“Swanky neighborhood,” I commented, thinking that a high rent plus a closet crammed with clothes explained her perpetual lack of money.
“I adore it! I’ve been there a few months. I was in this hovel on Twenty-Fifth Street for three ghastly years. Almost in the East River. Then one of Bea’s clients relocated to London and agreed to sublet to me. I couldn’t believe it!”
“Lucky.”
“Anyway, come. If you want.” The hesitation in her voice touched me. “It isn’t a meal meal. There’ll be turkey, of course, but then everybody’s signed up to bring a side dish or dessert. Nan and Therese are in, and even Bea said she might show up. I thought you could make that pimento dip. It would be a novelty for all the Northerners.”
After she mentioned the pimento cheese and the other agents and Bea, I figured my attendance wasn’t optional, but part of me was relieved to be included. Ramona’s party might counter whatever loneliness set in on my first holiday away, so I flashed her a smile and said, “I’d love to.”
• • •
I was going to be uptown anyway, I told myself. I puffed up my courage and phoned Thea to ask if she wanted to watch the balloon inflation with me. “You could give me photography pointers,” I added, trying to sound spur-of-the-moment, even though I’d planned what to say on my walk home from work. “I’m taking pictures for my sister.”
My invitation was met with silence, and I waited on the line several long seconds before I tacked on a cowardly, “You could bring Vern.” The idea of Vern tagging along reminded me of all the times my mother would only let Sue go on dates with “questionable” boys (meaning anybody whose folks she didn’t know from church or anyone who was a senior when Sue was a sophomore) if she brought her kid sister along.
“So, is this a friend thing then? Because at first it sounded like a date,” Thea said, and my heart picked up a few beats.
“Um, do you want it to be a date?” Dumb, dumb, dumb.
“I don’t know.” I heard a sharp intake of breath, then a slow release, and my face felt hot while I waited for rejection.
“Okay,” I said— another dumb response.
“I mean, I don’t know what to make of you. After that first night at Ariel’s, I thought I should stay the hell away from you, that you are major trouble. But then later I thought maybe I rushed to judgment. Maybe you’re just naive and don’t know when someone’s interested in you. My gut instinct about you might have been right, and you aren’t just another clueless white chick.”
“Gee, Thea,” I said. “Who knew you were such a sweet-talker?”
Laughter rippled from her end of the line. “I’ll meet you in front of the Natural History Museum at eight,” she said.
“With Vern?” I asked after a pause in which I had weighed whether to push my luck.
“No . . . without.”
• • •
Thea’s Nikon occupied its own camera bag, putting my Kodak Instamatic in its place.
“I wasn’t trying to one-up you, I swear,” she said when she saw me looking from her camera to mine with an open mouth, then shoving mine back into my messenger bag.
“My camera may never recover from the shame.”
“You said you wanted photos for your sister, and this takes great night photos. I just thought—”
“Hey, no problem. I’m grateful. Shoot away.”
Central Park West was a sea of families, and though it was hard to imagine, Thea said the actual parade route was much more jammed. “I made the mistake of going my first year here,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d make it out alive.”
As she snapped photos of Spiderman and Kermit, I pried into her life as discreetly as I could. “So do you teach photography? I don’t think I ever asked. Oh, look, could you make sure you get Snoopy?” Snoopy was flat on his belly on the avenue, with Woodstock propped on his back.
“Some Black Studies, some Women’s Studies,” she said. “I fit art and literature in whenever I can. I’m just finishing up a Women and Creativity class. We studied Berenice Abbott’s New York photos.”
“Cool.” My comment sounded flat and junior-high. I knew from experience I had to try harder to keep up with a professor. “I just can’t believe you teach at Barnard.”
She lowered her camera and gave me a quizzical look. “Why?” she asked.
“You’re so young,” I said quickly. “Or you look young. To me. That’s all I meant. How old are you anyway?”
“Twenty-eight,” she said, returning to shooting. “I started college a year early and went straight through to grad school. My adviser got me this teaching job while I finish my dissertation. But I’m looking for something permanent. Tenure track.”
Grad school. Dissertation. Tenure track. Even though she was only five years older, I felt young and out of my league. When I first knew her, I’d imagined Thea was just like me— a struggling young lesbian trying to make her way in New York. Now I felt embarrassed by my assumptions.
Still, I’d been out of my league before.
“How old are you?” she asked.
“Twenty-three.” Not much older than her students, with a dumb-ass camera to boot.
“Bea Winston must really trust you,” she said, looking me directly in the eyes. “To have you work with Clio Hartt, I mean.”
“Oh, I don’t know. It helped that I look a little like Flora Haynes.”
“I’m sure that’s not all of it,” Thea said. “Don’t sell yourself short. I do it, too, all the time, and most of the women I know. A liability of being female.” She snapped rapid-fire shots of me until I held my hands in front of my face for her to stop.
“I take horrible pictures!” I objected. “You’ll see. My eyes will be closed in every single one, or I’ll look like I just ate a pickle.”
She tucked the camera back into its bag. “I think we got enough, don’t you? My fingers are cold. Let’s grab some coffee and warm up.”
We slid into a booth at a nearby diner, where she stripped off her scarf and hat and unbuttoned her peacoat but left it on. A ribbed cherry-red turtleneck peeked out. Every time I saw her, she was wearing primary colors like red or royal blue that made her stand out, while most New Yorkers seemed to prefer black and gray. My own wardrobe was an unimaginative mix of neutrals that helped me blend into the landscape.
“You cold?” I asked, to say something.
“Yeah. Which isn’t too unusual when it’s thirty degrees, right?” Her tone was teasing, a little flirtatious. “How can you dress like that and stay warm? You’re like a teenage boy or something.”
“It’s warmer than it looks,” I said, flipping my Carhartt jacket open so she could see the Sherpa lining. “I didn’t need more than this at home.”
“Well, you’re coming up on a New York winter, so I’d get you some gloves. A hat at least.”
“It’d muss my hair,” I joked, running a hand over my freshly cropped cut, which was poker straight and stood up without any gel or foam.
“You lose half of your body heat through your head,” Thea said with professorial authority.
She ordered coffee, like a grown-up, and I had hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows. Thea smiled at my choice, and I stared, amazed, as she added three sugars to her mug.
“You take a little coffee with your sugar?”
“I have my vices.” The emphasis on “vices” made her seem mysterious. And sexy. She kept stirring, way more than she needed to, and I wondered briefly if she was as nervous as I was. “You’re one to talk about sugar,” she added, nodding toward my cup.
As we exchanged quips, awareness that there was no Gerri or Vern to act as a buffer, that we were alone on a quasi-date, hit me. We’d exhausted the trite subjects of cold weather and beverage choices, so I lunged forward.
“Tell me . . . your dissertation. That sounds daunting. Like writing a book.”
“Said the woman who works for a literary agent.” It was another quip, but she looked a little relieved that th
e topic had turned to a more thoughtful one.
“Sure, I like to read them,” I said. “I want to help writers shape them. I don’t think I could ever write one.” I sipped at my hot chocolate, taking extra care not to get foam on my lip. “What’s it about? Your dissertation. Or is that a stupid question?”
“There you go undercutting yourself again. It’s not a stupid question at all, Livvie.” My name sounded softer than usual. “It’s good you asked. I need to be talking about the damn thing so I’ll keep plugging along and finish by May. It’s about black women writers of the Harlem Renaissance, specifically Nella Larsen, Dorothy West, and Angelina Weld Grimke.”
Even though I’d been an English major, I had never heard of any of the women she named and was embarrassed to admit it. The gap between us widened: She’d gone to Cornell and Columbia, while I’d attended a state college in the sticks.
“You might not have heard of them,” Thea added, and my chest swelled with gratitude. “So many women writers have been forgotten. Like your Clio, for one. I’m surprised you even read her in college. You got a good education.” I could feel my face warming with the compliment.
“I had this professor,” I said, and Hallie’s face popped unbidden into my head at the word had. I squeezed my eyes shut to dismiss the image.
“She must have been something. You look like you’re about to cry.”
“No, I—” I stopped myself from lying. I liked Thea, and wanted to know her better, and denying Hallie didn’t seem a good way to start. “Yeah, she was something. She was my lover. For a while. But I’m not about to cry.”
The waitress refilled Thea’s mug, and she stirred the sugar in slowly before speaking again.
“She the April Fifteenth one?” Thea asked, and I was amazed that she remembered my exact breakup day. “The married woman who broke your heart when she went back to her husband.”
“That’s her.”
Thea nodded with a stiff smile. She started to button up her coat, and I panicked. “So you do have a ‘type,’ just like you told me,” she said, her words as tight as the look on her face. “For a minute, I thought you actually saw me. But you’ve been lining up your next professor.”
“No, Thea, that’s not it,” I protested. I reached across the table, taking her hand away from her buttons, and she didn’t stop me. “Don’t rush to judgment, remember? I do like super-smart women. The professor part— well, who’s smarter than a college teacher anyway, tell me that.”
We held hands for a long minute, until the waitress came with another refill. Thea freed her hand to wave away the offer.
“I can be a hothead,” she said.
“Fiery women keep you on your toes.”
We said good-bye out on the sidewalk. I wanted to be asked back to her apartment, which was closer than mine, but I just stood with my hands in my pockets, biting my bottom lip. Thea stepped up to acknowledge the awkwardness. “I don’t do that kind of thing,” she said.
I suspected she meant go home with someone on the first date, but I shrugged like I didn’t have a clue.
“I have to know you better,” she continued. “I’ve been burned, too, and I can’t tell what you want.”
“You’re not so transparent yourself,” I said. “First, you tell me, basically, to buzz off. Later, you put your hand on my knee, you touch my arm, you say, ‘You’re not as bad as I thought.’ Not the clearest signals, Professor.”
Her coy smile said she remembered everything I was talking about.
“I guess not. Is this clearer?” She pulled my face gently down to hers and we kissed right there on Seventy-Ninth Street, a soft, open-mouth kiss.
With Hallie, the first kiss had been firecrackers exploding in my body. Now, right in the open with Thea, our first kiss made me lightheaded, like the city around us was dissolving. Our tongues continued their exploration until a sharp cackle broke the spell: “Oh look, Jack, faggot ladies!” We pulled apart just in time to see a couple of punks with Brit accents pointing our way. They sauntered up the avenue without looking back.
“I can’t believe it!” I said. “In Manhattan!”
Thea shrugged off the incident. “You haven’t been harassed yet? It’s the price of being out. Gerri has zingers she shoots back at them, but I can’t come up with them fast enough.”
I was still a little dizzy and off-kilter from the kiss. “You want to . . . meet up . . . tomorrow?”
“I’d love to, but I can’t,” Thea said. “I have a lot going on.”
“All day?”
“Pretty much.” She glanced off toward the subway. I didn’t push her, and she didn’t ask me what was on my plate for the day. One chaste date and a kiss didn’t transform us into a couple— or me into a girlfriend with rights.
“Well, Happy Thanksgiving! I’ll call you. Soon,” she said giddily, leaving me to head down the station steps on legs like overcooked noodles.
Chapter 16
It would have been a near-perfect evening, one for the lesbian storybooks, if the answering machine hadn’t been flashing urgent-looking blinks as I walked in the apartment door. The first four were hang-ups, the fifth was an audible sigh that sounded like Clio, and then the sixth got down to business: “Miss Bliss, where are you? It is quite late to be out, going on ten o’clock, and I require your time. Please call me.”
My watch read 10:48, and I decided it was too late to call her back. Plus, she didn’t sound like she was in pain or emotional distress, so I opted to postpone the callback until the morning. But a few minutes after eleven, the phone squawked again, and I raced from the bathroom to get it before the machine picked up.
“You are out of breath, Miss Bliss.”
“I ran to the phone because I didn’t want to miss your call again.”
“Where were you?”
She rarely asked me personal questions— in this case, both personal and intrusive— so I was taken aback. “A friend and I went to see the Macy’s balloons being blown up,” I said. “For tomorrow’s parade? It’s very cool. You might enjoy it.” I knew it was a stupid thing to say the minute it came out of my mouth, almost like I’d forgotten I wasn’t talking to Gerri or another friend. Clio never went anywhere, she didn’t use the word cool, and she had never expressed any interest in holidays or cultural traditions.
“I have never been to Macy’s nor had any desire to do so. In fact, I have made it a lifelong practice never to patronize any store larger than the general store in Hendersonville.”
The long and eventful day had caught up with me, and I yawned as quietly as I could. “What can I do for you, Miss Hartt?”
“I thought you might stop by tonight, but it is too late for that now. I started calling you at seven-thirty, to no avail.” She paused. “It is too late, don’t you think?”
I didn’t relish going out again, especially if she hadn’t fallen or hurt herself in any way. “It is. Do you need something? I can bring it by tomorrow, although I don’t know what stores will be open.”
“I don’t require anything but your presence,” Clio said, her tone as crisp as one of my laundered oxford shirts. She sounded more awake than I was, and I wondered how late she tended to stay up if she napped on and off all day long. I heard a soft purring through the line and pictured her holding Remington on her lap.
We set our meeting for ten o’clock, which was much earlier than I would have liked. I had imagined lounging in bed late, replaying the details of the evening with Thea. And I wasn’t sure if Bea would pay me for working on Thanksgiving, so my holiday duty might end up being a freebie. Still, it was Clio, and I did what she wanted.
• • •
The sun threw a golden puddle onto Clio’s desk, where a pen lay poised on top of a sheet of paper. I was fifteen minutes late, and I hoped she’d been so occupied with writing that she hadn’t noticed. It had been an effort to drag myself out of bed, and I hadn’t even bothered to shower.
“You look a little unkempt, Miss Bliss.”
<
br /> Sleepy, I found myself short on snappy retorts. I let the sound of Remington lapping milk from his bowl in the kitchen fill up the silence.
“Cat’s got your tongue, too, I see.”
“It is Thanksgiving, Miss Hartt. My day off?”
“Artists don’t get a day off,” she said. “Holidays are just like any other day to us. And a day without artistic output . . . why, it’s a lost day, really. Flora and I even worked on our birthdays.”
I was surprised by the reference to Flora’s rigorous work ethic, remembering Gerri’s almost poetic assessment that Flora Haynes “drank, fucked, and snorted too much . . . and produced too little.” One night at her apartment, Gerri had pulled out a copy of Flora’s play Portrait of a Madwoman, which a feminist press had published in the mid-’70s. “It’s a weird play,” she told me. “Creepy. You wonder how anyone ever managed to produce it.” She wouldn’t elaborate, and her mysterious “review” made me take a pass on borrowing it. Now I wondered how Flora the artist had had time to carouse, and where the rest of her output had gone.
“You look like you don’t believe me,” Clio said.
“No, no, I’ve heard many writers write every day,” I said. “It’s admirable. I was just surprised by . . . Did Miss Haynes ever write anything besides Portrait of a Madwoman?”
Her fists flew out in front of her like she wanted to strike me, but I was not within reach. Even Remington sensed her rage and slinked away behind the armchair. “Of course, she did! Flora Haynes was a genius. Her plays are masterpieces. There will never be her like again. So much talent . . . gone! If I had only—” But she bit off the end of her regret.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I asked because a friend told me about that one play.”
“She had several produced before that one— that’s how we met at Provincetown Players,” she said, her hands lowering to her sides. “I fancied being a playwright, but I didn’t have the talent for it. Flora’s plays were complex, exquisite flowers.” Clio’s face softened. “The theater world didn’t understand her, really, and that took a toll. She could have tried another form—” Again, Clio cut her thought short. In the throes of maudlin reminiscence, she picked up Flora’s photo and stroked the frame, like she was comforting a loved one in pain.
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