Sisterly Love is a serialized novel. To savor the full narrative experience, start at the beginning and work through the chapters in order. You can find chapters on the Home page or in the Archive.
CHAPTER 19
On the same day that Summer noticed the Golden Wattle in early bloom through the window of the bus—and wondered at the resilience of the floral bunches that kept randomly popping up along the route—she received a promotion to Senior Political Reporter at The Daily Tribune.
“You’ve earned it,” said The Editor.
His sincerity surprised Summer, and she experienced a modicum of shame for the murderous revenge fantasies she had concocted months earlier, after The Editor fast-tracked her mentee, Scotty, into a team she had expressed interest in joining—digital was the future and she wanted a stake in it. But as she watched The Editor making his way back through the rows of cubicles—hangman’s hands swinging at his sides—she abandoned her guilt; even with a salary increase, allowing herself to feel safe would be foolish.
The paper was continuing to lose advertisers and further staff cuts were just a matter of time. Today is a reprieve, she told herself, worthiness won’t make the cut next time. Then she reminded herself that Senior Political Reporter was a title she had pursued. As an exceptional writer and a sharp observer of truth, the role would enable her to spread her wings, learn the cycles of Canberra politics and make the jump to the nation’s capital; this was her goal and she understood that to achieve it, she would have to fight to be taken seriously in the man’s world that was The National Press Gallery.
When eighteen months later, management announced a forty per cent workforce cut to the traditional newsroom, Summer quietly congratulated herself on her foresight. The Editor blamed independent bloggers—who had no journalistic experience and produced little original content, yet generated hundreds of thousands of daily page views—for bringing the paper to its knees. In The Daily Tribune’s scramble to reinvent itself, fair and accurate reporting gave way to conjecture; long-standing networks of sources became redundant, and data-mining skills lost their value as accountability ceased to matter. In this environment, The Daily Tribune became one of the first papers to dispense with experts—those reasonable folks who bring humanity and truth to an issue—replacing them with inexperienced reporters whose qualifications included the right look and the gift of the gab; and opinion leaders who knew how to feed the 24-hour news cycle with shrill, divisive chatter that entertained, attracted ratings, and left little room for establishing middle ground or building consensus.
Being one of the “lucky ones,” Summer was demoted to the news desk, leaving a reduced team of all male colleagues to cover the political beat. With nowhere else to go, Summer adopted the forced optimism she would need in order to adapt—or survive, as April routinely reminded her—to a practice that would become routine at The Daily Tribune: Ambitious young men with “superior credentials,” leaping into senior roles ahead of her; a new crop of digitally-savvy directors, editors, section heads, and columnists who injected life into stagnant copy, according to The Editor.
“It’s suffocating,” Summer complained to Jess six months into the reorganization.
Jess had driven into the city to celebrate Summer’s thirtieth birthday over a hurried dinner at an Italian restaurant. It had surprised Summer when, after Frankie’s shock departure, Jess had reached out to her with genuine empathy, offering support and friendship which Summer had come to both value and rely on. Jess was always there on the other end of the phone when Summer called to talk through a problem; she never complained about waiting in the cafeteria when Summer’s shift ran over, and it was never any trouble to change their movie tickets or cancel a dinner reservation when Summer was in a jam. And now tonight, when Summer had been “drowning” in a backlog of stories that needed “serious” editing, there had been Jess on the other end of her phone insisting that Summer step away to celebrate a “significant” milestone.
“Forty-five minutes, that’s all I’m asking for,” said Jess, “the restaurant’s a stone’s throw from the paper, and I know the owner, who has promised you’ll be in and out. Christ! I’ve even pre-ordered so you don't have to make any decisions!”
Summer looked affectionately at Jess from across the table. She pondered her reluctance to let her in. When there had been a choice between Jess and Frankie, she had felt torn, unable to decide between them. Then Frankie had abandoned her and she understood that there had never been any contest between the them; Frankie had won her over without even trying. But she had not shared that with Jess.
“Thank you for this Jess, you’re a true friend.”
“You always say that,” Jess said.
“Say what?”
“Stress the friendship thing.”
“It’s the truth, you are an amazing friend,” Summer said, sensing a shift in Jess’s mood.
“Well, happy birthday!” said Jess, raising her flute, “and here’s to the glass ceiling, which we all know you’re gonna smash through!”
Summer smiled broadly then, relieved that Jess had resisted the “what about you and me” talk, she drained her glass, and held it out for Jess to refill.
Almost a year after her thirtieth birthday dinner, and exactly one week after surviving another round of redundancies, Jess’s glass ceiling prediction came back to Summer when, looking up from her desk, she saw The Editor approaching. He was wearing a grin.
“I need someone to take over the lifestyle pages,” he said, planting himself on the corner of her desk and waving a prototype in the air.
Not wanting to appear eager but sensing an opportunity, Summer feigned disinterest. She raised her Styrofoam cup to her lips and blew on her coffee.
“Scotty too tired?”
“Don’t be a smart-ass,” said The Editor, “he’s a good kid... are you interested or not?”
“Is the Pope Catholic?”
“I’m not making any promises,” The Editor pressed his glasses hard into the bridge of his nose. “If you can breathe life into the section, you’ll be safe.”
“And I’m not looking a gift horse in the mouth when I ask, wide-eyed, given the current climate of aggressive transformation: Why me?”
“Right place right time, mate. Plus, you've got that wholesome look—”
Summer poked her tongue at him.
“And we have to be ready to re-launch in three months; you’re qualified and you’re not doing anything I can’t pull you off,” The Editor finished.
“You mean I’m over-qualified.”
“Whatever you say,” he dropped the prototype onto her desk.
“We’re broadening the remit; it's being renamed: Family & Lifestyle.
Summer scanned the cover of the prototype, she liked the masthead, it was sharp, the design clean. An old feeling of luck arose in her but she tempered it; these were uncertain times. She leafed through the pages of magazine but by the time she reached the back cover she was convinced she was being set up to fail—Australia was not yet ready for the kind of digital collaboration necessary for Family & Lifestyle to thrive in the marketplace. Websites were still basic, Internet speed was slow, and a dearth of meaningful information would compromise the clickbait strategy the prototype relied on. But there was an upside she admitted, gnawing on her knuckle. An untapped niche market in family that was rich with editorial potential and until now, largely ignored—how is it this sector had remained undiscovered so long? Summer weaved through the rows of empty desks toward The Editor’s office. As she approached his door, she could hear him shouting into the phone. Her spirits lifted.
+
“Thirteen weeks till launch, people!” Summer called, as Family & Lifestyle’s team of feature writers and editors filed into her office.
“Raj,” she said, kicking off the weekly meeting, “bring us up to date on ‘Kids who won’t leave home’?”
“We’re laying it out,” the art director cut in, “I'll be ready for photography decisions this afternoon.”
“And I'll have the edited copy on your desk in an hour,” said the sub, panting as he closed the door behind him.
“Good, thanks,” said Summer.
She scanned the magazine’s pagination from the computer screen on her desk.
“Melissa,” she said, her eyes darting around the room. “The gender story. How’s the US companion piece coming along?”
“We haven’t been able to get the family to speak with us,” said Melissa, “but I found a doctor in New York who’s willing to talk about the archaic American law that gives parents forty-eight hours to complete the birth certificate and stipulates that the baby can only be a X or a Y gender.” Melissa paused.
“Just clarify the issue, briefly,” said Summer, “for the benefit of the rest of the team.”
“Sure,” said Melissa. “In Australia, parents of intersex children can legally register a gender outside of the male female gender binary. But in America, in addition to the legal requirement to choose a sex, parents also face social pressure to decide on male or female cosmetic surgery for the baby. What this means is that they’re being asked to guess at how the baby’s features will evolve. If they choose the female surgery, for example, and the baby turns out to have more masculine features, then this will have a negative impact on her identity,” Melissa finished.
Someone asked, “What’s the incidence of intersex births in Australia?”
“It’s a good question,” Summer replied. “Incidence is low but the underlying question is: do parents have the right to agree to corrective cosmetic surgery for the baby, just to avoid the social stigma of having an intersex child?”
Melissa said she had a contact who knew someone who would provide a local angle on the dilemma. Summer told her to pursue it and began to wrap up the meeting, nodding at her assistant, Millie, who began passing out copies of a document stamped with the word EMBARGOED.
“This is an advance of a report from the Institute of Family Wellbeing,” Summer began. “It explores the ways family is changing in Australia; the ten years from 2003 to today are showing some interesting trends, good and bad. Take it home, read it and arrive next week with story ideas,” she said, then adjusting her tone, she added, “And let there be no doubt, we’re gonna pack a punch with the launch issue.” There was hum of agreement. “But,” Summer continued, “if we’re gonna rise above the fray in the crowded women’s magazine market, we need consistent greatness for the next six months. So get to work!”
As Summer predicted, consumer curiosity gave Family & Lifestyle a boost in initial sales. The gender story, in particular, generated wide interest. Mothers wrote in about stereotypes; letters were received from adults who had been born intersex and suffered from bullying as children. They described a struggle to lead a normal life and thanked Summer for shining the light on a little-known issue that had impacted, not just their ability to fit in, but their family relationships.
“When I was born,” one reader wrote, “my father pointed at me and said, ‘That’s not from our side’. To this day, my grandmother refuses to speak to him, and even though I know his ignorance is not my fault, I still feel responsible.”
All the same, the publisher expressed concern about the column inches afforded non-mainstream stories and demanded more balance in future issues, causing Summer’s team to scramble to come up with newsworthy stories that reflected traditional Australian family life.
“The publisher’s the gatekeeper of the proprietor’s view,” The Editor reminded Summer when she complained about editorial interference. “You remember the proprietor? The little guy with the glasses you knocked down? In his world, family is mum, dad, and two point five kids. Normal kids. And that means it’s our world too!”
“Normal can be so deceptive,” Summer retorted, not trying to hide her sarcasm.
The Editor looked perplexed.
“Take heterosexuality, for example. If you’re a lesbian and scared of losing your job because you’re a lesbian, then you’re probably not going to turn up at work looking like a lesbian.”
“Ha!” The Editor said, understanding. “It’s Web 2.0 you should be afraid of, not discrimination, you can't run from that.”
He was right.
Within a year, the magazine’s advertising business had been decimated and The Editor, again, approached Summer’s desk but this time her thoughts were devoid of visions of success and glass ceilings.
“Online can run on the smell of an oily rag,” he said.
Summer nodded, “and you have fixed print costs,” she finished.
The Editor shrugged. “Sorry, mate,” he said, extending his hand.
“Good luck,” Summer replied.
She stared after him. His slouch seemed more pronounced than usual, his gait unsteady. What happens to people like him? she wondered—news men who have dedicated their lives to the paper and have nowhere else to go.