all over me about being a wet blanket, bringing everyone down by just sulking around. But what am I supposed to do! Am I supposed to get into some discussion about something that happened in Milligan Hall?"

“Minihan.”

“See, I don't even know the names."

"You do so. You did that on purpose. After all these years, you can't tell me you don't know Minihan Hall."

"I thought you said you weren't a psychologist?" Marty laughed softly. “But you know what I mean. I figure if I sit there quietly, I’m doing about all I can do, right? Because all they ever talk about is college. And, when you think about it, what else could they talk about? What do they have in common besides that? Fifteen years ago they lived in the same room. Big deal. What is it about women, anyway?"

"Big question, Marty."

“Sure is. But look at us. What do I know? Local television and football. I don’t get the impression you care a whole lot about either of those things. What do you know? Literature and, I don't know, classical music or something. I don’t know anything about that stuff, but so what? We don't have much in common, but who cares? Our wives want to get together, it isn't going to kill us to sit around and talk for awhile, but four days? Four days? Thing I can't figure is, what can they talk about for four days? I mean, here's Barbara, tall and cool and smart as a whip, pretty, athletic, sings like a bird and she's got a professional job, right? Trish isn't any of those things. They didn't take the same classes, Barbara was a straight-A student while Trish barely scraped through, Barbara did all this activity business, choir and plays and politics and all. I don’t even know what Trish did with her spare time. Probably don't want to, either. But they shared a room in the dormitory. That's it. What the hell is the attraction? Why did we just come fifteen hundred miles? Does it make any sense to you?"

"They like each other. They’re friends. You don’t need an excuse to be friends, do you?"

"Sure you do. Guys do. Lookit, you say Barbara hardly ever watches Donahue, right? Trish never misses it. She makes dental appointments, does her shopping, schedules everything so she can be in front of the tube when Donahue comes on. Donahue gets up there with his innocent baby act day after day and she never catches on that he's either an idiot or a phony to listen to all those freako guests he books without becoming more tuned in to what's going on. Would Barbara let a phony dork like that bamboozle her? Trish thinks Donahue is a genius. She thinks he's this really brilliant guy. You know what? If somebody gets on Carson’s show and says ‘Horses are really smart', Johnny says, ‘Oh yeah? I'll bet they're not as smart as pigs. Pigs are really smart animals.' If somebody said that on Donahue, you know what he’d say? He’d say, “Wait, wait, wait a minute. What's a horse?' No lie, listen to him sometime.”

Ray laughed. “Come on, Marty, give the guy a break. It's just a difference in interviewing techniques."

"I know. But Carson assumes his audience knows what a horse is, and what a pig is, and maybe would like to hear something a little more interesting in the way of conversation. Donahue comes in with the assumption that his viewers are morons, so he acts stupid himself. And it is an act, because the guy makes millions. He really is a genius, but you can only tell that by looking at his ratings, not by listening to his interviews."

"Well, a lot of guys act like Farrah Fawcett Majors was the greatest actress since Sarah Bernhardt.”

"That I bought: Reruns of Charley's Angels. I ought to put it up against Donahue. We’d have murders in half the households in the market, fighting over the TV.

“The thing is, Trish watches a lot of television and Barbara doesn't. Is that such a big deal?"

“That’s not the point. It’s like women have to go to the bathroom together, you know? Why? What is all that stuff they do? You know, the singing business, where they pretend they're the Supremes or the Ronettes or whoever, and lip synch the music and work out these dance routines like they're on stage? I mean, come on, Ray! I didn't go to a college with dorms, I just drove in to class and then drove to my job, but did you and your roommate and your friends stand out in the halls pretending to be the Four Tops? Did you have stuffed animals on your beds? Did you put on your pajamas and go make fudge together? I don’t know what went on in those women's dorms, but it's like if everybody isn't your best friend, the whole damn world is going to come to an end! Tell me the men's dorms were like that!”

“There was some pretty silly stuff that went on."

“But who was doing it? The cool guys? Or the jerks? Did the guys you really respected, looked up to, you know, the student leaders, were they doing the silly stuff?”

"I guess not."

"Where’s your freshman roommate now? What’s he doing?”

"I haven’t got the slightest idea,” Ray admitted with a smile.

“Well, if he and his wife popped up for four days, what would you talk about with him? You’d be walking around whispering to Barbara, trying to figure out what they were doing here and when they were leaving."

"Listen, Marty, I enjoy having you guys here. Trish and Barbara are having a terrific time and that alone is enough to give me pleasure. And like you say, you and I get along. No, we don’t have much in common, but we get along. To tell you the truth, you're like a lot of neighbors I’ve had down the years. Talk about the rain, the crabgrass, and you don’t really care about it, but it's conversation. It's kind of nice. I’ll tell you something, Marty, I’d rather have you here than some of my relatives. No kidding.'"

"I appreciate that, Ray. I appreciate your saying that. But what you said about neighbors, that's the same thing. Everybody on our street has to be our friends. The women have decided that living on the same street makes you friends. We have parties at least once a month at somebody’s house, and nobody has anything in common except, uh, the same mailman or something. He doesn't get invited, either, because he doesn't live on our block. The guys all end up standing around with their drinks wishing they were anywhere else in the world, making polite conversation about crabgrass and football or some other garbage that nobody cares about, while the wives are all in the next room going at it like, well, you know, at least they don't dance and sing together, but it's that same ‘Aren’t we all having a marvelous time?' kind of thing. And then they come in to get a drink or refill a nutbowl or something, and it's 'Oh, all you guys do is talk about football, how horrible!' What are we supposed to be talking about, world hunger? And what are they doing that's so much better? Why do they put us through all that? What's the point?”

"Beats me. With us, it's a little different because we end up at faculty parties, and we all have the college in common. Most of the people around here are connected to the college somehow, so we do have something in common when we get together.”

"You're lucky. You're lucky in a lot of ways, Ray. The thing is, Trish gets so much pleasure out of making me look like an idiot, you know, with her funny stories and her snide remarks. If we get into an intelligent conversation at one of these things, she'll break in to tell me I say ‘you know' too much. Doesn't matter what else I might have been saying. I could say the greatest, most intelligent thing anyone’s said since Moses came down from the mountain, and all she’d pick up on is that I said 'you know' in the middle of it. Or stuff around the house. I fix things around the house all the time, but she doesn't notice the ninety-nine things that get fixed and work fine. The one thing, that one hundredth thing I can't get to work, oh, boy, that's big humor for the next six months. And it's not like she tells how I can usually fix things, but I screwed up this thing and it was funny. I could laugh at that. But she makes it sound like I can't fix things, like I mess up everything I touch. Or errands. I hate running errands for her. I tell her, ‘Look, just go yourself so you can get exactly what you want.’ But she sends me, and then it's the wrong size, or it has a little tiny dent or chip out of it, or I paid too much or it's the wrong brand or something. Next party, I can hear her in the next room talking about how I can't run a simple errand. And getting big laughs. I hear them laughing in the next room, I don't have to eavesdrop. I know what's happening, and that isn't paranoia, either. It's experience."

"Her sense of humor does have kind of a bite to it,” Ray allowed. "But everybody knows that, who knows her. I don't think people take those stories that seriously. They know she's clowning around, exaggerating."

“It's not that, Ray. For that matter, what do I care what some jerk down the street thinks? It does bother me, but ... "

He bent over to pick up another twig and began breaking it up as he had the other. “Here's the thing, Ray: She hangs around with all these people that she doesn't have anything in common with, except they lived together or down the block or whatever. Barbara is her best friend, and all they have in common is sharing a room in college. Well, I mean, I'm her husband. We've been married for eight years, two kids, dog, house. But we live together, too. Do you know what I’m saying, Ray? We live together.  Is that it? Am I just her new roommate? She doesn't seem to care who her friends are. She just makes friends with whoever she gets thrown in with. So where does that leave me?"

“Hey, Trish loves you. I've known Trish a long time, and she does love you, Marty.”

“Really? Is making babies at night any different to her than making fudge with the girls in the dorm? What do we have in common?"

Ray shrugged. "I don't even know what Barbara and I have in common, Marty, I sure couldn't try to say what you and Trish have in common. All I know is that my relationship with Barbara works, and works well. But I don't try to analyze it objectively. Love doesn't work that way."

Marty nodded and flicked away another section of twig.

"Funny thing is, if I’d told him to buy it, we'd still be living in an apartment. I mean, if he had gone ahead and done it on my say-so. That's the laugh. I told him what he wanted to hear and it turned out to be bad advice. So he got canned and I got his job. Big promotion, big raise, we bought a nice house. If I weren’t program director, we wouldn't have made this trip and we wouldn't be having this conversation at all. And she still gets to watch the damn program, you know, on the other station. It's not like she doesn't get to see it. But that's all I hear is that I didn’t buy Donahue. I've tried to tell her what my job really consists of, but she doesn't listen. I've tried to tell her it wasn’t my decision and how you can't just program your personal favorites and all that, but she doesn't want to understand it. It would ruin the joke. She wouldn't be able to ride me about it if she took the time to understand what really happened with that whole deal.”

“I hope you don't mind that I don't have anything very helpful to offer in the way of advice."

"I wouldn't expect you to. You're married to Barbara. She's not like that."

“She hits a nerve once in awhile. But when she does, I let her know about it. She doesn't mean to do it. Have you told Trish what you've been telling me?"

"I've tried. I told her one time that she hurt my feelings, but she acted like I was some kind of big baby about it. Couldn't take a joke, a little kidding. It was my fault, you know? I wasn't even looking for an apology from her, or some kind of, you know, whatever. She came down on me for it, though, and I didn't expect that. I don't think Barbara would do that to you.”

"I guess not. But Barbara, well, I’m pretty lucky."

"You can say that again. You know something, Ray, when I first met you guys, when I first met Barbara, the weekend we got married? It really scared me. I thought, ‘Wow, what am I getting myself into?' Because I'd never met anyone from Trish's college days, from Magdalen. And Barbara was just so pretty and classy and everything, that I started thinking maybe Trish was too good for me."

"I’ve always thought Barbara was too good for me,” Ray admitted. "I think you're supposed to feel that way."

"But not scared. I always thought Trish was kind of cute and smart and everything, and I was flattered that she liked me, and I knew her folks had a lot more money than my folks did. But when I met Barbara and the other girls who came out for the wedding, the ones from Magdalen, I started thinking she really was too good for me, in the scary sense of that. I mean, really too good for me. It's like, well, I know you don't watch too much TV, but do you ever see the old Bob Newhart shows?"

"Not too often. I’ve seen a couple. I know the basics, I guess."

“Well, on the show, there's this girl, Carol, and she marries this guy who's a real washout, just a total loser. Nobody can stand the guy. But everybody is nice to him because they like Carol and he’s her husband. They put up with this dork, and they're even nice to him, but only because they like his wife. That's what I started thinking was going to happen with Trish and me."

“Now, Marty, that just isn't the way it is. Forget it, man. It just isn't true.”

"It's true I felt that way, though. I don't anymore. I’ve got a good job where I get to make decisions, I have a staff under me, not much of one, but I do a little hiring and firing and motivating and all that. I make more money than my old man ever did and we live pretty well. And another thing is, people think I've got this wonderful job in an exciting industry. It’s great. I meet people from outside the industry and they think I have lunch with Harry Reasoner twice a week or something, you know? It's not really true, of course. Local TV, well, it might as well be a shoestore for all the romance. I’m just the guy who decides whether we should put ‘My Favorite Martian’ or ‘the Beverly Hillbillies’ on at four in the morning. But when I meet people, they think it’s really interesting, they're really impressed that I work in television. But if I'm with Trish, in about two minutes they hear this hilarious story about how I blew it on the Donahue thing. She gets her laugh and I look like an idiot all of a sudden.”

“I really think you ought to tell her all this," Ray insisted. "I don't think she's consciously trying to make you look like an idiot. She really does love you, Marty."

"I don't think she's trying to do it. She just does it. And that doesn't make a whole lot of difference, does it? Anyway, what I'm saying is this: If she just hung around with you and Barbara, I'd tell myself she had good taste and I'd be really flattered that she married me. But she hangs around with all these crazy neighbors of ours, you know? Her friendship with Barbara isn’t a question of her taste. It's just some clerk at Magdalen that put her name and Barbara's together on a room number. She had nothing to do with it. Her dad was a Maggie and he had the money to send his daughter to his old alma mater, that's all. She walks into her room the first day and there’s Barbara. I wish there was more to it than that, but there it is. And here we are leaning on your fence. You know what I'm saying?"

"I know what you're saying. I think you're wrong, Marty, but I can tell I'm not going to be able to convince you of that, and I feel stupid just telling you one more time to talk to Trish about it. But that's about the only thing I can think of to tell you."

"I wish it would do some good. I really do. I tell you, Ray, I’d do anything if I thought I could end up feeling like something other than just another one of her roommates. Anything. I might talk to her, you know, I might. If just once, she would just lay off long enough to let me say some of those things, maybe I could do it.”

He flicked away the last of the twig. "Anyway, here they come. Must be just about time to go in for dinner.”

Their wives were crossing the lawn, holding a glass in each hand. “We thought you might like to have your drinks out here," Barbara called out as they came near. “We'll even promise to stop talking about school if you'll let us join you."

"Actually, Ray, we thought we’d better get out here and rescue you," Trish laughed as she handed him a drink. "Marty has never understood that there are people in the world who don't want to be cornered for hours listening to his expert analysis of the last San Diego-Oakland game. I warned him before we got here that you're not much of a football fan. He hasn't bored you too much, has he?”

"We weren't discussing football," Ray said. “We were just out here, enjoying the weather and having a nice conversation in the fresh air. It really is a beautiful evening, isn't it?"

"See, Barbara? He's so polite!” Trish laughed, and her laughter tinkled out across the yard as she gave Ray's forearm an affectionate pat of the hand. “You can always count on Ray to be a perfect gentleman.”