A Place I've Never Been

by David Leavitt

  Diana—I only have one picture of her, and it is not a good likeness. In it she wears glasses and has long, long hair, sweeping below the white fringe of the picture, to her behind. She cut all her hair off as an offering to me the day after the first night we made love, and presented it that evening in a box—two neat braids, clipped easily as toenail parings, offered like a dozen roses. I stared at them, the hair still braided, still fresh with the smell of shampoo, and joked that I had bought her a comb, like in “The Gift of the Magi.” “Don’t you see?” she said. “I did it for you—I changed myself for you, as an act of love.” I looked at her, her new boyish bangs, her face suddenly so thin-seeming without its frame of yellow hair. She was used to big gestures, to gifts that made an impact.

  “Diana,” I lied (for I had loved her long hair), “it’s the most generous thing anyone’s ever done for me.” To say she’d done it for me—well, it was a little bit like a mean trick my sister pulled on me one Christmas when we were kids. She had this thing about getting a little tiny tree to put on top of the piano. And I, of course, wanted a great big one, like the Wagner family down the block. And then, about ten days before Christmas, she said, “Ellen, I have an early Christmas present for you,” and she handed me a box, inside which were about a hundred miniature Christmas-tree ornaments.

  I can recognize a present with its own motive.

  If I’ve learned one thing from Diana, it’s that there’s more to a gift than just giving.

  The next day was the day of the wedding, and somehow, without hitting any children, I drove to the hotel in Hillsborough where the ceremony and reception were taking place. A doorman escorted me to a private drawing room where, nervous about being recognized, I kept the Cuisinart in front of my face as long as I could, until finally an older woman with a carnation over her breast, apparently an aunt or something, said, “May I take that, dear?” and I had to surrender the Cuisinart to a table full of presents, some of which were hugely and awkwardly wrapped and looked like human heads. I thanked her, suddenly naked in my shame, and sturdied myself to brave the drawing room, where the guests milled. I recognized two or three faces from college, all part of Diana’s set—rich, straight, preppy, not the sort I had hung around with at all. And in the distance I saw her very prepared parents, her mother thin and severe-looking as ever in a sleeveless black dress, her streaked hair cut short, like Diana’s, her neck and throat nakedly displaying a brilliant jade necklace, while her father, in his tuxedo, talked with some other men and puffed at a cigar. Turning to avoid them, I almost walked right into Walter Bevins, who was Diana’s gay best friend, or “hag fag,” in college, and we were so relieved to see each other we grabbed a couple of whiskey sours and headed to as secluded a corner as we could find. “Boy, am I glad to see a familiar face,” Walter said. “Can you believe this? Though I must say, I never doubted Diana would get married in anything less than splendor.”

  “Me neither,” I admitted. “I was just a little surprised that Diana was getting married at all.”

  “Weren’t we all!” Walter said. “But he seems like a nice guy. A lawyer, of course. Very cute, a real shame that he’s heterosexual, if you ask me. But apparently she loves him and he loves her, and that’s just fine. Look, there he is.”

  Walter pointed to a tall, dark man with a mustache and beard who stood in the middle of a circle of elderly women. To my horror, his eye caught ours, and he disentangled himself from the old women and walked over to where we were sitting. “Walter,” he said. Then he looked at me and said, “Ellen?”

  I nodded and smiled.

  “Ellen, Ellen,” he said, and reached out a hand which, when I took it, lifted me from the safety of my sofa onto my feet. “It is such a pleasure to meet you,” he said. “Come with me for a second. I’ve wanted a chance to talk with you for so long, and once the wedding takes place—who knows?”

  I smiled nervously at Walter, who raised a hand in comradeship, and was led by the groom through a door to an antechamber, empty except for a card table piled high with bridesmaids’ bouquets. “I just want you to know,” he said, “how happy Diana and I are that you could make it. She speaks so warmly of you. And I also want you to know, just so there’s no tension, Diana’s told me everything, and I’m fully accepting of her past.”

  “Thank you, Mark,” I said, horrified that at my age I could already be part of someone’s “past.” It sounded fake to me, as if lesbianism was just a stage Diana had passed through, and I was some sort of perpetual adolescent, never seeing the adult light of heterosexuality.

  “Charlie,” Mark said. “I’m called Charlie.”

  He opened the door, and as we were heading back out into the drawing room, he said, “Oh, by the way, we’ve seated you next to the schizophrenic girl. Your being a social worker and all, we figured you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Me?” I said. “Mind? Not at all.”

  “Thanks. Boy, is Diana going to be thrilled to see you.”

  Then he was gone into the crowd.

  Once back in the drawing room I searched for Walter, but couldn’t seem to find him. I was surrounded on all sides by elderly women with elaborate, peroxided hairdos. Their purses fascinated me. Some were hard as shell and shaped like kidneys, others made out of punctured leather that reminded me of birth control pill dispensers. Suddenly I found myself face to nose with Marjorie Winters, whose eyes visibly bulged upon recognizing me. We had met once, when Diana had brought me home for a weekend, but that was before she had told her mother the nature of our relationship. After Diana came out—well, I believe the exact words were, “I never want that woman in my house again.”

  “Ellen,” Marjorie said now, just as I had imagined she might. “What a surprise.” She smiled, whether with contempt or triumph I couldn’t tell.

  “Well, you know I wouldn’t miss Diana’s wedding, Mrs. Winters,” I said, smiling. “And this certainly is a lovely hotel.”

  She smiled. “Yes, isn’t it? Red, look who’s here,” she said, and motioned over her husband, who for no particular reason except that his name was Humphrey was called Red. He was an amiable, absent-minded man, and he stared at me in earnest, trying to figure out who I was.

  “You remember Diana’s friend Ellen, from college, don’t you?”

  “Oh yes,” he said. “Of course.” Clearly he knew nothing. I believe his wife liked to keep him in a perpetual dark like that, so that he wouldn’t be distracted from earning money.

  “Ellen’s a social worker,” Marjorie said, “at the state hospital at Milpitas. So Diana and I thought it would be a good idea to seat her next to the schizophrenic girl, don’t you think?”

  “Oh yes,” Red said. “Definitely. I imagine they’ll have a lot of things to talk about.”

  A little tinkling bell rang, and Marjorie said, “Oh goodness, that’s my cue. Be a dear, and do take care of Natalie.” Squeezing my hand, she was gone. She had won, and she was glorying in her victory. And not for the first time that day, I wondered: Why is it that the people who always win always win?

  The guests were beginning to move outdoors, to the garden, where the ceremony was taking place. Lost in the crowd, I spied Walter and maneuvered my way next to him. “How’s it going, little one?” he said.

  “I feel like a piece of shit,” I said. I wasn’t in the mood to make small talk.

  “That’s what weddings are for,” he said cheerfully. We headed through a pair of French doors into a small, beautiful garden, full of blooming roses and wreaths and huge baskets of wisteria and lilies. Handsome, uniformed men—mostly brothers of the groom, I presumed—were helping everyone to their seats. Thinking we were a couple, one of them escorted Walter and me to one of the back rows, along with several other young couples, who had brought their babies and might have to run out to change a diaper or something in the middle of the ceremony.

  As soon as everyone was seated the string quartet in the corner began to play something sweet and Chopin-like, and then the proce
ssion started—first Diana’s sister, who was matron of honor; then the bridesmaids, each arm in arm with an usher, each dressed in a different pastel dress which was coordinated perfectly with her bouquet; and then, finally, Diana herself, looking resplendent in her white dress. Everyone gave out little oohs and aahs as she entered, locked tight between her parents. It had been two years since we’d seen each other, and looking at her, I thought I’d cry. I felt like such a piece of nothing, such a worthless piece of garbage without her—she was really that beautiful. Her hair was growing back, which was the worst thing. She had it braided and piled on her head and woven with wildflowers. Her skin was flawless, smooth—skin I’d touched hundreds, thousands of times—and there was an astonishing brightness about her eyes, as if she could see right through everything to its very heart. From the altar, the groom looked on, grinning like an idiot, a proud possessor who seemed to be saying, with his teary grin, see, look what I’ve got, look what chose me. And Diana too, approaching him at the altar, was all bright smiles, no doubt, no regret or hesitation registering in her face, and I wondered what she was thinking now: if she was thinking about her other life, her long committed days and nights as a lesbian.

  The music stopped. They stood, backs to us, the audience, before the reverent reverend. He began to lecture them solemnly. And then I saw it. I saw myself stand up, run to the front of the garden, and before anyone could say anything, do anything, pull out the gun and consummate, all over the grass, my own splendid marriage to vengeance.

  But of course I didn’t do anything like that. Instead I just sat there with Walter and listened as Diana, love of my life, my lover, my life, repeated the marriage vows, her voice a little trembly, as if to suggest she was just barely holding in her tears. They said their “I do”s. They exchanged rings. They kissed, and everyone cheered.

  At my table in the dining room were seated Walter; the Winterses’ maid, Juanita; her son; the schizophrenic girl; and the schizophrenic girl’s mother. It was in the darkest, most invisible corner of the room, and I could see it was no accident that Marjorie Winters had gathered us all here—all the misfits and minorities, the kooks and oddities of the wedding. For a minute, sitting down and gazing out at the other tables, which were full of beautiful women and men in tuxedos, I was so mad at Diana I wanted to run back to the presents table and reclaim my Cuisinart, which I really couldn’t afford to be giving her anyway, and which she certainly didn’t deserve. But then I realized that people would probably think I was a thief and call the hotel detective or the police, and I decided not to.

  The food, Leonore would have been pleased to know, was mediocre. Next to me, the schizophrenic girl stabbed with her knife at a pathetic-looking little bowl of melon balls and greenish strawberries, while her mother looked out exhaustedly, impatiently, at the expanse of the hotel dining room. Seeing that the schizophrenic girl had started, Juanita’s son, who must have been seven feet tall, began eating as well, but she slapped his hand. Not wanting to embarrass him by staring, I looked at the schizophrenic girl. I knew she was the schizophrenic girl by her glasses—big, ugly, red ones from the seventies, the kind where the temples start at the bottom of the frames—and the way she slumped over her fruit salad, as if she was afraid someone might steal it.

  “Hello,” I said to her.

  She didn’t say anything. Her mother, dragged back into focus, looked down at her and said, “Oh now, Natalie.”

  “Hello,” Natalie said.

  The mother smiled. “Are you with the bride or the groom?” she asked.

  “The bride.”

  “Relation?”

  “Friend from college.”

  “How nice,” the mother said. “We’re with the groom. Old neighbors. Natalie and Charlie were born the same day in the same hospital, isn’t that right, Nat?”

  “Yes,” Natalie said.

  “She’s very shy,” the mother said to me, and winked.

  Across the table Walter was asking Juanita’s son if he played basketball. Shyly, in a Jamaican accent, he admitted that he did. His face was as arch and stern as that of his mother, a fat brown woman with the eyes of a prison guard. She smelled very clean, almost antiseptic.

  “Natalie, are you in school?” I asked.

  She continued to stab at her fruit salad, not really eating it as much as trying to decimate the pieces of melon.

  “Tell the lady, Natalie,” said her mother.

  “Yes.”

  “Natalie’s in a very special school,” the mother said.

  “I’m a social worker,” I said. “I understand about Natalie.”

  “Oh really, you are?” the mother said, and relief flushed her face. “I’m so glad. It’s so painful, having to explain—you know—”

  Walter was trying to get Juanita to reveal the secret location of the honeymoon. “I’m not saying,” Juanita said. “Not one word.”

  “Come on,” said Walter. “I won’t tell a soul, I swear.”

  “I’m on TV,” Natalie said.

  “Oh now,” said her mother.

  “I am. I’m on The Facts of Life. I’m Tuti.”

  “Now, Natalie, you know you’re not.”

  “And I’m also on All My Children during the day. It’s a tough life, but I manage.”

  “Natalie, you know you’re not to tell these stories.”

  “Did someone mention All My Children?” asked Juanita’s son. Walter, too, looked interested.

  “My lips are forever sealed,” Juanita said to no one in particular. “There’s no chance no way no one’s going to get me to say one word.”

  Diana and Ellen. Ellen and Diana. When we were together, everything about us seethed. We lived from seizure to seizure. Our fights were glorious, manic, our need to fight like an allergy, something that reddens and irritates the edges of everything and demands release. Once Diana broke the air conditioner and I wouldn’t forgive her. “Leave me alone,” I screamed.

  “No,” she said. “I want to talk about it. Now.”

  “Well, I don’t.”

  “Why are you punishing me?” Diana said. “It’s not my fault.”

  “I’m not punishing you.”

  “You are. You’re shutting me up when I have something I want to say.”

  “Damn it, won’t you just leave me alone? Can’t you leave anything alone?”

  “Let me say what I have to say, damn it!”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t break it on purpose! I broke it by accident!”

  “Damn it, Diana, leave me the fuck alone! Why don’t you just go away?”

  “You are so hard!” Diana said, tears in her eyes, and slammed out the door into the bedroom.

  After we fought, consumed, crazed, we made love like animals, then crawled about the house for days, cats in a cage, lost in a torpor of lazy carnality. It helped that the air conditioner was broken. It kept us slick. There was always, between us, heat and itch.

  Once, in those most desperate, most remorse-filled days after Diana left, before I moved down the peninsula to my escape-hatch dream house, I made a list which was titled “Reasons I love her.”

  1. Her hair.

  2. Her eyes.

  3. Her skin. (Actually, most of her body except maybe her elbows.)

  4. The way she does voices for the plants when she waters them, saying things like “Boy was I thirsty, thanks for the drink.” [This one was a lie. That habit actually infuriated me.]

  5. Her advantages: smart and nice.

  6. Her devotion to me, to us as a couple.

  7. How much she loved me.

  8. Her love for me.

  9. How she loves me.

  There was less to that list than met the eye. When Diana left me—and it must be stated, here and now, she did so cruelly, callously, and suddenly—she said that the one thing she wanted me to know was that she still considered herself a lesbian. It was only me she was leaving. “Don’t think I’m just another straight girl who used you,” she insiste
d, as she gathered all her things into monogrammed suitcases. “I just don’t feel we’re right for each other. You’re a social worker. I’m not good enough for you. Our lives, our ideas about the world—they’re just never going to mesh.”

  Outside, I knew, her mother’s station wagon waited in ambush. Still I pleaded. “Diana,” I said, “you got me into this thing. You lured me in, pulled me in against my will. You can’t leave just like that.”

  But she was already at the door. “I want you to know,” she said, “because of you, I’ll be able to say, loud and clear, for the rest of my life, I am a lesbian,” and kissed me on the cheek.

  In tears I stared at her, astonished that this late in the game she still thought my misery at her departure might be quelled by abstract gestures to sisterhood. Also that she could think me that stupid. I saw through her quaking, frightened face, her little-boy locks.