Excerpt from Joy’s book, Charliy's
Web
Chapter 1
FROM: Irate Reader
TO: Charley@Charley'sWeb.com
SUBJECT: YOU ARE THE WORST COLUMNIST EVER!!!
Date: Mon. 22 Jan. 2007, 07:59:47-0500
Hey, Charley: Just a brief note to let you
know that aside from being THE WORST COLUMNIST WHO EVER
LIVED!!! you are quite possibly THE MOST SELF-ABSORBED WOMAN
ON THE PLANET!!! It's obvious from your photograph -- the
long, wavy, blond hair, the knowing glance from large,
downcast eyes, the subtle smirk on those no doubt Restylane-enhanced
lips -- that you think the sun rises and sets on your lovely
shoulders. Your insipid columns about shopping for the perfect
stilettos, searching for just the right shade of blush, and
coping with the demands of a new personal trainer have only
solidified my assessment. But what on earth would make you
think there is anyone who is even moderately interested in
learning about your latest foray into the world of the
sublimely shallow -- a Brazilian wax?!!! Before your graphic
and unnecessarily lurid description regarding the denuding of
your nether region in Sunday's paper -- (WEBB SITE, Sunday,
January 21) -- I actually had no idea there even was
such a thing, let alone that any grown woman -- I know from a
previous column that you celebrated your thirtieth birthday
last March -- would willingly consent to such a barbaric
procedure. I wonder how your poor father reacted when he read
about his Harvard-educated daughter infantilizing her body in
such a demeaning way. I wonder how your mother manages to hold
her head up in front of her friends with the constant public
airing of such private -- dare I say, pubic? -- matters. (At
least they have two other daughters to keep their spirits
buoyed!!! Kudos to Anne, incidentally, for the stunning
success of her latest novel, Remember Love -- number 9
on the New York Times bestseller list, and climbing!!!
And to Emily, who made such a lovely impression when she
subbed for Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America last
month!!!) Those are truly daughters to make any parent proud.
And speaking of daughters, what must your
eight-year-old think when she sees you parading around the
house in the nude, as I'm sure you do, judging from how much
you obviously enjoy exposing yourself in print!!! Not to
mention the teasing your five-year-old son will be subjected
to in his kindergarten class from other children whose parents
were no doubt similarly appalled by Sunday's column! Last
week's article about sex toys was bad enough!!
Can you not look beyond the tip of your pert
little nose -- courtesy of the best plastic surgery money can
buy, no doubt -- and consider the effect of such indiscreet
blathering on both these young innocents?! (Although what can
one expect from a woman who prides herself on never having
married either of her children's fathers?!!!)
I've had it up to here with your inane yapping
about all things Charley. (Thank you for not using your
given name of Charlotte. At least you spared us the
desecration of that most wonderful of children's books!) After
three years of reading -- and shaking my head in dismay!!! --
at your dimwitted musings, I have finally reached the end of
my rope. I would rather hang myself by my own still intact
pubic hairs than read one more word of your puerile prose, and
I can no longer justify supporting any newspaper that chooses
to publish it. I am therefore canceling my subscription to the
Palm Beach Post as of today.
I'm sure I speak for many disgusted and
disgruntled readers when I say, WHY CAN'T YOU JUST SHUT UP AND
GO AWAY?!!!!
Charley Webb sat staring at the angry letter on
her computer screen, not sure whether to laugh or cry. It wasn't
just that the letter was so nasty that had her feeling so
unsettled -- she'd received many that were worse over the years,
including several this very morning. Nor was it the almost
hysterical tone of today's letter. Again, she was used to reader
outrage. And it wasn't the wildly overused punctuation either.
Writers of angry e-mails tended to view their every sentence as
important and therefore worthy of capital letters, italics, and
multiple exclamation points. It wasn't even the personal nature
of the attack. Any woman who devoted a thousand words to her
recent Brazilian wax had to expect attacks of a personal nature.
Some -- including a few of her colleagues -- might even say she
invited them, that she prided herself on being provocative. She
got what she deserved, they might say.
They might even be right.
Charley shrugged. She was used to controversy
and criticism. She was used to being called incompetent and
lightweight, as well as a host of other more unflattering
epithets. She'd grown used to having her motives questioned, her
integrity impugned, and her looks dissected and disparaged. She
was also used to being told it was those same looks that had
gotten her a byline in the first place. Or that one of her more
famous sisters must have pulled some strings. Or that her
father, a highly esteemed professor of English literature at
Yale, had used his influence to get her the job.
She was used to being called a bad daughter, a
worse mother, a terrible role model. Such slurs usually rolled
off her "lovely shoulders." So what was it about this
particular e-mail that had her trapped between laughter and
tears? What about it made her feel so damn vulnerable?
Maybe she was still smarting from the fallout
from last week's column. Her neighbor, Lynn Moore, who lived
several doors away from Charley on a once-decrepit, now
verging-on-fashionable, small street in downtown West Palm, had
invited her to a so-called Passion Party, just before Christmas.
It turned out to be a variation of the old neighborhood
Tupperware party, except that instead of a variety of heavy-duty
plastic containers on display, there were vibrators and dildos.
Charley had had a wonderful time handling all the assorted objets,
and listening to the hyperbolic sales pitch of Passion's perky
representative -- "And this seemingly innocuous string of
beads, well, ladies, let me tell you, it's nothing short of
miraculous. Talk about multiple orgasms! This is truly the
Christmas gift that keeps on giving all year round!" --
then performed a neat evisceration of the evening in her column
the following month.
"How could you do this?" Lynn had
confronted Charley in person the day the column ran. She was
standing on the single step outside the front door of Charley's
tiny, two-bedroom bungalow. Charley's column was scrunched into
a tight ball in her clenched fist, her fingers curled around
Charley's paper throat. "I thought we were friends."
"We are friends," Charley had
protested, although, in truth, they were more acquaintances than
actual friends. Charley didn't have any actual friends.
"Then how could you do this?"
"I don't understand. What have I
done?"
"You don't understand?" Lynn had
repeated incredulously.
"You don't know what you've done? You
humiliated me, that's what you did. You made me look like a
sex-crazed fool. My husband is furious. My mother-in-law's in
tears. My daughter is beside herself with embarrassment. The
phone's been ringing off the hook all morning."
"But I didn't say it was you."
"You didn't have to. My hostess,"
Lynn recited from memory, "a fortyish brunette sporting
tight capri pants, two-inch crystal-studded nails, and
three-inch heels, lives in a charming white clapboard house
filled with fresh-cut flowers from her magnificent garden. A
large American flag waves proudly from the tiny, manicured front
lawn. Gee, I wonder who that could be."
"It could be anybody. I think you're being
overly sensitive."
"Oh, really? I'm being overly sensitive? I
invite you to a party, introduce you to my friends, pour you not
one, but several glasses of champagne..."
"For God's sake, Lynn. What did you
expect?" Charley interrupted, annoyed at having to defend
herself. "I'm a reporter. You know that. This sort of story
is right up my alley. Of course I'm going to write about it. You
knew that when you invited me over."
"I didn't invite you over as a
reporter."
"It's what I do," Charley reminded
her. "It's who I am."
"My mistake," Lynn said simply.
"I thought you were more."
There was a moment of awkward silence as Charley
struggled to keep Lynn's words from sinking in too deep.
"Sorry I disappointed you."
Lynn brushed off Charley's apology with a wave
of her two-inch nails. "But not sorry you wrote the column.
Right?" She began backing down the front walk.
"Lynn..."
"Oh, shut up."
WHY CAN'T YOU JUST SHUT UP AND GO AWAY?!!!!
Charley stared at her computer screen. Was it
possible Lynn Moore was her Irate Reader? Wary eyes skipped
across the words Irate Reader had written, searching for echoes
of Lynn's subtle southern drawl, finding none. The truth was
that Irate Reader could be anyone. In her thirty years on this
planet, three at this desk, Charley Webb had managed to ruffle
an awful lot of feathers. There were plenty of people who wished
she would just shut up and go away. "I thought you were
more," she repeated under her breath. How many others had
made the same mistake?
FROM: Charley Webb
T0: Irate Reader
SUBJECT: A reasoned response
DATE: Mon. 22 Jan. 2007 10:17:24-0800
Dear Irate:
Wow!!!! That was some letter!!!! (As you can
see, I, too, have an exclamation mark on my computer!!!!!)
Thanks for writing. It's always interesting to find out how
readers are responding to my columns, even when they aren't
always positive. Call me crazy, but I sensed you haven't been
too thrilled with my columns of late. I'm truly sorry about
that, but what is it they say? You can't please everybody all
the time? Well, I learned a long time ago that it's pointless
to try. Reading is such a subjective endeavor, and one
person's heaven is another person's hell. Clearly, as far as
you're concerned, I'm Satan incarnate!!!!!
Now, while I rigorously defend your right to
be wrong, I feel I must address some of your more egregious
utterances. (I'll see your indiscreet blathering and raise
you one egregious utterance!!!) First, I do not now, nor
have I ever, used Restylane to enhance my lips. My lips are
the lips I was born with, and while they're perfectly adequate
as far as lips go, I've never considered them to be
particularly noteworthy, or I probably would have written a
column about them by now. Also, I broke my nose when I was
seven, running into a brick wall to get away from my younger
brother, who was chasing me with a garter snake he'd found in
our backyard. The result has been a lifelong fear of reptiles
and a nose that veers slightly -- some might say charmingly --
to the left. I've never felt the slightest need to have it
fixed, although now that you've declared it "pert,"
I may have to reconsider.
I'm surprised you'd never heard of a Brazilian
wax before you read about it in my column, because I can
assure you they've been around for a long time. But once you
realized what I was writing about, and that such a topic was
an affront to your obviously delicate sensibilities -- a lot
of that going around these days -- why on earth did you
continue reading?!!! (Finally, I got to use the ?!!! It's
fun!!!!)
As for what my father thinks about his
Harvard-educated daughter infantilizing, (good word!)
herself in this way, I suspect he doesn't know -- cocooned as
he is in his ivory tower at Yale -- and if he does, he doesn't
care, since we haven't spoken in years. (Regular readers of
WEBB SITE should know this!!!) As for my mother, she doesn't
have to worry about holding her head up in front of her
friends, since, like me, she doesn't have any. (Possible
fodder for an upcoming Mother's Day column that you will,
unfortunately, miss.) My children, on the other hand, have
lots of friends, all of them happily oblivious to the inane
yapping of their mother, and since -- surprise! -- I actually don't
make a habit of parading around the house in the nude, they
haven't had to pass any unnecessary artistic judgments on the denuding
of my nether region. Wow -- that's quite a mouthful, even
in writing!!! As for my never having married either of my
children's fathers -- nor lived with them, I might add --
well, at least I haven't subjected them to the unpleasantness
of divorce, unlike both my more successful sisters, who have
four-and-a-half divorces between them -- Emily, three, and
Anne, one divorce, one recent separation. (Incidentally, I'll
pass on your congratulations to both of them for their recent,
much-deserved triumphs.)
As for my column, you should realize that I am
doing exactly the job I was hired to do. When I came to work
at the Palm Beach Post three years ago, the
editor-in-chief, Michael Duff, told me he was interested in
attracting a younger readership, and that he was especially
interested in what people my age were thinking and doing. In
short, unlike you, he was deeply interested in all things
Charley. What he wasn't interested in was objective
journalism. On the contrary, he wanted me to be totally
subjective -- to be honest and forthcoming and, hopefully,
controversial as well.
It would seem from all the e-mail I've
received this morning that I've succeeded. I'm sorry you
consider my prose puerile and that you're canceling your
subscription to our wonderful paper, but that is certainly
your prerogative. I will continue to do my job, commenting on
today's social scene, reporting on the morals and habits of
America's youth, and tackling important issues such as
wife-abuse and the proliferation of porn, alongside my
continuing forays into the world of the sublimely shallow.
Sorry you won't be along for the ride.
Sincerely, Charlotte Webb.
(Sorry. Couldn't resist.)
Charley's fingers hovered over the SEND
button for several seconds before moving to the DELETE
button and pressing it instead. She watched the words instantly
vanish from her screen as all around her, the busy sounds of
Monday morning began encroaching: phones ringing, keyboards
clicking, rain pounding against the floor-to-ceiling,
third-floor windows of the airy, four-storey building. She heard
her colleagues talking outside her tiny cubicle, inquiring
pleasantly about one another's weekend. She listened to their
friendly banter, full of laughter and harmless gossip, and
wondered briefly why no one had stopped by her desk to ask about
her weekend or congratulate her on her latest column. But
no one ever did.
It would have been easy to dismiss their
attitude as stemming from professional jealousy -- she knew most
of them considered her columns, and, by extension, her,
to be silly and inconsequential, and resented her high profile
-- but the truth was that her colleagues' ever-increasing
coldness was largely her own fault. Charley had purposefully
shunned their overtures when she first came to work at the Palm
Beach Post, thinking it was better, safer, to keep
relationships on a strictly professional level. (Just as she'd
never believed it was a good idea to get too chummy with the
neighbors. And boy, had she been right about that.) It wasn't
that she was unfriendly exactly, just a little aloof. It hadn't
taken her colleagues very long to get the message. Nobody liked
rejection, especially writers, who were already too used to
being rejected. Soon the casual invitations to dinner stopped,
along with the offers to tag along for a drink after work. Even
a polite "Hi. How's it going?" had stopped coming her
way.
Until this morning, she thought with a shudder,
recalling the obscene leer that senior editor Mitchell Johnson
had given her when she'd walked by his glassed-in office. Never
subtle to begin with, Mitch had stared directly at the crotch of
her Rock & Republic jeans and asked, "How's it growing?
Going. I meant going, not growing," he
corrected, as if his slip had been unintentional.
He thinks he knows me, Charley thought now,
leaning back in her brown leather chair and staring past the
dividing wall that separated her tiny space from the dozens of
other such cubicles occupying the editorial department's large
center core. The big room was divided into three main areas,
although the divisions were more imaginary than concrete. The
largest section was comprised of journalists who covered current
events and filed daily reports; a second section was reserved
for weekly and special-interest columnists such as herself; a
third area was for fact- checkers and secretarial staff. People
worked at their computers for hours on end, barking into
headphones, or balancing old-fashioned black receivers between
their shoulders and ears. There were stories to uncover and
follow, deadlines to be met, angles to be determined, statements
to be corroborated. Someone was always rushing in or out, asking
for advice, opinions, or help.
No one ever asked Charley for anything.
They think they know me, Charley thought. They
think because I write about Passion parties and Brazilian waxes,
that I'm a shallow twit, and they know everything about me.
They know nothing.
WHY CAN'T YOU JUST SHUT UP AND GO AWAY?!!!!
FROM: Charley Webb
TO: Irate Reader
SUBJECT : A reasoned response
DATE: Mon. 22 Jan. 2007 10:37:06-0800
Dear Irate: You're mean. Sincerely, Charley
Webb.
This time Charley did press the SEND
button, then waited while her computer confirmed the note had
indeed been forwarded. "Probably shouldn't have done
that," she muttered seconds later. It was never a good idea
to deliberately antagonize a reader. There were lots of powder
kegs out there just waiting for an excuse to explode. Should
have just ignored her, Charley thought, as her phone began
ringing. She reached over, picked it up. "Charley
Webb," she announced instead of hello.
"You're a worthless slut," the male
voice snarled. "Someone should gut you like a fish."
"Mother, is that you?" Charley asked,
then bit down on her tongue. Why hadn't she checked her caller
ID? And what had she just decided about not deliberately trying
to antagonize anyone? She should have just hung up, she
admonished herself as the phone went dead in her hand.
Immediately the phone rang again. Again she picked it up without
checking. "Mother?" she asked, unable to resist.
"How'd you know?" her mother replied.
Charley chuckled as she pictured the puzzled
expression on her mother's long, angular face. Elizabeth Webb
was fifty-five years old, with shoulder-length blue-black hair
that underlined the almost otherworldly whiteness of her skin.
She stood six feet one in her bare feet, and dressed in long,
flowing skirts that minimized the length of her legs and low-cut
blouses that maximized the size of her bosom. She was beautiful
by anyone's definition, as beautiful now as she'd been when she
was Charley's age and already the mother of four young children.
But Charley had few memories of this time, and fewer
photographs, her mother having disappeared from her life when
she was barely eight years old.
Elizabeth Webb had reappeared suddenly two years
ago, eager to renew contact with the offspring she'd abandoned
some twenty years earlier. Charley's sisters had chosen to
remain loyal to their father and refused to forgive the woman
who'd run off to Australia with, not another man, which might
have been forgivable, but another woman, which most assuredly
was not. Only Charley had been sufficiently curious -- spiteful,
her father would undoubtedly insist -- to agree to see her
again. Her brother, of course, continued to shun contact with
either of his parents.
"I just wanted you to know that I
thoroughly enjoyed your column yesterday," her mother was
saying in the quasi-Australian lilt that clung to the periphery
of each word. "I've always been very curious about that
sort of thing."
Charley nodded. Like mother, like daughter, she
couldn't help but think. "Thank you."
"I called you several times yesterday, but
you were out."
"You didn't leave a message."
"You know I hate those things," her
mother said.
Charley smiled. Having only recently settled in
Palm Beach after two decades of living in the outback, her
mother was terrified of all things remotely technical, and she
owned neither a computer nor a cell phone. Voice mail continued
to be a source of both wonder and frustration, while the
Internet was simply beyond her comprehension. "I drove into
Miami to see Bram," Charley told her.
Silence. Then, "How is your
brother?"
"I don't know. He wasn't at his apartment.
I waited for hours."
"Did he know you were coming?"
"He knew."
Another silence, this one longer than the first.
Then, "You think he's...?" Her mother's voice trailed
off.
"...Drinking and doing drugs?"
"Do you?"
"Maybe. I don't know."
"I worry so much about him."
"A little late for that, don't you
think?" The words were out of Charley's mouth before she
could stop them. "Sorry," she apologized immediately.
"That's all right," her mother
conceded. "I guess I deserved that."
"I didn't mean to be cruel."
"Of course you did," her mother said
without rancor. "It's what makes you such a good writer.
And your sister such a mediocre one," she couldn't help but
add.
"Mother..."
"Sorry, dear. I didn't mean to be
cruel," she said, borrowing Charley's words.
"Of course you did." Charley smiled,
felt her mother do the same. "Look, I better go."
"I thought maybe I could come over later,
see the children ..."
"Sounds fine." Absently, Charley
clicked open another e-mail.
FROM: A person of taste
TO: Charley@Charley'sWeb.com
SUBJECT: Perverts
Date: Mon. 22 Jan. 2007 10:40:05-0400
Dear Charley,
While I'm normally the kind of person who
believes in LIVE AND LET LIVE, your most recent column has
forced me to reconsider. Your previous column on sex toys was
bad enough, but this latest one is an affront to good
Christians everywhere. What a vile and disgusting pervert you
are. You deserve to BURN IN HELL. So DIE, BITCH, DIE,
and take your bastard children with you!
P.S.: I'd keep a very close eye on them if I
were you. You'd be horrified at what some people are capable
of.
Charley felt her breath freeze in her lungs.
"Mother, I have to go." She hung up the phone and
jumped to her feet, upending her chair as she raced from her
cubicle.
Copyright © 2008 by Joy Fielding, Inc.
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