T lie O b it Laurie A. Brlnli: My typewriter is humming in my ear, as 1rest my head on its keys. It's starting to drizzle, and I can hear the cars below slushing in the wet streets. Most of the reporters have left for the night. The on ly center of activity is the copy desk, as headlines are written and pages laid out. My city editor is nervously chewing on the top of his pen and staring at me. He wants to go home. Deadline and I are running a close race., I don't feel much like racing. But this is Leigh Flanery's obituary, and I owe it to her. S ervices for H ew s-P ress reporter, Leigh A n n F la n e r y , w h o died T h u rsd ay, w ill he 8 p.m . S a tu r d a y .. .
Died? That's not right, but you don't put suicide in print. God, it was a shock. Leigh and I worked together. We were friends, good friends. And none of us up here suspected. But people don't just plan things like that. I heard it's like an act of passion. Your head's not on straight, and well. . . But Leigh? Bright, intelligent, goingplaces Leigh? She was sort of the pet of the newsroom. I guess she was like one big bubble of enthusiasm, fresh out of Jschool, ready to save the world from itself. She seemed so happy. God, she couldn't have been too happy! But suicide? Not the Leigh that first came to the News-Press all wide-eyed and eager. No, that Leigh had changed. The street light shining through the window is casting a blue glow over the dark end of the newsroom. There's dust on the filing cabinets, a thin fuzzy layer. But Leigh's desk is clean. A circle of mourning carnations, blue from the street light, rests on her desk top. Her dictionary and stylebook are propped up by the phone. Humph, she was neat. Why Leigh? God, when did you change? Maybe I noticed the subtle dif ferences, but took them for granted. After all, reporting takes a lot out of you. Constant stress. Assignments com
ing one right after the other. Graveyard hours. Deadlines. The editor sees some young cub like Leigh, filled with excite ment trying to be another Woodward or Bernstein, and he uses her—uses her until she's so sick of writing, thinking, com peting, winning, she could. . .God, I feel sick. My stomach is churning over and over. My head is throbbing—a dull, deep pain. But, there's still the obit. Now, how do I describe her without get ting maudlin? She wouldn't have liked that. I guess for 22 she had a lot of con victions—to spread truth to the masses, expose crime, all those notions they teach in J-school but forget to tell you they don't always exist. At first I doubted if she really whole-heartedly supported anything. She just had the habit of always siding with the under dog—so much so that we called her Captain Avenger for a while. But equal rights, now that she got pretty heated about, and I guess it was a true passion. "I have the right to compete equally with men, to be as free as they are," she used to argue with Ray, the seasoned police reporter. Ray would sit back in his worn chair, puffing on a Camel like he was trying to breathe life into it. Then he'd take a long, deep drink from a cracked U.S. Marines coffee mug. "Well, Capt'in, ho now," he'd wipe his mouth with the back of his hand. "Compete with men. You?" a slight chuckle. "C'mon now. An' who says you ain't free? Hell, Lin coln did away with slaves, or didn't you learn that in college," he smirked. "Women just need to be at home, so a guy's got somethin' worth-whiled to come home to." Then he'd make some hand gestures suggesting a female shape and grunt with the Camel off to one side of his mouth. "That's not freedom. That's.. . .that's bondage." "Call it what you want. That's the way it's always been, and that's the way it'll always be."
"What an attitude. I know more enlightened Neanderthal men," she retorted, her face flushed. Ray had seen all the ways, just about, but this was one he couldn't fight with his fists and it frustrated him to death. "And you think equal rights shit will give you that freedom? Well, you're wrong. Dead wrong. You lady reporters are all alike, leaning on your sex like a crutch to get you 'in.' Well, you're wrong. You just try living a man's life. It's rough. Damn rough. It can kill you." But by then the Camel was just a stub, and Leigh had flitted out on some assignment. I never really knew if Leigh was a true-hearted bra-burner, or if ERA hid some other cause of hers, something deeper maybe. She never finished an argument with Ray. She'd just sort of leave him muttering to himself about when women were women. And she never spit out numbers or facts to prove her case. She'd argue some half-cocked speech about the oppression of the domineering male. All real nice and in voking, but it was like her mind and heart were elsewhere. But at any extent, her retaliations and banner-waving came long after her initial few months. In the beginning, she was eager to please and accepting. Every afternoon she'd come in and trip up to the city desk for assignments. That's eager; it's also suicide. Damn, there's that word. What I mean is no one likes to cover zoning commission meetings—they go on for hours. But not Leigh. She went for everything like a starv ing fish after a baited hook. No assign ment was too long or tedious. "1 want to learn," she said when she first started. "And 1 want to be good, really good, better than everyone. A real winner." It's starting to rain harder outside. Jim will be wondering what's keeping me. Hmmm, I can remember our wedding day. Leigh was there. But, now that I think about it, she didn't seem too hap py. She never smiled. No, it wasn't Cap tain Avenger. She stared off somewhere, and I thought maybe she was sick or pregnant or something. After my honey moon, she and I had lunch in her new apartment. She had been living at home with her folks. "Independence Day! You know, it's funny. I think I've waited forever for this day. I just knew I'd find my freedom here," she said, sitting in the freshly painted one-bedroom apartment. "But, I feel more hemmed in. Like a box sort of. Or maybe a rat in a maze trying to figure his way out. Maybe there isn't a
Phoenix
29