"Kay, no!" She grabbed the pile of papers atop the copier and tore them in two, then in two again, and again. I watched helplessly, as she took each ragged piece and wrathfully covered the floor with confetti.
"There. You're not getting any further with this story. It's over, do you understand me?" She glared at me in triumphant rage.
"You're selling out on a lot of people, if you do this, Kay. Of all the things you’ve done in your life, I never, ever thought you’d sell out to anything."
"I won't sell out my family. I'm learning how valuable family can be now, Marcus, despite all their faults and all their wrongs."
"Letting little kids eat paint chips filled with lead off the walls is valuable? Letting families live with the stench of shit because they can't get their landlord to fix the john is just a fault? Kay, you're not the woman I knew."
"Maybe I'm not. Maybe I've never been, but you're not going to drag my mother through the mud with this story!"
"I can always have the legal department subpoena them from you or your mother, now that I know where they're at. The people have a right to know."
"Don't you dare spout free press platitudes to me! I want my house key back. You go through with this story, and we're through."
Sadly, I pulled my key ring from my pocket and slid her key off. Eight years I had waited for her, just like I had waited for a story like this to put my career back on track. Did I have to lose one to gain the other?
"Don't do this Kay. I love you."
"That's your problem. If you have anything left at the house, it will be on the porch tomorrow morning. I've got to get back to my kids."
Sobbing now, Kay turned and ran, pushing past Jess as he came through the newsroom door.
"What’s she doing here? What's all this?" he asked, surveying the paper-strewn floor.
"Our hard evidence." I sank against the wall in despair. "Deeds to all the houses Aurora owns through Land Management Limited, letters about how they handle tenant disputes, articles of incorporation signed by James and McNair, everything. Kay just ripped it all up."
"What's this?" Jess walked back to the morgue and pulled another stack of papers from the rack beneath the copier. "Isn't that what this is?"
"My God, she got the wrong copies! The first time I ran the originals through, they were on the wrong size paper! She destroyed the wrong copies!"
"Talk about luck!" Jess crowed, as he flipped quickly through the documents. "We're on our way, old man. We've finally got this thing licked. Those two old biddies will be in jail, before they know what hit them!"
"And all it cost me was Kay." I flopped into my chair and turned on the computer screen in front of me.
"This is the news business, Mark. I've told you that before."
"But would you do a story on your mother-in-law, if you knew she was involved in illegal activity?"
"No, I’d have to have another reporter do the story, because I’d be too close to it. But I wouldn't kill the story."
"Then maybe you ought to write this one, Jess. Suddenly this victory seems awfully hollow."
"What are you talking about, Marcus?"
"Conflict of interest. You said so yourself. Marian James is Kay's mother."
"And from what I saw here just now, the apple doesn't fall very far from the tree, does it?"
I grabbed him by the collar. Eye to bloodshot eye, I could smell the tobacco on his breath. "Listen Jess, I know you never liked her, but that's none of your affair."
"It is, when I see one of my best writers dragging his butt around here like a whipped dog because some broad has him over a barrel!" Jess shoved me away and straightened his collar. "This is the biggest story this paper has had since I've been editor, and you want me to kill it over a woman? Need I remind you that I bailed your ass out once before? And here I was, ready to talk you up to Watt, let him make you our investigative projects editor. But then some broad whines a little, cries a little, and you want to call it all off? You're not dropping this story because I won't let you. Besides, it sounds as if you and Kay are through."
I sank back into my chair. "Maybe so."
"Forget about her, Marcus. You deserve better. We've been friends forever, and I've hated to see her yank you around the way she has." He reached over and patted me on the shoulder.
"It's not that easy."
"Don't hand me that." The hard-edged editor took over again. "I'm going to call legal first thing tomorrow morning and tell them what we've got. I want you to get a quote out of Elizabeth, and I want you there when these two bitches are arrested. Now go home and get some sleep."
"Jess, I can't do this story."
"Then you better learn how, because you don't have any choice. Get out of here."
Leaving Kay's confetti on the morgue floor, I returned home to a night of fitful sleep. Jess was wrong. There was no way I could remain on this story. My involvement with Kay, even if it was now over, was too powerful a conflict of interest. But to lose her again was gut wrenching.
What would I have done in her shoes? How easy would it be to turn in my parents? Could I?
The most illegal thing my father ever did was to buy a little corn liquor every now and again from the bootleggers in those southern Ohio hills. If I wanted to turn him in to the feds, I have also had to turn in every one of the people on our grubby, little street. But this was different. This was massive wrongdoing, massive. It was a systematic endeavor to deprive human beings of decent housing simply because they were who they were.
But what about Kay? How could she suddenly want to protect this woman? I couldn't understand that. Was it the major's death? Was it her cockamamie idea to bring that Korean kid over here? Maybe it was simply that, as her nuclear family was imploding, she was just trying to shore up everything that was left. But did the cost have to be so high? Or was it only my expectations? Either way, when this story runs in tomorrow's afternoon edition–and it will–Kay will be lost to me forever.
* * *
As the sun crept over the horizon, I left the twisted bed sheets behind and drove through Jubilant Falls' empty streets to Kay's to retrieve my stuff. My belongings, mostly a few pieces of clothing, disposable razors, and an extra toothbrush, weren't sitting on the porch. Maybe she had been bluffing. Lights were on in the kitchen. I took my chances and rang the bell.
She looked like death. Her eyes were swollen, and she was wearing the same jeans and white Oxford blouse she had worn last night. Her hair hung in her eyes, and a faint odor of wine hung on her breath.
I stepped inside and took her in my arms, brushing the copper strands from her face.
"I tr-tr-tried to call her last night and have her explain it all t-t-to me," Kay wept into my shirt. Her heaving sobs made it hard for her to talk. "She went into hys-hys-hysterics, screaming that I broke my promise, that I wasn't worth trusting, that the deal was off. "
"How much have you had to drink?"
"I don't know. What does it matter?" Dry, racking sobs convulsed her slim frame, and she held me close. "I can't lose you again, Marcus. I don't have anyone else."
"What did your mother say?"
"Oh it was awful! I was a cheap slut, a whore, I killed Paul just the same as if I shot him."
"Ssshhh. She's a sick woman, Kay, and she needs help." I wrapped my arms around her. "I thought I lost you forever."
"About last night," Kay whispered hesitantly. "I looked over the deeds for the property that Land Management Limited owns. Elizabeth's house was one of them."
"From what I saw, they own every house within a three-block radius of the literacy center,” I said. “Except for this one and a few others, they're all dumps."
"Mother can't know what Lovey dragged her into."
"For her sake, I hope not." I thought of Elizabeth's apartment; she was raising two children in three rooms that would fit easily into Kay's dining room. Marian had to know. How could she be that ignorant? And how could
Kay be so bent on suddenly putting her mother in a good light? I’d seen enough of Marian James' insensitivity and wanton cruelty to know she had no good side.
"You're going to go after Mother, aren't you?"
"It's going to get ugly, Kay. I can't tell you much else."
"Why not?"
"Some things require a leap of faith."
Kay pulled away from my embrace and sat down on the stairs, resting her elbows on her knees and letting her hands hang limply between her legs. She leaned her wet cheek against the wallpaper. "Marcus, why has everything between us gotten so difficult lately?"
"What do you mean?"
"It's not the same anymore. There’s a wall between us now, and I can't break it down." Kay shrugged in confusion. "And it all started with P.J."
"No it didn't, Kay." I couldn't tell her that it started a long time before the major's bastard son ever came into the picture. It started that night on her porch, the night the major died. I couldn't tell her that I was terrified to be a stepfather to two kids, let alone three. That I realized how little I really knew about her life, and that I was terrified I might not ever fit into it. "You're tired. We've both had a hard night. Why don't you get some sleep, and I'll come by tonight. We'll take the kids and go out to dinner, or something."
"Then it does have something to do with P.J.!"
"That's not so, Kay."
"Then tell me why everything has gotten so tough lately? Are we going to survive all this pressure?"
I sat down beside her on the stairs and lay my head in my hands.
"Sometimes I wonder," I sighed. "The truth is, it's not really P.J., it's the major. He's everywhere I look, when I'm with you. He's in the shadows of the bedroom, the faces of your kids, in every word you speak and every day you were away from me.
“The truth is, right now I’m scared of looking at Andrew and Lil and having them call me Dad. My father is a mechanic, for Christ’s sake. He’s got grease under his fingernails that never comes out, even on Sundays when they go to church, and a son who’s never lived up to what he thinks he ought to be. And on Saturday night, my dad likes a little bit of clear liquid happiness out of a Mason jar that he buys from some hillbilly in the sticks. He made my life a living hell.
“Andy and Lillian’s Daddy is a Goddamn hero in the eyes of everybody on the entire planet. He saves the Goddamn world twice a day before breakfast, and there’s no way I can live up to that. Then to have one more miniature Major Dad looking at me, day in and day out, it's more than I can take, Kay."
"Give it time—give us time. I know it will work out."
“And what if it doesn’t?”
“It will, Marcus. We’ve been through too much to give up on everything now. Going to get P.J. in Korea is something I have to do, to make peace with Paul’s memory. We had a bad marriage, and we treated each other just as badly.“
“I’d say he had more points on his side of life’s great piss-off scoreboard than you do.”
Kay smiled briefly. “But letting this little boy’s life go down the toilet because of who did what to whom is wrong. And I know that you and I can work through this. We just have to give it time.”
For a moment, I almost believed her.
"What about your mother and Aurora Development?"
"My mother couldn't have known about that."
"But don't you see? She should have made it her business to know! You're denying everything that Aurora Development had ever been or done! That company's sole purpose was to wring every penny they could out of the poor in this town. And after all your well-meaning speeches about wanting to bring prenatal classes and midnight basketball leagues into the area, I can't believe what I'm hearing!"
"I can't believe she would let this happen!"
"And I can't believe you want to bring some little bastard who caused you so much anguish into your home!" There. I said it.
"But you don't know how it is for those Amer-Asian kids, Marcus. When Paul and I were in Korea, I learned those kids don't have anything. They don't have a future and they don't have a past."
Red burst across my eyes, and I was blinded by rage.
"So send twenty bucks a month to Save The Children! I can't believe you're worrying about a kid you've never seen that's half a world away, when you're the cure for so many kids right here in your own home town!"
"Marcus, please! Listen to me!"
"No, Kay, you listen to me. Have you ever had a rat crawl between the sheets with you at night? Has Andrew? Has Lillian?"
She winced and turned away.
"Have you ever had to live without adequate plumbing? Can you imagine living with the smell of shit, day in and day out? You've always had everything handed to you. How does it feel knowing that what you had came at the expense of Elizabeth Kingston and her kids? The tenants of Aurora Development pay for your mother’s fancy car, her fancy house and even Novella’s salary.
This is not any of your half-cocked idealism. It's not watching the major trailing glory in a Goddamn fighter jet. It's not deciding to patch up a dead man's memory or doing good deeds to bolster your own ego. This is it, Kay. This is real life."
"Marcus, look at us!" Kay reached for me, tears running down her face, pleading for something I couldn't give anymore. "What's happening to us?"
I leaned back on my elbows on the step behind me, suddenly tired of the fight. "I don't know."
"Why does it have to always be so complicated?" She was begging now, but we both knew we had stepped beyond the point of no return. Like the flame blown out on a match, there was nothing left but the embers. I couldn't fight with her anymore. I couldn't let Elizabeth and her children and every other tenant that paid their rent to that Neanderthal goon in the empty office continue to live like animals. I had to do what was right.
There was no way anything could ever work between us.
"Kay, even when we first met, it's never been easy. I fastened my heart on something I couldn't have and hung with it like a pit bull, but even a pit bull gets tired. I have loved you for over eight years, and each time I have you in my life, it never seems to work. Why is that, Kay? Why?"
Kay laid her face against the garish entryway wallpaper and sobbed. "I don't know. I don't know. I don't know."
"Jess and his wife never seem to go through these twisted machinations. Why do we?" I stood and brushed off my pants. "I can't live like this anymore, Kay. I’m letting go.”
* * *
"Is this going to take very long?"
An hour later, I met Elizabeth at her home. She was sitting on the front porch with Aaron and Priscilla, waiting for the photographer, Pat Robinette and me. My ears still could not get used to her clear speech, accustomed as I was to translating any semblance of recognizable sound during our previous conversations.
I shook my head. "We’ve found out who is behind Aurora Development. We need to take a few shots of your apartment, Elizabeth. Then we'll sit down and talk, and I’ll ask you a few questions. I need to ask you again what's been repaired and what hasn't since the housing commission ordered repairs, that kind of thing.”
The children were clean and scrubbed. I recognized Priscilla's little dress as one of the hand-me-downs from Kay's daughter, Lillian. Elizabeth's cheap, black blouse hung on her bony shoulders like a shroud, and her denim skirt had a three-corner tear near the hem that had been repaired with an ironed-on patch. As we entered the building, she leaned forward to help Priscilla up the stairs, and the ribs in her back looked like rungs on a ladder.
Wordlessly, Robinette stepped through the apartment, snapping pictures of peeling paint, the rotten boards beneath the peeling kitchen linoleum, and all the other horrors that lived with Elizabeth and her family. He paused in front of the one window that had been repaired after my nasty confrontation with that Neanderthal down at the office. The aluminum frame still shone, and brand-name stickers were still on the glass.
"It took me thirty days
and a busted lip to get that window in here," I said. "There used to be jagged glass and cardboard there. That's the only repair they ever made on the place."
The photographer whipped a telephoto lens from his camera bag and focused on an unlikely prism, created by the double-paned glass that danced across the worn linoleum.
Jess was right; I couldn't get off this story. I couldn't let this woman down. Elizabeth was struggling too hard to make a better life and I owed her my loyalty. If Kay chose to dump her commitment to making things right in Jubilant Falls to protect the women who created this cesspool, then Kay wasn't the woman I thought she was.
Maybe if I said it long enough, I believe it.
"Got it," the photographer said.
"Good. Elizabeth, I want you to start at the beginning. Tell me the whole story."
* * *
That afternoon, the story ran with my byline alone: banner headline, above the fold.
"You're back on track, old man," Jess slapped me on my shoulders and handed me one of his rancid cigars. "Legal is backing us up, too. They’re meeting with the prosecutor this afternoon. I want you there, Marcus, when they bring those women in on contempt of court charges—at least that's what legal is assuming they'll be charged with. This is primo stuff, guy. Primo!"
"Thanks." I let Jess bask in the glory of the upcoming State of Ohio v. Aurora Development. Why wasn't the woman who brought me this story, the woman who believed only I could make it right, standing by my side? And why wasn't I celebrating the fact that this story had rescued me from a life of covering poetry readings and social calendar events? No surprise, that I really wanted no part of it.
What I thought would be a triumphant ride through Persepolis was tearing my guts up, costing me the woman I loved. Christ, why did it have to be so difficult? Why did I have to be the passing brave king? I didn't have the guts that Jess had, or the slimy willingness to make deals with Martin Rathke.
All I wanted was justice. Not power. Not glory. Justice.
How naive can you get?
The Major's Wife (Jubilant Falls series Book 2) Page 16
