A Thin Bright Line

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  “Coming with you,” Harry said, following his boyfriend and winking at Lucybelle. “I’ll miss you. We all will. Stay in touch. Come back and visit.”

  Clare returned with her martini just as Serena and Helen were saying their good-byes.

  “I should go too,” Lucybelle said. “L’Forte’s been inside since lunch.” But she didn’t move. She took a swallow of the martini. She couldn’t resist the urge to unmoor, to drift a bit, just for a few minutes.

  “So no one’s seen you since the middle of June,” Clare said. She sipped her beer. “Where’ve you been staying?”

  Lucybelle wished everyone hadn’t left. She needed the swell of jokes.

  “Are you really going to Chicago? Why?” Clare nudged Lucybelle. “You’re running away.”

  “No. I’m not.” How could she explain any of it to this young woman with her satchel of homosexual literature? She’d agreed to a new alliance, a strange and risky partnership with an ice scientist, with the snowcaps themselves. “I’m running to.”

  “To what?”

  “Something unknown. That’s the best part.”

  Clare nodded slowly, pleased that Lucybelle was answering her questions. She waved her hand at the bartender, and when she got his attention, held up two fingers. Then she thumped her satchel up onto the tabletop. “I want to show you something. It’s brilliant.” She pulled a piece of yellow construction paper out of her satchel and laid it on the table. A simple black line drawing depicted a ladder leading up into some clouds and off the page. Two women stood at the base of the ladder, and below them were the words “San Francisco, California.” “The first issue of a new magazine. I have an ex who’s working on it. This is the cover art.”

  “What kind of magazine?” Although Lucybelle thought she knew.

  “A new group of gay ladies. They’re calling themselves Daughters of Bilitis, though I have no idea why. They’re all in San Francisco.”

  The waiter delivered the martini and beer, and Clare toasted Lucybelle. “To Chicago and new love.”

  “To Chicago,” Lucybelle said, and she finished off half of the martini in one swallow.

  “They’re still working on the articles,” Clare said. “I thought maybe you could write something.”

  “What would I write?”

  “I don’t know. What it’s like to be a gay girl in New York?”

  “That sounds like something you should write.”

  “I can’t write. I can only talk.” Clare smiled and took Lucybelle’s hand. “I’m going to miss you.”

  “We hardly know each other.”

  “I’ve always wanted to know you better.”

  Why not? Why not? The words were so liberating. When she’d first come to New York, she’d been too green and too shy to go with girls like Clare. Then her life got consumed by Phyllis. But now she was entirely free to do as she pleased.

  Except, of course, for the small matter of her agreement with Henri Bader. But she hadn’t started her job yet. She wasn’t in Chicago yet.

  “I’ll walk you home,” Clare said. “Where are you staying?”

  Home. Lucybelle pictured this hardy girl holding her hand, crossing the Appalachian Mountains on foot, braving the blowing winds of the prairie, and then dropping into the northeast corner of Arkansas. Home. That abrasive rub between her little blue house in Pocahontas and the streets of New York. It always made her dizzy, thinking of that distance, her journey so far. Then again, it was probably the three martinis making her dizzy.

  “Come on,” Clare said. “At least to the subway station.”

  Lucybelle scooted out of the booth and took Clare’s arm. It felt good holding on to someone who felt so sure of herself. Below the grassy shirt Clare wore loose blue jeans cinched with a rough-hewn leather belt and a big brass buckle. Strapped to her feet were coarse leather sandals with thick black soles. All she needed was a staff to look like an urban shepherdess.

  The gin made her feet clumsy and she leaned into Clare. It was a hot night and a sheen of sweat covered their joined arms.

  “Tell me exactly where you’ll be,” Clare said. “I’m concerned.”

  “I took a job with the Snow, Ice, and Permafrost Research Establishment lab.”

  “The what?”

  “It’s a promotion. I’m happy.”

  “Do you miss Phyllis?”

  Lucybelle pulled away from Clare and stopped next to a streetlamp. Of course she did. In spite of everything.

  “How could you not? You were together forever.”

  “The first time I saw her she was on stage doing A Midsummer’s Night Dream. She was so funny and sexy. Shakespeare’s poetry in her mouth. Maybe it was just her mouth. Maybe that’s all I loved.”

  Clare laughed, leaned in, and kissed her.

  She’d had all that gin and no dinner. The air was hot and thick, the evening light too persistent. She stepped into a dark entryway and pressed her back against the cool stone wall. Clare followed her into the deep corner. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Clare pushed the damp curls off of Lucybelle’s forehead.

  Was desire a form of courage? Sometimes she thought it might kill her, this friction between the simple truth of what she wanted and the fear of getting it. How could they both exist, side by side? One day they’d combust.

  “You don’t need her,” Clare said, her alpine eyes brightening the entry-way. “You’re a hundred times the woman she is.” Her fingertips traced the vein running down Lucybelle’s neck, the span of her clavicle. “She’s always acting, even when she’s not on stage. Which I’ve noticed she hasn’t been in some time.”

  Lucybelle snorted gently.

  “Anyway, her cowardice is despicable. Marrying that man as a cover. Her soul will eat her from the inside out.”

  “Okay,” Lucybelle said. “You’ve made your point.”

  She let Clare run a finger over her top lip and then along her bottom one. She gave in to the solid wall against her back and the soothing wrap of darkness. Why not? She was leaving New York in two days.

  There had always been something a bit apologetic about Phyllis’s kisses, but not Clare’s. Lucybelle’s life of the mind took flight, soared from the dark entryway and up into the twilit sky above the Village. She pulled Clare against her, gripping the back of her head with both hands. The hot night caused both women to sweat sheets of saltwater.

  When, a few minutes later, Clare began to button up the front of Lucybelle’s dress, she grabbed her wrists and said, “Not yet.”

  “Ho!” Clare said. “I’d never have taken you for a greedy girl.”

  The word greedy only scratched the surface of the longing she felt. She wanted Henri Bader’s glaciers. Their clarity. Translucence. Boldly edging forward, they carved their own paths on this planet. After gasping against Clare’s hand, she slid down the wall and sat in that dark corner while Clare stood over her asking, “Are you okay? Lucy? Are you okay?”

  She realized she was crying, and she didn’t want Clare to see this. She got to her feet and said, “I’m fine. I better go.”

  “I’ll walk you.”

  “It’s too far.”

  “I’ll go with you in the cab.” Clare did see the tears and wiped them with her fingertips, a bit brusquely, thankfully devoid of sympathy.

  Lucybelle kissed her, right out in the open of the lit street. “I’m going to walk,” she said, “and it’s a long way.” She wanted to feel the hot pavement of New York against the soles of her feet one last time.

  Clare wouldn’t go away. She chatted cheerfully at her side, the melody of her banter not unpleasant though Lucybelle hardly listened to the content of the words. They hiked uptown, past the theaters and then the park, the streets emptying and the light dimming. Her legs ached by the time they reached the guesthouse.

  Clare said, “I think you’ll be back.”

  “Thank you for walking with me.” Poor L’Forte. By now he’d probably soiled the room’s
rug.

  “I admire you a lot,” Clare said. “Call me sometime, okay?”

  Lucybelle stood on the guesthouse doorstep, hot and exhausted, unwilling to speak a lie, impatient now to rescue her sweet dachshund. She said good night, pushed open the glass door, and walked briskly across the lobby without looking over her shoulder. A few minutes later when she brought L’Forte back outside—the good boy had held his bladder all these hours—Clare was nowhere in sight. In fact, the street was entirely deserted.

  Part Two

  Chicago, 1956–61

  Saturday, November 10, 1956

  The Snow, Ice and Permafrost Research Establishment lab was in Wilmette, twenty miles north of Chicago, and so Lucybelle found an apartment in nearby Evanston, on Michigan Avenue, just a couple of blocks from the lake. The rooms were large, freshly painted a creamy yellow, and filled with light. She didn’t know what she’d do with all that space but took the place in an expansive moment. The landlord said no dogs, so she was glad she’d left L’Forte tied to a tree. She signed the lease and smuggled him in. Luckily the elderly couple that occupied the apartment across from hers at the top of the outdoor stairway, Mr. and Mrs. Worthington, admired L’Forte and approved of her infraction. They themselves hid a basset hound in their rooms.

  The first weeks passed in a satisfying pitch of nonstop work. She understood geology and was well versed in the vernacular of academia, but here at SIPRE she worked cheek by jowl with the scientists themselves, a heady crew of men who lived and breathed the language of water, ice, rock, and air. There were thrilling moments, when she understood, when the importance of their work shone through the veneer of bawdy humor and the deceptive office attire of blue jeans and rolled up shirtsleeves, as if everyone were on a camping trip rather than investigating the edges of human knowledge. Other moments she felt nearly crushed by the weight of her job, to make these explanations of earth itself comprehensible to the public. Editor-in-chief, wordsmith, report writer: they dumped their data on her desk and she was supposed to transform it into readable sentences. Worse, all of them to a man believed he’d already written up his data in the best way possible. She did not have a knack for massaging egos, nor did she want to develop that skill. It would be a waste of time. It confounded her the way her habit of speaking her mind plainly did not go over well in these circumstances.

  “I changed your words because you hadn’t written complete sentences, so—”

  “Change it back to how I had it.”

  Or another time: “You’ve buried the conclusion in the middle of your paper. An opening paragraph stating what you will show and a concluding one summing up your results strengthens your case.”

  “Change it back to how I had it.”

  Even when she told a scientist, “I didn’t change a word. I only corrected spelling and grammar,” he insisted she, “Change it back to how I had it.”

  There were moments, rare ones, when the results of her hard work managed to drip through tiny crevices. “I checked the math. It doesn’t add up. There’s a mistake in your calculation about the pH levels.”

  “You’re not a mathematician.”

  “And yet I checked the math and found an error.”

  An hour later, Peter Hauser returned to stop in front of her desk to say, merely, “So you did.”

  Russell Woo, for whom English was a second language, was particularly and inexplicably defensive about his writing, and yet almost furtively grateful at the same time. Within earshot of others, he’d adopt a gruff reluctance with her suggestions. In private, he met eyes with her and said, “Thank you.”

  In the middle of November she finally took off a Saturday and rode the train into Chicago. She spent most of the morning at the Art Institute, waiting until the very end to find Willa Cather’s picture, or rather her character Thea Kronberg’s picture, The Song of the Lark. “The flat country, the early morning light, the wet fields, the look in the girl’s heavy face . . .” The girl in the picture might be barefoot, but she’s holding a scythe and looking out to the far distance. Thea Kronberg felt a “boundless satisfaction” in looking at the picture, and so Willa Cather too must have felt the joy of recognition. What exactly did the girl with the scythe see on the horizon? Lucybelle looked at the picture for nearly an hour.

  In the afternoon she braved Marshall Field’s on State Street. Thankfully, an animated young salesgirl found her wandering among the racks and offered help. She bought three dresses, two pairs of trousers, heels that went with all the dresses, and tie oxfords for the pants. When the salesgirl asked if she needed anything else, Lucybelle had her fetch stockings for the dresses and a pair of Keds for L’Forte’s walks. A new coat for winter? the girl suggested. Good idea. She bought the first one the girl showed her, plum wool with wide overlapping lapels and brass buttons. She was finished shopping in just over an hour.

  Even with full shopping bags in both hands she didn’t much feel like getting on the train back to Evanston. She ought to find a diner and get a bite to eat. She’d had coffee this morning, and maybe a glass of juice, but no breakfast or lunch. Sometimes she liked the light-headed feeling that came with not eating, but if she let it go too far, and she probably had today, she risked judgment impairment. Not that she had anything she had to decide or even think about today. She walked along the river, and when she came to the Michigan Avenue Bridge she stopped to investigate the bas-relief sculptures. She liked the woman with wings.

  Lucybelle walked to the middle of the span and looked down into the water. Earlier in the day it’d been a lovely muted green, but the river was blackening with dusk. She looked up at the jagged skyline, the dark buildings geometrically friendly as if their purpose were to frame the sky. The winged woman in the bas-relief sculpture could sail right up through the dark city and into the purple beyond.

  To be able to defy gravity! This bridge did just that, creating a pocket of space between the roadway, with her on it, and the slipping river. She looked down again at the flow. It was easier to avoid thinking about Phyllis and Fred on workdays. The backlog was tremendous and she usually stayed at the office long past quitting time, working on the reports and letters and other documents that needed her attention. Finally Bader told her to stop staying late and to stop coming in on Saturdays. It was the look on his face more than his words, as if he were studying her for signs of mental illness. He was a man who liked to have a good time, and while he’d hired her because of her reputation for hard work and precision, she could tell he didn’t fully respect someone who didn’t share his capacity for fun.

  She did in fact have a capacity for fun. She and Phyllis had had loads of fun, especially at first. She couldn’t imagine Phyllis having fun with wormlike Fred, or even having a laugh. Daddy was right: she should have kicked them out of the apartment even if she herself wasn’t going to keep it. Having such an intimate knowledge of the rooms they occupied was unbearable. If she didn’t know where they were she couldn’t imagine their lives. But she did know. She could picture perfectly how Phyllis dropped bread into the toaster each morning and then leaned against the refrigerator with her arms crossed, scowling, groggy, waiting for it to pop up. How she poured too much heavy cream into her strong coffee. Did she ask Fred to rub her feet at night? Of course she did.

  The Michigan Avenue Bridge was considered a wonder of engineering the way it held her suspended over the river. But she could overcome its defiance of gravity: she could jump. Would the shopping bags be heavy enough to pull her under? Of course she’d let go of the handles. How embarrassing: to jump from a bridge and survive, with new dresses, stockings, and heels floating about her body. Just the thought of facing her boss—tall, hale Henri Bader with his thicket of black hair, raspberry red lips, coarse sense of humor—after such a fiasco made her flush.

  She did want to please him. The bald arrogance of his pitch at life refreshed her. He was like a smart Paul Bunyan, wielding a giant axe to clear the way for his vision of the future.

 
; She ought to eat something. She hardly had the strength to heft her shopping bags and walk to the train station. She laid her cheek against her hands on the railing and closed her eyes, just a tiny nap here on the bridge. When she opened them again, she looked right into the lens of a camera, not ten feet away. Click.

  The young man—no, it was a woman—lowered her camera.

  “You took my picture.”

  “I took the bridge.”

  “With me on it.”

  About Lucybelle’s height, but heftier, with dark brown skin and a man’s haircut, the girl had a quick smile, perfectly straight teeth, and two big dimples in her cheeks. She wore a pair of tan trousers, a white button-down shirt, both pressed to perfection, and a woolen herringbone vest under an unbuttoned black wool overcoat. She had a big satchel slung over her shoulder, like Clare’s only in a heavy tan canvas.

  “You look so tired resting here. I like the contrast between the wisp of you and the grandeur of the bridge.” Cradling the bottom of the camera in her left hand, she raised it a bit and gestured at Lucybelle. “Where’re you from?”

  “How do you know I’m not from here?”

  She bunched her lips to one side and cocked her head. “You have an accent.”

  “Arkansas.”

  “Which part?”

  Her brain was swimmy from lack of sustenance. She ought to pick up her shopping bags and leave. “Pocahontas. It’s in the northeast.”

  “I know where Pocahontas is. I’m Stella.”

  Why wasn’t Lucybelle walking away? Instead she stared at the girl. It was the camera, the way she held it, claimed it, a sure link between herself and the world.

  “And you are?”

  “Lucybelle.” Most everyone just called her Lucy. Why had she offered her whole name?

  “Very nice to meet you, Lucybelle.” Stella hefted her camera, gesturing toward the purple sky and black river. “Don’t worry. It’s too dark. I didn’t capture your image.”

  “It’s getting late,” Lucybelle said, unnerved by the word capture. “I better get home.”