by Lee Lynch
Chantal watched her.
“Instead, to tell you the truth, the classes were driving me nuts. Life’s weird enough with its infinite options and Do-Not-Pass-Go-Do-Not-Collect-Two-Hundred-Dollars consequences.”
“You think too much,” Chantal said.
Annie stepped to the foot of Chantal’s bed, fingering her cap.
“Go ahead and hang it on the bedpost,” Chantal said, with a suggestive tone. She wore a long light blue silky nightgown and matching robe, both of which emphasized her eyes even more.
Annie reached for the post and stopped. Her team cap on Chantal’s bedpost—why did that sound like an irrevocable commitment? Next stop, twin rockers on the sun porch. They looked at each other. “Uh, Chantal,” Annie finally said.
“You’ve been trying to tell me you’ve got cold feet.”
She looked at her feet as if to confirm it. “I guess…I kind of do.”
Chantal said nothing.
Annie looked up. Chantal’s eyebrows were raised. “It’s not you,” she told Chantal. “I mean, you look great. You’re sexy as hell. It’s just—” She couldn’t name the feeling she had.
“Fear,” Chantal supplied.
“No. No, it’s not that. It’s like my sex drive disappeared. Crap, Chantal, I want you, you know I do, and I’m frozen.”
“Is that a challenge, Sugar? Because if it is, I think I could find your defrost cycle.”
“If anyone could do it, you could.” They were silent again. Then Annie suggested, “Maybe it’s having two failures in a row.”
“Damn that Barker woman. I hear Verne may give her the royal heave-ho before they even get out of town.”
“How did you hear—?”
“This is a smaller burg than you think, Annie. Ghost stories get around.”
“Ghost stories.” That’s just what she’d been telling herself, ghost stories. “I guess I don’t really think my ghosts are to blame, Chantal.” She was still standing, still playing with her hat. She sat, forgetting it was a waterbed, and almost toppled over. Chantal reached to steady her. “I never quite got the hang of these things,” Annie admitted with a nervous laugh at her own clumsiness.
Somehow, Chantal’s hand had found a home in hers. “Too bad it’s not ghosts,” Chantal offered, squeezing her hand. “I could get into an exorcism.”
Her regret was so obvious, her smile so brave, that Annie reached to hug her. “It wouldn’t be fair to ask you to get rid of my ghosts. They’re my problem.” Then she stood. “I like you so much, Chantal. I’m really, really sorry about this. I’m going to go before I start something I can’t finish.”
“I like you too, Annie. And as happy as I would have been to get into your chinos, it hurts a lot less now than if you’d let me lead us down the wrong path.”
“It may not be the wrong path, Chantal. I just don’t know yet.” She was in the doorway again, but couldn’t leave. “I feel like I can almost say it, like if you’re about to get a cold you start tasting a certain taste and eventually you recognize it’s how you tasted last time you got sick?”
“Love-sick, maybe?”
“Love-shy, would be more like it.”
“Sounds like a danger signal. I hope I didn’t set it off.”
“No. It’s really not you, Chantal. I have the same taste, like a sour stomach, when I think about what’s happening, about those people who think being gay should be punishable by death.”
They just looked at each other.
“Oh, no. That’s it, isn’t it?” Annie flung her team hat to the floor. “Damn it, Chantal. First these hateful people cost me my job, then my peace of mind—now they’re ruining my love life?”
“Annie, don’t let them.”
“Like I have a big choice. I wake up in the morning wondering how long I can stick to it, standing up to all these people who know who I am, know I own the Grape—just like they knew about Cece’s bike.”
Chantal glanced at the window. The Saab was outside.
Then Annie realized what she’d done. “Oh, my gosh. I never thought. As much as I worry, I never put it together that if it gets around that you and me—Chantal, I’m sorry. I was looking for comfort and I’m infecting your home with danger.”
Chantal, in her silken finery, looked uncertain.
“You said it yourself, this is a small burg. Too small.” Annie swept her cap up from the floor, urgency pushing her out of the house. “I’d better get the Saab off Violet Street.”
Chantal didn’t stop her as she exploded out the door.
Chapter Sixteen
Two days later The Sentinel started its series on the “Gay Scare.” Annie’s story ran first. Jennifer had tried to avoid using her name, but the editor had insisted on specifics about employers and sports and churches. Without some anchoring facts, the piece wasn’t newsworthy to him.
Every customer in the diner seemed to have a copy when she stopped on her way home to pick up dessert. She was out, in black and white. She’d promised herself a long quiet evening tinkering in the garden, playing with Toothpick, not worrying about the consequences.
The customers stared at her as Giulia wrapped her cream puffs. Annie would never understand how the same people who ate the food Dusty cooked, and drank the coffee Elly poured, could claim gay people were envoys of the devil.
Elly scurried out of the kitchen, pink baseball jacket, neatly repaired, over her shoulders.
“Let’s go over to see Gramma Gus,” Elly said, her voice tight, her eyes oddly worried-looking.
“I came over for—”
Dusty appeared behind Elly. “Come on, you two. In the car.”
“What—”
“Didn’t you tell her?”
“No,” Elly said quickly. “I thought we could on the way over.”
“What in hell is happening now?” Annie cried, then, seeing customers look up, shut up.
“There’s something going on over on Rafferty Street.”
“What?”
Dusty herded them both out the back door toward her old Dodge Swinger. “Hoodlums. Skinheads. Motorcycle types running wild. Gussie didn’t say, just that she was ready to shoot back.”
“Gussie wants to shoot back?”
“They’re shooting paint balls. Yelling about witches and queers. Come on.”
“I knew I should have moved out. This is all my fault.”
“Just get in the car.”
When they turned the corner onto Rafferty Street, Elly exclaimed, “This can’t happen here!”
The clumps of young men in jeans and sleeveless T-shirts were not at their usual hangout at the end of Rafferty Street, but stood in front of Gussie’s house chanting words Annie couldn’t make out. The sidewalk was splattered with yellow paint, but the front stoop had the worst of it. One of them had sprayed LEZ in black across the sidewalk. Crap, she thought with dread. They’ve run down the queer and I led them.
When several men started along the street toward them, she felt rage, not fear. A siren grew louder.
“This,” she told Elly and Dusty, “is what I’ve been scared of all my life. Nazis saluting Hitler. Neo-Nazis burning out the Gypsies in Germany. I can see Kurt in a Nazi uniform, his congregation goose-stepping along Rafferty Street. Those sirens better be for us.”
“John was calling as we left,” Elly said, her voice cracking.
Dusty declared, “We’ll wait here until the cops come.”
“And leave Gussie in there alone, at their mercy?” Annie protested from the backseat. “Let me out.” The boys stopped in front of the house, shouted, made obscene gestures. They looked like the same ones who’d sat in the bleachers the day Cece’s Suzuki was destroyed.
“Heaphy, you can’t get to her,” Dusty warned, voice commanding. Elly’s fingers tapped incessantly on her cloth purse.
“They’re not going to hurt me in front of the whole neighborhood.” Some of the boys were peering toward the car.
“We’re not going to give th
em the chance.” The car had only two doors. She was trapped. Annie rolled down the window. “Heaphy, don’t even think about it.” It only went half way. “Roll it up or they’ll pull you out, glass or not.”
“But it’s me they’re after, not Gussie.”
“Mobs don’t listen,” Dusty advised. “Who spilled the beans anyway? How did they know your address?”
A freight train passing the back of the houses let out a dispirited whistle, as if laden with troubles. Fleetingly, she wondered if Elly and Dusty were still at loggerheads.
“All they needed was one queer-hater at The Sentinel and a city directory.”
Elly took her knuckles from her mouth. “Testosterone-crazed teenagers have antennae, like giant mutated cockroaches.”
As they waited for the first patrol car, pictures came into her head. “Do you guys remember Victory At Sea, that fifties TV series that showed film clips of World War II?” Annie asked. “My dad never missed an episode. These Rafferty Street good old boys are in uniform too—look at them—sleeveless T-shirts, jeans, the heavy boots.
“I knew I was right to be scared of walking alone around here, right to be afraid in America.” She was aware of Elly turning and watching her face and equally aware that Dusty wasn’t missing anything on the street.
“There’s a black and white now,” Dusty said. “El, honey, you’ve got to stop sniffling when we go in there. You don’t want to upset Gussie more.”
“Crap.” Annie exclaimed. “If these barbarians give Gus a heart attack…” Even from here, she could see that one of them had a swastika tattooed on his upper arm. What word had Thor used? Fascism.
She suddenly felt small. “All of this—the trouble at work, the bad news from Colorado and D.C., the rough time Vicky’s having out in Oregon, the black civil rights struggle, apartheid, the riots and killings in Europe—these, these storm troopers—they’re all faces of an evil I couldn’t imagine except I watched their predecessors right there on TV.”
“There’s bad people in this world, all right,” Elly agreed.
“But that’s supposed to be over,” Annie protested. “My Dad may have been mean, but he was supposed to have made the world safe for democracy once and for all. Our whole generation of baby-boomers was taught that. Was it a lie?”
“It’s crazy, Heaphy, but you’re right.”
She hadn’t even known she believed so strongly in democracy until now. Today, this minute, it was clear to her that the monster called fascism wasn’t just a threat from the past.
“The bad guys never were busted, were they?” Annie asked. “And this time we’re the chosen people, we get to see it first. We’re the ones who have to confront it head on and stop it like our soldier dads were supposed to. What the world REALLY needs is superheroes.”
Dusty pulled up in front of the house.
“Hold it!” an officer commanded as Annie rushed the front door.
“I live here.”
A look of recognition, then a frown came to the man’s face. Had the Norwood flock been passing her picture around? He let her pass without a word.
“It’s me!” she called to Gussie as she unlocked the front door.
Gussie had pulled a chair into the doorway between her room and the kitchen and sat on it, her face waxen white, a little twenty-two rifle pointed at the door.
“Gussie! I didn’t know you had one of those.”
“It’s my last resort, Socrates. I’ve been through these times before. If they come for me they’ll never forget me.”
“The police are out there, Gussie,” cautioned Dusty.
Gussie rose. “I’ll hide it,” she said, turning toward her room.
She swayed briefly, then slumped against the doorframe. Dusty and Elly reached her first. “Got her,” said Dusty.
“Do you need your pills?” Annie asked, gingerly taking the rifle and gently placing it under the bed.
“Don’t fuss over me,” Gussie replied as Elly and Dusty supported her across the small room. Gussie lay on her bed with an air of great weariness.
Annie went to her side, inspired at the old woman’s tenacious irritability.
Dusty brought in a uniformed woman. “EMT,” she announced.
The cop had followed them.
“I want to press every charge in the book,” Annie said, holding Gussie’s hand.
The cop reached to a pocket for a pad and she led him to the kitchen. As she answered questions, she looked out the window.
She said, “The kids—some of them aren’t even kids—are still over there, smirking, smart-talking you guys.” She needed a bathroom, or a year off from this craziness. “Is the paint water-soluble?” she asked.
“Usually,” the cop answered. “What’s the matter with your—”
“With Gramma Gussie?” she found herself saying, as if she called her that all the time. Then she raged, “She’s eighty-three, and her home was just surrounded by thugs threatening her life.”
“Okay, okay,” he said. “I’m on your side.” Outside an ambulance bleated as it pressed through the crowd of neighbors.
When Annie finished her statement, she stayed in the kitchen while the ambulance attendants readied Gussie. “This really is bigger than one dyke losing her job or Cece losing her bike. It’s even bigger than a gay rights backlash, isn’t it?” she asked no one in particular. “It’s not about us at all. It’s about scared little men realizing that they can’t take our power away anymore.”
“The good news is, we won’t all fit in the closet,” Elly agreed.
Annie, remembering the film clips, thought glumly, the Nazis put an awful lot of people in their cattle cars.
Dusty joined them. “Heaphy, you’d better stay here and make sure there’s a house for Gussie to come back to. We’ll go to the hospital with her.”
“Is she bad?”
“In a pig’s eye!” called Gussie in a quavering voice as she passed, lying on the gurney. She stretched an arm up to smooth her cowlicks. “Why won’t they let me stay home? Because I’m old, that’s why. It’s discrimination. Anyone would be weak at the knees after that onslaught.”
Annie walked beside her to the door, laughing. “Hey,” Annie told her, controlling her own voice as best she could. “you’re better off away from these creeps. We’ll get this straightened out.”
While one attendant adjusted a wheel on the gurney, Gussie complained, “The time I was the last one out of the ladies’ room window at Punchy’s bar in Toledo I never even saw a doctor. A cop,” she said, poking a finger at the officer who had taken Annie’s statement, “took a swipe at my head. The girls carried me around the block to somebody’s apartment and somehow got me up two flights of stairs. When I came to we toasted our escape with a quart of ale, me with an ice pack on my bloody noggin.” She swiveled her head around as they began to move her. “Do you think you can change the world by the time they spring me?”
Annie squeezed Gussie’s cold hand. “I knew Jennifer’s articles would make things worse. That’s why I fought this profile idea.”
Gussie squeezed back. “Don’t let this get you down, Socrates. Things always get worse before they get better.”
“I love you, Gus.”
Dusty and Elly paused at the door, watching as Gussie was wheeled toward the ambulance. “Gutsy lady,” said Dusty. “Irregular heartbeat, blood pressure through the ceiling.” She looked over her shoulder, then whispered, “The cop on the door? He’s a member of our club.”
She grinned over at him. “Tell Gussie I may not change the world, but Toothpick and I’ll keep her house standing.” She went cold. “Toothpick!” There’d been no sign of the cat since she’d arrived. She barreled up the stairs, raced into her room, Nan’s room, the bathroom, her room again.
“There you are!”
The cat had stuffed herself against the back wall under the bed, but now came tentatively out. Annie hugged her until she struggled away. “I may send you to live with your aunts Peg and P
aris for the duration, little cat. You shouldn’t have to fight my war.”
Was it then that she felt something shift inside? It was one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments she knew she’d remember always. Her eyes sought the sky beyond the window. She drew air into her tension-sore chest. Her whole body straightened, as if pulled by a force larger than herself. “You know, I think I’m glad Jennifer published her piece. We’ve drawn the line.” She closed the cat in her room.
Toothpick was scratching at the door before Annie was halfway downstairs. “Count your blessings, kitten. Who’s going to protect the rest of us?” she called over her shoulder.
She could see through the front window that the ambulance had left. There were fewer people on the street and those who loitered did not seem threatening. Apparently, the police had arrested most of them. She closed her eyes, fatigued. Her body was just beginning to let go, shoulders slowly lowering, when the back door flew open. She spun around, wishing for the rifle.
“It’s okay! It’s only us!” Maddy and Chantal rushed in.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Annie said, reaching for a chair to lean against. Her legs felt liquid from the shock. “It’s too dangerous.”
Chantal nevertheless came to her and pulled her close. “Do you think I care?”
“You should.”
“Why? You’re doing a pretty good job of protecting the whole world,” Chantal accused her. “What are you doing, setting yourself up as resident pariah? Nobody’s seen you at the Sweatshop, you won’t talk to anyone at work, and you’re probably just too responsible to quit the softball team till the end of the season. And you haven’t returned one of my messages.”
Chantal didn’t know that Annie’d even suggested to Gussie that she ought to move out. Too late now, she thought. But Gussie had held her also—at arm’s length—while she delivered a vehement lecture about turning to, not away from, her friends. “What can they do to me at this age?” Gussie had asked. “You know there’s been many a time I’ve been a hair’s breadth from the hoosegow.”