On the Same Page
Page 19
“To give you something to talk about,” she said, in her fading attempt at playfulness. He chuckled wanly, but not the way she’d hoped he would. He often enjoyed getting irate, but he was not enjoying this.
TUESDAY NIGHT WAS the Annual Town Meeting.
Anyone who has never attended an Annual Town Meeting should head to New England and remedy that. If you’ve ever wondered who We the People really are, they’re the ones who show up every year and keep their butts in those industrial stacking chairs for four hours at a go, except for when they stand up to respectfully denigrate each other’s intelligence, morals, values, and integrity. It would take an epic poem to describe the world of a Town Meeting.
Joanna had attended every Town Meeting from birth until she went off to college, so she had never voted in one but she knew the superstructure as well as she knew her multiplication tables:
The evening’s program was spelled out in a warrant, with articles. A lot of these were rote spending articles. If the Finance Committee vetted and approved it, then generally it would get passed. The Finance Committee was made up of ordinary taxpaying residents, volunteering their time and judgment for a remuneration that would not quite cover the cost of the coffee they drank during Fin-Comm meetings. Anything involving the police or firemen or EMS or school generally passed with minimal debate. Anything involving conservation land or affordable housing was debated ad nauseam, and then generally passed. Grand, finance-free gestures of the town’s Progressive Ethos always passed, which the nonprogressive minority found blisteringly smug.
And every year, there was at least one tumultuously important Town Problem that caused a disproportionate amount of debate and angst and immediate family members not speaking to each other for days, and extended family not speaking to each other for weeks. One year the Town Problem was whether or not to allow dogs on the town beach. One year it was whether or not to allow beer and wine to be sold at restaurants. One year it was about solar energy panels being put up on town buildings. One year it was a return to the dogs-on-the-beach issue.
Hank had wanted to come. He’d never missed a meeting, in more than half a century. But Joanna convinced Helen and Paul to scold him with her, and, pouting, he’d agreed to stay home.
Nor, to her disappointment, did she see Orion. She wondered if he’d meant any of that stuff about the thrill of direct democracy in action, or if that was just a good pickup line to use at a political forum.
Hundreds of people crowded through the doors to the school gym, targeted a place to sit in the rows of chairs spread across the hardwood flooring, took off coats, waved to friends, gave political adversaries a cold shoulder, settled in with knitting or sudoku puzzles or cell phones. This was a return to a childhood ritual for her. She was here not as voter but as witness. She was over the discomfort from a few months earlier, of seeing familiar faces and fearing they knew what she was up to; now people were used to her presence, and her note-taking, and her reports. It helped that she wasn’t writing features for the Journal—that she wasn’t editorializing or inserting herself into what she wrote. She gave nobody any reason to feel defensive or self-conscious in her presence. She was here to do her job: report on the meeting for the Journal.
And also to do her other job: reporting on it for the Newes.
She walked to the side of the gym with her fellow nonvoters, property owners who were registered to vote off-Island but wanted to know where their property taxes were going; a handful of high school students probably here as a project for a civics class; resident aliens, largely Brazilians. The nonvoters numbered, in all, perhaps two dozen, and as a group they were not in the line of sight of the video camera recording the evening’s events. But she sat on the top bleacher as far back in the gym as she could, to prevent anyone looking over her shoulder, however innocently, and seeing what she was writing. She pressed her back into the wall as if she would make herself disappear into it, then pulled out her laptop, opened two different Word documents, and sized them both down to fit together in the window. She darted looks at the people closest to her, with a sour expression intended to prevent anyone from coming close, but nobody was paying attention to her. She took an approximate head count for both papers; there were about three hundred people present. That was more than enough to make a quorum, in a town of 2,600 voters.
For the Journal, she reviewed the pile of leaflets and brochures she’d been energetically handed by canvassers outside the school doors, and marked which organization was batting for which measures. Everett would take that info and have an intern figure out who was funding what, in case there was a story hiding in plain sight (her guess was there would not be, but he was a newspaperman and hope springs eternal for a scandal).
For the Newes, Joey Dias wrote an on-the-fly critique of the town’s current poet laureate Bettina Snow’s recitation of her poem “Takemmy Hills.” Joey Dias gave it a positive review, of course. Happily, Joanna genuinely liked it, but she’d have given it a glowing review in any case, because she saw Bettina not infrequently at the grocery store and occasionally even walking along the wintry beach. Even if Bettina did not clock her as Joey Dias, she’d have a visceral urge to hide if they crossed paths.
For both papers she jotted down the news of the upcoming Town Picnic, with the Newes receiving the lion’s share of information about the historical significance of the picnic and the Journal emphasizing what people should bring to it. Hippie Richard Burton, aka Moderator Peter Cooke, called the meeting to order, and the rest of the evening was a civic lovefest. It was spirited chaos at times, and at one point a debate about mending the cemetery fences became exasperating (“Dead people don’t need to be fenced in unless they become zombies, in which case these fences will not save us,” etc.). But compared to the harsh ugliness of politics off-Island, these people were practicing that slippery alchemy called democracy. As had been true since she was old enough to understand what taxes were, Joanna was enthralled by what people could make happen with a simple aye or nay.
Both papers would hear all about the budget, although the Journal readers would hear more about the proposed expansion of the light industrial district while Newes readers would get more of the skinny on monies being spent on upkeep—keeping the Ancient Ways cleared and mowed, for example—and the perennial arguments about dredging the Mill Pond.
Before they began the spending articles, Bernie Burt, as chair of the Board of Selectmen, took the floor to advise that the line item for legal services should go up because the town was being sued by Orion Smith of North Road. The town shared a collective hiss at this news—a hiss not worthy of mention in the Newes, but certain to be immortalized in the Journal. There was debate. The debate consisted mostly of Martin Howes (a relation so distant Joanna could not track it) insisting, despite town counsel assuring him he was mistaken, that if there were no money for a lawyer, the state would assign the town a district attorney, as it would for any other indigent defendant. Therefore, argued Martin (or Mr. Howes, as Anna Howes would report him in the Journal; Joey Dias knew the Newes would find it uncouth to cover this bit), not only should the town not vote to raise the funds, but it should in fact dissolve and redistribute whatever funds were currently in the legal coffers, to ensure the town would qualify for a DA. He suggested the funds be used instead to buy a new police car, at which point the chief of police stepped up to the audience microphone to politely inform Martin his department was not in need of a new vehicle.
In the end, a motion was grimly made, grimly seconded, grimly voted on, and passed: $100,000 would be raised and appropriated as a war chest for the upcoming legal battle. The town openly loathed Orion Smith. Never mind about the helicopter; now he was costing them money.
Both papers would also hear about the town’s vote to donate a thousand dollars to next month’s fund-raiser for the Jennifer Holmes Memorial Scholarship, created in honor of the departed wife of the town’s own Henry Holmes, who was not present tonight because in trying to prove he wa
s tougher than a nor’easter, he had jumped off his roof and broken every bone in his body, hahahaha. The town formally sends condolences and hopes he is up and about again, causing new trouble, soon.
* * *
“Nice coverage,” said Everett, glancing over his shoulder when she stuck her head in. He swiveled away from the computer screen tucked in the corner, and stretched his arms up over his head with a yawn as she settled onto the visitor’s chair.
“I have to come clean,” she said.
He stopped stretching, to give her an arch look. “Something happen with Mr. Smith?” He sounded hopeful, the bastard.
“No,” she said, blushing.
“Not yet,” he corrected her with a jocular leer, and settled back into his chair. “So then, is this about Hank being the new ZBA head again?”
“Sort of,” she said. “In part. This has been bothering me for weeks, Everett—”
“Stop beating yourself up,” he said gruffly. “You didn’t plan any of this, it all happened to you. I’m the one choosing to keep you on the story, so it’s on me if you stumble. But you won’t. You’re conscientious. You have integrity.”
“No, Everett, I really don’t. That’s the reason I’m here this morning.” She hesitated. If only she could do this by email. Or telepathy. “I have to tell you something you really don’t know. And it’s the reason you should pull me.”
He gave her an encouraging shrug. “All right, lay it on me.”
“There’s a writer for the Newes, you’ve probably seen the byline a few times without the penny dropping. A new writer. Joey Dias.”
“So?”
“Everett. Think about it.”
It took him a moment. It was fifteen years since he’d been her boss at the Newes. When he realized, he made a face like a fish drowning in oxygen.
“Joanna,” he said, slowly. Then: “Why?”
“You know why—I needed the money!” she said.
“But the Newes? Really? That effete country-club newsletter? The one you referred to as the enemy?”
“They’re the only other paper here,” she said, defensive.
“You’ve got a successful freelance career in New York. Surely you could have gotten an assignment. Which would have paid a hundred times what the Newes—”
“I interview people face-to-face, that’s what I’m known for, and those are the only gigs I get. The Anna Howes brand, or mystique, or whatever nonsense you want to call it, is all about sharing personal space, so nobody even wants to Skype with me.”
“With the fees you get you could certainly fly—”
“Everett, you can’t talk me into having done something differently in the past,” she said, almost snappy. “I can only change things from this moment going forward, and I think the change should be that I back off of covering this story for you. It’s just wrong. If I’m working for both papers, I still make enough money to pay my bills, and there’s less culpability for you.”
He frowned at her. “Who knows about this?”
Sometimes she wasn’t certain of that herself. “Hank, who doesn’t seem to care. Helen Javier, who says she doesn’t care. Celia, who thinks it’s hilarious. And my former math teacher who works for the Newes, but he won’t tell them because he’s the one who got me in there. And James Sherman might have figured it out by now, but he’s distracted with his new grandchild off-Island somewhere.”
Everett sighed with aggravation and impatiently massaged the bridge of his nose. “Okay, so,” he said irritably, “. . . are you covering this story for them?”
“I covered a couple of Zoning Board meetings for them. You may have noticed, they’re not very interested in it.”
“That makes you sneaky—as if that wasn’t already clear—but if you’re not currently covering it for them, then it’s not actually a conflict of interest. I’ve got nobody else who can do this.”
“What happened to Susan Grant? It’s her beat, right? I literally have never met her and I’ve been here nearly three months.”
“She had a family crisis off-Island, and I don’t know when she’ll be back.”
“Everyone’s leaving the Island to attend to family crises.”
“Except you,” said Everett. “Your family crisis brought you back here.” He grimaced. “Look, Anna, you’re freelance so you have the right to do features somewhere else. I’m appalled that you didn’t tell me, but that’s more of a personal offense than a professional one.”
“I’m sorry, Everett, it just felt so awkward. I’ve never been in a position like this before.”
“And you’ve handled it horribly,” he said, his brows so knitted they shaded his eyes. “But, like I said, I got nobody. Make this work. If you feel bad, make it up to me by doing what I need now. This is a big story, the Newes is avoiding it, you’re what I’ve got. Do it, and do it right, and I’ll get over your . . . unfortunate choices.”
“I’d be willing to do that but I think it creates a problem for you, Everett. Even ignoring the flirtation, I’m writing a story in which one of the major parties is my housemate and closest living relative. It’ll make the paper look bad, no matter how impeccably I manage things.”
“You and Hank have different last names and you look nothing alike,” Everett countered, growing rushed and desperate-sounding, as if his brain were working barely faster than his mouth. “People who don’t know you will never catch on, even if they saw you in public together. Not only do you not look related, but I hate to break it to you—you’ve got that cosmopolitan city thing going on. Someone didn’t know you from childhood, they would never guess you grew up here. You pass as someone else now.”
“Yes, as someone Orion Smith would want to date,” she said, unhappily, under her breath.
“The people who do know you’re related, they might call me to gripe,” he went on, thinking as he spoke. “I’ll explain the situation to them, and invite them to take a crack at finding an alternative. They won’t be able to, and they’ll say, with a grumble, Well, okay then. Most people know they have to be forgiving about these things. And,” he said in conclusion, “I am the editor, and have no direct connection to any of your internal connections. So I’m keeping you on it. Just try to keep your budding romance out of sight, okay?”
“Argh,” she said.
“And one more thing. If you’re writing for both papers, you have money now. Get your own place for a couple of months. Then you’re not living with the person you’re reporting about. There’s got to be some empty houses around between now and, say, Memorial Day.”
“Everett, do you read the pieces I file? There is no housing anywhere on this Island for somebody in my position.”
“Then see if you can house-sit or sublet or something. Not to be indelicate, but after the other night, you and Hank could definitely take a breather. That’s an order.”
* * *
When she drove up the dirt drive that afternoon in the slanting, dappled sunlight, the red Rav4 was parked outside.
“Thank you, Helen,” she murmured.
Inside, Hank was on his recliner with a Sam Adams balanced on his lap. Helen Javier was sitting at the table near him, her fingers intertwined around a mug of peppermint tea that delicately mingled with the scent of wood smoke. Over all the years Joanna had known her, the majority of hours she spent in Helen’s presence included her hands wrapped around a cup of hot tea.
“Hello, Anna,” she said, with a confiding smile. “Hank and I were just having a chat about your domestic situation.” Helen glanced at Hank for confirmation; he nodded without looking at her, and definitely not looking anywhere near Joanna.
Joanna knew this, because she’d called Helen and asked her to have that very conversation with Hank. Both women understood him well enough that with very few words exchanged, they both knew how this had to happen.
“Hank, do you want to tell her?” Helen offered, and as they both knew would happen, Hank gruffly presented Joanna’s proposal to Joanna:
“Huh, okay,” said the person who had come up with the idea an hour earlier.
“We’re renting out the house for the summer, but it’s sitting vacant until Memorial Day. Want to stay there? We’d just ask you to cover utilities.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Hank glance her way and then away again. She read all the emotions in that understated brief movement: guilt for wanting her out of the house, relief that she had somewhere to go, a little irritation that she was getting a free upgrade while he was now stuck at home without anyone around to do the things he claimed he wanted to do for himself but secretly enjoyed getting treated to.
And—although this was the least of it—he’d miss her.
She’d miss him too. Not his current attitude, but him.
“That sounds wonderful,” she said. “If you’re sure—”
“Of course she’s sure, we wouldn’t be talking about it if she wasn’t sure,” said Hank.
“This way we don’t need a caretaker so you’re actually saving us money,” said Helen. “One thing, though. We planted potatoes, because our renters want to be able to harvest their own potatoes, so you’d need to keep them up.”
“Twist my arm,” she said.
“Glad to, and thanks,” Helen said.
Joanna glanced at Hank. “Thanks for suggesting that, Hank. I think it’s a real win-win solution.”
He harrumphed, trying to pass as a disgruntled man pretending to be affectionate, but actually an affectionate man pretending to be disgruntled.