Evening News

by Marly Swick

  Some days, like yesterday, she thought maybe they would make it. Other days she thought no way. No way in hell. One of the worst days was Trina’s birthday, last Tuesday, what would have been her second birthday. As the day approached, Giselle had felt her panic mounting. How did you celebrate a dead child’s birthday? She wasn’t sure Teddy would remember the date, but she knew there was no way that Dan was going to forget. She even went so far as to look up “Birthdays” in The Mourning Handbook, which she had filched from Dan’s bookcase. The author’s suggestions had ranged from bad to worse, from donating toys to a children’s hospital in your child’s name to releasing a helium balloon inscribed with your child’s name at the gravesite. Giselle threw out the book. Dan had found it in the trash and yelled at her about her attitude. He had ended up going to the cemetery without her.

  ***

  Teddy was eating his supper at the coffee table in front of the TV, watching old reruns of Kung Fu, when the landlord called about the house. The rent was fifty dollars a month over their upper limit, but ever since she’d stood on tiptoe and peeked in the back windows, she’d had this image of the three of them eating in the sunny breakfast nook, joking around like the old days, that seemed worth any amount of money. She made an appointment for them to see the house at seven o’clock. Then she called Dan again at his office. She knew he wouldn’t appreciate his evening’s work being interrupted, but he had to see the house. It would be snapped up right away, and she didn’t want to lose it. She had been tempted to tell the landlord on the phone that they would take it, but she was afraid of Dan’s reaction to such a major unilateral decision.

  This time his officemate, Lou Trujillo, answered the phone. He said that Dan had just run over to the union for a sandwich. She started to ask Lou to tell Dan to call her, then said, “No, tell him we’ll be by for him in half an hour.” It was already six o’clock and the university was more or less on the way to the house. She didn’t want to take any chances that he’d get caught up in his work and be late. Or forget.

  She took Teddy’s empty bowl and set it in the sink. Lately she had taken to making him ramen noodles every night, since she and Dan weren’t much interested in real meals. Teddy seemed content to eat his bowl of noodles in front of the TV. Before, when they used to all eat together, he hadn’t been allowed to turn on the television set during dinner.

  “You want a Popsicle?” she asked him.

  He nodded, engrossed in some conversation David Carradine was having with an old monk. She didn’t bother to ask him what flavor, which was just as well, since there turned out to be only one flavor left in the box.

  “We’ve got to go look at a house,” she told him as she handed him the Popsicle. It was lime, his least favorite. He ate the grape ones first, then the cherry, then the orange, and left the lime for last. “A really nice house I saw earlier today. You’ll like it.”

  He held the Talkboy to his lips, pressed the record button, and said, “I don’t want to go.” Then he played it back at slow speed. “I dooonnn’t waaannnt tooo gooo.” He sounded like a stroke victim.

  “Well, you’re going,” she said. “You can’t stay here alone. And we’re going to pick up Dan at his office.” She looked at her watch. “So put on your shoes, please.” When he didn’t make a move, she added, “Now.”

  Teddy grumbled to himself as he tied his sneakers. In order to free both hands, he set his Popsicle down on top of a magazine on the coffee table, the June issue of Harper’s, which Dan hadn’t even looked at yet. She snatched up the dripping Popsicle. “What’s wrong with you?” she sighed. “Go wash your face.”

  Teddy trudged back to the bathroom, not bothering to turn off the TV. As Giselle wiped off the magazine cover, all she felt was irritation. Then suddenly she remembered noticing Trina’s sticky handprints all over the sliding glass doors — just a day or two ago — when the bright sun hit the glass at a certain angle. Trina was gone, but there they were, like fossils — too precious to wipe away. There was no double standard quite like that for a living versus a dead child.

  “I’m sorry I snapped at you,” she said when he returned. He looked at her suspiciously and clicked off the remote control just as the phone rang. Chances were, it was Ed. She raced over and turned the volume down low before the message could start to play. If it was Ed, then Teddy would want to talk to him and sulk if he couldn’t. Before the accident Teddy could take or leave talking to his dad. The phone calls tended to be short and monosyllabic unless Teddy was really wound up about something in particular — a movie he’d just seen or some kid throwing up on the school bus or a soccer match his team had won. But now it was as if the phone calls from Ed were the high point of his life. Suddenly it was as if his dad were the only one in the world who was really on his team.

  Teddy frowned but refrained from making a comment. His face was cleaner, but his tongue was still a sickly shade of green.

  “We have to go,” she said, ushering him out to the garage. “It was probably just someone trying to sell us something.”

  ***

  During the ride to the campus, he read aloud into the Talkboy all the personalized license plates he saw whizzing by on the freeway: NU PONY, ISU4U, SHEGOES, XWIFE, GASHOG, DONT SIN, PEARL HARBOR SURVIVOR #472. He snickered to himself as they passed an old purple VW whose license plate said, A GRAPE. Then he played back the list over and over again at fast speed as they were walking to Dan’s office. He had wanted to stay in the car, but she refused to let him. The thought of him alone made her nervous. She didn’t have a clue what was going on in his mind these days.

  The campus was at its most peaceful, in between day and evening classes. It was no ivy-covered citadel, but she had always loved the feel of a college campus. One of her most vivid early memories was sitting with her father in the midst of a sloping green expanse on the KU campus, eating a picnic lunch her mother had packed. It was her father’s tenth reunion. Her mother had been too pregnant to make the trip, so her father had taken her along instead. Vonnie had a test and couldn’t take the day off from school. Giselle was only in the first grade, too young for tests, so she got to go. She had felt special being alone with her father, like a little wife. The campus was very hilly — the first place she had ever seen that wasn’t flat — and she had imagined coasting down the steep hills on her new two-wheel bike. Her father took her into the library, a huge stone building like a cathedral, hushed with sunlight streaming through the large windows. Standing there looking at the stacks of books, she felt a shivery thrill and didn’t know how she would ever make it through all those years before she was old enough to go to college, which she knew, suddenly, was where she really belonged.

  When they got to the English department, housed in an unprepossessing building, she hurried past Dr. Diller’s office, tugging her reluctant son down the corridor behind her. She had not talked to any of her professors since dropping their classes. The door to Dan’s office was ajar, but the office was empty. She hoped that Lou had remembered to give Dan her message. Lou’s desk was a blizzard of papers strewn in haphazard drifts. An old Venceremos poster of a clenched fist hung above his desk, the edges yellowed and curling. Dan’s desk was neat and organized. There was a smaller version of Trina’s portrait in the red velvet dress sitting on his desk, along with a photograph of Giselle with a hibiscus tucked behind one ear, her face flushed with sun and mai tais, taken in Hawaii on their honeymoon. There was no picture of Teddy, and nothing hanging on the wall above his desk — he didn’t like anything to distract him while he was composing at his computer. She noticed a scrap of paper lying on top of some papers weighted down by a stapler and thought it might be a note he’d left for her. She walked over and read it. Lunch today? J. It was written in lavender ink. The single initial, written with a feminine flourish, struck her as intimate. But before she could absorb the emotional impact of this discovery, her attention was snagged by an open book marked with a profusion of yellow sticky tabs. The Gun Control Debate.


  She flipped it open to one of the marked pages. The underlined phrases leaped out at her: “88 children’s deaths in California from 1977–83 . . . 24% of the cases the shooter was a sibling . . .” She picked up the book and held it closer. “70% of the cases the shooter was a boy aged ten to fourteen . . . 69% were shot in the head or neck; wounds to the thorax . . .” Jesus Christ. She flipped to the next page. “Serious long-term effects are not limited to those killed or injured. At least 52 of the 53 shooters in deaths inflicted by others were family members . . . They are almost certainly at increased risk for acute and chronic emotional and behavioral disturbance; to our knowledge, this hypothesis has not yet been evaluated.” No shit. You didn’t have to be Freud to figure that out, but still, seeing it in print, in black and white . . . Her hands shook as she bent over to retrieve a letter that had fallen out of the book onto the floor. It was typed on Doubleday letterhead. She skimmed it, her heart pounding out each word like an old daisy wheel printer:

  We are all very excited about Johnny’s Got Your Gun. While I agree that some discussion of the Brady Bill and the debate over gun control have a place in the book, it is important that you keep in mind that the personal, intimate account of your daughter’s death has to be the main focus of JGYG. Unfortunately, the times are such that people see these tragic events on the evening news with numbing frequency; your book will have the power to bring it closer to home, to make them feel as if they’ve lost their own son or daughter. Little Jennifer or Jason.

  The letter was signed by Annabel Dixon, senior editor. There was a P.S. that said, “Give Harvey a kiss for me.”

  She felt faint. She fell into the desk chair. Teddy stopped rearranging the pushpins in the little bulletin board outside the door and looked at her. Giselle dimly remembered some dinner conversation about a sister-in-law who worked for a publishing house in New York. Something about her dating someone famous, a painter or musician whom everyone but Giselle had heard of.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked, forgetting for once to use his Talkboy. “Is something wrong?”

  The sound of Teddy’s natural voice, young and timid, brought tears to her eyes. Then, as the shock turned to anger, she stood up. The confessional novel. Well, this was it, all right, the real thing. Forget Fitzgerald and Conrad. And here was the true irony: the author was too cowardly to confess that he was writing it. What was he planning to do? Wait until she stumbled across it in Barnes and Noble? Until she turned on Oprah? Of course it wasn’t enough that he just read everyone else’s book. No, of course not. He had to write his own book. All the other stuff was just research. She should have known. She should have seen it coming. He was an academic, after all, and he would deal with his loss academically. It put a new spin on “publish or perish.” How about “perish and publish”? Suddenly she felt stronger than she had in weeks. A mother bear ready to defend her cub. She ripped up the letter and scattered the pieces, like ashes, over his desk.

  “What are you doing?” Teddy asked, eyes wide with surprise.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go.” Her fist clamped onto his skinny arm above the elbow. As she steered him down the corridor, he protested that she was hurting him. Derek Jackson was just unlocking his office, juggling a cup of coffee and a briefcase in one hand as he fumbled with the key in the other. He was the most recent recruit, fresh from some Ivy League school. She had met him at a party, and he’d reminded her of an actor playing a college professor. She had the feeling that if she whisked off his horn-rimmed glasses and looked through them, they would be nonprescription, a prop. She was hoping he wouldn’t remember her, but he flashed her a big smile. “It’s Giselle, right?”

  She nodded and tried to smile. She wanted to get out of there before Dan got back. She didn’t want to confront him in public. And she knew he wouldn’t go off and leave his office open for more than a few minutes.

  “How’s it going?” he asked. She saw him flinch and knew that he’d just remembered about the accident and was kicking himself. “What’s that you got?” He pointed to Teddy’s Talkboy to change the subject.

  “It’s called a Talkboy Jr.,” Teddy said into the mouthpiece, then played it back at fast speed.

  “Hey, that’s cool.” Derek grinned. “Maybe I should use it for my lectures. Can I try it out?”

  “I’m afraid we’re late,” Giselle broke in. “Good to see you.” She gave Teddy a little shove forward. He glared at her but kept his mouth shut and his feet moving. They trotted back to the parking lot in silence.

  ***

  The car was hotter than hell. As she rolled down the windows, Teddy asked, “Are we still going to look at that house?”

  She had forgotten all about the house. She looked at her watch. The landlord would be waiting for them. “I don’t know,” she sighed. It suddenly seemed pointless. They weren’t going anywhere. Who was she kidding? “I think I’ll just drive to a pay phone and call the landlord and tell him something came up. Okay?”

  Teddy shrugged. Two students in an orange VW convertible sailed into the parking place next to them, blasting rock music from the car stereo. She turned the key in the ignition. Nothing. She checked to make sure the car was in park and tried again. Stone cold dead. She looked at the dashboard and saw the generator light. “Shit!” She pounded her fist on the dashboard. Teddy groaned. She started to cry with her face pressed against the steering wheel. A flimsy whimper that escalated into a loud gasping wail. She thought of her cousin Ruth saying that it was the little things, as if coping with her daughter’s death had sucked up all the patience and forbearance allotted for this lifetime. When the convertible driver suddenly switched off the motor and the music stopped, they looked over to see what all the racket was. But she was too far gone to care. Teddy slumped down low in his seat, mumbling into his Talkboy. The parking lot was filling up with students arriving for their seven o’clock classes.

  When the fit subsided, she grabbed a Kleenex from a box on the dashboard and blew her nose. “We have to call Triple A,” she told Teddy. “Have them send a tow truck.”

  “Are they going to tow the car away?” He looked mildly interested at the thought of witnessing this.

  “Probably.” She sighed. “And then we’ll need a ride home.” She cursed Los Angeles for having such lousy public transportation. The last thing she wanted to do was drag herself back to Dan’s office and ask him for a favor. She thought about calling a cab, even though it would cost a small fortune, but she didn’t have enough cash on her. Ellen was out of town, visiting the in-laws back East, and no one else she knew, except Lois, lived anywhere near them. She couldn’t even think of any other friends. Surely, before the accident, she’d had friends, hadn’t she? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d just gabbed on the phone. If her brother was around, she would have called him. But Todd was in Tokyo working on some new monster movie. He had been sending Teddy funny Japanese postcards of indoor beaches and ski slopes with strange bits of cultural lore on the back. On the last card he’d said you could rent dogs by the hour in Tokyo, since people thought dogs were relaxing but didn’t have the space to own one. Later she had heard Teddy on the phone with Ed joking about taking Beowulf (Dinky’s replacement, a scruffy malamute) to Tokyo and setting up their own Rent-A-Dog. She took out her wallet and flipped through the packet of credit cards, making certain the AAA card was there. And not expired. Thank God.

  “Come on,” she said to Teddy. “We’ve got to go back to Dan’s office.”

  “I want to wait here,” he spoke into the Talkboy. As he pressed the play button, she reached over and grabbed the gadget out of his hand and threw it out the car window onto the asphalt.

  He shouted, “Nooo!” and then scrambled out of the car to retrieve it, darting out in front of a Jeep, which screeched on its brakes just in time. She sat frozen for an instant and then leaped out after him. The Jeep’s driver, a middle-aged man, blasted his horn and shouted, “Jesus Christ, kid, watch where you’re
going!” Then he glared at Giselle and shook his head. She ignored him.

  Teddy’s lip was trembling. He wouldn’t look at her. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to lasso her arms around him in a hug. “I was just upset about the car not starting. I’ll get you another one. I promise.”

  He bucked away from her, slugging her in the stomach, kicking her shins with his sneakers. “Leave me alone, I hate you!” he yelled, pushing her away as he bent down to pick up the broken Talkboy. There were a couple of plastic shards lying on the ground; he tucked them into his pocket. When he pressed the buttons, nothing happened.

  She leaned against the side of the car and tried to think. She needed some time to cool off, Teddy needed some time to calm down, before they saw Dan. When she confronted him, she wanted to be in control. She wanted to make herself clear. She wanted to make him see just what a disaster this book would be, what an act of disloyalty. She looked at Teddy, who was watching a blind girl and a Seeing Eye dog make their way across campus, the girl’s cane tapping against the sidewalk. He looked as if he’d just lost his best friend.

  “Let’s go to the student union and have a Coke,” she said. “We’ll call Lois and see if she can give us a ride home.” She knew that Lois would leap at this opportunity to help. Maybe the cold war had lasted long enough. She knew that Lois was suffering, too; she could see it in her eyes on the few stiff occasions when they had bumped into each other at the grocery store or in the driveway by the mailboxes. She had lost the five pounds and then some, but she didn’t look good. Giselle had heard them fighting next door on a couple of occasions. One night Bill had roared off in his Corvette, taking the corner so fast that he plowed into the neighbor’s chain-link fence and broke a headlight. It was one of the few times in recent memory that she had seen Dan crack a spontaneous smile.