Waltzing at Midnight (4 page)

“Okay,” Ginny said, looking through the shirts for a couple of good fits.

After her musical number, Rosie arrived at the lunch table, excited and wide-eyed. “How are my little soldiers?” she asked, slinging an arm around Faye and giving her a squeeze.

“We’re slinging hash, General,” Faye said. “Bribing the voters with beans.”

“How about slinging some my way? I’m starved.” We made up a plate for Rosie while she greeted the people around us. She gave Ginny a friendly hug and, from where I stood, it looked like she was getting introduced to Aura.

“What’s Ginny’s connection with Rosie anyway?” I asked.

“She told me they’ve been friends for years. I don’t know the circumstances. But Rosie has friends everywhere. And it’s a good thing. That’s how elections are won.”

Ginny and Aura pulled on Tshirts and both of them immediately rolled the sleeves all the way up, baring their arms.

As they left, Rosie returned to us and sat at the end of the table to eat. I noticed that she ate like she did everything else, with gusto and without self-consciousness. “Do you think we’ll have enough stuff?” she asked, chomping off a third of her hotdog with one bite.

“We might have to replenish the chip supply,” Faye said. “I can send Clark to the store.”

“This was a great idea,” I said. “A lot of people showed up.”

Rosie wiped her hands on a paper napkin. “People will always 2

show up for a free lunch. We’ll have to do this again.”

As Rosie finished her meal, Amy came by wearing Rosie buttons on both ears and five of them down the front of her T-shirt. While walking toward us, she was looking at her phone where her thumbs were moving at the speed of light, texting. I saw that she was approaching a sidewalk and called her name, hoping she’d look where she was going, but it did no good because, of course, she had her ear buds on and was listening to music as well. Without looking up from her phone, she somehow detected the sidewalk and stepped onto and over it without incident. She looked up only when she had come within a few inches of the grill.I put my arm around her, saying, “Rosie, I’d like you to meet my daughter Amy.”

Rosie shook her hand. “It’s good to meet you, Amy. Your mother is one of the most ferocious campaigners I’ve ever seen, so I’m not surprised she’s gotten you into the act.”

“I’ve been passing out buttons,” Amy said. “This is so cool.

Everybody’s really up, so hyped. Mom, too. Just look at her. I hope you win, Rosie.” Amy suddenly changed voices, deeper and deadly serious. “I’m sick of those fat-bellied, bald-headed old men sitting around farting and belching and spewing up garbage.

What we need is a woman at the helm, a woman, I say, to lead us into a brighter tomorrow.” Amy looked skyward. “A woman with vision and clarity of purpose,” she said, hitting the air with her fist, “a woman…who can play the saxophone!”

Rosie snorted. “Want a job as a speechwriter?” she asked.

Amy beamed.

2

Monday afternoon six of us were working at the office, gearing up for the final weeks before the election. Although time was growing short, none of us were worried about that. The election was in the bag, so the sooner it happened, the better.

In one corner of the room, a large flat-screen television was turned on, as usual, to the local community access station.

Someone I didn’t recognize, some young woman, was interviewing Holloway, the district attorney, at the courthouse. I was on the phone with a potential voter, so I wasn’t listening to what Holloway was saying, which I probably wouldn’t have anyway, since he was supporting Kiester. As I understood it, those two were cronies from way back.

Just as I hung up the phone, I heard Holloway say, “Hugh’s position on these issues is well known, but I don’t know what we can say for sure about Rosie. Voters have got to be wary of the scary liberal politics typical of the homosexual community, and therefore likely to be held by Rosie, who, being a lesbian, would have to be sympathetic to those views to some degree.”

2

I gasped. Then I looked around to see if anyone else was listening. Faye was. She had stopped in the middle of the room and was staring at the TV, immobile. Clark was trying to clear a paper jam from the printer.

“Clark! Clark!” Faye yelled, pointing at the TV. Clark turned and looked, as did everyone else in the room.

“But Rosie will have to answer that question herself,”

Holloway continued. “I can’t say I really know her position on amnesty for illegals.”

“What?” Clark asked, annoyed. “What’s the problem? Rosie’s position on that is—”

“No!” Faye practically hollered. “He just called Rosie a lesbian.”

Clark looked from one to the other of us and then said,

“What? Why did he say that? Some kind of slur? Like dyke? Did he say ‘dyke’?”

“No. It wasn’t like that.” Faye shook her head.

“It was very matter-of-factly,” I said. “He said ‘lesbian,’ like a member of the homosexual community, like that. As if it was just something everybody knew.”

Clark looked completely baffled. “I don’t get it. I mean…

This is absurd! What the hell did he say that for? What kind of game are they playing? I’ve known Rosie for nearly ten years, and—” Clark had gotten red in the face.

“Where is she?” Faye asked.

“Fund-raising luncheon,” Clark said, still looking stunned.

He shook his head. “This is just some pathetic trick. They have no way to attack us, so now they’re making stuff up. This will come back to haunt him. His smear campaign will bring him down once and for all!”

“I’m confused,” I said. “What does homosexuality have to do with amnesty for illegal aliens?”

“Nothing!” Clark snapped. “Which makes it pretty obvious what they’re up to.”

All of us were probably thinking the same thoughts then, dredging up our knowledge of Rosie’s personal life. She had been 30

divorced long ago, had no regular male companion that we had heard of or seen. But no woman either. One evening I’d seen her escorted by a nice-looking, silver-haired man who opened the car door for her and walked into the restaurant with her arm in his. I had paid attention because I was curious, because Rosie never said a word about her personal life. Not like the other candidates who trotted out as many children and grandchildren as they could gather around them to show the world they had

“family values,” as though procreating were proof enough.

We’d all been given a biographical sheet so we could answer questions from voters. It listed the basic facts about Rosie’s life.

Place of Birth: Portland, Oregon. Age: 51. Years of Residence in Weberstown: 30. Education: BA in Music, MA in Art History from UC Berkeley. MBA from the University of the Pacific.

Marital Status: Divorced. Children: None. There was then a long list of organizations of which she was a member.

Wow, I thought, there’s no information on that sheet that would tell you anything about her. It was useless. It was worse than useless.

The phone rang and I answered. “Hi, Jean,” said the caller,

“this is Gary from the
Sentinel
. I’d like to talk to Rosie.”

“She’s not in. Can I take a message?”

“I’ve just heard that Mr. Holloway of the district attorney’s office claims that Rosie’s gay.” I groaned silently and gave Clark a pleading look. “Can you confirm Holloway’s statement?”

“Who is that?” Clark snapped. I handed him the phone, relieved to give it up. “Gary from the
Sentinel
. About the …” I pointed at the television.

Into the phone, Clark said, “It’s a dirty trick. I don’t want to see anything about it in print, do you understand? It’s a vicious lie. If you print this, we’ll sue.” After surrendering the phone, he stood quaking with rage. “Call Rosie’s mobile,” he said to Faye. “Tell her I’m on my way to pick her up. Don’t make any statement about this to anybody. And don’t let anyone in. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Then Rosie will straighten this out.”

After Clark had gone, I sat with Faye to wait. “What do you 31

think?” I asked.

Faye shook her head, looking perplexed. “It’s ridiculous. Like Clark, I’ve known Rosie for years. I’ve seen her dozens of times out, you know, at events.”

“Business-related events?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

“You don’t socialize with her, then. I mean, you aren’t really friends, personal friends?”

Faye looked confused. “Jean, I’ve never thought about it that way. She was just Rosie.” Faye was obviously searching her memory. “I’ve arranged trips for her, business trips. At public events, she was usually alone or with other people who were part of the group. No, I have never been out to lunch with her, just me, and have never been to her house. I guess, if you think about it, our relationship has been pretty much business only. I never felt that way because she’s so friendly, you know. You feel like you know her. When it comes right down to it, I guess I don’t know anything at all about her private life. Rosie is so involved in the public life that I just figured that was her private life, that it was all the same thing.”

“Well, so what if she is a lesbian,” I said. “What difference does it make?”

“Looks like it makes a difference to Clark. He seems pretty upset about it. I guess he figures it will lose us votes. I mean, think about people like your parents. It would make a difference to them, wouldn’t it? I know it would make a difference to mine.”

“I don’t know,” I said, thinking about my parents and how this subject wasn’t something we talked about. I really couldn’t say if they would change their vote over something like this.

I proceeded to deal with several callers who wanted me, when I told them Rosie was out, to confirm or deny the rumor.

After an hour of avoiding saying anything, I got a call from someone asking, “What do you know about Rosie and Catherine Gardiner?”

“Nothing,” I said truthfully. I had never heard of her. Was this another land mine about to explode? “Does anybody know 32

who Catherine Gardiner is?” I asked after hanging up.

“I do,” Faye said. “Why?”

“They’re asking about her now.”

Faye bit her lip. “Oh, no.”

“Who is she?”

“She’s a poet, a radical lesbian poet. Lives in San Francisco, I believe, or Marin County.”

“Do they know each other?”

Faye shrugged. “If the press has made that connection, they must. Oh, God, the walls are tumbling down.”

I felt frantic, like I should find a way to save the day. But what could I do? Rosie would know what to do. She would march in and take charge and blast Kiester right back with both barrels.

Clark finally came back with Rosie. They came in from the alley through the back door. Rosie seemed calm, but serious and distant, subdued in a way I’d never seen her. I told her about the Catherine Gardiner question. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, she said, “That woman lives for controversy. She doesn’t have a subtle bone in her body. If they talk to her, we’re doomed.”

“Can you talk to her first?” I asked, frantically trying to keep up, to understand what we were doing, what the situation was.

Rosie tossed up her hands. “I can try. Please, no one leave. I’d like to speak to you before you go.” Rosie went into her office to make the call.

“I guess it’s true,” Faye said fatalistically. “I had no idea. One has to wonder, then, how
they
knew.”

Clark shrugged. “She didn’t say anything. Just sort of caved in when I told her. It appears to be true.”

My head was whirling. I sat, trying to force myself to think clearly. How big a disaster was this?

Clark, his tone accusatory, asked, “Did anybody here know about this?” No one admitted it if they did. We were all silent then, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The phone rang, but nobody answered it. We just sat around like deflated balloons.

I saw the lighted button on Rosie’s line go out. She was off the 33

phone. When she returned, she leaned against the edge of a desk, facing us squarely, her expression solemn. “As you all know,” she said, “the Kiester camp has just outed me. The press has seized upon the news and will no doubt make it a headliner. They’re working very fast, too fast, in fact, to head off.” Rosie stopped, took a deliberate breath, then said, “I don’t know how they’re getting their information, but they’ve got a reliable source.

They’ve contacted a friend of mine, a woman known for her radical politics. My association with her will be damaging.” Rosie lowered her gaze, looked at the floor. Without the characteristic sparkle in her features, the lines on her face no longer added interest. They just made her look tired.

“I’m truly sorry about this,” she said. “I know how hard you’ve worked. I hope you know how much I appreciate it.” I wanted to comfort her but held my place. It was obvious how gut-wrenching this was for her.

After a moment of silence with glances all around the staff, Clark said, “You should have told me. We could have prepared, linked you up with a man, for God’s sake. We could have dealt with it up front somehow. Even if you had been out from the beginning, we would have had the upper hand. There are so many ways this would not have been a problem. This way, you just handed them a bomb and said use it at your convenience.”

Rosie faced him. “I’ve always tried to keep my personal and professional lives separate. This is just so irrelevant.” She paused.

“I didn’t think it would come out. It’s not generally known, and I know Kiester didn’t know. Someone’s tipped him off.” Rosie shook her head. “I didn’t think he would go this low in any case.

This is a conservative town. I didn’t think the public would be comfortable with the subject. I mean, why bring it up? I’m single, nobody lurking in the wings. I thought it was worth the risk just not making an issue of it.”