by Jan Burke
I recognized the voices — O’Connor and Mark Baker. My first fears were allayed when neither of them tried the stall door. Then I realized what they were talking about.
“Why are you so down on her?” Mark Baker said.
“Because she’s not much of a reporter.”
“Man, that’s cold.”
“I’m going to ask Helen if she ever really taught her.”
“You think she lied in her interview?”
There was a pause, then O’Connor said, “No, I doubt that. But you’ll never convince me that Helen had much influence on anyone who turned in a half-assed story like the one Kelly turned in yesterday. And that wasn’t the first weak piece she’s filed. She doesn’t put any effort into anything. She just does the minimum. The worst part is, she’s giving every man who thinks we ought to have an all-male newsroom all the ammunition he needs for his arguments. She’s a sorry excuse for a reporter, and she’s going to make it more difficult for any other woman who wants the job.”
“I think you’re being too hard on her.” Mark laughed, a little uneasily. “C’mon, man, you have to at least admire her guts. She’s been taking shit from almost every dude in the newsroom.”
“And giving it back,” O’Connor said as they moved toward the door. “What a mouth she has on her. Who knows? Maybe Wrigley asked her to talk dirty to him…”
The door swung shut and I couldn’t hear any of his other complaints or innuendoes.
I waited until I stopped shaking, or at least didn’t shake quite so much. I went to the sink and washed my hands and face. At that point, I didn’t care if Wrigley himself walked in on me.
Just about anyone else on the news staff could have said the same things about me, and I would have shrugged it off. But O’Connor, the man whose work made me want to be a reporter, thought I was lazy, foul-mouthed, and had slept my way into a job.
I lived past the initial few seconds when I felt an urge to cry. That, I decided, would really undermine any chance I had at surviving in the newsroom.
Close on the heels of this devastation was rage.
I took a deep breath, turned around, and marched out of the men’s room.
In retrospect, I’m glad only two people saw me at that moment, and that of any two it could have been, it happened to be Mark Baker and O’Connor.
I considered letting O’Connor hear just how foul-mouthed I could be, and telling him I learned all those words from his mother. Instead, I walked up to them, looked only at Mark, and said, “Thank you.” Out of the corner of my eye, I saw O’Connor’s suddenly bright red face. I heard him call my name as I strolled out of the newsroom. I kept walking.
The moment I was sure I was out of sight, I scurried like a rabbit through the warren of corridors to features. Lydia was still there, signing off on the last of her pages for Sunday’s paper, which would be printed on Friday.
“Come with me into the women’s room,” I said. “Hurry.”
She looked puzzled, but followed.
“Are you okay?” she asked. “You’re kind of pale.”
“I need a favor,” I said.
“Okay, what?”
“Would you please get my purse from my desk? I just made a grand exit, and going back after it will ruin the effect.”
“You quit?” she asked in dismay.
“No. Not yet. Get the purse and I’ll buy you a drink…. Not at the Press Club,” I added hastily. “How about the Stowaway?”
“All right.” She started to leave, then said, “Why did you drag me into the women’s room to ask me this?”
“I might go into the men’s room, but I don’t think O’Connor will go into the ladies’.”
“What?”
“Long story, which I’ll tell you over that drink.”
We made our escape. The Stowaway is a small place, a quiet little restaurant with an ocean view. I called Mary from the pay phone when we got there, and found she didn’t mind if I got back a little late.
I told Lydia my story over dinner and drinks. And declared my hero an asshole.
“And you know what the worst part of it is? He’s right.”
She tried to argue with me.
“Okay, so I’m not about to stop swearing for his sake, and I didn’t sleep with anyone to get the job. But he’s right about my work being half-assed.”
“Irene, with everything that’s going on…”
“No excuses, Lydia. None. You stuck your neck out to get me hired at the Express, and I’ve let you down.”
“Baloney.” For Lydia, that was red-hot cursing.
We sat in silence for a few minutes.
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
“Prove him wrong,” I said.
20
O’CONNOR PACED ACROSS HELEN CORRIGAN’S LIVING ROOM FLOOR AS he listed his many grievances against Irene Kelly. Every now and then he found himself starting to address his complaints to an empty, overstuffed chair — the one that had been Jack’s favorite. The loss of Jack somehow further fueled his ire. Everywhere he turned, there were sharp reminders of him here. Even the air itself — although Helen had quit smoking years ago, Jack hadn’t, and the room still carried the scent of his cigarettes.
He wouldn’t — and couldn’t — talk of Jack. But he had a good deal to say about Ms. Kelly.
Helen patiently listened to it all.
“In the men’s room!” he said, still not quite believing it himself. “And never a word to let us know she was in there. She should be ashamed of herself.”
Helen smiled. “While you feel just dandy about your own behavior.”
He sat down on the sofa beside her, suddenly tired. “No, of course not.”
“Have you apologized to her?”
“I’ve tried. Twice. You may remember that I rarely work on the week-ends — I made a special trip in today to try to talk to her.”
“And?”
“I’m a mute version of the invisible man, as far as she’s concerned.”
“Honestly, Conn. Where’s that famous persistence of yours?”
“The last of the O’Connors to beg on bended knee died in the fifteenth century.”
“I’d love to ask all those generations of Mrs. O’Connors if that’s true.”
He laughed, then shook his head. “I don’t know why Ms. Kelly irritates me so.”
“I have some idea.”
“She irritated you when she was your student?”
“Not at all. She and her friend Lydia were two of the best I’ve had in the last decade.”
“Really? I’ll grant you that her writing is all right, but we both know that’s wasted on someone who won’t do the work. In fact, it makes it worse — a waste of talent.”
“Now, perhaps we’re getting closer to at least one of the reasons she angers you. You already know she has talent.”
“So what? Nothing I’ve read of hers indicates she’s capable of really going after a story.”
“Oh?” Helen reached for a copy of the Express. O’Connor recognized it as today’s paper. He had a story on page one, but Helen flipped past that to a story on page five. She held it out to him.
“What?”
“Read the story about the dog license fee increase.”
He did, then looked up at her in disbelief. “This isn’t hers.”
“If I were a gambler, I could make some money right now. Is it a good story?”
“Yes. But—”
“It’s hers. No byline, naturally, on a story like this by a new general assignment reporter. She’s not handling the sort of A-one stories you are.”
“She hasn’t earned that.”
“No, I imagine she feels lucky that Wrigley the Second hasn’t assigned her to the society pages. But that story is hers. I’d know her style anywhere.”
He frowned as he reread the article. “May I use your phone?”
She handed it to him.
He dialed the newsroom and asked for the city desk.
Helen listened in amusement as he confirmed that the story had been written by Irene Kelly.
“I don’t understand it,” he said, hanging up.
“No, you don’t.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Conn, how old were you when Jack took you under his wing?”
He thought of the day Lillian Vanderveer had given him a silver dollar. “Eight.”
“Don’t you think it’s past time you paid that back?”
For a moment, he thought she might have read his thoughts.
Seeing his puzzled looked, she said, “You’re a generous man, Conn. I could name a dozen examples of that generosity without having to work at it. And raising Kenny—”
“Kenny was fourteen when he came to live with me, Helen. I can hardly be said to have raised him.”
“We’ll argue about that another time. I’m not talking about your home life now. I’m talking about your professional life. As a newsman, whom have you helped along the way?”
He considered this in silence for some time, uncomfortable with the realization that while he had worked hard to be worthy of the lessons Jack had given him, he had never taken the time to show the ropes to less experienced reporters — something Jack had done not only with him but with others. He could look around the newsroom and see any number of men who had been helped by Jack — H.G., Mark Baker, and John Walters among them.
Jack had shared his expertise throughout his career, had been a teacher long before he joined the faculty at the college — as Helen had been, too. Neither of them had been much older than Ms. Kelly was now when they first encouraged O’Connor to write. That thought brought a sour reflection in its wake.
“Ms. Kelly doesn’t want help from the likes of me. Especially not after she eavesdropped yesterday.”
“I never knew you to be fainthearted before now, Conn. Show some spine.”
“It’s not a matter of being afraid of her.”
“I’ll tell you what,” she said. “You’re a good Catholic boy in need of some penance. I’m going to be your priest.” She laughed her husky laugh. “You’ve sinned against Irene by opening your yap about her to another member of the staff. You agree?”
“Readily, but…”
“So, for that sin, your penance is to help her even if she doesn’t want you to do so. Even if she never says, ‘Thank you, oh wise and wonderful Mr. O’Connor’ — help her.”
“Look, Helen…”
“And for your far worse sin of showing rather sexist prejudice against her — something I never thought I’d see from you, Conn — you must learn everything you can about her. You claim she isn’t working at being a reporter — do some digging. Find out why the hell not.”
He was taken aback. “Do you think she’s in some kind of trouble?”
“She may not be in trouble, but with only one story from her like this, I feel fairly sure that something’s going wrong somewhere in her life.”
“What do you suppose her problem is, then?” he asked irritably.
“Conn, I’d tell you if I knew. Hell, I haven’t seen her since she left for Bakersfield. She called after Jack died, but I was too damned distracted with my own troubles to ask her about any of hers.”
He looked again toward Jack’s chair. He felt a tightening in his chest.
“Conn?”
“All right, Swanie,” he said. “I’ll try to help her.”
21
WARREN DUCANE GLANCED AT HIS WATCH. THE YOUNG MAN HE HOPED to introduce to the others was a little late to the meeting, but Warren did not doubt that he would arrive. If the others would be patient, all would be well. Warren was in no hurry — he had waited for this moment for sixteen years.
He looked at the faces of those gathered around the long table in Zeke Brennan’s law office. Zeke, Auburn Sheffield, and Lillian Vanderveer Linworth. So good of her to come. He had worried she wouldn’t show, that the strain between their families might have endured even after his mother’s death. He was pleased to discover that she didn’t seem to feel animosity toward him.
The first five years after Todd was lost at sea had been the most hellish time of Warren’s life, but he had managed to get through them without doing either of the two things that seemed most likely to him: killing himself or confessing to the authorities. Warren believed it was his cowardice and not his courage that had prevented either. That, and Auburn’s friendship. Auburn had extracted weekly promises from him not to commit suicide, until a day when Warren finally promised not to try it without notifying Auburn first.
Warren’s life had changed. He no longer attended social events. Once a man who could seldom tolerate being alone, he now found himself seldom able to tolerate the company of others. His reclusiveness was seen by others as an indication of his grief — after all, others would say, the man had lost most of his family in one evening. That much was true.
One person, however, could command his presence at any gathering: Mitch Yeager. He realized that Yeager was monitoring his moods, as well as making sure that Warren knew where things stood. He wasn’t sure what Mitch Yeager had planned for him. Yeager, once confronted, said Warren had nothing to worry over, provided he wasn’t overwhelmed by an urge to make accusations that couldn’t be proved.
Yeager surprised him unpleasantly one day by telling him of a recording. The tape, Yeager said, made clear that Warren desired his parents’ deaths and wanted to take over his father’s company. Warren was assured that on the tape, Yeager would be heard adamantly refusing to be a part of any murder plot and advising him to seek psychiatric help.
Warren, reflecting on the work that had been done recently on the Nixon tapes, now wondered if specialists could determine that the tape Yeager secretly made of their conversation had been altered. And he was beginning to suspect that such a tape could not be used as evidence against him.
But no one in this room knew any of that.
Instead, he told Lillian what he had told Zeke and Auburn sixteen years ago, about the event that had led to this gathering. How it happened that Warren, leaving the Las Piernas Country Club after a luncheon engagement with Auburn, literally bumped into Yeager’s wife Estelle, who was not too steady on her pins. He was surprised to see her in that condition. He later learned that on the days when her adopted son was in preschool, it was not unusual for her to polish off three martinis in the country club bar.
She smiled up at Warren and asked him if he could help her figure out where she had parked. He gave her his arm and guided her to her car. He offered to give her a lift back to her house, but she shuddered and said, “Mitch wouldn’t like that much.”
Perhaps because of the booze, or perhaps because she hadn’t realized that Warren wasn’t truly a friend of the family, before she settled herself into her BMW, Estelle invited Warren to her young son’s fifth birthday party. Believing this was another appearance commanded by her husband, Warren accepted the invitation.
“I’d be pleased to come. I don’t think I’ve ever met Mitch Junior, have I?” he had said.
“Oh, probably not — I try to keep him out of the way when Mitch has his friends over. And he’s not Mitch Junior. We decided to call him Kyle. That was Adam’s middle name. Did you know Adam — Mitch’s brother?”
Warren shook his head.
“Oh. Well, he’s been gone for some years now,” she said uneasily, and looked away.
“I like the name Kyle,” Warren said, mostly to distract her from what were obviously unhappy thoughts.
She smiled. “Me too. Besides, I could only cope with one Mitch in the house at a time.” She blushed, then said, “Please don’t ever tell Mitch I said that.”
“I promise I won’t,” he said. She thanked him and hurried off, as if afraid of making further unguarded remarks.
Yeager had smiled tightly when Warren arrived at the party, his eyes glinting as he turned to his wife — who was perfectly sober on this occasion. Warren, correctly guessing that
Yeager neither expected nor wanted him to be there, saw the color drain from Estelle’s face, and hurriedly spoke before Yeager could lash out at her. “I hope you don’t mind my only coming by for a few minutes — I can’t stay long. Just wanted to wish your son a happy birthday.”
Warren had by this time learned to hide his emotions, behind a bland look perceived by Yeager as a mixture of stupidity and meekness.
Yeager laughed and said, “What could be more important than my son’s birthday? Come in and stay as long as you can.”
Warren saw Estelle’s relief and smiled.
He moved into a room crowded with adults. On the back lawn, a clown entertained a half dozen young children. Two young men were shooed away from raiding a table of hors d’oeuvres — Mitch’s nephews, Eric and Ian, he later learned — then they sat pinching and lightly punching each other whenever their harassed Aunt Estelle wasn’t looking. He thought they were probably in their twenties — too old to be acting so childishly.
Warren carefully set the wrapped gift he had purchased — a Tonka dump truck — at the base of a great pyramid of birthday plunder. He heard familiar laughter and turned toward it, smiling.
Todd! Todd’s laughter. In the next instant, he told himself that was not possible, was it? But the memory of that laugh was so clear…
The sound came again, and he realized it was a child’s laugh. He could not control the disappointment he felt, even as he chided himself for reacting as he did. The laughter of one boy as he ran from another, that was all. The laughing boy came to stand before Warren. A dark-haired, dark-eyed child.
The boy studied him, then glanced at the package Warren had added to the pile of gifts. “Did you bring that for me?”
“Are you Kyle?”
“Yes.”
Warren wondered how the child had managed to take note of one among so many, but he said, “Yes, that’s for you. Happy birthday, Kyle.”
“What is it?”
“Something I hope you’ll like.”
“Me too,” he said, and ran off to join the other children.