“I was always fully aware that I only had a dad,” Kelly said, almost wistfully.
“Yeah? How come? What happened to your mom?”
Kelly stiffened immediately. “That’s none of your business.”
“Whoa.”
Kelly rose quickly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap. I just … it’s not something I talk about.”
Elliot raised her hands and spoke in her most placating voice. “No problem. I understand.”
“Well … good,” Kelly said, her smile fake. “Because we need to get back to work.”
“Sure,” Elliot said carefully, unsure of what trigger she’d managed to trip, but she certainly didn’t want to do anything else to set off another conversational landmine. “Thanks for the chili.”
“You’re welcome.” Kelly gave a curt nod and quickly strode back to her office, shutting the door behind her.
Elliot dropped her forehead to the desk, feeling the cool wood beneath her skin. Why did conversations with Kelly always leave her confused and barely propped up? They weren’t friends. They weren’t lovers. They were barely even colleagues. Despite what had happened a week ago, Kelly was her boss, and Elliot had promised to respect her boundaries. But this back and forth between approachable and off limits made her head hurt.
Chapter Ten
Friday morning the bell above the front door jingled, causing Kelly to look up from the tax form of the local grocery store owner. His taxes took longer than any other business in town, and she’d already spent more than half her day poring over his receipts. She welcomed the chance to interact with another client for a while.
“Hey, strangers,” Kelly heard Elliot call out a warm greeting. “Back from the Big Apple?”
“I only went for Presidents’ Day weekend, but Stevie was there all month. She just got back yesterday.”
“I’m surprised you two found the time or energy to be out running errands today,” Elliot said, with a hint of suggestiveness that set Kelly’s teeth on edge. She couldn’t tell what bothered her more, that Elliot got familiar with one of her clients in the office, or that she seemed to know them well enough to feel comfortable doing so.
Stevie Geller and Jody Hadland made up fifty percent of Darlington’s out-lesbian couple population, or at least they did during the school year. The rest of the time they spent jet-setting between New York and wherever else Stevie’s plays were performed or her books were sold. Kelly knew them both in passing and suspected they knew about her sexual orientation, but she kept a polite distance for fear of being associated with too many lesbians.
Most people could overlook her friendship with Beth— everyone liked Beth. But for a single woman of her age to suddenly become close with a newly out teacher and her artist girlfriend would raise more than a few eyebrows. And really, what did she care? She didn’t need some sort of lesbian cohort. Why base entire friendships on the gender she happened to feel attraction toward? If shared attraction mattered so much, she could just as easily become best friends with any random straight man who crossed her path. At least making friends with men could alleviate people’s suspicions rather than arouse them.
Elliot didn’t have to worry about other people’s suspicions though. She had no problem chatting amicably with Jody and Stevie, even if she did sound a little awed as she said, “I can’t imagine coming back to Darlington after a stint on Broadway.”
“Off Broadway,” Stevie corrected.
“Still, you have everything you need to be comfortable and successful in the center of the free universe. I don’t know why you two keep coming back here.”
“Of course you do,” Jody said gently. “You understand better than just about any young person I’ve ever met.”
Kelly wished she could see Elliot’s face. Did she smile? Did her green eyes sparkle with a hint of mischief or mirth? She hadn’t seen as much of those things from her over the last week. She hadn’t seen as much of her, period. Not because they didn’t work the same long hours. She’d heard of employees inflating their hours on a timecard, but she’d recently started to suspect Elliot deflated hers. She always seemed to be there, and yet when she turned in her log, the total always came to exactly what her internship director said it should.
Kelly kept meaning to mention her suspicions, but she never seemed to find the right time, what with trying to completely avoid casual conversation and open-ended questions. She wasn’t proud of the way she held Elliot at arm’s length. She didn’t like the way she’d snapped at her last weekend. She hated the concern and confusion she saw every time she dared to meet her eyes.
For some reason it had never bothered her to avoid people like Jody and Stevie, but dodging Elliot brought her cowardice into sharp focus. Elliot wasn’t a member of the larger Darlington community. She didn’t contribute to the rumor mill, and Kelly had already given her plenty of fuel to throw on a fire if she wanted to. Elliot could’ve made her feel weak and vulnerable. Instead she’d behaved honorably, considerately, and with a great deal of grace.
“So, what do you guys have in the way of W-2 forms?” Elliot continued in the other room. So easy, so comfortable, so confident. She knew her place, she knew what she wanted, and she knew how to get it. A twinge of something unfamiliar twisted in Kelly’s chest. Admiration? Longing? Envy?
“Well …” Stevie drew out the word, “Jody has a W-2. I have royalties and honorariums and a few stipends and a grant and—”
Jody cut in. “We’re complicated.”
Kelly’s chest ached, but Elliot only laughed and said, “The best things in life usually are.”
“You work all the time,” Rory whined from the top of the bleachers.
“Oh, like you’re one to talk!” Elliot shouted as her feet hit the shellacked wood floor and she broke into a sprint across midcourt.
“I think you’re working harder on this internship than you did during any semester for me.”
“Aw, are you jealous?”
“Maybe I’m wishing I could lower your grade retroactively,” Rory grunted as they passed each other on opposite sides of the stairs.
“Good luck.” Elliot shook a sweat-soaked strand of hair out of her eyes. She refused to quit running stairs first, but Rory seemed to have extra stores of energy tonight. “Besides, it’s not like you’ve had time to hang out either, between classes and the gender symposium and wedding planning.”
“Oh my God, longest engagement ever!” Rory panted, as she sprinted back to the other side of the gym.
Elliot tapped the top rung of the guardrail and pivoted back toward the court. “You should’ve eloped when you had the chance.”
“Me and my political statements,” Rory called over her shoulder. “Beth would’ve been happy to go down to the courthouse and then have a little picnic last summer, but I had to have a big gay wedding in Darlington, Illinois.”
“Well, now you’re paying for it in more ways than one.”
“No kidding. Do you have any idea how much a caterer costs?”
“At least you get a faculty discount on the campus chapel.”
“Nope. We’re having the reception on campus, but Beth decided she wants to have the service at her church.”
Elliot’s foot faltered and her heel slipped off the stairs, sending her onto her ass with a painful thud.
Rory turned halfway up her flight of stairs. “Shit, are you okay?”
“Yeah.” Elliot waved her off as she stood and rubbed a spot on her right butt cheek, where she’d surely find a bruise later. “I’m fine. I just thought you said you and Beth intended to get married at the little church off the town square.”
Rory shook her head as she started back up the stairs. “We’re gay, we pray, I guess they got used to us.”
“Are you sure? Can you do that?”
“Apparently. Beth talked to the pastor, and he said he’d love to perform the ceremony.”
“And what about you?” Elliot asked, turning toward the bench rather than t
rying to catch Rory. “How do you feel about this development?”
“It’s the church her parents got married in,” Rory said as she slowed her jog back down the stairs. “I think she thinks it’ll help her feel close to them, and Lord knows my parents have been all over the wedding planning process, so who am I to deny her a small connection to her family?”
Elliot nodded as she grabbed her water bottle. “Makes sense. Families, they build us up, break us down, and rearrange the pieces.”
“Yeah?” Rory asked. “Sounds about right for me, but I thought you and Syd were like the Gilmore Girls.”
“We are. I mean, I wasn’t really thinking about me specifically.”
Rory sat on the floor and folded in half over her extended legs. “Who then?”
She didn’t like lying. She and Rory had always talked openly about everything— sex, class, race, women, their hopes, their fears, their insecurities. Over the last three years, she’d told Rory everything that’d ever weighed on her mind for more than a few hours, and Rory had never failed to help her make sense of the world and her place in it. Part book-smart, part street-smart, part people-smart— at times Rory also felt like part God or at least part living legend— and she’d never withheld any of her observations. Surely if Rory could help her comprehend Judith Butler, she could offer some insight into Kelly Rolen. And yet, Elliot couldn’t figure out how to broach the subject without betraying Kelly’s trust.
“I didn’t mean anyone specific, more of a general observation.”
Rory glanced up at her as if she didn’t quite buy the explanation.
“I’ve just noticed, working at the tax office, that a lot of people around here have family businesses. They do what their parents and even grandparents did.”
“Beth’s great-grandfather built the house we live in now.”
“Exactly. On some level I wouldn’t mind some roots. I guess I have them in my own ways, but what about when the mold no longer fits?”
“Then you have to break it, but around here, breaking molds and cutting ties— it’s hard to explain and even harder to do.”
“You did.”
“I did, and I don’t regret it. I am who I am because of the experiences I had, but I paid a price. I gave up a lot things, a lot of time, and the stakes were high for me. I had to get out in order to survive, at least for a while. Most people around here don’t have the same motivation. They might not like everything about their lives, but they’re safe, they’re certain, and, like you said, family counts for a lot.”
“What about family of choice?”
“They can count for a lot, too,” Rory admitted, standing up and doing a few side bends. “But you and I, we understand that a family is something you make. I grew up hearing ‘blood is thicker than water,’ and maybe it’s true, but in the gay community we’ve got more than water between us. We’ve got something stamped onto our DNA, something that marks us as belonging to each other every bit as much as we belong to our birth families. I’m not sure people outside the circle can ever fully understand a connection they’ve never experienced.”
“But what about people who haven’t gotten to experience either connection, not their birthright, and not their communal right, or maybe they’ve only seen parts of each?”
Rory froze, then stood up slowly, her green eyes searching Elliot’s. “What’s going on, Elliot? Did something happen at work or—”
“No,” she said quickly. “No one specific, I mean nothing specific. I’ve just come into contact with more people from the community the last few weeks, and I find myself wondering how you and Beth and Stevie and Jody all turned out the way you did when other people, random people, just keep doing the same things everyone who came before them did.”
Rory shook her head and sighed before proceeding more carefully. “You’re in a unique position at work. You can view things from an emotional distance that a lot of people are too close to see fully. But none of us ever really get the whole picture.”
Did she know? Had something Elliot said given too much away, or had she already known? And if so, how much did she know? An echo of an earlier conversation filtered back through her mind. “I knew something like this was going to happen.”
“We all get called in our own ways and in our own time, and maybe some of us never answer,” Rory said, “but it’s got to be our choice. No one else can make it.”
“Yeah,” she said, grabbing her bag. “Thanks for the talk and the run.”
“Let me guess. You have to get back to work?”
Elliot’s smile felt less exuberant, so she could only assume it looked that way too. But she’d had to either pretend or fake so many interactions lately that one small smile hardly seemed to rank anymore.
“Hey,” Elliot said as she pushed through the door on Monday afternoon. Kelly tried to remain neutral as she shed her jacket but noticed the warmer weather seemed to have an invigorating effect on Elliot. This morning she wore a gray suit coat over a white dress shirt open at the throat with dress slacks and turquoise Converse shoes. The style seemed the perfect cross between debonair and “who cares?,” leaving Kelly to once again resolve to go shopping as soon as tax season ended. “How have things been today?”
“Busy,” Kelly answered.
“Just the way we like it,” Elliot said with a little grin. “Did you get the stack of completed returns I left in the hopper for you Saturday?”
“I saw them, but I didn’t get to them yet. Was there something specific you wanted me to look over?”
Elliot shrugged. “Not particularly. They’re mostly the ones you flagged for me to take over.”
She wondered if Elliot had noticed that she’d started designating more returns for her and reading behind her less frequently. If pressed, she’d reason that as time went on and the workload got heavier, it made sense to give Elliot more responsibility. They both had to do their fair share, but while on the subject of fairness, she’d also have to admit to being impressed with Elliot’s work so far. Thankfully, Elliot accepted the increased volume without question.
In fact, she hardly questioned anything anymore. Kelly tried not to let the professional distance disappoint her as she’d all but mandated it. She hadn’t told Elliot to stop joking or arguing or asking too many questions, but she’d apparently shut her down enough times to send an equivalent message. And Elliot was nothing if not socially aware. She read people as well as anyone Kelly had ever met. The clients generally liked her immediately, and the ones who didn’t at least ended up respecting her by the time they left. Kelly understood why. Despite her early prejudices, Elliot was just plain likable.
Maybe too likable. No. Definitely too likable, and not just in the business sense. Hence the need to throw up walls between them. She couldn’t afford to like anyone as much as she could end up liking Elliot. For all her wonderful qualities, Elliot was still her intern, and only in town for a few more months. She was also flamingly gay. She’d initially wondered why Elliot didn’t tone down her flamboyancy, but now she realized she simply couldn’t. And that meant Kelly couldn’t get too close, not emotionally, socially, or God forbid, physically.
Falling back on her old standby of having piles of work to do, she took Elliot’s stack of completed returns and flipped through them. It didn’t take long to scan the first few. They could both do a standard return in their sleep, and checking Elliot’s work took even less effort, but something in the middle of the pile stopped her.
Her eyes flicked down the form, then back up to the heading. Stevie Gellar did not offer a simple return. She not only had a schedule C, she had to file in multiple states. A return like hers was so far out of the realm of Elliot’s experience. Stevie’s return should’ve never been in Elliot’s to-do pile, much less in her completed files.
Kelly’s temples pulsed a few times as she wandered back to her office and called up Stevie’s tax file on her computer. Flipping through the forms, she scrolled simultaneously through the scan
ned documents in the DMS program. She double-checked all the identifying information, finding it correct. She’d likely have to redo whole sections, but at least Elliot had done the basic input work for her. And the expenses were correct, too, since everything that came out of Stevie’s bank account worked for federal or Illinois statutes. She worried, though, that Elliot kept everything under the Illinois state income, so she clicked on the state allocation worksheet in the tax program and skimmed to the honorariums and stipends, and almost laughed. Pennsylvania, New York, California, Oregon— the list went on, but she’d done them all. At least seven different states. And so many of them figured at different rates depending on how the payment was earmarked. What’s more, Elliot had itemized deductions for home office and utilities based on a percentage of time Stevie had worked both in Illinois and back at her apartment in New York City. She’d figured per diems for travel based on location as well.
Kelly sat back in her chair and pressed her index fingers to her temples. Perfect. Every single line. A return of this magnitude would’ve taken her hours, even after fifteen years of doing them, and she wasn’t so fond of herself to believe she would’ve even taken on something of this level on her own, right out of school. She would’ve tried, but she would’ve had to check with her father several times. Why hadn’t Elliot come to her? Did Elliot not need her help, or had she been too worried to ask for it? She didn’t like the question, and she didn’t care for either answer, though for very different reasons.
Her chest constricted at the realization of what an awful internship director she’d been for Elliot. She’d pushed her away, she hadn’t asked her any real questions about her experience or her goals, and when Elliot had offered, she hadn’t listened. She hadn’t mentored, she hadn’t taught, and apparently she hadn’t even taken the time to get to know what Elliot was capable of. What else had she missed?
Curiosity piqued in her. Sure, she’d been able to overlook attraction, sexual orientation, and even sex itself, but a beautifully assembled Schedule C was too much to ignore. She wanted to know more about Elliot. Maybe work could offer her a safe way to have that conversation, or maybe it merely provided her a convenient excuse, but either way, she owed her more than a few curt compliments.
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