“In my blood. Why do you want it?”
“Mid-Atlantic wants to develop a communications division. Oh, I know there isn’t that much money in the Clarion but when I heard it was available I thought, ‘Why not?’ I think we’ll wind up buying it too. It will be the cornerstone of the division.”
“Don’t you own enough?”
“I don’t personally own these things.”
“You do.”
“Just because a company is big doesn’t mean it’s bad. You’ve got to grow beyond your romantic concept of this paper in particular and business in general.”
“We don’t agree on this issue, Diz. Don’t patronize me.”
He smiled. “Maybe you’re right. I did sound a little pompous. You going to start up with tennis as soon as spring arrives—if it ever does?”
I nodded. “How about you?”
“Not only am I starting, I’ve been taking lessons in New York. I’m going to be the best player in Runnymede this year.”
“You’ll have to beat Jackson Frost.”
“If I do, will you be my doubles partner?”
“You never give up, do you?”
“No.” He beamed.
“How much you want to bet that you’ll beat Jackson?”
“Twenty dollars, and I’ll do the job before July fourth.”
“I’ll take that bet.”
We shook on it and Diz left, a lilt to his step. I pushed open the door to the Clarion, already spending the extra twenty dollars in my head.
Lolly and Pewter were glad to meet me. So was Roger Davis, who slapped his copy on my desk. He couldn’t find the right transitions. I think Roger would kill his mother for good transitions but then that’s true of most journalists.
Later that afternoon the clouds hung low, gunmetal gray. They looked ominous. When John Hoffman came back into the office he looked ominous too. He and I hadn’t had any time to talk since Charles informed us of his plans.
John put his hat with the furry earflaps on his desk. At forty-six, though his hairline had receded, he remained a pleasant-looking man—clear hazel eyes, light-brown hair, clean features. He drank, so his complexion betrayed him with little red spider webs. He ate junk food and his hands shook when he drank yet another cup of roped coffee, laced with Jack Daniel’s Black. Sterilized by rationality, John never cut a shine in his life or even entertained an illogical thought. We coexisted without much affection but with respect. Charles had given John increasing business and advertising responsibilities and John lived up to them. No wonder he was so good at those right-wing editorials. He was speaking directly to our advertisers, many of whom also believed that if you were poor you deserved it.
John fondled Pewter, who jumped on his desk for a kiss. He’d bring her furry catnip mice and chase her around the bullpen, as we called our quarters. I used to wonder, watching him with Pewter, if there was an entire part of his personality that got squashed when he was a kid and someone told him men don’t play, they don’t write poetry, they’re not silly. Pewter seemed to be the only one of us who could touch his submerged and probably half-forgotten self.
He made smacking kissy sounds. “Oh, Pewter Motor Scooter. Uncle John’s got a fishy for you.”
He pulled out a food treat in the shape of a fish. Lolly steamed. John never brought her anything and she hotly resented his favoritism to a mere cat. After all, if robbers burst through the door to snatch our depleted coffers it wouldn’t be Pewter that would save us; it would be Lolly.
John addressed me, finally. “Filthy day. Gonna snow.”
“I hope not. You’ve been so busy I haven’t had time to take your temperature about the great events around here.”
He scratched Pewter at the base of her tail. She rewarded him with thunderous purring. “Yeah, the Old Guard is changing.”
“Got any ideas—for yourself, I mean?”
“I could sure use a pay raise.” He leaned forward over his desk. “And I like living in Runnymede. My kids like it. My wife likes it. But I’ve got to keep my options open.”
“You’ve got them too. You’re good, even if George Will is your hero.”
The compliment got to him and I meant it.
“Truthfully, Nick, I’m kind of rocked by all this. How the hell do we know what our new owners will do once we get new owners? They’ll tell Charles whatever to get him to sign on the dotted line. Now, mind you, I’m not saying they’re going to be bad. In fact they might even introduce the twentieth century to this paper. Hell, we haven’t even got computers yet and our wire machine is on its last legs.”
The AP machine thumped and hummed as the white paper spread across the room like a crazed tapeworm. I liked the old, buggy thing but John was right. Technologically we were so far behind, we were lonesome. But when it came to solid newspaper sense, the Clarion was aces. A steady stream of fresh kids came to Charles Falkenroth with journalism degree and virtue intact. They left with the journalism degree. And they left real reporters. Our “graduates” worked at The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Kansas City Star, both Chicago papers, both Detroit papers, the San Jose Mercury, the Baltimore Sun, The Washington Post, the Richmond Times-Dispatch, and my favorite, the Louisville Courier-Journal. People here left with bruises on their souls from Charles but they could write a story. If we’d lived in England, the Queen would have bestowed some honorary title upon Charles, but as we were Americans, what he got was the satisfaction of his work. Recognition was for rock stars or at least that’s how Charles would consider it.
“Nickel—you here?” John prodded me.
“Sorry, I was just thinking about Charles. I wonder if he can stay away from the paper even if he sells it.”
“He’s in his seventies.”
“Is he? I forget. He always looks the same to me.”
“My hunch is that Ann will get him to move to Palm Springs. The desert will help his arthritis. He earned his rest.”
“I can’t imagine this place without him.” I grabbed a blue pencil and began desecrating Michelle Saunders’s puff piece on the Jewish cemetery south of town. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the subject matter, it was just that Michelle had obviously spent her life in a WASP cocoon. She was also a graduate of Sarah Lawrence. Her skin was so thin she could bleed in a high wind, and Charles always stuck me with her copy because he couldn’t face her exhausting fits about English, her desire to be a female F. Scott Fitzgerald, her conviction that the Clarion staff were all trolls in the basement of literature. Well, I’d get an earful today. I scribbled in the column and spoke while editing. “Did Charles tell you I’m trying to buy the paper?”
“I was wondering when you’d get to that.”
I stopped scribbling. The piece was too awful anyway. “What do you think?”
“I think you’ve got brass balls.” He smiled broadly.
“I take it that’s a compliment.”
John laughed. “Hey, it’s David and Goliath and I’ve got a ringside seat.”
“You might hand me a rock.”
He was thinking about the rock when Michelle scurried over. Today she wore Pappagallo shoes. This girl would be buried in Pappagallo shoes. Her disdain for my wardrobe radiated from every pore. I couldn’t blame her. Shopping puts me closer to a nervous breakdown than my April fifteenth tax deadline. I wore my clothes until they were threads crossing my body. I was neat and clean but that’s about all you could say for me except I looked good in jeans and sneakers.
“Have you finished with my piece? I mean, the sense of history, of cultural integrity is just stupefying, isn’t it? I’ve just got to go to a seder.” She pronounced it “cedar.”
“Michelle, I’m not finished yet but I think you’ve got a heavy rewrite.”
“The pacing is perfect.” Her chin set.
Dear God, give me strength. “It does move but I think we’ve got to tone down sentences like this: ‘A latter-day Moses, Rabbi Kahn parts the waves of societal oppression for his tiny
flock.’ ”
“You deny the persecution of the Jews?” Her eyebrows flew into her strawberry-blond hair. Not one strand of gray in it.
“This isn’t a story about persecution; it’s a story about the Jewish cemetery. If you’re going to talk about societal oppression, then you’d better back it up with stories of anti-Semitism in Runnymede—and we’ve got it.”
“Here?” Michelle labored under the delusion that because the Square was quaint, our manners polished, that we were an ideal community.
John threw her a bone. “Talk to Mutzi Elliott. Ask him what happened when the Rosenbergs were brought to trial.”
“Mutzi’s not a Jew.”
I wanted to groan. How we were ever going to make a reporter out of this one, I didn’t know. I could spit at Charles for dropping her in my lap.
“Mutzi was an eyewitness,” I told her. “The other principals are dead now.”
John shook his head. “It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
I got up and walked back to the press.
You can get to the press through the Clarion building. The press addition was built immediately after the War Between the States. Since Maryland technically was a neutral state, we didn’t suffer the devastation of our great and greatly irritating neighbor, Virginia. Both the Falkenroth and the Hunsenmeir of that time invested shrewdly and added the huge press wing. They even filled it with an early linotype press. In 1924, when money was everywhere, Charles’s Dad, Michael, put in the offset press. That old baby was singing today. Michael also put in a gigantic glass picture window so the citizens could stand in the wide alleyway between Brown’s Meat Market and the Clarion and watch the paper get printed. The printers wore white overalls and white square caps. The walls were white. They were still white and so were the printers. Arnold Dow, the genius of the old machine, kept her going. I stood on the catwalk about the ponderous giant and inhaled the mossy odor of newsprint and virgin paper. I never tired of it, nor the sight of the printed page as it rolled off the press. Women, usually the wives of the printers, would bundle and tie the papers. The whole place was a ballet of activity infused with a spirit of freedom. I could write whatever I wanted in the Clarion. My ancestors saw to that and I, for one, wasn’t going to forget it.
There was no audience today. The weather turned colder; a few flakes floated down. In the summers we drew crowds. The magic of the Clarion beckoned to our community, or maybe it was the magic of newspapers. Whatever, they watched. They also watched Jeopardy on the television but there’s no accounting for taste.
When I was tiny, too small even for kindergarten, my father, Chessy Smith, would take me down to watch the paper. I think I knew even then that I’d wind up here. I think he knew too. Dad bought me a typewriter when I was six. Where he got the money, I’ll never know. He gave me a card of proofreading symbols. And he drilled me from behind the counter of his hardware store. I often wondered if Dad wanted to be a reporter himself. It was beyond his reach, because he didn’t get past fifth grade. He had to work and help his family after his father died suddenly of a massive stroke. If this was a dream of his, and he was living it out through me, he never said. What he did say when he’d read my childhood copy was, “Where’d you get your brains? You didn’t get them from me.” But I did.
I didn’t know Daddy when he worked as a carpenter. By the time I came into his life he had bought the long, narrow store next to the Clarion. He named it Smith’s Hardware, today called Smitman’s for the family that purchased it after Dad’s death. Saturdays I worked in the store with Dad until I was big enough to be a copygirl at the Clarion. He taught me to be prompt, orderly, and to smile at the customers. He also taught me how to use each of the gadgets and tools in the store. I especially liked the square metal tape measure that would whoosh back into its casing if you pressed a button.
People liked Chessy Smith because he made them laugh. They’d drop by the store for a dose of amusement after they’d spilled out their troubles to Dad in hushed tones. When we’d be alone in the store, Dad would say to me: “People worry too much. They’re too serious. They want answers. Well, there aren’t very many answers. The secret of life is that there is no secret, you know that, kid?”
No, I didn’t. Not at the time.
7
MY CHEATING HEART
TUESDAY … 31 MARCH
Tuesdays packed more excitement than Mondays in Runnymede but that’s true everywhere. Tuesdays the Masons had their regular meeting. So did the Daughters of the Confederacy. Their rivals, the Sisters of Gettysburg, held meetings on Wednesday night in the Pennsylvania side’s city hall. The Emmitsburg Pike divided the two city halls—that and taste. The Southern city hall was an echo of Jefferson, which meant it had graceful Palladian proportions and was a bitch to heat. The Yankee city hall reeked of gingerbread rococo. The architect of this edifice, Larkin Most, even went so far as to put gargoyles on the rooftop corners. On a misty night they could give you quite a start.
This night left mist far behind and embraced pea-soup fog. As I put the paper to bed on Tuesday nights, I was the last to leave. I hadn’t noticed how wretched it was until I stepped outside and locked up the heavy oak doors, using a key as big as a ruler.
By ten o’clock most folks are home. By eleven they’re in bed. A few hang on till midnight. Those who are still awake stay awake until dawn but those are the ones with problems. Unless a hot story came down the wire and I had to rip up the front page, I was usually out of the Clarion by ten. Each Tuesday I’d walk along the Square and then duck into the alleyway behind the drugstore on the southwest corner. Then I’d double back to Brown, Moon & Frost, where I’d go in the back door. I had a key. This night was no exception.
Jackson stood on a little ladder in the law library. “You’ve got ink on your forehead.”
I looked in a convex mirror and rubbed it off. “How come you didn’t tell me Charles was selling the paper?”
“Because he’s my client and that’s privileged information.” He stepped down. “And because he wanted to tell you himself.”
“What’s the point of having an affair with you if I don’t get the news first?”
Jackson kissed me. “That’s the point.”
“You’ll have to do better than that.”
He did. He always did. I can’t even claim to have drifted into this relationship. I sailed in, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. And I knew better too. My parents didn’t raise me to have relationships with married people but my parents also didn’t take into account the slim pickings in Runnymede, especially if one is gay. Which brings me to what appears to be a flaming contradiction. What was I doing in bed with Jackson Frost? Having a good time.
I subscribe to the blue dot theory of human sexuality. Actually, I don’t subscribe to it; I made it up. If on a given day every single person who has ever had homosexual sex woke up with a blue dot on his or her forehead, either three quarters of adult America would stay in bed or they’d be brazen and hit the streets, and finally all this huffing and puffing over who sleeps with whom would be over. Now there’s more to this theory. I think the color of the dot should reflect the level of one’s activity. So if you were stone gay your dot would be blue-black. If you’d once had a small experiment the dot would be such a pale blue as to be nearly white. My dot registered turquoise, somewhere in the middle but just a bit over the line.
I loathe this American obsession with sex and sexual definition. I am not who I sleep with. Actually, I was lucky to have Jackson to sleep with Tuesday nights.
Our attitude toward each other outside his office was proper. I loved his wife, Regina, and the only bad thing I could say about my best friend was she wore so much iridescent eye shadow that her lids looked like shrimp gone bad. Jackson and I had known each other since before kindergarten. Same with Regina. I guess as time went by, Regina looked like a better bet than I did. She married Jack, and if I was hurt I didn’t know it at the time.
&
nbsp; Jackson and I were doubles partners at the club but no one paid much attention. Lesbianism was etched in everyone’s cerebral tentacle—brain may be too optimistic a noun. It never occurred to anyone that I might be sleeping with Jackson.
Lolly snored on the fake Bokhara. Pewter pulled pencils out of an embossed leather cylinder on his desk.
Afterwards he made me a strong cup of Lipton tea so I could drive home. He had only to walk around the block to Lee Street, the same street Mother lived on.
“Do you think I have a chance?”
“There are a lot of factors out of your control but if Foster Adams comes down on your side, you’ve got a chance. Hope so, anyway.” His blond curls gleamed in the low light.
“Thanks. Oh, I ran into Diz and he made a twenty-dollar bet with me that he’s going to beat you in singles before July fourth. If he does, then I’m promised as his mixed-doubles partner for the rest of the season.”
“Ha! When hell freezes over. He never stops being competitive. I mean, success is a fetish with that guy.” He rubbed his square jaw. “He’d be more interesting if his fetishes were sexual.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.”
“How’s your mother?”
I knew why Jack was switching subjects. Anything to do with Diz generally put him in a bad mood and he didn’t want to be in a bad mood. Our time together was too precious.
“I’m not sure.”
“Sick?”
“No, but peculiar. She called me Sunday and talked to me about love and my future. It’s not like Mom to do that. I mean, normally, anger and wit are the only way she shows emotion. Anything else—she deflects. I wonder what’s going on with her?”
“It’s all over town what’s going on with Louise.”
“I wouldn’t take this date with Ed Walters too seriously.”
“She is.”
“How do you know so much about it?”
“Had lunch at Mojo’s, and Verna was promiscuous in her conversation.”
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