Toothpick House

by Lee Lynch

  “Hold on, Victoria.” Claudia stood, no longer the listener. “I know it affects your whole life, but you can’t begin to deal with all that yet. You’d be a frog on a lily pad. There’s no way you can keep from losing your balance if you haven’t got a hold of yourself.” Claudia sat at the edge of the bed, close to Victoria.

  “So you think I should decide if I’m a lesbian or not, whatever the consequences.”

  “It doesn’t really bother me, personally, one way or the other, but it would help you to sort things out.”

  Victoria sat down on the bed and bent her head to her hands. “I don’t want to be, Claudia,” she cried, rocking herself. “It’s too hard. The whole world disapproves of you. It’s not safe. I’m too scared.”

  Claudia’s face changed. She looked hurt now, as if she were feeling Victoria’s pain. Her hands clasped the straps of her overalls tightly. Finally, she reached over to Victoria and pulled her close, laying her head against her breasts. “Victoria, it is hard, but it’s worth it, that’s all I can tell you. Oh,” she went on, rocking her, “it’s so beautiful to love a woman. Let yourself feel it!”

  “Every time I do I get scared. I want to scream and run away as if I’d come upon something horrible.”

  “We’ve been taught it is something horrible. It’s not. It’s pure and sweet. You’ll never feel anything better. People think it’s horrible,” she soothed Victoria, smoothing her hair, “because they’re afraid of it and that goes back a long, long way. Rosemary says it’s our responsibility as well-educated lesbians to teach the world there’s nothing wrong with lesbianism. In my work, I want to help lesbians adjust to who they are without all the agonizing you’re going through. Not that I don’t get as scared as you sometimes, too, but I honestly believe it’s worth it.”

  Victoria was still crying, but more gently. “Just hearing the word makes me frightened.” Claudia loosened one arm from around Victoria and drew first one, then the other, of Victoria’s arms around her waist. She pulled Victoria closer and was quiet. Victoria whimpered for awhile, then found herself relaxing into Claudia’s arms. Words disappeared from her mind as a deep comfort invaded her and left her wondering at the magic a woman’s body holds. Annie would not be like this, she thought, then decided she’d feel even better. “You should be Anne,” she whispered.

  “How can it ever be if you won’t see her?” Claudia asked gently.

  Victoria sobbed once, but her tears did not start again. “I’m too scared.”

  “What do you think you’re risking? Expulsion from the human race? It doesn’t happen. I’m living proof,” Claudia said as she stroked Victoria’s hair.

  “I know that. I don’t know exactly what I’m afraid of. How do I deal with the world?”

  “Is that what’s worrying you most? I freaked out about how the world would see me, but eventually I realized that I was more concerned with myself. How I would be different in relation to the life I wanted to live. It was hard to see me through my eyes and not the world’s.”

  “What are you going to do about your parents?”

  “At this point I figure it’s going to break their hearts when I tell them I’m not coming home to teach for a few years and then get married and have babies. So even though telling your folks is the in-thing to do right now, I don’t want to overburden them. I figure I’ll tell them I want to continue school in the East.”

  “What about Rosemary?”

  “Her parents? She told them practically the first day after we made love. She’s been such a pain in the ass to them they apparently figured this was just another phase and shrugged it off. She’s letting it go for now at that. There’s just not enough of her left after our relationship, her writing and all her other activities to be that concerned over her parents.”

  “Not to mention school,” Victoria chuckled, sitting up again and pulling her hair out of her face. “We all have to graduate as well as go through all this.”

  “We will,” Claudia assured her, one arm still around her.

  “All this has hardly upset you.”

  “Us midwesterners are pretty steady on our feet. I know it doesn’t seem like it to you, but I think you’re making too much of it. Let it happen. The rest will fall into place. You can’t solve it all beforehand so it won’t hurt later. You’re making it so difficult now you can’t resolve anything.”

  “No wonder you want to be a psychologist.”

  “Do I make sense?”

  Victoria nodded sadly. “But it’s not easy to live with. Why is it happening? I feel like it came out of the blue.”

  “No, this isn’t coming out of the blue. I thought it was too until I remembered things from my earlier years. Pity’s sake, as my mom would say, I made love to a woman before. And I’ve wanted to again ever since.”

  “How could you forget that? I feel like such a helpless, naive little girl asking you all this.”

  “And it’s about time you let yourself be helpless and naive. You probably never did before in your life. You know, you can’t get anything good unless you open yourself up to it. I didn’t open myself up the first time I was with another woman—girl, I guess she was then. That’s probably why it was so easy to push into the back of my mind. She was the girl next door and we’d played together all our lives. When we were fourteen we became, like they say, inseparable. One of our favorite things was hanging out in the hayloft of the barn. We could be private there and talk about anything we wanted. But I see now that more than talk we wanted to indulge our feelings for each other. I think you know now the feelings I mean. That warm all over, breathless, blooming feeling? The secret passion that makes being together so painful and exciting?

  “So one day we were fooling around and we got physical with each other. We kind of challenged each other to take all our clothes off. I remember the sun was coming in through a little window on the side of the loft and her skin was so golden, like someone had spread it with honey. And my own was milky. We just stared at each other for so long, Victoria. I reached out my hand and touched her breast which was new and untouched. It just sprang to life, the nipple getting firm as if it was glad to see me. Then I touched the other. Then she began touching herself, masturbating, her eyes all glazed, her breathing real shallow. I wanted to be touching her, so I did. But no one ever touched me until Rosemary. And, wow, was that a relief after seven years of waiting!” Claudia laughed.

  Victoria rested her head against Claudia’s shoulder and gazed up at her, still feeling like a child. “Thank you for telling me. I guess it is all right to feel like that.”

  “You know it’s all right to feel that good, Victoria love. And I’m so glad Anne does make you feel like that.”

  “So am I,” Victoria said, rising. “I want to see her again. You’re right, it’s worth it. I’m not sure I’m strong enough. And I have to figure out how. I don’t even know if she’s called because I haven’t been answering the phone all week.”

  “I know. Maybe you’ll have to go and see her.”

  “That terrifies me.”

  They smiled at each other. “Ain’t life grand?” Claudia asked. “To think that terror could be the door that leads to so much pleasure and fulfillment. And it’s yours for the taking, Victoria.” She put her plump arms up to Victoria’s shoulders. “I’m here if you need me.”

  Victoria shook her head in amazement. “I never guessed how wonderful you are.”

  “Aw, shucks,” said Claudia, hugging Victoria and quickly leaving her.

  * * * * *

  After skulking away from Victoria’s room Monday morning, Annie spent the week consumed by conflict. She felt, alternately, victorious at her escape from a difficult and consuming relationship—and crashingly disappointed to have abandoned the woman and relationship she wanted so badly.

  She worked long hours without planning to and avoided the bar. At home she crawled into bed dressed and shook, as if with fever, in the damp spring beach air, while the foghorns sang desolat
e lullabyes. She ate only at the diner where she’d had breakfast the morning after she slept with Eleanor—as if to keep alive in herself the sense of relief she’d felt at that escape.

  When she drove it was either in a fog of fantasies about the hours she’d spent with Victoria or hustling as a cab driver must to make good money. She would plan ahead when it was best to be at the Park Plaza, the railroad station, the Doctor’s Building, and then dash her fares to their destinations and return for more as fast as she could. Hustling occupied her whole mind as she guessed which passengers would yield the best tips, which routes avoided the most traffic, who would tip her more for special treatment.

  For Annie, it was a grey week punctuated by the shy swelling of the buds on the willow trees by her house. Their new light greens brought tears to her eyes as she marched past them on her morning walks. They stirred the part of herself that was like them and she wondered if they were altogether happy that now they were committed to leave their warm winter casings and hang all upside down, exposed to the winds and whatever they might bring.

  Friday night Annie drove her VW straight to a bar from the terminal for the first time since before she’d seen Victoria at the dance. The bouncer stamped her hand, she pushed through the chattering men, and anchored herself to the empty side of the bar. As she waited, not making small talk with the bartender on purpose to relish the moment, a vibration, a memory of Victoria, began to wash through her. She stared down at the wooden bar, remembering the wooden tables where they had sat together and Victoria’s long fingers on them, and the way those fingers felt on her body. But she’d had those waves of Victoria so many, many times now and she was still without anything but the mirage of her, afraid to make her real again. Unclenching her fists, she took the drink from the bartender and downed it quickly, pushing a bill toward her for another.

  Peg drove her home much later, Annie and Turkey reeling with drink. They had spent a dull evening of small talk and gossip, as if her friends suspected Annie was not yet ready to talk about why she’d stayed away from them all week. Turkey was sick and collapsed on Annie’s bed while Peg made coffee. She joined Annie at the old kitchen table where Annie was pushing splinters back through the tablecloth into the table.

  “What the fuck’s the matter with you, Heaphy?” Peg challenged her, standing in a three piece suit at her full height above Annie.

  “Nothing,” Annie mumbled. “Take your jacket off, you’re making me hot.”

  “Bullshit nothing’s wrong. Drink your coffee.” Peg brought two mugs back from the stove. “And if you’re hot, you’re hot from the booze. As usual it’s freezing in this hut.”

  “Aw, Peg, leave my house alone. It’s all I’ve got. And you know damn well what’s wrong.”

  “Well, I figure it’s your Yalie, but why? Why are you so hung up?”

  “Oh, Peglet, she’s so beautiful. She’s sensitive and gentle and intelligent and educated and she makes my heart turn over every time I think about her and she turns me on like nothing I’ve ever felt before. She’s just perfect.”

  “Did you have a fight?”

  “No, no, no. No fight. I just love her,” and Annie Heaphy started to cry.

  Peg glared, unyielding, at Annie, angry that her friend kept throwing love away. “Then why aren’t you with her? Where have you been all week? Why’d you get drunk tonight? Doesn’t she want to be with you?”

  “I think so. I think she’s scared of being gay, maybe. I brought her out, for Christ’s sake. Besides, we’re so different. It wouldn’t work.”

  “You could try.”

  “It’s so hard to talk to her sometimes. It’s like we don’t need to talk when we’re together, but then I don’t really know what happened, how it was with her when I left her.”

  “You mean you snuck out again.”

  Annie hung her head, wiping the tears off her face. “Yeah. I guess I did.”

  “I warned you about that, chickenshit,” Peg reminded Annie with an affectionate smile.

  “It’s easier just to get in the cab and drive.”

  “And then get polluted so you don’t have to deal with it?”

  “Leave me alone, Peg. You sound like one of those fucking libbers.”

  Peg got angry again. She brushed invisible dirt from her pants viciously. “And you sound like one of those macho dykes that just want to act like men, running from woman to woman, not caring how you tear her up, and being so goddamned stoic about how you’re feeling you lose touch with the woman underneath. What are you feeling? Never mind all the details of why it can’t work. I’ve never seen you like this over a girl. What are you feeling in one word or less?” she glowered, pushing Annie’s mug closer to her. “And drink your coffee while you’re thinking.”

  Annie whispered, “Scared,” then drank some coffee.

  “Of what, you asshole, she’s no different from you.”

  “She is too. She’s smarter and better and has a lot of discipline and comes from a rich family . . .”

  “I said no bullshit,” Peg demanded.

  Annie suddenly saw herself clearly. She saw her own harried, scared self dashing back and forth across the city mindlessly, like a robot. She saw her own rapid, graceless movements like a speeded up film and knew they were signs of her great turmoil and lack of control. It was as if that crazy self were being propelled. And by what? By fear? That’s what she’d told Peg. And that’s what she saw in the little running vision of herself. She looked at Peg who seemed to sense Annie’s need for quiet time to think. Annie felt mad at Peg at the same time that she felt grateful. This was what her friend had done for her time after time: forced her to think about what she was doing.

  So, there Annie was, the tiny figure in the city full of tiny figures, running in meaningless circles alone. She could do this forever—or she could stop. It was easier to keep running, keep circling like an airplane that never lands. But sooner or later she would crash. She’d be one of those people who have nowhere to go but the diner and the bar. Whose lives revolved around one lonely place after another. Even her house, as much as she loved it, was getting to feel emptier and emptier since Vicky. And Annie would lose it this summer anyway. Was she going to lose Vicky too?

  Annie watched Peg wander to the living room where she stared out beyond the porch to the beach as Vicky had done Sunday morning while she waited for Annie to drive her home. Vicky was kind of like Peg and certainly the opposite of Annie: calm and graceful. Annie envied their ways. She smiled drunkenly to think of Vicky. And remembered her words: “I want to understand and that’s why I’m drawn to you. I sensed your fullness, your love of life, when we first met. I want to feel like that.” Annie remembered thinking Vicky sounded scared.

  “Just like I am,” she said aloud.

  “You talking to me, Heaphy?” Peg asked, as she reentered the kitchen and sat at the table.

  “Did you ever wonder if the ways you are and the ways someone else is could just be ways? I mean, that you’re basically the same underneath?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m not sure. I love Vicky for her control, the way she handles things, doesn’t just react to them, you know?” Annie asked, passing her hand across her face, tugging at her hair as if to clear her thinking.

  “Okay.”

  “But what if her calm, the way she is, is just how she shows how scared she is of everything?”

  “So . . . ,” Peg encouraged while Annie paused.

  “So if I’m scared and she’s scared, then it’s stupid to be scared. Do you think one person’s need to be always in motion could be a sign of the same tension that makes another person always need to be still and slow?” Annie beamed at Peg. “Of course,” she cried, pulling Peg up, pulling her behind her as she triumphantly dodged her books and shoes and furniture and ran for the porch, Peg following curiously, ready to prevent Annie from driving. “Vicky’s just like me!” she yelled back at Peg as she leapt off the steps and ran, hardly stopping to
check for cars, across the street, her thighs and arms pumping in unison so that she felt like a running machine turned on full power until she reached the damp sand and the water.

  “Vicky’s just as scared as me,” she thought. “I’m not really scared of her. I’m scared of me and she’s scared of herself and we’re scared of seeing ourselves in each other. And we’re hurting from the awful thing we’ve both been suffering, the awful experience of being alone in the world.” Annie stumbled a little from the liquor as she looked up at the stars. “The whole crazy world’s going around and around both of us and I’m standing here like an idiot without her.” She stared up at the moon and felt raw with loneliness.

  Peg caught up with Annie and stood silently beside her. “Night after night, Peglet, I have stood here looking at the moon in all its shapes and sizes as if it could do something for me. I’ve been angry, miserable, out of control and I almost just chained myself to the empty old moon because I was so damn afraid of doing the one thing I want: loving a woman. And I’ve been afraid of what she is, not even who she is.” Annie faced Peg. “And Vicky’s done the same thing, I’ll bet. She’s sitting in her room. She built the damn thing around her so everything she touches is herself and she doesn’t have to feel the aloneness. She thinks she can just watch life and not be touched by it.”

  “Ah, Peg, you son of a bitch,” Annie shivered, the sweat turning cool on her back. “Did you know all this? Why didn’t you tell me? I think I can tell Vicky now. Thank you, Peg,” Annie hugged her silent friend, “thank you. I think I can sit still long enough to tell her. I think I can slow down enough to match her pace if she’ll start moving. Oh, Peg, look what you gave me!” Annie threw her arms toward the sky, swaying a little, and stood smiling at it with Peg, drunk now on wonder too, hurting with the pain of knowing what she knew and crying from the beauty of it all.