don’t give me credit for being an adult,” Laila went on in a nicer voice. “I’m gonna work in a construction project in Lagunas, a village in San Marcos. And I’ve applied for a USIA grant to photograph the indigenous peoples for a show.”
Struggling for calm: “But why not finish college first—”
“Arghh, why must you boss everyone’s life?”
Sighing, Maddy rose, catching her image, haggard but svelte, in the night bay window. Well, the mother-daughter thing was famously toxic; she’d heard her friends griping about the resident bitch on wheels; she’d just been lucky till now. Suddenly she wondered if Nick found her bossy, too. And was she obnoxiously overscheduled, like those women who, Sophie joked, penciled in orgasms?
“You gotta trust me, I know what I’m doing,” Laila said enigmatically. Then her pale eyes glittered and she was close beside Maddy, hugging her, yet Maddy hung back, hands against Laila’s scary ribs. “I love you,” Laila said.
She felt this taut little body. Laila once smelled of unfinished wood from her bunk bed; now she smelled womanly and complicated. Okay, probably Laila had never forgiven her for Nick—that’s what was going on; with Marshall, Laila knew who came first. No matter that she’d bought her the Nikon F5 and created the darkroom on the third floor—Laila felt bought off. You did your best, and it wasn’t good enough. That seemed to be the deal.
She pulled Laila onto the window seat beside her. “Lou, let’s go away for a week, just the two of us. In September, for your birthday.” She’d shave some days off the trip to Ireland, even if Nick already groused it was too short. “We could go hiking in the Rockies. Remember that climb to Cathedral and coming down for lunch at the Pine Creek Cookhouse? I’ve never been so happy.” A girl’s happiness, gamboling and free, needing no tending like adult passion.
Laila flashed her lovely smile. “Remember those dogues?”—one of their invented words, which also included goofy love-names. “The ones wearing backpacks?”
“And the llamas? And the way the breeze flicks the silver underside of the aspens?”
Laila’s eyes clouded; she shifted away. “At this resort in the Caribbean they give the guests a choice of nine friggin’ pillows. And in Juárez the pepenadores forage for food in dumps and compete with dogs.”
That she could follow Laila’s logic didn’t help. Their connection crackled like a wire ready to short out. “So you won’t ever go anywhere nice?”
“I’ll go where I’m needed. I can have my goddamn birthday at the Point.” She jumped up, eyes darting around the room. “I’m outta here.”
Almost midnight, and she was leaving to meet Jed at that dive off Hudson where they’d just shot a dealer. Maddy stood in the middle of her lovely room, hands hanging. Well, here it was, delayed adolescence kicking in, plus a shitload of anger, and somewhere in the mix—Maddy tried to stifle that thought—a hint of hereditary damage?
Her fine reasons failed to satisfy. Something in her world felt out of joint. That bomb Nick had dropped about a baby. She was suddenly convinced he’d never mentioned any Nessa Trent-Jones before that evening in Nohant.
At the door Laila hesitated; turned and looked at Maddy. “I’m sorry. For everything.”
“What everything. What is going on here!”—but she’d vanished down the stairwell.
STRAIGHT OFF THE ELEVATOR, she saw the huddle like the folded wings of buzzards.
“Wait’ll you hear what happened while you were tripping through the poppies,” Sam said. White-lipped smile. “Charlie Unger’s out.”
Oh, shit, her dream of a boss. She’d caught the early rumblings of course, but in France managed to put all vexing thoughts on hold.
“Bern Conant’s our new executive producer.” Sam rolled his eyes at Maddy: Tried to warn you . . .
“Bern Conant, Lord help us.” Remembering last night’s cryptic message on her machine. Conant was the new breed of broadcast exec as high school dropout, postliterate, mesmerized by ratings. She leaned a shoulder against the cinder-block wall, feeling its texture of petrified cottage cheese through her blazer.
“Guess they’re grooming the local yokel for bigger things,” Sam said. “Welcome back, darlin’! Let’s hope our boy’s not dumb enough to monkey with your segment.” He steered her down the hall. “While you were away, Video Kitten badgered the powers to let her narrate a story on Hootie and the Blowfish. And in the rough cut of your Domna Scotti, she went with the least flattering shots. Watch your back.”
WELCOME BACK, INDEED. Maddy took refuge in her office, a bright, ordered place hung with photos: she and Byron Janis and other music luminaries; Laila and Nick on the beach; a treasured Laila painting from second grade of a mother and baby shark, “from your one and only daughter” . . . Jesus, Bern Conant. Station manager from local, dubbed by the industry “Conan the Barbarian.” He’d been associate producer on the morning news, and now, it appeared, the powers had judged him ready for his own show. Chronicle would beef up his bona fides before they handed him the evening news. Conan was known for looking at a story and taking out the best part. And when Martha Graham died, he’d assigned a piece on Martha Raye, the dentures queen. If they wanted to boost ratings by going tabzine, they’d found their man.
Heart leaden, she backhanded pitches and press kits into the trash. From one flyer leapt the name Anton Bers. God, they’d practically grown up together at Juilliard, she and Tony Bers. He’d been a prodigy and goofball who scorned scales and “practiced” by ripping through his favorite composers. Tony went on to win the Leventritt and join the exclusive preserve of pianists touring the world’s capitals—then, like many a gold medalist before him, tumbled from the heights. Injured his right hand, went the story; performed left-hand repertory for a while. Now the wunderkind had washed up in Monmouth, New Jersey, playing chamber music in the local Episcopal church. She sighed, engulfed by a world of regret.
Anton’s covering letter pitched a story about the current explosion of chamber groups. “Let’s talk soon.” She pictured the caption in a recent cartoon in the New Yorker: How’s never. Would never work for you?
Now, none of that . . . You needed a gauze mask to avoid catching the arrogance that was epidemic among New York’s players. And self-importance: marketing chlorophyll toothpaste for Procter & Gamble held the gravitas of religion. What she ought to do was invite Anton, for old times, to Conscience Point for a session of four-hands. And then they’d brainstorm how to spin his story idea. Of course now, under the new regime, she might be less of a player.
She’d somehow felt immune to the seismic shocks rocking broadcasting; eleven years on the show, she’d become a fixture; everyone was expendable, of course, but she perhaps less than others? She gave good value, Nick was right: concert pianist with an inside track on the arts who could write—plus poster girl for graceful aging with a devoted female following. Charlie rarely vetoed her ideas. He offered her TV’s most precious commodity: minutes. He’d become a lone holdout against the prevailing dumbing-down, going for think pieces and arts coverage for the literate. He’d made Sunday Chronicle the class act of network television, the cultural companion to 60 Minutes. And now? In one moment the palace Charlie had built could blow off like a heap of silt.
The world around her was growing curiouser by the minute. Maybe this the true onset of middle age, this loss of control
