Lucky in the Corner (16 page)

After the group met at their house and he saw the actual women in the group, he had more ammunition. First it was about Sara, who was huge. Russell, a quick study, began referring to her as a “woman of size.” Then Betty was a “woman of red hair color.” There was a lot of this sort of funny but not really funny commentary.

Then one afternoon at work, he broke a finger at an agency lunch-hour softball game and was taken to the emergency room. Which brought him home with a tiny cast on his pinky at one-thirty in the afternoon, left-handedly fumbling his key in the lock. This was the first signal of his unscheduled arrival, the door opening too quickly for Nora to disengage from Chimera, one of the women from the reading group, but not the only self-named one. With whom Nora (having taken a personal day off from work for something personal) was not quite naked on the living room sofa, Rod Stewart rasping from the stereo, sandalwood incense smoke twisting up from a charred nub in a saucer on the coffee table.

Tonight, all these years and miles later, Russell greets them at the door and drapes an arm of fatherly appropriation over Fern’s shoulder and leads them back through his apartment to the kitchen. He still has a very good butt is Nora’s line of thought until she gets distracted by the apartment, which has undergone new onslaughts of decorating since Nora was last here. She used to think she and Russell shared at least a superficially common view of the world. And so it depresses her to come into this patch of maroon and azure, decor reminiscent of Tara, which must surely spring out of Louise’s Confederate imagination. But what sort of chameleon is Russell that he lived so comfortably in what Nora always thought was their funky, idiosyncratic style and now seems equally content amid white furniture with gold edging, velvet drapes, a lighted cabinet in the bedroom showcasing Louise’s collection of cotillion dolls?

Louise is setting out mugs by the coffee maker. She wears her clothes extremely tight—tonight a stretchy striped T-shirt and exercise shorts. Nora doesn’t suppose the intent is sexy so much as a longing to show off the peculiar muscles she has acquired. Louise is fascinating to look at, in a sideshow sort of way, to see what she has been overdeveloping. Tonight, it’s her neck—thick as the trunk of a small tree, circled by a thin chain with a small heart pendant. The message being that she might be built like a little brick shithouse, but underneath, she is one hundred percent woman, strictly a female female.

She looks up from her bustling to acknowledge Nora and Fern with a marvelously false smile, not masking in the least her weariness with having to deal with them. Nora doesn’t care if Louise gives her this look, but hates the way she looks at Fern—as though she is a troublesome piece of everything Russell dragged into their marriage, like an elderly cat with a skin condition or a giant Budweiser poster.

“Decaf?” she says brightly. She says everything brightly. She has the beady eyes and scary inner glow of the zealot. She is radiant with her beliefs. The wattage in any room with Louise in it always seems to be pumped up.

“I’ll only be a minute,” Nora says and ducks into the bathroom to get out of the glare. While she’s there, she goes through the medicine cabinet—an old and reliably fun activity. Russell’s taking Rogaine, now that’s interesting. There are many prescriptions for Louise, nothing Nora recognizes. She guesses these are fertility potions. And there’s lots and lots of floss. Louise would, of course, be a serious flosser.

Everyone brings a coffee mug into the living room, and Louise sets out a plate of sliced banana bread. Nora and Fern settle into the plump sofa, readying themselves for the bumpy ride ahead. Nobody touches the banana bread.

Russell starts off the conversation by being generous about the academic path Fern has chosen.

“I was too plugged into the job thing when I was her age,” he says. “Let her have this time to explore. And I like the idea of the field study thing. She should be doing all the stuff we couldn’t, or didn’t.” Who’s going to pay for it is a question that floats around in the air above them, a lazy balloon.

Then Nora notices Louise giving Russell the hairy eyeball, which cuts short his praise of the broadening influence of travel.

“What we were wondering was why Fern isn’t contributing more to her education herself,” Louise says, shouldering the burden of this less pleasant topic.

Fern sits like a closed clam, taking Nora up on her offer to do all the dirty work.

“Well, give her a break,” Nora says. “She was only able to get something part-time this summer.” She is not sure if Russell and Louise know the exact nature of Fern’s job. She herself has described it only as “telemarketing,” but who knows how revelatory Fern has been. Nora is protective of Fern, and in these sorts of bad moments, she puts Russell into the camp of those from whom Fern needs protection. Then there will be other moments when she feels herself shifting into an old, familiar parental alliance with Russell. Like when she first saw Fern’s tattoo, her impulse was to pick up the phone and call Russell, to figure out what they should do. (As if there was anything they
could
do.) She didn’t, of course. She has no idea what Russell thinks about the tattoo.

“I had a savings account, even when I was a little girl.” Louise reminisces on the money issue. “I saved almost all my allowance. Plus I held on to all the savings bonds I got for birthdays. I was quite a little Scrooge.”

“Well, that was a different time and place,” Nora says. “Louise, I don’t think you can expect thrift to be a compelling notion to a twenty-one-year-old. You can try talking to her. I mean, you’re welcome to that conversation.” She reaches over and ruffles Fern’s hair, as though she does this all the time, as though they are always teasin’ and joshin’. Fern goes along with this charade, smiling shyly. She is a good actress when necessary; it’s all that show biz in her gene pool.

Louise isn’t interested in persuading Fern, though. She is a dollars-and-cents girl; she oversees budgets for all the ad agency’s campaigns; that’s how Russell met her. She has gone over their finances with the same ruthlessness and has a dollar figure at the ready, the extent to which she and Russell are willing to help. This amount has clearly been arrived at before Nora got here; they have just been making her dance.

Nora tries to pull out of this sinkhole into some Zen place of larger vision. Instead she winds up fiendishly craving a cigarette. Russell interprets her brief silence as concession, and hands her a check—for a little better than half of what Nora had been hoping for. He says, “Now, Louise has something she wants to talk with you about. And while we leave you girls to your little chat, I want to show Fern my new laptop. Humongously powerful. I have to strap myself into the chair before I launch onto the Web.”

Fern sits tight and looks at Nora as if she knows her mother needs to be rescued (and that she owes her something for tonight), but Russell takes her hand and pulls her off the couch and down the hall and all she can do is look back over her shoulder at Nora, which Nora interprets as a silent wish for good luck.

When they are alone and the room is silent, Louise leans forward across the coffee table.

“What’s this about?” Nora says, not giving Louise a chance to lead up to whatever is coming. She tries to suspect the worst, but can’t really see what that is going to be.

Louise clasps her hands together and fixes Nora with a look of synthetic sincerity. “I wanted to apologize.”

Nora knows enough not to ask “for what?,” but lack of a prompt is not going to stop Louise.

“My faith teaches us to hate the sin but love the sinner. But sometimes, well, sometimes I’d get the two mixed up. The truth is I had a hard time dealing with your perversion, and, of course, at first I had to cope with my personal concerns. That I was, perhaps, being regarded in a, well, an unsavory way by you, the way a man might look at me.”

Nora doesn’t know where to begin. Sarcasm, usually a tool close at hand, eludes her. Which leaves Louise free to continue cataloging her fears.

“And of course, Russell and I worried about Fern’s development, that you couldn’t provide a role model that was, well, healthy.”

Nora sinks deeper into the sofa. She can’t imagine Russell actually shares any of these crackpot notions, but she supposes it’s possible he lets Louise
think
he does, which is almost worse. She knows that in a few days she will come up with knifelike replies to Louise’s remarks, but in the moment she seems to have fallen into a chasm of silence she can’t climb out of. All she can come up with is “Are you nuts?”

“Well, you can insult me, Nora, but I’m only voicing concerns you must realize are shared by most people,
righteous
concerns.”

“Basically,” Nora says, “I have trouble dealing with any line of chat that includes the word ‘righteous.’”

“Well, then I’m sorry for you.” Louise is on a roll. “Righteousness comes from having God and Scripture on my side. Leviticus tells us—”

“Oh please, Louise. Don’t even start thumping that Bible with me. Doesn’t that homo thing come in some passage that also forbids putting two fish in the same oven and riding an ox to market?”

Louise puts up a hand, like a Supreme singing “Stop in the Name of Love.” “Please. You’re taking this the wrong way. Let’s start over. I’m only trying to bring you good news. My church has a new ministry that’s very exciting—”

“I am not interested in being accepted by your religion. I think being shunned by your religion is the best possible relationship I can have with it.” Nora has to get out of here. The air in the room is beginning to thicken and become cloying, as though those little air freshener things are plugged into every wall socket.

“I think you’re only defensive because you haven’t felt welcome before. But now we have an outreach specifically directed toward your needs.” Louise’s eyes begin moistening. Nora’s discomfort is nothing to her; she’s a Mack truck with a mission, bearing down, ready to run Nora over if that’s what it takes to get her message out. “It’s called Healing Waters. You see, it’s a beautiful program that uses the power of prayer for change. And we’ve been so successful. It’s been wonderful to see all these happy people who used to be sad and sorry, trapped in perversion and a godless lifestyle, and now they’re freed from all that through prayer, free to live a normal life again, to find serenity and be in God’s grace. Think about where it could take you. You could even remarry, provide a healthy atmosphere for Fern. Now we even have scientific studies to back us up. It’s been proven that if you try hard enough, you can make it work for you.”

“Or maybe,” Nora says, belatedly finding her full voice, “we could take care of your concern from the other direction. Maybe they could come up with a program for you. You know, if you tried hard enough—with God’s help, of course—
you
might be able to turn queer. Think about it. You could be in the Pride Parade. I could get you a rainbow bumper sticker.”

Louise closes her eyes for a long moment, clearly praying for strength. When she opens them, she has nothing more to say, only sits with her hands clasped in front of her, prayerfully poised fingernails pointing at Nora, aiming enlightenment at her over the banana bread.

As Nora gets up from the sofa (more awkwardly than she would like, as the deep cushions don’t relinquish their occupants easily), she senses the heat in her face and hopes it doesn’t show. “Louise,” she says as she goes to find Fern, “don’t ever talk to me like this again.”

In the car, she turns up the radio, then lets Fern change it to a station she likes, which has a playlist of songs that seem to be mostly amp backlash and guitars about to be slammed against the wall. If she lets Fern have her station, she won’t have to talk. The tactic doesn’t work, though.

“Something really bad happened, didn’t it?” Fern says, turning off the radio.

“Really. Bad.”

“I think I know. I saw some pamphlets lying around. When I was at the cottage. I figured she was going to unload on you sooner or later.”

“Then why didn’t you warn me? So I wouldn’t get ambushed.”

“What difference does it make what she says? It’s just another stupid thing she believes in. I mean, she’s against Halloween because it has witches and goblins and they don’t believe in that. She also thinks there was Adam and Eve and then us, no monkeys. She’s a moron. I couldn’t even talk to her tonight. It’s like I just locked up.”

“I know. I was there.”

“Don’t blame me. Please. I mean, how was I going to defend myself in the face of that noble little picture she was painting. Thrifty little Louise standing with her piggy bank—”

“I saw it as a cookie jar full of quarters.”

“In line at the bank—”

“The East Bumfuck Bank,” Nora fills in.

“Yes, the First National Bank of East Bumfuck,” Fern says, and rolls the radio back up, but switches it to XRT for Nora. Sometimes, rarely, and only in little spots like this one, in blips on the verge of dissolving even as they are formed, but still, the two of them align and ally and sit in soft grass on the same side of the fence.

At home, upstairs, Jeanne is curled up on the sofa in her study. She is the picture of domestic contentment, of constancy and faithfulness. Nora has been out the entire evening, and all Jeanne has done with this time alone is keep the home fires burning. She has not been sitting out by the lake in a pickup truck with a stranger. She is right here with a glass of wine and a short stack of travel magazines.

Jeanne enjoys these not so much to plan vacations, or even to travel via armchair into the luscious photo spreads, but rather for the columns that relate readers’ horror stories. Travelers stranded in airports for days with all their luggage lost or passports stolen, subjected to cavity searches for drugs. Tourists who wind up in Greek prisons for going over their Visa limit in a gift shop. Bus group stragglers lost for days in the maze of some ancient medina.

“Anything gruesome?” Nora asks, slumping into the easy chair opposite the sofa, envying Jeanne her uneventful evening.