Talk of the Town (19 page)

"Mom. Hi." He didn't bother to hide the glass. He'd already seen the look in her eyes.

"You know," she said in a deceptively soft and pleasant tone of voice that Harley understood immediately. "Your real mother probably wouldn't mind that." She indicated the wineglass with one all-knowing and undeniable finger. "But if I catch you doing it again, she won't be able to recognize you when she finally comes to steal you back Is that understood?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She could see it was.

"Did you like the way it tastes?" she asked, with as much curiosity as understanding.

"Not really," he said, aware of the role alcohol played in his personal history. "It's bitter. Beer's better, but it has a ... an aftertaste, you know?" He screwed up his face.

"When did you have beer?" He gave her a don't-be-stupid look, and she remembered what it was like to be fifteen. "Alright. Well," she sighed fatalistically, "you're a smart young man, honey, and you're getting too old for me to keep you from doing what you really want to do—you'll always be able to find a way round me. But you're also the one who will always have to pay the consequences for your actions. If not with me, with someone else."

"I know."

"Okay," she said, praying he truly did know. "Now, what have you done with your grampa? We should both be keeping an eye on
him.
"

Harley chuckled. "I haven't seen him in an hour. Think he took someone up to our suite? Want me to go check?"

"Oh, you." She bumped him with her elbow. He loved seeing her so happy. "Just keep your eyes open. Are you having any fun, honey?"

"Yeah. This whole thing is really out there."

"Okay." She knew 'out there' wasn’t an all bad thing. "Well, I'm supposed to go meet a few people, and I need to find Gary. Did you know he sent the tickets?" He shook his head, smiling. Being Gary's guest was a whole lot better than being Justin's. "Well, he did. Have you seen him in the last few minutes?" She was scanning the crowd.

"Nope."

"If you do, will you tell him I'm looking for him? But don't say anything about the tickets, all right? And behave yourself."

"I will. Is it okay to eat more than once?"

"At these prices, you can eat till they're down to their last soda cracker. Just don't take the last of anything, that's rude."

Walking through the crowd, she was alert to the fact that she was being noticed. People were looking at her, nodding her way when they happened to make eye contact, smiling politely.

Maybe it's the dress, she thought, feeling pretty and basking in the attention, but at the same time realizing an embarrassment at being singled out of the crowd. It had been her habit for so long to blend in, to keep the boat from rocking, to avoid standing out and generating gossip that even being sighted in a pretty dress was uncomfortable.

Well, she'd suffer through it tonight, she decided, her heart laughing deliriously. She couldn't remember being happier. She poked her chest out and walked a little taller, a whole millimeter taller. It was this vertical enhancement that enabled her to spot Gary as he stood talking to two gentlemen and
a
striking woman in a dress as black as her hair.

They appeared to be deep in discussion, and she hesitated, wondering if she should intrude or not. She still hadn't found Earl, and Justin was waiting for her. She could catch up with Gary later.

". . . a garbageman," she heard a woman's voice saying, somewhere to her right. It was like a television commercial for E.F. Hutton, when everything seemed to stand still and the only sound in the huge ballroom was the woman's voice. "He doesn't look like
my
garbageman," she said.

"Are you sure?" her friend asked. "Since when can garbagemen afford to attend charity balls?"

"Well, he's
just
a garbageman. He owns a recycling center and has several other financial interests, but he told Stan that his primary concerns were in everyday garbage."

"You're kidding."

"No. Stan said he was fascinating to listen to. Depressing but interesting and very amusing. Stan liked him. He gave the man his card and wants to invest in some new project he's been talking about."

Rose had heard enough. Her anger swelled to explosion level. She was hurt and ashamed and mortified, too, but all she could feel at the moment was the outrage.

Without looking more than a foot in front of her feet, she approached him.

"Ah, there you are," he said, his familiar voice warm with pleasure. "I was beginning to think that I'd lost you for the rest of the evening. Rose, I'd like you to meet Councilman Yarrell and his wife, Judith. And State Representative Paul McManaway."

"How do you do. Hello," she said, shaking hands but unable to look them in the eye.

"I was just trying to convince Bob here to—"

"Excuse me. I'm sorry," she broke in, weak voiced, trembling with indignation. "But I'd like to leave now. Please."

With a quick glance she could see the concern on their faces and heard it in Gary's voice.

"What's wrong? Are you ill?"

"Yes."

"Has something happened?"

"No, no."

"Are you sure?" he asked, sensing the end of his world and not knowing why or what had happened. Fear sank in bone deep, and he felt half sick to his stomach.

"I'm so sorry," she said again to the most-official people she'd ever been close enough to spit on.

While the three of them murmured their understanding and sympathy to Rose, Gary was shaking hands and promising to get in touch with them soon. She didn't move until she felt his hand at her back, and then it was if he'd flipped her switch and she all but ran to the exit.

"Wait a second. Will you slow down?" He kept trying to take her arm and she kept shaking him off. "Rose. Hold on. What's happened?"

She was slinking past people without seeing them and without touching them, like a black snake in a water maze. Her goal: to get out the end and disappear.

"Rose," he said, taking a tight grip on her arm to slow her down. "Is it Earl? Has something happened? Or Harley? Is he all right?"

She growled and tried to pull away to the anteroom a few short feet away, but he wasn't letting go.

"Talk to me," he said, his tone demanding as he turned her to him and locked his left hand around her right arm.

"No. Not here."

Clearly she wasn't ill, but furious with him. He was so surprised, his hold slipped and she got away. He caught her again in the anteroom between an ancient bronze sacrificial wine holder from China, early Chon period, and a painted steel project by Robert Smithson —some other damn period.

"Yes. Right here, right now," he said. "I want to know what's happened. Why are you so angry?"

She stared at him for a moment, then glanced around to find only two other people in the room. She kept her voice low, but her emotions made it hiss.

"I can't believe you'd do this to me."

"What?"

"Buy those tickets and get me to come and make it seem like something special, and all you really wanted to do is meet rich people and get their backing for your stupid furnace."

"That's not true," he said, looking bewildered. "I did send the tickets,  that's true. And I did want it to be special, but the rest—"

"I trusted you. I thought you knew how important this was to me. I worried about Harley and Earl, but it never once occurred to me that you would deliberately do something like this."

"What? What have I done?"

"Why?" she asked, forgetting to keep her voice down.

"Why what?" He was at the end of his wits and his voice rose as well, drawing unnoticed stares from the ballroom. "You're going to have to calm down and tell me what I've done. I don't know why I'm defending myself."

"You wouldn't. You have no pride. No, you have too much pride. That's what it is. But you should know by now that the world doesn't begin and end in garbage dumps."

His eyes narrowed for a moment as if he were trying to decode a secret message from an alien planet. Then, suddenly, awareness dawned in his expression. He released her and stepped away as if she'd turned slimy in his hands.

"Is that what all this is about?" he asked, overwhelmed with shock and a terrible squeezing ache in his chest. "What I do? The recycling center? The landfills? The incinerator? I wasn't supposed to talk to anyone about them tonight, was I? I wasn't supposed to tell anyone what I do for a living. If they asked, I was supposed to make something up. Lie. But I sure as hell wasn't supposed to tell anyone I was a garbageman, was I, Rose?"

"You could have told them you were something else, yes. It's not as if you hang off the back of a truck. You could have said—"

"Oh, but I do hang off the back of the tracks sometimes. Remember? I told you that the first day we met. You knew who you were getting involved with. I never lied to you. I told you I was a garbageman, and that's exactly what I am. And damned proud of it."

"You've made that very clear. Telling a state representative ..."

"And you've made it very clear that you're ashamed of it." His words vibrated off the walls, sending back waves of hurt and disappointment. Anger too. "Well, I'll tell
you
something, Miss Rosemary Wickum. I don't have a thing in the world to be ashamed of. I don't have to go to fancy parties to pretend to be something I'm not, and I don't have to let pompous pinheads dictate what I do or build things I hate. I am who I am. I won't apologize or pretend otherwise. I'm not like you, Rose."

If she were still fighting mad, she might have asked what he meant by that last remark. But she wasn't angry anymore. She was thinking more clearly, and she knew what he meant.

"As for telling McManaway who I was and what I do, I didn't have to," he said, his voice cold and calm now. "I'm on his subcommittee for urban renewal and refom. Yarrell is working with the Planning Commission to get my incinerator approved. And in case you hadn't noticed, neither one of them was embarrassed to be seen talking to a garbageman tonight."

"Gary, I—" By the time she thought to beg his forgiveness for being shallow and stupid and selfish, he'd stepped around the last of the sculptures and disappeared.

She wasn't sure how long she stood there, wishing the last few minutes away, before the music seeped into her consciousness. The Patrons' Ball. She looked up. Too many accusing eyes stared back at her. She felt like Cinderella at 12:01. Her true identity exposed. Her dress tattered and torn. With no glass slippers to prove the miracle had ever happened. No Prince Charming to love her or come to her rescue. No fairy godmother to give her a second chance.

An incorrect analogy, really. She couldn't be Cinderella. Cinderella was good and sweet and kind. Rose was an ugly stepsister, hateful and mean, pretending to be Cinderella. Always pretending to be someone she wasn't.

Pretending not to care, when she did. Striving to look perfect, when she wasn't. Sacrificing her life to avoid gossip. Wasting a year and a half welding sculptures she hated to please other people. She was a great pretender, and not much more.

One would have hoped that seeing Harley and Earl in the gathering at the ballroom doors would be a relief. It wasn't. They walked toward her with mixed expressions of sadness, disappointment, regret, disapproval, and confusion. Harley tried to smile, he really did, but he couldn't quite manage it. He didn't understand, couldn't imagine why Rose would want to hurt Gary the way she had. He'd wanted Gary to stick around awhile.

Earl, on the other hand, looked resigned. He looked tired. Weary and reconciled to picking up the tiny pieces of her life once again. By the time he reached her, her gaze was locked firmly to the floor, where her hopes and dreams lay drained and desolate. She was prepared for his silent censure, assuming he'd simply take her arm and lead her away. The light touch of his fingers beneath her chin was a surprise then, and she looked at him.

"When you were young, you ran away from it. Then you came back and hid from it. And now you're trying to destroy it. You only get one chance, you know. So before you waste your only shot at this life, you'd better figure out what it is you're aimin' at," he said, then he slipped an arm about her shoulders, turned her, and led her away from the ball.

ELEVEN

The two-and-a-half-hour drive back to Redgrove the next day was difficult, to say the least. The strain between the passengers in the long black limousine was brittle and fragile. Gary's generous nature and the prepaid bills on the hotel suite and the limo contrasted like diamonds in a coal mine to Rose's egotistical, self-indulgent, and hypocritical behavior of the night before. No one spoke and they all found a window to stare out off, fearing that the slightest unguarded glance could disrupt the delicate balance of guilt, love, reproach, support, frustration, and crushing loss between them.

There had been a message waiting when they returned to their rooms, from Lu of all people, insisting that Rose make time to browse the Cannery—a building once owned by Del Monte, now converted into shops and restaurants—before she left San Francisco.
Most important
.

Not much of a shopper in the first place, Rose dismissed the suggestion immediately. Shopping and chocolate and long-distance running—or any of the other coping mechanisms other people used—had never worked for Rose. Alcohol was the traditional escape she was most familiar with, and she had been tempted.

She didn't sleep in the huge bed she'd planned to share with Gary that night. She'd cried some, but she couldn't sleep. She'd cried, not because he was angry with her, but because she'd hurt him. She'd cried, not because she was alone again, but because of the person she was alone with, the person she'd let herself become.

Who was she? When had she become so unthinking and cruel? Having felt looked down upon through most of her life, how could she belittle someone else? Having felt unloved, how could she forsake Gary's kindness and care for false preconceptions and narrow-minded intolerance? If she loved him—and the soul-crushing misery she was feeling actually confirmed that she did—how could she have treated him so badly? If she'd ever felt shame before, it was nothing to the self-loathing she felt now.