“Queer and has the mouth of a truck driver. You’re doing the Darby name proud.”
“I’m not queer. Now could you please leave me alone?”
He softened his tone. “All right, come on, Bea. Don’t be a sore loser. Gwen’s my wife now, so you’ll just have to get used to it. I’d like to think we can all get along as a family.”
Beatrice sighed in resignation. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
As Quentin walked back to the reception, Beatrice couldn’t hold in her tears any longer. A warm stream of them flowed down her cheeks as she watched Gwen and Quentin kiss under the main tent.
*
Beatrice stood by the stone wall watching the moon spread its light in a triangle where the ocean met the horizon. She was still reeling from the humiliation of getting jostled in the crowd of girls clamoring to snatch Gwen’s bouquet and be the next bride. By ten p.m., she was sweaty and exhausted with a headache to beat the band. After pulling each petal from the white rose she’d plucked from the head table’s centerpiece, she let the stem drop into the rocky surf below.
“Beatrice,” Gwen called out, traipsing down the grassy incline. She had never looked more beautiful. Even if she hadn’t been wearing a five-thousand-dollar Oleg Casini original gown, she’d still have had the countenance of a princess.
Beatrice smiled warmly and set her gaze back to the ocean.
“Incredible, isn’t it?” Gwen said.
“Yep,” she replied quietly.
“Well, this is it. I’m off to start my new life as Mrs. Quentin Darby. I’m so thrilled,” she said, clutching Beatrice’s hands in hers. “We have to get to the airport soon. The honeymoon suite awaits. God, I’m so nervous.”
Beatrice knew if she spoke, she’d collapse into Gwen’s arms. All she could do was smile through the fog of tears blurring her vision.
“Oh, Bea,” Gwen said. “I know how you feel. I’m so happy I keep crying, too. Don’t worry. We’re still going to see each other at holidays and things, and then when you’re done with your master’s—”
“Remember how we said we were going to take the summer after we graduated and travel through Europe together?” Beatrice said wistfully.
“I remember, and it was a fun idea, but I assumed we’d do it only if we were both single. Didn’t you?”
Beatrice shrugged.
“I fell in love with Quentin,” Gwen said, a twinge of guilt in her voice. “I’m his wife now, and soon, I’ll be the mother of his children.”
“Instead of being college professors.”
“I knew something was bothering you. I was afraid it was because I was getting married and you weren’t.”
Beatrice glared at her. “Really?”
Gwen grinned. “Yeah, that is kind of absurd, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
She brushed Beatrice’s arm with her fingers. “Oh, Bea, we were kids when we said all those things. We’re adults now. Look on the bright side—you’ll be married, too, one day and having lots of babies. Won’t it be such fun raising our kids together?”
Beatrice’s gut boiled. The thought of Gwen intimate with Quentin, the touching and the nakedness, the sharing of laughter and secrets as a bond formed in their marriage bed—and then when the babies came. It was all too much. Her head was spinning from the champagne, the heat, and the utter despair that had been slowly eroding her heart since learning of their engagement. She dashed over to a blue hydrangea and showered it with champagne vomit.
“Oh dear.” Gwen went after her and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Darby, are you okay?”
“Mother was right,” she said, pulling herself upright. “I should’ve eaten my filet mignon.”
*
Beatrice had moped around for the rest of the summer, visiting Gwen only when Quentin was at work. She simply could not stomach the sight of them together, and when Gwen would mention that she and Quentin were already trying for a baby, it took Beatrice at least a day to purge the awful image of them “trying” from her head.
One August afternoon when Quentin was at work, she and Gwen lounged in white Adirondack chairs, enjoying glasses of fresh-squeezed lemonade in the shade of an oak tree. Beatrice surveyed their small yard with its tiny vegetable garden and miniature rose bushes that dotted a picket fence surrounding their modest, powder-blue cape. A picture postcard of the American Dream. The only things missing were little Susie and her pipe curls and Skippy and his propeller beanie. Beatrice’s nostrils flared with revulsion.
“How can you stand going from mansions and servants to this?” she asked, fingering the condensation on her lemonade glass. “Your parents must be beside themselves.”
Gwen smirked as she dangled a sandal off her toes. “I doubt it. My father, the big business tycoon, can’t tell the difference between my sister and me half the time—and we’re not even twins. As for my mother, well, she’s been beside her miserable self from the minute she learned I was marrying beneath me, as she likes to put it. Serves her right, the snob.”
“I’ll never understand how you turned out so wonderfully down-to-earth.”
“I told you before—my wonderfully down-to-earth Nanny Rose, of course,” Gwen replied with a goofy smile. If Gwen only knew what that smile did to Beatrice. “Money and material things don’t mean anything without love, Bea. Your mother is a dear, but I don’t think she realizes that.”
“She doesn’t. My loving, yet under-employed father could’ve told you that. He gave her everything he could afford, yet she never missed an opportunity to point out all the things we couldn’t afford.”
“You still miss him, don’t you?”
Beatrice nodded pensively. “He was a great dad, so positive about anything I wanted to do. He’s the only person who ever got me.”
Gwen playfully kicked Beatrice’s foot, knocking off her sandal. “Ahem…”
“Oh, present company excluded,” she said with a smile.
“Quent said your dad favored you.”
“It wasn’t so much that he favored me as he was sticking up for me. My mother’s always had very specific expectations for me, and as you know, I’ve yet to meet any of them.”
Gwen nodded. “She was complaining to me about how you haven’t spent that much time with her all summer.”
“It’s for her own safety. If I hear her say how I’m doomed to a life of spinsterhood if I don’t snag myself a rich college boy one more time, I’m gonna ring her goddamn neck.”
Gwen laughed and pressed a hand into her chest, assuming her best snooty New England accent. “My goodness, Beatrice, such language.”
“I’m being kind. She’s truly insufferable.”
“Let’s face it,” Gwen said. “Our parents are from the old generation. They’ll never see things our way, so all we can do is grin and bear it.”
Beatrice arched an eyebrow. “Is marrying a guy outside your social class and then moving a hundred and fifty miles away from home your idea of grinning and bearing it?”
“You know what I mean. At some point we’ve got to decide who we’re going to live our lives for.”
Beatrice shooed away a persistent horsefly as she pondered Gwen’s sage words. If she was going to live life for herself, she couldn’t stick around here.
“My mother’s whole problem is she cares too much about what others think. Apparently, life is just some big competition for money and social status. I’m afraid she’s been irreversibly brainwashed by Joan Crawford movies.”
“What’s that they say, the grass is always greener?”
“I don’t understand why anyone should care how others live, especially if they aren’t hurting anyone. It makes me crazy.”
“That’s why I’m so glad I met you and Quentin. We may not have everything, but he loves me, and I love him so much.” Gwen gently squeezed Beatrice’s forearm. “We’re all a family now.”
Beatrice forced a smile, then looked down and jiggled the melting ice cubes in her cup. Low,
steady breaths. It was the only way to control herself whenever she felt like she was about to explode and deluge Gwen with tearful I love yous.
“I need to put the roast in the oven and start dinner. Quent will be home in about an hour. Please stay and join us.”
Beatrice stood and gathered her glass and a bowl of barren grape branches.
“Thanks, but I’m not hungry. I have some reading I want to catch up on anyhow.”
Gwen looked crestfallen. “But you’re leaving for New York in a couple of weeks. Don’t you want to spend as much time with us as you can until then? At least it’ll save you from dinner with your mother,” she added with a wink.
Beatrice despised how Gwen’s “me” was now “us.” Why did couples have to do that? It irked her that when women married, they traded in their individual identity to become half of an “us” or a Mrs. Somebody or so-and-so’s mother. You were Gwen before you ever became Quentin’s wife, she wanted to scream.
“Are you okay, Bea? Your face is all red.”
Beatrice shook it off. “Oh, I’m fine. Think maybe the heat is getting to me.”
“Come inside then. I’ve got the fans on.”
Beatrice followed Gwen into the scorching kitchen, unable to fathom why she would even consider making a roast in this appalling heat.
Gwen stacked the cups and dishes in the sink and then faced Beatrice.
“You promise you’ll come for dinner before you leave?” Suddenly, Gwen’s eyes pooled with sadness.
Beatrice had to catch her breath. Gwen looked more beautiful every time she saw her. As much as she hated to admit it, marriage suited her, lending a maturity and grace to her flawless image.
“I promise.” She offered a bright smile, but the ache in her heart threatened to overcome her. This was never going to work.
They studied each other’s eyes for a moment as if they were both trying to solve a riddle. Beatrice kissed Gwen on her warm cheek. Slowly, her lips glided onto Gwen’s, the sweat under their noses mingling as their kiss lingered. She stood motionless, lost in the sensation of kissing Gwen the way she’d imagined hundreds of times.
When she pressed her chest against Gwen’s and draped her arms around her, Gwen nudged her back.
“Bea,” she whispered, looking away as she smoothed down her blouse.
Beatrice trembled as she averted her eyes. She couldn’t decide which felt worse, her humiliation at losing control or the look of discomfort on Gwen’s face.
“I’m sorry.” Her words were more of a spontaneous reaction than an earnest apology. Honestly, she wasn’t sorry at all. That kiss had been four years in the making, and it was utterly spectacular.
“Why did you do that?”
Honesty was out of the question. She searched absently for her purse as she continued mumbling apologies. “I’m sorry. I have to go get the bus. I’m…”
As Beatrice headed for the screen door, Gwen grasped her arm. “Bea, answer me. Why did you do that?”
“I don’t know,” Beatrice lied. “I guess I got confused. I mean, I don’t know. It’s just that I’m going to miss our friendship, you know, the way things used to be.”
She studied Beatrice for a moment. “Bea, Quentin isn’t right about you, is he?”
A wave of heat swept over Beatrice’s face that had nothing to do with the weather.
“What are you talking about?”
“Quent told me something on our honeymoon,” she said pensively, “and I just couldn’t believe it.”
Beatrice’s heart pounded at the walls of her ribcage. “What did he tell you?”
“That you’re…” Gwen’s eyes drifted toward the ceiling as she spoke softly. “That you’re—oh, I don’t know why he even said it.”
Beatrice grinned awkwardly as she formulated a denial, one that would sound authentic and not like a random collection of desperate words.
“He’s not right, is he?” Gwen’s pleading tone cut deeper than the accusation. “He’s mistaken, Bea, isn’t he?”
Beatrice gritted her teeth to contain her tears, but her eyes pooled anyway. Although she couldn’t bring herself to admit it, Gwen was the one person in the world to whom she couldn’t sell herself out by making an outright denial.
“I’m gonna miss my bus,” she said, and lunged down the porch steps two at a time, striding briskly toward the sidewalk.
“Bea, what the heck is going on with you?” Gwen called from the porch.
Beatrice waved without turning around, her heart still pounding. She finally noticed the patter of Gwen’s sandals on the sidewalk as she trotted behind her.
Gwen grabbed at the tail of Beatrice’s shirt. “Bea, will you talk to me?”
She stopped and whirled around to Gwen. “About what, whether or not I’m queer? What do you think? ”
“You kissed me.”
“You kissed me back.”
“I know.” Gwen said, stuffing her shaking hand into her pocket. “Look, I don’t know why I did, but I do know you’re my best friend, and I’m going to miss the way things were with us, too.” She scanned their surroundings. “We probably shouldn’t be talking about this stuff out here for the whole neighborhood to hear.”
“So suddenly you do care what the Joneses think.” Beatrice shook her head. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
Gwen stood, confounded into silence.
Beatrice wiped her cheek with the side of her hand.
“None of this matters anyway. I won’t be here to talk about it with anyone.”
“But for only two years, right?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“How I feel once I figure out who I’m living my life for.”
Beatrice rushed off toward the bus stop, panting in the oppressive heat, unable to look at Gwen even as the fading sound of Gwen’s voice called after her. Why did she have to be queer and in love with her best friend? Why couldn’t she just be normal like everyone else? Her whole childhood she’d wished for a friend like Gwen, and when she finally got one, she had to ruin everything.
*
As she boarded the train in New Haven two weeks later, Beatrice still felt guilty for not taking Gwen’s phone call in the days after their visit. The curiosity of what Gwen was going to say nagged her, but she simply couldn’t bear anymore heart-wrenching exchanges that would only end with the same result. She could barely handle seeing the initial disappointment and fear in Gwen’s eyes. Beatrice couldn’t face her, especially to say good-bye.
Chapter Nine
Beatrice’s first year at NYU sailed by without much ado. She appreciated the low-key existence, eluding the disaster of her emotions by immersing herself in her studies: Victorian literature and a minor in the poetry of Emily Dickinson. She’d also taken a job waitressing at a Greenwich Village bistro that allowed her the small pleasure of living a vicarious social life through the conversations of eclectic patrons.
At the start of her second year, however, she brought new meaning to the phrase “giving it the old college try” with one of her professors. Paul Wainwright was thin and lanky with a baby face and shock of blond curly hair. He smoked profusely, wore elbow patches on his corduroy blazers, and, above all, he knew his Dickinson. By his third request to see her privately in his office, it was evident that he was interested in more than just her educational aspirations.
On their first date, she’d discovered Professor Wainwright was unlike any of the boys, few as they were, she’d dated. Paul was a man—confident, worldly, and intelligent. He took her to Ma Rainey’s, a soul-food restaurant in Harlem where the smell of fresh corn bread and sounds of Ellington and Holiday enveloped the small space packed tightly with patrons of all backgrounds and an array of African art and architecture.
“This place is fantastic,” Beatrice said as she gazed around at the collection of faces both living and artificial.
“Nothing keeps the creative juices flowing like surrounding yourself with culture: p
eople, places, music, and food. They all inspire in their own fascinating ways.” He smiled and took a sip of his martini. “Frankly, I’ve never understood how Dickinson was able to be so prolific while being a shut-in.”
“I don’t know how she was that prolific at all. I’ve tried to write like her a million times and failed miserably every time.”
“That’s your problem right there, Bea. You should be writing like Darby, not Dickinson. You think she tried to be like anyone else?”
Beatrice shrugged and sipped her 7 and 7, an ode to Abby Gill.
“Think of Dickinson’s style,” he went on. “The dashes, the seemingly random capitalizations—today’s critics would eat her alive for that, but those are the most recognizable aspects of her writing.”
“She’s just marvelous. How anyone could write such a beautiful poem about wind blowing into her room, I’ll never know. I keep trying to write poetry, but I’m just not any good at it.”
He engaged her with piercing blue eyes as the weight of his full attention fell on her. “All you need to do is discover where your own writing strengths lie. It’s in there, Bea. Don’t be shy about letting it out.”
“I was always good at essays and even short stories, but that was in high school.” She hesitated. “I think I’m afraid my writing won’t be mature enough now.”
“Have you written anything recently?”
“Sort of.” She hedged. “It’s a really rough draft.”
“Why don’t you let me read it? I’ve had several pieces of fiction published. I’d be glad to give you some feedback.”
She shrank in her seat. “Oh, I don’t think I could. I wouldn’t feel comfortable.”
He offered an endearing smile and placed his hand on hers.
“I’m an English professor, your professor. If not me, who can you feel comfortable with?”
Beatrice raised an eyebrow. Was he still talking about writing? “It’s a work in progress. I’m not ready to share it with anyone yet.”
“Well, when you are, you know where to find me.”
She took another sip of her drink to mask her awkwardness.
The Revelation of Beatrice Darby Page 12