Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! (11 page)

Sweat was now pouring off the doorman’s face.

“I’ll make it easier for you. We won’t even use your name. I’ll just say ‘an unidentified witness,’ OK? Will that make it easier for you?”

“You won’t use my name?”

“Give you my word on it.”

Sidney looked at his watch. “Look, pal, I’m not trying to rush you but I’m on deadline. I gotta run. Yes or no?”

The doorman made no move.

He pushed the money at him. “Here, take it! I’m not gonna let you blow this chance.” He slammed the money into the doorman’s hand. “Put it in your pocket, sign right here, I’m gone, you’re rich, nobody’s hurt.”

The doorman took the pen in a daze. “If you’re not gonna use my name, why do I have to sign?”

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it, just an in-house deal. It’s filed for legal reasons. Nobody ever sees it. You don’t have a thing to worry about. Trust me—I wouldn’t steer you wrong.”

As the doorman was signing, Sidney kept talking. “You’re gonna thank me for this. Believe me, working guys got to stick together, right? Right?”

As soon as the last
l
in O’Connell was written, Sidney grabbed the paper and ran. He called over his shoulder, “Thanks, pal, you won’t regret this.”

The doorman called, “Are you sure you won’t—”

But Sidney was out the door. When he reached the editor’s office, he handed over the signed paper.

“Here it is. But it wasn’t easy. That greedy mick held us up for twenty-five.”

The editor opened a drawer, and pulled out the cash. “If I find out there isn’t a doorman named O’Connell, you are dead meat, Sidney.”

Sidney looked indignant. “What, don’t you trust me? I could have held you up for three with a story like this. You think I would try and skim off you? You’re like a father to me.”

The editor waved him away. “Yeah, yeah, get out of here, you creep.”

Sidney laughed and walked out the door. He was too high to go to bed so he hit a bar or two and the sun was coming up just as he reached the hotel. The world looked swell to him today. He even noticed the flowers in the window boxes. Were they always there? By the time he reached his room he was tired and could finally get some real sleep.

Not more than three minutes after Capello had drifted off, fat stacks of newspapers were being tossed off the backs of trucks all over town. You could almost hear the front page shout up from the sidewalk. To a few readers, the families and friends of the two parties involved, the headline and photographs would seem as brutal and heartless as a man exposing himself to children on a playground. To others, strangers hurrying by on their way to work, it was just another of the morning’s entertainments, a slight jolt, an eye-opener, a sudden rush like a cup of good, strong coffee to help get the day started.

After Dena took the job at the local station in New York, she worked for three long years, smiling and nodding at the male cohost of the morning show with the bad wig, and interviewing authors of books about child rearing, interior decorating, and cooking, three subjects in which she had absolutely no interest. Finally, she landed what she wanted, and became cohostess of the network’s morning show. It had been an easy transition. Still, although it was network, she found herself sitting, smiling and nodding at another male cohost with another bad hairpiece and doing more or less the same sort of interviews as before.

It was the best job most women could expect at the time and most would have been satisfied. But she had her eye on the new, hourlong prime-time evening news show that her old boss, Ira Wallace, had created and was now producing. Just as Sandy had predicted, there was pressure on the network to use a woman. Soon Sandy talked the network into letting her do several interviews on the evening show. Although they were fluff pieces used in between hard news, she was good at it and she was meeting some interesting and important people.

And yet, after a year, she continued to be thought of as
nothing more than a pretty girl who could fill in and handle a few lightweight interviews. Wallace or any other producer was not ready to assign serious, hard-hitting, news-making interviews to any woman. She knew if she was going to ever get one, she would have to go out and get it herself.

She spent weeks searching, and then one day found her man. Everybody suspected that when Senator Orville Bosley switched political parties and became a Democrat, he was positioning himself for something big, maybe the vice presidency. The press were curious. Reporters had tried in vain to get to him, but he was, uncharacteristically, very discreet and not granting interviews. Ever since Woodward and Bernstein and the Watergate investigations had started, politicians were suddenly leery of reporters and started to turn down many interviews. Luckily for Dena, Bosley thought he was God’s gift to women. Dena thought him a complete and pompous ass, and right up her alley.

She found out he would be at a reception for newly elected Democratic senators and congressmen at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. That afternoon, she took the train to Washington and that night Dena timed her entrance for about an hour after it had started. She arrived alone, wearing a long black dress with a slit up the side. She knew her legs and her hair were her best features. The only jewelry she wore was a gold choker around her neck. She did not want to look like a senator’s wife and she didn’t.

Bosley was over in the corner of the room surrounded, as usual, by a group of men who all had on the same suit and tie. He looked to be puffed up with his usual macho self-importance and was holding forth on trade policy when he glanced up.

She stood in the doorway, long enough to stop conversation, then walked straight through the crowd toward Bosley. People stepped aside like the parting of the Red Sea and she did not stop until she was standing in front of him. Her hair was parted on one side and when she turned her head slightly as she spoke, it fell forward, enough to intrigue him. She looked him directly in the eyes, smiled, and said, “So, Senator, I hear you and I smoke the same brand of cigar.”

Three weeks later he was sitting across from her in the studio
with a microphone around his neck, preparing to give his first major interview since switching parties. Ira Wallace was impressed. The regular male anchors were furious Dena had been the one to rope him in and hoped she would fall flat on her Scandinavian face. But the viewing audience at home did not see all the eyes behind the scenes or know that up in the booth they were focused on her as if she were about to jump off a tall building. All the audience saw was this nice-looking young woman in a simple, neat red and black wool suit, with huge, clear blue eyes and a peaches-and-cream complexion, who seemed, when they began, as calm and composed as if she were in her own living room chatting with an old friend. She smiled at her guest and appeared to hang on every word he was saying. She looked sympathetic when he told her about growing up in the Depression and having to eat pancakes for an entire year. She read a quote from one of his grammar school teachers, saying, “Orville was always a leader, even as a boy. I knew he would do well.” They laughed over a photograph they flashed on the screen of little Orville in tattered overalls. After he was completely relaxed, she said with a smile, “Senator, people have said that even though you are a Democrat, your voting record is … actually, more like a conservative Republican’s. Don’t you feel it would be fair to inform your Democratic constituency that, while your party has changed, your position has remained the same?”

Bosley was caught off guard. He thought he would go on talking about his poor childhood and how he had worked his way through college picking cotton and digging ditches and he began to stutter.

“Well, uh … I think that charge is completely unfounded. Everybody who knows me and knows my voting record …”

Dena knew his record cold and she sat back and drew out his position, issue by issue. She was ready for him, carefully prepped by Ira’s team of researchers. When he had finished one, she proceeded to cite his every vote on that and eventually every issue he mentioned, chapter and verse, with the efficiency of a machine gun. The male interviewers’ hopes for her demise slowly faded. His voting record contradicted everything he had just said. She had busted him big time and she had done it in prime time on network television.

It had been a tightrope to walk. She had to look good, be
charming, have her facts ready, and yet make it seem as if they were almost a surprise to her as well. And she had done so in less than ten minutes.

After the director had called, “Off the air,” Dena had the feeling she had just scored a touchdown at the last minute.

As she was being escorted off the studio floor, being congratulated by a pleased Ira Wallace, and by Sandy, she glanced back at Bosley. It was only a second, but long enough to see his face. He sat there, completely devastated by what had just happened to him.

A week later when she read that after the interview Bosley probably would not get enough votes to be reelected, let alone make a vice-presidential candidate, a wave of guilt flooded over her. She realized what she had done and understood even more now just how powerful the medium she worked in was. But it was too late. She could not look back, not now; she had to keep moving forward. Ira had hinted that if she played her cards right, in a year or so she might be the first female to be offered a permanent spot on the show.

She was definitely on the way up. Yet there had been a price to pay for Bosley—and for her. His career was wrecked and she started to wake up in the middle of the night with terrible stomachaches.

Aunt Elner was a roly-poly farm woman, soft as a pillow, with the sweet smile of a child. Her hair was gray but her eyes and her smile were still young. And she always smelled like a wedding cake, an effect caused by the Cashmere Bouquet dusting powder and the Dorothy Gray hot-weather cologne she wore, even in the winter, and her whole house smelled sweet. She had never had children of her own but she loved them and they loved her. Every Easter she would cut a pattern of a big pair of bunny feet out of a piece of cardboard and make bunny prints out of her talcum powder as if the Easter Bunny had hopped through her front door all the way through the house and on out the back door. Children would come from all over the neighborhood and find the little Easter baskets she said that the Bunny had left for them.

It was 11:00
A.M
. and Norma was just thinking about what to fix for lunch when Aunt Elner called. “Is Macky there?”

“Yes. He’s out in the yard.”

“Tell him to come to the phone, will you, honey?”

“Do you want him to call you?”

“No, yell out there and tell him to come to the phone. I’ll hold on. I’ve got something important I need to ask him.”

“OK.”

Norma went to the back door and called to Macky, who was digging in the red-worm bed. “Macky, you have a phone call.”

“Who is it?”

“Aunt Elner.”

“Tell her I’ll call her in just a minute.”

“She wants you to come to the phone right now.”

“Find out what she wants.”

“Aunt Elner, he says to ask you what you need.”

“Well … I need to talk to him about something.”

“All right. Hold on. Macky, she needs to talk to you right now.”

“OK.” Macky got up and brushed the dirt off his hands. He came into the kitchen and headed for the phone. Norma stopped him before he reached it. “Macky, wash your hands. I don’t want worm germs on my phone!” He went to the kitchen sink.

“What does she want, do you know?”

“No, I don’t. But it sounds urgent.” Norma pulled a paper towel off her rack and handed it to him. “Here, use this.” He dried his hands and picked up the phone. “Hi, what’s up?”

Aunt Elner said, “Is Norma standing there?”

“Yes.”

“Well, don’t let on something is wrong, but I need you to come over here and look at what somebody put in my door and tell me what you think.”

“All right.”

“And look and see if there’s anything stuck in your front door and if there is, get it and don’t let Norma see it, she’s nervous enough as it is.”

“Okeydokey.”

Aunt Elner was standing on her front porch waiting for him when he came walking up. “Was there anything in your door?”

Macky shook his head. “Nope, not a thing.” And stepped over her cat, Sonny, who was lying on the sidewalk.

“Well, would you look what somebody put in mine? Take a look at this and tell me what you think about it.” She handed him a bright, strawberry-colored piece of paper with bold black print: