Sweet Love (14 page)

“So that’s why you didn’t bring a cameraman or tape the interview.”

“No need. It was a courtesy call.”

“A courtesy call?” Arnie, who’s been twirling one of Owen’s pool cues, stops pacing. “You work for WBOS, Julie, not the goddamn ladies auxiliary.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed, what with the way everyone is so demure and polite around here.”

He wags his finger. “Watch it. You’re on thin ice, Tinkerbell.”

“Too late,” Owen says, “Tinkerbell’s fallen through. Our best reporter felled by a peach.”

Best reporter
. Goes to show Owen really loves me, as does Arnie. Otherwise they wouldn’t half joke around. What I’ve got to do is get them to see my mother’s innocent—albeit unfortunate—comments were harmless and then they’ll lighten up again.

“Let’s put this in perspective,” I begin, oozing rationality. “It was a cobbler, not a nuclear bomb. If you ask me, you’re being a couple of pansies.”

“We didn’t ask you, and people who bring cobblers are in no position to call other people pansies,” says Arnie. “Besides, don’t you realize the
Globe
’s moronic columnists are going to have a field day making fun of us for this? This does not add to the image we’re trying to cultivate of being serious journalists. We’ll be the laughingstock of Boston news.”

Perhaps a different tack. “Have you considered that, instead, I
saved
the station’s reputation?”

Owen leans forward. “How so?”

“It’s kind of a bad cop-good cop routine. Valerie was the bad cop, I was the good cop. The
Globe
could have attacked us for floating the Rhonda rumor. Instead, they attacked me, bearer of delicious desserts.”

“Except I didn’t assign you to play cop, did I?” Arnie says. “Much less ask you to bring dessert.”

“You should have posted a sign-up sheet like Dolores does for the company potluck barbecue.”

“Do you
want
to be fired?” Owen demands of me, glancing at Arnie, who is back to pacing, head down, pool cue twirling. “Is that what these wisecracks are about? Maybe you’ve got another job lined up and you’re looking for severance pay.”

“Darn. Why didn’t I think of that? Look, Owen, I’ve done nothing wrong and you know it. Now‚ why don’t we let this ride and I’ll go downstairs to finish my campaign finance story.”

“I say fire her.” Arnie sticks out his tongue at me. “She’s getting wide in the caboose, anyway. She’s no longer an
ass
et to the station.”

“You fire me after that comment and you’ll have a sexual harassment suit slapped on your own ass before you’re out the elevator.” I stick out my tongue in reply. “Anyway, you know the
Globe
will go crazy if you can me for this. Keep me on and they’ll forget about it once their lazy columnists find another victim to hang. Fire me and it’ll be front-page news.”

Examining his green desk blotter, Owen says, “Okay. I’m not going to reach a decision on this until further investigation. I need to think.”

“And I need to drink,” chimes in Arnie. “Preferably something cold and malted in a small green stadium off Lansdowne Street during a Red Sox-Yankees doubleheader. In the meantime, what should we do with her? I could always stick her on night sports with Smelly Leo.”

Owen strokes his chin, regarding me thoughtfully. “Obit update.”

“Not that!” That’s the worst. “In the basement?” A tedious job involving poring through archives and splicing films.

Arnie says, “Excellent idea. We haven’t had our obit file updated in a year and Ted Kennedy’s sure to kick it sooner than later and Barney Frank’s not getting any younger, either.”

“Also, you’ve got to apologize to Valerie.” Owen scribbles something onto a sheet of paper and slides it across the desk to me. “She can be reached here.”

“No way am I apologizing to Valerie, she was . . .” Wait. What’s going on here? I have to read the address again. “This isn’t her email address. This is the address for—”

“The Washington bureau.” Owen keeps his gaze on the blotter, as if he can’t face me. “Valerie left this morning for a two-week tryout.”

Suddenly, the mood’s not so light.
He picked her
. My initial instinct was right. That’s why she was with Kirk all yesterday morning. Not to discuss Amy Michak, but because
he picked her
for the national election team.

“Sorry, Julie.” A hand squeezes my shoulder. It’s Arnie leaning on his pool cue. “If it’s any comfort, Owen and I agree you were the better choice. And not just because you’re learning how to cook.”

“Unless I decide to fire you,” Owen adds. “In which case, I will announce in a press release that you were the worst reporter we ever had and an embarrassment to the station.”

“You’re so supportive.”

Owen nods. “You can always count on me to back you up when things are going well.”

Chapter Eleven

Xanax.

That’s what the DMV should hand out with every teenage driving permit. Who was the nimrod who decided seventeen was an ideal age to get behind the wheel, anyway? Like sex and marijuana and beer parties weren’t enough to deal with, now these poor kids have got to learn how to handle a two-ton vehicle, too.

“How you doin’, Mom?” Em’s smiling bright eyes, those meticulously tweezed brows, appear in the rearview mirror. Does she have to be so pleased with herself?

“Just fine,” I chirp, digging my fingers into the backseat.
Keep your eyes on the road and not on me, kiddo. Disaster is only a distraction away.

Mom, riding shotgun because she insisted, points to the left. “Your exit’s coming up. I don’t know what bonehead designed this crazy road, but you’re going to have to move across two lanes and pretty fast, too.”

“Two lanes!” Em says.

Two lanes!
I nearly scream.

“You can do it. Just check your mirrors and use your blinkers,” Mom says.

Sure, like that will help. Doesn’t Mom realize blinkers are a sign of weakness in this city? They’ll run all over us. We’ll be roadkill on the six-thirty news, my trusty green Subaru Outback a mangled burning heap, some loudmouth Southie opining as to how the ladies should stay off Storrow if they can’t deal with “real” drivers.

“Maybe I should take over this part,” I say, undoing my safety belt and crawling between the seats.

Mom pushes me down. “What the ho-hay are you trying to do, Julie? Cause an accident? Emmaline can handle this.”

“Yeah, Mom.” And‚ leaning out of her window, her blond ponytail flapping in the damp and dirty breeze, my seventeen-year-old daughter manages to do what I have never been able to in my decades of driving: sail across two lanes of Storrow Drive, one, two, exit—with merely a smile and a wave.

I have to admit, I am very impressed. Or is that relief to be alive?

“Good for you!” Mom pats a wrinkled hand on Em’s bare shoulder. “I knew you could.”

“Thanks, Grandma.”

Gawd, I’m an awful parent. I mean, really, really lousy. Here all Em ever wants is a vote of confidence, a chance to drive and be independent, and where am I? Cowering in the rear seat, hiding my eyes. Thank heavens Mom’s there to pick up the slack.

Though, come to think of it, since when did Mom get so cool? She wasn’t this laid-back when I was learning how to drive, what with her gripping the dashboard and slamming her right foot against the invisible brake, letting out gasps whenever I moved the car an inch.

And that was just pulling out of the driveway.

The thing is, I’m simmering with a fair amount of inner resentment since I’m finding it hard to completely forgive her for what she did at the Michaks’. To violate the sacred boundary between kitchen gossip and work is unheard of. It’s so . . . wrong (even if she was right). She had no business talking to that
Globe
reporter.

All week I’ve been paying the price in the basement of WBOS, updating obits. Listen, it’s not easy paring Ted Kennedy’s life to three precious minutes, two of which could go to Chappaquiddick alone. It’s so unfair. Here Valerie’s jetting off with the national election team to Denver and Sacramento while I’m trying to make sense of Boston native Bobby Brown’s prison record. And why?

Mom.

This is what drives me up the wall about my mother. Her meddling. She can’t simply listen to my troubles and leave them be. She has to
do
something. She has to make suggestions and “make calls,” pull strings behind my back. She has to be Mrs. Buttinsky.

That might have been mildly acceptable in first grade when Mavis Buckhoe tripped me with her jump rope every day because she thought I liked her boyfriend, Michael Utard, and Mom had me switched to another class. But I am over forty! What’s she thinking, blabbing to anyone and everyone about my troubles?

“Okay, so where is this famous cooking school?” Mom asks as traffic screeches to a halt.

From the backseat I answer, “On Newbury Street, but don’t make Em drive me to the door. It’s a zoo. Just drop me off at the Eliot Hotel and I’ll walk up.”

Unfortunately, Em takes a right too soon and ends up heading the wrong way on Beacon Street, a one-way corridor headed toward a mess of an intersection made more terrifying with the Red Sox in town.

“No problem,” Mom says, her gripping fingers on the dash belying that statement. “We’ll make it through.”

Em is panicked, unsure what lane to be in as Boston drivers, sensing a weak one among them, cut her off and flip the bird. Her previous confidence has vaporized and she is no longer smiling at me in the rearview. Every muscle in her arms is tensed to snap.

“Get into the left,” I tell her. “Check first, goddammit!”

I know, I know. You’re not supposed to swear at your teenage daughter, but I can’t help it. She was sliding into the next lane without looking at her mirrors. We could have been killed. Or . . . badly dinged.

Em checks, looks out the window, and gets over. “Good,” I say, determined to be the one to walk Em through this and not my buttinsky mother. “Okay. This intersection’s not too bad. Just packed with Red Sox fans. Better than if we’d been here an hour earlier. We never would have gotten through.”

Mom, somewhere on Planet Plutron, muses whimsically, “Used to be a swamp, Kenmore Square. Literally, a swamp. Now, when was the last time we were down here to see the Sox? Was it with Nana?”

Holy Hank Aaron. “Now is not the time to be strolling la-di-da down memory lane,
Mother
.” Not when Em nearly hit some guy in a wheelchair.

“The last game she ever saw,” Mom adds. “Too bad you couldn’t hold out longer to see them win the pennant. You might have tried, Mom.”

In the rearview mirror, Em grimaces in alarm. I agree, weird. Mom talking to her own mother, who’s been dead for ten years. Still, that’s no reason to take one’s eyes off the road.

“There’s your left.” I point to the craziness of Lansdowne Street blanketed by fans in the trademark navy and blue holding seat cushions and water bottles, signs, raincoats, and pink hats. “Do your best.”

Em does her best, at one point actually closing her eyes. Perfectly okay. Lots of drivers around here drive with their eyes closed. It’s the only way to stay sane.

The next challenge, getting from Lansdowne to Ipswich, to Boylston and back to Mass. Ave., she manages with very little swearing on my part. The back of Mom’s seat, however, will be forever imprinted with the indentations of my right hand.

Pulling into a gas station, Em practically collapses. “That was the worst. I am never driving again.”

“Of course you are,” I say, opening the door to get out. “You did a fantastic job. Why, I couldn’t have done that at your age. I didn’t get the guts to drive through Boston until I was in my twenties.”

“I dunno. I’m not ready for this. Grandma, can you drive back?”

Normally that would be fine. My mother’s an old hand at taking on Southies. Shoot, she’s been battling them long enough. But there was something about her talking to her mother just now. And the way she was tottering in the garden this morning. Like she might have been having another dizzy spell—an observation she refuted with an “I am not!” as though my loving inquiry was an outrageous insult.

The bottom line is, I don’t want her driving Em. Awful, true, but there you have it. I don’t trust her brain.

“If you want me to, Emmaline . . . ,” Mom is saying.

“Actually‚ I’d like Em to have the experience of getting back on the horse.” I give them both encouraging grins. “You understand, right, Mom?”

She understands all too well. “If this is about what happened in the garden, I told you, I just got up too fast, that’s all.” She folds her arms and frowns. “Honestly, Julie, you need to stop treating me like I’m an old lady. I’m only seventy-five, one year older than Gloria Steinem. Barbara Walters is seventy-eight and look at her!”

“Yes, but you haven’t been living on a one-thousand-calorie-a-day diet,” I say. “Nor have you been working out every morning with a personal trainer, sipping wheatgrass juice, and taking frequent trips to Canyon Ranch. And don’t get me started on those Pepperidge Farm cookies you sneak every afternoon. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all the sugar you eat that’s making you dizzy.”

Em glances from me to her. “What are you two talking about?”

“Nothing,” I say, keeping my gaze on Mom, who seems tinier somehow, more brittle. “Mom knows I want you to drive just for the experience. Anyway, that’ll be a half hour of driving on your record that I won’t have to stomach.”

Then I give Mom a kiss on the cheek, Em a thumbs-up, and step onto the sidewalk right as a gentle summer rain begins to fall.