White Collar Girl (35 page)

•   •   •

T
hat night I left the
Tribune
in a stupor. I boarded the el, holding the ceiling strap with one hand, my attaché case with the other, and swaying along with the motion of the train. It was still unseasonably warm for that time of year and stale smells of the city poured in through the open windows.

I got off at the Armitage stop and headed down the platform, thinking about Marty, thinking that I should pick up something for dinner even though I wasn't the slightest bit hungry. I made my way down the station stairs and walked over to Lincoln Avenue. It was dark that night—for some reason the streetlamps hadn't kicked on yet. There were a few people around, hanging out in front of a pool hall and the taverns. I headed down a few more blocks and became aware of footsteps behind me. I didn't give it much thought at first, but when I turned onto Clark Street, the footsteps followed. My body tensed up. It knew something was wrong before I did.

I started walking faster. The footsteps matched my pace. Less than three feet later something inside me snapped and I broke out into a full-on run. So did my pursuer. With my attaché case
banging against my knee, I ran, passing one darkened storefront after another. The dead lampposts and buildings whirled around me, disorienting me as I panicked. He was gaining on me, his footsteps growing louder, coming closer. I was about to scream when the man who'd been following me ran past me, waving his hand in the air, calling out, “Teddy? Hey, Teddy, wait up!”

I was panting as I watched my would-be assailant meet up with this Teddy person. I felt ridiculous. What had come over me? It was only my imagination chasing me. I was still shaking though, and I realized I was not okay. Everything was getting to me. Little flecks of light danced behind my eyes, like right before you're about to faint. I was scared of blacking out on the street, in the stairwell of my building, or on the floor of my apartment. Bottom line, I didn't want to be alone.

It had started to drizzle. The rain pelted my face and coat as I stood frantically waving to hail the first taxicab I saw. I jumped in, my hands shaking, my voice trembling as I rattled off my parents' address and stared through the windshield wipers swishing back and forth, back and forth. Slowly my heart rate returned to normal.

I looked out the window as we drove along, trying to distract myself. It was raining harder now. There were cars backed up on Wells Street, their headlights reflected in the wet pavement like an impressionist cityscape painting.

Finally the taxi pulled up to the Painted Lady. Even from the curb, through the sheets of rain, I could see the lights were on in the back of the house. As I made my way up the steps, the front door swung open, startling me.

“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 never 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.

•   •   •

A
fter 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.

•   •   •

T
he 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 someone 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.”

“I know, but I have to say something and I have to say it now before I lose my nerve.” I leaned in closer. “We have to talk about your pieces.”

“What about my pieces?”

“Oh, Marty, this is a painful conversation to have—and I hope to God you have an explanation, but—”

“What the hell are you getting at?” His brows knitted together. He looked genuinely confused. He had no idea what I was about to spring on him.

“Marty, some of your pieces, some of the facts, they're not checking out.”

“What? That's ridiculous.” He shoved his coffee aside, sloshing it onto the table. His cheeks grew dark as his fingers crumpled up
his napkin. “I don't believe what I'm hearing. You've got some nerve, Walsh. I don't know what you're implying, but—”

“Your sources, Marty. Your quotes. C'mon, the jig is up. I know what you've been doing. You made them up.”

The moment I said that, all his indignation evaporated. He looked like I'd punched him in the gut. The color drained from his face, and he brought his hands to his forehead. “Oh, God. Oh, good God.”

“Why, Marty? Why would you do something like that? You're a brilliant journalist—you don't need to do something like that.”

He dared to meet my gaze. “It was just the one piece,” he said. “Just that one on Gertrude Lammont.”

“Marty—”

“I just needed that one extra quote,” he insisted. “I was on deadline and Ellsworth was breathing down my neck and . . .”

“Marty, I know it wasn't just that one time. I know what you've been doing. It's been going on for a while. What I don't know is why.”

He squared his elbows on the table and dropped his head to his hands. His shoulders started to shake, and I realized he was crying.

“Marty—”

He raised his head as tears trickled down his face. “You don't know what it's been like for me. I don't care if Big Tony is in prison—you think I don't still worry about that? Ever since the hospital. Ever since I got sick. I can't take the pressure. The deadlines. The expectations. It's been too much.”

“Then why didn't you ask for help?”

“A Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist doesn't ask for help, Walsh.”

“Then why didn't you quit?”

“I have a family to support. And I only did it when I absolutely had to.”

“No, Marty. You never
have
to do that. You're a journalist, not a fiction writer. The past three months your work's been full of holes.” I reached in my bag and handed him a tissue.

He ignored it and continued to let the tears run down his face. “Are you going to tell Ellsworth?”

I sighed. That was the question I'd been wrestling with. “I don't want to do that to you. You know I don't. But you can't go on doing this.”

“I promise. I won't ever do it again.”

“Marty, you're tainting the whole paper, the whole field of journalism. If you were a doctor, it would be malpractice. If you were a lawyer, you'd be disbarred.”

“This will destroy my whole career. My reputation. I'll never be able to work again. If word about this gets out, no one else will ever hire me. How am I going to support my family?”

My head was throbbing. I pressed my fingers to my pulsing temples and tried to steady my breathing. I took a moment and gathered my thoughts. “You're too good, too talented to take a shortcut like that.” Despite what he'd done, despite how morally wrong it was, I looked across the table and I still saw the man who had inspired me, who'd taken me under his wing. I couldn't turn him in. I just couldn't do it. Swallowing past the lump in my throat, I said, “This'll stay between the two of us. I won't say a word. But—”

“But what?”

“But if I see it again, you know I'm going to have to say something.”

“Oh, Walsh.” He let out a deep breath and grabbed my hands. “Thank you. Thank you for understanding.”

“I don't understand, Marty. I really don't. I just don't have the heart to bring you down.”

•   •   •

M
arty didn't come back to the city room with me. He said he needed to take some time, get some air. I watched him heading south, walking across the Michigan Avenue Bridge, with hunched shoulders and shrinking pride.

The rest of the day dragged for me. I finished up my workload and begged off when the others went across the street for a drink. I was exhausted from the night before and not in the mood to socialize.

I went straight home instead, poured myself a big glass of wine and wondered if I had anything besides eggs in the house for dinner. My body was stiff and ached to the bone, so I took a bath in my tub that never drained right.

I sat while the water lapped against my body, the waves slapping at my limbs. A ship lost at sea. My mind replayed the past twenty-four hours as the bath turned cold. I was so disillusioned and disappointed. Especially with myself. I wished I hadn't let Scott get away. I wished Marty hadn't let me down. And mostly I wished that I'd hadn't backed off my story about Daley and the Mafia stealing the White House.

I always knew that I would have had to tread lightly with the Mob, watch what I set to ink—but even that went against everything I believed in. Everything the press had been founded on. But the Outfit had won. They'd frightened me into submission. I had allowed them to intimidate and censor me.

I was toweling off when I heard someone out in the hallway. Maybe the lady with the mysterious baby buggy. As I slipped into my bathrobe, someone knocked on my door. I wasn't expecting anyone. It gave me a start, and Giancana flashed through my mind. Everything inside me clenched together as I tiptoed out to the living room. There was another round of knocking. And then
I saw the doorknob trying to turn. I had one sharp knife in the kitchen, and I reached for it, inching toward the door. I held my breath as I dared to look through the peephole.

I couldn't believe it. My heart nearly stopped. “Dad? What are you doing here?” I unlocked and unlatched the door, yanking it open.

“It's about time,” he said. “This is heavy.” He stepped inside, carrying Eliot's typewriter in his hands. “I thought you might like to have this.”

“Really?” My eyes misted up.

“Really.” He groaned as he set the typewriter down on the table. “Your mother and I started packing up Eliot's things. It's time.” He said this as if he'd come to this realization on his own. I didn't mind though. I was just grateful that he'd gotten there at all.