At sundown, Emily came out of her birding lair and asked, “Have you seen Edward?” She had binoculars in one hand and a birding book in the other, and her eyes were wide. I was still in the studio, and her inquiry startled me.
“Maybe he stayed for the evening rise or—”
“I wonder if you should go look for him. He doesn’t see well in the dark. It will be dark soon, won’t it? What time is it, anyway?”
“I don’t have my watch, but I’ll walk up and see how he’s getting along.”
“Don’t bother him if there are bugs on the water. He gets furious. What time did you say it was?”
“I left my watch on the dresser.”
“What difference does it make? We can tell by the sun.”
“Okay, here I go.”
“And if he’s intent, please don’t disturb him.”
“I won’t.”
“He gets furious.”
When I got back, I sat with Emily on the sun porch waiting for the sheriff. She was weeping. “He’s with that woman.”
“What woman, Emily?”
“The one with those huge hats. Francine. I thought that was over.”
I refrained from noting that Edward would have had no means of conveyance to “Francine.” Perhaps, she knew more than I thought and was escaping into this story. As time went on, “Francine” came to seem something portentous. Emily hung on to the idea even after the sheriff arrived, who seemed to us old folks an overgrown child, bursting out of his uniform. He listened patiently as Emily explained all about Francine. He nodded and blinked throughout.
“She met him in the lobby of the Alexis Hotel in Seattle and lured him to her room. That was back in the Reagan years, and she has turned up several times since.”
“Ma’am,” said the sheriff — and I remember thinking that this big, pink, kindly, bland child of an officer was the right person to say “ma’am” as slowly as he did—“Ma’am, I can’t really comment on that other lady, but this creek comes straight off the mountain, and we’re a long way from town.” Emily watched him closely as he made his case. She was quiet for a moment.
“He’s dead, isn’t he. I knew this would happen.” Emily turned to me. “I suppose that settles it.” I couldn’t think of one thing to do except wrinkle my brow in affected consternation. “Well,” said Emily. “I hope she’s happy now.”
Prairie Girl
When the old brothel — known as the Butt Hut — closed down, years ago, the house it had occupied was advertised in the paper: “Home on the river: eight bedrooms, eight baths, no kitchen. Changing times force sale.” The madam, Miriam Lawler, an overweight elder in the wash dresses of a ranch wife, beloved by her many friends, and famous for having crashed into the drive-up window of the bank with her old Cadillac, died and was buried at an exuberant funeral, and all but one of the girls dispersed. Throughout the long years that the institution had persevered, the girls had been a constantly changing guard in our lively old cow town. Who were they? Some were professionals from as far away as New Orleans and St. Louis. A surprising number were country schoolteachers, off for the summer. Some, from around the state, worked a day or two a week but were otherwise embedded in conventional lives. When one of them married a local, the couple usually moved away, and over time our town lost a good many useful men — cowboys, carpenters, electricians. This pattern seemed to land most heavily on our tradespeople and worked a subtle hardship on the community. But it was supposed by the pious to be a sacrifice for the greater good.
Mary Elizabeth Foley was the one girl who stayed on after the Butt Hut closed. She retained a pew at the Lutheran church, just as she had while working for Miriam. No one sat with her at first, but gradually people moved over, with expressions of extraordinary virtue. The worldly old pastor must have cited some Christian duty. It fell to Mrs. Gladstone Gander — not her real name but a moniker bestowed by others with less money — to ask the aggressive but traditional local question: “Where are you from?”
Mary Elizabeth replied, “What business is it of yours?”
Where was the meekness appropriate to a woman with her past? It was outrageous. From then on, the energy that ought to have been spent on listening to the service was dedicated to beaming malice at Mary Elizabeth Foley. Even the men joined in, though it was unlikely that they had entirely relinquished their lewd fantasies. Soon she had the pew to herself all over again and greeted it each Sunday with happy surprise, like someone finding an empty parking spot right in front of the entrance to Walmart.
The rest of the town was suspicious of Lutherans, anyway, and would have been more so if Gladstone Gander — not his real name — hadn’t been president of the bank that was the only lending institution in town, and if his wife had not been the recognized power behind the throne. Mary Elizabeth was a depositor at the bank and would have enjoyed modest deference on that basis, but everything changed when she eloped with Arnold, the son and only child of the banker and his wife, whose actual names were Paul and Meredith Tanner.
Since it was a small town, and functioned reliably as a Greek chorus, the Tanners had never been free of the pressure of being the parents of Arnold, a gay man. Now that Arnold had married, appearances were much improved, or would be once time had burnished Mary Elizabeth’s history. In town, there were two explanations for the marriage. The first held that Mary Elizabeth Foley had converted Arnold by using tricks she had learned at the Butt Hut. The second was that she intended to take over the bank. Only the second was true, and the poor Tanners never saw it coming. But it wouldn’t have worked if Arnold and Mary Elizabeth hadn’t been in love.
Mary Elizabeth was an ambitious woman, but she was not cynical. In Arnold she saw an educated lost soul. She had great sympathy for lost souls, since she thought of herself as one, too. She lacked Arnold’s fatalism, however, and briefly thought that she could bring him around with her many skills. Once she realized the futility of that, she found new ways to love him and was uplifted to discover their power. She delighted in watching him arrange the clothes hanging in his closet and guessing at his system. He had ways with soft-boiled eggs, picture hanging, checkbook balancing, and envelope slitting that she found adorable. She could watch him stalking around the house with his fly-swatter in a state of absorbed rapture. He brushed her hair every morning and played intelligent music on the radio. He had the better newspapers mailed in. Mary Elizabeth was not a social climber, but she did appreciate her ascent from vulgarity and survival. They slept together like two spoons in a drawer, and if she put her hands on him suggestively and he seemed to like it, she didn’t care what he was imagining. She had been trained to accept the privacy of every dream world.
When they returned from their elopement, in Searchlight, Nevada, the Tanners welcomed them warmly. After a preamble of Polonian blather, Paul Tanner said, “Mrs. Tanner and I are both pleased and cautiously optimistic going forward. But, Mary, wouldn’t your father have preferred to give you a big, beautiful wedding?”
“Possibly.”
“I don’t mean to pry, but who, exactly, is your father?”
“What business is it of yours?”
This could have been a nasty moment, but the Tanners’ eagerness to sweep Junior’s proclivities under the rug resulted in their pulling their punches, which was much harder on Mrs. Tanner, who was bellicose by nature, than on her husband. At times like this, she gave out a look that suggested that she was simply awaiting a better day.