Electric Elizabeth: A Novel

by Vincent C. Martinez

  That night, I composed a letter to Coxton College rejecting the New Journalist Scholarship. I would pay for college with Mom and Dad's leftover life insurance money and whatever loans or grants I could get. I would owe no one in Blackbridge anything.

  Bentley didn't speak to me again for the remainder of the school year. When I saw him at school, he'd glance at me and look away. In the cafeteria or on the benches outside, I had my zones of safety again. Two months later, we graduated. I didn't attend graduation and had them mail the diploma to my house. I threw it in a box with old tax forms, utility bills, and medical records. I'd heard Berkeley left town the afternoon of graduation aboard a private plane chartered out of the airport in nearby Avoca, his only reminder that he was from Blackbridge a contrail that floated like a fiery feather into the setting sun.

  I wouldn't hear from him again for almost five years.

  ***

  Coxton College was small, but it gave me space and anonymity that Blackbridge didn't. Every morning, I left home, drove the winding route to school, and stayed until late evening. I maneuvered the halls and paths of Coxton in silence, avoiding the student groups and spending most of my time in the library, the computer center, the tree-shaded benches, the isolated chairs and tables in the student union, the classrooms that had no classes for the day, the off-campus coffee shops with liberal policies toward students who showed up with only a few dollars in their pockets and a stack of books in their arms.

  Serving on the Coxton student newspaper, the Coxton Clarion, was a requirement for all journalism majors. I was assigned to layout, handed how-to books for the computer software, and was soon laying out pages, shuffling columns, adjusting tracking and leading, cropping images, dropping in text from student reporters, and proofreading copy. Layout didn't require interviewing skills or socialization. Most interaction was with computer and printers, at least until Mr. Bradbury called me to his office one day.

  "How come you're not on the reporting staff?" he asked.

  "I'm an underclassman," I said. "Reporting is for upperclassmen."

  "That the only reason?"

  I shrugged.

  "You know," he said, "it's really not a stringent requirement to be an upperclassman."

  "I was told it was."

  "More like a guideline to weed out the ones who can't write. You can write," he said, jabbing one of his thick fingers at me. "Don't get me wrong, it's good to know layout. Gives you technical skills, but you need to get out there, start getting stories for the paper, start getting sources, even if it's only about the library budget. You've got four years to start getting a portfolio of pieces together, or you'll be in a world of hurt come graduation time."

  "Oh," was all I could say.

  "Okay," he said, "here's what we're going to do: I'm moving you over to the reporting staff, but your first piece will be an editorial."

  "I don't know how to do one."

  "Hell you don't. It's just a matter of just keeping it under two-hundred words."

  "What do I write about?" I asked.

  "Ever see the previous editorials written by new additions to our reporting staff?"

  "Yes."

  "There you go. It's all pretty weak ale," he said. "It's the basic boilerplate about serving the campus community through journalism. Mostly a way of getting your feet wet. Don't worry, you'll move on to bigger things. Just give me a short editorial we can drop into the paper. Get it to me tomorrow by lunch. What the matter? Looks like you're staring at an oncoming train."

  "I feel like I am," I said.

  "Then get off the rails, find out the train timetables, who owns the rail line, where the train's headed, and what it's transporting. Got it?"

  I said "Yes" but wasn't sure if I really did.

  "Good. Two-hundred words or less. A little over two-hundred'll be fine. I know you can knock out something like that in under twenty minutes. Also, get some reporters' notebooks from the bookstore. No one'll take you seriously with those composition books under your arms."

  I started and stopped writing the editorial five times before I finally managed to complete the first draft. Instead of an editorial on the duty of journalists to serve the campus community, I'd written an editorial on the necessity for students to critically evaluate what was printed in the Clarion and newspapers everywhere. I was afraid Mr. Bradbury would rage and throw it back at me, but it was approved and passed on to me to be placed in the editorial page layout. Carefully, I sized the editorial and slipped it gently beneath the editorial cartoon and next to the masthead. After checking it and re-checking it, I saved it and sent it to print.

  ***

  I soon found that asking questions wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. It seemed to be a matter of dropping a small question and remaining quiet, letting pressure build on the interviewee for several seconds or even minutes. After enough uncomfortable silence, they'd fill the air with anything: a little laugh, a little elaboration, or even just a word that can be repeated back in the form of a question. Most people live in oceans of noise. Silences drive them to insanity. In my house overlooking a cemetery, silence was a given.

  But when others spoke, my mind wandered. I found most of my subjects to be dull: a librarian discussing the cut in literary journals, a department chairperson mulling matters of changes in curriculum, and so on. Their words passed over me in a haze, and I was grateful to have a voice recorder on loan from the Clarion, or I'd wind up missing half of what the interviewee would say. Instead, I'd think of the burned-out home in Duryea I saw on the way to school, the abandoned coal mines along the road in Avoca, the overgrown graveyard in Taylor next to a cluster of dying birches. I tried focusing but would often fail, and I didn't know if it was from a life of avoiding others at every turn.

  In my second month of reporting, I was assigned to interview a new freshman fullback for the college's Division III football team. He was a short, boxy eighteen-year-old who shaved his black hair close, which made the part in his hair look much like an axe wound. He spoke of his tough training, his work ethic, his faith in God, and how they contributed to his on-field success. As he spoke, I looked out the window behind him. The trees were swaying in the early evening breeze, the sky was turning pink from dusk, and a lone light shone on a distant hillside and flickered like starlight tired from millions of years of travel. I wondered if it was a streetlight, an antenna, a weather station, a house gone unnoticed over the years. It burned brightly, pulsing erratically. I watched it without thought, hypnotized by its erratic rhythms.

  The football player stopped speaking and smiled. I turned my attention back to him. "How," I asked, "does your faith in God square with the off-campus parties your fraternity holds?"

  ***

  That Saturday morning, I awoke early and placed my notebooks, pens, and second-hand camera on the passenger's seat of what used to be my mother's car. I drove past Coxton College just as the sun peeked over the Poconos, and took a snaking road up the distant hillside. The pavement became gravel, the gravel became hard dirt, and the hard dirt became a small lot cut into the hillside. I thought of The Heights overlooking Blackbridge, but this hillside notch was small, just large enough for a small house and a shed. Another dirt road led into a dense treeline and disappeared. The lot itself was gravel filled, and the car's tires sank into it slightly, leaving a clear set of tracks to the house's front door, a door painted pink with a yellow porch light glowing and flickering brightly beside it. A blue Ford station wagon sat out front, its faux wood side paneling sun bleached and peeling.

  I turned off the engine and got out. The dawn chorus was deafening, the surrounding pines alive with sharp birdsong. I looked back at the twisting road, saw it disappear around a bend. In the valley below lay the grounds of Coxton College, its geometry a patchwork of gray and green.

  The front door opened with a pop and squeak.

  A woman in a green flannel shirt and worn
jeans stood at the threshold, her face long and lined with age, her silver hair short and frizzed with flyaways.

  I introduced myself, told her how that lone light snagged my curiosity for no other reason than it was a light on a dark hillside.

  She looked over at the glowing light bulb and shielded her eyes. "I got the switch turned off," she said, "but the light keeps turning on." I don't know why. She sounded unsure of herself, her voice soft and wavering.

  Her name was Alice Krenetsky. She was only fifty-two. She once had a daughter named Nancy. One day, Nancy walked to the Susquehanna River ten miles away, tied a large rock to her leg, hobbled across a busy beige concrete road bridge, then jumped.

  Nancy was twenty years old.

  She'd been a student at Coxton College.

  ***

  No one was happy with my Nancy Krenetsky story. The Athletic Department was incensed that their fullback was only mentioned in a ten-line article. The School of Sciences wasn't happy that I'd mentioned a story that they thought was best forgotten. The staff at the Clarion weren't happy with the angry calls from angry departments or with the attention the story brought. Most weren't happy with me. At all.

  "So what happened to the profile piece?" Mr. Bradbury asked.

  I cleared my throat. "It's still there," I said. "A smaller one. Then I just . . . started another profile." I'd been concerned with Mr. Bradbury's reaction. He gave me a football player to interview, and I gave him a dead girl and a lot of baggage. Strangely, Mr. Bradbury seemed placid.

  "You know The Scrantonian called," he said. "And The Citizen's Voice. They're looking into the story, you know that?"

  I shook my head.

  "A lot of angry people," he said.

  "Why aren't they angry about Nancy Krenetsky?" I asked.

  He sighed.

  "She was a Coxton sophomore," I said. "A good physics student who suffered from depression then was hounded from day one by all the male students and faculty in the physics program. She was told she wouldn't be able to handle the material, that she was wasting her time, told to take up something more up her alley. Students and faculty said this."

  "I know," he said.

  "They pushed her until she jumped off a bridge," I said, my voice rising. "And when she was gone the good old boys of the physics department had one less female to deal with until they were just down to three. And now it's down to two women. I don't know, Mr. Bradbury, but I think it's a bigger story than some fullback talking about how great he is, and I don't think people really understand just how damned awful it is when someone—the only person you ever had a connection with—decides to wake up one morning, walk to a river, and sink forever."

  Breath wheezed from my nostrils, and sweat tickled my back. Mr. Bradbury was quiet, pensive, looking down at his large hands folded on his metal desk. I knew I was in trouble and probably about to be let go from the Clarion, and maybe kicked out of the college. Most of my life I'd kept my head down, and now the one time I raised it I'd probably ruined what was left of my life.

  "I think that's the most I've ever heard from you at one time," he said. "Milton, when you did the layout you pushed out the other columns that were supposed to be on the page."

  "I worked on Nancy's story and ran out of time with my other two stories, so I . . . I laid out the page to fit her story."

  "And that wasn't your call. You didn't run it by the editor, and you didn't run it by me."

  "The editor was in Vermont at a wedding," I said, and I . . . I ran out of time to run it by you."

  "And you just went ahead and did it." He let out a deep breath. You didn't run it by anyone, Milton. Is it an important story? Yes. But the Clarion is a newspaper, a small college newspaper, but a newspaper nonetheless. I'm glad you found passion for a story, but there's a chain of command. Without it, newspapers would be an unchecked free-for-all, and there's enough of that in this world as it is."

  "Everything was accurate," I said.

  "That's beside the point," he barked. "The Clarion isn't your personal newsletter. And you better learn that now before even thinking about taking another step as a journalist."

  I lowered my head. "I know," I said. I closed my mouth, started thinking about enrolling at a Penn State campus. There was one near Scranton. They had a two-year computer technology program that might accept an expelled journalism student.

  "What do you think I should do?" he asked.

  "I know you have to do something," I said. "I know I'm on the chopping block. Maybe I shouldn't have followed that light into the hills, but I did. Maybe I was too enthusiastic. Maybe I felt that if I didn't insert it into the paper it would never get printed. But I broke the rules, I broke your trust and—"

  I ran out of words. I knew my time at Coxton was over.

  Mr. Bradbury folded the copy of the Clarion in front of him, dropped it on a book stack behind his desk, and folded his fingers. "From now on," he said, "you pass all stories through me. I don't care if it's a story on new library books or a piece about the new design of the campus parking decals, everything goes through me. And your editor-in-chief will pass every finalized copy of the Clarion to me before its printed. You just made more work for me, Milton, and I hate more work."

  "You're not expelling me?" I asked.

  "Some want to," he said, "but you didn't break any college regulations. Secondly, now that the story's gone off campus, no one's going to touch you. Lastly—he paused, looked up at the ceiling, then at me, eyes sad, voice soft—it was a terrific piece. It was actual news. It's got big people talking, it's got audits in motion over in the School of Sciences. Real journalism, Milton. You did the wrong thing in slipping it into the paper, but you did the right thing on following your nose, which reminds me: How did you know about this story?"

  "I didn't," I said. "I just saw a light on the woman's porch and . . . followed it."

  "Serendipitous."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And why didn't you think your piece would be given consideration?" he asked.

  "Because no one's ever really been interested in what I have to say, Mr. Bradbury."

  "They do now."

  ***

  That evening, I drove the twisty road home over river and railroad tracks, through forests and town limits. I pulled into the driveway and walked up the house's creaking front steps over which my father used to stomp in his work boots and my mother used to tiptoe in her pumps right behind him. I locked the door and turned on the porch light, listened to the house groan and settle as I walked up to my room, sat in my chair, pulled out a stack of legal pads, a handful of ink pens, and began to write an essay about a quiet woman who, one day, walked to the midpoint of a black steel rail bridge, then jumped into a river's brown waters, never to be seen again.

  After midnight, I finally slept and dreamt of another woman whom I didn't know, of clouds racing over her skin and odd disembodied voices floating on air.

  And sometime after midnight, another woman named Elizabeth Valdez was writing a letter, proofreading it, and sealing it in an envelope that would arrive in my mailbox at the Clarion two days later.

  Chapter Six

  The letter was written in black ink on thick, beige paper and had the slight scent of vanilla. The handwriting was small, grid-like, the cleanest writing I'd ever seen:

  Dear Mr. Conroy,

  Thank you for the story about Nancy Krenetsky that you had written this past week for the Coxton Clarion. I am one of two remaining female students in the Coxton College physics program, and the problems of isolation and condescension on the part of the physics faculty toward female students is indeed real, and any effort by those of us who have tried to redress the problem have met with stone walls and deaf ears. The other female student is contemplating leaving the college, and I have also thought of changing majors myself. Since your article has appeared, things are in upheaval, and the long-tenured faculty seem—how should I say?�
�muted. I hope you continue to pursue this story, and I hope you know how much good your piece has done. I no longer feel invisible. I no longer feel alone and isolated. I hope someday you will allow me to thank you in person for your great work.

  Sincerely,

  Elizabeth Valdez

  For the rest of the day, my hands smelled of vanilla.

  ***

  I didn't know if I should step into the Science Building. There were plenty of people outside the building that disliked me, and after the Krenetsky story, I imagined there were a lot more inside. Every article that we'd written in the Clarion had our headshot next to our byline, and I'd hoped that my thumbnail portrait would be small enough to make my face indistinct.

  The building was a squat gray box that differed from the neoclassic style of the other buildings on campus, the department separating itself as much as possible from the rest of the college with a square-and-rectangle Modernism rather than ornate pillars and white eaves. Inside, it glowed with death-white fluorescent lighting that buzzed and hummed and burned out shadows. The wall paint was thick and glossy, and the air smelled of chemicals and plastic. From behind classroom doors, professorial voices murmured, punctuated by the tap of chalk on blackboards. I looked into each room, scanning the student body for signs of a female student. In one hand, I held a schedule of all upper-division physics courses. In my other hand, a black pen that I used to check off every room number. In room after room, every class was filled with men, often spaced around the room with desks crowded with scientific calculators and notebooks.

  After thirty minutes, I came to a classroom with an open door. Inside sat maybe fifteen, twenty students. A rail-thin, gray-haired instructor scribbled equations on the blackboard for specular reflections and drew angles, marking them with Greek thetas and sloppy lettering. In the rear of the classroom, a small woman with dark Louise Brooks bangs scribbled away in a tablet, looking up only to note what was being sketched on the board. She wore a red sweater and black slacks, her face was soft and rounded, her skin white, her eyes obsidian. I watched from the hallway as she scribbled in her tablet and squinted at the blackboard, lost in equations and optical angles.