by Levy, Marc
“The comfort of home, perhaps. What’s got you down, sweet pea?”
“Nothing, everything’s okay,” I assured him.
“Come now. Those eyes of yours are way too red for ‘okay.’ Problems in your love life? Something about a man?”
“A . . . what?”
“You know, I myself was single for a long time. I recall that being the worst period of my entire life. I was always so afraid of being alone.”
“Well, how do you cope with it, now?”
“I’m not alone, I’m a widower. It’s not the same thing, not at all. And I have you children.”
“Do Maggie and Michel come to see you often when I’m not here?”
“I should hope so, as you’re not often here! Anyway, I have dinner with your brother every Thursday. Maggie comes to check on me two or three times a week, never for all that long because she is a busy woman, after all. Busy with what, I don’t have a clue . . . But you asked about being lonely? I can tell you, even when you’re far away, you’re always with me. All I need to do is think of your mother, or one of you kids, and the loneliness just skitters away like a thief in the night.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You got me. I was lying. How about you tell me what’s really got you down?”
“What was Mum doing before she came back to England? Where was she?”
“And there you have it! Silly me, thinking you came because missed your old man so much,” said Dad, teasing me as always. Then he gave a weary sigh. “I really can’t tell you much, love. She wasn’t fond of talking about that period of her life. You know that daft saying—I suppose they’re all daft, come to think of it—that the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree? Maybe that one’s not so daft when it comes to you two. Like mother, like daughter. Truth is, your mother actually had a bit of a career . . . in journalism.”
That certainly was a bit of a bombshell. Mum had been a chemistry teacher.
“Your mother excelled in chemistry when she was at university. Then we both abandoned that path around the same time, and she became a journalist. Don’t ask me how or why, I never understood the whole thing. When she came back and got pregnant with you and your brother, it didn’t take long for us to see my salary alone wasn’t going to cut it. She hunted around for a journalism job for a few weeks, but the bigger her belly grew, the quicker those doors would swing shut in her face. The best offer she got was to be the secretary of an editorial board, working for peanuts. Of course, she was livid at the very notion! That a woman—much less a pregnant one—wasn’t fit to be offered a real job. And that type of rage just won’t do when you’ve got a bun in the oven, much less two. When she finally came to her senses and realized she had to calm down, she decided to return to her first love. Or rather ‘loves,’ I should say—besides me, of course,” Dad added with a wink. “In the run-up to you two being born, she took courses by correspondence to complete her chemistry degree, which you already know. Studying between bouts of morning sickness, she managed to pass. As soon as you were old enough to be away from her, she became a teaching assistant, then did her PGCE to become a full-on science teacher. Your mother was passionate about children. She couldn’t get enough of them. I would have liked to have been twelve years old forever just to get to hang around with her all day and be the teacher’s pet.”
Dad went quiet and ran his hand through his hair, a nervous habit of his on the rare occasion he actually let the conversation veer towards anything deep.
“Elby. I’ve told you a hundred times: Don’t be sad when you think of her. Think back to the special moments you two shared together. How much she loved you, how close you were. Close enough to even make your own father jealous at times, I’ll admit. Whether she’s dead or not, they can’t take that away from you.”
Before he even finished his sentence, I had burst into tears and curled up in his arms. Sure, right. You’re not the emotional type, not at all. Just keep telling yourself that.
“Well, safe to say I’ve done a great job of cheering you up. Give me another chance, will you? I know just the remedy for this type of heartache. Come on, now! Let’s go,” my father said, taking me by the hand. “The old Austin is fit as a fiddle once more, so what do you say we splurge on some ice cream, yeah? And I’ve got news for you, little lady: Croydon now has its very own Ben & Jerry’s! If that’s not good news, I don’t know what is. And now that your sister’s wedding is off, to hell with fitting into my dinner jacket!”
“So . . . what newspaper did she work for?” I asked, licking melted chocolate ice cream from my spoon.
“I really don’t feel like talking about all that,” my father replied, without looking up from his own massive portion of ice cream.
“Why is that?”
“Because I don’t want you getting any ideas.”
“If you really think you’re getting off that easily, then you don’t know your own daughter at all.”
“Elby, I have to tell you right off: one word of any of this to your brother or sister, and you and I are going to have some real issues.”
“Hey, when you call me Elby, I know you mean business.”
“Her newspaper was called the Independent.”
I threw my father a dubious look. Knowing him, he could be pulling my leg just to see how far he could take the joke.
“The Independent? The daily paper with some of the most talented voices in journalism today? Which section? Culture? Economy? Hold up, I know . . . the science desk!” I gasped, laughing, emphasizing the ludicrousness of it all.
“It was the Metro section. You know, social issues.”
“Are you sure we’re talking about the same woman?”
“She was quite keen on politics, and had an exceptional knack for editorials. And you can wipe that snide look off your face, young lady. It’s the absolute truth.”
“Nice lesson in humility, right? Considering I only write travel chronicles, essentially just hyped-up tourist recommendations.”
“Now, don’t you start! It’s not like any particular subject is more important than another. You transport your readers to distant lands that they’ll never set foot in. It’s the stuff that dreams are made of! And every single one of your articles is a call for tolerance, which is all too rare these days. You need proof your work is important? Flip open the Daily Mail. One glance at that rubbish is all you’ll need. Don’t belittle what you do, my dear.”
“You wouldn’t be trying to say . . . you’re proud of me, would you?”
“Why, because you don’t know that already?”
“You never talk about my work.”
“Well, maybe that’s because . . . because your bloody work keeps you so far away from me! Look, let me buy you another ice cream.”
“Dad’s favorite antidepressant, results guaranteed,” I said with a smile, running my finger along the rim of the bowl and savoring every last drop. “But this stuff has got to be a thousand calories per spoonful, so it might be just a little over-the-top.”
“What’s wrong with a little over-the-top once in a while? You’ve got to live sometimes, take a risk or two. Start with the banana split. It’s over-the-top in all the right ways!”
Dad came back carting two immense glass bowls, overflowing with perfect banana slices held captive in a prison of absurdly rich ice cream, covered in steaming hot caramel. Delicious as it looked, I was busy tapping away on my smartphone in a frenzy.
“Is that the magazine?” he asked.
“No. I’m digging around for articles by Mum, but I can’t find any. It doesn’t make any sense. All the big papers have put their archives online, and the Independent only puts out a digital edition these days, anyway, so you’d think there’d be something.”
My father cleared his throat. “You won’t find a thing written by your mother in there.”
“What, she didn’t use her real name for the byline?”
“No, she did . . . but you’ve got the wrong Indepen
dent. The one I mean is from way back when.”
“I don’t understand. There was another Independent?”
“It was a weekly paper. Very short run. See, I might’ve left out . . . The fact is, your mother actually started the paper herself, along with a motley crew of her pals, all mad as hatters, just like her.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Mum . . . started her own newspaper?” I repeated, my voice rising. “And you two never thought to mention it? Not even when your own daughter became a journalist?”
“No, it never really occurred to us,” my father said. “What’s so awful about that? You don’t have to make a fuss about it.”
“Don’t have to make a fuss? Typical. Of course. Never make a fuss in our family. I break my leg. Don’t make a fuss. I could have fallen to my death from that roof, and you’d have stood over my dead body saying, ‘Don’t make a fuss, Elby! You’ll be right as rain soon!’”
“Oh, good lord! You were six years old! What was I supposed to do, give you a look of sheer terror and tell you we’d have to amputate?”
“Great. There it is. You found a way to make everything all cheeky and fun again. This is serious. Tell me why you kept it from me.”
“Because I didn’t want you getting any ideas. Remember our daft saying from before, about apples falling . . . ? The one that’s not so daft in your case? I knew you’d stop at nothing to impress your mother. If we had told you she had founded a weekly paper, I can’t imagine what you’d have done. Run around covering war zones? Or, even worse, try to top your mother, create your very own paper?”
“You make that sound like such a terrible thing!”
“It would have been! That shitty little rag of a newspaper ruined your mother! Financially and emotionally. Quite a price to pay, even for one’s dream. Now, for goodness’ sake, let’s move on before you make me order a third ice cream and I end up in the back of an ambulance.”
“Unbelievable,” I scoffed. “For once, you’re the melodramatic one. This is a historic moment.”
“I’m not being melodramatic. Fact is, I’m a bit diabetic.”
“What? Since when are you a diabetic?”
“I said ‘a bit’ diabetic. How long has it been now?” Dad feigned counting on his fingers, breaking into a snide little smile. “Twenty years, give or take a few.”
I buried my face in my hands, furious. “You have got to be kidding me. It’s like the bloody house of secrets!”
“Come now, Elby. Don’t blow things out of proportion. Did you expect me to pin my medical chart to the kitchen wall? Why did you think your mother always gave me such hell every time I tried to get my hands on a packet of biscuits?”
With that, I confiscated my father’s ice cream and asked him to drop me off at the station, using the excuse that I had to rush back to London for work.
I hate lying, especially to him. The moment I boarded the train, I took out my phone and called an archivist from the magazine. I had a huge favor to ask.
14
ELEANOR-RIGBY
October 2016, London
Back at my studio, I sat cross-legged on the couch watching Absolutely Fabulous, about to start my third bag of crisps.
Not only was the show a cult classic, but it also happened to serve a vital public service for certain members of society. Take, for example, a woman who might be home alone stuffing her face on a Friday night, feeling guilty about having opened a bottle of wine that she would almost certainly drink all by herself, made all the worse considering the bottle was a gift from a friend who came for dinner, back in the days when she still had friends over for dinner.
Or, another example, picked at random: a woman who catches a look at herself naked in the mirror after stepping out of the shower and feels that it’s absolutely absurd that she’s still single . . . and then makes the critical error of lingering too long in front of said mirror, and realizes maybe it’s not so absurd after all.
For that woman, and others like her, Ab Fab’s Patsy and Edina were absolute lifesavers. Genuine saints. Late at night, they come to your rescue, easing your drunken shame by showing you that it could be worse, and giving you another strong dose of reality the next day when your morning hangover reminds you that real life is nothing like TV.
In this episode, Edina and Saffy—her daughter—are arguing, which reminded me of all the fights I had with my own mum. In walks Saffy’s grandma, who calms everything down. I never knew my grandparents, and never would, since Mum grew up in an orphanage. The fog around her backstory suddenly seemed to have grown a lot thicker in light of current events. Struck with a thought, I rushed over to grab the troubling letter from my bag.
All we can ever see of our parents is what they wish to show us . . .
But Mum never wanted to show us a single thing.
As I held the letter in my hand, I had a closer look at the stamp on the envelope. I nearly slapped my forehead—what an awful detective I was! The stamp bore an image of the Queen, but the color was different—it wasn’t an English stamp at all. Squinting, I could make out a word written in tiny letters beneath Her Majesty’s glowing smile: Canada. Of course. How could I have missed it? The postmark said Montreal, and it had been right there under my nose the whole time. It begged the question: Just who was this poison-pen writing to me from the other side of the world?
It was only the first of many questions.
The next day, I was flipping through a magazine and watching my laundry in the washing machine spinning around in a dizzying dance when I received a call from the archivist friend I’d contacted. She hadn’t found a single trace of a weekly Independent in all of England. Thinking of the stamp, I asked her to extend her search to the other side of the Atlantic.
One hour later, I opened up my postbox down in the lobby and made another discovery. There, standing out amongst the fliers and ads, was a second letter. I recognized the beautiful handwriting immediately. I stumbled out of the lobby—straight by a worried neighbor, who told me I looked pale—and returned to the flat, still light-headed as I tore the envelope open.
It contained nothing more than a single sheet of lined paper bearing a short and cryptic message:
October 22, 7 p.m. Sailor’s Hideaway, Baltimore.
It was the nineteenth. That left less than three days.
I began rushing about, throwing my toiletry bag and other essentials pell-mell into a carry-on bag before realizing I hadn’t even bought a ticket yet. I ran to my computer, hunted down a last-minute ticket, and hit “Buy Now.” Insufficient funds. Shit. With my heart racing in my chest, I called Maggie up in the hope she could lend me the cash.
“About that . . .” I could hear her wincing. “It turns out there’s some truth to the story I told Dad about problems with overdraft at the bank.” Being an absolute expert on all my sister’s shortcomings, I knew for a fact she wasn’t a cheapskate, so I took her at her word.
“How about you tell me why you need two thousand pounds so desperately?” she asked. “Are you in deep shit or something?”
I told Maggie about the strange new letter. She immediately flew off the handle and started ranting and raving about what a mistake it was. What the hell was I thinking, putting myself at the mercy of a lunatic, just to get kidnapped and murdered and have my ravaged corpse thrown into the sea? Why else would the poison-pen set up a nighttime encounter at a place called Sailor’s Hideaway?
Maggie has a wild imagination that concocts outlandish things, most of which tend to be macabre. My counterargument far from convinced her: If a maniac were really trying to lure in his prey, wouldn’t he lay the traps a bit closer to home? It seemed like a whole lot of trouble making his victim cross the ocean, with perfectly decent murder victims just next door. A logical point.
“Aha!” Maggie exclaimed. “Not so fast. You disappear so far from home, there’s a better chance no one would ever realize.”
“It’s not like the poison-pen asked to meet in the middle of the woods somewhere,
” I pointed out. “It’s Baltimore!”
Maggie went silent and gave up. She knew me well enough to know that I had made up my mind and would stop at nothing to see this through.
“What about asking your magazine for an advance on travel expenses? Isn’t traveling part of your job, or am I a blubbering imbecile?”
I was the blubbering imbecile, to use her beautifully poetic words. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind. I hung up on my sister midsentence and called my editor in chief. By the time he picked up, I had already contrived an angle for the article. The magazine was long overdue for a feature on Baltimore. After all, the city had some intense urban renewal underway, not to mention one of the largest commercial ports on the East Coast. We could also do a sidebar on Johns Hopkins University (the article was writing itself—thanks, Wikipedia!). Why not highlight the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, a center for African American history?
When I paused, my editor grunted out his indifference, not quite sold on the pitch. “Baltimore isn’t exactly sexy stuff, you know.”
“Oh, I beg to differ. It’s sexy, all right. And undiscovered.”
Another grunt, but with a little more interest this time. “Let’s say you’re right. Why Baltimore, out of the blue?”
“Because no one knows about it, and I’m out to remedy that!”
Right in the nick of time, I made a serendipitous discovery at the bottom of the screen, the perfect weapon for a masterful coup de grace. My boss had a well-documented Edgar Allan Poe obsession, and since the illustrious poet had been kind enough to make Baltimore his final resting place, I pitched using Poe to tie the feature together, complete with a perfectly pompous title: Baltimore and the Last Days of Edgar Allan Poe.
Before I even got to “Poe,” my boss had burst out laughing. I couldn’t blame him.
“Easy, tiger,” he said, composing himself. “How about you just stick with the economic resurgence angle, how far the city has come and all that, how it’s growing into an appealing destination for students. Engage with locals, take the city’s pulse. The elections are just a few weeks away, and I’m not convinced Trump is going to get the epic ass-whooping all the polls are predicting. So, fine. I’ll sign off on a one-week assignment. Accounting will send your funds through tomorrow. And take a nice snapshot of Edgar Allan Poe’s tombstone for me, will you? You never know.”
