Sellevision - Augusten Burroughs [59]
As it turned out, Debby had in fact been stalked. It was 1977, and “You Light Up My Life” was the number-one song in America for the ninth straight week. Debby’s life was a dream. Until, as she told Peggy Jean, the nightmare began. Through a series of terrifying letters, her stalker made threats of unspeakable rudeness. Somehow, the stalker even obtained Debby’s home telephone number and repeatedly called, swearing into the phone and singing a perverted version of Debby’s hit single that confused and frightened Debby’s broken-English-speaking maid. Poor Nellie quit, fearing the phone calls were from immigration officials who were going to tell her they had scored her test wrong and she was now going to be deported. “Alone and forced to answer the telephone myself, I suddenly smartened up,” she told Peggy Jean. By involving the local authorities, and by virtue of her celebrity, the stalker’s identity was revealed to be a harmless fourteen-year-old boy in Pasadena with a cleft palate and little parental supervision. And although she had never actually been in any real danger, Debby had learned a very important lesson. She would never again play the role of victim.
Facts were facts: The Smythes’ home telephone number was unpublished. All articles of mail sent to Sellevision hosts were now X rayed. And Peggy Jean’s address was known only to friends, coworkers and relatives. In truth, E-mail was the only way this Zoe person had of contacting Peggy Jean. And the odds were that in real life, this Zoe person was a confused, lonely, and sad individual who had, for whatever reason, focused on Peggy Jean. Debby even suggested that it could quite possibly be an adolescent girl who was suffering from a distorted self-image and was projecting her own fears and insecurities onto the celebrity host. Debby had been quite clear with her instructions: “Ignore her E-mails, and eventually they’ll go away.” She had told Peggy Jean that “a stalker is like a fire; if you stop feeding it wood, the fire eventually dies out.”
As for taking Zoe’s personal comments to heart, Debby had laughed, saying, “Peggy Jean, if I listened to every terrible thing people have told me over the years, I would have just buried my head in the sand long ago.”
Even the crucified rat didn’t worry Debby. “It’s time for a little tough love, Peggy. You’re a celebrity; that’s what happens. People have sent me used underwear, bags of fingernail clippings—you name it. What you do is you throw it away and move on.”
How foolish Peggy Jean had been to let this confused person interfere not just with her own self-image, but even her marriage. Tonight, she had decided, she would show her husband not only how much she loved him, but how much she desired to please him, and how confident she was in her own femininity. Tonight, Peggy Jean would get on top.
Beginning to feel a bit like a prune from the long bath, Peggy Jean climbed from the tub and gently towel-dried, using a plush England’s Rose Palace Collection bath sheet.
Wearing her pink robe and kitty-kitty slippers, she walked into the kitchen and mixed herself a gin and tonic, because she’d read that the quinine in tonic water was actually healthful. Just as she was about to take the health drink and the latest copy of Soap Opera Digest into the living room to catch up on her reading, the telephone rang.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Peggy, it’s Tina from next door.”
“Well hello, Tina. How are you?”
“Listen, Peggy. I don’t want to alarm you or anything, but I’m looking out my window and it seems like one of the neighborhood kids has played a dirty little trick on you.”
“A dirty little trick?” Peggy Jean asked, confused.
“Well, maybe you should just go and look for yourself.”
“Tina, what is it, has somebody knocked over the mailbox or something?”
“Not exactly—look, Peggy Jean, I really think you should just open your front door and take a look.”
“Well, all right, but I can’t imagine any of the boys’ friends playing a prank. But I’ll go see for myself. Thanks for letting me know.”
Peggy Jean