“It’s dark at 8:30,” Dahlia pointed out. “It’s seven now.”
“Still… takes a while to walk home from here…” Dahlia didn’t know why she thought that girl might stay. As soon as the fun was apparently over, Anem was gone.
“She lives two blocks behind here,” Heaven said from the counter. “I don’t live that much farther. You ready to go home, hon?” That was directed to Salama, who let her sigh of relief be heard as she ignored the crew and went back behind the camera. Whatever they muttered to one another in the kitchen could not be heard.
Wayne turned off the camera and wrapped his arms on top of the stand. “Good going. Scaring off the natives without much effort. Is this a new record for you?”
Dahlia was not perturbed. She may have an empty roundtable, but she always had a backup plan. “Maybe it’s a new record, maybe not. I admit, I was hoping they wouldn’t notice until at least a few more minutes in. Does throw a wrench into that angle of the documentary, but they all have our card. I’m sure one of them will step up for a private interview, even if it’s done anonymously.” In a small town like that, she didn’t blame a woman for wanting to go incognito when spilling the deets. Who knew what kind of backlash she might face? “You got all of that on camera, right? They signed their releases. I’m sure we’ve got something good in there.”
Wayne cocked the kind of smile that said his boss was up to her no-good tricks again. “Whatever you say. Because, yeah, the camera was running for all of that. You should’ve seen some of those walks out of here. We could sell stock footage like that.”
“We won’t have to, but we will still make a nice payday out of what we did get.” Payday might not come in the form of money, but it could come in awards. Recognition. A raw depiction of what it was like to be a different kind of minority in a minority-oriented town. Come on, somebody. Spill your guts and show me what Paradise Valley is really like.
All it took was one person to knock over the first few dominoes.
Chapter 9
KAREN
“You know I’m not as big of a rabble rouser as I could be in this town.” Frankie stirred the cream into the coffee she helped herself to in Mayor Rath’s office. “But if something smells, you know I’m not afraid to call it out.”
Karen steepled her fingers. Her phone buzzed with texts from her children, both of whom were bored enough to ask if they could take this old car apart or bake this recipe that required “two shots of bourbon.” Neither Xander nor Christina were legally old enough to purchase bourbon from the liquor store on the edge of town, but Karen personally knew Bob Rigsby, the owner and operator of Cascade Spirits & More. Couldn’t she… like… nudge him to put the bourbon on her tab and conveniently leave it on his back stoop for Xander to pick up? He was only a few months shy of twenty-one! He was practically legal!
Her children did not get her attention right now, however. When Karen saw Frankie step into city hall fifteen minutes ago, she knew something was up. As Frankie said, she wasn’t a rabble rouser. She wasn’t Cindy Smith, Abby Marcott, or Susie Pate. She mostly kept to herself, only raising her voice during chamber of commerce meetings. This was a woman who ran her deli on her own. She didn’t have time to lock up and come down to city hall over any little thing. When Frankie showed up to say her piece, people listened.
“I’m sure it must have been a misunderstanding.” Karen drummed her fingers on her desk. “I mean, it’s clear what Ms. Granger was doing by inviting our honorable members of the… ah…” While Frankie raised her eyebrows, Karen searched for the politically correct words to say. Unfortunately, those words were always changing. What was considered politically correct in urban bubbles like Portland and Seattle might be a little too ahead of the times in rural areas like Paradise Valley. Frankie was usually good at reminding the mayor what to say and what to avoid. Yet when talking to her directly? When she came in upset? Oh, boy.
“Members of minority communities?” Frankie offered. “Because I don’t know what other polite thing you can collectively call us when Anem Singer is thrown into the mix. That poor girl was so lost. I don’t think she’s used to having a spotlight shown on her Jewishness.”
“No, I suppose not.” The closest people came to being reminded that the supermarket checkout girl was Jewish was when Hanukkah rolled around and she wouldn’t stop singing that dreidel song. “Catchier than ‘Deck the Halls,’ now ain’t it?” Anem was once heard saying to a patron who pointed out she sung it all late autumn. “Ms. Granger is observant, but she doesn’t know about how this town gets along with each other. Or puts up with each other, in some cases.” That was especially true when Yi told off the wrong library patron for looking at porn on the computers. While everyone else in the library – yes, including young moms like Susie Pate – laughed the offender out of the room, he was likely to file a complaint against the no-nonsense librarian who wasn’t afraid to speak her mind.
Or complain, for that matter.
“Oh, good! You’re here, too!” There was Yi, in Karen’s doorway. It should probably be noted that the door had been closed a few minutes ago. Yi had helped herself without so much as a knock. When she flung the door all the way open and marched in? Frankie rolled her eyes and took generous sips of her coffee. She would probably need it. “Hey, Mayor! I don’t got a lot of time to talk, ‘cause I’m on my lunch break from the library.” Yi slammed her hand on Frankie’s shoulder as if they were buddies. In reality, all Yi was good at doing was making Frankie spill a little coffee creamer onto her blue windbreaker. “Are we talking about that movie lady? Because she’s a real treat. Came into the library this morning to ask me if I wanted to follow up on what happened yesterday. Can you believe it? She invited that girl from the supermarket!”
Frankie guffawed. “I’ve already filled her in about that.”
“You shoulda seen that Meadow Hobfield,” Yi said with a grin. “Such a cool cookie, picking up her things and sauntering out like she had a model shoot to get to. In Mandarin we say she’s zhengmei. Real pretty lady. I hope they put that shot in the documentary! Only worthy one they got before I left!”
“Yes, we were talking about Ms. Granger and what happened yesterday.” Karen slammed her hands together, fingers strangling one another as she resisted the urge to twiddle them. “It’s my understanding that Ms. Granger may have committed a faux pas by gathering every woman of a certain checkmark to talk about what it’s really like to live in Paradise Valley.” Whatever that meant. Karen was still reeling from the implications that there may be racial or religious tensions in her town… and she hadn’t heard about it. “I’m sorry to hear that this has happened. At no time did she mention to me that she intended to go for that angle.”
Both Frankie and Yi exchanged looks that implied Karen still didn’t get it. “You’re acting like she’s going to tell you everything, huh?” Frankie snorted. “Why in the world would she tell you about that? Far as I know, the only thing a filmmaker has to do around here is get some permissions and permits. So, I didn’t give her permission to use me in her little movie.”
“You’re lucky you get to choose,” Yi interjected. “They keep showing up at the library to do ‘research.’ Pretty sure I’m in a hundred shots by now. I hope they got my good side!”
“We thought you should know what’s going on around town, Mayor.” Frankie placed her paper coffee cup on Karen’s desk. “Personally, I’m not too upset about it. People make weird inferences about me all the time, but it’s quite a different matter when it’s done on camera. I’d like to point out that the homeschool moms and the people down at the gay bar haven’t yet been singled out. We were one of the first groups she came to. She said something about it ‘still being a small town,’ as if we don’t know!” Frankie inhaled a deep breath. “Ah, Mayor, the only reason I’m here is because I believe you actually listen well enough.”
“Thank you for bringing this to my attention.” Karen wrote down a note on a Post-It. “I’ll have
a talk with Ms. Granger as soon as I can track her down. I’m sure you can sympathize that we’re still catching up post-Fourth of July and preparing for Paradise Pride later this month.”
“Oh, great!” Yi exclaimed. “They’ll love to film that!”
“They do have the proper permits for it, yes.” That was a that day development.
Neither Frankie nor Yi hung around much longer, but lest Karen believe she had been let off some metaphorical hook, the complaints kept coming all day.
Cindy Smith was aghast that the film crew showed up at her church to ask the minister what it was like preaching to a town full of lesbians. (Although the minister never said a thing to Karen. In fact, that man was so under the radar as far as preachers went, that Karen couldn’t remember his name!) Lorri Abrams from the biggest hardware store in town dropped by on her lunch break to say what her partner, Joan, wouldn’t – that Dahlia had dropped by the craft shop to talk about the pressure to emulate “heterosexual relationships” and greatly upset the hormonal woman. Abby Marcott phoned in a complaint that Dahlia had caught wind of her history, particularly with her deceased son, and wouldn’t shut the hell up about leaving husbands and dragging kids around by the cuff.
Karen took that one a little personally, and it wasn’t about her!
“We seem to have a problem with Hibiscus Films,” Karen said to Tom later that afternoon. “Their crew is running around upsetting the locals with insensitive questions.”
“So I’ve picked up from the bits I’ve overheard from your office.” They were in Tom’s office now, where the man kept a clean and clutter-free abode. He rubbed his chin hairs as Karen went over the list of complaints she received that day. When she got to Abby Marcott, Tom lowered his hand, suddenly alert, and said, “She’s harassing the stroke victim?”
Karen couldn’t help but chuckle. She could always count on Tom to inadvertently make her feel better. “The” stroke victim? A woman knew she was in a small town when it only took having two strokes in one year to become “the” stroke person about Paradise Valley. Granted, Abby had a wallop of one a under a year ago and had done an amazing job of recovering, but what a nickname to earn.
“I guess so. You know, when she said she would be conducting some interviews around here, I thought they would be over the table, so to speak. Previously arranged. The interviewees would be on board. However you want to put it.” Karen sighed. “I seriously cannot believe she gathered every woman of color she could find in this town and threw them into an interview! Without telling them what it was about! According to Frankie, she was led to believe she was selected for diversity’s sake, but only to keep the shot from looking like snow falling on Norway.”
It was Tom’s turn to laugh. For all Karen could remember, the man had recent ancestors from Norway. Usually it’s Sweden or Denmark around here. The Scandinavian influence in Oregon could not be denied. Granted, the origins of the state shined in less than stellar lights, but it was a hilarious jaunt through the land. The number of Danish flags that unironically flew next to Confederate signatures never failed to make Karen shake her head. Good Lord. Is that what the documentary is angling toward? What did that have anything to do with Paradise Valley being founded as a lesbian commune? Two of the five founding women were black!
Was Dahlia really that clueless? Or was she driven by some other ulterior motive?
She had forgotten about her kids’ plans for boredom salvation by the time she arrived home and smelled cooking sherry in the air. Karen also discovered the old Jeep in her garage had been dismantled from the inside. Everything, from the cooking sherry to the mess in her garage, smelled of Xander. The boy desperately needed a summer job, but they weren’t easy to come by in Paradise Valley. Not even for the mayor’s kid. I can get him a million volunteer positions that look great on a cover letter, but those last only a few hours a week. Honestly, she half-expected Yi’s visit to be about Xander’s inability to properly shelve the non-fiction books. Again.
“Soooooo there ended up being no bourbon.” That’s what he said as he leaned in the doorway between the kitchen and the garage. Karen was too tired to scold him for the mess. She was more likely to collapse on the couch while her daughter played a cutesy video game on their new Switch system. After the third “pee-KAH-CHOOO” in a row, though, I have to grab my migraine medicine. “Thanks for that, Mom. Could’ve hooked me up, but you didn’t.”
Karen knitted her brows into a fine scowl. “You’re not twenty-one, and I’m the damned mayor. I would like to not resign because I was caught facilitating the sale of alcohol to minors.”
“I wasn’t that serious…”
She sniffed the air. “What are you cooking, exactly? I’m starving.”
“I picked up this crazy Swedish cookbook last time I volunteered at the library. You’re gonna go nuts for it. Soooo much herring.”
“Do not tell me you cooked herring.”
“Ew, no.”
Christina’s voice rose from the living room. “He cooked tenderloin steaks he picked up from the market! He put it on your card!”
Karen massaged her forehead with the back of her hand. “Just put it on a plate and let’s be done with it. I’m so hungry I could eat a whole cow.”
“Rough day at city hall?” Xander spoke as he pulled plates out of the cabinets and his mother sat down at the dining table on the far end of the kitchen. “You know how those constituents are. If they’re not complaining about the color of the fire hydrants, they’re picking their noses and wiping it on their pants.”
“Thank you so much for that colorful imagery right before I eat.” Karen accepted a plate of whatever the hell her son spent all afternoon cooking. “No, I’ve been dealing with complaints about that film crew. You know the ones.”
Christina made her way to the table. Xander sat down across from his mother. Neither were prime to eat as much as she did. Not when she was the source of all their entertainment in those few precious minutes. “The ones making a documentary?” Christina asked. “Yeah, I heard about what they were asking Leigh Ann Hardy from school.” When Xander looked askance at her, she explained, “She’s in my class. I hear about everything that happens to kids in my class.”
“Somebody else was talking about that earlier,” Karen said. “Something about her feeling pressured to be gay at school?”
“It’s so stupid. Everyone knows that you can’t be pressured to be gay or straight. You either are or you aren’t.” Before Karen could feel too proud that her daughter had picked up something from living in Paradise Valley, she continued, “Leigh Ann couldn’t be gay if she tried. She’s too up Billy Carver’s butt.”
“Yooo, sis, bisexuality exists! Stop this bi-erasure,” Xander said. “Or our mom will make you watch that video from the ‘90s again.”
Karen shot him a look. Then, to her daughter, “Seems she’s asking a lot of questions about people feeling pressured or excluded. Only not in the ways you would expect from a movie about being in a gay town.”
“Maybe it’s some crazy reverse homophobia thing,” Xander said. “We had that problem on campus once. Some straight guy got all mad because the GSA wasn’t all about him. He didn’t get the memo that the A stands for ally and, duh, most allies are straight people. It’s like gay rights 101.”
“I really did not get that impression from her from our prior communications,” Karen said.
Xander shrugged. “People are freakin’ weird. They tell you one thing to your face then pull a 360 behind your back. Sounds to me she’s got some agenda she doesn’t want you knowing about. Which isn’t a good sign, of course. Probably means she’s about to ask Deputy Greenhill if she feels pressured to be stone cold butch because she’s always got a gun strapped to her waist.”
He joked, but Karen was wondering the same thing. How far would Dahlia go to get the angle she searched for in this town?
What would Karen do to stop her from discoloring the town she loved so much? How would she protect
the townsfolk who had finally found a little slice of paradise?
Or… was this really all a misunderstanding? That’s what I want to believe. Even at her age and political experience, Karen Rath still wanted to believe in the good in people. The thought of a crew coming to disparage their quaint little town, their slice of Heaven in an uncertain world, was both offensive and disheartening. What if, though… what if it was a misunderstanding?
Surely, Karen could get to the bottom of this with one phone call. She was used to calling media outlets and setting stories straight. So why did the thought of dialing Dahlia’s private line make her nervous? Was it coming off as too adversarial? Too confrontational? Assuming the worst in an outsider who might simply be doing their due diligence to root out possible paths to follow? What did Karen know about the artistic filmmaking process, anyway?
I know enough to protect my townspeople. Women like Abby and Joan didn’t need the extra stress in their lives right now. Nor did Frankie need daily reminders that she was a black woman in small town Oregon. Also, the moms down at the park didn’t need to question what a film crew was about to do with footage of the kids. There was a fine line between letting someone do as they willed after the permits were granted… and then there was keeping a strict eye on what went on in her town.
Even if the woman in question was feisty and commanding enough to make the mayor shake in her flats. The worst part? Realizing that she liked that shaking. That Karen hadn’t experienced something like that in a long, long time.
Not since she first came out as a bisexual woman searching for more meaning in her life. Not since she left her ex-husband and brought her kids to this same piece of paradise that had changed so many other lives for the better.
“I can talk to her,” Christina volunteered. “If she’s going after Leigh Ann, it’s only a matter of time before she bugs other kids from school. Why not offer myself as tribute? I’ve got all your PR training, Mom. I know how to tell the straight story of this town, so to speak.”
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