by Lee Lynch
“I’m not sure. I have to love you at least a little because you’re unlike me.” Annie was disturbed at this first difference between them. Could it be the beginning of the end? She knew their love was too good to be true.
“Yes, but not because of exterior things like a rich education or what Turkey calls ‘classy’ clothes.”
“God, no. But you do have a fine mind under all that education,” Annie tried to smile. She saw that Victoria’s lips were trembling toward a smile and she went on despite her own misgivings. “And that beautiful long-legged body didn’t get that way on rice and beans.” Victoria did smile. “And the incredible teeth,” she touched a knuckle to them, “behind your smile did not come from staving off hunger in Ireland with soft potatoes.”
“And I have learned so well to be high-strung and sensitive about all sorts of things that are going to make you miserable until you can’t stand me anymore.”
“Not if I understand them. Shit, there must be stuff your parents taught you to hate about people lower than you on the ladder. And I must personify half of them.” Annie wondered if she was trying to reassure herself as well.
“Only the half I grew to love in rebellion.”
“Oh, so I’m an act of rebellion against your family now, am I?” Annie teased, tired of trying so hard to patch it up and wanting to just enjoy Victoria. She pulled Victoria’s hands to herself, feeling depression sweep over her, even as she comforted Victoria.
“No, no,” Victoria laughed. “Let me go, that’s Main Street up there! And you’re not my rebellion. I’m trying to be real with real people. Actually exposing myself to people who can hurt me like I was hurt just now and learning to survive it.”
“Well, then, I’m honored to be part of it, even if I will hurt you sometimes. Because I know I try to give you much more pleasure than pain,” Annie assured Victoria while fighting the despair that rose in herself. Could she deal with it? Was it worth it? She wasn’t sure.
“And you do give me more pleasure, duckling.”
“Here we go again with duckling,” Annie teased, still holding out against a nearly overpowering desire to run as far and as fast as she could from their conflict. “Why not just call me ugly duckling and get it over with?”
“Because you’re not, you’re not. You’re lovely. Especially with the sun and the ripples from the water reflected on your face.”
Annie smiled, but dropped her eyes. “Do you think we can work it out?”
“I don’t want to be alive if we don’t. I used to be able to survive alone, but I’m not so sure I’d want to anymore. And I have a very strong desire for survival.”
Me too, and I’m not sure I can survive a relationship, Annie thought as she watched the water rush by, running from its winter heights. She felt the chill it brought with it and watched it darken as a cloud passed across the sun.
* * * * *
Peg and Annie Heaphy were gathering more wood that afternoon.
“I’m going to start laying the fire for tonight,” Peg said, kneeling by the circle of rocks they had made for a campfire. “It’ll be too dark when we get back from the movies.”
“What else do we need?”
“Some kindling.”
“Like this?” Annie showed her three long branches she’d been dragging behind her.
“Beautiful. Want my knife?”
“No. I brought my old Girl Scout knife.”
“You were a Girl Scout too?”
“Wasn’t every dyke?”
Peg laughed. “Probably. It was the first place I ever loved a woman.”
“It was?”
“I don’t mean I came out in the Girl Scouts. But I sure loved my camp counselor. I was nine.”
“A little early.”
“You ain’t kidding. But I almost came out when I was a counselor in training. You had to have a buddy. You know, for mountain climbing, swimming, going to the John at night. My buddy and me fell in love. We must have been sixteen. I wish we’d known what was going on. Karen. She’ll never know how much I loved her. You know we slept in one another’s arms?”
“That must have been tough,” Annie panted, finally cutting through the thickest stick. “I’m not sure this one is dry enough.”
“Can you snap it?”
“No.”
“There’s plenty of dry stuff. Chuck that one. Actually, I didn’t sleep. Not for hours. We both stayed awake a long time talking. Then we just lay there. I think Karen pretended to fall asleep just so we could stay close. I forget how we got that way.” She paused and laid another stick on the foundation she was building. “I remember. We heard something outside the tent in the bushes and were scared. It was one of the last nights at camp. One of us must have been brave enough to grab onto the other. I remember feeling lightheaded with the pleasure of holding her. She was so warm, so soft. She wore her hair long and it smelled of campfire. I remember thinking something like, ‘If I were a man I’d probably marry Karen.’ What a dummy.”
“You’re probably lucky.”
“Why?”
“That you couldn’t marry her. I’m not so sure it’s worth getting involved.”
“Because of what happened with Vicky this morning?”
“Partly. And because I ‘m not sure I ‘m cut out for it.” Annie stopped breaking sticks and sat on a log with her head down. “What’s the sense if we can’t get along already?”
Peg shook her head wearily and thought for a moment. “Remember I told you I started going to a consciousness raising group?” she asked.
“Yeah, why? You’re not getting me to one of those,” Annie looked up defiantly.
“I’m not trying to. I just want to tell you something somebody said. We were talking about friendship and making the relationships in the CR group meaningful over a long period of time and an older woman said, ‘That’ll take a lot of hard work.’ I asked how you work hard at friendship. We argued back and forth for awhile, me saying friendships should come naturally and if you had to work at them maybe they weren’t real and her saying, no, no, no you’ve got to work for any good things you get and that women especially had to work real hard at relationships because we’re trained to romanticize things. Like we’re brought up to think that our prince will come and we’ll fall in love and everything will be hunky-dory after that. We’re brought up to think that if we’re physically alluring and socially graceful enough we’re going to love and be loved and never even have to try to make our relationships work. We’re brought up to think that women are catty and bitchy and unreliable and not worth much so if a friendship gets rocky we should just dump it because it’s not worth working on. We don’t have to work hard at anything except maybe keeping the house or cooking well.
“She blew my mind, Heaphy. Look what so many lesbians do. We start a love affair and as soon as a difference comes up or a problem gets out of hand we want to run, or we ‘fall out of love,’ or we develop a passionate attraction for someone else and are sure it’d be much better if we were with her. Well, we don’t have to. We can stand firm and face it, deal with it, resolve it. We’re worth the effort and our relationships are worth the effort. My next relationship I’m going to be willing to lay my life down for. Only after I fight practically to the death to make it work will I let myself consider whether it’s worth it. I feel like I’ve got to do that to make sure I don’t throw away something very valuable out of habit. Or culture. And I’ll bet just the process of working hard together to build or keep a relationship makes it even firmer and more valuable to the women in it.” She smiled and walked over to Annie. “Listen, Heaphy, I feel so strongly about what I’m saying that I feel it not just for you and Vicky, but for me and Vicky. That’s why I didn’t leave with Turkey when things got rough back at the restaurant. I want you two to make it and because I’m your friend I feel committed enough to my relationship with Vicky that I want to work it out between her and me, too.”
Annie looked up at Peg sullenly. “Maybe
you were right. Maybe that libber was wrong. Just because she said it in a ‘consciousness raising group,’” Annie sneered, “that makes it right?”
“No, Heaphy. I wasn’t sure it was right. And I fought just as hard as you’re fighting. But it kept coming back to my mind and ever since this morning, with Vicky, it’s all fallen into place. And I feel like I have to tell you because I care about you and Vicky.”
Annie stood and walked jerkily around the campfire circle. She yanked her cap off and slammed her fist into it. “Goddammit, Peg, it’s not worth it. It’s even got you and me fighting.” She wheeled to face Peg, her face pleading. “We never fought before.”
“I don’t mind fighting if it accomplishes something.”
“Well, I do,” Annie said as she stalked away. She walked down the driveway and around the first curve before she sat down. Calmer, she tried to think through the mess things had become since that morning. What were they all fighting about? She could hardly remember, but certainly it wasn’t worth all this aggravation. Obviously she would have to give Victoria up. She’d shot too high. Victoria was out of her league. Too smart, too educated, too upper class, money or not. Why did she ever think she could handle her? Annie’s father was a truck driver. Her parents were comfortable, but they owned nothing beyond their four year old car. They couldn’t even pay for Annie to go to a local school. She had to get a scholarship and a loan. They went away for a week every year to a cottage in Plymouth which they rented with an aunt and uncle. Their culture was TV and the movies. That was Annie, for all her high-minded reading. Victoria travelled and went to operas and plays and knew how to dress and went to Yale and was brilliant. Annie laughed at herself for thinking that they could ever spend their lives together without conflict. Peg was one of her own. And Turkey. She wasn’t losing them for any woman. After you’re through with a woman, you got to have good friends to turn to, she thought. Now she just had to decide whether to tell Victoria it was over today or be kind and wait until they got back. She would wake her from her nap and ask her to go for a walk. Maybe she would tell her right away, kind or not. She would see how it went.
She felt afraid and wondered if she was running away. No, damn it, she thought. I’m not running away from anything. I’m going to face her and explain why it can’t work. What a shame I love her so much, she thought sadly and felt tears coming. No romantic bullshit, she admonished herself, thinking that Peg had been right to put that down. But not about the other things. How were you supposed to keep a relationship going by fighting about it? Some things you can’t change. Or could you? Annie felt confused and didn’t like it. She pushed Peg’s words away as she resolutely went toward the cabin for her walk with Victoria. She’d trust to her feelings and do what was right. Still, she thought, considering how beautiful and tender Victoria was, if there was a way, maybe it would be worth a try.
“What have you been doing with yourself, duckling?” Victoria asked as they started into the woods.
“Wait,” Annie said abruptly, running back to the car and pulling a blanket out of the trunk. “Just in case,” she said forgetting for a moment the bad tidings she carried, deciding they needed the blanket because they had to sit when they talked. As she stood before Victoria, out of breath, she relished the woman’s wild-looking hair, her brown eyes darkened with intensity and pleasure and the feathers which still clung to her jeans. She plucked one off. “Have a good rest?”
“Yes,” Victoria said. “And I love featherbeds. Didn’t you just sleep like a child last night?”
“Ummm,” Annie replied. “But I didn’t think it was feathers that made me sleep good. I thought it had more to do with driving five hours, staying up late and making love pretty energetically.”
Victoria laughed. “I know, we never did make it back to the fireplace, did we?”
“I was warm enough. How about you?”
“You know I was.” Victoria turned back toward the cabin and, seeing that they were out of its sight, turned to embrace Annie. Hesitating, Annie allowed herself to be held, rationalizing that it was one of the last times. But Victoria had felt her pull herself away. “What’s wrong?” she asked.
“Nothing,” Annie tried to say smoothly. “Why?”
“You felt—different.”
“I don’t think so,” Annie lied, wishing she could tell her right then.
They walked on for awhile, quieter. Nothing could dampen their happiness with each other. Victoria kept spotting different types of wildflowers, picking them and running to give them to Annie. Annie took them indulgently, unused to receiving bouquets. “You know you’re messing with my image, girl,” she told Victoria.
“How?” Victoria asked innocently.
Annie laughed and stopped in the path. “You look like such a little girl! Your hair’s a mess, you’re all smudged and stained from digging up flowers, your glasses are halfway down your nose—it’s great! As for my image, the hell with it. So dykey women aren’t supposed to walk around with their arms filled with flowers. You gave them to me and that’s all that counts.” A look of pain passed over her face.
“There is something wrong,” Victoria accused. “Please tell me what it is. Was it because I got upset this morning? I’m sorry. I was suspicious when there was nothing to be suspicious about. I’m just so unused to having friends I don’t always know how. Please believe me, Anne. I was afraid you were liking me for being someone I’m not, looking to get out of me what I don’t have. I’m not used to being liked for being me. I haven’t learned to trust yet. Please give me time.”
Annie reached for her hand and they walked again. “You don’t know how I wish there were no differences between us and we could just be happy together all the time,” she told Victoria, then fell silent. They walked hand in hand awhile longer, soon dropping their confusions again and playing. Victoria picked more flowers and Annie laid hers down to weave a dandelion chain for Victoria’s hair. “Wish we had some wine,” she said at one point.
“Let’s find a stream instead,” Victoria suggested. Then their walk became punctuated with brief, quiet stops where they both listened intently for the sound of water. Once they thought they heard it and cut a path of their own through the trees, only to find that they were above the highway. The sound they had heard was traffic, faint and far below.
“Look,” Victoria said, pointing up. “A beautiful meadow. Let’s go up there!”
“How?” Annie asked, looking around for a path to climb.
“Let’s just do it. We’ll find a way. I have to feel what it’s like to lie on the grass.”
Annie smiled indulgently. “Okay, lady.” She promised in a low voice, “If that’s what you want, we’ll do it. Ain’t nothing can stop us.”
“And when we get there,” Victoria suggested, “we’ll talk about what’s bothering you.” She watched Annie frown. “Because we have to, Anne.”
Annie nodded a resigned yes, thinking that she would have to tell Victoria today if she was really going to break up with her. She was not sure that she could, but she still felt that she had to. She watched Victoria thread her way through trees and brambles before her, holding branches back so they would not scratch Annie, crawling on her knees through the more tangled places, and making sure Annie found the same firm footholds she found for herself. Annie hurt at the thought of giving up someone who not only wanted to dance and make love and have a good time, but who wanted to take care of her. Annie did not remember ever loving a woman who expressed her love like this. How could she let her go? But it would be better to do it now, before she got used to it, because she would never find another Victoria among her crowd. It just wasn’t part of their lifestyle, to take care of each other. Annie saw herself in ten years driving a red convertible with a long-haired blonde in the passenger seat. Walking together into a bar in another city somewhere, sharing a fashionable apartment and having a demanding, important job. Good-looking and smooth and respected: that’s how she saw herself, how she had alw
ays seen her future self since she came out. She did not want to be a bar dyke forever, or one of Natalie’s crowd who could pass for straight. What she wanted was to be somewhere in between, with enough sophistication to impress and room for the things she loved, like walking in the woods and making love in the sun.
Victoria, meanwhile, sensed the conflict in Annie and, for the moment, put her own aside. She knew that she had something special in Annie and that it was not just that she was a woman. Yes, she thought, I’ll have to deal with being a lesbian, but I think now I can handle that. Annie had a spirit in her that Victoria wanted to learn and she felt herself become like a mother animal, fierce and possessive of this new thing that had attached itself to her body and soul. Nothing would take her Anne away from her. No preying birds, no hungry animals, and no wandering spirit in Anne herself. Somehow she would make Anne understand that she wanted her above all else and would change in any way that she could to keep her. Was changing already. Annie had said that she looked like a little girl! Just the opposite of how she had wanted to look and feel. So here she was, like a little girl reckless of all risks, tearing through brambles, leaping across gullies, filthy and determined and feeling very good.
“Wait!” Annie called out behind her. “Do you hear it?”
Victoria stopped to listen. Cupping her ears she realized she had been stepping onto softer and softer ground and had led Annie to an overgrown path which opened to a small, clear mountain stream. They smiled broadly at each other, successful explorers, and fell to their knees to scoop handfuls of water to their dry mouths. Annie sat watching Victoria drink. Her hair dragged into the water as she leaned forward and she tossed it back each time she came up before letting the icy cold mountain water run into her throat. The sight of Victoria’s throat and chin against the blue sky caught Annie’s chest in a vise. She swallowed air as Victoria was swallowing water and found herself gasping.