Bingo (24 page)

She feigned sympathy but I suspected she was enjoying my predicament. After all, wasn’t she saddled with the hunt club newsletter for the last three years? As she evacuated the
Clarion
her Joy perfume left a trace of her presence.

“I’d help you if I could,” Michelle offered, “but I’ve got to drive over to Baltimore to pick up Mom. She’s flying in for a one-day visit.”

“It’s nice of you to offer but you don’t have to—I’ll give you good assignments anyway, because you’re getting good.”

“I didn’t think of it as a trade.” Her voice was dry.

“Sorry. The sight of Ursie makes me cynical.”

John Hoffman emerged from the back room. I wanted to say the sight of him made me cynical, too, but I didn’t.

“Michelle, let me know if I can help you. Lot of facts to juggle.”

“Thanks, John.” Michelle didn’t mean it. She thought she could do fine by herself.

“I’ve got some theories about this Iran caper.” He leaned over her desk. “This is a perfect example of national security being more important than our domestic laws,
if
the law was broken.”

“Bull.” I had the number dialed for my next quote and put the phone down.

“Just what I expected from a bleeding-heart liberal.”

“I’m no bleeding-heart liberal, John, and I don’t much appreciate your label. I’m a realist, especially where politics are concerned, and I don’t expect people to act like saints and I don’t expect them to scuttle their self-interest, but I do expect government officials to abide by the Constitution. We can’t have one set of rules inside the U. S. and another set outside the U. S.”

“Fortunately, you are not a national security adviser.” He smirked. “Morality has nothing to do with international relations.”

“Nor national ones,” Michelle volleyed. I was proud of her.

“You’ll agree with anything Nickel says. Female solidarity.”

The sight of Michelle taking on John brought Charles out of his office. He leaned against his door, and Roger wandered in from the morgue—the name every newspaper uses for its storage of back issues and pertinent information. The exchange mushroomed in intensity until John accused Michelle of being a dyke, at which point I blew up.

“That’s it, Hoffman. Right now. Shut your fucking face!”

He surmised I was bordering on the violent and decided to pull in his horns. “Don’t take it personally.”

“I’m taking it very personally. Just because she has an opinion of her own and is becoming competent in our profession and, more to the point, does not agree with you, you call her a dyke.”

“It was an unfortunate choice of words,” John replied.

“I think so too.” Charles puffed on his pipe. He hadn’t moved from the door but I knew when he clenched his pipe hard between his teeth he was furious.

“I’m sorry.”

This calmed our group somewhat and we returned to our tasks. I called Regina and begged her to come down after supper and help me. I also got a quote from her on zoning. I identified her in my article as a lifelong resident and concerned citizen. Her quote was: “The Zoning Commissions for both North and South Runnymede have made inconsistent decisions concerning land use. We need to revamp those commissions or hold a referendum on the issue.”

When she danced through the door, I showed her her own quote set in type. Then we got to work. We typed the show information in columns, then took turns at layout. Breaking off the affair with Jackson made me feel quasi-virtuous. I wasn’t but I was
relieved. I didn’t want a barrier between me and Regina. I also told her about Michelle’s sparring match with John and we batted opinions back and forth.

“There, what do you think of that?” She held up our front page. Our masthead ran the hunt club’s logo: crossed swords in front of a fox mask.

“Better than what I’m doing. I’ve got zip talent for layout.”

“What if we dumped the ‘out’?” She laughed.

“Thanks, Gene. I appreciate that and how would you know?”

“Wouldn’t.” She walked over to the hot plate and boiled water to make instant coffee for her and tea for me. “It’s odd, isn’t it, that people can be as close as we are but not know intimate things about each other?”

“I don’t think it’s odd. You can’t sleep with everyone.”

“You could try.” She laughed again.

Regina enjoyed a robust sense of humor but I was now on guard and I didn’t like feeling that way, even if it was my own fault. “I haven’t time. I mean, how would this newsletter get printed?”

“Maybe human relationships are like a clock. With most people the relationship is maybe fifteen minutes or ninety degrees on the dial. Just a quarter of what the relationship could be. Call it a social relationship. Sex would be part of that circle, part of that three hundred and sixty degrees. And what’s so strange is, you can sleep with someone and not complete the circle. Sex isn’t enough. It’s necessary for a full understanding but not enough. Get it?”

“I don’t know.” I was standing next to her now, dunking my tea bag to make the tea strong. Pewter rubbed up against my legs. Whenever I was near food she became sticky-affectionate. “What are we?”

“We’re forty-five minutes, three quarters of the clock. Close, but I don’t know everything and neither do you.”

“Are you sixty minutes, three hundred sixty degrees with Jack?”

“No. I don’t know if any woman ever gets the whole circle with a man. Maybe. But I’ve got forty-five minutes with Jack—a different part of the circle, though. He has what you miss and you have what he misses. Ironic.”

“Have you ever slept with another man since you’ve been married?” Why did I ask that?

“Nickie, I tell you everything—well, almost everything. Everyone has to have some secrets … and the answer is ‘no.’ ”

I opened Hoffman’s desk drawer and gave Pewter a treat. Lolly wanted one too. The feeding hid my confusion. “Yeah, I guess, but maybe secrets are like stomach acid. They give you psychic indigestion.”

“Ha. You make the truth a sacrament. Because you’ve told the truth about your sexual orientation you don’t have to tell it about everything else you know. Sometimes a secret can be rejuvenating and it doesn’t have to be sexual. Just”—she paused and her voice sounded like Regina as a girl—“private.”

“Secrets make me feel dirty. You are as sick as you are secret. That’s what I used to say to closet queers.”

“That’s different. You’re talking about cultural oppression and I’m talking about individual liberty, or the cultivation of secret gardens, if you will. Of course, I don’t expect you to keep secrets from me.” She laughed.

I glanced at the time and walked back to the layout table. Regina didn’t follow. She slowly drank her coffee before she joined me.

“What do you think of this page?” I handed her another one.

She didn’t inspect it. “Nickie, you are so incredibly repressed that sometimes it hurts me.”

“Huh?”

“You share your ideas but you don’t share yourself. Your emotions are locked away somewhere. Even I don’t know where they are, and I want to. Your mother and I talk about it sometimes.”

“Behind my back.”

“Where else?”

“I figure that people have enough to handle with their own emotions. They haven’t time for mine.”

“That’s not true. You do this because you’re gay and because you’re open about it. Sounds like a contradiction but it’s true. You know and I know that you’re outside the approved social order. You’re well-mannered and thoughtful but you’re distant. What is it that you don’t want us to know?”

“Me. I don’t want you to know me,” I blurted.

“I love you. I want to know you.”

“Straight people only want to know gay people if they act according to straight people’s rules. People don’t want to hear what I think about women—or men, for that matter. They don’t want to see the heat or feel the passion, although they’re perfectly happy to celebrate it in one another. But because I feel that for a woman, it makes them uncomfortable. Can you imagine if I walked through Runnymede Square holding a woman’s hand? It seems such a small thing and yet the cumulative effect of these chilling conventions is to drive you back into yourself, or at least it’s driven me back to myself. Hell, I’m not stupid. I know I’m repressed, to use your word.”

“I’m not a straight person. I’m me. How do I know I couldn’t be in love with a woman? I met Jackson first and I didn’t think about it. Don’t lump me with the others and don’t sell your friends short.”

“Oh, Gene.” I put my arm around her shoulders. “You’re such a romantic. My friends like me in spite of the fact that I’m gay, not because of it.”

“You’re wrong. You are who and what you are because of everything that’s happened to you and everything you are inside. Loving a woman is part of that. It’s what has made you you and we love you.”

Tears stung my eyes. I very much did not want to cry. “Thanks.”

She hugged me back. “Anyway, why should you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders? Frances wasn’t worth it.”
She referred to the one woman I had loved, so long ago I was in danger of forgetting.

“Evolution is the hope of the immature. I’ll try and be more open. Might be in another life, though.”

We laughed. We didn’t finish the newsletter until twelve-thirty that night but the time flew. I knew that someday I would tell Regina what I had done, because I couldn’t keep a secret from her. On the one hand I knew she should shoot me, and yet oddly enough, on the other hand, sleeping with Jack had made me much closer to her. I didn’t know if she would ever feel that way about me once she knew. What I did know was that Regina was worth ten of me.

W
inter gave us a backhanded slap. A cutting wind under dull skies reminded me that we weren’t out of the woods yet. As it was Good Friday, the weather added to the dolorous nature of the day. I have never understood the Christian fascination with suffering and death. The crucifix makes me ill and I find it painful even to contemplate a mutilated man, much less worship one.

Mother, devout in her off-center way, would be singed if I told her my thoughts. Aunt Louise would light so many candles for me she’d burn down Saint Rose’s. Silence on the issues that concerned me the most was becoming my
modus operandi
. Regina was right. I was reaching the point where I began to fear I couldn’t open myself up to anyone.

This is not to say that I don’t love Jesus Christ or his message; I do. I don’t love what’s sprung up around him, and in the office we received rumblings of strange goings-on in the PTL Club. Roger and I dubbed it Pass the Loot, but the official name is Praise the Lord. If I made as much nontaxable income as those TV preachers, I’d be praising the Lord too. Since when does Jesus need a press agent? If God is so smart, you’d think he’d hire better help.

Good Friday services start at two o’clock but I dashed into church for an early morning service, as I knew I’d be in the bullpen today. It was my turn to cover for everyone else when they went to service. Not much crackled on the AP wire.

Mother called to tell me about her date. She and Ed drove
over to Emmitsburg for a good dinner. She said he reminded her of Dad. He didn’t remind me of Dad. She said to be sure to come to her house tonight for renegade bingo. Saint Rose of Lima’s did not run the bingo game or any other form of festivity or fund-raising on Good Friday. Mother’s rationale was that as Jesus died at three in the afternoon, what we did at night was our own business. Also, she felt it her civic responsibility to keep people off the streets. I allowed as how I would come this evening, armed with dab-a-dots.

After that conversation I began thinking about The Last Supper. I bet it was fettucine Alfredo.

Mother’s house, luxurious in landscaping, displayed what real estate agents call curb appeal. The curbs were loaded tonight. I had to park two blocks away and I was glad I’d taken Lolly and Pewter home, because there’d be too many people in a small space.

When I opened the door Mom shot right up to me. “Two dollars. Price of admission.”

I dug into my jeans. “Here, but where is the money going?”

“A charity of my choice.” She put the money in the apron she wore.

I walked into the room and Mutzi was calling. The BonBons were out in full force, including Sonny and Sister, Verna’s twin brother and sister. These were the people to whom Louise was to have delivered the popcorn. Their real names were Cleota and Leota. Why Verna’s mother called a boy Cleota we will never know, but they circumvented this problem with the nicknames Sonny and Sister. Most of the gang was there, including Michelle and Roger—their second date.

Aunt Wheeze, disapproving of a party on Good Friday, sat in the kitchen with Goodyear. She made up a batch of pickled eggs. One of the good things about my aunt was that she hated to be idle. She whizzed in and out of the kitchen with her eggs and other dishes. Finally she alighted next to Ed.

“How are you doing?”

He pressed his dab-a-dot on number nineteen. “Just fine. You work too hard. Why don’t you sit down here next to me? Let one of these other girls pass around the horse’s dubers.”