Venus Envy (32 page)

“You’re drunk, Ann,” Frazier warned her.

“Yes. But tomorrow I’ll be sober. You’ll still be a lesbian.” She laughed hysterically.

Bob, more sober, reached for her as Ann was picking up speed, heading toward the fireworks display. “Ann, hey, slow down.”

More fireworks illuminated the sky and Ann stumbled into the carefully set-up sequence Frazier had laid out. “I forgot how compulsive and organized you were.” Ann knocked over sequence seven.

“Get out of here, Ann.” Mandy grabbed her arm as Bob grabbed the other.

“Let go of me,” she snarled.

“Go on, Ann, you’re making a spectacle of yourself.”

Ann wobbled toward Frazier. “I’m making a spectacle of myself? I am? My father’s not a crook and I’m not Miss Gay America.”

A small wire snapped in Frazier’s head and she threw a right cross that connected with Ann’s jabbering mouth. Ann sank to her knees, then flopped over on her
side, knocking a live taper into fireworks that had also fallen all over. Within seconds fireworks shot up the lawn like tongues of flame.

Mandy, with Bob’s help, dragged a kicking and screaming Ann, mouth bloodied, out of the fireworks. The crowd screamed. Hundreds of people hit the dirt and Tiny Lockett shouted, “Save the children!”

Tables were knocked over as people ducked behind them. Billy ran into the main building, leaving the chinless Camille to fend for herself and perhaps wonder what sort of man he was. Carter pushed Sarah behind the table with Ru, Frank, and Libby, then dashed across the lawn to pull a child to the ground.

“Mandy, get the fire extinguisher!” Frazier smothered a taper into the grass but another was lit by the fireworks going off on the ground, and every firework setup now shot into the sky or up the lawn in a crescendo of such light they could probably see it all the way to Nelson County. The dogwood went off, too, sending white sparkler trails onto the ground.

Mandy trained the nozzle on the tapers. Frazier madly stepped on flickering embers.

After the last fallout waltzed to the ground, spectators crawled out on their bellies. In the far distance a siren gave evidence that someone was smart enough to call the fire department. Yancey Weems sputtered, “I’ll sue for emotional distress and extreme negligence.”

Stunned, Frazier swayed, then sat on the ground.

Mandy stood over her. “I have this theory—”

Frazier hoarsely interrupted, “That love—is a very destructive emotion.”

“No shit, Sherlock.”

Up at the lawn Debbie Noakes was ecstatic. “Best Dogwood Festival ever!”

T
HE FRONT PAGE OF THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER CARRIED A COLOR
photo of the fireworks debacle at the country club with the headline EXPLOSION! The newspaper, tossed on the office floor in disgust, bore testimony to the fact that Frazier had repeatedly walked over it. The staff photographer had captured good photos. That didn’t bother Frazier. What bothered her was the story. The reporter—a generous appellation—got Frazier’s occupation wrong, her age, and misspelled her first name as well. Strung-together quotes from eyewitnesses revealed that the reporter couldn’t pull the story together so he thought quotes would do it for him.

How could those people be eyewitnesses? They cowered behind tables. At least no one had interviewed Ann. She would have declared that lesbians are unstable, hostile, hate men, and can’t handle fireworks.
She then would have thrown Bob on the ground and humped him to prove her heterosexual credentials.

The phone rang. Mandy picked up, as she had done all morning. In fairness to the town, most of the calls had been to inquire if Frazier was all right and to find out what really happened. Frazier was known for her attention to safety—first, last, and always. How could she tell them what really happened? If she did, she’d have to reveal that she and Ann had an affair. Much as she loathed Ann she felt bound by the old code Not To Tell about anyone else. Then again, would she want to claim having slept with such a bonehead? Being known as a lesbian was far less embarrassing than being known for bad taste in women. So Frazier hemmed and hawed about a spectator being inebriated and falling into the fireworks, the tapers catching the fuses, and boom! Everyone accepted that.

Mandy tiptoed in. “Her mothership. Should I tell her you’re out?”

“No, she’ll keep calling to catch me. I might as well get it over with.” She lifted the receiver off the cradle as Mandy left. “Hello, Mother.”

“You’ve read the papers?”

“I have.”

“What would the
Central Virginia Tribune
do without the Armstrongs?”

“Pick on someone else, I guess. Look at it this way, Mother. If we’re getting it, it means someone else is getting a rest.”

Libby’s voice dropped. “I don’t
care
about someone else. Now I want to know exactly what happened. I was so distraught last night that your father took me directly home and then I woke up in the middle of the night because I thought Frank was having a heart attack.” Libby waited for the desired response, which she got.

“What?”

“Oh, yes, all this commotion—starting with you, Miss Mary Frazier—has caught up with him. That hideous article in the papers about his business and then last night. Oh, I don’t know how he’s managed and it caught up with him. He complained of pains, woke me by getting out of bed—you know any little motion awakens me, I’m such a light sleeper—and he went into the bathroom. Well, he had every medicine out on the counter. I asked him what was wrong, he was sweating so. He put his hands over his chest and I knew it was his heart. I ran for the phone but he stopped me. ‘Heartburn,’ he said, and I said, ‘At your age I don’t know. Let’s call a doctor.’ Your father hates doctors and he said, ‘If it is a heart attack I prefer to suffer it alone and die in peace. If Yancey Weems were the last face I saw on this earth I’d be furious.’ As it turned out he was right about the heartburn, but he’s under so much pressure and you and Carter add to his woes. He was appalled by Sarah.”

“He didn’t look appalled to me. Her boobs were pushed to high tide and I thought Dad got a kick out of that.”

“Your father is a leg man.
You
were probably the one peering into her cleavage!”

Braking for an instant to let her mother’s comment pass, Frazier rejoined, “It’s hard for me to fathom how unhappy and full of hate you are.” She hung up the phone and dialed her dad. “Hi, Mildred. Is Pop there?”

“Listen, honey, what a mess last night. I’m so sorry, and of course you’ve got to be shaken up too.”

“Thank you. I’m just glad no one was hurt.”

“I’ll punch you through to Big Frank.”

“Dad?”

“Yeah.”

“You okay? Mom said you were sick last night.”

“Oh, that damned crab. The new chef at the club puts all those sauces on everything and I think it was too rich for me. Your mother thought I was having a heart attack.” He paused. “Maybe she wants me to have one so she can control everything again.”

“Dad?” Frazier couldn’t believe her ears.

“Things are changing at home. I should have taken hold a long, long time ago, but better late than never. Frazier? Frazier, are you there?”

“Yes. Just amazed.”

“One day at a time. I don’t want to be ugly but I can’t stand it anymore. What a jellyfish I’ve been. And, Frazier, I want you to be the first to hear this: if we can’t work things out, then I am leaving your mother. I don’t know how many years I have left in this life but I want them to be … peaceful. I gave up on happiness when I came home from Korea.”

“Dad, don’t ever give up on that.”

“I’ll try, and you try to forget the article in the paper. Both articles. It’s all shit.”

“I know.”

“Say, Carter came in to work early this morning and checked out equipment with me. After last night, and his girlfriend—isn’t she a hot tomato, whooee!—I figured he wouldn’t get to work until late but he was here at seven-thirty.”

“He’s trying, Dad. He’s a good man.”

A silence followed. “Frazier, I think I have a lot to learn.”

“Daddy, so do I.”

“Talk to you later. Goodbye.”

“Sure.” Frazier hung up and thought that maybe her father
would
talk to her later. Maybe those bottled-up decades would finally be decanted.

The phone rang again and this time it was the lovely
and mature Ann Haviland. “I’m suing you for bodily harm.”

“That’s a nice hello.” Frazier blinked.

“I’ve had photos taken of my bloodied face and I have a chipped tooth and I just wanted you to know that I’m suing you before the papers come in the mail.”

“Calling me first means in your mind that you’re responsible and a Virginia lady? Ann, if you were a Virginia lady you wouldn’t have gotten drunk in the first place, and in the second place you wouldn’t have tottered down the lawn to harass me. Get a grip.”

Ann retreated into frosty superiority to prove, against all odds, that she was mature, responsible, and in control. Ah yes, the great American vice, being in control. Her voice sounded as though it issued from the bottom of a well. “We’ll let the courts decide.”

“You know, I’m sorry.” Frazier could hear the eager intake of breath on the other end of the phone while Ann waited for Frazier to grovel. “I’m as sorry as I can be that I didn’t tear your face off. My lawyer will call your lawyer and I hope that makes you happy, you dumb bitch, because it means you’ll still be connected to me in some way.”

“I don’t want anything to do with you!”

“Hey, if you’re suing me you’re going to have a lot to do with me. What’s the buzz, Ann? If you can’t be the positive center of my attention, you’ll be the negative?”

“I was never the center of your attention. You think only of yourself. You never wrote me love letters. You rarely sent me flowers. You never loved me.”

“I never said I loved you. You said you loved me. Sounded like a baited trap to me. A woman says, ‘I love you,’ and if you don’t return the compliment you’re heartless and if you do and you don’t feel it, you’re a liar. Which is worse?”

“I don’t know, in your case you’re both.”

“Are you smart enough to tell the difference? What the fuck are you complaining about? We dated for a year or so—”

“A year and a half! Don’t make light of it.”

“I paid for the trips for the most part, I took care of things. I remembered your birthday and Christmas, and for me that’s a big deal. I didn’t want to settle down and if you think about it, with both of us lying through our teeth about being gay, how could we have lived together without creating ten times more stress? I didn’t love you? What am I supposed to do, pay forever because I didn’t? I wasn’t mean. I tried to be good company. That was it.”

“I feel sorry for you.” Ann’s voice embraced the superior tone. “Sorry because you’ll never let yourself be vulnerable to another human being. You’ll be alone—old and alone.”

“Vulnerable
seems to be the catchword these days, doesn’t it? You tell me what intelligent animal wants to be vulnerable? Nature gave animals fangs, claws, hooves, speed, whatever, so they wouldn’t be vulnerable. I think you people who use words like that are so goddam far away from reality that the only reality you have is the vocabulary you use with one another. I didn’t love you. I liked you but I didn’t love you. Big fucking deal.”

“You hurt me and you’re going to pay.”

Frazier calmed down and said quietly, “Thank you, Ann. Finally you told the truth.” She hung up the phone. “Jesus H. Christ, what’s going on? Is Mercury sliding through the slops of the universe or what?”

Mandy called in from the other room, “Retrograde. That’s when Mercury travels backwards.”

Frazier walked out. “Aha! You and the Reagans. I knew it. I knew you were going mystical on me.”

“Nah, I just like astrology. It’s the wisdom of the
millennia, and the Christians wrecked as much as they could but the remnants are better than nothing. Anyway, you don’t want to hear about how I know you feel about things you deem irrational. I want to know what’s going on.”

“Mother is majoring in child abuse and Ann is suing me for bodily harm.”

“You’re kidding me?” Mandy’s deep eyes widened.

“I wouldn’t kid about a thing like that. Better to fall into the hands of the Devil than those of lawyers. But then again it’s better to feed one cat than many mice, so I’m calling my lawyer and he can handle it. Be back in a flash.”

Mandy pulled the aluminum stepladder out of the closet as Frazier reappeared. “So?”

“So, I’ll run up a bill but I think Ann will back off.”

“Why? She’ll see how much it costs her to get her rocks off via the legal system—you realize I use that term in jest—and depending on how angry she really is, she can keep it going for years.”

“I suspect when Link Critzer lets her know that the nature of our relationship will be central to the case, she’ll shut up. She’ll fume at me, of course—can we deny her the emotional satisfaction of screaming and hollering about what a victim she is and what a powerful, mean, manipulative person I am? Ever notice how both parties in a busted relationship are just dying to be the victim? Women are much better at it than men.”

“Maybe they have to be.”

“Why the hell would you say that?”

“Because men reward women when they’re weak, and being a victim means that you’re weak and you need a protector.”

Frazier helped Mandy to set up the ladder. “Mandy, one of these days you and I are going away for a day and
I want you to talk to me about everything. You see things I don’t.”

“Your vice is my versa.” Mandy smiled. “We’re supposed to see things for one another. We’re a herd animal, remember? Anyway, the lights finally came in from Eck Supply, so let’s try this over Mount Olympus.”

“Let me get up there. I don’t know if the light is on the fritz or if it’s the bulb. Is the switch off?”

“Yes.”

Frazier climbed up the ladder and reached down for the pink bulb. “Did you hear that?”

“What?”

“A giggle.”

“I think it’s on the tape that’s playing.”

“The ‘Divas’ tape?”

“Uh-huh.”

“I don’t remember giggles on that tape. I remember people talking. Don’t you hear it? Damn, now I don’t hear it either.”