Murder in the Collective by Barbara Wilson Page A

firing from the high school that they’d first met—six months ago. Fran was somebody’s friend and Elena hadn’t paid her much attention. One of those people you just see around, say hi to.
    “I was actually a little put off by her,” Elena confided. “She really seemed butch, I mean, she’d been in the Army and had never been to college, worked at odd jobs, driven trucks, had a motorcycle. A real bar dyke. And who was I? A teacher, a housewife, a mother, living in Bellevue, realizing that I was turned on by the woman next door. And the salesclerk at Safeway. And some of my students. If I hadn’t been so idealistic and told my husband I couldn’t live with him anymore, if I hadn’t become a raging lesbian-feminist when he told me he was taking me to court for custody of the kids…I’d probably still be back in Bellevue, taking off my clothes with the woman next door, but enjoying all the privileges associated with class and heterosexuality…I’m talking privilege.”
    Penny flipped the eggs indifferently. “So what brought you two together then?”
    Elena was animated now, drinking coffee, gobbling toast as if she were starved, and with each bite gaining new strength. “It was the kids! Garson and Samantha latched on to her right away. It was really funny. We were all at someone’s house, in a big discussion about the court case or something and I say, ‘Where’s Sam and Garson?’ and find them upstairs, in the middle of some complicated game, string and cards, and having a wonderful time. With this woman I hardly knew, and was slightly afraid of…”
    “Let me guess,” said Penny, serving the eggs. She gave me a glance as if to say, How long are we going to have to put up with this Love Story business, but I was oddly moved and interested. For one thing, the image of Fran, child-friend, didn’t jell with the Fran I knew: drinker, bruiser and possibly crazy.
    Penny’s sarcasm was lost on Elena, who was leaning into her coffee cup with a dreamy expression. “They just love her, the stories she tells them, the jokes. When she’s over it’s like a party, it’s like family, the way it should be. We watch TV and make popcorn, play games. On weekends we take them places….” Elena trailed off and then came back to reality. “I can’t tell you the number of women I’ve been involved with over the last three years—as friends or lovers—who’ve thought that children were nothing but a big, fat drag. ‘Can’t you leave them at home?’ ‘They just make a mess….’”
    I looked away guiltily. My sentiments exactly.
    “So what’s the problem then?” Penny asked, wiping up her plate and leaning back in her no-nonsense way. Even with her big purple glasses and short, shocked hair, she still managed, at times, to look like the vice-president of some multi-national corporation—ruthless, suave, impatient.
    “Class,” said Elena. “It’s a class difference between us.”
    I thought about Fran’s S&M hint last night and the way she laid into the Jim Beams and beers and wasn’t so sure. “Do you think Fran might possibly have a drinking problem?” I asked.
    “We’re all the same, we all lay down our middle-class values and expect everyone else to follow them….Fran’s accustomed to drinking a lot. It doesn’t bother her. I mean, it doesn’t affect her in the same way it does you or me.” She paused, and I recalled that she’d had her fair share last night too—trying to keep up, to prove that she wasn’t a nice housewife anymore?
    I didn’t press her, though perhaps I should have. Instead I asked, “You think there’s any chance that she ran amuck at B. Violet?”
    “You said this morning that you thought she’d been there, that there was something…” remembered Penny. “What was it?”
    Elena put down her toast and I could almost see a half-chewed piece of it sticking in her throat, unable to go down. “It’s so hard for me to believe,” she said. “I know there