feet and fetched a wad of toilet paper from the bathroom. When she came back she didn't settle again to her comfortable place on the carpet but perched vulture-like on the edge of the straight-backed chair. 'I haven't any Kleenex,' she apologized as she held out the tissue.
'This is fine. Thank you.' Christina blew her nose.
Anna was speculating whether or not she had murdered her lover, but when Christina looked up there was such loneliness in her brown eyes Anna found herself saying with honesty as well as compassion: 'Those are beautiful photographs.'
The simple kindness seemed to undo Christina and the trickle of tears became a river. Anna knew from experience that tears made men nervous. Though she certainly enjoyed them less, they bothered her no more than laughter.
In a minute or two the sobs subsided. Christina took a deep drink of her wine and sighed as if she were breathing out her very soul.
'I thought maybe she was blackmailing you,' Anna said. 'Though who'd care these days is beyond me. But maybe you wanted to go to seminary, become an Episcopal priest, run for Congress, or Mrs. America. Was she?'
Christina shook her head. 'She threatened sometimes. Half kidding you know, wanting to make me 'come out of the closet'. I like it just fine in the closet. But Sheila'd never have done it.'
'Because she loved you?'
'No. I don't know that she did love me. Because she was a very ethical person. Painfully so. She used to boast-and it was true in a lot of ways-that she had no morals but she did have ethics. To tell someone else's secrets would not have been an ethical thing to do.'
'Why did you break in, search her picture collection?'
'I was afraid if the pictures turned up in her effects they might be made public in some way. Then Erik would find out like he finds out everything. He would use them to prove I was an unfit mother. He'd take Alison from me.'
'Erik is Alison's father?'
'Legally.'
Anna looked at her questioningly. It had nothing to do with Drury or lions, and she couldn't bring herself to voice mere curiosity.
'After Erik and I had been trying a while we found out his sperm count was too low-practically nil-and what few little guys there were, were pretty poor swimmers. 'Weak specimens' the doctor called them. Alison's daddy is the turkey baster. High tech, though. We had it done in a fancy clinic in San Raphael.'
'I take it, it was not an amicable divorce,' Anna ventured and Christina laughed bitterly.
'No. Erik was having an affair with his corner office and his mahogany desk at an investment banking firm in San Francisco and I was having an affair with the woman who came to do the stenciling in the nursery.
'Erik had been pretty upset over the sperm count thing even though it really didn't matter much to me. I guess having his wife run off with another woman was more than he could take. He even threatened to kill her. He actually waited at her off ramp and rammed Linda's car with his Toyota. He was just trying to scare us, I think. It worked. Linda moved to Seattle. I lost touch with her after a while.'
'Why didn't he get Alison then?'
'He tried but I went on the stand and lied my way out of it. There wasn't any proof. And I guess I didn't look like the judge's idea of one of 'them.' He'll never give up, though.'
'He loves Alison that much? Or hates you?'
'Both in his way, I guess. But what he really loves is winning and what he can't stand is losing.'
A moment passed in silence. Christina looked through the pictures again but this time there were no tears. When she'd finished, she held them out to Anna.
'Keep them,' Anna said.
'You loved somebody!' Christina sounded faintly surprised.
'Did you think of me as the Snow Queen, a heart of ice?'
Christina was quiet so long, Anna thought she wasn't going to reply.
'I suppose I did,' she said finally. 'You seem so tough, so together, lifting heavy weights and driving big trucks. It's easier to believe other people are tough-unfeeling-then you don't have to be careful of them. You can go right on along being careful only of yourself. If you have a heart,' Christina said gently, 'it's made of gold.' She held the corner of the bundle of pictures over the chimney of the lamp. Flames bloomed green and blue from the developing chemical.
'It's a shame,' Anna said. 'They were really the only pictures Sheila ever took that were worth a damn.'
Christina left at nine-forty; eleven-forty New York time. Anna decided to risk Molly's displeasure, gambling she'd still be up watching Jay Leno.
For this call, Anna went to the pay phone down the road half a mile at the Pine Springs Store. The laundry room in the Cholla Chateau was too public.
'It's me. Did I wake you up?' Anna asked.
'Nope. This is the City That Never Sleeps. Tonight I know why. The people in 3C won't let it. I knew I should have moved when they took up clog dancing.' There was a sudden silence in the listening darkness of the phone lines, a hushed breath, a sense of palpable relief.
'Still smoking?' Anna asked.
'Still drinking?' Molly returned.
'Like a fish.'
'Like a chimney.'
'By sixty-two you'll be dead of emphysema like Aunt Gertie.'
'By seventy-four you'll fall drunk in the upper pond and drown like Gramma Davis.'
'Come to West Texas. At least mix your smoke with some real air,' Anna said and, as always, she felt a fluttering of hope that this time Molly would say yes. And wouldn't cancel out at the last minute.
'Too many crazy clients,' Molly said with a laugh.
'Speaking of crazy,' Anna blurted out, 'I think I may be gay.'
'Woman to woman love? Politically correct. Low risk of disease. High chance of getting grant money for artistic endeavors. That'll be a hundred and forty-five dollars.'
'Molly…'
'You're serious. Okay.' There followed a silence through which Anna could hear her sister changing gears, dropping the banter. Now they would talk. Relief welled up like a warm spring.
'And Rogelio?' Molly asked.
'Rogelio is…' Anna searched for the words that would sum up the man who had appeared in and disappeared out of her bed for the last eight months. 'Rogelio is every inch a man.'
'Nine,' Molly said dryly.
'Give or take.'
'Your occasionally torrid past indicates a degree of heterosexuality that I, as a licensed psychiatrist, cannot overlook,' Molly said.
'Tonight I think I felt myself leaning toward a torrid future with Christina.'
'Christina?'
'Every inch a woman. Christina Walters. She's the clerk-typist here.' Anna heard Molly sigh-or light a cigarette. 'What?' she demanded.
Two beats of black silence pounded through the phone wires. 'What do you feel about all this?' her sister asked.
The doctor was IN.
'Mostly confusion.'
'Okay. Tell me about Christina.'
Anna was glad to talk of the woman. She was surprised at her eagerness. Was it the same as the girlish longing to tell her friends of the new boy in her life?
For over three-quarters of an hour, way past midnight Eastern Daylight time, Molly listened. When Anna had squeezed out her last thought on the subject, Molly listened ten seconds more.
