“It isn’t easy,” the tall man concluded, “raising a child without a mother. Never is, I would suppose.”
*
“Do you think of her often?”
“No,” she said and bit at her lower lip.
“Does that make you sad?”
“Yes.” She reached for the box of tissues.
“Tell me.”
“She was so wonderful. She was little and beautiful. I look like my Dad, big like him.”
He chuckled.
“I have this picture of her when she was about my age now and she is smiling or laughing, I guess. Laughing. You can see how happy she was. Gosh,” she cried and put the tissue over her eyes. “Gosh, that is sad.”
“What?” he asked softly.
“She was so happy.”
“And she died,” he finished for her.
“Yup. And she died,” she said and loudly blew her nose.
*
He wasn’t sure he should get her back to the fear that brought her to him. It was anxiety, panic beyond it, the dope, the highs, the strange place with nothing to do and being with this man who apparently planned to do nothing. No sense of safety. Anxiety finally pushed to terror.
Still, she had been strong and rational enough to get out and to ask for help. And, the job was definitely making a difference.
“I think I really can do it,” she told him.
She told the station manager the same thing when the call came in and the reporter was out.
“I can do it. Let me go,” she begged.
She brought back a story, one short throwaway story but she put it together and it aired. Management now had a fill-in reporter for the price of an office girl who retyped the wire copy for the morning man, answered the phones, and did the filing.
“I love it,” she told him.
“It seems like the type of work where you could go far, if you wanted to,” he told her.
Why wouldn’t she go far? Most of the reporters he saw on the evening news didn’t have the brightness, the glow of this girl.
“What about television?” he asked. “I would think there is a lot of opportunity there.”
“Oh gosh,” she blushed, “getting into television is a whole different thing. I hear them talking about it at the station. I think everybody wants to go into television, even if they don’t say so.”
“I think they would be interested in someone like you.”
She gave a small nod.
“Maybe,” she said. “I don’t know if I’m good enough.”
The voices or that voice that called to her from the end of her tunnel was gone. She told him that, gone.
*
“Are you ever afraid anymore?”
“No voice,” she said.
“I know, but the fear, the counting?”
“No. Sometimes I’m scared but not like before. It stopped when I started coming here.”
“Do you know why?”
“Why it stopped?”
He nodded.
“Because I was frightened and now I’m not. Everything is so much better now. I feel good about everything.”
He wanted another six months with her, at least, six months without the fear and panic. They had been together less than a year.
*
“How will you feel about leaving?”
“Okay.” She smiled. “I mean, I’ll miss you but …”
“But?”
“Well, you’re not cheap.” She laughed.
“Come on, Debbie. How will you feel?”
“I will miss you,” she said. “You are my friend.”
*
He did get his six months before the opening came in Bakersfield and it was television.
“It’s a great place, I mean, the station,” she rushed to tell him when she returned from the interview trip. “It’s nice, the country. I mean, it’s flat and dry but I like it, lots of farms.”
Her joy radiated. The office filled with her light.
“I could rent a little house or something. It doesn’t pay much but it’s a start.” She stopped abruptly.
“I’m glad for you,” he told her. He also told the father he thought she would be fine.
“And all of that about the voices and being frightened, why did it happen?” the father asked.
“Youth, strange circumstances, no one reasonable to turn to. She left herself in a position of having no one to trust except this man and he was more of a child than she was. And, she saw that. What Debbie needs is stability, work, a plan. Most of us do. To be honest, I would like her to stay for a few more months, but she wants this job badly and I don’t think it would be productive for me to suggest she put it on hold.”
Oh. he would miss this tall, sweet girl with her legs long in the chair, her eyes peering up at him in confusion or laughter.
“Don’t fear the fear,” she sang it.
“Yes, and trust yourself and your instincts. Your instincts are good, Debbie. Use them. If something inside you says this person or this situation is not right for you, back off and take another look. Listen to that voice.”
“Not the bad voice?” she asked quickly, almost too quickly.
“No, no. Just that sense of what is good for you. And start seeing people. Men too.” He smiled.
“Remember,” he added, “you can always call me if you need to, for a kind of a tune-up. I’m always here.”
The blue eyes filled and, like a shy child, she turned her face away.
“I love you,” she said. “You know that.”
He felt his own sadness. “I know, Debbie. I know.”
*
Her father helped her pack the van he gave her the year she left for college.
“An old van?” he had asked her. “Are you sure?”
“Like a hippy,” she said. “A VW hippy van. That’s what I want.”
When they found the van, her hippy van, she laughed with joy as she got in the driver’s seat.
“It’s all I’ve ever wanted,” she told him. “I will never want anything else ever again.”
9
When the television van drove into sight, the cries went up.
“Abortion is murder! Abortion is murder!”
Six women made up the parade, one pushing a stroller while holding a sign. The baby in the stroller slept, his head rolling from side to side.
“No more abortions! No more abortions!”
Until they saw the news van, their chanting had been half-hearted, growing only when other women approached and entered the
