by R. G. Belsky
Moments when she had the opportunity to find happiness but didn’t take advantage of them.
And I suppose that was the worst tragedy of all.
CHAPTER 62
I WAS THINKING about all this as I sat in a rental car outside a house in Winchester, Virginia.
Linda Nesbitt’s house.
The woman I believed used to be Lucy Devlin.
My daughter.
It was a little after eight a.m. Other houses on the block were springing to life, with people emerging to start their day. Finally, the door of the house I was watching opened, and a woman came out with a little girl. She walked the girl to a waiting school bus, kissed her goodbye, and began heading back toward the house. Just before she got there, she turned around to wave goodbye to her daughter one more time.
I could see her face clearly now.
And I knew.
God help me, I knew it was her.
This was Lucy.
I’ve always had this dream about meeting my daughter again.
Well, two dreams.
The first dream is the happy one. When Lucy and I meet for the first time, she tells me she’s watched me doing the news on television and always admired me from afar. Even before she knew I was her mother. She tells me all about her own child, an adorable little girl too—and how I’m a grandmother now. Then I take her in my arms and I hold her. I tell her that I’m sorry I left her for so long. I tell her that I’ll never leave her again. I tell her she’s the one good thing I’ve ever done in my life.
The second dream is different. In this one, I’m sitting in a car outside a house that I’ve never seen before. I know Lucy lives there, but for some reason I can’t go up and knock on the door. Instead, I just sit in the car and do nothing. Eventually, Lucy comes out of the house. Again, I want to run to her, but I can’t—my legs won’t move. I simply watch as she walks away down the street outside of her house, just like she did that long-ago day in New York City, and disappears on me all over again.
I thought again now about Dora Gayle.
The beautiful, brilliant young woman who called herself Cinderella, believed in fairy tales, and waited in vain for her Prince Charming to come save her.
Yes, Dora’s life ended tragically.
But maybe—just maybe—she was right about believing in fairy tales though.
Except sometimes you just have to make your own fairy tale come true.
I opened the door, got out of the car, and went to meet my daughter …
AUTHOR’S NOTE
BELOW THE FOLD takes place in a TV newsroom in New York City. I know a lot about newsrooms. I’ve worked in plenty of them over the years. NBC News. NBC local stations. New York Daily News. Star magazine. New York Post. And, so, what I’ve tried to do in this book is give you a real-life look at what it’s like behind the scenes in the high-stakes world of news media.
It’s not always the same as you see on TV or at the movies. Not everyone is as likable as Murphy Brown or Lou Grant or Jane Craig in Broadcast News. Not every story turns into Watergate. And not every journalist comes to work every morning hoping to right the wrongs of society and make the world a better place, as we’re frequently led to believe.
Do you know what the biggest motivation in a real newsroom is? Fear. Fear you’re going to screw up. Fear you won’t get the story. Fear someone else is going to beat you to it. Funny, but the stories you remember aren’t just the ones you got. They’re the ones you missed, too.
I talk in the book about “feeding the beast,” and that’s what a news journalist has to do every day. Come up with a big story that’s better than the story your competition is doing. And, as Clare Carlson points out, the beast is never satisfied. No matter how many stories you feed it, the beast always wants more.
There’s a classic anecdote about a reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his newspaper. His editor held a big party in the newsroom after the announcement to celebrate this great honor. They congratulated him, praised him, and did toasts in his honor. At the end of the party, the editor called the reporter over to the side and asked him: “So what have you got for tomorrow?”
Then there’s the title of this book itself. “Below the fold” is a newspaper term—which Clare uses in the TV newsroom, since she’s a veteran of print journalism—to indicate a story that’s not important enough to be displayed prominently at the top of the front page. Except it’s not always that easy. Sometimes a “below the fold” item—like the seemingly meaningless death of a homeless woman like Dora Gayle—can explode into a huge Page One phenomenon of its own. I’ve seen this happen many times, which is why I wanted to write a book about this kind of story.
All of this pressure to produce day after day takes a real toll on a journalist. Frequently, the result is someone like … well, Clare Carlson. Three failed marriages, uncertain about her role as a mother, a personal life that is in constant turmoil—but she’s still one helluva journalist!
Readers ask me if the Clare Carlson character is based on a specific person. My answer, of course, is no. Clare Carlson doesn’t actually exist. But she is an amalgamation of many real journalists—both women and men—that I’ve worked with in newsrooms over the years. People who literally live their lives from deadline to deadline.
Let’s just say I’ve known a lot of Clare Carlsons in my life.
And that’s what Below the Fold—and Clare—is all about.
Not necessarily journalism the way we think it should be.
Or the way we imagine it from TV and movies.
Just the way things really do work in a big-city media newsroom.
—R.G. Belsky