Good Riddance(44)

“Jesus! I’m not writing you a check.”

I took off my sunglasses to achieve more penetrating eye contact. “Did you want to follow that with a ‘but’?”

“But . . . I’ll consider a cost-of-living raise.”

“I’ll need it in writing,” I said, pointing to his phone. “Send me an email. Twenty percent raise okay?”

“Don’t be absurd. Five percent.”

“Don’t you be absurd.”

“Seven and a half percent.”

“Ten percent.” I dared him to guess what his Scrooge accountant was direct-depositing into my checking account every month, usually late. He didn’t know and, to his credit, looked surprised to hear what he was underpaying me. “Eight and a half percent, take it or leave it,” he said.

“That is bullshit. I could go public, you living in splendor, me in a garret. I’m going to be telling my story in a podcast soon. Make it ten and you won’t have to worry.”

“This is blackmail. In church, no less.”

“Not that again. How about ten percent till I get a full-time job? That way I get a cushion and you get to tell Julie you’re a new man, making amends. Win-win.”

“Don’t think you’re coming back next year asking for another raise. This is a one-off.”

“Ten percent?”

“Until a job comes through.”

What a good and distant deadline that was going to provide. “Deal,” I said.





21


The Reevaluation of Daphne



Geneva’s patron, her wealthy father, once again came through with enough money to get the podcast off the ground against my strenuous but fruitless objections. She proudly announced this on a formal visit to my apartment. Green-lit! She’d found a recording studio on Eighth Avenue willing to do one episode at a time with a real sound guy. She’d direct, and I’d be the first interview—a piece of news she delivered as if I’d be honored.

“Count me out,” I said.

I could see she’d come prepared for my lack of cooperation because her follow-up was “Fine. I’ll ask your father to kick it off.”

“Nice try. Do you even know his name, let alone how to contact him?”

“Tom.”

“Tom what?”

“Maritch, like you.”

“Well, you’re not going to reach him through me.”

“I can’t?” She raised her eyebrows.

As I was reviewing the possible ways she had of contacting him—Was his number listed? Would she stalk him on Facebook? Would the internet yield his address?—she said, “Your polite father sent me a thank-you note after he came for Thanksgiving. On paper. With a return address.”

Of course he would have. “Please don’t involve my father. This whole thing could be very painful.”

That might not have been the smartest approach. Painful? In a way that made good copy?

“I’m not ruling anyone out. You have to go first. Or do you want it to open with that valedictorian, the one who started the scholarship in honor of your mother? Didn’t she write him college recommendations?”

What did she know? Had her offensive questionnaire yielded some link to Armstrong? I had to say okay, I’d let her interview me about the yearbook, the literal, physical one. Don’t ask me questions about the people in it or about my mother’s comments next to the pictures. Okay? I’d do it as long as she promised not to involve my father or Peter—I caught myself—“what’s-his-name, the valedictorian.”

So I went to the Eighth Avenue studio, where Geneva was waiting, looking officious, trying to impress me with producerdom. Episode one, she instructed, would supply background; she wanted me to start with a physical description of my mother at her peak. She’d have her photo on the website— “What picture? What website?”

“Every podcast has a website so listeners can donate. The picture from the yearbook—don’t tell me you didn’t know they gave her portrait a whole page?”

I reminded her that it had been ages since I’d laid eyes on the damn thing. And what did she mean by donate?

“Money.”

“To the scholarship in her name?”

She checked her watch, tapped a pencil on the table between us, and reminded me that she was paying for one hour and didn’t want to run over.

A disembodied voice asked if we were ready. He wanted to do a sound check. Would I say my name and something else? I said flatly, “Daphne Maritch. I’m here against my will.”

“Ready,” he said. “And don’t forget, if you stumble, don’t sweat it. Just repeat it. I’ll edit it.”

Geneva told me that she’d recorded an introduction to the whole thing.

“Which I’d like to hear.”

“You will when it’s aired.” She scribbled on a notepad and slipped it toward me. The chip on your shoulder—good.

“Happy to oblige.”

Now in interview mode, she asked, “Your mother, June Winter. Can you tell us why this yearbook, this class, these graduates, meant so much to her that she devoted her life to them?”

“That’s not true. She devoted her life to her children and then, secondarily, to teaching.”