The From-Aways

by CJ Hauser

  “Okay,” she says. “You’re right. You call.”

  We move our chairs together and I flip to a new page in my notebook. Leah pulls their number from her cell phone. “Are you ready?” she says. I nod. I call.

  It rings three times and I think they won’t pick up. I’ll be connected to their high-tech answering machine or their maid. Just when I’m brainstorming what kind of a voice mail I should leave, there’s a woman’s voice.

  “Hello?”

  “Elena Dorian?” I say. I feel like I’m playacting, but also like, This Is It, it’s finally happening, the part of this job I was made for!

  “Yes, who is this? Do you know what time it is?”

  “I do, Mrs. Dorian, and I’m sorry. This is Quinn Winters from the Menamon Star.”

  “And?”

  “I was just calling because some records have been brought to our attention that imply that you wrote several large checks to the town of Menamon to bend building code for the construction of your new house. I wondered if you had anything to say about that?”

  “Good God,” Elena says. I write down on my steno, Good God! “That’s absolutely ridiculous,” she says, “and I hope you’ll understand why I have nothing to say to you.”

  “So you don’t want to give any comment?” I say.

  “Comment?” she says, surprised. “No, I don’t want to give any comment. Your whole town has been nothing but trouble, and if I’d known what kind of lot you all were, I’d never have bought there. Good night.” She hangs up.

  I write down the rest of what she said. Leah looks at the pad, reads my scrawl, and grins. “She really said that?”

  “I’m taking notes, aren’t I?” I say. “Don’t you always fucking tell me to take notes?”

  Leah slaps the notebook. “We’ll put it in tomorrow,” she says. “Let’s go to the bar.”

  AT THE UNCLE we sit in the back, next to the jukebox, which someone has spent ten dollars to monopolize for the night. The next twenty plays are all slotted for Patsy Cline. I look around at all the grizzled men turning their whiskey glasses over in their hands, each one equally unmoved as Patsy sings about falling to pieces.

  We drink gin. “Was it like this,” I say to Leah, “when you were at the Gazette?”

  She laughs. Her hair is down and kinked where she tied it back earlier. “We didn’t have to take turns with the laptops at the Gazette,” she says. “And I didn’t get to wear boots to work.” She kicks her feet out from under the table. She’s got on knee-high, size-ten green rubber boots. The bottoms have a tide line of dried mud.

  “No,” I say. “I mean the deadlines. Worrying you won’t get everything done on time and working late.” Bernstein drinking one million cups of coffee waiting for an informant to crack. Woodward creeping around parking garages to meet the shadowy man in a trench coat. I was dying to have that, but now that it’s here, all I feel is exhausted.

  “Sure it was,” Leah says. “But I was never worried about, hey, what’s my local fishmonger going to think when he reads this?”

  “Or your husband,” I say. “How did things go over with Henry?”

  Leah spins the glass between her enormous hands, some gin sloshing onto the table.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me,” I say. “You haven’t told him?”

  “I was thinking he wouldn’t have to know,” Leah says.

  “You’re not serious,” I say. Leah takes a long drink and shrugs. “Holy shit, you’re totally serious.”

  “I figure if I don’t put my name on it, that’s mostly all that matters,” she says. “The byline. And he’ll never have to know I’ve been helping with the research and writing.” She looks at me, pleading. I exhale a long breath.

  “Lady, I know you want me to give you a pass here, but I can’t. That’s a terrible plan. You’ve got to tell him now. If he finds out later it’ll be way, way worse.”

  “I know,” Leah says. She covers her face and mumbles into the hollow of her hands, “I know, I know, I know, I know.”

  “So when are you going to tell him?” I say.

  “Soon,” she says. “Tomorrow.”

  WE HAVE A couple more drinks, and then it’s late. Leah pulls in her legs and clomps her boots together. “All right,” she says. “I’m going back.”

  “You want a ride home?” I say.

  She shakes her head. “Back to the office. I’m going to sleep on Charley’s couch. I’ll be up in a few hours anyway.”

  My heart sinks. This is what real journalists do. They don’t go home to their girlfriends and tell them all about the top-secret articles they’re writing.

  “I’ll come too,” I say.

  “Let’s go, Woodward,” Leah says, and throws her arm around my shoulders.

  IN THE CAR, I see Leah texting.

  “That Henry?” I say.

  She nods, and keeps tapping. “Yeah,” she says. “If anyone asks, I’m drunk and crashing at your place.”

  “Okay, I’ll remember that in case your mom calls my mom.”

  “Don’t give me a hard time,” Leah says.

  “I’m trying to help,” I say, turning into the Star parking lot. “I’m a helpful son of a bitch, and enough of a fuckup to know one when I see one.”

  Leah chucks her phone back into her purse. “I know,” she says, “I know, I know, I know, I know.”

  INSIDE THE STAR it’s dark and we don’t even bother to turn on the lights. We go to Charley’s office, where the air is warm and close. Behind Charley’s desk is an enormous brown plaid couch that’s been around since the seventies. According to Charley, her grandfather lugged it in here and slept on it three or four nights a week back in the good old days.

  I take off my jacket. Leah is bent in half, struggling to get her boots off.

  “Stand up,” I say. She does. I step on the toe, where her foot isn’t. I reach my hand down into her boot and grab her ankle. “Now lift,” I say.

  Her foot slides out.

  “Hey,” she says. “Thanks.”

  I step on the second boot. Her other foot comes free, and I chuck her boots over in the corner. “You smell like wet dog,” I say.

  Leah yawns. “It’s raining,” she says. I pause to listen and realize I can hear that the rain has started up on the roof again. A tinny, drumming sound. Leah lies down on the couch, her head tucked against the arm. I take my sneakers off and slide in behind her, my feet at the back of her head. I’m asleep before I can even wonder whether Woodward and Bernstein ever fell asleep together like this—on watch, in the car, in the office—waiting for a late-night call.

  THE COFFEEMAKER, CHUGGING through a new pot, wakes me around seven. Leah is towering over it in sock feet, solemnly watching coffee accumulate.

  Charley’s in by ten and I’ve managed to be sitting at my desk by then. She has a box of apple-cider doughnuts, two new tins of coffee, and a sample layout from the printers. “Look at this newsroom!” she says. I’ve never her seen her so happy.

  The layout looks good. A five-page spread showing where the text will go with the pictures already blocked in. Some of them are Rosie’s Polaroids of the construction. We whited out her messages to her parents, all the Love, Rosalinds. We gave her a real photographer’s credit.

  By noon, Leah is electric. She circles the table with the documents on it like a shark, like she isn’t looking for anything in particular. Then she snatches up a paper and takes it back to her desk. I keep reading my same sentences over and over.

  By three o’clock I’ve got a lot of my material written, and I’m feeling good, but then I start reading over what I’ve written and the sentences don’t make sense. I’ve got some basic statistics flipped and my pronouns could be referring to either the local police force or the loons.

  By six o’clock I’m delirious.

  “You’re a champion, Winters,” Charley says. “Come back tomorrow for the homestretch.”

  At home, I pull into the parking lot and see that the Stationhouse
is shut down. The Daily Specials menu chalkboard is ten feet out in the parking lot. Over the ghost of a spinach pie special is a pink-lettered announcement: CLOSED TONIGHT FOR SPECIAL EVENT.

  Sitting on the porch, with the fans spinning round, I see Rosie, Carter, Billy, Joseph, Jethro, Cliff Frame, and Sara Riley. They all look up as I walk toward them, jingling keys in my hand. They’ve got a pitcher of lemonade on the porch table.

  “What’s up, Rebel Seven,” I say. They look at me like they’re glad to see me, their faces respectful. Something is wrong. And then I know: Carter, Rosie, or both of them have told them about the documents. “What the fuck,” I say.

  “We won’t tell nobody,” Billy says, and he does some Honest-Injun Boy Scout crap with his heart and hands. Rosie looks delighted. She’s wearing my red number nine T-shirt, and it hangs on her, because she’s still getting smaller. Carter’s got his hair tied back in a knot at the base of his neck, which makes his profile more hawkish than usual.

  I say, “You know that if you leak this before Monday, our article won’t matter at all, right? It will just be some town gossip culled and reprinted in the newspaper.”

  “Which is why no one’s going to say anything,” Carter says.

  The rest of the group dutifully nod assent. Jethro looks like someone’s pulling strings to make him do it, a clumsy puppet bob to his head.

  “Jethro,” I say, “I will kill you myself if you get drunk and start—”

  “That’s just hurtful,” Jethro says, and drinks some lemonade.

  “If you don’t let us do this right, then we can’t help,” I say.

  “That’s why it’s just the seven of us,” Rosie says. “Or eight,” she amends, pouring me a glass of lemonade and sliding it across the table.

  “I don’t want any damn lemonade,” I say. Rosie makes a face.

  Carter says, “We’re planning an event to happen in tandem with the piece. We wouldn’t have had time to organize if we waited for you to run it first. This way”—he taps his pencil against a few things written on his pad—“the article comes out Monday morning, and by that afternoon we’re down on the green, outside town hall. So when people get mad there’s a place for them to go.”

  “People are already mad,” says Jethro. His pad’s got nothing written on it. It’s covered in doodles of arrows pointing in all different directions. “I keep telling you, we can do more.”

  “Flyers,” Sara Riley says to me. “We’ve got to have them printed ahead of time. There won’t be time on Monday.”

  Joseph Deep nods. “It’s the best way, Quinn.”

  “The demonstration is going to be amazing,” Rosie says.

  They all go quiet. Carter puts a hand on her hand, which is bone white, clutching the lemonade pitcher. He says, “Rosalind, you can’t come.”

  Rosie shakes her head. “Of course I’m coming.”

  Billy says, “C’mon, Carter.”

  “I’m sorry,” Carter says. “Billy, you’re a minor, and after the last time I don’t think it’s such a great idea that you be there either. You and Rosie will be a special team. You’ll hand flyers out all over town. But I want you both far away from the green.”

  “After everything I’ve done?” Rosie says. “You want me to babysit Billy? After—”

  “You really think two high schoolers with flyers are going to help anything?” Jethro interrupts. He’s loud but talking down at his pad. Drawing more arrows. “If you think that, you’re nuts. If Joseph talks to the guys at the dock, and Billy talks to the boys—”

  “I’m nineteen!” Rosie says.

  “Jethro,” Carter says. “This is the plan. You like it or you don’t but this is it.”

  “I don’t know why you think we have to do what you say, Carter,” Jethro says. He smacks the table and stands up. “I’m not marching in some parade.”

  He heads down the stairs, heavy-footed, then hustles angrily to his truck. He has to climb into it through the passenger side because the driver’s-side door won’t open anymore, no matter how much he’s tried to bang it out. He slams the door shut and guns the engine as he pulls out.

  Joseph Deep shakes his head. “What you guys will be doing is important,” he tells Billy and Rosie. “And Jethro’s wrong about the green. So you guys canvass. And that will be that.”

  “I’ll get you the flyers tomorrow morning,” Sara says. “You decide what you’ll do with them Monday.”

  “Fucking Rebel Seven,” Billy says. “This is a joke.”

  Rosie just keeps gripping the lemonade pitcher. A wet-smelling spring breeze blows in and I smell the skunk cabbage growing by the creek down south of the tracks.

  AN HOUR LATER Rosie and I are at the bar. She’s complaining about not being allowed at the protest and I’m almost listening but mostly playing with her hands, stroking the backs of them and squeezing.

  “They think this is just a phase. They don’t even think of me like a real grown-up who’s been helping them. But who do they think arranged all that stuff for the concert? Elves?”

  She’s too mad and distracted to care what I’m doing, so I just keep mm-hmming her. I stick my finger into the waist of her jeans and crook my finger, add an inch or two of space. I shake my head. “Let’s go home, Rosie. I’ll cook you something,” I say.

  “I’m fine,” she says.

  But I feel like raising my glass of gin and giving a eulogy for Rosie’s hips. Another for her ass. I would speak of the splendor of her erstwhile curves, and how they will be missed. Let us all take a moment, bar patrons, to reflect and mourn.

  We walk out into the parking lot weaving and bumping into each other. It’s not that late. There’s time for me to be functional in the morning and finish the piece, which, even as I’m talking to Rosie, is still rattling around in my head.

  I hear a clang. Billy’s sitting on the hood of his father’s car, knees all crooked up and feet on the bumper. He’s got a handful of gravel and he’s throwing stones at an empty can on its side. He hits it, and the target moves. He chucks another one. It misses, pinging off a car hood.

  “Hey,” he says. “We got to talk.” It’s Rosie he wants, not me. But I answer anyway.

  “Billy, go home,” I say. “Go back to school.”

  “School’s practically over,” he says. “We’ve another month left, maybe. Rosie, listen.”

  Rosie stands up straight, willing herself sober.

  Billy says, “I think Jethro is right.”

  “Billy, Jethro’s a nut,” I say.

  Billy shakes his head. “You really think a bunch of people marching around on the green is going to do anything? It won’t. We’ll have the protest and you’ll write a nice story about it and I’ll finish school.” He hops off the hood and starts pacing around. “And then, when it’s time for me to take over the store, there won’t be anything left. It’ll be some lobster underwear tourist trap.”

  Rosie says, “He’s right.”

  “Rosie, seriously?” I say. “You’re not giving up on the power of song that easy, are you?”

  “It’s not funny, Quinn,” she says. “You’re doing something, okay? You don’t know what it feels like, them telling us to hand out flyers like kids. They love me beaming and singing for Menamon, but when it’s time to actually do something, they try to send me home.”

  “What do you want to do?” I say. “What else is there to do?”

  “I don’t know,” Billy says. “But I bet Jethro does.”

  “Then you’re a nut too,” I say. “C’mon, Rosie.”

  Rosie sighs and says, “Good night, Billy. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “Yeah,” Billy says. “We’ve got a lot of flyers to pick up.” He gets in his car, and when he flips on his blinker, it’s flashing left. Rosie watches him pull out. To get to Billy’s house you make a right.

  Rosie and I, we amble home. Arms looped in the darkness.

  37

  Leah

  Henry is working nonstop, which is the
only reason he doesn’t notice that I am working nonstop too. That probably I wouldn’t be clocking quite so many hours if I were really covering delays in the construction of the Poverty Hollow Bridge and the senior center’s Sadie Hawkins dance.

  When he comes to bed at night, half the bed sags away as he falls in. He breathes a kiss near my ear before rolling over. I feel so guilty. I keep planning to tell him I have changed my mind, but then I think that maybe this is the best way: a secret compromise. We both get what we want. Henry gets to be happy, thinking I’m not involved and seeing no Leah byline on the article. And I get to be happy too, grinding out this story, feeling useful in my job and good for standing up for what I believe in . . . without him ever having to know. It’s a lie. But a lie of omission! Marriages are full of these, I think. Sometimes a lie can be helpful. Sometimes a lie is best for everyone.

  ON SUNDAY NIGHT, we finish. We sit on the desks in a circle and I read the whole thing out loud for the second time.

  “It’s good,” Charley says. “Now let go and give me that.” She takes the hard copy from me and she takes the little chip of file too. She’s straw-haired and wearing a soft flannel shirt that no way belongs to her.

  “You’re sure he’s still there? The printer?” Quinn says.

  “I know he is,” Charley says.

  “How many copies?” I say.

  “A thousand.” Charley grins. “You feeling big-time, Lynch?”

  “For certain,” I say. “What size shirt does he wear? This printer you know is there?”

  “What time are you coming back?” Quinn says.

  Charley laughs. “I’m not coming back, Winters,” she says. “We’re done. Go home. Celebrate. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

  IN THE CAR, we roll down the windows. I can hear water rushing through all the streams that run in the roadside ditches. The energy of the thaw is in everything.

  Quinn lolls an arm out the window. “I have postpartum depression,” she says.