“Everything is fine now, Ellen. Why do we have to talk about changing it?”
How could they not talk about changing it, she wondered. What was she supposed to do, sit in a one-bedroom apartment for the next who knew how many years? Was she supposed to keep reporting in a town with no news, in a state with nothing to cover? Was she supposed to spend weekends in his mother’s guesthouse, sneaking across the lawn after the rest of the family went to bed? Is that what was worth keeping the same?
“Things have to change,” she told him. “That’s the way it is.”
“That’s bull,” he snapped. “Nothing has to change unless you want it to and I don’t like changes.”
Their first and only fight came soon after, following a day filled with too many hours of drinking. Drinking or not, she felt she was goaded into it.
They were at Carl’s apartment, a friend of Ronnie’s, when the men began making comments about the woman in the television movie they were watching.
“I always liked big tits,” Carl said. “You did too, didn’t you, Ron? Once, I mean,” he said with a loud shout of laughter and a pointed look at Ellen’s chest.
“Hell, why not,” Ronnie agreed and reached for another beer.
“What about that little lady from Midland? Darlene, that was her name, Darlene the barrel racer.”
Darlene’s name and phone number were written on the wall above the guesthouse phone.
Ronnie laughed.
“She was built,” Carl said.
“Remember her, Melissa?” he called over to his fiancé. “Like Dolly Parton.”
“Sure, sure,” said Melissa with a grimace.
“Like those big ones,” Carl said again.
“Tend to drag a bit,” Ellen commented.
Ronnie looked at her. Melissa smiled.
“Sure. About forty they are down to your knees,” Ellen continued. “In fact,” she sipped from her glass of wine, “women with big breasts have more breast cancer.”
She didn’t mean to say that exactly. She meant breast cancer was harder to find in large-breasted women. She let it stand.
“Really?” Melissa leaned forward in her chair.
“That’s bullshit,” Carl said, but he didn’t look so sure.
“Could be,” Ellen said and paused. She was about to pay them back for the breast comments along with the hours spent in a bar where she and Melissa had been ignored while the men swapped stories of mutual friends. Yes, she was going to tell the sportscaster’s story.
“Let me tell you,” she leaned close to Melissa, “what this sportscaster once told me.”
“What’s that?” Ronnie called from the kitchen.
“It’s about this size thing,” Ellen said to Melissa. “You know, this size thing men have about themselves. They all have it. This sportscaster told me they check each other out, even if they say it doesn’t matter.”
She could see Ronnie standing in the kitchen doorway.
“You know, all those magazine stories telling them it isn’t the size that matters, not the size of the baton that makes the music. All that Playboy stuff. Well, the guy says it’s all bull. He said he looked. I mean, he spent a lot of time in locker rooms, so he looked.”
She gave a hoot of laughter.
“What, what?” Melissa demanded happily.
“He said it was exactly what you’d expect. He said the weightlifters have these real little ones.” She made a measurement of about an inch with her thumb and forefinger.
Carl turned from the din of the television.
“What?” he demanded.
“They are tiny, really, really dinky. And he said football players are normal, no big deal, but basketball players are …”
Ronnie now stood over them. Ellen looked up, met his eyes, and went back to Melissa.
“That basketball players are enormous. That’s what he said.”
They both laughed.
“What the hell are they talking about?” Carl asked.
“The size of dicks,” Ronnie spat out. “Who has the biggest dick.”
“Oh,” Carl shrugged and turned back to the television.
Ellen looked up at Ronnie. There was no challenge in her eyes, no mocking, only a question. What would he do with her now?
“It was cheap, that’s all,” he said when they were back in the guesthouse bed.
“It was a story,” she said. “You and Carl sit around and talk about breasts and old girl friends. That’s okay, right?”
“It isn’t the same thing, Ellen, and for some reason you don’t get it.”
“It is exactly the same thing. You talk about breast size and Darlene. Okay, I’ll talk about men.”
“And cocks,” he spat. “That’s real nice. That’s the kind of woman a man wants to introduce to his friends.”
She lay in the darkness. She did not remind him of Melissa’s open laughter or Carl’s indifference.
“You embarrassed me and you embarrassed yourself,” he finished.
He raised himself on one arm and pounded his pillow into a desired shape.
“Ronnie, please.” She put her hand on his shoulder.
“Ellen, go to sleep or go into the house. I want to get some sleep.”
She waited for his touch, for him to roll over and reach for her. He did not.
“I had too much to drink last night,” she told Joan McBain and Sara the next morning over coffee at the kitchen table. Neither of them responded.
Ronnie came in later and read the paper as she sat and stared at the table. She started to apologize, to give her mumble about too much to drink.
“It’s not important, Ellen,” he said from behind the paper. “Forget it.”
She wasn’t sure why telling the sportscaster’s story was so wrong, but the hangover and Ronnie’s words in the guesthouse bed left her resolved to be more careful. She would try to act the way Ronnie expected a woman to act. She would tell fewer stories and do a lot less drinking. She couldn’t risk losing this man.
In the weeks that followed, she found herself trying to move closer to him, to be touching him, his back, his shoulder, his arm. She moved into him, watched him, waited for a sign that he had forgiven her and that she was doing things right, the way his woman should.
He gave no indication that his feelings for her had changed, but she sensed a difference. She believed he had seen something in her he didn’t like and the damage could not be undone.
Not long after the sportscaster’s story, she got the call.
“We want you, Ellen Peters,” Jim Brown announced.
“You’re kidding.”
Months had passed since her interview at the station and even though Brown warned her it might take a long time before they had an opening, she never thought Carter would agree to hire her.
“The job is here if you want it, but we need to know right away,” Brown told her.
She knew she had to give him an answer without a note of indecision in her voice, nothing that would warn him off.
“Give me twenty-four hours,” she said. “That’s all I’ll need.”
“No more than that, Ellen.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get back to you. And, Jim?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks.”
She didn’t ask about money or who would pay for the move or the hours or days she would be working. They could talk about that later. What she needed to know now was how the man she loved was going to stop her from taking the job.
“I think you should take it,” he told her in the late afternoon quiet of the restaurant. “It would be good for you. It’s what you do.”
She nodded and then burst into tears.
“Come on,” he said as she wiped at the tears with the tiny cocktail napkin. “It’s not so far away. I’ll come see you. It’s where you should be, Ellen. You know that.”
As they left, she saw the seated women looking up at him and the waitresses turning to him, the tall, handsome man with a cowboy
hat in his hand.
“I do love you,” he said on one of their last nights in the guesthouse bed. “You know that.”
She nodded in the darkness, her face wet with tears.
“But, we’ve only known each other a few months.”
“Six.”
“All right, six, but I’m not ready to offer you or anyone anything permanent. I’m not ready for that.”
And what about her? Where would she ever find another cowboy with a ranch and a cabin on a hill?
She didn’t cry that last morning, but it hurt when she left him leaning on Joan McBain’s fence. She knew he’d turn his attention to one of Joan McBain’s horses when her car was out of sight. He’d stand there another five or ten minutes before going to the house or the tack room or to talk to Juan Moya, Joan McBain’s man. And that, she thought, would be that.
It could have been the sportscaster’s story or the way she denied the city he loved to that San Francisco art gallery owner. It could have been her strong opinions or the voice that sometimes grew too loud. It could have been any of those things or anything else that made it so easy for Ronnie McBain to let her go and she couldn’t do a damn thing about it. He’d miss her, though. She knew that.
The first month they spoke twice a week, alternating calls.
“Love it here. Professional beyond belief,” she told him. “Miss you,” she would say.
“I miss you too,” he would answer.
“I love you, Ronnie,” she would say and hate the ring of childish pleading in her voice.
“I love you too,” he would say and she would go to bed aching for him and crying herself to sleep.
Finally, after one month, he told her.
“Ellen, I think we better stop talking for a while. This isn’t working.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s too hard. I didn’t think it was going to be this hard. We both have to get on with our lives.”
“If we could see each other, it would be okay,” she told him. “We need to see each other.”
“No, Ellen, I don’t think so. I think we need to stop this for a while.”
“Are you seeing someone else?” she demanded. “Is that it?”
He gave a tired laugh.
“No, Ellen, but if I want to, I will. I told you I wasn’t ready for anything permanent. You should be making a life for yourself out there, not waiting around for someone like me.”
“Ronnie, please, I think we need to see each other,” she pleaded.
“No. We have to stop talking for a while.”
“For how long?”
“Let it go for awhile, okay? I need some breathing space and so do you.”
She wouldn’t argue. She would play this thing like the non-pushy, non-liberated woman he wanted and she would wait. If he didn’t want her, it would be because there was something wrong with her, something she couldn’t hide and something she didn’t know how to change.
Months later she sent a note to Joan McBain. She wrote about the wonderful weather and how much she liked her job. She did not mention Ronnie. Eventually, she stopped crying at night.
*
Ellen did have another story about size. It was a better story, a sweeter one. Thinking about this story made her smile but she never told it. In a way, it was too sweet.
She had a crush on an editor at the Florida station. She blushed if they passed in the hall. If they accidentally touched, she jumped as though burned. Finally, he took her into an empty office and shut the door.
“Look,” he said roughly, “I’m queer. Do you understand?”
“Sure, I understand, but I don’t like that word,” she said, trying to hide the shock of his announcement.
“So, make it gay, but I am.”
They remained friends, sharing a beer or two in the hours after work.
“I have something I need to ask you,” he said on one of those nights. “It’s really bad,” he said. Beads of perspiration dotted his forehead.
“Look,” he fumbled for the next words. “I mean, how do women feel about a man’s size. You know, penis size?”
“What?”
“The size of his penis.” His face was red.
“I don’t know. Why are you asking?”
“Well, ah, this is really personal.” He reached for her hand.
“It’s that Chip’s is bigger than mine.” He whispered the words.
She knew his boyfriend and she didn’t like him.
“How much bigger?”
“Well, I mean, I am normal but he is much bigger.”
She gave a snort. “Unless he’s the size of an elephant, it doesn’t matter.”
He looked stunned.
“No, really,” she said. “Not to a woman. I don’t know why it would matter to men. And isn’t everyone about the same size when they’re, you know, erect?”
“Not Chip,” he said sadly.
“Does he ever say anything about it?”
“No, no,” he assured her.
Oh, but she bet he did. She bet Chip said a great deal.
“God, that’s no problem at all,” she proclaimed.
He smiled hopefully. “So, it doesn’t matter?”
“Not the size of the baton that makes the music,” she recited without a trace of doubt.
32
“Some guy with a gun at St. Joe’s, sniper maybe,” Tony Santella yelled across the newsroom. “Debbie, get down there. Move.”
She grabbed her pen and pad and slung her purse over her shoulder.
“Who’s going with me?” she called to George.
“Cappy.”
“Got it,” Cappy said. He walked toward the door to the garage, holding back the desire to run to the van and the story.
Throughout the newsroom reporters stopped their typing and phone chatter. Photographers moved into a listening position. This could be a big one. Cappy slammed out the door and the spell was broken. They all moved back to their work.
“He’s on the third floor or something,” Tony said.
“Okay,” said Debbie.
“I’m sending out the remote truck,” George called after her.
“What have we got?” she asked Cappy.
“Sniper, that’s all I know, and everybody in town is going to be there.”
She felt good again, alive, for the first time since the abortion. This is what she wanted to do, this kind of run-and-gun story. This is what she was proud to do for a living.
“Hell,” Cappy swore and made a quick turn. “They’ve already got the streets blocked.”
He had to get past the cops. He drove into an alley, across a side street and into an enormous empty lot.
“Over there, over there,” he pointed to a break between two buildings. “You can see the hospital but it’s a haul. Call George and find out what side the guy’s on.”
“George, which side is the guy on? North, south, which side?”
“What?”
“What side of the building, the sniper, what side?”
There was no answer.
“George, can you hear me?”
“Gee, I don’t know,” he mumbled. “Can you see anything?”
“Move,” Cappy yelled, and threw open the van door.
“Here, here.” He tossed her the box with the clip-on mikes and tucked an extra cord into the waistband of his pants.
“Let’s go.”
They walked quickly through the lot and, rounding a building, faced the flashing lights of a patrol car.
“Where is he?” she asked the officer.
“Up there,” he nodded to the hospital across another empty lot. “You can’t go any farther. This is as far as you go.”
“Right,” she said. “Anybody hurt?”
“I don’t know. Hey, you, get back.” His attention switched to a newspaper photographer who had moved into his line of sight.
“You too,” he ordered Debbie.
“Everybody must be on the other side,” sh
e said to Cappy who was trying to get a focus on the multi-storied building.
“If we could get up there,” she nodded toward a parking garage facing the east side of the hospital, “we could get a direct shot to the hospital.”
Cappy looked doubtful. They would have to walk back to the lot, make a wide circle away from this cop, staying along the back of the buildings, then break and run for the garage. They would make it only if the cop didn’t glance sideways and spot them when they made that run. Was it worth the effort?
“There has to be another door to that garage, the door for the stairs, one we can’t see from here,” she insisted.
“If we’re lucky,” he grumbled as they began their slow move away from the small crowd that had gathered.
They walked back toward the alley and began to make the wide half circle. They crept tight to the buildings before breaking for that run to the garage.
“Shit, it’s not even finished,” Cappy said, seeing the blue construction-site dumpster. Debbie disappeared around a corner of the building.
“Cappy,” she called, “there’s a door here. It’s open. Come on.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” he grunted behind her as they climbed the stairs.
At the third level, she slowly pushed the door open and peeked out.
“I think this is good,” she whispered.
Cappy peeked out as well. “Looks okay to me.”
Like children, they tiptoed into the empty garage, the unfinished cement floors crackling beneath their steps. Cappy went straight to the far edge that faced the hospital. He stood and stared and then fell into a crouch, yelling. “Goddamn, get down. Jesus, I think that’s him. Right there. Do you see him? Over there, at that window. Oh God. Sweet Jesus God Almighty.”
“Where, where?” She stretched to see the wall of hospital windows level with the garage.
“There, the next floor up, middle window. Wait a second.” He lowered his head to the camera eyepiece. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not much light, not much,” he muttered, “but that’s him. Talk to George.”
He unhooked the walkie-talkie from his belt and skidded it across the floor.
“I need a better shot,” he said and, with the camera held like a rifle, he duck-walked forward, pulling the recorder behind him.
The Best in the West Page 18