ANN DILLON
With the black mini-puffball two inches from her lips and the razor line of shadow bisecting her smooth cheek, Ann Dillon walks about the well appointed office and tells the Vice Consul to the Romanian Ambassador that as Trustee and Chief Executive Officer of the Kost-O’Neal Charitable Trust, she will commit to the staffing and rehab of several orphanages dotting the Romanian countryside like the dark pebbles of bad memories. “We can do that,” she says, her voice a whispering rasp, thick with a cold brought on by a virus wrapped in Autumn’s changeable weather. “I’ll have to ask the Board about those other items,” she says, passing the second of four wall size windows, her fingers touching the velvet face of one rose petal, the whole time knowing there is no Board of Trustees, except for her, because she is the Board when she wears that hat and meets with herself in her office once every two months to do those things only the Board can do, directing herself as the Trust’s CEO to do those things only the CEO can do. “I’ve come a long way,” she says to herself, as she listens to the Vice Consul wrap up his part of the conversation, padding his closing remarks, maintaining a front, so serious and engaged, as indirect as romanita, old-world-aristocracy, comfortable with approximations and evasions designed to draft the borders of intention, meant to express what isn’t there, leaving for inference the implication of what is – a skill suited to children born last in large families who learn the value of never saying what they mean in order to get what they want.
“I’ve come a long way, indeed,” Ann tells herself as the Vice Consul takes another side-trip to Buffalo to get to Albany, and she edits him mercilessly, riding the sound, foregoing the sense, as she remembers the place from where she came – the air conditioned auditorium with the halogen lights, the almost imperceptible buzzing, the screech of folding chairs, when she struggled to take the Bar Exam with a summer cold and the menthol-medicinal lemon lozenges with the almost bitter taste. She remembers the proctor, the awful man who decided to ruin her life, the sweaty tall guy with the comb-over and serial killer eyes embedded in many-layered lenses, correcting for some strange astigmatism. She remembers how he stared at her from the moment she entered the auditorium, staring at her legs with his up-and-down eyes, never still, never settled, but wanting to see every part of her and loathing himself for being the kind of loser who looks at a woman that way, knowing he can never have her, but wanting her all the same and then hating her for it.
“His eyes,” she thought that morning in late July, all those years ago, were furtive little beads popping snatches of look-see as she struggled with her sore throat and then the cough that started mid-morning and bothered those around her. And yet she was so smart, so prepared, she sailed through it, her photographic memory scanning three years of law like turning the pages of a Time Magazine, taking the exam to satisfy her divorced parents, the trade-off for having ruined their lives and expectations for grandchildren – the trade-off for not liking boys.
The morning session ended with a bell ringing, and they collected the tests and she stayed at her seat and ate the sandwich she’d brought for lunch when he crossed the floor and stared at her again, making her hurry, making her finish her sandwich too quickly, making her stand up and walk away, too quickly, leaving some things behind, feeling something come off of him as she passed him, something desirous and pathetic, misshapen, and he repulsed her and he knew it and felt it, and it pissed him off.
The afternoon session called for essays, and she wrote until the bell rang when she put her pen down and looked around, rubbing her neck, thinking only of cool sheets, a warm bed and several weeks with nothing to do but rest and recuperate. The proctors collected the blue booklets and the guy walked down the other side of the room as Ann reached for the box of lozenges and put them in her purse. Then the guy crossed the room and told the woman collecting Ann’s booklet to stop. The woman stepped back; they whispered. He pointed to Ann, approached her from behind, tapped her on the shoulder and asked her to follow him. At first Ann refused until the woman proctor said it would be best if she just went along, and the three of them walked to a room behind a room behind a door in the far wall of the auditorium. The other proctors had gathered there and they were talking and laughing and drinking coffee from a huge coffee urn. Only one or two looked at Ann as she followed the awful man to another room where a little-woman (couldn’t have been more than four feet tall) sat on a raised chair behind a small desk, her hair pulled back in a bun, her mouth etched with a downward crease. She asked the guy what the problem was and the guy said he’d caught Ann cheating, and Ann protested and things began to spin out of control when the guy asked Ann to take the box of lozenges from her purse. Ann said he was crazy, but placed the small box on the desk before the little person. Then the guy told the woman to take out the white paper inside the box, and she did so, and there, in the smallest possible script, they saw figures and numbers and letters, handwritten, something like a code, and the little woman looked at it, looked at Ann and started to make phone calls.
“How could you?” Ann’s parents asked her, having spent all that money on college and law school. “But I didn’t,” Ann said, and it was just like the time in college when Ann came home with her friend and told her parents why she and her friend had slept together in Ann’s bed the night before Thanksgiving. “But you can’t be,” her mother had said. “But I am,” Ann had said, “and there’s nothing anybody can do about it,” because “it’s the way things are” – though these last words (“the way things are”) were not Ann’s words, but are the words of the Vice Consul on the other end of the phone, words that pull Ann back from her memory trip of faces, facts, dates, times and weather. Now, sensate and present, immediate and solid, she gathers her extended self with the ease and energy of youth. She tells the Vice Consul that one must see things as they are and not as one might wish them to be, and the Vice Consul agrees and continues the long withdrawal preparatory to a simple good-bye.
Ann fingers another flower bright in the sunlight shred through silent blinds. Her personal assistant, Lorene, enters the office carrying a wide tray set for late morning tea. Ann smiles and thinks about the night before with Lorene, a tall, pretty young woman, Irish and Thai, and she points to the Hitchcock table by the long sofa under the Matisse print.
The Vice Consul finally signs off and Ann lifts the mini-puff ball with the invisible head gear and sits in one of the Louis XV chairs facing the table. “Jesus Christ,” she says, as if talking on the phone were the same as digging a ditch, curing cancer, saving the world. But Lorene knows this part of the play and being young, ambitious, dependent on Ann’s money (which is the Trust’s money) she knows how to exaggerate Ann’s efforts and praise her accomplishments.
“What is it honey?” she asks, sounding like the actress-comedian-model-whatever in the movie who tried to soothe Madonna when Madonna was bored and irritable, all presumption offered up in a sweet sop.
“Nothing,” Ann says, as she picks up the phone messages on the tea tray – the pink leaves set in a square by the tea pot and scones. “Did Mr. Johnson call?” Ann asks, and Lorene says no.
“And who’s this?” Ann asks, pointing to a scribbled name.
“I’m sorry,” Lorene says. “My penmanship is usually better than that, but the pot had begun to scream, and I was moving between my desk and the kitchen …”
“So who is it?” Ann asks, not mad, but busy, determined, the allowable bad manners of office life.
Lorene takes the slip of paper and prays she’ll remember the name. “Emma,” she says. “No, not Emma – Emmanuella. That’s it: Emmanuella. I remember because it’s such an unusual name,” and she hands it back to Ann who puts it on the bottom of the stack.
“Did the people from Houston call?” Ann asks, but Ann doesn’t care about the people from Houston. The question’s just a transition, a way to ignore other things.
“I don’t think so,” Lorene says, playing along, pouring the tea, picking up a scone, careful not to get powdered sugar on her black sweater.
“They probably don’t think the Trust is up and running,” Ann says.
“I think word’s getting out, though,” Lorene says, “and when these people realize you’ll be the person running it now, they’ll kill themselves to get in line.”
“Place has a history, though,” Ann says. “Disappointments, broken promises, whatever,” and Ann pictures Cal Stevens, her old boss, the tall patrician with the bow ties, a good man, incompetent, fond of the very best things as long they were served up in a kind of Republican rectitude and understatement.
“I know Mr. Stevens let things go,” Lorene says, like a question, still uncertain of her place, not wanting to provoke Ann to disagreement for the sake of disagreement,
“He did,” Ann says, leaning forward. “I don’t think he could bring himself to give away money he thought belonged to Emma. Everything he did was because of her.”
“He loved her, you said.”
“All his life.”
“You went to his funeral.”
“I paid for his funeral, or the Trust did. His own family – Jesus, they’re too old or dead and even the ones who could have been there were too embarrassed. People think he died from all of that, the scandal, the fact he couldn’t raise the bond, the fact he went away. But he didn’t die from any of that. None of that killed him. What killed him was a broken heart.”
“I’ve heard about that,” Lorene says, “how a couple can be together for years and then one dies and a month later the other one drops dead of a heart attack, even when there wasn’t any history of heart trouble.”
“Broken heart’s more than just a word,” Ann says, picking up the phone slips, going through them one more time.
“I hope that’s not how it will be with us,” Lorene says.
“What on earth do you mean?” Ann asks.
“What I mean is I want both of us to be a hundred and twelve in a big bed in a nursing home and one afternoon we just drift off together.”
“I don’t know how romantic that sounds. Anyway, we can’t be a hundred and twelve together.”
“Why not?”
“I’m twenty years older than you.”
“Yes, but age doesn’t matter after a hundred and ten.”
Lorene stands and rubs Anne’s shoulders and Anne rewards herself with a sinking, momentary letting-go. She tells herself she deserves a rest, because she works so hard; she does so much: She took over the Trust; she’s seeing it through probate; she out-conned a con artist; she keeps a beautiful young woman; she’s impressed her parents who live in separate cities; she’s made money; obtained position and the kind of power that comes with money. “Yes,” she says to herself, “I deserve a rest.”
The phone rings and Lorene crosses the office and picks it up. Ann, still warm, still sinking, turns in her chair and shakes her head to say she’s not available to take calls. Lorene identifies the caller, mouthing the words: “Your mother,” and then speaking into the phone: “Yes, Ann told me you planned to meet in New York sometime. That should be a fun trip for the both of you.”
Anne settles back in her chair, grateful not to have to talk with her mother.
“I’ll be sure to tell her as soon as she returns,” Lorene says, and she picks up a letter from the desk, stationery from the French Embassy in New York, an invitation to a charity function for something or other, and she tells Ann’s mother that her daughter’s with the French Ambassador.
Ann listens to all of this. She knows why her mother is calling. It’s because Ann’s high school class is holding a reunion in Meriton in a few weeks and Mr. Dillon’s hopeful his successful daughter will choose to attend. But Anne wants nothing to do with Meriton or reunions. She wants nothing to do with the hometown people who made her feel inadequate, not because she was, but because they were envious, because she was so much better than they were - smart, wealthy, beautiful and gay, and, because she was gay, doomed to downplay all of it in a mill town filled with dumb, shrewd, crafty, old world people with an unwavering love for the kind of cruelty and sentimental nonsense that attends all mediocrity. No. Her father might want to show her off now – show the mean-spirited little town how the prodigal daughter turned out, but Ann wants nothing to do with the expenditure of all that energy just to be pleasant, to make nice with overweight fanny-pack women in stretch pants, greasers and their cars, rah-rahs with their small town ambitions, the ones who made her feel small and not quite right. “Fuck them,” she says to herself, worked up now, angry, wanting her mother off the phone.
“I’ll tell her,” Lorene continues, when Anne’s cell phone rings and Lorene picks it up and hands it to Anne. ““I have to take another call, then,” Lorene says, and “Yes, I will be sure to tell her,” and she lowers the receiver as Anne answers her private line.
“Hello,” Anne says, noncommittal, flat, the cold struggling to disguise the anger. “Then did you speak with the Commissioner?” she asks, and Lorene knows enough to excuse herself.
“I already said I’d attend the dinner,” Ann says, “but you said you’d take care of the other.” Again there’s a pause. “He’s going to be the fucking Governor, for Christ’s sake. Are you telling me your brother can’t twist a few arms at some second rate Commission?” She holds the phone and listens, and then explodes again. “Now listen, Drew, let’s get a few things straight here, because maybe your brother’s got a short memory.” Drew tries to answer, but Ann interrupts: “No, Drew, I said you listen: Eight months ago he was down ten points and that was before the rumors started. My godfather asked me to do a favor, and I came forward and stood by his side and looked up at him with those lovey-dovey Nancy Reagan eyes, and now your brother is up six. But I haven’t done it for nothing, and my godfather knows I haven’t done it for nothing, and you assured both of us that you’d deliver. Now this deal isn’t closed till that fucking Commission scores my exam and admits me to the fucking Bar.” Again there’s silence as Little Drew, Sweet Drew, back peddles and stammers, wondering what a Kennedy would do in a situation like this. He tells Ann he’ll do what he can with the Bar Commission, but Ann says that’s not good enough. She says: “You tell the Attorney General I’m going to be a lawyer in this state or the Hartford Courant’s going to run an expose that’ll ruin his career before he gets a chance to ruin it himself.”
Ann clicks off the phone and throws it against the far wall where it shatters and falls to the carpet.
Lorene looks in, tentative, uneasy. “Is everything alright?” she asks.
Ann stands with her back to Lorene. “Order me a new cell phone,” she says, “and charge it to the Trust.”
Lorene makes a note.
“And try Coop Johnson again,” Ann says. “It’s about time his favorite little girl threw one of her favorite little tantrums.”