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  “Teach him a lesson,” Emma sputtered. “You don’t . . .”

  “He’s spent plenty of weekends in jail,” I pointed out. “Hasn’t taught him a thing.”

  “Wait,” my father said. “Can he get a public defender?” So far, Emma and Hugh’s lawyer had always represented Sam, with Hugh footing the bill.

  Naomi laughed. “Of course he can. He’s over twenty-one—you’re not legally responsible for him. If he can’t afford a lawyer, the court will appoint one.”

  “He can’t afford a lawyer,” Hugh said firmly.

  Emma dismissed this with an airy wave. “Naomi could . . .”

  My sister pursed her lips. “No, Emma, I couldn’t.”

  They glared at one another. I wondered if Naomi knew how much she looked like my mother. Or acted like her. My oldest sister, Ruth, looked like Emma as well, though she, thank God, had my father’s disposition.

  “Hey,” I said, interrupting the staring contest. “Why is the bail bondsman called Slinky?”

  Naomi looked puzzled until she realized that I was trying to rescue her. She smiled. “It’s after the toy. He’s tall and skinny, and he sort of uncoils himself when he stands up.”

  “He’s a snake,” Emma remarked acidly, “but we need him. Now don’t change the subject. You know that I wouldn’t leave either of you in jail.”

  “I don’t shoplift,” I observed.

  “And I don’t punch up my girlfriends,” my sister added.

  I caught Naomi’s eye for a moment. She looked away. I wasn’t out to my family. Not that I was exactly closeted, but I’d never had a big sharing moment. As far as my private life was concerned, no one asked, and I didn’t tell. It wasn’t that I worried about their reaction—I didn’t think they’d care—but I dreaded the prospect of becoming another one of my mother’s great causes. It was hard enough just being her daughter without her marching in the streets and joining P-FLAG.

  “Enough,” Emma snapped, tapping her wristwatch. “It’s five past two. We have got to get your brother out of jail. What’s Slinky’s phone number?”

  “How should I know?” Naomi sniffed. “You’ll have to look it up.”

  “Fine. Bil, you find the phone book. Hugh, grab your checkbook and go warm up the car.”

  My father remained in his seat. “The car doesn’t need to be warmed up, Emma. And before I grab my checkbook, I want to know exactly what’s going on here. Did Sam hit his girlfriend or not? Because if he did, I’m not bailing him out.”

  My mother said nothing. She looked past Hugh, fixing her gaze on a spot somewhere down the hallway.

  “I’ll take that for a yes,” my father said. “He can rot in jail.”

  Here, I saw fit to intervene. “It’s more complicated than that, Dad. Francie’s blacked both of his eyes, so my guess is that it was a mutual altercation. As bad as Sam is,” I held up a hand to forestall my mother, “I don’t think he’s a girlfriend beater.”

  “Maybe,” Hugh said skeptically. “Still, bail bondsmen cost money, and that’s money that you don’t get back. Slinky Nilsson is a shyster.”

  “It’s either pay Slinky or pay the full bond,” Naomi said. “Take your pick.”

  At this point, my mother, who had been pacing up and down the room, sprang at my father with a whoop and a holler and tried to yank him out of his chair. “Hugh, listen to your daughter—get your checkbook and let’s go!”

  My father refused to budge. It was the immovable object meets the irresistible force. His face was beginning to harden, and soon he’d be set like a lump of cement. I racked my brains for a persuasive argument.

  “Ah,” I said. “Think about this, Hugh. If we don’t get Sam out of jail, Emma will make our lives unbearable. Tonight, tomorrow, the next day. The entire weekend, shot to hell.”

  He pondered this, tapping the bowl of his pipe against the arm of the chair.

  “Besides,” I added, “what does he do when he’s sitting in jail? He calls collect every five minutes.” I pointed at my mother. “She won’t refuse the charges. You know she won’t. The phone bill will add up to more than his bail.”

  “All right,” my father said at last. He turned to Emma. “I don’t care if you bail him out, but I don’t see why I should go with you. Use your own checkbook.”

  My mother hauled back and gave my father a flat-handed slap on the arm. “You’re mean, Hugh. You’re an old screw, a skinflint, a tightwad. You know I don’t have any money in my checkbook. I live like a pauper on that measly allowance you give me.”

  Hugh laughed. It was always like that with them. My parents are not a lot alike, but they are compatible. Emma talks, Hugh listens; she’s into the big picture, he obsesses over the small details; she tells big fat lies, and he laughs.

  Hugh is a professor of business and accounting at Cowslip College. He and my mother met there as undergraduates, and Emma dropped out after her sophomore year to marry him. They traveled around for years after that, Hugh collecting graduate degrees and Emma collecting children. When he accepted the job at Cowslip, Hugh insisted that my mother re-enroll and finish her degree in philosophy. She did. Juggling five kids and taking one class a semester, it took her ten years to finish. She’d worked off and on, only part-time since Sam’s diagnosis, and always at clerical jobs she could leave with two weeks’ notice. Consequently, my father was the recognized breadwinner.

  “I don’t give you an allowance,” he was arguing, “I supplement your income.”

  “Whatever you call it, it’s a paltry sum!”

  “Then use the joint account. That’s your money, too.”

  “Not for bailing Sam out of jail! I’d never hear the end of it.” Emma turned to us. “Take a lesson from me, girls—don’t ever get married. Men, even good men like your father, only want one thing.”

  I laughed. “From what I hear, he gets it.”

  Hugh stood up and put The One-Minute Manager on the seat of the chair. Two other books were crammed into the crack between the arm and the cushion, their spines covered in pipe ash.

  “Fine,” he said, “I’ll come with you. I’ll even pay, but you’ve got to call Nilsson first. I want to know exactly how much this is going to cost me.”

  “Done!” Emma cried. “Get your skates on, Daddy, I’ll be back in a mo!”

  Chapter 4

  I bummed a ride into town with my parents. Slinky Nilsson’s office was on Main Street, right next door to the Cowslip Café. I was eagerly anticipating my three o’clock rendezvous with Sylvie. Unfortunately, my truck, which needed transmission work, was sitting at the Toyota dealership waiting for me to come up with the cash for the repair bill.

  With Hugh at the wheel, the drive back to town was slower than molasses. I drove the speed limit, but my father drove ten miles under it. Emma had her feet propped up on the dash and was performing a little toe dance on the windshield. Wisely, she said nothing. I looked out the window and tried to concentrate on the scenery.

  To the north of Cowslip stood Cole’s Mountain. Though it wasn’t particularly tall as western mountains go, the peak was covered with snow for at least eight months out of the year. To the south was Hayman’s Butte, smaller than a mountain, bigger than a hill. The top and back were covered with trees, but the front was bare. On its green expanse sat Hayman’s horse farm, which overlooked our moderately picturesque town of twenty-five thousand. It was a prime piece of real estate, in the Hayman family since time immemorial, but I preferred the view on the back side of the butte. My best friend Tipper Schwartz’s mother had a house on that side, and from the top of her ridge you could see for a hundred miles. Distant wheat fields, evergreen forests, and long, twisting roads that seemed to roll off into infinity. I yawned, and it suddenly dawned on me that I needed a nap. I’d been up until three o’clock in the morning watching To Have and Have Not, and the lack of sleep was beginning to catch up with me.

  “Tired?” Emma asked.

  “Yeah. I need at least twelve hours of sleep a day
to feel fully human.”

  “You’re worse than a cat.”

  “I didn’t say I got that many hours. I just said I needed them.”

  Emma tapped on the window and pointed at Hayman’s Butte. “How long is Tipper in town? Until this anti-gay thing is over?”

  The anti-gay thing was a ballot initiative called Proposition One. I was supposed to be helping Tipper organize opposition to it, though so far, I’d been obliged to bag out. I was serious about doing better in school. Tipper, however, didn’t know how to take “I’m busy” for an answer. He was a drag queen, and though he now lived in Seattle, he was a native of Cowslip. He was also really, really pushy.

  “He’s here until November,” I said. “He’ll go back to Seattle after the election.”

  “And what’s the number of that initiative again?”

  “One. It’s not hard to remember, Ma.”

  “I’m not trying to remember. The safest thing to do is just go in and vote no on all of these citizens’ initiatives. They’re always written by crackpots.”

  “Well,” my father laughed, “that’s what I call informed.”

  “They’re all anti-something,” Emma insisted. “Anti-tax, anti-abortion, anti-gay. Vote no, and you don’t have to waste your time reading the ballot.”

  “If only everyone were as lazy as you are.” I yawned again and rolled down my window.

  “That’s it,” she said, lighting a cigarette and letting the smoke blow back in my face. “Get some fresh air into your lungs.”

  When we finally got to town, our first stop was the bank. Hugh muttered about there being no point in having a savings account if you never saved anything, and Emma swore dramatically that she’d economize. Even better, she’d never loan Sam money again. Hugh raised his eyebrows but said nothing. I pretended I was deaf.

  We exited the drive-through and headed down Main Street, past three Chinese restaurants, two bookstores, and a pizza parlor. The population of Cowslip was eclectic, part descendants of pioneers, part college transients. The division between town and gown was still evident, though it was no longer as sharp as it had once been. For reasons now obscure, a group of progressives founded the college in the early nineteen-twenties. Why anyone would want to build a small liberal arts school out in the middle of nowhere was a mystery. Before the college came to town, Cowslip was just a fork in the road with a Catholic church at one end, some grain elevators at the other, and a railroad track running between them.

  It was five ’til three when my father parked the car in front of Slinky’s office. I hopped out quickly, saying, “I’m going to the café. I’ll get Sarah or Ruth to drive me home later.”

  “You don’t want to come with us?” asked my mother, as if the gory details of springing Sam from the Hoosegow were of universally acknowledged interest.

  “No, thanks. I’ve had enough excitement for one day. It’s time for a triple mocha latté.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said. “When are you getting that truck of yours fixed?”

  “It is fixed. I’m just gathering up the money to pay the bill.”

  “You could gather a lot quicker if you didn’t buy so many three-dollar coffees.”

  Hugh, bless him, gave her the evil eye. “In the meantime,” he said, “you can use either my car or your mother’s whenever you like.”

  Emma didn’t rise to this bait, choosing instead to turn sharply and march into Nilsson’s office. My father followed at a more measured pace.

  Sylvie wasn’t at any of the outside tables at the Cowslip Café, so I went in to look for her. She wasn’t there, either. A teeming multitude was crammed around the tables next to the window, and there was a distinct smell of wet leather and wool socks. As the sky was now perfectly clear, I decided to forego the tables at the back and instead sat down outside. There were four bohemian-types near the door, but otherwise, I had the place to myself. Sylvie had said she wanted privacy; I hoped this would do.

  The temperature was warming up, but the wind was brisk. I smiled at the bohemians. Although they didn’t look like the Wal-Mart shoppers who comprised most of Cowslip’s permanent residents, they looked just as mass-produced. All of them were wearing tie-dyed T-shirts, knitted caps, and Birkenstocks. They smiled at me and then went back to talking.

  I leaned back in my chair and waited for someone to fight his or her way through the throng to take my order. I could hear the harvest trucks three blocks away, rumbling along Highway 8 to and from the grain elevators. The farmers wouldn’t be happy about the morning’s rain, which would delay the rest of the wheat harvest for at least three or four days. The wind stirred up stray kernels on the pavement, and I noticed a few people were out and about. An old woman and her Labrador were looking in the bike shop window, and a couple of teenage girls stood across the street with their backs to me, checking out the fine fashion on display at the Goodwill.

  I drummed my fingers on the table. Eventually, a waiter came out to take my order. He was wearing a knee-length floral dress and a look of concentrated boredom. I admired his chutzpah and wondered if he knew Tipper. However, I didn’t ask. Why make assumptions? Certain members of my family got pretty tired of being asked if they knew every other minority resident in town.

  I ordered a mocha with whipped cream and took stock of myself. I’d only seen Tipper once in the two months since he’d helped me move back from Seattle. He’d called a couple of times and left messages with my mother, but I hadn’t called him back. Schoolwork was a lame excuse. The real reason I hadn’t thrown myself into political work with Stop the Prop was that their first order of business was encouraging gay volunteers to come out. I dreaded that disclosure for a number of reasons, not the least of which was my fear that it would lead to questions about my former “roommate,” A. J. Josephs. We’d lived together for nearly two years until it all went to hell in a hand-basket. She was why I left the University of Washington. She was why I’d come back to Cowslip with my tail between my legs. I didn’t want to talk to my mother about A. J. I wanted to forget her.

  The wind was becoming unpleasant. It had picked up a bit and was now stirring the dust and wheat kernels in little eddies. Still, I didn’t want to go inside. The interior was far too crowded for my taste. If I was going to be cheek to jowl with a bunch of people, I wanted to be dancing, not sipping a latté. I turned my back to the wind and shielded my cup with my hands.

  A shadow fell on the table in front of me. I looked up, squinting to keep the dust out of my eyes. Sylvie was smiling down at me. Her hair was pulled back in a short ponytail, and she’d changed her clothes. She now had on a white T-shirt, a brown bomber jacket, and faded blue jeans. A black motorcycle helmet was tucked under one arm. I smiled back at her.

  I wish I was the sort of woman who requires a long courtship. The kind who wakes up one day and happily discovers that she’s in love with her best friend. I wish I was the sort who turns to a woman she’s known and liked for several years and suddenly discovers that her feelings have grown into something substantial and mature. But I’m not. I’m like a penny on a railroad track, and beautiful women are like freight trains.

  Sylvie Wood poured Novocain on the sensible parts of my brain and poked a cattle prod into the areas marked “idiot.” I had no idea what I was going to say before I heard myself talking.

  “Anybody got a match?”

  Oh, Jesus. It was Lauren Bacall’s opening line in To Have and Have Not. Sylvie hesitated for one interminable moment, while I sweated a case of bullets. Then she laughed.

  “You know how to whistle, don’t you? You just put your lips together and blow. I guess I’m not the only one who stays up late watching old movies on television.”

  “I’m an insomniac,” I lied. “Never sleep more than an hour or two. Please, sit down.”

  “Thanks.” She placed her helmet on the table, pulled out the chair opposite me, and sat down in a single, fluid motion. Ballet, I thought suddenly, and lots of it. Nothing else could acc
ount for the way she carried herself, erect but not stiff. Ballet and motorcycles. Interesting woman.

  She sat back in her chair and smiled, or rather half-smiled. Several moments passed while she just looked at me. I waited for her to say something, my heart pounding with the effort not to babble. I stirred two spoons of sugar into my already sweet coffee, propped an elbow up on the table, and rested my chin on my hand in a vain attempt to keep my jaw from dropping into my lap.

  “So,” she said finally, “is this coffee better than church coffee?”

  “It doesn’t taste like gym socks, if that’s what you mean. Oh, sorry. I’m sure you’d like one yourself. I’ll flag down the waiter.” I searched in vain for Mr. Laura Ashley, but he was nowhere in sight. “I could go inside and get you one, though it might be quicker if I just went to South America and picked the beans myself.”

  She smiled broadly this time. “The service is always glacial here.”

  Straight white teeth behind full pink lips. I was reminded of a line I’d read somewhere about Chiclets nestled in a red velvet case. I thought about the gap between my own front teeth and covered my mouth with my hand. Why the hell did my parents not get me braces? Selfish bastards—they’d ruined my life.

  Sylvie rested an elbow on the table and leaned forward, shielding her eyes from the wind with her hand. I looked around again for the waiter and caught sight of him through one of the windows. I waved, but he either didn’t see me, or he pretended not to notice.

  “The service isn’t just glacial,” I said, “it’s inept. I hope you’re not dying of thirst.”

  “I’m not.” She was looking at me curiously, as if weighing her options. “I’m sure you know why I wanted to see you.”

  I had no idea why she wanted to see me. I knew what I was thinking—I already had us married and living in Provincetown—but I wasn’t optimistic enough to believe Sylvie was thinking the same thing. Stalling for time, I said, “I hope the funeral wasn’t too upsetting.”

  I immediately regretted it. Of course the funeral was upsetting. Bizarre circumstances. Rumors of poisoning. Aside from that, Burt Wood was one half of Cowslip’s great gay scandal; he left his family for another man. Even in 1978, a gay elopement on its own wouldn’t have been that big a deal, but the Woods were an old family, and Frank Frost was the mayor’s son.