Alison Lurie - Last Resort

“I guess so,” said Lee, who considered herself one.

“Like with Barbie’s husband, Bob Hickock. Potentially, he’s a winner, but he’s got a wild streak. Impulsive. He doesn’t care anything about money; he’s not going to get into that kind of trouble. But he’s a hot-blooded bastard, excuse the language. Back when he was in the statehouse I realized what the score was. I told him straight out. Listen here, boy, I said, if you feel like fooling around behind my daughter’s back again, you go out of state. And you pay for it up front; none of this messing around with party workers that could fall for you and make a scandal, or get themselves pregnant and blab to the media. Go to Dallas, I told him. Ask somebody you can trust for a phone number.” Myra sighed.

“Acourse Bob didn’t take my advice,” she added. “So pretty soon this over-the-hill ex-Vegas showgirl got her claws into him. I figured it’d run its course, but he’s still nuts about her. Out of his mind. I phoned him day before yesterday, said would he please call my poor Barbie, and ask her real sweet to come back. She’s just waiting to hear from you, I said. Tell her you’ve given up what’s-her-name. Laverna, yeah. I told him, listen, buddy, Laverna is professional suicide. Her history and some of her old photos get in the papers, you’ll be dead politically.”

“And what’d he say?”

“Aw, he was totally unreasonable. He said maybe that’d be better than the way he was living now. Told me he wished to God he’d stayed in North Gulch and just practiced law. Maybe he’d resign his seat and go back there, he said. They were decent people, they’d like Laverna, they’d accept her. In a pig’s eye.” Myra laughed sourly. “I know those small towns.

“Course, Bob was just bluffing,” she added. “He’ll calm down in a while, see reason. If he wants to stay in Congress he’ll do what I tell him in the end, ’cause I’ve got too much dirt on him. But there’s no use talking to him again until Barbie comes to her senses.”

“Mh,” Lee uttered.

“Lord God, the whole thing makes me sick sometimes.” Myra stopped rocking and stared out the window at the pale-green palms blowing in the warm green wind. “I look back over my life, y’know, and I see what I did wrong so clear. All that time I wasted trying to get some man elected. Standing behind some dope who couldn’t learn what we had to teach him, didn’t appreciate the time and, Holy Jesus, the money we put into his campaign. If I’d seen the light sooner, I would have run for office myself years ago. I figure I could have made it to the state senate at least. Maybe further.”

“Maybe you still could,” Lee suggested.

“Naw. It’s too late. I might not look it, but I’m sixty-five.”

“Really?” Lee reexamined Myra’s appearance: the upright posture, square jaw, tight skin, helmet of reddish-brown hair. She had estimated Jacko’s aunt as at least ten years younger.

“I should’ve gone to law school, but nice Christian girls didn’t do that back in the fifties. The Fudd women mostly got married right from college. Before graduation sometimes, like I did. After that they didn’t work outside the home, that was the idea, though my aunt Sophie ran a two-thousand-acre ranch. I was brainwashed, like those crazy feminists say. They’re not so dumb sometimes.”

“No,” Lee said. Again she felt some sympathy, and had to remind herself that if Myra Mumpson had gone into politics she would have been against everything Lee was for. She would have been anti-gay, anti-choice, anti-affirmative action. It was one of the things that had made Lee give up therapy: the realization that half the time she was helping people she didn’t like to become strong and confident enough to do things she didn’t like, such as write deceptive advertising and sell jerry-built condos.

“I have to plan my schedule for the next couple of months now,” she announced, assuming that Myra would take this broad hint and shut up.

But apparently the hint was not broad enough. “Never a letup in the hotel business,” Myra said. “I know. I have a friend back home, she runs a B and B too. You wouldn’t believe the thefts, the damage, the last-minute cancellations—Well, I guess you would. Except you’ve probably got it easier. That was a smart notion of yours, only renting to women. Cuts down on wear and tear, I bet.”

“Mm,” Lee agreed, bending over a full-page calendar for the third week of April.

“I guess you get some homosexual couples, too,” Myra continued.

“Yeah,” Lee almost growled. You give people the wrong impression, she told herself; you look too straight. But what the hell was she supposed to do about that? Should she wear overalls and heavy leather boots, and get a crew cut? But an outfit like that would be intolerably hot in Key West; besides, Lee liked her long, thick, near-black gypsy hair, and so did other women. For instance, Jenny—

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you should turn them away,” Myra said, apparently registering Lee’s angry inward expression. “After all, it’s good business. And just between ourselves, I don’t see the harm.” She rocked more slowly. “Not like with the men. The things they get up to, I don’t even want to think about. Disgusting.” She gave a little shudder.

“Women, that’s different,” Myra continued. “My aunt Sophie Fudd, that I mentioned to you before, she never married. Lived most all her life in a big bungalow out on the ranch with her best friend, Rose, who taught fifth grade in town. There was some talk now and then, jokes about old maids. But they were respected. And the way I see it, if they did cuddle a little and make each other happy, what was the harm, right?”

“Yeah,” Lee agreed, recognizing what Jacko had meant when he described his aunt as “steamrollering you with her opinions.” With a conscious sense of resisting heavy road machinery, she added: “Matter of fact, I’m that way myself.”

“That so?” Myra gave Lee a long, interested look that made her wonder if she was about to make a similar declaration. “Well, live and let live is what I say.” She rocked back and forth, then consulted an expensive watch. “What’s the matter with Perry and Sis? They should’ve been here half an hour ago. Didn’t you hear me tell him we have to catch a five-thirty plane?”

“I heard you,” Lee admitted.

Myra stopped rocking. “Well, I’m not going to hang around waiting any longer,” she announced. “I’m going back to the hotel. You tell Perry when he gets here, I expect them to be there at four o’clock. Sharp. And the same for Barbie, if she turns up.”

For ten minutes, Lee worked on her schedule uninterrupted. Then, far more quietly than her sister had left, Dorrie Jackson drifted up the steps. She was wearing a faded oversized white shirt that had belonged to Jacko, and her floppy green hat.

“Perry’s dropping off some orchids,” she explained. “He’ll be back soon. Where’s Myra and Barbie?”

“They left.” Lee decided not to go into details. “Myra got tired of waiting.”

“Oh, dear,” Dorrie squeaked, apparently not deceived by Lee’s softening of this message. “Was Myra awfully cross?”

“No, not really. She said he was supposed to meet them at the hotel at four.”

“Oh, Perry knows that. Is it all right if I wait for him here?”

“Yeah, of course.”

Like her sister, Dorrie chose the rocker; but she settled back fully onto the handwoven purple cushion, and the motion and sound she produced were minimal.

“You’ve been a real good friend to Perry; he told me so,” she murmured presently. “I’m so glad of that. And acourse you don’t hold it against him that he’s the way he is.”