One Fine Day

by Erica Abbott

  Now he looked genuinely puzzled, as if trying to decide whether or not to believe her. “Really?”

  “Really. There are two reasons I don’t like Gary, and neither have anything to do with the fact that he’s married to your daughter.”

  After a moment, he said quietly, “Perhaps you should tell me, then.”

  She had a final moment of hesitation. Was she really going to tell Walter things she’d kept carefully to herself for years? A month ago, she probably wouldn’t have had this conversation with him. Now she was suddenly tired of hiding her feelings.

  She knew it was because of Caroline. The woman was beginning to take over her life again. “All right,” she conceded. “Gary doesn’t like to work. He wants to play at being a big firm lawyer, and he likes to schmooze clients, but he doesn’t want to get his hands dirty.”

  “Every firm needs rainmakers,” he said mildly.

  “I understand that. But Gary isn’t bringing in new clients, or new work. He’s playing golf and eating dinner on the firm’s expense account. He comes in late, leaves early, and I’ve had to authorize writing off a lot of his time. His billable hours are well under our targets.”

  She watching him during this speech, trying to gauge his reaction but, as before, she couldn’t read him. At length he said, “You said you had two reasons.”

  In for a penny, she thought. “Yes,” she said. “He’s made it clear that he doesn’t like me. Not because of who I am, but because of what I am.”

  “What?” Walter looked confused. “Because you’re a woman?”

  “Because I’m a lesbian.”

  She saw a flicker in his eyes. “Has he said that to you?”

  “Not directly, no. He’s said it to others, more than once. A few weeks ago, he asked Gina, my paralegal, if she had a boyfriend. When she said no, he asked her if she was ‘one of those dykes, like Allen.’”

  “I see,” Walter said, noncommittally. “Why haven’t you brought this up before?”

  “He’s your son-in-law, Walter. What was the point? You weren’t going to fire him for being a homophobe, were you?”

  The rhetorical question hung in the air between them. She wondered what he was thinking, but his face was closed. After a moment, he said, “Jill, I’ve never said this to you before, but I want you to know how much the firm, and I, appreciate your discretion over the years.”

  What was he talking about? she wondered. “Discretion? Are you talking about dealing with Gary?”

  “No, no,” he waved a hand. “I mean your discretion about your preference.”

  She tried not to flinch at the word. “Preference” always made her feel that people believed that she had just chosen “lesbian” instead of “straight” in the cafeteria line of sexual orientation, like picking lemon bars over apple pie. She suppressed an urge to explain to him that some people just don’t like apples.

  “I’ve always been out, Walter,” she said, still wondering what he meant.

  “I know, and I appreciate that. But we also appreciate it that you’re not in our face about it.”

  “In your face?”

  “You know,” he said, waving his hand again. “Posting Pride Day flyers in the break room. Wearing rainbow pins at work. Bringing dates to firm events. For example, you came alone to the Friends of the Opera party last Friday. We appreciate that sort of thing.”

  Jill stared at him, feeling as if he’d punched her in the stomach. Was Walter, open and accepting Walter, actually congratulating her on keeping her sexual orientation under wraps?

  In the next moment she realized it wasn’t really Walter who was making her angry. She was angry with herself for being a good little lesbian, out, but not too far out. After her criticism of Caroline to Terry last night, she felt like the worst kind of hypocrite.

  She finished the conversation with Walter, promising to keep him informed on the Rocky Mountain Opera case, and went back to her office, feeling a little dazed.

  Chapter Nine

  Jill stood in front of the apartment door, tightly gripping the bottle of wine. This was a bad idea. She had been telling herself that since Wednesday. Why did I agree to this?

  She reminded herself firmly that after the conversation with Walter a few days ago, she’d made a sort of New Year’s resolution, albeit five months late. She wasn’t going to lie to herself anymore, and she was going to try, at least, to understand how she was feeling. Why did I agree to this? Because I want to see Caroline, and talk to her, and try, as best we can, to be friends again. It was what Caroline wanted, and it was what Jill wanted, too. She knocked firmly on the door, and within seconds Caroline opened it.

  “Jillian,” she said, her voice low but still full of the music that Jill remembered so well. “I’m so glad you came.”

  She reached for Jill’s free hand and pulled her inside, but didn’t attempt the hug and kiss she’d given Jill at the Friends of the Opera party. They stood in the foyer a moment, looking at each other. Jill had seen Caroline three times since she returned, had talked to her on the phone several times, but the stirring of excitement she felt at being in Caroline’s presence again hadn’t diminished.

  Her wavy hair was piled carelessly on top of her head, held in place with a clip. She wore loose-fitting linen trousers and a knit tunic top in her favorite blue color. It wasn’t an outfit for a date, just a casual evening at home, what they’d agreed to do. Yet the top showed Caroline’s curves, the V-neck just low enough to give a hint of her cleavage, and Jill found herself looking away as she felt her breathing speed up.

  “You didn’t have to bring anything,” Caroline said, taking the wine from Jill’s hand.

  Jill said, “You know my mother. Never show up at someone’s house for dinner empty-handed.”

  Caroline laughed. “Good to see that training is still effective after all these years. Come in, and see the place.”

  Jill stepped into the loft, admiring the high ceilings with the exposed ductwork and old brick wall. Caroline had the gas fireplace burning brightly to ward off the early May chill. There were prints on the walls, carefully framed, the colorful abstracts that Caroline favored. Jill noted that her taste had improved with her income.

  “Nice place,” she said. “You’re renting?”

  “Yes, Jack helped me find it. The place is actually owned by a friend of his who’s off for a year to Asia on some work project. I thought it would give me a chance to look around and find a place of my own. For now, it’s nice, and it’s close to the office.”

  “It sounds odd for you to say that,” Jill remarked. “The office.”

  “It feels odd, believe me,” Caroline said. “The whole rhythm of getting up early, getting dressed, and going to an office is so alien to me. It’s been quite an adjustment.”

  “I imagine so,” Jill said.

  “You know what’s been the strangest part?”

  “Tell me. The commute?”

  Caroline laughed. “No, although I have to tell you, I do miss being driven around. Really, the oddest thing has been actually not having someone show up to give me a costume and fix my hair and makeup so I can go to work. I’d really gotten used to throwing on my jeans and going to the theatre for someone else to try to make me look presentable every evening. This having to do it for myself is really peculiar.”

  Jill shook her head, smiling. “You poor thing. Welcome to the world of real working people.”

  “Now, now. I was working very hard. Make-believe is very hard work indeed.”

  Yes, Jill thought. It is. “You can tell me all about it,” she said.

  “I will. But first let’s start dinner, I’m starving.”

  “You always are.”

  Caroline put her hands on her hips, eyes sparkling. “You’re not going to bring up the shrimp fried rice again, are you?”

  “Well, now that you mention it—you owe me about a hundred orders.”

  “I always shared.”

  “Caroline, you always ate lik
e you’d been digging ditches all day instead of singing and giving voice lessons. I was lucky to get a few measly grains of rice.”

  “You’ve been keeping that grudge all these years, have you?”

  She said it lightly, but the moment shifted between them as Jill met her eyes. That wasn’t the only thing Jill had been keeping for all these years, and she saw that Caroline knew it. Was that why Caroline was pressing her, because she knew just how strong Jill’s feelings were for her?

  Caroline cleared her throat and her voice sounded a little hoarse. “Come on, I’m putting you to work,” she said, leading Jill to the galley kitchen.

  She gave Jill the task of chopping vegetables while she heated oil in a wok and took out the chicken breasts that she’d already cut into bite size pieces for the stir fry.

  “Bottled sauce, I’m afraid,” she apologized. “But it’s a good one.”

  Jill said, “Hey, you know me. Any home-cooked meal is great.”

  Carolyn put the rice on, and said, “You don’t look like you’ve put on a single pound. In fact, you seem more slender than I remember.”

  Jill shrugged. “I don’t keep track.”

  “I wish I didn’t have to. I’ve been trying to lose the same twelve pounds for ten years.”

  Jill cut the stalks off broccoli and said, without looking at her, “You look great, Caroline.”

  Caroline put the lid on the pot of rice. “Well, fortunately, people don’t have the same expectation of opera singers that they do of, say, movie stars. A little extra weight is almost an expectation, as if we’re all supposed to need a few more pounds to generate lung power or something.”

  Jill sliced carrots and fought off an overwhelming desire to put her arms around Caroline’s waist and pull her in, running her hands down Caroline’s curves to reassure her of just how beautiful she found her. She wondered again why she thought she would be able to get through the evening without touching Caroline. “At least no one ever fired you for being overweight,” she said.

  Caroline turned to her. “You’re referring to the infamous little black dress incident, I suppose?”

  Jill nodded. “It was Deborah Voigt, wasn’t it?”

  Caroline gave her a sharp look. “That’s right. She was going to sing Ariadne at Covent Garden in 2004, but they fired her for being too big to fit into the director’s costume choice for a period piece, a contemporary little black dress. Idiots,” she finished succinctly.

  Jill grinned at her. “Had an opinion about it, did you?”

  “Believe it or not, competition aside, no one knows better than another opera performer who the good singers are and who isn’t worth the trouble. Deborah has a big, magnificent voice, perfect for Wagner and Strauss. The Royal Opera House had used her before. They knew what they were getting when they hired her: a great voice in a big body. Management backed their fool of a director instead of recognizing talent when they had it. They actually called my agent after they fired her and inquired about my availability. I told them to go to hell. The German soprano they eventually got to replace her couldn’t touch her for talent.”

  “Voigt got her revenge, though, didn’t she?”

  Caroline smiled wolfishly. “In spades. She sang the same role a few years later at Covent Garden, after a change in management. It was a triumph.”

  “And after she’d had gastric bypass surgery and lost about a hundred pounds.”

  “Since when have you been keeping up on opera gossip?”

  Jill shrugged, and Caroline continued, “She’s braver than I would have been. Abdominal surgery for an opera singer, the idea scares the shit out of me. If you don’t have your thoracic diaphragm in great shape, you can’t sing opera. At all. Fortunately, she came through it without any ill-effects. She still sounds wonderful.” She stirred the chicken and then said, “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “I follow opera. I’ve read Opera News, and I go online sometimes.”

  “Keeping track of me?” Caroline sounded casual, but Jill knew what was behind the question.

  “Yes,” she answered simply, then changed the subject. “So did you talk to Terry? Is she going to do the PR work you needed?”

  Caroline leaned against the counter and smiled. “She is, and I’m very happy so far. She seems very diligent.”

  “She is that. And persistent.”

  Caroline seemed to catch something in her tone and she cocked her head a little in a way that reminded Jill, incongruously, of Walter. “Sounds like you’ve been at the receiving end of that,” she said.

  Jill dumped broccoli, slivers of red peppers, water chestnuts, and carrots into the wok on top of the cooked chicken.

  “You could say that,” she said, wiping her hands with a paper towel. Caroline obviously wanted to know more about the relationship, and Jill had no trouble telling her. “We met at the grand opening of a new shopping center one of my clients had built in Northminster. She was covering the event as a stringer for the neighborhood paper.”

  “Love at first sight?” Caroline asked, stirring the cooking food.

  No, Jill wanted to say. I’ve never felt that for anyone except you. “Not really. I thought she was cute, and I gave her my card. She was very attentive. I think we had lunch five times in the next three weeks, and dinner twice. After six months she moved in with me.”

  “How long did you live together?” Caroline asked, diligently checking the rice to avoid looking at Jill.

  “Almost two years. And before you ask, she left me. Not that I blamed her. I was hardly ever home. I was never what she needed.”

  Now that the story had reached the end of the relationship, Caroline could turn to meet her eyes. “And what was that?” she asked.

  Jill sighed. “I wouldn’t call Terry high maintenance, but she does like a lot of social time. She’s more into going out, bars and clubs, than I ever was. She liked to have people around her. She’d invite people over, her friends mostly, when all I wanted was a glass of wine and a bath.”

  Caroline got down two plates. “Yes, you were always a bit of a homebody.”

  Jill folded her arms. “Did that drive you crazy?”

  Caroline looked surprised at the shift in the focus of the conversation. Slowly she answered, “No. I like being with people, but I was always happy to just be home with a good book and some music…” She stopped, but Jill heard the rest of the sentence: and you.

  “Have there been a lot of other girlfriends?” Caroline asked, a little hesitantly.

  Jill shook her head. “No one serious.”

  They plated the food, rice under the stir-fry, and carried the dishes to the dining room table. Caroline asked, “I’ve got water, sparkling or still, a chardonnay, or some decent pinot grigio.”

  “A glass of the pinot, I think.”

  Caroline poured wine and they sat down to eat.

  “You’re right,” Jill said, “the sauce is good.”

  “I’m glad you like it. I haven’t exactly been honing my cooking skills for the last few years.”

  “I imagine not.” She looked at Caroline and added quietly, “Tell me about your life, Caroline.”

  Caroline talked, and Jill listened to the stories about traveling and the great opera houses of the world. Caroline described the life of an up-and-coming singer and the heady world of a superstar.

  “What was your best moment?” Jill asked.

  Caroline considered for minute. “Winning the Operalia in Paris was an amazing feeling,” she began. “But I think it was the first time I did Butterfly. I was still very young, only a few years into my career. I’ve done it a number of times since, including at the Met, which was incredible. But that first time, when I finished ‘Un bel di,’ and the audience came to their feet, and I heard them calling out ‘Brava!’…” Her voice sounded choked up, “It was the first moment I knew I belonged, that I had become the opera singer I had always wanted to be.” She put down her fork and smiled. “I still get goosebumps thinking abou
t it.”

  Jill said, “It was amazing.”

  “What?”

  “I was there,” Jill admitted.

  “You…what?” Caroline stuttered.

  “Bass Hall in Fort Worth, right? A beautiful building, like a classic Old World opera house. It had just opened. Two thousand people on their feet, giving you a three-minute ovation.” Jill smiled and said, “I get goosebumps myself.”

  Caroline sat back in her chair in astonishment. “I had no idea. Jill, why didn’t you tell me? My God.”

  “I don’t know,” Jill admitted. “I just…I just had to hear you, I suppose. I flew into DFW one day and left the next.”

  “I had no idea,” Carolyn repeated. “You should have sent me a note or something. You could have come backstage.”

  “I didn’t want to talk to you,” Jill said. “It was still so…it still hurt so much.” She took a slow sip of wine, then said, “What amazed me was your acting. I mean, I knew how incredible your voice was, but that scene in the third act, when Butterfly realizes she’s been betrayed by the man she loves…you were unbelievably poignant. There were a lot of tears in the audience.”

  Carolyn said softly, “It wasn’t hard for me to play a woman with a broken heart.”

  Regret tightened Jill’s throat. “I’ve never forgotten how you sounded that night,” was all she could say.

  They took after-dinner coffee into the living room, and sat in front of the fireplace. Jill was relaxed, remembering how good it was just to be with Caroline. Caroline put music on, a classic Ella Fitzgerald album.

  As the bass and trumpet introduction to “Fine and Mellow” filled the room, Jill said, “I haven’t heard this in years.” She listened for a few bars to the lament about the man who didn’t love his woman right. “My God, I’d forgotten how really wonderful she was.”

  “The finest female popular singer of the twentieth century,” Caroline intoned gravely.

  Jill grinned at her. “Are we going to have this argument again? It’s Streisand.”

  “Please. She couldn’t hold Miss Ella’s coat.”