Solitaire and Brahms

by Sarah Dreher

  Solitaire and

  Brahms

  Sarah Dreher

  New Victoria Publishers

  © Copyright Sarah Dreher 1997

  All rights reserved, worldwide. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a web site without the prior written permission of the publishers.

  Published by New Victoria Publishers, Inc., 7011 S. Pintek Lane, Hereford, AZ 85615

  Cover painting by Elaine Frenett

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Dreher, Sarah.

  Solitaire and Brahms : by Sarah Dreher.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 0-934678-85-5

  1. Lesbians—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3554. R36S65 1997

  813' . 54--dc21 97-19545

  CIP

  For Liz, Fayal, Jeannette, Alice and Pat

  the women who kept me alive

  Chapter One

  The one thing Shelby Camden had always known about herself was that there was something about herself she didn't know. Sometimes she thought she had known it once but forgotten it. And sometimes she thought she had never known it, but was always on the edge of knowing. Sometimes it felt like an animal of a strange and frightening nature, one that would draw strength from daylight and so had to be kept in the darkness. Sometimes it felt like a friendly thing, perhaps a hidden talent or skill, one that would give her a great deal of pleasure. Most of the time it was a secret box that might be opened one day—if she could, if she wanted to, if she dared, reach in her pocket and find the key. But until she did...

  She leaned back against the celery green Naugahyde sofa and watched a small gray and black bird as it pecked at a tightly-wrapped maple bud. A goldfinch, still in its winter plumage. The day was as gray as the finch. The days were always gray in March. March in New England was the other side of November. It gave you more to look forward to than November, but lasted twice as long. The sky dripped—not really mist, not really rain, but a compression and congealing of soggy air that coalesced on anything it touched. A single droplet cut a channel down the picture window.

  Inside the editorial offices of The Magazine for Women, the radiators chugged and clanged but couldn't make headway against the creeping, bone-devouring dampness. Shelby pulled her attention away from the window and glared across the coffee table at the rubber tree plant that languished in the far corner of the waiting room. Rubber tree plants always struck her as annoyingly artificial, with their dark green glossy leaves and arched limbs like department store mannequins. They never bloomed, as far as she knew, and she'd never seen a new branch or bud. They never quite lost all their leaves, only an occasional pitiful dry one, which wouldn't fall while you were watching but liked to greet you in the morning with all its dead-leaf-from-the-rubber-tree-plant pathos. They did this just often enough to make you think you were doing something wrong, and should water it less or feed it more, or maybe prune it. But if you took action on its behalf, the next day it would look exactly the way it had the night before. And it would have dropped exactly one leaf.

  Rubber tree plants were very popular, and Shelby hated them.

  Good God, she thought with a twinge of self-disgust, listen to you. She'd be twenty-five years old next week. She had a Master's degree in journalism, just as she'd always planned, and an apartment of her own in a large, old and slightly spooky house on a quiet, tree-lined street, just as she'd always hoped. She had friends, and a job with a popular and respectable magazine that was sold on newsstands, not 'in grocery stores, and could be found in most libraries, and she'd probably be promoted to assistant editor within the next six months. And here she was taking offense at rubber tree plants.

  She glanced across the room toward the door to David Spur’s office, where the editor's private secretary sat like a concrete Chinese dragon on guard and tapped away at her typewriter. Miss Myers was an enigma. If she had a life outside the office, a first name, a family, a pet, even a pet peeve, no one had ever discovered it. If she had ever been young or foolish, there was no one around who had witnessed it. She never took a day off and was never sick. There were no photographs of loved or admired ones on her desk or tucked into the corner of her blotter. She ate her lunch in the lunchroom, but always sat alone and reading a paperback book, sipping her tea and nibbling delicately at bits of lettuce and tuna salad. No one had ever been able to get a peek at the paperback book.

  Once, feeling sorry for her, Shelby had invited her to join their table. Miss Myers had merely glanced up, murmured, "Thank you, no," and dismissed her by turning her head away.

  Miss Myers was there when they arrived in the morning, and still there when the offices closed at night. She might be potted behind her desk like the rubber tree plant, slipping into a coma through the passing night hours, gray-streaked hair forever gray-streaked, wearing the same modest dark and flowered dress, just a touch of lipstick, a dab of powder, no rouge, hands poised above the typewriter keys, fingers delicately arched, nails filed and polished to perfection...

  Or maybe Spurl crept back in after the offices were closed, while Miss Myers waited in black lace panties and garter belt, and they made wild, abandoned love while the rubber tree plant dropped its solitary leaf

  Prom behind her desk, Miss Myers glanced up at her and briefly smiled. Well, she didn't really smile. "Smile" implied an act of volition. In Miss Myers' case, the smile was a random and unwilled act, an autumn cloud drifting across the face of the moon.

  A smile happened to Miss Myers, Shelby thought.

  She realized she envied the woman, in a way. A smile happening took no decision, no force, no planning or intention. It happened whether it was expected or not. Some days Shelby thought the energy required to smile would be too much for her.

  Smiling was mandatory in Shelby's world.

  The keys of Miss Myers' typewriter rose and fell in perfect cadence, a well-trained army. The platen slid along at a constant speed. You could probably fine-tune a motor to the intervals between strokes. Now and then, Miss Myers paused to proof her typing, scowling at the words as if defying them to display a blemish. If she found one—Shelby had witnessed this once, and it had struck terror into her heart—Miss Myers ripped the page from the typewriter, tore it to shreds, and dropped the offending item into the waste basket. No easy solutions for Miss Myers, no indeed. Miss Myers obviously felt that anyone who relied on White-Out or other modern conveniences was of low moral character and unworthy of the privileges and responsibilities granted to superior human beings. Sometimes Miss Myers would look up suddenly, her eyes sweeping the room with a piercing, wary expression as if searching for disorder. Finding no rebellious inanimate objects—animate objects knew better than to rebel against Miss Myers—she'd give a satisfied nod and go back to work. Her fingers never broke stride.

  The rubber tree plant caught Shelby's attention again. She scowled at it. Too bad Miss Myers didn't disapprove of this monster. It would go the way of errant commas and misplaced hyphens.

  They were just that self-satisfied, rubber tree plants. And they were everywhere. Like those wax-encrusted Chianti bottles they all had back in college. Tall-necked, green, round-bellied things, dressed up in terribly cute little baskets. She'd even saved one after an evening of pizza, herself- "Everyone" did, her roommate insisted—although they galled her.

  Sometimes, when she took a dislike to something for no reason—it had happened with paper napkins for a while, and stuffed celery—she ended up feeling sorry for the poor thing which hadn't done anything, really, to deserve her animosity. That hadn
't happened with Chianti bottles; they had sinned by being too rigorously popular. And it hadn't happened yet with rubber tree plants.

  Miss Myers was still tapping and dinging away, getting those letters and words and punctuation marks in line. She was just the kind of woman Shelby's mother had said Shelby would turn into, when she'd found out Shelby had applied to graduate school. Naively, Shelby had hoped Columbia's prestige would count for something in Libby's social-climbing eyes. It hadn't.

  Libby had raved for a while, and there were some pretty unpleasant, silent dinners at the Camden's,' but eventually she had calmed down. Calmed down, not to be confused with coming around. She'd probably never come around. A career was a Sure-Fire Dead End on the Marriage-Go-Round as far as Libby was concerned, and the Marriage-Go-Round was the only thing that counted in this life. Journalism wasn't quite as Disastrous as—God Forbid—Science, as long as it didn't lead to Unfeminine Activities such as reporting on Wars and Crime and Juvenile Delinquency. But it was Pretty Bad.

  Libby was fond of capitalizing her words. Shelby could hear them when her mother spoke. Sometimes parts of her periodic letters were in all caps. Bits of advice, mostly, followed by DO NOT FAIL TO DO THIS—usually referring to sending thank-you notes or birthday cards to relatives, especially those on her father's side of the family. Which was a little strange, considering that Libby and Thomas had been happily divorced for years.

  Silence had fallen. Miss Myers had abandoned her typewriter and was standing by the filing cabinet. Shelby made a mental note to tell the lunch bunch that she had actually witnessed Miss Myers away from her desk during working hours. Only very fortunate persons were privileged to see Miss Myers away from her desk during working hours. It was thought among Shelby's fellow senior readers to be an omen, a sign that one was destined for greatness.

  Shelby didn't feel destined for greatness. What she felt destined for was sitting forever on Naugahyde couches in waiting rooms, grinning like an idiot at every human being who came within view. That was what people like her—young, probably-about-to-be-successful women—did.

  Thinking about killing themselves certainly wasn't what people like Shelby Camden did.

  There it was, another one of those thoughts that popped into her head without warning or permission. It was happening more and more lately—words appearing uninvited and unexpected, as sudden as snakes.

  Maybe I'm developing a multiple personality, like Eve White and Eve Black.

  But if she were splitting into a one-woman group, someone would have noticed and spoken up. She could count on that. In Shelby Camden's life, people noticed and spoke up.

  She noticed she was chewing her lip. Great. Probably chewed off her lipstick. Shelby took a deep breath and steeled herself. "Excuse me," she said to the formidable Miss Myers in what she hoped was a self-assured voice, “I know I'm a little early. Do you think I have time to wash up a bit?"

  Miss Myers paused, hands hovering above the file drawer. She seemed to do a quick calculation. A brisk nod. "You have time, if you don't dawdle."

  She hadn't dawdled since she was five, if then. No one had ever accused Shelby Camden of dawdling. Not even on her way to the dentist, which was certainly an appropriate time to dawdle. If there was one thing that could be said of Shelby Camden, it was that Shelby Camden did NOT dawdle.

  She walked briskly down the hall to the ladies' room.

  The offices of The Magazine for Women were in an old, creaky, weather-beaten brick building that was slowly being strangled by an eerily healthy Boston ivy. The building had recently held a book bindery. Before that, it had been a private school, and before that a creamery. With each new incarnation, the inside had been remodeled, scraps of its former identity left here and there like scars. The latest renovation had brought the Naugahyde sofas in the public rooms, and picture windows that looked out-of-place from the street, chopped out of the brick and ivy. The editorial offices were high-ceilinged, with dark book shelves and stuffed leather chairs. Masculine. The readers' room was like a school library, large, with heavy wooden desks spaced just far enough apart to offer some privacy. Its floor was made of narrow hardwood slats that had begun to curl at the edges and squealed pitifully when you walked across them. The lunchroom was light and smelled of brown linoleum and old ice cream.

  The ladies' room was different. The ladies' room had kept its scholastic institutional flavor, with a tile floor and gray walls, and stalls with green metal doors. As if whoever had designed the rest of the building had overlooked, or didn't want to get involved with, the ladies' room.

  Shelby liked the ladies' room. She suspected she was the only person who had ever liked that room, or who ever would like it at any time in the foreseeable future. Its musty sterility reminded her of the common bathroom back in college, where you had to yell a warning before you flushed the toilet or whoever was in the shower would be scalded to death, and where Pru Richey—the scholarship student from Appalachia—used to sit late into the night playing her dulcimer.

  She dug into her handbag for her lipstick, and glanced at herself in the mirror. The room's dim, quivering, fluorescent lights gave her a washed-out appearance, brown hair gone mousey, hazel eyes gone flat. Her skin, pale enough after another New England winter, had taken on a blue-grey tinge.

  I look dead, she thought.

  She felt a heavy pressure behind her eyes.

  Oh, God, not another headache. Not now. Not when I have to see Spurl about... whatever it is I have to see Spurl about.

  What did he want to see her about, anyway?

  Spurl, Spurl, Spurl. Friend of the working girl.

  She browsed through her actions for the previous week. Couldn't find anything she'd done wrong or overlooked. Hadn't been too pushy, or too timid. Kept up her end of the conversation in the lunchroom. Hadn't communicated with any writers without her Assistant Editor's OK. No major social blunders. Her mother would be gratified.

  The ladies' room smelled of old showers and wet wool.

  She touched the shiny metal frame that ran around the mirror, avoiding eye contact with herself. She knew she was delaying the meeting, that she was a little bit apprehensive. But not dawdling. She was always a little apprehensive dealing with Authority Figures, as they called them back in Sociology 101.

  Good old Sociology 101, with balding Professor Jannings of the baggy sweaters with the leather elbow patches. Professor Jannings smoked a pipe. He really did. Smoked a pipe and paused to relight it whenever he was working up to a profound thought. Professor Jannings was a bit of a fool, who fancied himself a character in a British novel, a college-level Mr. Chips. But Professor Jannings held the power of pass Of fail, so it didn't matter how much of a fool he was, he was an Authority Figure.

  This isn't college, she reminded herself firmly, no grades or term papers or extra points for class participation. This was Real Life, with or without Libby's capitals. It only felt like college.

  Shelby ran her hands through her hair, brushing the soft brown waves away from her face. She sighed and left the ladies' room.

  The door whooshed shut behind her.

  Miss Myers had returned to her fortress and was typing away, stiff and expressionless. Shelby crept to her assigned place on the sofa and stared out the window. It had started to rain. The bird had left.

  She heard the typewriter go silent and glanced up. Miss Myers gave her a curt nod, meaning she could go in now. Shelby wondered how she knew; she hadn't heard the intercom, or a door opening, or anyone yelling from the Inner Sanctum. Maybe Miss Myers and Spurl were psychically connected, Siamese twins who thought as one, separated at birth.

  She took a deep breath and stood. Her fingertips tingled with anxiety.

  As she started into the office, Shelby felt a light touch on her arm. She looked down.

  Miss Myers smiled up at her. A purposeful smile, not a random one, complete with eye contact. "I think you'll be pleased," she said.

  "You have got it made," Connie squealed. C
onnie always squealed when she was excited. Sometimes the prospect of it made Shelby think twice before telling her exciting news.

  “I don't know, Con. He didn't say any..."

  "He didn't have to. You get the glad hand from Myers the Mannequin, you're in Like Flynn."

  "She only smiled..." Shelby began.

  "Does Mount Rushmore smile? Does the Statue of Liberty smile? I'm telling you, two weeks, a month max, you're an assistant editor." She gave Jean a look across the table, demanding agreement.

  Jean looked back in an apologetic way.

  Shelby wanted to go home.

  Connie wouldn't approve of that thought. No way.

  Connie Thurmond had an enthusiastic nature and large. very white teeth. Movie star teeth. Connie thought she looked a little like Gloria DeHaven. It didn't matter that DeHaven had larger eyes, a smaller nose, fuller lips, and brown rather than blonde hair. Connie saw the resemblance, and that was all that mattered to her. Connie had a firm, unshakable belief in her own particular view of reality. The whole rest of the world, including the four billion Chinese or whatever, could disagree with her. The whole rest of the world would be wrong.

  Shelby picked at her chicken salad sandwich and tried to think of a way to change the subject. Connie was probably right, she was on her way, but she didn't want to think about it. It was too much of a... of a... well, just too much. "Maybe."

  "What did Spurl say, actually?" Lisa asked. Lisa Marconi—whom Connie had immediately and predictably nick-named Macaroni—was skinny and angled and accident-prone and always in motion. She leaned forward eagerly, the corner of her scarf trailing in the mayonnaise on top of her canned-pear-and-lime-Jello salad.

  "He wants me to train a new reader."

  "There you are!" Connie snapped her fingers and scanned the table triumphantly. "What'd I tell you?"