Gina shrugged. “You get used to it. Why do you hate your brother?” If Gina’s hands hadn’t been cupped around her tea, she would have slapped herself on the forehead with one of them. “I’m sorry. That’s too personal.”
Roni folded her legs on the couch again in that perfect, elegant movement. “It’s fine. My parents just always favored him. They wanted me to be a boy so I could help on the farm. Since I wasn’t a boy, they just ignored me. David knew that, so he used it as a chance to pick on me. At home, it wasn’t so bad as when we were in school. He’s only two years older so we were in the same school a lot together.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I can make a call, have him pulled over,” she added with a grin.
Roni smiled back. “That’s okay, it worked out for the best. If I had been more influenced by my family I might not have been able to form my own opinions and personality as easily. They’re pretty backwoods.” She sipped her tea and shook her head in disapproval. “I want to hear more about your time in the military. That’s pretty exciting.”
“It was pretty boring, actually. When I wasn’t reading, I drove people around. Which isn’t much different than what I do now.” She mused with a smirk. “I was mostly stationed in Europe acting as a translator.”
“Oh, what languages?”
“Italian. And some Spanish. They’re pretty similar.”
Intrigued, Roni leaned forward on her crossed legs. “That is so fascinating. Did you join the police as soon as you were done with your service?”
“I did. I was paired up with Steven immediately...Talk about a perfect match. He’s my rock and best friend. I honestly don’t know what I’d do without him.” In fact, Steven was the best man she had ever known. He was reliable, responsible, and sensitive when he needed to be. Gina’s brow furrowed slightly as she thought of the one negative aspect of their partnership. “There’s this one guy at work who calls us the ‘Affirmative Action Duo’. I really hate that guy.”
“I’d hate it if I had that nickname too.” Roni thought of their stories, and while different, were running parallel. “We’re probably about the same age. Twenty-four?”
“I turned twenty-five a few months ago. I guess I’m the older and wiser of the two of us.” Gina feigned an air of superiority and sipped her tea.
Roni laughed and it warmed Gina’s heart. “I don’t know about wiser, but older I’ll give you. Why don’t you share some of these notes you wrote and then I’ll determine just how wise you are?”
Gina read her notes thoroughly. Roni was taken by how sensitive and perceptive Gina was. Her ability to sympathize with the point-of-view of the different characters was especially interesting. No one else in the book club would do that. In addition to enjoying Gina’s slightly husky voice, Roni appreciated that someone else did most of the research for a change. All she needed to do was chime in with her own conclusions and thoughts.
“I never really thought about how feelings of love could be similar to being ill, but maybe that’s because I’ve never experienced love as intensely as Florentino did,” Roni concluded.
“I don’t think most people have. But I do think most have experienced heartbreak so visceral it’s reduced them to purging their system.”
Roni sat back into her couch and flashbacked to her first real relationship. Allison held her weeping body as Roni poured her heart out and, consequently, came out to her. “That, unfortunately, I can relate to.”
“I’m sorry.” Gina’s eyes held nothing but sympathy. “I didn’t mean to say something to make you feel uncomfortable. Was it recent?”
“No,” Roni smiled sadly, “but it still hurts to think about sometimes. I guess you can’t truly understand or appreciate great romantic love until you’ve had the pain to compare it to, which is exactly what you just said. You know...you’re pretty smart.”
“For a cop, right?” Gina had heard that so many times she debated getting business cards with it written.
“No. You’re just pretty smart.”
Gina grinned and tucked her head down bashfully, causing some of her loose, dark hair to sweep into her eyes. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” Roni resisted the urge to move the hair that was covering Gina’s eyes. Instead, she glanced down and saw that Gina’s cup was empty. “Would you like some more tea before the show starts?”
“I’d love some, but are you sure you wouldn’t rather I head home? I mean, I’ve had a great time, but I don’t want to intrude on your personal space or time.”
Roni giggled at Gina’s rambling and bent to pick up the tea tray. “I don’t think you’re intruding at all. To be honest, I’ve really enjoyed your company so I’d like you to stay—unless, of course, you need to scamper back to Early.”
Gina tried not to stare at Roni’s bent form. “I would really hate to interrupt his boys night. I’ll stay put.”
“Great! Why don’t you get the TV cued up and I’ll get us more tea.”
On opposite ends of the couch, they watched L.A. Law in comfortable silence, sipped tea, and stole the occasional glance. Roni noticed that Gina’s hair appeared longer than last she saw her and she was pushing it behind her ear often, only to have the strand fall again. Roni bet it felt as smooth as black silk. Gina observed that when Roni was anxious about something on the TV, she would bite her lower lip. That lip was so full and soft. Roni bit her lip often towards the end of the show.
The onscreen behavior had started off benign. Two female characters were talking and laughing as they walked out of a restaurant to a parked car. They hugged as female friends usually do at the end of the evening, but then the taller of the two leaned in for a kiss. And then another. It wasn’t a passionate kiss, but it wasn’t a chaste kiss either.
Both Roni and Gina turned their heads to each other at the same time to catch the other’s reaction to the display of affection before them.
“So,” Gina began and cleared her throat, “that was unexpected.”
“It was.” Roni nodded her head in agreement, but needed to subtly find out answers to a few questions that had been gnawing at her “Did watching two women kiss like that bother you?”
Nice and calm, DiCarlo. “No. Did watching two women kiss like that bother you?” asked Gina timidly.
“I can’t say that it does. You know,” Roni placed their tea cups back on the tray, “in the past, I may have had a few women kiss me.” She left for the kitchen not able to bear a possible look of contempt from Gina.
“Really?” Gina followed her, anxious to get to the bottom of this disclosure. “What did you think?”
“That doesn’t bother you? That I’ve been kissed by women?”
“No, I’m not bothered.” Let’s get to the real question. “What did you think?”
Roni smirked, pleased by Gina’s persistence and apparent comfort level. “Let’s just say, some kisses are better than others.”
“Oh.” Gina wished her jeans had pockets so she had somewhere to put her nervous hands. She settled for placing her hands on the counter behind her. “I’d have to agree with you that some kisses are better than others.”
“Kisses, in general, or just kisses from women?” Roni inquired, as she decreased the distance between them to place the cups into her washing bin. She grinned at Gina’s confounded expression, but decided to catch her a break. “But I suppose that’s the kind of thing you don’t need to concern yourself with now that you’re married. Your lips are for his only.”
“Yeah, my lips are for his only,” Gina said more glum that she wanted to. The reality of her marriage reminded her of another inconvenience. “The bus!”
“Shit!” Roni had completely forgotten too. “Did you miss it? I can drive you to the stop.”
“That’s okay. All I have to do is hustle.” Gina dashed from the kitchen, pulled her peacoat on quickly, and collected her note-stuffed book. “What’s next month’s book? I’ll be near the library tomorrow and I’d like to see if they have it.�
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“Um. I forget. I have a list somewhere on my desk.” Roni shuffled through the papers on her desk near the door. “Ah ha! Here it is. March is Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. That should be an interesting discussion.”
“I don’t even know what it’s about,” Gina wrapped her scarf securely around her neck.
“Oh, I think it’s right up your alley,” Roni smiled and opened the door once she saw that Gina had all of her things. “I’m glad you decided to stay. I had a lot of fun.”
“Me too. Goodnight, Roni.”
“Goodnight, Gina.”
***
“You need to be careful,” warned Steven, as he jogged alongside Gina.
“I am! I’m not touching or flirting. I’m not dressing provocatively in any way, shape, or form.”
“I don’t even know if you’d know how to dress provocatively.”
“Shut up. You’d be surprised what kind of response I get from the ladies when I try.”
“I’ve seen the response, remember?”
Gina chuckled to herself. Sometimes going to bars where Early performed did have its advantages. “I’m behaving myself the best I can and it’s nice to think that I might have a friend that’s not you or Early. I’ve been in this town for three years and don’t have any other friends. I’m lonely.”
“Okay. That I understand. You haven’t really branched out into your own social group. Even I have my baseball team to hang with and Early has his people.”
“Right! This book club could be a great start for me. Really, there’s nothing to worry about. I’m keeping myself under control and she’s probably not even gay. A lot of women experiment in college or have had a round of truth-or-dare. All the lesbian-based evidence is entirely circumstantial.”
“Wouldn’t hold up in court,” Steven added helpfully.
“Exactly. She’s probably just really nice and going out of her way to make me feel welcome.”
“Keep thinking that.” Steven slapped her on the back and sprinted ahead.
***
“I swear to you, this class is tons better than last semester’s Understanding Education Statistics,” Allison tried to convince her friend.
“Yeah,” Roni stated simply.
Allison eyed her suspiciously. “What’s up with you? You’re really quiet.”
“I’m getting over some kind of bug and I just have a lot on my mind.” Roni flipped to her notes from last week’s class.
“Which makes it even weirder, because when you’re preoccupied you usually won’t shut up.” Roni stared ahead, wishing the professor would start class. “Hmmm.” Allison continued to scrutinize her friend.
Roni gave her perfected teacher glare to her friend. “Stop analyzing me. You opted not to go the school counselor route, remember?”
“I got it!” Allison, being a teacher herself, was immune to Roni’s glower. “Who is she?”
Roni squirmed in her seat from frustration. Allison knew her too well. “She just joined my book club. Her name is Gina and she’s a cop.”
“Knew it!” Allison smiled triumphantly. “Is she butch?”
“More in appearance than demeanor. She’s so insightful and funny, even though she doesn’t try to be. She didn’t freak out when I mentioned that in the past I had kissed women.”
“Woah! How’d that come up?” It took Roni two years to come out to Allison and that was only because she was a crying, drunk mess after her first girlfriend dumped her for a member of Delta Chi.
“We were watching L.A. Law and there was that kiss so I asked her if that made her feel uncomfortable.” Allison nodded, given the hoopla that episode made, the conversation topic made sense. “It didn’t. Add on the fact that she has those dark Italian features going for her and a voice could melt butter—throaty, but not too throaty.”
“Not Kathleen Turner throaty?”
“Right.” Roni sighed, forlorn by a single fact. “And she’s married...even if she is really, really gay.”
Allison’s excited face fell. “Well, if she’s married it doesn’t matter how gay or hot or smart she is. You,” she pointed sternly at her friend, “need to respect the vow even if you didn’t take one yourself. At the most, you can indulge yourself in a little fantasy. But you should just be happy with the fact that you may have made a friend other than me. A friend who, by the sounds of it, won’t care that you’re a lesbian.”
“You’re right,” Roni begrudgingly admitted. “Even if I do think that she’s gay, she still made the decision to marry this Early guy. I need to respect that.” Roni opened her notebook and thought about Allison’s suggestion of fantasy. “Do you think she’s allowed to use her handcuffs for personal use?”
ONE MONTH LATER, MARCH 1991
GINA COULD NOT BELIEVE HOW slowly time moved.
So slowly, in fact, she volunteered for extra duty in the hope to make time move faster. She helped direct concert traffic and even did tours of a few different classrooms talking about Stranger Danger. The latter experience was truly frightening—twenty incredibly small people stared at her and asked questions. She didn’t know how Roni did it.
Dammit! Stop thinking about her. Gina knew she had to stop her infatuation with the blonde. All it was doing was adding tension and possibly complicating her already complicated marriage further.
Gina did the only thing she knew of that could take her mind off of the situation. She reached for her copy of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, propped herself up with a few pillows, and lounged comfortably as she started to read in bed. She enjoyed the writing style, the quirky characters, and the vivid setting of the turbulent nature of the Deep South. As she read, she felt the need to reread the page she had just read. And then she read it for a third time, just to make sure she wasn’t missing a small detail that would change her assessment. But she hadn’t missed anything and what she had read made her smile.
“Oh, my.”
***
“Oh my God, Gina, what did you bring?” Roni laughed, as she opened the door further. Gina held an overstuffed paper bag in her hands.
“I may have gone a little overboard at the store, but I was inspired. Since you said on the phone that you were making iced tea, I bought all kinds of snacks the characters would have liked. If we had green tomatoes up here, I would have made those.”
“You’ve made fried green tomatoes?” Roni asked surprised and took the bag from Gina.
“No, but it can’t be that much different than eggplant. I make a mean eggplant parm.” She watched Roni arrange the snacks meticulously on a platter and then lick honey glaze off of her thumb. Gina had never been so envious of a thumb in her life. She also realized how much of a challenge the evening was going to be. Gina muttered, “I’m such an idiot.”
“Did you say something?” A knock at the door disrupted Roni’s organization and her follow-up question. “Oh, sounds like the rest of the gang is here. Would you mind getting the door? I’m all sticky,” she held up her shiny fingers.
Gina nodded since her ability to form words was paralyzed. God help me—she’s sticky.
Based on the themes of the book, Roni anticipated this to be one of their more thought-provoking conversations, but she hadn’t expected it to be so captivating or spirited.
“Our society is so obsessed with anorexic ‘beauty’ right now, it’s disgusting,” commented Francis, who like many women felt the burden of accumulated weight over the years.
“I agree,” interjected Louise. “What happened to being healthy and beautiful? I mean, there is still the classic beauty, like Roni.”
“I’m not—”
“Oh, shut up, Roni. Yes, you are. Must be all of the dancing you do.”
All nodded their agreement except for Gina who was busy entertaining herself with images of Roni dancing. That did explain why Roni had such a grace about her when she moved.
Sarah noticed Gina’s silence right away. “You don’t agree, Gina?”
Gina felt trapped. It was just like when Roni showed Gina her intimidating look, except multiple teachers stared her down. She looked to Roni for assistance, but she absently flipped through the book, trying to ignore the fact she had been dragged into this. Gina swallowed nervously. “I...ah...of course, I agree. Roni is very attractive. She has beautiful eyes.” With that comment, Gina’s eyes met the emerald eyes she spoke of and Roni coyly smiled.
“That reminds me,” Sarah jumped in, “I heard that some people think there are lesbian tones to this book. I didn’t get that at all.”
“Are you kidding?” Roni exclaimed in outrage. “It’s plain as day.”
“It is not,” remarked Louise. “You’re reading into the story too much.”
“She is not!” Gina backed up Roni. “The love that Idgie has for Ruth is undeniable and heartbreaking.”
Sarah chortled, “That I’ll agree with, but Ruth did not reciprocate.”
“She did too!” Roni defended Gina. “Her protector, her ‘beecharmer.’ And how about this? If Ruth was so traditional and good-looking, why didn’t she remarry after leaving that awful man? I’ll tell you why. Because she loved and was committed to Idgie just as much as Idgie loved and was committed to her! End of story.”
Louise rolled her eyes. “Ruth didn’t want to remarry because her first husband beat the tar out of her. And just because she didn’t remarry doesn’t mean she’s a lesbian.” She gestured to Roni, “You’re getting up there in your years and you’re unmarried, doesn’t mean that you’re a lesbian.”
“I’m twenty-four! Okay, twenty-five next week, but since when is that old?” Roni chose to ignore the other suggestion.
“It’s not old,” answered Nancy, the eldest of the group at fifty-seven. “But that does bring up how aging was portrayed in the book. I’d like to talk about that next.”
“Oh, I wanted to talk about race,” interjected Mary. “Can we talk about race?”
After more heated conversation of aging and race, the book club was adjourned. The older women felt proud to have life experience. The heavier women vowed to view their health through energy and not a number on a scale. And both Roni and Gina were riled up from having to defend lesbian subtext that was hardly hidden.
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