A Thin Bright Line

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  “What are you?” Lucybelle asked. Somehow she was pretty sure the woman wasn’t a geologist.

  “I’m a dyke. How do you like my costume?” the woman boomed and then laughed heartily.

  Beverly said, “Ruthie.”

  Ruthie said, “I want to go in.”

  “I don’t bite, ladies, but are y’all sure you’re at the right party?”

  “Yes,” Dorothy said. “We’re friends of Dorothy.”

  “Actually, she is Dorothy,” Lucybelle said, “and we’re the friends.”

  Beverly exhaled her exasperation. Lucybelle was botching the code for getting in the door. Lucybelle and the big greeter laughed at the irritated clown.

  “Her real name,” Ruthie said gesturing at the pirate, “is Dorothy.”

  “What are you dressed as?” the woman in the dyke costume asked. “A secretary?”

  “Ha ha,” Ruthie said. She glanced down the street where they’d parked the car.

  The dyke bellowed her laugh again. “Welcome, ladies. Come in.”

  Lucybelle plunged in the door before her friends decided to not attend the party. The house was already packed with lavishly attired women, the festivities in full swing. Over the shouts of conversation and laughter, she heard the tinkle of ice cubes and the pfft of beer bottle caps being removed. She made her way through the bright blotches of color to the makeshift bar on the far side of the front room, answering the question, “Who are you?” five times on the way. She hadn’t expected people to recognize her costume, but their blank expressions when she said the author’s name was disappointing. She asked for a gin on the rocks and then realized she’d left her friends and couldn’t see a thing. Surely she could find Dorothy’s red blouse in the fuzzy tableau before her. There!

  Dorothy’s hand gripped the hilt of her sword as she talked to a sailor. “Lucy! Guess who I found!”

  “Popeye?”

  The woman in the sailor cap and white bell-bottomed pants smiled. “Who’s this lovely lady?”

  “Djuna Barnes!” Dorothy said.

  “Really. I’m extremely pleased to make your acquaintance.” The sailor held out her hand.

  “You know Barnes?” Lucybelle asked.

  “Her work, not the woman.”

  “Lucy has met her.” Dorothy’s cheeks were already rosy. The prominent gap between her two front teeth worked well with the pirate garb.

  “Do tell.”

  “I used to live in the Village. She was at a party once.”

  “And even though she hardly talks with anyone, she talked with Lucy for hours.”

  “Maybe ten minutes.”

  “Lucy—?”

  “Bledsoe.” She shook the sailor’s hand as the woman said, “Valerie Taylor.”

  Dorothy elbowed Lucybelle and then couldn’t contain herself. “Whisper Their Love. I loved it. It’s so nice to meet you in person, Miss Taylor.”

  “Please. Val.”

  Lucybelle felt the shock of opening that brown paper package all over again. That the book had an actual flesh-and-blood author jolted her to the core. Well, of course it did, but until now she’d imagined it coming from some generalized cloud of malevolence. She hadn’t pictured a person—a woman, a gay girl herself—sitting down and penning the story.

  Furthermore, Dorothy had read and “loved” the novel.

  Valerie Taylor wore cat-eye glasses much like her own, but she’d had the good sense to keep hers on with her sailor costume. Lucybelle wished she could see her more clearly.

  “It’s a great book, Val,” Dorothy was saying. “Thanks for writing it. Are you going to write a sequel? Tell you what, write a sequel and have Joyce leave John, don’t you think?”

  Valerie Taylor looked a bit fatigued by Dorothy’s enthusiasm, but she was kind. “I’ll give that some thought.”

  “Do,” Dorothy said. “I hate to think of Joyce stuck with him for the rest of her life.”

  “What do you do?” Val asked Lucybelle, and so she began to explain about the ice research, but a slim blond woman beelined over to Val’s side and gave her a juicy smack on the temple, right at the hairline. Dorothy elbowed Lucybelle again.

  “Sweetie,” the woman said to Val, “we need to get to our next party.”

  Val nodded as she lit a cigarette.

  Lucybelle thought she might faint from the need for a smoke, another casualty of her rushing out the door without her purse. “May I bother you for one of those?”

  The blond girlfriend slung a possessive arm around the author’s waist as Val lit a cigarette for Lucybelle. Inhaling gratefully, she watched the couple make their way to the door.

  “Wow!” Dorothy said. “That was exciting.”

  The woman’s voice had been intelligently intriguing. Lucybelle wished they could have talked more.

  “I’m going to get us more drinks,” Dorothy said.

  “No, thanks. Not for me.”

  “Really? Well, don’t move. I’ll be back.”

  Lucybelle weaved through the costumed women to the front door and was disappointed to find the dyke away from her post. She slipped outside and sat on the porch smoking. It was a cold and damp night, but clear. Lucybelle wished she could see the stars. When she squinted she thought maybe she could see smudges of light. She pictured her parents at the door of their house in Pocahontas, handing out homemade caramels to the children. Daddy would first request tricks and then guffaw at their crestfallen faces before giving over the candy. John Perry’s children were probably haunting the streets of Portland, all but the baby, Lucy, who’d stay home with Helen.

  “There you are.” Dorothy the pirate stood on the step behind her. “We’d better stay inside.”

  “I know.” Yet another unspoken rule: when at parties, give the neighbors as little to see as possible.

  “You look great in that costume, by the way.” Dorothy nudged her with a knee.

  Lucybelle looked out at the blurry neighborhing homes. “Thanks, but—”

  “But?”

  Her fun had soured. Valerie Taylor was the only one who’d even heard of Djuna Barnes, and anyway, these women’s relationships to their costumes were too complicated for real fun. Half of them needed total disguise to attend a party at all.

  “Are you okay? You look sad. Are you thinking about Phyllis?”

  Lucybelle waved her cigarette at the sky. “Farthest thing from my thoughts.”

  Dorothy allowed herself a big smile. “We should go back inside. That person watching the door told me we aren’t supposed to be out here.”

  “I know.”

  “Beverly says I’m reckless, and I guess she’s right. I have my mother. I can’t afford to lose my job.”

  “People go to Paris,” Lucybelle said softly. “People write books. Some people, like Ruthie, have families who accept them. Every street is not a dead end.”

  “I’m going to get you another gin. Come in with me.”

  “Okay. I’ll be right there. I’m just going to finish this cigarette.” She heard the door open and close again as Dorothy went back inside. She crushed out her cigarette, stood up, and wrapped the black cape more tightly around herself. A group of children came down the sidewalk, brown paper bags in their tight fists, shouting with excitement about their growing wealth of candy.

  “Boo!” she said.

  “Dracula!” shrieked the oldest one.

  As they started up the walk to the front door, Lucybelle opened her cape and roared. That did the trick. They backed up and then ran all the way to the next house, looking over their shoulders.

  Back inside, Lucybelle took a seat on the couch and watched the shimmering party shapes bounce and swoop. A few moments later, Dorothy handed her a glass of gin and sat on the arm of the couch. “Can you believe Valerie Taylor was here?”

  “Who was the blonde?”

  “I bet she has a lot of options, women-wise.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “So did you ever read Whisper Their Love
? I mean before Bev burned it.”

  They both laughed and Lucybelle didn’t answer. Instead she said, “I just finished Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us.” Now there was someone she’d love to meet: Carson, who wrote about the sea with the passion of a shark, swimming restlessly, mouth open, head swinging from side to side.

  “I read that.”

  “You have very eclectic tastes.”

  “What choice do I have but to read everything, what with being stuck at home most nights?”

  “You’re not home now.” The sentence popped out staccato. Dorothy’s constant references to her homebound mother grated.

  “No. That’s true.” Dorothy dutifully glanced out at the roomful of women, as if she were perusing the best route over difficult terrain. Then she sighed and shrugged. “She’s family, you know.”

  “Yes, but you do take such good care of her, and you have a right to a life too.” Lucybelle was glad for the opportunity to speak more sympathetically.

  “I don’t mean my mother, and I don’t mean that kind of family.”

  “Who do you mean?”

  “Rachel Carson.”

  “How would you know that?”

  All Lucybelle could see of Dorothy’s eyes was the flash of green as she breathlessly explained her source, a friend whose family had a house in Maine, and how nothing had ever been said, but via the power of observation of certain visitors and their walks on the beach, well, it was plain. “Quite plain,” Dorothy emphasized.

  The news almost hurt, like a sharp injection of truth. Lucybelle cared too much. She was already half in love with the author, just from reading her books. How she would love to be the one walking with her on Maine’s shore. She imagined crouching before crusty orange starfish and gazing into shallow pools inhabited by green anemones waving their tentacles, waves crashing on the rocks, wetting their faces. She could just taste the rubbery seaweed brine. Most of all, most welcome of all, would be the conversation about things that mattered: books and the planet, stories and the sea.

  It was discommoding, this interest in like souls, this feeling of yes, mine, Rachel Carson. It was as if she knew already, could read the depth and nature of Carson’s affectional tendencies in the texts about the sea, but how could that be possible? It showed in her willingness to embrace complexity, an enormity of love, all bursting out from behind a shield of sorts, an invisible shield, but one felt even in her books.

  “Everyone knows about Sappho,” Dorothy rattled on, excited and maybe a little drunk, “and Gertrude Stein and Virginia Woolf, of course. That’s all public knowledge. But I’ve heard that Eleanor Roosevelt is one of us! Imagine!”

  Lucybelle liked Dorothy. Even without her glasses she could see the liveliness in her face as she talked. Who but a librarian read Whisper Their Love alongside The Sea Around Us? She refrained from touching her friend’s flushed cheek. The impulse surprised her. Maybe it was her blindness; if she couldn’t see, she could touch. The full, red blouse was easy enough to see. Dorothy’s multifarious reading habits complemented her lubricious figure.

  “You don’t believe me,” Dorothy said.

  “I don’t not believe you. I just think people need to name themselves.”

  “You’re right. Of course you’re right.”

  “Have you read Allen Ginsberg?”

  Dorothy shook her head hard. “Goodness, no.”

  “Ah, so you haven’t read everything.”

  “Drugs and penises I can do without.” Dorothy pulled her lips tightly around her teeth and it seemed as though her whole face sagged a bit, as if the very existence of that poem spoke of a world rocketing past her. “Come on,” she said getting up from the arm of the couch. “We should circulate.” She pulled Lucybelle to her feet, misjudging her slight weight, and Lucybelle came forward too hard, falling against the pirate. She was soft and yielding.

  “I’ve been looking for the two of you.” Ruthie’s voice startled them both.

  “Where’s Beverly?” Dorothy asked, as if everyone needed to be accounted for.

  “In the hall closet with the butch who answered the door,” Lucybelle said.

  To say the joke fell flat would be an understatement. Maybe she’d spent too much time with the SIPRE scientists. “Come on. It’s funny, isn’t it?”

  “No,” Ruthie said.

  Dorothy pasted on a weak smile, but she put a supportive arm around Ruthie’s shoulders.

  Fine, she’d go look for the big bomber herself. Not that she could see a thing as she made her way across the room, but the woman in plaid flannel and blue jeans working as the front door bouncer would be hard to miss. As Lucybelle approached, she thought better of the plan. If her work friends saw her so much as converse with the flagrant dyke, she’d be shunned for at least a week.

  Lucybelle swerved from her course toward the front door and made instead for the kitchen, where she found the telephone book, looked up Acme Transport, dialed the number, and gave the dispatcher, a nasal-voiced fellow this time, the address of a major intersection a few blocks away. Then she looked for the bright pink blob that would be Beverly’s head, found her in the den, and told her she was going home.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.”

  “Hon.” It was the first time she’d ever used a term of endearment for Lucybelle; perhaps she’d made inroads into the office manager’s labyrinthine trials of trust. Beverly leaned in and whispered, “I heard that author was here. The one who wrote that book. You must be upset. But she’s already left. I think it’s safe.”

  “It’s not that. I shouldn’t have gone out without my glasses. Don’t worry, I asked the dispatcher to have the cabbie stop four blocks away. He won’t know about the party.”

  “I’ll walk you.”

  “A clown and Djuna Barnes walking down the street? Do you think that’s safe?”

  Beverly laughed. Lucybelle was happy to see her loosening up and enjoying herself. A drink sloshed in her hand, and Lucybelle reached down to level it for her. Then she tweaked Beverly’s red-ball nose. “I’m fine. I really am. See you Monday morning. Please give my regrets to Ruthie and Dorothy.”

  Someone in the den cracked a good joke and under the cover of gales of laughter, Lucybelle slipped out, passed through the kitchen, and stepped back out into the night. It was well past the bedtimes of most children, and the streets had cleared of the little goblins and witches. She walked the four blocks as quickly as she could and then stopped on the corner to wait.

  As cars whizzed through the busy intersection, she wondered how she would even be able to distinguish a taxicab from other vehicles. Black and white, she thought, with checkers. Or would it be yellow? She hadn’t told the dispatcher to have the driver look for a woman in a long cape and fedora. She couldn’t wait to get home, tear off this costume, and sink into a hot bath with a book. Meeting Valerie Taylor had unnerved her more than she wanted to admit. The intelligent amusement in the author’s voice, a kind of happy irony, surprised her. It was curious that she’d written that silly book.

  But more unnerving was that house full of women she might like to know, but couldn’t even see, in large part because she’d been dumb enough to go out without her glasses, and also because they were all wearing disguises. That inflammatory rub between fear and desire: Beverly’s touch-stone word “safe” and Dorothy’s lush presence.

  Where was that taxicab?

  A flash of lightning jagged through the sky to the east, probably over the lake, followed by a long growl of thunder. Any minute the clouds would dump their wet load. Should she run back to the party?

  A shiny black-and-white cab, with no yellow or checkers, just stripes of dark and light, swerved up to the curb, its roof light illuminated. Lucybelle pulled open the backseat door and fell in with relief.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  She gave the fellow her address and he turned in the seat to look at her, suppressing a grin at the sight of her flamboyant outfit. The black che
rry lipstick had probably smeared across her cheeks and chin. “All the way up to Evanston? That’s going to be a steep fare.”

  She recognized that voice. “That’s okay.”

  “So who are you supposed to be? Costume-wise?”

  “Stella?”

  The driver snapped on the interior light. “Do I know you?”

  “Michigan Avenue Bridge, about a year ago. You took my picture and gave me a copy of Allen Ginsberg’s book.”

  “Hot diggity. So I did.”

  “I thought you’d given me a false telephone number. I called once. To give you your book back.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that?” Stella grinned now, suppressing nothing.

  “I did. Your dispatcher answered.”

  “Why didn’t you ask for me?”

  “It didn’t occur to me that you worked for the taxicab company.”

  “I own it. I don’t usually drive anymore, but it’s Halloween. We’re busy.”

  “I could run in and get your book when we get to my apartment.”

  “Like I said, Evanston is a long way.”

  “So drop me at the train station.” Lucybelle was surprised by the petulance in her own voice.

  “Nah. I’ll run you home. What with it being Halloween and that getup you’re in, I don’t suppose we’ll find any trouble.”

  “Trouble?”

  “Chicago is nothing but trouble these days.” When Lucybelle didn’t answer, Stella turned off the interior light and added, “For my people.”

  “Yes,” Lucybelle said. “I know. I’ve been reading the paper.”

  “Yeah, well, reading the paper is a lovely place to be. I’ve been living the heat.”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “No,” Stella said as she pulled out into the traffic. “You can’t.”

  Lucybelle settled into the backseat, relieved to be going home and unaccountably pleased that Stella hadn’t given her a fake telephone number after all.

  Stella glanced repeatedly in the rearview mirror until she said, “Arkansas. I remember.”

  “Not Little Rock.”

  “And other parts of the state are any better?”

  Lucybelle started to object, but of course the girl was right. “Probably worse.”