Substitute for Love

by Karin Kallmaker

  “Thanks, but no. Sandi is going to call later. She’s at one of those sales kick-off conference-type things. She sells insurance and investments — blue diamond club at her company, which is pretty hot. Like her phone calls.” Jo lowered her eyes, but her lips had quirked in that mysterious way that told Holly she’d missed something salacious.

  “Is it the real thing?”

  Jo’s smile softened. “I hope so. How do I tell?”

  She thought of Tori and Geena. “Give her your future. That’s the best I can do on that one.”

  “I’ll think about it.” She turned wicked again. “Meanwhile, she’s a tiger in bed and that’s just fine with me. Rod thought I was a nymphomaniac, but I just needed fingers instead of a —”

  “Too much information!” Holly put her hands over her ears. “La, la, la, I can’t hear you. La, la — oh.” She lowered her hands and thanked the server for her vegetarian quesa-dillas.

  Jo burst out laughing. “Oh yeah, before I forget, after oral sex don’t hurry off to brush your teeth.”

  Holly fought down yet another blush. They talked about a million things at once, promised to get together in a few weeks, if not sooner, split some carrot cake and parted ways where they had begun.

  I just want to go on being this happy, Holly told herself as she drove home. For a little while.

  She ended the evening with the phone numbers of two of the women at the party and arrangements to meet for coffee. Jo had said that the coffee date was common, giving each woman a chance to come up with a plausible excuse for calling off further contact if the vibe was wrong. Holly would never have thought of that. She’d never dated, so the nuances of it were lost on her so far.

  Sleep was deep and complete, and she woke happy. It was all she needed, for a little while.

  9

  Summonses from her father made Reyna nervous, and even though she was long schooled at hiding all emotions around him, she couldn’t stop the tic under her left eye. She was too tired; she’d spent every possible moment she could at the hospital. It had been an exhausting weekend and the work week had been worse. She was behind on several major deliverables.

  That was the likely reason he wanted to see her. She was supposed to have seen that packets for the Values and Faith Summit went out on Monday, but they weren’t quite ready and it was halfway through Thursday. Part of it wasn’t her fault — she’d been abruptly deluged with e-mails from participants wanting to tweak the agenda one way or another.

  Paul Johnson, her father’s faithful lapdog assistant, told her she needed to wait just a moment. “He’s wrapping up a call.” He turned his back on her because he was a superior little shit, and always had been. He was one of Danforth’s saved souls, a poster child for the Ex-Gay crowd. Most of the time she pitied him, but today she was just too tired.

  She suspected that Paul, who knew everything and said nothing, was privy to the reason Reyna required the watchful eyes of private detectives. He’d once had the temerity to tell her he prayed for her. In Reyna’s book, Paul’s god wasn’t doing too good a job looking out for him. He’d been led to forgo his nature and sublimate his desire to sleep with men. Instead of sleeping with them, he slaved for them. Power was its own kind of sex.

  “How’s Monica?” Her question made him acknowledge her existence again. Saint Monica was the woman who had married a formerly gay man and produced requisite offspring as proof of their conjugal relations. She pitied the children most of all, growing up with a father who hated himself.

  “She’s fine.”

  She waited in silence for a few minutes. “How are the kids?”

  “They’re fine.”

  She leaned on his desk, thoroughly out of sorts. “Did you see that article in the Times on Monday? About the forum at the Episcopal seminary?”

  “I did,” he said shortly. “The liberal media as usual smearing the word of God.”

  “All the paper did was report on the forum. It was the forum that did the smearing — rather, the clarifying of the word of God.”

  “To say that the Bible is anti-family values — I don’t know how those so-called scholars keep their collars, or whatever it is they have.”

  “Seems to me they’re just using the mind God gave them. The examples of where the Bible is not a great moral guide for raising and maintaining families were thought-provoking.”

  “Using their minds to do the devil’s work.” He smugly stacked two files together and locked them into the cabinet behind him.

  “I really thought their point about the most severe attack on the family coming from the economy was well-taken. Families stay together when their incomes are rising, but fall apart in hard times. But I guess that’s a hard concept to debate. It’s so much easier to blame uppity women, birth control, easy divorce, promiscuity — oh yes, the homosexuals, too.”

  He refused to look at her so she turned to study the wall hanging that dominated the gateway to her father’s office. Her judgment must be badly impaired, she thought, because it was a waste of energy to bait Paul, and even if she did manage to get a rise out of him it would change nothing. She’d have to watch her mouth when she talked to her father.

  Paul’s phone chirped. “Your father is free now.”

  “Lucky him.” She did not let him see her brace herself to walk through the door.

  His office was massive and yet he seemed to dominate it. Even standing casually in front of his meticulously displayed collection of L.A. Dodger memorabilia he could not be ignored. It was his height, but also the way he assumed that center stage was his and his alone.

  “Reyna,” he boomed congenially. Behind him the Dodger pennants formed a flag in stripes of red, white and blue. All the arrangement needed was an apple pie. “Just the face I wanted to see. Have a drink. We’re celebrating.”

  She just stared at him because it was a first, offering her a drink in his office. Dryly, she said, “To what do I owe this honor?”

  “I’ve been asked to keynote the New York Republican Convention. Not emcee, but keynote. They want my views on the future of conservatism. Six years ago the keynote was by the fellow currently residing in the White House.”

  She had his eyes, and they were most alike when he was pleased. But some mornings it was disconcerting to see him looking at her from the mirror. “Congratulations,” she said automatically.

  He had been carefully changing his image from entertainer/commentator to political thinker. He got to play the Washington outsider with his public yet had influence over an enormous number of Congressional issues. A keynote for such a large convention, even mid-term, was proof that his image-enhancing strategy was working. It struck her then that maybe someday she actually would be the daughter of the President or Vice President of the United States. Not if I can help it, she thought. I don’t want to be his daughter any longer than I have to be.

  When he handed her the drink she set it down without tasting it. She had no idea what was in it and he hadn’t asked what she wanted, anyway. “You wanted to see me about something.”

  “The Values and Faith Summit —”

  “The packet is going out in a little bit. Everyone will have it for the weekend to study before they show up on Wednesday.”

  “Good. I needed some assurance. The summit is critical, you know that. I hope to be leaving it next week with the pledged support of a wide spectrum of Christian leaders. Now with the convention keynote in New York, California is likely. I could be throwing my hat in the ring sooner than we thought.”

  Reyna did not care. “Paul could have asked me.”

  “I wasn’t sure the summit was a top priority for you.”

  “It isn’t. My mother is.”

  “Her care is flawless. You can leave it to others.” He smiled as if that should put her mind to rest, but she heard the threat.

  She looked at him hatefully, though she knew he could read her emotions. “I’m standing here because I love her. I’m here, living by your rules, because I love
her. Because she is my top priority. How can you not understand that?”

  His eyes had narrowed into the slits that made them no longer resemble hers. “I do understand it. I even respect it.”

  “You mean you use it.” Stop, she warned herself. Nothing good ever comes of arguing with him.

  “I don’t know why it still surprises me that you have to be forced to do everything, even what’s good for you.”

  “I’m old enough to judge what’s good for me. Thirty is not so far off.” God, she felt so much older than that.

  For a large man, he moved quickly. She gave ground as he loomed over her and cursed herself for letting him see she was afraid.

  “Good,” he said, after a moment of studying her face. “I wanted to make sure of that, too.” He sighed heavily. “Why do you make this so hard?”

  She’d given him what he wanted: fear and reassurance that she would do anything to help her mother. Great, just great. She was too tired for this, because she said bitterly, “You do understand that I hate you, don’t you?”

  “I hated my father, until I comprehended his plans for me.

  “I do comprehend your plans for me. You and I have a completely different ideology. I don’t want any part of yours.” Why couldn’t he understand that?

  “Honey, you’ll thank me one day. The good ol’ U.S.A. may not be a monarchy, but some valuable intangibles are still hereditary. The Putnam name is a real family value.”

  “The polls don’t even support your positions anymore. If you won’t listen to my instincts, then look at the numbers. You’ll never get the White House with fringe policies.”

  “I know that, but I need the money and the support from people who believe heart and soul in those policies.”

  “Do you? How can you be sure that they don’t cost you more than they give? Danforth can mesmerize an audience full of woman-hating, immigrant-hating, gay-hating bigots, but John and Jane Q. Public tune him out. They might respect his right to his positions, but they don’t like them. That will rub off on you when you try to claim moderate ground.” It had been a long time since she had spoken to him so boldly about his plans. She didn’t care if he won or lost, so why was she giving him her best advice? She should save it for his opponent. That was an idea, going to work for the other side, after her mother — God. She derailed her train of thought just in time.

  He studied her for a long moment. The piercing regard in his eyes was like a mirror. “Danforth and I are old allies.”

  She didn’t have much of a hand to play against that. It was so weak she almost said nothing. She was too tired for good judgment. She spoke when she ought to have remained silent. “And I’m your daughter.” It had no effect, so she added her only ace. “And I have studied and conducted as much research into conservative policies and American voter opinion as some people twice my age. You know I’m good at what I do. My own ideology doesn’t taint the results. Danforth, and those like him, will bring you down. They’re already falling and they don’t want to see it.”

  His eyes narrowed, then the phone chirped. “Remind me to put you on my campaign team,” he said, as if it was a joke. As he went to the phone, she bit her tongue and tasted blood. Without another word she stalked out past Paul, who gave her a pleased little smirk, and into the long corridor that led to her own office. On the way she saw the admin assistant working on the agenda mailing scurrying to the elevator with a pile of thick FedEx mailers. The Values and Faith Summit — two back-to-back days of hell.

  Agenda item one: God hates homosexuals. Two: Conservatives hate homosexuals. Three: Everyone should hate homosexuals. Four: People who don’t hate homosexuals are probably homosexuals. Five: How to raise money by hating homosexuals.

  It didn’t actually say that — she was far more clever than that. She was an expert at taking every proposal for the extermination of gay people and turning it into a righteous policy aimed at strengthening the only kind of family that mattered: the mythical Cleavers who lived in an America with no divorce, no sex outside marriage, and most certainly no homosexuals.

  She sat with her head in hands for a few minutes, aware that she was on camera. She didn’t know if anyone ever reviewed the security tapes, but her father had referred to their existence several times, just to remind her she was never really free. The black hole was there. She felt like Wile E. Coyote just as he realized he’d run off the cliff. She wanted to fall, to give in to the fury and anguish, but she couldn’t afford the energy it would take to come back from the depths. She had to hold it off now. Think, she told herself, think of the music, and the women.

  Horribly, unequivocally, she had to admit that it didn’t help. A splitting headache came out of nowhere, and she couldn’t hold a memory in her head for more than a minute. She’d used fantasy as a numbing agent so often that it no longer worked.

  He had no idea that for a moment she had considered how much damage she could do to him with his autographed baseball bat. Did he think she would never snap?

  She opened her e-mail in an attempt to refocus. There were fewer today as the summit package had finally been completed, thank goodness. She scanned the list of new items and a message from IAtchison at U.C. Irvine caught her attention. Irene.

  It seemed markedly innocent on the surface, a simple thank you for the talking points she’d e-mailed. In a postscript there was a question. She read it three times, then escaped to the privacy of the bathroom.

  What did Irene want with her? It seemed just a friendly question on the surface. Was she a basketball fan? If so, would she be interested in a ticket to Sunday night’s WNBA game?

  It was nothing — she was paranoid. That was all. Just because WNBA games were crawling with lesbians didn’t mean Irene was suggesting anything. She was married, for God’s sake, but then, so was Paul Johnson. This was just her own paranoia talking. But why would Irene ask, when they’d really spoken so little at the reception?

  She paced the bathroom, not knowing what to do. If Irene was making some sort of subtle suggestion she could just play obtuse. Of course she would refuse the ticket. But what if Irene then suggested an LPGA tournament? Quoted Gertrude Stein or suggested “Let’s be friends”?

  She wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. Irene was not gay, nor was she prowling. How could she know Reyna was a lesbian anyway? She couldn’t.

  She managed a quick note thanking her for the offer. She did like to watch the WNBA when she got the chance, but her schedule at the moment was difficult, and her mother needed her. It was a light mix of truth and lies. She was very good at that.

  Her headache got worse.

  “And that’s when I decided I’d had enough. Angie like borrowed money from me all the time, and it wasn’t as if she had a job. Angie…”

  Holly decided it was just best to tune it out. She glanced at her watch again, but the nuance was lost on Gayle. Again. Gayle was her second coffee date of the week and it was obvious that Gayle was not over Angie, no matter how much she said she was, because every other sentence was about Angie.

  “.. . admitted she’d been sleeping around, and I mean all around. Angie was such a slut, you just wouldn’t believe it, and it’s not like I’m pure as the driven snow or anything, but Angie…”

  Her first coffee date had been a little bit better, but it had been Candace who began looking at her watch shortly after Holly explained that conceptual mathematicians primarily play games. She’d lost Candace somewhere between dart theory and Ramsay numbers.

  “So what do you do?”

  Holly missed the question initially, and floundered in her desire to hide the fact that she’d been thinking about other things. “At the moment I’m considering going back to school.”

  “Really? To study what?”

  “Mathematics.” Perhaps she ought initially to go easy on the conceptual part.

  “Really? You mean stuff like stranger/friend theory — what’s that called? I can never remember.”

  Holly blinked. “Th
e stranger/friend theory side of things. Ramsay numbers.”

  “That’s right, Ramsay numbers. My great-great uncle was Alan Turing. Mind you, I don’t like get any of it and I’ve tried, but I do know that stuff is like hard. I just don’t have a head for math. It was the only thing Angie was good at — she could add up how much something cost with tax and ask me to pay for it in the blink of an eye. Angie…”

  Well, that was frustrating. She had found someone who actually understood a little bit about the subject dearest to her heart, but that someone was completely and totally fixated on her ex. She had had high hopes for a meeting time of eight-thirty for coffee and dessert. They might have gone to a movie and then on to more private pursuits. Those pursuits might have led to a lovely Saturday morning breakfast and the beginning of something sustained.

  The U-Haul Syndrome was sounding like a darned attractive disease, now that she thought about it.

  It was just another frustration in a long week of them. It was patently clear that she needed a faculty sponsor at the university of her choice, but she couldn’t choose a university unless she had a good idea that she could find a sponsor there. She could send out a battery of letters to department chairs and see what happened, but it might take weeks, months, to stir interest. Her problem was she had nothing to intrigue anybody except for a four-year-old college transcript. Calling herself a conceptual mathematician was — like, you know — overreaching. With another four years of college she might be able to claim the title.

  “I’m really sorry, but I have to rush off. I just lost total track of time.” Gayle was rising. “This was fun. Maybe we could do again sometime.”

  “You have my number,” Holly said. Gayle smiled happily, but something in her little sigh said that in the romance equation, Holly did not equal Angie. Add the fact that Galina had never returned her phone call. It totaled up to major depression.