Substitute for Love

by Karin Kallmaker

  “I don’t know.” Questions like this had never occurred to her, not until tonight.

  Galina rose gracefully from the chair and leaned against the wall where the woman had been. She ran her hands over her stomach and closed her eyes for a moment. “Of course you don’t. But we can imagine, can’t we? Perhaps it was strangers in the night,” she murmured more softly. “Yes, it’s quite private here.”

  She was all mystery and silk, and her dress clung provocatively where rain had dampened it. Holly wanted to back away, but now Galina had her hand, was pulling her into the corner, turning her so her back was against that same wall.

  “Can you imagine it,” Galina whispered. “Two people see each other, want each other, and do something about it? I’m tired of bony waifs in my bed. I saw you and realized how long it’s been since I’ve had a woman who was soft, and curving…”

  Galina’s hand slipped around Holly’s hip. There was no air. “I’m not…” she tried to say, but she wasn’t at all sure she had actually spoken.

  “And I’ve always had this fantasy of doing something just like this.”

  Dangerous, seductive … Galina was leaning into her now, her breasts shocking Holly’s into responsive tightening. Her hands ran up Holly’s arms until she cupped Holly’s face and then the world paused. The music stopped, the rain stopped. Her heart stopped.

  All for a kiss of fervent desire, for the eager meeting of their mouths. Her mouth opened, she pulled Galina’s arms around her. She kissed her. And moaned, low in her throat.

  The world began again, and her heart pounded behind her eyes. She thought she might faint because the kiss was perfect and it would be easier if everything could just end here. Because the next moment would bring all the rest of it, the new questions, the self-doubt — the fear. Her moan became a whimper and even terrified she continued that kiss, aware of the heat of Galina’s body and that it had been so long since she had felt warm.

  “Oh yeah,” Galina murmured, when their mouths finally parted.

  What could she do? She had never been so frightened of herself, of another person, not ever. Unproven truths were all she had to defend herself. She strangled out, “I’m straight.”

  Galina came in for another kiss. Holly rocked on her feet, surged against Galina, wanting to feel… words decent women didn’t use surged up in her mind, and she wanted to use them all, to tell Galina what she wanted to touch, where she wanted to be stroked. Truth had become merely a theory, a theory expressed by a false equation. She said it again, because of the fear and because Tori had said it and Tori would know, wouldn’t she?

  “I’m straight,” she said again.

  Galina took a wobbly step backward, leaving Holly to shiver with the return of what she had never known was perpetual cold. “Do you really think so?”

  “I —I must be.”

  “Why?”

  Holly could only shake her head and then turn her face away, hiding the tears that spilled down her cheeks.

  Galina leaned into her again, her body taut and urgent. “I don’t fuck straight women.”

  Fuck. The word pierced Holly and she could hear the final rending of her life from its anchors. She shook her head because it was the only part of her body that would obey her. Shook her head while her arms reached for the heat again.

  Galina stepped back, then reached into the little bag that dangled from her shoulder. She extracted a white rectangle and held it up to the dim light.

  “My phone number is on the back of this one,” she said. “Call me when you’re not straight anymore.”

  Holly wanted to take the card, feeling weak for wanting it so badly, the card … the fuck. Decent women … Was she not decent anymore? She could not make her arms move now, nor did she react when Galina stepped toward her one last time to slip the card down until it was tucked into her bra.

  “I’m not a bitch, you know.” Galina’s matter-of-fact tone brought a deeper flush to Holly’s face. “I’m just honest.”

  Holly pushed past her and escaped into the cold night. The rain was falling harder, but she didn’t feel the chill. All she felt, as if it had been dipped in acid, was Galina’s card burning her skin.

  The rain was one type of cure for the heat that suffused her when she thought about what she wanted — how she wanted it. The darkness brought images again, and there were new equations wanting solutions. She had had female friends before and never felt this way — or so she had told herself not a half-hour ago. But the past didn’t support that statement. Female friends? There was only Jo. She’d already been enthralled by Clay when she had met Jo. She’d had friends in the neighborhood and at school when her mother was alive, but Aunt Zinnia had put her in a different school, a Lutheran school that was more rigid. Aunt Zinnia had insisted that Holly put her studies first, and her life had been regimented. There had been no adolescent friends, neither girls nor boys. Holly had even understood why her aunt kept her away from boys — that was her job. But she had never wondered why the girls, too.

  There was something… something her aunt knew that she did not. Something that had made her refuse every invitation Holly had received for sleepovers and weekend trips. Something that had made her willing to use Holly’s love of learning as a substitute for friendships, even though her aunt would later oppose Holly’s desire to further her education. Decent women did not go to college to learn, they went to find husbands. Decent women didn’t study mathematics, didn’t push themselves into a field where men excelled. Decent women remembered they were women.

  Decent women did not fuck other women.

  They didn’t want to fuck other women, they didn’t want to go back inside and beg another woman for her mouth, her hands, her body.

  Once she started to laugh she found she couldn’t stop. But it was unbelievably funny. Two days ago she’d gotten up at the usual time, done all the usual things, and never suspected that it was all fabrication, founded on nothing more than adolescent worship and a desire to live a good, useful life. How could these things have hidden such a truth from her?

  There was something she did not know and she had no idea how to ease the ache of ignorance. She had never been confronted by a problem she could not solve. She had only allowed Clay to stop her looking for harder problems. She seemed besieged by coincidence, which, given her understanding of statistics, was even funnier. She knew if two people at a party for twenty-three discovered they had the same birthday, they would exclaim over the coincidence, but she knew there was better than even odds of it happening.

  But what were the odds a straight woman would defend a gay woman’s right to keep her job and wake up the next day… changed?

  She was cold. So cold. Drops of rain streamed down her face, merging and separating. Finally, she understood their dance was random.

  Part 2: Marble

  Doubtless it will seem strange to many that the hand unaided by sight can feel action, sentiment, beauty in the cold marble…

  - Helen Keller. 1903

  Reyna, Now

  “Holly,” the woman in her arms whispered back. “I’m Holly.”

  Reyna tasted the name on Holly’s mouth as she kissed her again, falling deeper into painful urgency. Holly clung to her for a moment after the kiss, shaking her head as if dizzy. Reyna could not remember ever having this profound an effect on a woman. It had surely gone to her head and overwhelmed her good sense.

  Holly gestured at someone, a sketchy good-bye, then they were moving toward the door. After a brief delay to reclaim her jacket and helmet, they stepped into the cool, moon-drenched parking lot.

  The pulse of the music inside the club faded to a dull rhythm. Holly stood irresolute, unfocused.

  “This way,” Reyna said. “There’s someplace we can go about four blocks from here.”

  Holly nodded and her voice seemed far away. “I’ll come back for my car — later.” Then her gaze returned from some distant point and caught Reyna all over again, nakedly desirous.

&nb
sp; Reyna dropped her jacket and helmet next to a parked car so she could capture Holly’s face in her hands. How could anyone be expected to give up this delight? Each kiss seemed to reach deeper, seemed to uncover yet more layers of need and longing in both of them. Was this what it was like to have a woman melt in your arms? There had been so many, and none had felt like this.

  Her hands left Holly’s face to grip her shoulders, then sweep again over the hot silk that clung to Holly’s breasts. Holly trembled, murmured, “Yes.”

  Only when the car alarm went off did Reyna realize how hard she was moving against Holly, how eagerly they were wrapped around each other, rocking toward their need. Holly jumped at the onslaught of noise and pulled away. Reyna caught her hand and with a gasping laugh, said, “We should probably get out of here.”

  Holly was ready to run, Reyna realized, so she held tight to her hand until they were some distance from the blaring vehicle. “There’s no need to be afraid of me.”

  Holly turned, her face pale and strained in the moonlight. “I’ve never done this before.”

  “I have,” Reyna said, meaning it as a joke, though it was also the truth. Holly’s expression clouded. Her gaze fell to Holly’s breasts, taking in their rapid rise and fall and the hardened nipples that made her mouth ache.

  Holly shook her head, but whatever she meant by that was lost in her breathless, “Kiss me.”

  5

  Reyna, Seven Years Ago

  Reyna Putnam scraped the last of the strawberry yogurt from the bottom of the container. It had been cool and refreshing after the muggy unpleasantness of the uncharacteristically hot Berkeley day. She tickled Kimberly’s ear as she rose from the deck chair. “You want a beer?”

  Kim didn’t open her eyes. Drowsily, she said, “Sure. I feel so guilty just sitting here, doing nothing. I’ve got two papers due and about a thousand pages to read before the weekend.”

  “Me, too,” Reyna acknowledged. “But we can’t study every minute. It’s too hot.” As she crossed the deck of the little apartment they shared she could see the heat rippling off the Campanile. It seemed to be wilting.

  The kitchen windows were shuttered against the heat. Blinking in the dim light, she didn’t notice the man seated at the kitchen table. Only when she had two beers in hand did the refrigerator light reveal his presence. The door swung shut and they were in darkness again.

  “What do you want?” She spoke harshly; he had frightened her. Had they left the front door unlocked? No matter — a locked door wouldn’t stand in his way.

  “Is that a nice way to talk to the man who pays for your education?”

  It was always that way with her father, always about what he paid for and her lack of gratitude. She could not be grateful for what she did not want.

  “Let’s not revisit that.” Reyna put the beers down and turned on the kitchen light but did not sit. She felt braver on her feet. She was beyond his reach, she reminded herself. He had no leverage, not even money. He only supported her while she was in college because it looked good to do so, tailing responsibility for the child he’d fathered out of wedlock. He could always withdraw his support. She’d never asked for it and wouldn’t complain if it ended. But his enemies might notice. That he was too ambitious to willingly supply his enemies with fodder was his concern, not hers.

  As if by way of an answer, he pulled a piece of paper from a slender file, smoothed it on the table, then pushed it toward her.

  She picked it up warily. A medical report from the UCLA Medical Center. Her mother’s name swam up off the page, entangled with a phrase she only knew from her study of Flannery O’Connor’s life. It frightened her to see it paired with her mother’s name. Lupus erythematosus.

  The paper fell from her numb fingers, coming to a rest on the table between them.

  She wanted him to stop talking. She was his daughter, after all, and she had known how his mind worked since she was sixteen. Words were unnecessary.

  “Her medical insurance is poor, and after the expenses of her breast cancer treatment — still in remission, thankfully — she’s almost at her lifetime maximum. My people can be slow or quick with checks. There can be a professional with her twenty-four hours a day, or just checking in by phone.”

  “I’ll take care of her. I’ll leave school if I have to.”

  “I don’t doubt that you would. I’ve always admired your ability to work hard.” He was smiling when he ought to have realized he had lost. There was obviously something she did not yet know. He would tell her when it suited him.

  She smoothed the medical report on the table and pushed it back toward him. It was bravado in the face of his smile, a smile of victory.

  “Immunosuppressive drug regimens can cost eighty-five dollars a day. I’m sure you can do the math. Her insurance will be exhausted in seven months. Without further complications.”

  She could do the math. Having no idea where she would find thirty-one thousand dollars a year, she nevertheless said firmly, “We’ll manage.” He kept smiling.

  Her life had been of his design, even before he had acknowledged that she was his daughter. Her mother was strong in beauty but frail in spirit, and had always taken the path of least resistance. What Grip Putnam wanted from her he got. Reyna couldn’t blame her mother for being true to her nature. He wanted them to move, they did. He wanted discretion, then she was silent.

  Then, when Reyna was eight, that had all changed. Grip’s son and wife had died in an automobile accident and he’d claimed Reyna as his own. In his first autobiography, written two years into the phenomenal success of his syndicated radio program, he’d said that the tragedy had taught him how important family was, and he knew then that financial support was not enough. His out-of-wedlock daughter deserved everything he would have given the son from his marriage.

  He wanted Reyna’s last name to be his, and it happened. She was enrolled at an exclusive private school, provided with tutors whenever her grades faltered below perfect, and lavished with language and riding lessons and a closet full of designer clothes. She learned to carry herself like a daughter of the Putnam lineage, a great-granddaughter of a U.S. senator, the granddaughter of a California congressman, the daughter of a conservative analyst who could tip his supporters’ positions in almost any direction he pleased. She was not allowed to forget that she could some day be the daughter of a president. Grip Putnam had aspirations and the cool, careful logic required to fulfill them.

  She had been sixteen when she’d first rebelled at clothing selected by a media consultant, and wanted to choose her own classes and her own books and movies. Sixteen, before she had realized that her entire life was scripted, right down to the friends she was allowed to make. When she told him she wanted more freedom, she reasoned with him that he could hardly expect less from her. They had the same strength of will. He would not allow anyone to control him — neither would she.

  He told her freedom had a price. She proved to him she could adjust to public school, and without a look backward returned the car she’d received on her birthday. She thought he would eventually relent, not wanting his daughter to be seen flipping burgers after school.

  Instead, he upped the ante and taught her that the rules for the wealthy and powerful really were different. To her mother’s credit, she had never hinted that her sudden firing from an administrative job she’d held for several years might have been arranged to put financial pressure on both of them. Her mother had stoically looked for a new job for four months and kept her calm when she’d discovered the tires on the car slashed a second time. Then the car had simply disappeared — two days after the insurance lapsed. Reyna had had to help her hysterical mother into bed, and she had been badly frightened when she answered the phone.

  Her father had asked if she was tired of freedom yet. He even managed to make it sound as if his call was a coincidence.

  She was his daughter, and her mind worked like his. In ten seconds she tallied the coincidences to his account
and she’d said yes, she was tired of freedom. Like him, she knew how to wait.

  At sixteen, her youth and her mother’s frailty had worked to his advantage. At twenty-three, standing in her kitchen, it was a piece of paper that trapped her. For years she would not forgive herself for her instinctive reaction — a reaction that made her completely his daughter, as hateful and selfish as he was. Mother, how could you do this to me?

  He was still talking, but she didn’t have to listen to know what he was saying. Her transcript had appeared from the file. He glanced down as if to confirm something, but she knew he had no need to refresh his memory. “Your journalism degree is finished. You will be getting a double master’s — political science and governmental affairs, just as I did. Journalism won’t do you any good later on.”

  He put the transcript back and pulled out a photograph in its place. “You’ll also be living alone. Scandalous liaisons are a barrier, too. You’ll thank me, later, when the press puts its microscope on you.”

  God, Kimberly. The photograph was of the two of them walking on campus. She had suspected him of hiring someone to keep an eye on her, but the confirmation of it made her skin crawl.

  Kimberly’s future was nothing to him. She had so many strikes against her — lesbian, middle-class, black, female and liberal. In her father’s world, only straight wealthy white male conservatives had any power. And few of them had more than he did at this point.

  “She’s a nice-looking piece, but my daughter is not a biological error.” He exchanged the photograph for a neatly typed list of names that he set down on the table and pushed toward her as he had the medical report. Surnames that read like a political Who’s Who tied her stomach in knots. “This is a list of acceptable escorts. A few are even the same color she is, if that is what you have a penchant for. But you won’t marry one of them. We’ll choose someone suitable.”