Murder in the Collective (20 page)

June was leaning against the door. “Jeremy and I might have been black and white, but we did have some things in common, especially in your collective. Before he got there I was the youngest, before he got there I was the only one who’d never been to college, much less had some kind of graduate degree. We’d been around in ways you can’t even imagine. Sure, your politics impressed me; I didn’t know beans about no revolution, girl,” she laughed shortly and opened the door to go. “I guess I still don’t.”

“But we need your help, June.” I wanted to explain: Look, I’ve fallen in love with Hadley and that’s part of what’s happening here, that’s maybe why we seem like some kind of team, but I couldn’t find the words. I mumbled instead, “Penny said you
wanted
to help…”

“Yeah, but you and Penny are two different kettles of fish,” June said, hand on the door knob. “She’s not afraid to jump out of an airplane, for one thing.”

“So, does this mean you don’t want to help us?” Hadley asked calmly.

“I mean to follow some leads on my own,” said June. “We’ll see who gets there first.” She gave us a curious smile and disappeared out the door. “See you later!”

When Penny came back from the store I told her what had happened.

“It’s not my fault I’m too chicken to skydive—and now June thinks I’m being racist.”

In spite of her concern Penny seemed amused. “Don’t forget ageist and classist.”

She was peeling fruit for a salad, and Hadley had taken a hand in hulling the strawberries.

“I can’t help feeling that June is hiding something,” Hadley said. “Are you sure she didn’t know anything about the forging? I mean, who was printing that stuff, anyway?”

“June’s no murderer,” Penny said. “She’s been hurt and now she’s pissed at being offered some minor role in something that’s still a big emotional thing for her. You want her to share her information, but you don’t want to share anything with her.”

Ray had been outside getting the charcoal fire going in the rusty old barbecue. He came in looking for the grill. “Maybe the collective method doesn’t work so well when it comes to solving crimes,” he said. “But I’m interested in what June said about what she and Jeremy had in common. It makes sense that they’d be drawn to each other and against us. A class issue, why didn’t I ever think of that before?” he wondered, pulling at his black beard.

“You’re so goddamned theoretical all the time,” I exploded. “June has practically accused me of being a plantation mistress and as usual you’ve totally missed the point.”

For answer Ray threw a convenient banana in my direction and slammed out the back door.

“Not again,” groaned Penny and went after him.

“Now I think I see why you didn’t tell me about this previous relationship,” Hadley said. “Still a little rocky, eh?”

A cookout that was actually cooked-out—what could be more unique and thrilling in the Northwest? Although most of our backyard was taken up with the garden, we still had a patch of grass and a rectangular courtyard our family—hauling flat rocks from the beach—had built many summers ago. The evening had that northern slant of light that seems to last for hours without fluctuating. A golden evening fringed with green leaves, smelling of roses, sounding of children, with hamburgers and sourdough rolls and baked beans and buttered corn on the cob and five kinds of salad: fruit, spinach, pasta, carrot and potato. It was rare to be able to sit outside like this, without a sweater anyway, in the evening during a Seattle summer—though year after year we bundled into our jackets and blankets at eight o’clock and huddled around the barbecue, pretending we were in San Diego.

Sam and Jude came back from a day hiking; phone calls brought neighbors and friends. June returned in an apparently chipper mood with her daughters Amina and Ade.

Penny greeted her as if nothing had happened; she got June husking corn and she herself played a game of tag with the girls. To Amina and Ade she was Auntie Penny, though four-year-old Amina thought it was pretty hilarious to call her Auntie Nickel, Auntie Quarter or sometimes even Auntie Million Dollar.

I couldn’t help noticing, in my present guilty mood, that there were no other Blacks here—though there was Ray’s friend Bill Asuka and his new Korean-American girlfriend, Evelyn, and Maggie Chin, the Taiwanese student from next door, and Ray himself…but what was wrong with me, anyway, counting like this?

I remembered suddenly what Penny had said to me one day, “You know, Pam, you worry about being called racist as if it were syphilis or something. Like you were accused of carrying some dread, disfiguring, incurable disease. But I think it’s more like telling someone or being told, ‘Hey, you’ve got snot hanging out of your nose.’ You say thank you and wipe it off. Though that doesn’t mean the snot’s not going to ever drip again.”

“Gross! You’re always so disgusting, Penny!”

But it was true. I worried much more about racism than she did, resisted the charge, would do anything to avoid it…No wonder June felt more comfortable with Penny than with me. Penny treated her like a human being; I treated her like a symbol of something I was terribly afraid of not pleasing—or just plain terribly afraid of.

June seemed ready, at any rate, to put the afternoon behind her.

“About this, this investigation stuff,” I said, sitting down on the step above her and her children on the back porch after dinner.

“No problem, Pam. I’ve been thinking about it and I decided that what you and Hadley have going for you is objectivity. I’ve got a lot to deal with on my own. I don’t want to be getting much more involved than I already am.”

Surprisingly I wasn’t relieved. “But you could tell us a lot…we could tell you, too…”

“Probably not much more than you could find out on your own. Jeremy was a closed-up guy, remember. Anybody who could keep a marriage secret didn’t go around spilling any other kind of beans.”

Could it be true, as Hadley suggested, that June was hiding something? She didn’t look one bit secretive at the moment. Ade and Amina were sitting on either side of her, quietly figuring out what half-eaten corn cobs could be made to do.

“What about your leads—you said you were going to follow up some leads?”

June shrugged her small strong shoulders. She was wearing a tube top that showed them off to perfection. “I guess I just had too many sunbeams this afternoon.” She changed the subject.

“So, what’s this Penny tells me about you and Hadley?”

“Oh…just one of those things…”

“Well, I wish you luck.” She looked a little doubtful. “Just kind of happened, huh? Just like that?”

I couldn’t say I’d always been a lesbian. Some of it definitely had to do with Hadley.

“I like her a lot, you know.”

We watched Hadley throwing a ball with some kids in the alley. Her long arms flew around like the hands of a large clock; her silvery hair whirled around her plain face. She was having a great time.

“Well, she’s tall, anyway,” June said charitably.

Later the full moon went up like a handheld prop in a cheap stage production, far too decorative to be anywhere out in space. Our guests lingered on and on, even though it was Sunday night, Monday morning tomorrow. They had to marvel over and over at the magical weather, feel the warmth and moonlight on their bare skins.

I looked over and saw Amina and Ade sleeping on June’s lap, and Penny talking to her in what seemed a serious manner.

“We’re just talking about the possibility of June going away for a while,” Penny said, when I joined them a little hesitantly. “There’s still a good chance that the press could pick up on her initial arrest. I’d like to spare her that.”

“Go where?”

“Well, my sister lives in California, Oakland…” June didn’t sound too sure. “I don’t know…”

“I think it’s a great idea,” insisted Penny. “A change of scene would do you good. Don’t worry about the shop. We’d call you if we felt we couldn’t handle it.”

“You wouldn’t be trying to get rid of me?” June asked mildly. She glanced from Penny to me.

“If anyone deserves a vacation,” I said, “it’s you.”

“Deserving ain’t always getting.” She stretched and stood up. “But what the hell. I’ll leave tomorrow.”

H
ADLEY AND I SLEPT
together again that night. Not at my house—I still wasn’t quite ready to deal with Sam and Sapphism together at the breakfast table—but in Hadley’s bed under the skylight. We drank some tea and then a little wine and lit a candle and made love. It wasn’t the full display of fireworks as the first time, when I’d wondered what was going to happen next, but it was still just fine. More play and perhaps more satisfaction. My orgasm poured down into my toes instead of up through my cortex and out the top of my head.

Afterwards I asked her to tell me about her father.

“Now? Why?”

“I want to know about your life. You were close to him…”

“This is always the time when I want a cigarette,” she interrupted. “And I never smoked in my whole life. I’m sure I saw too many French films as a teenager and they did permanent brain damage.”

“Have a candle instead,” I offered, passing it to her.

“The wax makes such a terrible mess of the sheets, you know—when it drips. Besides, you nasty little Freudian, if you think I’m going to talk about my father with a stubby pink candle in my mouth…”

We tussled a minute, laughing, then Hadley asked, with a shake of her silverstraw hair, “Do you know how attractive money is? Sure you do. Money is very attractive. And so kind and charming as well. It can afford to be. Yes, he got drunk, but even then he was charming. When I was small he’d sit me down beside him and hold long conversations with me, always treating me like an adult woman. ‘Your mama doesn’t understand me,’ he’d say. ‘But you do.’ He was tall and well-built with funny eyes like mine. And there were presents and trips and everything nice for his little girl…who didn’t understand why her parents didn’t get along, just like Shirley Temple, but who couldn’t do anything about it…” Hadley broke off, pulling up the sheet with a sudden movement to her bony shoulders. She had soft warm freckles on her chest and upper arms, and a streak of white scar tissue from a broken arm.

“Didn’t his work suffer because of his drinking?”

“Money doesn’t have to work, don’t you know that? Besides, he was more or less just a figurehead. He and his older brother, Uncle Bob, had inherited the business, but Uncle Bob ran it. Dad was a superfluous vice-president with a fancy title. As long as he didn’t cause problems he had an office in the main building in Houston—later the polite term was ‘working out of the house.’”

“He stayed home then?”

Hadley just nodded. Eight years she’d spent in Houston after college, taking care of him. What had her life been like, what had happened to make her leave? I didn’t know how to ask those questions. Instead, I asked something that had occurred to me several days ago.

“Hadley, it’s not just your family…I mean,
you
have money too, don’t you?”

She looked at me for a moment with her clear turquoise eyes and, though she didn’t move her leg away, I could feel her skin physically lifting off mine. Instinctively. Her voice didn’t lose its detachment, however.

“Rolling in it,” she said, and blew out the candle. “Goodnight.”

We were quiet the next morning. Zee was to be arraigned at ten in open court. It was only on the way down to the courthouse that Hadley broke the silence. She said, as if to herself,

“I always dread the moment when the money comes up. I hid it for a long time, still hide it from most people. I never know how they’ll react.”

“Why?”

“Like I said, money is attractive. Complicated. In the women’s movement especially, where everybody is so goddamned poor.”

“But you don’t act like you’re rich.”

“A crash course in radical feminism. I trained myself into—well, not exactly poverty, that would be impossible—but into not acting on desires.
Not
automatically picking up the phone to call long-distance…choosing the $5.95 lasagna instead of the $10.95 chicken cacciatore…
not
offering to pay the tab, or to loan money, or to give expensive presents…It makes me a little nervous sometimes, that you don’t expect anything like that, that you seem self-sufficient, that you can take care of yourself. In my worst times I believe I’m a born Mother Theresa, only at home with the needy.”

“But Hadley, does this mean that you don’t give yourself anything you want, that you
never
eat chicken cacciatore?”

She just smiled, the curious half smile that didn’t quite make it to her eyes. “It’s not really the same problem that it was a few years ago. I’ve given away a lot over the last three years and the rest is temporarily tied up. I don’t live on it anymore. I live on my wages…so I do feel able to spend that money.”

“Who’d you give it to?”

“I gave a certain amount anonymously around Houston and here too, to women’s groups I thought were decent. But it was hard—most of them were so poor and the women had no experience budgeting—the money wasn’t always spent in the most useful ways. It led to quarreling among them and I ended up feeling very judgmental—though it wasn’t
my
money anymore. And of course there were all sorts of rumors. You know, that
Playboy
was co-opting them or something. So I tried giving to out-of-state groups and national organizations—publishers, journals, music groups. And some to political campaigns and to peace groups and to international groups. My name was on every mailing list and the fund raisers were always calling me…It all got pretty complicated. I spent hours doing research trying to figure out who deserved what and how much. I could have done it full-time and not felt any better, though. It wasn’t making the whole issue any easier. I realized I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life counting out stacks of coins and pushing them to various outstretched hands around a table.”

I was a little taken aback by her matter-of-fact tone. The King County courthouse loomed up before us.

“I heard of groups of wealthy people, mostly well-off leftists who’d inherited, who had come together to form non-profit organizations to give the money away. They stayed out of it, hired some people to give it away for them. There was a local one I joined, but then I decided I only wanted my money to go to women. So now it’s tied up with a national group—same type of thing. We meet once or twice a year.”