Marcia Talley - A Quiet Death

‘Volunteer work, mostly.’

‘Ah.’ There was an awkward silence while I tried to think of something to say. ‘So, you don’t work outside the home?’

‘Not since before the children were born,’ she said. ‘We have two grown daughters.’

‘I wish… I wanted…’ My voice broke rather convincingly. I wasn’t very good at producing tears on demand, so I thought about the sad-eyed, abused and abandoned animals I saw on the Animal Planet channel when Animal Cops came on, and flapped my hand apologetically.

‘I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?’

I shook my head and scrabbled in my purse for a tissue.

‘How long had you been married?’ she asked.

‘Fifteen years. You?’

‘Almost thirty-five years.’

‘Has your husband ever… you know?’

Her gaze was cool. ‘Not to my knowledge.’

‘You’re lucky. Bob’s mistress was his choir director. He was a minister, for Christ’s sake, a man of God. Pardon me while I laugh. Morality isn’t just a concept, it’s supposed to be his business.’

I dabbed at the corners of my eyes. ‘The only good thing about the situation is that I’ll never again have to sit through one of Bob’s excruciating sermons.’

For some reason, this cracked Doro up.

As I joined in the laugh fest, I wondered if she ever watched her husband’s broadcasts and, if so, what she thought about them. Did they ever discuss his programs? At dinnertime, did she offer advice about his choice of wardrobe? Pump him for gossip? Inquire about what his guests were really like? What if she went home tonight and told John over steak and potatoes about the troubled woman she met today, poor Lilith Chaloux, whose husband was cheating on her big time. Would Chandler spew wine all over the tablecloth? Choke on his steak?

Doro smiled sympathetically. ‘In the early years of our marriage, we moved around a lot. I know how hard it is to be the new kid on the block.’

I nodded, sniffling for effect and feeling like a bit of a shit. I had been fully prepared to dislike Doro for depriving Lilith, who I liked a lot, of the love of her life. Disliking Doro would have been a lot easier if she weren’t being so nice.

At a summons from one of her well-coifed minions, who had been hovering nearby like a bodyguard, Doro breezed away in a cloud of Shalini perfume – a gorgeous mélange of bitter orange, coriander and ylang ylang with undertones of sandalwood and vanilla. I’d been squirted with eau de Shalini at Bergdorf Goodman the previous summer and loved it, but when the saleslady told me it cost $900 for a two-ounce bottle, I knew I had to pass. Doro could afford luxuries like that. I wondered what would happen if something threatened that cash flow and suddenly she was reduced to buying Chantilly at WalMart like the rest of us?

Back in the ballroom for a coffee refill (my fifth!), I saw Doro at a distance, standing near the podium conferring with an attractive dark-haired woman wearing black slacks and a lavender brocade jacket, who I took to be our speaker du jour .

‘Lilith?’ somebody said.

I turned. It was Jeannette Williams, chugging toward me like a woman on a mission, holding a white carnation in one hand and a large, pearl-headed corsage pin in the other. ‘We like to present our newcomers with a little something special,’ she said as she pinned the flower to my lapel.

‘Thank you.’ I cringed inwardly, knowing it would mark me as Someone You Must Talk To and Make Feel Welcome, when all I wanted to do was fade into the woodwork.

The effect was almost immediate. Like moths to a flame, club members fluttered over.

‘Jeannette! Please introduce us!’

‘Ah! I saw you talking to Helen Sue earlier and thought you might be new!’

‘Lilith. What an unusual name. Is it French?’

I was the quarterback in the middle of the huddle, except everyone else was calling the plays.

‘No, yes, not French, but Biblical…’

Whirr, click, click, click . I turned my head and found myself face to face with a photographer as she aimed her Nikon D80 and its periscope-like flash attachment in our direction. My heart flip-flopped.

Whirr, click, click, click . At the first flash, the women with me slapped on their perma-grins, sucked it in, posed prettily, while I was caught, wide-eyed, temporarily blinded, like a deer in the headlights. The photographer had a sidekick, I noticed, a buzz-cut reporter with a notebook, steadily advancing. ‘Excuse me,’ I managed to blurt out, panic seizing my vocal cords. ‘I think I’d better visit the powder room before the lecture begins.’ Ducking, I hurried off before the reporter could sidle up to us, ask for our names and how to spell them.

I could see it all. A spread in the Washington Post Style Section: Pictured left to right, Lilith Chaloux and… and… oh shit, those women knew ‘my’ name!

I was doomed.

Several minutes later, I found refuge in the powder room. I plopped myself down in one of a pair of Louis XVI, striped silk-covered dining chairs in front of an enormous gilt mirror, foxed with age, where I was taking deep, steadying breaths. When the door to the powder room creaked open behind me, I knew it couldn’t be the reporter – unless the guy got off on crashing ladies’ restrooms in search of a story – so I ignored the newcomer and began rummaging through the dribs and drabs at the bottom of my handbag, an expedition to lay hands on the tube of lipstick and the stub of an eyeliner pencil I knew was in there somewhere, so I could repair the damage done to my make-up by my crocodile tears.

‘Who the hell are you, anyway?’

I nearly jumped out of my pantyhose. I looked up and into the mirror. Dorothea Chandler stood directly behind me. She wasn’t wearing her happy face.

‘I beg your pardon?’ In the mirror, my eyes looked enormous, innocent, even to me.

‘Is this some kind of sick joke? Just what are you playing at?’

I simply stared at Doro’s reflection, letting it do all the talking.

‘I don’t know who you are, but you are not Lilith Chaloux.’

I opened my mouth to claim that she must be mistaken, she must be thinking about some other Lilith Chaloux, but I knew from my searches of the Internet that the Lilith Chaloux of this world were thin on the ground. I was well and truly busted.

‘I owe you an explanation,’ I said, swiveling around to face her, rearranging my features into the reasonable facsimile of an apologetic smile. ‘Aliens occasionally take over my body, I’m afraid. I came here today because I wanted to talk to you. I should have just introduced myself and asked you right out, rather than playing at silly games.’

Her green eyes narrowed. ‘Asked me what?’

‘If you knew about Lilith Chaloux.’

‘My husband’s mistress? Of course I know about her. But all that ended more than twenty-five years ago.’

‘I realize that, but-’

Doro raised both hands, palms out, cutting me off. ‘Then what are you on about? Do you know who my husband is?’

Even though she managed to make it sound like a threat, I smiled, nodded. ‘John Chandler. Lynx News.’

‘John confessed ages ago,’ Doro said, folding her arms across the shelf of her bosom. ‘I forgave him. We moved on.’

We glared at each other without speaking for several long moments, like gun molls in a spaghetti western; a Mexican stand-off that would only be resolved by diplomacy, surrender or a pre-emptive strike. I tried to put myself in Doro’s patent leather pumps. What would I do if some crazy bitch came up to me at a social event and informed me that Paul had fathered a child by another woman? Would I have ‘moved on’ quite so gracefully? And if Doro didn’t know about Nicholas, I decided I wasn’t the person to rock her world with the bad news.