The Girl in the Green Raincoat_ A Novel - Laura Lippman [30]
“Surely you know?” asked Beth, who appeared to be the spokeswoman. It wasn’t so hard to tell them apart, after all. Beth’s eyes were blue, while Liz’s tended toward green. “We just assumed—I mean, he said he had gotten it from your, um, partner, so we thought he had been consulted.”
Tess liked the fact that one of May’s two mommies had to grope for the proper term to describe Crow. She fought down the urge to scream out, Cloris Leachmanlike, “He vuz my boyfriend!” But even if they got the Young Frankenstein reference, these terribly earnest women probably wouldn’t be amused by it.
“What did he get from Crow? Some inappropriate film?” In a flash, Tess knew what had happened. “Did he screen In the Realm of the Senses for May? Or something by Peter Greenaway? You have to understand, to Lloyd, film is film, it’s all about technique, not content. I’ve tried to explain that other people have different sensibilities, but—”
“This isn’t about a movie,” Beth said.
“Would that it were,” Liz muttered.
“Well, what then?” Tess snapped. “I don’t mean to be impatient, but I am expecting someone this afternoon, and if you could just get down to cases—”
“This past weekend was May’s birthday,” Beth said. “Lloyd gave her a ring and asked her to marry him.”
Tess reached Crow at work, but he was innocent of Lloyd’s intentions, as it turned out. He had shown Lloyd the ring, an heirloom from his mother’s family, and told him that it would be his one day, when he found the woman he wanted to marry. Crow just hadn’t expected “one day” to come so soon.
“You can’t even call it stealing,” Crow said. “I told him that he could have it when he decided to get married. I’m not glad he took it without asking, but he took it for its rightful purpose, didn’t hock it. It’s not that long ago that Lloyd might have done just that. That’s progress.”
“Why would he want to get married?”
“He’s in love,” Crow said.
“Eighteen-year-old boys fall in love every day. They also fall out. However, they don’t go out and propose every day. Sort of the opposite.”
“We did screen Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, alongside Baz Luhrmann’s version. I saw it as an opportunity to see how a classic text was interpreted in two different eras, but Lloyd—well, I guess Lloyd was focusing on something else.”
“You don’t seem as upset about this as you might,” Tess said.
“It’s not tragic,” Crow said. “I mean, I don’t think it’s the best idea he’s ever had, but it’s hard for me to get upset because a teenage boy, deeply in love with a teenage girl, decided he wanted to marry her.”
“Actually, it could turn out to be absolutely tragic,” Tess argued. “They could ruin their lives. What if they have a baby? Oh my God, is that it? Is she pregnant?”
Crow laughed. “Truthfully, I’m not even sure they’ve had sex yet. I let Lloyd have as much privacy as possible on that score. But you’ve met May, Tess, and heard her ten-year plan for her life—Teach for America, followed by graduate school. She’s not going to get knocked up. Look, we’ll deal with this, but your anger is really all out of proportion.”
A rap on the door, followed by a quavering “Hello?” alerted Tess to the arrival of the guest she had been expecting, Mrs. Zimmerman. She said a hasty goodbye. Why was she so upset? A family heirloom, an engagement ring—didn’t Crow have any use for it? Were they not to be married then, at some point? Crow was the one who used to press for marriage; she had told him it made no sense unless they had children, thinking all the while—we will never have children. But now they were having a child, and she couldn’t remember the last time Crow had mentioned marriage. Was he really going to be there for her? Could she rely on him?
She called out to Ethel “not the Merm” Zimmerman, her mind fixated on the ring she had never seen. It was probably ornate, not to her taste. Or small, better suited