Steve Kistulentz - Panorama

Mary Beth handed her ticket to the skycap and, pointing at her only bag, said, “Dallas.” Mike tried to hand over a tip, a trio of crumpled ones, but Mary Beth intercepted him by the wrist. “Relax. We’ll be fine. I’m going to take care of things for myself for once. Maybe this is the beginning of a new era. One where I come first. A pro-MB phase.”

Her thoughts: There had never really been a pro-MB phase. Everything she’d ever done, she felt, had been at the behest of the men in her life, the clothes she wore, the way she did her hair. She’d chosen a university and majored in international relations at the insistence of her father, and then he was dead. She’d moved to Atlanta, then Memphis, and finally Dallas following the vagaries of her ex-husband’s career, or his political whims, or his firm belief that real estate or gold or crude-oil futures were going to skyrocket. Clark, her ex, had mandated even her choice of undergarments. There should have been a way to make that sexy, but instead it felt creepy.

Perhaps she would even have time to sit in the airport lounge, writing a postcard for Gabriel and having a quiet drink. She wasn’t much of a drinker, never had been, first out of fear and later because of her husband’s insistence; his attempts to control her behavior spiraled outward to include not just what she wore on her body but what she chose to eat and drink. A jingle popped into her head: Schaefer is the one beer to have when you’re having more than one. Schaefer, the beer she had refused to buy for her brother when she was in college, because there were lines of propriety that Mary Beth wouldn’t cross. Her reticence went away after a while; one weekend when Richard was in college, they’d actually smoked weed together. A week later—in an era when long-distance was expensive and people actually wrote lengthy and considered letters—she’d written to confess to her brother how her husband sometimes slapped her for “making a spectacle,” and a few years later, the husband had stolen all of their money and disappeared six weeks before she’d discovered that she was pregnant.

But she’d never made that spectacle. Clark had made her feel silenced and small, so she behaved accordingly. She supposed that Mike had given her a voice. Mike, who discovered she was as good at navigating the little Byzantiums of insurance companies as she was at projecting a feeling of warmth to his clients. Her clients, she thought. Maybe she’d study for her licensure, write a few different lines of life insurance, workers’ comp policies. She didn’t want to be an office manager. Everything about her job felt limiting—its title, its responsibilities. Her inner dialogue about work relied heavily on the word only, as in, I’m only the office manager. He’d given her a voice, so why was she so reluctant to use it? She needed something she could call her own. Surely Mike could help her stand on her own feet in that one way. And if he couldn’t, maybe a pro-MB phase was a no-Mike-Renfro phase too.

She tipped the skycap, then returned to her conversation with Mike. She wanted her face to be blank, not just to Mike but to the flight attendants, the other passengers, the world. She felt like a weary traveler between more exotic destinations, waiting for her luggage to catch up, hoping she could be rerouted through Helsinki. Her brother did that, lied to people on planes about his destination, his career; he thought of it as entertainment; he was a roughneck, a bond trader wanted in Hong Kong, the author of a forthcoming series of children’s books about a purple Airedale terrier who taught at Harvard Law School and spent his evenings fighting crime. She wanted to be someone else, a retired figure skater, a courier carrying a diplomatic pouch. Anything except what she actually was, a middle-aged woman with limited prospects. She wanted just to be able to watch Mike Renfro drive away without hoping that he might turn back.

Standing on the curb with Mike at street level, she could see the expanse of scalp that threatened to emerge through his once-impressive head of lacquered black hair. And that’s where she chose to place her kiss, on the top of his head, intimate but without the upheaval of romance. She did not want to stir herself that way, not before her flight. As she stepped in for the kiss, he moved toward her, forcing her to reacquire the target; he was too close now, and her lips came in inches off, a motherly landing point that left the outline of her lips stained across Mike’s forehead. She didn’t tell him about the lipstick above his Soviet-looking eyebrows and resisted the urge to forage through her handbag for a tissue. Mike pursed his lips, an expression Mary Beth assumed meant just what it did at the office: he was giving up. He wasn’t going to fight.

When he retreated to the driver’s side of the Jeep, he still had three dollars crumpled in his right hand. He stuffed the bills into his shirt pocket, then watched as Mary Beth disappeared behind the sweep of the automatic terminal doors.

IN THE green room, Richard passed time by flipping through Tuesday’s issue of Barron’s, last week’s U.S. News and World Report, the most recent Foreign Affairs, all publications that in a normal, busy week he would have already read. The holidays made everything a bit more casual, and he was regretting his lack of preparation. It reinforced the idea that his career frequently felt like an elaborate charade. He wasn’t being a pundit so much as pretending to be one. The guys who did the same thing for a living, the ones he saw on television every day, had staff, young lawyers, interns, assistants, all tasked with boiling down the issues of the day into talking points on a three-by-five card. Maybe, Richard thought, he should hire an intern.

Toni White appeared in the open doorway, arms crossed to hold a pile of videotapes. An overly tanned man in a black suit and gray shirt with an open collar leaned in behind her, and Toni dropped the pile on the makeup table, rested her hips against its edge, and began the introductions.

“Richard MacMurray, meet Don Keene, news director of the lowest-rated newscast in all of Pennsylvania.”

Don laughed, showing teeth dingy yet perfectly straight. “Not all of Pennsylvania. Just the northeast.”

Richard got up out of his chair for a handshake. “Lowest rated? I thought you had the dean of Pennsylvania anchormen up there.”

“We do,” Don said, holding Richard’s hand a beat too long, a mannerism Richard associated with both politicians and television personalities. “It’s not that we don’t have a solid product, I just think people are tired of watching. They like to take some time and look around, watch a few weeks’ worth of Family Feud and Bowling for Dollars. I’m down here casting around for what’s going to bring them back.”

“Come home to Channel Eleven’s Eyewitness News, ” Richard said, a heavy emphasis on the Eye- in Eyewitness.

“Which brings us to you and your tape.” Toni gestured to a pile of videos.

Richard said to Don, “Until this morning, I didn’t know I had a tape.”

“You don’t, in the usual sense,” Toni said. “I sent him a compilation of your greatest hits.”

“I hope,” Richard said, turning back to Don Keene and his black suit, “she didn’t send you the thing with the candy bar. Not exactly my proudest moment.”

“It might not have been on your reel”—Don laughed—“but goddamn, it was great television. I thought the anchorman might lose it. Anyway, nothing wrong with shaking things up a bit. Let’s just hope you never get charged with a federal crime in Alabama, or else that prosecutor will fuck you but good.”