Waltzing at Midnight (6 page)

Does she even know you?”

Embarrassed, I said nothing for a moment. “That doesn’t 42

sound like me,” I finally said. “You’re exaggerating. Faye’s known me since high school.”

“I’m not exaggerating,” Rosie said seriously. “You underestimate yourself. Although you haven’t been with us long, I believe that your being here has made a significant difference.

I’ve watched you soaking everything in like a sponge and somehow instinctively knowing what to do with the information you absorb. You’re somebody who can get things done. That might not sound like a great talent, but believe me, it is. It’s valuable and it’s rare.” She paused and smiled warmly at me. “I know it’s a meaningless offer, but I’d like you to take over my campaign. Clark’s quit. He said it’s because I wasn’t totally honest with him, but I think it’s also because he’s not comfortable with the sexuality issue. Will you do it?”

Shocked, I asked, “Me?”

“Well, you needn’t be flattered because you’d be minding an empty store. You’d be the clean-up crew.”

“Okay,” I heard myself say. “Sure, I’ll do it. Imagine, me a campaign manager.”

I was ecstatic. Jerry wasn’t as happy for me as I’d thought he’d be. “Great,” he said. “Manager for a loser.” Jerry’s sarcasm toward Rosie, which had appeared as soon as he’d learned she was gay, angered and embarrassed me. He wasn’t the only one who had changed, though. The climate I’d been working in for the past couple of months flip-flopped overnight. The attitude at headquarters was defeat-oriented, and the new polls bore out that pessimism. Rosie’s popularity had plummeted. There were other indicators too. Some of the people I talked to were openly hostile. One man on the street even muttered “filthy dyke” as he walked away. He was referring to me. And not only did people withdraw their support, but they made a point of being nasty about it, making sure we knew why. I didn’t tell Rosie about the unpleasantness. I didn’t have to. She knew how it was. We had lost several of our volunteers too, for various reasons, including sheer disappointment. Or, like Clark, they felt misled because Rosie had kept this fact about herself from them. Ginny, however, was 43

still on board, and I realized that I wasn’t surprised about that.

Rosie kept her previously-made appointments, but she made it clear that she didn’t want to load up her calendar. She was winding down, merely playing out the hand. In public, she remained the upbeat candidate, but she no longer hid her frustration, at least not from me.

“Every time I walk out that door,” she said, “somebody asks me about my sexual orientation. They don’t want to talk about crime anymore. Now they want to know if I support same-sex marriage legislation. What the hell does that have to do with being mayor of this city?”

It became clear to me as these issues arose and were discussed that Rosie had adopted a strategy long ago for protecting herself from the homophobic society she inhabited. It was the way she always operated, completely separating her private and public lives. For most of us, that wouldn’t happen because there was no need for that kind of privacy. Personal privacy, in fact, was becoming a sort of archaic notion, especially with the prevalence of cell phones, but for someone whose private life had the potential for bringing condemnation, it was probably a natural adaptation and had worked well for her up until now. Having operated that way for so long, she found it truly frustrating to have to deal with the public idea of that private self, with how her two separate worlds were now merging.

That frustration was no more apparent than when other people were dragged through that previously locked gate. One morning I took a call from a woman identifying herself only as

“Sue.”

“There are reporters asking me questions,” she said. “What am I supposed to tell them?” Her voice was quiet, shy.

“Say as little as possible,” I advised her. “Just say she’s a friend and keep it at that. You don’t have to answer anything.”

When Rosie came in, I told her about Sue’s call.

“How do they find these things out?” she asked, disgusted.

“I’ve already lost the election, so what’s the point? Why are they out there harassing my friends?” Rosie stood in the center of the 44

room, looking distraught, watching me. “I can’t imagine what’s going on in your mind,” she said, “what kind of picture you’re getting of my life. You’re probably wondering if droves of them are going to start oozing out of the woodwork.” She wanted to know if I was judging her. She didn’t wait for a reply. She walked toward her office, saying, “I think I’ll give Sue a call. She’s not very good at standing up to people.”

It intrigued me that Rosie had kept on good terms with her ex-lovers. They seemed to respect her, the two that I knew about, and she referred to them as her “friends.”

Thankfully, no story appeared about Sue. But there were other disturbing reactions.

Three days after Rosie’s press conference, I came home to find the banner in my front yard vandalized. In the hand that was raised into a wave, someone had drawn an oversized and finely-detailed dildo in red paint. Standing beside my car and without a thought in my head, I pushed my fist into the driver’s-side window.

It shattered in the frame into a spiderweb of broken glass. I stood in the driveway, shaking all over, pain shooting through my hand.

A moment later, Jerry drove up. He saw the banner and then the window. Rushing over to me, he said, “Are you okay?”

I moved my fingers tentatively and nodded to him. He went over to uproot the stakes of the desecrated banner. I walked into the house, then sat at the computer and wrote a letter to the editor of the
Sentinel
, the knuckles of my hand stinging. When Jerry came in, I kept writing and didn’t greet him.

“That was a stupid thing to do,” he muttered. “I’m surprised you didn’t break your hand.” He called a glass shop and arranged to have the window replaced the next day, Saturday.

“Thank you for taking care of that,” I said. “You’re right. It was a stupid thing to do.”

I called Gary at the
Sentinel
and told him I was sending him a letter and wanted to see it in tomorrow’s edition.

“I’ll see what I can do, Jean. Hey, sorry about…you know.”

“Yes, I know.”

Saturday morning Jerry brought the newspaper to the 45

breakfast table, having read my letter to the editor. “Who wrote this for you?” he asked. “Rosie?”

I took the paper from him. “Nobody wrote it for me. I wrote it myself.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“It doesn’t sound like you. I guess I’ve never read anything you wrote before, except personal letters. It’s very articulate.”

“Your compliments are really backhanded,” I said.

“Don’t you think you’re getting a little carried away, Jeannie?

If this is a sincere appeal, you’re going to be very disappointed when she loses.”

I didn’t answer him. Instead, I read my letter to see how it sounded in print.

I’m writing out of appalling disbelief at the reaction of the citizens
of my city to the rumor put out by the Kiester campaign that Rosie
Monroe is gay. Before that rumor broke, she was leading in the mayoral
race by twenty points, her lead climbing daily. And rightly so. Few
people have done more for Weberstown than Rosie has. She’s worked
hard to make this a better place to live for all of us. She’s worked largely
without recognition or any thought of recompense. She entered politics
reluctantly, pushed into it by those who know how much she can benefit
this town.

We are all aware by now of some of Rosie’s accomplishments. She
almost single-handedly saved the adult literacy program from shutting
down last year. Her Women in Business directorship has allowed that
organization to feed and clothe over one hundred homeless children
this year alone. Her work with the Weberstown Arts Commission has
contributed a renewed energy to the fine arts in our community, and the
beautiful new portrait gallery of the museum wouldn’t exist without her
efforts. I could go on and on, but why bother? Most of us already know
Rosie as one of our most valuable citizens. Why have so many chosen
to ignore all that now? Because some low-handed, desperate politician
whose morals must certainly come into question has slandered her to get
your vote? So, am I to conclude that the sleaziest of political shenanigans
has worked?

46

Rosie is not an experienced politician. She’s a humanitarian and
public servant by nature. She’s the kind of person I would be proud to
have as mayor. I will be very much ashamed if we allow the despicable
political machinery of this town to sway us from the right choice. Rosie
deserves your support. As an ordinary, middle-class citizen, wife and
mother of two, my vote goes unhesitatingly to Rosie.

“Not bad,” I said. “Looks even better in print.” Jerry was watching me, I saw, warily.

He finished his coffee and stood. “I’ve got to go get that window replaced.” He took hold of my hand and rubbed his thumb lightly over the most obvious bruise. “What are your plans?”

“I’ve called Faye. She’s giving me a lift to the office, so I won’t need your car.”

Faye and I arrived at the office before Rosie who, a few minutes later, came in grinning and holding a copy of the newspaper. “Jean, you clever girl,” she said. “What a beautiful letter. So sincere, so full of earnest appeal. And the part about being a wife and mother—brilliant!”

“Well, it’s true,” I pointed out.

“Yes, so it is.” She looked momentarily sheepish. “Doesn’t quite capture you, though, does it? Well, it’s a strong hit at the conscience of the voters, and I thank you, but I don’t think it’s worth throwing the punch.”

“I’m just so angry,” I said.

“I know you are. Get over it. It won’t help. But I appreciate the effort.”

“We need to find a way to deal with this issue, put it behind us and move on,” I said. “Your refusal to answer questions about it may be keeping it alive.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I don’t know. I’ll try to think of something.”

Monday morning, we got a call from a representative of the National Gay and Lesbian Alliance. Rosie agreed to take it and was on the phone about fifteen minutes.

“What did they want?” I asked when she emerged from her 4

office.

“They wanted to take up my cause. They wanted to launch a media blitz, put my story in newspapers, magazines, that sort of thing, put a face to the problem. You know, isn’t it a travesty that this kindly old grandmother couldn’t get elected as her hometown mayor because she’s a lesbian.”

“Kindly old grandmother?” I asked.

“Okay, I’m exaggerating. But you get the idea.”

“What did you say?”

“I said no, thank you.” Rosie sat at the empty desk next to mine. “I know that such stories need to be printed, and I considered it, but that sort of publicity wouldn’t be good for this town. I don’t want our city to be portrayed in the media as a symbol of homophobia.”

“I don’t understand why you’re so concerned about a city that’s treating you this way.”

“I know you’re angry right now, but the town’s been good to me, Jean. I’ve always known that this wasn’t San Francisco, or even Sacramento. This town is having its share of growing pains these days. Sexual orientation is not the only issue that these people are struggling with. Sometimes we’ve had a tough challenge to convince people that the town needs things like an arts commission, for instance, or that it should pay for a museum exhibit when crime and unemployment rates are high. They don’t understand the connection. I thought I could really do something for this city as mayor.”

She was more forgiving than I was in the light of all of the insults we were encountering, but it occurred to me that Rosie, having been gay all her life, had a lot more experience with homophobia than I did and had probably learned a little bit about how to let it roll off. That was not an easy life, I imagined. It was certainly not the path of least resistance. Nothing like mine, in fact. I had followed the easiest possible path. I had married my last boyfriend out of high school and had easily flowed through twenty years of normalcy without anyone ever challenging or questioning me, least of all myself.

4

Rosie’s next scheduled interview was on a local cable TV talk show hosted by David Foster. She asked me to cancel it.

“Why?” I asked.

“I’m tired of evading the issue of my sexual orientation.

Foster is bound to ask me about it. He’s not a particularly kind interviewer.”

“Maybe you should quit evading the issue,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“Answer his questions.”

She said nothing, appearing unsure.

“What have we got to lose?” I asked.

“Let me think about it. There’s not much fight left in me, Jean. I’m tired. A couple more weeks and we can get on with our lives. After this, I’m going to try to rest up for a while. How about you?”

I stuttered. “Uh, I don’t know.” Soon it would all be over.

The idea panicked me. I’d have to find something else to do.

“My daughter gave me a copy of the course catalog from her college,” I said. “I’ve been looking through it, trying to decide on a practical, job-oriented class. I’m just not sure what would make sense.” I produced the catalog and handed it to Rosie.

“Something to do with business, I guess.” Rosie flipped through the pages. “How about beginning economics? That’s a practical, useful starting point.”