by Jan Burke
On the Monday after the great Men’s Room Incident, O’Connor walked by my desk and said in an overly loud voice, “Great story about the dogs, Kelly.”
Kelly. Not Ms. Kelly or Miss Kelly. This probably isn’t something a lot of people would even notice, but it seems to me the naming business is part of deciding who is on the team and who isn’t. Last name only, you’re on.
I was still angry with him, though, and decided I was going to ignore him, but he ignored me first. He kept walking.
Later, he waited until Mark Baker was standing near my desk, walked up to him, and said, “What I said the other day was crap. I’d appreciate it if you would forget every word of it.”
“No problem,” Mark said, and looked at me.
I pointedly turned my attention back to the black IBM Selectric on my desk. I was writing a story on Las Piernas High School’s astounding success in a drill team competition. Not a story that would win a Pulitzer, but I wasn’t ashamed of it, either. I had found a quotable kid who made all the difference.
Lydia told me that O’Connor had been asking her a lot of questions about me. That bothered me. It bothered me even more that she had answered most of them. I asked myself why I cared and couldn’t come up with a good answer.
Then came the Byline Blowup.
A week after the Men’s Room Incident, I was working on a story about art supplies. I hit upon this one by accident — I was waiting for my father to finish his latest round of chemo, when Aunt Mary became irritated with my anxiousness and told me to take a walk. So I strolled down toward the emergency room. Sure enough, there was someone there with bigger problems than mine: the mother of a teenager who had started hallucinating in art class, then passed out. So far, he hadn’t regained consciousness.
“He doesn’t use drugs,” she said. “I don’t know what caused this.”
At first I chalked this up to the “not my Johnny” syndrome — no love is so blind as parental love.
But some of his friends came by to wait with her, and after talking to them for a while, I became convinced that her son might be the clean-and-sober type after all. I got a few details from his classmates about what had been going on just before he started freaking out.
I took down the mother’s name, address, and phone number. When the doctor came out to talk to her, she let me listen in. I asked him if chemicals in use in the art class could cause that reaction.
“Conceivably,” he answered. “We won’t know the answer to that until his blood work comes back from the lab.”
When I got back to the paper that afternoon, I contacted a woman in the purchasing department of the school district. I had been trying to build trust with her; she had been a minor source whom I had hoped to go to for more in the future. I hadn’t really planned on hitting her with anything big so soon, and at first I feared that asking for a list of art supplies purchased for one of the local high schools might be more than she was willing to risk. The records were ones I could demand to see, but I preferred not to do that — taking that approach only builds future resistance.
When I told her about the episode in the emergency room, though, she asked me to meet her at a coffee shop in forty minutes. When she arrived, she was carrying a big stack of photocopied invoices.
“I have a son that age,” she said, and left without anything more than my thanks.
I don’t know how O’Connor learned I was working on that one, but he did. I found a note on my desk in his odd, nearly indecipherable scrawl: the name and phone number for the Center for Occupational Safety in New York, an organization that could give me information about the hazards associated with art supplies.
I marched over to his desk and said, “Do you think I’m so helpless, I can’t do my own research?”
“No,” he answered.
I was trying to come up with something truly disagreeable to say to him about not being able to buy me off with little favors, when, as if reading my mind, he added, “I know you have no intention of accepting an apology from me, but we do have to work together here. Just use that information if you can, toss it if you can’t. I’m sure you’ll do what’s best for the story.”
So I used it. I felt proud of the result of my work: a story that revealed that a local high school was using dangerous chemicals in art classes with poor supervision and inadequate ventilation, and had come close to causing one student’s death.
H.G. praised me. John Walters praised me. Wrigley II praised me. This last had me all puffed up with pride until Wrigley also handed off the story to O’Connor for a rewrite and basically took it away from me.
To my further irritation, O’Connor complained about that before I could, then he went on to make it a much stronger story, discovering that a teacher at another school in the district was out on permanent disability, probably as a result of exposure to the same chemicals. I hadn’t dug deep enough, or in enough directions.
I felt angry with myself over that, and had just decided that he deserved all the glory anyway, when I learned about his next campaign on my behalf. Before the shouting between O’Connor and Wrigley was over, everyone in the newsroom knew exactly who had made sure I’d get my first byline in the Express.
When Lydia asked me — in front of O’Connor — how it felt to have that byline, I told her that I would find it less embarrassing and painful to fall flat on my ass while crossing a busy street.
My only comfort was seeing the frown that remark brought to O’Connor’s face.
Lydia frowned, too, as she watched him walk away. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked.
“He’s way too involved in my career, thank you. I want to earn my bylines on my own. And I don’t want to share them with that jerk.”
“He’s not. You ask me, you’re the one who’s being a jerk. He said something out of line, and he knows it, and besides, that was before he knew about your dad.”
I felt as if I had swallowed a block of ice. “What?”
She had the look on her face that a person gets when he or she suddenly figures out that a really good idea was actually a really bad idea. Shouldn’t fill blimps with hydrogen. Shouldn’t dive headfirst into unknown waters. Shouldn’t tell everyone at work about the health problems of your best friend’s father. She broke eye contact.
“You told him about my dad?” I asked, horrified.
“Not much…” she said faintly.
Translation: too much.
I tried to explain that although I knew her intentions were good, I’d rather that details about my personal life — and my father’s health — did not become the property of newsroom gossips. When she insisted that O’Connor wasn’t the type to spread gossip, I reminded her about the Men’s Room Incident.
“Are you ever going to let that go?” she said.
The real problem was that I would have preferred O’Connor’s respect rather than his pity.
That was a Monday. The next day, I came into the newsroom and went to my desk without hearing one double entendre, without a single “honey,” without so much as a sour look. In fact, the whole room became quiet, then everyone managed to be really busy all of a sudden. Shades of the features department. I felt uneasy, and that unease only increased when I happened to surprise a look of sympathy on Wildman Billy Winters’s face.
O’Connor had told them.
Over the next few hours I received several offers of help, compliments on the art supply story, and friendly reporting advice from veteran newsmen who had wanted nothing to do with me for weeks. I managed to get through the day without letting my temper get the better of me, mostly because I was afraid that if I started to express my true feelings about their sudden solicitousness, my brief career in journalism would be over.
On Thursday, while I was out grocery shopping, Aunt Mary took a phone call. Helen Swan, calling to ask if I’d come to dinner with her at Lillian Vanderveer Linworth’s palace. Mary said she knew I’d be delighted, and asked what I should wear.
To
say that she then forced me to go would be unjust. I didn’t really want to see Helen at a party at some Lady Bountiful’s mansion, but I surrendered when Mary told me she had decided I must accept the invitation. I knew what sort of contest of wills I was in for if I resisted Mary, and at that moment I didn’t have that much fight left in me.
Helen greeted me warmly when I picked her up at her home. It was the first time I had been there since Jack had died, and I found I could feel his presence — or maybe the lack of it. She talked cheerily as she gathered up her purse and turned off lights, but I found myself staring at an old chair, thinking of Jack Corrigan telling a story at one of the parties they had held for the staff of the college paper.
We stayed only long enough for her to grab her keys and lock up the house. That we didn’t linger was okay with me.
On the way to the Linworth mansion, she stressed that no matter what happened or what I heard, we were at a social event at the invitation of one of her good friends, and writing about it was strictly forbidden.
As soon as Lillian Linworth’s decrepit butler opened the door to the royal library, I saw O’Connor. I almost turned on my heel and went right back out. The only thing that kept me from doing so was seeing that he was as shocked as I. We both looked at Helen. She was smiling and saying, “Conn, what a pleasant surprise…”
His brows lowered, and his mouth made a flat line. Then he said, “I doubt it is either a surprise to you or pleasant for Ms. Kelly to find me here.”
Mrs. Linworth seemed deaf to all of that, and introduced herself to me as Lily.
I was supposed to call her majesty by her nickname?
Then she said, “Conn, would you please serve as bartender this evening? What will you have, Ms. Kelly?”
I asked for a vodka and soda on the light side. I thanked O’Connor when he handed my drink to me, sipped it and found that it was about four times as strong as I would have made it myself.
He was drinking scotch on the rocks. While Helen and Lillian chatted across the room, he stood next to me in awkward silence. He made the ice in his glass swirl rhythmically with a slight motion of his wrist, and studied the cubes as if they might roll over like the goodie inside an eight-ball toy, the answer to some problem printed on one side. There was something in his face that either hadn’t been there before or which I hadn’t perceived. Not anger or frustration… I had seen plenty of each of those in the last few weeks. Sadness, maybe? Maybe he was missing Jack.
I found myself feeling guilty for continually snubbing him, and thinking that I ought to apologize to him for being such a pain in the ass, but before I could say anything to him, three more people were ushered into the room, and O’Connor moved forward to greet them.
We were introduced to Auburn Sheffield, Warren Ducane, and Kyle Yeager. I went straight toward the one who interested me most: Auburn Sheffield.
Not that the others weren’t interesting. Kyle Yeager was cute in a Clark Kent kind of way, and Warren Ducane struck me as one of those men who find themselves adrift in their middle age. But Auburn — not every day you get a chance to talk to a guy like him.
I had grown up hearing the story of his rebellion against his family. His home was named in honor of it, after all. In fact, there was a scenic turnoff in the road leading up to Auburn’s Stand that was known to anyone who had spent his or her adolescence in Las Piernas. Local make-out hot spot. Not that anybody ever took this Catholic girl up there.
Within a few moments, Auburn was regaling me with little-known facts about Las Piernas history, including plenty of great dirt on the Sheffields — his uncle Hector was apparently a dangerous lunatic. The Sheffield name was on a street, a subdivision, a library, an elementary school, and a number of buildings downtown. They had made a fortune selling ice cream, and, he said, stayed cold and rich ever since. Auburn had to be seventy or eighty years old, but I’ve encountered plenty of people half his age with less life in them.
Warren Ducane was deep in conversation with O’Connor, who was making drinks for the new arrivals, and Helen was talking to Lily, so it wasn’t too surprising that Kyle Yeager joined us. Auburn pulled him into the conversation.
“Kyle just graduated from Dartmouth, Irene,” Auburn said, with so much pride, I thought maybe this was his godson.
“Congratulations,” I said. “What did you major in?”
I heard a familiar voice say, “Now, that’s an original question.”
O’Connor had brought their drinks over, and handed them off as he said this.
I felt my face turn red.
“But a natural question,” Kyle Yeager said quickly. He smiled at me. “I’ll answer it, even though you’re going to think I’m a nerd when I tell you. I majored in computer science, with a minor in geography. If it had been up to me…”
“He’s being modest,” Auburn said. “He didn’t tell you that he has also been accepted into Dartmouth’s prestigious business school, Tuck.”
“Must make your old man proud, Kyle,” O’Connor said, in a tone I’d never heard him use before. “Preparing to take the reins of Yeager Enterprises?”
I saw a quick flash of anger on Kyle’s face, then he smiled. “I’m surprised to discover a man in your profession who knows so little town gossip,” he said to O’Connor — calmly, if you ignored a certain martial light in his eyes. “I’m a bastard, so I have no idea if my ‘old man’ would be proud, ashamed, or even if he’s alive to hear what’s become of me.”
“I meant no offense—”
“Of course you meant offense,” Kyle said, his tone just as pleasant as before. “As did I. Although I’m a little better informed than you, it seems — I know you’re a reporter for the Express, and that you’ve never liked my adoptive father much. But just in case you are preparing a story — ownership of Yeager Enterprises will be handed over to Mitch Yeager’s own children, not to me.”
O’Connor smiled, too, more genuinely than Kyle had, I thought. “Well, now, that only proves that Mitch is as big a fool as I’ve always thought him. No, no — no need to get fired up again. Ms. Kelly is already angry at me, and I can’t take on the whole of your generation. But just so you know, tonight is off the record — Helen’s retired, and Irene and I have promised our hostess that neither of us will be writing about anything we hear this evening, Mr. Yeager.” He then excused himself and moved over to where the others were standing.
Helen was staring at Kyle with an odd look on her face, Warren looked as if he were about to be ill, and Lily seemed bemused. When I glanced at Auburn, I thought the two of them might be in on some private joke. This seemed even more likely when he said, “Excuse me, I need to speak to our hostess,” and moved away.
Next to me, Kyle said, “I’m sorry — I didn’t know you were a reporter.”
“According to some people here, I’m not much of one,” I murmured.
“Who? O’Connor?” he said. “Well, why should his opinion matter so much? It doesn’t to me.”
I should have felt comforted by this ready championship, but I heard some echo of my own indignation in his words and found I didn’t really like the way it sounded.
I glanced over at Helen, who seemed to be watching us more than listening to those who stood near her.
“You know what, Kyle? I shouldn’t have said that. The truth is, it does matter to me. He’s a great reporter, someone I’ve admired forever. I guess that’s why it bothered me when he criticized my work. But I deserved a lot of what he said, and he’s apologized more than once, so I suppose I shouldn’t keep harping on it. I need to move on, let it go.”
“That’s not always easy.”
“No,” I laughed. “But I’m making an enemy out of him for no real reason. I’m sorry if he’s written something negative about your dad—”
“Don’t be. Since we’re being honest about things, I’m not my dad’s biggest fan. And O’Connor never wrote anything untruthful about him, as far as I can tell. Listen — is it true that you aren’t h
ere as a reporter?”
“Yes.”
He seemed to brood over something.
“Why geography?” I asked.
“Pardon?” he said, coming out of his reverie.
“I know why computer science is a hot major, but why the minor in geography?”
He smiled. “Professor George Demko. I took his class just because it fit my schedule in my freshman year. Contagious enthusiasm, I guess. My two fields of study aren’t as far apart as you’d think.”
For the next few minutes, he talked to me about navigation and Polaris submarines and atomic clocks and the launch of something called a GPS satellite, which he said would someday be able to prevent anyone from ever being lost. Eventually he lost me — or noticed he had lost me — and laughed and said, “Sorry — now you do think I’m a nerd.”
“Not at all. Why apologize for being intelligent? I’m just sorry I couldn’t keep up with you.”
“I suppose I got on to GPS because I’ve been thinking about the Ducanes. Do you know their story?”
“Warren’s family?” I shook my head.
“His father, mother, and his brother — Todd — were all lost at sea.”
“That’s awful,” I said, looking over to where Warren stood, staring up in a melancholy way at a portrait above the mantel, a painting of a beautiful young woman who somehow looked familiar.
“That’s Kathleen,” Kyle said of the portrait. “Katy, I think they called her. Mrs. Linworth’s daughter, who died in the same boating accident. Her daughter was married to Todd Ducane. Do you really not know this story?”
“No.”
“Well, I didn’t, either, until Mr. Sheffield gave me some articles to read. Actually, O’Connor and your friend Helen wrote many of them. A sad story.”
He told me about the night the Sea Dreamer’s passengers and crew disappeared, and Max Ducane was kidnapped.
Standing in the same room with members of both families, seeing the portrait of a vivacious young woman who was near my same age when she died, knowing the reporters who wrote many of the stories — for a few moments, I was simply stunned, and overwhelmed with sympathy for Lily Linworth — who was transformed in my mind from “her highness” to a mother who had lost both child and grandchild — and for Warren Ducane, whose air of being a lost soul was now perfectly understandable. So much devastation wrought all at once would have been difficult for any family to cope with. Twenty years had passed, but they were twenty years without loved ones. Life would not, could not, have been the same after that night.
