Capital Crimes

“Fine.” Again blue eyes clouded. Lucille looked close to tears.

“What is it, Mother?”

“It could have been bullets.”

“Luckily, it wasn’t. So let’s just enjoy this meal and being together.” Which was an oxymoron because whenever they were together conflict was inevitable.

Mother harrumphed, and then abruptly plastered a smile across her face as she waved across the room to two women who’d just entered.

Darlene MacIntyre and Eunice Meyerhoff. The duo hobbled over to the table, tongues clucking in unison. Darlene was short and pudgy, Eunice tall and severe with impossibly black hair drawn back in a Dragon Lady bun.

Lucille blew air kisses.

“Darling!” Eunice gushed. “How are you?”

“Fabulous, what else? Enjoying a di

Eunice turned her eyes to Davida. “Are you all right, honey?”

“I’m fine. Thanks for asking.”

“That was just terrible!”

Lucille said, “Not to mention frightening.”

Darlene said, “Motherfuckers!”

Davida broke into laughter, but was grateful that the room was empty. “I couldn’t have said it better, Mrs. MacIntyre.” She took a sip of her wine. “Would you two like to join us?”

“We wouldn’t dream of intruding,” Eunice said. “Your mother rarely sees you.”

“Is that what she tells you?”

“All the time, dear.”

Davida shot a mock-stern look at Mother then focused her gaze back to the two old women. “Well, then, it’s lovely to see you both. Enjoy your evening.”

“You, too,” Darlene answered. “And don’t let those assholes get you down.”

When they’d toddled off, Davida said, “I hardly see you?”

Mother reddened slightly. “Eunice is a troublemaker…I don’t complain about you chronically, Davida. That battleaxe is smitten with jealousy because her Jane detests her.”

“Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?”

“Hardly, Davida. Eunice sided with Jane’s ex during the last divorce. Though I suppose one can understand her frustration, seeing as it was a third divorce.” Sly smile. “Or perhaps sixth. Or twenty-sixth, I’ve lost count.”

“Third,” Davida said. “I heard about Eunice taking Parker’s side. On top of being tacky and disloyal, it was misguided. Parker Seldey’s a jerk and a maniac.”

“But good-looking.”

“Once upon a time. I hear he has quite the temper.”

“So do I, but that doesn’t concern Eunice. Because he was courtly to her- remembering her birthday, that kind of nonsense.” Lucille sighed. “One’s blood is one’s blood. Still, by the same token, despite Eunice’s quirks, Jane shouldn’t despise her.”

“She’s angry at Eunice, but she doesn’t hate her, Mother. Believe me, I know.”

Jane Meyerhoff had been Davida’s friend since grade school and one of her roomies at the UC. Both had been rebellious teenagers, smoking dope, skipping school, hauled in more than once for petty theft in Sacramento. Stupid self-destructive acts committed because neither girl liked herself.

Jane had carried fifty extra pounds and hated her “summer squash” nose. She starved and vomited the weight off during her freshman year in college, got the nose job as a junior. But old self-images die hard, and Jane had never been comfortable with who she was.

Probably never would be comfortable, Davida decided with some sadness.

She, on the other hand, came to grips with herself well before college. Everything changed a few months before her senior prom when she came out.

Like birthing a child: painful, but you had something to show for it. Coming out meant life was suddenly honest- illuminated by a clean, bright light Davida had never imagined.

She chewed her pasta while glancing across the table. Mother had many faults, but homophobia wasn’t one of them. She’d never given a rat’s ass that her only surviving child was gay.

Perhaps it was because Mother, though resolutely heterosexual, didn’t care for men in general and hated Davida’s father, in specific.

The Honorable Stanford R. Grayson, District Court Judge (ret.), now lived in Sarasota, Florida, where he played golf with a second wife twenty years younger than Lucille. Mother had been thrilled when the old man got re-hitched, for now she had something else to complain about. And Father had step-grandchildren with Mixie, so he ignored Davida and left her all to Lucille.

If Mother ever felt pangs about her lack of grandchildren, she never expressed her longings to Davida.

Mother picked at her food and pushed it around on her plate. “How often do you see Janey?”

“A bit more since she moved to Berkeley.” Davida smiled tightly. “I try to keep in contact with all my old college roomies.”

Mother had wanted her daughter to go to Stanford. Davida insisted on Berkeley. Once there, she’d never really left, working first as an assistant to the mayor, then moving to the capital, where she gofered for Ned Yellin, the most progressive member of the assembly. Ned’s shockingly sudden death from a heart attack had propelled her own career. Now she represented her district with workaholic pride and loved her job.

Although there were days like yesterday that made her wonder why she’d ever shaken the hornet’s nest that was state politics. It was challenge enough to deal with the vagaries of constituents basically in harmony with her views. Working with- and around- her less-enlightened colleagues could be as frustrating as…there really wasn’t anything worse.

Less enlightened; her euphemism of the month. Bigoted and biased would be more accurate. Then again, everyone had his own agenda. She certainly had hers and it had nothing to do with sexual orientation.

When she was ten, her older sister Gly

Gly

Stem cells would have saved Gly

Two and a half years ago, Davida had been heartened when the people voted in an initiative funding a state stem-cell institute. But years later, she was disillusioned and angry: all the institute had accomplished was creating a board of directors and issuing a namby-pamby mission statement.

“Science works gradually” was the excuse. Davida wasn’t buying it. People like Alice had the answer, but Alice hadn’t even been consulted by the new board- Davida’s repeated requests notwithstanding.

She decided she’d waited long enough. Buttressed by a battalion of scientists, doctors, clergy, humanists and genetic sufferers, she went to war every day in Sacramento, laboring to convince her less-enlightened colleagues that a less grandiose but more efficient legislative approach was the answer.

And got precious little for her efforts.

It wasn’t that the stodgy pols really cared about aborted fetuses, because she’d learned that few pols cared about anything other than getting reelected. Though they screamed a good case. Six months into her struggle, she was convinced it was Davida they were rejecting. Because of who she was.

Day after day of wearing out her vocal cords, making deals she really didn’t want to make, wasting hours on mind-numbing meetings. Now eggs in her face, on her blouse…right there on the capitol steps, the humiliation.

What a mess- there was a metaphor for you.

Mother’s voice snapped her back to the here and now. Prattling on about dangers lurking around every corner.

According to Lucille, Davida was a major target of every white-supremacist hate group in California, not to mention Bible Belt prolifers, hypermacho antigay farmers from the San Joaquin Valley, and, of course, misogynists of every stripe and gender.