The Talented Miss Farwell Page 11
“Before we go back in, I wanted to give you this in person.” Becky steered them to a long draped table covered in gift-wrapped boxes. Ingrid lit up, even though she’d been stopping by Sears daily to check on her registered items and therefore knew what almost everyone had bought her. Becky moved presents around to find the package, 11 inches by 17 inches, covered in plain white paper. No card.
Ingrid sat on a nearby bench and opened one taped flap. “Should we get Neil for this?”
“What?”
But Ingrid ignored her own question and went right on unwrapping. Becky took a deep breath when the drawing was revealed. The child’s tiny fingers, curled around one of her mother’s. And the woman’s relaxed posture, all that warmth and strength vibrating through the few lines on the page.
“Oh, wow,” Ingrid said, her pink-chapped hands gently bracing the sides of the frame. “This is so sweet.”
“Do you like it?”
“I love it. Love love love. Of course I can’t put it up until, you know, the cat’s out of the bag.” She patted her belly. “It’s going to look great over the—” With one arm Ingrid thrust the picture out to squint at it. Becky reflexively jumped, ready to catch it if it fell. “No. Too small. And we’re thinking Neil’s Zeppelin tour poster will go there. But I’ll find the perfect place.” Ingrid stood and propped the Cassatt back on the gift table. “Thank you!” She enveloped Becky in a hug.
Becky eyed the sketch leaning against the toasters and blenders. She felt reasonably sure no one here would give it a second look.
As they entered the reception room the DJ had just cued up Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places” and everyone was screeching for Ingrid to join a front-of-the-room sing-along, which she happily hurried to do.
“Hi again.” Ken Brennan, suddenly at her elbow. “Got a second for me?” He held up two plastic flutes of pink champagne, and his ridiculously handsome smile did its work even as Becky saw right through it. Told herself she saw right through it.
The wedding progressed from Ingrid and Neil smushing cake into each other’s faces to line dancing led regally by Ingrid’s mother and her friends: the Picnic Polka, Louisiana Hot Sauce, Tush Push. Becky watched it all from a table with Ken, who talked and talked. Mostly he told her about his misadventures in area real estate, an epic saga of his family’s move from Springfield that involved plot twists and reversals and a nearly lost deposit and a corrupt moving company . . . Becky picked at her slice of cake and tuned out. As the wedding dwindled, new Mayor Ken only seemed to pick up steam.
“It was a little too much house,” he finally sighed. “And way, way, way too much money.”
Well, obviously, Becky thought. She knew what Mayor Ken’s new salary was, and a third-grader could have told him not to even bother.
“They want us to go under,” Ken said, pushing aside the table centerpiece, his voice suddenly serious. Becky tuned back in.
“Who?”
“Listen.” He leaned close to her, elbows on knees. “For the last eighteen months I knew I wanted to get out of Springfield. That place makes Chicago pols look like Girl Scouts. But they kept bringing me along, this committee, that committee, hey Brennan come by the club, or how about a round this Sunday—”
“Which club?” Becky cut in. Damn. She knew the real deals got made in those stupid cigar and scotch sessions. Maybe she could get Ken to—
“What I’m saying is, I was listening.” His eyes, greenish brown, were intent on her. “I saw the budgets, I saw what they actually have while they’re telling you they don’t. Remember last year when you put in for road repair on the . . . I can never remember which bridge is which.”
“Do I remember?”
“What came back? A quarter of the ask? An eighth?”
Becky stared. “We got nineteen hundred, on a bid that came in around twenty grand. And some line about waiting for more research on a new form of—”
“Macadam,” Ken said at the same time she did. “A new form of macadam that would solve all your problems. Did you ever hear about that macadam again? Meanwhile, do you know about how much Greenland County got that spring for an eight-mile lane rehab? Twenty-five thousand. Right off the top.”
“Those fuckers,” Becky said. They’d closed the bridge on Galena three times last year because of dangerous conditions. She’d narrowly avoided a fourth by selling off one of her very few—and very much cherished—pastels, a mid-level Roger Hilton. She’d made the sale swiftly and sloppily, trading speed for a good price, and poured that money into Pierson’s Roads account. Becky always finds a way, is what was said around the office, after she put out a vague story about squeezing some funds from one place and shifting funds around from another. Obviously they knew she didn’t always find a way, but she tried to patch the most obvious and glaring holes and when that happened, the praise rolled in.
Every time she drove over the crumbly but still-standing Galena bridge, though, she cursed a little bit in honor of that lost Roger Hilton. It had been a great piece.
Ken went on, citing memo after memo where Pierson had gone to the state for funds and been denied. Becky fumed. They’d looked like chumps, she and Mayor Thomsic. They’d been laughed at, fobbed off with stories she couldn’t believe she’d fallen for. And they’d never once pushed back. Just think what she could have done for the community with that money from Springfield. Just think what she could have done for the Activity!
“Thomsic always had a positive spin,” Becky said sullenly. “Said he had people there, said it would be our turn someday.”
“That’s where you went wrong,” Ken said. “They counted on that. His wanting to keep up a good front, make it look like he had things in control. But I have a different— Listen, do you want to get out of here?”
“What?” She hadn’t noticed, but now the dance floor was empty and the DJ had packed up. Around them servers were whisking off white tablecloths to reveal the scratched wood tabletops. “I can’t, I have to . . . Where’s Ingrid?”
There she was, in the lobby, changed into a shiny rose-colored dress with her hair freed from the elastic band of silk flowers. A group of women surrounded her, laughing and tossing confetti, shepherding her out into the chilly afternoon. Becky watched her go, love and melancholy welling up.
Luckily, Ken Brennan kept pulling at her attention. “I know a good place for beer.”
“How do you . . . Where’s your wife?”
“Went home a while ago, set the babysitter free. Come on. The end of a wedding is so depressing.”
“Beer in the middle of the day isn’t depressing?” But she took the hand he held out. Let him hold her coat, open the door of his car for her, of Fitz’s when they got there.
From the booth, watching Ken as he went up to order their drinks, rolled sleeves and bare forearms resting against the bar, Becky could see his appeal. She’d been hoping, she realized, that someone she knew would see them together.
Perhaps it was to cut off those feelings that when Ken returned to the table Becky said, “Listen. I’m not sure we should make any major waves in your first year.” She was only looking out for him, after all. She could take the heat from council and residents, but he’d probably want to keep his nose clean.
But Ken wouldn’t hear of it. He was one hundred percent in, one hundred percent with her on helping this town get back on its feet. He didn’t care about optics, he cared about results. And from what he knew, she was the only person who could spearhead real change. “Don’t you see? That’s how we’re going to get them. That’s how we can win.”
“Shame them,” Becky said slowly. All those promised state grants that never came through: for demolition of old properties, for roadwork, pension help. For repairing the riverwalk! God, how many times had the state sent out inspectors and environmental teams and financial assessors. She’d walked them up and down the riverwalk dozens of times, she’d followed up diligently. Nothing ever came back.
“Point out every way
they’re failing us, every dollar missing, everything Springfield owes us.”
“It’d be ugly. In town, I mean. Thomsic kept it—we kept it—pretty optimistic.” So that the constituents wouldn’t know the full extent of their helplessness. So he could get reelected.
“That ends now.” Ken shrugged. “I can take it, and so can you. They love you. You can convince them, I know you can.”
“Sure, because I’m the one who’d be the messenger. You’ll get to shrug and say, ‘I tried my best for you, Pierson, but when it came budget time Becky just couldn’t get it done.’”
“Bullshit,” Ken said. He reached across to take her hand, as if they were shaking, but instead just held it lightly on the damp bar table. “I will never hang you out to dry. Whatever you say, I’ll fall in line.”
She withdrew her hand from his. This could be the cover story she’d been waiting for: Springfield. They were in the hole because of Springfield. And if Ken backed her, the town would buy it. Wouldn’t they? If the state was shorting them already, who would notice another hole within the hole?
It would be a risk bigger than any she’d taken: to ride her Activity on Springfield’s back. And on Ken’s. But also, and this was the weird part, she believed in Ken. In his smarts, in his passion. He reminded her of her. So if he went to bat against the state and won more for them . . . Becky won too. If she could take what she needed and Pierson could be fully operable? The ultimate dream.
“All right,” she said slowly. “I’m in. Let’s shake things up.”
Ken sat back against the high booth, then sprang up. “Wait here. Don’t move.” He returned minutes later with two shots. “Johnnie Black,” he said, passing one to her. He clinked his whiskey against hers. “To not getting rid of us.”
Becky nodded once and sent the Johnnie Black scorching down her throat.
12
Pierson
1990
Date
Received
Notes
March 31, 1990
$45,000
J.W. Roof Service and Repair
It wasn’t hard to do. Becky had logged so many invoices in her years of bookkeeping that she had a veritable mental album of Accounts Payable: dozens of templates, fonts, misspellings, dropped digits, and unimaginative company names to whip through. She mocked up an invoice, at home usually, on one of four flea market typewriters, rotating through different kinds of paper (cream to dead white, in varying weights), and gave it a fake service date and amount. In the beginning, she worried about the bill itself, and would go to great lengths to simulate the crunch of post office processing by crumpling, then smoothing the bill, folding it in thirds, at times flicking it with dirty dishwater and leaving it to dry on a tea towel. Then she just dropped the fake invoice into the wire baskets for Accounts Payable along with the real bills she sorted from the general mail delivery.
Payments rolled out with no questions, funneled into the spiderweb of accounts and sub-accounts and sub-sub-accounts that she herself set up and managed, closing and instituting accounts so often that everyone in the office was grateful not to have to understand the big picture, grateful she was there to tell them what to do. No one had a better memory than Miss Farwell. She could call up details on the past four rounds of tax code revisions without batting an eye (if you’d been so unlucky as to ask a tangential question)—and would reel off numbers and years and acronyms, on and on and on, smiling brightly at you there by the water cooler, until you could thank her, nod as if you knew what she was talking about, and flee back to your desk. Thank god for Becky, so commonly muttered around City Hall, was a kind of shorthand everyone understood. It meant Thank god someone else knows that mess so I don’t have to get my head around it.
Money moved in and out of the accounts, including RF Capital Development, one of a half-dozen dedicated “RF” funds, and Becky made sure to supervise numerous payouts for bills from all of them. At times she even let RF Capital empty out—though she hated to see it that way—just as the others did, to keep them all alike. Then once a month she would pay her credit card bills using RF Capital. She often paid city cards that way too—they were transitioning to credit for many services—and also she ostentatiously “paid back” to City Hall any personal charges, i.e., meals without clients, using her own pale pink checks stamped Miss Rebecca Farwell, 140 County Road M, Pierson.
So much money shunted in and out of that one artery, RF Capital Development, and yet Becky could put the total in the account to within a few dollars at any time. Not to mention she kept detailed notes—stupid, she knew—logged in the meticulous bookkeeping manner that was her second nature. By the end of the 1980s she was taking a hundred thousand a month and putting back into Pierson maybe a quarter of that. Her annual salary was a respectable fifty-nine thousand, plus benefits.
Date
Paid
Notes
October 9, 1989
$140
United Airlines (NYC)
$300
Le Cirque (NYC)
October 16, 1989
$199
United Airlines (NYC)
$695
Casa Bella (Frank M brought friends!!)
October 25, 1989
$180
United Airlines (NYC)
$80
Cats tickets
$400
Four bottles Château Mouton-Rothschild
October 26, 1989
$580,000
Wired to Frank M, via Beate Gallery, full payment for Thiebaud, Ice Cream Cake 1979
October 26, 1989
$14.99
Pierson Fantasy Florals (Mrs. Fletcher, Happy Secretary’s Day)
By early 1990 all of Pierson knew that Becky loved “pictures.” For her twenty-ninth birthday, the city council surprised her with an ornately framed oil rendering of Rock River, commissioned by esteemed area painter W. Marlon Rinman, who presided gravely over the ceremonial unveiling of his work, accepting Miss Farwell’s gushing astonishment with mere nods of acknowledgment. Later, several members of the council wondered at the way Becky chose to hang this beautiful piece, so relaxing to look at, right next to a couple of other pictures, small brown things with squiggly lines. Like stuff your kid made.
But if only she had someone! Women in Pierson would inevitably gossip.
I heard she was dating Ted Thompson.
Oh, she dumped Teddy two months ago—but he won’t say a bad word about her.
What about that commissioner from Rock Falls, the one she brought to the tree lighting last year?
He could light my tree.
Who knows.
Men can’t handle strong women. They don’t like it when they’re not the one wearing the pants.
Nothing Becky can do there—she’s always going to be the one wearing the pants.
Thing is, even if they have it all, some women—at this, everyone sighed—just aren’t lucky in love.
Ingrid laughed every time Becky did this routine over the phone at night, cranking up her voice into her best nasal flat-vowel accent, making up what they were all saying. Who? Ingrid demanded. You know who, Becky said. Them.
Fuck them, Ingrid said through the receiver, and Becky smiled. Sleepy-phone protective Ingrid was one of her favorite Ingrids.
Date
Received
Notes
June 9, 1990
$140,000
Mapplethorpe, Shadow Block, sale to Monk Gallery, LA
Date
Paid
Notes
June 10, 1990
$499,999
Hockney, Study 2 (Ghent Gallery—never again!)
July 4, 1990
$1,900
Marilynne’s Pony Parade (July 4 town party)
Date
Received
Notes
July 21, 1990
$4,000
Doherty video
$45,000
Auerbach, Profile
$19,000
Bill, Three Squares sale to Adira Khan (via Mac)
Date
Paid
Notes
July 30, 1990
$35,000
Marden, Sketches for Cold Mountain
$43,000
Sherman, Untitled No. 102
August 1, 1990
$1,000
Tracy Moncton, monthly
August 7–10, 1990
$9,000
Bergdorf (Ungaro, YSL, Perry Ellis)
Council meetings took place monthly, on Tuesday evenings, in the first-floor conference room in Town Hall. Budget season was May and October, so during those months Becky and Mayor Brennan held more frequent sessions for various city services to come plead their cases for funding. Later, the published budget would be released to the local paper, and a public hearing traditionally took place in one of the church meeting rooms.
Council members, many of whom had been elected and reelected for decades, could barely remember a harder time than the present year, although they often tried to: the Carter administration crisis . . . the mid-sixties drought . . . the early-eighties subsidy squeeze. But no one could successfully argue Pierson had seen it worse before.
And it was clearly taking its toll on Miss Farwell. Each meeting, stretching past 10 pm, deepened the violet shadows under her eyes. Look at her tonight, shaking her head even before Police Chief Vessey finished reading his statement. It had to be hard, to be the one always having to deliver bad news.