by Lee Lynch
Annie had butterflies about the straight friend as well as the kids. How she longed for the taste of Marie-Christine’s lipstick on her lips, a crowded piano bar where she could, for a cover charge, rent a table for the night and feel at home. Did she have it in her to start all over, so differently, including putting up a fight for her job? Was Chantal’s pull strong enough to energize her when all these other forces seemed to be tearing her apart?
“Is there room for me?” Annie asked, her voice embarrassingly small.
Even over the leaping river, she could hear a train come into town. Chantal’s voice sounded small too as she looked toward the falling water. “Well, I suppose if I didn’t have to spend time complaining about my love life I could fit you in somewhere. For a while, anyway, till you went back to your exciting ivy league women.”
“Why would I go back?”
“Be realistic, Annie.” Chantal ticked off points by poking a finger at Annie’s knee. “I’m just a divorced gal in a dumpy little factory town. I’m fat and forty and I’ll retire as a payroll clerk for some dinky operation like Club Med. I don’t expect romance. I never expected a good-looking, smart woman like you to look at me twice. There’ll be another Jo in your life, guaranteed. I’ll enjoy you while I can and then we’ll both go on.” She turned to Annie and traced her lips with an index finger. “As a matter of fact, I’ll be satisfied getting you into bed.”
“That’s all you want?”
“No, but I don’t think it’s wise to be too optimistic.”
“Geez. I always want this to be It, Chantal. All or nothing. Sophisticated women have their good points, but it never works out for me. I’m just a common, garden-variety dyke.”
“So maybe we could be It. I don’t know. I’ve learned not to count my chickens till the Kentucky Fried scouts leave town.”
“I guess I get married in my head every time I kiss a woman.”
“You haven’t kissed me yet.”
“Not because I don’t want to. Just because of where it would lead.” She slammed the heels of her hands against the steering wheel. “You’re right. I want, for once, to look before I leap.”
“When’s your birthday?”
“April 30.”
“Taurus. It figures. Hold me again, Sugar. It’s getting chilly.”
Annie leaned over the shift and wrapped her arms tightly around Chantal. “Wouldn’t it be nice if—”
“We got trapped together on a desert island in the tropics?” Chantal suggested.
“Well, yes, but—”
“I won the lottery and could invite you to visit me in my New York penthouse or my beach house in Provincetown?” Chantal nuzzled Annie’s neck with a cold nose. “You always smell so clean.”
“That too, but—”
“We were the kind of people who didn’t worry about tomorrow and we could you-know-what each other silly?”
“That’s more what I had in mind,” admitted Annie.
Chantal grinned. “That’s the good thing about you Taurus women. You get what you want or die trying.”
Annie pulled away. The moon had drifted just out of sight. She opened her window wide, stuck her head out and howled at the dam.
“All right!” cried Chantal. “Do you know how many times I’ve wanted to do that?” She howled too.
“I’d settle for a howling partner in my life about now,” Annie admitted. “Oh, crap, no!” She slammed her cap onto the seat.
“What?” asked Chantal, whipping her head around to look out the back window.
“Another damn cop. This isn’t my night.”
Chantal moved to the far side of her seat. “He probably thinks we’re a couple of kids.”
“Yes, but what if my speeding ticket is already on their computer? Or the dispatcher remembers my name. And who’s to say he doesn’t already know who I am?” Though she didn’t want to be right, it did feel like they might be hounding her.
But when the city policeman reached the Grape, he peered inside and asked, “You ladies need any assistance?”
“No,” Annie said, trying to sound on top of things. “We’re just talking.”
Chantal laughed, and used her flirty voice. “It’s so hard to get any privacy at home for, you know, girl talk.”
The officer, no rookie, cocked a finger at Chantal and grinned. Annie could see that Chantal had piqued his interest. “Then I’ll leave you to it, little lady. Just keep your doors locked. We get some rough customers out on the streets this late at night.”
“I’m sure you do,” Chantal said, leaning across Annie, one hand, out of sight of the cop, behind Annie, under her shirt.
“You’re awful!” Annie said, laughing as she rolled up the window. “He didn’t even ask for I.D.”
“I lived with a lunk like that for a long time, Sugar. That’s all you have to do to keep them in line.” Chantal hadn’t removed her hand and was delicately kneading the small of Annie’s back.
“I think I’d better get you back to your car, Chantal, before he has any second thoughts about us.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Chantal said with a sigh, getting out of the way of the gearshift. “This isn’t the time or place, and we deserve a better start than this, don’t you agree?”
Annie just smiled and pulled her cap back on.
Chapter Twelve
That Sunday afternoon Annie scooted the Saab into the last parking space behind Rafferty Center where the art exhibit was being held. A mass of grey clouds had been haunting the day. She didn’t notice Peg and Paris until they’d come up beside her.
“Penny for your thoughts,” said Paris.
Annie jumped. “Hi. I was thinking.”
Peg laughed, settling three fingers in her vest pocket. “I thought you gave that up.”
“Philosophy? Like you gave up three-piece suits,” teased Annie.
“Philosophy,” Paris teased, “is only institutionalized worrying.”
“Disciplined worrying—it trains the mind,” Annie defended herself. “Look at you two. If you aren’t a dyke fashion statement.”
Paris glanced lovingly at Peg. Peg examined Annie.
“Hey,” Annie said. “This happens to be my best blue button-down and these are my newest chinos.”
Paris laughed. “A tweed jacket and elbow patches and Turkey could get you a job teaching philosophy in New York.”
“My ultimate dream,” she jabbed.
Once, when Annie and Paris had been waxing nostalgic about the unsettled nature of their otherwise very different younger years, Paris had explained why she had finally put down roots in Morton River Valley. “Missing that freedom is not quite the same as wanting it. And the periods of wanting it, are getting briefer.” Her words had encouraged Annie to move in with Gussie.
Above them, the sun peered through clouds as if mulling over a grand entrance.
“What’s all this?” Paris asked.
Several people with signs circled in front of the steps, looking angry in dark suits or pastel dresses.
“The Rush Limbaugh Fan Club,” Peg grumbled.
Annie pulled her cap over her eyes, but she’d seen a sign that depicted a circle and slash around the word pornography. Others read, Save Our Children and Out of the Army/Out of the Schools. She felt cold with fury.
“They’ve gotten wind of Elly’s lesbian drawings,” Peg explained, stopping to watch.
Paris added, “They pulled Verne Prinz out of the junior high. The parents objected when she showed some slides of sixteenth century nudes.”
“Is there a back way in?” Annie asked, talking to the sidewalk.
“Why?” asked Peg. “They’re just a bunch of no-brain reactionaries.”
“I don’t want to run into anybody from Medipak,” she muttered.
“Whoa,” said Paris. “Once burned, twice shy?”
Peg said, “As long as we’re doing clichés, lightning never strikes twice.”
“Better safe than sorry,” countere
d Annie.
“Come on, then,” Paris said. “I can get us in the back way, though I hate for them to run us off like this.”
Annie balked. “You’re right. I shouldn’t give in to them. That’s just what they want, isn’t it?”
“Art becomes pornography if we let them call it that,” Peg agreed. “Let’s go.” She dashed through the picketers, head down.
“Hey, you!” called a man’s voice.
Annie made the mistake of looking up. Lorelei’s father had hailed her.
“Where’s your friends?” he hissed. Then he turned to the person behind him and said loudly. “All the sickos will show up for this, wait and see.”
She stopped to shut him up, but froze with a groan. Behind Mr. Simski was Mrs. Kurt. The woman, plump with bouncy blond curls and little makeup, squinted suspiciously at her. Annie looked around for Kurt, but evidently, she was to be spared that confrontation.
“I wanted to speak with you when my daughter wasn’t around,” said Mrs. Kurt, in a voice carefully not hostile. She still only knew Annie by sight from the ballparks.
Annie stepped boldly up to the woman. “Listen, it wasn’t what it seemed at the game that day. I was as surprised as you.”
Mrs. Norwood’s face registered genuine shock. “Surprised? Surprised? Don’t try to blame that poor innocent.”
Annie’s face felt hot and red. As soon as she said it, she knew she’d gone too far. “I suppose you think lesbians are so irresistible your kid’s going to throw herself at one of us too?”
“I don’t want you speaking of my daughter. She’s been raised to resist the temptations of Satan.”
“What’re you calling me, you hateful, narrow-minded bigot?”
“Evil! I’m calling you evil! You and the pornographers in there!”
Peg put a restraining hand on her arm. “Let’s go inside.”
“Are you another one?” accused Paula Norwood, her almost cherubic face transformed by some combination of terror and aversion. “Are you?” she screamed after them. “Corrupters! Filth!”
Propelled forward by Peg and Paris, Annie called back, “Bless you too. Thanks for your Christian charity and goodwill!”
“Heaphy!” admonished Peg. But Annie stopped. The cherub had returned.
“You’re right. God hates the sin, but loves the sinner. You’re welcome at our church. Come and be saved for Christ!”
She felt the mesmerizing conviction of the woman, a ray of a kind of heartless purity like a tractor beam trying to pull her aboard a phantom rescue vessel. Chantal was right. She could explain to Mrs. Kurt until doomsday and never even be heard, much less understood. And vice versa, she chided herself.
“Crap!” she said once inside the entryway.
“You’re really letting this get to you, aren’t you, Annie?” asked Paris.
Annie pulled away. “Didn’t you hear her?”
“She can’t do anything to you, Heaphy.”
“She already has, Peg.” Her two friends had almost matching concerned expressions.
“Listen, I’m not the crazy one. I need to protect myself.”
Venita Valerie came through the door. “Aren’t they horrible?”
“Scared Heaphy here half to death.”
Venita looked sympathetic. “They’re harmless, Annie. Just a lot of noise.”
“What can I say to make you guys understand where I’m coming from? I’m not scared of those wackos; I’m scared of their crazy power, of living with no cushion between me and the unemployment line. You try it and then see if they feel so harmless.”
She noticed the shock on Venita’s face. “Venita, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, but women who grow up in Chelsea, Massachusetts don’t very often lead gay pride marches and if they do it’s when we’re too young to know what’s at stake.”
“There were stands I should have taken, I suppose,” Venita said in her quiet way, “but for me, being the best teacher I could be was going to change the minds of more white people than any march. I never had to choose between my job and my race. I think I understand, though. You’re walking a tightrope and if you fall there’s no net for you like there would be for Peg, or for a retired person like me.”
Annie nodded. “I’m sorry. I’m getting confused about who my friends are. My job now is to be even more careful Mrs. Kurt doesn’t see me at work. And to stop putting off confronting Judy.”
A small black man in a suit, tie and green, red and black crocheted cap joined them. “What are you doing, Paris, importing troops? This one,” he said, looking Annie up and down, “must be a hit with the moral majority outside.”
Paris introduced Thor Valerie, Venita’s nephew and director of V.O.W., Valley Opportunity Watch, the town’s community action program. Where Venita was soft-spoken and self-effacing, Thor was a fast-talking, assertive, gifted spokesman for the poor. He and Paris were soon deep in grant talk.
The building itself was a work of art: French doors, mahogany wainscoting, decorative tiling around the fireplace and stained glass windows. A lemony furniture polish smell was strong. About two dozen people wandered through the main room, looking at artwork, sipping wine and nibbling hors d’oeuvres. Annie stood for a while watching, trying to regain her calm.
“You came,” Elly said, her voice breathy and low. In her patterned dress and high heels, she appeared to have shed yet more pounds. She was almost frail-looking except for the same old stubbornly forward-set jaw and jauntily up tilted nose. “I was afraid no one I knew would be here for the biggest night of my life. I feel like the parachute jumper who just passed by the edge of the earth.”
Elly took Annie’s arm, her hands bony icicles, and led the three of them to the hearth. “This is Verne Prinz, my instructor.” Annie noticed an incredible level of excitement in Elly’s eyes.
Verne did not offer to shake hands. “I’ve been hearing a lot about you,” Annie said, studying the woman who leaned, no, lolled against the mantelpiece, the picture of sang-froid. Her eyes were a striking grey and her hair, short on top, had been dramatically thinned and left long down her back. She smelled of red wine gone sour.
Verne said, “Not from my Southern belle, surely.”
Elly laughed softly, eyes downcast, eyelids lavender-hued. Her fingers, nails under a glitter polish, softly tapped a small beaded purse as if echoing a heart beat out of control.
“Where’s Dusty?” asked Paris.
“Working.” Elly rolled her eyes. “I’ll bet that woman came out with one hand stirring a pot of stew and the other...” She stopped, and clapped a hand daintily over her mouth. “I do run off at the mouth when I get nervous, don’t I?”
Annie scowled at Verne. No one said anything, but even Annie’s obvious hostility could not suppress Elly’s excitement. “Did you know,” Elly asked in a proud tone, “that Verne studied at the Art Institute of Chicago? And she lived in a loft in SoHo!”
Annie asked Verne, “Did you get lost?”
Elly laughed, casting a tender glance at Verne. “She makes her living doing residencies in places like this.”
Peg moved smoothly between Verne and Elly. “Show us your work, El.”
“I’m so nervous. I can’t.” Downcast eyes, tap-the-purse. It was as if Elly’s outgoing soul, the heart of the Queen of Hearts, had been consumed. No wonder Dusty was worried.
Peg led them to the nearest wall where they studied a striking and realistic self-portrait of an old man, then several messy abstracts. They moved on to an arrangement of photographs of the Valley and its people.
Paris commented in a low voice, “Verne serves a purpose, though. She brings some semblance of culture to backwaters.”
“And polishes gems like Elly,” Peg added.
Elly’s drawings were on the next wall.
“She’s so good,” Paris said.
“I can’t get over it,” said Annie, opening her arms wide to indicate Elly’s work. “All this talent just waiting for the light of day.”
>
The Valley scenes—factories, river, railroad—had the look of finely detailed etchings. The controversial drawings were softer, both of the same couple. In one, the two women kissed, pressed tight together. In the other, they walked along a road holding hands, a suggestion of arms swinging between them, a dark dog bounding behind, leafed trees meeting above.
“But at what price?” asked Peg. Annie followed Peg’s eyes.
Verne was accepting wine from Elly as if used to being served. In the doorway, Dusty, in grey slacks and white shirt, stood watching with narrowed eyes. As Elly poured, Dusty clenched her fists.
“I’m not standing here doing nothing,” Annie declared and crossed to Dusty.
“Did you ask her?” Annie led Dusty toward Paris and Peg.
“Ask who what?”
“About Ireland,” Annie said, able to answer her own question by the stubborn look on Dusty’s face.
“I think maybe I’d better find someone else to ask, the way things are going.”
“No, Dusty—”
“Heaphy, this has been coming for a long time. She’s been restless. I should have done something right off, but I didn’t figure it out for a while, and then I suppose I hid out at the diner rather than own up to the problem. Now, I don’t know if I care enough myself.”
Annie felt as if someone close had just died. While Paris hugged Dusty hello, Annie tried to shake off her sadness. Dusty must be doing enough grieving for all of them.
“So, are we talking great artist here or what?” Dusty asked in a raspy voice, peering at Elly’s drawings. She cleared her throat. “Hey, that’s our place,” she declared a little too loudly and added, as if to distract everyone, “We’ve had two Canadian geese on the pond this week. They’re so big it’s getting crowded. I’m afraid they’re planning to settle down and raise a family.”
“Dusty!”
Elly came across the room to her lover with a half-skipping step, her color even higher. “Do you like them?” she asked.