I’m a Journalist Now
Walking home from the subway stop, I had ten minutes before my parents’ store closed. Because they wasted no time locking up and heading home, I’d get away with the briefest of rose-colored job reports. I called the landline, which Mary-Jo answered, then proclaimed, “It’s Rachel, everyone!”
My mother was on in seconds. “How’s the job? We were going to call you last night but we restrained ourselves. Can I put you on speaker?”
“Not if there are customers there, Ma.”
“They’re not paying attention.”
In as general and impersonal detail as this public airing deserved, I said only, “Mr. Champion has been showing me the ropes. I’m doing some writing, and I’m accompanying him on interviews.”
“Already?” asked a distant male voice.
“Hi, Murray. Yes.”
“An interview with anyone we might have heard of?” my mother asked.
“Doubt it.”
“But interesting? And a challenge? I mean, you’re not doing clerical work, or whatever it’s called these days?” my dad asked.
At this point “clerical” sounded preferable to accompanying Kirby on dubious social pursuits. I said, “Definitely doing real journalism.”
“Anything you can tell your biggest fans?” asked my dad.
“I’m sworn to secrecy,” I said. “But we’re getting along really well.”
“How’s the living situation working out?” Mary-Jo asked.
“Good. Really good. Elizabeth’s girlfriend moved in and she made me a welcome meal.”
“Girlfriend?” my mother asked.
“Yes, like that,” I said.
“Fine with us,” my father called.
I almost slipped and mentioned my roommates’ matchmaking efforts, but thought no, too soon. Bev and Ken would be looking for romantic advancement every time we spoke. I said, “That’s about it. Everyone good there?”
“We’re fine. How are you feeling?” my father asked.
What made me elaborate other than a throwback to childhood obedience? Why did I have to announce that an optometrist had checked my eyes and everything looked good?
“Optometrist?” said my mother. “With a hyphenated name, by any chance?”
“Ma. I shouldn’t have said that much. Everything is off the record, even a visit to an optometrist. Forget I mentioned that.”
“A medical examination in your private life is off the record?”
I told them I’d reached the apartment and needed both hands to find my key. Nice talking to everyone . . .
“Snap a picture of the office so we can see where you work,” Murray said.
“Will do.”
“And try to get the people in the photos too.”
“There’s only Mr. Champion and his sister. Oh, he wants me to call him Kirby, so I started that today.”
I heard Mary-Jo laugh. “Maybe one day I’ll start calling Murray ‘Murray’.”
I didn’t comment, but thought to myself I think those two just went public.
Yasemin and Elizabeth arrived home together, one carrying two bags of groceries and the other a knapsack, a pocketbook, and a briefcase. I helped unpack rotisserie chicken, flour tortillas, onions, pepper, avocados, salsa in two colors. “Something Mexican?” I asked. “D.I.Y. fajitas,” said Yasemin. “How about cutting up the onions and peppers? That would be a big help.” I agreed, and said blithely, “You two should put your feet up, have a glass of wine. I can handle the onions and peppers”—which was exactly when a text arrived from Kirby, advising me to check @realDonaldTrump’s newest tweet.
I did. U.S. presidents have to be born here, can’t be immigrants. Maybe should apply to 1st Ladies. #MAGA
Just below that, twenty minutes earlier, a more reasoned one had said @FLOTUS needs “a rest.” She’s the hardest working FIRST LADY in history. Anything else is FAKE NEWS.
I texted back to Kirby, What do you think it means?
She’s outta there! She knows!
Did I have to answer? Texts from my boss might be confidential, but presidential tweets certainly weren’t. I showed them to Yasemin and Elizabeth.
Turn on CNN came the next directive from Kirby.
I told Yasemin I’d have to do the onions and peppers later. The boss wanted me to watch TV.
“Go,” she said. “Work before fajitas.”
I went to the living room alcove we facetiously called the media center, turned on CNN and sat down on the Persian carpet that had arrived with Yasemin. Wolf Blitzer was moderating a panel of pundits, but the topic was farmers and pork, despite the news ticker below the screen repeating Trump’s tweet asking if immigrants should be first ladies.
A new text pinged. My WH source helped her pack EVERY SINGLE THING.
“Can you guys come watch for a few minutes?” I called towards the kitchen.
Elizabeth appeared first, managing a bottle of wine and three glasses. I told her I was waiting for Wolf and company to address what was scrolling beneath them: the president’s marital tweet.
Yasemin joined us and plopped down next to me. “Yikes! She’s bolted! We could get a really ugly divorce! Yay. Go, Melania.”
“That gold digger,” said Elizabeth. “You’re not taking pity on her, are you? She married him! She deserves him!”
I said, “She does seem to be a devoted mother. And that ‘Be Best’ stuff looked sincere.”
“Then where’s the kid? Is she leaving him behind with his sociopath father?”
“Something must’ve finally gotten to her,” said Yasemin. “Something worse than Stormy.”
“She hates him! She wanted to leave him after Pussygate.”
Pussygate. It was getting a lot of traction this week. If only I could confess all: that I’d been told Donald Trump was having sex with his optometrist, who’d been speeding to meet him when she’d hit me. And by the way, I’d been to her office, an excruciating half hour during which my boss, there on the pretense of choosing new frames, had hit on her. Oh, and further? I’d been harassed by her husband, who didn’t know which way the wind was blowing in terms of his cheating wife, marriage, separation, or divorce, and was using me in some way I hadn’t figured out yet.
I had my phone in one hand and the TV remote in the other. I said, “I’m switching to MSNBC. They should be all over this.”
Better than that. Better than a reporter standing on the south lawn of the White House filling in the gaps, there was an aerial shot of a highway, with the breaking news underneath, First Lady Melania Trump heading north on Route 95.
“Holy shit,” one or all of us said.
“She’s still the freakin’ first lady. I hope Homeland Security doesn’t shoot down the news copter,” said Elizabeth.
MSNBC’s regular programming had given way to a panel of anchors, and one was saying, “NBC hasn’t independently confirmed this, but the Associated Press is reporting that a moving van is outside the First Lady’s parents’ house in Potomac, Maryland, generally regarded as her—to put it diplomatically—home away from home.”
“Maybe she’s heading there to get her parents and kid,” said Yasemin. “They all want out. And this was no spur-of-the moment escape.”
“But I just saw an exit sign that said Wilmington. She’s almost in Delaware,” Elizabeth said.
An ex-senator-turned commentator was saying, “The First Lady doesn’t drive herself anywhere. She’s not driving! There’s a Secret Service detail! She’s in the back seat of the middle car!”
Kirby’s new text asked R U watching? Do we think she’s heading for NYC?
We. Had I become, overnight, Kirby’s pal and confidante? Was I now the person he texted with news, ideas, feelings and innermost thoughts?
His next text: Call the real estate agent???
I emitted an involuntary “Oh God.”
“What?” asked Elizabeth.
“The boss again . . . He’s asking me to call a source who might know what’s causing . . .” I flicked my hand at the screen, “. . . whatever this is.”
“They’re going to hit traffic in Jersey, let alone the Lincoln Tunnel,” said Yasemin. “I’ll do the onions and peppers. Yell if something more exciting happens.”
“Who’s the source you don’t want to call?” asked Elizabeth.
“Can’t say.”
“Works for the First Lady?”
I shook my head.
Gray bubbles on my phone turned into ????? from Kirby. Hearing my groan, Elizabeth instructed, “Shut your phone off. You don’t want to reinforce a twenty-four/seven workday.”
I said, “It’s only my first week. I don’t think I should ignore him.”
“Then make the call, for crissakes. Get it over with. He or she probably won’t pick up and then you can say that you tried.”
I checked numbers under “recent.” There she was, Mandy Cullinane, my old call to her car.
Elizabeth leaned over to sneak a peak. “Mandy Cullinane. Aren’t I the detective! Is she your source?”
I said, “Please forget you saw that. She’s only a source several times removed from anyone major.”
“Even if she doesn’t work in the East Wing, I bet she works in the White House.”
With my finger pointed, I drew an imaginary line around the alcove. “Cone of silence, never to leave this room: she works for Cornwall Parker.”
“Oh the intrigue! A real-estate agent! I bet she keeps bottled water and a box of Kleenex in her shiny deodorized American car!”
I silently reviewed everything I couldn’t say, that she was the girlfriend of an obnoxious schemer, who’d had a possible green-card marriage to a woman allegedly having sex with the president of the United States. What I did say was, “If I stay in this job, you’ll have to respect that everything is off the record until Kirby’s book comes out.”
“No problem,” said Elizabeth.
I hadn’t noticed that Yasemin had been watching from the doorway, wine glass in hand. “Look,” she said, pointing at the TV.
The convoy had pulled off the highway at a rest stop. Mrs. Trump, in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, black pants, no coat, large sunglasses, baseball cap, got out of the middle car, quickly surrounded by—my best count—three men and three women. Other travelers were gaping, pointing, snapping pictures.
Yasemin said, “You have to give her credit—stopping like a normal person to pee.”
“They’ll clear the ladies’ room first,” said Elizabeth. “Melania Trump isn’t going to wait in any goddamn line.”
We watched. The talking heads were thrilled to have something besides northbound traffic to discuss. After at least ten minutes, Melania and her detail were back on the road, behind the tinted, presumably bullet-proof windows, merging without signaling. Blitzer noted that her stop had been at the Biden Welcome Center.
“Another fuck-you to her husband,” said Elizabeth. “She probably didn’t even have to pee.”
Abandoning texting, Kirby phoned me. I answered, despite my advisors shaking their heads no. He was his usual optimistic and enthusiastic self, unfazed by my failure to do anything.
“This is unbelievable,” he gushed. “You’re too young to remember O.J. and the white Bronco, but this is the closest thing to it. This could go on for her entire trip. Fox is saying she’s headed for New York, and this is no shopping trip.”
I handed the remote to Elizabeth and whispered, “Find Fox.”
“Can’t wait to hear what the real-estate agent tells you!” said Kirby.
That again. “I’m thinking I should learn more before I call her . . .”
Kirby was enthusing, “I just had a brainstorm: call the husband! You have his number, right? Why waste time with the middleman?”
Was it too early in my journalistic career to say, “No, you do it. You’re the muckraker.” I offered an anemic version of that: “Do you think I’m the best person for this pretty critical follow-up, with the presidential marriage falling apart? I’m not a reporter—”
“You’ll do fine. Just ask this: surely you’re aware that the first lady of the United States has absconded from the White House. Was it precipitated by her finding out about his most recent affair?”
My nerves wouldn’t let me retain half of that. I said, “Can you hang on? I have to write that down.”
“I’ll wait. In the meantime do you want to hear my theory?” Without any prompting, he said, ‘I’m good at reading people. She was in a mood—”
I’d darted in and out of my bedroom for a notebook and pen. “Who was?”
“Veronica, today. And now I’m thinking it wasn’t just my social overture. Who throws a patient out of an office for being a little playful? Something else was going on. I think she knew either who I was or who you were.”
“But I didn’t mention the date of the accident until, like, two seconds before she threw us out.” Desperate to end the call, I added, “Shouldn’t we be watching the news? They’re starting to talk about how this will affect the evangelical vote.”
“Don’t you want me to repeat the question you should hit Mindy/Mandy/Candy with? Isn’t that why you got a pencil and paper?”
I said, “Yes. Shoot.”
He repeated: “Ask her if Donald’s latest affair was Melania’s last straw.” I thanked him and said, “I’ll try to call during the next commercial.”
“I think we should prepare ourselves for Melania Trump giving it all up because of something we set in motion. Bye-bye, third wife! Bye-bye, second term!”
I had to remind myself that I hadn’t caused the breakup of POTUS and FLOTUS. I was merely an innocent bystander, if stumbling into traffic could actually be called bystanding. Why was I feeling that I was in the middle of a big story that involved the president of the United States? Oh that’s right: because I was.
Maybe the glass of wine had made me braver because I found myself asking, “What was your book going to be about before you hired me?”
“Trump, of course. ‘The Blight’!”
I said, “But then the Hyde-Whites came along. They’re seeming pretty front and center.”
“They’ll be one chapter! That’s it! And in interviews when the book comes out, I’ll tell them the story of us.”
I waited. I knew his chatty mood—no, his entire effusive personality—would lead to his elaborating without a prompt.
“It’s a great story! I have a contract for a second Trump book. My assistant quits. I need to hire a replacement. And who do the gods send me? An ex-Trump employee! What channel do you have on? We’ll synchronize. Are you on Fox yet? Lou Dobbs just said that the First Lady is speeding, going ten miles over the speed limit. And sources told him that her driver’s license may have expired. She’s not even at the wheel! That had to come from Trump!”
I said, “Yes, I’m watching, but I have to get off. Supper’s ready. This could go on for hours, given rush-hour traffic. I’ve driven that route between D.C. and New York City.”
“What’s for dinner?” he asked.
If I weren’t 100 per cent disinclined to do so, increasingly worried over his divorce-induced buddy-buddiness, I might’ve said, “Fajitas. Do you want to come over?” I didn’t.
A thornier question: was I in over my head, professionally? I knew that if I posed that question to my roommates, they’d tell me that everyone feels like a fraud. They’d lecture me: I’d brought sources to the future book, so take ownership of them! Call, interview, cross-examine, challenge! Don’t be a girl. Don’t wimp out. Run with it, unless you want to go back to selling paint.
I wouldn’t confide in them tonight; wouldn’t admit that I felt unqualified to muckrake as an equal with Kirby. Too much too soon. Maybe I’d even dial that back and revert to calling him Mr. Champion. You never know what’s around the corner, literally and figuratively. It was bad enough getting knocked unconscious by a speeding car, but why did it have to be driven by a woman who was having sex with the president of the United States?