“I don’t believe it.”
“It was a wire service report: a short piece about his sudden death, and his earlier dismissal from NBC after Winchell exposed his past. And how Sara Smythe of Saturday Night/Sunday Morning was his sister.”
“Why didn’t you mention this before?”
“Because that would have been nosy. In fact, now I feel like a right fool for that slip of the tongue. I really would never have mentioned anything.”
“Do you think other people in Brunswick know who I am?” He shifted uneasily in his chair. “They do, don’t they?”
“Well . . . ,” he said hesitantly. “It is a small place. And though no one would directly ask questions to your face, they do talk among themselves. The other night, for example, I was at a dinner with a couple of college people and Duncan Howell—the editor of the Maine Gazette. I don’t know how your name came up in conversation, but Duncan turned to me and said, ‘Do you know who I hear is living in Brunswick? Sara Smythe—who wrote that really smart column in Saturday/Sunday. I’d love to approach her about maybe writing something for us . . . but I don’t want to intrude. Especially as I gather she’s up here to get away from New York and that whole business with her brother . . . ’”
I suddenly felt ill.
“Dr. Bulduck, you didn’t say anything about me being a patient of yours?”
“God, no. That would have been completely unethical. I’d never, never dream of . . .”
“Fine, fine,” I said weakly.
“I now feel terrible. But I promise you this: Maine being Maine, people will never let on they know who you are.”
“Who I am is completely inconsequential. What worries me is the stares in the street I’ll begin to get once my pregnancy is apparent.”
“Once again, no one will ever shun you because of your marital status.”
“They’ll just gossip behind my back.”
“As small towns go, this is a pretty tolerant place. I think you’ll find more sympathy than anything else. And I tell you this: everyone at that dinner the other night said what happened to your brother was an awful thing . . . and wasn’t he a brave man to stand up for what he believed.”
“So you don’t think he was a Communist stooge? A flunky of Stalin, disguised as Marty Manning’s top banana? You’re smiling. Why?”
“Because encountering Manhattan wit, face-to-face, in Brunswick is a rare thing. But can I say something? Like a lot of people I know around here, I have great doubts about what McCarthy and his ilk are up to. Especially as they are supposedly running this witch hunt in our name . . . which makes me very uncomfortable. And I just want to say: I am truly sorry for your loss. Do you have other siblings?”
“He was my only family.”
Dr. Bolduck said nothing . . . and I was grateful for that. I quickly changed the subject back to medical matters, asking whether my need to urinate every half hour was particularly worrisome.
“I’m afraid it’s a common complaint during pregnancy,” he said. “And one which medical science has no answer for.”
“Until next week then?” I asked, standing up.
Bolduck got up from his chair. “Once again, I am sorry for that faux pas.”
“No . . . it’s better to know these things.”
“Would you mind if I told you something else then?”
“Go ahead.”
“I know that Duncan Howell, being the decent guy that he is, would never dream of calling you to see if you want to write for the Maine Gazette. But from the way he sounded, I’m sure he’d be thrilled to bits if you were interested.”
“I’m taking a break from the word business,” I said. “But thanks for the tip.”
Naturally, two days later, I picked up the phone and called Duncan Howell at the Maine Gazette. I was put through to him immediately.
“Well, this is an honor,” he said.
“You are about the first editor in history who’s ever said that.”
“Glad to hear that. It’s nice to have you in Brunswick.”
“It’s nice to be here.”
“How about letting me buy you lunch, Miss Smythe?”
“That would be fine.”
“Now we have two choices of venue. I could take you to the Brunswick version of posh—which means the dining room of our best inn, the Stowe House. Or I could introduce you to some proper local color, in the form of our best diner: the Miss Brunswick.”
“Oh, the diner without question,” I said.
Duncan Howell was a pleasant, portly man in his early thirties. He dressed like a college professor: tweed jacket, V-neck sweater, knit tie. He wore horn-rimmed glasses. He smoked a pipe. He was a son of Brunswick. He’d grown up knowing he’d go to Bowdoin and eventually work for the paper his family had owned for the past seventy-five years. He spoke with the slow, no-rush, backcountry cadences that defined the Maine inflection. But like everyone else I’d met in the state, he was anything but a hick.
He was already seated at a booth in the Miss Brunswick when I entered. It was a proper diner: a prefabricated corrugated aluminum structure with a laminated vinyl lunch counter, and six booths, and a clientele of truckers and soldiers from the local naval air station, and a short-order cook with a lit cigarette in his mouth, and waitresses who used pencils as bobby pins. I liked it immediately. Just as I also liked Duncan Howell.
He stood up as I entered. He waited until I sat down opposite him before taking his seat again. The waitress called him “Duncan.” He insisted on referring to me as Miss Smythe. He suggested I try the Trucker’s Special: a steak, a stack of pancakes, three eggs, home fries, six pieces of toast, bottomless coffee. When I said that I might stick to a modest hamburger and a cup of Joe, he said that I’d never have a future driving a rig.
We ordered. We made small talk. He talked a bit about local politics, about the expansion of the local paper mill, and regional worries that the Boston train might soon be canceled, due to lack of economic viability. He told me a bit about the Maine Gazette: how his great-grandfather founded it in 1875, how it maintained an independent political stance, and (like most of Maine) refused to slavishly back a specific political party.
“By inclination, this is a Republican state,” he explained. “But that doesn’t mean that we’ve always supported Republican candidates for national or state office. We always came out in favor of Roosevelt. Twice, we supported Democrats in our senate races . . .”
“And what do you think of Joe McCarthy?” I asked.
He didn’t seemed disconcerted by my challenging tone . . . though, frankly, I was surprised that I popped that question so directly.
“I’ll be entirely straight with you, Miss Smythe. I do take the idea of a Communist menace seriously. I do think, for example, that all the evidence points to the guilt of the Rosenbergs, and that treason is a capital offence. But on the subject of Mr. McCarthy . . . well, he genuinely worries me. Because (a) I consider him a complete opportunist who is using this Communist issue as a way of wielding power, and (b) because he has destroyed a lot of innocent people in the process.”
He looked at me directly. “And, in my book, destroying innocent people is unforgivable.”
I met his gaze. “I’m glad you think that way.”
He shifted the conversation toward my “work” at the moment.
“I’m not working at the moment. No doubt, you know why.”
“We did run a piece about your brother. I’m very sorry. Is that why you came to Maine?”
“I needed to get away for a while, yes.”
“I presume Saturday/Sunday were very understanding about giving you leave.”
“Oh, they certainly wanted me on leave. Because, as far as they were concerned, my brother’s refusal to play ball with HUAC meant that I was now a liability to them.”
Duncan Howell actually looked shocked. “Tell me they didn’t do that.”
“I was as stunned as you were. Especially as they knew I was about the most apolitical pe
rson imaginable. Even my poor brother had completely renounced his brief fling with Communism during the thirties.”
“But he still refused to name names.”
“Quite rightly, in my opinion.”
“It’s a tough call, any way you look at it. And I can see why certain people probably thought naming names was a patriotic gesture . . . and why others saw it as a self-serving one. But I certainly respect your brother’s high principles.”
“Look where it got him. I’ll be honest with you, Mr. Howell. There are times when I wish to God he’d just named names like everybody else. Because he’d still be here. And because, quite honestly, if history teaches us anything it’s that today’s life-or-death argument becomes a lot less consequential as years go by. What I’m saying is: sooner or later, the country will wise up and the blacklisting will end. In time, historians will probably write about this period as a political aberration; a shameful blight in our national life. And they’ll be right. But my brother will still be dead and gone.”
“I’m sure he’d still want you to be writing.”
“But—haven’t you heard?—I’ve been blacklisted too.”
“Only by Saturday/Sunday. And they haven’t officially terminated you.”
“As soon as this paid leave of absence is over, they will. And word travels fast in Manhattan. Once Saturday/Sunday fires me, I’m definitely going to be declared a journalistic untouchable.”
“Not in Brunswick, Maine, you won’t.”
“Well, that’s nice to know,” I said with a laugh.
“And I bet one of the hardest things about your enforced sabbatical is being ‘out of print,’ so to speak.”
“How did you guess that?”
“Because I’ve been around journalists all my life. If there’s one thing they can’t live without, it’s an audience. I’m offering you an audience, Sara. A small audience. But an audience nonetheless.”
“Aren’t you worried about employing a political hot potato like me?”
“No,” he said directly.
“And what sort of thing would you want me to be writing?”
“Probably something similar to your ‘Real Life’ column. We’d talk that through.”
“Saturday/Sunday might get a little upset, were they to discover that I was working for someone else while collecting their paycheck.”
“Did you sign a contract with them, granting them complete exclusivity to your work?”
I shook my head.
“Did they insist that you didn’t write for anyone else while on leave?”
“No.”
“Then there’s no problem.”
“I guess there isn’t.”
“But there is, of course, the matter of money. Now, if you wouldn’t mind a private question, what did they pay you weekly for your column?”
“One hundred and eighty dollars.”
Duncan Howell gulped. “I don’t even make that much,” he said. “And there’s no way I could ever come near matching that. We are a small town, after all.”
“I’m not saying you have to match that. How’s fifty bucks a column sound to you? That’s about what I spend a week on rent and basic items.”
“It’s still far more than I pay any other columnist on the paper.”
I arched my eyebrows. Duncan Howell took the hint. “Fine, fine,” he said, proffering his hand. “Fifty a week it is.”
I took his hand. “Nice to be back on the job,” I said.
Of course, Duncan Howell was right. Though I wasn’t admitting it (and kept telling myself that I really wanted a break from my typewriter), I was desperately missing my weekly fix in print. And yes, he was so damn shrewd to glean that off me. Just as he probably sensed that what I needed more than anything was work. I wasn’t good at being slothful, unproductive. I needed direction, focus; a shape and a purpose to the day. Like anyone who was used to having an audience, I really craved one again. Even if my audience was no longer a national one, but the eight thousand daily readers of the Maine Gazette.
The column premiered a week after the Miss Brunswick Diner meeting. We agreed to call it “Day-to-Day Stuff.” Like the old column, it was a gently satirical commentary on prosaic matters. Only now I lost some of my usual metropolitan slant, and focused in on somewhat more homey, parochial matters: like “Twenty-three Dumb Uses for Kraft Velveeta Cheese” . . . or “Why Leg Waxing Makes Me Always Feel Inadequate” . . . or (my personal favorite) “Why Women Just Can’t Relate to Beer.”
Duncan Howell insisted that I keep the flip tone which so characterized my Saturday/Sunday columns. “Don’t feel you have to write down for your audience. Mainers always know when someone’s condescending to them . . . and they don’t like it. They might take some time getting used to your style . . . but, eventually, you’ll win them over.”
Certainly, the first few weeks of “Day-to-Day Stuff” didn’t win anybody over.
“What are you doing, employing such a wiseguy gal to write such a wiseguy column in a decent, respectable paper like yours?” ran one of the first Letters to the Editor.
A week later, another torpedo landed in the Letters column. “Maybe this sort of thing plays well in Manhattan, but Miss Smythe’s worldview certainly doesn’t seem to have the slightest bearing on life as we live it up here. Maybe she should think about heading back south.”
Ouch.
“Don’t take those letters personally,” Duncan Howell said when we met again at the Miss Brunswick for a little tête-à-tête a month after the column started.
“How can I not take it personally, Mr. Howell? After all, if I’m not connecting with your readers . . .”
“But you are connecting,” he said. “Most of the newsroom really like you. And every time I go to a dinner around town, at least one or two of the Bowdoin or local business people tell me how much they enjoy your take on things, and what a coup it was to get you for the paper. We always expect a couple of naysayers to complain about anything new and a little different. That’s par for the course. So, please, don’t fret: you’re doing just fine. So fine that I was wondering . . . might you be willing to start writing two columns a week for us?”
“That’s a joke, right?”
“No—I’m absolutely serious. I really want to get ‘Day-to-Day Stuff’ established—and I think the best way to do this is to up the ante, so to speak . . . and make them read you every Monday and Friday. You game?”
“Sure, I guess. Can you afford it?”
“I’ll work it out somehow.”
He held out his hand again. “Do we have a deal?”
“And I came to Maine thinking about a life of leisure.”
“Once a journalist . . .”
I took his hand and shook it. “Right—it’s a deal.”
“Glad to hear it. One final thing . . . there are a lot of people around town who would love to meet you. I don’t know what your social calendar is like these days . . .”
“It’s completely empty, by choice. I’m still not in a particularly sociable frame of mind.”
“Understood completely. These things do take time. But if you’re ever feeling in the need of company, do know that there are plenty of opportunities. You have fans.”
Like Dr. Bolduck. Not only was he delighted that, by calling Duncan Howell, I took the bait he dangled in front of me . . . but also that I had just passed the first trimester mark without problems.
“No worrying discharges, no constant cramps, no ominous discomfort?”
“Nothing ominous whatsoever. In fact, this has all been far simpler than my last pregnancy.”
“Well, what can I say except: good stuff. Fingers crossed. And keep taking it as easy as possible.”
“Not with Duncan Howell now insisting on two columns a week.”
“Oh yes, I heard about that. Congratulations. You’re becoming a local name.”
“And I’ll be even more of a name three months from now, when everyone on Maine Street sees the bump in
the belly.”
“Like I said before, it will not be as big a deal as you imagine. Anyway, why should you care what people think around here?”
“Because I live here now, that’s why.”
Dr. Bolduck didn’t have an answer to that. Except: “Fair enough.”
The following week, I began to be published every Monday and Friday. There was another spate of letters in the paper, bemoaning my smarty-pants style. But Duncan Howell called me weekly for an impromptu editorial conference on the next week’s copy—and he constantly sounded enthusiastic about the way the column was progressing. He also said that he was getting terrific feedback about its twice-weekly appearance. So much so that he had some good news: the two largest papers in Maine—the Portland Press Herald and the Bangor Daily News—had both enquired about perhaps picking up serialization rights for the column.
“The money they’re offering isn’t great: about sixty dollars each per week for the two columns,” Mr. Howell said.
“Of which I’d receive how much?”
“Well, this is new territory for me. Because the Maine Gazette has never really been in a situation where one of our columnists has ended up being syndicated. But I spoke with someone at our lawyers, and they said that a sixty/forty split between the writer and the originating newspaper was commonplace.”
“Try eighty/twenty,” I said.
“That’s awfully steep, Miss Smythe.”
“I’m worth it,” I said.
“Of course, you are . . . but how about seventy/thirty?”
“I’ll settle for seventy-five/twenty-five, nothing less.”
“You drive a tough bargain.”
“Yes. I do. Seventy-five/twenty-five, Mr. Howell. And that covers this, and all future serializations. Fair enough?”
A pause.
“Fair enough,” he said. “I’ll have our lawyers draft an agreement for you to sign.”
“I’ll look forward to receiving it. And thanks for getting me into Portland and Bangor.”
“Am I ever going to get you over to dinner? My wife is really dying to meet you.”
“In time, Mr. Howell. In time.”
I knew I was probably coming across as some affected solipsist . . . but the combination of my pregnancy and my ongoing grief made me shy away from any social gatherings. I could handle my weekly dinner with Ruth, but the idea of making polite conversation over a dinner table—and answering well-meaning questions like, ‘So, what brought you to Brunswick?’—made me want to steer clear of all social possibilities. I was still succumbing to outbursts of despair. I preferred to keep them private ones. So I kept refusing all invitations.
The Douglas Kennedy Collection #1 Page 51
