Venus Envy (17 page)

Closing the book, for she had no desire to read on, given that although she loved that verse she could barely abide Saint Paul, she thought about the concept of reward. External reward surely pleases because everyone sees your victory or the fact that the Lord has shone his love light upon you. The concept of internal reward was more demanding. No wonder those jackleg preachers stressed money. Christianity, a demanding religion, spawned a host of false prophets to make it easier for people.

Frazier didn’t much think of herself as a Christian but when she read bits and pieces from the Bible she knew something remained in her brain. She also knew the Good Book would be used as a weapon against her.

Funny how so many people leapt up to judge homosexuals. It was as though every bad feature of heterosexuality
was projected onto those men and women who found themselves in love with a member of their own sex. They were scapegoats for the culture. The common run-of-the-mill adulterer created more damage than a lesbian could dream of doing. The adulterer betrayed his wife, wounded his children, and used the woman with whom he slept for pleasure. But he was not so bad, not so hateful, even though he took down at least two women and however many children he had sired.

Frazier held the small old Bible in her hands and wondered how people could read so selectively, but then maybe she was reading selectively. She did get one message clear though: “Judge not lest ye be judged.”

T
HE WIND STUNG, TINY NEEDLES IMPREGNATED WITH MOISTURE
. These sharp gusts alternated with dead calm, the sun shining—another March day. The temperature edged into the high fifties, giving Frazier the excuse to play her first round of golf for the season. Mandy and Ruru accompanied her.

Although it was a weekday Frazier hung a sign on the door of the gallery:
OUT
. The Puritanical dedication to work meant a few passers-by would scowl and shake their heads. These were the “Keep thy shop and thy shop will keep thee” people. Not that their worldview lacked truth, merely that it was their truth. Frazier’s hospital scrape encouraged her to play more, period. Mandy volunteered to hold the fort but Frazier beguiled her outside too.

A long fairway harboring hidden sand traps greeted
Auntie Ruru as she sank her yellow tee into the soft earth. She studied the situation.

Frazier motioned toward the right. “Green’s over there, Ru. If you hit straight you’ll be in good position for the next shot.”

“Five hundred and forty yards,” Mandy read aloud from the small diagram placed at the ladies’ tee.

“For you.” Frazier always teed off from the men’s tee, since she hit the ball about as far as any woman in the club and most of the men. Frazier’s driving powers impressed everyone. Putting, though, gave her fits. She’d run hot or cold. There would be days when she could do no wrong. Unfortunately these days would be followed by weeks when she could do no right. Cigarettes had helped during those “no right” times. Her golf bag was stuffed with last year’s cigarette packs, and as this was the first time she had played this season, she hadn’t cleaned them out.

Around the slow, graceful curve of the fairway reposed Libby Armstrong’s house. This would become visible on one’s second or third shot, depending on how strong one’s second shot turned out.

Ru performed the obligatory wiggle, her number one wood poised dangerously over her right shoulder. She uncorked her drive, the splintered tee flying into the air. The ball, also bright yellow, sailed low but straight.

“Good shot!” Frazier appreciated the feat.

Mandy grimaced because now she would have to tee off, and as a beginning golfer, she was hard on herself. She felt she slowed down everyone’s game. She did, but what she couldn’t believe was that they didn’t care. Mandy had taken up golf at Frazier’s urging. Since the game made her boss happier than anything, Mandy figured there must be something to it. There was: blood, sweat, tears, and an expansion of her vocabulary of
abuse. Worse, golf’s cruelty lay in the fact that every now and then she’d hit the ball sweet and true. It felt so wonderful—to her bones wonderful—that she’d brim over with enthusiasm, sure she could master this game. Of course, the next shot would take care of that glory. For all Mandy’s suffering she was hooked and while not a natural like Frazier—then again, who was?—she learned quickly and she was developing into a nice player. Another year and she’d be an asset to any twosome of foursome.

Ru and Frazier respectfully fell silent as Mandy pushed her orange tee into the ground, topped with an orange ball. She slipped her driver out of the bag. The woods proved more difficult to handle than the irons for Mandy, so she’d psych herself out, worrying instead of simply hitting the ball.

Frazier read her mind: “Think of it as a fat iron.”

Fat iron, hell. The woods felt unwieldy. Mandy wished she made enough money to buy graphite clubs. She kept trying out the set in the pro shop and they felt fabulous in her hands. The price was equally fabulous. Now
those
woods—yes, with those woods she could accomplish miracles.

Mandy took a few practice swings. Then she stepped up to the ball. She tried to relax. Slowly she brought the club up over her shoulder, she paused for a moment, and then tried to do what Frazier told her over and over again: “Let the club head do the work, the club head and gravity.” Gravity was off today. The ball sailed way high like a balloon escaping, only to hook off the fairway.

“Damn, damn, double damn.” Mandy voiced her disappointment.

“Honey, if I could have hit a shot like that after playing two years of golf I’d have bought beer for everyone,” Ruru encouraged her.

“You’re in the rough, not the trees, so you’re in good shape.” Frazier called out from the higher tee.

Mandy and Ruru stepped off the ladies’ tee, out of the way of Frazier’s ball, and turned around to observe her swing. She made it look so effortless. She’d limber up, then stand still, lifting the club as though it were a feather, only to swing it down in an arc of grace and power.

The ball soared, climbing like a homesick angel, screeching in the distance even as it gained altitude. After what seemed a long time the white dot dropped into the middle of the fairway.

Mandy and Ru looked at each other and then at Frazier. They shook their heads in admiration and climbed into the green golf cart. Frazier joined them.

Now the second shot called for an interesting decision. Depending on where the ball rested, depending on whether one could really handle a wood without the help of a tee, there was an opportunity to use a four wood. It was tricky.

Mandy wisely chose her four iron. Even though she would be sacrificing distance, she was worried about getting back out onto the fairway. Ruru, in good position, grabbed her four wood, as did Frazier.

Frazier and Mandy studied Mandy’s predicament.

“Okay. See that hillock? You aim for that and you’ll be in good shape.”

Mandy, relieved that the grass wasn’t as high as she had feared, punched the ball out and hit stronger than either she or Frazier had anticipated. The orange globe disappeared over the manicured hillock.

“What a shot!” Frazier placed her hand over her eyes to shade the glare.

From down on the fairway Ruru cheered.

“I didn’t think I’d hit it so far.” Mandy blinked.

“You’re in Mom and Dad’s backyard,” Frazier said.

After Ruru hit her second shot, a straight clean strike but a bit short, she joined Frazier and Mandy as they clambered over the hillock. Frazier’s ball lay farther still up the fairway. The three women gazed down at the white brick Armstrong house. Perched like a brilliant oriole by the back door sat Mandy’s golf ball.

“Uh-oh.” Mandy despaired.

“There’s a creative way out of this.” Frazier rubbed her palms together.

“Well, if she takes her five iron she can pitch up and over Libby’s boxwoods. It will cost her a shot, plus another one to get on the fairway, but it could be a lot worse.” Ruru slung her wood over her shoulder.

“Ru, it will cost me more than a shot. I don’t know if I can get the ball up and over like that and think of the divot I’ll make in Mrs. Armstrong’s lawn. She’ll have a coronary.”

“We won’t be that lucky,” Frazier replied. “Follow me. I know how to do this. It will cost two strokes but it’s going to work.”

Frazier and Mandy strode into the backyard, followed by Auntie Ruru driving the golf cart.

“Seven iron,” Ru puzzled.

“Nope.” Frazier opened the back door. As this was a Federal-style house with a large central hallway, a clean expanse dotted with grotesquely expensive chairs along the wall beckoned the threesome. “Ruru, hold open the front door.”

“With extreme pleasure.” Ruru giggled, her gray curls dancing.

“Your mother will kill us.”

“She’s at Garden Club, so she’ll never know. Now you do what I tell you to do. Take your pitching wedge, because you have to get the ball over the lip of the
back step. But it’s not much, see. So a soft, soft swing, using your wrist, or you’ll put a hole in the ceiling. Not that I care. In fact, I’d pay to see Mother’s face when she discovered it and I’d love to hear the explanation she’d concoct to explain the sudden depression in the ceiling.”

“Frazier, I don’t think I can do this.”

“Yes, you can. Remember, soft.” Frazier handed Mandy her pitching wedge, then held open the door, standing well to one side of it.

Mandy gulped and flicked her wrist. The ball popped up over the stairs and landed in the middle of the hall, where the heart-pine floorboards glowed with decades of waxing.

“Roll, you sucker, roll!” Ruru yelled from the other end.

The orange ball died by a Queen Anne chair but not under it, thank God.

Frazier grabbed Mandy’s putter. “Come on.”

Mandy dutifully followed. “I was too soft.”

“Hey, this is an original golfing situation. Don’t worry about it.” She handed Mandy her putter. “Aim for Ru.”

“Thanks.” Ru ducked her head.

“Don’t hold back.”

Mandy followed Frazier’s instructions and knocked the ball way out into the front yard. Ru shut the door and scurried around the back for the golf cart.

Cheering, Frazier and Mandy dashed out to see if Mandy had any kind of shot. She did. All she needed was a strong smack and she’d be under the green. She had to clear some hedges about twenty yards off but Frazier told her that was a piece of cake and after Ruru arrived with the clubs she discovered it was.

Laughing like grade schoolers, the three finished out
the day rejuvenated by the situation, by the sport, and by one another.

That evening Libby called Frazier. When Frazier picked up the phone she groaned because she assumed she’d hear yet another chapter in “A Day in the Life of Carter Redington Armstrong and His Mother.”

Instead Libby fairly shrieked, “You’ll never guess what happened to me!”

“What?” Her mother’s tone worried her: sickness, money losses, more Carter troubles, someone at the club picking on her because of Frazier’s sexual orientation—such an interesting way to put it.

“My hallway floor has pockmarks! You can’t believe it—you just can’t believe it. That was the first thing I noticed when I came home from the club late because Florence Grissom had to tell me everything I never wanted to know about her vacation on St. John Island. Pictures too.” Libby’s voice shivered with distaste. “How many wild donkeys can you look at, I ask you? She must have shot five rolls of wild donkeys and the ocean. I know what the ocean looks like. It’s big, it’s blue, and it’s boring. Well, so I came home, my arms falling off from carrying the groceries—they were having a sale on steak at Giant so I thought it prudent to load up the freezer. Well, anyway, I barely had my toe in the doorway when I noticed these tiny marks, like teeth marks. I put the groceries down and I looked. Then I got down on my hands and knees. My hallway, from front to back, is pockmarked. Pockmarked!”

“Smallpox.”

“What?” Libby’s voice hit the soprano register.

“You said the floor is covered with pockmarks so I figured it was smallpox.”

“If that isn’t comfort to your mother,” Libby growled. “I’ll tell you what happened. Some of those terrible
golfers walked through my house! My house! And in their golf shoes. I know that’s what happened. I am never leaving my house unlocked again. You can’t trust people anymore. I am sick, sick, sick, and believe you me, the country club is going to hear about this.”

“Mom, I am sorry,” Frazier lied through her teeth.

L
OVE INSPIRES ME TO NAUSEA.” BILLY CICERO LEANED AGAINST
his backup car, a metallic-silver Range Rover. Since he worked in Richmond, servicing the vehicle was easy and he really loved the car.

Frazier watched the numbers on the gas pump flip over. Gas prices were like slot machines—from week to week prices popped up or slid down. She’d run over to the station by Zion’s Crossroads early this morning because she needed to check on Carter’s truck, which was being repaired. The body shop was nearby. She’d noticed she needed gas, and as luck would have it, she pulled in as Billy was filling up his Range Rover.

Both parties were surprised at each other’s presence but Frazier figured Fate was throwing them together for one last roll of the dice, or a new game altogether. She asked Billy if he loved Kenny. Nausea was the reply.

“That’s too bad. He’s a good man.”

“Fray, I’ve never been interested in long-term deals. Why would I change now? Kenny became an exercise in monotony.”

“Ann too.” Frazier couldn’t resist a dig at her ex. “The Princess of Lingerie spends more money at Victoria’s Secret than most families spend on food.”

“I won’t be taking her out much.” He smiled. “I had to escort her to the Saint Patrick’s dance. She’s so petty, and it provided her with a lurid glory if only for a moment—then, too, I enjoyed the look on your face.”

“Billy, why are you so mean to me?”

“Because”—his lustrous eyes flashed—“you spoiled everything. I would have married you. It would have been perfect. Then you wrote those bleeding-heart letters. God, Frazier, I would never have thought you’d cave in to cheap emotion. Who cares if you tell the truth? People want to be lied to, cajoled, jollied along. Don’t disturb them with the facts. You made an ass of yourself and I’m going to make certain you don’t make an ass out of me.”