Any Place I Hang My Hat (36 page)

“Amy, Bob. Come down to my office.”

Dragging myself down that long corridor, I barely thought about the twenty-eight thousand dollars in still-outstanding student loans I would now be unable to pay, or the likelihood of winding up, at age almost-thirty, as a contributing editor to a political website hurtling headlong into bankruptcy. All I could imagine was John one day picking up a copy of In Depth, leafing through it, and noticing my name had fallen off the masthead. Would he think I’d quit? Or would he guess I was fired and say to himself What’s wrong with them to fire someone with her talent? Or, God, did I do the right thing! What a loser.

Happy Bob was on the phone as I walked in, but he made a shut-the-door motion with his index finger. Then, as he was wrapping it up, he jabbed the same finger downward to tell me to sit.

“Amy,” he said as he put down the receiver. Here it comes, I thought, the Maybe you’d be happier someplace else speech. “Why is it that whatever I ask from you, I always get an argument in return?”

Considering his question, I decided an argument might not be the best response. Sweat began to glaze my skin inside my polyester knockoff of an incredibly cool Calvin Klein white cotton shirt. I tried to recollect whether, in my usual rush to get out of the apartment, I’d forgotten deodorant. I sat silent so long I began to worry that Happy Bob would think my nonresponse was hostility. But I couldn’t think of what to reply that would make him back down, maybe even rethink me. Finally, independently of any consciousness on my part, my mind got disgusted with my inaction and began to speak.

“I think one of the reasons I became a writer was that it allowed me to edit myself,” I told him. “That’s not one of my natural abilities.” I noticed I’d interlaced my fingers. My hands looked like those of a child about to pray. I pulled them apart. Of their own volition, they fell onto my lap Grandma Lil-style, palms down and neatly arranged, the right covering and perpendicular to the left. “You know I grew up in a pretty rough part of the city?” Happy Bob nodded, probably wondering on what bumpy road I was going to take him. “It was not a neighborhood necessarily known for its reflective souls. Early on, I learned that taking time to think before talking was guaranteed to make me the loser of any argument. Even now, all these years later, my response to a challenge is to argue it away, not say, Hmmm, let me reflect before I speak.” I waited for him to say something about not being interested in excuses, but instead of speaking, he cleaned under the nails of his left hand with his right middle finger. “I know I can shoot from the hip. But I hope you realize that I recognize not just your experience, Bob, but your authority.”

He peered up from his personal grooming. “Really? You don’t act as if you do.”

“That recognition and respect doesn’t mean I’m not going to fight for my ideas.”

“Did you ever think,” he said slowly and a little too evenly, “that your verbal street-fighting skills are a bit too confrontational for In Depth?”

“I’m thinking it now.” He managed a small non-tooth-displaying smile. “Look, I wish I had a smoother style. I’d like to be able to wow you with wit or brilliant observations. It would be nice if I had some quirk, like wearing a monocle, that would make me a legend at the magazine: Oh, that Amy Lincoln is so deliciously eccentric.”

“How about a combination like good writing and noncombativeness?” he suggested.

I recognized I had an invitation to agree with him. That meant that within seconds, I had moved from the verge of unemployment to more stable ground that would not necessarily shift and throw me off the magazine. “How about good writing and an automatic ten-second time-out before I speak?”

He paused long enough to give my stomach time to churn a couple of times. “All right,” he said slowly. “We’ll try that. I don’t object to discussion, you understand.” He waited. So I nodded. He gave me such a broad smile that I was able to glimpse a new brown spot on his upper right canine. “In fact, I encourage discussions.”

“So can we discuss whether I can have two paragraphs on anti-Semitism rather than one?”

Happy Bob’s smile diminished only slightly as he said: “Two short paragraphs.”

In graduate school, my concentration was in magazines, mainly because I realized that anyone who took two hours to compose an opening sentence was probably not suited for work on a daily newspaper. So I surprised myself when I finished my article at four o’clock that same afternoon. I read it. I reread it. It seemed okay to me, but not wanting to ruffle a single one of Happy Bob’s feathers, I took it down the hall to Gloria Howard’s office. “I know you’re busy,” I said, “and I know I should go up the chain of command—”

“But you don’t want to,” Gloria observed. Except for the pencil stuck behind her ear, she was as perfectly groomed and ladylike as ever. She wore a dark blue skirt, a white blouse with a simple ruffle of the sort John Adams would have admired, and a blue and ivory herringbone jacket, the bones coming from teeny herrings.

“Could you give this a fast read and let me know if it’s coherent?”

For an instant, I thought I saw Gloria’s eyes darting back and forth, as in Trapped! That’s when I decided the only way she would allow herself to get stuck is if she was willing. “Have a seat,” she murmured, her eyes already whizzing down the first page. Although she was not the neat freak I was, with piles of paper obsessively straightened until all corners were aligned, she was orderly, with her department’s work separated into a rainbow of manila folders.

“It’s fine,” she said. “I like the anti-Semitic stuff. You know what I mean. I like what you’ve written about it. If I have any criticism, it would be to expand that part of it and drop something … probably the quote about America becoming a pariah among nations. That’s old.”

“Happy only allowed me two short paragraphs on the anti-Semitism. The reason I wanted you to check it is because I pushed him too far. He got so seriously pissed that I’m going to have to be simultaneously agreeable and serious for a couple of weeks. Maybe even a month. The thing is, I need to get out and do background for another story. So if you say this is okay, I’ll sneak out tomorrow morning and hand this in late afternoon. On the other hand, if you say it seriously sucks, I’ll keep working.”

“It doesn’t suck at all,” Gloria said. “Go and do … whatever it is you have to do.”

“You’re making it sound much more intriguing than it is,” I said, a little too perkily.

“I don’t think so,” she retorted. “Ten dollars says it’s something I hope to hear about someday. In any case, good luck tomorrow morning.”

If I got into the passenger seat of a car and saw that I was the driver, I’d get out and take the subway. Not that I’d ever had an accident. But I didn’t learn to drive until I was twenty-two, and that was only because I figured I’d need a license to rent a car for work. Until then, my attitude toward driving was similar to what my attitude toward sex had been when I was eleven: Doing it would make me crave more, and more again, and I’d wind up another scrawny hooker in thrall to the pimp of Avenue B, a guy with a diamond in his nose and a belt buckle that was a three-inch-high Knicks logo in brushed gold.

Getting a driver’s license had seemed equally perilous. Such temptation! Like my father, I would develop a passion for other people’s cars. On a holiday from boarding school, lured by a silver Porsche stopped at a red light, I would begin the sad spiral downward from scholarship student to compulsive carjacker.

Of course, I knew it wouldn’t be a Porsche that could set me off. Ever since I’d left the projects and discovered a level of luxury far beyond Nike sneakers, I’d been nervous that one day the barrier between me and criminality would collapse under the weight of my desires. I longed to be the casual owner of sumptuous goods. Oh yeah, right, the third drawer has my cashmere twinsets. I know the hoots feel like velvet, hut they’re actually suede, from the skins of aborted Turkistan calves. Those pillowcases trimmed in hand-crocheted lace? Aren’t they sweet? My great-grandmother—I think—sent them home from Brussels the summer she went on her grand tour.

I ached for luxury. Since heisting a couple of prime ribs for dinner didn’t appeal to me, I pictured myself keeping up the family tradition of thievery by stealing cars. Best to be ignorant of them. Nevertheless, once in journalism school, I recognized that in America, if not in New York City, adults drive cars. I learned the basic how-tos from some temporarily smitten guy in my magazine writing workshop, who took me home to his parents’ house in Tenafly, New Jersey, every weekend and gave me all sorts of lessons in his father’s Jeep Cherokee. A year and a half later, after Tatty and I spent a weekend in her Jaguar practicing three-point turns and parallel parking, I passed my test. Since the hottest car In Depth would spring for was a Dodge Neon, my propensity for felony was never tested.

The next morning, in a Chevy so gray it blended into the sky and the pavement, I drove to Long Island and parked on Main Street in Shorehaven. The Shorehaven Sentinel took up the first floor of a building that, according to the black-painted directory on the glass front door, was also home to Hudson Gaines, D.D.S., and Rosenthal-Lipsky Investments, Ltd. I realized a woman behind the counter at the Sentinel was giving me the eye, but for moments I just stood outside, reading the door, unable to make my hand open it.

I kept thinking how much better John would be at a gig like this. Most often, the people I spoke to for a living were people who wanted to get their points of view across to the public. As for any others, once they started talking, I had the strategic skills to get from them what I wanted to know. My charm, such as it was, had always been in presenting myself: likable, friendly, but not gabby, so people felt comfortable talking to me. John’s charm was in making people believe he was interested in them. That was because he actually was. When he’d volunteered to help me, I should have said, Go to the local newspaper in Shorehaven and find out whatever you can about Véronique and Ira Hochberg.

When I finally made it through the door, I spent a couple of minutes convincing a woman behind the counter, Ms. Nature Girl—no makeup, no bra, gray frizzy hair—that I wasn’t interested in placing an ad, despite the Sentinel’s low rates. I tried to get across the idea that I was deserving enough to get to see the editor-in-chief, Sandy Garfunkel. Ms. NG said she’d never heard of In Depth and Sandy probably hadn’t either.

Sandy Garfunkel, when at last I got to meet her, turned out to be a woman with respect both for In Depth and makeup. She didn’t look painted, but it was clear she knew which end of an eyeliner pencil was up. She was one of those small, thin-thighed, supertoned types who could be any age between thirty-five and fifty-five. Her office was as well taken care of as she was, all blue and white, like a design on an antique Chinese bowl. “I’m honored,” she told me, taking her seat in a tall striped chair behind her desk. “Unless In Depth is doing a story on the decline of the suburban weekly.”

“Not at all. I just used my being at In Depth as a door opener, although it would sadden our publisher to know how few doors it actually opens. I’m here doing due diligence for myself.” Generally, journalists are pretty quick at figuring out if someone is a straight shooter or a liar, so by the almost imperceptible nod of her head, I sensed Sandy had determined I passed the truth test. “I recently found out I’m related to a family in Shorehaven. I know I could probably knock on the door and say, Hi, I’m Amy Lincoln, but I figured a little background couldn’t hurt, just in case they’re the town psychotics. In journalism school, we were told that if you need a quick take on an area you’re not familiar with, talk to someone on the local paper.”

“Sure. Would you like coffee or something? There’s a Starbucks two blocks away and an independent coffeehouse across the street. I can send Nell, the one in front.” We both chose coffee with whole milk and Equal and agreed to split a muffin, so I felt we were virtually soul mates. “Who’s the family?” she asked.

“Véronique and Ira Hochberg. They have two sons.”

“Sure, sure, sure.” She had a line of small white animal figurines about two inches high, elephants, camels, and the like, and she spent a couple of seconds rearranging them in what I guess was supposed to be a circus parade. Since she glanced my way right after that, I smiled at their adorableness, although I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to be admiring them because they were cute, for their artistic worth, or for how expensive they were. “Ira owns a big lighting fixture store,” Sandy went on, “and he’s a pretty steady advertiser. If not for that, I wouldn’t know him. He’s not active in the community. As far as him being the town psychotic, I don’t think so. Let me be open with you and ask for … I guess you’d call it reciprocity. In exchange for the information, do I have your word that even if Ira turns out to be your long-lost father or whatever, you’ll keep everything I’m telling you under your hat?”

“Absolutely.”

“The best way I can describe him? He’s someone you don’t want to get stuck with at a cocktail party. Unless you play golf.” I shook my head. “That’s the only thing I’ve ever heard him talk about, other than business. A couple of years ago he called me to announce he’d been elected chairman of the rules committee at his golf club.”

“Front page,” I said.

“He thought so. He made it pretty clear that he viewed his appointment as a major accomplishment, if not actually front page. In a kind of half-kidding way, I offered to send over a photographer and get some shots of him on the putting green. Guess what?”

“He said yes and you ran it.”

“Right. So bottom line on Ira is that he’s a little full of himself, what with his wanting photo ops and talking endlessly about golf. But he doesn’t seem to be a bad guy. Just a boring guy.”

“And what about Véronique?” I asked.

“Is she French or something?” Sandy asked. I shrugged.

“She’s on a committee to bring back a small theater to Shorehaven that did a lot of Shakespeare. It closed a long time ago, late sixties. Besides the bandshell and the library, that was the town’s claim to culture.”