The Storm

by Shelley Thrasher

  “You’ll never drink better water. Want to try it?” Molly asked.

  “Sure. Let’s kneel on my old quilt.”

  Molly formed a cup with both hands and scooped up a drink. “Hmm, cool and sweet.” She reached for another handful, then turned to Jacqueline, beside her. “Perfect for such a hot afternoon.”

  The look Jacqueline gave her, though, made her warmer than before she’d quenched her thirst. Another kind of thirst began to build.

  After they bathed their faces and hands, she tried to slow her waltzing heart by saying, “The children come here and slide down that big hill. Let’s walk a little farther for some peace and quiet.”

  But her heart only danced faster when Jacqueline agreed. When they entered a small grove with a clearing in the middle, it fox-trotted.

  “I like to come here alone sometimes, especially when Mother Russell makes me so mad I can’t see straight.” She struggled to keep her voice calm and even. “The wind in the pines always soothes me, and I go back to the farm feeling like I’ve had a vacation.”

  Jacqueline spread her quilt and patted a spot. “Sit here. You’re not mad now, are you?”

  She stretched out and gazed through the sheltering branches toward the blue sky. This was heaven—only her and Jacqueline, no chores and no one to scold her.

  “No, not angry. Resigned, almost numb. I’ve tried to understand and forgive her and, believe me, burning my rolling pin is minor compared to other stunts she’s pulled. I don’t know what to do, but I can’t live with her much longer. She eats at me like a cancer.”

  Jacqueline gave her a sympathetic look. “I know. Eric doesn’t affect me that way or I wouldn’t be here. But I don’t want to spend my life with him. I feel trapped too.”

  She had an absurd urge to push back Jacqueline’s bangs and check her wound, but she was afraid that if she touched Jacqueline she might not want to stop. The soft breeze threatened to lull her to sleep, yet she felt strangely on edge. Jacqueline lay next to her, close enough that if she turned just a hair and reached out, she could—“How did you meet Eric, Jacqueline?”

  That was the only way she could think of to distract herself from her shimmying heart.

  *

  Molly’s question about meeting Eric sucked Jaq back into the happy days before the War, before everyone began to cross the Channel and either didn’t return or came back damaged or changed. She wanted to linger on those early times, spin them out to Molly, relive them, show her how she was before she went to France instead of the coward she was now.

  “I met Eric in London. I lived there with my sister a few years before the War began.”

  Sister Mary Therese invaded her mind. Would she ever forget her? She’d opened up so many new feelings. She’d tried to forget them, but right now they were springing to life. Bloody hell. She could probably seduce Molly with her adventures in a world she’d never known. Sister Mary had taught her how.

  She could entrance Molly into a state of desire…No! Desire reminded her of quicksilver—here one minute, transformed the next. Or water. Boiling, it scalded, but then cooled and froze. Without Willie, her frozen longing for Sister Mary and Helen could have destroyed her. Willie had showed her sex without guilt, but that was impossible with Molly. Married, innocent, and trusting, Molly had taken care of her when she was hurt and helpless. She could control her desire for Molly, who would never know what she was missing and would grow old contentedly with her grandchildren.

  She could merely entertain Molly, not involve her in the jaded world she’d discovered in Europe. Maybe she could remember herself as she was before then. If she were still that old self, Molly wouldn’t shrink from her as she would when, and if, she told Molly who she actually was, what she did in France, and perhaps even about Willie.

  She inched away from Molly, made her voice carefree. “Sorry. I got caught up in my own thoughts. It’s a long story. Are you sure you want to hear it?”

  Molly’s curls bounced as she nodded. “Oh yes. Your stories remind me of watching a picture show. Your stories are even better than a movie, though, because they’re true.”

  Her face flamed as she murmured her thanks and then rewound her mind.

  Molly lay next to her on her patchwork quilt with a face that begged to be kissed as she described how she’d admired one woman who’d run away from home to drive an ambulance in France and sent her mother a one-word wire that said SAILING. More than tempted, Jaq reined herself in and tried to distract both of them by describing another woman she’d known.

  Toupie Lowther had owned a motorcycle and driven a Peugeot, which Jaq envied. She had been organizing a group to go over to France and drive an ambulance, but Jaq had joined the WAACs before Toupie formed her unit.

  Then Molly put her hands behind her head, a question in her eyes, and asked why she’d joined the WAACs.

  When Jaq mentioned “In Flanders Fields,” Molly beamed. “Oh, yes. I read it in the paper and cried.”

  Her reaction warmed Jaq. The little poem had inspired her to join, and now Molly’s face shone with the same idealism she’d felt back then, though it hadn’t lasted very long.

  “It made me want to pick up that torch the poor men with failing hands were talking about,” Molly said.

  “That’s how I felt.” She blew out a sigh. “When I got to Europe, I promised myself I’d answer the dead soldiers’ challenge to help fight the Germans.”

  Then Jaq described the khaki jacket and skirt and tight-fitting cap she’d worn and how she’d envied the women who rode motorcycles because they got to wear tight khaki pants with boots laced over them.

  Molly gazed at her with clear longing. “You’ve led such an exciting life. While you were in Europe, I was milking a cow and raising a child.”

  If only she could take Molly to Europe after the War, introduce her to friends, show her the sights—damn it. She couldn’t even think about it. It wouldn’t do any good to wish for what neither of them could ever have.

  She inched away from Molly again as she tried to describe what war was really like. But she’d intended to tell Molly how she met Eric. Her sister had introduced them because she thought Jaq would enjoy spending time with someone from the States.

  A ray of sun hit her eyes and she shut them so she could concentrate on what she was trying to say. Her thoughts were jumbled and she was rambling and going into too much detail, but being so close to Molly affected her that way.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Molly loved Jacqueline even more because of the way she’d talked about that poem. She’d been so honorable and idealistic back then and still was, though going to war seemed to have made her lose touch with that side of herself a little.

  When Jacqueline mentioned a woman called Marguerite Radclyffe Hall and some books she’d read about sex, Molly jerked to attention. No one said the word sex in polite company, but she tried to relax. Mama had taught her to listen first and judge later.

  As Jacqueline talked, her dark eyes darted and flashed with life, and her pink-red lips, like a lush rose, drew Molly in. Molly wanted to finger those lips, pull them close to hers, see how they tasted.

  Jaq talked about Marguerite’s older-woman friend, Mabel, who’d had a lot of affairs, even with the future king of England.

  That floored Molly. An affair with a future king? This sounded like a novel. She would never have even daydreamed about something so unbelievable.

  As Jacqueline described Marguerite wooing yet being mothered by Mabel, Molly tried to pull herself away from the sight of Jacqueline’s seductive lips and picture Mabel. She’d never known a woman who had affairs, at least to her knowledge. Her shoulders stiffened. But if Mabel had mothered Marguerite, she must have cared for her.

  She tried to relax as she fixed her attention on Jacqueline’s closed eyes and full lips with their Cupid’s bow. Those luscious lips certainly made it difficult for Molly to breathe.

  Then Jacqueline said something that riveted her. Marguerite
and Mabel had become lovers. She tried to look nonchalant but grabbed hold of the quilt as if it were the side of a rocking boat on a stormy sea.

  She gritted her teeth and grabbed a bigger piece of the quilt when Jacqueline described how Mabel wanted to tell everyone they were as much a couple as Lord and Lady Clarendon, her sister. She’d nicknamed Marguerite John, after her grandfather, and herself Ladye, to mock her sister.

  Surely Jacqueline had made this up. But Jacqueline kept talking, far away in another world that Molly could barely imagine.

  It turned out that Jacqueline’s friends had nicknamed her too, but Molly had almost reached her limit. She needed to get back to the church. They expected her to play for the—

  “Jaq.” That was what her English friends called her, and then Jacqueline said that if they ever visited any of her English friends, she would have to get used to that name.

  Molly took a deep breath. Would it even be possible to visit any of them? Maybe someday when Patrick was grown and she’d saved every cent from teaching piano lessons, she might be able to…No. Jacqueline could leave any day now, and she would probably never see her again. Jacqueline had better, more interesting things to do than go anywhere with her.

  Suddenly she quit feeling so panicky and thought about college. She did know a little about couples like Jacqueline had been describing. She relaxed her grip on the quilt a fraction. But her two teachers would never have been that open about their special friendship. In public they always acted like nothing more than companions.

  She needed more time to absorb all this information, so she said, “Do you want to hear something strange?”

  “After all this, you can tell me almost anything.”

  “My real name is Marguerite, though everybody has always called me Molly. But isn’t it odd that two women can have the same birth name and one be nicknamed John and the other Molly? A name makes all the difference, doesn’t it?” Her remark seemed to please Jacqueline, so she lessened her grip even more.

  “If I called you Marguerite and you called me Jaq, would that change how we feel about each other?” But as soon as the words left Jacqueline’s lips, she bit them and blushed.

  How would it feel to be Marguerite, a sexy Frenchwoman who could stir the heart of a suitor without even trying? She let go of the quilt. What a contrast to Molly the milkmaid and pianist, who could stir only her mother-in-law, usually not in a pleasant way.

  She decided to experiment.

  “Jaq.” She practically purred. “If I were your Marguerite, would you give me flowers and jewelry, and write poems for me?”

  Jacqueline blushed and stared at her like she had that first Sunday in church. Then she moved nearer and lowered her head alarmingly close.

  She instinctively pulled back, and Jacqueline retreated to the other side of the quilt. She didn’t know whether she wanted Jacqueline or Jaq by her side.

  She sat as still as if the sun had turned to ice. She wanted Jacqueline, or Jaq, or whatever she decided to call her as near as she was when Marguerite had summoned her. She wanted to hear her sharp intake of breath again, to let those lips come closer until they relieved the pressure building in her own.

  But she still needed time. She was about to change her life forever—do something even more radical than vote. Something shimmered between them like heat rising from hard-packed earth during a drought and drew her to Jacqueline, like parched earth calling out for water.

  Jacqueline seemed to read her mind because she propped her head on one elbow and continued to talk about John and Ladye, Molly’s blood pounding so loud in her ears that she missed a lot. Jacqueline really did know some important people, so why would she waste her time talking to her? She flinched at her own insignificance, but Jacqueline apparently didn’t notice. And when Jacqueline later asked if she was tired of hearing her ramble, she told her not to stop. In fact, she almost called her Jaq, just for fun, but their little charade earlier had scared her.

  Then Jacqueline described how John had met another woman, and when Ladye had later died, John felt so guilty about taking up with the other woman that she and her new lover went to séances, and John was certain she had contacted Ladye.

  Molly sat up, brought her knees to her chest, and wrapped her arms around them in a most unladylike fashion. Her world seemed tiny. How shocking that Jacqueline mentioned the word sex so casually, and John went to séances. She wanted to know more. Papa probably wouldn’t approve of such activities, but Mama was a lot more open-minded than Papa, so she guessed she took after her.

  But then Jacqueline sat up too and said she liked the way John acted like a man in her relationships with both her women lovers. What did Jacqueline mean? Molly listened even more intently.

  “John called herself an invert, a man trapped in a woman’s body,” Jacqueline said. “She believed she couldn’t change the way she felt about women.”

  But Molly was puzzled and wondered why that interested Jacqueline. So she smiled and asked, “You’re not an invert, are you? You’re one of the most womanly women I’ve ever seen.” As she lightly said these words, though, the nickname Jaq hit her in the head.

  Jacqueline eased back down and lay on her side, facing her again. “You haven’t seen me dressed in my brothers’ clothes and working on our automobiles together. You haven’t really seen the way I drive, because the roads around here are too rough to speed on. And you didn’t see me in France. I wore men’s clothes most of the way up here. They make life easier when you’re on the road. The next time you come over, I’ll show you what I look like in them.”

  She couldn’t picture Jacqueline as a tomboy, though she’d hinted that she’d been one. She saw only a beautiful, fashionable woman.

  “In France, doing your job mattered most. But dressing like a man doesn’t make a woman an invert, and working like one doesn’t either. The way I feel about women makes me one. That’s why I married Eric.”

  “I don’t understand.” Suddenly she felt like she was talking to a stranger. “How do you feel about women? And what does that have to do with marrying Eric?”

  “I married him because I was a coward. I admired John, but I couldn’t face my real self, not like she could. And I couldn’t stand to even imagine what my parents, especially Mother, would think if they found out. The books about sex that I read scared me silly. I guess I thought that if I married a man, my deep feelings for women would disappear. Of course that didn’t work and wasn’t fair to Eric or me because I didn’t love him.”

  Molly understood. She knew all about being unfair and marrying a man she didn’t love.

  “Oh, Eric was handsome and charming, an admirable hero. I must have thought everyone would consider his wife womanly. He seemed really independent too. We never lived together. He left for the front just a few days after we married.”

  Molly sighed. The only time she ever spent away from Mr. James was when she visited her parents in Dallas. He certainly depended on the two women he lived with, especially his mother. And she was dependent on him.

  “After our first night together I realized I’d made a mistake,” Jacqueline said. “We agreed to lead separate lives, but I didn’t want to get a divorce or even an annulment because of my religious background, and because of what Mother would say. But now we’ve agreed to have our marriage annulled when we return to New Orleans. The only problem is, I’ve met you and I’m even more confused now.”

  Why did meeting me confuse Jacqueline? She lay back again, wrapped part of the quilt over her, and gazed at the pines overhead. Why couldn’t people be more like pines—stable, rooted, sure of where they belonged? Poor Jacqueline, caught in a loveless marriage and mixed up because she loved women.

  Though she didn’t love Mr. James, and Mother Russell drove her to distraction most of the time, she had her music. Most important, though, she had Patrick. He made everything worthwhile, and he always would.

  As she lay there, Jacqueline crossed her arms and massaged them repeatedly.
She spoke so rapidly Molly had to strain to catch every word.

  “In New Orleans I met a woman who convinced me I’ll never change. But I’m not as strong as John. Sometimes I wish I could be like other people. Life would be so much simpler.”

  Jacqueline’s dark eyes flashed like thunderclouds, and the words “I met a woman” ripped through her like lightning, shattered her calm. Thunder deafened her, yet she didn’t want to run. She wanted to curl up next to Jacqueline and never leave her. Yet who was this other woman? Would Jacqueline see her again when she returned to New Orleans?

  “Molly.” Jacqueline’s voice drowned out the thunder. “I don’t want to feel this way. Sometimes I want to find a doctor who can cure me of my attraction to women so I can live a normal life. That won’t include marrying another man—I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll probably spend my life alone, but at least it’ll be my life. I want to devote my life to a worthy cause such as helping women gain the right to vote, or like my Aunt Anna has with her work in medicine.”

  Slowly Jacqueline edged nearer, as if she needed to be physically as close as possible before she could say what she wanted. And now she whispered, “Women have caused me nothing but heartache. I left France partially because I fell in love with a nurse named Helen. She took care of me when I was exhausted and ill, and for the longest time she never knew I was in love with her.”

  The thunder boomed again in Molly’s head, and she let it. She didn’t want to hear about Jacqueline loving someone else.

  “Helen was a true hero. She gave herself for what she believed in—this stupid war that has slaughtered so many young people. She was amazing.”

  She couldn’t block out Jacqueline’s words. She felt like she’d rammed a needle under her fingernail and recognized the stinging pain as jealousy. Mr. James had given her the diamond he bought for someone else. Now Jacqueline considered her second-best too.

  “I don’t imagine you want to listen to me talk about Helen, but she’s dead, and I can’t get her out of my mind. Mustard gas killed her. She spent too much time working on gassed men, and I guess the overexposure ruined her liver. But I left France before she died then went to Washington and back home. I met the woman I mentioned earlier, and eventually Eric turned up, so I’ve had problems for quite a while.”