The Last Word

Posted on | November 2, 2009

CHAPTER ONE

‘What Are The Facts?’

UNLIKE OTHER PEOPLE, who collected butterflies, hubcaps or stamps, Susan collected facts. Her grandfather Rubin had shaped this particular habit.

“Get the facts, they cannot lie.” Again and again he would stress the need to get the facts.

What are the facts?

At four the only facts Susan knew was her mother was pretty and smelled nice, her father always had dirty hands, her elder sister Elisabeth gave great hugs, and that she loved ice cream. As for the facts, who needed them? As she got older of course, things changed. Life changed. Susan realized Rubin was right. She wanted the facts. Even if it meant some where along the line she might loose something in return like—a social life, friends, or love. Her appetite for the facts was consuming.

At seven it was. “Tell me again, grandfather,” as she sat on his knee reading from the newspaper with him. They were analyzing the main stories of the day, as they did nearly every evening from the moment she could read.

“Come now Susan, I want you to set the table for supper.” Her mother interceded, calling from the kitchen.

“But mother, I want him to tell me just one more time.” Susan wasn’t stroppy, but matter of fact. The man laughed, a twinkle in his eye.

“Quickly then.” Her mother shouted through the open door, amiably enough.

Susan sat in rapt attention. She would never grow tired of listening to the man’s deep gravel-rich voice.

“Shun wishful thinking,” he told her this evening, “it is a waste of time. Ignore divine revelation, unless God speaks to you.” He intoned solemnly. “Forget what the stars foretell, superstition will never put man on the moon. And avoid other people’s opinions—make your own. Care not what the neighbours think; they probably don’t know what’s going on anyway. Never mind the un-guessable, as it clouds judgement. Forget the ‘Verdict of History’, it can be misleading.” He paused a moment in reflection as Susan held her breath, waiting for him to continue.

“Ask yourself, ‘what are the facts?’ and to how many decimal places. Facts will always help you pinpoint the truth.”

The truth was something else Rubin was fond of, being a survivor of the concentration camps.

“The truth is never an easy thing to uncover, but it is out there little one, never forget that.” He sighed slowly.

Later in life Susan would add her own footnote to that statement. But for now she just smiled up at him without a worry in the world, except perhaps for Benyamin putting creepy crawlies in her desk at school.

At sixteen, though, when the Vietnam War was winding down, just when her elder brother Samuel should have been coming home, when everyone was getting ready to celebrate his home-coming, Susan questioned just what the truth was. She questioned the facts as presented to her. She questioned everything, period. She even questioned the very existence of God.

Samuel came home in a flag-draped box.

Where was the truth in pain?

Susan refused to believe in anything, anymore.

It was two long years before she could feel again. Before Rubin took heart, before her mother and father slowly began to stop mourning their loss, and before life began to slowly return to the family. It was the day Elisabeth announced she intended to marry that brought everyone back to some sense of reality, and gave them all something to smile about.

As life began to move forward, Susan began to think seriously about her future, and more importantly what to do with it. For too long she’d been coasting along without direction or purpose. So when Watergate broke and she enjoyed unprecedented attention because of the simplicity of her surname, she took a step closer to deciding on that future course.

Susan Bernstein, journalist extraordinary.

It had a ring to it, more importantly; the role would fulfil that need within her to know the facts, and that constant quest for the truth. No one was surprised, least of all Rubin. He at least, it seemed, had already assumed this was the role she would take up, long before she herself realized it.

When it came time for her to leave for UCLA and a whole new life of experiences, it was her mother who insisted on throwing a party, but it was Rubin and not her father, who handed down the sage words of advice to Susan, as he always did.

“Remember little one,” Rubin began, still insisting on calling her that despite the fact Susan had reached the lofty height of six foot. No one in the family could quite work out where the genes had come from. Her brother Sam had graced five nine, where as her sister Elisabeth had only made it to five four, like her mother, while her father Joseph came in at five eight.

Certainly no female on either side of the family had had the audacity to sprout to basketball player height. Susan was only too happy that the occurrence had happened almost over night, and, of course, had not over shadowed her high school or college years. In this one year alone she had stretched well over a foot.

It had been a painful year.

Susan listened carefully to everything Rubin had to say that day; as if it might be the last time she would see him. He was never in the best of health, and California seemed a long way from New Jersey.

Unbeknown to Rubin, at the tender age of seven, Susan had started to scribble down every homily the man had ever quoted at her. It was, she felt, a treasure chest of wisdom and wit. Which when she reached high school and then college, she began supplementing with further pearls of wisdom from other heroes, literary and historical. She was sure Rubin would have loved the idea of ranking up there with such esteemed company.

Life at UCLA could have been something of a trail by fire for Susan, who was never quite alone, never quite isolated, and never quite in. To be in demanded popularity and although Susan wasn’t unpopular, she never made it to the premiere league, that is, until just before graduation.

What she had achieved in the meantime was a reputation, on and off campus, for her single-minded approach to unearthing facts in the pursuit of truth; the college newspaper never saw her like again. As a consequence, Susan was seen as a little too uptight even for the average male’s attention.

“Hey, Bernstein, if you ever find your Woodward, remind me to leave the country, will ya!” Cory Wilkes, quarterback and rising star of the university team—with a future being mapped out in the NFL—was one of the ‘in’ who had never given up hope of dating Susan. Never once realizing that he was the only one in pursuit.

He tried at least once a week regardless of the several other women he also dated, or chased, to get Susan to accede. Susan liked him despite herself, but they were worlds apart. And though she never totally put him off, after all she was flattered by his attentions, she could never quite bring herself to go out with him. That was, till chasing down a lead on a story that could get her foot firmly in the door with not just a reputable paper, but one of the big-time names, she needed him. She was, Susan knew, totally without shame in deciding to use him.

Cory came from the sort of family, and with the appropriate upbringing, that secured a passport to not only the upper echelons of polite Los Angeles society, but also that rarefied strata of the American Power-Grid.

This was something of a turn-around for Susan but she concluded the end justified the means. And, Susan knew, a date with Cory wouldn’t exactly be, well, unpleasant.

So as not to gloss-over her principals, Susan let Cory know up front exactly why she was going to accept a date with him this particular weekend, and what she intended. She expected him to decline but Cory didn’t share her high ideals. He’d wanted a tick next to her name in his book, one way or the other. But how it all turned out, surprised even him.

“Bernstein, are you dead from the neck down?” Cory light-heartedly bemoaned on the phone when she called.

“No, I’m just a nice Jewish girl.”

“Great, no heart just a sense of history, but what the hell, I’m intrigued…”

“That’s all I want you to be.”

“Look, I’ll change my name in celebration, partner, but just don’t tell me I’ve got to get my dick cut, okay?”

Susan laughed loudly at the thought of it. “Cory, you certainly know how to charm a girl. No. This is all strictly cerebral.”

“Hey, you mean all I get to do is talk dirty?”

“No, not even that…true awareness Cory is all in the mind!”

“Really Bernstein, and there I was thinking you’d never made it. Now I know…so, when do I pick you up?”

Even though Susan thought she had all the angles covered, nothing quite prepared her for Cory. Where she had expected him to be all over her at every opportunity, he wasn’t. Caught up in her quest for truth and the fun as he put it, in exposing one venerable Senator to be a pious fraud, Cory played his part to the hilt.

He called in favours owed not exactly him, but his family and subsequently, over the ensuing weeks, they successfully uncovered and pieced together the unsavoury ‘other life’ of the Senator. And, quite by accident, about his part in the manipulation of a major Bill up before the lower Senate Committee, on Ethics of all things.

Their story broke a week before their graduation.

Cory concurred it was a triumph and in Susan he owed a great deal, mainly because he had successfully manage to impress his mother for the first time in his life. That he had impressed Susan was something else.

Susan in turn impressed Hank Summers of the LA Times, who she had called at least once a week for the last year in the fervent hope she’d make the grade. When Susan presented him with the thoroughly researched piece on the Senator and then graduated top of her class, he had no reason to think twice. He hired her.

Cory Wilkes went on to blaze a trail of glory in the annuals of football history. Meanwhile, Susan hacked a path through the jungle of newspaper journalism wondering if she would ever make it passed the bridal column. Wondering, what had gone wrong?

Of course, nothing had gone wrong, Susan now reflected with a wry smile. She’d had to serve out her apprenticeship just like everyone else, great story or no great story.

Flexing cramped muscles, Susan hit command save on her power book, closed down her files and cleared her desktop before final shutdown. She carefully unplugged the connections, neatly folded all the cables and slid everything into its leather carry-case, placing it next to a small flight bag.

Uncoiling herself from sitting on the bear dusty floorboards, she gave a quick glance round the now empty apartment and then at her watch. Jerry was unusually late; she hoped he wasn’t going to be too much longer. She knew how he drove and didn’t fancy the white-knuckle experience to Kennedy to make her flight. A taxi would have done but Jerry had insisted and couldn’t be dissuaded. He had made up his mind he was seeing her off and that was that.

Well he hadn’t been any different in the eight years she’d known him. A pensive man at best, his short stocky build he moaned, was a result of the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“And you, Bernstein, are making me shorter by the second.” Was his favourite line.

Susan felt a pang of loss. She would miss the man. The best damn editor she’d worked with. It was Jerry Doyle who’d given her, her first real break when she’d moved to the wonderfully rotten apple, New York. And never once did she regret leaving the sunshine, smog and the LA Times, for the rain, snow and the New York Times.

A quick tour of the apartment told her it was all over, for the moment. Joe Santini had been up earlier to take custody of the keys for the couple who were moving in at the weekend.

Everything had changed.

Wasn’t that the principal for moving forward, change? She wondered as she came to halt by a window and looked out onto the street below.

In the three months since Rubin’s death, Susan had made some hard decisions. All the more so because Rubin was no longer a telephone call away. He would no longer be there to give her the help and advice he had done, for so long.

Memory may have recorded the detail, but there was no one left to argue with.

That fact cut deep within her.

If it was possible for someone to loose a little of their own soul every time a loved one died, then Susan had lost another large chunk of hers with Rubin’s passing.

She was almost at empty. The fear was, would anything else ever fill the hole?

A thumping at the door brought Susan out of her reverie and away from the precipice she was skirting dangerously in thought.

“It’s the big bad wolf, so open up in there or I’ll…”

Susan opened the door to look down onto Jerry’s balding pate and the cloud of billowing smoke that issued from a thick cigar he chewed on. He craned his neck to look up at her; the hint of a smile rounded the edges of his mouth.

“Or you’ll what?” Susan asked mildly arching an eyebrow. The man cocked his head sideways at her his eyes missing nothing.

“Well, are you gonna let me in Bernstein?” He brushed passed her but stopped a couple of feet inside with a soft exhalation of breath. The sight that greeted him was unfamiliar. The room was stark. He shrugged his shoulders and then, just as quickly, shuddered. It wasn’t cold. Something had prickled at the back of his brain. An uncomfortable sensation that left him wondering about what his star reporter, Bernstein, was up to. He turned to face her.

To say he hadn’t been keen on loosing her was an understatement. Jerry thought he’d done everything he could to make her stay, but fighting the inevitable was like tilting at windmills: a serious pain in the neck. He knew the look of course when he saw it in her eyes: my mind is made up, it said. He’d seen it in her eyes that day she’d come to him and quietly announced she was quitting, and handed him her resignation.

He saw it now.

“I hope you got a serious price for this place?” He asked quietly, keeping to trivialities.

“Good enough.” Susan matched his tone and then, coming to his side where he stood by the window, unnerved him. He glanced up at her.

“Not too late?” He posed the question already knowing the answer even before she smiled down at him.

“Too late.” Her tone was tinged with sadness. She moved away and bent to retrieve the flight bag.

“Are you sure this is everything?” Jerry sounded surprised. There were a couple of travel bags, which he picked up and very little else, he noted, as Susan shouldered both the flight bag and leather carry-case. He knew what was in the carry-case and surmised what was in the flight bag.

“Rubin’s final wish?” He gestured with a jerk of a thumb as the door closed with finality behind them. Susan’s face turned solemn. She nodded. Jerry was aware of her promise to the old man about taking a piece of him to Israel. Susan was fulfilling a last wish. As for the rest and he knew there was more that he could even begin to guess at.

“Why in God’s name did you get your hair cut so short?” He asked, struggling down the corridor toward the lift. Sorry he’d picked up both bags now. He stopped to one side of the doors and all but dropped them. Susan hit the call button and ran a hand through a mass of thick black curls, knowing it made her face look even thinner.

What the hell, it was done now.

“Makes you look twelve years old.” Jerry muttered at her silence, covering old ground as she flashed him a look.

To Susan, it had been an obvious act of defiance. But to whom, she wasn’t sure yet.

READ THE NEXT SECTION

Filed Under Fiction, Serialized Stories, The Last Word | Leave a Comment

Comments

Book Covers

Keep Track Of Me

About

Alexandra is a viviparous mammalian carbon-based biped who occasionally makes a living writing and editing words.
CONTACT ME »

Check Out

Testimonials

"Hey, I just read CODY'S DREAM. I loved the way you took two disparate characters and brought them together. Can't recommend it highly enough! — Lisa

"I enjoyed your eBook SOULMATES. Being one of the last existing true romantics; I loved it. I thought it was very well written. A quick, and easy read. I'm looking foward to reading more of your work." — Denise

"The Dark...is an excellent piece. So sad and full of despair." — Rachel Green, author of 'An Ungodly Child'

Latest Novel

Visitations

Follow Me

The Legal Niceties

Subject to the conditions prescribed under Canadian and International Copyright Law, no part of this website and content can be copied, altered, reproduced, in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including, but not limited to: electronic, mechanical, micro copying, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

Admin

Log in
XHTML

Fantastical flights of fiction

Stories by Alexandra Wolfe