IN THE PHOTO, HANK FARWELL stands so straight he’s pushing his chest out farther than his chin. Beside him, Jean Dore is calmer, more at ease even with the round bouquet she has to hold. One side of her hair is tucked behind her ear, a casual mistake perhaps, given the formality of the photo, but Becky always loved that detail. She wished the photo wasn’t in black and white, so she could examine the exact coloring of her mother’s hair at that age, twenty years old, and compare it to her own at almost twenty-five.
Hank had kept this photo framed on the mantle, but he also had a crumbling white satin book with a dozen other photos from their small, family-only wedding in 1959, at a church in neighboring Dixon, where her mother had grown up. As a girl Becky used to page through the stiff curling photographs, searching for hints of what her mother had been like. The smiles were so forced, the poses so standard, that it was impossible to tell.
Hank used to say that he could instantly distinguish which photos were from before the service and which after. “Pale as a ghost,” he’d say, pointing to his face in the earlier ones. Becky didn’t really see a difference. “There, see—by then it was all official and I got my color back.” The new Mrs. Jean Farwell had the same smiling complexion in every photo. But only in the one on the mantle had she unthinkingly tucked back her hair in that girlish gesture. So this was the one that Becky now kept at home on her dresser—in Pierson, that is, not the Chicago condo.
Now, this October Sunday morning, Becky and Ingrid were midway through the reception for Ingrid’s wedding to Neil “She Actually Said” Yesko (as was piped in frosting, under a busty rendering of Ingrid, on his bachelor party cake). Becky was crammed next to the bride in the ladies’ room of the Amber Gate Banquet Hall on Timber Creek Road, west of Brinton. She held up layers and layers of itchy crinoline and slippery satin, her eyes shut as demanded.
“Don’t look,” Ingrid snapped again. “Don’t look!”
“It’s not the looking,” Becky mumbled.
“Shut up! I can’t help it! That’s so mean!”
“All right, all right, I was just kidding.”
Silence again in the bathroom. Through the walls they could hear the raucous talk and burbled bass from the reception.
“When they say ‘morning sickness’ they make it sound so petite and dainty,” Ingrid complained. “And all anyone ever admits to is throwing up! Nobody but me gets the trots, apparently.”
“Mm-hmm.” Becky had heard this speech before. It was their third emergency rush to the bathroom since the service. Ingrid claimed no one knew the reason for the suddenness of the date, and her parents had been happy enough to save money with a brunch reception, so Becky kept quiet about how the other bridesmaids had guessed the truth right away.
“Neil’s haircut looks nice, doesn’t it? I like it longer in back like that.”
“Sure.”
“Could you tell my aunt was avoiding my mom the whole weekend? We told them there’d be a champagne toast. It’s not my fault they’re all born-agains.”
“The groomsmen have been pouring shots of Jim Beam in the coat room.”
“I’m sure Aunt Christy’ll do penance for all our souls.” Ingrid let out a sigh, her forehead on the heels of her hands. Becky, who had opened her eyes, adjusted her friend’s tilted headband, silk flowers on elastic. “All right. I guess we can go.” Ingrid stood and the two of them began the process of rolling the girdle back up her thighs and stomach. Muffled in a face-full of dress, Ingrid said, “Also, Mayor Ken Doll has probably sent a search party for you. Ow.” The band on the Wonder Shaper had snapped back.
“Sorry. What are you talking about?”
“Following you around like a lost puppy. ‘Becky, I need your opinion on what house to buy.’ ‘Becky, I need your opinion on what pants to wear. And don’t mind my wife over here at table three, or our twins at home.’”
“You’re the one who invited them.”
“They weren’t supposed to come! Jesus H., as if I didn’t have enough stress without worrying which relative is going to say something to insult brand-new Mayor Ken Doll Brennan. Mayor Bren Kennan!” Ingrid laugh-burped, washing her hands. Becky knew she’d had a bit more than the “just for toasting!” pink champagne. They met eyes in the mirror.
“‘He was like the country he lived in,’” Ingrid intoned, quoting one of their favorite movies. “Come on. You know it.”
“‘Everything came too easily to him.’” Becky obliged with the rest of the line from The Way We Were. “But Redford is a stretch, even with the hair.”
“It’s not the hair, dummy. It’s the golden boy aura. Okay, it’s the hair too.”
“Hmm.”
In truth, Becky didn’t want to talk about the new mayor, an eager-beaver type who had already cornered her twice during hors d’oeuvres. She was stretched to the limit at Town Hall right now, between the increased focus of her new promotion and trying to make up the difference in several accounts she’d borrowed from too heavily in the past two months—to furnish the new Chicago apartment, to transport and install her many pieces there, and to throw several open houses aimed at cultivating top-end buyers and dealers. She was fighting to put back as much as she could, not knowing how closely this new mayor would be scrutinizing the finances.
Ingrid had been studying Becky in the mirror above the sink. “What about Adam Murphy? He is at your table, after all.”
“Murph plus three other horny single guys. I wonder how that happened.”
Ingrid began a lilting “Well, you never know . . .” But a fierce look from Becky shut her up. They left the ladies’, Ingrid’s dress squishing through the door. “Just be careful about him, okay?”
“Please. Murph wouldn’t know how to—”
“Not Murph, Mayor Ken,” Ingrid hissed. “He’s got his eye on you and I don’t like it.”
For a second this caught Becky off guard. An anxious flare sounded deep inside her, a kind of muffled sonic boom. Had she underestimated golden boy Ken Brennan? Was he smarter than he seemed? She mustered a smile and found a distraction.
“Before we go back in, I wanted to give you this in person.” Becky steered them to a long draped table covered in gift-wrapped boxes. Ingrid lit up, even though she’d been stopping by Sears daily to check on her registered items and therefore knew what almost everyone had bought her. Becky moved presents around to find the package, 11 inches by 17 inches, covered in plain white paper. No card.
Ingrid sat on a nearby bench and opened one taped flap. “Should we get Neil for this?”
“What?”
But Ingrid ignored her own question and went right on unwrapping. Becky took a deep breath when the drawing was revealed. The child’s tiny fingers, curled around one of her mother’s. And the woman’s relaxed posture, all that warmth and strength vibrating through the few lines on the page.
“Oh, wow,” Ingrid said, her pink-chapped hands gently bracing the sides of the frame. “This is so sweet.”
“Do you like it?”
“I love it. Love love love. Of course I can’t put it up until, you know, the cat’s out of the bag.” She patted her belly. “It’s going to look great over the—” With one arm Ingrid thrust the picture out to squint at it. Becky reflexively jumped, ready to catch it if it fell. “No. Too small. And we’re thinking Neil’s Zeppelin tour poster will go there. But I’ll find the perfect place.” Ingrid stood and propped the Cassatt back on the gift table. “Thank you!” She enveloped Becky in a hug.
Becky eyed the sketch leaning against the toasters and blenders. She felt reasonably sure no one here would give it a second look.
As they entered the reception room the DJ had just cued up Garth Brooks’s “Friends in Low Places” and everyone was screeching for Ingrid to join a front-of-the-room sing-along, which she happily hurried to do.
“Hi again.” Ken Brennan, suddenly at her elbow. “Got a second for me?” He held up two plastic flutes of pink champagne, and his ridiculously handsome smile did its work even as Becky saw right through it. Told herself she saw right through it.
The wedding progressed from Ingrid and Neil smushing cake into each other’s faces to line dancing led regally by Ingrid’s mother and her friends: the Picnic Polka, Louisiana Hot Sauce, Tush Push. Becky watched it all from a table with Ken, who talked and talked. Mostly he told her about his misadventures in area real estate, an epic saga of his family’s move from Springfield that involved plot twists and reversals and a nearly lost deposit and a corrupt moving company . . . Becky picked at her slice of cake and tuned out. As the wedding dwindled, new Mayor Ken only seemed to pick up steam.
“It was a little too much house,” he finally sighed. “And way, way, way too much money.”
Well, obviously, Becky thought. She knew what Mayor Ken’s new salary was, and a third-grader could have told him not to even bother.
“They want us to go under,” Ken said, pushing aside the table centerpiece, his voice suddenly serious. Becky tuned back in.
“Who?”
“Listen.” He leaned close to her, elbows on knees. “For the last eighteen months I knew I wanted to get out of Springfield. That place makes Chicago pols look like Girl Scouts. But they kept bringing me along, this committee, that committee, hey Brennan come by the club, or how about a round this Sunday—”
“Which club?” Becky cut in. Damn. She knew the real deals got made in those stupid cigar and scotch sessions. Maybe she could get Ken to—
“What I’m saying is, I was listening.” His eyes, greenish brown, were intent on her. “I saw the budgets, I saw what they actually have while they’re telling you they don’t. Remember last year when you put in for road repair on the . . . I can never remember which bridge is which.”
“Do I remember?”
“What came back? A quarter of the ask? An eighth?”
Becky stared. “We got nineteen hundred, on a bid that came in around twenty grand. And some line about waiting for more research on a new form of—”
“Macadam,” Ken said at the same time she did. “A new form of macadam that would solve all your problems. Did you ever hear about that macadam again? Meanwhile, do you know about how much Greenland County got that spring for an eight-mile lane rehab? Twenty-five thousand. Right off the top.”
“Those fuckers,” Becky said. They’d closed the bridge on Galena three times last year because of dangerous conditions. She’d narrowly avoided a fourth by selling off one of her very few—and very much cherished—pastels, a mid-level Roger Hilton. She’d made the sale swiftly and sloppily, trading speed for a good price, and poured that money into Pierson’s Roads account. Becky always finds a way, is what was said around the office, after she put out a vague story about squeezing some funds from one place and shifting funds around from another. Obviously they knew she didn’t always find a way, but she tried to patch the most obvious and glaring holes and when that happened, the praise rolled in.
Every time she drove over the crumbly but still-standing Galena bridge, though, she cursed a little bit in honor of that lost Roger Hilton. It had been a great piece.
Ken went on, citing memo after memo where Pierson had gone to the state for funds and been denied. Becky fumed. They’d looked like chumps, she and Mayor Thomsic. They’d been laughed at, fobbed off with stories she couldn’t believe she’d fallen for. And they’d never once pushed back. Just think what she could have done for the community with that money from Springfield. Just think what she could have done for the Activity!
“Thomsic always had a positive spin,” Becky said sullenly. “Said he had people there, said it would be our turn someday.”
“That’s where you went wrong,” Ken said. “They counted on that. His wanting to keep up a good front, make it look like he had things in control. But I have a different—Listen, do you want to get out of here?”
“What?” She hadn’t noticed, but now the dance floor was empty and the DJ had packed up. Around them servers were whisking off white tablecloths to reveal the scratched wood tabletops. “I can’t, I have to . . . Where’s Ingrid?”
There she was, in the lobby, changed into a shiny rose-colored dress with her hair freed from the elastic band of silk flowers. A group of women surrounded her, laughing and tossing confetti, shepherding her out into the chilly afternoon. Becky watched her go, love and melancholy welling up.
Luckily, Ken Brennan kept pulling at her attention. “I know a good place for beer.”
“How do you . . . Where’s your wife?”
“Went home a while ago, set the babysitter free. Come on. The end of a wedding is so depressing.”
“Beer in the middle of the day isn’t depressing?” But she took the hand he held out. Let him hold her coat, open the door of his car for her, of Fitz’s when they got there.
From the booth, watching Ken as he went up to order their drinks, rolled sleeves and bare forearms resting against the bar, Becky could see his appeal. She’d been hoping, she realized, that someone she knew would see them together.
Perhaps it was to cut off those feelings that when Ken returned to the table Becky said, “Listen. I’m not sure we should make any major waves in your first year.” She was only looking out for him, after all. She could take the heat from council and residents, but he’d probably want to keep his nose clean.
But Ken wouldn’t hear of it. He was one hundred percent in, one hundred percent with her on helping this town get back on its feet. He didn’t care about optics, he cared about results. And from what he knew, she was the only person who could spearhead real change. “Don’t you see? That’s how we’re going to get them. That’s how we can win.”
“Shame them,” Becky said slowly. All those promised state grants that never came through: for demolition of old properties, for roadwork, pension help. For repairing the riverwalk! God, how many times had the state sent out inspectors and environmental teams and financial assessors. She’d walked them up and down the riverwalk dozens of times, she’d followed up diligently. Nothing ever came back.
“Point out every way they’re failing us, every dollar missing, everything Springfield owes us.”
“It’d be ugly. In town, I mean. Thomsic kept it—we kept it—pretty optimistic.” So that the constituents wouldn’t know the full extent of their helplessness. So he could get reelected.
“That ends now.” Ken shrugged. “I can take it, and so can you. They love you. You can convince them, I know you can.”
“Sure, because I’m the one who’d be the messenger. You’ll get to shrug and say, ‘I tried my best for you, Pierson, but when it came budget time Becky just couldn’t get it done.’”
“Bullshit,” Ken said. He reached across to take her hand, as if they were shaking, but instead just held it lightly on the damp bar table. “I will never hang you out to dry. Whatever you say, I’ll fall in line.”
She withdrew her hand from his. This could be the cover story she’d been waiting for: Springfield. They were in the hole because of Springfield. And if Ken backed her, the town would buy it. Wouldn’t they? If the state was shorting them already, who would notice another hole within the hole?
It would be a risk bigger than any she’d taken: to ride her Activity on Springfield’s back. And on Ken’s. But also, and this was the weird part, she believed in Ken. In his smarts, in his passion. He reminded her of her. So if he went to bat against the state and won more for them . . . Becky won too. If she could take what she needed and Pierson could be fully operable? The ultimate dream.
“All right,” she said slowly. “I’m in. Let’s shake things up.”
Ken sat back against the high booth, then sprang up. “Wait here. Don’t move.” He returned minutes later with two shots. “Johnnie Black,” he said, passing one to her. He clinked his whiskey against hers. “To not getting rid of us.”
Becky nodded once and sent the Johnnie Black scorching down her throat.