Perhaps the only point is to keep the public off-balance, so skeptical and cynical about the possibility of public truth and a free press that they no longer hold those ideas as even laudable, much less worth fighting and dying for. A handful of people might give their lives for a free press. None would for a pandering, manipulative, lying, propaganda machine. So liberty could disappear without a fight. Not one drop of blood shed. Just the quiet conviction that it never existed at all. And then it doesn’t.
I’d thought that spreading out all these stories at once, lining up one headline against another, would help me see more clearly. Find the connections that Ada had hungered for, had been so certain existed. She’d wanted to believe that she could live in a way that would have delivered an autistic boy from loneliness, that would have kept a Syrian mother from being crushed to death beneath the same hospital in which her only daughter had been fighting for her life, that would have coaxed the great American novel from her lover’s fingertips. She’d wanted to believe that we were somehow all one great soul, that kindness practiced by her might have unforeseen consequences of beauty halfway around the world. That grace beget grace.
But those weren’t the sort of connections I was seeing. I saw the wealthy and powerful stirring up discontent, distrust, and violence in the very communities, that if ever united in purpose, would bring those same wealthy and powerful to their knees in an hour. I saw carpetbaggers and conspiracy theorists given equal billing with scientists and diplomats, ensuring that enough reasonable people would fall on either side of the debate that no real change would be affected. I saw exploitation and objectification relabeled as feminism and so made defensible. I saw defense labeled as bigotry and bigotry labeled patriotism. I saw lies renamed alternative facts. I saw the very people and institutions whose unparalleled corruption brought an idiot tyrant to power entrench themselves twice as deeply in their corruption and remake themselves heroes of liberty in contrast to the monster they themselves kept fed and petted.
There was no agenda, I concluded. Not in the sense of a philosophical or political ideology. They didn’t really care whose hatred and paranoia they incited as long as it was sufficient to keep the citizenry enslaved to their own vices.
I smiled grimly. I could relate to that. An uneasy and off-balance readership is the easiest to manipulate.
It was a strange junction to be standing at, when a journalist is considering the possibility that the press wants neither itself nor the public to be free.
Once I would have stated unequivocally that a free press is the first and most necessary requirement for any attempt at liberty. Without words, there are no wars. Now, staring at these headlines plastered on my office wall, I wondered how many decades had passed since the free press had perished unremarked. Even if these media moguls suffered some sudden pangs of conscience and attempted to shake off the shackles they’d donned, cynics like me would scoff as fiercely at truth as we had at falsehood. What was the difference now? It wasn’t that any one of those headlines lacked factual basis. It was all in how the facts were arranged and presented, with what other facts they were paired so as to prove cause-and-effect where only correlation existed, and that scantly.
Talk about a crisis of conscience.
On the other hand, running the paper was my job. It didn’t have to be my calling. I could tear down these headlines and throw them in the trash. I could round up advertisers, assign stories, write the occasional piece myself when my reporters were swamped, and enjoy piddling around town with all the other villagers. I could call my congressman, vote my civic duty, shake my head at the evening news, and live as blissfully ignorant as everyone else.
The funny thing is, this is most well-informed age of man that has ever lived. At the stroke of a finger, we can see in real time what events are unfolding almost anywhere in the world. Within moments of an incident, we can listen to any number of experts weigh in on the whys and hows and wherefores. We can research our own medical conditions to the extent that we sometimes achieve better results than our doctors do. We can earn diplomas, buy Italian shoes, donate a goat to an African village, and have our groceries delivered to our door without ever leaving our apartment.
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And still we of all people in history can’t give away our liberties fast enough, shoveling them into the pockets of our overseers hand over fist in a frantic effort to rid ourselves of any inconvenience or responsibility.
But who am I to complain? I’ve been on the sidelines my entire life. I just count as I watch all the pretty horses go by, never intending to ride one myself.
Unregarded loneliness.
* * *
I was halfway home before I realized I’d never even said good-bye to Dayla. When I didn’t return, she’d know to lock up the shop and go home, but still. It wasn’t like me to not even acknowledge her existence when I came and went. I liked to think I practiced human interactions like an old hand. But I’d sent the final edition to press, snapped my laptop shut, and walked out the door without a glance back.
Dayla was soft-hearted and forgiving, excellent qualities in an office assistant. Especially mine. She’d probably put my brusqueness down to a broken heart and say a prayer or two for me.
She might even be right. What was the difference between a broken heart and a complete existential crisis, anyway?
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I’d forgotten to lock the front door again. That was not a good sign. There are certain things we do by rote, that haven’t required deliberate thought for decades. Things like shifting left or right when approaching another pedestrian, turning on the lights when you walk into a room, blowing on your coffee before taking that first sip, stopping at a red light. Locking the front door.
Max had been in the paper again. Max was a blue heeler whose owner had taken out a very expensive, full-color, three-inch ad in the lost section.
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I wondered about the owner. He wasn’t local―that ad had been in one of the Grand Junction papers I’d picked up. I’d been curious enough the first time I spotted it to consider calling the owner to see if Max had been returned yet. That was three weeks ago, and the same ad had run in this week’s edition. So apparently not.
Blue heelers are a dime a dozen in Colorado. I would have loved to know the story behind that ad. Obviously the owner loved and prized his or her dog dearly, but somehow the animal still got lost. Most of the time animals get lost in the middle of some sort of transition―a move, a camping trip, something like that. Dogs do jump fences, but that is usually no more than run-of-the-mill misbehavior. They’re not actually trying to run away from home. However this Max had gotten lost, his owner was willing to take a serious financial hit to get him back.
What would become of the owner if no one brought Max back? If he never turned up? Would the owner get another dog? Would it be a blue heeler?
So. Unlocked front door.
The brain functions on automatic more than we like to acknowledge. It’s how we drove to work without ever seeing a stoplight or a street sign. It’s how we managed to walk home blind drunk. It’s how we survived the sheer drudgery of breathing.
Once the brain becomes so overloaded with manual functions that it short-circuits the automatic functions, it’s time to pay attention.
It’s like a twitch of the brain. Pay attention.
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I did lock the door behind me. Home invasion wasn’t an issue in Brisby. The occasional armed robbery usually turned out to be the consequence of a drug deal gone bad, and even that was pretty rare. It’s the principle of the thing. I always locked my door. Like I always brushed my hair or zipped my fly. I didn’t want those to be the next th
ings I forgot to do. Lately it seemed like I was clinging to the edges of my mind while a cyclone tried to wrench it away.
I walked across the living room in the dark, dropping my messenger bag on the couch. I passed our bedroom door―my bedroom door, now―to reach the second bedroom.
Pausing, I leaned my forehead on the closed door. How many times had I taken this closed door for granted? It seemed impossible that I could open it now and not find Ada beyond it. The force, the vitality of her personality, the passionate fury with which she tackled everything in her life, had left a tangible impression on every wall of this house. And in this room, where all of her canvasses waited stacked and silent for her to send for them, her absence would be more obscene than anywhere.
Smooth wood on skin. The cool brass of the doorknob in my hand.
Focus on the little details.
The sound of her voice in the dark. How cold her hand felt in mine when we said good-bye. The way the blue of her eyes became the blue of storm, the blue of midnight skies so immense they terrified me, the blue of a broken robin’s egg, brittle and so still.
I turned the knob, fought not to fall into the room.
Shut-up rooms are all the same, no matter why you shut them up in the first place. Time doesn’t seem to move in those places. I imagined that they took on that quietude, that stuffy, musty smell, that defensiveness that moves to keep all intruders at bay from the first hour the door is closed. A day, a hundred days, a hundred years, and the closed room keeps its nature.
I turned on the light.
You’d have never guessed my girl was gone. But then, she hadn’t known herself. I took a scant comfort in knowing that she hadn’t been brooding on her decision. She hadn’t been longing and longing to leave and waiting for the right time to break the news to me. She’d simply gotten caught up one night in all those connections she no longer wanted to shed. She’d been stricken. Desperate, maybe. She’d just had to go. My little whirlwind, whirling away from me.
A paint-stained cabinet laden with paints, brushes, and used palettes stood beside her easel at the room’s one window. My breath caught in my throat when I realized that a fresh canvas stood at the easel, only a few strokes of color hinting at her purpose. I crossed the room, and in spite of myself, picked up the brush that waited on the little ledge.
It was as if I could feel her fingers under mine, strong but delicate, fingers that could turn paint into magic, walls into windows, my body into fire. My knees trembled. I looked out of the window, wanting to see what she had seen when she stood there.
What I saw was a wooden fence, the roof of the neighbor’s house, the tree in the back yard, the ragged grass and dandelions that badly needed mowing.
A cage, I thought. What she’d seen was a cage.
I dropped the paintbrush as if it had burned me.
Stiffening my knees, I turned my back on the window. I moved to the edges of the room, where stacks and stacks of canvases leaned against both walls. I’d often urged Ada to find a gallery that would take her work, maybe an art co-op where she could work one day a week in exchange for display space. She’d always laughed and promised “soon.”
Her excuse was that she didn’t have time to be an artist and a marketer both. She kept putting it off, saying that she needed to build her portfolio a bit more before she would have the time to devote to finding a market for her work. I used to think maybe that was a smokescreen. Maybe she was afraid of failing, afraid of putting her best self on display for the whole world and having it reject her. But Ada wasn’t one to be ruled by fears. More often she terrified me.
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Maybe I should take these paintings to Grand Junction or Denver or Fort Collins or the Springs, I thought. Perhaps I could find a gallery for Ada.
I wasn’t sure if I could do that legally. They’d probably need the artist to give them permission.
I pulled out my phone. Stared at its blank screen in despair.
Still, I indulged myself. I imagined the expression on Ada’s face when I told her that her work was hanging in a gallery somewhere, that people were looking at her paintings and seeing what she saw every day. I could almost hear her delighted laugh.
Even now, I liked to visit that place in my mind. That place where Ada’s colors filled every wall and her laughter filled my ears.
* * *
That was a long night. I sat cross-legged on the floor, gazing at canvas after canvas. It was the color that hurt me so deeply. Ada had shown me colors I didn’t know existed, and now the only place I could still see those colors was here in this room where she was not. I examined each painting in detail, one at a time. I tried to remember the stories she had told for each one, the world on which each of these windows looked out, but try as I might, all I saw was chaos and confusion and color. So much color.
The doctor in this place tells me I could only have ever pretended to see what Ada saw in those paintings, but I don’t believe him. I remember when Ada was here. When Ada was here, I understood everything. Now the world has faded to grayscale, and I cannot follow these lines to their end.
I forgot to eat dinner that night. At some point, I fell asleep, curled up on the floor in my day clothes, my fingertips resting on a blue and green painting spattered with a dark, terrible brown.
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At least I wasn’t hungover Thursday morning. Thursdays I was alone in the office, except for the occasional drop-in of one of my reporters or a customer looking to place an ad in person. These days, though, face-to-face business was a rarity. Even most of the old people seemed to be proficient at technology and preferred it. Much of what Dayla did was just transferring ads from email or our website portal. We didn’t have to run the credit cards ourselves, the program did all of that for us.
In consequence, Thursdays were pretty light work days. Technically, I could have gotten away with taking them off like I did Sundays. Our drivers picked up the papers directly from the printer and delivered them before dawn, so I didn’t even need to show up for that. On the rare occasion a driver didn’t show up, I would get a call at home. Those occasions were rare for two reasons: one, I’m an excellent judge of character, so I don’t hire flakes. Two, jobs in this town are hard to come by. Even work that only pays a few dollars two days a week is coveted, so it’s low-maintenance management for me. I don’t even remember the last time I had a conversation with one of my drivers.
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Actually, I’m not sure I can even dredge their names up. Better not to try too hard.
I came in on Thursdays because I didn’t want a day off. Even when Ada was here, this place was more home to me than any other. Sundays were our adventure day, and I loved them, but mostly I didn’t need an escape from my real life. I’ve heard it said you should live in such a way that you don’t need a vacation from your life. I had myself convinced I’d done that.
Ada had often come in to see me, sharing a lunch or filling me in on the latest from the diner. I believed she felt at home here, too. Or maybe this had been the place she felt closest to the man she’d hoped I’d become, the man she’d seen lurking in the back of my eyes when we first met. She always believed more in the fiction of me as a writer than I did. I could have worked harder to dissuade her, but I didn’t want to. There’s something intoxicating about the faith of a beautiful woman, especially one who possessed all the passion and drive that she mistook in you.
I was snipping out headlines from my latest stack of papers when the door chimed. I looked up.
Andy ambled in with his coffee tumbler, sleeves rolled up in deference to the spring morning that was already warming up. He barely glanced at me as he poured the last of the black joy juice
and started a second pot. I was so surprised to see him, I nearly dropped my scissors.
It’s a strange thing: once your mind accepts that people simply vanish from your life, it’s always a surprise when someone reappears.
I grabbed at the scissors and kept clipping away as if nothing were out of the ordinary. I can follow a cue as well as anyone. Sometimes.
Andy stirred in enough sugar to make a southern grandma happy and walked over to my desk, lowering himself into the opposite chair with a contented huff. I cast him a sidelong glance as I taped up my newsprint. I’d covered the wall from my desk to Dayla’s, and now I was headed toward the back wall.
“Good morning, Andy. How’s the town doing?”
“You’re my first stop.”
“Ah. Been busy lately.”
“Been thinking.”
He took a long draw at his coffee. “Heard from Ada lately?”
One of the reassuring things about male communication versus female is that men don’t often dance around the subject. They just sail right in, no matter how stormy or rough the waters. Women, in my experience, like to hint, to sniff around, to feel things out. For example, poor Dayla has been dying of curiosity for a good week now. I admit I’ve taken a mean pleasure in ignoring all of her valiant efforts to draw me out or offer me―God forbid―a “safe place” to share my feelings. Dayla likes to regard herself as the soul of discretion, so an outright interrogation is out of the question for her. But she would dearly like to know, all the same.
“Not a word,” I rejoined grimly.
“Hmph. I thought as much.”
I raised an eyebrow in his direction.
“How’s the paper going?” he asked by way of answer.
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