Now she was perfectly happy being the one who was loved, and she was going to keep it that way. Sex, maybe, friendship, yes, but love, no. If she ever felt love coming toward her, she would cross the street to the other side. Besides, she was determined not to let anything or anyone stand in the way of her work ever again.
After the bath she got into bed and called J.C. and was pleased he was not home. He had probably gone over to the sports bar to watch football, so she was able to leave a message with his answering service. It wasn’t until she put the phone back on the table and took the receiver off the hook that she noticed her address book lying wide open—to the letter W. A wave of hangover anxiety came over her when she saw the names Norma and Macky Warren, Elmwood Springs, Missouri. She began to have a recollection of calling someone at six o’clock that morning when she had been out of her mind. She tried to remember. Oh, please don’t tell me I called them, tell me I didn’t, surely I couldn’t have done something that stupid. But deep down she knew very well that she might have. She had called people before and not remembered. She didn’t want to think about it so she put on her electric blanket, pulled the covers over her head, and went to sleep.
Dena awakened at 4:00 A.M. on Monday morning, rested, but still a little guilty. She had slept all Saturday and Sunday. She showered, dressed, and was ready when the car picked her up at five and took her to the studio. She liked the city that time of morning. The streets were quiet and almost empty, only a few early risers and several stragglers going home after a long night. The aloneness was familiar. She saw one couple trying to hail a cab, the woman still dressed in a sequined cocktail dress and the man in a tux without a tie. At this time of morning Sixth Avenue looked as long and as wide as a football field but would soon be so packed with cars and people that by the time she left work, the buildings on both sides would look like they had each taken twenty giant steps into the middle of the street. She went into the building at the studio entrance. After four years she still had a hard time believing she actually worked at Rockefeller Plaza and no matter how many times she went in, the minute she entered she always had the feeling she had stepped inside an Ayn Rand novel, from the murals on the walls to the way her high heels cracked like gun shots on the marble as she walked down the empty halls to those smooth, brass elevators that shot her up twenty-six floors in five seconds. The only side effect of her lost weekend was that her eyes were puffy from so much sleep but Magda, the Yugoslavian makeup woman, would fix that as she always did, making her sit for ten minutes with tea bags on her eyes.
Her interview with Helen Gurley Brown went very well. It was supposed to have been a fluff piece on the Cosmopolitan editor but it turned out to be sharp, funny, and just spicy enough, so Dena was in a good mood when she got to her office and found a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a huge fruit basket from Julian Amsley, the president of the network, that said, Heard you wowed them at the luncheon. Thanks from your network family. She had almost forgotten the last, long evening until she started going through her messages and saw one that had come in while she was on the air:
Baby Girl, we are thrilled you are coming home! Please don’t forget to call and let us know what flight you will be on so we can pick you up at the airport.
Your Elmwood Springs family,
Norma, Macky, and Aunt Elner
The people standing outside her door at the water fountain heard a loud “Oh, God.” Dena leaned over her desk with her head in her hands wondering what in the world had possessed her to call and tell them she was coming to Missouri, of all places! Elmwood Springs was nothing more than the name of a town she had lived in for a short time as a child. Her father and grandparents were buried there, but other than that it was nothing more to her than some vague memory. She didn’t even know where it was. And why Norma and Macky? Not only did she not know them well, she had not even thought of them in years. She couldn’t even remember how they were related. She knew that Norma was her third or fourth cousin, or something. But they might as well be perfect strangers. Sure, they always sent her birthday cards, Easter cards, and some kind of preserves at Christmas, and for years, no matter where she moved, they always found her and sent her a subscription to a religious magazine, some Daily Word thing that she promptly discarded along with the weird brown preserves. Norma and Macky were sweet people but she hadn’t even seen them but once and that was years before when they had come to New York for a few days. As nice as they were, it had been a strain. They had stayed at the Hilton and J.C., as a favor, had taken them to see the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building. All she did was get them tickets to Radio City and the Tonight Show and go to dinner with them and all they had talked about was meeting Wayne Newton, who had been a guest that night on the Tonight Show, and how really friendly he was. A friend of hers had arranged for them to go backstage after the show and meet him and get an autographed picture.
Dena was baffled. Why, of all the people in her address book, had she picked them to call? Maybe it was because she had been having that dream about her mother and that house again; maybe it had been the aquavit. Whatever the reason, she wondered how she was going to get out of this one.
This is not my fault, she thought. I’m going to kill J.C. He’s the one who ordered all those drinks in the first place.
Going to Siberia
Elmwood Springs, Missouri
April 3, 1973
For dinner, Norma had tested several recipes out of The Neighbor Dorothy Cookbook. She had told Macky that she just felt like trying something new for a change, no big deal, but he knew she was trying out dishes to fix when Baby Girl came home. She knew he knew but they both played along. He had been served: Minnie Dell Crower’s “Meatloaf Delight,” Leota Kling’s “Lima Bean and Cheese Casserole,” Virginia Mae’s “Scalloped Turnips,” John and Susan Tate’s “Light as a Feather Potato Puffs,” Lucille’s “Fly off the Plate Rolls,” Gertrude’s “Bing Cherry Salad,” topped off with “Chocolate Peanut Butter Bunt Cake” from Vernelia Pew.
Everything passed muster with the exception of the turnips. Whoever Virginia Mae was, she was destined not to go to good-recipe heaven. After that, Macky could hardly move and was stretched out in the living room watching television. Norma was in the kitchen listening to the last of the turnips being ripped to shreds in her new garbage disposal when the phone rang and she picked it up.
Five minutes later she came in the living room with a dejected look on her face, sat down, and looked at Macky. “She’s not coming.”
“Why?”
“She was so disappointed.… You should have heard her.”
“What happened?”
“Well, she said she had planned on coming in tomorrow but decided to come tonight instead. She had made all the arrangements to come on the late flight to Kansas City and was going to call us from the New York airport, so we would be sure and know exactly what time she would be in. She was packed, had her ticket, had already called a taxi, and was headed out the door, was actually in the hall, when the phone rang. And she said she could just kill herself for even going back in and picking it up. Because wouldn’t you know it, it was her boss and he was frantic because there was this very important interview already set up out of the country and the reporter that was supposed to go had a sudden attack of malaria, right at the last minute, and couldn’t go.”