White Collar Girl

by Renée Rosen

  “Where have you been—oh, God,” my mother said, her hand clutched to her throat. “It’s you.”

  “Yes, it’s me. What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

  She looked around, stalling.

  “Mom? What’s going on?” I was still rattled by my own drama as I followed her inside the house, droplets of rain falling off my sweater, the tips of my hair. “Mom? What is it?”

  “It’s your father.”

  “Is he okay? What’s wrong?” I twisted out of my wet sweater and set my attaché case down, the leather speckled from the raindrops.

  “I’m furious with him. I can’t find him.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t find him?”

  “He’s missing.”

  “Missing?”

  She hugged herself and chewed on her bottom lip. The smell of stale smoke and bookbindings hit me as soon as I got past the doorway. A bolt of lightning flashed through the front windows.

  “He probably went for a drink,” I said.

  “I called around to the bars. No one’s seen him.”

  “Why didn’t you call me?”

  “I kept thinking he’d be back any minute. I should have known better.” She sighed and shook her head, her hands clenched in fists.

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, it’s his damn book. Doubleday rejected his novel. They were his last shot. His novel has now been rejected by every publisher in New York.”

  “Oh, no. How’d he take it?”

  “Not well. He was angry, fit to be tied. He said those editors didn’t have any taste. And I thought, Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s just the wrong editors.”

  “It’s possible. You hear all the time about great books that were rejected all over the place.”

  “So I finally convinced him to let me read the manuscript.”

  “And?”

  “There it is.” She gestured to a stack of paper on the floor next to her chair and folded her arms across her chest. “I wanted to fall in love with it. Really, I did. I wanted it to be brilliant, and I wanted to be able to look him in the eye and say, ‘Yes, the editors were wrong.’ But . . .”

  “But?”

  “Auch.” She unfolded her arms and swatted at the air. “The whole damn thing is about us. About Eliot. I’m so angry with him—how could he exploit what we’ve been through? How could he think it was all right to do this? And on top of that, the book’s no damn good. It’s self-indulgent and bloated. It’s just no damn good.”

  “He wrote about Eliot?”

  “I don’t know how he could have done it.” She brushed her hair up off her furrowed brow. “He had no right. I feel so violated. How dare he do that? He never should have sent it out. He should have let me read it beforehand. It’s no one’s business what happened. It’s our business.”

  “What did you say to him?”

  “Well, I told him how mad I was, and then I told him exactly what I thought of his goddamn book. I didn’t do it to hurt him. I told him the truth. I’ve never lied to him—especially not about his work. I told him the book—regardless of what it’s about—doesn’t deserve to be published.”

  “Oh, boy.”

  “Oh, boy, is right. He flew into a rage. Wait till you see what he did to his office. I heard him in there throwing things, smashing things, and the next thing I knew, it was quiet. He was gone. I didn’t even hear him leave.”

  “When was this?”

  “Last night.”

  “Last night? And he hasn’t been home since?” Now I was scared.

  “I’m worried something’s happened to him.”

  “Did you call the police?”

  “Not yet. I’m still hoping he’ll turn up.”

  I understood this. Bringing in the police meant that he had to be found, meant that she’d lost faith in his wandering through the front door on his own.

  “If something’s happened, I’ll never forgive myself. I want to give it a little while longer before we call the police.”

  So we sat in the living room, our eyes trained on the bay window, our hearts leaping each time we heard a car go by or caught a glimpse of someone coming up the sidewalk. My mother was curled up on her chair, her eyes half closed. I finally convinced her to go upstairs and get some rest.

  All alone in the family room, I drifted over to my father’s manuscript, hefted it up—all twelve hundred plus pages—and sat with it in my mother’s chair. I brought my feet up to the cushion, rested a stack of pages on my knees and began to read The Lost Son.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that he would have written about Eliot and yet I was. I wasn’t offended like my mother was, just stunned is all. The son’s name had been changed to Edward and the surviving daughter was Georgina and the wife was Mimi. But it was all there, my broken family.

  The prologue—forty-seven pages on its own—was a recap of the parents learning about the accident. I read the first twelve pages and had to pause and take a break. My mother was right about the manuscript. My father was a great writer, but this book was not well written. And subject matter aside, it wasn’t fiction. It was more like a news article.

  I couldn’t believe he’d spent all this time on it and it was just plain bad. I tried but couldn’t read any more. I set the manuscript down and went into the kitchen for a glass of water. The place was a mess and I needed to keep busy, so I washed the dishes, wiped down the counter, swept the floor. I bound up the trash and slipped into my shoes, still damp on the insides from the rain. I threw on the back porch lights and opened the door. Trash in hand, I started down the pathway where they picked up the garbage. It had stopped raining, but the air was damp with a faint misty drizzle.

  As I headed toward the walkway, bathed in the glow of the porch lights, I saw the leaves piled up to the side of the fallout shelter door. I dropped off the garbage and as I turned around, I noticed a clearing in the leaves and a trail of footprints left in the soggy grass. They led from the back of our house, disappearing beneath the trapdoor to our shelter.

  I rushed over through the leaves, the wet grass brushing against my ankles. I bent down and tugged on the hatch with both hands. “Dad?” My heart hammered, uncertain of what I was about to find. “Dad?” I called out again as I climbed down the steps, holding on to the handrail. “Dad? Are you down there?”

  It was pitch-black down there. The darkness played havoc with my vision, and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. When it did, I found my father on a cot, a bottle of bourbon at his side. His face had a white cast from his whiskers, a day or two’s worth of growth. I’d never seen him looking so small, so old and broken.

  “What are you doing down here?” I asked. “We’ve been worried sick about you.”

  He muttered something that I couldn’t decipher. He was drunk and groggy. He must have been sleeping before I came down. He rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.

  “Dad?” I waited. “Dad? Aren’t you going to say something?”

  He wouldn’t look at me and that made me feel foolish for even trying to help him. All the years of his slights slapped me in the face. Every conversation he’d shut me out of, every achievement he’d refused to acknowledge—they all festered inside me. The longer I stood there being ignored, the more humiliated I felt.

  “Would you at least say something, dammit? My God, what is it going to take to reach you? How long are you going to keep pushing me away? I know you’re disappointed about the book. I know you’re upset about what Mom said. But you can’t just hide down here, scare the daylights out of us and feel sorry for yourself.”

  Still nothing. He stared ahead as if I weren’t even there.

  “Okay, that’s it. I’m done. I’m not going to stand here and beg you to talk to me. You want to sit down here in the dark and pout, be my guest. I’m not going to be your audience. You want to self-destruct, then you do it on your own.” I was shaking by then. I may have lost my temper in the past and raised my voice now and then but I’d ne
ver talked to him like I just had before. I was certain that I’d just destroyed what little was left of our relationship. I turned and made it halfway up the ladder.

  “Jordan, wait—” His voice sounded strained, tinny.

  I froze in place.

  “Don’t leave.”

  I slowly lowered myself back down and turned around. For a moment the two of us said nothing, but our eyes were locked on each other and I felt that for the first time in a long time he was seeing me.

  Without a word, he made room for me next to him on the cot. When I sat down, he handed me the bottle of bourbon. I took a swallow, letting it burn the back of my throat, the heat spreading throughout my chest. I held out the bottle for him, and the touch of his fingers brushing against mine released the words I’d been holding inside all this time.

  “What happened to us, Dad? Where did we all go? I miss us. I miss our family. You and Mom are all I have now. I need you, don’t you understand that?”

  “I—I can’t . . .” He squeezed my fingers, his voice on the verge of cracking. “I can’t find my way out of this one. I can’t get past it.” He took a pull from the bottle and composed himself. “When I was covering the war, I watched men die. Dozens of them. Right in front of me. I saw it all. I got past it.”

  “But that was different, Dad. This wasn’t some soldier, some stranger. This was your son.”

  “I thought—I thought the book—I thought it would . . .” He shook his head, unable to finish his thought.

  “I know what you were trying to do. You were trying to keep Eliot alive. Writing that book kept him with you every day. I know that because I do the same thing with my reporting. Every day I go into the city room and I think, What would Eliot do? Don’t you see? We’re all stuck and we all have to figure out a way to let him go. We’re not abandoning him, but we have to find a way to move forward with our own lives. It’s time.”

  He hung his head. “You don’t know how tired I am. I’m tired of feeling miserable. Tired of feeling sad and angry. It’s wearing me out.”

  “I know it is. Eliot wouldn’t have wanted this for us. You know that, right?”

  “I just—I’m just so . . .” He couldn’t finish his thought, and I saw the frustration mount inside him right before he threw the empty bottle, smashing it to bits on the floor. Then he started to cry. I’d never seen him do that before. Not even at Eliot’s funeral. But now he was sobbing like a baby as he reached for me, his arms pulling me in close, his head on my shoulder, his body shaking as he wept.

  “It’s all right,” I said over and over again, or maybe I only thought I said that. I was delirious, my heart swelling and breaking all at the same time.

  Chapter 40

  • • •

  After I got my father out of the fallout shelter and into the house, my mother took him in her arms. It was late and I was exhausted. I ended up staying over that night in my old room still decorated with posters of Troy Donahue, Ricky Nelson and Fabian—a carryover from my youth. Everything seemed smaller than I remembered: the little bed and quilted headboard, the white eyelet curtains, the bookcase. I realized how much my world had expanded since I’d moved out, but still, I was an in-between. No longer a child, not fully a grown-up. I no longer fit inside that bedroom, but where did I belong? I always thought home was still an option, and now I realized it wasn’t.

  The next morning, after barely sleeping at all, I got up early, before either one of my parents was awake. I eased out the front door and headed toward the el. The sun was coming up, rising from behind the rooftops, its blinding rays poking through the tree branches. There was just a handful of passengers on the platform waiting for the train. Across the way, on the opposite platform, a southbound train was rushing through, and as the cars flashed by for a split second, I thought I saw Scott Trevor standing there among the commuters. I was forever thinking I saw him. It was the same way with Eliot right after he died. In restaurants, on a bus, across the way in a store, I imagined him. And now Scott had become another ghost. The southbound train rushed past and the platform was empty once again.

  The northbound el was nowhere in sight and my head was crowded with thoughts of my father, my brother and Marty, my fallen hero. I was overtired and wondering how I was going to talk to Marty about his sources. I glanced at my watch. It was almost seven o’clock. I’d have just enough time to get home, get cleaned up and make it back to the city room by eight. The wind kicked up and a shiver took over my body. I hugged myself about the middle as I felt the rumble of the el approaching in the distance, drawing closer, closer and closer still. I was drifting toward the track when someone came up alongside me.

  “I thought that was you.”

  I turned around. “Scott?”

  He was breathing hard, and I realized that it had been him across the platform. He must have skipped his train to come to the other side to see me. With one look into his eyes, everything from the past day and night caught up to me, and I burst into tears.

  “Hey, hey, c’mon now. What’s going on?” He placed a hand on my shoulder but didn’t go to hug me, to hold me in his arms.

  “Sorry.” I took a deep breath and composed myself. I realized then that I must have looked awful, my hair slept on, no lipstick or rouge. “Been a rough couple of days.”

  “Don’t be sorry. How are you?”

  “Not great. Obviously. How about you?”

  He grinned but didn’t say anything.

  The train came barreling through, dropping off and picking up passengers. I couldn’t bring myself to get on board and leave him.

  “It’s good to see you. I’ve missed you. I really have.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I know. It’s been a long time.”

  “You don’t know how many times I prayed I’d run into you. It’s like you disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “I’ve been busy. Teaching. Back at Northwestern. An ethics class in law, if you can believe it.”

  I know I said something after that, but I couldn’t remember what it was. I was so aware of his eyes staring into mine and my heart opening wide and wider still. I wanted him. I wanted to pick up where we’d left off. I wanted to take us back to that moment in that awful bar when we were dancing and kissing and ready to start something wonderful together. “Oh, Scott,” I said, practically thinking out loud. “We should be together, you and me. You feel it, too. I know you—”

  “No. Don’t.” He shook his head and brought his fingers to my lips to quiet me. “I can’t. Jordan, it’s too late.”

  “No, it’s not. Don’t say that. You wouldn’t have come over here if you didn’t want to be with me.”

  “I came over here because I wanted to see you. And I wanted . . . I wanted to tell you that . . . Well, I’ve met someone. I’m getting married.”

  “Oh.” All the air left my lungs, and it was suddenly hard to breathe.

  “I was actually going to call and tell you. I didn’t want you to hear it from someone else.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and willed myself not to cry. He was still talking, telling me about the girl, but I wasn’t listening. I couldn’t. I felt foolish and exposed. And abandoned. I was in agony. Thank God another train arrived because I couldn’t have stood there and looked at him another minute.

  We said good-bye and I disappeared inside the train and cried the rest of the way home.

  • • •

  The city room was a bundle of energy when I arrived. The floor was vibrating from the presses running in the basement, the phones were ringing and the wire machines were going like mad. We were less than twenty-four hours away from the vote.

  Despite all that preelection excitement, I was still upset about Scott. I couldn’t help blaming myself for ruining things with him. Strange, but even though we were never really together, losing Scott hurt more than breaking off my engagement with Jack.

  I tried to clear my mind, focus on what I knew I had to do. Marty was shouting across the room to som
eone about exit polls as he ripped his latest pages from the typewriter, calling out, “Copy. Copy.”

  I thought about not saying anything to him, but I couldn’t pretend I didn’t know what he’d done. When I first met Marty he would have done anything to protect a source—including threatening to quit his job. Or so I thought. But I’d since learned that he was scared of going up against Big Tony, scared for his own safety rather than a violation of some ethical code. Maybe Marty had never been the hero I’d made him out to be. Maybe he was just as pragmatic as the rest of us, just getting the job done. And now here he was inventing sources out of thin air. He’d traded any sense of professional ethics he had at all for the sake of his byline. It hurt to think about him like that, but his fall from grace was turning one of the noblest professions into a sham.

  As I looked at him, the only question running through my mind was, Why? Was he falling behind on his deadlines? Was there a mix-up with his notes? How could he have been that careless? I’d seen a lot of reporters do a lot of questionable things. I myself had even done a few borderline things to get the story, to get an interview, but doing this—and for no reason other than him being too lazy to do his job. It made my heart sink.

  I watched him at work, feeding a new set of copy paper into his typewriter as he slurped his coffee and started pounding away. Benny came up to ask him something and Marty barked at him. “I’m on deadline, dammit.”

  I waited until he took a break and went over to his desk. I wanted to at least give him a chance to explain why he did it.

  “Marty, can we grab some coffee or lunch? We have to talk.”

  He must have detected the seriousness in my tone, in my eyes. Perhaps he even knew what was coming. “Okay, Walsh, but we’ll have to make it quick.”

  He backed away from his desk, reached for his hat and coat, and without saying another word, we went ’round the corner to Norm’s Diner.

  “I have to tell you, your timing stinks, Walsh,” he said, as we took our seats at a table in the corner, away from everyone else. “We’re gearing up for tomorrow’s election returns, in case you haven’t heard.”