More Than Allies

by Sandra Scofield

  “What you like,” Nora said, “is a book that comes together at the end.” Once again, you could see she was criticizing.

  Gretchen spoke up. “Seduced Woman is hardly a romance.”

  “I’m just saying maybe we ought to expand our views,” Nora said. “I’d like to see us read writers from Ireland and Eastern Europe, India and Africa. I’d like to meet some challenge in our group.”

  “Like trekking in Turkey, you mean?” Gretchen said. She liked to read about women’s adventures in exotic lands.

  “I’d like to read something that made me laugh,” Lynn said. She leaned back, smiling broadly, enjoying the sticks and stones. “I wouldn’t mind having a good time with a book.”

  “As I said, I have been reading,” Rachel said. “And I’ve brought a book to propose. It’s my turn next.” She reached into her large bag and brought out an anthology of lesbian writers on sexuality. She handed it to Maggie, who passed it to Gretchen, and on around the table.

  “You really think we want to?” Lynn said.

  Rachel said, “It’s a wonderful collection. Provocative and insightful, and, of course, sensual. If we’re going to broaden our horizons, why do we have to go to Africa to do it? Why don’t we consider experience other than our own, right here?”

  Nora pushed her plate away. “I have to tell you I don’t see myself having time for erotica, intellectual or not.”

  Rachel slid the book back into her bag. “Because it’s by lesbians?”

  “Are you telling us something?” Lynn asked.

  Maggie was wondering the same thing. She’d never have asked, though.

  Rachel said, “My sexual preferences are irrelevant. I’m proposing this book because it’s good, because we haven’t read anything by a gay writer—at least not anything about the experience of homosexuality—and because I think this group is getting as boring as the old one.”

  “My my,” Nora said.

  “That is your problem, though, isn’t it?” Rachel said. “You are offended?”

  “No, not at all,” Nora said. “I don’t want to read it because it’s about sex. Any kind of sex. The idea that sex is its own subject, worth book after book—I have to tell you, it just doesn’t interest me anymore.”

  “What ever happened to the personal as political?” Rachel asked.

  Nora answered briskly. “That faded in about 1979.” She gestured with her fork: eat, eat. They had all shoved their plates away by then. She made a show of spearing a slice of yellow pepper from the salad bowl, and held it in front of her like a baton. “Cities are becoming shells, Eastern Europe is roiling, Africans are starving—I’m sorry, Rachel, but things that drip and suck and swell and come just do not interest me.”

  Gretchen made a small gagging sound and coughed into her napkin. Lynn toyed with her glass. Rachel said, lightly, “You are a bitch, Nora.” Maggie sank down in her chair. She didn’t know whether this was a serious disagreement, or something between Nora and Rachel as insignificant as sibling grumbling. She didn’t know if this was something friends did for fun. She remembered in high school she had heard girls going on at each other about boys and clothes and hair, sometimes viciously, then seen them hugging and laughing at the joke of it. She had been Gretchen’s best friend in high school. They hadn’t talked to one another like that. She wished Gretchen would get up now, take the lead to leave. She stared at Lynn across the table from her. Suddenly she realized what had been bothering her since their arrival. Lynn, who had been away several weeks in May, had done something with her eyes. What did they call it? A tuck? She didn’t know whether to say anything, since Lynn had not mentioned it. What had she said? That she was going to a spa. A spa my eye, Maggie thought. She couldn’t wait to ask Gretchen if she’d noticed.

  Nora gave them all a cool appraising look, then sighed and spoke in a different voice altogether. “I apologize. I am in the worst mood I’ve been in since Craig left me for a woman who could sing. He’s back, you know. I mean, really back. He and Trudy—imagine being named Trudy!—and the twins—imagine being a twin—now live four blocks away from Sarah and me. Five years he’s a spectre; now he wants me to consider joint custody.”

  “Well, well,” Rachel said. “Life is full of tales to tell.”

  “He called me in March about moving here. He wanted to know if I would find them a house. He said I might as well get the commission.”

  Lynn was delighted. “And did you?”

  “I referred him to another agent in the office. He walked right into a house on Cathedral, about six lots up from you, Rachel. Get this. His mother-in-law died. In Santa Barbara. They sold her house, paid cash for this one, and have money left over. The sonofabitch.”

  “What does your lawyer say?” Lynn, who used to be a story consultant for a Hollywood studio, leaned her elbows on the table. “What’s the chance of manslaughter versus Murder One?”

  “Very funny,” Nora said. “I talked to my lawyer, though. She said he has the right.”

  “To joint custody!” Rachel exclaimed.

  “No. To ‘generous visitation arrangements.’ Where was he when I needed some relief? Sarah turned eleven last week. We don’t need him.”

  “What does Sarah say?” Gretchen asked. She sounded like someone speaking from under the bedclothes, her voice dull and heavy and muted. Maggie thought they ought to go. She wanted to go.

  Nora was furious. “I think they had twins just to seduce her. To get out of child support. To make me mad.” She smiled, a little, to show she was exaggerating.

  Lynn said hotly, “Surely your lawyer can protect your support payments. Surely she can do that.”

  Nora drained the last of her wine. “Maybe we’ll go with Carolyn Dannon to Washington next year. See how he likes that.” She raised her empty glass in a mock toast. “And I do mean D.C.”

  “Whatever made you think we wanted to be friends with them?” Gretchen snarled as they walked toward the car. The others had stayed to try the desserts: poached pears, pot-a-creme, a raspberry tart.

  “Something tells me the group just broke up,” Maggie countered. She was a lot less sorry than she would have thought she would be. She was more worried about getting back to relieve Polly. Living in the puddle of someone else’s graces—even Polly’s—felt dicier all the time.

  Gretchen said, “Drive up on Deer Creek Lane, I’ll show you their house.” Maggie didn’t have the heart to say she ought to hurry. As she chugged up the long steep hill to that street, Gretchen said, “Shit, Maggie, doesn’t love suck?”

  Phoebe Alex’s new house was at the dead end of Deer Creek Lane, just up the street from Lynn and Dermott’s. And it was Phoebe’s house, Gretchen made clear. Blake had explained it all. They weren’t buying a quarter-million dollar house on his salary as a stage manager.

  Maggie made a U-turn and parked across the street. There wasn’t a car in the drive, and the garage door was up.

  “Blake’s working matinee,” Gretchen said.

  They watched a woman in a turquoise velvet-terry track suit lope up the street. She did her end-of-the-run sprint right around Maggie’s car, and they could see that she was at least seventy. She saw them watching and waved, smiling, then walked to the intersection and turned onto Spire, a street that dead-ended in forest. From a house on the corner another woman came out to walk her dog. She was carrying her cat up on her shoulder like a fur ruff.

  Maggie had to ask. “Did you and Blake have some sort of—you know—goodbye scene?”

  “Hardly. More like, lights down, up on a new act. New play.”

  “So where do you stand?”

  “Let’s go home. I have to work the break between matinee and the evening show.”

  “I’m sorry, Gretchen.”

  “He said I had to understand. Their history. They scraped by together. Now Phoebe’s getting rich and famous, he can’t walk out on her.”

  “He thinks he’s entitled to some of it?”

  Gretchen shot Maggi
e a hateful look. “He thinks she’ll fall apart. She’ll say, ‘What was it all for?’ And look, the house is in Lupine. It’s perfect. A two-hour flight to L.A. She can have her career, and she can have Blake and Lupine. Maybe she can have a baby.” She made a terrible, retching, crying sound. “Can’t you see it now? There’ll be a dance for the company, but they’ll invite her too, because she’s famous. She’ll walk among us, acting humble, like all actors are equal, huh? At the end of the season, when we light candles and hold hands and sing ‘Greensleeves,’ she’ll want to be there. She’ll say it just kills her to be in the movies and not in a company like ours. She’ll act like she knows she’s sold out but it just cannot be helped. She’ll kiss everyone on both cheeks. She’ll sing something cheerful at our AIDS benefit. She’ll buy a festival sponsorship, and hold court in the Members’ Lounge, where I will have to serve her coffee!”

  “She won’t,” said Maggie. She tried to steal a look at her watch. She still had to pick up Jay at Dulce’s.

  “She’ll be in the movies, then she’ll come to Lupine just to fart around.”

  “She won’t,” Maggie said again.

  “Blake farts,” Gretchen said. “He has this terrible problem with flatulence. In bed. Every time.” She laughed. “Hell, let’s go home.”

  She pulled up in front of the house, to let Gretchen out. Gretchen had laughed, more or less, all the way down the hill from Deer Creek Lane, then had cried the rest of the way home. It made Maggie too nervous to drive and talk seriously, so she didn’t try, but she reached over to keep Gretchen in the car a minute. She turned off the ignition. “I’m sorry about Blake,” she said. “About you being hurt.”

  “Yeah, well.” Gretchen’s hand was on the door handle.

  “You know I love you.”

  “Yeah, well.”

  “Gretchen, come on. Look at me. I’m your best friend. I know how you must feel.”

  Of course she meant to comfort. She couldn’t have been more surprised when Gretchen whirled her head around and snarled at her. “Of course you don’t! How could you? I am a stupid cunt in love with a man who is married to somebody else!”

  “I only meant—”

  “Oh, you’re so stupid! My brother loves you!”

  “Why are you yelling at me?”

  “You want me to feel what you feel. That’s what you really mean. Well, I can’t. All my feelings are busy right now!”

  “Gretchen—” she tried to stop her, but Gretchen got out of the car and slammed the door. She watched her all the way to the house. She wanted to follow her and talk, but she had places to go and things to do. She had to be mother. She had to be.

  The boys were missing. Maggie had told Jay she wanted him home by two. It was past three, and there was no sign of him. She went to Dulce’s. They left a note on Dulce’s door and went off in Maggie’s car to look in likely places. First they checked at Lupe’s. Gus and Jay had come by for Hilario a little before noon, and they had gone off on their bikes (Hilario on the ancient one the station owner had lent him). From Lupe’s, Maggie and Dulce scouted spots along the creek, and the big ditch under the freeway near Maggie’s house where, this time of the year, a thousand things were growing and sprouting and begging to be explored. They went by Rachel’s house and Maggie ran in to see if Mason had seen them. Finally, Maggie said she had to get home. Jay was on his bike, it was only mid-afternoon, but she was angry with him for his tardiness. Dulce said Gus and Hilario often spent the day away, but conceded that Maggie had set a time. “I always want to know where he is,” Maggie said, a little defensively. Dulce said, “I used to be like that.”

  When Maggie went home again and told Polly where she’d been—she went in talking, before Polly could say anything about her being late—Polly immediately said, “But don’t you think he—” and at exactly that same moment, Maggie realized where they would have gone. Jay would have something to show off, something to share. How stupid not to have thought of it in the first place.

  “He has this spot where he liked to go with his dad last year.” She had asked Dulce to ride over with her. “It’s a pretty piece of property, not very far, but they don’t have any business being there.” She confessed that she had gone there herself earlier in the week, trying to cheer Jay up. “He looks at me a way, sometimes, it makes me want to scream. We have to get out of the house.” Dulce, maddeningly, said nothing.

  At the intersection by the junior high, they had to wait for a line of a dozen or more bicyclists to pass. They were all dressed alike, in white helmets and T-shirts and lemon yellow tight shorts. They were in their fifties, maybe their sixties, trim as sticks, and Maggie was so fascinated, she let a car half a block away pass before she inched forward to turn. A driver behind her honked. “Okay!” she yelled, then glanced at Dulce, who had no expression at all.

  As they turned onto the street where the Gabrelli property was, though, Dulce whispered, “Mother of God. Not up there,” pointing toward the Gabrelli house.

  A fire truck was parked in the yard, and a police car at the street. Maggie pulled in beside the car and jumped out. The three boys were in the back, huddled like sick little birds on the seat. Maggie tried the door handle. Of course it was locked. She turned to Dulce, but Dulce wasn’t behind her; she was still standing by the car, her hands covering her mouth. Jay saw Maggie. His eyes widened, and he started crying. His poor broken-out face was puffed and red. Gus glanced up, then hung his head. Hilario yawned and leaned against the back seat, as if this was all so boring. It was an act. Maggie thought, I bet he’s scared to death.

  She banged on the window. “What have you done?”

  “Ma’am,” someone said behind her. It was a policeman. She recognized him. He often sat at the busy intersection kids had to cross in the morning near the grade school. He had a round, friendly face and freckles. He was younger than she was. He looked like a kid trying to play grown-up, his face so serious, his shoulders pulled back bravely.

  Another cop was striding across the yard toward them. The engine of the fire truck turned over, and Maggie jumped at the noise. Slowly, the truck pulled out and away. Whatever had been going on seemed to be over.

  Dulce had moved next to Maggie. At the same moment, they reached for one another, clasped hands, and squeezed hard.

  As the second policeman approached, the first introduced himself—Officer Brandon—and suggested they step away from the car. Maggie glanced at her son, whose swollen face was glossy with tears, then followed the cop a few yards away, toward the farm house. What had been going on while she was eating eggplant caviar?

  They’re all right, she told herself. Nobody dies of crying. She ought to know!

  “Are you the boys’ mothers?” the officer asked. Maggie nodded. He looked at Dulce, who said, “Yes.” The officer took out a pad and pen and took their names. Maggie was dressed up, from the lunch. Dulce was wearing an old pair of jeans and a T-shirt. Maggie wished they were dressed more alike. She hoped Dulce wasn’t uncomfortable. Uncomfortable! Their kids locked in a cop car.

  “You knew they were here? You know this is private property?” The officer directed his question to Dulce. Maggie tried to explain—Jay’s dad had worked here in the summer, he had been told it was okay to play. The officer looked doubtful. He said, “We were about to take them to the station and give you a call. They’re very lucky, you know, not to be hurt. You’re very lucky. That’s the thing, boys this age, playing unsupervised.”

  Maggie’s cheeks felt scorched in the sun, under his scolding gaze. Did he really think mothers stood around and watched nine-year-old boys all day? “What happened?” she asked. She had a sensation of choking. She tried to swallow, but couldn’t make her throat work. She panicked, for an instant, and then she squeezed Dulce’s hand again and made herself stop trying to swallow. “What did they do?” She glanced beyond the cop, toward the far part of the property. She didn’t see any signs of a fire.

  Officer Brandon explained that the boys h
ad built a fire in the shed to roast hot dogs. They made some effort to put it out, but left it smoldering. Then they went up the slope where the abandoned cars were parked, to fool around. He shook his head. “Boys,” he said. “They love cars.” He shook his head again. “These old cars ought to be hauled away. You see ’em all over. I bet they’ve been here thirty years. Course, they’re not expecting anybody to be trying a joy-ride in them, are they?”

  From where they stood, Maggie couldn’t see the police car. She thought the officer had deliberately placed them like that. It was a kind of torture. “They’re not hurt?” she said. It required enormous effort to keep from crying. She wished she had brought Polly. Of course she hadn’t known there was going to be trouble. Of course Polly had her hands full with two babies.

  “Oh,” she said. She was nauseated. The ground seemed to be unstable beneath her feet. She wished Mrs. Cecil was there. A principal would know how to handle something like this. She’d know the boys hadn’t meant any harm.

  Dulce put her arm around her shoulders. “They’re okay,” she said.

  “The Mexican boy—the little one—” the policeman said. “He was in the car.”

  “Gus,” Dulce said.

  “The other two pushed it off, a little roll off that slope, a little ride. The car hit the corner of the shed, glanced off that fallen roof, and slid to a stop.” His look grew sterner. “Very lucky,” he said. “It must have shook him pretty good, but it didn’t do him any significant damage.” He touched his chin. “Gave him a little nick here, the steering wheel. Maybe some bruises. We looked him over pretty good.”

  Maggie looked at Dulce. She thought Dulce had to be alarmed, but she kept her face utterly neutral, as if she had turned to stone.