Toothpick House

by Lee Lynch

“What is it?” Victoria asked in alarm, letting a handful of water fall to the swift, shining stream.

  “Nothing,” Annie answered, shaking her blonde head, her cap already fallen beside the stream. “Nothing is wrong, Vicky. I want to talk. I want to get all this worked out.” She was silent a moment, still staring at the wonder that Victoria was to her. “My queen,” she said slowly, “you are just too wonderful to lose.” Victoria looked solemnly at Annie, feeling that something momentous had just passed. She felt its power beyond her reach, as moved by its strength as Annie seemed immobilized by it. “You are my queen, you know,” Annie declared, looking at Victoria.

  Victoria felt uncomfortable at being given so much power and sought to equalize it. “How can I be your queen,” she asked, “when you’re a queen to me?”

  “I thought I was your duckling,” Annie smiled as they moved toward each other.

  “Umm,” Victoria nuzzled Annie’s hair, now warm from the sun, “Queen Anne you are, and I shall be your loyal vassal as long as you require it of me.”

  “Uh-uh,” Annie said, shaking her head. “I’m never going to command nothing from you, my lady. Except love and companionship.”

  “Then let’s pledge,” Victoria said ceremoniously, “to command from each other what we need and what we can give or learn to give, Anne.”

  “Sounds fair,” Annie answered. “I command that we get to your meadow and take off all our clothes and roll around on the grass.”

  “Your command is my wish,” Victoria laughed, jumping up, her jeans damp with dark mud. “I’m a mess.”

  “You’re beautiful,” Annie called as she ran ahead of Victoria, forgetting the blanket, through the last several yards of clearing woods and onto the field. They met in the middle of the wide, sloping grass and did their dance of joy, their whirling, hand-holding swing, at the apex of the meadow. Dizzy, they fell to the grass and Victoria began to unbutton her flannel shirt. “Not yet,” Annie stopped her. “I have to say what’s bothering me.”

  Victoria sat up and pulled her tangled hair back, a serious expression replacing the sensuality of her face. “Vicky,” Annie started, “I was feeling like we couldn’t be together any more. Like you’re too, you know, classy for me. Like I’m just a dumb gutter-dyke and you’re this beautiful, gracious woman I can’t measure up to. You know?”

  “Anne,” Victoria answered, shaking her head now. “You are beautiful to me. And gracious in a way I’m afraid I’ll never master. Gracious and intelligent in ways of life that have eluded me all these years. You give me your spirit and I can—oh, I don’t know how to say it to you—I can drink deeply of the stream. You don’t know how much that stream meant to me. It was a symbol of all you are to me and all I’m learning with you. Just to dip myself in and drink, drink, drink. Oh,” she said, covering her mouth in fear, “to think you were going to stop it, thought you had!”

  “Vicky, Vicky, you’ve got to listen to me. You don’t understand. I’m not going away. I was afraid. I’m still afraid.” Annie put her arms around Victoria. “Vicky, I didn’t think I could handle you. You’re so different from me. You were brought up different and I don’t know your ways just like you don’t know mine. And I was thinking that we’re really tying ourselves up in knots together trying to learn not just to love each other, but whole new ways of talking and acting that neither of us have acted like before. It just seemed too hard. Too much to ask of you and beyond me altogether. But I’d rather try. I don’t know how to even start, but I can’t give you up. You’re too special, too much what I want. And I want to learn the new ways, I think. I want us both to learn new ways we can be together. Do you understand?”

  Victoria was wiping her tears. “Of course I understand. It’s what I’ve been fighting all my life—the way I am, the way I was brought up. I don’t like it, I want to get rid of it. That’s something I’m counting on you to help me with.”

  “But I love you the way you are, Vicky. I don’t want you to change.”

  “I think there are some ways you and I are going to have to change, Anne. In order to be together. And as long as we don’t change our—” she groped for words, “our essences, there’s no reason that we will change beyond each other’s reach.”

  “Do you really think we can do it?” Annie asked.

  “We have to do it, Anne. I’m not rich and there’s no reason for me to go on acting like I’m in the upper class. I hate it and it keeps me from being real.”

  “And I’m not a real bar dyke, I know it. I want too much more out of life.”

  “So let’s learn who we are together. Maybe it’ll have something to do with feminism. Maybe I’ll never quite get over being a snob and you’ll never take off your hat. And maybe we’ll step on each other’s toes a lot and it’ll hurt.” She lay three clovers across Annie’s hair. “I crown you Queen Duckling,” Victoria said smiling tenderly, a deeply solemn look settling in her eyes. “And I pledge myself to you, our life together and our work, whatever it may become.”

  Annie returned her solemnity, shyly. “Here under the sky, where everything that matters is my witness,” she said, pulling Victoria up as she stood, “I also pledge myself to you, in our life and our work.” She felt her breath grow shorter with the fear of what she was saying, knowing she would not retract this promise, afraid she was wrong to make it, but unable to stop it, it came from so deep inside herself, back where she couldn’t interfere with it. “If I could pull my heart from my body and hand it to you, Vicky,” she said half-whispering, “I would do that right now.”

  They moved along the mountainside feeling the strong tie of their freshly spoken bond and the sensuality it inspired. First they took their shoes off and walked on the spongy grasses. Then they removed their jackets and shirts and left them lying behind with their shoes as they moved together, marvelling at each other’s breasts and shoulders in the sunlight. They stopped, touched breasts, looked into one another’s eyes, then reached as one for each other’s belts and soon were naked, utterly naked in the mountain air.

  Annie swallowed hard to see Victoria’s beauty so plainly. She moved them to the ground softly.

  “It’s almost too much,” Victoria said. “I’m not sure I can make love.” She felt blinded by Annie’s brightness, the desire knocked out of her by the enormity of her emotion. So they just touched, ran their hands along the smoothness of each other’s bodies for awhile.

  Victoria took her glasses off and laid them down. Then they turned away from one another’s faces and, laying mouth to vulva, spent another very, very long time lying under the sun touching each other alternately with their mouths and with the sun and air until quietly they came, Victoria starting with a groan and Annie allowing herself to follow so that some of the time they felt what they felt together. They lay still afterward, just like that, breathing each other.

  When they were ready, Victoria moved with a long sigh upright alongside Annie. They talked, lips touching, into one another’s mouths. “Did you hear the band?” Annie asked.

  “You heard it too?” Victoria asked, incredulous.

  “Yes,” Annie answered, gently surprised, still glowing. “The sound drifted up the mountainside. We must be above a playing field of some sort.”

  “I thought it was inside my head,” Victoria laughed softly.

  “You must have been really into making love.”

  “I was, my duckling.”

  “Well, you’re pretty good for a beginner,” Annie laughed.

  Victoria sat up and pushed playfully at Annie’s still-bare shoulder. “Huh,” she said indignantly. “I have a lot of imagination to make up for my inexperience.”

  “I noticed.” They hugged and felt a tension in each other’s bodies. “We’d better not,” Annie said. “I’m getting nervous about pressing our luck out in the open like this.”

  “I agree,” Victoria answered, bending to kiss Annie’s breast as they struggled into their jeans. “Do you remember the way back?”

&n
bsp; “No, do you?”

  “I scattered bread crumbs,” Victoria laughed.

  “We’re not that far from the stream. Once we find our shirts, my cap and the blanket we just have to guess which way to walk.”

  “My guess is we should head down,” Victoria teased as Annie pulled her up. They kissed again, hungrily, for a long time, pulling back and looking at one another as if to memorize the meaning of their day before turning away from the sun to walk back into the woods.

  Chapter Eight

  Annie Heaphy laughed at herself. She was walking down the steps of the Women’s Center as if she were entering prison to serve a life sentence. Pulled and prodded there by Peg, she was sulky and hostile. And she was damned if she was going to make it easy for them to convert her. She was as much of a feminist as she wanted to be and probably more of one than they were. You had to be pretty liberated to be queer. She had been thinking more about herself politically, especially in talks with Victoria. Entering the lion’s den unnerved her. She followed Peg closely and stood behind her at the door fingering the brim of her cap, peering into the large room from behind her hand. There were a lot of women in the room; they milled about, waiting to hear the poet who would be reading that night.

  “What’s happening to me,” Annie asked herself, “coming to a faggy poetry reading?” Peg had insisted this would not be a “faggy” reading at all. The poet was “a real dyke from California.” Annie was still suspicious, but in the face of Peg’s determination to save her, Turkey and Eleanor from their apolitical lives, she gave in. Besides, she had found Victoria and now she wanted to be worthy of her. To do that she knew she must break out of or at least widen the circles of her life. She had tried to persuade Victoria to come to the reading too, but Victoria had been adamant about studying that night. She wanted to keep her grades high. Annie realized Victoria had a need for the credentials that came with high grades in order to feel worthwhile.

  Rosemary and Claudia were not as concerned about their grades. Annie spotted them through her fingers as she adjusted her cap. Peg paid her own and Annie’s way into the Center as Annie tried to hide behind her taller back. When Peg stopped to talk with someone she knew, Annie tried pulling her cap down to her nose and getting further behind Peg, but Rosemary was bearing down on her.

  “What a gratifying surprise!” Rosemary called, still halfway across the room. Annie smiled awkwardly and glanced around to see if anyone had noticed. Victoria said Rosemary had some redeeming qualities, but Annie had avoided spending any time with her thus far. Rosemary hugged her and Annie squirmed uncomfortably, making a face at Peg who turned to watch with an amused expression. “I’ve heard so much about you,” Rosemary said, still holding Annie by the shoulders. Annie looked at the sari Rosemary affected and the dull hair coiled tightly in back of her head and wondered what made this woman tick. As Claudia joined them, Annie tried to imagine what the plump-cheeked, cheerful Claudia found physically attractive about this ornery feminist.

  “Hiya, Claudia,” Annie said, attempting to join in the social graces. She stuck out a hand and shook both of theirs. That’s how a dyke says hello, she thought to herself. They ought to learn. “This is my friend Peg.”

  “The teacher Victoria went to Vermont with?” Claudia asked.

  “The same,” Peg laughed. “Though I wouldn’t think that’s how she thinks of me. I have enough problems remembering that’s what I am.”

  “She’s told us quite a bit about you, too, Peg,” Rosemary added.

  Peg answered, “And Vicky has mentioned both of you often.”

  Rosemary seemed to want to keep the conversation going. “Have you ever heard Judy Grahn before?”

  “Never even heard of her till Peg button-holed me into coming tonight,” Annie answered.

  “You’ll like her,” Claudia assured her. “She’s very real. Not at all intellectual.”

  Annie wondered how Victoria had described her to her friends. “I don’t mind intellectuals,” she answered defensively. “I mean, I read poetry and all that.”

  Claudia still smiled. “I do too, sometimes, though I’m a psych major. But I can’t stand these fuddy-duddies who think poetry is pretty words. I like it to mean and from what I’ve read, Judy Grahn means a lot.”

  Comfortable listening to Claudia, Annie almost relaxed. “I think all poets try to mean, but some of them just don’t know how to do it, you know? Like they’re afraid to get any emotion in there. I’m still not sure that someone like Shelley, even though he’s a romantic, really ever feels anything but lightheaded. Sometimes I wonder if men poets didn’t just hear about emotions from women and want to feel them so bad they spend all their time trying to describe them so they can learn how to have them. I mean, what about all of us back here on earth who’ve got to drive cabs and can’t go floating around mountain-tops?”

  “That’s just what I mean,” Claudia responded excitedly. “Rosemary’s never understood what I’m trying to say. Does that make sense to you?” She took Rosemary’s arm and pressed herself to her side, looking up at her questioningly.

  Rosemary squeezed Claudia’s arm back and answered, “I think so. You want the raw stuff of life, you two. You don’t want puns and philosophy.”

  “But don’t those have a place in poetry too?” Peg asked, joining the discussion.

  “Just what I was about to say,” Rosemary answered. “I think you need all of it to really speak poetically. Would Judy Grahn have found her poetic voice if she had not read other poets? Could she pack her poetry so full of meaning if she didn’t know how to use words every possible way? I can say I love you,” she said looking at Claudia, “and I can say I love you many different ways, but that doesn’t have the emotional impact of: ‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways . . . ,’’’ she quoted persuasively.

  “By a woman, of course,” Annie muttered almost inaudibly.

  “Well, anyway,” Claudia smiled, not hearing her, “however she does it, Judy Grahn is good.”

  “Thanks for the reassurance.” Annie took off her jacket. “Maybe I’ll stay awhile and try her out.” She winked at Peg.

  “You’d better,” Peg punched Annie playfully in the arm. “I didn’t fight to get you this far just to lose you. She’s afraid she’ll be converted,” she stage-whispered to Rosemary and Claudia.

  “I love it!” Rosemary laughed, a real, deep-throated laugh. “That’s just what these women’s center people are afraid you and Judy and Peg and now Claudia and I will do: convert them!”

  They all laughed together and Annie found herself wondering if Rosemary didn’t have some kind of stiff charm that might include a lot of posturing, but was really a desperate attempt to express herself. She must be as shy as I am, Annie thought, amazed, and wanted suddenly to assure her that she could relax with herself and Peg. She smiled up at her and got back a brief shadow of a grin.

  “Look!” Claudia whispered. “It’s her! I recognize her from her picture!” A thin dyke walked in the door. In her thirties, she looked scarred by time, her face near-exhausted with intensity. To Annie she looked just the way she pictured herself in ten years: marked by the difficulties of gay life.

  “She looks so much older than I imagined,” Rosemary commented in a shocked voice. The women who escorted her in hovered around her, setting up the room as the poet wanted it, offering her endless refreshments and comforts until Annie felt embarrassed for them and wanted to rescue the trapped poet from their fawning attentions.

  “But she’s beautiful,” Claudia said in an admiring whisper. “She looks like she’s felt everything.”

  “Makes me feel like a little kid,” Annie commented, no longer absorbed by her social relations with Victoria’s friends.

  “This calls for a beer. How about it Heaphy?”

  “They have beer, Peglet?” Annie’s face lit up.

  “Rosemary?”

  “I don’t drink,” Rosemary reminded them.

  “Oh, yeah,” Peg nodded. “Claud
ia?”

  “I’d love one. If it’s nice and cold. I can’t stand it when beer gets warm. Smells skunky.”

  “You’re right,” Annie agreed. “I wondered what it was I didn’t like. I’m always so glad to get it I never thought that much about it.”

  Rosemary took both their arms. “We ought to find seats,” she said, guiding them to a couch. “Before everybody else thinks of it.”

  Annie watched for Peg, afraid she would not find them, then realized she was really afraid of being left alone with these two harmless women. Vicky’s friends. She grinned.

  “What are you smiling at?” Claudia asked.

  “You’re Vicky’s friends,” Annie said, watching Claudia’s face grow puzzled. “And I like you.” Annie’s face reddened.

  “Here you go, ladies,” Peg said as she handed them beer and squeezed in between Annie and Claudia. “Just what I love to do on a spring night: go to a ballgame and pop open a beer.” She laughed. “Doesn’t this feel strange to you?” she asked Annie. “Drinking a can of beer at a poetry reading?”

  “Beer is a male custom—to go with sports. We’ll give it a new use,” Rosemary answered her, across Claudia. Her voice sounded angry. “They’ve had too many customs too long. I will join you.”

  “Liberate the beer!” Peg laughed, quickly bringing back another can and watching as Rosemary struggled with the pop top, then tasted the beer. They all laughed at the faces Rosemary made as she drank her first sips.

  Annie felt very satisfied with herself, sitting among feminists, ready to hear someone new say something new. She also felt comforted by the beer, a bit of security from her old world. As the poet directed all the lights to be turned off except the one next to her, Annie steadied herself against the fear the darkness brought on, the darkness and the unfamiliar women. Peg was beside her, her good friend Peg. Vicky was near and probably thinking of her. Turkey and Eleanor were at the bar and would be there when Annie arrived. Then the poet spoke into Annie’s complacency with raw and violent words about pain and the realities of different women. A lot of the pain was her own. She had never heard another woman speak of it, had never even thought of it in words, had just lived through it. She took her hat off because she was sweating. Someone pushed open the back door that led into an alleyway and she longed to go through it to stand under the lone streetlight she saw outside. She took off her jacket and glanced toward Peg who looked back through the dim light, solemn-faced and obviously as moved as Annie.