A Thin Bright Line

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  Lucybelle broke open a few peanut shells and dropped the peanuts into her Coke.

  “You’re something else, girl.”

  “It’s good.”

  “A southern thing.”

  “It is.”

  “How’s the mustard level?”

  “Perfect. Do you always take game days off of work?”

  “I shouldn’t.”

  “But you did today.”

  “Yeah. It’s not my time so much as the car. I had to give a driver the afternoon off.” She hesitated and then looked straight ahead as she said, “But I wasn’t going to take you to the game on the train.”

  “I love riding in your cab.”

  “It’s a bit chilly. Here.” Stella took off her jacket and fitted it around Lucybelle’s shoulders.

  After finishing lunch, Stella rose to her feet each time there was hope for a White Sox play, shouting her encouragement, but they lost three to four. The two women walked with the dejected crowd out to the parking lot, Stella talking the whole time about the doggone Yankees and how the Sox had better improve if they ever expected to win a pennant.

  When they reached the taxicab, she said, “Let’s just let the crowds leave. I can’t risk someone denting my fender. You in a hurry to get anywhere?”

  “No.” She couldn’t stop looking at Stella. Why didn’t she feel shy? She’d never felt this at ease in her life. No, it wasn’t at ease. It was a kind of energy, an expanding zest.

  She sympathized with Valerie Taylor. How did a writer find words to describe this feeling? The floral and volcanic metaphors were laughable. Tingling, pulsing, throbbing all boorish. And yet, she did want words, accurate ones, true ones.

  Stella rested her back against the car door interior and her arm across the top of the seat. “I’ve never seen the ocean. Have you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, it’s like Miss Carson describes?”

  “You read the book?”

  “Twice. Once in a big gulp. Then sentence by sentence so I could really see.”

  “You liked it.”

  “I loved it. Is that what the ocean is like?”

  “I love swimming in the waves, but I don’t have the kind of eyes Rachel Carson has.”

  “Let’s go.”

  “Okay.” Lucybelle pivoted so that she was facing forward again, disappointed that Stella was already through talking about The Sea Around Us.

  “I meant to the sea.”

  “Oh!” It was all she could do to stay on her side of the car seat. “You and me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How would we get there?”

  “What? You don’t like my car?” Stella gestured at the dashboard and then the roomy backseat.

  “I love your car.”

  “How many days would it take us?”

  “We could do it in two. If we drove through the night.”

  Stella turned and looked out the window, as if the sea were just there, a bit beyond the edges of the parking lot.

  “Really? You read the book twice?”

  “We’re gonna go some day. We’ll just start driving east, okay? Take whatever roads are in front of us. Small roads, so we can see stuff. We’ll stop whenever we want. I’ll take pictures and you’ll write. We’ll take two weeks, not two days. We’ll have time.” The way she said the word “time” made Lucybelle picture a very large mountain, layers and layers of time stacked high, grand, beautiful.

  The parking lot had emptied, and Stella drove straight across the painted space lines. She saluted the attendant again and drove out without paying. A few minutes later, as she pulled in front of Lucybelle’s apartment building, she said, “You asked me a question when we were entering the ballpark. Why I called that boy ‘sir.’”

  She wanted to tell Stella that she didn’t have to explain anything. She wanted, even more, to hear everything.

  “I don’t look for trouble. If one three-letter word can keep it at bay, I’ll use it. Respect never hurt anyone, even if it’s a one-way street. I learned that in the service.”

  “What else did you learn in the service?”

  “Lots.”

  “Thank you.” Lucybelle touched Stella’s hand and climbed out of the cab, the folder with L’Forte’s photographs tightly tucked under her arm. When she got upstairs to her apartment, she looked out the window as Stella pulled away from the curb and drove down Evanston’s Michigan Avenue.

  Friday, April 25, 1958

  “It’s obviously Phyllis,” Beverly said leaning forward to take the last egg roll. She slid it around in the red dipping sauce and took a big bite. “She’s hurting, the little coward.”

  “You said she drinks, am I correct?” Ruthie said. “It fits. Get a little tight. Send an ex dirty books.”

  “Lucy Gayheart is not a dirty book.”

  “Lucy Gay-heart. Please.” Beverly rolled her eyes.

  “It’s not,” Dorothy said. “Willa Cather is a famous author.”

  “La-dee-da.”

  “I actually think Phyllis is happy. Finally. She said in her last letter that she’s quit drinking. Because of the baby.” It hurt that their own relationship hadn’t inspired sobriety, but still, Phyllis had so much to give the world and now she was back in the theater and off the sauce. Baby Georgia deserved a fully present mother.

  “Happy, my foot. This is exactly the sort of thing people do. Their fear twists up their insides and they go a little . . .” Beverly twirled a finger around the air beside her ear. “Seriously. You need to cut ties. I don’t think you should be allowing her to write to you. You just never know.”

  “I’m in full agreement,” Ruthie said. “She needs a connection to her true self and she’s using you to get it. The books are links for her. Like life-lines. Only you can’t be that for her. It’s dangerous.”

  “Where was it mailed from?” Beverly asked.

  “I didn’t think to look at the canceled postal stamp.”

  “It’s Phyllis,” Ruthie said.

  “I don’t know,” Lucybelle said. “Phyllis is a little nuts, you’re right about that, but I don’t think she’s organized enough for this kind of a prank. Anyway, she is happy. She adores her baby. And her play is doing great on Broadway.”

  “Huh,” Beverly said. “La-dee-da.”

  “Happy is as happy does,” Ruthie advised. “I don’t care what her story is, you don’t turn on your friends.”

  “She didn’t exactly turn on me.”

  “No. She left you for a man.”

  “Okay, enough, Bev.” Dorothy patted Lucybelle’s hand.

  “It’s okay. It takes a lot to offend me.”

  “That’s what we like about you,” Beverly said. “You’re a straight shooter. A person knows where he stands with you.”

  “She,” Dorothy said.

  “I was using the universal. ‘He’ is correct in that instance.”

  Dorothy sighed and looked to Lucybelle for editorial support.

  “Speaking of grammar,” Beverly said. “We had an idea.” She paused so long both Lucybelle and Dorothy were forced to say, “What?”

  “We think,” Beverly smiled at Ruthie, “that Geneviève would be perfect for Dorothy. I don’t know why we didn’t think of this in the first place.”

  “Yes,” Ruthie agreed. “Bookish. Attractive. Gainfully employed.”

  “Bookish!” Dorothy shrieked.

  “And so are you.”

  “I like to read. That’s different from bookish.”

  “The Vassar professor?” Lucybelle asked, appalled at the way this crowd talked about available women as if they were circling through on a conveyer belt, waiting to be plucked off.

  “She’s quite safe,” Beverly said. “As a professor at a fine liberal arts college, well, she’s not going to be stopping in at the Bagatelle.”

  “You’ve been to the Bagatelle?” Lucybelle asked.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “It’s not that bad.”

  �
��You haven’t been there either,” Dorothy said to Lucybelle, making fun of Beverly, and they all smiled.

  “The best part, though,” Beverly continued, “is that she lives in Poughkeepsie.”

  “So you’d never have to see her,” Lucybelle said.

  “That’s not what I’m saying.”

  “She’s saying,” Ruthie clarified, “that Geneviève has a very full life of her own, that a long-distance relationship might suit both of your needs. Nice weekends here and there. I like her very much.”

  Dorothy gave a theatrical shake of her head followed by an even more dramatic shudder. Lucybelle approved of the reaction. Dorothy was delightfully lively. She deserved someone much more interesting than that Vassar professor.

  “Why don’t we invite her down for a weekend?” Beverly clapped her hands.

  “You forget,” Dorothy said. “You already did that. For Lucy.”

  “And it didn’t work,” Ruthie said. “Lucy’s loss, your gain.”

  “Stop.” Dorothy held up her hands. “Enough. I’m making more drinks. Strong ones. Everyone?”

  Lucybelle sometimes felt claustrophobic in Beverly and Ruthie’s apartment but she’d never noticed until tonight that there wasn’t a single window in their front room. She heard Dorothy drop the metal ice tray in the kitchen. Ice cubes clunked and slithered across the linoleum floor. Dorothy smiled at her as she stooped in the doorway to pick them up. The other two sat smugly sharing the leather seating, Ruthie in the chair itself and Beverly next to her on the ottoman. They were so obviously happy here in their nest of homemade comforters and revolving prints by famous painters. The place was strangely reminiscent of Lucybelle’s girlhood home, the way it held its inhabitants, and also confined them.

  “I’m awfully tired,” she said after quickly finishing the new drink. “I should probably go walk L’Forte.”

  “You don’t look tired,” Beverly said. “You look all lit up. You have ever since you went out sick last week. Are you sure you don’t have a fever?”

  “Of course not.” She stood and reached for her coat.

  “I should go too,” Dorothy said. “I’ll give you a ride home.”

  “I need the air. I’m fine walking.”

  But Dorothy pulled on her own coat anyway, and when they reached the street she stepped alongside Lucybelle. “I’ll walk with you and then come back for my car.”

  “Sure. That’d be nice.”

  “So. Last week. Tuesday afternoon. Were you really sick?”

  When Lucybelle didn’t answer, Dorothy said, “I saw that girl pick you up in her cab. It seemed like you knew her. I mean, the way you got in the front seat. And how you sat and chatted for a while.”

  “I can’t believe you were spying on me. Where were you watching from?”

  “You were on the sidewalk in downtown Wilmette at lunchtime. It would have been hard to miss. You need to be careful, that’s all. I don’t know who she was, but yowzer. I don’t think she’s a good idea.”

  “I didn’t ask for advice.”

  “Don’t get tetchy.” Dorothy spoke softly, almost sympathetically.

  “How’s your mother?”

  “You’re changing the subject. Look, I didn’t say anything to Beverly or Ruthie. I absolutely covered for you. But I did see what I saw.”

  “You saw me get into a taxicab.”

  “I know what it’s like to be lonely. I’m just going to say it. We have so much in common. We both love to read. We both love to laugh. We both drink Booth’s dry gin! I really like you. I think you like me.”

  They’d reached her building and Dorothy kept going, heading up the walk that led to the stairway that ended at her front door, as if she could physically walk right into the center of Lucybelle’s life.

  Shocked into submission, Lucybelle started to follow her but then stopped and called out, “Wait. Dorothy.” A full twenty yards separated them and she had to shout, “I do like you.”

  The prospect of neighbors overhearing brought Dorothy back to her side. “Just give us a chance. I mean, we can just try it.” She reached for Lucybelle’s hand and held it too tightly.

  The moment was unbearable. Dorothy’s face, with that sweet gaptoothed smile and the dancing eyes, could break a woman’s heart. She was right too. They had so much in common. A weird logic fitted them together. Lucybelle thought: this is what I could have, here, now. She watched herself almost acquiesce, as if her id rose out of her body, floated above, and gawped down at her libido rolling into the wrong woman’s arms. That fast. And then where would she be? How would she ever free herself ? She squeezed Dorothy’s hand, and oh, that was the wrong thing to do.

  Dorothy whispered, “Let’s go upstairs.”

  Lucybelle felt wretched, but she had to tell her friend the truth. “I care about you so much. As a friend.”

  Dorothy twitched as if she’d been touched with an electric probe.

  “I’m sorry. I just . . . I’m not at liberty.” Then, unable to bear hurting her friend, she made her next mistake. “I made a promise to Bader. I have a high security clearance.”

  “That’s what I mean.” Dorothy spoke in an excited whisper. “We have access to the same classified information. There’d be no risk for anyone.”

  “You forget your vow to never again get involved with someone at work.”

  “I know, but that’s what I’m saying, this is different.”

  “I’m so happy to have you as my friend. I don’t want to ruin that.”

  “It’s because of my mother, isn’t it? Please just be honest.”

  “Dorothy, your mother isn’t the impediment you make her out to be. In fact, just the opposite. Your loving care for her says so much about the wonderful, kind person you are. It doesn’t have to get in the way of your life.”

  “So then why not?”

  “I need you as my friend.”

  “Of course.” Dorothy finally released her hand. “I understand.”

  She set off down the street, into the dark, alone, her gait weighted with emotion, as if she were trying to move quickly while carrying a piano on her shoulders. Lucybelle almost called out to her.

  Friday, June 13, 1958

  How could she have felt all that expansive happiness by herself ? Maybe she’d insulted Stella by asking her about calling the white kid sir. Maybe Stella thought she could never understand what it meant to be in her skin. As the days, and then weeks, went by, she looked for her everywhere: out her living room window on Sunday mornings; curbside in front of Lyman’s drugstore; walking across the Michigan Avenue Bridge on her way to Friday night drinks with the fellows. She almost called Acme Transport a dozen times but managed to restrain herself. Clearly she’d been dropped, if there’d ever been anything substantial enough between them in the first place to warrant the word dropped. Dorothy had been right: she had no business running after a woman like Stella. The difference in the colors of their skins was an issue, of course it was: they inhabited different worlds, ones that didn’t intersect, at least not gracefully; but more, Stella wore men’s clothing, owned her own company, and danced slow tunes with women in public. Lucybelle had been a moment’s distraction for her.

  On a warm June evening two months after opening day of the White Sox season, Lucybelle rode the crowded train into Chicago to join the scientists for drinks. It was Friday the 13th and had indeed been a rough day. Nothing disastrous had happened, but she felt foiled at every turn. A key on her typewriter had snapped off. She not only ran out of cigarettes, but Lyman’s had been out too. Ruthie had an asthma attack brought on, according to Beverly, by some potted plants Peter Hauser’s wife, Emily, put in the foyer. While Ruthie gasped for breath, Bader threw a temper tantrum because he wanted her to take dictation right then. By five o’clock Lucybelle needed the raucous but impersonal company of the scientists, and she looked forward to an ice-cold martini. She stood pressed to one of the silver posts, reading the New Yorker, as the train rocked along its tracks.

/>   “You’re Djuna Barnes, aren’t you?”

  Startled, she dropped the magazine. Her behind slammed into the man in back of her as she bent to pick it up.

  “I’ve been staring at you,” the voice continued, and Lucybelle placed it as coming from a woman seated on the bench to her right. “I just couldn’t figure it out. Usually I’m very good with faces. But of course you’d had the whole costume on when we met.” The woman smiled and held out a hand. “Val Taylor.”

  “Yes, I remember.” Again, that jarring dissonance of there being a real person, a normal-looking person, behind that flashing siren of a book. Lucybelle remembered to say, “How are you?”

  “Excellent. Very well, thank you.” She had the most forthright voice. “Where’re you headed?”

  “Into town for drinks with people I work with.”

  “Sounds dull. Come with me. I’m going to a party to raise money for Lorraine Hansberry, a Chicago playwright. Should be a good time.”

  “Oh, thank you, but—” Oh, why not. “I’d love to.”

  They got off the train in Hyde Park and walked a few blocks, Val talking nonstop about a group of Cuban rebels, led by the Castro brothers and Che Guevara, who were staging a revolution against Batista’s government from some mountains on the tiny island. About ten years older than Lucybelle, Val projected a larger-than-life attitude, a saucy dismissal of the everyday, as if she could only be bothered by excellent food and big ideas. Her skin was the pasty color of uncooked dough, and her hair, hacked off at a medium length, looked as though she’d done it herself in front of the bathroom mirror. She wore a short-sleeved white blouse with red stitching on the top edges of two breast pockets and an ill-fitting gathered brown skirt, worn askew. The zipper and clasp sat on Val’s hip, and Lucybelle kept wanting to move it to the back for her. She wore glasses, cat-eyes much like Lucybelle’s, only Val’s were bedecked with ornamental curlicues.

  Party guests—men and women, Negro and white—crowded the wraparound porch. Val shouted greetings and pushed through to the front door. For once Lucybelle was pleased with her own appearance. Last Saturday she’d bought a new summer dress to replace the outdated polka dot one. The polished cotton fabric was covered with green and violet hydrangea blossoms, the fitted top snugged against her breasts and ribcage and the full flowery skirt announced summer. Friday the 13th be damned. She was at a theater party in Chicago, wearing a pretty new dress. She planned on having a good time.