The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [76]
Tally automatically made this calculation upon meeting another attractive woman: How many more men were in her future? It was like assessing another person’s bank account. What are you worth? Do you have more than me or less than me? Most women had decidedly less. Rita was harder to judge. She was earthy, practically reeking of sex. Clem was a bigger prize than Rick, but Rick was a catch. He can probably fix things, Tally thought. He didn’t bother with this place because it was a rental. But if he owned his own home, everything would work, always. His dream house would function, no corners would be cut, no mistakes would be made.
“Would you like a beer?” Rick asked. She said she would. Gwen shot her a look. The look said many things. Such as: You never drink beer! If there’s no rush to get home, why are you here already? What are you doing? But Tally was just being polite.
Later, on the short trip home, Gwen said: “You acted sappy.”
“Sappy? What do you mean?”
“Weird. Drinking beer. Staying late, when you always say that good manners mean not hanging on and on.”
“I thought you wanted to spend more time with Mickey. She is your best friend.”
“Mickey said—” Gwen paused. “Mickey said you were flirting with her dad. She said women do that all the time, right in front of her mother.”
“I thought he was her stepdad and not even that, not really.”
“What do you mean?”
“They’re not married, right?”
Gwen’s face clouded with hard thought. Oh dear, what was so obvious to an adult could fly over a child’s head. Gwen honestly didn’t know that people could live together and have babies without being married. Tally remembered her playing Barbies with a friend back in the old neighborhood, Gwen informing the friend solemnly: “They can’t have babies if they’re not married. It’s a law.” Her daughter was naive in a way Tally had never been.
“I didn’t mean they’re not married, darling. Just that they didn’t have a big wedding. But that’s typical of second marriages. Forget I said anything.”
Talk about naive: children never forget what they are asked to forget. Within a week, Gwen had hurled this accusation at Mickey, after some silly argument, and Mickey reported the insult to her mother, who had, lord help them, driven to the Robisons’ house to confront Tally. Tally claimed a migraine and asked Clem to take charge of the mess, but he insisted that she at least be present while he defended her.
Rita was headed to work, her hair in a messy upsweep, sort of a deflated beehive. Her fury was so palpable that one could almost imagine real bees buzzing furiously around her head.
“It was a misunderstanding,” Clem said. “Tally never meant to say anything to Gwen.”
“Misunderstanding? More like wishful thinking, if you ask me. I’m used to women throwing themselves at Rick. I’m not used to them using little girls to carry their ugly gossip. Maybe Mickey shouldn’t be coming over here, if you have problems with my lifestyle.”
“Mickey and Gwen love each other,” Clem said. “They shouldn’t be punished because an adult made a mistake.”
“What do you mean, love? My girl’s not queer.”
“Not that kind of love.” Tally could tell that Clem was working hard to keep his emotions in check, that he was repulsed by Rita’s quickness in projecting romantic love on the friendship of two innocent little girls, and her knee-jerk disgust at homosexuality. Perhaps Clem suspected, even then, that Fee was gay. At any rate, he talked Rita down, apologizing for Tally’s misstatement. (Which it really was; she had done everything to mitigate her slip.) He charmed her. Clem could charm. He had charmed Tally into giving her life away.
Now, almost four years later, watching her slim-hipped daughter switch about the kitchen in a way that seems designed to make the pleats on her skirt swing just so, Tally wonders if Mickey