The Big Sugarbush

by Ana Good

  “You seen my boots?”

  “You weren’t wearing boots, darling.”

  Dylan held up the one boot she’d found under the bed and shook it. The brass buckle rattled. “Of course I was, Muffy. Here’s one. Where’s the other?”

  Bunny shrugged.

  By the time Bunny and Dylan were dressed and downstairs, group was ready to disband, but Bunny insisted they go, anyway. “If we show up it counts. There’s no rule against coming late. Late is okay. We can show up late and there’s nothing they can do to us.”

  Dylan shuffled into the therapy room first. Her hair was disheveled, per usual.

  Bunny bounced in next, looking as made-up as ever.

  Babe scolded them both. “You girls are late.” She gestured at her wristwatch. “Very late.”

  “Sorry,” grumbled Dylan.

  “Won’t happen again,” promised Bunny.

  Babe eyed them both. “Where were you two?”

  Bunny smiled as she took a seat. “Working together on our fearless moral inventory.”

  “Really?” Babe appeared skeptical.

  “Yes,” said Bunny. “Dylan got very upset. She started to cry when she realized how selfish she’s been most of her life. I was trying to comfort her.”

  Babe circled Dylan, who sat, head hung, hair flagged across her eyes. She was busy trying to ignore Babe in favor of peeling the cuticles off her left fingers. “Yeah. I got, like, really upset. My fault we’re late.”

  “Look at me.” Babe instructed as she took Dylan’s chin in her hand and raised it upward. “I said look at me.”

  “What?” sneered Dylan as she looked up.

  “Your neck?”

  Dylan slapped a hand to her neck. “What?”

  “Hickey.”

  Wee Gee scooted over to get a closer look. “Girl, what was sucking on you?”

  Dylan clamped both hands over her neck. “I do not have a hickey.”

  Bunny patted Dylan’s neck. “Afraid you do, dear. Huge. Size of a pork chop.”

  Babe stared at Bunny. “Anything you want to confess to group?”

  Bunny shrugged.

  Dylan did the same.

  “Fine,” said Babe, as she dismissed the group. “You can all go.”

  But as Dylan tried to dart out of the room, Babe blocked her way. “Not you, stud muffin. I want you in my office. Pronto.”

  24. Real Dykes Don’t Cry

  “I didn’t do anything,” mumbled Dylan. She was standing in front of Babe’s massive oak rolltop desk, head hung, gaze glued to the floor. She kicked at an imaginary dust ball with one boot.

  “You did Bunny.”

  Dylan shuffled in a little circle. Saying nothing, she slid over to a bookcase and yanked out a title. She squinted as she read the title: Women Who Love Too Much.

  “Not your problem,” stated Babe drily.

  Dylan shrugged. “I dunno, I get my share.”

  “Of sex. Not love.”

  “Who says there’s a difference?”

  “Me.”

  “You’re not God.”

  “To you, right now, I kinda am.”

  Dylan plopped into an oversized armchair. She slung both legs over an arm. Her knees jutted out the artful rips on each pant leg. “I’m not listening to your yak. I’m only gonna be here another three weeks.”

  “If you’re lucky.”

  “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I decide each week who stays and who goes. Right now, girlfriend, I’m thinking maybe come Monday you pack your duffel bag.”

  “You’d kick me out?”

  “You broke a rule. A very important rule.” Babe rose and walked from behind the desk over to Dylan.

  Dylan was sitting scrunched up in the armchair, peeling her cuticles again.

  “Look at me!” commanded Babe.

  In response, Dylan twisted in the chair, moving as far away from Babe as possible.

  “Just look at me. Okay?”

  Dylan raised her face.

  Babe raked the hair from her eyes and studied Dylan’s pupils, which shone like fiery black moons. “You’re stoned. What the hell did you take?”

  “Nothing. Allergies. My eyes get like this.” Dylan sniffled.

  “In the dead of winter?”

  Dylan shook off Babe’s hand. “Why pick on me? That old girlfriend of yours not putting out?”

  “You have so much talent and potential.”

  Dylan rolled her eyes. “That’s what my high school guidance counselor said. Man, was she wrong. Stupid bitch.”

  “You know why I say you have potential?”

  “Don’t care.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Fine. You can read minds? Go ahead and read mine now.” Dylan glared at Babe. To punctuate the effect, she stuck out her pierced tongue.

  Babe returned to her seat behind the desk. She placed both hands on the desk. “It’s your anger. Your anger shows me you care.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “You’re angry. At me. At the world. At life. Someone hurt you big time. You’re stuck there. A long time ago. You want an apology. That’s why you keep attacking people. You hope eventually someone might show you they care.”

  Dylan slid to an upright position in the chair and crossed her arms tightly to her chest. “Who died and made you Oprah?”

  “What I said is true. Why not admit it?”

  Dylan went back to studying her cuticles.

  “Okay. Let’s try another way. Your husband called me this afternoon.”

  Dylan groaned as she shrank further into the chair. She clutched a pillow to her chest before throwing it hard against a bookcase. “What the fuck did that fucking asshole want?”

  “To ask if you were okay, and to confirm he’s coming to see you this weekend.”

  Dylan swiped the hair from her eyes. “He’s not really my husband, you know.”

  “Not my business. The court sent you here, and they say he’s your legal next of kin.” Babe slid on a pair of reading glasses and squinted at a piece of paper on her desk. “What happened to your parents?”

  “Dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Happens to all of us.”

  “Who raised you?”

  “Crazy aunt and uncle.”

  “The uncle the one who abused you?”

  Dylan drew into a tighter ball in the chair. “No one abused me. I ran away from that dump of a trailer park when I was seventeen.”

  “Why?”

  “I wanted to be an artist. They wanted me to be a waitress at the Bob Evans. The uniform didn’t fit,” Dylan sneered.

  “Do you want a better life?”

  “Like what? Kids? Station wagon?”

  “That’s for you to define.”

  Dylan glared. She stood up and angled around the room. “Okay. Maybe I was abused as a kid, but that shit happens. No one abuses me now.”

  “I understand that. I’d say your Big Pink Pussy speaks to that regard.”

  Dylan stopped fidgeting. “You get that?”

  Babe nodded. “I love your work,” she continued. “Most women who are abused hide in shame. You’re doing the opposite. You’re making the world look at what they do to women’s bodies.”

  Dylan plopped back into the chair. “You don’t think my work is pornographic?” Her eyes narrowed in suspicion.

  “The exact opposite. I think your work is full of anger and defiance, and that that anger is the first step in healing yourself. The first step, though. You don’t want to get stuck there.”

  “Stuck?” Dylan looked puzzled.

  “Yes, stuck.” Babe consulted her wristwatch. “But that’s enough for tonight. Think about what might come after anger.”

  “Huh?”

  Babe stood and opened the door. “Just think about what else might be inside you, just underneath that anger.”

  “Huh?”

  “This weekend. We�
��ll talk more about it when your husband is here. One more thing,” Babe added, catching Dylan by the elbow.

  “What?”

  “Flush the drugs down the toilet.”

  Dylan mumbled.

  “Down the toilet, if you want to stay. Understand?”

  Dylan mumbled, “Yeah. Sure. Okay, I guess.”

  “And don’t sleep with Bunny again. Don’t even so much as look at her in a way that might make her panties slippery. Understand?”

  Dylan stopped abruptly in the hallway. “Why? Give me one good reason.”

  “Because you want to be loved, and every time you’re not loved you feel worse about yourself. And Bunny is definitely not going to love you.”

  Dylan loped up the stairs. The lights were already out in the hallway. She ached to hurl something smart and disrespectful over her shoulder at Babe, but she felt tired as she climbed, like she’d just survived the worst day of her life.

  For the first time in her adult life, Dylan felt trapped. She had this odd unpleasant feeling that she was about to cry.

  Instead, she went to Bunny’s room and popped another Ecstasy.

  25. Missing: One Pop Tart

  That night, when Babe came to bed, Lily could tell she was at her wit’s end. “Kids acting up?”

  “To the max! Bunny and Dylan blew off group. I think they blew off group to have meaningless sex with each other.”

  Lily chuckled. “Like me and you in our baby dyke days?”

  Babe and Lily had met through AA. In fact, Babe had barely been thirty days sober when Lily had approached her and offered to be her sponsor. An hour later they’d been wrapped around each other in Lily’s Soho loft. They’d broken a sacred rule (sleeping together), and lived not to regret it, but they both knew this wouldn’t hold true for most women struggling to remain sober.

  “I don’t think Bunny will make it. Dylan, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “They don’t think they have a problem — other than me.”

  “Did they admit to the group they have a problem?”

  “Yes.”

  “Give them some time. It’s scary. You know that. They may catch on. Some of the worst cases end up being the best at staying sober. You know you can’t predict that.”

  “I know, but it’s depressing, this time for the group, I mean. I won’t know for another week if anything’s taking with these guys.”

  “How’s Wee Gee?”

  “Fine. She’s sailing right along.”

  “Well, maybe one of them may make it. Sometimes that’s the best we can do.”

  Babe rolled over in bed. “Only one?”

  “Don’t get depressed. You know most of them will make it. They’re tough. It takes a lot of courage to be a lesbian. Our kind doesn’t roll over easily. You of all people ought to know that.”

  Grumbling, Babe tossed to one side and snapped off the light. She started to roll out of bed when she thought she heard a noise below their bedroom, in the kitchen, but she was so tired she fell asleep before her hand could find the light switch again.

  Downstairs, Wee Gee inched along the wall in the dark. All the lights were out, save a lavender nightlight of Artemis, Greek goddess of the hunt, that leaked a weak light at the foot of the stairs. Wee Gee crept slowly toward her target: the industrial-sized refrigerator. Arriving at the tall, shiny box, she sprang open the door and began to shove things aside in search of the good stuff. Unfortunately, because Babe and Lily were vegetarians, little of what Wee Gee uncovered in the fridge would make for memorable binge eating.

  Optimistic when her hand hit a hidden bag in the back of the crisper, Wee Gee pulled the bag onto the floor and ripped it open, only to have cucumbers roll in every direction.

  “Damn!” she huffed.

  Kicking the bag of cucumbers aside, Wee Gee decided to try the cupboards. There she found oatmeal and bran flakes. Canned soup, too.

  By the time Wee Gee had ransacked the upper cupboards, her urge to binge eat had passed. She shuffled over to the table with the bag of cucumbers and a knife. When she was a child in Kentucky, her grandmother had given her peeled cucumbers in the summer as snacks. They tasted great in the heat of the Southern summer. Less so, she now discovered, in December in Vermont.

  Nonetheless, munching on a giant salted cucumber soothed Wee Gee’s desire to devour anything more destructive. While the cucumbers didn’t fill her up, the memory of her grandmother did.

  It was nice to remember she’d once been truly loved.

  Sometimes Wee Gee thought sex was the worst thing in the world. Most of the time she was certain it had little to do with love. Certainly young people thought sex was love. But most every woman Wee Gee knew over the age of forty had figured out otherwise. Dating Little Debbie was the most satisfying period of most postmenopausal women’s lives as far as Wee Gee could decipher.

  With two cucumbers devoured, Wee Gee returned the paper bag to the fridge and climbed upstairs to her bedroom. She opened the door slowly so as not to wake Poppy, but as soon as she was inside the room she felt the rock star’s absence. She walked over to the girl’s bed and wasn’t surprised when she peeled back the covers to find a pair of towels rolled up in imitation of Poppy’s thin little body.

  Wee Gee wondered where her roommate had gotten off to so late at night but figured it was none of her business. She liked Poppy, but Poppy was a grown woman. She had a mom who loved her. No use Wee Gee trying out for that same thankless position.

  26. Moonlight in Vermont

  Following Storm’s lead, Poppy relaxed her knees and fell backward into the snow. She landed with a thud, sinking into the softness until her arms and legs were embedded in a mold of cold.

  “Flap your arms up and down,” instructed Storm. “Like a goose. Try to fly.” Storm made sound effects, which sounded to Poppy like a sick goose.

  Freshly fallen snow flew everywhere as Poppy cranked her arms.

  Alone in the backyard, the two women giggled. A full moon spun in and out of dark winter clouds. Poppy and Storm were lying side by side in the snow, staring up at the moon.

  “Next,” instructed Storm, “spread your legs in and out, fast, like you’re flapping them also.”

  Poppy did as instructed.

  “On the count of three,” said Storm, “we have to grasp hands and rise straight up out of the snow. Together. Don’t hesitate. Get up fast!”

  At the count of three, the two women locked hands and jumped up. Still holding hands Storm and Poppy turned to face the place they’d been lying together. The snow was fanned into the shape of two angels, one clearly wearing combat boots.

  “Snow angels!” proclaimed Storm proudly.

  Poppy didn’t know what to say. It had been a long time since anyone had invited her to do anything as patently silly as making snow angels. People talked to her all the time: about record deals, concert bookings, financial investments. About scoring a lot of whatever drug was popular on the club circuit.

  Tears came to Poppy’s eyes as the moon slid from behind a cloud, bathing the ground in a silvery light that made the angels appear to dance together in the darkness of the frozen night.

  “Hey,” chided Storm, squeezing Poppy’s mitten-clad hand, “why so quiet? This is supposed to be fun.” At dinner Poppy had confessed to Storm she was feeling depressed. Storm had suggested they sneak out after lights-out and have “a little fun.”

  Poppy had assumed Storm would be taking her somewhere private to have wild weasel sex.

  But instead they’d come out into the backyard to hold hands and make snow angels. Standing hand in hand in the snow with Storm made Poppy feel warm, full of wonder. The area around her heart glowed with a happiness she’d rarely felt since childhood.

  When the moon slid behind a stand of pine trees, leaving the yard dark again, Poppy suggested they go back inside. “Maybe have some hot chocolate?” she murmured.

  The two women held hands as long as possible, right up to the time they a
bsolutely had to let go to strip off their coats at the back door.

  The next evening in group, Poppy started by asking if they might talk about a topic that was on her mind.

  “Shoot,” said Babe, glad to have someone finally suggest a topic.

  “Sex —”

  “Count me in,” sneered Dylan.

  Everyone laughed.

  As soon as the room fell quiet, Poppy began again. “I was thinking maybe sometimes sex gets in the way of intimacy. Is that possible?”

  Bunny rolled her eyes.

  Catching Bunny’s eye motion, Babe invited her to respond to Poppy.

  “Well,” began Bunny, “I rolled my eyes because what Poppy said seems silly. I mean, come on, sex is intimacy.”

  “Is it?” Babe turned the question back to the group.

  Wee Gee’s hand shot up. “As you guys know, I write romance novels.”

  “Patriarchal poison!” Betty bellowed.

  “And,” continued Wee Gee, ignoring Betty, “there’s a lot of sex in the stuff I write. Girls love to be sexed up these days. They want their heroes well hung. They want to know he’s packing to please.”

  “Oh please!” protested Betty. “Do we have to listen to this hetero garbage?”

  “Yes, you do,” said Babe. “Be quiet. Everyone will get a turn. Let Wee Gee finish.”

  “Well, as I was saying, the hero has to be well hung, but he also has to have a huge heart. I mean, it’s the huge heart that snags the girl in the end.”

  “And what does this have to do with us?” asked Candice, who was somewhat suspicious of the huge heart theory of everlasting love since she made more than three million a year endowing other anatomical features.

  Storm raised her hand. “I think I know.” She turned to face Poppy. “What is it we really want from sex?” she asked.

  “Orgasm?” offered Bunny.

  Laughter again.

  “Okay, I can go for that,” said Storm, “but deep down I think what we all want, at least what I want, is to feel loved. Warm. Safe. Think about it for a moment. It’s like the most intimate thing in the world, to invite someone deep inside you. Inside you, for chrissake. That’s not like something you want everyone to experience. Is it?”

  Silence.

  Babe waited a long while before adding a comment. When she did speak, the room was deathly quiet. “I think Poppy brought up a good question. And some of you added items of value. Everyone here will have to find their own answer to this question, but I’d ask you to think about this one idea.”