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As I hurried through the newsroom, I zigged and zagged as necessary to avoid being eaten by the spectacularly healthy plants that Jolene insisted on growing here. The huge grape ivy that sat on the soda machine had been joined by a gigantic red poinsettia, one of several that sat about in case we forgot that Christmas was a mere week away. On the great windowsill of the picture window African violets bloomed pink and purple and variegated in spite of the time of year, and Jolene’s Christmas cactus in a teeth-jarring shade of fuchsia hung nearly to the floor.
Mac’s policy was the same as our former editor’s: ignore the greenery and maybe it would die.
“Have I got an assignment for you, Beautiful,” Mac said when I stood before his cluttered desk. “You’ll love it!”
“Yeah?” Whenever Mac told me I’d love something, I got nervous. We were so different that most things he thought were great, I thought were vulgar, profane, and/or without redeeming social value.
“And if you don’t love it,” he said, “the penalty is dinner with me. Alone. At my place.”
“I can tell already that I’m going to like this assignment a lot.” I smiled to let him know I knew he was joking about the dinner, though I wasn’t certain he was. He asked me out with great regularity, and I refused with equal regularity. The last thing I wanted or needed was an office romance with a guy like Mac. Besides, a third guy would definitely be more than I could handle.
“I already assigned you Longwood Gardens at Christmas, right?”
I nodded. Longwood Gardens was a local wonder that I was to do a piece on for the December 26 issue, something I could write ahead, an informative filler that wouldn’t change, unless, of course, the conservatory decided to burn down or something.
“Good.” He nodded. “Don’t forget.”
I scowled at him. Like I’d forget an assignment.
He fumbled through one of his multiple stacks of papers. He grunted with satisfaction as he pulled a sheet free. “You know about His House?”
“Whose house?”
“His House.”
I looked at him blankly.
“You know. Like in God.”
“God’s house? Like church?”
“What’s church got to do with anything?” Mac looked as confused as I felt.
“Church is God’s house.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess it is. But I’m not talking about church. I’m talking about His House.”
We were back where we started.
“His House is a place for girls in trouble.”
“Ah,” I said. “In trouble with the law? With pregnancies? With their parents?”
“Probably all the above, but mostly with pregnancies. I want a tearjerker story on some of those girls. I want to wring the readers’ hearts.”
I nodded. I could do that.
“I want your story to be so compelling that our readers will admire these girls, no, will love these girls for their courage to carry their babies instead of terminating their pregnancies. I want heartbreaking stories of desperation and blossoming maternal love, of perseverance in the face of abandonment by families and, most terribly, by the babies’ fathers.” He rose from his seat, carried away by his own rhetoric. “I want the readers to cry!”
I stared at him in astonishment. Where had all this emotion come from?
He grinned sheepishly as he noticed not only me but Edie Whatley, the family page editor, staring at him.
“Lapsed Italian-Catholic guilt,” he explained as he sank into his new chair. “I’m conflicted over abortion. I’m conflicted over the Church. And Christmas always makes it all worse. I mean, what if Mary had aborted Jesus? Did you ever think of that?”
“Mac!”
“And then there’s all the other seasonal questions. Should I go to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve? It sort of makes me feel good to go, you know? But isn’t that hypocritical if I never go any other time? And shouldn’t you go to church to talk to God, not to get a warm seasonal buzz? But it’d make my mother happy. The question is: would it make God happy? And why would he want to see me after the way I’ve acted the rest of the year? If there is a God.”
I couldn’t help laughing at his expression, but I realized he was asking some very serious questions.
“Come to church with me on Christmas Eve,” I said.
“Are you asking me for a date?” He looked much too eager.
“Absolutely not, but you could sit with me.”
His eyes lit up.
“I wouldn’t want you to feel awkward in strange surroundings,” I said primly.
“Too kind, kid. Here.” He handed me the sheet of paper.
I read Dawn Trauber, Director, His House, followed by a phone number.
“Call her,” he instructed. “Set up an interview.”
I nodded. “Thanks. I agree with you. This will be a great story.”
“It better be, Schweetheart,” he said in his best Humphrey Bogart. “I may not go to Mass, but consider me the Little Drummer Boy bringing my gift of the story to the manger. You’re the drum I’m beating on, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum.”
I went to the file cabinet along the wall, slid the gigantic jade plant—now festooned with an equally gigantic red bow and white fairy lights—to the rear of the cabinet, and dived into the H drawer. Certainly the clipping service had something for me on His House. I pulled the information out.
I carried the file back to my desk by way of the soda machine. As I walked past, I tossed my head. Just that quickly I was attacked by the great grape ivy. Its tentacles reached out and wrapped themselves about my spiky hair, twisting and twining themselves until I was imprisoned against the dollar slot.
My file fluttered to the floor. I gurgled in outrage and began struggling, though I didn’t want to be too rough because I was more afraid of Jolene, the mad gardener, than I was of the plant. But I didn’t want to be dinner for a carnivorous organism, either. So I pulled and twisted, and no sooner did I get one spike free than another fell prey to the shoots.
I could just see the headline: “Reporter Vined to Death. ‘But it seemed such a nice plant,’ friends say.”
As I struggled, a tendril reached down the back of my collar and wound itself around my neck. I felt it begin to choke me.
“No!” I lashed out wildly. I felt my feet slip on some downed leaves just as Jolene and Mac reached me. I grabbed for them to keep from slamming to the floor, but they calmly sidestepped me and grabbed the falling grape ivy instead. I hit the floor with a great thud, but all I heard was, “Thank goodness! We caught it just in time.” That was Mac.
“Merry! What were you thinking? You might have harmed it.” That was Jolene.
As I sat there with my skirt around my ears and my hip announcing its fury at my inconsiderate treatment, Mac and Jolene patiently unwound the vines from my hair and with a great show of concern put the plant back on the soda machine.
“Poor thing,” Jolene murmured as she patted the villainous tendrils of green.
Snarling, I grabbed my fallen file, pulled myself to my feet and limped back to my desk.
A minute later a laughing Mac stood beside me offering a peace Coke. The absurdity of the whole thing struck me just as I took my first swallow. Mac had to swat me on the back several times to prevent me from choking.
“You made my day, Merry,” he said as he walked away. “You made my day.”
In the work situation, all I ever wanted was to be a consummate professional. Well, professionals are people who please their bosses, right? I perked up a bit.
I went into our e-files to supplement the His House paper file, which wasn’t exactly fat, and between the two sources found several news articles, many of them about local church women’s groups who had showers and in-gatherings to benefit the House. There were several pictures of smiling women sitting behind stacks of hand-knit baby sweaters and blankets while boxes of diapers rose like block towers beside them. There was a picture of the House itself, a huge, old Victorian just east of town.
I looked carefully at a picture of the director, Dawn Trauber, woman around thirty who reminded me of Katie Couric. Same nice face. Same warm smile.
According to the article that chronicled her coming to His House, Dawn had wonderful credentials. She had a degree in social work from Philadelphia Biblical University and an MSW from Temple University in Philadelphia. She had worked for several years as a houseparent at a children’s home near Lancaster. According to the article, she had now been in Amhearst three years.
There was nothing in either file about any of the girls who stayed there.
As I thought about it, I wasn’t surprised. If I had to stay in a facility like His House, I didn’t think I’d want my story and picture splashed all over the local paper. Obviously I couldn’t keep my situation a secret. I might not even want to. But to let a bunch of strangers in on it was another whole issue.
Well, Lord, you’re going to have to help me find a way to do this story. I don’t think it’s going to be easy.
I called His House and asked to speak with Dawn Trauber. When she came on the line, I explained who I was.
“I’d like to do a holiday story about some of your girls. You know. Coping with extraordinary circumstances at a time of year that’s often difficult in the best of situations.”
“Well,” Dawn said, drawing the word out. I could hear the reluctance. “Certainly you can speak with me and certainly you can find out all you want about how we operate. As far as talking to the girls themselves, though, I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“What if one or two are willing to speak with me?”
“We’ll see. Come out and let me meet you. I need to assess whether I can trust you.”
We made an appointment for the next morning, and I hung up uncertain whether this drum was going to rum-pa-pum-pum.
Suddenly Jolene stood at the side of my desk. I looked at my watch. Exactly 5:00 p.m.
“Ready?” she asked. She smiled sweetly if somewhat vaguely at me, the very picture of a lovely, somewhat ditzy woman without a care in the world. In other words, she had returned to the woman I worked with each day. Gone was the mad gardener who let me fall while she saved her plant or the shrew who so masterfully dissected Airy at lunch.
Airy. What was it short for? Arianna? Ariadne? Arabelle? Certainly not Aristotle.
“What’s Airy’s real name?” I asked as I tucked all the clippings into the His House file and slipped it back into its place in the H drawer. “And how does she spell it?”
“Airy?” She sounded as if she’d never heard of anyone by that name.
“You know,” I prompted, “the woman we met in the ladies’ room.” Though come to think of it, I hadn’t met her. No one had been in an introducing mood.
“Oh.” Jolene nodded in “sudden” remembrance. “Valeria.”
“Valeria?”
Jolene nodded. “Valeria Lucas Bennett. Sounds high society, doesn’t it?” And she laughed sarcastically.
I shrugged my red coat on, and we left The News by the back door. Jolene talked as we crossed the parking lot behind the building.
“She was Val until I started calling her Valentine’s Day when we were in first grade. Valentine’s Day, go away. Don’t come near for another year.” Jolene sang the rhyme. “She decided she didn’t like Val anymore. I suggested Larry from Valeria. She said that was a boy’s name. Then I told her she should be A-i-r-y, like a breeze floating wherever she wanted to go. Airy, Airy, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? With weeds and seeds scratching your knees and ugly prickers all in a row.”
I shuddered for poor Airy as I unlocked my car doors. We climbed in and I cranked the heater as high as it would go.
Jo loosened her scarf. “Airy and I sat next to each other all through school. Lucas and Luray—that’s our maiden names. By the way,” she said as I turned toward her parents’ home, “I need to stop off at my house for a minute.”
“Oh.” I thought of her very upscale condominium in the new development on the old Greeley farm south of town, fifteen minutes from here. How like her to neglect to mention this little detour until now.
“I don’t mean the condo,” she said, reading my mind, a trick of hers I found very disconcerting. “I mean my house. I need to see Arnie, and he’s there.”
“You have a house and a condo?”
She looked at me as if to say, “Doesn’t everyone?”
“How long will this take?” I knew I was committed no matter how long it took. After all, she was already sitting in my car.
“Not long. No more than fifteen minutes.”
“To get there or to talk with Arnie?”
“Yes.”
Sighing softly, I told myself that I wasn’t being taken advantage of, that I liked going miles out of my way. After all, I had nothing better to do, unless you counted eating dinner, petting Whiskers or relaxing a minute before running out again to take a picture of the committee for the Amhearst Annual Christmas Food Project, or AAC-FOP as Mac called it.
Fifteen minutes later we pulled up before a gorgeous, gigantic mansion—I couldn’t think of any other word for the glorious vision in front of me. “This is your house?”
“Yeah, it’s mine.” She climbed out of the car.
“Wow!” I wondered about Jolene with her cloying lily of the valley perfume and big hair. Thoughtfully I glanced at her coat. Maybe that wasn’t faux fur after all.
The house drew me. Light streamed in wide ivory ribbons from Palladian windows and picture windows, bow windows and plain old regular windows, casting a golden glow on perfect shrubbery and a winding brick driveway and front walk. Through one large window a Christmas tree trimmed in little white lights twinkled from its place next to a sofa bigger than my entire apartment. A chandelier that looked like it would fit in well at the White House shone through the great window over the double front door.
“Look at all those lights,” Jolene said in disgust.
“They’re wonderful,” I said, mesmerized.
She gave her unladylike snort. “Arnie loves lights. When he was a kid, they didn’t have any money. I mean none. His mother would only let them have one light on at a time, and that was a sixty watt. Now he puts on every light in the house, all a hundred watt. You need sunglasses at midnight! ‘I can afford it,’ he yells. ‘Don’t you turn a single switch off!’”
I grabbed my camera from the backseat. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about using a flash.
“Has the paper ever done a feature on this place?” I asked. I could see it as the first in a series of Great Homes of Chester County, some new like this, some historic, some remodeled places like the barn over on Route 322. I’d have to talk to Edie Whatley, the home page editor. This was more her territory than mine, but I’d love to do such a series.
I stopped halfway up the walk and stared at the magnificence of it all. “Why live at your condo when you have this?”
“Because Arnie goes with this.”
I’d never met Arnie, but how bad could the man be if he could provide all this electricity? “Why did you two break up, Jolene?”
