The Alpine Advocate (6 page)

Obviously, the antipathy was mutual. I marveled that Margaret Doukas Ramirez had maintained any contact at all with her father. No wonder she got a case of the glums whenever she heard from him. Still, my conscience was needling me. I decided to put Neeny on the alert. It was the least I could do.

“Chris has a chip on his shoulder, I’ll say that. He was very fond of his mother.” I spoke carefully, hoping Neeny wasn’t in one of his purposely obtuse moods.

“Kids should like their mothers,” he said with a grunt. “How old is he? Twenty? They all got chips on their shoulders at that age. Don’t worry. He’ll get it knocked off soon enough.” He paused, and I heard a sound in the background. “Listen, Emma, I got company. Let me see what you’re gonna do to fix up your dumb-assed story.”

Ordinarily, I never clear copy with anyone, but I decided it wouldn’t hurt to make an exception. “I’ll do it right now and read it to you over the phone later, okay?”

“Huh?” Neeny was obviously distracted. “Yeah, sure, fine. Goodbye.”

Before he hung up, I heard a female voice in the distance. I was almost sure it belonged to Phoebe Pratt.

Ed Bronsky was about to go home to his long-suffering wife and hyperactive children. “Another day, another half-dollar,” he said, putting on his wrinkled raincoat. “I haven’t had a raise on this job in three years.”

I gave him my brightest smile. “If we took in more money, we could pay more. It’s that simple, Ed. Why not bring in some new accounts?” Instead of losing our old ones, you dumbbell, I thought in secret annoyance.

Ed was searching in his pockets for his driving gloves. He didn’t find them. He never did. Frankly I didn’t think he owned a pair. “Now who would I get? A lot of the stores at the mall would rather advertise in the shopper that comes out of Monroe. Those other new places are too far out of town. Some of these merchants want to do inserts, and stuff
The Advocate
full of four-color tripe that just falls out on the sidewalk.” He gave a forsaken shake of his head. “You wouldn’t believe what advertisers can come up with.”

I could, and wished I had the nerve to get rid of Ed and hire an ad manager who shared my imagination. Like Ginny Burmeister. But I was too good-hearted—and weak-willed—to fire Ed Bronsky. “What about Driggers Funeral Home?” I asked, hoping for the best but fearing the worst.

Ed was shuffling toward the door. “I talked them out of running that weekly ad. Once a month—that’ll hold them.” He tugged at the doorknob, which needed fixing. “Heck, it’s the only funeral home in thirty miles. Besides, nobody has died here since July.”

It was funny that Ed should mention that. No, it wasn’t funny at all. Within twenty-four hours, it would be quite sad.

W
ITHOUT
C
HRIS COMING
to dinner, I wasn’t inclined to fry up a batch of chicken. I hate cooking for myself, though I’m fairly competent around a stove. I left the office at six, heading for the Venison Eat Inn and Take Out. Except for a new French restaurant ten miles down the highway, the inn had the best kitchen in the vicinity. I often ate alone, which I usually preferred. I brought the printout of
The Advocate’s
financial statement. The conversation with Ed had goaded me into a serious analysis.

Unfortunately, I’m not very good at managing money. In the eighteen years I worked for
The Oregonian
, I succeeded in saving a grand total of $2,146.85. It was just enough to send Adam off to his first semester at the University of Hawaii.

I ordered the broiled halibut cheeks and rechecked the columns of figures. The good news was that the holiday season was upon us; the bad news was that Ed would probably try to cancel Christmas.

Over my green salad, I considered my personal finances. Out of Don’s $500,000, less taxes, I’d spent $200,000 on
The Advocate
and $30,000 for the used Jaguar. I’d sold my two-bedroom house in Portland for $145,000 and paid just under $100,000 for the stone and log cabin in Alpine. I’d paid off all my debts and still had a small nest egg. I certainly didn’t want to use it to keep
The Advocate
alive. Capitalism wasn’t supposed to work that way. But if Marius Vandeventer had updated his technology, he’d let the building run down. In heavy rain, the
roof leaked. When the snow piled up, ice covered the inside of the windows. The floorboards in my office creaked ominously. The exterior and interior were badly in need of paint. I figured I was looking at an outlay of at least $25,000. Given our current hand-to-mouth existence, renovation wasn’t feasible.

The halibut arrived, snow-white and tender, with just a dusting of charcoal on top. Should I pony up that twenty-five grand? Once I got Adam through school, he’d be on his own. Maybe. I knew a lot of parents who’d congratulated themselves at commencement and four years later were still providing free room and board. Or worse yet, had found their children on the doorstep with
their
children.

I layered my baked potato with butter, sour cream, chives, and bacon bits. Luckily, gaining weight isn’t a problem for me. I have too much nervous energy, and I tend to burn off calories. It’s a good thing, because I consider physical exercise a deplorable waste of time. I could be eating instead.

The
Advocate’s
spread sheets depressed me. Chris Ramirez’s hostility depressed me. Gibb Frazier’s comment about the increase in postal rates depressed me. Ed Bronksy’s negativism depressed me. Carla Steinmetz’s careless journalism depressed me. I should have ordered a drink. Instead, I ate like a pig and watched my fellow diners, which depressed me even more.

There was Dr. Starr’s dental hygienist again, holding hands with her boyfriend. There was Harvey and Darlene Adcock, looking devoted after thirty years of marriage. There were the newlyweds whose wedding Vida had just written up. Two other couples I didn’t know sat at tables across the room.

Couples. The world was geared to pairs, not singles. I cup up my potato skin and ate that, too. I’d never really been part of a couple. I’d been engaged. I’d borne a child. In the past twenty years, I’d had two more lovers and another
fiancé. I wasn’t given to casual romance. I never loved anybody but Tom Cavanaugh.

I met Tom when I was an intern on
The Seattle Times
and he was working the copy desk. I was twenty, he was twenty-seven, and we fell for each other like a ton of bricks. My plans to marry Don Cummings after we graduated from college evaporated. Tom talked about leaving his wife of five years. We were wildly, briefly happy. Then I got pregnant. So did Tom’s wife. He made a heart-wrenching choice and stayed with Sandra.

I went to Mississippi to have my baby. My brother, Ben, had received his first assignment as a priest in the home missions along the delta. A capable black midwife with a seamless contralto voice delivered Adam, and the two of us struck out on our own.

My parents had been killed in a car accident coming from Ben’s ordination the previous summer. I finished my degree at the University of Oregon, instead of at Washington, and took a job on
The Oregonian
. I’d stayed there until a year and a half ago when I inherited Don’s insurance money and realized I could fulfill my seemingly impossible dream of owning a weekly newspaper.

I’d stopped dreaming about being half of a couple a long time ago. My last romance was with a twice-divorced professor of philosophy from Reed College who was brilliant, charming, and so claustrophobic that he wouldn’t even go to the movies. We went on so many picnics that I developed a phobia of my own—to potato salad. We split up in January of 1987 after I caught pneumonia from eating lunch in a hailstorm.

My depression lifted with the presentation of the dessert menu. Either I am very shallow or I have great resilience. Whichever it may be, cheesecake restores me. I was polishing off the last bite when Eeeny Moroni came into the restaurant.

“Emma,
mio cor!”
Not wanting to show favoritism, he gave the hostess a slap on the backside before gliding up to my table. Eeeny Moroni was light on his feet for an
older man and reputed to be the best dancer in Alpine, though Vida insisted it was only because he’d taken professional lessons in his youth. “I thought you had a date with a younger man,” said Eeeny, sitting down in the vacant chair opposite me. “Was that Chris Ramirez I saw outside of the Burger Barn with Simon?”

“Probably. Dark, not quite six feet, denim jacket, and baseball cap?” Given Eeeny’s lousy eyesight, I marveled that he could tell Chris from Vida. Except, of course, that Vida would have worn the baseball cap backward.

“That was him.” Eeeny nodded. “I kept my distance. They seemed deep in conversation. So where’s the kid now?”

“He’s safe in the bosom of his family,” I said as Eeeny stared unabashedly at my bosom. “Simon and Cece asked him to dinner.”

Eeeny scowled. “Simon’s going to make Neeny mad.” He paused, accepting a menu from the waitress and offering her his body. She laughed mechanically and recommended the Idaho trout. Eeeny adjusted his thick glasses and squinted at the entrées. “That Chris is just going to cause trouble, Emma,” he continued, back to serious matters. “It was bad with Hector, for the whole Doukas tribe. It almost broke Hazel’s heart. I can’t tell you how many times she tried to go to Hawaii to see Margaret and that kid.”

“Why didn’t she do it?”

Eeeny looked at me as if I were dense. “Neeny wouldn’t let her. That’s why.”

“Hazel Doukas must have been a wimp,” I declared, trying in vain to imagine my own independent-minded mother knuckling under to my father in similar circumstances. Then I remembered the concessions I’d made to Neeny that very afternoon and gave Hazel a little mental slack.

Eeeny Moroni ordered cracked crab and a half bottle of Chardonnay. I excused myself, recalling that after a few
drinks Eeeny’s amorous words could turn into lecherous deeds. I’m not much of a flirt.

I got home just after seven, still stewing over
The Advocate’s
finances. The wind was up, making the stately evergreens sway and rattling the lid on my garbage can. I changed clothes, looked through
The Seattle Times
, heard somebody’s dog howl at the brewing storm, and winced as the electricity flickered several times. I needed some business advice, so I called Dave Grogan, the newspaper broker who had handled the deal between Marius and me. He lived about a hundred miles away, in a small town not far from the ocean. After listening patiently to my tale of woe, he advised caution.

“You aren’t going broke yet, Emma,” he noted in his kindly voice. “Your repairs can wait. Take a look at those ledgers in January. Even Ed can’t wipe out the Christmas spirit single-handedly.”

“He’ll probably try, though,” I said, sounding almost as gloomy as Ed.

Dave Grogan, who knew virtually every small daily and weekly newspaper in western Washington inside and out, chuckled. “Have you ever considered that Ed may be using reverse psychology?”

“No,” I said bluntly. “And if he is, I don’t think it’s working.” I sighed. “I’m probably overreacting. But I want to make a go of this so much.”

Dave paused, and I could hear the shuffling of papers over the miles. “You’ve got several options, Emma. One thing you might mull over is a partnership.”

“No.” I was emphatic. “The big attraction for me—or at least part of it—is being my own boss. I’m awfully independent, Dave.”

“I don’t mean an editor-publisher relationship per se,” Dave said in his mild manner. “I’m talking about the kind of setup where a—I guess you could say silent partner—has a financial interest in the paper but no hands-on control. I’ve got a couple of people looking for that sort of a deal right now. They want an investment, but they don’t
want to get actively involved in the operation or else they don’t want to live in a small town.”

I frowned into the receiver. “What’s the payoff?”

“For them? Money. That type of person is usually willing to sink a pretty good-sized amount of cash into expansion. Generally, they’re interested in suburban weeklies, where the growth potential is obvious. But once in awhile you find someone who’s a bit more adventuresome. Or farsighted.”

I hesitated. “It’s a thought.” My ears caught the sound of a car outside. “I’ll take your advice and hang tight until after the first of the year. If conditions look grim, maybe you can find me a pigeon.” The car drove off; no one came to my door. A false alarm, I decided, figuring it was too early for Chris to come back anyway.

“I’ve got one right now,” Dave said, accompanied by the sound of more paper shifting. “He’s an old newspaper hand whose wife came into a lot of money a few years ago. He’s bought into three weeklies in eastern Washington, four in Montana, one in Idaho, and has a deal in the making up in British Columbia.”

I was impressed. “Who is this moneybags?”

At the other end, Dave’s wife was calling to him. “What?” he said, momentarily distracted. “Oh, he used to work for
The Times
, ’way back. His name’s Tom Cavanaugh.”

By midnight, I was ready to give up waiting for Chris. Maybe he’d changed his mind and decided to stay with his relatives after all. It wouldn’t be unusual for a kid that age not to call. Adam had always thought my rules about checking in with old Mom were arcane—and weird.

Besides, I was beat. It had been a busy, exceptionally long day. I marveled that I’d kept awake all evening, and figured I probably would have nodded off hours ago if it hadn’t been for the jolt from Dave Grogan.

All I knew about Tom Cavanaugh was that he’d stayed on at
The Times
for another five years, had a second child
with Sandra, and then moved to Los Angeles. After that, his history was a blank—except for a chance remark three years ago at a Sigma Delta Chi Journalism Awards banquet when a retired city editor had mentioned Tom’s name, and added, “Poor guy.” I pretended I didn’t care and failed to ask for amplification. Of course I’d kicked myself ever since.

But
poor
apparently didn’t describe Tom’s financial state. I recalled that Sandra Cavanaugh came from a wealthy Bay Area family, and it would follow that she would end up rich in the wake of her parents’ demise. So would Tom, since it appeared the couple had remained together. Good for them, I reflected grimly. I hoped Sandra had turned out to be every bit of the ditz she seemed to be. My better nature doesn’t always win.