a few days ago, but now I really missed it.
I missed him.
My eyes started getting misty, but I sniffed back the emotion. No tears. If my grandmother saw tears, she’d probably fly to wherever Jackson was and drag him back here. The woman had been wanting me to be with a man for years. I would say that she wasn’t picky, but she actually was. And Jackson ticked all of her, and my, boxes.
“Hello, there Ms. Clarke. Nice to see you again.” Milton Hughes, who had been a doorman at my grandmother’s building since before I was born, held the door open for me.
“Hi, Milton.” I dug in my bag and pulled out four postcards and handed them to him. Milton had never been out of the state of New York, but he loved postcards. So, since I was a little girl, I’d brought him postcards from everywhere I’d visited. “Here ya go.”
His face lit up.
“It’s no place fancy.” I didn’t want him to get his hopes up. “Just small towns across America.”
“I love small towns!” He enthused as he helped me to the elevator and pressed the up button. When the doors opened, I walked inside. As I pressed the number eighteen and stepped back, he held up his hand. “Oh, and I saw you on the news and I thought, that’s my girl. You tell ’em.” Pride radiated from his face as the doors shut.
It made me feel good that people I cared about supported me in my decision to speak out. I tried not to think about the fact that Milton may or may not have seen the reason that I’d had to speak up in the first place.
My grandmother was waiting in her doorway with open arms and a glass of wine when the elevator stopped at her floor. She wore a floral silk robe, high heels, a bright red lip and not a hair was out of place. She was always “camera ready.”
She was beaming as she announced loudly into the hallway. “There she is! The woman of the hour! I’ve been getting calls all day for comments! The phone has been ringing off the hook, darling! What a glorious day!”
I didn’t quite share her enthusiasm. But any day that the press’s attention was focused on my grandmother was a good day in her book. She was firmly in the “the only bad publicity is no publicity” camp.
“Hi, Grandmother.” I kissed her on her cheek in greeting. “You look beautiful.”
“You look tired,” she replied before I even set my bags down.
“I am tired.” I’d wanted to go straight home and go to bed after my flight, but my grandmother had insisted that I come see her first.
“So, what is the plan?” She offered me a glass of wine that I gladly accepted before plopping down on her sofa.
“The plan?” The only plan I had was going home, going to bed, and staying there for as long as possible.
“Yes, the plan.” She walked across the room and back with a dramatic flair that only she could pull off. My grandmother lived her life on stage, even if that stage was her living room and there was only an audience of one. “Our first interview will obviously be Gayle King, and then after that we can—”
“Our first interview?” I cut her off and shook my head. “What are you talking about? I’m not giving any interviews.”
“Of course not darling.” She picked up her folding fan, opened it and began to flutter it in front of her face. “You aren’t giving any interviews. We are. I told you, the phone has been ringing off the hook. The offers are pouring in. This is our ‘me too’ moment. Gayle wants to focus on the generational differences of harassment in the industry. I mean, the stories I could tell. Don’t worry, darling, you’ll barely have to say a word.”
The same sense of dread, of déjà vu, that I’d felt when I’d woken up yesterday morning and found out that Gio was once again using me to get his five minutes of fame washed over me. My grandmother was pushing me into the spotlight, again. But this time, I had no plans of going.
“Grandmother, I don’t want a ‘me too’ moment. I’m not going to do any interviews—”
“You already have, darling. When you spoke to those reporters you caused quite a buzz. It was brilliant. Now all we have to do is—”
“Grandmother, you’re not listening to me!”
I’d never raised my voice