Hardscrabble Road (19 page)

E
llen Harrigan was rarely
faced with the truth about her life as Drew Harrigan’s wife, and when she was, she responded to the information by going
shopping. That was what she was doing today, in spite of the cold and the wind that made even the lobby of her own apartment
building feel uninhabitable. It wasn’t that the lobby was cold. The lobby was never cold. It was the sound of the wind rattling
the doors that caused the problem, which was that sitting there in one of the chairs arranged for visitors, waiting for her
car to show up, she felt as if she were in a house with a ghost in it. Ellen Harrigan believed in ghosts. She believed in
angels, too, and in a God whose personality was very like that of Fred Rogers, although she didn’t like Fred Rogers or his
neighborhood at all. PBS was bad. She knew that. She’d
known it even before she’d married Drew. PBS was taxpayer-supported television for rich people, and not rich people like her.

The truth about Ellen Harrigan’s life was this: she knew absolutely nobody anymore. The friends she had had before she married
Drew had all melted away. They weren’t comfortable in the big apartment, and they couldn’t follow her to the kind of department
stores where she now did her shopping. They were elementary school teachers and nurses and typists, just the way she had been
before she’d been married. She’d grown up with most of them, gone through Brownies and Girl Scouts with them before the Girl
Scouts became the latest outpost of lesbian feminism, taken First Holy Communion with them in white dresses and white veils
and white patent leather shoes with cultured pearls on the toes. They watched Touched by an Angel every week, without fail.
They went to the movies when there was something good on, like Titanic. They had dinner out every month at a Chili’s or a
TGI Friday’s. They weren’t comfortable in her living room, with the pictures on the walls of herself and Drew with President
Bush at the inaugural ball, with Newt Gingrich at the launch of his new book, with Senator Santorum at some party somewhere
where Ellen had had to wear a ball gown made of shimmering blue silk. Ellen wasn’t really comfortable with all that either,
but she found she couldn’t go back to TGI Friday’s. She was out of place, and she had no idea how it had happened.

The problem was, there was nobody from this life, either, to take up her time. The women she met, even the women on their
own side, were all like Martha and Danielle. They had degrees from big-name colleges like Yale and Vassar. They talked about
federalism in family policy and reconfiguring the tax code to favor traditional family forms and entrepreneurship. They were
always writing books. In spite of the time they spent defending “stay at home moms” from the evils of elitist liberal feminism,
Ellen didn’t think a single one of them would opt to be a stay at home mom herself, and none of them had any time during the
day to do things like go to a movie or have lunch. They all had jobs, and the kinds of jobs that ate up ninety hours in the
work week.

The car was here, and Ellen got up to let the driver hold the front door for her and then hold the car door for her, because
she was supposed to do that. When he got into the front seat, she tapped on the glass and leaned forward.

“Not downtown right away,” she said. “I want to go to Christopher’s.”

“You have an appointment at the hairdresser?”

He sounded hesitant, because if she’d had an appointment at the hair-dresser he should have known about it. Her scheduler
should have said something.

“I don’t have an appointment, no,” she said. “I just want to stop there and check something.”

It didn’t matter if she had an appointment or not. They’d take her. There was something good about being married to Drew.

Christopher’s was not very far away. It was only a matter of a couple of intersections. On another day, she might have walked
the distance, although she had to be careful with that. Most people didn’t know who she was, or who she was married to, and
wouldn’t recognize her if their lives depended on it, but the true Drew-haters—and there were more of those than you’d think—were
relentless. She’d been cornered on the street on several occasions, as if she could do anything about the way Drew talked
about Social Security or Head Start on the air.

It was after ten o’clock. When they pulled up to Christopher’s, the driver double-parked next to a Volvo and a Saab and started
to get out to open her door for her.

“You don’t have to do that,” she said quickly, popping the door herself.

The door buzzed open, and Ellen pushed it in. The receptionist was on her feet with her hand out.

“Mrs. Harrigan,” she said. “Am I supposed to have you down for an appointment? I don’t remember you in the book.”

“No, no,” Ellen said. “I just, I was wondering, if Hermoine had a minute, do you know? It’s just. Things.”

The receptionist made no gesture that indicated she had understood what Ellen was talking about, or cared. She went back behind
her desk and picked up the phone. She must have talked to Hermoine. Ellen didn’t hear her. She was staring at the photographs
on the walls as if she’d never seen them before.

A moment later, Hermoine came in, a sensible-looking middle-aged woman in flat rubber-soled shoes and hair she had let go
naturally gray. If Hermoine cared about looking as young as she felt, nobody knew.

“Mrs. Harrigan?” she said.

“Oh,” Ellen said. “Well.”

“Come on back,” Hermoine said.

There wasn’t much to the back. Christopher’s wasn’t a big place. They never scheduled more than ten or twelve hair appointments
a day, and maybe as many manicures. They just charged enough for each so that they didn’t have to do more.

Hermoine’s office was a little closetlike space near the door that led to the back alley where the garbage was taken out.
Hermoine went in first, and sat behind her desk. She waved Ellen to a chair.

“If you have an emergency, we can do something for you, of course,” she said. “But it really helps if you know beforehand.
I know that’s not always possible—”

Ellen hadn’t taken the chair. “It isn’t that kind of an emergency. It’s just. Things.”

Hermoine licked her lips. If Ellen hadn’t known it was impossible, she’d have said the woman was annoyed. Hermoine was never
annoyed. “What things?” Hermoine said.

It was, Ellen thought, the sound of the human voice she needed. It didn’t matter if it was annoyed or not. “Things,” she said.
“I was sitting in the apartment. I was showered and dressed and all done up and that was it. The whole place felt like it
was pressing in on me. I don’t think I’ve been out much at all since Drew went into rehab, and it’s more than twenty days
before he comes back, and I thought I was going crazy.”

“Ah.”

“And I felt—wrong. Do you know what I mean?”

“No.”

“I felt bad. Guilty, I guess. Because except for the loneliness, I hate to say this, but except for the loneliness it’s been
better with him gone than with him here. It’s not him, you understand. I like having him around. It’s all the stuff that goes
on. The people who shout at him. The people who call. You wouldn’t believe the people who call. I can’t answer my own phone.
They call and swear at me.”

“At you?”

“About Drew,” Ellen said. “They don’t really care about me. It’s all about Drew. It really is. The ones who stop me on the
street are the same way. And of course I don’t know what they’re talking about, and then they get mad at me and call me names,
and half the names I don’t know either. It’s not Drew himself, you know. It’s the show.”

“It must have calmed down some, then, since Mr. Harrigan has been … away.”

“Not really,” Ellen said. There was the chair, empty. Hermoine expected her to sit in it. Ellen usually tried to do what was
expected of her, because it was easier, and it meant that fewer people got mad at her. She sat. “They come up to me and talk
to me about the rehab now. They call him a hypocrite. They call me a hypocrite, although I don’t get that. How do they know
what I believe in to know that I’m a hypocrite? I never say anything about anything in public. I just wear a dress and smile.
And then there are the people from his office. They’re always trying to tell me things. They’re trying to tell me Drew is
going to go to jail, except now they say that he won’t.”

“Now?” Hermoine sounded puzzled. Ellen was glad that she no longer sounded annoyed. “Why now?”

“Because that man has disappeared,” Ellen said. “That awful homeless man. I never get his name straight. The one who got Drew
the drugs. The one who was suing him. Can you imagine that? He got Drew the drugs and he was suing Drew for ruining his life
or something, and the lawyers were all taking it seriously. It’s like Drew says. The courts are out of control. They’re run
by a bunch of liberal idiots who want to destroy the country and turn it over to the UN to run.”

“Ah,” Hermoine said.

Ellen shifted in the chair. It was a terrible chair. She had never been in Hermoine’s office before. She thought it was not
outfitted in the expectation that Hermoine would have visitors. Or, at least, not visitors from among her clients, who were
used to comfortable chairs.

“Anyway,” Ellen said, “he’s disappeared, or something. Do you want to know what woke me up this morning? My cell phone rang.
The number is supposed to be a secret. It’s not under my name. The only people who know what it is are Drew and a few of his
assistants at the office. But somebody got it. And it rang.”

“And?”

“And whoever it was accused me of having that terrible man killed,” Ellen said, and suddenly she was so near tears she couldn’t
keep them back. It made no sense. She hadn’t felt like crying when the call had come this morning. She hadn’t felt like crying
at any time since. At first, she’d merely been angry. Then she’d been afraid. Then she’d been—claustrophobic, that was the
word. “They said Drew had had it done, had hired a hit man, from rehab. Can you imagine? He’s not even allowed to talk to
me from rehab, and he’s supposed to be hiring hit men to chase homeless people around and have them killed. It was awful.
You wouldn’t believe how awful it was. And I was afraid he’d call back. So I put the cell phone down the garbage disposal.”

“What?” “I know, I know,” Ellen said. “It wasn’t the most sensible thing. I know it wasn’t. But I couldn’t help myself. Whoever
it was had an awful voice, and he just went on and on. About how he knew we’d had that man killed, and how he was going to
tell the police about it, and how Drew was going to die from lethal injection and that’s what ought to happen to somebody
who’s such a big supporter of the death penalty. Except he didn’t say supporter. He said, I remember, cheerleader. Such a
big cheerleader for the death penalty.”

“And when all this happened you put the cell phone in the garbage disposal?”

“That’s right,” Ellen said. “And then I called for the car, because I wanted to get out of the apartment. I thought he might
have the number for the regular phone, too. I mean, those calls get screened, but things get through. You wouldn’t believe
it. People leave messages on the answering machine. I didn’t want to be in the apartment anymore, just in case, and it was
so quiet. I had to get out. I thought I’d go shopping.”

“Instead you came here.”

“Yes, well. I didn’t want to start talking about all this in a department store somewhere where everybody could hear me. You
have to be careful with things like that. You say things and you don’t think there’s anybody around to listen, and then everything
you’ve said shows up on the front page of the National Enquirer the very next Monday. Drew’s been on the front page of the
Enquirer enough. And to think I used to actually like that newspaper.”

Hermoine sighed. “It would have been easier if you’d called ahead,” she said, “but we’ll manage something. How about a manicure
and some new color for your nails? That will give you time to rest and think about things. All I ask is that you consider
calling the police when you leave us this morning.”

“Calling the police? Why? The police are the ones who are persecuting Drew.”

“Maybe. But that phone call sounds like a threat, or something close to it. You have no idea who made it. Somebody may be
looking to do you harm.”

“Just because I’m married to Drew?”

“There are a lot of crazy people in the world.”

“I know there are a lot of crazy people in the world,” Ellen said, “but they’re all liberals. Aren’t they? Wasn’t this man
a liberal?”

“I think it should be enough that he was threatening your husband with death, even if it was death by execution,” Hermoine
said. “You shouldn’t take threats lightly. And you shouldn’t ignore them. And I think your husband would say the same if he
were here.”

“I wish he was here,” Ellen said. “I hate rehab. You have no idea how I hate rehab.”

Hermoine didn’t say anything to that. She just stood up, and Ellen automatically stood with her. It was true, though. She
really did hate rehab, and she hated even more all the things that were connected to rehab. She was sure, though, that Drew
would never order anybody killed.

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” she said, as Hermoine led her from the room in the direction of the manicurist. “Why would
Drew want to murder some stupid old man who wasn’t worth anything to anybody? If he was going to murder somebody, he’d murder
somebody who mattered.”

R
ay Dean Ballard understood
that the term “out” had come to cover a lot of other things besides being gay. There were people who said they were “out”
as shopaholics, for instance, and people who said they were “out” as liberal Democrats, especially if they lived in the South.
There was an entire movement to convince atheists to “come out,” and Ray Dean could never hear the term without thinking of
young women in white dresses making deep curtseys in the middle of a ballroom floor. There was no movement anywhere to help
people like Ray Dean Ballard to come out, and he didn’t expect there to be one soon. He kept wondering how long he was going
to get away with it. For now, people wrote off what they thought of as his “eccentricities” by saying he came from the South,
and you could never tell what people from the South would do. There was nobody in this office who had gone to Vanderbilt with
him, or even to Emory or SMU, where they might have known someone in his family. There was nobody here who could expose him
for who and what he was, except Kate, and he didn’t count her. She wouldn’t expose him for the same reason he wouldn’t expose
her. He had no idea why he was thinking about this now, on this particular morning, when what he was supposed to be worrying
about was what had happened to Sherman Markey. He wondered why it was that so many people who did the kind of work he did
found it necessary to hate all things graceful, and elegant, and true.