by Sarah Dreher
"Anyway," she went on, "I want to apologize for letting my work slip the last few days. I promise I'll catch up before the weekend."
He cleared his throat again. "Actually, Miss Camden, that's what I wanted to talk to you about."
Her full attention shot into focus on him, like a dog's ears to a strange sound.
"It's not the quantity of your work that's troublesome. But there is a problem of diminished quality."
'Diminished quality'? It sounded like a condition that came on with senility. "My mind hasn't been on things the way it should," she said quickly, "but I've been having personal problems. It's fine now." She hated the way her voice sounded.
"It affects your work," He glanced down. "And your office relations,"
"Office relations?"
He didn't seem able to meet her eye. "Your friends are concerned.”
She couldn't believe she was hearing this. She stared at him.
"They think you may have fallen in with... the wrong sort of people."
"They came to you with this?"
He blushed. "They brought it to my attention. It appears to be damaging your work, and the morale of the fiction department as well. As I say, we're concerned."
She was trembling like quicksand inside. "Mr. Spurl," she said as evenly and calmly as she could, "I understand that my personal problems have hurt my work. But my life is my life, and nobody owns it but me."
Spurl looked at her straight and hard. "This is a family magazine, Miss Camden. The public expects certain standards of behavior from us. We have to live up to those standards. We are not a supermarket tabloid. We take as much pride in who we are as we do in our product."
"You make it sound as if the public cares what we have for breakfast."
"No, but they do care who we have it with."
If she didn't move in the next three seconds, she'd never be able to move again. She stood up. "I don't think you really give a damn what the public cares about. You're the one who's bothered by this."
"Yes, I am. And so are your co-workers." He stroked his tie. "You're young and talented, Miss Camden. You have your whole life ahead of you. Please don't let a temporary obsession..."
"Mr. Spurl..."
"Let me spell it out for you. I find it personally uncomfortable to have this sort of thing in my office. I'm afraid I have to ask you to choose between your position here and your... well, your after-hours entertainment."
She pivoted on her heel and strode out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Miss Myers gave a tiny jump and squeak.
She wanted to go down to the readers' room and scream her rage, and go on screaming until the plaster fell from the walls. She also wanted to climb under her desk and never come out, to lock herself behind drawn blinds pretending nothing existed that she couldn't see through a pinhole in the fabric.
She settled for calling Jean. At first she was hesitant, picturing the others sitting at their desks, pretending to work but knowing where she'd been and waiting for a phone to ring. And when it did, the looks of smug satisfaction passing among them. But she needed to talk to someone now. She dialed Jean's desk.
"Look," she said when Jean picked up, “there's some really nasty stuff going on here."
"I know," Jean said.
"You weren't in on it, were you?"
"Of course not. For God's sake. I only found out just now."
"I need to talk to you. Alone."
"Let's meet at Friendly's for lunch."
"Good. See you there."
She wasn't hungry, but she ordered a grilled cheese sandwich and coffee. Jean arrived, a little breathlessly, and asked for a hamburger and fries.
Shelby raised her eyebrows. "What's this?"
"Not a day to keep up appearances." She pulled a pillbox from her pocketbook and searched through the jumble of colors and sizes. "Vitamins," she explained. "Care for any?"
"Do you have anything for incipient nervous breakdowns?"
"B." Jean found a white, round pill and handed it to her. She looked at Shelby carefully. "Better take two," she said, and found another.
"Thanks." Shelby swallowed the pills and sipped her water. "Jean, what's going on at the office?"
Jean shook her head. "I wish I knew. Connie and Lisa and Penny met with Spurl yesterday. They kept me out of it. They've kept me out of most things lately."
"They know you'll come to me with anything you find out."
"Exactly. I've turned into the office snitch."
The waitress brought their food. They waited until she'd left. Shelby picked up her sandwich. "Do you have any idea what they're up to?"
Jean loaded her hamburger with catsup. "From what I can make out, they're upset about your friendship with Fran." She added a slice of onion, lettuce, her tomato, and a sprinkling of potato chips.
"That looks lethal," Shelby said.
"Yeah." Jean took a bite of her sandwich. "We live in desperate times."
"Why would my friendship with Fran upset them?"
"They think you're changing. They don't like the direction."
Shelby thought about it. "I guess I am. Bridge has lost its thrill."
"Not for me," Jean said. "It can't lose what it never had."
She felt a little more relaxed, having a moment of normal, everyday conversation about bridge with her normal, everyday friend. She managed to eat, and taste, a bite of sandwich. "I think that confab with Spurl was about Fran and me," she said.
lean stared at her. "You're kidding."
"I'm not. He just told me I had to choose..." She took a deep breath. "Basically, between Fran and my job."
"He doesn't have any right to do that."
"I pointed that out. Just before I slammed the door. Scared the wits out of Miss Myers."
Jean grinned. "It was a crazy thing to do, but I'm glad you did it."
"The thing is..." Shelby poured a spoonful of sugar and stirred it into her coffee. "...this whole business is really dangerous. I know Libby's behind it. She got hold of some information about Fran from the Army, and she's been passing it around. Fran's already lost her job. I don't know what she wants, or how far she'll go."
Jean stared at her in shocked amazement. "You think she's working behind your back?"
"Yeah, I do. I think she's got the others working with her. The pressure is on to get me away from Fran, and I don't know what to do about it. Do you have any ideas at all?"
"Yep." Jean chewed another bite of hamburger. "Deny everything, for starters. Everything."
"Even if it's true?"
Jean put her sandwich down. She fingered the rim of the plate. "What's true?"
"Fran is a lesbian."
"I figured as much," Jean said. Her voice was a little shaky.
"That's OK with you, isn't it?"
"Sure." She said it too quickly.
“Isn't it?”
Jean looked as if she wanted to shrink to the size of a pin and crawl under a fry. "Well, yeah, it's OK. I mean, it's OK..."
"But?"
“It's OK.”
Shelby leaned across the table and touched Jean's hand. "You have to be honest with me, Jean. It's getting rough. I need to be able to trust you."
"All right." She extricated her hand from Shelby's and wiped grease from her fingers. "I want it to be OK. For your sake, even for Fran's. I like her. I don't want anything bad to happen to her." She lowered her head. "But, no, it's not entirely OK." She glanced up for a second. "I hate feeling this way. It's wrong, and unfair, and I don't understand it. But it's how I feel."
"I see." She felt as if she'd turned to cement. Everything was cold and hard. Inside her, outside her, everywhere. "And what would you think if I told you Fran and I are lovers?"
"Are you?"
"Yes."
Jean was silent for a moment, then burst into tears.
Shelby watched her.
"I didn't want you to say that," Jean said.
"It's the truth." She wanted to feel compassion f
or Jean. She couldn't.
"Because it's not... it's not you." She began to cry harder. "You're not like that. I know you're not."
"Then I guess you don't know me as well as you thought you did."
"That isn't true." Jean was sobbing like a child now, stiff-faced, mouth wide open. "You've changed, that's all. You can change back.”
Shelby felt nothing.
The waitress was hovering. She caught Shelby's eye. "Anything I can do?" she asked.
"I just told her I'm a lesbian," Shelby said loudly. "She's taking it badly."
The waitress looked at her blankly, then seemed to remember an emergency in the kitchen.
"What did you do that for?"
Anger burst out of its cage. "Because it's true. It's all true, and I'm sick of people telling me to pretend it isn't. And threatening me. And making snide little comments and innuendos. Even Fran wants me to pretend. But, damn it, this is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I won't pretend it isn't. And if everyone else in the whole narrow-minded world thinks this is a tragedy, they're welcome to, just don't put it on me."
"I'm sorry," Jean began.
"I don't want to hear it. For the first time in my life, I really, truly know who I am. I wish the people who say they care about me could be happy for me. But obviously they can't. So screw them, Jean. And screw you."
She got up and grabbed the check.
Jean took it from her. "I'll do this. I owe it to you."
She was too angry and hurt to argue. Without speaking, she picked up her pocketbook and left the restaurant.
"I can't help it," Fran said later. "I feel sorry for her."
Shelby grunted.
"I mean it. Jean really loves you. How would you feel if you loved someone, and one day just couldn't love them any more? It's a horrible feeling, Shelby."
"I guess so," she admitted. "But I'm still angry."
"Give yourself some time. But give Jean a little time, too."
Shelby picked a blade of grass from her jeans.
"I know it's Libby behind it. Maybe she didn't say anything to Spurl, but she said something to someone who did."
"Not necessarily," Fran said. "Sometimes a virus gets into the air, and everyone catches it at the same time."
Shelby looked over at her. "Do you have to argue with everything I say?"
"Probably." She reached out and touched Shelby's cheek with her hand. "I love you."
"I love you, too." She caught Fran's hand and held it.
Fran stroked her knuckles. "You don't want to throwaway Jean's friendship, do you?"
"She seems to want to throwaway mine.”
"No, she doesn't. She doesn't know what to do with herself, that's all. If she does manage to get herself squared away, I hope you'll be able to forgive her."
She looked over at Fran, at the kindness in her face, and felt herself on the verge of tears. "It hurts," she said.
"Yeah."
They stared out at the yard for a moment.
"There must be some way to stop this," Shelby said.
Fran picked a flake of paint from the porch railing. "The only thing I can think of," she said, "is to try to reach your mother.”
She rubbed the back of her neck. "She's determined to separate us. She wants me to marry Ray. She wants everything back to normal."
"Would it make any difference to talk to her?"
"I really don't know," Shelby said. She didn't want to do that, didn't want to see her mother, ever. Didn't want to face that anger and soul-searing sarcasm. Didn't want to feel like the less-than-worm she always felt like at times like this. "But it looks like my only choice, doesn't it?”
Fran didn't answer, just took her hand.
It was getting close to dark. A few remaining locusts buzzed dryly in the trees. Two crickets started up.
"It was kind of nice having such a dry summer," Fran said irrelevantly. "No mosquitoes."
"Are you as terrified as I am?" Shelby asked.
"At least."
"I certainly got you into a mess, didn't I?"
"I thought it was me who got you into a mess."
Shelby squeezed Fran's hand. "We make a great team."
* * *
Libby didn't hang up on her this time. She even sounded friendly. She agreed to meet her for dinner on Friday—wait, no can do, library committee meeting—Saturday at the Inn. Yes, they needed to talk, things had gotten out of hand, hadn't they? It was time to try and patch them up. Seven o'clock, Sweetie, kiss-kiss.
She hardly had time to think about it over the next couple of days. She was damned if she'd give Spurl her work as an excuse to nose into her personal life. If he wanted to fire her, let him do it. She got to the office early and left late. Charlotte was there, in and out, and wondered if there was something wrong which had sent Shelby into such a frenzy of activity. Shelby said she was trying to catch up, and shut off any further conversation.
On the first day, she did what she should have done the day before. She gathered up the flowers her friends had given her, and the card, and left them on Penny's desk before anyone got there. She hadn't expected to feel much when she saw Jean's desk, but she was wrong. It was like an iron fist around her heart. She got out of there as fast as she could.
No word from anyone. No questions about the flowers. Once she ran into Jean unexpectedly in the lounge. Jean buried her head in a magazine. Shelby turned away from her, poured herself a cup of coffee, and left. She forced herself to put all her attention on her work.
Fran found work easily, at the local bookstore. Once the college re-opened, the pool of cheap summer labor dried up and jobs were plentiful. She registered for her classes without a problem. At night, she studied. Shelby sat beside her with her own work.
They tried not to talk about Saturday.
But it was there all the time. Hanging in the air with a stillness like the stillness between lightning and thunder. Sometimes she found herself hoping Libby'd had a change of heart, that she'd apologize for what she'd done and Shelby'd apologize for provoking her, and it would be all right.
Then she'd realize that they'd never, in all of Shelby's life, been like that. And never would. She was annoyed with herself for being so pathetic.
Fran was quite clear on what she expected. It was a set-up.
Saturday night Fran insisted on driving her to the Inn, even though she could have walked the distance in twenty minutes. She was uneasy, she said, and wanted to be sure things started out all right. After that she'd go across the Common to the bookstore and try to learn something about the business. She'd feel better being near-by.
Shelby laughed and asked if Fran expected her mother to pull a pearl-handled ladies' pistol and shoot her down in the Inn's foyer, like something out of a ' 40s movie. Fran said she wasn't putting anything past anyone, and knew Shelby was capable of doing something equally insane.
Fran spent Saturday washing her convertible and getting the gas tank filled and checking the air in the tires. Shelby said it was beginning to feel as if she were preparing the get-away car.
Fran said that wasn't far from the truth, and took a small quivery breath. Shelby went back to worrying over what to wear.
One thing she knew for sure, she wasn't about to have a drink before she met her mother. She needed to have her wits about her.
She took out everything in her closet and spread it on the bed, looking for something that would keep Libby mellow, but wouldn't make her feel like a stranger to herself.
Easier said than done. She was struck by how many of her clothes were Libby-pleasers. Even the dresses she wore to work—Libby thought skirts and blouses were too casual—had been chosen by Libby's standards.
Shelby sat down on the floor. Her whole life had been like this, Libby approved. Even the nights in the Village listening to Beat poets hadn't really been a rebellion. Libby found it "cute" in an artsy kind of way.
Living here in Bass Falls, working for The Magazine for Women. Libby re
ally didn't disapprove. She'd have disapproved of Shelby moving to the midwest to work for a newspaper. Shelby hadn't done that.
Why? Because Libby was so intimidating? Well, she was. But there was more to it than that.
Sadness gushed up inside her.
And anger.
She hit her hand against the floor. Damn it!
She'd wanted Libby to love her.
A tear tickled down her face. Then another. She let them run. She felt about twelve years old, a skein of contradictions.
When you're twelve years old and confused, it's all right to cry. You can wipe your eyes on your sleeve, and you're not required to blow your nose.
Fran walked in on her that way. "Hey," she said, "what's up?"
"I'm just being maudlin," Shelby said. She searched for a tissue.
Fran handed her one. "What about?" she asked gently.
Shelby felt her eyes fill up again. "My mother. My stupid mother. I'm crying because I want my stupid mother to love me, and that makes me stupidest of all."
"It's not stupid." Fran sat down beside her. "The stories I could tell you." She stroked Shelby's hair. "The trouble is, they get us when we're very small, and after that there's no way to fight."
"Yeah." She felt a little better, just having someone there.
Fran stayed with her for a while, until she'd stopped crying. "You don't want to be late," she said gently.
"Good God, no." Shelby got up and straightened her hair. "But I can't figure out what to wear. Pick something."
Fran came up with a soft, plain beige dress and a matching cashmere cardigan. "There. It'll make you look like a matron and feel like Nancy Drew."
"Shucks," Shelby said, "if I'd thought of it I'd have polished my saddle shoes." She looked Fran over. "You look nice."
"Thank you."
"Want to come with me?"
Fran laughed. "My business with your mother is finished. She fired her best shot, I didn't go down. All that's left is to negotiate the terms of her surrender."
The nights were growing cooler. Shelby was glad Fran had suggested a sweater. Or maybe it was only fear that made her hands clammy and her breath tight.
They drove the mile to the Inn in silence.
"Well," Fran said, "here we are,"