by Jan Burke
“So Lisa’s headed for Sacramento!” Becky said.
Marcy laughed. “Filing hasn’t even opened yet, Becky.”
“Still, not bad for a Survivor of Selman,” Ivy said.
Among some of the original members, the notion that SOS actually stood for Survivors of Selman was an old joke. Somehow, applied to Lisa, it didn’t seem so funny. Another small silence ensued, and Ivy blushed furiously. As one who has done my share of blurting out remarks that kill conversation, I felt sympathy for her.
“I guess none of us have done too badly, have we?” I said.
“No,” Becky chimed in, and began to talk about a research grant that one of the other “survivors” had received.
I glanced around the banquet room at the Cliffside Hotel, and saw the faces of a few of the others who had joined the organization not long after it began. A number of them held degrees in law, medicine, and business. There were also artists, writers, homemakers, bureaucrats, educators, entrepreneurs. Their political leanings ran the gamut. But the first women to join SOS all had one thing in common: they had survived a marriage, relationship, or affair with Dr. Andre Selman, professor of sociology at Las Piernas College.
Professionally, Dr. Selman was highly respected in his field. He had not yet come into his own when I knew him. In the mid-1970s, his studies of changes in urban populations were just under way, not yet published. These days, he was one of the college’s most prized faculty members; consulted globally, not only by his fellow sociologists, but by media and moguls alike. Andre Selman was now a man of affairs.
Privately, you might say he had always been a man of affairs. About thirty of the women who were now in SOS had personal knowledge of that fact. Four of them were ex-wives; the rest of us had experienced everything from a few weeks to a few years with him, but got out without the help of lawyers.
Lisa had survived being his child. While I could now laugh at my own foolish decision to become involved with him, Lisa didn’t have a choice.
“Marcy, why isn’t Lisa here tonight?” Alicia asked, as soon as Becky stopped to draw a breath. “There’s all kinds of money walking around in this room.”
“She wanted to come along,” Marcy said, “mainly to see her old friends. But I asked her to wait until after the dinner. She thought I just didn’t want her hitting everyone up for campaign contributions at a fund-raiser for the battered women’s shelter, but that wasn’t it.” She hesitated, then added, “Sometimes, when we all get together, we start talking about her father or her brother. And even though she’s an adult now and even she certainly survived Andre, I don’t think it’s right for her to hear us go on about him.”
“I agree,” said Roberta Benson, who had just walked up. Roberta, Becky, Helen, Ivy, Marcy, and I were the founders of SOS. We had all known Marcy first, because we had all dated her ex-husband. We were also all especially close to Lisa while she was growing up.
Roberta’s a therapist, and Marcy’s remark allowed her an opportunity to wax on about contemporary psychological theories on why a child — even an adult child — should never hear rude remarks between exes.
Not especially interested, I looked around to see a local artist talking to a real estate broker about finding a location for a new gallery. The conversation was just part of the typical networking that goes on at an SOS meeting.
Helen had moved back to the front of the room. Alicia was still too close for comfort, but she had Ivy in a one-on-one now. “My Harold gave me this one for letting him keep his tacky old easy chair in the guest house,” she said, rocking her hand back and forth to catch the light on a diamond. “The chair’s gone now, of course, but…”
Ah, poor Ivy. Alicia had more history to her rings than a Hobbit.
Roberta drew my attention away from them by placing a hand on my arm.
“I wanted to tell you—” she began, but was interrupted by Helen’s call to dinner. “I’ll catch you afterward,” Roberta said. “I need to get in there and try to sit next to Helen. She’s on the board where I work now. But I want to talk to you, too. Can you stick around for a minute after dinner?”
“Sure.”
The group made its way into the dining area, and once we had feasted, Helen stood up and gave a quick speech. Applause followed her report that we had donated a record amount to the shelter and its programs against domestic violence. Nominations for officers for the next year were called for, and I deftly avoided being drafted.
Becky sat next to me throughout the evening. Ivy sat at my other side. Alicia, unmerciful, was at our table, too.
“Andre’s married to his fifth wife,” she said. “That’s five years now, and a record.”
“Alicia, who the hell cares?” Becky said, and asked if I wanted my dessert. It was something that was supposed to be mousse, but looked closer to moose, so I told her it was all hers.
“All I’m saying,” Alicia went on, “is that at the age of fifty-five, he seems to have settled down.”
Becky leaned over and whispered, “Not that the women in this town are safe. Word is, Jerry is just as bad as his old man.”
I had already heard rumors that Andre’s son by his first marriage was a womanizer. I looked over at Sharon Selman, Jerry’s mother. Becky caught my glance. “Not Sharon’s fault, of course.”
“No,” I said, “I guess not. Maybe not even Jerry’s. Andre has kept Jerry as close as he’s kept Lisa distant.”
“Andre’s loss,” Becky said.
“I agree.” I found myself thinking about what Alicia had said. “Becky, Andre had a heart attack five years ago. Think that made him decide to change his ways?”
“Maybe, but Lisa told me that Andre’s on hypertension medication, too.”
“He has high blood pressure?” Ivy asked.
“Yes. Lisa was telling me about all of his prescriptions. The one for high blood pressure — well, my guess is that old Andre may suffer the occasional side effect of impotency.”
“Someone should have diagnosed his high blood pressure years ago,” I said.
Becky laughed. “Maybe someone did. Another possible side effect of that medication is priapism.”
“What’s that?” Alicia asked.
“A condition that’s very hard on a man,” Becky said — with a straight face.
Alicia didn’t seem to get it. Or maybe she did, and that’s why she went home early.
Later, after the meeting wound down to a close, I stood talking to Marcy and Roberta in the lobby of the Cliffside. Becky and Sharon and several other women were nearby, all of us reluctant to end this year’s time together. At one point, I looked over my shoulder toward Claire Watterson, who was married to the president of the Bank of Las Piernas. Each year, at SOS meetings, she made a point of spending some time talking to me. I enjoyed her company, but tonight, she didn’t seem to be herself. Normally vivacious, she had been quiet and withdrawn all evening. I beckoned her to join us, but she shook her head and gave me a little smile, then walked farther away from the group.
I turned my attention back to the others. Roberta was telling us about her work as the director of counseling at a privately operated community services center. Most of her work was with the homeless.
“I’ve heard about the center,” I told her. “I remember that the business owners in the area went before the Planning Commission about it.”
“They were opposed to it at first,” Roberta admitted. “But we had help from some local philanthropists — including Helen — who convinced the commission that it was the best place to let us locate — right among the people we serve. Now that we’ve been there a while, they’ve accepted us.”
“I’ll have to come by and see it.”
“Sure. I’m leaving for an out of town meeting tomorrow, which makes my schedule a little hectic this week. But call me next week and I’ll give you the grand tour of the center — oh! I almost forgot to tell you! An old friend asked me to say hello to you…”
She stopped sp
eaking and, looking over my shoulder, smiled broadly. When I turned around to see what had distracted her, I saw Lisa Selman strolling toward us.
Lisa was smiling, too. She had her father’s blond hair and her mother’s light gray eyes and dark brows. Her other features were clearly her father’s and yet not masculine on her, giving her a strong but pleasant face. Even though she was ostensibly there only to give her mother a ride home, she wore a modest but sleek black dress — one that was not at odds with the elegant evening wear of the women coming from the banquet. She looked poised, sure of herself. A woman, I realized. No longer the adolescent prankster I was introduced to in the mid-1970s. An adult.
I go through this every time I see her, which is usually no more frequently than once a year. If those were the only moments in which I received a reminder that time was advancing, I don’t think it would bother me much. Unfortunately, I get these reminders more frequently than I get membership renewal notices from my local public television station.
“Lisa! You’re looking great,” I said, and gave her a hug.
“Hello, Assemblywoman Selman,” Roberta said, smiling.
We chatted for a while, then Lisa said, “Give me a call, Irene, and we’ll make plans together while I’m here. I’m staying at my brother’s place.” She wrote the number on the back of a business card. Her smile changed slightly as she handed the card to me, and I saw a hint of her old mischief in it. “No room at my mom’s place — she’s renting my old bedroom to a college student.”
“You could have stayed with me,” Marcy said. “There’s still plenty of room. The couch folds out into a bed.”
Lisa laughed. “Mom, even the attic at Dad’s is better than that old sleeper sofa.”
They laughed, but I wasn’t so comfortable with the memories she had evoked. Andre had a three-bedroom house. Back when I was dating him — when Lisa was about twelve or thirteen — Andre used one bedroom for an office and slept in another. The third was reserved for Jerry. When Lisa visited, she stayed in an attic room that was finished, but had no closet. “He doesn’t want me here,” she once told me with a shrug, as if it were an accepted fact of life.
Marcy suddenly realized she had left her purse in the banquet room, and went back to get it. As one of the other women began to talk to Lisa, Roberta turned to me and said, “I’ve got to be going. I just wanted to let you know that seeing you has really made a difference in Lucas Monroe.”
“Lucas Monroe?” I said, puzzled. “I haven’t seen him in years. Not since before I went to work in Bakersfield.”
She looked troubled. “Really? He claims — well, maybe he was mistaken.”
“He claims what?”
“That he saw you about a month and a half ago,” she said. “While you were waiting for a bus.”
3
LUCAS MONROE = The Man on the Bus Bench. Try as I might, it was impossible for me to completely accept that equation as the truth.
Lisa, Becky, Sharon, and others overheard Roberta mention his name, and remembered him. Roberta glanced around at their expectant faces and looked uneasy.
“Roberta…,” I said, then shook my head. I couldn’t make sense of what she had just told me.
She put an arm around my shoulders, keeping her voice low as she said, “Look, he wants to have his act together when he sees you.”
I pulled back a little, looking at her face.
“Don’t worry,” she said, misreading my distress, “he’s cleaned up, and I get the feeling that the things he wants to talk to you about are important. I suspect that when he makes his case this time, he wants to do it right.”
“Is Lucas a lawyer now?” Becky asked, making us both aware that we were still within earshot of the others.
Roberta looked at her watch. “I’ve got to get going. Good-bye, everybody! It was good to see you!”
“Wait,” Lisa called as Roberta reached the doors. “Will we see each other before I go back to San Diego?”
“Sure, if you can meet me for lunch tomorrow,” she said. “I’m traveling to a meeting in Sacramento tomorrow night.” Lisa nodded in agreement, and Roberta left. Lisa extracted similar promises from several of the others as we walked out of the hotel.
As its name suggests, the Cliffside is built above the ocean, and outside, the salt air was damp and cold. The others hastened their movements. I needed the coldness, the briny smell, and found myself walking more slowly than the others. Their voices eddied around me, surging bits and pieces of conversations passing me as the women moved on to their cars, leaving me standing on the steps of the Cliffside, until the only remaining sound was the whispering of the sea below the cliffs.
I heard it beneath a chorus of relentless self-accusation.
“IRENE?”
I turned to see a tall blonde standing behind me. “Oh — hi, Claire. I thought everyone else had left.”
“They have. I was going to call a cab, then I saw you standing out here alone. Are you all right?” she asked.
I nodded. “How about you?”
“I — I need a favor, actually. I wonder if I could get a ride. My car is in the shop, so Ben was going to pick me up this evening, but I guess he’s fallen asleep. I’ve called, but I just keep getting the answering machine.”
“Maybe he’s on his way over here. I’ll wait with you, if you’d like.”
She shook her head. “At first I thought he might be on his way, but it’s been too long. And he doesn’t answer the car phone in his Jag.”
She literally meant “his Jag,” as in “his and hers.” Ben and Claire Watterson had matching Jaguars. This proved they were frugal — they could have afforded a chauffeur-driven limo. And she wanted a ride in my drafty old heap? Right. Cab fare, even all the way across town to their mansion, could have been paid for with about two minutes’ worth of the interest on Claire’s pin-money account. So I figured that Claire needed a favor, but it wasn’t a ride.
“Sure, I’d be happy to give you a lift,” I said. “Just let me go back into the hotel and call Frank. He’s turned into a real worrywart.”
“Please, use mine,” she said, reaching into her handbag and pulling out a cellular phone.
I started to say “A pay phone would be cheaper,” but realized what a ludicrous remark that would seem to Claire. I called home. I also got an answering machine, and left a brief message saying I’d be later than expected.
“Frank must have been called out,” I said, handing the phone back to her. “Come on. I’m parked in the self-parking lot — I’m too cheap for valet.” I paused, wondering again why she would want to ride with me. Even though Claire was one of the women who had survived Andre Selman, I usually only saw her at the annual dinner. But in the next moment, I thought of the last time I had turned my back on someone. “I’ve only been to your house for a couple of fund-raisers,” I said. “Seaside Estates, right?’
“Yes. I hope it’s not too far?”
“Don’t worry about it. I didn’t get to talk to you much tonight. This will be our chance to catch up.”
“Yes,” she said, but didn’t say more as we walked to the car.
As I started the Karmann Ghia, she asked, “What did you mean, ‘called out’?”
“Pardon?”
“About your husband. You said he must have been called out.”
“These are his prime business hours. He’s on call tonight.”
“On call? Is he a doctor?”
“He’s a homicide detective.”
She made a face. After a moment she said, “Doesn’t it bother you that he spends his time around dead bodies?”
“Cuts down on the office sex.”
“Irene!”
“Sorry. No, the dead ones don’t bother me. In general, bodies don’t tend to be dangerous. It’s the folks who left them that way that worry me.”
Her perfect brows drew together. “Yes, I suppose the fact that he’s out looking for killers is more frightening.”
“Right.
I begin to feel relieved if it’s a suicide case.”
She was silent for a time, then suddenly asked, “Who’s Lucas Monroe?”
Good question, I thought. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her that Lucas Monroe was a drunk on a bus bench, partly because I couldn’t understand how it could be that Lucas was that man. “I’m not who I used to be,” he had told me. No kidding.
“An old friend,” I said. “I haven’t seen him in years. I met him in college.” When he was strong, good-looking, and dressed more neatly than about 98 percent of the student body. So clean-cut, he wore a suit and tie every day. “He was a graduate student, a teaching assistant in sociology. I took a statistics class from him.”
“Statistics?” She was openly puzzled. “I thought you majored in journalism.”
“I did. And Introduction to Statistics wasn’t required for my degree. I took the class at my father’s urging.”
“Your father must have been a cruel man.”
I laughed. “I fought the suggestion. But my father argued that government decisions were constantly being made on the basis of statistical studies, and that I would be a better reporter if I could analyze those studies on my own.”
“Statistics was the most boring class I ever took,” she said.
“I told my dad that I had heard that complaint from lots of stat students. He pooh-poohed that, told me to ask around the various departments until I found someone who had a reputation for teaching the subject well. Lucas Monroe had that reputation.”
“You must have really loved your father to take that class.”
“My father and I were close, but we weren’t getting along very well at that time. Growth pains, I suppose.”
“But you took the statistics class anyway.”
“To prove him wrong. When I later reported that Lucas Monroe made a convert out of me, my father was pleased. When I graduated, Dad ignored my journalism professors and sought out Lucas.” I shook my head, remembering. “He made his way through the commencement crowd to shake Lucas’s hand. They talked for a while, and later my father said, ‘That young man is destined for great things.’”