One To Watch(15)
FROM: Lauren Mathers <[email protected]>
TO: Bea Schumacher <[email protected]>
SUBJECT: RE: Contract and next steps
Bea! So thrilled contract and legal jargon is all squared (blech), attaching a few more things for you to look over—tentative production schedule, calendar of pre-prod meetings with camera, sound, makeup, wardrobe, PR, marketing, and I want to get you in a room with some of the other producers to give them a sense of what you’re like, what kind of men they should be scouting (can you tell us more about your type??), etc. Plus we’ve got a standard NDA for you to sign—please please PLEASE note that we are not announcing you as the next Main Squeeze until five days before air, so I just cannot impress upon you how careful we need to be to make sure the news doesn’t leak before then. This rollout is going to be spectacular, and I’ll frankly kill a man if that self-important motherfucker Reality Stefan scoops our mutual coming-out party. So please, take the NDA seriously!! (Sorry to be a shit about it, but you know. It’s for the good of the show!)
——Forwarded Message——
FROM: Bea Schumacher <[email protected]>
TO: Lauren Mathers <[email protected]>
SUBJECT: RE: Contract and next steps
Hey Lauren! This all looks good (I mean, overwhelming, but good!). Re: my type of men, smart and funny and kind are the most important things, everything else is optional. And diversity is obviously a big deal to me!! Body-type, race, background—I want these men to bring a new look to the show the same way I am.
NDA signed and attached—full disclosure, I already told my best friend Marin about the show, and assuming it’s okay to share with my family? Truly not worth the headaches if my mother hears about this from anyone but me. Thanks again, talk soon!
——Forwarded Message——
FROM: Lauren Mathers <[email protected]>
TO: Bea Schumacher <[email protected]>
SUBJECT: RE: Contract and next steps
You haven’t told your mom yet?? BEA! Call her right now—and btw will you send me her contact info? We’re def gonna need to shoot some b-roll with your parents and figure out which week works for you to bring the guys home to meet them.
“Real TV? Like actual TV? The kind we get?”
Bea’s entire family was gathered in front of her stepdad’s desktop computer in the second-floor office—her mom, stepdad, three brothers, their wives, and assorted nieces and nephews all jostling for position in front of the globular webcam affixed to the top of the monitor.
All three of Bea’s brothers got married in their mid-twenties, and with the arrival of Duncan and Julia’s new baby just a month ago, now all of them had children. Bea’s parents—Bob and Sue—were both elementary school teachers who absolutely adored kids, and Sue in particular wasn’t shy about letting Bea know that she was eager for her to follow in her brothers’ footsteps as quickly as possible. Sue strongly believed that Bea was standing in the way of her own future marital bliss; she’d once read a book on self-sabotage by an author named Abyssinia Stapleton that she now quoted at Bea with the same regularity that other people’s parents quoted scripture.
“Abyssinia says that when you sabotage yourself in love, you dig two graves.”
“Mom, that’s Confucius, and he wasn’t talking about love, he was talking about revenge.”
“No, Beatrice, it’s different! Abyssinia means the graves as a metaphor.”
“Confucius meant it as a metaphor, too, Mom.”
“One grave for you, and one for the spouse you’ll never find.”
“If I never find a spouse, why does he need a grave? Isn’t that just wasteful?”
“Beatrice, that’s why it’s a metaphor.”
Bea wasn’t worried that her family would disapprove of her going on Main Squeeze—if anything, she was nervous they’d get too excited. But she’d put off telling them for two weeks, and it was time to let the cat out of the bag. So that Sunday night, she saddled up to break the news via Skype at their family’s weekly Sunday dinner. Since her brothers and their families all lived in Ohio, they all showed up in person every Sunday, and Bea was always expected to join them for ten minutes of video chat—which could be a real headache if she was traveling in Europe or Asia. Even when she got annoyed, though, it meant a great deal to her that her family always wanted her to be included.
“So what’s the show?” Bea’s oldest brother, Jon, asked expectantly.
“It’s, uh … it’s Main Squeeze. You know. Main Squeeze?” Alone with her laptop and a glass of wine, Bea felt a pang of wishing she were with them. It was freezing in Ohio, so her stepdad, Bob, had probably made a big pot of chili, and the brothers would all watch football while the wives gossiped and crushed a few bottles of Cabernet.
“What, like Main Squeeze, the real one? The main one? Are you going to be a commentator or something?” Bea’s middle brother, Tim, loudly snapped his gum.
“No,” she corrected him. “I’m going to be the Main Squeeze. The person who dates twenty-five people and chooses a winner.”
The family was dumbstruck, looking back and forth at one another and Bea’s face on the monitor, letting out errant gasps of disbelieving laughter.