by Sandy Lowe
Her mother, apparently happy at last with her hair, planted a kiss on her cheek. “You, my sweet girl, look gorgeous, and everyone will think so. This is a celebration for all of us, but in particular for me and Karen, as both of our daughters have come to share this night with us. How can it be anything but special?”
Lindy held up her hands and laughed. Mom was hard to resist. “You win. Let’s party.”
She only hoped she could manage to keep her cool when she finally came face-to-face with Amber.
The short trip to the party consisted of walking out the front door and going through the opening in the shrubs that separated her mother’s yard from Karen Kaplin’s. The two families had been neighbors for more than thirty-five years, and now the two women, both widows, were, according to her mother, in the same coven.
She still had a hard time wrapping her head around the idea her mother was a witch. When in the hell had that happened? According to Mom, when she’d posed that exact question, it was well before they lost Dad to cancer five years ago. It figured Mom would gravitate to something like Wicca; she always did like things a bit off the beaten path.
Now, Karen joining in, that surprised her. She always thought of her as the straight arrow, the mom who was the first to raise her hand at PTA meetings and the one who always got them to soccer games on time. A Wiccan was just about the last thing in the world Lindy could imagine her being, though the thought of it made her smile.
In the old days, Lindy would have opened the door and barged in with just a yell to announce her arrival. With the passage of years and the long absence, common courtesy seemed a better course. She pressed the small lighted doorbell button. A moment later, Karen opened the door and enveloped Lindy in a big hug. “Oh my goodness, it’s so wonderful to see you.”
Like Lindy’s mother, Karen was dressed in a lovely dark blue gown. Lindy wondered if this was what Wiccans always wore to their gatherings as she hugged her back. “I’ve missed you,” she admitted, and it was the truth. Tears started to well in her eyes and she blinked them back.
As she stepped inside she was hit by a wave of nostalgia. The house looked much as it had when she was that teenager so eager to find independence and make her way in the world. The furniture was new, but the arrangement was not. She was smiling as she moved into the living room where women dressed similar to her were milling about holding wineglasses and chatting.
Lindy stopped in front of a wall covered by photographs, some older and some more recent, and her heart started to race. Imagination was no longer required as to what Amber would look like in uniform. One was clearly Amber’s West Point graduation photo. She was more stunning than anything Lindy’s imagination came up with. “Get over it,” she muttered. “She’s probably married to some big, buff Navy SEAL.”
“What Navy SEAL?”
The way she jumped at the sound of Amber’s voice right behind her was definitely not cool. Slowly she turned, and if her heart was beating fast at seeing pictures of Amber in uniform, seeing her in a well-cut gown just about put her over the top. She was as beautiful in the gown as she was hot in uniform. She was most likely drop-dead gorgeous when she had nothing on. Don’t go there.
“Amber.” Oh so smooth. It was like she’d never been around a beautiful woman before.
Amber smiled and reached out to hug her. “God, it’s good to see you.”
And to hold her, Lindy wanted to add. As much as she hated to be a cliché, Amber was her first love, and to hold her in her arms right now was a little slice of heaven. She had definitely not outgrown her first love. Nope, not at all. Sucked to be her.
“You look great.” Pretty lame. It was not getting any better.
Amber stepped back and held her out at arm’s length. “Lindy, I love the hair.”
Lindy rolled her eyes. That made one of them. “Mom’s handiwork.”
Her smile lit up her face. “I bet you still wear it long, straight, and in a braid.”
“Sucker’s bet.” It warmed her heart to think that Amber remembered.
Amber hugged her again. “Seriously, Lins, it’s so good to see you. You don’t know how much I’ve missed you.”
Lindy stepped away and didn’t know why. Maybe because it hurt a little to hear her say she missed her, because if she had, wouldn’t she have tried to get in touch with her at least once?
“I’ve missed you too.” No sense lying even if her feelings were hurt. She’d missed Amber so much she’d stayed away for fifteen years, only coming back for visits short enough to ensure there was no time to visit with neighbors, even if they lived next door. She’d made certain to keep as far away from any reminders of Amber as humanly possible. Her success had been 100 percent. Until tonight.
“Come on.” Amber tilted her head toward the back door. “Let’s leave the witches to their party and go have a drink out by the river.”
“Isn’t it a little cold?” It was, after all, the end of October, and in this part of the country, chilly outside. Besides, the riverbank was typically cluttered with fallen leaves and branches. Not exactly what she wanted to pick over in long black velvet. Nor did she want to be alone with Amber in the moonlight. Her heart could only stand so much.
“No worries, Mom put in an awesome fire pit patio thingy down near the water. One flick of the remote, and whoosh, we have fire. She had the right idea when she put in a gas fire pit. No fuss, no muss. There are chairs and everything. Come on.” She held out a hand to Lindy.
Still, Lindy hesitated. Oh, she wanted to go bad enough. She just wasn’t sure her heart was up to it. All this time apart, and after five minutes it was as if they’d seen each other yesterday. She was still as drawn to her as ever.
“Okay, let’s do it.”
Amber’s face lit up, her eyes dancing. “That’s the Lindy I remember. Wait here a sec.”
She didn’t give Lindy a chance to say anything. Instead, she raced toward the kitchen, returning two minutes later with a bottle of wine and two glasses. “Now we’re ready. Let’s go catch up.”
As they were walking toward the river, Amber asked, “You notice there seems to be some kind of order to the dresses?”
“What?” Lindy was concentrating on not tripping on anything as they crossed the yard heading toward the promised chairs and fire pit. The moonlight was romantic and all, but it wasn’t a whole lot of good when it came to negotiating the terrain in a long dress.
“The dresses. You and I got stuffed into these fancy get-ups, and if you took a look around, some of us are in black, some in green, and a couple, specifically our moms, are in blue. I wonder what it all means.”
They’d reached the chairs, and as promised, they were nice and ringed the elaborate fire pit. From a patio chest, Amber fished out a remote and, with a press of a button, had fire warming the air.
“Pretty sweet,” Lindy said as she lowered herself to the double seat that faced the river. She almost jumped when Amber sat next to her instead of picking one of the other chairs.
Neither of them said a word as Amber uncorked the wine, poured each of them a glass, and then set the bottle on the ground. She leaned back, took a sip, and stared up at the sky.
“Do you ever wish things had turned out differently?”
Only about a million times was what Lindy wanted to say. “Like what?” From everything Mom had told her, Amber’s life was amazing. She’d been all over the world, was highly regarded and very successful. Someday she was going to be wearing stars on her uniform.
“Like you and me.”
Lindy almost spat out the wine she’d just taken a sip of. “I don’t understand.” And she didn’t, either. Yes, she’d loved Amber and probably still did. Amber had never been anything but a good friend. She’d dated guys in high school, and even though Mom never mentioned men in her life, Lindy had always assumed there were.
Amber leaned down and set her glass on the ground. Then she turned until she was facing Lindy. In the moonlight her eyes sparkled. �
�Have you ever heard the old saying ‘You don’t know what you have until it’s gone’? Well, I’ve had to live with that one for fifteen years.”
Lindy’s heart felt like it was going to burst. Amber couldn’t possibly be saying what she thought she was. “Amber…”
“Let me finish. I came tonight for one reason and one reason only: you. Mom told me you were going to be here, and I got on the first plane. I had to see you, Lindy. I had to know for sure.”
“Know what?” Did she really come across as stupid as she sounded to her own ears?
“This.” She took Lindy’s face between her hands and leaned in to kiss her. It started out tentative, soft, and quickly turned into something far more passionate.
When Amber pulled away, Lindy could hardly breathe. “I’ve dreamed of that for years,” she admitted softly.
Amber’s smile was beautiful. “I’ll tell you my big, dark secret. So have I.”
“What?” Could it really be true?
“I think I knew long before I left for West Point and you headed off to the University of Washington.”
“Why didn’t you say something?” Fifteen years. Fifteen long years she’d waited to hear something like this, to hear anything that might give her hope.
“I was afraid. I wanted to go to West Point. I wanted to be the officer I’ve become, and in my mind that meant I had to be what the world expected me to be.”
“Straight.”
Amber laughed. “Oh yes, straight.”
“How’d that work out for you?” She said it with a smile.
“Well, I did meet some nice guys along the way. Quite a few toads too.”
“I’ll just bet.”
“I met some nice women along the way too.”
That thought made her heart constrict. “But?”
Amber took her face in her hands again, staring into Lindy’s eyes. “But no matter where I looked, I couldn’t find what I was really looking for.”
“And what was that?”
“You.”
Tears pooled in Lindy’s eyes. “Are you screwing with me?” This couldn’t really be happening.
Amber shook her head. “One of my best friends was killed several months ago by a suicide bomber. She was smart and beautiful and so incredibly talented. She was the kind of woman who was going to change the world. One day she was there and the next she was gone. It was losing Gail that made me realize what I’d been doing all these years, and that was hiding from the one person I truly loved.”
The tears couldn’t be held back anymore. “You know I’ve loved you for years.”
Amber nodded. “I didn’t realize it until later. Until we were apart. I think I took you for granted. You were my best friend, and it took me a long time to understand that it was my best friend who held my heart. Lindy, I love you, I’ve always loved you, and I’m not hiding from you anymore. Can you forgive me for being so dense?”
Easy. “I can forgive you anything.”
“Really?” For the first time, Amber looked uncertain.
Lindy smiled. “Really.” She pulled Amber close and kissed her deeply, letting the love that had lived in her heart for all these years have free rein.
The sound of clapping made Lindy pull back. Both Lindy and Amber turned to look behind them. Their mothers stood side by side on the edge of the lawn, clapping and smiling. The moon spilled warm light down, bathing them in a buttery glow.
“It’s about time,” Lindy’s mother said. “It’s taken us years to get you two to come to your senses. We finally had to call in our sisters to weave a little magic.”
“I thought you said this party was a tradition,” Lindy said.
“It is,” her mother answered. “Each year we come together under the October moon to help those who need a little push. We finally decided this was the year to give you a little needed push.”
“You cast a spell on us.”
Her mother laughed. “Not really. Let’s just say it was more a case of the universe conspiring to bring you together.”
Lindy smiled and turned back to gaze at Amber, who took her hands. “I don’t care if they did cast a spell, I’m just happy that I finally got the girl of my dreams.”
“The girl next door,” Amber said, laughing. “It’s so clichéd.”
Lindy pulled her into her arms and whispered into her ear. “It’s so perfect.”
Chemistry
Lea Daley
There is such a thing as chemistry, but that doesn’t mean you can trust it. Chemistry can point the way, or lead you astray. The problem is figuring out which direction it’s taking you. I wondered about that after meeting Nicola Sevier on the closing day of the Wyldwomyn Music Festival. Her last name was pronounced “severe,” as in severe crush—appropriate because the woman exuded an almost magical charm. Her dark hair, cut in an asymmetrical style, fell across one of her smoky gray eyes. She was tall, with to-die-for biceps, and legs that I instantly imagined wrapping around my neck. As for her breasts, amply displayed courtesy of a scoop-necked T-shirt—don’t get me started. I’ll slide off my chair.
We liked all the same music; we shared the same political beliefs. And that last part really mattered right then. It was the summer of 2016, when longtime friendships were ripped asunder by the political feud. If Nicola had said she was voting for my second choice, she might have lost some of her allure. But no. And I especially liked that she’d shown up at Wyldwomyn, which was so little publicized that just knowing about it automatically conferred über-cool status. Of course, I was only at the festival because my best friend had stumbled across it years earlier. This was the first time that I’d attended without London.
Wyldwomyn took place in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri, and if you thought of it as a smaller-scale, lower-rent version of its Michigan sister, you wouldn’t be wrong. Hosted by a gaggle of second-wave feminists on Dykeland, their collectivist farm, the festival was a three-day immersion in the past. Complete with cheap, communally cooked food; outdoor “plumbing”; and an abundant supply of mosquitoes. But the music was exceptional—that was the hook. Up-and-coming artists from all over the country performed; when one of those acts penetrated the zeitgeist, we could claim we’d discovered it.
The downside? Our hosts had an ulterior motive: to saturate us in 1970s feminist philosophy, which my generation found laughably deficient. Each summer we suffered through “consciousness-raising” sessions with total strangers. And we were herded into awkward workshops on decoding the female body that actually involved inspecting our nether regions with cheesy hand mirrors. As if we hadn’t already explored our sexuality—and then some.
Worst of all were the passionate lectures on the patriarchy. With a capital “P.” To the extent that I thought about those matters on my own time, the patriarchy was like a receding fog. I wouldn’t want to drive through the murk, but it was a distant problem, and clearing nicely. The sun would come out soon. But for those old gals, the Patriarchy was a looming threat, as concrete as a black-clad burglar scaling the walls of our homes, looting our treasure. And it was pointless to call the police because cops were just another arm of the machine, indifferent to the multitudinous ways women were brutalized by it. “Protect and serve, my ass!” I’d heard Comfrey mutter more than once.
Mostly we queued up for Wyldwomyn’s ancillary events because the concerts didn’t start till afternoon. And because the founders were so quaint and earnest, almost like living exhibits of their bygone era. Each had adopted a new name. Willow. Star. Sorrel. Terra. And they’d rejected a hundred things we willingly embraced. Fashion, makeup, porn—even shaving. I doubted any of them had heard of a landing strip or a full Brazilian. Yet they were missionary in their zeal to educate us young folk.
Apparently there was a capitalist conspiracy designed to strip women of our hard-won—if unequal—wages. Corporatists were working overtime to persuade us of our innate inferiority so we’d spend big bucks on makeup, corsets, hair coloring, and spike heels. It
was futile to argue that many third-wave feminists liked wearing< dramatic styles, at least occasionally.
Those weren’tauthentic choices, Raine insisted. In a patriarchal society, a woman’s “performance of femininity” inevitably reflected male values. If men preferred modest women, females concealed their hair, their bodies, even their faces. If men preferred women who looked like porn stars, females dressed like…well, some of us. Yet men were universally unencumbered by restrictive apparel, face paint, wax jobs, or objectification.
I’d heard that rant repeatedly and avoided it when I could. Still, I tried to view the archaic rituals at Wyldwomyn as part of the price of admission. If nothing else, the exercises supplied comic relief at home—assuming London wasn’t present. Because she worshipped our hosts, from the tips of their little gray heads to the fraying hems of their overalls. I wasn’t allowed to poke fun at them—not even in the gentlest way. On the return trip to St. Louis after our first festival, London said, “They know things we don’t, Ali—important things.”
When I accused her of drinking the Kool-Aid, London’s response was uncharacteristically fierce. “Why shouldn’t we be accepted in our natural state? If guys don’t need makeup, why do we?”
“Because it’s fun? Because I look better with it?”
“Says who? I’ve seen you barefaced, and you looked terrific.”
“You’re not exactly my target audience,” I’d said flippantly.
London smacked me with her copy of The Beauty Myth, so I knew I’d won that round.
But each summer, she hung with the wyldwomyn whenever possible. Not surprising, I suppose—she was a throwback to some former time. London would rather phone than text, rather read a “real” book than a Kindle, preferred stolid Craftsman cottages to glossy new condos. She fit into life on Dykeland like she’d been born there, or like she was an honorary member of the tribe. She could have been a granddaughter of Linden or Raine or Solstice—not that any of those hardcore dykes had children. And London looked like she belonged there, too.