Toothpick House

by Lee Lynch

  They stopped in front of St. Patrick’s. “Look at that monstrosity,” Annie snarled. “So huge and ugly. And all built to honor their mythological father. Look at the money they poured into that building. All for the purpose of worship, damn it, Vicky. Wasting all that space to mutter meaningless words under their breath and expect life to get easier or better for them because they’re doing it.”

  At the top of the steps Annie hesitated. “I feel as though I’m stepping into their net going in here. I was brought up to believe this crap. I want to desecrate it. Look at the woman praying, Vicky. It makes me sick. They’re praying to the male master for their husbands to stop beating them or for better places to live when it’s the male landlords who are ripping them off, letting their homes rot rather than spare the money.”

  “Or praying that their sons survive the wars that men insist on waging,” Victoria whispered. “You’re right. It’s ludicrous. Just think of people praying to end a war when it’s the worship of that god that makes them feel righteous about killing. In his name. Remember the holy wars? Fighting over which way to worship their figurehead best?”

  Along the side of the church they paused by the candles. “It’s creepy in here, isn’t it?” Annie asked. “Want to light a candle?”

  “Yes. Let’s light a candle for the speedy overthrow of men by women,” Victoria giggled. “Wouldn’t Rosemary be proud of our conversation?”

  “And Peg,” Annie agreed. A woman who stood with them said, “Shh,” and moved on.

  “She doesn’t know any better, Anne,” Victoria observed to calm Annie’s anger.

  “You’re right. Come here.” Annie took Victoria’s arms roughly and kissed her hard. Victoria pushed her lips and hips back at Annie. They kissed with determination, not for the pleasure of it, but to make their point to themselves and the church. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  “Wait,” Victoria said as she pulled her tie out of her pocket. She put it around her neck and stood tying it in the chapel defiantly. “Now let’s leave.”

  They took a bus downtown and wandered, feeling depressed, but liberated, and somewhat among their own, on the Village streets. They decided to go to the bar where they had met, but found the bitter taste of the church’s incense was stronger in their mouths at the thought of paying cover to the men who owned it. They stood outside, holding hands, feeling let down after their earlier exhilaration. Women came and went into the bar while Annie and Victoria looked at the buildings or at each other, desultorily finding things to say to each other. They were about to leave when a particularly rowdy group emerged drunkenly from the bar and moved off in a body. “Let’s follow them,” Annie suggested.

  Victoria’s eyes lit up. “Sounds great. Where do you think they’re going?”

  “Somewhere to have fun. If it’s not private, we’ll just blend with them.” Conspiratorily, the two followed the crowd several blocks to the sound of music falling to the street from open windows. Figures lounged on the fire escape.

  “Don’t they look like dykes?” Annie asked, excited.

  The sign on the building read “Firehouse.” “I’ve heard of a firehouse,” Victoria said. “I think Rosemary may have been here. I don’t think it’s a bar. More like a women’s center.”

  “Sounds like a party to me,” Annie said before preceding Victoria through a knot of women at the top of the stairs. “Who does it go to?” she asked the woman taking the cover money.

  “Tonight’s a benefit for the women’s center,” she answered as Annie noted the difference between this slight, short-haired woman with a pleasant manner and the bouncer at the bar. Either she hadn’t been out long, Annie thought, or there’s a whole new breed of lesbian coming down the road.

  Inside, Annie and Victoria walked around a makeshift dance floor and through clusters of lesbians who were shouting and clapping and talking intently. One woman was painting the naked torso of another while several more waited their turns. Marijuana smoke drifted through the huge room. They could see the fire escape across the room where several women still lounged. Victoria spotted a counter where beer was being sold. “Are you sure you don’t want cider instead?” she yelled at Annie jokingly as they opened their cans and drifted again, looking for a space of their own.

  “What a great atmosphere,” Annie shouted, leaning against a pole to watch the dancers. “It’s like New Haven. Look at the group dancing.”

  “Yes, I don’t feel as though I’m in the big bad city at all. Or just a cab drive away from my parents.”

  “Look, there’s Faye and Jean from Yale!” Annie said. They saw Victoria and Annie at the same time and drew them into their group. Soon they found themselves whirling around the room in separate dances of liberation. Annie wondered if they would ever feel this high again and worried lest their relationship was starting out too intense to sustain normal life. She resolved to renew their discussion of goals on the train tomorrow no matter how tired they were from tonight. They would certainly need a commitment beyond themselves to survive. She imagined, as she spun around the room, running a printing press with Victoria or opening a women’s bar. She saw them playing together in a band, or giving lectures about lesbianism to straight women. None of it felt real, but as she caught Victoria’s eye across the room she knew that there was something very real waiting for their combined energy. Their relationship would be a strength to sustain them, a haven from which they would go into the world, expose themselves to accomplish something, and to which they could return for nurturing and binding up of wounds. While they healed themselves they would find the strength that they would need to go out again and again until they began to make a mark upon the world, until all the women were strong and loud, until women began to be heard and felt as a power in the world to change it from the warring, hateful, hungry place that it was into, simply, a better place to be. Annie realized that she was getting drunk and stepped out of the dancing circle to stop from getting dizzy. For the first time in a long time, she did not want to be drunk. She wanted to be at her best, ready for anything.

  Suddenly there were several uniformed men at the door and Annie felt herself go cold with fear. She looked for Victoria in the crowd of equally paralyzed women and began to make her way to her. Were they shooting? Would they arrest them? Were they here to beat and rape? These were the terrified thoughts that went through Annie’s mind until she found Victoria. They took one another’s hands and stared until it became clear that this was the fire department. “A complaint,” was the skeptical murmur that went through the crowd. Someone had complained about something and they were here to investigate. The women without shirts had hurriedly put them on. “We can’t even be naked among ourselves because of their damn law,” Victoria whispered. The woman at the door would not let the firemen in without papers.

  “I’m glad these women know what they’re doing,” Annie whispered. “How many of them are there?”

  “There’s more on the stairs,” another woman whispered back, her eyes wide with fright.

  “I think it’s okay,” Annie heard someone say, aloud. She saw the woman at the door nod affirmatively and the men begin to back away. The crowd stood still and silent. Annie could feel the women, like herself, fighting their own weakness and paralyzing fear. She could sense them all tensing and retreating, ready to spring or to fall back. She looked around for support and saw both strength and fear in the faces. Annie wondered, as the firemen left and the women drifted back to what they had been doing, which would have been the dominant force had the enemy shown their weapons and a belligerent intent. She hoped she would have had the strength to fight. And that Victoria would have joined her.

  “Tense, huh?” she said to Victoria.

  Victoria visibly relaxed. She took her glasses off and wiped sweat from around her eyes. “I didn’t like that at all.”

  “Me neither. I’ve never been in a bar when one was raided.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Late, my
love, but I hate to go back.”

  “Me too, but I think we ought to. I’d like to go to the park in the morning to show you where I really grew up when I was in New York.”

  “I’d like that too. You’re right. We have a lot more to do than just party,” said Annie, remembering her resolve.

  They said goodbye to Faye and Jean, then slipped through the women, through the bodies painted bright colors, through the hair long and cropped, through the touching, loud women, and made their way to the street. It was after midnight and cool. They walked toward the subway arm-in-arm looking up at the stars. The walls of the buildings seemed to meet over their heads. “It feels as if we’re at the bottom of a well, tonight,” Victoria said.

  The music grew fainter behind them and for one whole block all they could hear was distantly passing cars. Two men went by arm-in-arm. The four smiled at one another. “Maybe we should live in New York,” Annie suggested.

  “Maybe we should live in Iowa,” Victoria laughed softly.

  “Do you have a preference?”

  “I want to live with you.”

  Annie lifted her cap and spun it on her index finger. “I feel as if I’ve just been asked for my hand.”

  “Except I want your whole body,” Victoria squeezed Annie closer to her.

  “Do you really want to live with me?”

  “I never want to be away from you.” Victoria watched Annie lower her head. “What is it, Anne? Did I upset you? We don’t have to. We could just be lovers,” she said, afraid once again that she had scared Annie by wanting too much.

  “I’m sorry Vic. Of course I want to live with you. I want nothing more than that. You just said it like Natalie did. And I got scared that we’d end up the same way.”

  “I can’t predict,” Victoria told Annie as they went down the subway steps. “But I promise you I’ll never just take off. I’ll work on staying together.”

  They had stopped outside the turnstile. “Will you? I’d feel much more hopeful if I felt like you were as committed to making us work as I am.”

  “Remember how you said when you’re making love to me it sounds as if I’m opening the world for you?” Annie nodded. “Well, Anne, that’s you. Over and over you open up the world for me. You unlocked it for me. I can walk into it and around in it now. I’m not just hiding inside anymore. Do you think I would ever throw away my key?” She gently tugged Annie’s arm.

  “Someday you won’t need a key any more.”

  “But I’ll always know you made it possible. And when I am as free and open and brave as you all the time, I hope that you’ll still want to be all those things with me and not just a teacher for someone else. How can I know that you won’t leave me when the excitement of watching me come out farther and farther wears off?”

  Horrified, Annie shook her head until her hat almost fell off. “Then we’ll have the excitement of accomplishing things together, Vicky, or of watching each other succeed at what we want to do. Of sharing our victories or just of being together. I want to be old with you, Vicky. I want to love the lines on your beautiful face and admire your grey hair. I want to have memories with you.” There was a rumbling in the station. Victoria gestured toward the arriving train and handed Annie a token which she fished out of her jean pockets.

  “No,” she decided when Annie went to insert her token. She reached over and put her token into Annie’s turnstile while Annie did the same for her. Their eyes met as they moved together slowly through the turnstiles each had unlocked for the other and they broke through at the end into a run which took them down the stairs together and into a car. The nearly empty train slid away from the station carrying two lesbians hugging just inside the door.

  Chapter Ten

  Annie and Victoria boarded the train the next night and sat, not touching, collapsed into themselves from the strain of visiting the Lockes. As they pulled out of Grand Central Station and rushed up past 125th Street and into the suburbs, they were nearly silent, beginning to recover. Annie giggled unexpectedly.

  “What is it, Anne?” Victoria asked softly, laying a hand on Annie’s thigh.

  “Just remembering the ducks in the Children’s Zoo at Central Park.”

  “How they waddle?”

  Annie giggled again, “Yes, it tickled me somehow.”

  “I like the goats. They seem to have such sweet dispositions. Like you.” Victoria kissed her cheek.

  “Silly,” Annie teased, ducking her kiss.

  “Bar car at the rear of the train,” a uniformed man sang through their car. Annie looked at Victoria. “Want a drink?” she asked.

  “I’ll join you if you do, but I have no desire for one.”

  Annie squirmed in her seat. “I guess I don’t want one either. It’s just habit. When somebody offers a drink I want it,” she shrugged. Victoria smiled at her. “You know, I’d really rather not drink,” Annie confessed. “It just seems to go with everything I do. It’s an easy way to relax from the tension of hustling in the cab all day, an easy way to have fun in what isn’t such a fun place: a gay bar; and an easy way to loosen up enough to socialize with people like your parents or new lesbians.”

  “As you said, it’s habit,” Victoria agreed, cleaning her glasses with the tail of Annie’s shirt.

  “I think of drinking when I think of the high points of my life. I drink to celebrate, to party, to make love.”

  “My parents do the same thing.”

  “That’s a kick in the teeth. I really have something in common with your parents?”

  Victoria laughed warmly and ran her fingertips through Annie’s hair. “Just what you share in a bottle.”

  “I’ll try not having a drink now and see what happens. After all, we’ll be in New Haven in an hour. If I need a fix I can get one then. Are you coming home with me?”

  “Let’s see how we feel in town. I have to get ready for graduation, you know. It’ll be here in just a couple of days.”

  “You’re not going to do anything productive tonight, though,” Annie suggested temptingly, leaning to lay her lips on Victoria’s bare arm.

  “I’m certainly not if you’re going to be in that kind of mood.”

  “What other kind is there around your lovely body?”

  They held hands, each losing herself in her own thoughts. Soon, Victoria noticed Annie’s hand become slack. Her head had rolled toward Victoria’s shoulder and Victoria settled it there, kissing her blonde hair after she removed the hat. She fingered the brim in her lap, loving it and loving Annie Heaphy, so trustingly asleep on her shoulder.

  When Victoria had time to think, which did not seem to be often anymore, she was overwhelmed by two things. One was her enormous love for Annie where there had been no amount of love for anyone before. Included with that were the sexual feelings she now found in herself. The excitement Annie had unleashed in her had become a need. When she thought of Annie’s mouth between her legs or even of touching Annie’s breasts through a flannel shirt, she felt warm and sensual and had to close her eyes to handle the flood of feeling in herself. Her underwear was always damp. Annie teased her about it. About having grown so passionate that even when Annie wasn’t around, Victoria could keep herself turned on with thoughts of them together. Victoria admitted it gladly to Annie, but wondered what would ever happen should she lose her. Could she feel this way about another woman? Would she always feel this way about Annie and forever be unsatisfied without her? Victoria remembered Annie’s head on her shoulder when Annie stirred. No need to worry about losing her. She wouldn’t let it happen. They would learn how to give each other what they could and how to let each other meet their other needs elsewhere.

  Smiling into the deep darkness outside the window, Victoria thought of the other thing by which she was overwhelmed: herself. How quickly she had blossomed, not just into love, but into a fuller person. It was as if, in responding to Annie’s kisses, she learned to respond to the rest of the world around her. As if, in learning what mattered to h
er, what was meaningful to her in love, the rest of the world had finally been revealed to her in a way that made sense. All the pieces of the puzzle had fallen into place when she opened herself to another woman. The academic world which had consumed almost all of her, while still important, was receding a bit and she saw it in a new perspective. She would use it, use her background, training and literacy for herself. Rather than be buried by it, she would use it to stand on when she learned what her next step would be. Perhaps the best thing for her to do would be to go on, to teach literature from a female perspective or to study women’s literature. Perhaps it would be more important for her to write clearly about what was happening to women and to show women themselves where they were going. Or she could go on a search for women’s poetry and put it in a volume to inspire other women with their own achievements. There was no end to her options and she continued, as she thought of new ones, to smile into the window.

  Outside it had become totally dark. All she had been able to see for awhile were lampposts, highway lights and occasional partially lit towns. Connecticut closed early on a Saturday night. The window was double glass and Victoria could see her own faint blurred reflection in it. There were two of her, one inside the other, the edge of neither self sharp and clear. Her image disappeared now and then as the outside lights became brighter. It was this ghostly reflection that made her think of Louise, the witch-like woman on the train at Thanksgiving. It seemed as if Louise had started it all. Victoria saw Louise’s now lesbian daughter in the window—or was it her own lesbian self? The images of her past and her future selves, the witch’s daughter, merged, but were not yet one. For a long while there was only darkness outside and Victoria stared at this glowing woman in the glass, wondering and wondering what would happen to her. She was a trick of the light thrown on darkness, an impression of the deep unknown dark of her future. She could almost see the image speak to her, to herself, or to her other. She let herself imagine what she was saying. The sound in her head merged with the noise of the train, a long rushing sound. Victoria had to slow it to make any words distinct. Then, rather than actually hearing them, she seemed to feel them as, with eyes closed, she experienced their message.