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3 P.M., FRIDAY, JAN. 20, 2022, OHSU — For Blair, the week seemed to settle into a routine. Blair saw her new therapist Tuesday after the meeting with Dr. Planck. She was a nice woman who was probably 35: not her age, but not her mother’s age either. Of course, her mother was old enough to be her grandmother, so that was a meaningless metric, wasn’t it? But Karen McKinnon was easy to talk to. They spent the first session just talking about what happened. Karen suggested twice a week for a while, and Blair nodded.
Wednesday, she called her mother. She picked a time when she thought her father wouldn’t be around. She was right. He’d gone to breakfast on Wednesdays at 8 a.m. with some other men for as long as she could remember. She told her mother what had happened. And then, she asked about her mom and her father.
“I’m so sorry, Blair,” her mother said finally. “We failed you. I failed you.”
Blair started to protest. “No, let me finish,” her mother said firmly.
She talked about the strain that had always existed in their marriage. That for a number of reasons her father was threatened by a strong woman, by smart women. Ironic then that he’d married one. It hadn’t been too much of a problem at first. He was a principal at the high school, she was an attorney busy building a practice and raising three kids. But then, he became superintendent, and she was more and more vocal about women’s issues. And it was causing problems between them.
“I think we would have divorced, to be honest,” her mother said. “Then, I got pregnant. I thought it was menopause. And oops!” She laughed. “It happens so often there’s a name for it, menopause babies.”
Blair laughed too.
They decided they wanted the baby. “And I’m so glad we did, because you are the daughter most like me,” she said.
But that was a problem for her father. And while he couldn’t bring his wife in line, he could raise his daughter to be the dutiful woman he wished his wife was. Blair winced.
“But you didn’t seem unhappy,” her mother said. “You complied with his demands. It wasn’t until you went away to college, I realized you had mimicked my ways of keeping the peace. Give in, keep quiet. Placate. Those were choices I made as an adult. That’s very different than being raised to be that way — to think you are that way. And I should have realized it and done something.”
“You never talked about your work at home,” Blair observed. “I would see things in the newspaper, but you never mentioned anything. I would have liked to talk to you about the things you were doing. They were important.”
“Your dad wasn’t interested,” her mother said. “And truthfully, my causes caused problems for him. He was a public figure, and Medford is very conservative. So why create tension in the home by bringing it there?”
Blair could see that — especially since she did the same thing, didn’t she?
“I’m afraid of Will, now,” she confessed, barely above a whisper. “Afraid I will provoke anger like that again. I don’t want to live in fear that something I do will set him off.”
“Like you saw me do with your father,” her mother said. “But Blair? I wasn’t afraid of your father. I would have left him if I was. I loved him, and I wanted our time together to be happy times. And if that meant letting him rage a bit? I could do that. But you learned something very different from that. And I’m sorry. Everyone gets angry.”
“I don’t,” Blair said. “And I didn’t think Will did. We’ve had some tough times here at PSU, and I have never seen him get angry. It’s one of the things I loved about him. Until last week.”
Her mother was silent. “You never get angry,” she said neutrally. “Ever?”
Blair thought about it. “The last time I got angry, Dad made me go to that awful girl’s school for a year and took away my books.”
“That was the eighth grade! He thought you’d be more intellectually engaged there.”
“At a Christian girls’ school?” Blair asked incredulously.
“He and I are overdue a conversation,” her mother said.
“Don’t, mom,” Blair said anxiously. “It’s all right. Let it go. It’s in the past now.”
“And so you picked a man who didn’t get angry either,” her mother said, after a deep breath. “Were there other things you loved about him? He seemed like a nice young man.”
Blair snickered. “Said every mother everywhere. He is. And he’s very smart, a cut-throat journalist, and has this sneaky sense of humor. No, I like many things about him. But I also felt safe with him.”
“I see,” her mother said. And Blair was afraid she might see more than Blair intended. Or more than Blair even understood about herself.
“I’m seeing a counselor,” Blair said. She hadn’t planned to tell her that.
“Good,” her mother said. “Tell her about male anger and that provoking it scares you. Get to the heart of it. And you can call me anytime. As you obviously know, Wednesdays at 8 a.m. are always good.”
Blair laughed.
So, Thursday she went back for a second visit with her therapist, and this time Blair told her about being afraid she would provoke male anger and about her parents. Karen looked like she found this enlightening, but Blair was too timid to ask her why. She figured she had time.
She stopped in to talk to Harmony regularly. Just hi, how are you? And once, a thank you. Harmony smiled and nodded at that. It had cost her to say something, Blair thought, and she owed her for doing it anyway.
Blair went upstairs, chewing her lip. When she got upstairs, only Ryan was there. She hesitated, then knocked on his door. He smiled at her and pointed to his visitor’s chair. He always made a person feel welcome, she thought. Well as extroverted as he was, they probably were welcome.
“Harmony?” she began tentatively. “Do you know who her ex is?”
He shook his head. “No, why?”
She told him about the walk-and-talk as the newsroom called them. They’d taken the place of going for coffee, getting a drink, all the ways that people had talks pre-COVID. He frowned. “It worries you?” he asked.
She tipped her head. Did it? She nodded slowly. “It cost her something to tell me,” Blair said slowly. “That worries me.”
He nodded and tapped his fingers on his desk. Then scowled at them, and then at her. “I have a tell,” he complained. “And it is all your fault.”
She giggled. But she felt reassured by the thoughtful look on his face. He’d watch out for Harmony, she thought. Because that was what he did. What they all did. They looked out for each other.
Blair thought Will saw his therapist daily, but she didn’t ask about their sessions when she saw him at the hospital, partially because it wasn’t her business, but mostly because she didn’t have the energy to deal with it.
Ryan came up to visit him at least once, she knew, because she bumped into him as he was leaving and she was just getting there. She kept that visit short, so Will didn’t get too tired. She didn’t ask, and he didn’t mention Ryan.
There was going to be some work to heal that friendship too, she thought. If it was even possible.
Not her problem, either.
Thursday, she moved back into the Goose Hollow apartment, and she made cookies — chocolate chip so the smell of them would fill the house. After the broadcast, Bianca and Ben came down with Kahlua and cream and they drank coffee nudges and ate the cookies until they were silly. Well Bianca and Blair were silly. Blair didn’t think Ben got silly. But he was smiling when he and Bianca climbed the stairs to their apartment.
It had been a good way to cleanse the apartment of memories of the last two weeks, she thought, as she turned out the lights and went to bed. She hesitated about the bed and almost slept on the couch. But she lifted her chin, and murmured, “Suck it up, buttercup.” She spread her grandmother’s quilt over the top of her.
In the morning on Friday, it felt like she had staked her claim to the apartment. It was hers again.
Hers and Will’s.
Ryan picked Will up at the hospital, and Blair waited for him at the apartment. She hugged him when he walked in. He looked unsure about his welcome. She wasn’t sure about it either. But until she was, ‘act as if’ worked for her. She did care about him. And she would take care of him. That was a part of who she was. And then? Well, ‘then’ had a way of taking care of itself.
They both attended the editors’ meeting through Zoom. Everyone’s welcome helped him a lot, she thought. She didn’t know if he noticed that Blair and Ben weren’t among them. That was another relationship that would have to heal, and it might take time, too.
She had supper already prepared. Will ate a bit, and then he was exhausted and went to bed. She sat in the living room, reading for classes. It was really quiet.
She watched the evening newscast, and it looked good. Ben had carried a large part of the load this week, she thought with concern. But she was pulling the early shift when there was a lot of copy to be edited. Then she ran the editor’s meetings. But she found she tired easily too. Emotional exhaustion was still exhaustion.
Saturday they were going to have a spa day — and this time, everyone was determined that it would happen — come hell or high water. Blair laughed and agreed to be there. Will said he’d be fine. He had a book, and he’d need a nap. “Or maybe two,” he said wryly.
Bianca was driving Ben’s pickup, and Blair climbed in beside her. “You OK, girlfriend?” Bianca asked.
“Just fine,” she assured her friend. And she was.
They picked up Kari on their way. Becca was bringing Cindy.
There would be pizza.
***
WILL WANDERED AROUND the empty apartment trying to make sense of his memories of the last week, but especially that last night. Sam had told him not to try. They would either come back on their own or not. And that trying to force them would stress an over-stressed brain.
Easy for Sam to say.
To be honest, he hadn’t been sure Blair would be here when he got out of the hospital, and he wasn’t sure she should be. Wasn’t sure he was safe to be around. He just remembered being so angry.
He’d never really been angry before. Not like that. He got angry about injustice. About Davis and that no one had done anything about him until it was too late. But he had learned early on that fighting back equaled losing. So why do it?
Blair was at a girls’ spa day up on the hill, and that was good. But it meant he was here alone with his thoughts, and well, that wasn’t so good.
Calm, he thought. I’m supposed to practice calmness. Sam had suggested learning meditation and eventually taking a yoga class. Will rolled his eyes.
There was a knock on the door. Will frowned. Visitors had to be buzzed into the building, and he was pretty sure that Ben and Bianca weren’t going to pay him a visit. They were pretty pissed on Blair’s behalf if he read the editors’ meeting right. And, well, he couldn’t argue with that.
He’d managed to alienate all of his friends last week too, it seemed.
Another knock. Puzzled, he went to open the door.
Ryan. That did surprise him — but he guessed as the property owner he would have a key. Ryan had been to see him at the hospital, and he’d brought him home. Out of obligation, he had guessed. He thought he’d ruined that friendship too. There had been those text messages he’d sent. He would apologize, but how did you apologize for something like that?
“Can I come in?” Ryan asked. “They chased me out. I have pizza.”
Will rolled his eyes and moved out of the way. “Tell me it isn’t Hawaiian,” he said.
“Only half.”
Will laughed and went to find plates and napkins.
***
MCSHANE PRINTED OUT all the files James Fisk had sent him and took them home, but he didn’t get a chance to actually read them until Saturday. It was a hell of a long week. The week of the symposium had been hectic, but interesting. This last week was just a long slog as he tried to figure out an administrative structure for the university. He had interims everywhere. Some of them like Fisk were interims for interims. There were huge gaping holes in some places — University Advancement was the biggest one. Jacob Lewis was the interim VP, that left his own position in the Foundation vacant; Alumni Affairs was vacant because that idiot didn’t believe in vaccinations. He couldn’t remember if they had a public information officer or not. If they did, Harrison probably hired him, and it would be a him, and he would need to go. If University Advancement was the worst, Student Affairs was hurting almost as much. That whole thing with the Health Center? If he wasn’t so short-handed he would have been tempted to fire Steve Planck right then.
OK, so he’d calmed down since Tuesday. Some. But he needed to get permission to do some emergency short searches for some key positions — for Planck, and for Lewis if he’d take it. And they needed to start a national search for provost, and that was more paperwork. Maybe he needed an assistant — he could hire Ryan to do it. He thought about what might happen if Ryan took it on and shuddered. He’d watched what Ryan did to projects. They snowballed. He didn’t want a provost search that snowballed. He needed someone who would make sure all the forms were done correctly, that ads were placed in the right places, and that a committee was organized.
He needed to clone his secretary Carol Braun. That’s what he needed. He’d bring Elizabeth in if the provost office didn’t need her so badly.
Saturday came, and he was still loath to tackle whatever it was Fisk had sent him. He’d just found Fisk’s latest land grab for EWN and moved to stop it only to find out that Ryan already had. Thank God, someone was competent. He smiled a bit wistfully at the thought of his protégé. Former protégé, he thought. Not just because their relationship had changed that night at Hill House, but Ryan didn’t need much mentoring these days. The symposium was proof of that.
McShane liked his leisurely Saturday mornings with his wife. But, well he was curious. So, after a late brunch, he retreated to his office and read Fisk’s files.
He started laughing, and he wandered out in search of Abigail. “You need to know what your advisee is up to now,” he said. He handed her the cover memo.
She read it. Then read it again.
“He got bored, didn’t he?” she asked, smiling. “What are you going to do?”
McShane shrugged. “See what happens.” He laughed again. “Let’s get out of here,” he said, and he kissed her. “Let’s drive to the coast, spend the night at a B&B, pretend we’re honeymooners again.”
She went to pack a bag and get her coat.
***
BLAIR AND BIANCA WERE headed into EWN for the 4 p.m. editor’s meeting, when Blair said suddenly, “Do we have time to go to the Bookstore first?”
“Sure,” Bianca said. “They can start without us if necessary.”
Bianca waited in the pickup while Blair dashed in so she didn’t have to find parking.
Blair went to the print station, called up a file from her email, printed it out, and then found a frame for it. Fifteen minutes later, she was back in the pickup. They made it to EWN and up the stairs just as the meeting was starting. Ben scowled at them, but they ignored him. Corey added them to the meeting.
Afterwards, Blair knocked on Ryan’s door. “I have something for you,” she said. “To say thanks.”
Ryan smiled at her. “For?”
She shrugged, and instead of answering — she wasn’t sure she even had words to explain what he’d done for her this last week — she handed him the artwork. It wasn’t an expensive print or frame, but it was for the office, not for his house. He could afford amazing art if he wanted it there. Although, now that she thought about it, she hadn’t seen any art there at all. Maybe he didn’t like art? This might not have been such a great idea.
He unwrapped it and saw what it was. He swallowed hard, and for a moment she was afraid he would cry — that they would both cry. And they would never live it down.
Thank you,” he whispered. He took down the print of the EWN building that hung on the wall behind his desk — left from Professor Cooper’s years as advisor — and replaced it with the new print. When he turned back around, he was in control of his feelings. Mostly.
“What is it?” someone asked from behind her. Those in the newsroom must have gathered to see what was up. Great, she thought, an audience.
“Kintsugi,” Ellison Lee said, which was good, because Blair wasn’t sure she could pronounce it.
“It’s beautiful,” someone else said. “Is it gold in the cracks?”
“Yes,” Ellison said. “It’s a Japanese art form. A broken cup like this is mended with gold mixed in the solder. And it’s stronger — and some say more beautiful — than the original.”
Blair nodded at Ryan and smiled at Ellison as she turned around to the newsroom room. “Well?” she asked. “Do we have stories to get out or not?”
“On it, boss,” Bianca said.