Curtains (16 page)

“Hi, Alma,” Morris said. He went from one to
another, collecting their names for the record, making sure the
spelling was correct. You could miss a county budget by a zero,
apply the wrong charge in a police brief, and even fail to call the
mayor on Arbor Day, and all these mistakes were wiped out with a
Page 2 correction. But woe unto the reporter who misspelled a name
in a fuzzy family feature.

Alma Potter. Reba Absher. Lillian Moretz.
Daisy Eggers. The “other Alma,” Alma Moretz, no immediate relation
to Lillian, though they may have been cousins five or six times
removed.

“Just keep on working while I take some
shots,” Laney said. She contorted with catlike grace, stooping to
table level, composing award-quality photographs. The janitor stood
at the door, appreciating her professional ardor. He was chewing so
fast that his teeth were probably throwing off sparks behind his
eager lips.

“So, how did you ladies meet?” Morris smiled,
just to see what it felt like.

“Me and Reba was friends, and we’d get
together for a little knitting on Saturdays while our husbands went
fishing together,” Alma Potter said. “They would go after rock
bass, but they always came home with an empty cooler.”

“God rest your Pete’s soul,” Reba said.

“Bless you,” Alma said to her.

Morris glanced at his wristwatch. Thirty
column inches to go, plus he had to knock out a sidebar on a
weekend bluegrass festival. All with the Kelvinator looking over
his shoulder. Kelvin Feeney, Journal-Times editor and all-around
boy wonder, a guy on the come who didn’t care whose backs bricked
the path to that corner office at the corporation’s flagship
paper.

“So, Alma, when did you start sewing?” Morris
thought of making a pun on “so” and “sew” and decided to pass.

“Oh, maybe at the age of five,” she said. Her
eyes stayed focused on the tips of her fingers as she ran the
needle through a scrap of yellow cotton. Laney was working the
scene, twisting the lens to its longest point, zooming in to get
the wrinkled glory of the old woman’s face.

“Did you learn from your mother?” Morris
asked, scribbling in his notebook. Maybe he could use some of this
in the Great American Novel he’d been working on since his freshman
year, which had been tainted by a professor who thought Faulkner
was the Second Coming and Flannery O’Connor was the Virgin
Mary.

“She learnt it from me,” Daisy Eggers said,
her eyes like wet bugs behind the curve of her glasses. Daisy might
have been anywhere between eighty and ninety, her upper lip
collapsed as if her dentures were too small. When she spoke, the
grayish tip of her tongue protruded, constantly trying to keep her
upper false teeth in place.

“Good, we’ll get back to that.” Morris made a
note as Laney’s shutter clicked. “Tell me about Threads of
Hope.”

“You really need to talk to Faith about
that,” the other Alma said. “She’s the one started it. We were all
sewing anyway, and figured why not get together on it?”

Reba, who appeared a little less inclined to
defer to their absent leader, said, “Threads of Hope gives blankets
to sick kids in hospitals. Like the Ronald McDonald House and the
Shriner’s Hospital. It’s all about the kids. But you’d best talk to
Faith about that part of it.”

Okay, Morris thought. It’s not Pulitzer
material but at least it has sick kids. Now if I could just work a
cute babe and a puppy into the story, I’d hit the Holy Trinity.

“Is it local kids, or someone with a specific
type of illness?” Laney asked the obvious question. She was
actually better at that than Morris.

“Oh, just ones sick any old way. Faith, she’s
a nurse at Mercy Hospital, and she comes in about once a month and
collects them, takes them off. We’ll get a dozen done on a good
morning.” Reba held up the quilt she was working on and pointed to
a scrap of denim. “That come from Doc Watson. You know, the famous
flatpicker.”

Morris had written about Doc a dozen times.
Doc was also up in his golden years, with six Grammys on his trophy
shelf. The musician had tried several times to retire, but every
time he did, someone would launch a festival in his honor and he’d
feel obliged to perform there.

Lillian spoke for the first time since giving
her name. “These scraps have stories in them. They’re like pieces
of people’s lives. And we figure the kids get some of the life out
of those pieces.”

“And a little hope,” the other Alma said.

“Threads of Hope,” Daisy said, knitting a
fishnet-style afghan. Her knitting needles clicked like chopsticks,
pushing and hooking yarn. The janitor came into the room, and
though it was cramped, he managed to sweep the tiny scraps off the
floor without once brushing against Laney. Morris wrote it all
down, and they were back in the office by lunch time. The ladies
had been all smiles by the time they left, speculating on how many
copies of Friday’s edition they were going to buy and which
relatives they would call.

The phone call came shortly after eleven in
the morning. The edition couldn’t have been on the street for more
than an hour, and those who received the paper via home delivery
probably wouldn’t see theirs until late afternoon. Morris dreaded
the post-edition phone calls. The tri-weekly had a low circulation,
but the reading audience was exacting.

“
Journal-Times
news desk,” Morris
answered, in his most aloof voice.

“Are you Morris Stanfield?”

“Yes, ma’am.” It was always bad when they
guessed your name.

“We have a serious problem.”

“Ma’am?” Morris’ finger edged toward the
phone, planning a quick transfer to the Kelvinator. Serious
problems were beyond the capabilities of an ink whore.

“Did you write the Threads of Hope
article?”

Sometimes they called to say thanks.
Sometimes, but not often. “About the sewing circle.”

“Where did you get your information?”

“From the ladies.”

“The ladies.” She sounded like a high school
English teacher who was upset that a student had opted for the
Cliff Notes during the Hawthorne semester. Her voice sounded
familiar.

“It was a feature about a group of friends
who get together and sew. A people feature.”

“You were supposed to call me.”

“Are you Faith Gordon?” He had meant to call
her, really, but between the domestic dispute that led to a police
standoff and the damned bluegrass festival sidebar, Morris had been
forced to slam his story out an hour before deadline. The Threads
of Hope web site had provided some history on the organization,
about how the effort had been started by a seamstress in Kentucky
whose son had been diagnosed with a brain tumor. A story of courage
and perseverance, a true sob story, fraught with unsung heroes and
all that happy bullshit.

“This is Faith. The ladies said you would
call.”

“I’m sorry. Deadline caught me. What’s the
problem?” Morris tried to replay the article in his mind. Often, by
the time he finished writing one, it was seared into his memory
until the next pint of whiskey or the next skull-numbing city
council meeting, whichever came first. Writing was all about
remembering, while the rest of Morris’s life was all about
forgetting.

“The headline,” Faith Gordon said. “It says
‘Local Women Stitch Blankets For The Needy.’ These blankets are for
any sick child, not just those of economic difference.”

“I don’t write the headlines,” Morris
said.

“But it has your name right under it.”

“Yes, ma’am, but the editor wrote that
headline. Perhaps you can speak to him.”

“It says ‘Local Women Stitch Blankets For The
Needy’ by Morris Stanfield. You’ve done serious damage to the
organization, not to mention insulting the women in the sewing
circle. You should be ashamed.”

“How did I damage the organization? I don’t
think many people in our readership have even heard of Threads of
Hope.”

“Exactly. Your callous disregard for the
facts has tainted Threads of Hope for the whole community. And the
ladies . . . poor Alma Potter was in tears.”

“I’m really sorry to hear that,” Morris said.
He couldn’t remember if Alma Potter was the “other Alma” or
not.

“No wonder people no longer trust the media.
If this is any example of how you take the good intentions of an
innocent group and twist it into a sensational story—”

“Whoa,” Morris said. “If I made a factual
error, I’d be glad to run a correction. But I took my information
directly from the sewing circle’s own words, with some Internet
research on the parent organization.”

“You didn’t talk to me,” Faith said.

Morris at last saw the real problem. Faith
Gordon’s name hadn’t appeared until the third or fourth paragraph.
She obviously felt she was the real story, the tireless organizer
who was practically an entire spool of hope, one who lifted the
entire project on her shoulders and inspired everyone who could
navigate the eye of a needle to great acts of charity.

“I’ll transfer you to my editor,” Morris
said, and punched the buttons before she could respond. By leaning
back in his chair, he could see out his cubicle to the glassed-in
office of the Kelvinator. Feeney was checking on stock prices,
probably in the middle of an editorial column on the dubious merits
of funding public libraries. Morris waited until the editor picked
up the phone, then turned his attention to his own computer. He
opened his e-mail and found six messages about the Threads of Hope
story. Three were from Faith, reiterating her displeasure. Two were
from Reba, who was concerned about a misquotation, and the last was
from Lillian, who said she thought the article was good until Faith
had told her what was wrong. Now, Lillian wrote, she was ashamed to
have her name associated with either the Threads of Hope or the
Journal-Times, and she was canceling her subscription “right this
second.”

Morris was in the midst of deleting the
messages when the Kelvinator appeared in the mouth of the
cubicle.

“Morris,” the editor said. He was ten years
younger than Morris, with a personal digital assistant in his shirt
pocket. His eyes moved like greased ball bearings.

“Bad headline, huh?”

“No, it was problems in your copy.”

“What problems?”

“Faith Gordon has a list. You can talk to her
about them when you see her.”

“See her?”

“Write a follow-up. That’s the only way to
fix the mess you’ve made.”

“There’s no fucking mess. I didn’t say
anything about the blankets being for needy children.”

“You must have, or I wouldn’t have put it in
the headline. Anyway, the easiest way to handle this is to
interview Faith. And use a tape recorder this time, so you won’t
misquote her.”

“But it was just a chummy little
feature—”

“It’s gotten bigger than that. I had a call
from the Threads of Hope’s national office. Apparently Faith Gordon
has been blowing smoke up their asses, too.”

“So let them sue for libel.”

The Kelvinator tossed a sticky note onto
Morris’ cluttered desk. “Two o’clock today at the church. Polish it
up for Monday’s paper.”

“Can Laney come with me?”

“We already have enough photos. She has to
cover a flower show at the mall.”

Morris crumpled the note as the Kelvinator
returned to his office. He wished there were enough threads to make
a noose. A noose of hopelessness, by which to hang himself before
he had to write another quilt story.

The church sat in a valley and a fog hung
over it, rising from the river that ran beside the road. The church
parking lot was empty. That seemed odd, even for a Friday
afternoon. He thought he was supposed to meet the entire sewing
circle. Maybe he had a solo showdown with the legendary Faith
Gordon. He shuddered, opened the dashboard, and retrieved the pint
of Henry McKenna and a vial of Xanax. Substances that provided his
own threads of hope, or at least stuffed cotton wadding between him
and his anxiety and despair.

He stuck one of the tranquilizers on his
tongue and toasted the stained-glass Jesus. “Here’s to you, Big
Guy.”

Belly warmed, Morris entered the quiet
church. He had been raised Baptist but had recovered quickly, and
his only religious experience since then had been a foray into the
Unitarian church in a half-assed attempt to meet women. Still, the
polished oak of the foyer, the sermon hall with its carefully
arranged pews, and the crushed velvet drapes invoked feelings of
solemnity, as if he were actually in the presence of something
mystical and important. He stepped carefully, afraid to break the
hush.

“Mr. Stanfield.”

He turned, recognizing the shrill, strident
voice of Faith Gordon. He had expected a beefy, shoulder-heavy
woman with a broad face and hands that could strangle an ox.
Instead, she was diminutive, even pretty in a severe way. Her
cheeks were lined from years of not smiling. She was about Morris’
age but had none of his gray.

Morris attempted a boyish grin, knowing this
was a time to turn on the charm, even if he came off like Clint
Eastwood miscast in a comedy. “Miss Gordon. I’m sorry my story
disappointed you.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about. It’s the
ladies in the circle. They were so excited about being in the paper
until I told them about your errors.”

“We can make it right.”

“You can never make it right. The damage is
already done. Feelings have been hurt. And what about the children
who received blankets from Threads of Hope? How will they feel when
told they are ‘needy’?”

Morris dropped his grin. He wanted to scream
at her, tell her that a fucking space-filler in the back pages of a
dinky local rag didn’t cause empires to rise or fall, and, truth be
told, didn’t sell a single goddamned car for the dealer whose ad
ran right beside it. A newspaper was fucking fishwrap, a dinosaur
walking in the shadow of the Internet that was too dumb to know it
was going extinct. The only people who’d read the piece of
brainless crap had been the members of the sewing circle.