Chapter 6
Chapter Six
It was very early the following morning that Elena met Natalie at the newspaper offices and watched as the last of the newspapers were printed, folded, and tied up for delivery.
It might have been any other year, any other decade.
It had nothing to do with the internet, and that was a good thing.
Elena grabbed a still-warm paper off the stack and inhaled the delicious smell of ink, pointing at the feature Natalie had written for the front page—one about a scandal two towns away that included the mayor’s wife, fraud, and a basketball team.
Natalie had been working on it for the better part of three weeks and had been mystified when she’d learned that Carmen hadn’t remembered the existence of the article at all.
“But she read it,” Elena had told her. “Last night. And she loved it. I think she said, ‘Natalie is a true talent. You could learn a thing or two from her, Elena.’” Carmen hadn’t actually said that, but Elena wanted to make Natalie happy. That, and Elena really did respect Natalie’s work.
Natalie beamed, but her eyes stirred with questions. Elena hoped for a conversation with the doctor later today, one that illuminated her mother’s health plan and strategy.
But for now, she and Natalie had finished their first paper together. It was something to celebrate.
As the buttercream dawn spilled over the slanted snow on either side of the sidewalk, Natalie and Elena walked toward the local bakery, discussing interviews they planned to conduct and Christmas events that needed to be published.
“Carmen always said it was up to the Gazette to bring everyone out of their homes for Christmas. To build community, or remind people it exists outside of their homes,” Natalie said.
“I remember. She said the same thing to me when I ran off to be a war correspondent,” Elena said timidly. “She couldn’t understand why I’d throw myself into all that danger when there was so much community-building to do back here.”
“Oh, but you were so brave!” Natalie cried. “Your mother thought the same.”
Elena felt another stab of guilt. No matter how long she lived, she imagined she’d never overcome what she’d done.
But as they entered the bakery and inhaled the delicious, creamy, buttery smells, she let her guilt drift away, replaced by gluttony.
She and Natalie ordered enough pastries for themselves and the other Gazette journalists who’d agreed to return to work.
By the time they got back to the office, everyone was there, typing like crazy.
When they entered, the staff members stood to applaud Elena and Natalie.
“The newspaper is back up and running!” one of the men said.
“Carmen would be proud,” another said.
“We couldn’t have done it without Elena,” Natalie announced.
Elena blushed and thanked them before retreating to her mother’s office to phone her mother’s neighbor, the same one who’d called her that fateful Thanksgiving night.
It was up to Jemma to watch over Carmen in a way that didn’t make Carmen think she was being babied.
It was easier this way, because Jemma was Carmen’s equal.
As older female neighbors alone in their houses, they watched out for each other.
Jemma answered on the third ring and filled the receiver with laughter. In the background, Elena could hear her mother laughing, too.
“Sorry! Sorry. We got to laughing and gossiping,” Jemma said. “What do you need?”
Elena felt foolish for checking in like this. “How’s Mom?” she asked.
“Your mother is brilliant, as ever. I think this little time off is exactly what she needs,” Jemma said.
“That’s a lie!” Carmen cried, then burst into giggles again.
“You two are out of control.” Elena smiled and caught her reflection in the window. She looked straggly and fatigued—like most journalists, she knew.
“Let me talk to her,” Carmen ordered, and a moment later, she was on the phone. “Have you finished the article about the retirement facility’s Christmas pageant yet?” Her tone was no-nonsense and charged with anger.
Elena rolled her eyes. Her mother was the biggest control freak in the history of modern journalism, and that was saying something. “I have a few more things to finish this morning before I get to it.”
“You have to remember that Reggie is the one you interview for that, not Connie,” Carmen went on.
“Connie gets upset and gives bad answers and tells you you’re wasting your time, basically.
I learned it all the hard way. She’s a good worker, though.
Essential. Maybe you can include a photograph of her?
” Carmen took a breath. “Oh, and darling? A note I thought of is this. You need to bring more Christmas spirit to your articles. Do you know what I mean?”
Elena sat at the edge of her mother’s office chair and spun herself in a circle. “Christmas cheer, huh?”
“This is small-town stuff,” Carmen said. “People want to feel the heart behind the articles. They want to feel something. I know that’s different from your typical work. It’s harder, too.”
Elena found no way to argue with her mother. “I’ll try to show my heart on my sleeve, I suppose.” But she genuinely doubted she was capable.
“There are a few past Christmas features in the files on the right-hand side of my desk,” Carmen went on.
“After you give the retirement home a call, maybe you can read them over and get inspired. There’s nothing better than reading through some of the Millbrook greats who’ve published in our paper.
You know, your grandmother’s Christmas piece has long been my favorite.
So much heart. So much life. So much beauty. You should read that first.”
Elena was surprised. She couldn’t remember ever having read a Christmas piece from her Grandma Rosa. “Thanks for the tip, Mom,” she said, surprised at how delicate her voice sounded. “I’ll be home in a few hours. Any requests for dinner?”
But suddenly, her mother burst out laughing, and Jemma echoed it, and they hollered they had to go and scampered off.
Neither of them hung up the phone, so Elena hung up on her end and put her head in her hands.
Her mother was volatile and emotionally all over the place, but there was still so much of Elena who wanted to please her.
Before she forgot, she dialed the retirement home and asked to speak with Reggie, not Connie, as her mother had insisted.
But the woman at the front desk seemed not to understand.
“There’s nobody named Reggie or Connie here,” she said.
“I think there was a Reggie, like, ten years ago, but… Oh, you know what? He lives here now. Like, he’s a patient. Do you still want to interview him?”
Elena’s heart dropped. So often, her mother seemed to have every capacity, every intellectual ability. But sometimes, it seemed she’d left her intellectual abilities ten years in the past. She’d managed to bring her arrogance along with her, though. That was something.
That night, after Natalie, Elena, and the other journalists had sent their finished articles off to the printer, Elena said goodbye to everyone, grabbed the file of past Christmas features, and headed into the sparkling cold night.
The walk back to her mother’s place brought her past James Murphy’s house, and she paused outside for a moment, gazing at the glowing windows and wondering what he was up to.
That afternoon, she’d mentioned to Natalie that James had come over last night, and Natalie had sparked with interest.
“James Murphy? Is he close with your mother?” she’d asked.
“He said she helped him out a few times. That she was there for him?”
“Oh.” Natalie’s face had folded. “James lost a great deal a few years ago.”
Elena’s heart had spiked. Lost a great deal. But she’d told Natalie not to tell her. “I think we’re becoming friends, maybe,” she’d said of James. “I don’t want to betray him. I don’t want to know more than he wants me to know.”
Natalie had looked at Elena with surprise and said, “I respect that.”
Elena hadn’t been able to tell her the truth: that she’d been fighting for a way to earn respect from herself for years. She hadn’t anticipated she’d find it here, in Millbrook.
Now, Elena startled as James moved past his living room window, en route to the kitchen. What was he up to in there? He disappeared for a moment, a moment that demanded Elena realize how weird she was being, and she shuffled along, back to her mother’s place. Her breathing sputtered.
What was it about James Murphy?
The last time Elena had dated anyone was back in Syria.
At the time, Elena had been outrageously obsessed with her career, hardly ever dropping out of the world of her computer to live a life.
But one night, when she finished an article, she raised her head to see Timothy Linklater across the newsroom from her, closing his notebook and reaching for his bag.
She respected Timothy, respected his way with Syrian locals and other journalists.
He’d won an award last year for excellence in war correspondence.
He mostly kept to himself, which intrigued her. Who was that guy?
And then, he’d glanced her way and said, “You don’t want to grab a drink, do you?”
Next to the newsroom was a little kiosk, where they bought beers and sat in the shade to drink them.
Over the first beer, they exchanged the basics: where they were from (Elena, Millbrook; Timothy, Brooklyn).
By the second drink, they were talking about their respective current, fiery stories.
Timothy was writing about potential peace negotiations, and Elena was in the midst of interviewing three sources whom she suspected would help her break the biggest story of her career.
She told Timothy this, but in vague terms. She knew better than to betray her sources, especially so early on in her relationship with them.
That first night, Timothy told her things that she’d always yearned to hear from a man, especially a journalist. He told her he thought she was fearless, that he’d read her articles and experienced a sort of floating sensation as a result of her prose.
He told her that he’d never seen anyone better suited to war correspondence, save for himself.
It had seemed like they were a match made in heaven. Not that Syria was heaven. Not that war was heaven.
At the time, Elena had yearned to call her mother back in Millbrook and say, I met the one, Mom. I met him in the very place you said I didn’t belong. But at the time, her father had still been alive, and her mother had been angry but only passively so. She hadn’t called.
When Elena got back to her mother’s house this chilly night in late November, she found Carmen and Jemma stationed on the sofa in front of a film: When Harry Met Sally again.
Now that Elena was doing “journalism,” one article about Christmas after another, she didn’t feel so bad seeing Sally as a journalist on-screen.
“Elena used to love this movie,” Carmen announced to Jemma when Elena walked in. “Back in the day, her father grounded her from watching it for two weeks, and she somehow convinced the librarian at her high school to show it to her during her free period.”
Elena had forgotten that story. How could her mother remember it?
The rules of early-onset Alzheimer’s are strange and inconsistent, she thought, before asking her mother and Jemma what they wanted to eat.
They announced that Mexican was the only option, so Elena went into the kitchen to order tacos, quesadillas, nachos, and salsa.
When the food came, Elena, Carmen, and Jemma ate on the sofa together, watching as Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan argued on-screen.
Elena still had nearly every word memorized and had to hold herself back from speaking to them aloud.
When they were finished eating, she brought the leftovers into the kitchen and retired to her mother’s study—eager to get her mind around what her mother called “Christmas spirit.” If she was going to be a journalist for The Millbrook Gazette, she wanted to do it right.