Wild Things (2 page)

He saw me to my door and refused my offer of coffee, as he usually did. Only occasionally did he brave the chill setting of my parents' sitting room. When he did venture inside, he went out of his way to charm them, but it took effort.

He kissed me in his usual way, with a dispassionate sweetness. Cupping my cheek, he said, "I'm glad you'll get to know Sydney. I want you to meet the rest of my family."

If my heart hadn't already been beating hard from panic, it would have leaped into double time. Meeting his family was a big step and now, my mind beginning to flood with long-buried memories, I wasn't sure I was ready. I nodded, however. "I'd like that."

I took a deep breath of the cooling night air as I watched Eric drive away.

* * * * *

"You're not a beautiful woman, Sydney, but I could still go for you in a big way."

Sydney favored Mark O'Leary with one of her coolest stares. The noise of the post-award ceremonies reception was only a dim clatter. "Flattery won't get you anywhere with me."

Mark didn't miss a beat. "That's the point of this little meeting, isn't it?"

Sydney turned her head slightly to look at her longtime political mentor. Alan Stevens merely quirked an eyebrow, but Sydney had no trouble interpreting his meaning. He was saying I told you so.

She looked back at Mark, who yanked his cigar out of his mouth and guffawed. "Well, Alan, I do believe we've unsettled the Ice Queen."

"Not at all," Sydney said. "I knew this conversation was inevitable." Mark was built like a teamster, and cigar smoking had left his teeth and hands yellow. She controlled her urge to shudder. She couldn't afford to make an enemy of Mark O'Leary. He didn't hold an official position with the Illinois Democratic party, but it didn't matter. If Mark opposed you, you were done. If he supported you, you were in. If he was tepid, you could go either way. She was aiming for tepid.

"So it's true," Mark said. The hotel guest chair creaked under his bulk. "You're a dyke."

She raised her eyebrow in a small gesture of distaste at the sound of
dyke
in his Sidney Greenstreet mouth, then nodded coolly.

"I've never understood why good-looking women go that way, have you, Alan?"

Alan shrugged. "Perhaps because you're the alternative."

Mark guffawed and slapped his knee. "That's a good one." His laughter subsided, and Sydney realized he was trying to make her think he was a buffoon. He was probably hoping she'd think she didn't need an old fool's support and tell him off.

"Gloria Steinem," Sydney said.

"You always could name a quote," Alan said. "Try
her, Mark. She can tell you where just about any quote comes from."

"That so?" Mark studied her closely for a moment. "Which are you, a dunce or a rogue?"

"Emma Goldman," Sydney said smoothly. "Her third option was an anarchist. I'm none of the above."

"Then what are you?" He made the question sound flippant, but Sydney knew it wasn't. Her answer was everything.

"I'm an ambitious woman who wants to make a positive difference in people's lives. I can play political games, but the game means nothing to me next to the end result."

'Winning?"

"Doing the right thing."

Mark grimaced at his cigar. "You're one of those do-gooder dykes."

"Whether I'm a lesbian is irrelevant. I don't intend to let it hamper me in any way."

"So you've got a nice comfortable closet."

"No," Sydney said firmly. "I am not involved with anyone and haven't been for years. I intend to keep it that way until people realize that my sexuality is both as relevant and irrelevant as the color of my skin. It influences everything I do and it influences nothing I do."

"You've lost me," Mark said, waving his hand dismissively. "I'm Joe on the street, and I don't understand a thing you've said."

Sydney lifted her chin slightly. "When it matters, it matters a lot. My thinking on civil rights is heavily influenced by my politics as a lesbian. With me so
far?" Mark nodded with a frown, probably not liking her tone. "My thinking on government efficiency and spending wisely but within our means is not at all influenced by whom I sleep with. Is that clearer?"

Mark gave Alan a baleful glance.

"Don't blame it on me," Alan said. "I told you how she was. And she sees right through you, Mark."

Mark glanced sharply at her. "You think you can talk that way to me?"

"No, but I might talk that way to Joe on the street," she said sardonically.

"Not if you want to be a senator," Mark said.

Sydney couldn't control a nervous swallow. Mark saw it and smiled his terrible smile again. "Now that got a reaction. So are you telling me that I'm not gonna pump some money into your campaign only to have some big sex scandal waste it all?"

"There will be no sex scandal. However, it's possible an opponent might find out about my past relationships with women and use it. And if anyone asks me outright, I won't lie."

"You'd better learn to evade, missy." Mark's eyes took on an eerie gleam and Sydney controlled another shudder. "There are lots of people who don't want a dyke in the statehouse."

"There are already a few there," Sydney said.

"On the house side, who cares? They come and go. But senators are different. They stay. They go on to congress, they become governors and vice presidents."

Sydney leaned forward. "My life since sobriety can bear examination. The skeletons I accumulated were displayed in public when I ran for alderwoman and in the end, no one cared. Everyone knows I'm a re
covering alcoholic. Everyone knows my father is richer than God and I'm not destitute myself. Inevitably, everyone will know I'm a lesbian. But by then, they will also know I don't have my hand in the cookie jar, I don't go on junkets, and I'm not trying to fuck the taxpayers or my aides."

Mark leaned back in his chair, his gaze only leaving Sydney's when he turned to look at Alan.

"If it stays that way, we can talk about the preliminary party ballot." He looked back at Sydney. "But if it doesn't, if I hear about you in anything like a compromising situation, then I'll bounce your ass out of this state."

Sydney stood up slowly. "I understand you. Understand this: I need your support, but I won't be bullied into anything. I am my own judge."

"You calling me a bully?"

Sydney realized that he was oddly pleased and felt a huge wave of relief sweep over her. "Yes. And I think you like it."

He looked at Alan and laughed. "You trained her good."

Alan stood up, and the two men shook hands. "She was born this way."

Mark stuck his cigar back in his mouth. "The winners always are."

* * * * *

Sydney examined her silk blouse, then dropped it into the dry cleaning hamper. Mark O'Leary would never know the amount of sweating she had done during their interview. She smiled at herself in the mirror. All she had to do to stay on Mark's good side
was what she was doing already — stay focused on her law practice and political career. No distractions. She was already so good at it.

* * * * *

"We're in the kitchen, Faith."

The last thing I wanted was a postmortem of my evening. I needed to be alone. The wound I had thought healed needed to open and drain again. But I went to the kitchen.

I immediately sensed a family crisis. My mother had been crying and now had one hand pressed to her heart as if it were failing, which wasn't in the least likely. My father looked more grim than usual. Michael, with one arm wrapped around his chest as always, looked both stricken and annoyed.

"What is it? What's wrong?" I sat down and took my mother's hand.

Michael cleared his throat. "Abraham was in an accident and died last Friday."

I gaped at him.

My mother shook off my touch and dabbed at her eyes. "You would think that Mary Margaret would have seen fit to tell us sooner."

I bit back a reminder that my little sister had been told never to mention her husband's name in this house. A lump formed in my throat. Huskily I asked, "How did it happen?"

My father's shrug was eloquent. "A car accident was all Mary Margaret said." Obviously he hadn't asked for details.

I sighed. "How is she coping? And the baby?"

It was my mother's turn to shrug. "I don't know. I never see my grandson. Perhaps that will change."

My eyes filled with sudden tears. Meg was widowed and left with a nine-month-old baby. I had never had a chance to get to know Abraham. Meg had met and eloped with him quickly and moved almost immediately to Philadelphia where he was going to law school. She had written to me a couple of times at my office, but the anger between her and our parents spilled over to the already troubled waters between the two of us. We had never been particularly close — I had been twelve when she was born — but to be widowed at twenty-two . ..

"It was your choice not to see Meg. You can't blame it on anyone else." Michael snapped his mouth shut, bis tone more vicious than usual. It was a byproduct of being in continuous pain as the burns on his arm and chest healed.

"Let's not fight," I said, hearing the peacemaker weariness in my voice and hating both my tone and the necessity of the role. "It can't be undone now."

"She's been given another chance," my father said. "She's young. There's still time for her to marry within our faith."

I pressed my lips together, not trusting myself to speak civilly. Michael looked murderous but held his tongue as my mother pressed her handkerchief to her lips. She was shaking her head. I could almost hear the refrain in her head,
A Jew. How could she marry a Jew?
That refrain had been playing for the last two years.

Poor, poor Meg. What would she do now? Abraham's family had been only slightly more accepting of their marriage than had my parents.

"I'm very tired," I said, getting up.

"Tell me about your dinner," my mother said. "And Eric, I assume he is fine?" The wistfulness in her voice implied that she wouldn't have to ask if he had come in for coffee. I was devoutly grateful that he had not. I wasn't ready for him to witness firsthand the narrowness of my parents' minds. He already sensed some of it since he was a semilapsed Lutheran. My parents were Catholic right down to their DNA, and they'd passed the gene on to me.

"It was lovely. Eric was very proud of his sister. I thought she was quite... striking. We're having dinner with her on Sunday."

My mother's expression brightened. I was meeting some of Eric's family. It might lead to the engagement she longed for me to have. She had reminded me just last week that I wasn't getting any younger. Thirty-four was nearly a spinster, I could almost hear her thinking. I thought it myself and knew only I was to blame.

I paused long enough to give Michael's good shoulder a comforting squeeze, then finally, my heart feeling like lead, I escaped to a stinging, hot shower and my bedroom.

* * * * *

The first two years of my undergraduate career were the first and only time I'd lived away from home. Michael had been stationed at Fort Dearborn right in Chicago and visited frequently. If he hadn't been so close, my parents would never have consented to my living at the University of Chicago campus. After all, it was just an El ride away, there was
no reason for me to be living on my own. Nice Catholic girls left their fathers' homes when they married, and for no other reason. When they married they became adults. Catholic girls who lived on their own were either nuns or whores.

But they had consented, most likely because I was joining the Catholic sorority, and I had enjoyed the first year immensely. For the first time, I began to form my own opinions and not simply repeat my father's dogmatic viewpoints. Having gone to Catholic school all my life, it was the first time I read history that wasn't pro-Catholic. I was amazed and stimulated by the different viewpoints. I'd written my first term paper in history on the difference between Catholic and feminist histories of the Inquisition.

I discovered that I was good at research and basked in praise of my writing. By the end of the year, I wanted to be a scholar. I wanted to know everything there was to know about the past, about how and why different people viewed the past differently. I discovered a hunger for information that surpassed any passion I'd ever known. For the first time in my life, I felt like an adult.

In my second year I met Renee Callahan and discovered more passions. Lust, self-loathing, dread fascination, and disgust.

That two-second glimpse of Renee Callahan across the banquet hall had brought back all those feelings. I hadn't known she had moved back to Chicago. I hadn't wanted to know. I had thought I had forgotten her and how she made me feel.

Huddled in my nightgown and shivering under the blankets, I prayed she hadn't seen me. I wanted to keep those memories behind me. I wanted instead the
life Eric might offer me. But memories were churning, and I remembered the way her voice had sounded in my ear.