by Sarah Dreher
Anyone who had never seen it, she thought, wouldn’t believe it.
Stoner took a deep breath of fresh air. She felt comfortable here. So comfortable, in fact, that she was constantly afraid Gwen and Marylou and Aunt Hermione really hated small town life but didn’t let on because she was obviously happy here.
“Stoner...” She could almost hear the voice of Dr. Edith Kesselbaum, her former therapist and Marylou’s mother. “Please, spare us your delusions of grandeur. Three people are not going to suffer just to make you happy.”
Small towns could be good places. Sometimes. They had their dark side, too. Gwen had taken to re-reading her old Shirley Jackson stories about small town life. She’d just about memorized The Lottery, and was into her second rereading of We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
Stoner hoped it wasn’t a bad sign.
Stoner’s own home town of King’s Grant, Rhode Island, had certainly been an uncomfortable place. One of those self-consciously quaint New England villages with a village green surrounded by Colonial houses. King’s Grant had about it the odor of money and pretense. It prided itself on its authenticity as a genuine eighteenth-century town, though, Stoner thought, if they were really going to be authentic, they should stop bathing and get rid of the electricity.
There were no malls or shopping centers in King’s Grant. Even speaking the words was taboo. If the residents couldn’t get what they wanted at the local grocery, they went “out of town,” usually under cover of darkness, to the Super Stop and Shop outside Westerly. Westerly was also pretentious, but Twentieth Century enough to have a shopping mall.
Gwen had grown up in a small town, too, in Georgia. She seldom talked about it. Or about her childhood at all, as a matter of fact. All Stoner knew, really, was that her father had been abusive and her mother vain. Her brother had run away from home. Both parents were killed in a plane crash when Gwen was fourteen, and she had come to Boston to live with her grandmother. She and her grandmother had parted company when Gwen fell in love with Stoner and declared herself a woman-loving-woman. That had been more than five years ago, and Gwen hadn’t heard from her since. Gwen claimed that Jefferson, Georgia, was the dullest place on the face of the earth. The only excitement there were the Klan’s annual march through town, and the summer picnic sponsored by the motorcycle plant in the next county, where most of the Jefferson residents worked. She hadn’t missed Jefferson a-tall.
Shelburne Falls wasn’t Jefferson or King’s Grant. It was hard to say exactly what it was, actually. In summer, the locals claimed, as soon as the schools let out, it would be jammed with tourists (for the glacial potholes and the Bridge of Flowers, of course) and hikers exploring the state forests around the Mohawk Trail. In fall it would be infested with hunters, and the gun and liquor stores would do enough business to get them through the winter. The citizens tended to look the other way when the hunters were in town.
Beneath its average-small-town exterior, Shelburne Falls had a whole other life. It was a haven for artists and craftspersons, a dinky little place where you could pick up a museum-quality painting from the original painter herself. Most of the artisans displayed their work at the Salmon Falls marketplace. This was an old wood building that seemed to have once been a depot for the Maine Central railroad, as a track and siding ran directly behind the store. There’d been talk about converting the old railroad yard into a skateboarding park. There was also the hope that the railroad business would pick up, and the yard would return to its former glory. A dream, Ethel who ran the Trolley Stop had told her, that Shelburne Fallers had been dreaming since the last century.
The basement floor of the marketplace was occupied by Turquoise, a store selling clothing, jewelry, books, incense, crystals, and various bits of New Age paraphernalia. It was owned and run by Diana, a trance channel who would “tune in to Spirit,” and help you with any problem from life-and-death decisions to suggestions for gifts. Diana had been a tax accountant before she came into her powers—or whatever one did with powers. Stoner liked her, but felt a little uneasy around her, as Diana shared Aunt Hermione’s view that Stoner was psychic and heading for trouble if she didn’t do something about it.
Diana knew what she was talking about. She had, she said, “been tortured in mind and body, and brought to the doorway of death” before she accepted her psychic destiny.
Psychics, witches, pagans, and various alternative healers made up the other major group of citizens. You could take your pick of astrologers, clairvoyants, herbalists, massage therapists, Reiki practitioners, homeopathic physicians and veterinarians, Bach flowers specialists, aroma-therapists, Ayurvedic consultants—the list was endless. If you were looking for a new type of healing that wasn’t in the local directory, you sent out the word and within forty-eight hours someone would surface who had what you needed.
Stoner wasn’t alone in suspecting that, while most were sincere and dedicated, a few of these well-meaning souls added to their “specialties” with little more than a one-day workshop or an evening with a book-on-tape. This was, after all, America. Anything goes, as long as you make a buck and don’t bend the letter of the law. If you were considering a certain kind of service, and you didn’t know the practitioner personally, you simply stopped around at Turquoise and asked Diana. In Shelburne Falls, your reputation rested firmly in Diana’s hands.
She hadn’t seen any sign of a psychic lawyer yet, but she was certain there was one just around the corner. Channeling the spirit of Justice Learned Hand, no doubt. Or Clarence Darrow.
Interesting, she thought as she turned the corner onto Main Street. There aren’t very many dead lawyers you’d want to channel. Among the living, lawyers were divided into two groups: those with ethics, and those who won. The Winners went into television and the Ethicals went into the Government, where they were quickly corrupted and became Winners.
Well, she thought, we are certainly in a lovely mood to start the day.
Passing the Trolley Stop Tavern, she exchanged waves with Ethel through the dusty window. Ethel was long past retirement age, but she kept the former coffee shop open even after her husband died. Townspeople still called it the coffee shop, the only coffee shop in the area, even though Ethel had acquired a partial liquor license and had laid in a supply of beer and wine. How she had gotten the license was open to much speculation and gossip, as it was well known that there were no more liquor licenses available for Shelburne Falls. But, as Ethel was fond of saying, in her enigmatic way, “There are more than two ways to skin a cat.”
Why she had gone out of her way for the license was less puzzling. Shelburne Falls, like many towns in Massachusetts, had passed a “no smoking in restaurants” ordinance. Smoking was, however, permitted in bars. So Ethel stocked up on the beer, closed down for a week, and reopened as the “Trolley Stop Tavern.” That’s what the official papers filed in town hall said, anyway. Ethel never got around to putting up a new sign, and the alcoholic beverages that made it possible for her customers to hover over their coffee cups in billows of smoke and destroy their lives gathered dust and cigarette grease.
Ethel’s regulars were an unhappy lot, the kind you expect to find in a cramped little store whose windows are opaque with grime and walls covered with the crisp remains of mummified insects. Seedy old coots with ragged shirts and three-day beards, they were all over seventy, and all retired—though they were hard put to tell you what they were retired from. “Retired from resting,” Ethel was likely to say. They’d all been in The War, more or less. Some of the stories seemed to change with the retelling, and sometimes Ed would tell Malvern’s stories as though they were his own. They all had aches and pains, despised young people, and had no women in their lives.
“Which should come as no surprise,” Ethel said. “What self-respecting women would put up with them?”
Stoner had asked her once why she kept the Trolley Stop open. She didn’t need the money or the work. Her kids were grown, her husband dead. Her daughter want
ed her to come live with them in South Carolina. Said it would do her good to close the door right in the faces of those smelly, useless old sinners and find out what it was like to be around people who weren’t mad at God.
“I don’t know,” Ethel said pensively. “Doesn’t seem right. And where’d they go in the winter?”
Aunt Hermione suggested that Ethel’s regulars might really be angels disguised as old coots, and Ethel knew what her path was, whether she knew she knew it or not.
The door to the travel agency closed behind her with a tinny jingle. She looked back. A small bell of tarnished metal hung over the lintel, where the door would strike it opening or closing.
“Cute,” she said.
“Like it?” Marylou asked eagerly. “I picked it up this morning. At that antique barn on the Colrain Road.”
“Well, nobody can sneak up on us now.” She hung her book bag over the coat tree and motioned to Marylou to surrender the desk.
Her partner laughed. “Stoner, no one could possibly sneak up on us. We have an 8 by 12 storefront in a defunct laundromat, one door, and windows that let us see everyone on the street, and everyone on the street see us.”
“So why the bell?” She shoved the book she had brought along into the desk drawer and switched her running shoes for loafers.
“For the tourists. To give the place an air of authenticity. You know, old colonial country store and all that.”
“Marylou.” She shook her head at her affectionately. “In the first place, I doubt they had travel agencies in colonial times. And second, tourists are already where they want to be when they get here.”
Marylou grunted. “We could offer some kind of special trip thing. Like charter bus tours of the local haunted houses.”
“Are there any local haunted houses?”
“This is Massachusetts! Of course there are haunted houses!”
Suddenly serious, Stoner looked at her. “Are we in trouble? Financially?”
“Not yet. But it’s time to think of a gimmick.”
It had been a little frightening at first, agreeing that Marylou would handle the business accounts. Marylou went through life like a roller-coaster at high speed. The ups were exhilarating, and the downs were heart-stopping. It all averaged out to anxiety.
But the fact of the matter was, Marylou knew where she was going, and never jumped the track.
Besides, Stoner lived in nearly-irrational terror of official business with the Government. Like taxes. She was certain she’d make a terrible mistake and spend the rest of her days in the Women’s Prison in Framingham. It was enough to make her mind go blank whenever important-looking letters arrived at the agency.
Marylou took a different view of it all. If they made a mistake, she assured Stoner, the Government would rather get the money owed them than spend tax-payer dollars feeding and clothing a pair of travel agents. Marylou felt about tax inspectors the way Stoner felt about cats—they were strange, kind of cute, and perfectly harmless if you didn’t play too rough.
Face it, Marylou knew how to deal with men in general. As far as she was concerned, aging hippy or IRS, they were all alike under the skin.
“What do you think?” Marylou asked. She opened her change purse and began counting coins to see if she had enough to stop by McCusker’s for a treat. “Should we do it or not?”
“Do what?”
“Sponsor the women’s softball team?”
“What women’s softball team?”
Marylou emptied her wallet on the desk in front of Stoner and poked in the corners with one finger. “There isn’t any women’s softball team. Not unless we sponsor them. Or they find someone else. The only other offer they have is from the taxidermist, and they don’t feel comfortable about that.”
Stoner shoved her hands through her hair. “I never even heard of any women’s softball team around here.”
“Well, you’ve certainly seen them. The baby dykes who hang out across the street waiting to catch a glimpse of you.”
She blushed deeply. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure, you do.” Marylou gestured toward the window. “They hover over by the post office.”
Yes, she had noticed them. A rough-and-tumble bunch, in their early twenties for the most part. They lounged around on the post office lawn in shorts and sleeveless tee-shirts, looking peppy and eager, and jostling one another with their elbows.
“That has nothing to do with me,” she said. “It’s just where they congregate.”
Marylou shook her head as if Stoner were too impossible to be believed. “If you were here in the morning, you’d see them flutter in and perch, one by one, when it gets toward noon. It’s like a scene out of The Birds.”
“They’re on their lunch hour. That’s where they spend it. Across the street...”
“From our agency,” Marylou interrupted and finished for her. She got her pocket book and dumped the contents onto the desk top and stirred through them. Life savers, lip gloss, mascara, a small notebook. Sunglasses case, empty. Appointment book, out of date. Three ball point pens stolen from motel rooms, one without a cap. A pack of condoms. Shredded tissues. The receipt from a bank transaction...
“For God’s sake, here.” Stoner got out her wallet and offered her money. “Take what you need.”
Marylou looked over the selection of bills and chose a five. “That should do it. Unless you want something from the store?”
“I’m fine. Are you going to tell me about the softball team?”
“Oh, right.” Marylou swept her life’s detritus back into her pocket book and settled one hip comfortably on the desk. “They want to start a softball team. Feminist, as we used to say without fear of offending. Non-competitive, everyone gets to play, just to have a good time. They can join the women’s league out of Northampton if they have a sponsor.”
“And what does that involve, being a sponsor?”
“Pay for their tee-shirts, go to a couple of games.” She shrugged. “Mother them, I guess.”
Stoner laughed and rolled her eyes. “I can see you mothering a softball team.”
Marylou tilted her chin as if insulted. “I can do that. You ask how they’re doing, bring cookies to the games and ‘tut-tut’ if one of them gets hurt.”
“Yeah,” Stoner said. “It’ll be the only team in the league with cookies made with Godiva chocolate.”
“And what’s wrong with that?”
“Unless times have changed, at least half of them probably don’t even eat sugar. Much less exotic chocolate.”
Marylou jangled her silver bracelets, a definite sign she was about to make her discussion-ending point. “It would be advertising, Stoner. We need to do things that’ll get us known around the area. The softball team would be perfect.” She moved in for the kill. “Think of all the women who go to those games. And every one of them would think of Kesselbaum and McTavish first when they need a travel agent.”
There was no disputing that.
“You realize we might become identified as a lesbian travel agency,” Stoner pointed out. “How does that sit with you?”
“Not a problem for me. Is it one for you?”
“Why would it be?”
“I could be a problem, not being one of the tribe. Unless you want to make me honorary.”
Stoner grinned. “We could present you as my assistant in het-as-a-second-language.”
“You might need a straight consultant from time to time, Marylou said, serious and musing. “We could make me vice president in charge of non-alternative lifestyles. Of course,” she went on slyly, “we can scrap the whole idea and continue with the Chamber of Commerce and Rotary Club luncheon talks. I’ve run out of slide shows, incidentally. You’ll have to come up with something for the June meetings.”
Stoner covered her head with her hands. “All right, all right. We’ll do the softball team.”
“Great.” Marylou gathered up her things and went to the door. �
�You won’t regret this.”
“Famous last words.”
Stoner watched as she crossed the street and said a few words to the baby dykes. They were clearly waiting to hear from her, and excited. She wondered how many meetings there had been between them and Marylou before Marylou had just “happened” to mention it to her.
My God, she thought as their very own lesbian softball team surged across the street toward her, now what have we gotten ourselves into?
If the child weren’t such a worrier...
Hermione mentally gave herself a slap on the wrist. Stoner wasn’t a child. Hadn’t been for a number of years, if she ever had been. Sometimes it seemed her niece had been born grown up. Not all that unusual for an only child, of course. But in Stoner’s case it was complicated by parents who were… well, to be perfectly honest about it… as loving and warm as rocks. In addition to her many talents, Helen, Hermione’s sister to her great dismay, was a snob, a social-climber, and a label-peeper. Dishes, coats, blouses, shoes, you name it. Helen could always find a way to get a peek at the label.
It was one of the joys of Hermione’s life to catch her at it. “Sister, dear,” she used to say,“anyone with real taste would know what brand it was without having to look at the label.”
Helen would claim she found that ridiculous, and usually said something lame like, “What would you know, you gypsy?”
Which was true, but definitely not a term of endearment on Helen’s lips. Hermione had been a gypsy several times. Not surprising, considering she had been psychic for as far back as she could remember. Italy, Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, even the Isles of Britain. Sometimes male, sometimes female. Many lifetimes, in quick succession. She’d enjoyed those lives, what she could recall of them. They were hard, short lives, but filled with passion. Lust, rage, love, revenge, fury… each with its own color and taste. Rage was red and sharp as peppers. Fury was black and oily. Love was the blue of robins’ eggs, and bore the taste of almonds. Lust burned with orange flames, and smelled like hunger. But revenge, that was the most complex. Revenge was mercury, silver-gray, taking shape to fit the container, impossible to catch and hold. Always in motion, changing, but mercury never the less.