The Art of Saying Goodbye - Ellyn Bache [56]
Oh, this was wrong, this silence. This was cruel.
Is it possible that only a moment before Andrea thought she didn’t even like her? Now she trembles with the intensity of her love. She feels every iota of Courtney’s pain, every fear—everything—as if once again they have opened her daughter’s body with a scalpel of the sharpest steel, the future before them like a sudden darkness, and no promise at all of a cure.
Chapter 14
Paisley—Eating
Something I’m ashamed of? That day the dark wind started blowing through my head. No excuses. The sun was shining, shining.
Mason’s newspaper hosted a barbecue every year. A command performance, not optional. The whole staff was expected. Spouses, children, significant others, too.
That particular event was on a sweltering day at the beginning of June, far too early for such heat. A rented tent, green and white striped, in the center of the publisher’s big backyard, with tables and chairs underneath. A long food table where servers dished out huge portions of meat and beans and slaw, and bowls of banana pudding sweet enough to make your teeth ache. The barbecue was messy, dripping in red sauce, but no one cared. There were soft drinks, bottles of wine, a keg.
Print news had not begun losing readers in a serious way yet, so the younger reporters—a talented, ambitious group—saw themselves as future Bob Woodwards, not relics (soon to be castoffs) of a dying trade. They hoped to make their mark in a year or two and then move on to more prestigious papers: the Charlotte Observer; the Philadelphia Inquirer if they were lucky; or if they were really good, the Washington Post. Mason hoped for that, too. He had become managing editor; he was on his way. I suppose it was digital news that finally stopped us, kept us where we were. But that was later.
Brynne was three then and wouldn’t touch the barbecue. Not just because of the sauce, which was daunting enough, but because she didn’t like meat. She downed a bowl of banana pudding and went off to run through the sprinklers with some of the other kids. Herb Clay, the copy editor, sat next to me as always, chatty and devoted as a puppy, jumping up to get me more slaw, more beans, food I didn’t really want but ate because he was so anxious to bring it. Mason said, year after year, if you want Herb gone, just say the word. But I didn’t. It was so clear that all he wanted was that half hour of closeness, so easy to give. I usually knew what people wanted.
I waved to Mason, who was standing just outside the range of the sprinklers, holding his messy sandwich and talking to his little cluster of followers. The entourage of newly hired reporters had materialized months before, at his promotion party, and persisted at every social function since.
“Employees always suck up to the managing editor,” he’d said with a lightness he didn’t seem to feel. “Part of the job.” He didn’t mind the young men, who tried to outdo each other with their perceptiveness, their wit, their forward-thinking ideas. But the fawning women made him uneasy. He was a serious, private person. At one of the first parties after his promotion, I’d spotted him literally backed into a corner, frantically scanning the room to catch my eye so I could rescue him.
That day I realized he’d gotten accustomed to the attention. He didn’t return my wave. Probably didn’t see it. He looked perfectly comfortable, holding his sloppy, dripping sandwich above his flimsy paper plate, nodding alternately to the speakers who surrounded him, who appeared to be talking all at once. The king holding court. One of the new hires, Karin Branch—Karin with an “i,” not an “e,” as she would be quick to remind you—pushed her way to Mason’s side and said something that set the entire crowd laughing, a chorus