Kate drove back to the LGBT Center. According to the clock in her car, fourteen minutes remained in the meeting of the bereavement group, a few more if, like AA meetings, there was minor social interaction afterward. She located a parking space close to the entry to the Center, backed into it to face the door, and waited with the engine idling to feed the air conditioner.
She had brought with her the photo of Natalie Rostow that Geneva Fallon had given her, and she picked it up from the passenger seat. She wanted an in-person look at Rostow, her need to physically assess the woman undoubtedly the lingering effects of cop mentality, she conceded. She also had the address of the mobile home in Desert Hot Springs, taken down during the brief conversation yesterday that set up the drive into Palm Springs today.
Still smarting over her meeting with Geneva Fallon—if she could even call the thirty seconds of take-this-envelope-and-get-lost a meeting—she admitted that she was being irrational. Nevertheless she indulged her resentment that a member of the superior rich had finessed her into a commitment, then treated her like a minion carrying out the get-it-done orders of a mafia don. For two cents she’d march into the Center and hand the checks over to the bearded guy at the front desk and consider it mission accomplished, the money well spent to support community programs. But she knew, and grew even more irritated with the certainty, that on principle and for the sake of Natalie Rostow and her own conscience she would do no such thing. She would carry out her commitment.
The door of the Center finally opened to seven people emerging in a flock, five women, two men, all of them advanced in years, three of them on canes, Natalie Rostow easily recognizable among them. A small woman with a neat cap of gray-white hair, she wore well-fitted white capris on trim hips and legs and a lavender T-shirt with print Kate could not discern. Her arm was wrapped around a stooped woman on a cane, in sisterly comfort more than affection; the other woman’s face was blotched with red, her eyes wet, presumably from the discussion in the bereavement group. Rostow assisted her along the curb to where a driver waited by the door of a van whose sign announced one of the assisted living facilities in town. After a farewell pat on the woman’s shoulder, Rostow turned and made her way to a dark blue Datsun Pulsar that dated from somewhere in the nineties, Kate guessed.
She followed her out of the lot, over to Indian Canyon, remaining at a distance. Reviewing her thought process about a possible approach to Natalie Rostow, the alternative she’d come up with as she’d sat fuming in the parking lot at the LGBT Center, she knew she had to make a decision before she approached the turnoff. She remembered the Soon, very soon note from Ellie Shuster in her mailbox and with a loud, fierce growl of “Stop being an idiot, you could die today,” she turned away from the road to her house and sped up until she was behind the Datsun.
Natalie Rostow’s mobile home was on the far end of Dillon Road, part of a community off Smoke Tree Road. When the Datsun pulled into the carport alongside the trailer, Kate drifted her Jeep past to take a longer look at the place.
Four hundred square feet at most, she judged, and a standout amid its neighbors, sandy beige with a slightly peaked roof and two vertical front windows framed in dark brown below a small, graceful clerestory window. A stairway led up to the doorway and a tiny covered patio with two white chairs and a small table, bookend to the covered parking spot on the other side of the trailer.
She turned the Jeep around and parked in front of Rostow’s home. Then made her way through a small yard landscaped with fine crushed rock and sand and cactus, and up the stairs.
Natalie Rostow immediately answered her knock as if she’d been standing just inside the door.
“My name is Kate Delafield.” To the stony expression in the blue eyes magnified by thick glasses, she added, “I’m not a preacher and I’m not selling anything.”
“You followed me here.” The tone was flat, accusatory.
“For a good reason I’d like to explain. May I come in? I’m a retired LAPD police officer, if it helps.”
“That may impress some people,” Rostow conceded, leaving but not me implied. She stepped aside.
The living room, a fan turning under its peaked ceiling, was immaculately tidy. A decorative gray stripe around the top of snow-white walls matched a gray sofa enhanced by fluffy white pillows. There was a cream-colored loveseat, a coffee table with a marble top, two stylish ceramic lamps adorning miniscule end tables, a geometric black and gray carpet covering much of what appeared to be hardwood or laminate floor. A small TV sat on a bookcase filled with paperbacks. In an alcove, a gold mirror reflected a dining table with a white top and two gold chairs with bright red seats. The tiny kitchen held handsome dark gray cabinets and appliances and a counter with a gray-white Formica top on which were a coffee maker, a container of cooking implements, a knife set. Only Geneva Fallon, Kate thought acidly, would ever consider this very pleasing home “a decrepit trailer.”
“I need coffee,” Rostow said, stepping lithely toward the kitchen. “You too?”
“Me too, and black is fine,” Kate said gratefully. “May I sit down?”
“Of course. Anywhere.”
The coffee maker was preloaded, apparently set up before Rostow made her trip in to the bereavement group, and a few minutes later its rich aroma permeated the air and she came into the living room carrying two mugs.
Kate, seated on the loveseat, sipped excellent coffee, nodded appreciation, set the mug down on the marble table. Without preamble, she extracted the envelope from her shoulder bag as Rostow seated herself on the opposite sofa.
“Geneva Fallon asked me to bring this to you. I understand how very upset you were at the sight of her—”
“Do you really.” Rostow set her coffee mug down on the coffee table with a whack and crossed her arms.
“—and that your partner, Barbara, threw her out.”
“It’s blood money,” Rostow uttered, not looking at the envelope, her tone granite.
“Most definitely. And I’m here to offer it one more time. Or to have it distributed to your choice of our gay and lesbian organizations throughout the valley.” She slightly emphasized the “our” to further identify herself. She extended the envelope to Rostow. “Your decision.”
“Well, that’s a new variation on an ultimatum,” Rostow said coolly, but with the barest hint of amusement. She uncrossed her arms, took the envelope and in the same motion flicked it onto the marble table between them. Picked up her coffee and sat back in the sofa. She gazed at Kate. “You seem an odd sort of emissary.”
Tell me. She thought about explaining, then said merely, “It’s complicated.”
“Are you a friend?”
“Not on this earth,” Kate said, “or any other planet.”
The lines in Rostow’s face deepened in the barest hint of a smile. “Tell me more about what you think of her.”
Kate did not reply.
Rostow said impatiently, “For God’s sake, why are you doing this?”
Kate said with equal impatience, “Look, just give me a decision and I’ll be out the door.”
“Tell me this: what does she expect in return? Forgiveness?”
“Absolutely nothing. Nothing,” she repeated. “What she did to you bothered her enough to make a gesture. Millions haven’t, don’t even acknowledge what they did to us, much less consider restitution. My problem with her is the one I have with most rich people. They actually think they deserve what they have and can buy what they want because they’re superior. It never occurs to them that they’re just goddamn lucky. Geneva Fallon already has what she wants. The instant I took this envelope from her you got crossed off her list.”
Rostow’s laugh was involuntary, contemptuous. “People don’t change, do they. What she did to me is the person she actually is. But I give her half an ounce of credit for having half an ounce of conscience.”
“As do I,” Kate said, and drank much of her coffee; it appeared she would not be here long enough to savor it.
“Barbara guaranteed me it was worth it to throw her out on her ear. Since your alternative is donations to LGBT organizations, I take it she’s offered more than the paltry sum Barbara guessed it was.”
“What did she guess?”
“Five hundred, maybe five thousand at most. So, I’m curious—what’s on the check? What was the damage she did to my lesbian life worth to her?”
Kate held Rostow’s gaze and remained mute.
Rostow shrugged, picked up the unsealed envelope, opened it, looked at the top cashier’s check.
“Jesus God!”
“Believe me, she can afford it.” Kate was trying not to smile at the gasping whisper, the wide-eyed, slack-jawed amazement on Rostow’s face. “Maybe you’ll increase that half ounce of credit to an ounce.”
“Maybe two ounces.” Rostow, quickly recovering, pushed the check back into the envelope, dropped it on the table. “I like you,” she pronounced, getting up. “Let me refresh that coffee. Unless you’re in a hurry?”
“I’m not,” Kate said. “And I like you too.” This spirited, self-possessed woman was good for her morale, good to be around.
“Call me Natalie. I never let anyone call me Nat. Short person that I am, it makes me feel even more like gnat the insect.”
Kate smiled. “Except for people I arrested in my police career, no one’s ever called me anything but Kate.”
When Rostow returned with mugs of coffee refilled to the brim and resumed her seat on the sofa, Kate said quietly, “You asked why I took this on. My partner back then could have been you, Natalie. Anne was a teacher too, primary school. We were very careful. And always afraid.”
“I thought I was really careful too. How lucky that nothing happened to Anne.”
“Something did.” She felt as if she could tell this woman anything and continued heedlessly, “She died in an accident on the Hollywood Freeway. She was thirty-two.”
“Oh, Kate, I am so sorry.” She looked genuinely distraught. “How terrible that must have been for you back then.”
“We did have twelve good years. I’m very sorry about Barbara. How long—”
“Twenty-seven for us. They were good years, too.”
Kate asked, choosing her words, “After Fallon did that to you, what…how did you manage?”
“I didn’t. My teaching career—gone. The woman I loved—she told me I had to leave. My parents were horrified. Friends and colleagues were no longer friends and colleagues. Geneva Fallon dropped an atomic bomb on my life.”
Geneva Fallon, Kate thought, was lucky that Natalie Rostow had only screamed at her. I probably would have killed her.
“Two women, two wonderful women came to the house while I was packing up and told me they were there to help…” Tears welled and she picked up her coffee.
In the pause, Kate offered, “I had help from women at key times too. I can’t imagine where I would be without them.”
“In my case, I’d be dead. I had reservations at a motel, I already had the bottle of vodka and three bottles of aspirin I was going to take when I got there.”
“Who were they? How did they know about you?”
“They never did tell me who it was that sent them, to this day I don’t know. I suspect it was someone in administration in the school system. That’s the only way they would have known my address. They were Betty Berzon and Terry DeCrescenzo.”
She looked at Kate as if expecting recognition of the names. “They were co-founders that year of the Southern California Women for Understanding.” When Kate still showed no sign of knowing the reference, she said impatiently, “A lesbian organization that brought mostly professional women together for networking and to do community work. Betty Berzon was a psychotherapist instrumental in getting homosexuality declassified as a mental disorder. Both women have written books…” She scowled at Kate. “You don’t know this? Where have you been all your life?”
Kate answered shortly, “Being a closeted police officer.”
Rostow’s face softened slightly, and she nodded. “In the eighties, Terry DeCrescenzo founded GLASS—Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services—the first refuge anywhere for our throwaway youngsters.”
Mute with admiration at all this achievement and its impact, Kate just nodded. “I don’t know my history as well as I should,” she muttered, chastened.
“For sure,” Rostow said in a tone that did not disguise disapproval. “They took me in. To their home. Betty treated me for suicidality. They got me a job as a researcher for a historian they knew, and I went on from there into technical writing. Then I met Barbara and the sun came back into my life.”
“I’m very glad to hear it,” Kate said. “What did Barbara do?”
“She was co-owner of a bakery. Till a drunk came through a red light and crippled her. Between insurance money and workman’s comp and my income, we got this place and managed. It’s a little harder now she’s gone, but I have a good home here, not much expense.” She glanced at the envelope, back at Kate. “I do manage, I have enough. A whole coterie of women live here, we all look in on each other. We’re all colors, all creeds, a lot of us lesbian.” She smiled. “Though I’ve always suspected that most women are lesbians. Some of us just don’t realize it yet.”
Kate smiled back at her. “It’s a good thought. Tell you what, Natalie…” She pointed to the envelope. “Why not use this money to make life a little easier for all these women around you?”
Natalie Rostow contemplated her. “That’s actually not a bad idea. In fact it’s a good one. Melanie needs a caregiver and can’t afford one. Our clubhouse needs a little work. Actually, a lot of work. That car of mine—it’s on its last legs, I could use an upgrade…”
“So put the blood money to good use and tell everybody it’s life insurance.” One of the approaches she’d been thinking of using. That, or a phony inheritance.
“Kate, I saw two checks in there.”
“The other’s a cashier’s check for me, ten thousand. I wouldn’t touch it with a flagpole. I’d like you to give it to the LGBT Center.”
“Why don’t you—”
“I’d rather it came from you. Maybe to fund that bereavement group you go to?”
Rostow nodded. “A good idea.”
Kate finished her coffee and rose to her feet. “I have to go. I just remembered I have a dog to walk and feed.”
“Whereabouts are you?”
Kate gestured. “Over in Yucca.”
“It was rude of me not to ask more about you. Will you come back and visit?” Rostow rose and went to the kitchen counter, wrote on a pad, and gave the page to Kate. “I think you’d like the women here and I’m sure they’d like you.”
Kate looked down at the page; it had Natalie Rostow’s phone number. She took the pad and wrote her own phone number on it. And finally read the message on Natalie’s lavender T-shirt that she had noticed in the parking lot of the LGBT center: When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple.
She grinned. “Thank you, Natalie. I definitely will.”
If I live long enough, she thought, looking wistfully around her. It was a lovely place to be. A peaceful place to visit with this cultivated, interesting woman and her circle of friends.