In-Person Interview—Faye Blanchet, Gina Ross, and Sally Schumacher #4
Faye: No, not everything. I still have my family, your support, my circle here. Just not my privacy. But like I said, when you factor in the counterstress of holding on to this secret—
Gina: You’re describing a balanced scale where those two have equal weight. I think that’s fantasy logic. Madeline, do you have a journalistic opinion here?
Madeline: Faye, earlier you mentioned a finite period of time. How are you defining that?
Faye: I’d guess…I don’t know, three to five years? Before everyone gets bored with the story and it all settles down?
Gina: Longer.
Madeline: I have to agree. It would almost certainly be longer. And even then, I don’t think you could expect your life to revert to what you’ve become accustomed to. It would quiet down, sure, but there would likely be a ripple effect. I want to be honest about that before…yeah.
Faye: One thing I will mention: I would prefer to reach out to certain people myself prior to publication. I’d rather they hear the full truth from my perspective rather than finding out from a headline pop-up. I don’t expect them to forgive me, necessarily, but I still think I owe them that much.
Sally: You thinkin’ about Sam, hon?
Faye: Kent, too. Maybe Stevie. My parents have passed. My brother…he should hear it from me first. But Sam was the first one to pop into my mind. It really would be nice to see him again.
Madeline: I have to ask…did you ever have any romantic feelings for Sam? Or was it really all one-sided, like he says?
Faye: Oh my gosh, is that what he thinks? I guess I can see why. No, it wasn’t one-sided at all. It was just complicated.
Early in our friendship, I thought I would wind up marrying Sam.
Trouble was, I met him when I was nineteen years old.
I wasn’t ready for a rest-of-my-life romance.
Still wasn’t ready when we moved to New York.
And then Bobby happened and derailed us until there was no possible way back to each other.
It’s funny. Looking back, I’ve had such a wonderful, rich life and a healthy, life-affirming love with Claude, and I miss him desperately, but I still feel some ruefulness when it comes to Sam.
He’s been married for ages, hasn’t he? So obviously it all worked out the way it was meant to, just with a period of drama to punctuate it.
Gina: Sam’s divorced.
Sally: A year, it’s been, I think.
Faye: I’m sorry to hear that.
[Gina smirks. Sally kicks her under the table.]
Now, in terms of Bobby finding out. That is something I’d like to find a way to buffer myself from. I don’t want to talk to him. He’s not going to take it well. He’ll find it…mortifying.
Madeline: The complete story does not shine a very positive light on him. And he seems to thrive on a tightly controlled personal narrative.
Sally: This could destroy his reputation.
Gina: Least that’s one silver lining.
Sally: Yes and no. I worry what his response to that might be.
Faye: I guess that’s something I can prepare for but not necessarily prevent. I mean, it’s done, right? I’ve met this lovely reporter. It’s up to her now.
Madeline: I guess it is. But let me ask directly: If you got to choose, would you rather the general public continue to believe you’re dead?
Faye: Yes. But as I said, it’s not my call. You figured it out. You would have landed on the correct theory whether you’d met me in person or not, and presumably gone to press with it. So now the ball is in your court.
Gina: I’m gonna interject here—shocking, I know.
Madeline, at the beginning of all this, you set out to write a nuanced, incisive article about the toxic patriarchy in comedy.
I don’t know, color me na?ve, but I bought into it.
I guess everybody’s got to make a living, but what happened to your feminist high horse?
Did it run off? I’m starting to miss it.
Madeline: Didn’t you tell me the most feminist thing you can do is what’s best for yourself?
[Gina throws up her hands.]
Faye: Hang on a second, Gina. Let me just say something.
Madeline, Gina’s been calling me throughout your interviews, keeping me apprised in real time.
And I did feel compelled by your pitch. It made me examine aspects of my young adulthood that I hadn’t looked at for a long time, maybe in a different light.
So I’ve got to ask—what drew you to this story?
You mentioned you’re a comedian yourself?
Madeline: A failed one. I guess I’ve always grappled with what it means to be not just a woman in comedy as a field but simply a funny woman?
When you’re talking about humor, that’s a form of intelligence, a point of view, personal autonomy, and these are things that women still have to fight to justify. Like, I find that on dates, when the guy says, “You’re really funny,” it’s not a compliment. It’s like, “Check, please.”
I guess the experience of trying and failing professionally has made me feel all the more in awe of women who’ve made it, put up with all those obstacles, and managed to break new ground in a field that’s still so male-dominated. But I’ve always wondered what the personal cost of that is.
And in terms of why you? Well…you’ve always been my favorite.
Gina: I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.
Madeline: Do you ever miss it, Faye? Not the competitive aspect of comedy, obviously. The creative side.
Faye: A little. But not enough to want to do it again. I don’t miss academia either, by the way. I’m happily retired.
Gina: We’re talking around this and through this. Are you still planning to write this, Madeline?
Madeline: I’m not tossing out the article, if that’s what you’re asking. I’m writing something.
Gina: Okay. Can you be more specific?
[And this is it. Time to choose.]
Gina: [Her jaw clenches.] Cohen?
Madeline: Listen. My ego is incredibly gratified by the fact that I’ve correctly solved a mystery. But ultimately—brace yourself, Gina—I agree with you. I don’t think anything from the night of Faye’s disappearance onward is relevant to the article I set out to write.
Gina: [She smacks the table.] Attagirl.
Sally: Slow down. What are we saying here?
Madeline: The forty-year-old cold case? I’m not gonna touch that. A story about the toxic culture of comedy isn’t going to land me my first cover byline, but…I’m okay with that. You’ve made a beautiful life here. I’m not prepared to blow that up.
[Faye reaches out across the table to grip my hand and lets out a slow breath.]
Gina: How ’bout it, Faye? Can you handle the counterstress of holding on to this secret a little while longer?
Faye: I mean, just talking about it now is helping. Madeline, you’ve got this look—
[She mirrors me, wide-eyed, clenching my glass of water like a microphone. Spot-on imitation.]
As if you have a dozen follow-up questions piling up in your brain.
Madeline: I do! They all fall under the category of off the record, though. Hang on a sec, I’m just going to turn this—
[End of transcript]