She pretended that it suited her, that she was so taken up with her career that a full-time relationship would be just too restrictive. But as the months went on, she knew she was lying, to him and to herself. She never raised the subject with him, probably, she told herself, because she wasn’t at all sure of what his reaction would be. He told her all the time that he loved her, that she was not like anyone he’d ever met, that she was gorgeous, but still she was not convinced. If he had to choose, would she be the one? He used to joke that she was his Vivien Leigh and always signed his texts ‘Rhett’ or just ‘R’. She always thought it was cute, though she wished he could have chosen something other than her ridiculous name to make jokes about. In the cold reality of what had happened, she realised that he wrote R in case anyone found the texts. Charlie was protecting himself.
And now, the worst possible thing had happened. She’d destroyed everything she’d worked so hard to build.
Chapter 4
The phone rang again. For the hundredth time since she got home. She looked at the screen. Lorena. She would just keep calling, Scarlett knew that, but she couldn’t face it. She let it ring out. Journalists and lots of unrecognised numbers were calling all day. All trying to get the scoop.
Moments later it buzzed again. A text from Lorena. Scarlett sighed. Her mother couldn’t text properly despite Scarlett showing her about a hundred times. Reading her messages took a lot of guesswork.
‘Scar let. I wil come over to your hoof rite no if you do not an sser me.’
Scarlett groaned. A visit was the very last thing she needed right now.
Reluctantly she found her mother’s number in her contact list.
‘At last!’ Lorena never lost her southern drawl, and she spoke with the breathy hesitancy she considered attractive in women.
‘Hi Mom.’
‘Hi Mom! Is that all you have to say? Scarlett! I have been calling and calling. What on earth is going on? They are saying the most terrible things on the TV! Well? Tell me none of this is true?’
Long seconds ticked by, the silence between them deafeningly oppressive in the shadowy kitchen. She knew what Lorena would think. That she was an adulterer, she was a home wrecker, she had destroyed everything she had worked so hard to build, she had no credibility now, political or personal, and she would never have it again. Her readers and followers really had believed she was a decent, honest analyst of the political landscape. They had trusted her to tell them the truth, often even when the truth was something they would rather not hear. The thought of them reading about her in the daily tabloids, made her feel nauseous. The hacks would no doubt fill whole articles with salacious tidbits about her and Charlie’s affair
She sighed. ‘I wish I could, Mom.’
‘So, my daughter is a fornicator, an adulterer? Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘Yeah. All of that.’ Scarlett was exhausted. She couldn’t defend herself, even if there was something she could say.
‘Scarlett, apart from the fact that you have destroyed your career, did your eternal soul not enter into your head? You have committed a most grievous and mortal sin! When I think of his poor wife and the little children... So now what? Does he want to leave his wife and marry you? Is that it?’
She stared into space, barely hearing her mother’s diatribe. She had no plan. She and Charlie had never discussed what would happen if they were found out. They had never considered it as a possibility. She really had been that stupid, believing they could continue indefinitely in their own little cocoon, untouched by reality.
‘No,’ was all she could manage, and the word sounded like someone else’s.
‘So, that’s it, is it?’ Lorena’s voice was rising in frustration and disappointment. ‘You had an affair with a married man. You have destroyed everything you’ve achieved. You do know that, don’t you? People trusted you. They believed you when you told them what was really going on behind the closed doors of power, and it turns out you are just as bad as those you helped to expose over the years. To add to that, as if that wasn’t enough, tonight there are two children whose lives have been devastated by revelations of their father’s sordid sex life. You of all people know what it means to have a father you can’t trust, and yet you could do this...’
Scarlett knew everything Lorena was saying was true. She had nothing, no way to try to justify what she’d done.
She walked to the living room and flicked on the TV while Lorena went on and on. The news anchor was discussing with a child psychologist the impact that revelations of infidelity have on children. The ticker tape along the bottom of the screen burned into her brain.‘Senator Charlie Morgan admits to an extra marital affair with political correspondent for the New York Examiner, Scarlett O’Hara.’
She changed channels, only to be confronted with the face of Sam Winters, Charlie’s publicist. He would have convinced Charlie by now that the only way to salvage anything at this stage was to come out contrite and honest. The whole ‘I am an ordinary man, flawed and sorry’ kind of line. Sam wasn’t the best campaign strategist in the business for nothing. He knew the electorate and knew what they would take and not take. After the Clinton debacle, Charlie had explained to her over beers one night that the American public can forgive most things, especially if the person needing forgiveness was once loved, but a direct lie to their faces when asked a straight question was the tipping point. Do that, he explained, and you are dead in the water.
Charlie had carefully built an ‘ordinary Joe’ image. Now he was an ordinary Joe who made a mistake. In time they would take him back, perhaps even Julia would. He can go on Oprah, explain he was a sex addict or some other such crap, shed a few tears and the nation will melt once again to the charms of Charlie Morgan.
The other woman, on the other hand, is damned forever. And if that woman made her living out of being an honest journalist, well, she was under no illusions. She was finished.
‘What do you want me to do?’ Lorena’s voice was quiet now. Scarlett tried to focus on her mother’s voice. She muted the TV but left it running. She deserved it. The footage of her fumbling for her keys half an hour before was now emblazoned on the screen. She could just imagine the anchor’s voice as he explained with velvety tones who she was. The puns on her name would abound, and his glee at her demise would be very thinly concealed.
‘Nothing. There’s nothing you can do. I’ll call you in a few days,’
Scarlett summoned her remaining strength to talk Lorena out of coming over to the house.
‘Honestly, Mom, there’s nothing anyone can do at this stage.’ Her voice was monotone. ‘I’ll get away, I think, go somewhere for a few months...’ The idea was forming in her head as she said it. She had to keep Lorena away for now.
She was barely keeping it together as it was Adding a hysterical Lorena, invoking saints and asking her over and over how she could have committed such a grievous and mortal sin, would be just enough to push her over the edge.
‘Ok, Scarlett, I’m so worried about you. I’m going to ask Fr Ennio to say a mass for you, right this minute. I need to get off the phone now so I can call him.’
‘Fine, that would be great. Thanks.’ Scarlett hung up before her mother could start on another rant.
She leaned back on her comfortable lounger and stared at the ceiling. The bespoke chandelier that she had spent ages planning, invisible to her now. The TV, silent, flashed images of Charlie’s house in Montauk, his children’s school, his wife, like an endless roll of torture. She knew she should turn it off but she couldn’t. Suddenly, she saw him driving his car out the driveway of his home, unshaven and crumpled looking, a look no doubt carefully designed by Sam. She was sure he was going to drive away and then realised he was slowing down. As he lowered the window to speak to reporters, she scrambled for the remote to raise the volume.
‘...understand it’s a story, and you have a job to do, but my wife and children are innocent in a
ll of this. Go after me if you want, but please, keep them out of it. I’m truly ashamed of myself and my actions, and I will answer for them, unreservedly, but I’m asking you to spare my wife and children...’ Tears glistened in his eyes. The eyes that had so often twinkled at her across a crowded room, or bored into her soul as they made love.
He made to put up the car window when one of the reporters asked,‘What about your girlfriend Scarlett O’Hara? Is she just an innocent in all of this as well? Is that where you are going now?’ He stuck a microphone in the car window.
Charlie ran his fingers through his hair, a learned gesture, surely, since she’d never seen him do that before, and he ran his hands over his face. The performance had Sam written all over it.
‘Look, I’m not denying the indiscretion; it was wrong and stupid of me to risk my beautiful family. I’m truly, truly sorry,’ eyes to camera, ‘Ms. O’Hara is very familiar with the world of politics. She understands how it works, but not my wife and family. No, I’m not going to Ms. O’Hara. She and I have had no contact, and I won’t be seeing her again.’
He put the car window up and drove away as the cameras flashed and whirred. Scarlett just made the sink in time as she vomited the entire contents of her stomach. Tears and mucus covered her face as waves of nausea gripped her, and she could do nothing to stop the retching.
After what seemed like hours, the heaving in her stomach subsided and she slid down the kitchen cabinets and sat on the tiled floor. Sitting there for what might have been minutes or an hour, she was alerted by yet another message on her phone.
‘I’m so, so sorry. You know I had to do it. I had no choice. Talk soon. R xx’
She crawled to the couch and covered herself with a woollen throw she’d been given as a gift by a woman and her sister on whom she’d done a story. They ran a shelter for battered wives in Brooklyn. What must they think of her now? She drifted off into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter 5
Scarlett’s phone buzzed on the coffee table. Charlie again. Outpourings of sorrow at what he had done. Texts telling her how much he loved her, and how she must understand that it was the only option. Waters was going to break the story anyway. He had got distracted during the meeting and started sending her messages and inadvertently pressed send to the Republican instead of Scarlett. He begged her not to speak to anyone.
She longed to see him. She knew he would never deliberately hurt her. She believed him when he said he wished it was different. She knew they were both being watched like hawks, trying to meet up would be just impossible. She hadn’t replied to any of them. Lorena had called constantly. Scarlett answered one in ten of her calls to keep her from coming over. Apparently one mass wasn’t enough for to exonerate her terrible sin, so Fr Ennio was saying a novena as well in Lorena’s living room every night. Lorena was begging her to come over. She’d had other emails and text messages of support from a few colleagues and acquaintances, but mostly it was reporters wanting to ‘give her a chance to tell her side of the story’ or strangers venting abuse. This morning a text message, from a number she had never seen before, went on for ages about how she was clearly possessed by the devil, but if she paid just $5000 dollars she could be exorcised. It had made her smile for the first time since the whole thing happened.
The doorbell rang constantly. She never opened the door and refused to open the blinds. She had managed to screw shut her letterbox to stop the barrage of hate mail and entreaties from magazines to reveal all. Lorena had tried to get in a few days ago, but was intimidated by the army of reporters outside the front door.
Scarlett picked up her phone and opened the text message. Perhaps her evangelist friend was offering further de-devilling.
‘Answer your goddamn phone you stupid broad! X A’
She closed the text and the home screen of her phone flashed - 156 missed calls.
She knew Artie had tried calling her a few times but she’d ignored him. Unlike all the other calls she ignored, though, she felt guilty about his. He was her first editor. He gave her a job on the Yonkers Express when she was just a cub reporter, and when the time came for her to move up in the world he let her go, albeit grudgingly.
‘Oh miss high and mighty, so we’re not good enough for you anymore, that it?’ he had rasped, the ever present cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
‘C’mon Artie, don’t give me a hard time about this. You know what a job on the Examiner could do for me.’ She had pleaded guiltily. She knew there was nobody of her calibre on the staff of the little paper, and that she was making the Express profitable for the first time in years.
‘Yeah, yeah, kid, whatever.’ He growled, sucking furiously on a cigarette. If Kathy, his wife, caught him smoking, she’d kill him, so he smoked incessantly at work to make up for not being allowed to at home. A heart attack earlier in the year made his wife of thirty five years put her foot down. ‘It’s time you moved on, I guess. Just don’t screw it up, ok? You’re a good looking woman, use it, but don’t let it be all about that, you hear me?’
So she moved to the Examiner as a senior political analyst, ahead of several older men, and loved her job. Her salary package was quadruple that of the Express, and she was enjoying life, covering New York politics in the run up to the primaries. She even got to meet John Simpson, whose books she’d read voraciously as a teenager. They talked about the conflict zones of the Middle East, and she really felt like she had arrived.
Artie had trained her well. She had an uncanny knack of finding the right people to talk to her, giving a human dimension to the issues. She never flirted or was coquettish, like so many of her female colleagues, and she was riding high in the polls for a journalism award later in the year. She kept in touch with Artie, and met him for a few beers in the bar at the end of his street most weeks, where he told her how her latest piece was too soft, or that she could have done better with a story, but she knew that deep down he was proud of her. In lots of ways Artie Schwitz was the father figure she never had. She should call him. Artie was abrasive at the best of times, and she knew she was in for some ear-bashing. The phone rang once and he answered.
‘Yeah. Now she calls me!’
‘Sorry, Artie, I just couldn’t...’
‘Whatever. You screw who you like. It was dumb though. Even for you.’ He growled.
‘Agreed. Did you just want to tell me that?’ Scarlett sighed.
A wheezy chuckle sounded in her ear.
‘No, not just that, though I never trusted him, that Morgan jerk. Too squeaky clean, you shoulda known that. You don’t get to the top by playing nice all the time. Women, you’re all the same, letting your heart rule your head...’
Scarlett fought the urge to pick him up on his sexist remarks but knew she just had to take it. She deserved it anyway.
‘So what was the other thing?’ She was barely controlling her frustration. He was her friend, she knew that, and he’d been good to her over the years, but ...
‘I gotta job for ya.’
Scarlett was nonplussed. What was he talking about, a job? She couldn’t take a job. Maybe he was losing it. He wasn’t getting any younger.
‘Thanks, Artie, I appreciate it but I’m not really...’ She was determined to stop him before he said another word.
‘So what you gonna do, eh? Sit in your house all day, scared to come out? You turnin’ chicken after all these years?’ The wheezy chuckle again.
‘No. It’s not that. It’s just I’m going away. So I can’t...’
‘Where?’ Silence ticked as she tried to think of somewhere.
‘Figi.’ She blurted in desperation as her eye caught the spine of the DVD The Truman Show.
‘Why?’ His voice cut through the silence like a knife.
‘Emm… to recover, to relax and let all this die down…’ she mumbled.
‘To hide. That’s what you’re doing, hiding. So you must be chicken after all. Don’t be a schmuck, O
’Hara. So you slept with the wrong guy, and now his wife and kids are all over the front pages and you look like a bitch. So the hell what? You’re a regular Mata Hari, but you locking yourself up like this is becoming a story in itself. You’ve done too much to have this be the end, to have this be what they remember about you.’ His voice was softer now.
‘I can’t Artie. I just can’t face it.’ She tried to hold back the tears.
Artie’s voice lost some of its gruffness, ‘C’mon, Scarlett, you’re Dan O’Hara’s kid. You shouldn’t have amounted to anything but here you are. If you let them win, then you might as well have never pulled yourself out of that crappy childhood. Look, I know you’re scared, but suck it up, ok? Meet me at the office. I’ll tell you my plan then.’ Scarlett held the phone to her ear. Artie had finished the call, without any goodbye, but then that was standard practice for him.
She couldn’t stay cooped up in the house forever but the thoughts of going out, facing them all baying for blood, was terrifying. She stood up and examined her face in the oval mirror over the fireplace. She looked pale but ok, her wavy red hair curled softly down her back and her green eyes shone. Artie was right. This was no way to live. It was time.
Chapter 6
‘A burglary.’ Her voice was flat. She knew she should be more grateful, but it was such a come down.
‘A series of burglaries actually, in Queens. Look, I know it’s not what you’ve been used to, kid, but it will put bread on the table. You were staff, but only freelance on the Examiner, so they ain’t gonna give you a red cent. You’re lucky they ain’t suing your skinny ass for dragging their name in the mud.’
Artie was still smoking and the air between Scarlett and him was tinged with blue. Old editions of the paper were piled on every available surface, and old paper coffee cups were all over the tiny office.
‘It’s not that I’m not grateful, Artie, but coming back here, after everything... Also, this place is filthy, and a health hazard. You should clean it.’
Jean Grainger Box Set: So Much Owed, Shadow of a Century, Under Heaven's Shining Stars Page 40