“You are?” I see her literally swallow, a bulge in her throat moving up and then down, disappearing. I’ve always thought it was just an expression. “When are you leaving?” she asks.
I shrug. “As soon as I get better. By the end of the month.”
Nancy is thrilled and promises I can stay with her as long as I need to. She says she wants to fix me up with a couple of guys she thinks I’d really like, but I’ve told her I don’t want to start dating anyone right away. My parents think my decision is a great idea too. My father says there are terrific job opportunities in DC. All I want is to get out, start over.
Min nods, squinting. “So, you’re practically gone. I guess it’s pretty obvious why you’d want to leave.”
I stare at her. “God, you are so presumptuous.”
She looks down. “I don’t mean to be. I was trying to say I respect your decision.”
I can’t believe we are having this conversation. It really is true, she’s willing to let me go. For her, it’s the easiest thing to do. I look down at my hands, one clasped inside the other. I don’t want her to know I’m getting tearful. She’s seen too much of that.
Min starts to speak, stops, is silent again. A guy from the building appears on the street in front of us, unlocking the gate. “Hi,” he says, skirting around us as he climbs the stairs. Neither of us answers him.
“I wanted to tell you I miss you,” Min says. I close my eyes as my heart squeezes tight. I wait for her to go on. “I’ve done very little these last couple of weeks but think of you, you know. No, I guess you wouldn’t know.” She laughs a little, nervously. Then she swallows again. I can hear it this time. “I’ve been a mess. Margo finally came over to yell at me. She made me step back and get a little perspective. You were right, what you said that night about my being afraid of losing you if we got too close. It’s true. Of course understanding it doesn’t make it go away.”
I smile in spite of myself. My eyes are still closed. I am holding my breath.
She goes on, “I realized something else. There are consequences to loving someone, to her loving you. I mean responsibility, I think. Margo helped me see that it wasn’t fair of me to tell you that I wanted to be with you and at the same time that I wanted to be able to see other women.”
I am so grateful to be hearing this at last. At the same time, a small voice inside me flares up, accusingly. (That’s what I was telling you all along.) I reach into the pocket of my bathrobe and take out a tissue. I blow my stuffed-up nose into it.
I say, “Margo had to tell you what you wanted?”
“I didn’t know what I wanted, Laura. I’m still not positive. I’ve always trusted my feelings in the moment to guide me. I’m impulsive. That’s not something I feel I need to apologize for.” I look at her, then away. I’m still waiting. Then I feel ashamed of myself. I’m acting like I deserve her apology. When did I stop receiving her love as a gift?
Min says, “What I realize is that I have to make a decision one way or the other. To commit or to get out. Something that takes you into consideration too. Otherwise you’ll do something like move to Washington.”
She hasn’t said what her decision is, and her missing me isn’t enough for me to jump to a conclusion. I turn, shifting my whole body toward her. I feel calm. In a strange way, it doesn’t matter what happens now.
“Laura,” Min says abruptly, and I can tell that she’s holding herself back from touching me, which would be the easy answer, the one she has always used. “I really miss you. I don’t want you to move to Washington. I want you to stay here. With me.”
I have no immediate response, for her or for myself. A lot has happened between us, maybe more than we know what to do with. She’s not the only one who’s scared.
I reach out and cover her hand that is lying in a loose fist on her leg with my own hand. “Do you remember when I met you the first day of fifth grade and we played Scissors, Paper, Stone?”
“Yeah, you hit me!”
“I didn’t know any better. Those were the rules I’d learned.”
Sitting with her now on the steps of my building, I hold her fist firmly, paper covering stone. Then I slide my fingers lightly over her knuckles, her fingers, feeling the smoothness of the skin and the shape of the bones underneath. It’s hard, but I hold her gaze as my hand moves along hers. Her fingers open and spread, and mine slip along their sides. I touch her very lightly. Now I couldn’t look away from her eyes if I tried. Then she turns her hand over, unhurriedly, never losing contact with mine. We rub our palms together, lightly. My fingers slide between hers. We clasp hands. I want to spend the rest of my life memorizing her face, knowing she could someday turn away.
Then I close my eyes and sneeze, and sneeze again.
“It’s chilly out here,” Min says. “You should be in bed.” We let our hands pull apart, and we stand up. I brush off the back of my bathrobe. I am giddy, though I have no idea how much is exhilaration and how much is being sick. When I run up the last steps to the door and turn around, Min is standing where I left her.
“Aren’t you coming up?” I ask, afraid I have misunderstood everything.
“Wait,” she says. “I want to know something. If I hadn’t come over and you had moved to Washington, would you at least have said goodbye?”
I panic, not sure what to tell her. Her slight smile drains away. She can see from my face what the answer is.
“Well,” she says, bounding up the steps and putting her hand on my back. “That was close.”
I push open the door, kicking the wedge out of the way. We go inside.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wrote Scissors, Paper, Stone during the second half of the 1990s, two decades before it is being published. In the intervening years I lost my notes and documentation related to the book, so the following acknowledgments are necessarily incomplete. In addition to those named, a number of people gave me valuable assistance along the way, for which I am genuinely grateful.
My appreciation to the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, and the Saltonstall Foundation Arts Colony for their gifts of uninterrupted time to write in beautiful parts of the country.
Thank you to Red Hen Press for such a streamlined and rewarding publishing experience. I am especially grateful to Tobi Harper for founding the Quill Prose Award.
Most of all, I thank my non-writer friends who read the full manuscript at various stages and gave illuminating feedback: Joy Cramer, Ruth Chapman, Pam Roman, and Pat Uribe-Lichty. Your support and encouragement helped me persevere.
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
MARTHA K. DAVIS is a writer, editor, and teacher living in San Diego. Her short stories and essays have appeared in River Styx, Stone Canoe, The Gay & Lesbian Review, StoryQuarterly, CALYX, and elsewhere. She received her MFA in fiction from Columbia University. Parts of Scissors, Paper, Stone were written during residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Djerassi Resident Artists Program.
Scissors, Paper, Stone Page 32