It was a challenge being a female reporter in a country that treated women like third-class citizens. There were rules about whether we could swim in the hotel pool and where we could eat; at a Baskin-Robbins, women reporters were told the tables were reserved for men. Driving was out of the question.
Here’s the irony: While we were subjected to misogyny, the experience was a glass-ceiling-shattering, star-making opportunity, with women correspondents at the forefront in unprecedented ways. Thanks to her plummy-voiced, levelheaded explanations of conflicts in the Middle East, my former fellow neophyte at CNN Christiane Amanpour became a cable news supernova.
In my case, my Pentagon training served me well. I reported with authority on the war effort while injecting my stories with humanity. At 34, I was in the spotlight, getting prime placement on TODAY every morning. My career was on the F-16 track—full throttle, straight up.
18
Horny Toads
THINGS JUST WEREN’T working out with Deborah Norville. On top of residual bad feelings from the Jane Pauley debacle and the absence of chemistry, there was a major relatability problem. Viewers wanted to feel comfortable at that hour. They had morning breath, they were stumbling out of bed, they were wriggling into their pantyhose and trying to separate the damn Mr. Coffee filters. In that state, maybe they didn’t want to be greeted by relentless perfection. As a colleague once told me, “With Deborah, people feel like they need to get dressed before they turn on the TV.”
When Deborah took maternity leave, NBC asked me to fill in for her. The big job. Live interviews. Charming chitchat. A whole new level of scrutiny.
My college friend Kathleen Lobb, now working at a PR firm in New York, came to my room at the Essex House and played stylist. I’d throw on a jacket and kneel behind a chair so that the seat cut me off about where the bottom of the TV screen would in a close-up. “Scarf or no scarf?” I’d ask. “Is this jewelry too much?”
Meanwhile, nailing the mechanics of live television wasn’t easy—it’s like learning to juggle, recite “The Song of Hiawatha,” and tap-dance all at the same time. It means paying rapt attention to the person you’re interviewing while someone’s in your ear telling you to throw to a clip as the stage manager gives you time cues in a newfangled sign language （a crisp twist of the fist means “Wrap it up”; if it comes with a thrust, it means “Now”）， graciously thanking your guest, smoothly teasing the next segment, and effortlessly hitting the commercial break with seconds to spare. It was an art form that would take me months, if not years, to learn. Luckily I was in the presence of a master: Bryant was the Michelangelo of live broadcasting.
At least my sense of humor was fully developed. When Willard Scott was doing the weather from, believe it or not, a horny-toad convention somewhere, and threw back to the anchor desk, I piped in with “Hey, speaking of horny toads, Gene Shalit just walked into the studio.”
The director, Bucky Gunts, put the camera on Gene, who was hiding sheepishly behind a monitor. It was a daring and saucy thing to say, but I went for it and it worked—guffaws broke out in the studio. It reminded me of those times at the dinner table when I’d say something cheeky and my dad would call me “irrepressible” while my mom shook with laughter. Now it was paying off—the ratings jumped almost immediately.
And soon I was mastering the serious part of the job too. A month into Deborah’s leave, Stormin’ Norman gave me his first postwar interview, which helped us win a different kind of war: That half hour, TODAY beat GMA in the ratings.
All in all, life was going pretty swimmingly—except for one teeny, tiny thing: While I was in Dhahran, I didn’t get my period.
I’d confided to Wendy, who was there with CNN, that I had been feeling a little off. My breasts hurt, and I’d lost my appetite. She asked me if I could be pregnant.
Oh God…I hadn’t thought of that. Did they even have EPTs in Saudi Arabia? I wasn’t quite up to the reconnaissance that finding one might require.
When we got back to DC, Wendy came to my apartment carrying a brown paper bag; inside was the telltale pink box. I went to the bathroom and peed on the stick. Then we ate bologna sandwiches and waited for the results. A few minutes later, I looked—in the little round window, a plus sign.
I remembered a cool October morning in Maurertown—the smell of damp leaves in the air and a dozen eggs sitting by the stove, waiting to be freed from their cardboard compartments and fried up. Jay and I were so happy. We’d taken a walk down to the river, and when we saw a neighbor, we asked him to snap our picture. I still have it in a frame—Jay looking pensive and casual-chic, as always, wearing a dark denim coat with a corduroy collar; me in a sweater the color of merlot and a jean jacket, looking like an unmade bed. I’m pretty sure I hadn’t showered. I radiate a happy calm. If I’ve got the math right, I was about 12 hours pregnant.