“Now, this is the way you put it in. You pinch it together and insert. Many women do it while sitting on the toilet or with one leg up on the toilet seat. See this?”
She led Debbie to the large clear plastic model of the vagina and uterus. She wiggled one long thin finger up the plastic opening.
“This is where you put it, open it, so it lays flat across here. Do you see?”
Debbie nodded. The model fascinated her. The parts appeared to be removable.
“Now, you take this in there.” The woman handed her the rubber disc and pointed her to the bathroom. “You wash it off and put it in. You don’t leave here until you get it right. When you think you have it in right, I’ll check it.”
In the tiny bathroom, Debbie tried, carefully folding the disc as the woman had but when she started to insert it the disc sprang out of her fingers and bounced off a wall. She rushed to retrieve it from behind the toilet.
On the second try, it exploded again and bounced away. Good grief, she asked herself, what kind of woman was she? She couldn’t even do this simple womanly thing.
Quietly, cautiously, she opened the door and peeked into the examination room. She took the smallest diaphragm from the display. She folded it and started to insert it into the plastic vagina. If only she could see how it should work, how it should fit.
Suddenly, the diaphragm snapped open, blowing the model apart. The clear plastic stomach cover flew to the floor, the pink ovaries bounced, the two red fallopian tubes jumped in opposite directions.
She cried out and fell to her knees, scrambling for the pieces. She was wet with sweat. How could she tell this woman she couldn’t do this, didn’t want to do it. She put the pieces she found on the counter.
Back in the bathroom, sweating and shaking, she tried again and this time the diaphragm stayed inside her.
“Perfect,” announced the woman. “Perfect. Feel it.”
Debbie reluctantly inserted a finger.
“Feel that? Do you? Do you remember how you put it in?”
Debbie nodded quickly.
“Remember how it feels once it’s in there. It’s important that it lays flat.”
Debbie nodded again. She had no idea how it felt or how it was supposed to feel. She doubted she would ever put it in the right way again.
“I sort of broke your thing,” she said before she left the room. She nodded toward the counter.
The woman said nothing.
At the pharmacy, while the druggist was finding her size, Debbie did feel some relief. At least she didn’t have to ask for the big one.
“For an elephant,” she whispered to Paige Allen. “I would rather die.”
*
Jason didn’t ask her those first weeks if she was using anything. She knew what she was doing and it was soon obvious she had a diaphragm. He didn’t care what she used. It all felt good to him.
Debbie didn’t want to use the diaphragm. She didn’t like touching it, folding it, putting it in. She felt embarrassed by her trips to the bathroom. She did it for Jason. He was good for her. He held her back from the worry and the tears.
“Stop thinking about it,” he would order when he saw her start to react to a story on the national news.
“Think about something else. Think about how great everything else is. Come on, big ‘un.” He’d pull her close. “You worry too much. What are you going to do, feed all the starving kids? Save all the elephants?”
“It’s not that, Jason. It’s …”
“It’s all hype, Debbie. We call it news but it isn’t. You know that.”
He made sure the movies they saw were funny, that the television they watched, with the exception of national news on the weekends, didn’t include PBS documentaries on war or concentration camps or anything about animals. They watched, when they watched, situation comedies and old movies.
He could watch the documentaries in his own apartment. That was his business, photography and editing. He had to watch, wanted to, but she didn’t. And, he liked being able to keep her from the bad crap. He liked making her happy, making her laugh. He liked everything about these days except for the time he spent wondering when he would be able to make his move to a bigger market.
Debbie knew Jason was taking care of her, keeping her safe. He was smart in a way Michael had never been smart. He had a good job. He had a future. This wasn’t another Michael. No way. She was, Debbie knew, very, very lucky.
“He’s so great,” she told Ellen.
“Right,” was Ellen’s response before she changed the subject.
*
“Afraid there’s no Grand Canyon trip in our immediate future,” Jason told her.
“Oh, no. Why not?” She was looking forward to leaving the city and seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time.
“I’m going to work with Ferguson on the breast cancer series. It’s going to take two weeks of shooting. We may end up going to California or New York, maybe both.”
“I thought Clifford was working with Richard.”
“Not on this one.” He reached to stroke her arm. “I guess we’ll have to put the Canyon on hold for a while.”
“Okay,” she sighed deeply.
“Hey, it’s no big deal. It ain’t going anywhere. Come on, give us a smile.” He chucked her under the chin.
She laughed in spite of herself. They would still be together most of the time.
Brown made the decision that paired Jason and Ferguson.
“I think you should do this one with Jason,” he told the medical reporter.
“Well, okay, but Clifford has been doing some good work with me.”
“He’s a good man, but let’s go with Jason on this one. I think it would be better.” He nodded as though they both agreed on the choice.
Ferguson said nothing until he was back in his cubicle. He leaned out to talk to Jack Benton.
“Says he wants Jason on the breast thing instead of Clifford.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Maybe it’s because he’s black,” said Benton. “You know, white women’s titties and all that.”
“Come on,” laughed Ferguson.
“You never know,” said Benton.
Charles Adkins was in the photographers’ room drinking a can of soda and talking with Steve when Clifford slammed in.
“I hear Jason’s doing the series with Ferguson,” he told them. “Does anybody here have something against me?”
Charles Adkins shook his head. He honestly didn’t know.
“Happens all the time,” he offered. “Probably Harding’s fault.”
“Shit, I don’t know,” Clifford said, shaking his head in frustration. “I don’t even know who to talk to about it. Ferguson said it wasn’t his decision.”
“Ah, let it go,” Charles Adkins advised.
Steve nodded a vague agreement from his seat at the equipment bench. He had taken apart his old CP16 to clean it. Brown gave him the film camera when they changed over to videotape.
“You deserve it,” Brown said.
He could tell Clifford how it felt to be one of the best in the business and have the business change around you and some mealy-mouth punk hands you an old camera and says, “You deserve it.”
He could tell him how it felt to be working with kids who didn’t know the beauty of film, didn’t know the feel of it, the weight of it, who didn’t know how to open a camera and see in a second what was wrong. Now they brought the equipment back to the station and called an engineer to fix it.
“I’m sure it’s nothing personal,” Charles Adkins was saying to Clifford.
“Well, fuck, man,” Clifford shouted, “sometimes I think this nigger is too black for the Fat Boy. Is that it? Is this nigger too black?” he drawled.
Charles Adkins gave a short laugh.
“No, man, that’s it and it ain’t making me laugh.” Clifford gave a hard shake of his head as he picked up his equipment. �
��No, I ain’t laughing,” he said, and left the room.
“You know,” Charles Adkins said to Steve after a slight pause, “Across the Street they give out ice-cream cones when somebody leaves.” He took one last slug of soda. “Isn’t that strange?
“Good old George is leaving,” he chanted, “and here’s an ice cream cone. I think that is perverse.”
“More than we get,” Steve said, his head bowed to his work.
He cleaned the old camera at least once a month and kept it in the back of his van. Sometimes he would say he was going to take it out and shoot a few hundred feet but he never did. Why bother? Who was going to develop it? The processor hadn’t been used in two years. Sooner or later they would get around to tossing it.
“It’s not the same. The quality is all wrong,” he had argued about videotape. “Film has a texture to it, a depth. Videotape is flat.”
They didn’t know what he was talking about. The only ones who were into film wanted to go to Hollywood to make movies. Of course, they didn’t want to shoot the camera. They wanted to direct.
He also had a sweet little DR. Best little camera every made. They covered the war in Korea carrying that camera. Hell, they were using them for news right up until about five years ago. Sometimes he’d bring it in. Some of the guys liked to look at it. It was so damn simple. Fit right into your hand. Made for it. Cappy knew. Cappy started with a DR. Neatest, tightest little camera ever made.
Well, he’d keep his CP16 in the back of the van, ready to go. There might be that one time when he would need it, reach for it and it would be there, taking those beautiful film pictures. He sighed and Charles Adkins made a clean shot into the trashcan with his empty red soda can.
23
They came to the city by the thousands, a ragtag army. They stretched across the parks, piles of rags and tatters pushing grocery carts filled with their lives. The newer arrivals tried to wash themselves and their clothes in the few working fountains and under the spigots city janitors had neglected to cap. The others, the ones who had found themselves here for years, accepted their filth. They were young men with woolly beards and wild eyes. They were middle-aged men with frightened eyes and missing teeth.
They had a schedule to keep, given to them by those who cared and those who made money by caring. They began at the plasma center, selling their blood for the few dollars that bought booze at the corner convenience store. The booze brought friends and conversations and finally, at night, brought the laughing or stench-sick cops who dragged them into the detox center. A few days later they began the cycle again.
In the mornings they lay on the grass in their parks or played cards at the picnic tables. Then, when the time came, they rose to the march, a gray Confederate shuffle in the dust and sun and across the cement. They became a slow-moving line feeding into the charity dining hall
Twice a year the Best went there as well. They showed up in a van, a grim reporter and a sullen photographer, to show the audience how charity was dispensed on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Behind them or in front of them were other crews from other stations. Each had been given or had requested a specific time slot for the story. It was the one story Ellen swore she would not do. It was that horrible.
The reporter would wander up the aisles, mike in hand, past the tables filled with the poor and the crazy. The photographer was told by those in charge not to embarrass these people and to ignore any anger they might show.
They had enough dignity, these people, to resent the reporter and his camera and his words. Even the craziest, the never-ending mumblers, the worst of the shufflers, the rag-layered worst of them, had enough dignity to be ashamed and angry that they were being used as a story. On the other hand, the holidays were slow news days and this was a sure thing.
The managers of the dining hall allowed the television people in because they felt it might help donations.
“We’re usually okay during the holidays,” they’d say, “but we operate all year round. We need more help after the holidays. Could you say that?”
They went live with the story even if the dinner was served in the afternoon. They would run the tape of the meal and the poor and the crazed beneficiaries. Sometimes they got lucky when so many showed up that a line still stretched outside as it had since ten in the morning.
The story made viewers feel full and contented and happy not to be bundled in filth and desperation. Yet, it was tear-touched as well. All those poor people, ah well. Yes, a perfect holiday story.
As a rule, George Harding gave the story to a male reporter. No one asked why, although Charles Adkins did ask why it had to be him and pointed out he got these types of stories more than anyone else. It was true he was divorced, something Carter was still pissed about, and had no family dinner to go to, but didn’t he deserve a break?
He did handle the story with a certain gentleness. He would walk through the dining hall talking about how many meals had been served and how the city and the business community came through once again to make this dinner possible. Behind him, inevitably, an old whiskered face would stare into the camera.
“Why me, George?” Adkins would demand.
“Because you are so good at it,” George Harding would give his infrequent grin.
*
When Jack Benton did the story, he made it seem as dingy as it was, and as reeking and ugly. His report would make George Harding frown before returning to his phones.
“Back to you, Tom,” Jack Benton would say with a slight smile. Carter would nod and give his thanks and that alone would indicate that he, too, felt sorry for those folks down at the charity kitchen, and he, too, felt glad to be sitting warm and cozy in the newsroom on Thanksgiving Day.
Carter worked the Thanksgiving newscasts. It came on a Thursday and Tom Carter always worked a full week.
*
“Turn that thing off,” Clifford ordered from his seat on Debbie’s couch. “Man, I don’t want to look at that nastiness.”
Paige Allen switched the channel to another newscast.
“Man, that is awful. Why do we have to go down there with all those sorry people?” Clifford asked before going back to his high-piled plate.
Charles Adkins stood at the dining room table, stabbing another piece of turkey.
“Thank God I didn’t have to do it,” he said. “Why do I get those stories?”
Debbie cooked the Thanksgiving dinner for those who had no family in the city and no time to make it home to another state. Clifford, Charles Adkins, Tommy Rodriguez, and Paige Allen accepted the invitation.
“I might live,” Tommy groaned from his seat next to Clifford. “But only if there is pie. You better have pie.”
Jason couldn’t make it. Instead of flying straight back from shooting in New York with Richard Ferguson, he took a flight to Chicago to be with his parents.
“Sorry, babe,” he told her. “I’ll see you Sunday night.”
They hadn’t seen much of each other in the past few weeks. Jason was either out of the station or in the editing booth. Ferguson decided to work on another medical story at the same time they were doing the breast cancer series. Jason was shooting both. There were those few hours of sex and sleep before he left by six or seven to get back to the station.
“Richard has him tied up fifteen hours a day,” Debbie explained to Ellen. “And this breast cancer thing is important to him.”
“Let me check for breast cancer,” he said on one of those late nights. “No, seriously.”
He grabbed for her and she laughed.
“Come on, big fella. It shouldn’t be so hard to find.” He placed his hand on one small breast.
She missed him.
“November is always busy,” Ellen said, “with ratings and everything. It should slow down soon.”
Debbie wasn’t sure. Jason seemed to have so much to do and to be so excited by it.
“Ferguson thinks he already has this thing sold to the network,” he told her when he called
from New York. “We got some some new info on the reconstruction surgery they’re doing here.”
“Come home soon,” she told him. “And, don’t you go fooling around with those big-city women.” She kept her voice light.
“Not me, babe. I’m straight-arrow,” he told her.
Ellen had to work Thanksgiving.
“What are you going to do for dinner?” Debbie asked. “At least you could come by for a sandwich or something.” She could see Ellen eating a turkey TV dinner in front of her television.
“No, thanks. I’ll give you a call later,” Ellen said.
Debbie knew she would call late in the night and they would talk, as was becoming their habit.
24
“Why bother?” Richard Ferguson asked when Jason told him what he planned to do.
“It’s only fair,” Jason said.
It was only fair to tell Debbie he saw Ashley in New York, that he had called her and asked her to take a commuter flight up from Washington. When she walked into the hotel bar, every head turned.
Richard stayed only long enough to say, “Looking good, Ashley.” That made Jason smile. When did she not look good?
“I think you should start applying in DC again,” she said that night while his hands made an inventory of all the places they knew of her body. They stopped to cup the large full breasts.
“And what would that mean for us?” he asked.
“I think we might want to spend some time together,” she said softly. “I think about you a lot.”
He told her he had been seeing a woman but, he added quickly, “It’s nothing serious.” He felt her body stiffen before relaxing again with a sigh of acceptance.
“That’s all right,” she said. “Be warned, though, things will change once we start working together again.”
He laughed. He did like this woman and he wouldn’t mind being with her again. No, he wouldn’t mind at all.
On Sunday, Debbie cleaned the apartment for him, changed the sheets. She made a casserole. They would eat a late dinner and sit on the couch and laugh. They would go into the bedroom and make love and he would stay the night.
He came at ten and stayed only long enough to tell her what he thought she had a right to know.
The Best in the West Page 13