The Last of the Stanfields(22)
“Are you two going to argue?” Michel asked.
“No, not today,” Maggie assured him.
“I’ll tell you one thing that fascinates me about you two,” Michel began, while dabbing the corners of his mouth carefully with a napkin. “Most of the time, what you say makes no sense. Yet, you seem to understand each other better than most of the people I’ve observed, at least when you’re not fighting. If that’s what it means to be ‘close,’ then yes, I suppose we are. I hope that answers your question, Elby. Your real question.”
“I’d say it does, love. And if you happen to need any advice, you know . . . girl stuff? I’m right here for you, anytime.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you, Elby. Even though you’re not ‘right here’ very often, you can always come back, unlike Mum. Which is very reassuring.”
“This time, I’ll be right here for a while. At least, I think.”
“Until your magazine sends you to study giraffes in a faraway land? How is it that you care more about people you don’t even know than about your own family?”
If anyone else on earth aside from my brother had asked that question, I might have been able to give an honest answer. At the beginning, I set off to see the world, scouring the globe in search of hope, something I was sorely lacking at the age of twenty. I wanted to break away from a life that was mapped out in advance. I was desperate to avoid being boxed in to the type of life my mother had led, the same sort of path that Maggie seemed to have no qualms about pursuing. I had to leave my family to learn to love them again. Because in spite of all the love around me, I found suburban life to be suffocating and unbearable.
“I was just fascinated by all the diversity in the world,” I replied. “I left to try to learn more about all the things that make people different from each other. Does that make sense?”
“No. Not very logical, I must say. After all, I myself am different from the others. And yet, that wasn’t enough for you.”
“You’re not different, Michel. We’re twins, and you’re the person I feel closest to in the whole wide world.”
“You know . . . if I’m intruding, just let me know,” Maggie said, rolling her eyes.
Michel studied each of us in turn. He took a deep breath and laid his hands on the table, ready to get something off his chest, a secret that had been weighing heavily on him.
“I do feel . . . close to Vera,” he whispered, short of breath.
11
THE INDEPENDENT
June to September 1980, Baltimore
Ever since that drunken night at the end of spring, May and Sally-Anne had devoted every waking hour to the newspaper, body and soul. They spent the entire summer working on the project, with the exception of one short Sunday at the beach.
First, a great paper had to have a great name. May took the first stab, drawing inspiration from Robert Stack’s portrayal of Eliot Ness in old reruns of The Untouchables. Even though it was a bit dated, the show still ran late at night on ABC. At first, Sally-Anne thought May’s idea was a joke. Not only was the name pretentious, but she could already hear the lewd jokes some men would make. A newspaper run by women could never be called The Untouchables.
Sally-Anne found an abandoned warehouse on the docks that she planned to transform into the paper’s newsroom, and got Keith to help with the renovation. On a particularly hot July afternoon, Sally-Anne stood admiring their muscled friend’s physique as he lent them a hand with the work.
Sally-Anne had declared that all the warehouse really needed was a new coat of paint. Keith took the time for a thorough walk-through and found she had vastly underestimated the scope of the work. What was more, they had an absurdly small budget for the project. This was all the more absurd, Keith observed, considering that Sally-Anne’s family wasn’t exactly strapped for cash.
What Keith didn’t know was that behind the facade of carefree temptress, Sally-Anne lived by an unshakably strong moral code. As far back as she could remember, long before her teenage years, she had known she was different from her family, as illustrated in a tale she recounted to Keith and May.
Sally-Anne had once told her teacher that she had so little in common with her father, and even less with her mother, that she sometimes wondered if she had been switched at birth. Her observation was rewarded with a long lecture, in which the teacher berated the brazen young lady for being so judgmental of parents who were models of success. Sally-Anne thought the only success anyone could credit her parents with was managing to cling to their inheritance, compromising their principles and telling unforgivable lies in the process.
Suddenly, it clicked. Keith’s offhand remark had triggered an idea, a common ground that both women could wholeheartedly unite on: they didn’t owe anyone a single thing. Thus, the name the Independent seemed to be a perfect fit for the paper.
“Well, lovely as that sounds, without any resources, this is going to be one mammoth undertaking,” Keith exclaimed. “The window frames are all eaten through with salt. The hardwood floor is such a mess you can actually fit your whole hand between the planks! I’m not sure even Superman could get that boiler up and running, and this shit-hole hasn’t had electricity in ages.”
“There are only two types of men in this world,” Sally-Anne replied with a chiding smile. “Men with problems and men with solutions.”