“You know, somebody’s grandmother or uncle or something sees the story and starts saying you defamed their kid and we get sued for thousands. Brown will tell you,” he nodded. “It happens.”
It did happen. They knew the stories.
“That bozo Fred Painter did some story on a drooly old grandmother,” Jack Benton said, “in some rest home for the criminally insane or something.”
Her eyes widened.
“Nah, nah,” he sneered. “It was only some nursing home, but the next thing you know this grandson of hers who hadn’t seen the old lady in five hundred years is on the phone screaming that we embarrassed the family and what the hell were we going to do about it and who the hell said we could take a picture of the old babe anyhow?”
“They paid ’em off,” somebody offered from another cubicle. “A couple of thousand.”
“Yeah, but they think they’re going to get millions,” Jack Benton said. “So now they make us get a release for every moron. Hey,” he shouted, “you hear that, Kowalski? That’s good. For every moron and she’s out doing retards. I am good,” he cackled.
“You’re the moron,” Frank Kowalski yelled.
Chuck Farrell explained it to her.
“You see, they can’t sign a release because they aren’t supposed to be able to handle their own legal affairs. And, sometimes their parents can’t sign a release because the state is sort of a guardian and the state won’t sign because they want the kids’ permission or the parents’ or somebody’s that we can’t get because they keep telling us to get them from the state. Most of the time we get nothing so we don’t do the stories. Nobody wants to do them anyway.”
“What the hell am I supposed to shoot, George?” photographers would demand in front of his desk.
“Am I supposed to shoot shadows, George? How the hell are we going to do a story about shadows, George? Why the hell are we doing this story anyway, George?”
Reporters didn’t want to deal with any of it. And, even the tough ones had trouble laughing their way through some of those stories. Chuck Farrell saw their faces when they came back and he listened to them.
“You know it’s this program where they bring dogs into this nursing home for a few hours and all the people play with them. You know? We got some good stuff and we got releases,” Frank Kowalski told him.
“But, I mean, you wonder,” his voice grew hoarse, “why can’t they have pets? It makes them happy. You could see that. I don’t understand. They get to be with a dog for a couple of hours and then they take them away. That doesn’t make any sense. Give ‘em a fucking dog.”
“They do it with children too,” said Harold Lewis, moving into the conversation.
“What?”
“They have these programs where they bring in children like a grandma, grandpa thing. They hold them and play with them and then the kids go home.”
His soft, gentle face with the black-rimmed glasses looked over the partition. “It’s strange.”
“I’ll bet,” shouted Jack Benton. “All those old guys holding all those little girls. You want to sit in my lap, girlie?” he rasped.
Chuck Farrell had to laugh. Benton would never change.
Ellen had been to her share of nursing homes. She wanted to get out fast. The patients would reach for her, grab her hand. It was as though they were begging her to get them out of those airless, horrible places.
She had seen it all. She had seen the old ladies in the gray rooms lying on white beds, already corpses, already with the nose pulled into a beak, cheeks sunken, dying.
“No one has come to see her in years,” some nurse would tell her. “Isn’t that terrible, and she’s such a dear.”
The nurse seemed to relish the story, whatever nurse it was.
Ellen told Debbie a few of the stories in the quiet of an early afternoon newsroom. She told her about the old woman who had somehow fallen into the care of the sloppy, grease-speckled woman.
“She’s happy, isn’t she?” the woman insisted. Her voice was brittle, the mouth mean. “She’s a hundred years old.”
Ellen stared at the small body that moved with shallow breaths. The heat in the tiny room was stifling. An orange sheet covered the window, turning the light of the day into a haze of shadows and dust.
“Who’s going to take care of her if I don’t? Who?” The woman moved to the bed. “She can’t move. She can’t talk. She can’t do nothin’ but,” she bent over the body and shouted into one long, white ear, “we love her, don’t we.”
The body made a whimper, like a child startled in the night.
“I mean, what would happen to her without me?”
“What is going on there?” Ellen shouted to county authorities who certified nursing homes. “Is she actually getting paid for this? Is anybody checking on this place?”
“Did they check it out?” Debbie asked her.
“Probably, but I don’t know. I didn’t follow up on it.” She sighed.
“I did one story at a beautiful nursing home, a big bucks place. This nurse told me about this one old woman who got all dressed up every Christmas morning, gloves, hat, the whole bit. She would sit in the lobby and wait for her children to come. All day she would sit there. She did this on all the holidays. All dressed up.”
“And they never came?” Debbie whispered. “That’s so sad.”
“Nope, never did.”
They sat without speaking. Debbie saw a gentleness in Ellen’s face.
“You’re really a big softie,” she said and smiled.
Ellen returned the smile. “No,” she said. “I’m not.” The smile was gone.
11
When she first arrived in the city, a rental agent showed her an apartment in a complex, gushing on about all the people she could meet there.
“It’s incredible,” she said. “They have all these pool parties and movie nights. There’s lots of people you can meet, lots of things to do.”
“That’s not
