The Talented Miss Farwell Page 12

  “I wish we could, Jim.”

  “Now wait a minute. We were told if we held off until fall we could—”

  “It just isn’t there.” Becky brushed at the binder in front of her. Several council members nodded, or shook their heads, meaning the same thing. “I would go to Busch Municipal on my knees if it would do anything. They’re screwing us, Jim. Excuse me for putting it that way.” Her voice caught.

  Mayor Brennan began to speak, something conciliatory, but Chief Vessey shook it off. “You said fall,” he told Becky, exhaling hard. “Training, operations, patrols, ballistics. Can’t be done on ninety thousand. We’ve waited. Now it’s goddamn fall!” That last shouted word startled everyone, but none so much as Miss Farwell, who flinched, both hands flying up to her mouth and nose, pressed together in front of them. She swiveled to turn her back to the table. Was she—?

  Brennan called for a break. Vessey hovered, uneasy, until a council member drew him away. Miss Farwell stood, shielding her face, and walked quickly out of the conference room. In a short time she was back, though, in the same chair at the front, her face freshly washed and her eyes shining and steady.

  “Next item,” Becky said. Voice clear and almost entirely calm.

  Date

  Paid

  Notes

  November 20, 1990

  $650

  Groceries

  $1,300

  Wine delivery (Thanksgiving here with I’s parents and two aunts, Jesus God)

  December 10, 1990

  $1,400

  Resurface HS gym floor

  $500

  Food, drinks, decorations (HS Winter Ball)

  December 15, 1990

  $1,299

  (Franklin Furs—Mrs. F)

  $4,500

  (Swarovski—office staff)

  $850

  (Blackhawks VIP pkg—Ken)

  $2,000

  (FAO Schwarz delivery—TJ)

  $32

  (necktie—Ken)

  $13,300

  (Davis Jewelers—Ingrid)

  “What the shit,” Ingrid said flatly. At Becky’s door, 9:45 Christmas morning, dangling the emerald pendant necklace from her gloved fingers. She pushed past Becky in her robe, bringing cold air into the house.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “Because, you dummy. I drove by last night on my way home from church and saw your lights on! You lied to me!”

  “The flight was canceled last minute!” Becky wrapped her robe tighter, naked underneath. She’d been upstairs having espresso, opening her own gifts to herself: a rare small Barnett Newman oil and two photographs from Tracy Moncton’s latest editioned series. She’d had to fight to get these from the woman’s new big-name agent who only reluctantly allowed the sale when Tracy insisted, still honoring their deal. The artworks and all of their discarded packaging were now strewn across Becky’s California king–sized bed.

  Guilt after the nightmarish series of budget meetings had worked its way through her, and the past several months she’d pulled back hard on the skimming. She’d moved money around to return some to various accounts, and she’d covered as much as she could for the town out of her own pocket (secretly, as far as she could). That meant denying herself the fall art shows and half a dozen serious deals that made her fume with longing and regret. So these purchases were extra special.

  “Why didn’t you call? We have so much food!” Ingrid stalked the living room, her fleecy pajama bottoms tucked into winter boots. Then she stopped, suddenly quiet. “You don’t . . . Do you have someone over?”

  Becky followed Ingrid’s pointing toward the stairs. She laughed, immediately igniting her friend’s ire again.

  “I knew you weren’t going to the Florida Keys. I told Neil, I call bullshit. Since when does Becky go sit on a beach for vacation? Since when does she vacation! But I can’t believe you lied to me.”

  “I lied to everyone. Do you want a coffee?”

  “No, I have to get back. My in-laws will be expecting a festive brunch on top of tonight’s roast beef extravaganza.” Ingrid collapsed onto Becky’s leather sectional. “And what the hell is this?” She swung the emerald necklace around her fingers.

  “You’re welcome?” Becky curled up next to her friend, whose wide pale face looked more tired than ever. She’d had to quit being an ER nurse after TJ was born in order to care for him full time. After a series of bewildering seizures, and multiple tests, he’d been diagnosed with an intellectual disability. Ingrid dealt with all of it—finding doctors, researching treatments, and now her own lack of income—with brisk good cheer. Becky wasn’t sure what it meant for TJ and never really knew what to say. “Did he like the electric car?”

  “Oh, Becky.” Ingrid’s face lit. “I don’t think he’s gotten out of it since six am. He can barely sit up in it but he’s driving it all over the house, ramming it into everyone’s legs, making all the right car noises . . . We’re going to go broke for that thing’s batteries.” She grabbed Becky’s hand, but then scowled. “But this? And don’t tell me it’s paste. What are you thinking, spending that kind of money?”

  “I thought it would go well with your eye color.”

  “With my jelly-stained sweatsuit?”

  “I’ll exchange it for you.”

  Ingrid let the necklace fall in a silky metallic heap onto the coffee table. She stared at it, not Becky. Becky made herself wait. She wouldn’t think about the two pieces on her bed upstairs. She wouldn’t look toward the one painting she allowed herself to display down here, a 6-inch-by-6-inch Matisse oil. Pretty enough to escape anyone’s notice—Ingrid had never commented on it—it was worth several times the house and property lot combined.

  “You could tell me, you know.” Ingrid pushed back a tendril that had escaped her scrunchie, and smiled. “If there’s . . . someone. Like, a guy. Or a girl!”

  Becky laughed, and so did Ingrid. “I’m just saying!”

  “Nothing’s going on, Beanie. I’m sorry I didn’t call. Tagging along on other people’s family holidays can get me down, that’s all.”

  Ingrid weighed this as she was now weighing the necklace coiled in her pink palm. She had no response, which startled Becky, who realized that what she’d said about tagging along had more truth than she’d planned.

  “Well,” Ingrid said at last. She handed the necklace to Becky, swiveled away from her, and waited.

  Becky needed three tries with the clasp, her fingers brushing against her friend’s nape. “What do you think?”

  Ingrid turned and held down her bulky acrylic scarf so they could see the pendant, half-hidden in her pajama top.

  Becky burst out laughing. “Okay, I’m an idiot. Give it back and I’ll—”

  Ingrid put a hand over the emerald. “No way! I’m going to wear it on every trip to the FastMart. And the pediatrician. And story hour at the—” They tussled, shrieking, until Becky slid off the leather couch onto the carpet. Ingrid gave her a hand up. “All right, let’s go. I’m already in the doghouse.”

  Becky put her hands on Ingrid’s shoulders. “You head back, and I’ll be half an hour. I’ll get doughnuts from that place by the gas station.”

  “My in-laws are the worst, you’ll go crazy,” Ingrid said happily, giving Becky a long muffling hug. “We’ll start drinking at noon.”

  “We’ll hide in the kitchen with a bottle of wine.” Becky breathed in the sugary scent of Ingrid’s melon shampoo.

  “It’s a Christmas miracle,” Ingrid sighed. Still hugging her.

  13

  Pierson

  1991

  By early 1991, crisis gripped Pierson. Although the financial situation was nowhere near as bad as it would become in a few years, the budget-cut pileup had reached critical mass—broken playground equipment and mail gone missing and forced police retirements—at least in the eyes of the citizens. The local paper’s editorials grew more pointed, and although they generally followed Becky and Ken’s script by blamin
g Governor Thompson and the Illinois legislature (even, at times, Mayor Daley or President Bush), suspicion was tightening around even the beloved “Pierson Pair.”

  The tipping point was petunias.

  Ken, still enough of an outsider, had little compunction in canceling the annual Petunia Festival. When you couldn’t afford new textbooks or toilets in the elementary school, who cared about flowers?

  “Aren’t they kind of garish, anyway?”

  Becky shot him a warning don’t go there look across the conference table. Too late. Aggrieved council members spoke over each other, praising the petunia’s hardiness, its long bloom phase, the subtle differences in shading from grandiflora to milliflora to wave variations. Becky knew what the bottom line was, under the committee outrage. The Petunia Festival wasn’t just a time-honored summer tradition, it was the main tourist attraction of the year, bringing in an annual average of four hundred thousand in visitor business. Merchandise, food sales, entertainment. But what did that matter if they didn’t have the funds to outlay for the mammoth necessary preparations: bids for landscape firms, the tools and contracts and equipment and inevitable overruns.

  Doodling a petunia in her notebook—anyone raised in Pierson knew one when she saw it—Becky thought about money too. Her Activity account was out. Run dry, scraped clean. For the past few months Becky had been on a buying binge. Art world prices fell by the week, and she scooped up everything she’d ever had an eye on. She knew she should rein in her spending, but she couldn’t. Everything was so cheap! All the names, every phase, every dream buy now a possibility. In the past six months she’d acquired pieces from artists who were laughably out of her league. She bought early works and canvases with paint still drying. All you had to do was hesitate for an iota, and a seller would lop off another ten percent. In fact, the hardest part was getting a hold of anyone. Gallery after gallery shuttered; dealers disappeared, their answering machines so full they weren’t accepting any new messages. Friends, other collectors, warned her to stop but if the whole system was going down in this market “correction,” then for the sake of sweet baby Jesus, Becky would own a Rauschenberg. If only for a short time.

  The other problem was space. A lack of cubic square feet. Crated art all over her Chicago apartment, when the condo was where she was supposed to view the art, to show it. She could keep pine boxes in Pierson, for Christ’s sake. But she was maxing out: both bedrooms, the combination living room/dining area, the small foyer, and even the kitchen were all covered with paintings. She’d even had to slide stacked canvases under both beds. Only minor works, a lesser Kline and a Barrett add-on from a package deal earlier in the year—but it was still far from ideal. Her cocktail party guests laughed when they saw the crammed space, joking they had the same disease, but she knew that all these wealthy collectors—acquaintances, business contacts, all of them calling her “Reba”—displayed their own works throughout giant suburban estates.

  How long could she sustain this? She owed six thousand to her condo management, and the dunning letters left in her mailbox were getting serious. She should stop opening those.

  “Maybe our superhero will rush in and save the day at the last minute.” This voice, sing-songy and nasal, belonged to Phil Mannetone from PR and Communications. Overgrown Neanderthal mouth-breathing Phil. Always in her business, acting like he was in on some kind of joke. Across the conference table he gave Becky a long, loaded smile. “Becky, you always seem to find funds somehow. Somewhere.”

  Ken snorted. “If anyone can price out what’s needed from this quarter, they’re welcome to try. But in lieu of any—”

  “I’m not talking about the budget,” Phil smoothly interrupted. “Not the official one, anyway. Just wondering if Becky could work her magic and find a little extra somewhere.”

  “If only I could,” Becky said. You fucking nitwit, don’t you think I would? She hadn’t sold a piece in months, so there was no magic to be worked. No “miracles” of “juggling the accounts” to come through for Pierson, and without those regular infusions of her payback, people—like Phil fucking Mannetone—were obviously starting to notice. If only the market would come back! If she could just buy a little time, art sales would resume—they had to!—and then she’d be able to keep the worst at bay.

  “This isn’t on you, Becky,” Rhona Lear said, and shot Phil a dirty look. “It’s on all of us.”

  “Thank you,” Becky said. “But Phil does have a point. Maybe there is a way. I’m spitballing here, but what if we . . . did it ourselves?”

  Then she was off and running, the other council members eagerly taking up her idea and fleshing it out. What if they reclaimed the Petunia Festival as a fundraiser for the town? Leverage petunia nostalgia into a do-it-yourself planting weekend this spring. Start a pledge drive for planning logistics. Lean on small businesses for donations for publicity. Bring in the League of Women Voters, the Girl Scouts, the local press. Who needed landscapers when nearly everyone’s neighbor was a proud gardener with years of experience? True, it would be nothing like past years and the revenue would certainly be smaller . . . but there would be petunias. And concessions.

  Becky’s cheeks grew warm as she worked, up at the whiteboard scribbling down all the ideas and plans and numbers and dates. With all hands on deck they could just about pull off a “planting day” event with a kickoff in early April, to make sure this summer’s Petunia Fest would happen. Phil Mannetone sketched out press releases and a pitch for local TV, the picture of enthusiasm, but Becky knew there was trouble. He was trouble.

  Three months ago, she’d come in late one morning to find him strolling around her office in front of her desk. He had some pretense of a letter he wanted to get her opinion on, but he was looking at the things in her office—her leather coat and her objets and the fresh flowers delivered weekly. And then at her, in a way no one else did: speculative, interested. What was it he’d said? “Someday you’ll have to show me how you do it, Becky Farwell.”

  The council meeting rushed ahead with plans and decisions, infused with positivity for the first time in months. Only Becky grew quiet, glancing up now and again at Phil Mannetone. Sorting through what she knew about him outside of this room, his family, his home, his routines and habits.

  Three weeks later she was standing in the freezing wind on a makeshift press stage while Ken wrapped up his speech for the two press reps and a smattering of citizens, more than Becky had expected for a March Friday with snow in the forecast. “Why didn’t we do this in the auditorium?” she hissed at Ingrid, who needed her full attention to hold back the thirty kids onstage—a Boy Scout troop and some matching local Brownies—from playing their part too early.

  “You wanted that big finish,” Ingrid whispered. “Graham, if you’re going to rip the bag you can’t hold it. TJ, hold my hand. Here’s my hand.”

  “Petunias,” Becky called into the mike, as soon as it was her turn, after the cheers for her had finally quieted. “Are one of the country’s most recognizable flowers. And although they are known to be the most beautiful”—unfortunately this set the small crowd into applause, muffling her point—“they are one of the hardiest, too!” She hurried on to the plan: reclaiming the annual Petunia Festival as a fundraiser for Pierson, using volunteers for the planting and maintenance and a local pledge drive to boost the summer tourist business.

  “We thought about cutting it—as I know you know, Pierson has been going through a hard time lately—but like I told Mayor Brennan, Pierson doesn’t need pity . . . it needs petunias!”

  This line killed, of course. It would headline tomorrow in the paper. Ingrid fought valiantly to hold back the troops while wrangling her giant toddler. She gave Becky a look: Jesus, hurry up.

  So instead of outlining what it all meant dollar to dollar, or how next month’s “Planting for the Future” event would kick off a town cash drive to repair or replace services—it was all in the press release anyway—Becky gave the nod. More or less in sync th
e kids tore open their decorated brown paper lunch bags and began to toss handfuls of seed—bird seed, not petunias, but the effect was the same—in the direction of the rutted dirt behind a park bench.

  It worked. Warm murmurs and genuine applause spread through the crowd, and Becky stepped away from the mike filled with pride from a thought-through plan well executed. Mayor Ken smiled and waved, bird seed in his hair. Ingrid gave her a long one-armed side hug and Becky didn’t pull away. People still cheered, even the reporters.

  Who needed Springfield? Becky thought, face flushed in the cold. Why should anyone count us out?

  Forgetting, for one moment, that without Springfield she had no enemy for the budget shortfall. Without Springfield, and the political strands of truth and untruth and half-truth she wove together, she would have nothing, no money in the secret account, and no way to cover up what she needed to do. (It didn’t matter that she currently didn’t have any money in the secret account.)

  Becky watched the gritty seeds skitter off into the cutting spring air. The levers in her mind worked frantically to balance guilt with energy, recognition with effort. She herself was the cause of the pain she worked so hard to remedy. But who could say where the town would be without her? All the work for this planting fundraiser: the idea and the number crunching and the late-night planning . . . it was exactly what she would have done if the town was truly in the hole. Which it was! Couldn’t one make up for the other, karmically or morally or whatever? Like a kind of equation where one complex function Xs out another and replaces it, after a lengthy series of twists and reversals?