Chapter 4 #2
Natalie was waiting for her at the front door.
She was maybe a little younger than Elena, with curly blond hair and a nervous smile.
When Elena got close enough, Natalie threw her arms around her and cried out, “I’m so sorry!
I’m so sorry! It’s so awful! I don’t know what to say.
” Elena felt sure that Natalie was her stand-in, as though her mother had decided Natalie was a better daughter figure than she was.
Elena felt a flare of jealousy, mixed with gratefulness that her mother had had someone like this to love and be loved by.
“Thanks for meeting me so soon,” Elena said.
Natalie wiped away a tear and unlocked the front door.
“Don’t mention it. I don’t have anything to do today!
It’s strange. I’ve worked seven-day weeks ever since coming to the Gazette.
And now? What should I do with myself?” She wrung her hands as they entered the newsroom, which was filled with fifteen desks.
It still had the old smell of ink and fresh paper.
“I went to see your mother earlier this afternoon. They told me you’d been in.
I couldn’t believe it! You came back!” She offered Elena a shy smile.
“Did she tell you how much she dislikes me?” Elena wrinkled her nose.
Natalie looked surprised, then beckoned Elena to follow her to Carmen’s office. She unlocked it to reveal an organized desk, framed awards, and a photograph of Elena receiving her journalism degree. In the frame, Elena was twenty-two years old and determined-looking, with thick, low eyebrows.
“She said you had the best instincts of anyone in the journalism world,” Natalie said, blushing. “I read some of your articles from early on in your career. I couldn’t believe it.”
All of a sudden, Elena felt crushed with grief. She’d been a natural. She’d had everything. Why had she let it all fall apart?
It was terrible to face this old photograph of her more prosperous self. What would that girl say if she learned that forty-two-year-old Elena was writing terrible freelance articles, living in Queens, and flat broke?
Natalie’s voice wavered as she asked, “Are you going to help me?”
Drawn from her reverie, Elena yanked around to look at her. “Help you with what?”
“I thought that’s why you called,” Natalie said. “Don’t you want to help me get the paper going again? You must know how close we are to being flat broke. I don’t know if we’ll withstand any time off. And I don’t know how we’d refund people expecting the paper for all of December.”
“Oh.” Elena let her shoulders slump forward. So, it was really that dire. She’d held out a private hope that it wasn’t so bad.
Natalie looked disappointed. “I guess I misunderstood?”
“I mean, yeah. I guess.” Elena left her mother’s office, feeling her twenty-two-year-old eyes on her back until she turned the corner.
“I guess you have bigger assignments to write?” Natalie suggested, closing Carmen’s door and following her back into the greater newsroom. “Are you still working for CNN?”
Elena shook her head.
“Ah. You went freelance?” Natalie asked.
“Yes.” It wasn’t a lie, at least. Elena crossed and uncrossed her arms. They stood in the center of the desks in a sort of face-off. “Natalie, I need to ask you. Did you notice anything wrong with my mother over the past few months?”
Natalie’s eyes glinted. For a little while, she seemed to consider what to say, as though she wanted to tread lightly.
“I need the truth,” Elena said. “You don’t have to worry about hurting anyone.”
Natalie wrapped one hand around the other wrist. “She was having trouble keeping track of things, I guess. Little things. But everyone gets mixed up sometimes.”
Elena sighed.
“And I guess I had to sometimes—sometimes! —rewrite a few of her articles. But it wasn’t bad. I mean, she’s taught me so much, so I didn’t mind stepping in when she needed it.”
“Did you hide it from her?” Elena asked gently.
Natalie’s cheeks were pink, as though she’d been caught doing something wrong. “Like I said, I didn’t mind doing it.”
Elena sat in a swiveling office chair and let it twirl. She felt sad. “They’re going to test her for Alzheimer’s,” she said.
Natalie collapsed in a chair opposite and stared at her knees. “Goodness.”
For a little while, neither of them spoke.
“You know,” Natalie began tentatively, “I don’t speak to my mother either.”
Elena was surprised to hear this. Natalie seemed so wholesome, so eager to please.
“She’s incredibly religious,” Natalie went on.
“She doesn’t believe that women should work.
When I got this job at the paper and broke off my engagement, she told me that I was wasting my life, the life God had given me.
I felt so ashamed and so sad, but I went to work anyway.
I stopped calling her, and she stopped calling me. ”
Elena felt compassion sweep through her. “That’s tremendously unfair.”
Natalie wiped a tear from her cheek and glanced up. “Carmen never told me why you stopped speaking. In fact, she never said you weren’t, but I put it together.”
Elena nodded gravely. “I wasn’t sure we’d ever see each other again.”
“That would have been a tragedy,” Natalie said.
Elena didn’t know what to say. For a second, she gazed out across the news desks, at the pens and pads of paper, at computers waiting for their journalists to return.
She felt a profound ache, remembering that newsrooms had once been her favorite environment, the place where she felt the most at home—even as far away as Syria.
She remembered how powerful the air-conditioning had been in the Syrian newsroom, how the sun had felt like it was baking you the second you stepped outside.
Had she thought that she’d live and work in Syria for the rest of her days? Yes, she realized. When Carmen had stopped speaking to her, when she’d felt no other avenue toward home, she’d assumed being a war correspondent was all she needed.
Now, she was here, back at The Millbrook Gazette.
“Natalie? I have to head back up to the hospital before visiting hours are through,” Elena said. “But would you like to get a drink maybe tonight?”
Natalie looked both overjoyed and confused. “Of course,” she said. “I’m sure you have many questions about your mother.”
“I do,” Elena said. “But it’s more than that.”
She was beginning to think Natalie was right. They needed to start publishing again. They couldn’t let The Millbrook Gazette falter for more than a couple of days. It was as good as dissing her mother’s life’s work. It wouldn’t be right.