Do You Want to Know a Secret? (11 page)

On the ride home, Louise fought back the tears as she listened to her son recall a conversation about the Yankees that he’d had with his father.

Louise could always tell when William was trying to make sense of something. He would do a replay of a conversation with the person involved. Amazingly, she’d known him to be extremely accurate in his recall. He was a wonderful mimic.

Now he was trying to somehow make sense of the fact that his father, who’d promised they’d go to some Yankee games, was gone and wouldn’t be taking him.

William had stayed with her last night. Surprisingly he fell asleep quickly and he slept through the night. Louise knew that while it was easier for those around him to think that the young man really didn’t have the same emotions as “normal” people, William did have feelings. He felt things deeply. William idolized his father. This was a profound loss.

There had been a few phone calls last night, friends wanting to connect. But she was exhausted and hadn’t really wanted to talk. The phone had continued to ring today. Neither she nor Bill had ever remarried. Bill’s parents were dead and there were no brothers or sisters. As the mother of Bill’s son, Louise was the one they called with condolences and questions about arrangements.

By late afternoon, William, who had spent most of the day in the den playing video games on the computer, approached her in the kitchen.

“I want to go to my house,” he said.

Louise was surprised. “You do? Why?”

“I’m used to it. I want to go.”

Knowing how important order was to him and knowing that he had never really considered the condominium his home, Louise had driven William back to the group home a few miles away. She herself would have preferred to have her son with her tonight, but she always remembered what a friend who had long taught special education told her: the children who do the best are the ones whose parents let go the most. She encouraged acts of independence. She wanted William to function as well as he could on his own, to have some measure of self-confidence. The counselor had reassured Louise that he would call if William seemed to need her.

Now, home again, she sat in the crewel-covered Queen Anne wing chair and began to flip absentmindedly through the mail. A department store flyer, a couple of bills, mail order catalogs, the order form for the tickets for the New Visions for Living fund-raiser in June. Tired, she rubbed her forehead round and round with her fingertips. God, Bill was scheduled to be the featured speaker at the fund-raising dinner. He did it every year. It was a big draw. Now what would they do? Maybe she could get someone else from
KEY News
to fill in for Bill and make a speech. But who could do it nearly as well as Bill with all the experience he brought to the subject? Louise didn’t want to think about that now.

The familiar handwriting on a long white envelope caught her up short. Her name and address were written in Bill’s distinctive scrawl.

Louise sat for a few moments, staring at the letter. She pictured Bill licking a stamp and sticking it on the corner of the envelope. She wondered if he had walked to a mailbox himself to deposit it, or if he had just given it to Jean to mail for him. She thought of him doing a common, everyday task, oblivious of what was just ahead.

Briefly, she thought of calling someone to be with her while she read the contents of the envelope. She reconsidered, knowing there was no one with whom she wanted to share the intimacy of Bill’s last message to her. Louise bit her lip as she carefully tore open the flap. Inside was a letter on heavy paper, and a gray computer diskette.

Dear Lou,

By now, you’ve learned that I am dead. I’m so sorry that it had to be this way. I’m sorry, too, about leaving you to take care of William all alone.

Leaving you? She stared at those words and reread them over and over again, afraid to continue. How did Bill know that he was dying? She tried to think of how he looked that last time she had seen him. She forced herself to read on.

William’s the best thing about us, Louise, and you’ve been the greatest mother he could have ever had. I’ve put all my financial affairs in order, as best I could, and you and William will be taken care of.

You know how much I’ve always hated wakes, so please, just a Mass. I know how strange it may sound, but I want to be buried from Sacred Heart Cathedral in Newark.

Newark?

There’s a young priest there, Father Alec Fisco, and I’ve already let him know that I want him to give the eulogy. Please make the arrangements, Louise. Maybe a donation’s in order, as I’m not a regular parishioner there. If you would, have my body sent back to Nebraska—there’s a plot next to my parents’.

It’s always amazed me how the experts seem so sure that suicides are angry, wanting their loved ones to know that their love was not enough.

Oh my God!
Suicide
. But that’s impossible. Bill would never take his own life.

I’m not angry, Louise, especially with you. You were a good wife. I want you to know that what we once had was very precious to me. I failed at being the kind of husband you deserved, and though I’ve seemed like a success to the rest of the world I’ve failed at facing life—failed, I guess, at the most important thing there is. I just can’t go on, knowing what I know.

I’ve enclosed a diskette for William. He so loves that computer. I want him to have a goodbye note from me. I know that I’ve left you with the impossible job of explaining this to him. Again, I’m sorry, Louise. Please forgive me.

Love,

Bill.

Louise sat alone, stunned, listening to the sound of the ticking clock. The phone rang three times before she even heard it. Range Bullock was on the other end of the line.

“Louise, it’s about Bill. The autopsy results are back. I’m sorry. . . .”

“I know,” she whispered, not bothering to wipe the mascara running down her cheeks.

Chapter 17

“This is the
Bill Kendall autopsy results narration in three, two, one. . . .

“New York City coroner Ben Calducci announced the jolting results of the
KEY News
anchorman Bill Kendall’s autopsy.”

McBride paused. “Insert Calducci’s soundbite on the Prozac overdose causing death.

“Pickup narration in three, two, one. . . . Bill Kendall, forty-nine, was found dead in his apartment last evening by his son, William. Louise Palladino Kendall received a suicide note in today’s mail. According to his ex-wife, Kendall gave no specific reason for the suicide. Speculation is widespread as to why the anchorman would take his own life.

“Here’s where the soundbites from KEY staffers will go.”

Mack cleared his throat and continued. “Pickup in three, two, one. . . .
KEY News
correspondent Eliza Blake was substituting for the anchorman when word came of his death. It was she who announced it to the nation.

“Drop in Eliza’s s-o-t here.

“Three, two, one. . . . Today
KEY News
Washington correspondent Peter Carlson took the
Evening Headlines
anchor chair.

“Insert Carlson’s soundbite on his feelings.

“Three, two, one. . . . Memorial services for Bill Kendall are still unconfirmed. This is Mack McBride,
KEY News
, New York.”

McBride came back into the editing booth. “You want me to stay in here while you edit?”

“No, we should be okay,” said Range Bullock. “But hang around until we feed this out. God only knows if something else will happen before feed time.”

McBride left for the commissary and a cup of its trademark thin, bitter coffee as Bullock and Joe Leiding, a topnotch videotape editor, began putting the piece together. It was rare that an executive producer would piece-produce but, as Range pointed out to the night news manager, this was not a usual situation.

Leiding carefully laid the video of the coroner’s news conference over the opening sentence of McBride’s narration and then popped in the soundbite from Calducci. The doctor estimated that Bill had taken seventy to eighty 40-milligram fluoxetine tablets. Calducci explained that fluoxetine was the generic name for Prozac.

“How the hell could he do that to himself?” an anguished Bullock asked the television screen. “I didn’t even know he was taking Prozac.”

They screened the pictures of Bill’s covered body coming out of his townhouse the night before. They looked at some file video of Bill very much alive and looking fit. The blanketed body shot they used to cover the part of the narration recounting Bill being found by his son. The alive-Bill file tape they used to cover the part about Louise receiving the suicide note and widespread speculation.

They put in Jean next. Poor, bewildered Jean. God, she’ll be lost without Bill, thought Bullock. He watched Jean on the television monitor, puffy-eyed and holding a handkerchief under her nose, her hair slightly awry.

“I hadn’t noticed anything,” she was saying. “He was just as he always was. If only I had known. I don’t know what I would have done, but I would have done
something
. He was always so good to me.” Jean dissolved in tears.

Bullock looked at Leiding. First judgment call. Did they go for the emotion and let the whole thing run, or edit it down and just take the first two sentences? The producer decided to do something in the middle.

“Let’s take ‘I hadn’t noticed anything. He was just as he always was,’ cut out the next part and skip down to ‘He was always so good to me.’ When she starts to cry, just take a beat or two of it. It’s moving stuff, but let’s not drown ourselves.”

Leiding pushed the incue and outcue buttons on the editing console, expertly executing Bullock’s directives.

Next came a soundbite from Yelena Gregory.

“Let’s listen to her again,” said Range.

The two men watched the interview, which had been taped in Yelena’s office within the last hour. She is almost homely, thought Range as he watched her on the monitor. Yet she did have a presence. An intimidating presence which came from her position. Vague rumors circulated at KEY about some sort of Russian royalty in Yelena’s background. Range reflected that she looked more like she came from good solid peasant stock. He knew that Yelena had attended all the “right” schools, had gotten her law degree and worked her way up in corporate law at KEY before being tapped to lead the news division as its first female president. She had built a strong legal reputation and was respected by her colleagues. She dealt firmly but fairly and set high standards for herself and for those who worked under her command.

On the screen, Yelena was giving the official view. Kendall was a first-rate journalist, he would be sorely missed. Then she looked down at the blotter on her massive glass-topped desk and began to fiddle with a paper clip. “You know, I played golf with Bill a few weeks ago at the company outing. He seemed”—Yelena groped—“like
Bill
. Nothing was amiss. If anything, he played better than usual.” She rambled on, angrily distracted. “Of course, it was on his membership at one of those dinosaur, yet unfortunately not extinct, clubs that only allow male members. But that’s a different issue.” Yelena took a deep breath and let it out. “I don’t know, I just don’t know. You name it, I thought I’d seen it. Nothing much surprises me at this point. But this . . . this hits you in the gut.”

“Pick up from ‘I played golf and let it run to ‘in the gut,’ ” Bullock instructed Leiding. “Take out the part about the sexist golf club. How’re we doing on time?”

Leiding looked at his counter. “A minute fifteen.”

“Good. Use some setup video from last night’s broadcast to cover Mack’s sentence about Eliza’s substituting and announcing the death. Then lay in her reaction today.”

The two men watched as a misty-eyed Eliza Blake soundbite was edited into the news story. “It just strikes me as incredibly sad that Bill was so overwhelmed that he felt there was no other way than to take his own life,” she said. “Bill was well liked and respected around here. It’s a big, big loss for all of us. I am going to miss him very much.” Eliza wiped the corner of her eye with the tip of her little finger.