Tunnel of Love

by Hilma Wolitzer

  “What’s your name, miss?” the salesman demanded.

  “Lucy Thompson,” Robin said promptly, “and you’d better let me go. My father is a big-shot lawyer and he’ll probably sue you if you don’t.” Why did she say “lawyer”? She’d meant to say “cop.”

  “Her name is Robin Reismann, Julian,” someone else said, “and she doesn’t have a father.”

  Robin whirled around. It was the blonde who’d spoken, and in a voice Robin knew very well. The woman removed her sunglasses. Her dark eyes flashed, and her mouth was cruelly amused. Robin’s mouth dropped open, as if its hinges had broken off.

  “Do you know this girl, Ms. Sterling?” the salesman asked.

  “Close your mouth, Robin,” Cynthia said, “before something flies in.” She turned to the salesman. “I certainly do know her,” she told him. “Her mother works for me.” She glanced at their rapt audience. “Could we take this inside, please?” she said.

  In the office in the rear of the store, the salesman offered to let Robin go, if Cynthia would vouch for her. “We’ve got the merchandise back, so we’ll just forget the whole thing—that is, if you say so, Ms. Sterling,” he said.

  “Thanks, Julian,” Cynthia said. “But it wouldn’t be very instructive for Robin to simply walk out of here as if nothing happened.”

  That witch, Robin thought, she’s going to have me arrested. “Listen—” she began.

  “No, you listen, for a change,” Cynthia told her, “and keep your little trap shut.” She put her sunglasses back on. They were really an amazing disguise, along with her hair. It used to be so black, with those gray streaks in it. When did she bleach it? It was the same color as Lucinda Blake’s now. Or Robin’s own hair, or Phoebe’s.

  “Do you want me to get the police involved in this?” the salesman asked. If Cynthia gave the okay, he would probably send Robin to the chair.

  “No,” Cynthia said. “I don’t think we have to go that far, at least not this time. But I would like this episode to go on your own permanent records. You said that she’s been in here before, and I think it will serve as a future deterrent.”

  “He’s a liar! I was never here before!” Robin said indignantly, and Cynthia lowered her sunglasses and threw her one of those killer looks.

  “As I was saying, it will be a deterrent to future crime,” Cynthia said. She wrote everything down on the salesman’s pad: Robin’s name and age and address. “Linda wouldn’t be very happy to hear about this,” she told Robin. “So I might just keep it to myself, for her sake. But you’d better shape up, lady, or else.” Then she looked at her watch. “I have to get back to the studio,” she said. “You’ll be sure to send my purchases out this afternoon, Julian, won’t you?”

  “Of course, Ms. Sterling,” Julian the brown-nose said. “I might even drop them off myself on my way home. And I’m very sorry you had to be delayed like this. Kids today, what can you do?” He scurried behind Cynthia like a mouse, reaching out with one paw to push the office door open for her. “But it’s always a pleasure to serve you, Ms. Sterling. See you again soon, I hope. Have a nice day now!” Blah, blah, blah.

  Robin should have been relieved, about the police part anyway, but she felt a simmering, restless anger, even when she was out in the mall again, free, and with all of her belongings (except, of course, for the crystal harp) back in her knapsack. It was hard to breathe right and hard not to talk to herself. She was angry with that jerky salesman and that fink security guard for humiliating her like that, angry with Cynthia for being such a control freak, with Linda for a thousand different reasons, with Lucy for choosing stupid love over friendship, with Carmel for not being a good enough substitute for Lucy, and with Nathan for not sticking around when things got rough. Robin was even angry with Lady Audrey for dumping Duke in favor of his evil stepbrother. But she was angriest, practically to the point of stormy tears, with her father and Manny for being dead.

  27

  Rocket Man

  LINDA VENTURED OUT ON her lunch hour to get some panty hose at The Broadway. They were having a buy-three, get-one-free sale on her favorite brand, and she was down to her last pair. She planned to go right back to the office afterward and eat the tuna-salad sandwich she had brought from home and stashed in her desk drawer. The mall seemed especially crowded today, with a lively, festive air beyond the usual Friday afternoon shopping fervor. Linda noticed a number of American flags hanging in the doorways of stores, and people hurrying by carrying smaller flags, and signs and balloons that said things like Vote Clinton/Gore and Bill and Al ’92. Bill and Al. That sounded so friendly, so real, like the names embroidered on the coverall pockets of the men who pumped gas at the Chevron station. Someone at work had mentioned that Governor Clinton was in Los Angeles and that he was scheduled to make a speech at the mall that afternoon, but Linda had forgotten about it. That was what happened when you were caught up in the trivial details of your own life, like buying panty hose and dodging your lecherous boss.

  Mr. Albano and Mr. Murphy were both voting for President Bush again. Linda heard Mr. Murphy tell someone on the phone that he didn’t need some tax-and-spend Democrat to change his country, he liked it just the way it was. And the other night at dinner, when Linda mentioned to Mr. Albano that she was thinking of voting for Bill Clinton, he said he didn’t trust “Slick Willie” any further than he could throw a piano. Linda hadn’t actually been thinking about voting for anyone; she hadn’t even gotten around to registering yet. Mr. Albano was the person she didn’t trust, and she was just trying to make conversation that wasn’t too personal.

  Linda had agreed to their dinner date against her better judgment, and only after trying earnestly to get out of it by telling him that she didn’t mix business with pleasure, and that she’d recently broken up with someone and wasn’t ready to start dating anyone else. This last was certainly true. Linda hadn’t heard from Nathan again after he delivered her plants that night. Not that she expected to hear from him, or wanted to, but there was the sense of unfinished business between them, of a wound that hadn’t properly closed over so that it could begin to heal.

  Mr. Albano wore down Linda’s resistance with arguments he might have made in the courtroom, piling up evidence for his own innocent intentions. “I’d like to get to know you better,” he said, “but strictly as a friend. I just got out of a bad relationship myself, and believe me, I’m not ready to get burnt again either. Hey, it’s only dinner, anyway, with all four hands on the table. We both have to eat, Linda, don’t we?”

  Linda told Vicki she was dreading the date. “Then why didn’t you just say no?” Vicki demanded. “Didn’t you learn anything from Nancy Reagan?” But Mr. Albano had been so persistent. The only thing he couldn’t convince Linda to do was call him Vince. As long as she didn’t cross that crucial border into familiarity, she told herself he wouldn’t get the wrong impression.

  He took her to Hoofbeats, a steakhouse in the Valley that had tufted, red-leather booths and flickering carriage lamps on the paneled walls. As they were being seated, waiters went by bearing trays laden with bloody slabs of beef. It seemed you got to choose your own raw steak at Hoofbeats, before it was carried away to be grilled to order. From time to time, Linda had considered becoming a vegetarian, mostly for reasons of health—hers and the animals’—but her meat hunger always won out in the end. As their elderly waiter hovered with his burden of glistening flesh, and Mr. Albano leaned across Linda to make his selection, she became almost ill with revulsion. This evening was about sex, plain and simple, no matter what he’d said about all four hands on the table, and not wanting to get burnt again. She could feel it in the pressure and heat of his arm and leg against hers, and she could smell it in the faint but vulgar perfume of the quivering steaks. “How about you, honeybun?” Mr. Albano said. “Which one gets your juices flowing?”

  “You choose,” Linda gasped, with her eyes closed, and she slid a couple of inches away from him on the cold leather seat of the b
anquette. But she knew that she’d only be fighting him off in a few more hours on the cold leather seat of his car, and she wondered if she should force herself to eat a big, rare steak, just to build up her strength. She hardly ate anything, though, and she did have to fight him off, desperately, at the end of the evening. That was how her next-to-last pair of panty hose got ripped.

  Things became more congested as Linda approached The Broadway. A wooden platform had been erected near the entrance to the store, and someone was setting up a cluster of microphones on it. There were television cameras all around—kids were mugging for them already. Behind the platform, a band of uniformed musicians had assembled and were taking out their instruments. And several people milled around two folding tables draped with red-white-and-blue bunting, one on either side of the aisle. Linda was glad she’d taken her cane with her, as she worked her way through the crush and into The Broadway. The area around the panty-hose counter was exceptionally busy, too, because of the sale, she supposed, and a general overflow from the mall. By the time Linda made her purchase and left the store, the band was tuning up in that boisterous way that makes you want to cover your ears and gives you a thrill of expectation at the same time. The crowd had grown considerably and everyone was surging forward, toward the platform. Linda was pushed forward, too, as if by the oceans tide; it would be really hard to try to go in the other direction now. And if she stayed to hear the speech, she could just skip lunch, or pick up some yogurt or a taco to eat on her way back to the office. She really needed something more fortifying, though, after staying up so late again, pasting glitter onto those Christmas cards. Robin had helped for a while last night, until she realized it wasn’t much fun. She was too careless, anyway, strewing glitter way outside the prescribed areas, and stopping to read the verses aloud, breaking Linda’s concentration and her assembly-line rhythm. “With jingle bells and Yuletide smiles, we send our love across the miles,” Robin read in a mocking singsong, and then she grabbed her own throat and croaked, “Oh, gag me!”

  “I’d love to,” Linda said. But she was already speeding backward across the miles and years to some childhood Christmas that couldn’t possibly have been as happy as she remembered or imagined it was. Why was the past always sweetened by memory? Would she think of this tiresome night someday with a similar wrench of nostalgia? The work was more boring than strenuous, but the glue stank and the glitter got into everything. It stuck to their fingers and hair and eyelids, and was scattered in their clothing and even in their food. At night, there was a trace of phosphorescent glitter on Linda’s pillow, like a sprinkling of Stardust. The extra money would certainly come in handy, though.

  Linda decided in favor of staying for the speech, more out of curiosity than anything else. She had never seen a Presidential candidate in person before. It would be something to tell Robin about later, although she’d probably be a lot more impressed by some television or rock star.

  The bandleader raised his baton and the band broke into a loud, brassy rendition of “Don’t Stop.” An older couple near Linda did a few steps of the fox-trot, practically in place, to scattered applause, and several people began singing along with the music: “Don’t stop … thinkin’ about to-mor-row!” Then, under the din, Linda felt something like an electrical current move rapidly from one person to another. “He’s here! It’s him!” she heard. “Bill, Bill! We love you, Bill!” a man yelled, and the woman right next to Linda flapped her arms and emitted a joyful, wordless shriek, like an exotic bird about to take flight.

  Linda was reminded of the time she and Dee Dee Mueller, her best friend at Coatesville High, traveled by bus to Pittsburgh for an Elton John concert, the first concert either of them had ever attended. They’d saved some of their baby-sitting money for an entire year for this expedition, and each girl had told her mother she was staying overnight at the other’s house to study for finals. It was the most daring thing they’d ever done. They were remarkably innocent for the late seventies, truly believing that sucking Pop Rocks made you high—why else did they start giggling like that when the candy exploded its sweet tartness in their mouths?—and that they would be best friends forever.

  The arena was packed when they got there. Linda and Dee Dee grasped hands as they went toward their seats, in ecstatic anticipation of the music, and in terror of being separated. After the opening act (awful Beatles imitators called the Termites) had overstayed its welcome, Elton John—himself!—leaped into the fiery lights, wearing a gold-lamé jumpsuit and those cool glasses, setting off a charge of excitement that traveled from body to body around the arena, until everyone was united in one gigantic, screaming mass.

  Linda hadn’t seen or heard from Dee Dee Mueller in over ten years—they’d drifted apart soon after graduation—but now she wished Dee Dee was beside her again, to hold onto and scream with as Governor Clinton went by only a few yards away, huge and handsome and familiar, and radiating his own heat and light. It was too bad Vicki wasn’t there, either. Just the other night, she’d said that Clinton might be the first winner she ever voted for. “And if he fucks up,” she added, “well, at least he’ll be our fuckup for a change, instead of theirs.” But Vicki was off in Acapulco, catching a few days with her married lover.

  Standing by herself, Linda felt shy and separate from the merriment around her. The governor shook hands and patted babies, lifted high by their parents as if for a blessing from the Pope, and kept smiling that generous, boyish smile. Linda wasn’t close enough to touch or be touched, and she had to use her cane as a kind of pogo stick to see what was going on, but she was thrilled anyway. The crowd went crazy, just as that other crowd did at that long-ago concert in Pittsburgh. The speech they waited to hear was already singing in their hearts and brains. It was like that at the concert, too, Linda remembered, the words and music to “Rocket Man” running through her even before Elton John took the stage.

  Clinton stepped onto the platform, and a chant began: “We want Bill! We want Bill!” Flags and signs were waved about, and the band played one more jazzy chorus of “Don’t Stop.” What happy chaos it was! Bill Clinton had to hold his big hand up for several minutes before the noise abated. Then, when he said, “My fellow Americans,” in his eager, raspy voice, the crowd went wild again. Even the few hecklers—a man shouting, “Stop killing innocent babies!” while waving a blowup of a bloody fetus, and someone else who screamed, “Go back to Arkansas!”—were easily drowned out by the roars of affection and approval. Linda was still too self-conscious to join in; she stood quietly, her entire being poised and listening.

  “My fellow Americans,” Governor Clinton said once more, and this time there was a respectful hush. He spoke about California first, how it had been especially hard-hit by the recession, and said he was here to offer hope for change.

  Linda thought sadly of Rosalia, who wasn’t doing much better in Chicago than she had in LA., and remembered that she owed her a letter.

  “Do we have the courage to change for a better tomorrow?” the governor asked, and a tremendous cheer went up. He went on to talk about racial division, saying that we all needed one another, that we could only achieve a stronger America by working together. And then he said, “There’s been a lot of talk in this campaign about family values; I know something about that. I was born to a widowed mother, but we were still a family. A family involves at least one parent, whether natural, adopted, or foster, and children. A good family is a place where people turn for refuge and where they know they’re the most important people in the world. I’ve seen the family values of all these people in America who are out there killing themselves working harder for less. And I think the President owes it to family values to show that he values America’s families.”

  He seemed to be speaking directly to Linda, assuring her that the haphazard choices she’d made were all right, that her odd little family was legitimate and valuable, and that if she just hung in there, help was on the way. Fourteen years ago, when Elton John leaned ac
ross the lights and sang, “My gift is my song, and this one’s for you,” Linda knew that he meant her, and not Dee Dee, who was crying and seemed to be eating her hands, or the thousands of other teenage girls around them, holding up lit matches and flaring cigarette lighters as an expression of their devotion.

  Governor Clinton stepped down from the platform, and men in suits and dark glasses immediately surrounded him, but he worked a determined path through them to his enraptured audience, extending both hands to be gripped and wrung on the way. Linda felt herself being borne by the human tide in his direction. She knew, from the sudden escalation of noise and the rush-hour press of bodies, that she was very close to him, although she couldn’t actually see him. She hooked her purse and shopping bag over the wrist of the hand that held the cane, and she waved her other hand high in the air, as if it held a political sign. The glitter under her fingernails sparkled gaily like the match flames at the Elton John concert. “Hello!” her hand said. “Thank you, Bill! I love you, too!” And then an amazing thing happened: in passing, Bill Clinton reached out and took Linda’s waving, chattering hand in his, enveloped it in one of his soft, warm paws for what must have been only seconds. The source of contact was unmistakable, the shock of it stunning. She would not have been surprised if her hand had disconnected itself from her arm then and floated upward, like all those liberated helium balloons dancing high above the heads of the mob. But the rest of her was solidly, safely rooted to earth. This was what the laying on of hands probably meant, an infusion of spirit and hope from one person to another with the simple, miraculous application of touch.

  He was there, and then he was gone, and once again Linda was transported with hardly any effort of her own, this time toward one of the bunting-draped tables, where other people were already lined up, registering to vote. She looked at her watch; her lunch hour was over, and she hadn’t eaten a thing. But a different hunger invaded her now, a hunger to remain a part of this magical, encompassing crowd, a hunger to belong and to participate. She took her place in line and waited to register, too.