Private Affairs Page 9

  "Terrific!" exclaimed Wally. "By God—!"

  "Terrific?" echoed Kirkpatrick sarcastically. "For firing the entire staff of a newspaper?"

  "We're not firing anyone but Cal," said Elizabeth. "If the rest of you leave, you'll do it on your own. And the two of us will—"

  "Three!" Wally burst out. "I'm staying!"

  Behind the desk, Matt's hand found Elizabeth's and they stood close together, their hands gripped for support. He smiled at her, then turned to Wally. "We're glad to have you with us. The rest of you have until ten to clear out."

  "Matt, don't be a fool!" Barney growled.

  "The fools are the ones who quit because of Cal." Matt scanned their faces. "You don't like worrying about the future? I don't either. We put everything we have into this paper—we sold a good company and mortgaged our house, we're in debt up to our ears, and we work twenty hours a day to keep from going under. But you don't like worrying about the future. Well there's a way to take care of that. You can work your asses off the way we do, and protect your jobs by making the paper a success. If you can't handle that, we don't want you." He looked at his watch. "It's close to ten. Get going. Elizabeth and Wally and I have work to do."

  No one moved. Bill Dunphy cleared his throat. "If you don't mind, I'd like to stay. Even a newsletter needs photos."

  Matt nodded. "Who shot the photo of the Nambe dance?"

  "I don't know, Matt. Nobody told me about it."

  "Okay, I'll believe that. I'm glad you're staying."

  "Well." Barney shuffled his feet. "I don't want to leave, either. Where would I go, at my age? Anyway, I like your style, Matt. You and Eliza-

  beth. The thing was—you know—solidarity. But of course on any paper someone has to be in charge, ..."

  "You shit," muttered Artner.

  Barney's shuffling had carried him across the office. "I'd like to stay, if you'll have me."

  "That would please us," Matt said quietly.

  "Mmmm," Kirkpatrick hummed awkwardly. "Perhaps I'll—"

  "Herb, God damn it!" Artner burst out.

  "You'll need top political coverage," Kirkpatrick went on. "I wouldn't deny you my skills, since you do need them."

  Matt and Elizabeth kept straight faces, squeezing each other's hands. "Good of you," Matt said.

  One by one the others followed. Only Axel Chase was silent. His agonized face told Elizabeth he'd been in on it; as pressman, he'd be the likely one to help Cal paste up the new page. But they had no proof, and they needed him.

  But Chase didn't wait to be fired. "I'm with Cal," he said defiantly. "You can print your paper without me. I don't like people kicked out after years of service—"

  "Save your breath," Artner snorted. He looked at Matt. "You fucking bastard, I'll get you some day." Matt returned his look in silence. "I don't forget what people do to me," Artner flung at him, then strode from the office. Chase followed, disappearing into the pressroom. The others, shocked by Artner's venom, watched him yank open his desk drawers and throw into a carton papers, pencils, photographs, a coffee mug, a battered pair of shoes—until Elizabeth, feeling she was prying, turned away. "We should have our staff meeting now," she said to Matt. "If everyone can find a place to perch. ..."

  They found places on the frayed couch and leather chair, the two folding chairs, and the deep window ledges in the adobe walls. From a corner of Matt's desk, Elizabeth looked about. They were terribly short-handed; no managing editor, no pressman, only three reporters. But at the moment, none of it mattered. Because, she thought, for the first time this newspaper is truly ours.

  Their long days became longer. Peter and Holly divided their time between their grandparents' home and their own, while their parents were at the newspaper office until midnight or later, doing their own jobs, sharing the managing editor's job, filling in for Artner's reporting and Chase's management of the pressroom: Elizabeth helping with production and Matt printing the paper.

  "Thought I'd gotten out of this business," he said ruefully to Elizabeth the first Thursday after Chase's departure. His hands and shirt were smeared with ink, his eyes, like hers, were red-rimmed from exhaustion, and the paper was two hours late, keeping the drivers waiting impatiently in their delivery trucks at the loading dock in back. "At least I know how to do it. I guess I should be grateful. This is one time Dad would be proud of me."

  "He'd be proud of you for everything you're doing," Elizabeth said. "And so is everyone else. Look at them."

  He did, and saw what she meant. The newsroom looked as if someone had speeded up a film, with everyone trying to do everything at once. By plunging in themselves, instead of waiting for others to do it, Elizabeth and Matt had galvanized the staff. Elizabeth had left her features desk to stand for hours at a counter pasting up the paper, learning as she went along how to visualize a full page before she began to paste stories, headlines, and photographs, and at the same time plan ahead to the inside pages where the stories would be continued and had to fit neatly together with more headlines, more photographs, and display advertisements. Matt had left his glass office to run the press, even making mechanical repairs that were second nature to him, after sixteen years with the Lovell Printing Company, but unfathomable to the rest of the staff.

  And from the receptionist to Herb Kirkpatrick, they were won over by their new bosses; with no more reservations, they drew together, cooperated more generously, became a community.

  "Axel did it, bless his heart," said Matt after the first wild week. "We're almost a family."

  "You did it," Elizabeth said, but Matt countered, "No, you did," and it became a private joke. And even when they hired a new pressman and Matt went back to his office and Elizabeth to her desk, no one forgot the picture they had made: Matt Lovell, their ink-covered editor-in-chief, and Elizabeth Lovell, features editor, standing at a counter, pasting up stories while the rest of them went home.

  "They came through," they all said whenever anyone brought it up. "They did fine. They really came through. Like pros."

  The Nambes and their lawyer had consulted and found acceptable the Lovells' offer of a front-page apology plus a story by Elizabeth on one of their leaders. In fact, they found the idea fascinating and it took only half a day of discussion to withdraw the threat of a court case and arrange an interview with Edward Ortega, whose Indian name was Soe Khuwa Pin, "Fog Mountain."

  Ortega was a friend of Peter's—one of the Indians who drove him to and from the pueblos after school and on weekends when they had business in Santa Fe—and so Peter went along when Elizabeth interviewed him in his home. He listened, squirming, as his mother probed and persisted in her questions to uncover the private Ortega behind the public one. "Those were personal questions," he told her as she drove home.

  Elizabeth nodded. "Did you notice how he skirted the ones he didn't want to answer? But he told me enough. Sometimes, you see, a picture isn't worth a thousand words. Sometimes only the best words, put together in the best way, can show readers what a person is really like."

  But later, when she sat at the kitchen table where she had set up her typewriter, no words came. For years she'd written smoothly and easily for others; now, writing for herself, she tightened up, head pounding as her thoughts darted back and forth, searching for something to say, trying out phrases, discarding them, trying others, before she even touched the typewriter keys.

  It was late; everyone had gone to bed. Earlier, Peter and Holly had tiptoed into the kitchen to wish their mother good luck with her first column, then disappeared down the hallway to their bedrooms. Matt finished the work he had brought home, read the day's New York, Denver, and Albuquerque newspapers, asked Elizabeth if she wanted to talk, and, when she thanked him and said no, he too went to bed.

  Elizabeth sat alone at the scrubbed pine table and ordered herself to relax. Pine cabinets and countertops of buff-colored Mexican tiles reflected the light from the wrought-iron chandelier; in the deep window seats Holly's collection of Kachina do
lls sat in rows, round black eyes watching her critically. In the typewriter, a blank sheet of paper waited to be filled.

  At three in the morning, Matt came in, tying his bathrobe, and found her frowning as she Xed out a sentence. He filled the teakettle and put it on the stove. "Stagefright?" he asked.

  Elizabeth gave a small laugh. "Something like it. All these years I've complained about not being able to do my own writing in my own way. And now I'm terrified."

  He kissed the top of her head. "That's why you're better than most writers. You respect writing; you don't dash it off."

  "That makes it harder," she commented ruefully. "I never realized how comforting it was—I can't believe I'm saying this—to work for someone else who was responsible for deciding whether my work was good enough to print."

  "Something like my discovery that it was comforting to have the secu= rity of the Lovell Printing Company, and my father, behind me."

  They exchanged a look in the circle of light around the table. Elizabeth's frown disappeared, and in a minute they were laughing. "Both of us," said Matt, pouring boiling water into the teapot. "Scared of having to prove ourselves in the big world." He touched Elizabeth's cheek. "I wouldn't even have tried, without you."

  She held his hand against her face. "Neither would I. We keep propping each other up when we get scared. But, Matt, this time I'm alone: just me and a typewriter and words tumbling in my head. And I can't seem to do anything with them."

  "Listen to me." He poured their tea and sat opposite her. "I'm telling you, as your editor, not your husband, that you are one hell of a writer. You can make words dance and sing; you can make people and places seem so real I swear I can touch and hear them. There isn't anything you can't do with words, as long as you trust yourself. Now stop worrying about whether you can do it or not; let the words come from whatever mysterious place inside yourself they're born, and just start writing. If you want to be scared, wait until tomorrow, when you show me your story and I tell you what I think of it."

  Elizabeth burst out laughing. "After that, how can you say it's no good?"

  "The best writers have bad days," he said with a grin. "And bad nights. But I'm not worried; you'll be fine." He stood behind her chair, kissing the back of her neck, sliding his hands over her breasts. "I love you and I want you, but I'm going to leave you alone so you can write." And taking his cup of tea, he left the kitchen.

  Leaning her head on her hand, Elizabeth gazed at the typewriter, thinking of Matt. He'd found a way to prop her up, so why wasn't she writing in a fury of creativity? Because she could feel his hands on her breasts and she wanted him. And it was still so special, this renewed passion, that she let it grow within her, treasuring it, loving the fact that she loved her husband. I could go to him, she thought, By now he's back in bed, and as long as we're awake. . . .

  But then her glance took in a sentence on the page in the typewriter, and as she read it the words rearranged themselves in her head. She rolled the paper back to retype them, and along the way she came across another sentence that hadn't seemed right all evening. But it's simple, she thought; why didn't I see how to do it before? And then a phrase came to her— Edward Ortega hangs onto his dreams the way a rock climber clings to a ledge —and she knew she had her opening sentence. She pulled her

  chair closer to the table. Dearest Matt, thank you, she said silently. And she began to type.

  "Private Affairs" appeared the following Thursday, spread across the bottom third of the Chieftain's front page. Since it was her first column, Elizabeth began with an explanation. "These will be portraits of people who aren't in the spotlight," she wrote. "People in rural towns and back roads, sparsely-settled valleys and crowded city neighborhoods. Some are poor, others are comfortable; some are beautiful, others plain; some are angry, others content. All have stories to tell, with as much drama as any book or movie—but almost always private, unseen by the world. When their stories are told here, if they wish to remain private, they'll be given a different name. But with their own name or a pseudonym, in 'Private Affairs' they will share their stories with all of us. 'Private Affairs' is all of us."

  Then the story began.

  Edward Ortega hangs onto his dreams the way a rock climber clings to a ledge. He's held on to them all his forty-eight years. Black-haired, black-browed, with eyes that puncture pretense, he creates a whirlwind of rapid speech, joyful laughter, roaring anger at injustice, and a dreamy storytelling that sounds like a chant as he describes his vision for the future of his people.

  As the article went on, in Elizabeth's words and his own, Edward Ortega grew as real and vivid as if he strode across the page. His home seemed real, too: a cluster of small houses almost lost in the vastness of the pink-gray-brown desert dotted with green; the curve of a highway between irregular fields of grazing and farm land, watered, in good years, by a twisting stream that came from the blue-gray mountains on the horizon. Elizabeth wove together Ortega's stories of the Indians' past and present, loves and legends, wars and feasts, and the Anglos and Spanish who surrounded the pueblo, attracting young people, making it harder for the older ones to keep a separate language and sacred ways.

  The next morning Elizabeth found on her desk a rare cactus plant with a spray of white flowers, and a card. "For the best writer and the best story the Chieftain ever had. Are we going to be famous!" And everyone had signed it.

  But it was only the beginning. That day three people called, one scolding Elizabeth for making an Indian some kind of hero, the others thanking her. "I never knew how they felt," one caller said. "You made me

  think maybe I ought to help them," said the other. And the next day the mail brought ten letters of praise and three saying if she loved Indians so much why didn't she go live with them?

  Matt was jubilant. "Thirteen letters!" he said at the Friday morning staff meeting. "From one column!"

  Jack Jarvis, the advertising and circulation manager, tapped his pencil on the desk. "And for every reader who takes the trouble to write, hundreds more have an opinion but don't write—and how many hundreds of others read the story, talk about it to their friends, begin to look for Elizabeth's column, maybe even buy the paper to find out what she writes next? Thirteen letters. Very impressive."

  "Print them," Wally said. "We've never had Letters to the Editor."

  "We'll run an ad for the column in the Features section," Jarvis went on.

  "Send copies to school teachers," Barney said. "They could use them in social studies. Learning about pueblos. Or learning how to write."

  Jarvis made a note. "Good idea; sell a few hundred more each week."

  Kirkpatrick inspected his cigar. "You have your work cut out for you," he told Elizabeth. "You won't always find controversial subjects that get so much attention."

  "You sour son of a bitch," Barney rumbled.

  Kirkpatrick barely glanced at him. "We all carry our weight around here. However, I congratulate you, Elizabeth. It was a well-done story. I hope you can keep it up."

  Elizabeth broke into laughter. "Thank you, Herb. I'll try not to get a swelled head from such lavish praise."

  "Don't pay any attention to him," Wally said heatedly. "He's jealous. So am I. Elizabeth, I wish I could write like you."

  "And I," Barney said quickly. It was the highest praise writers could give each other and Elizabeth felt again the flush of triumph that had come when she found the plant on her desk.

  "All right," said Matt. "We have the rest of the paper to do; let's go over the main stories for the week."

  They settled down, but there was a new excitement in the discussion. Because they had all been in the business long enough to know what it meant when readers began talking back to a newspaper. They were on their way.

  Peter and Holly were washing and drying dishes, comparing problems. "He criticized everything I sang," Holly said mournfully. "It was the worst lesson I ever had."

  "He was in a lousy mood," Peter suggested. "His wife's c
ooking gave him food poisoning. His mistress found somebody with a bigger, longer="

  "Peter!"

  "Well, something was wrong with him and it wasn't your singing. He usually tells you what a brilliant future you have. You'll see: next time he'll be back to normal. Or dead of food poisoning."

  She laughed. "Thanks. What did you do after school?"

  "Went to Nuevo."

  "Nuevo! We haven't been there for ages. How did you get there?"

  "Hitched a ride with Maya's father."

  "Maya?"

  Peter got very red and scrubbed a pot so vigorously that soapy water splashed on his shirt. "I've been going there. She's studying pottery-making with Isabel—you know, Mom's friend, or she was Mom's friend; she says she never sees Mom anymore. ..."

  "I've talked to her on the phone, when I've called Luz. If I'd known you went there I'd have gone along. Tell me about Maya; I hardly remember her."

  "She's little and beautiful and . . . fragile. And she listens a lot. And laughs at my jokes."

  "Smart," Holly said. "Well, I'm glad you finally got a girl. Too bad you couldn't find one at school, closer to home."

  Peter shook his head. "I like Nuevo. It makes me remember Grandpa."

  "I like it too. Could I go with you next time? I haven't seen Luz forever and I miss her. We were so close all those years when Grandpa was alive ... I wish Mother and Daddy weren't so busy."