Free Compromising Positions by Susan Isaacs

beauty parlor.
    “And what can we say to Bruce’s wife, to his three fine children, to his mother, his family, his friends?” pondered the rabbi.
    You can say that whichever one of them gave him a Polaroid for his birthday made a big mistake. As he went on, I peered around the chapel. Everyone seemed to be concentrating intently, possibly because at this funeral of a contemporary, they might hear a preview of how their own eulogies would sound. They all seemed serious, but not suspiciously so. Could any of these ordinary, predictable people have ended Fleckstein’s career as the Don Juan of dentists?
    The rabbi banged his fist down on the pulpit, as if remonstrating me for losing interest in his sermon. “We may be deluged with rumors, besieged by innuendo,” he continued, “nearly strangled by the half truths and smears the media call journalism. But we all know the sort of man Bruce Fleckstein was. We know...”
    I sensed, more than felt, a shudder and glanced at Scotty. Her eyes were filled with tears and she opened them wide so the tears wouldn’t run down her cheeks.
    “Scotty,” I said softly, “are you okay?” She nodded, staring at the rabbi. “Scotty?”
    “I’m fine,” she snapped. At first I was bewildered. The combination of Scotty Hughes crying and irritable was barely believable. She was such a controlled person that normally the most emotion she could show was a big round of applause at a tennis match.
    Then I knew. “Scotty,” I murmured, “were you having an affair with Bruce Fleckstein?” She whipped her head around to stare at me and then turned away. I knew I had committed a gross breach of etiquette, but I persisted. “Scotty, this is important,” I whispered. “Did he take any pictures of you?” This time, her whole body turned toward me.
    “You?” she whispered.
    “No. A friend of mine.” I watched as she rummaged through her pocketbook, obviously looking for the handkerchief she had given to Brenda. I reached into mine and handed her a clean but linty tissue. She pressed it against her eyes.
    “Scotty,” I began again.
    “I think enough has been said, Judith,” and she turned from me, offering me a bit more of her back than was polite. There was no way I could pressure Scotty, as I had Mary Alice, to give me information.
    Mary Alice was so easily manipulated, and Scotty was a bright, self-possessed woman. But Bruce had gotten to her too.
    “...that Bruce Fleckstein was a man, a fine man with a fine family, and the memory of his warmth, his humor, his thousand little kindnesses will be our record of his life, our inheritance.” I tuned out the rabbi again and looked around. In a pew across the aisle, I saw my dentist, Dr. Burns. He was a soothing sort, small and quiet, who had Chopin piped into his office.
    A few rows in front of him sat a friend of mine, Fay Jacobs. I was startled. How could she know the Flecksteins? Fay and I had met three years before at a NOW conference, where I had led a seminar on women in the New Deal. We began chatting and discovered we lived no more than a mile apart. Fay was in her fifties, short, stocky, and as muscular as a longshoreman, with chopped-off gray hair. She wore no makeup except for bright red lipstick, which invariably became smudged, giving her mouth a kind of pleasing, undefined generousness. She had been teaching history at Shorehaven High School since the late nineteen forties and was totally dedicated to her subject and her students. I adored her.
    “As Wordsworth so aptly put it...” the rabbi was saying. Certain that the quotation would not be apt, I glanced away from Fay back to Scotty. Her large, bony hands gripped the arms of her seat, and her eyes were locked on the Eternal Light in a red-rimmed, unblinking stare. Had she come to Baum Brothers for a short goodbye, for a last moment with a lover who had brought passion and spontaneity into her placid, correct life? Or was she simply making sure the corrupt,