The Big Sugarbush

by Ana Good

  After several minutes of silence, Babe began. “Hello, Mrs. McGraw. Thank you for coming.”

  “Please, call me Sheila.”

  “All right, Sheila. You know why you’re here today?”

  She nodded. “My daughters need me.”

  Babe was taken aback by the unadulterated honesty of Sheila’s answer. Most people when asked that question responded evasively, trying to deny or normalize the situation. “You know why they are here?” She nodded at the twins.

  “Because I failed them.”

  “Mom!” wailed Thumper.

  Babe raised a hand. “Let your mom speak. You’ll get a turn.”

  Sheila bit her lip. “Yes, as I was saying, I failed them. They needed guidance and I didn’t understand that. I was busy trying to keep the farm together after their father left. They were always good girls. I thought they were raising themselves fairly well.”

  “And now?” asked Babe.

  “Like I said, I failed them.” Sheila turned to each of her daughters. “I’m sorry.” Tears choked her words. “I shouldn’t have let you travel without me. I should have kept you home. Raised you right.”

  Dirk’s right hand shot up in the air.

  “Yes,” said Babe.

  “Can I say something about all this stuff?”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Mom, this isn’t your fault. Lots of parents let their daughters tour for athletic events. You didn’t know.”

  “I suspected.”

  “How could you?” doubted Thumper.

  “Well … the mustaches, for one. Those weren’t normal for fifteen-year-old girls.”

  Dirk objected. “But we’re dykes.”

  “I realize that, and that may have confused me a bit, I admit. But I still should have known. Dirk, you have run wild for years now, and I just let you. You make all the money in the family. I figured that entitled you to some leeway. I treated you like the head of the family, like a boy, and that’s not right because you’re a girl and you needed me to give you more guidance. I see that now.”

  Babe sensed Sheila was holding back. “But?” she asked, hoping to encourage her.

  “But—” Sheila took a deep breath. “You can’t do those steroids no more. I won’t allow it. Not in my house. Not ever again. I agree with the Olympic Committee. I’m glad they sent you here. I was reading about those steroids on the Internet and they can kill you. Kill you! You girls understand that?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” mumbled Dirk.

  Sheila turned to face Thumper. “You understand that also?”

  Thumper’s head bobbed.

  The silence was so thick it seemed an icy fog had settled across the room.

  Babe let it linger.

  It was a long time before Dirk cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” joined Thumper.

  “I know,” said their mother, tears in her eyes. “We were all trying. We all did our best.”

  “Yes,” confirmed Babe. “You have been trying. All of you.”

  “What now?” asked Sheila, her eyes clouded.

  Babe: “Let’s ask your daughters.”

  Dirk bit her lower lip. “We’ve stopped the steroids.”

  Sheila eyed each daughter. “Both of you?”

  “Yes,” confirmed Thumper.

  Sheila’s eyes narrowed. “Why should I believe you?”

  No answer.

  Babe tried: “Your mother asks a good question. How does she know you’ll stay off the steroids? Why should she trust you?”

  Dirk sulked. “Dunno.”

  Thumper volunteered an answer. “Because we get it, Mom. We see how we’ve hurt you. Our bodies.” Tears welled in her eyes. “And we care about that.”

  “Why did you do it?” asked Sheila. “You were good, both of you. Amazing on those little boards of yours. You flew like penguins on those boards. Both of you. Day one. Sliding all over the back pasture, never afraid of falling. Why the steroids?”

  Dirk chewed her lip before answering. “I wanted to win. All the time. Thumper went along with me.”

  “Mom, we said we’re sorry. Really, we are. We won’t do it again.”

  Sheila looked to Dirk for confirmation. “Can’t promise that,” she mumbled.

  “What was that?” asked Babe.

  Dirk paced the length of the couch. She stared out the window at the vastness of freshly fallen snow. “I said I can’t promise. Can’t promise I won’t do steroids.”

  Thumper jumped to her feet. “Of course you can! You went cold turkey first. You’re the one who turned us in. You blew the whistle. This has all been your doing. You made me throw my stuff away. This was all your idea.”

  “I know, but for me it’s different. Different. Different than you. Understand?” Dirk stared at her twin pleadingly.

  “Different? Get real. We’re twins. We took the same drugs. How can it be different?”

  “Maybe I want to keep taking them, that’s how.”

  “Dirk!” Sheila was on her feet, at her daughter’s side. Dirk was weeping now, her body racked with emotion as she tried to hide her face in the curtain by the window.

  “Dirk, honey?” Her mother had an arm around her. “Talk to me, Dirk. Tell me what has you so upset. Honey, please. I’m your mother. Spit it out.”

  “Mom!” wailed Dirk.

  “What, honey, what is it?”

  “I think I want that operation.”

  “What operation, honey? What are you talking about? Your knee? Did you hurt your knee again?”

  “No! The other operation. You know!”

  Babe suddenly understood.

  Thumper, too.

  Sheila cradled her tall, gangly daughter close to her as best she could. “I see,” she said. “Okay, honey. If that’s what you want. I mean, if you’re sure.”

  “I am, Mom. I really am sure.”

  Sheila looked at Babe, her eyes pleading.

  Babe nodded. “If that’s what she wants, she’ll have to take the steroids again. But it will be with a doctor’s guidance this time. And she’ll need therapy to make sure she understands all the things that will happen to her if she continues with the steroid treatments.”

  Sheila cradled her daughter’s head. “Okay, honey,” she said. “We can help you. We will help you.”

  Sheila glanced at Thumper as if to ask, You want this surgery, too?

  Thumper shook her head. Absolutely not. And for the first time in her life she felt alone. Dirk had always been her twin. The stronger of the two. Thumper had always looked up to Dirk as who she might become, if only she were braver and pushed the envelope.

  But this was something Thumper did not share with her twin. One envelope she didn’t want to push. Something which would physically and emotionally separate them forever. Thumper wanted to cry, but instead she joined her mother and sister in an emotional huddle.

  37. Trust Me, Dear

  Nan Goldberg wanted a cigarette. Badly. But they were sitting at the kitchen table in the farmhouse, and smoking was forbidden in the house. A fact she regrettably had to enforce when her partner, Birge, retracted a silver cigarette case from her jacket pocket and plucked out a Dunhill.

  “Can’t smoke in here, dear,” said Nan, her hand atop her partner’s.

  “You? Forbidding me to smoke? That’s a switch,” scoffed Birge.

  Though Nan and Birge had been together for almost thirty years, they were finding it difficult now to sustain a conversation. In Nan’s opinion, much of the strain came in the form of Nan’s leggy new brunette assistant, Mirabelle.

  Mirabelle, who sat across the table from Nan looking bored beyond belief, was not yet thirty years old. She had a bosom like Marilyn Monroe and legs that would not quit, which she had dressed in two hundred dollars’ worth of designer silk stockings.

  Birge loved women in stockings: the real thing, with elaborate silver garters, not pantyhose. Nan was keenly aware of this. She was also aware that Mirabelle �
� whom she’d already dubbed Tinker Bell, just for spite — had a raspy Lauren Bacall voice that made everything she said sound impossibly sexy.

  Nan hated Mirabelle to the ends of the earth.

  “So,” said Nan, turning to address Mirabelle, “you came from the Jamison Agency?” The Jamison Agency was the most exclusive executive talent agency in Manhattan. They recruited young women with Seven Sisters pedigrees to serve as assistants at Wall Street’s most prestigious financial houses. Jamison girls were known for their brains as well as their knock-’em-dead good looks. (The term “gold-digging whore” also often accompanied their professional efforts.)

  Nan found it suspicious that as soon as she left home, Birge signed on a ta-ta girl to wait on her hand and foot. Birge’s last two executive assistants had been old English fags, sticklers for details, very good at pomp, which Birge’s position as head of Wall Street’s smartest accountancy firm called for in no small dose.

  Mirabelle smiled at Nan, a very expensive smile, which, if Nan was correct, had been brightened and whitened and veneered to the tune of about seven thousand dollars: a smile that reminded Nan how old and imperfect her own teeth appeared these days.

  Nan chewed the inside of her cheek.

  “I signed with Jamison right out of Vassar,” confirmed Mirabelle. “I intend to go back to graduate school at Harvard for my MBA next year. I was delighted when Birge here snapped me up.”

  “Yes, I imagine you were. Birge is quite the catch.”

  Birge changed the subject. “So, how is this place? A little rustic, yes?”

  “I’m not here for the decor, as you recall.”

  “Yes, well, let’s not get nasty, dear.”

  “Nasty?” fumed Nan.

  Sensing an imminent catfight, Mirabelle excused herself. “I’ll be in the limo, making calls, if you need me,” she assured Birge as she departed.

  Silence fell between the two women.

  “You want to tell me about Tinker Bell?” Nan grunted at last.

  “Mirabelle,” corrected Birge.

  “You know who I mean.” Nan was standing, arms crossed, back to the refrigerator.

  “She’s my new assistant.”

  “You couldn’t find an ugly one?”

  “I suppose I could, but why on earth does it matter?”

  “Because I don’t like the way she looks at you.”

  “How is that?”

  “All adoring.” Nan molded her face into a mask of adoration. She batted her eyelashes.

  “I’m her mentor, dear. She damn well ought to adore me.”

  “She wants to sit on your face.”

  Birge was quiet for a second. “What if she does? I needed a new assistant. She’s who the agency sent. You want me to send her back? Fine, I’ll send her back. But you have to tell me what’s eating you. You seem jealous. You’ve never been like this before. If this is what you’re going to be like sober, we might well reconsider this whole sobriety thing.”

  Nan sat down at the table. She batted a salt shaker between her hands. “Tinker Bell is gorgeous. Any woman would be jealous.”

  “I suppose. But it’s not like you. Hey, this is me. Birge. We’ve been together since the dawn of civilization. I’ve never cheated on you.” Birge took her partner’s hand and patted it assuredly.

  “Never?” whined Nan, hating how insecure she felt. She felt twelve years old. Out of control. Feelings raged inside her searching for an outlet. She’d numbed herself with alcohol for so long she no longer knew how to talk about her own inner turmoil.

  “Of course not.”

  Nan decided to accept Birge’s declaration of lifelong love and change the subject. “We have to talk about this addiction thing. Babe will make us talk about it so we might as well warm up before she lights the fires of hell under us.” Nan sighed, wishing she could avoid talking about her addiction and how it had, for the last year, embarrassed and fatigued them both.

  Several hours later, Birge left the farmhouse for the night, emotionally exhausted. Too much talk. Too many feelings. Way too many feelings. Nan had poured her heart out. Apologized in so many ways. In many ways today’s Nan reminded Birge of the emotionally driven girl she’d fallen in love with in grad school.

  This did not, however, make Birge happy. Instead, it filled Birge with heavy guilt. By the time the limo dropped Birge off at her hotel for the night, she was in a foul mood.

  Mirabelle had booked them at a ski resort in Stowe, an A-grade spa with heated whirlpools in each room and personal chefs for every guest. Birge wasn’t surprised to find Mirabelle sprawled on the triple-wide, down-ensconced bed typing financial reports on a laptop when she keyed open the door.

  Mirabelle sprang up from the bed, and, after helping Birge off with her coat, handed her a cut-crystal glass brimming with Scotch.

  “When are you going to tell her?” asked Mirabelle as she filled another Scotch glass, this one for herself.

  “Oh, honey, I can’t now. You saw her. She’s fragile.” Birge lay down the bed and tried to ignore the headache that pounded behind her eyes.

  “I’m fragile, too,” whined Mirabelle as she suggestively parted her hotel robe. Underneath, Mirabelle wore intricately laced black stockings and a matching bustier that held her ample breasts barely together with the aid of a delicate, red, silk string. “Really delicate,” she purred as her long legs expertly straddled Birge’s lap.

  38. Homo-sex-u-all

  Babe eyed the wall clock. It was time for Candice’s family therapy session; ten minutes past time, in fact. Candice’s parents were in the room, but the good doctor herself was nowhere in sight.

  “Maybe she got called to a medical emergency,” suggested Ellie, Candice’s mother. “She’s a doctor, you know.”

  “Probably thinks we’re not important enough,” snorted Daniel, her father. “She doesn’t like us, you know. Never has. Born with her nose out of joint.”

  “Don’t say that, Daniel! Please don’t start with that!” Ellie cried.

  “Why not?” objected the old man as he straightened the vest on his suit, which was creeping up his belly. “It’s the truth. You’re always making excuses for that girl. Since the day she was born. She don’t fool me, though. I see who she is. What she is.”

  Babe watched as the hands on the wall clock advanced. It was becoming clear to her that Candice did not intend to show for her family session. It was also starting to dawn on her why Candice might choose avoidance to time alone with her parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Antwerp?” she said with a sigh.

  “Yes?” they answered in practiced unison.

  “I’m going to find your daughter.” Babe scraped back the chair and stood.

  “Don’t bother yourself,” declared Daniel. He rose with the help of his cane. “We can take a hint. She hates us that much. Always has. We’ll be on our way.”

  “Sit down, Daniel!” It was Ellie speaking. For a small-framed woman, well into her seventies, she had a commanding voice.

  Daniel fell back onto the sofa.

  Ellie faced Babe. “You go and find our daughter. We want to speak to her. Tell her we’ll not leave until she talks to us. She wants us to leave, she needs to tell us that to our face.”

  It didn’t take Babe long to locate the doctor. She was in the cellar exercise room climbing the StairMaster, sweat running off her face, down the hollows of her back. The green silk headband she’d tied through her red hair was soaked through. Ignoring Babe’s many shouts, she refused to shut off StairMaster. If anything, she quickened her pace.

  Babe, not one to be put off, yanked the power cord on the machine.

  Candice fell forward, off the machine, onto the floor. She yowled as she clutched her right ankle. “You could have hurt me!” she spat at Babe.

  “Yeah, well, you’re late for your therapy session. Get those tight-assed buns of yours upstairs. Pronto.”

  “No.” Candice sat cross-legged on the floor, nursing her injured ankle. “I don’t want to see my
parents.”

  “Why not?”

  “They don’t like me.”

  “They seem to think it’s you who doesn’t like them.”

  “They said that?”

  “Your father did.”

  “You mean the great and mighty Reverend Antwerp?”

  “He did mention he headed a church.”

  “They don’t like me. Especially him. I haven’t seen them in twenty years. They are not my family.”

  “Well, the medical association says they are. And for purposes of your stay here, they are your only legal family. You have to see them. Either that or you have to leave treatment. Now. Today. This very hour.”

  “I can’t leave treatment.” Dr. Antwerp glared at Babe.

  “You can leave anytime you’d like.”

  “I’ll lose my medical license if I leave.”

  “It’s your choice.”

  “I really hate you,” said Candice, her eyes alive with malice. “Really. I hate your stinking lesbo guts.”

  “I’d say that means we’re making progress,” said Babe. “Now, get up. I’ll get some ice for that ankle and we’ll walk into that therapy session together. You can face this. Whatever has you so scared, you can face it. You have to face it.”

  Dr. Antwerp got up and hobbled toward the door. When Babe offered her a shoulder, she refused. Though the pain in her ankle felt like razor blades shooting up her calf, the doctor walked, unaided, up the stairs, into the therapy room.

  “I’m here. What do you want?” she roared at her parents. She did not sit down. She stood instead, facing the large window that looked out over the pasture.

  Daniel turned his gaze away from his daughter.

  Ellie slid a hand over her mouth. “My God, Candice. Is that you?”

  “Of course it’s me.” Dr. Antwerp turned to face her parents.

  Daniel narrowed his eyes. “You look different.”