Winter Solstice (Winter #4)(42)
Margaret turns to see Ava and Potter enter the greenroom. Behind Ava is a young woman Margaret is sure she doesn’t know, and behind the young woman is… well, for a second Margaret’s heart stops.
It’s… it’s… Kelley. No, it can’t be. But it looks for all the world like a young Kelley Quinn, Kelley when Margaret first saw him, standing by the Angel Tree at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s Kelley, forty years ago.
“Look, Mom,” Ava says. “Bart is here!”
Bart! Margaret thinks. Her heart resumes its regular activity. Margaret hasn’t seen Bart since the previous Christmas, right after he got back from Afghanistan. Now his hair has grown out and he’s gained back all the weight he lost.
“Bart,” Margaret says, gathering him up in a hug despite the inevitable dress wrinkles. “You gave me a fright. You look… exactly like your father did when he was your age. I had a bit of a senior moment. I thought you were him.”
“Time to retire!” Drake says.
Margaret takes another moment to look at Bart. He’s the spitting image of Kelley—it’s uncanny—whereas Patrick and Kevin both favor Margaret’s side of the family. “I’m so happy you’re here. I’m honored you came.”
“Thank you for having us,” Bart says. He ushers the young woman forward. “Margaret, this is my girlfriend, Allegra.”
A girlfriend! Margaret thinks. Kelley and Mitzi must be overjoyed.
Margaret takes Allegra’s hand. “Allegra is one of my favorite names. I’ve loved it ever since I read ‘The Children’s Hour,’ by Longfellow.”
“‘Grave Alice, and laughing Allegra,’” Allegra quotes. “It’s my mother’s favorite poem.”
“Two minutes, Margaret,” Mickey, the producer, calls out.
Margaret blows everyone in the greenroom a kiss. “Off to work,” she says.
One last time.
Margaret greets the world with a smile and says, “It’s Friday, November tenth, two thousand seventeen. From the CBS studios in New York City, I’m Margaret Quinn.”
The news is serious as always—the president, Congress, Syria, Russia—but there is nothing earth-shattering. No surprises. Margaret feels the minutes pass in seconds, and when they break for the last commercials, she experiences a moment of pure panic. She has made a mistake! She doesn’t want it to end!
She hears a whisper—her name—and she looks out into the darkened studio to see Darcy, her former assistant, standing next to Camera 1. Darcy waves like crazy, and Margaret fights to keep her composure. Darcy works for CNN now. Did she fly all the way up from Atlanta just to be here for Margaret’s last broadcast? She must have. It’s an incredible gesture.
There is one last human-interest story—at the National Zoo a baby gorilla who lost his mother has cottoned to one of the zebra mares—and then it’s back to Margaret to say her final words. She has nothing written down. It’s every nightmare come true: Margaret is in a play but didn’t memorize her lines. Roger forgot to dress her and she’s naked on camera. The teleprompter falls over and smashes, and Margaret has to talk about the new Republican health care bill off the cuff.
She focuses on Darcy, who looks impossibly chic and professional in her pencil skirt and sling-back heels.
“Tonight marks the end of my broadcasting career,” Margaret says. “When I first started out as a copy girl in the newsroom of WCBS, I never dreamed I would someday be sitting in this chair.”
But that’s a lie, Margaret thinks. She did dream about it, constantly. She had grown up idolizing the great newsmen of her youth—for back then, they had all been men: Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw, Ed Bradley, Harry Reasoner, and the greatest of all time, Walter Cronkite. And then, as Margaret was coming into her own, she looked up to Diane Sawyer, Lesley Stahl, Connie Chung, Jane Pauley, and Christiane Amanpour.
Like any dream, hers has required sacrifices. Why that seems true for women more than men, Margaret isn’t sure. All she knows is that when Kelley came to her saying he wanted to move the children up to Nantucket, Margaret let him go. She could have insisted he stay in New York. Or she could have left New York and taken an anchor job at the CBS affiliate in Boston. But she didn’t do either. She let Kelley go with her blessing; she praised him for quitting his high-powered job trading petroleum futures. She was happy he was taking over the parenting duties.
And yet the most horrible, awful day of Margaret’s life was the day she kissed the kids good-bye. Ava was only ten years old. A ten-year-old girl needs her mother. Everyone knew that. Margaret had convinced herself that she would still be Ava’s mother; she would just take care of things from afar. She had decided that the best way to parent—especially with Ava—was to lead by example. She would strive for excellence. The kids would see her and then they would be inspired to strive for excellence.
Did it work out? Maybe—but there were innumerable lonely nights and countless days where the only word Margaret could find to describe herself was selfish. She wanted to be in front of the camera. She wanted to fly to Port-au-Prince, to Fallujah, to Islamabad. She let Mitzi and Kelley do the drudgery, the heavy lifting. Mitzi packed Ava’s lunch and delivered Ava to piano lessons. Mitzi bought Ava her first bikini, filled her Easter basket, chaperoned her first girl-boy birthday party at the Dreamland Theater.