Waltzing at Midnight

by Robbi McCoy

  I threw the vegetables into a hot wok with a little more vigor than was necessary, losing some of them on the floor in the process. What are you mad about, I asked myself. What’s the problem? Jerry has a right to be suspicious. You’ve never read a whole book of poetry in your life, you’ve never written a letter to the editor, you’ve never shown any interest in learning Excel. If he was behaving in ways you didn’t recognize, you’d be suspicious too. I breathed deeply and calmed myself. After disposing of the vegetables from the floor, I dumped a cup of rice into boiling water, covered the pan, and tossed the vegetables around the wok, more gently this time.

  54

  Jerry came into the kitchen with one of the books. “You know,”

  he said, “she’s good. Sophisticated and subtle. I especially like this one about the girl and the spinning wheel, how she’s so careful and proud of her work, but she’s oblivious to the thread that she’s a part of, the rites of passage and all that, the matriarchal lineage that she’s working herself into.”

  I looked up from my cutting board, startled. “Uh, yes,” I said,

  “I did read that one, but I didn’t think about it that much. I didn’t even know you liked poetry.”

  “I used to like it a lot, but it’s not the sort of pastime you continue after college, unless you’re a teacher or something. I remember especially liking Gerard Manley Hopkins. Have you read him?”

  “I don’t know. Probably not. I don’t think I’ve read anybody in the way you mean, if it wasn’t some English class assignment.”

  Jerry had an associate’s degree. I had no college at all. We had been married as soon as I graduated from high school, so my exposure to poetry did not extend much further than “Listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere.”

  “Poets can do such clever things with just a few words,”

  Jerry said. “They get just the right angle on a thing and it’s like a revelation.”

  He looked thoughtful, then left the kitchen, reading on.

  Who was that man, I asked myself. An admirer of poetry? What disarmed me most was the idea that I could learn something new about my husband at this stage of the game. Is this what they meant when they said that if one partner brings something new into the relationship, the other will show new faces as well?

  They weren’t talking about poetry, though. Or maybe they were.

  The only time in my memory that I could connect Jerry and poetry was when the children were toddlers and he did dramatic readings of poems like “Jabberwocky.” I could see him in my mind pacing alongside Bradley’s bed, his arms raised. “Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!”

  Then he’d swipe at the air above Bradley’s head. Bradley would 55

  squeal with delight. I smiled to myself, remembering this.

  Jerry had been the storyteller in our family, reading the fairy tales and Dr. Seuss books to Bradley and Amy from a very early age, which is where his nickname of princess came from for Amy.

  Jerry always changed the name of the princess in the stories to Amy, as in, “The witch grabbed Princess Amy and whisked her off to the deepest, darkest forests of North Umbria.” No doubt Jerry was a much better dramatic reader of poetry than I was.

  That was probably where Amy got that from, after all.

  When the vegetables were done, I turned off the stove and went into the living room. Jerry was lying on the couch, reading Gardiner, comfortable in his socks, shorts and T-shirt. I came up behind him and put my arms around his neck. He reached up and took my hand, then tilted his head back to look at me.

  “Dinner’s ready,” I said.

  The next day at the office, Faye and I went over the results of the latest e-mail poll conducted by the local news station. Rosie was holding at second place. Mike Garcia was third. Kiester now had a comfortable lead. “It looks like most of Rosie’s backing has gone to Kiester,” Faye said.

  “Yeah, too bad it couldn’t have gone to Garcia instead, if it had to go somewhere.”

  “This is just so damned disappointing. The only reason Rosie agreed to run in the first place was to get rid of Kiester. She had to be pushed into it, really. She didn’t seem to want the limelight of public office. Well, now I think I understand that, but I didn’t get it at the time. She’s worked so hard behind the scenes all these years, I just figured she ought to be right out there, you know, hosting the show. I thought she was the perfect candidate to take him down. Everybody did.”

  “And she was,” I said. “She is, actually, and if there was a little more time, I know we could recover from this setback. People are just reacting to the surprise of it. They would get over it and get back behind the issues. At least most of them would, enough of them would.”

  “But there isn’t any time,” Faye said. “They knew what they 56

  were doing, Jean. They had this little firecracker in their pocket all along. They knew just when to light it for maximum impact.

  All this time we were so sure of ourselves and so cocky and they were sitting over there snickering to themselves, just waiting for the moment.” Faye tossed the poll report on the table. “Oh, well, I imagine there’s a part of Rosie that will be relieved to return to her comfort zone, although things are bound to be a little different for her after this.”

  Behind us, stacked into enormous piles, were the thousands of flyers that had yet to be mailed. Nothing much had happened in this office since the big revelation. Everyone seemed certain that there was no chance of winning the race now, so there wasn’t much point in working at it.

  When the door to the street swung open, Faye and I looked up in unison to see a strikingly beautiful woman stride in. She was elegant and exotic looking with long, thick eyelashes and black hair wound into a spiral on top of her head. She wore white silk pants and a feminine, navy blue Nehru-style jacket with huge gold buttons. She was a petite woman, but her bearing created an undeniable presence. She directed a sharp gaze directly at me as I stood to greet her.

  “Where’s Rosalind?” she asked authoritatively.

  “Hello,” I said, stepping out from the table. “I’m Jean, Rosie’s campaign manager. Can I help you?”

  “I am Dr. Patel,” said the woman, her accent subtly English.

  “And I’m here to see Rosalind. Ah, I see she’s in her office.”

  The woman brushed rapidly past us and let herself into Rosie’s office, shutting the door immediately behind her. Faye looked at me, startled.

  “Do you know who that is?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Faye replied, and with dramatic emphasis and a flourish of her arm, she said, “That is Dr. Patel!”

  Faye then giggled at herself and I laughed obligingly.

  “I only know her by reputation,” I said. “She’s a huge contributor to Rosie’s campaign. I think she’s a pediatrician. Has an office in that new medical building over by the hospital.”

  5

  Faye nodded thoughtfully, then said, “I guess I won’t be running into her at Wal-Mart anytime soon then. I’d better get to work, Jean. See you later.”

  After about fifteen minutes, Rosie and Dr. Patel emerged.

  “Nothing to worry about, dear,” Dr. Patel was saying. “Let’s get together as soon as this is over for dinner or something. Why does it always have to be business?”

  “You’re right, Chandra,” Rosie said. The two of them hugged one another familiarly, and then Dr. Patel glanced briefly at me before walking out.

  “What was that about?” I asked.

  “She’s just checking on her investment,” Rosie said. “Wanted to see the bottomless pit that she threw all that money down, I guess. Of course, she knew the risk and agreed from the beginning that we shouldn’t go public with my sexual orientation. Chandra’s a good friend. She was concerned about me, actually, how I’m holding up. And she wanted to know how they found out. I wish I knew.”

  After Rosie returned to her office, I didn’t
really know what to do with myself. Tina was at her desk, silently doing something on her computer. No one else was there. Even the television was turned off. We no longer wanted to hear the news, apparently.

  I ate my lunch while working the newspaper crossword. Rosie came out of her office around noon, saying to Tina, “I’m going over to the printer’s to pick up an order.” This would be an order for her advertising business, as Rosie had shifted her attention away from the campaign now and back to her regular work.

  “Do you want me to go?” Tina asked.

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll get lunch on my way back.” Rosie turned to me and glanced at the crossword puzzle, which was almost completed. “You’re doing that in ink?”

  “I always do.”

  “Wow!” She shook her head. “Those things are way beyond me. You’ve got to know far too many obscure words.”

  “I guess,” I said. “But I’m sure you know a lot more obscure words than I do, with your knowledge of arts, literature, languages 5

  and all that.”

  Rosie smiled crookedly at me. “Bildungsroman,” she said. It was a challenge.

  “Coming-of-age story,” I said calmly, pleased with myself.

  Rosie laughed and nodded approvingly at me. “You want anything while I’m out, Jean?”

  I shook my head. I finished the puzzle and my sandwich, my mind preoccupied with the disaster that this campaign had become. Clark had been right. The voters felt cheated. I had even spoken to a couple of gay men who were still undecided, citing Rosie’s denial of her sexual identity as a disappointment. They were young men and their experience of living as homosexuals had to be vastly different than Rosie’s had been at their age. But I was in no position to argue this case. I was unqualified and didn’t pretend to fully understand either her rationale or theirs.

  When Rosie returned with a box from the printer and a paper bag from Burger Barn, she walked straight over to me and said,

  “Trompe d’oeil.”

  Her pronunciation was so perfectly French that I hesitated because my knowledge of terms like this was strictly as they were written. “A trick of the eye,” I said, after visualizing the phrase,

  “an optical illusion, like in a painting.”

  “Ha!” she said, gleefully. “So you don’t know obscure words, huh?”

  As though she had somehow tricked me, Rosie strode into her office in triumph. I smiled to myself as I opened the mail. And, then, quite suddenly, like one of those lightbulbs over a cartoon character’s head, I had an idea. I jumped out of my chair and rushed into Rosie’s office. She was eating her hamburger while watching a demo commercial on her DVD player. She pressed the pause button on the remote control as I entered.

  “Coup de main!” I said.

  Rosie looked puzzled, unsure how to play this game. “Okay,”

  she said tentatively. “Surprise attack?”

  I nodded, excited. “Mike Garcia.”

  Rosie put her hamburger down. “What about him?”

  5

  “Would he be a good mayor?”

  Rosie shrugged. She seemed annoyed with me. She didn’t want to think about the election. “I don’t know. What difference does it make? He doesn’t have a chance. He’s farther behind than I am, even after all of this.”

  “But what’s your opinion of him?”

  “He seems okay. He’s honest, smart. He doesn’t have any experience, really, but with the right people around him, he’d be effective, I think. His political views are agreeable. At least he probably wouldn’t run the city into the ground like Kiester is doing.”

  “Why’s he doing so poorly, then?”

  “He doesn’t have a lot of money. He doesn’t have the name recognition either Kiester or I have. In this kind of race, people focus on the two most popular candidates and don’t pay any attention to the others. And, as far as politics goes, his stand on most of the issues is similar to mine, so he isn’t offering a real alternative.”

  “Then why didn’t the votes you lost go to him?”

  Rosie sighed. “I assume the voters just didn’t think of it. Like I said, it’s been a two-person race. Kiester and I have spent all of our time and money attacking each other. We have completely neglected Mike, so nobody else has noticed him either.” Rosie narrowed her eyes at me. “Jean, what are you thinking?”

  “Let’s get him elected,” I said.

  She stared. She said nothing. Then, seeming to understand what I was saying, she shook her head. “Oh, no, Jean, it’s crazy.

  There’s no time left.”

  “Your primary concern is getting Kiester out, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, sure, but…”

  “Then let’s put Garcia in. I know we can do it. People don’t really like Kiester. They liked you. They have probably taken their votes to Kiester very reluctantly. Show them they have another choice.”

  “Are you suggesting I drop out of the race and endorse him?”

  60

  “No, no, that’s not what I’m proposing. I don’t think that would do it. I’m suggesting sucking Kiester’s support away, to you where possible, to Garcia where possible. I’m suggesting a ferociously aggressive strike against him, a consolidated strike that will hit him so hard he’ll be down for the count before he even knew he was in the ring.”

  “A cooperative effort?” A flicker of a smile came to Rosie’s lips. “Yes, exactly.”

  “Hmm. Now that is an intriguing idea. Oh, Jean, it’s impossible. If we had more time, maybe.”

  “We can try. We don’t have to just give up and play dead.

  There’s a little fight left in you, isn’t there, Rosie?”

  She hesitated, then looked at me slyly. “You’re really something,” she said. “Okay, Jean, you’ve got it. Arrange a meeting with Garcia tonight. I want you there. And nobody else can know about this. Tell Foster we’re back on for the interview as planned.

  We may still have a couple of tricks up our sleeve, after all.”

  Rosie was flushed, motivated, herself again. I was elated.

  61

  Chapter Six

  We met Mike Garcia and his manager, George Appleton, in my living room to avoid detection. Amy and Jerry went out to dinner at my bidding so we’d have the place to ourselves. This was the first time Rosie had been to my house, and it was all very exciting because it was clandestine and because it was my own plan they were going to discuss. Everyone was there on time at seven. Garcia was a handsome young man with dark eyes and a firm, clean-shaven chin.

  “So what’s this about?” Appleton asked Rosie once we were all settled. He was clearly on guard.

  “We want to join forces with you against Kiester,” Rosie said bluntly. “I want to help Mike win the election.”

  The two men did not hide their amazement. “Why?” Garcia asked.

  “Because I’ve lost my chance at it. You haven’t.”

  “But I’m way behind,” he said. “I’m behind you, Rosie.”

  “I know. But we can change that. At least Jean thinks we can, and I trust her instincts.” Rosie glanced at me and the look she 62

  gave me washed over me like a warm bath. She looked back at the two men and leaned toward them. “Tomorrow I’m going to tape an interview with David Foster. In it, I’m going to confirm the rumor, give them what they want to hear and the only thing they care about now. I expect that to prompt the gay community to come out on my side. Right now, they’re lukewarm about me because I haven’t come out in public.”

  Garcia and Appleton sat transfixed. Rosie had them in her spell. “They’ll swing instantly behind me,” Rosie continued.

  “Gays and lesbians are more politically active than many groups, unlike, for instance, Latinos. That’s another issue we need to address. You’ve got to get the Hispanic community to the voting booths. Only fifteen percent turned out in the last local election. When you consider that we have a forty-three percent minority population here, their potential strengt
h, if they vote, is enormous. We’ve got to get them to the polls. If we can do that, you win. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Rosie,” Garcia said, looking suddenly boyish, “I don’t have any money.”

  “I know that, Mike. That’s why I’m going to be campaigning for you too. My staff is your staff. In the interview tomorrow, we’ll get David Foster to ask me something about you. I’ll say you’re a decent fellow. I can’t exactly appear to endorse you, but it will have the same effect. It will get people looking at you. And then we both attack Kiester. I’ll draw back some of my support in the time that’s left. You’ll draw the rest, and together we’ll bury him.”

  Garcia and Appleton looked at each other wordlessly.

  “You do want the job, don’t you?” Rosie asked.

  “Yes, yes, I do. I just never thought I had a chance.”

  “You do, Mike. You’re the long shot who’s going to come from behind and sweep the race.” Rosie shook his hand warmly.

  She was beautiful—buoyant and vibrant. She flashed me a brilliant smile.

  The following day we went to the television studio. I was nervous. So was she. The set was furnished with a chair for the 63

  guest, a chair for Foster, a coffee table containing a water pitcher and glasses, and an artificial plant. Rosie went in for makeup before the show and came out a few minutes before airtime, looking splendid in black slacks, a conservative tan jacket and a print blouse. Before taking her chair, she winked in my direction.

  There was no audience, just the crew. The interview would be taped and aired later, before the local news. I had already spoken to Foster and prepared him. It had been no problem getting Rosie’s cancelled time slot back once I explained what we wanted to do. Foster promised to take it easy on Rosie. He could afford to, as he was getting such a scoop—Rosie would be coming out on his show.

  As the cameras hummed, he introduced her and began to chat about the course of the election. She sat with her legs crossed, looking relaxed. How did she do it? I was so nervous that I’d pushed my thumb through my Styrofoam coffee cup without even being aware of it until the coffee started running across my hand.