Things We Didn't Say - By Kristina Riggle Page 0,6
have time to think about her now, so I turn my back to my desk, facing the center of the newsroom as I try to read between the lines of the press release and guess the announcement.
Still can’t think. Angel’s voice is in my head, telling me this morning something is “up” with Casey. Then she stared hard at me. I only caught a glimpse of her look, because I was watching the road, but I could feel her turned toward me for long moments. Can she detect the distance between Casey and me these days? If so, it’s not a stretch to imagine that she’d be glad of it.
Last weekend Mallory took the kids, and we’d planned to cook a nice dinner for ourselves at home—going out costs too much, but I told her I’d light candles in the dining room and put on music. The conversation kept circling back to the kids, and Casey turned prickly and defensive at my gentle suggestion she was taking it all too personally. And in the midst of it all, Mallory found reasons to call me three times.
I’d hoped to fall into bed with Casey right after dinner and stay there, only she got up to clear the table and filled the sink with hot water and washed every dish. By hand, ignoring the dishwasher.
Watching her do that, her face locked in a resigned grimace, a look I recognized as Casey fighting back tears, twin geysers of sadness and anger erupted in me. I grieved for our vanished affectionate companionship, and was simply pissed that she chose to wash the fucking dishes instead of coming to bed with me.
My e-mail dings, and I reflexively look. It’s a staffwide e-mail. Groans roll through the newsroom like a wave. Four o’clock staff meetings never bode well.
My cell phone goes off as I find the first blank page in a notebook, marking the spot with a paper clip. I scribble “Univ. press conf.” on the top line.
“Hello.”
“Michael, it’s your father.”
“I’m at work.”
“We’re having lunch today, are we not?”
I hadn’t even looked at my planner yet. “Oh, we are. Though I have a press conference to attend.”
“Surely you can manage to jot down some canned statements from a podium without too much strain.”
“I realize it’s not open-heart surgery,” I reply to Henry Turner, M.D., but he ignores my remark. “However, they might have an important announcement, there might be reaction, analysis . . .”
“Analysis,” he repeats, and I hear him huff through his gray mustache into the phone.
“I’ve gotta go. I’ll call you.”
I give up trying to make sense of the release and just take note of the location and parking.
Turning back to my screen, I decide to give last night’s story one more read-through, double-checking the quotes and the vote totals from the precincts. I can’t find it in the system at first, and I have a moment of queasy panic, thinking it vanished. Then I do find it, in a folder where I can’t open it. It’s already out of my hands, off to the copyeditors. Damn. Now I’ll be anxious all day that I couldn’t double-check. We never used to send the stories so early, but the copy desk is stretched so thin these days, they need more time. If I made a mistake on my late shift last night—I’m careful, but it’s always possible to screw up—now I can’t fix it, and it will be reprinted thousands of times, all over the city, with my byline.
There’s nothing I hate more than a mistake with my name on it.
I set my phone to vibrate and put it in my pocket. It goes off immediately, but I don’t even look. It’s probably Henning calling with some terrific quote for the election story, and now I can’t even use it.
I check my recorder for fresh batteries and head to my car to listen to some canned quotes from behind a podium.
The press conference is in the atrium of the administration building. They have arrayed many more chairs than necessary for just me, a radio reporter, a college kid in jeans and combat boots from the school paper, and a couple of TV cameras there sans reporters for the sound bite. I pick a seat close to the front, sharing nods with the handful of colleagues. I think I heard something on my way out of the office about a shooting at a nightclub last night, so that’s probably where the TV reporters are, doing stand-ups