Skinnydipping (48 page)

Crisp fall air outside, and
the leaves in Central Park just starting to turn. It was the middle of October, and I felt more deeply content than I had in years, as Harris and Muffin and I sat together in my warm apartment to watch the premiere of
Domestic Goddess
with baked ziti in the oven and a bottle of wine on the coffee table.

None of my friends could believe I hadn’t been allowed to see the show yet, but I hadn’t even had a sneak preview, and I was dying to see it! The week before it aired, it was all I thought about. Harris and I discussed it endlessly: Did I want to invite people over? Was it premature for them to meet him? Should I invite the girls over and not watch it with him? But no, we had to watch it together! Finally, I decided I would be so incredibly nervous and wound up, I was better off just watching it with Harris and Muffin and a bottle of wine.

I couldn’t wait to see what the producers had made out of the thousands of hours of footage they must have had from our sixty-day imprisonment—and I hoped they didn’t make me look bad! The network had bombarded the television with ads promoting the show for the last few weeks, with tantalizing clips, but not enough to really tell anything. There was one clip of Shari and me whispering, another of Andy and me acting silly in the Loft, and one of me leaning out the hot dog truck window yelling, “What up, dog?” but everything was so brief, it was hard to discern what the show would be like.

And Harris and I couldn’t help asking each other, again and again: Had Sybil seen it yet? Did she know about us? She hadn’t said a word to him, but that didn’t mean she didn’t know. It was all a waiting game, but finally, the evening arrived.

Harris sat down next to me, wine glass in hand. “Are you ready?” he said.

“I hope so!” I said, feeling both eager and terrified.

My phone vibrated. It was a text from Perry, watching the show in L.A.:
It’s really happening! I can’t wait to see you on TV!

The music started. “Look!” I said to Harris. “There’s your house!”

As dramatic music swelled, the camera panned over Sybil’s property: inside shots of the magnificent kitchen, the charming sitting rooms, the butler’s pantry, the orchard, the gardens, and tree-lined drive. And then there was Sybil, standing in her kitchen.

“They say home is where the heart is, but running a home with skill and proficiency isn’t something you do in your spare time. It’s a full-time job,” she said, in her curt and sensible way. “That is, if you want to be …”—quick pulsing shots of Sybil stirring something in a soup pot, arranging flowers, picking a tomato, brushing her dog, and standing at the head of a conference room table in a suit—“a Domestic Goddess.” A pulsing beat kicked in then … shots of New York, of Sybil’s building, of her offices.

My phone vibrated again, this time from Victoria:
Sybil’s so full of it!

“There you are!” said Harris, as they showed me getting out of the car.

“They didn’t use the part where I stared directly at the camera like a moron,” I said.

You look so powerful! And nervous!
said a text from Bronwyn.

They showed other contestants arriving, and all of us sitting in the conference room, as Sybil’s voiceover explained how the competition would work. Shari and I were whispering together and giggling. It made me sad. Harris took my hand and squeezed.

That bitch
, said a text from Perry. I’d told her all about Shari during a long catch-up phone conversation.

They showed the moment when Ian McGinnis revealed that he knew me, and Sybil’s angry glare. “She did
not
like that,” Harris said.

Oh my God, I remember him!
A text from Jeannie, also watching from L.A.
Thank God you didn’t sleep with him!

“She didn’t like that I knew him, or that she didn’t know about it first?” I said.

“That you knew him at all,” Harris said. “She was ready to cut you right from the start. I remember her talking about it, before I knew it was you. You’re supposed to be below her, not hanging with her peeps.”

“Or sleeping with her son.”

“Yeah… let’s hope she doesn’t find out about that one for a while,” he said.

“Because you’re ashamed of me?” I said, half serious.

“Because we want you to
win
,” he said.

“There’s Chaz!” I said. “I miss him. But he hated it there.”

They showed a long segment of Chaz and me making the pink lemonade mojito, then shamelessly swilling it.

I remember that drink!!!
A text from Brooke. I wondered if she was watching the show with my father.

“They’re using a lot of clips of you,” he said. “Probably because you’re so cute and funny.”

“You just notice my clips because you love me,” I said.

“That must be it,” he agreed.

And there I was again, in one of the interview clips: “So, everybody’s still working on their tasks, and Chaz and I are boozing it up,” I said to the camera. It was strange to watch myself on television. “I’m sure Sybil would be so impressed with our behavior. Hey, Shybil,” I slurred from the TV screen, pretending to be drunk, “Why don’t you come have a little drinky with us!”

Harris laughed. “That’s my girl,” he said.

They showed a clip of Shari ordering around Jodi Sue, demanding she place the flowers on the cupcakes in a certain way.

We hate Shari!
said a text from Victoria.

“They’re making Shari look horrible,” I said. “Was she that obnoxious?”

“I thought she was pretty obnoxious,” said Harris. “But not as insufferable as that crazy Katie woman with her astrology fetish.”

“She was just certifiably insane,” I said.

“Or Nadine.”

“You mean, Your Excellency, Queen Nadine?”

Finally, the closing credits rolled. “It’s weird to see how they put it together and how it looks compared to how it really was,” I said. “It was so much more stressful and grueling. They make it look almost fun.”

“I wonder how my mother thinks it went,” Harris mused. “She comes across as pretty cold.”

“In person, too,” I said. “No offense to your mother.”

“None taken,” Harris said. “She’s not exactly the warm-and-fuzzy type.”

The next day, my world
turned upside down. First, the phone rang at eight a.m.

“Faith Brightstone? This is Cathy Tower from Ovation Network. How are you this morning?”

“Fine,” I said, suspiciously. What did they want from me now? I was in the kitchen making coffee, holding the phone against my ear with my shoulder.

“Great,” she said. “Hey, I’m just giving you a call because our website has been flooded with requests for the pink lemonade mojito recipe. We would like to offer you the chance to write a note to your fans along with the recipe, which we will post on our website.”

It took a minute for this to sink in. “Fans?” I said.

“Yes, fans. You’ve got a lot of them, and they want your recipe.”

“I could do that,” I said.

“Do you think you could have it to me by this afternoon? We want to take advantage of the momentum.”

“Of course,” I said. It was another challenge.

I sat down at my computer and thought for a minute. Then I checked my e-mail.

I had more than three hundred messages.

Dear Faith: You don’t know me, but I just wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed you on the show last night.

Dear Faith Brightstone: You are hilarious! My fave on the show. Is this really your e-mail?

Dear Ms. Brightstone: You were wonderful on Domestic Goddess. I hope you win!

Dear Faith: I love you! I can totally relate to you. You remind me of me.

Dear Faith Brightstone: Your pink lemonade mojito looked so delicious. Can you please send me the recipe?

Dear Faith: Watch out, I think Sybil’s got it in for you! You totally should have won that challenge.

And it went on and on like this. Some were long, people sending me their whole life stories. Others were more bursts of encouragement, but they all said some version of the same thing: We liked you!

“Harris, quick, come look at this!” He came out of the bedroom in his pajama bottoms and peered at the computer over my shoulder, rubbing his eyes. “How did all these people find my e-mail address?”

“Wow!” he said. “It looks like you have fans.”

“Ovation wants my Have Faith Pink Lemonade Mojito recipe.”

“Do you own the rights to it?” he said.

“I think so,” I said.

“Let’s be sure,” he said, always the lawyer. “Before you hand it over.”

It was a strange feeling. People all over the country knew who I was, and not only that, they were motivated to reach out to me. I decided to check Facebook. I had hundreds of posts!

Faith, you’re the best!

Love u on Domestic Goddess!

Rooting for u!

You crack me up—LMFAO during all your scenes!

Your drink was the best! Wish I had the recipe on my ePhone right now!

Who needs cupcakes? We want cocktails!

Having a mojito in your honor, wish it was pink!

You and that geezer Ian? Seriously? Girl, you can do better.

If we could vote I would vote for u!

Holy shit balls, this was crazy! And just the beginning. The e-mails and Facebook messages doubled with each passing episode, and the network began to send me huge packets of fan mail. The reports were that the ratings were high, and polls about each character showed me running as extremely popular. The fan mail confirmed it. “America loves you!” as Harris put it.

It was all too strange to comprehend. I began to get calls to appear on morning shows, news programs, afternoon talk shows, radio interviews.

After the second episode, where Harris and I had our exchange in the craft room, the letters and e-mails and phone calls exploded, and I had to unlist my phone number. Victoria, who called me the minute every episode was over, was practically screaming at me over the phone. “Is it Harry Jansen? Tell me the guy you’ve been seeing is Harry Jansen. You guys have
chemistry
!”

“You’ll know soon enough,” I said.

“Damn it, Faith! I’m not a patient woman!” she said.

The entertainment shows kept bringing up the amazing reappearance of Harry Jansen, and speculating on his relationship with
Domestic Goddess
fan favorite Faith Brightstone: “Are they or aren’t they?” they all asked.

“We are now,” Harris said, with a laugh. I laughed, too, but I was worried. Surely, Sybil was aware of all this. I felt I’d finally earned her respect during the show, but what did she think of me, now that the whole world was speculating about my relationship with her son, whom she was so sure belonged to someone else?

And sure enough, the network was savvy enough to run everything
they had taped at Sybil Hunter’s house. It was a ratings bonanza. The viewers thought I was hilarious, and they were rapt by the now not-so-private heart-to-heart I’d had with Harris there.

“Shit, Harris, what are we going to do?”

“She doesn’t know we’re involved now,” he said. “She asked me about it …”

“What? She asked you? What did she say?”

“She asked me if I was still in touch with you.”

“What did you say?”

“I kind of implied we weren’t.”

I wasn’t sure whether to be offended or relieved.

“Am I off the show?”

“Are you kidding?” Harris said. “The network isn’t going to allow that, no matter how powerful my mother thinks she is. You’re making them millions.”

Watching the episodes, I saw
things I never knew about during the filming, like what other people said about me when I wasn’t in the room. And I began to see that I’d been duped by Shari all along. In her OTFs and interviews, or when interacting with the other contestants, she said things like “I don’t think Faith is going to make it much further,” or “If someone has to go, it should probably be Faith,” or “If they ask you, I would advise you to say what you really think about Faith,” or “I only wish I could tell you what Faith Brightstone just told
me
!” How could I have been so blind?

“She just went for your weak spot, like a jackal,” Harris said. “She could tell you needed someone to talk to. Forget her. Forget them all.”

“I’m going to have to face them all in a few weeks,” I said. “So I can’t exactly forget them. And at some point, they’re going to find out that you and I are actually together.”

“Let’s worry about that when the time comes,” Harris said, pulling me into his chest and hugging me.

The finale was three weeks away, and I was getting more and more
anxious. Every day, I played over the last challenge in my mind—everything that happened at my benefit carnival, and everything that might have happened at Shari’s baby shower. What had Sybil said about me behind closed doors, to Ian and Alice and Ruby Prasad? I imagined Alice defending me, Ian defending me. I imagined Ruby arguing that I should be cut, and Sybil nodding and smiling with that little devious knowing smile she had. If she had even an inkling that I was with her son, all the respect I’d earned from her would most certainly become a thing of the past. I would become her enemy. Would she really want me to host a show on her network, even if she secretly thought I was the best choice? No way. Even without the Harris factor, the more I knew her and watched her and heard about her from Harris, the more I suspected we would clash too much. I was no Sybil Hunter clone, and if that’s what she wanted …