Your Face in Mine (8 page)

In my life I have never heard, never imagined, the sound an office makes when everyone in it is fired at once. Here it is the sound of the live feed burbling over the speakers—Joe Giamelli’s taped show
Once Upon a Garden
—and occasionally the automatic scritching of Barbara’s fax machine, and the squawk of the walkie-talkie back in the engineers’ room, and the emergency frequency beeping every minute or two at Sully Parker’s news desk. The machines speak, and I look from one face to another, willing my arms not to cross my chest protectively, to remain open, in a receptive, listening posture. No one looks at me. I count them, once, twice. WBCC has seventeen employees, and they are all, mercifully, present—no one on vacation, no one with a sick uncle in Denver. They are all staring at Winnifred, who has just made the announcement, in a convincingly shaky voice, and now wipes her eyes with a tissue. There is no better defensive weapon than a tissue, it just now occurs to me. Not for nothing does she work in public relations.

How much time do we have? Sully asks.

Winnifred seems in no shape to answer, so I pick it up: Until what, Sully?

You know. Until the final decision is made. Until the ax falls.

Sully, I say, I’m so, so sorry to say this, but the final decision
has
been made.

Bullshit, Mort says. That’s so much self-serving nonsense, and you know it, Kelly. It ain’t over till it’s over, right? He looks around the room, gathering the troops, but there are only one or two muted
yeah
s, a few murmurs, and otherwise silence, thick as before. It’s going to be a lawsuit, then, he says. Jesus Christ, Winnie, you sold us down the river, didn’t you?

Don’t you
dare
use that expression with me, Winnifred says. That’s disgusting. You ought to know better.

Well, okay, good, Mort says. I guess you can say you’re firing me for cause. Because that’s the only way you can do it. Our contracts all say that we have ninety days’ notice if our employer files for bankruptcy or goes out of business. That’s standard boilerplate.

But WBCC isn’t going out of business, Winnifred says patiently. As I’ve just explained. We’re in a transitional period.

Were we just not
popular
enough? Diane Mackintosh, our pink-sweatered musical consultant, asks, her face already red and raw, a shred of tissue clinging to her nose, too. I mean, is that what you’re saying here? Basically BCC is giving up on us because we’re not
marketable
anymore? Because I have a few things to say about that. Take this off the air—she flaps a hand around the room, at no one in particular—and it disappears. I could show you the stacks of letters saying that we’re people’s
lifeblood
. That’s what I care about. Not about
ratings
. I went into radio to change people’s
lives
.

No one is saying the station isn’t an amazing resource, I say. It’s distinctive. There’s so much here to be proud of. And all of you can go on to offer the same content in other formats. Internet radio. Podcasts. Blogs. There’s a hundred different venues that didn’t exist ten years ago.

That don’t pay anyone a salary.

No, I say, you’re right. Not yet. The industry’s in transition. But
public radio was never about institutional support; it was always about listener membership. And WBCC never had the membership dollars, the sponsorships, to work properly, in any case. BCC was footing too much of the bill. It was unrealistic, to be honest. In a down market something like this was bound to happen.

Shut up,
Winnifred is signaling me with her eyes, all but mouthing the words.

We had six weeks of pledge drives last year, Sully says. You’re telling me we didn’t
try
?

I’m telling you that we were in the wrong position in the marketplace.

This capitalistic language, Diane says. It’s making me
ill
.

I’m sorry, I say. I’m sorry! I wish I didn’t have to be saying these things. Someone should have said them a long time ago. From my perspective, this station has had very poor leadership. Very poor strategic planning. I know it doesn’t help now. I just wish I’d had more time. It’s a huge waste. I’m so, so sorry.

No one appears to be listening, save for Winnifred, who stares at me with such concentrated fury I can feel it radiating from her body. For a moment I wonder whether she could construe what I’ve just said as talking to the media, a violation of my agreement, but she cuts her gaze away, flicking me off the table of her mind, and I know how insignificant I am, thank god, how justifiably an afterthought and a minor irritation.

We go to the papers first, says Michelle Berkowitz, who’s young, not even thirty, with a communications degree from Northwestern. I’ve never quite known what she was doing here. There’s going to be a firestorm, she says. You’ll see.

We can’t stop you from doing that, Winnifred says. We can’t stop you from doing
anything
. This is a station committed to public discourse, and discourse is what there will be. But in the end it’s likely that things will still come out on the college’s side. I say this as a matter
of sheer practicality. I would encourage you all to think of this as a transitional period to new employment—

Where?
shouts Trevor McCloud, our chief engineer. Everyone turns to look at him. His eyes have turned bubblegum pink; spit glistens at the corners of his mouth. I’ve got two kids in private school, he says, a mortgage, home equity, a car loan.
Where?
In fucking Kansas? In Milwaukee?

Trevor, I say, trying to lock every joint in my body at once, this is incredibly hard, it’s a disaster, but we’re giving you every minute of advance warning we can. The station won’t be off the air for six weeks. You’ve got skills. You’ve all got portable skills. I won’t say,
it could be worse.
It couldn’t be worse. Especially for those of you with kids and houses and families and obligations. But we will do everything we can.

Fuck
you, he says. I mean, at least Winnie’s
from
here. You’re just, what, an import? A scab? What’s your job, anyway, in the new scheme of things?

No job. I’m looking for work, just the same as you.

Well, good luck with that, Mort says. Personally,
I’d
give you the highest possible recommendation.

Mort, that’s not fair, Michelle says. Stop looking for a scapegoat. Or if you
are
going to look for one, open your eyes, okay? Who do you think made this decision? She turns to me. I mean, it’s a sweet deal for PureLine, right? They’re not putting any cash in up front, are they? For a prime FM license? Just ad revenues? Wow, BCC is
such
the winner in that scenario.

I don’t know, I say. I’ve told you everything I know.

If you’re fishing for dirt, Winnifred says, you’re not going to get it from us. This was a straightforward strategic decision on the part of the college.

Oh, Mort says, what now, Winnie, you
supported
this? This is too much. He combs his fingers through his hair, which he wears Bruce Springsteen style, down to the nape of the neck; along with the open-
necked shirts, the arrowhead on a thong, and the single gold loop in the left ear, it’s his virility costume, and I won’t hesitate to say that I find it deeply satisfying to see it become clownish and transparently sad. This is just
evil
, he says, it’s a corporate takeover, a total sellout, and I don’t know why Walter thinks he’s going to get away with it, but he’s not. This meeting is over. I have to go on the air in an hour, and guess what I’m going to talk about? Guess what just happened to your carefully orchestrated PR calendar, Winnie? I can’t
wait
to hear what the people have to say.

I have packets for everyone, Winnifred says, standing up, as if on cue, and pulling a stack of lavender folders out of her bag. I’ll just put them on the break-room table, and everyone can have a look. Your severance is calibrated to your latest contract. There’s a number for the BCC HR department, but don’t everybody call at once, okay? Read the materials first. And, obviously, the sooner you can prepare a résumé, the sooner your transition can begin.

A crash, outside the newsroom, in the direction of the engineers’ room; everyone jolts out of a collective stupor, and a few run in the direction of the sound, just as Trevor emerges, hugging an enormous outdated computer monitor, trailing cords, like a gigantic tumor, the casualty of some botched surgery, and drops it on the hallway floor. You can take your severance and shove it up your ass! he hollers, at no one in particular. I should have known you people would stab us all in the back.

Easy, man, Mort says. He brushes past me, walking slowly toward Trevor with his palms out, and the tiniest, most imperceptible swagger, as if to say, to us,
see? See what you’ve gotten us into?
We’re all upset, but come on, man. Let’s not shit the bed, okay? You don’t want to do anything you’ll—

You!
Trevor screams, turning purplish, the color of an unripe eggplant. Fucking batshit liberals! We had a word for you when I was growing up, you know that?

Trevor, Mort says. Trevor. You can call me anything you want if it’ll make you feel better. But not here. Let’s go down to Max’s, okay? I’m buying. I’m buying for everyone. All right? Can I buy you a beer? Let me buy you a beer.

Fuck you, hymie, Trevor says. Fuck you, kike. As he says the words, his face contorts, a mangling of grief and horror and self-loathing. He’s my age, after all, or perhaps five years older, perhaps forty; he’s probably never said these words before in his life. Even ancestral rage, I can’t help thinking, comes to us secondhand.
Fuck
you! He whips around and throws the 200-volt adapter, concealed like a baseball in his enormous right fist, through the soundproof glass of the broadcast booth. It spiderwebs, sags inward, as if stunned, unsure of how to respond, and then collapses, throwing shards across the monitors and desks and soundboards.

Enough! Winnifred shouts, phone pressed to her ear. I’ve called the police! Someone behind me is sobbing. I look around at an empty room: everyone has taken cover behind a desk, or rushed into my office, or out into the lobby.
He could have had a gun,
they’ll say later, interviewed on the Fox ten-o’clock news.
It was like one of those postal-worker situations.
Police sirens are howling outside, all the office phones ringing at once, the emergency band squawking under its blanket of broken glass. But Trevor is already finished; he’s sitting on the floor, cross-legged, like a child in kindergarten, and Mort is kneeling in front of him, holding his hands.

In a cloud of meaty smoke, whooshed away by an enormous ventilation hood, Robin Wilkinson lifts a rack of skewers out of the oven and delicately rotates each one, turning the blackened side up, the raw pink side down, adding sea salt and cracked pink peppercorns from a bowl. When she bends over the counter the front of her dress droops a little too low, revealing the top of a salmon camisole, and she flattens it, demurely, with one hand.

We have a pretty nice grill, she tells me. It came with the house, actually, and so I got really into cooking outside. Not just hamburgers, you know, rotisserie,
churrascaria
, pretty ambitious stuff. And then we got this stove, and I realized we can more or less do all the same things inside. Even more, in fact. I can make
shawarma
, if I want. The kids love it. But it has to cook for at least six hours, and the heat’s so high you don’t want to leave it on by itself. It’s not like a pot simmering on the stove. These kebabs are so much simpler, though you do have to check them. The biggest mistake most people make is putting meat and vegetables on the same skewer. Why would you do that? I’ve never understood it. Stick a cherry tomato on there and it’ll be, just,
carbon
. Okay, that’s it. End of lecture. As you can see, when I meet new people, I get nervous. I talk too much.

She slides the rack back in, wipes her hands, and takes a generous sip from her glass. We’re drinking a Chilean rosé, Montes Cherub, which sounds like it means
swill
, she said earlier, but actually it’s quite good, all Syrah, very dry, really good to start things off.

No, I mean, I say, it’s an awkward situation, I guess. Initially. I’m not just any guest. You have to feel that you’re a little on display.

Don’t you get that all the time, with your subjects?

This is kind of a new line of work for me, actually, I say. Martin may have told you. My background’s mostly in public radio—

Right. WBCC. That’s a sad story, isn’t it? Sad, but typical of this town. No one thinks big here. No one wants to
innovate
. A station like that, it was a resource, and what do we do but sell our resources away?

In the living room, across the kitchen island and down three steps, Sherry and Tamika are playing a tennis video game, bounding across the floor with little white wands in hand. On your
toes
, Martin is saying. See what Venus does? Constantly up on her toes. Your heels never hit the ground. Always ahead of the next shot.

Listen to him, she says. You’d think he actually knows what he’s talking about.

He doesn’t play himself?

No, of course he does, he’s just not, like, an
expert
, exactly. I played tennis at Penn. I guess I’m a little sensitive.

You’ll take over when the time comes, I guess.

No, she says, pouring herself another half-glass, no, it’s best not to learn that kind of thing from Mom. I don’t want to make it an issue in our relationship. No stage parenting here.

Spoken like a child psychologist.

Yeah, well, it’s got to be good for something, doesn’t it? Are you done with the zucchini yet? She looks over my shoulder, at the counter, and smiles. Martin, she calls out, who is this guy? What, did you decide I need a sous-chef?

I disclaim any knowledge, Martin calls back. We don’t talk about food.

Oh, yeah, right. Only the serious man stuff. Money. Power. Race. The big three. I forgot.

I had a good teacher, I say, but a limited repertoire. Half the things I know how to make I can’t, because you can’t get the ingredients here. Or if you can, it never tastes right. Wendy used to say that cooking an American duck was like cooking a big bag of fat with a little meat at the bottom.

Robin pours the zucchini chunks into a bowl, adds olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a splash of the wine, and mixes everything together with her fingers. I hope you don’t mind, she says. I like to get my hands dirty. I have to say, Kelly, you sound extremely well adjusted.

I’m not sure that’s such a compliment.

No, it’s an observation. We get to make those in my line of work. Notice I said
sound
. And the other observation I was going to make was: it’s a lot of change for you, I mean, this tremendous loss, leaving one job and one city, moving home, taking up another job, then leaving your entire line of work.

Baltimore isn’t really home. My parents aren’t here. And we were never
from
here; we landed here for a while and then left. I’m not terribly attached to it, honestly. All I really need is a place to keep things.

That sounds very portable and
comme il faut
.

Well, I say, I guess that’s right, for the time being.

Robin, Martin says, I’m going to make you send him a bill.

We’re just talking.

Anyway, he’s supposed to be asking the questions.

I don’t think that’s what this is going to turn out to be, she says. I think this is going to be like one of those Janet Malcolm pieces where the reporter becomes a character in the story. Like
In the Freud Archives
. I’m just teasing, she says. And trying to show off. Another bad habit.

Not at all, I say. In public radio that’s just casual conversation. You’d fit right in.

Well, I’m a listener, she says. Martin’s not. You can always tell a Jack and Jill girl from a mile away.

You were in Jack and Jill?

Oh, good, she says, that’s one thing I don’t have to explain to you about the black middle class. How do you know about Jack and Jill?

My best friend’s girlfriend was in Jack and Jill. When I was in college. Amherst. She had some kind of scholarship from them, too.

And she talked to you about it?

Not really. She just said it was sort of what held her world together. Like a country club, a sorority, the Girl Scouts, all wrapped up in one package. What, it’s not supposed to be a secret, is it?

No. I think we mostly assume that no one else really gives a damn. Anyway, it’s very old school, very aristocratic. There’s color prejudice, too, within the black community. Of course. I don’t mean to be giving you a lecture. But J and J—one of my friends used to call it Just Jamocha. Or JSOP. Just Short of Passing.

She stands up straight and does a quick shoulder rotation, as if to punctuate the thought, and I duly notice that her skin is easily three shades lighter than Martin’s. In an amateurish way, I would call her medium-light and Martin just absolutely medium, perfectly what one would expect, halfway between, say, Shaquille O’Neal and Harry Belafonte. Robin, on the other hand, has definite pink and lavender undertones; maybe it’s makeup, but I doubt it. You could even say that her face shows a certain grayness, a kind of pallor, that some light-skinned black women have. As a factual statement. I’m aware, at the same moment, that I would never describe her as anything other than beautiful.

Listen, I say, I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. We don’t have to be this, this—right off the bat—this—

Anthropological?

Right.

Well, why not? Isn’t it true, as the cliché goes, you know, that the
color line is all about ignorance? Martin told me your wife was from China, right? Tell me if it’s okay to discuss this.

It’s fine.

Well, then, I would wager, I would guess, that you know much more about the intricacies of Chinese culture than you do about African American culture. Though one has been under your nose, so to speak, your entire life, and the other one you had to seek out, actively
choose
.

I think that’s probably true, I say. On the level of conscious intelligence, factual information, yes, definitely. But then again, if you look at it from my point of view, it’s easier to be an expert on China, isn’t it? No one expects me to be an expert on black people. Frankly, nobody
wants
me to be an expert on black people. That would be intrusive. That would be weird. It would raise all kinds of red flags.

But I’m not talking about being an expert. I’m talking about basic cultural competence.

Give me an example, then.

Oh, no. She has a high, piping laugh, a practiced laugh, I think, from working with children all day long, full of soft exclamation points. I’m not giving you a test. Anyway, we’ve got to feed those girls before they collapse. Come on. You can help me set the table.

—

Look, Sherry says to Tamika, when dinner is almost finished. She points at my hand. He has a wedding ring, too. See? I
told
you that all grown-ups wear wedding rings. They have to. It’s, like, a
law
. When you’re a grown-up you have to get married.

Who told you that? Robin asks her, her hands paused above her plate. Someone in school?

No one. I just figured it out myself.

It’s not true, you know, Martin says. Sherry. Look at me when I’m talking to you. Grown-ups don’t have to be married.

Well, you’re married, aren’t you? Sherry says, looking up at me. Mr. Kelly? You’re married, right?

Not exactly.

That’s the end of this conversation, Robin says. Sherry, you have to learn that there are some questions—

No, I say, it’s all right. If it’s all right with you.

Go ahead, Martin says. We don’t keep secrets in this house.

Well, Sherry, I say, I
was
married, but my wife died. You know what that means, right?

Did she have leukemia?

She died in a car accident.

Sherry scrunches up her nose and squints at me, as if to ascertain, through some secret method, whether this is the truth or another moralistic fable.

Was she wearing her seat belt?

She was.

Then she shouldn’t have died, right?

It doesn’t always work that way.

Okay, Martin says. Okay—

I hold up a hand. Let her talk, I say. Let her ask what she wants to ask. Sherry, is there anything more you’d like to know?

Tamika, sitting perfectly straight, removing bits of meat from her skewer with great delicacy, looks over at wayward Sherry and all but rolls her eyes. That’s enough, Shay-Shay, she says. You don’t have to ask him about his little girl.

What
little girl? Robin asks. Tamika! She reaches over and pulls Tamika’s chin toward her. What are you talking about?

Nothing, Tamika says, her eyes round, lips making a little
o
. I just thought he had a little girl. I could tell.

You could tell?

I guessed.

Don’t guess, Martin says. Never assume. You hear me?
Ask
,
little girl. Learn how to
ask
.

Excuse me, I say, and float away from the table, not entirely sure of my legs, overstuffed and cramping. The thing about grief is that it ambushes you; you never know when the great pleasures of life—a glass of wine, buttered popcorn at a movie theater, driving the Pacific Coast Highway with the windows open, whatever—will turn sour and hollow, and so you stop trusting pleasure itself, and become wary, overcautious, self-protective. Then that caution, too, falls away; you forget, and learn to enjoy yourself again, inordinately, but you are still vulnerable. That’s as far as I’ve gotten. Still vulnerable. I wander down a hall and find the guest bathroom, exactly as I imagined it would be, lights on, fresh towels, a cardamom-scented candle, a glass bowl of flat river stones next to the sink. All of it has nothing to do with Martin, and everything, these benign surfaces, this domestic anonymity, colored only by Robin’s deft touch. Martin, I want to say, you are a sick genius, or as we used to put it in high school, a genius of crack. Where did that phrase come from? Some song, some band’s callow humor. Why was it funny? Why is anything funny?

I sit on the toilet, waiting for something to happen; it felt for a moment like diarrhea, or nausea. Nothing. With one sleeve I wipe the tepid coating of sweat off my forehead, stand, zip, and inspect myself in the mirror. The same face, slightly flushed, slightly puffy, a little more obviously graying at the temples than I remember. In the months after the accident I lost fifteen pounds, more or less all my disposable weight, and went around padded in sweaters and wool hats; since then, I’ve gained most of it back. I am, more or less, the same person I was three years ago, or twenty years ago. After all, Martin recognized
me
. That, in itself, is astonishing.

A year after the accident, I asked my therapist, Dr. Silverstein, if he thought it was odd that while Wendy was constantly on my mind—was speaking to me—I never, ever, thought about Meimei. I kept her
pictures around, and her artwork, out of a desire for sheer order, but nothing I did, or saw, reminded me of her. I might see another father exactly my age crossing the street, another three-year-old clutching his hand, and look right through them, not registering a thing. No, he said, refusing, for once, to turn the question back on me. No, of course not. Don’t you know it’s natural? He seemed quite agitated, as if I’d mentioned, in passing, that I had a loaded pistol in my courier bag, and was thinking of using it. Don’t touch it, he said. Don’t touch her. Let the wound heal by itself. The worst thing you can do is blame yourself for what you’re
not
feeling.

I do think of her now, in roundabout, philosophical ways. I do not remember, say, how it felt to give her a bath, the way she squealed as I scrubbed shampoo into her scalp, and gave her spiky rhinoceros horns; I choose not to remember sailing with her on the Charles, or the way she grabbed my back pockets and hoisted herself up against my legs from behind as I tried to leave for work. Those memories are there, perfectly visible, in their own vitrines, but what I choose to think about, instead, is how it felt to have a purpose in life. I say this entirely in the abstract. When I left Harvard and began working at WBUR it was because I was sick of trying to support a family on the penury of a graduate stipend, plus Wendy’s small salary; I wanted a
job
that turned in small, manageable cycles and paid in large fixed increments, not the echoing black hole of a dissertation and the endless anxious scrabbling of an assistant professorship in Bloomington or Columbus or Madison. My wants, my needs, and my obligations were perfectly in sync, in a righteous, time-honored order. Now, by contrast, I’m on a permanent vacation, thrust back into independence. Unneeded, unwanted. Worst of all:
single
.