The Note

by Hunt, Angela

  “But opinion is important in the lifestyles section. We’re not producing hard news—we’re what people read for pleasure.” She leaned forward, the set of her chin telegraphing her infamous stubborn streak. “Emma Duncan had great numbers when she was writing ‘The Heart Healer.’ At one point, this department was receiving over a thousand letters a week, all for Emma—”

  “Yeah?” Peyton’s voice went hoarse with frustration. “Well, Nora, let’s not lose sight of one important fact— Emma Duncan is deceased. And because you didn’t want to lose her readers, you gave her column to me. I’m doing my best to keep the thing going, but did you ever think that maybe the entire concept is dead?” She leaned back, scrubbing her hand through her short hair. “I mean—‘The Heart Healer.’ How sentimental is that? No professional writer would volunteer to write that sappy stuff today. It may have been timely twenty years ago when Emma began to write, but now—”

  “The concept will still reach readers.” Nora’s voice held a note of irritation. “But perhaps it’s time we had another writer take a crack at it. We can always move you to something else.”

  Peyton’s inner alarm bell began to clang. Move her? To what? She’d left the frenzy of the sports department to write “The Heart Healer.” While the homespun column wasn’t much of a creative challenge, the regular schedule had been good for her peace of mind. Sports writing required too many late nights, too many encounters with testosterone-fueled men, and too many squabbles with Kingston Bernard, the senior sports editor.

  She couldn’t deny that “The Heart Healer” had done better in years past, but she’d made considerable progress in the ten months since Duncan’s death. The readers had rebelled at first, probably resenting Peyton’s professional approach, and for a few weeks reader mail virtually disappeared. But over the last six months Peyton had received an average of twenty-five letters or e-mails per week. Not huge by Dear Abby standards, but respectable. Peyton liked to think that while her version of the column may not have appealed to Emma Duncan’s readers, she was appealing to someone.

  “Nora,” she firmed her voice, “the problem is a difference in approach. I came out of journalism school; I learned to write from a properly detached perspective. Emma got plucked from the neighborhood; she wrote about her kids and dogs. My work may not resonate with Emma’s crowd, but the column is accurate and useful. A lot of local people are looking for practical, simple information—”

  “I can’t afford to reserve front-page space for a useful column appealing to only a limited number of people.” Nora’s brown eyes snapped behind her glasses. “I hate to be the one to tell you, but few of our readers are interested in step-by-step procedures for conducting a title search. Nor do busy families want the recipe for modeling clay. And what was that piece you wrote last month? How to seal seasonal clothing in plastic by reversing the hose on a vacuum cleaner? Honestly, Pat, no one’s interested in those things.” Her brows rose, twin wings of disdain. “I have a hunch those topics don’t even interest you.”

  The words stung, but Peyton knew she held the upper hand. As an over-forty female, if they let her go she could sue them for both age and gender discrimination . . . and they knew she wouldn’t hesitate to call a lawyer.

  Peyton pulled her shoulders back. “I’m a good writer. You can’t say I haven’t met my responsibilities and deadlines.”

  “No one’s saying you don’t write well.” Nora leaned back in her chair, some of the frostiness bleeding out of her expression. “Your speed amazes me, and you have a great eye for detail. But there’s more to doing a column than putting all the words in the proper place. A good columnist writes with passion, and I just don’t feel that in your work. Emma Duncan, God rest her soul, had it. If she wrote a piece about tomatoes, by the time you finished reading you not only knew how to plant them, you wanted to run out and plant an acre.”

  “You want me to get excited about tomatoes?” Peyton threw up her hands. “I’m sorry, Nora, but I’m not what you’d call passionate about gardening. But I can write a competent column about anything you’d want to name. I’ve come up through the ranks; I’ve paid my dues. I can’t help it if ‘The Heart Healer’ attracts readers who want to know about title searches and clothing storage. They write letters, I answer them. It’s that simple.”

  Nora leaned back in her chair, then pulled off her glasses and set them on the desk in a deliberate gesture. “Honestly, Pat”—she inclined her head in what seemed a condescending posture—“I don’t think you’re a bad writer. You’re good, and you’ve got the awards to prove it. But ‘The Heart Healer’ isn’t pulling its weight. Let me put one of the other girls on it, someone who’s married and has a kid or two. And we’ll move you back into the sports pool or maybe give you a shot at local news.”

  Not trusting herself to speak, Peyton shook her head. No matter how Nora presented Peyton’s transfer, her move from columnist to reporter would be seen as a demotion, especially if she got tossed back into the reporters’ pool. The thought of once again covering dull city council meetings made her head ache. After fifteen years of newspaper writing, she should have been promoted to editor. She might have been, if she wasn’t continually butting heads with anal-retentive types who clung to outmoded rules and regulations like children who refused to be weaned from the breast.

  “My column is fine,” she insisted, lifting her gaze. “It’s working.”

  “The numbers don’t lie.” Nora tapped the report with her glasses. “Only little old ladies are reading your stuff, Pat, and I think those numbers came from nursing homes where the residents read everything out of sheer boredom.” She lowered her gaze, stubby lashes shuttering her eyes. “I think it’s time you let me give ‘The Heart Healer’ to someone who cares less about writing to her peers than to her readers.”

  Again, the words stung. What was wrong with writing to a certain standard of excellence? Did the Tampa Times want writers to dumb down their work and appeal to the lowest common emotion? Emma Duncan, not exactly the most brilliant bulb in the chandelier, had written maudlin stories about her poodle and Chihuahua, for heaven’s sake. The lady had never won an award, while Peyton’s résumé was liberally peppered with honors. Yet Nora seemed to be saying that “The Heart Healer” needed someone who had kids and pets in order to make the column work.

  Odd that, in a day when women were empowered, emancipated, and responsible for their own fulfillment, the old prejudice against unmarried females could rear its head and nip at an exposed ankle. In the office Peyton made no secret of how much she enjoyed her freewheeling singleness. Few people knew that she had once reveled in a husband’s love and the scent of a man on a freshly slept-in bed. Yet a rain-slick road brought that life to an end, erasing a wonderful man and the family that might have been . . .

  Abruptly, Peyton closed the door on memories she’d locked away a thousand times before. Raking a hand through her hair, she struggled to find a weapon against the editor’s relentless logic. “Nora, I’m receiving twenty-five letters a week. And you know what they say—for every letter we get, at least a hundred people intend to write but never do.”

  “Even twenty-five hundred readers are not enough to convince the bean counters.” Nora’s voice scraped like sandpaper against Peyton’s ears. “We live in a major metropolitan area with a substantial population of retirees. ‘The Heart Healer’ is intended to appeal to the upper-age demographic, so it should be reaching at least seventy-five thousand people. You should be receiving over seven hundred letters a week.” She paused, then added: “Emma Duncan did.”

  Peyton swallowed hard, realizing how little her twenty-five letters meant to the number-crunchers in the executive offices. The newspaper’s daily circulation was 250,000, so her reader mail represented only 1 percent of the total daily subscribers.

  “The Heart Healer” wasn’t working.

  But how could she surrender it? She’d worked so hard to make certain her column differed from Dear Abby and Ann La
nders and all the other advice columnists. In each “Heart Healer” column she answered only one letter from a reader, going far beyond the usual pithy answers to give specific, detailed guidance. Along with the admittedly dry topics of title searches and insurance, she had given advice to mothers who needed to comfort daughters who’d suffered miscarriages, fathers who feared losing angry teenage sons, and mothers who worried about teenage daughters. Quoting whatever psychology expert’s book she happened to have within reach, she’d given practical, expert, useful advice.

  Her readers didn’t need passion—they needed understandable answers.

  “Please”—she scarcely recognized her voice—“don’t take me off ‘The Heart Healer.’ Give me some time to adjust it; let me rethink my focus.”

  Nora’s eyes glinted behind her glasses. “I was hoping to give Janet Boyles a shot at that column. I think she’s ready for it.”

  Peyton forced a smile even as Nora’s words spread ripples of pain and betrayal. Peyton had thought she and Janet were friends, but if the television writer had been jockeying for her spot . . .

  “I’m ready for anything.” Peyton forced herself to hold the other woman’s flinty gaze. “Give me three months. If the numbers haven’t improved by then, let’s retire ‘The Heart Healer’ and institute a new column with a different concept.”

  “I’ll give you three weeks,” the editor said, crossing her arms. “That’s when we’ll take our next readers’ poll. If ‘The Heart Healer’ hasn’t shown marked improvement, I’m giving Boyles a shot.” She glanced toward the sea of desks beyond the door. “In the meantime, you might want to think about where you’d like to go next—back to sports or regional news.”

  Peyton clenched her fist, well aware that she was occupying sacred ground. Emma Duncan’s untimely death from a heart attack, at her desk, no less, had elevated the woman to virtual newsroom sainthood. “The Heart Healer” could tank with ten different writers, yet Nora and the top brass would still want to keep Emma Duncan’s column on life support.

  So Peyton had to do something . . . and her approach had to work. She needed something incredible and novel—and she’d need breathing space to pull it together.

  “I have vacation time coming,” she said, exhaling slowly. “Why don’t I take next week off and give this some serious thought? That will give me two weeks to try out a new approach.”

  Nora’s gaze rested on her, as remote as the ocean floor, then the editor nodded. “Sounds like a good plan. Sure. File your Friday column by deadline tomorrow, and we’ll run the ‘on vacation’ notice beginning Monday.”

  “My Friday column’s done. I’ll file it now.”

  Nora lifted a brow. “Topic?”

  “How to select a good laptop computer. One of my readers has to buy one for her grandson.” Rising from the chair, Peyton slung her backpack over her shoulder. “Thanks,” she called as she left the office, though she felt anything but grateful.

  And as she wandered through the newsroom, she pressed her hand to the back of her neck and wondered how in the world she was supposed to produce passion in a how-to column that had outlived its usefulness. Clearly, Nora Chilton didn’t think she could do it.

  Peyton would have to prove her wrong.

  Comment by Nora Chilton, 52

  Senior Editor/Features

  I’ve been working at the Tampa Times for thirty years. I like being an editor—most of the time. When the process works, there’s nothing like the electric feeling of pulling a team of writers together and beating the clock. When we’re on, nothing—not balky computers, recalcitrant interviews, or penny-pinching accountants—can stop our momentum. Rocky Balboa’s sweat-drenched “Yo, Adrian! I did it!” can’t compare to the thrill of dogging a breaking story until the last minute, then turning out great copy just under the wire.

  But people like Peyton MacGruder, talented though they may be, can make me want to tear out my hair.

  She didn’t take my direction very well when I spoke to her a few moments ago. She’s probably ticked at me for giving her an ultimatum, but what else could I do? I’ve tried subtle hints over the last few months, but Peyton’s always turned a deaf ear to my guidance. I was blunt with her today, but someone had to be. Someone needs to be blunt with all of us.

  Back in the days of paper and typewriters, when I was coming up, our editors thought nothing of throwing a story back on our desks and barking an order to write it again. Those pitiful pages would bleed with red ink, and we had to make changes in a heartbeat, often starting from scratch—no word processors, you know. We learned the hard way, in a real pressure cooker, and if I have any ability at all, it’s been developed in the school of hard knocks and inflexible deadlines. But writers like Peyton came up in a softer, easier atmosphere. Everything’s electronic, so telling a writer to go back and fix something in his or her story is far simpler, and the reporter who changes a phrase or two doesn’t have the advantage of starting from a blank page and rethinking every word. We lost something important when we lost the effect of red ink on a stark white page.

  That’s why I take my job as features editor seriously. While the older writers cling to their venerable traditions and the executives fret over market surveys, profit and loss statements, and circulation figures, I’m always trying to reach the men and women who have enough free time to pick up my section and look for something special. That’s why I push my writers to produce exceptional copy.

  I feel like I’m venting, but I can’t talk about these things with my superiors, and I certainly can’t lay these responsibilities directly on the younger writers. They’re struggling to make ends meet, take care of their kids, and produce clean copy on a deadline. Most of them don’t have time to worry about the Big Picture.

  But I do—that’s my job. And that’s why I told Peyton MacGruder to either rethink her approach or prepare to move on. She’s a good writer and a mature one, but her work has all the warmth of a glacier. Not once in her tenure as the Heart Healer has she revealed a glimpse of the woman beneath the permafrost. Emma Duncan, may she rest in peace, was nothing but heart, and the readers miss her.

  It’s not Peyton’s fault, exactly—these days journalists are encouraged to keep any sense of themselves out of their work. A good journalist, according to conventional wisdom, writes tight prose that covers the bases without revealing the writer at work. That kind of writing wins awards and warms the cockles of other writers’ hearts.

  It does not, however, touch readers’.

  This is a tough business. I was hard on Peyton, but I know there’s more to her than meets the eye. She’s bright, extremely methodical, and she works hard—once she decides to apply herself. Time and again I’ve told her to loosen up and let herself relax in her work, but she only shakes her head and goes back to her step-by-step writing. Just once, I’d love to see the woman, not the writer, shine in that column.

  I think today I was trying to light a fire under our resident heart healer . . . but who knows how she’ll take my coaching? I’m hoping she’ll understand and use her talents to make a good column more appealing.

  Truth is, we need strong-willed people like MacGruder in the newspaper business, no matter how hard they are to corral. The American daily paper is going to have to change, and we’ve got to winnow out those who are stuck in inflexible patterns.

  Peyton MacGruder will either move into the future with me or she’ll move into another department. It’s her decision.

  Driven by an intense desire to vent, Peyton headed for the east side of the building, home of the Tampa Times sports department. As she moved past the copy desk, she saw Carter Cummings, the outdoors writer, huddled with Bill Elliott, who covered the Bucs beat.

  “Hey, Peyton,” Carter called as she walked by. “How’s life with our own little Martha Stewart?”

  “Can it, Carter.” Peyton jerked her thumb toward the far wall, where another row of glassed-in offices had commandeered the available windows. “Is King in his
castle?”

  “Yeah.” Carter’s mouth curved in a smart-aleck grin. “But you’d better watch your head. I don’t think he’s in the mood for questions about the proper way to hang curtains.”

  She flashed him a look of disdain. “He’s not the only one in a mood, so don’t toy with me, Carter.”

  The outdoors writer elbowed Elliott, then in a stage whisper announced, “She wants the boss. Can’t stay away. Mark my words, there’s something going on between them.”

  As Elliott waggled a brow, she permitted herself a single, withering stare in their direction, then swallowed her irritation and moved down the aisle. Boys will be boys, she reminded herself, and she’d had her fill of them during her stint in the sports department. Though women had made tremendous gains in all areas of reporting, some males, stuck in adolescence no matter what their chronological age, apparently expected all women to behave like cheerleaders with raging hormones. When she had to conduct interviews in locker rooms, more than a few male athletes stood before her in various states of undress, obviously trying to either embarrass or rattle her. But she would look at their eyes only, and she’d learned how to navigate through the locker room by watching the ceiling. Her writing tended to suffer, though, when the only telling details she could add to a story were the color of an athlete’s eyes and a mention of the water stains on the ceiling tiles . . .

  She paused outside the office labeled Kingston Bernard, Senior Editor/Sports. The door stood ajar, so she pushed it open. King sat behind his desk, the phone to his ear. His rugged face was scrunched in a scowl, his gaze fixed on his flickering computer monitor. “Whaddya mean, he’s not signing?” he growled, but his face lightened considerably when Peyton rapped on his door and stepped into the room. He pointed toward the chair, then pounded the desk. “Listen—that rookie’s dumber than he looks if he can’t recognize a golden deal when it’s presented to him. You need to get someone in there to talk sense to the boy.”