Toothpick House

by Lee Lynch

  Eleanor rubbed her cheek on Annie’s hand. “What do you want for Christmas, Annie?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. How about a ...” Annie stopped herself from saying lover. That was a joke she, Peg and Turkey shared. It would only hurt Eleanor or lead to more than Annie wanted. “A six-pack.”

  “Is that all you ever think of?”

  “Then how about a new muffler for my car?”

  “How about ten dollars or under?” Eleanor laughed, lifting Annie’s cap and smoothing her hair.

  Annie knocked her hand away, more roughly than she had intended. “Don’t mess with the hat.”

  A hurt look flashed across Eleanor’s eyes, but she laughed again. “Do you wear that thing to bed?”

  Remorseful, Annie smiled. “No. Just in the shower.”

  “Silly.” Eleanor moved closer to Annie and snuggled into her shoulder. Sighing, Annie put one arm around her, chugging at her beer with the other. “Put that down, Annie.”

  “Didn’t finish it,” Annie complained into the can.

  Eleanor took a turn at sighing and sat up. “Well, at least I got you here, away from your precious house. I suppose that’s a big step.”

  “I’m sorry.” Annie hung her head. “I’m real tired, El.” She put her arm back around Eleanor’s thin shoulders. “I’m not sure I have the energy to do you justice.”

  “What will be, will be. Will you stay over anyway, even if we don’t do anything? You know, ‘Help me make it through the night?’”

  Annie smiled to hear Eleanor sing the song she played endlessly on Marcy’s jukebox and to hear her own thoughts in the other woman’s mouth. Feeling unsure of herself, she looked up at Eleanor. “Maybe I shouldn’t.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  “I’d feel I was here under false pretenses.”

  “I’m asking you to stay, Annie. That nasty old Dusty didn’t even show up at all tonight. How’s that for a brushoff? I keep thinking about how hard it is waitressing all day when I can’t depend on Dusty being there at night. All I got is the bar to keep me from going nuts.”

  Annie was humming Eleanor’s song inside her head. It had weighed on Annie at the bar and increased her own sense of desolation at the thought of going home. When her roommates lived there she had loved the long drive back. Now, remembering the deserted beach, she weakened again. “As long as it’s okay with you.”

  “Oh, it’s real okay with me. You’ll have to sleep in my bed because Rudy and George usually come home with company and stay out here for awhile. But I promise I won’t touch you.”

  Annie nodded gratefully and went to get into bed while Eleanor fixed them a bedtime snack in the kitchen. She felt like a kid sick in bed in a pair of Rudy’s pajamas rolled up on her arms and legs. Eleanor came in with two glasses of milk and chunks of chocolate cake.

  “Well, it’s nice to know I can make you smile,” Eleanor said when she saw Annie eying the cake. “Here, hold this while I get undressed.” She changed into a black shortie nightgown while Annie averted her eyes. “Like my negligee?” Eleanor asked as she climbed in next to Annie.

  “It’s real sexy,” Annie giggled. “I feel like we’re having a sleepover party,” she said as she gave Eleanor her cake and milk.

  “Me too. This is kind of fun. I never thought of you as fun to sleep with.”

  Annie pretended to look hurt.

  “Just exciting,” Eleanor grinned lasciviously. “Now, you all take off that hat and eat so we can get up in the morning. Long as we’re not going to do anything worthwhile we might as well get some rest.”

  They finished their snacks and pulled the blankets over themselves, turning off the light. Annie lay in the dark stiff with self-consciousness. It would be hard to fall asleep, not having made love. “You know, this is new for me, El.”

  “What?”

  “Platonic sleeping together.”

  “Me too. Don’t really seem natural, does it? It’ll ruin our images. Some butch you are,” she teased Annie, pushing lightly at her in the dark.

  “Can you see us telling Peg and Turkey we slept together and them not believing it was innocent?” Annie laughed to cover the warmth that stole over her from Eleanor’s light touch.

  “Never! We’d have to prove it. Some night let’s ask them to come to bed with us and we’ll have a sexless orgy.” Eleanor began to laugh too.

  “We wouldn’t even need beds. Four sleeping bags on the floor.”

  “We’d never all fit in a bed,” Eleanor added.

  “We’d go through the mattress!”

  “Rudy and George would come in when they heard the noise and find all those tangled up arms and legs and hair. . . !” Eleanor couldn’t finish from laughing.

  Annie was doubled up on the bed from laughter, her cap finally falling off. “Oh, stop, that’s enough!”

  “This is almost as good as sex!”

  As they calmed down Eleanor moved closer to Annie who jumped. “Your feet are so cold!” Annie said, reaching under the covers to warm them as she would a lover’s. “You do need someone warm in your bed.”

  “Um, that feels good, Annie. We should have thought of this months ago. Do you think Turkey and Peg ever sleep together? Like this?”

  “I don’t know, but they ought to.” Eleanor settled her head on Annie’s shoulder.

  Annie sighed deeply and leaned her face against Eleanor’s hair.

  “Tell me a bedtime story, Annie.”

  “Goldilocks?”

  “No, silly, something real.”

  “How about Gone With the Wind?”

  “Don’t make fun of a defenseless Southern belle. Something about lesbians.”

  “Oh, you mean a dirty story.”

  “You’re awful. Not a dirty story, a real romantic one.”

  “Once upon a time Miss Scarlett realized that it was Topsy she loved all along . . .”

  “Oh, Annie,” Eleanor pulled away from her, pretending to be disgusted.

  Annie held her back. “Dorothy fell in love with Toto?”

  “Was Toto a girl?” Eleanor giggled. “Tell me your come out story. I never heard that.”

  “Do I have to?”

  “Either that or make love to me. I’m not ready to sleep.”

  Annie hesitated, feeling again a stirring glow from Eleanor’s words, enjoying holding her slight body.

  “Besides,” Eleanor interrupted her wavering will, “I’ve told you mine.”

  “Yeah, poor kid. What an awful way to come out. In jail.”

  “Reform school. They didn’t call them jails. And it was nice. She made me feel like I had a real home for the first time ever. I would’ve stayed at the school forever if she hadn’t been sprung. I loved our little cottage. At least until they put two more girls in there. But even then it wasn’t so bad, because their girlfriends were in other cottages and they were out all the time.”

  “I feel overprivileged.”

  “Why?”

  “I came out with a Cliffey.”

  “What in hell is that?” Eleanor asked, rolling over to face Annie. Annie kissed her, their bodies barely touching, her lips finding a spark in Eleanor’s. “Oh, no,” Eleanor sighed. “You’re not getting out of it that easy. Now I want to hear. Tell me.” She pushed Annie back into the pillows and laid her head on her chest.

  “Natalie went to Radcliffe. That’s the woman’s school at Harvard.”

  “How’d you meet her?”

  “At the library. The Boston Public. It’s kind of corny.”

  “Love stories always are, aren’t they?”

  “I guess so. Stop me if it’s too silly for you.”

  “Oh, Annie,” Eleanor chided her, slipping a hand across Annie’s chest and under her ribcage.

  “I used to go there every Saturday. To the library. Mostly to get away from my family. My house was always full of old ladies, cousins, aunts, neighbors. It felt like bingo night at St. Ann’s. I’d go to study. I was in high school. Junior year. I didn
’t have any friends except neighborhood kids. We’d go to the football games together. Or shopping downtown, walking to school, but I had nothing in common with them. I didn’t know I was gay, but I read a lot and they called me The Intellectual. So me and my shadow would go to the library.”

  “Sounds dull, honey,” Eleanor said, running her hand along Annie’s side.

  “Actually, I didn’t study much, so it wasn’t. I’d go into a room and pull out a book and get lost for a few hours. At lunchtime, though, I always went to this courtyard in the middle of the place and I’d eat my sandwich there. One day I noticed this girl looking at me. I’d noticed her before, so I smiled at her. Well, that’s as far as it went for a few weeks. We’d smile. I was shy and it turned out she was too, back then.”

  Annie shifted on the bed. “You still awake?” she asked when Eleanor didn’t move.

  “Oh, yeah. Just too comfy to move.”

  Annie stroked her hair. “So one day, of course, the only place to sit was next to her. You sat on these low cement benches. We smiled and finally she asked me what I was reading. She was reading The Well of Loneliness. I found out later that she’d been carrying it every Saturday in hopes that I’d talk to her.” Annie laughed. “She was gay, but she was only a freshman at Radcliffe and scared to death she’d be kicked out if anyone found out. She’s a big shot on the campus now, a senior. But then she was just a scared little queer and she thought I was, too. You know, I wore jeans and sneakers and a hat.”

  “Not the same one!” Eleanor interrupted, pretending horror.

  “No, no. Usually a Red Sox cap, then. Anyway, we went for coffee. She was majoring in literature and I’d read a lot so we had plenty in common. I’d never heard of The Well and she lent it to me. All she said was it was the life of an English woman writer. We didn’t talk about meeting the next week, but she knew the book would bring me back. Luckily, it was spring and we could leave the shelter of the library for the Common and the public Gardens, the Charles River and the docks.

  “It was a sweet kind of relationship. She said we budded, then blossomed together, first holding hands, then walking arm in arm and so on. We didn’t sleep together until that summer. She was a counselor at some camp in Vermont and I worked at the Chelsea library shelving and stuff. I missed her like we were blossoming plants the blossoms had been torn off. I’d finally started fantasizing about her. When she got her first weekend off I met her. I was scared to death because we stayed at a country inn and it was so respectable looking and I was far from home and, of course, I knew what would happen if I wanted it to.

  “We went on being lovers till I graduated from high school. But I remember the courting best, if you’ll forgive the expression. The weather growing warmer, colors being born, everything expanding and filling with life, like me. Toying with love. Before we had to face the daily realities like where can we sleep together and where do we go from here.”

  Eleanor raised herself to look into Annie’s eyes. “That is a sweet story, girl. And just like you. A quiet kind of first love, that took a long time to happen. What happened to her?”

  “The summer I graduated high school she started some kind of study program in Spain. She didn’t come back until the end of the winter. She was so different. So—sophisticated, I guess. I mean, she’d always been a lot more with it in terms of getting along with society and fitting in at Radcliffe. She could pass easily for straight. But before she went away she was like a kid a lot, especially alone with me. Like a kid who’s been pushed into the adult world and puts on a good show when she wants to. I didn’t stop loving her because she finally became part of that world, but I didn’t feel I could keep up. And she didn’t want to give it up. You know, she’ll always be one of those lesbians who goes to cocktail parties and people say, ‘Oh, that’s so and so the lesbian,’” and go back to their drinks because she looks just like them and acts just like them and keeps her love life totally separate from her social and professional life. I think it’s a new kind of closet that’s been invented for women who love women but also love the straight world.”

  “And Annie Heaphy doesn’t.”

  “You’re damn straight I don’t love their world. Shit,” she sneered, putting her hands on Eleanor’s shoulders and gripping them. “This is my world and if I’ve got to be a cab driver then I will be before I take my hat off for anybody. I may have a lot of faults, but I’m no hypocrite.”

  Their eyes were locked and Eleanor was smiling at Annie’s angry pride. “You lowclass dyke,” she hissed.

  “You poor white Southern queer,” Annie countered and suddenly they were kissing hard and holding each other very tightly. They had found something in each other to which they responded. Rolling on top of Eleanor, Annie, with short, firm caresses, made love to her, but it was all an outward flow of energy. When Eleanor tried to touch Annie, the touch was parried. Annie was masterful, everything she thought Eleanor wanted her to be, until Eleanor began to fight her, caressing her back, moving until she was no longer underneath Annie, but next to her and finally finding an opening to make love to Annie, too. They went on for awhile roughly touching each other, Eleanor as if to purge the straight world from Annie’s body, Annie ridding Eleanor of the night’s hurt and disappointment. Then, their passions met and they retreated from their fight as if to admire and appreciate each other. I’m making love with a friend I respect, thought Annie, and she smiled in the dark, still for a moment.

  “What’s the matter?” Eleanor asked.

  “Whether we do this again or not, I like you.”

  “I like you too, Annie.” And then their caresses were gentle until they slept.

  * * * * *

  Victoria was ready to knock, but the door to Rosemary and Claudia’s room was wide open. Claudia was dancing inside, arms wide, eyes closed, dipping and spinning in unrhythmic abandon. Victoria knocked anyway, once lightly and again more heavily when Claudia did not hear.

  Claudia’s whole body started and her eyes jumped open. Balanced in a backward step she swayed side to side, then thrust her round body forward and to the door to grab Victoria and pull her into the dark room which faced an alley. “Want to dance?” she yelled over the cha-cha.

  “No!” Victoria shouted back. “Why don’t you turn that thing down? Aren’t people trying to study?”

  “I was indulging myself,” Claudia admitted, turning the stereo down, still lightly dancing in her long flannel nightgown.

  Victoria watched the girl’s joy in dancing and her unself-consciousness in her body with its heavy breasts and protruding belly. Small bare feet poked out from under the nightgown. Claudia began to unroll curlers from her hair. “What did you do last night?” she asked Victoria.

  “I read, listened to music.” Victoria remembered dancing by herself to Debussy. “What did you do?”

  “Went to a film. David and Lisa. Have you ever seen it?”

  “No.”

  “It’s about two kids with emotional problems. I must have seen it six times. Fascinating.”

  “For a psychology major.”

  “Rosemary liked it too. I want her to understand my interest in psychology. She sees it as a ‘male tool to further enhance male strength by rationalizing it.’ I believe we can use it to understand their strength and our own.” She cleared books off a chair. “Want to sit down? What are you doing here anyway? We usually have to drag you out of your room.”

  Victoria looked at her feet and took a deep breath. She was lonely, restless, excited by the coming winter holiday when her parents would be away and she would be free in the apartment in New York. There was finally not even the money for a live-in maid. She also felt at a loss about what to do with herself those two weeks, when she could do anything she wanted without having to report her activities to anyone. “I suppose I was bored.”

  “Want to come to the women’s poetry group?”

  “Is that all you’re doing today?”

  “Yes. Rosemary’s going to read.�
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  Victoria tried not to sound negative. “I’ve heard her read before.”

  “There’ll be a discussion afterwards. Come on. You’re a poet. You’ll like it. There won’t be any bearded men showing off there. Just us.”

  “I really don’t care for poetry readings,” Victoria protested, wringing her hands in frustration. “I suppose I’m looking for something more exciting to do.”

  Claudia looked surprised. “Exciting? You, Victoria Locke, looking for something exciting to do?” She slipped her curlers into a flowered cosmetic bag. “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose nothing.” Victoria slumped dejectedly into the armchair Claudia had cleared, unsure whether to change the subject or not. “Oh, Claudia, I want to plunge into something. To get lost in it, do you understand what I mean?”

  “Sure I do. I just never expected you to feel like that. I do a lot,” Claudia said, slipping onto the arm of the chair and looking into Victoria’s eyes. “What sort of things do you get lost in?”

  Before Victoria could answer, Rosemary’s bedroom door opened and she appeared in a long skirt and peasant blouse. Her lank brown hair was rolled on the top of her head, strings of it falling out already. “Good morning,” she said in surprise to the tableau of Victoria and Rosemary. She walked to the stereo turntable and stopped the cha-cha.

  Victoria looked up at the girl’s thin, pointed face. “Hello,” she answered.

  Claudia lifted herself away from Victoria and attached herself to Rosemary’s arm. “Victoria wants something exciting to do, but doesn’t want to come to the group,” she said, leaning her head against Rosemary’s shoulder as they both looked toward their friend. Rosemary awkwardly took her arm from Claudia’s and rested it across her shoulder.

  “What do you find exciting, Victoria?” Rosemary asked solemnly.

  “I’m not sure anymore. Nothing seems to satisfy me. I have this vague, restless feeling.”

  Rosemary looked at Claudia. “Surely we can think of something. Why don’t you go and wash up, Claudie, so we can go,” she said gently. Claudia let go of her arm slowly and, with a lingering smile at Rosemary, left them. “How long have you felt like this, Victoria?”