Toothpick House

by Lee Lynch

  Claudia helped Rosemary with the last of the braid. She smiled winningly at Turkey. “What are your plans?”

  Turkey flushed. “Well, when I figure which end is up,” and she laughed loudly, “not that that’s not obvious to anyone but me, I guess I’ll do some kind of social work.”

  “But what’s your dream?” Claudia persisted.

  “If I have one,” Turkey said, licking her lips and drawing an index finger through a puddle of moisture on the table, “I guess it’d be teaching people that it’s okay to be different. Showing them how society is made up of all of us, not just one privileged group who gets to shit on everyone else.”

  “What a great thing to teach,” Peg said, shaking her head in admiration. “I never knew you wanted to do something like that.”

  “I never really said it out loud till now. In so many words. When Claudia asked, it just popped into my head, so I guess it’s been there for awhile.”

  “Nothing can survive for long in your head, Turk,” Annie teased as she set down a pitcher.

  “Speak for yourself, Heaphy,” Turkey said, grabbing the pitcher and pouring a glass for herself. “Anyone want what this chick is offering?” There was silence. “Whoops,” Turkey corrected herself. “What this here woman is offering?”

  Rosemary held out her empty glass. “One of the hardest words there is to say,” she commented, spilling part of what Turkey poured. “Used to be ashamed of it myself. Woman isn’t a title to be proud of in this world.”

  “Or lesbian, either,” Victoria added. “Remember how I just couldn’t say that at first, Anne?” She reached for Annie’s hand and smiled at her.

  “Yes. You had a rough time. I practically had to give you lessons.” Annie set her cap on Victoria’s head. They gazed at each other, their smiles getting broader.

  “Why don’t you ever do things like that to me, Claudie?” Rosemary asked, laying her head on Claudia’s shoulder.

  “You don’t like it, Rose. Especially not in public.”

  “Well, I like it now,” Rosemary said, pulling Claudia’s arm around her shoulders. “A little romance won’t compromise feminism.”

  Turkey groaned in memory of first meeting Rosemary in New York and met Annie’s eyes. “You sure have changed since we first met you, Rosemary.”

  “Have I?” asked Rosemary, taking her head from Claudia’s shoulder and sitting up. “Ohhh,” she moaned. “Moved too fast. Guess this is called being drunk. Call me Rosie, Turkey. Claudia, I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Come on, Rosie, then,” Turkey soothed, pulling Rosemary out of the booth. “I’ve done this enough times.” She and Claudia got Rosemary between them and walked to the door through the crowd of lesbians and gay men. Victoria and Annie and Peg laughed when the door shut behind them.

  “Poor Rosemary. She’ll never be the same,” Victoria said, and laughed harder. “I love it. That stiff, sour woman is turning into a dyke.”

  Annie took her hat back from Victoria. “Boy, is she going to be sick in the morning.”

  “And embarrassed.”

  “But maybe she’ll stay changed. She won’t have to get drunk next time to relax.”

  “Or else she’ll get drunk every time.”

  “Oh, Anne, you’re such a pessimist.”

  “Yeah, Heaphy. Let’s have high hopes. I still have hopes of finding a woman to love.”

  “You blew your best chance,” accused a glazed-eyed Eleanor who slumped into the booth next to Peg. “Just like my Annie. ‘Scuse me, lady. Your Annie,” she said, looking at Victoria.

  “Elly,” Annie warned.

  “Oh, so I can’t sit at your booth and talk to your lady?”

  Annie looked to Peg for help, her blue eyes hurt.

  “Elly,” Victoria asked, “were you and Annie lovers before I came along?”

  The boothful of women went still.

  Elly looked like a child who had been reprimanded. “Not hardly to speak of, I guess,” she answered, her head hanging.

  “We spent one night together awhile back,” Annie explained, looking directly into Victoria’s eyes with concern. “Before you,” she added gently.

  “I don’t care, Anne. I just want to stop Elly from feeling so bad and left out.”

  “Annie, I hope I didn’t screw things up for you,” Eleanor cried in alarm, her hand over her mouth. “I just couldn’t live with myself.”

  “El, nobody’s going to mess up this relationship,” Annie said, still looking into Victoria’s eyes.

  “I really do wish you well. It’s just that I’m going to miss you.”

  “We miss you too, Elly,” Peg chided her. “Ever since you met Dusty you have no time for us.”

  “But at least I’m not running around with a whole new crowd. That’s different! Besides, I can’t help it if you all don’t like my Dusty.”

  “Well, damn it, we’ve never been able to spend enough time with her to find out. Why don’t you tell her to come sit with us?”

  “She has a mind of her own. Doesn’t like libbers. I tried to tell her you all aren’t really libbers. That you were gay first. But she don’t believe me.”

  “Maybe we can all do something sometime. Spend time together. You think she’d like that?” Peg asked. “Maybe if you ask her.”

  “I will,” Peg promised.

  “Can’t you get her over here?”

  “Into the enemy camp? What if you don’t like her? Or she don’t like you?” Eleanor asked, suddenly losing her drunken aspect.

  Annie shrugged. “We’ll never know till we try.” As Eleanor waved Dusty to the booth Annie measured the woman apprehensively. She was big and butch and, from what Elly said, not very educated, a perfect stereotype of a bulldyke right down to the pointy black boots. Would Dusty’s rough ways scare Vicky off? She was watching Dusty approach too, and Annie thought she saw fear widen Vicky’s eyes. But then Victoria rose.

  “Hi, Dusty. I’m glad to meet you. Elly’s been raving about you every chance she gets.”

  Annie was proud of the way her lover’s few words and welcoming manner put Dusty at her ease. Vicky might have learned this social ease in the sophisticated world Annie despised, but it looked like it might come in handy right here in the bar, with these very different people. Perhaps she should stop protecting Vicky from the gay world and let her find her own place in it. Dusty was shifting shyly from one foot to the other, obviously pleased to hear of Eleanor’s pride in her. “I don’t know what she finds to say about me.”

  Peg smiled warmly. “Sit down and let us find out if it’s all true!”

  A silence fell. Shyness seemed to take hold of the group. Again Victoria came to the rescue. “We came down here to talk to that gay poet who just left. I didn’t hear her, but from what everybody says, she writes about people like us, about real people.”

  “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Eleanor said. Peg took the book she’d bought from the seat next to her. “How’s that for a title,” she said, displaying Edward the Dyke.

  Dusty said, “I never could understand all that fancy stuff they made us memorize in school. This looks like a different matter.”

  “We probably wouldn’t have to memorize these,” Victoria offered. “We’ll want to know them.”

  “What kind of things does she say?” Dusty asked curiously.

  As the conversation went on Annie smiled to see a bunch of dykes sitting in a bar talking about poetry. Dusty seemed to warm to the group perhaps because they were all so different: Victoria the Yalie, Turkey the first in her family to go to college, Peg the professional, Eleanor the Southern waitress, Dusty the Northern factory worker, herself most like Turkey, but a dropout. She felt a warmth for this crazy mixed-up group of women that felt like hope. Hope that they’d all stay together somehow and make each others’ lives a little easier. And maybe leave something of themselves behind for other kids like them.

  “I guess it’s time to clear out of the enemy camp,” Eleanor said after awh
ile. “Goodnight everybody. I hope I’m forgiven for getting mad before.”

  “Of course you are,” Peg called after her. She shook her head when they were gone. “So she was really just worried that Dusty wouldn’t like us. It wasn’t our fault at all. How do you like that?”

  “Maybe there is hope that things will work out,” Annie agreed.

  “Well, I’m too tired to work on it any more tonight,” Peg said, standing.

  “Want a ride?” Annie joked.

  “I think I can make it across the street. Unless Vicky here wants to help me.”

  “Now, no girl-stealing. I mean, woman-stealing.”

  “Nobody can steal me,” Victoria said, yawning.

  “You’re just too tired to fool around,” Annie teased as they got outside into the warm spring night. She looked up at the stars.

  “If I can’t steal a warm body, then I’ll have to find a big one,” said Peg as Turkey and Claudia came back towards the bar.

  “We put Rosemary in Jean and Faye’s car,” Claudia said. “You won’t have to drive us home.

  “I wouldn’t have anyway. I thought it would do her good to walk,” Annie teased. “How is she?”

  Turkey sighed. “Sick as a dog. I think she threw up everything she ever had inside her.”

  “Then maybe her metamorphosis will be easier,” Victoria suggested. When Claudia looked puzzled she went to her side and took her arm. “We were talking about the changes in Rosemary before,” she explained.

  “I know,” Claudia said, turning and putting her arms around Victoria. “I don’t know if I can handle it. I feel as though I’m learning to love a new woman. Or reinvent one.”

  “Is that bad?” asked Victoria, holding Claudia.

  “I don’t know yet,” Claudia said. “That’s what’s so frightening. What if I can’t keep loving her? After all, I’ve been encouraging the changes.”

  “Somehow,” Victoria said, running her hand up and down Claudia’s back, “I think you’ll come out okay. I really do.” She hugged Claudia tightly, then pushed her toward Jean and Faye’s car. “You’d better get ‘Rosie’ home before she completely metamorphoses—into a pumpkin!” she laughed.

  Chapter Nine

  Annie Heaphy felt an unfamiliar anxiety as the train entered New York City. She wasn’t going to a gay bar for an evening. She was visiting her own New York City lover. Victoria had preceded her to talk to her parents. She would definitely tell them she would not be living the life they had planned for her. She might tell them she was a lesbian. Annie half hoped she would not get that far as it would make meeting the Lockes that much harder on her. Poor Vicky, she thought. If I’m scared, imagine what she’s feeling.

  The buildings grew taller as she penetrated deeper into the city. And her fear grew too. What if they had changed Victoria’s mind? What if all the years of training had proven too strong for Victoria to overthrow? Annie could be left waiting for her at the station. Victoria might meet her only to say that it had all been a mistake—that her parents were right. She drew her jean jacket closer around herself.

  The man next to her snored once loudly and woke up. “Hundred twenty-fifth Street,” he muttered as they slowed for the station. Annie felt frightened of him, vulnerable. He blocked her way to the aisle. She would have felt better if she had brought her car, but Victoria was right, the parking would be too difficult. The strange man reminded Annie of the old woman Victoria had met on the train who foretold Victoria’s future. When the man shifted again she rose, climbing over him to pull her knapsack down from the luggage rack. She was too excited to sit anymore and her fears diminished when the train went underground, into the romance of the dark tunnel to New York City and Victoria.

  Annie was the first off the train. She started to run up the platform, but calmed herself and slowed to a long, rapid stride. At an arched opening to the huge hall of Grand Central Station she paused to seek Victoria in the crowd, her anxiety high again. Victoria came to her side and was touching her before Annie saw her. Smiling widely, they drew each other out of the crowd of people coming from Annie’s train and hugged. “How are you?” Annie asked.

  “It’s been hellish,” Victoria blurted. She stood straight but willowy, ready to bend back to Annie’s arms. “I told them everything, Anne. I decided I didn’t want the fear of their finding out looming over me all my life. How are you?”

  “My house was so empty. And I was so scared. And you’re so brave.”

  “Scared of what?”

  “That they’d take you away from me,” Annie said chokingly, tears of relief escaping with her tensions.

  “How in the world could they do that? I’ve been waiting all my life for you to help me get away from them, silly duckling.”

  Annie pressed her head to Victoria’s shoulder. “Let’s leave,” Victoria said. “There’s so much I want to do with you before we have to go meet them.”

  “Okay, okay,” Annie said, wiping her eyes with her hat. “I just needed to break down a little, I guess.”

  “Why didn’t you go stay with Peg and Turkey? They would have comforted you.”

  “I don’t want to lose my ability to be alone, to take care of myself. I would have been okay if I hadn’t known how difficult this was going to be for you. It was being without you and worrying that did me in.”

  They were moving across the shining floors toward another dark arch. “I’m stronger now, Annie, much stronger after just a few months of being with you, learning that it’s possible to be me and having you appreciate me for who I am, not for a role you want me to play.”

  “Were they awful?”

  “Yes. Very formal and stiff and cold. They kept coming to me with propositions. For example, they would send me to Oxford if I would give up my ‘bohemian attitudes.’” Laughing, Victoria leaned into the dark wood and glass door out of the station. “As if there was not really a me talking to them, but an entity which could still be molded to their use.” She pushed the door open forcefully.

  “You’re angry at them.”

  “You’re damn straight, as Turkey would say.”

  Annie laughed. “It’s funny to hear you say that.” She stood and looked at Victoria in wonder. At her jeans, at her loose, heavy hair, at her round glasses glinting in the city’s afternoon sunlight, at the white tennis sweater over a yellow shirt. “You look like a million dollars. Sorry, I forgot about the money phobia. You look like a beautiful dyke. Where are we?”

  “First of all, I’m not sure I want to look like a dyke, beautiful or not. But to answer your question, this is Forty-second Street. You haven’t been in New York much have you?”

  “Not in the daytime,” Annie admitted, drawing a deep breath and looking up at the towering buildings. “Sure is bigger than Boston.”

  “Sure is,” Victoria agreed, taking Annie’s hand and leading her toward Fifth Avenue.

  “Where are we going?”

  “I haven’t planned it. I just want to be with you, to see you in New York. Like I want to see you against a background of Paris and London and everywhere else in the world I’ve been without you. You’d fill them with color and life, I just know it. My whole past seems so drab and spiritless since I’ve loved you, Anne. Loving you is like carrying a candle which sheds light on everything I see and warmth over everything I feel. Oh, Anne, I could embrace the Empire State Building I’m so excited!” They grinned at each other and Annie hopped into the air in happiness.

  Holding hands, they crossed Fifth Avenue. Victoria led Annie to the front of the 42nd Street Library. It was the end of lunch hour and people were leaving the spaces in the sun where they had eaten. Annie jumped onto a newly vacated lion and rode it, horse-style, hitting its flank with her cap. They ran hand in hand up the rest of the steps and into the lobby. Annie wanted to see the library, but didn’t want to have her knapsack inspected, so they left and followed the stairs around into Bryant Park. Between lunch hours it was empty of all but stragglers: a couple of gay men,
a wino, a man selling joints, two women who talked intently and kept glancing at their watches and at the strange men. Annie and Victoria looked at each other, then smiled and shrugged away the bad vibrations of the park. The city was theirs today and they would allow no one to interfere. They walked slowly to a bench and sat admiring the old building.

  “If I’d grown up in New York would I have met you at this library and come out with you?” Annie asked.

  “Only if our story can have a different ending.”

  “I wonder how she wants it to end?” Annie questioned a nearby statue.

  A cloud moved and the sun beat down on them. Victoria squinted from its brightness. “I don’t want the story to end at all, Anne.”

  “I know. Listen, why don’t you get a pair of sunglasses made? You’d look great in them.” She held her hand over Victoria’s eyes to shade them.

  “I can’t stand them.”

  “That’s too bad. I remember when sunglasses were so cool. All the dykes in Boston wore them. The coolest ones wore them at night, too, in the bars.”

  “Did they wear the reflective type?”

  “You had to be a tough butch to get away with those.”

  “And were you tough enough?” Victoria asked, hugging Annie’s arm to herself.

  Annie shook her head regretfully. “That took a lot more arrogance than I had. Besides, I didn’t spend much time in the bars. Natalie didn’t like them. She didn’t want me to look like a bar-dyke because she wasn’t one. She didn’t like me acting dykey. She said bar-dykes were too obvious and we’d be left alone more if their kind would drop their affectations and act like women. As a matter of fact, that’s what our first fight was about. Acting like a woman. I said she was talking about acting like women who want men to like them and asked why we shouldn’t act differently. She thought the older women with real short hair slicked back who wore men’s pants were repulsive. I couldn’t fall in love with someone like Eleanor’s Dusty, but there was something about them I liked. Their style. They looked like they wouldn’t take anybody’s shit. And those were the women who wore sunglasses. No, I wasn’t tough enough.”