Lorrie, you misunderstand me, for I see the real woman (Maria) behind the ferret mask. I know that deep down, despite the legions of adoring (mostly male) fans, despite the great wealth that her marriage into the Steinberg clan has brought, there are desultory moments when she wishes she were still a nobody, able to take a lingering bubble bath without the interruption of a cell phone. She thinks of simpler times, of the days when she still lived at her parents' place in Queens, of those early June days when the chalk-blue sky at Rockaway seemed to melt into the harbor, when all of her dreams were still dreams.
The ferret is just a character that she plays on TV, in a miniseries based on a true story - a fanatical bull triumphs time and again by dint of dumb luck and federal intervention - and like everything else on television, it is an illusion. She resents having to wear the ferret mask, yet it has brought her all of the things that she longed for years ago, before she compromised.
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