The Talented Miss Farwell Read online

  “Hello in there,” called a young female voice. Right away Becky recognized the tall pudgy figure of Ingrid Beanton (she would not call her “Beanie” the way everyone at school had) standing at the end of the aisle with a shy smile on her face.

  Everyone in their row looked over to her, and then back to Becky. “Well, come on in,” Becky called back crossly.

  Ingrid wide-stepped over tight-jeaned legs in her own tight jeans. “Exsqueeze me. Exsqueeze me.”

  Becky shut her eyes briefly. Another roll of applause around the concert hall. When she opened them, Ingrid was beside her, expectant. Becky hadn’t directly spoken with Beanie—Ingrid—in the two years since they’d graduated, and maybe not even in all the time they had spent in the same class of Pierson Elementary and then Pierson High School. Back then Ingrid had been a slightly chubby volleyball star who floated easily between the standouts, the burnouts, and even the theater weirdos. Now she was a softly rounded ER nurse in clogs and a faded denim jacket with a tight permanent Becky could tell she’d done herself.

  “Straight from work?” Becky asked, meaning the ugly shoes.

  “Good to see you too, Becky Farwell. Think they’ll open with ‘Rhythm’? I heard Wynonna did ‘Tears for You’ a cappella two nights ago in St. Louis.”

  Becky opened her mouth but just then the lights dropped and a general clamor rose as members of the band walked to their instruments. She searched wildly for available seats in the lower levels. Meanwhile, Ingrid took two quick snaps with the 25mm hanging on a strap around her neck. When the swinging bass chords of “Rockin’ with the Rhythm” kicked in, she nudged Becky and winked. Wynonna came in with her guitar ahead of Naomi, who was serene in her petite beauty and easier vocal part.

  “Can’t wait for Wy to go solo already,” Ingrid half-shouted in Becky’s ear. Huh. Becky hadn’t thought of that. Wynonna solo: that would be something. She tried not to notice how her and Beanie’s shoulders were rocking in the same rhythm, right and then left, and then right, and then left. Along with everyone else in the crowd.

  At work the tedious client dinners with Karl continued, two or three per month. Karl now also liked to take office teams on what he called “off-sites” for weekend barbecue “brainstorm sessions” in his spacious backyard. Becky estimated these events extended the actual completion of any work project by three or four hundred percent. But she attended, laughed, lingered in Karl’s doorway the next day with gushy gratitude. Karl was fifty-nine with a history of angina and a paid-off second home in Lake Geneva. Becky could wait.

  Because work had become just as much about what she thought of as her Activity, snatching up any invoice error or forgotten reimbursement or unused staff training budget and tucking the money away into accounts only she kept track of. In the past year she’d used $24,290 to purchase art, which often she resold for more. After repaying Pierson, whatever was left over was hers to play with. She couldn’t tell which part of it pleased her the most: the pieces of magic hanging on her walls at home, or the fact that they had come from mistakes in the office only she knew how to spot.

  It wasn’t enough, though. The money or the art. Becky had her eye on something bigger, much bigger. The Activity needed to grow—somehow.

  She wouldn’t find those answers in the Art History 101 night class she’d been taking once a week at the School of the Art Institute in downtown Chicago. Becky had begun in high hopes. She loved the bad grilled cheese and burned coffee at the diner where she always ate beforehand, and at first she’d loved the thrill of the darkened auditorium as the part-time instructor—not a real professor; she had no illusions—clicked through slide after slide of ill-lit historical paintings and talked endlessly about the least interesting aspects of them: color, line, shape, form, texture. Only once had he mentioned the word value and when he did, Becky started up. There was a grimacing caricature on the screen, a George Grosz in browns and greens. Not that she’d ever want something like that, but . . .

  She raised her hand.

  “Yes?” The teacher squinted out at her, puzzled.

  “How much is the . . . What is the price?” The length of the pause and the way her uncertain words hung in it let her know she’d made a mistake.

  The teacher pressed her to clarify. Other students—mostly senior citizens—looked away. “I thought you said . . . what its value was,” Becky mumbled.

  “Oh, value.” The teacher was relieved. “Value meaning lightness or darkness on a gray scale. If we notice the shifts in shading in Grosz’s later work, we can clearly see how—”

  Becky slumped down, grateful for the gradations of shadow in the auditorium. You weren’t supposed to talk about the money. You were supposed to pretend it didn’t exist.

  “How much did you pay?” she called into Ingrid’s ear. “For your ticket.” Wynonna was circling the stage in an extended instrumental break, stopping by each band member to jam. Her mother, lightly toe-tapping at her standing mike, waited for this part to be over. “Donny told me it was face value but I feel like he scalped me.”

  Ingrid paused in her dancing. “You gave him money? That dipshit.”

  “He didn’t charge you?”

  “I bought these seats. He and I were supposed to go together.”

  It all came out at intermission, when they ate three-dollar hot dogs with their feet up on the row in front and shared a watery beer. Donny Wagner worked in management at Collins Stamping over in Palmyra. He had glossy tumbled dark curls and wore a puka shell necklace on weekends, out at the bars. It was rumored he’d been married before, a crash-and-burn with no kids, but no one had the real story, since Donny was one of the few people to have moved to Pierson later in life, where he lived with a cousin out on Kilgore.

  “He had a few meetings with my boss,” Becky said. “He kept calling me later. I don’t know why.”

  “Because he’s a dog in heat, that’s why.” A foam of beer hung on the corners of Ingrid’s mouth. “No offense.”

  Becky shook her head, it’s fine. “We went out once, last Thursday, for—”

  “Wings night at the Canteen,” Ingrid finished. “Did he spend the whole time talking to other people at the bar? Like, calling them over to your table?”

  “Yes. Like he was running for office. And then he said he had an extra ticket and did I want it and . . .” Becky stared ahead at the audience milling around in the smoky glare of the halftime lights. For a full idiotic minute at the Canteen she’d thought Donny was asking her to go out again, to go with him to the Judds. “I don’t even know why I said yes in the first place.” Becky crumpled the paper hot dog wrapper.

  “Because he’s super cute, dummy. Still has a good flat stomach, not like most of the schlubs from school.”

  Becky shuddered. She didn’t know anything about Donny’s stomach, flat or not.

  “We dated for three months,” Ingrid said. “In all that time, guess who never bought one full meal for me. Get this: One Sunday he was supposed to come out to my folks’ for a dinner. It totally was not, like, meet-my-parents—my dad was out of town, even! But my mom had made a full chicken thing, with real mushrooms, and like a dodo bird I even baked a cake. Duncan Hines, though, thank god.” Ingrid chewed her hot dog meditatively.

  “Uh huh,” Becky said cautiously, not sure where this was going.

  “So we wait and wait. My sister’s husband starts eating in front of the Notre Dame game. Finally the phone rings and he says he’s at the Sunoco down the road, can I meet him. It’s, like, what the fuck, but I go. He’s all smiling but squirrelly and says it’s engine trouble and he can’t make it out. But the whole time his truck was sitting over by the pump! No mechanic anywhere that I can see.”

  “He didn’t make it for dinner,” Becky guessed.

  “That’s not even the worst part,” Ingrid whispered.

  Becky smiled. “You gave him money for gas, didn’t you.”

  Ingrid covered her face, and Becky was afraid she might cry. Then came a burst
of laughter. “And I slept with him after that, like, four more times! Am I a dope, or what?”

  “No,” Becky protested. Kind of, she thought. “What about the tickets though?” The lights had dimmed again, Tanya Tucker on the PA system faded out.

  “I mail-ordered them three months ago. Soon as they announced the tour. I was hoping I’d have . . . well, that I’d have a boyfriend by now. Then stupid Donny started sleeping with Kristine Looney and I pretended I hadn’t heard about it, I offered him the ticket thinking maybe he’d change his mind. And show up.” Ingrid looked down at her clogs.

  Normally, a moment like this would have filled Becky with distaste. People were so needy, so unbearably undisguised! But now she only tipped the rest of her flat beer into Ingrid’s cup. “I was the one who gave him thirty-five dollars,” she said.

  Ingrid’s eyes fluttered. “Thirty-five?”

  “How much did you get them for?”

  “Eighteen each!”

  Wynonna and Naomi stomped into a cover of “Girls Night Out” and the entire audience jumped to its feet, including Becky and Ingrid. Becky didn’t even shrug Ingrid’s arm off her shoulder later in the show, or protest when Ingrid held her camera high, twisted it around to face them, and clicked off several snaps.

  “Those will never come out,” Becky yelled.

  “Oh stuff it, Becky Farwell,” Ingrid shouted. She was sweaty, beaming. “We’ll mail one to Donny.”

  “With a bill for thirty-five dollars.”

  This sent Ingrid into whoops of laughter.

  Becky allowed herself to sing along with everyone to “Grandpa,” which she usually disdained for its overdose of sentimentality.

  The encore was “Why Not Me.” Ingrid was in her own world, eyes closed and swaying her head left and right with the music. She was one of about three thousand women in the audience wholeheartedly buying into the song, nurses and teachers and homemakers and retail clerks, all of them crying out the question along with the Judds. To her surprise Becky too got swept up in the lyrics, noticing for the first time how the phrase went from plaintive to exultant as it was repeated. Wynonna sang like she was really feeling it, this single that had been on the charts since last summer. And even Naomi’s fill-in harmony worked, calling out to all of them in the crowd, every person’s longing. Making what they wanted into the best part of themselves.

  6

  Pierson

  1986–1987

  Becky and Ingrid didn’t fall in right away. After the Judds concert, Becky hurried away from Ingrid, grateful they didn’t have to hug or anything like that.

  But on a November afternoon, Becky was in a staff meeting when one of the secretaries leaned in and whispered loudly in Karl’s general direction, “The fire department’s here!”

  Instant flutter of excitement through the sleepy room. Anything was better than a staff meeting.

  “Oh oh,” Karl said. “Who forgot to unplug the toaster?”

  But it wasn’t the truck and the guys in their gear, only Chief Edwards, alone. And he only wanted Becky. “Let’s take a drive,” he said, putting a hand on her back. “Your dad’s over at County ER.”

  In fact, he was dead. Had died even before the ambulance got out to their place, called by Mrs. Nowak when she arrived to find him fallen halfway between the TV and the bathroom.

  That morning Becky had unwrapped his midmorning coffee cake and shown him that the plate for lunch was where it always rested in the fridge: middle shelf, covered in tinfoil. He’d seemed no better or worse than most days and nodded when she reminded him Mrs. Nowak would be stopping by in the afternoon.

  During the short ride to the hospital in Chief Edwards’s personal car, Becky hoped and hoped she had remembered to hug or kiss her father goodbye this morning. She usually did, but sometimes when she was in a rush she didn’t. Had it been a rush morning?

  She thanked the chief when he dropped her at the front door. No, he didn’t need to walk her in, she would be all right.

  From the serious, calm face of the doctor who greeted her she knew he was gone. They brought her to his room, quiet and dark. His belly a rounded mound under the green sheet. His cheeks were sagging, brow with the same creases, eyes shut.

  “Massive stroke,” the doctor said, just as she reached for his hand under the sheet. Not warm, not cool. Rough in exactly the way she knew it would be. Instantaneous. He didn’t suffer.

  Becky leaned her hip on the bed, nudging Hank over a little so she could sit with him. She didn’t want to let go of his hand.

  “Here, let me get you a chair.”

  “Can I . . . Am I allowed to sit on the bed?”

  “Oh,” he said quietly. “Yes, of course.” He helped her lift her father’s body, to make room.

  By the time she got home that night it was almost 8 pm, and there was an unfamiliar car out front. When she approached, she saw Ingrid’s face, her brief burst of smile, and then a chastened look. Ingrid got out of the car first, her mother followed, and Becky awkwardly accepted hugs from both of them. She stood by the car, expecting they would leave, but Ingrid simply walked her to her own door and came in, as natural as anything.

  Becky was too tired to object. “You don’t have to,” she said, however, when Ingrid went right into the kitchen to warm up the food they’d brought. And start on the dishes.

  “I know,” Ingrid said. “Here, Mom.” She had found some cleaning supplies in a closet and now Mrs. Beanton was vacuuming the area of the hallway, near the bathroom where— Oh. Becky felt a little sick as she realized what Ingrid’s mother was working to clean, and why.

  She ate the chicken and rice Ingrid handed her, and drank a full glass of water rather crossly when Ingrid wouldn’t let up about it. A few more cars arrived, and Mrs. Beanton brought in dishes for the fridge. When the phone rang, Ingrid answered, and took down messages, nodding and saying the right things. At some point Becky even went up to bed, following Mrs. Beanton to her own room, where the sheets had been changed. Becky fell asleep to the sound of Ingrid moving around the kitchen and when she woke in the morning she half-expected to find her there, even though the house was empty and still.

  Over the next week, leading up to the funeral, Ingrid slid seamlessly into Becky’s life. They both belonged to First Presbyterian so Becky understood the machine that now cranked into action: helping her arrange a service, a burial, a reception. People had loved Hank and went out of their way to assist, even with things Becky hadn’t known she had to do.

  The biggest surprise of it all was Ingrid. She came to the house and supervised food: portioning, labeling, freezing. Occasionally vetoing entirely: “Uh uh, that one goes straight into the trash. I’ve seen Mrs. Fremont sneeze into her open hands.” She nudged Becky to order food for the reception, she made her get a hair appointment, she kept a list of all the incoming cards and flowers. Becky got tired of being bossed around but Ingrid never picked up on hints like “Well, this has been a big help, so . . .”

  Mostly Ingrid was just there. After dinner she’d show up with some kind of snack or a couple of light beers. Becky didn’t feel like talking much and she certainly didn’t want to cry or look through photos so mostly they watched TV. Stupid shows that Ingrid loved—Dynasty, of course, but also all the half-hour comedies about families with sassy-bratty kids and adults with wacky problems. Ingrid ridiculed every feature of these shows but seemed to enjoy them anyway. Becky got used to her being curled up on the other side of the couch, Keds off, beer in hand. Neither of them sat in what had been Hank’s armchair.

  The day of the funeral was cold and slushy. A raw sadness stabbed at Becky, underneath everything she did or said. She shivered through the service, her feet icy and numb, and only a few people came to the cemetery to watch Hank’s dark coffin lower into the muddy grave. But the reception back at the church—coffee, deli platters, and many homemade desserts—was full of clients, coworkers of Becky’s (including Karl and his wife), and parents of her schoolmates.

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nbsp; Ingrid came to all of it: the service, the burial, the reception. She stayed in the background but she stayed. Hanging up coats, clearing away plates, reminding people to sign the guest book. Becky had no memory of procuring a guest book.

  Toward the end of the day, that longest day, Ingrid passed by her with an armful of wadded tablecloths and Becky snapped. “You don’t have to stick around, you know. Didn’t your folks leave, like a while ago?” Ingrid still lived at home too. “Nobody asked you to do all this.” We’re not really friends. We don’t even know each other. And we don’t have to, just because we’re the only losers our age still left here. Becky managed not to say any of that out loud, but she knew it bled through her face and voice.

  Ingrid only rolled her eyes and went off with the tablecloths. But later, when Becky peeked around for her, she was gone. By the time the last group of mourners left the church hall, the windows were dark. Becky needed four trips to carry the flower arrangements out to her car, the only one left in the parking lot. She didn’t even want them but she didn’t want to leave them for the janitor to deal with.

  For a while she drove around. Looping back and forth along the river, crossing the bridges north and south. She slowed at the sight of Barner’s Restaurant, realizing how shaky and tired she was, not having eaten all day. But her lips were chapped and throat sore, and Becky didn’t think she could speak one more sentence out loud, let alone to someone who might have served her father his last plate of warm mashed potatoes drowned in butter, Hank’s standing weekly order.