Obituary Writer (9780547691732) (3 page)

Waiting on my desk were the picture and the two clips on Arthur Whiting, all the paper had from the past ten years, and one was about a dog show. This "man of consequence" had turned out to be an ordinary guy. Strange how quickly I had doubted myself. Others had gotten through to the desk before when I was on deadline—grieving widows, irascible family members, parents of accident victims—but it rarely took more than a few minutes for me to say what I had to say: "Our deadline is final. We can't do it until tomorrow," even if tomorrow meant the time and location of the service wouldn't appear until the day of the funeral, even if tomorrow was too late. So why hadn't I done the same with Alicia Whiting?

The hold button was still flashing. It had been twenty minutes.

"Are you still there?" I asked.

"Yes." Her voice didn't reveal a hint of irritation.

"Mrs. Whiting," I began.

"Alicia," she said.

"I'm afraid the deadline for tomorrow's paper has passed." I tried to sound resolute. "You'll have to call back in the morning."

"St. Louis is a nice city," she said sadly. "I like it here, but I should probably leave."

"I know," I said in an effort to hurry her along, now convinced that my instincts had been right. This was a woman in shock. There was the clink of ice and a sound like breathing into a glass, and I wondered if she might be drinking.

"I used to drive around and feel like this was my very own city. The streets were my streets and the river was mine and the barges and riverboats. And the buildings, too. Especially the buildings. I'd walk up and down the stairs of the old post office and run my hand over the banisters or sit in the main reading room of the public library looking up at the high ceilings, like they were ceilings in my own house. But I don't feel that way anymore."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"I just want to stay home now, and my house is small. Fall is the best time of year, when the leaves start to change. Arthur liked to take me on walks in the botanical gardens."

This woman had waited for twenty minutes. Twenty minutes I'd had her on hold and she didn't even mention it. This must be despair, I thought, going to such lengths to keep a stranger on the phone.

The fan clattered away on its evening cycle. Apart from the racket, it cast a noxious odor, especially at this time of day when the lead particles, having accumulated from all corners of the newsroom, made a final turn from my desk on their way to the lower floor.

"What's that noise?" she asked.

As if on cue, the fan abruptly stopped.

"You should call us in the morning," I said, making use of the pause. "If you'd like to gather the information and fax it, with place of residence, age, occupation, cause of death—"

"Let me give it to you now," she interrupted.

And I realized that I wouldn't stand firm, that I was losing this fight, had lost it in fact an hour ago when I was convinced somehow of her husband's importance, then drawn in by the loneliness in her voice. I took down the essentials and promised I'd do my best to get it into the next morning's paper. With Ritger not looming over me, it wouldn't be much trouble finding space for a small obit. And that's exactly what I did—tapped out five inches, no subhead, fourth column, below the fold:

Arthur R. Whiting, 43, a loan officer with Portage Savings Bank, died Friday of a heart attack at his home in St. Charles.

Mr. Whiting was born in Davenport, Iowa. He was graduated from the University of Iowa in Iowa City with a degree in business administration. He also served in the U.S. Army.

Mr. Whiting was employed by Portage Savings Bank for 15 years. He worked as a bank teller, assistant manager, and manager before becoming chief loan officer at the St. Charles South branch.

He was treasurer of the Whispering Pines Country Club and former treasurer of the Clayton Lodge of Elks. A dog enthusiast, Mr. Whiting owned Irish wolfhounds that won several local, state, and national awards.

He leaves his wife, Alicia; a brother, Joseph R., of Winfield; and a sister, Margaret M., of St. Charles.

I hit Save and made a few more cuts to the dentist's obit to make room. I hadn't eaten since breakfast and could feel the dizziness that sets in with extreme hunger. I brought up a plate of rice and some kind of goulash from the cafeteria, forwarded my calls to the switchboard operator, and devoured my dinner, staring at the green blur of letters on my computer screen. I was in no mood to stay late, having wrapped up an advancer on Joe DiMaggio late the night before. So I packed up my briefcase, and getting up to leave, noticed Arthur Whiting's picture and the two clips still sitting on my desk.

In the picture, Alicia's husband was standing in front of the Portage Savings Bank shaking a policeman's hand. Tall and stoop-shouldered, he had thinning hair, rather long in the back, and a discernibly large Adam's apple. He looked older than forty-three, rawboned and hollow-cheeked.

The bank robbery had occurred just as the librarian described it. Arthur had gone for the emergency button, couldn't find it until the last possible moment. A pair of squad cars happened to be a block away, and the dispatcher had the police there in minutes. The robber was sixty-eight years old and had no accomplices. "It's not often a criminal is active at that age, much less still alive," an officer was quoted as saying.

The dog-show clip was short, a three-inch brief in Hannah Greene's "At Home and Around Town" column:

NEW YORK
—An Irish wolfhound from St. Charles has won a top prize at the famous Westminster Kennel Club dog show in New York City. Gambolling Gavin of Galway, a 2½-year-old male owned by Arthur R. and Alicia Whiting, 436 Dalecarlia Drive, took first place in the Sight Hound Division after winning Best of Breed in a field of 24 dogs. To qualify, Gavin won state and regional competitions in July and October. The dog, according to Mr. Whiting, was a wedding gift to his wife.

It was time to go home. The initial sense that I had stumbled on an important obituary with Alicia Whiting's call was quickly fading. The clips all pointed to the fact that Arthur Whiting had led an unremarkable life, and that Alicia had simply inflated her husband's memory.

On my way out, one of the security guards stopped me to hand me a package that had just come in.

"There was a lady in here just a few minutes ago," he said, passing me a thin manila envelope with
GORDON HATCH, REPORTER
written in large capital letters. "We tried to call you but your line's switched over."

"Did she say anything?" The return address was a personalized sticker, with the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals logo, of Mr. and Mrs. Arthur R. Whiting.

"Not much," he said. "She wanted to talk to you."

"How old would you say she was?"

"Mid-thirties, blond. She had a big gray coat on. Nice looking."

I thanked him, trying to look casual as I walked out, in case Alicia was just outside. A brisk fall wind had picked up, and the sun was setting just in front of me, about to drop beneath the Cupples Station warehouse, the old freight storage complex on Ninth Avenue. An orange stripe cut across the
Independent
's masthead.

Down the street a docent at the bowling museum was bringing in his signboards and locking up. An elderly couple stood arm and arm at the corner waiting for the light to change.

I turned the envelope over to open it. On the back, Alicia had written "Photo Enclosed." I pictured her husband, his hollow face, thought of her disappointment tomorrow at the tiny obituary: no picture, below the fold. Instead, I slipped the unopened envelope inside my briefcase and headed home.

TO PREPARE MYSELF
for the night police beat—my next job, I figured—I had bought a scanner that I listened to after coming home from work. It gave me a chance to hear where the homicides were, what neighborhoods were considered unpatrollable, and how long it took police to respond to a call. That evening I had just turned it on and collapsed on my living room couch when the phone rang. Still caught up in the reverie of the day, I almost expected that it was Alicia Whiting calling to make sure I had received the photograph.

"What are you doing home?" my mother asked half accusingly. "You're never home at this hour."

"Research," I said, annoyed.

"What about last night? Where were you? I left a message on your machine and you didn't get back to me."

"I didn't check the machine until late. Too late to call."

"Why didn't you wake me? It's not fair when I don't hear from you."

I turned the scanner's volume to low. "I've been working on an investigative piece," I lied.

"An investigative piece," she repeated, but didn't pursue it. "Did you listen to my message?"

"Yes." I was already growing impatient. "I'm going to see you in a couple of weeks. I thought we talked about it—"

"This time I hope you mean it," she interrupted. "You've promised to make it home before and something always comes up. Expectations have consequences if you can't fulfill them. Today it's me. Tomorrow it could be someone important."

I lay back down on the couch, in no mood for my mother's lecturing.

"I have news about Thea Pierson," she said. "Do you want to hear it?"

"Depends."

"Am I being intrusive again? Is that the problem?"

"What is it you want to tell me?"

"She's moving to St. Louis."

My mother paused, listening for a reaction.

"What do you mean she's moving to St. Louis?"

"She's there as we speak, on a one-year program at SLU Hospital." I heard the strike of a match, her deep inhale. "It's something they do before medical school."

"Really?" I tried not to sound interested.

"Yes, really. She called last night."

"Why St. Louis?" I sat up and turned the scanner off.

"Don't ask me, Gordie. She certainly had a choice. With her record, she could have gone anywhere."

I stretched the phone cord to the bathroom, a few steps away in my tiny apartment, and leaned over the sink to check my reaction up close in the bathroom mirror. Small wrinkles had formed between my eyebrows.

"She still cares," my mother said.

"What does it matter?" I asked.

"Trust me," she said. "She hasn't given up on you."

Thea was born Thuy Linh, one of the few
but dot,
children of a Vietnamese mother and an American GI, whose father returned to Saigon to claim her. She was four years old when the plane touched down at Columbia Regional Airport. Her father, Daniel Pierson, had used an old Army officer connection to doctor her birth certificate and change her age to two. He figured Thea could use the extra couple of years. She'd start school late, catch up with the language.

Daniel Pierson was a single man, a third-year doctoral student in public policy, and he must have been lonely when he picked up the phone and dialed an old friend at the Immigration and Naturalization Service. He said he had a daughter by a Vietnamese woman, and what would it take to gain custody? Depends on the woman, his old friend said.

Unlike many new immigrants growing up in America, Thea had no access to her culture and no contact with the country of her birth. The nearest Vietnamese community was on South Grand in St. Louis, an hour and a half away. She said she didn't know about South Grand until she moved there many years later. In Columbia,
bui doi
was just another foreign term.

Not until the sixth grade did she begin to take note of herself. She put pictures on the mirror of other girls in her class—goldilocks, freckle face, and button nose—class pictures with marbled blue backgrounds. She looked at them and back at her reflection, trying to will her stubborn face to do what it couldn't do.

On the Fourth of July, 1979, she returned from the town parade and started a letter to her mother. "My name is Thea Pierson," it began. "You knew me when I was a little girl, and now I would like to know you."

She wrote of friends, school, American things; marching bands and colorful floats, Shriners doing figure eights in mini antique cars; her house, a cat named Ringo who got in through the basement and stayed. It was a long letter that grew by the day, written at school in the margins of books, copied over before bed on a wide-ruled notepad as she lay on her stomach with her feet in the air. It never occurred to her that her mother might not read English.

In the mornings she went to the county library and ripped out pictures of boat people from
Life
magazine, sneaked them into a book, and stapled them to her letter in the girls' room. She read about the Vietnamese living in New Orleans, East Texas, the Mississippi Delta, where it was hot and wet like Vietnam, where shrimp and rice were farmed, wrote about them as if she had been there. By early August, her letter nearly filled the notepad.

Then, a week before Labor Day, around dinnertime, in the middle of another late summer thundershower, her father received a phone call from the same friend at the INS who had originally helped with the papers. Thea's mother had died several months before.

"It was my fault," she told me later. "How could it not be? I started the letter too late."

"But you couldn't have known," I said.

"She was my mother. We had that connection. She was probably waiting for me to write her, expecting it every day," she said. "But I didn't even think about it."

The morning after the phone call, Thea ripped up the letter and put the pieces in a large serving bowl, cut off a lock of her long hair and placed it in the middle. She went to a card shop downtown and bought two fat candles—one red and one yellow, the colors of the South Vietnamese flag—and made a little shrine on her bedside table.

Growing up in Columbia, Thea became a curiosity. She was one of only two Asian students at Columbia Central, and classmates invited her home to show her off, took her to the mall and dressed her up, talked to her as if she were their child. When the novelty wore off, she found herself alone once again. But she was resourceful. She had a breeziness about her, moving with ease from circle to circle, hiding the wounds of abandonment.