Last Resort (12 page)

“I d’know. The thing is, I keep letting him down. I don’t mean to, really, but—” The toast snapped up: she started, flushed.

“Here.” Molly slid the butter toward Barbie.

“It’s—Well, like there’s this thing with food,” Barbie went on. “See, when I was about fourteen I stopped eating meat. I’ve always loved animals, and it just like didn’t seem right anymore, you know? But then about a month after we were married, we were at a thousand-dollar-a-plate barbecue, and this journalist asked if something was wrong with my steak, why wasn’t I eating it? So I told her why, and she put it into her newspaper. Mom was furious. She said, why couldn’t you just have said you weren’t hungry, or you were on a diet?” Holding the lid of the English china butter dish, which had a cow on it, she looked at Molly helplessly.

“Why should you have done that?” she asked. “There’s nothing wrong with being a vegetarian.”

“Well, but there is sometimes, sorta. I mean, for a lot of people, in cattle country especially, if you don’t eat beef it’s an insult. It’s sorta like, unpatriotic.” Barbie giggled sadly. “The trouble is, when anybody asks me something, I don’t think first, I just kinda tell the truth, you know?”

“I can see that might be a handicap for a politician’s wife,” Molly said. Becoming impatient, she took the two slices of toast away from Barbie, buttered them, and set them on a plate.

“Oh, thanks. I’m sorry, I’m so stupid today—”

“Why don’t you pour yourself some coffee?” Molly suggested, pointing to the electric pot, which was more than half full. When her arthritis was bad, as it was this morning, she didn’t try to lift the heavy, slippery glass container, but scooped the hot liquid out with a soup ladle. She was reluctant to demonstrate her method in front of strangers, even as inept a stranger as Barbie Mumpson.

“Oh, thanks.” Barbie poured, then sat down heavily at the kitchen table with a mug of coffee to which she had added large measures of sugar and half and half. “Hey, this toast is yummy.”

A child, that’s what you are, Molly thought. “Maybe you should learn to tell an occasional white lie,” she suggested in a neutral voice.

“Yeah, that’s what everybody says.” Barbie sighed. “Only I mostly can’t think of any. But it’s not just that.”

“Mm.” Molly lowered herself into a chair.

“It’s—” Barbie chewed toast. “The thing is, everybody loves Bob so much, so naturally he just has all these opportunities.”

He cheats on you, Molly translated. “I see.”

“So then these things happen. Mom says it’s my own fault. She says I don’t know how to hold my husband’s interest.”

“Really.”

“I’ve tried, honestly. I read all these kinda weird books, and I went to Dallas and bought this silver lace camisole and panties set that the saleswoman at Neiman-Marcus swore was the latest thing. You wouldn’t believe what they cost. Only when Bob saw me he went into a laughing fit and said it looked like I got myself caught in a spiderweb.”

“That wasn’t very nice,” Molly said, making an effort not to laugh herself, or even smile.

“No,” Barbie said, as if surprised. “I guess it wasn’t.” She blinked fast, as if there were something in her eye, then swallowed. “What it is, see, there’s this person called Laverna he knows. She’s very glamorous, she used to be a showgirl in Las Vegas. When Bob was running for Congress he swore it was all over, and we were going to start a new life together in Washington. But then last month I found out Laverna was in Washington too, because I called up the number he left with his receptionist and she answered.”

“Ah,” Molly said, this time more sympathetically.

“Bob said it wasn’t like that. He said, didn’t I think Laverna had a right to visit our nation’s capital, like any other patriotic American? I said yeah, okay, but what was he doing at her place at ten o’clock at night? Then I started to cry, and he said, ‘Baby, you’re hysterical. Why don’t you go back to Tulsa for a while, get ahold of yourself?’ So I bought a plane ticket and went on home.”

“Mm.”

“I was crying the whole time, the flight attendant kept bringing me Kleenex. I told Mom it wasn’t any use, I wanted a divorce. But she says I should think it over for a while. And she thought I should get out of town, because she didn’t trust me not to break down and blab to some journalist, like I keep doing. And besides, then there would be somebody to come to Florida with Aunt Dorrie. It was sorta killing two birds with one shot. Mom likes that kind of thing.”

“She likes to kill birds,” said Molly, who had begun to form a negative opinion of Barbie’s mother.

“Yeah—What? No, it’s a, what do you call it, a proverb.”

“Really,” Molly said, managing to keep her voice neutral.

“So what do you think I should do?” Barbie gazed wide-eyed at her.

“Well.” Molly paused. For most of her life she had been considered an artistic and delightful lightweight, and people seldom asked for her opinion on serious matters. But once she became elderly, she was assumed to be wise—perhaps a survival from an earlier age, when simply to live into old age suggested that you were both shrewd and lucky.

“Mom said before I do anything drastic I’d better be sure. She says most men are like Bob. Eventually they run around on their wives, if they get the chance. She says I should think about my future, what it would be like without him. And there’s no guarantee I would do any better next time, at my age.”

“Really,” said Molly, to whom Barbie seemed scarcely out of adolescence. “What is your age?”

“I’m thirty-six. And it’s probably true what Mom says. I mean, if I leave Bob I can forget about ever living in Washington again and being the wife of a prominent person.”

“If that’s what you want from life,” Molly said. Barbie, staring into space, did not respond. “So what will you do now?” she asked, as mildly as possible.

“I d’know. I’ve got to think about it. Mom says if I decide to stay with Bob, she’ll tell him he has to treat me right.”

“You think that’d have any effect?”

“Yeah, maybe. After all, Bob owes her. Once we were engaged, Mom got behind him in a big way. She raised a lot of money for his campaign, and got him some real professional staff and advance people.”

“I see.”

“Anyhow, she says we’ve got the upper hand now, because if people find out about Laverna it could really hurt Bob’s career, especially on account of he has a lot of born-again-type constituents.”

“You mean she would threaten to tell his constituents about Laverna,” asked Molly, in whose mind a less and less favorable picture of Myra was taking shape.

“Yeah. Well, probably she’d just tell the media, that’d be faster. But she says if Bob listens to reason, she’ll get rid of Laverna for good.”

“Really? How could she do that?”

“I d’know. But I guess she could if she wanted to. She knows people who can do things for her. She probably knows some even in Washington.”

Molly stared at her guest. Was it possible that this naïve young woman was talking about the planning of a murder? “People who do what kind of thing?”

“Well, you know.” Barbie chomped on her raisin toast. “I mean, it doesn’t hafta be like something drastic,” she added, finally registering Molly’s tone and expression. “Mom says, with somebody from that kinda background, there’s always a charge against them on the books somewhere, or something in their past they don’t want to have come out.”

“Really.”

“Yeah. Like drugs maybe. Or Laverna could have been a hooker once, Mom thinks. Anyhow, she isn’t the kind of person a congressman could marry, even if he wanted to. See, in politics you need a wife with a good reputation and the right connections.”

“Like you,” Molly said. She swallowed another sigh.

“Well, sorta. Except I keep doing things wrong, like I told you.”

“It sounds as if your mother wants you to stay married,” Molly suggested.

“Yeah, I guess so,” Barbie admitted. “She said, if I wasn’t sure, I could tell myself I was doing it for Oklahoma.”

“Really!” Molly remarked, this time not troubling to keep her tone neutral. “And do you feel you have an obligation to Oklahoma?”

“I d’know.” Barbie’s voice trembled between a whisper and a wail. “I guess I do in a way. I mean, I’m not much use for anything else.”

Molly did not contradict her guest; her response had shifted from sympathy to a weary impatience. Barbie was what her husband used to call an Eeyore, someone who deliberately chose to be helpless and depressed. Why should I feel sorry for you? she thought. You have everything I’ve lost: youth, health, beauty—at least a plump blonde all-American prettiness—and a future. “I’m going to lie down for a little while now,” she said. “If you want anything else to eat, help yourself.”

Later the same day Jacko parked his truck in front of Molly’s house in Old Town. He had spent most of the morning buying a bed for his cousin Barbie, hauling it home, and wrestling it into Alvin’s pool house. Then he had grabbed some lunch and gone on to one of his regular gardening jobs, while his mother napped.

“Hi,” he said when Molly opened the door. “Barbie here?”

“Not now. She went on the Conch Train.”

“Oh, for shit’s sake.” Jacko made a face. The Conch Train was a gasoline-powered imitation old-fashioned locomotive, trailed by four open cars painted yellow. Actually there were several nearly identical trains, which all day took tourists round the island while the driver, through a loudspeaker system, described local sights.

“Come on in,” Molly said soothingly. “She should be back soon. Would you like some iced tea?”

“No,” Jacko nearly growled. “Oh, all right, why not? Sorry, I’m in a foul mood. It was great of you to let Barbie stay here last night, I don’t even remember if I thanked you.”

“Of course you thanked me. Here you are. Let’s sit outside.”

“The Conch Train,” Jacko repeated, following Molly through the house and onto her side deck. “That’s the sort of idiot thing Barbie would do.”

“She was very eager to go,” said Molly, who had never been on the train, though it passed her house continually. The day she and her husband first moved in, the loudspeaker had called the tourists’ attention to a large tropical tree with loose, flaky bark that grew in their yard. “On your left, just ahead, you will see a fine specimen of one of Key West’s native trees. It is a gumbo limbo, but natives call it the tourist tree, because it is always red and peeling.”

The first time Molly and her husband heard this joke they laughed. They heard it again soon afterward, and then at regular intervals until sunset. It did no good to shut the windows; the loudspeaker was clearly audible through the uninsulated walls of the house. Polite calls to the Conch Train office over the next few weeks accomplished nothing; the woman who answered the phone appeared to think that Molly should feel honored to have her tree noticed.

After hearing the joke approximately every twenty minutes for two weeks, Molly and her husband discussed having the tree removed. But it turned out that the gumbo limbo was a protected species; any tree service that destroyed it would lose its license and be liable for heavy damages, as would the Hopkinses. An acquaintance suggested pouring bleach into the roots, but the gumbo limbo appeared to like bleach.

Finally, after getting permission from the Historical Preservation Society (a lengthy process), Molly and her husband put up a fence which cut off their view and darkened the yard, but concealed the trunk of the tree. On one memorable day at the end of the season, the Conch Train passed in silence.

“I got a room in the pool house fixed up for Barbie,” Jacko said. “She’ll be out of your hair soon.” He set his glass down. “And in mine.”

“Maybe she can entertain your mother while you’re at work—take her to the tourist attractions.”

Jacko shook his head. “Mumsie wouldn’t like that. What she wants, as soon as she’s rested, is to go round gardening with me. She’s great with plants: most of what I know I learned from her.”

“Will Cousin Barbie go too?”

“Not if I can help it. She’ll have to take care of herself.”

“It sounds like that’s just what she can’t do,” Molly said.

“Yeah, really?” He laughed. “You know I warned you she’d have some sob story. So what’s the problem now?”

“Well.” Molly paused, wondering if she should repeat Barbie’s confidences to this unsympathetic audience. But no doubt he would hear soon enough. “You have to feel kind of sorry for her,” she began.

“Says who?” Jacko rejected the imperative.

“The problem is her husband, mainly. He’s been having an affair with some Las Vegas showgirl. Barbie wants to leave him, but if she gets a divorce the scandal will hurt his political career.”

“Why should she give a damn about that?”

Molly shrugged. “I don’t know that she does, but her mother seems to.”

“Yeah. She would.” Jacko scowled. “Aunt Myra has an obsession about politics. Her grandfather was a senator, and she thinks every man in the family should carry on the great tradition. She practically railroaded me into law school, and she was furious when I quit. And when it came out that I was gay she wanted to send me to a shrink so I could get cured, and nobody would ever know. Then I could be a senator too.”

Molly stifled a little sigh. Though it was not yet teatime she already felt tired. All these stories, all this emotion, she thought, as she had often thought before. When Howard was alive it had seemed natural; she had been part of it. Now she sometimes felt as if she were living in the epilogue of her own life, watching things happen to other people.

“I can’t quite see you as a senator,” she remarked, glancing at Jacko’s purple T-shirt and frayed denim cutoffs.

“Damn right.” He laughed. “Listen, I better be getting home; Mumsie’s nap should be over by now. Tell Cousin Boobie to call when she gets back.”

A
BOUT A WEEK LATER
, in the front room of Artemis Lodge, Jenny Walker sat behind the glass-topped desk with its hotel register, stack of brochures, and vase of orange lilies. This was her third day as Lee’s temporary morning guest clerk, and also her first paying job in twenty-five years. She would have been happy to help out for free, but Lee had insisted on the going rate. “Hell no. I’d feel like a cheapskate otherwise. Anyhow you’re not doing me a favor, you’re doing one for Polly Alter. She was wiped out, trying to work here and get ready for her show next month.”