I ignored the last part. “Chicago. There’s a Chicago Star mug on his desk.”
“And I don’t know if he worked there, bought it from their gift shop, or stole it from someone’s kitchen. What I just told you is all I know.” She took another swallow of coffee and I did the same. “So, he’s been mean to you?”
“Not mean exactly. I just can’t read him. I’m trying. Really I am. My grandmother sent me here for a purpose and I want to honor her by being on my best behavior.”
“Your grandmother?”
I had said too much. Probably. “Yeah . . . old friend of Shelton and Bobbie’s.” Mister Shelton. Miss Bobbie. “It’s . . . nothing.”
“If it means anything as far as what I think, you seem to be doing fine. At least you’re getting that nasty desk cleaned up.”
“Yeah,” I said. But I hadn’t come to Testament to clean up a desk. Or to be bullied by William Decker. I’d come to resurrect the old magazine.
No. I’d come to win my father’s job.
I wrapped my hands around the warmth of the mug. “I guess we’d better get back to work before the story . . . what did you call it?”
Alma laughed. “I call it ‘story time,’ just because I like to keep things cheerful around here. The newspaper business can be kind of hard-nosed. Especially when we’re hitting deadlines.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’ve worked at a magazine for years. It’s the same way.” Just not every day.
Alma stood and so did I. “You can take your coffee back to your desk if you want. As you may have noticed, one of the rooms Miss Bobbie has resigned herself to never decorate is the main office for us reporters.”
That much I couldn’t argue with. “Can you show me where the restroom is, please?”
“Oh. I’m supposed to be showing you around anyway, aren’t I?”
“That’s okay. I’ll go to the restroom and meander for a few minutes on my own. I’m sure I’ll be fine.”
We stepped into the hallway. Alma pointed to our left. “Second door on the right is the little girls’ room.”
I handed her my coffee. “Would you mind terribly putting this on my desk?”
“Not at all.”
I ventured into a room that had undoubtedly also seen Bobbie’s touch. Miss Bobbie. All right then. I’d have to work hard to remember that.
An oak-and-marble sink stood in front of me. I opened the lower cabinet door and peered inside to find cleaning supplies, feminine hygiene products, and extra rolls of toilet paper. I straightened, testing the overhead mirror to determine if it was, in fact, a medicine cabinet.
Bingo.
Inside was an assortment of pain relievers, a tube of toothpaste, and several hotel-sized bottles of mouthwash.
Nice.
After a few minutes in the bathroom, I wandered to the back of the building where a large room seemed to stretch for miles. Dozens of wooden cubbies filled the space, each bursting with newspapers dating back several weeks. To the far back stood the remnants of what had been an old printing press, no longer used since the miracle of pdf files. Old metal filing cabinets in need of a good dusting crowded the cubbies, their drawers labeled by yellowing slips of paper scrawled with faded ink. One drawer in particular drew my attention from across the room; its label typed boldly in black: HUNTING GROUNDS & GARDEN PARTIES. I glanced over my shoulder, wondering if I was somewhere I shouldn’t be. As if Will would walk in any moment and yell at me for not sitting at my desk doing nothing. Or for snooping.
But this magazine—or the remnant of it left inside the cabinet—was my ticket up. This was why I was in Testament in the first place.
Feeling secure in my mission, I stepped toward the cabinet and gingerly, almost reverently, opened the drawer. The smell of dust and old print wafted around me, tickling my nose. Again, I looked over my shoulder, then back into the deep drawer, where a thick stack of the defunct magazine issues had been stored.
I pulled out the top issue—dated May 1956—and pushed the drawer closed. I laid the magazine on top of the cabinet and studied the cover photograph: an old hunting dog sitting in front of a linen-draped round table adorned with an eggshell china tea set.
My lips crept upward in a smile. I turned back the cover, flipped past the table of contents and a few ad pages to the editorial section, where I found the names of my grandparents and the Deckers.
I ran my fingertips over my grandfather’s name and title—Richard W. Rothschild, publisher. Papa. I closed my eyes for a moment, drawing his scent from memory. His larger-than-life presence. No man could fill his shoes in my heart . . . not even Dad.
I looked at the magazine page again. Gram had been his sole journalist, although I saw under her name a short list of contributors. Bobbie Decker served as the only photographer and Shelton as the copy editor.
Humble beginnings.
“Those were the days,” someone said from behind me. I spun around so quickly I knocked the magazine to the floor.
“Oh,” I said. Heat rushed to my cheeks as I bent to retrieve the magazine sprawled near Bobbie Decker’s feet. “I’m sorry. I guess you could say I was snooping.”
“Snoop all you want,” she said. “There’s not a thing back here that’s a secret.”
Returning the magazine to the drawer, I said, “I’ve never seen these before. Any of them.” I brushed dust from my palms.
“Really? Connie didn’t keep some of the issues for herself?”
I closed the drawer with a click. “If she has, I haven’t seen them. Gram is often pretty closedmouthed about the past.”
Bobbie’s eyes lit up. “Always was.” She stepped around me, reopened the drawer, and picked up the magazine I’d just put back along with a short stack of others. “Would you like to take a few of these back to the cottage to look over? We did good work, even if we didn’t have a clue as to what we were doing.”
I took the magazines from her. “Really? You don’t mind?”
“Might help you in the project Shel and Connie set you up to do.” She linked her arm with mine. “Have you met the gals in advertising?”
I shook my head. “No, I haven’t.”
Bobbie led me toward a door I’d not noticed before, on the opposite wall from where I’d entered the room. “I’ll introduce you. I’d have thought William would have done all that by now.”
My back involuntarily straightened. “He’s been busy.”
“He’s a good boy,” she said. “He’s just . . . he’s had a hard time of late.”
A hard time? Really . . . “I didn’t know . . . don’t know . . . he hasn’t said.”
She patted my hand. “He wouldn’t. And don’t say I said anything or I’ll end up in the doghouse.”
We stopped at the door of a brightly painted room with walls dominated by corkboard and dry-erase bulletin boards. The strong odor of paint and the painter’s tape outlining the sole window told me someone had been working recently. “You’ve been redecorating,” I whispered to Bobbie.
Miss Bobbie.
“I’m trying. And one of these days I’ll get to the office you’re in. Good Lord willing.”
Three women, two older, one younger, sat behind metal and faux-wood desks, their eyes fixed on their computer screens. “Well, hey, Miss Bobbie,” one of the older ones called out.
“Hey there, yourself,” she said. Then, pulling me farther into the room, “Yvonne, Dianne, and Carrie, I want you to meet the granddaughter of one of my oldest and dearest friends.” Bobbie repeated the pat on my hand. “This is Ashlynne Rothschild. She’s going to be working with us for a few months, shadowing William and bringing our old magazine out of mothballs.”
The younger women coughed out a laugh. “That’s not a bad gig,” which brought follow-up laughter from the other two.
“The magazine?” one said. “The old Hunting Grounds?”
“I’m afraid so,” Bobbie said. “Seems Shelton wants a project and he’s picked this one.” Bobbie squeezed my h
and, leaving me to wonder if the magazine was the project or me.
“My mother used to love that magazine,” the woman—whose desktop nameplate read Carrie Birchfield—said.
“Your mother used to send us story ideas,” Bobbie added. “Never wanted to write them, of course, but she was full of ideas.”
“What was your name again?” the youngest—Dianne—asked me.
“Ashlynne. Ashlynne Rothschild,” I added with a smile.
The smile was not returned. “And you’re going to work with William, you say?”
“I—uh—only temporarily. Until I get the lay of the land, I guess you could say.”
The three women shot messages to each other with their eyes. Messages I’d learned long ago to read without understanding the code.
“Now, girls,” Bobbie said. “We’ll have none of that.”
“Oh, Miss Bobbie,” Yvonne said, “we’re just being who we are. You know us.”
“I know you, and you just be who you are on your own time. While you’re here, there will be no funny business.”
Carrie gave a half-grin, as though she were in on the greatest secret to hit Testament, North Carolina.
Bobbie squeezed my hand again. “Y’all make Ashlynne feel welcomed, now, ya hear?” She patted my hand again and I wondered if the action was more to calm her or me. “You’ll do fine, Ashlynne. Don’t let these girls scare you. They think they’ve got a club up in here or something.”
I looked down at Bobbie and tried my best not to cry as an old memory settled around me. I was twelve, standing in front of a classroom filled with ordinary middle-school kids. They were halfway through the Monday in their second week of seventh grade, but I had just started my first day.
For nearly two months I had begged my parents to let me leave St. Andrew’s Academy, to attend a public school—even if for only a year—like normal kids. Real kids. Not children born with special privileges just because their parents had done well in business and in life. My best argument had been that while St. Andrew’s was known for academics, the public school system had a variety of sports none of the private schools offered.
Like I played sports.
Mom had been all for it, but Dad sorely against it. And Dad’s vote trumped Mom’s and mine put together so, for all he knew, he’d won the battle.
But not the war.
The first day of school, I refused to get out of bed and go to St. Andrew’s. On the second day, Dad found me kneeling over the toilet bowl, throwing up from an exaggerated level of drama I’d worked myself into. That was when Gram and Papa stepped in, saying, “Let her try, Richard. Might do her a world of good.”
Dad never could say no to Gram or to Papa.
If I’d known then what I learned a short time later, I would have gotten up that first morning of school, dressed in my St. Andrew’s uniform, and been the dutiful child—new notebooks and book bag in hand. And stayed out of the lion’s den.
I looked at the faces of the three women from advertising.
The lion’s den. Exactly where I found myself again.
9
Their faces said it all—nothing had changed.
Old feelings returned. I didn’t belong here. Would never belong here, not even for six months.
Miss Bobbie insisted they explain to me their individual roles at the paper. Although they talked for several minutes, each describing their part of the newspaper business, I knew they saw me as an intruder to their world. To their community. Someone who would never fit in, even though I paid careful attention to every word they said because I knew, in the end, advertising was just as important to the newspaper as it would be to the magazine I had come to resurrect.
No, I didn’t belong here. The only place I belonged was Winter Park.
The bigger problem—bigger than these women staring at me, telling me that I had intruded into their world—was that Dad and Gram didn’t believe I fully belonged back home either. They didn’t understand—not fully—that Winter Park, and the magazine specifically, held safety for me. And that my friends, few though they may be, were true friends. They understood. Everything.
I blew out a pent-up breath and looked around, making every attempt to regain my composure. My control. On a small portion of one wall, a Saturday Evening Post calendar displaying Norman Rockwell art hung beside three dry-erase boards. Each board held the name of one of the three women; underneath that, a list of businesses. Stretched over the boards, a banner read: NEW BUSINESSES. Just as in the magazine publishing world, new business was as important as old for drumming up ads. We had our loyal clients, of course. But we were always looking to expand the horizon.
“Our paychecks depend highly on commission,” Yvonne told me, “so we spend precious little time lollygagging.”
Lollygagging. The way she said the word clenched my heart. Is that what she thought I did? “I understand,” I said. “It’s that way for me too. Back home.”
“Oh, really?” Carrie asked, and again I could feel the disbelief in her voice.
“Mmhmm. As soon as I walk into my office, I’m faced with loads to do. Articles to write. Interviews to go out on. Fires to put out. No time for lollygagging.” And, in my case, friendship-building. Which was why Dad and Gram thought me incapable of connecting with our employees. And, right now, I couldn’t say I blamed them.
“Oh, well then I guess you know,” Carrie said.
For several moments, we were at a standoff, none of us really knowing what else to say. The three ad girls looked at one another. Bobbie and I looked back. I blinked a few times. “Miss Bobbie,” Dianne finally said, “Testament High is having a swing band dance on the night of their first game and placed an ad for it today. I told them we’d give them a good rate.”
“Good, good,” Bobbie replied. Then to me, “We always give the schools a good rate. It’s only right. And, of course, what would a small-town newspaper be without school news. Especially high school.” Looking back at Dianne, she said, “When does school begin this year?”
“Wednesday.”
“And first game?”
“Next Friday.”
Bobbie looked at me again. “We’ll make sure William takes you to the first game. We’ll want a story, of course, but it’s also the thing to do on Friday nights during the season.”
But . . . “I thought Alma was the sportswriter.” And, because the ad girls had been so quick earlier to respond to my forced relationship with Will, I watched for any reaction about him taking me to the game. “Isn’t she?”
“Honey, if you’ve got a chance to go out with Will Decker, don’t sneeze at it,” Yvonne said as she laughed.
Heat rushed to my cheeks. “I’m not going out with anyone.”
The three laughed all the harder, sharing their secret joke. I looked at Bobbie again, a silent pleading.
“Girls,” she said, and the laughter stopped. She turned her attention to me. “Alma will do the game story, of course. We’ll need someone to cover the dance. You like to dance, don’t you, Ashlynne? I’m sure you do. Your grandmother was a marvelous dancer.”
I wondered if dancing may have been how Gram connected to these people so long ago. And, if so, then this was a perfect alley for me to go down in my quest upward. “Yes,” I said. “I like to dance.” In fact, I was very good at it. Years of classes had seen to it.
“Good. Then it’s settled. I’ll tell William.” She looked at the wall clock. “Dear me, it’s five till four. We’ve got the meeting to get to.”
“Good-bye, Miss Bobbie,” the three said in harmony.
She waved. “Carry on, girls. Make us some money.”
They laughed as she turned me toward the door. I glanced over my shoulder. “Nice to meet you,” I said. “And maybe I’ll see you all at the dance.”
“You too,” they echoed, but I knew they didn’t mean it.
I drove home around 6:00 p.m. in near-comatose condition, except for a lump in my throat I’d been unable to swallo
w for the past two hours.
Emotional exhaustion had clamped down on every muscle in my body. Ever fiber of my being. My brain refused to think and I was grateful the traffic in Testament was practically nonexistent. I turned my Jag into the Decker driveway, stunned I remembered the way.
The car rocked side to side as though it had already memorized the incline leading to the cottage. I pulled up alongside the unpainted, tin-roofed structure and turned off the car. Too tired to get out, I laid my head back and closed my eyes. I would nap, I decided, for fifteen minutes. Even in the late afternoon heat. I didn’t care. If I died, I died. Should I live, then I’d go inside, shower, try to muster up the energy to chew something and call it “dinner,” and then fall into bed.
I jumped at a dog’s bark and swung my head to the window. My furry friends welcomed me home, tails wagging, tongues falling out the sides of their mouths. Or perhaps they were preventing my attempt at dying in my Jag at the end of my first workday in Testament, North Carolina.
I pulled my purse and briefcase from the passenger’s seat and opened the door. “Hello,” I said, swinging my feet to the pebble-covered ground. “Are you my welcoming committee?”
They panted in response.
I trudged toward the door with my new faithful companions at my feet. “You know,” I said, “I haven’t been told your names. We’re practically strangers.” Yet, they welcomed me. The irony . . . the irony.
The panting continued.
“Are you thirsty?” I asked. “I bet you’re thirsty.”
One of the dogs yelped in answer.
I opened the cottage door, swinging it wide enough for the three of us to enter. I placed my purse and briefcase on the counter and continued with my one-sided conversation. “Let me find a bowl big enough in here somewhere,” I said, now fumbling through the cabinets, “and I’ll get you some water.”
The dogs continued to pant as they paced in wide circles.
The Road to Testament Page 8
