Waltzing at Midnight (10 page)

“Excuse me,” I said, tentatively. Everybody looked at me. I hope you’re not out of line, I thought to myself. “It seems rather shortsighted to be focusing so heavily on attracting businesses from other California cities. I mean, we win one away from San Diego, and Fresno wins one from us, and you just keep circling about like that. How is that, ultimately, benefiting the economy of the state?”

Nobody said anything for a moment, then Rosie addressed me without a trace of condescension, as though I were one of them. “What would you recommend, Jean?” she asked.

Then I was sorry I’d spoken. I was being asked to give an opinion on a subject I knew nothing about. It would be okay, Rosie, I thought, to treat me like the rest of you if I
was
like the rest of you. Why are you putting me on the spot?

“Well, I don’t know that much about it,” I began. “But just from an outsider’s viewpoint, it seems that stealing business from other California cities is a short-term fix. We can’t be a thriving community in a dying state. We have to consider the health of the larger structure. I would think you’d be putting more emphasis on creating new businesses, new areas of business, high-tech, for instance. Why not try to attract out-of-state companies, even foreign markets to expand to California, Weberstown in particular, which may have a small-town mentality, but hasn’t been a small town for a long, long time. There’s no reason we can’t compete on a large scale.”

I waited to see if they would laugh at me or simply ignore me.

But they didn’t. It was Ken who said, “She’s right. That’s exactly

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right. That’s what we were supposed to be doing here, and we haven’t done it. Most of our recent successes are simply the luring of companies away from our neighbors. You’re perfectly on the mark, uh, what was your name?”

“Jean Davis,” I said.

“Well, Jean, you’re perfectly right. Aren’t you the one handling Rosie’s campaign for mayor?” I nodded. “Well, you’ve done a remarkable job. Since Clark left, Rosie’s skyrocketed back.”

“Jean’s indispensable to me,” Rosie said. She was smiling at me proudly with just a trace of amusement. I knew I was blushing.

“Yes, we’ve lost sight of our original vision,” Rosie said, back on the subject, “because it’s easier to steal businesses looking for a place to relocate than to open up new business opportunities.”

“That sort of thing takes a lot of work and a lot of time,”

someone said. “And I just don’t have it.”

“None of us has been able to devote enough time to this organization,” someone else said. “It’s a full-time job. It takes a lot more than good intentions and ready money.”

“Money I got,” one of them said, “time I don’t got.”

“Maybe we should consider hiring someone,” Rosie suggested.

“If we’ve got money, as you say, Gordon, then let’s pay somebody to do it right.”

They took a vote. It was unanimous. They were all in favor of getting someone else to do the legwork for the Partnership.

After the meeting, Rosie drove me home. “I’m very proud of you, Jean,” she said, not taking her eyes off the road. “You’ve got an instinctive grasp of how things work. And Ken was right, you’ve turned around a campaign that anyone would have labeled hopeless.” She turned the car down my street. “I think you need to reassess your view of yourself and define some more challenging goals for your future. You have a lot more potential than you seem to know. I don’t think you know yourself very well.”

No, I thought, I don’t. Not anymore.

Rosie pulled up to the curb in front of my house and stopped.

She turned and looked at me in the dark. “As you heard, we voted to hire a full-time administrator tonight. In a couple of weeks,

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you’re going to be out of work. So, if you don’t have any other prospects, I want you to take the job. I’ll have to talk to the others about it, of course, but before I make my case for you, I’d like to know if you’re interested.”

I was stunned. About to protest, about to point out my lack of qualifications, I stopped myself. Rosie didn’t want to hear that.

She wanted to hear something positive. She was pushing me into new realms. She thought I could handle it.

“Discuss it with your husband,” Rosie said. “Let me know as soon as you can.”

I discussed it with Jerry. He was less than overjoyed. “If Rosie ever retires from public life,” he said resentfully, “you’ll be unemployed. Why would she hire you for such an important position anyway? You have no qualifications. What’s going on?”

He was jealous. I was confused. A few months ago I would have had the same reaction as Jerry. What insanity would cause anyone to hire me for such a job? But things had changed. I had changed.

I was running a successful campaign for mayor.

“I guess she thinks I can do it,” I said lamely.

“I don’t want you to take it,” he said with finality.

“Why not?”

“It’s not for you. It’s ridiculous to think so.” And then Jerry got angry and blew up at me. “I’ve been putting up with a lot of shit since you’ve been working for Rosie. The only reason I’ve kept quiet about it is that it was going to be over soon. You’re never home. You never talk to me anymore, and when you do grace us with your presence, all you can talk about is poll results, fund-raising dinners, Rosie, Rosie, Rosie. I’m sick to death of Rosie! And now, on the brink of getting my wife back, you tell me you want to take another job working for Rosie. I don’t want you working for Rosie any more. I want you to stay away from her.

After election day, you’re no longer one of Rosie’s minions. Rosie is out of our lives and things will get back to normal. Take a class next semester. Get a job if you want to. But not this one.”

I didn’t really have an argument for Jerry. I understood what he was saying and what he was feeling. But, for some reason, it

4

just didn’t matter as much as it should have.

The next day I told Rosie I’d take the job. Jerry was already apologetic because he’d lost his temper and it was stupid to turn down a full-time job with this much promise. What else could I get? Just more of the same flunky office jobs? No, this was a real opportunity that couldn’t be dismissed.

“Good girl!” Rosie said. “We’ll rent you an office and do this properly. It’s about time the Partnership had its own office anyway.”

Jerry’s objections, though, did make an impression on me.

I tried not to talk about Rosie or her campaign at home at all anymore. I’d seen clearly enough how jealous Jerry was of the time I was devoting to Rosie. But I resented it that he felt entitled to my rapt attention without reciprocation. I was enthusiastic about what I was doing and felt cheated keeping it to myself.

The hour or two after Jerry fell asleep while I lay awake, which happened almost every night now, my mind raced through the events of the day and my plans for tomorrow. Relaxing my thoughts had become quite a challenge. I stared at the luminous red numbers on the alarm clock. It was midnight. I recalled Rosie laughing in her relaxed fashion into the phone, and wondered what she was doing, and with whom, as I gradually fought my way into sleep.

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“The next thing we have to think seriously about is the election night party,” Rosie said. “It has to be planned—food and drinks have to be ordered. I expect we’ll have a couple hundred people.”

“Do you want me to hire someone to organize it?” I asked.

“I was sort of hoping you’d be able to do it. I know I’ve heaped a lot on you, Jean, but the money’s getting tight. This campaign has cost me.”

“Okay,” I said uncertainly.

“Super. Tina has already sent out the invitations and rented the building. All you have to do is take care of decorating, hiring a caterer and servers, and whatever else you think we need.”

I was way out of my comfort zone again. I’d never done anything like this before, had never even invited more than two other couples over to the house, and the only parties I had organized were my kids’ birthday parties. Rosie’s guests would not be interested in pin the tail on the donkey or Neapolitan ice cream. It seemed like every day was stretching me to the limit of

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my capabilities.

When I tried to get Rosie’s help, she waved me off, saying,

“It’s up to you, Jean. Whatever you think.”

For the next several days, my energies were split between running the campaign and planning a party for two hundred people.

“Don’t serve caviar, Mother,” Amy said in an affected voice.

“Too snooty. In politics, you must avoid ostentation.” Why does your daughter sound like Julie Andrews, I asked myself?

“To drink, I thought probably we should have champagne, since it’s a sort of celebration.”

“Sort of?” Amy said. She opened her mouth wide and mouthed “Oh, my God!” silently at me. “Mom, it’s the highlight of your career! It’s your shining hour.”

“Okay. Champagne it is, then.”

“Mom, what about music?”

“Oh, I hadn’t considered that. Do we need music?”

Amy’s mouth fell open again. She stared at me as if I was a major freakazoid.

“I don’t know,” I said. “There’s so much to do. Maybe we can just have the sound system tuned into a classical radio station or something.”

From Amy’s expression, I gathered “major freakazoid” again.

“Let me do it!” she said. “Who better? How many hours do you need? I’ll get Wendy and Tommy and we’ll make some CDs.”

I shook my head. “No. The people at this reception are not going to want to listen to Smashing Mouth or whatever.”

“Mom, do you even know what decade this is?” I didn’t answer. “I know a lot about music, Mom. I know how to do this.

You get some loud, upbeat pop music that doesn’t scream the seventies or something bizarre like that. Something modern that nobody’s gonna notice that much.”

The fact that she wasn’t doing an impression made me realize she was serious. “Okay, Amy, give me three hours. We can repeat it once. That should be enough. I’ll listen beforehand, of course,

and I have veto power.”

Amy was off in an instant with her MP3 collection to round up her friends.

Reporters from all over the country were following our little election for mayor, turning it into a curiosity. It was odd hearing about it on network news. Would a mid-sized California city elect a lesbian for mayor? Rosie had become a symbol after all, despite herself. To the rest of the country, it was probably not much of a story. They wouldn’t think it remarkable because they didn’t understand that California was not just one homogenous, liberal haven for nuts and fruits. For Weberstown, being in California notwithstanding, electing a lesbian mayor was not something to take in stride. If we had ever doubted that, the last few weeks would have put those doubts to rest.

The atmosphere around the office had now taken another dramatic turn. There were more people around, for one thing, with the influx of the gay contingent. Suddenly I was surrounded by gay men and lesbians who, because they were all together in a group, didn’t worry much about how their behavior would impact the few straight people around. There were a lot of off-color remarks and sexual innuendos flying about. Someone had hung an eight-foot long rainbow flag across one wall. I think Rosie was more uncomfortable than I was with these changes. This wasn’t normally the way she ran things in the office, so loosely, so casually, but she appreciated the support and said nothing to discourage the exuberance.

Ginny, who it was now clear to me was also a lesbian, always showed up to volunteer now with her girlfriend Aura. One evening while they were there stuffing envelopes, I approached her, saying, “You knew about Rosie all along, right?”

Ginny nodded matter-of-factly. “Sure.”

It was like that, then, I guessed. There was some secret lesbian society that the rest of us knew nothing about where they all got together and did…whatever they did, and Rosie was a part of that.“So you and Rosie have known each other for a long time?”

“Yep.”

Aura was looking at me suspiciously, I saw, distrusting. She’s scary, I thought, looking at the tattoo on her neck and the rows of silver jewelry on her ears. Maybe if Ginny had been there by herself, I could have questioned her more about Rosie’s secret life. She wasn’t going to offer up anything, apparently. I was frustrated. Here was someone who knew the other Rosie, the one that none of the rest of us had even known existed, and I didn’t know how to pry anything loose from her.

“You’re straight, right?” Aura asked me in a challenging tone.I nodded.

“Thought so,” she said dismissively.

Ginny smiled a little apologetically at me, but said nothing more. So the campaign went gay in the last week and I found myself on the outside looking in.

One of the female volunteers, Tracy, who joined us during the final week, developed an immediate and severe crush on Rosie.

She was about twenty, cute, with a thin, boyish figure. She went all pie-eyed every time she saw Rosie. The second morning after Tracy arrived, as Rosie breezed through, Tracy asked, hopefully,

“Can I get you a cup of coffee, Rosie?”

“No, thank you,” Rosie said, then glared in my direction.

“Jean, I need to see you, please.” I followed her into her office and shut the door. “That girl, Tracy, she’s making me nervous.”

“She adores you.”

“I know she does. That’s what’s making me nervous. Did you just see what happened here? I
do
want a cup of coffee, but now I can’t get one because I just told her I didn’t. I don’t want her to bring me coffee because she’ll hang around in here and look at me like she does and I’ll get irritated and snap at her and she’ll be hurt and probably cry and I’ll feel guilty and try to comfort her and she’ll start apologizing and saying how she can’t help it, how she’s in love with me, and then we’ll have to have a God-awful heart-to-heart talk about her feelings and how she ought to handle it and…well, do you understand?”