I couldn’t do it by “six.”
It would take me longer than that to plan a proper defense—a good offense, that is. How to delay Susan, while still getting in a few licks of my own?
After a few minutes of heavy thought, I paged her.
“Susan,” I said, when she called back within seconds. “I really appreciate the chance to rebut that editorial.” Sarcastically, I added, “I always thought journalists were supposed to try to get both sides of a story before they printed it, didn’t you?”
“They didn’t interview you?”
She sounded pleased and appalled in almost equal measure to hear of the ineptness or unfairness of the competition. It wasn’t such a surprise, really, as the Times was a family-owned enterprise, and that family had opinions, which they had been stuffing down Port Frederick throats for as many generations as my own family had been living there.
“Never tried to,” I said, conveying my own—quite sincere—indignation.
“Well, we’ll get you on live at six.”
It was already fifteen minutes till six.
I didn’t want that. “God, I wish I could, Susan, but I’m already home, and you know how far out I live. I’d barely make it to the end of my driveway by the time you started the news.”
“We’ll do a phone patch at …” She must have consulted a schedule. “Six-oh-three.”
Damn, was this their lead story? That was bad news and good news for us. Bad, because it would make it seem just that much more of an emergency and get that many more citizens worried about us; good, because they’d all hear my defense. Assuming I could, in the next seventeen minutes, come up with one that didn’t sound defensive.
Susan instructed me: “At six sharp, call me back at the number I’m going to give you now.” I wrote it down as she dictated it and then read it back to her. “We’ll use a file photo of you. One of our anchors will ask you questions—probably Marilyn. Keep it simple if you can, Jenny, we don’t have much time. You may only get fifteen seconds out of a three-minute story, because we’ve got other related interviews, too.”
Related interviews? Shit.
“Who, Susan?”
“Oh, you know,” she sounded harried, but also embarrassed. For herself or for me? “Pete Falwell, the fire chief, Ardie Kennedy, about who you’d expect, and the mayor.”
Poor Mary.
“We tried to get somebody from the insurance company, but they won’t tell us anything.”
You and me both, I thought.
“Call me at six,” Susan said, and hung up.
It was by then nearly five minutes until six.
This wasn’t how I wanted to do it—my disembodied voice coming from nowhere, unable to look confidently and sincerely into the camera’s eye. I hated to think what photo of me they might yank from their files. What if it was one where I looked young—too young—or naively, dumbly enthusiastic, or worried, or angry, or what if it had my eyes at a slant so I looked like a crook—
I made myself stop that.
Two minutes until I was supposed to call back. Three minutes after that to wait to go on the air. Five minutes in all to come up with a brilliant plan.
The phone rang under my hand.
I jumped. Then picked it up and blurted, “Hello? I’m sorry, I can’t talk now, can you call back in fifteen minutes?”
“Miss Cain?”
“Yes, listen, I don’t mean to be rude—”
“Shut down the highway.”
“What?”
I glanced at the caller identification display unit attached to the telephone. The little window there displayed a caller name and number that I didn’t recognize.
“Please, I beg you, for God’s sake, close it down forever!”
And then, thank goodness, the caller hung up. I didn’t even have time to react. Anyway, whoever she was, she was now stored in the caller ID system, so I could look her up again later, if I thought of it.
One minute until six.
To prevent the phone from ringing again, I picked up the receiver and put it to my ear … and heard, not a dial tone, but electronic noises.
“Oh, no. No.” Disbelieving, I held down the button, then released it. “Come on, come on!” Still no dial tone. More weird electronic noises. “I don’t believe this!” The phone couldn’t go out now, not right now at this moment! What kind of friends would I make in the media if I left them scrambling, live, to fill empty airtime?
And then I knew what the problem was.
I dropped the receiver and hobbled like a one-legged gunny sack racer toward the dining room, shouting, “Get off the phone! Get off the phone! Now!”
I stood—wild-eyed, I’m sure—on one foot in the doorway, while inside the dining room two males stared at me with twin expressions of astonishment. It was Geof, the cop with experienced reflexes, who reacted first. He didn’t ask why, just reached up to the keyboard and calmly backed the computer out of whatever telephone modem use they had had it in, thus freeing the phone immediately for me.
“Thank you!” I yelled as I race-hobbled back to the phone in the kitchen and dialed—at three seconds to six. I was dimly aware that the computer freaks had gotten up and followed me in. Great, a home audience.
Susan Bergalis answered.
Told me to hold on.
I looked over at Geof … and received strength and confidence from his steady face …
Looked at David … and all of a sudden felt the reason surge through me …
Looked out the kitchen window, as Marilyn Stuben asked her first on-air question. Evidently, they had already summarized the story and identified me, because Marilyn started out with a whammy:
“Ms. Cain …”
In real life, it was Jenny.
“What if you don’t get the insurance?”
“We will. The company assures me we will. They are merely being extra careful, because our own fire department wants all of us to take seriously our responsibility for the safety of so many visitors to Port Frederick. It’s not an emergency, Marilyn, it’s business as usual.”
That is what the insurers had told me, I was actually quoting them.
I wasn’t required to say, on air, whether I believed them
“Oh.” She sounded a little surprised, and then, bless her sweet heart, she said, “well, that’s good news.”
I hoped my fifteen seconds were up, but oh, no … she had to ask:
“But what if they do turn you down?”
Shit. I nearly said it on air, but bit it off in time. “I cannot even imagine that happening, Marilyn. We’re going to have the most wonderful weekend this town has ever seen! Are you coming?”
She laughed. “Wouldn’t miss it. Thank you, Jennifer Cain, director of the Judy Foundation, organizers of the upcoming Port Frederick Halloween Festival. Now, let’s talk to—”
Abruptly, she was gone, and I was talking to air.
Well, she’d phrased it positively—“upcoming”—as if it really would happen, even if she had damned us with the wrong label. Halloween Festival.
Gently, I hung up.
Looked at my men.
“Television,” I explained.
David got bug-eyed, then turned and ran off. I heard him slam into the living room, where, I suspected, he would try to see if they were saying anything else about us.
“You done good, kiddo,” Geof praised me.
But I shook my head. “I don’t know. I can talk all I want, but until the insurance comes through …” I smiled at him. “And don’t tell me to call them first thing in the morning. I will. You know I will.”
He laughed. “Me? Do that?”
In a couple of minutes, David reappeared, looking excited. “I only caught the end of it. The last thing was the mayor saying it would be a great day for Port Frederick …”
Sounded like Mary, I thought fondly.
“… and then some fat broad with black hair saying it could be a black day for Port Frederick. Who’s she
, anyway?”
“Ardie Kennedy,” I said tersely, not wanting to go into it. David was old enough to vote, but he clearly wasn’t into learning the identities of the local candidates. I looked at Geof, sharing a thought with him: Damn. What a way to end the news segment. What a thought to leave in the minds of their viewers. Would they remember anything that either Mary or I had said? I wondered what Pete Falwell had said, or the fire chief—whose toes I would personally and gladly have roasted over an open fire.
Well, I’d done what I could for the time being.
I needed to put stage two into action, but …
“I’m exhausted,” I admitted to them. “Anybody hungry?”
“You go be a lump,” Geof said, coming all the way into the kitchen. “Relax. Put your feet up. I’m going to cook.”
I glanced at David, bracing myself for an onslaught of complaining about how Geof was abandoning their computer adventures. Instead, he said, “Is there anything I can do to help?”
Geof and I carefully avoided looking at each other.
“Can you tear lettuce?” Geof asked casually.
I walked quietly out of the room, trying to hide my limp so Geof wouldn’t have a fit again about Pete, and left the cooking to them. What a shock, David’s offer of help! Was it because of Geof, I wondered, or something we said? A wry voice inside my head warned, Don’t ask!
I went and was a lump in the living room until suppertime, my right leg propped on a coffee table, the television off, my eyes closed. I was unable to face the stairs at that point, but I prayed food would give me the strength finally to attain the comforts of the second floor.
The phone rang repeatedly, and none of us answered it.
I couldn’t nap. Too wired. I’d forgotten something. I just knew I had, but what in the world was it?
After we ate the entire bowl of Geofs best tuna casserole, with David’s green salad—he took his supper into the living room to watch the tube—I consulted briefly over the phone with my board of directors. Then, by consensus, I called the one person among my previous employers whom we all felt would be the most likely to rush to our defense.
“Miss Grant?” I said to my former fourth-grade teacher and current member of the board of directors of the Port Frederick Civic Foundation. “Do you agree with that editorial in tonight’s paper?”
“My dear,” said Lucille Grant, “what a question! I hope you don’t take that sort of nonsense seriously?”
Was that a “no”? She was brisk, kind, her voice progressively weaker every year. Over eighty, she had actually taught long enough to have had both Pete Falwell and me as students, thirty years apart. It was a mind-boggling career. I loved her dearly and missed seeing her as often as I had when I was director of the old foundation. Though it pained me to hear her voice sound so weak, I was delighted at the strength of spirit remaining behind it.
“Well, actually, I do take it seriously insofar as it could shake a lot of people’s confidence in our ability to get this show up and running. If the insurance doesn’t come through on Monday, I’m going to have to persuade the town council to allow more time, and they won’t do it if they’re scared. Besides, we want people to feel good about this festival, Miss Grant. It’s their festival, not ours. As for me, I’m only the go-fer.”
“Jenny Lynn Cain, you could have run this festival with your hands tied behind your back in fourth grade!”
I’d been standing, leaning against a kitchen wall. But when she said that, I felt so grateful I had to grab the nearest chair and sit down in it.
“Would you say that? I don’t mean that, literally, but something to show your faith in me? On television?”
“I? On TV?” She sounded flustered, then rather tickled at the notion. “Yes, I will, but only if you truly think it’s needed.”
“I truly do, Miss Grant. And if you think any of the other trustees would—”
“Oh, they will.” She chuckled, a lovely sound, because I knew it held equal parts affection for me, determination to do the right thing, and sheer pleasure in the power she still had to intimidate obstreperous boys. “If they want my vote on any of their dreary projects in the future! I’m really quite peeved at you, dear—”
“Really?” instantly I was alarmed.
“Yes, really. You recruited me for the board of directors, and then we started having fun, you and I, prodding all those stuffy old men to take some philanthropic risks, and then you upped and quit on me! You have left me stranded on a desert island with four old geezers, my dear.”
I laughed, enjoying her immensely. The oldest of the geezers was probably a decade younger than she was.
“Sorry,” I apologized. “You want to jump ship and join us at the Judy Foundation, Miss Grant?”
“I’d love to, Jenny, but I won’t. I fear that would hurt the old boys’ feelings.” Then she was brisk again. “How do I arrange for myself to become a television star, dear?”
Carefully, down to every detail, I told her. When we hung up, I felt better, but I knew that come Monday, if the insurance still hadn’t come through, no quantity of glowing testimonials—not even if they were from the governor, the President of the United States, or the Queen of England—would save us. As for any furor over God’s Highway, if I could just keep that tamped down until after the festival …
Miss Grant was taking a chance in going public to refute the Times. And neither of us could predict at this point whether she was backing a winning horse.
David wandered into the kitchen, empty supper plate in hand. He set it in the sink and then ran water over it. Would wonders never cease? I said nothing aloud, but warned myself silently: Don’t expect this to last.
“Where’s your cycle?” I asked him.
“Behind the garage,” he said, pleasantly enough. He was drying his hands, and now he leaned back against the edge of the counter and crossed one long blue-jeaned leg over the other. “My landlady kicked me out, said she needed the space for her granddaughter who’s moving to town.”
I waited for the other shoe to drop.
“So.” He looked briefly at me, then anyplace else. “I thought I’d camp out here for a few days. Just until I find new digs.” When I still didn’t speak—it’s hard to talk when you’re in shock—he added, aggressively, “Is that okay with you?”
“Sure,” I lied.
“Okay.” He unfolded himself. Not thank you, just okay. “I’ll check it out with Geof.”
There were two nuggets of gold in this vein of heavy lead, I decided after he departed. One was that David might continue to keep Geof occupied after hours, so neither one of them would bug me as much. And the other—and most interesting—was that David had asked me first, before he asked Geof.
Yeah, but what did that mean?
I thought it was probably a good sign, but couldn’t have quite articulated why I thought that was so.
On my way upstairs to bed—with my briefcase—I stopped by the living room, where both males were stretched out like great lithe tomcats on the two couches watching a shoot-’em-up HBO movie. The masculine presence in the room was so thick I felt as if I could have moved it around with a wave of my hands, like smoke.
“David?”
He didn’t remove his stare from the screen, but he did say, “Huh.”
“Would you help me run an experiment tomorrow? For the foundation?”
For the foundation with his mother’s name on it, I thought he might perform favors he wouldn’t have done for me alone.
“Like what?”
“Watch your movie. I’ll explain in the morning. Will you still be here for breakfast?”
He patted the couch he was sprawled on. “I’ll be here.”
When I was halfway up the stairs, I heard my husband call, “Jenny? Honey? Do we have any chocolate-mint ice cream?”
“No,” I called back down, perhaps a shade more brusquely than was absolutely required to answer such a simple question.
8
&
nbsp; WHEN GEOF FINALLY CAME UPSTAIRS TO BED, I WAS JUST STEPPING carefully out of the tub. He came into the steaming bathroom and grabbed a towel and began to dry me off. As the steam cleared, we both exclaimed a bit over the multitude of dark colors decorating my skin, I with clinical interest, he with dismay. Black, blue, and red were the principal colors of the basic design. When Geof’s outrage began to heat rapidly from simmer to boil, I leaned against him and pleaded simply, “Don’t”
Then I stood limply, like a happy wet rag doll and let him dry me.
After a few blissfully peace-filled moments, he said in a near-whisper, “Can you believe it, Jenny? It was actually kind of nice tonight with him around, don’t you think so?”
“One step forward,” I agreed, as Geof shifted his efforts from my backside to an even more gentle drying of my front. “And it could be followed by three steps back.”
He glanced at my wet face.
My concern probably showed—for him, for his feelings.
“Don’t get my hopes up, you mean?” he asked.
I didn’t answer, knowing he didn’t require me to. I merely groaned anew with lazy, appreciative pleasure.
“I need a shower,” he said.
“Not for me, you don’t” I was too worn out to wait for him to bathe; by the time he got out, I might be asleep. My hands moved to the top buttons of his shirt. “But we’ll have to be quiet, won’t we, so we don’t wake the baby.”
“You’re so amusing. Are you sure you want—”
“I want.”
We were almost asleep when I mumbled, “Geof? Isn’t Lake Dawson a young guy?”
“What?”
I told him at the Dime Store that day Bill Kennedy had said it was amazing that Dawson was still playing football after all these years.
Geof laughed into his pillow. “A joke, Jenny. The Kansas City Chiefs’ most famous quarterback—before Joe Montana, of course—was Len Dawson. He’s a sportscaster now. Must be in his fifties or sixties.”
“Oh. It was sure wasted on me.”
Lake Dawson. Len Dawson. The Kennedys. Melissa Barney. God’s Highway …
“Close the highway!” My eyes opened wide and I stared into the darkness of our bedroom. That’s what it was, what I had forgotten! An odd little phone call before my interview. It had been a woman. What had she said to me?