A Thin Bright Line

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

But then she remembered that Daddy was dead. This could never be home again.

  Tuesday, November 25, 1958

  Stella had the nerve to be irritated. “Where’ve you been? I came by on Sunday, three different times, and knocked and knocked.” Then Stella smiled. “I was afraid the Worthingtons were going to call the police.”

  “Daddy died.”

  “What?”

  “Daddy died. I had to go to Pocahontas.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s eleven o’clock at night.”

  “I know. I had a fare in the neighborhood, so—” She caught herself too late.

  “So it was convenient. For you.”

  “I’m sorry about your daddy. Is there anything I can do?”

  “Do? How about be here for me. When I actually need you. Not in the middle of the night before a work day.”

  “Baby, I know. I’m so sorry. I—”

  “I’m supposed to sit in my apartment and wait for you to show up.”

  Stella shook her head.

  “You don’t do that, show up, as much as you used to either. I’ve noticed, in case you think I haven’t.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s been crazy busy. I’ve had two drivers quit.”

  Lucybelle went to the window and looked for the sliver of moon. She’d seen on the news that Pioneer 3 would be launching soon and attempting a lunar flyby. She couldn’t see the moon from her window. The sky was black. “My daddy died.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.” She held her camera in her right hand, hanging by her side, her fingers gripping extra hard.

  “You’re afraid,” Lucybelle said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re afraid of the intensity of my grief.”

  “Look, I got a lot going on too.”

  She wanted to break more dishes. “You can’t put a camera between yourself and death.”

  Stella cocked her head, chuffed. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “When your turn comes.”

  “You’re acting crazy.”

  “I’m not acting crazy. My father just died.”

  “I would have come over sooner if I’d known.”

  “Exactly. If you’d known. You can’t know anything about me or my life unless you knock on my door. When you feel like knocking on my door.”

  “Look, it’s probably the wrong time to mention this. But Tiny and Ruby had to close the club. It’s been a really hard time for everyone. It just seems like things are falling apart.”

  Lucybelle was tempted to comment on the comparison between one’s father dying and the closing of a bar, but she knew that Tiny and Ruby closing the club was a significant loss in its own right. “I’m sorry about the club.”

  Stella looked relieved at Lucybelle’s understanding. “Let’s lie down for a few minutes.”

  “No.”

  It was the first time she’d ever said no to making love and Stella looked startled.

  “It’s almost midnight. I have to be at work at nine. And I’m sad. I don’t want sex.”

  “Okay. Fine.”

  “Will you come by on Thanksgiving? Just for a couple of hours?”

  “I thought you were doing Thanksgiving with your work friends.”

  “I’d rather see you.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Why?”

  “Come on, Lucybelle. Don’t do this now. Everything’s too . . . too sad already.”

  “Why? ” She didn’t feel desperate so much as she felt resolute. She needed to know exactly what they had.

  “You want me to say it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. We have people coming over for Thanksgiving. Wanda’s cooking.”

  “I’m tired of this.”

  “You’re exhausted. Let’s talk later, okay?”

  “Let’s talk now. Put down your camera.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “Why are you giving me orders?”

  “I want to talk.”

  “So I’ll talk holding my camera.”

  “It’s like your blanket. It’s a shield you hold between you and the world.”

  “That’s deep. Real insightful.”

  “Don’t you dare be sarcastic with me.”

  “And don’t you talk to me about being disingenuous. You’re the one who made a deal with your boss, with the United States government no less, to never have a lover. Talk about a shield.”

  “I love my work.”

  “Baloney. You’re hiding.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  Stella thumped her chest with her palm. “This is what living honestly looks like.”

  “You’re so hypocritical. All high and mighty about being out in the world when you’re cheating on your girlfriend.”

  “Wanda has nothing to do with us.”

  “No? Then take me to the opening of Raisin in the Sun.” She’d thought about this. Wanda hated to travel. There was no reason she and Stella couldn’t go. They could have so much fun in New York.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your favorite stalling sentence: ‘What are you talking about?’ You know what I’m talking about. I want to be with you. I want to be with you for the important things. I love you.”

  Stella set her camera down on the coffee table. “No. Don’t cry. I love you madly. You know that. What we have is . . . is . . . I know what it is. You know what it is. It’s rare and priceless and beautiful. I love you so much. Please don’t cry.”

  “I do know that. And I try to tell myself that our lovemaking is all that matters, that the depth of happiness we have is something few people ever get to experience in their lives. But I know this too: you also love Wanda. I’m jealous of her. Wild crazy jealous. And yet I love you for loving her. I can’t help it. I love your devotion to whatever it is you’re devoted to—Wanda, baseball, your camera. I love all of you. But I also want all of you.”

  Stella tried to approach but Lucybelle held out an obstructing arm. “I can’t do this.”

  “I’m not the only one who keeps us apart. I’m not the one pretending to be a widow.”

  “No, you’re the one pretending to be unmarried.”

  “There’s no such thing as married for us.”

  “So that means Wanda doesn’t mind you sleeping with another woman? Because you’re not married? Nice try.”

  “I guess I do think of you and me as somehow outside of time. Like we have our own universe.”

  “My bed.”

  “You know perfectly well that our universe is much bigger than your bed. Our life in that bed is so important, so beautiful, because of our big universe together.”

  Lucybelle wanted to hold that close. She knew it was true. But it was still nothing if it existed in isolation. “Our universe is a fairytale if we can’t have friends, spend holidays together. If I can’t call you when my daddy dies.”

  “It’s not a fairytale. I love you. You know that.”

  She did. She also knew that Stella would not leave Wanda and that she would never ask her to leave Wanda. They had a house, a business, a family of friends. Lucybelle was on the outside of all that. With every passing week, she felt colder and colder out here in their private galaxy, like Pioneer 3 attempting a lunar flyby.

  “I love you too,” she said. “Now leave, and please, if you love me as much as you say, don’t come back. Ever. Let me get on with my life.”

  “No. This works.”

  “Works for who? Not me.”

  When Stella opened her mouth to speak again, Lucybelle shook her head. She knew she looked fierce with the grief from her daddy’s death etched on her face. If Stella was going to honor their promise to tell the truth, always, she’d walk out that door now.

  She did.

  Sunday, December 21, 1958

  Four days before Christmas, at two o’clock on a Sunday morning, Lucybelle awoke to a rhythmic thumping, as if someone were us
ing a blunt object to bash in her front door. She crept out of bed, eased the window curtain open half an inch, and saw, parked across the street, an Acme Transport taxicab. She made out the shape of Rusty’s cap on the head of the person in the driver’s seat. The front door pounding continued, the sound surely echoing up and down the stairwell. The Worthingtons would be calling the police, if they hadn’t already.

  As Lucybelle pulled open the front door, she jumped out of the way, which was a good idea because Wanda’s baseball bat was in the forward arc of its violent swing. The momentum pulled her into the room, and the bat clunked onto the floor. Lucybelle quickly shut the door. Wanda raised the bat again, her eyes wild with fury.

  Then she scoffed so hard it was like retching. “You’re nothing. Look at you. A flimsy piece of shit nothing. I tap you with this bat and you’d die. One thing I know: I’m not going to prison for the zero of you.”

  Lucybelle could offer no words that would be equal to the situation, so she had the good sense to remain silent.

  “I could destroy you. I could find out where you work. I could call your mama. I could leave notes under the doors of all your neighbors.”

  Wanda wore a pair of black satin slacks, a red mohair sweater, and matching red heels. Her earrings were sparkly green Christmas ornaments. A large black purse was slung over her shoulder. She let herself down on Lucybelle’s couch and laid the baseball bat across her thighs.

  “You mute?”

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  “That’s okay, baby. You don’t have to say a thing. These say it all.” She yanked a couple of eight-by-ten photographs from her bag. They were creased every which way, as if she’d crumpled them in her fists and then flattened them back out again. “Stupid me. I almost tore them to bits. What use would they be to me then?”

  Wanda may as well have slammed the baseball bat into Lucybelle’s gut. She buckled, would have fallen to the floor if some survival instinct hadn’t kicked in hard and fast. She somehow knew that standing up to Wanda was going to work a lot better than groveling.

  “I’ll take those,” she said and began making her way toward Wanda, moving slowly as one might approach a wild animal.

  “Nah. I’m gonna keep ’em. Arkansas might be interested. You said Pocahontas, right? Nice little town. Bet your mama and papa go to a nice little church—I’m gonna guess a First Methodist kinda joint—just teeming with upstanding white folk who’d love to have a look at the prodigal daughter.”

  “Not prodigal.”

  “Why do you even talk? How do you think words can do a thing for you now?”

  She had a point.

  Wanda stuffed the pictures back into her bag.

  “Please. Just let me have them. Please. I won’t ever interfere again. I—”

  “Interfere? Is that the word you people use for fucking other people’s girlfriends? That’s rich.”

  “Just let me have the photographs. You have my word that I’ll stay out of your way for the rest of my life.”

  “Your word. Do you know how much value your word has with me?” She pounded the end of the bat on the floorboards. “I want an answer to that question.”

  “I’m sure none.”

  “Exactly. Besides, what good would my giving you these photos do? I’m sure there’re more where they came from. Stella always shoots and prints a lot, and I know I could find them. Let me ask you this: Who in her right mind would let someone take pictures of her buck naked? You crazy, right?”

  Lucybelle nodded.

  “Aw. Poor baby. Poor repentant baby.”

  “Look. It’s over, completely over, between Stella and me.”

  “Between Stella and you? Over? You truly believe there ever was anything? Delusional, crazy bitch.”

  “I’m sorry.” The ridiculously inadequate words reminded her of the times Stella had said them.

  “Not as sorry as you’re going to be.” Wanda stood and held the baseball bat by its top knob, letting the shaft swing like a pendulum.

  Lucybelle had the absurd urge to offer Wanda a drink.

  “I’m actually a very nice person,” Wanda said, her face easing into something akin, maybe, to mercy. “I don’t hurt people. Until provoked. Until they do something to deserve it. You are smack in the bull’s-eye of that category. But I’m going to walk out of your apartment now. I have a Christmas party to get back to. This is your one warning. There won’t be another one.” She chucked the baseball bat across the room and it landed in front of Lucybelle’s television set. “That’s your souvenir. In case you forget. And these”—she patted her big handbag—“are my guarantee.”

  Wanda let herself out and Lucybelle went to the window to watch her climb into the front seat of the cab. Rusty started the engine and carefully pulled into the street.

  Friday, July 31, 1959

  On the last Friday in July 1959, a bevy of military types descended on the SIPRE lab to celebrate the occupation of Camp Century. A crew of men had successfully flown to Greenland and begun living in the city under the ice cap. Their post was more lavishly outfitted than some towns in America. They had a recreation hall and theater; a library and hobby shops; and a dispensary, operating room, and a ten-bed infirmary. They had a laundry facility, a post office, scientific labs, and a cold storage warehouse. A nuclear power plant provided their energy and was backed up by a diesel-electric power plant. They could get their hair cut in the barbershop and pray in the chapel. Sixteen escape hatches allowed them to pop up from the city and onto the surface of Greenland’s ice cap, should they choose to do so.

  How Camp Century would stop the Russians from staging an attack via the Arctic was less clearly detailed, but perhaps the Army would figure that out now that they were situated under the ice. In any case, the Army was quite pleased with its accomplishment. Men in uniform swarmed through the Wilmette lab offices, popped open bottles of champagne, shook hands with the scientists, grinned at the support staff, inspected the cold labs, and then began an endless ceremony of speeches. Attendance was mandatory.

  Lucybelle sat with Beverly, Ruthie, Dorothy, and the scientists’ wives, who’d been invited but knew they were supposed to appear simultaneously proud and confused. The project was still top secret. The laudatory language was vague and general, as in “a job well done” and “exemplary service,” leaving many in the room in the dark as to why exactly they were drinking champagne.

  The SIPRE wives were accustomed to being held outside the content of their husbands’ work lives and they didn’t let the lack of information stop them from availing themselves of the bubbly and adding to the festive atmosphere. It was a party and they did their part. They wore shiny, flouncy dresses, had had their hair done, and several had brought cheese balls and Chex party mix.

  Lucybelle tried to appear attentive as the hard voices sailed overhead, but she’d drifted into a decidedly carnal reverie by the time she felt Dorothy’s elbow in her side. “Go,” Dorothy whispered. “They want you up front.”

  Everyone was looking at her.

  Again Dorothy whispered, “Go!” and gave her another shove. She rose from her chair and walked through the silence to the front of the room to stand with the men in uniforms, multicolored bars pinned to their jackets, brass buttons up their chests. She looked into the grates of white teeth, what passed as smiles for these men, and hoped they meant her well. Wasn’t that what smiles meant? And yet her recent thoughts were ever so much more vivid than anything happening here in this room. It was irrational, downright crazy, but she felt as if everyone could see those thoughts. With all eyes on her, she was about to be publicly renounced. For loving someone of the wrong gender and wrong race. Why not throw in adultery. Lasciviousness. As the decorated officer began talking, she couldn’t listen because she wanted a cigarette so badly. Bader caught her eye and flashed his best canine grin. Then he winked. She heard the words “outstanding service” and took the framed certificate. The applause beat at her ears. As she worked her way,
as quickly as possible, out of the limelight and back to the women’s section, Bader intercepted her. He took her arm, leaned in, and said, “Try to smile, sugar.” She whispered, “Go to hell,” which he enjoyed immensely. Everyone had dressed up for the occasion but Bader, who seemed to have purposely dressed down. He wore blue jeans and his red plaid, short-sleeved shirt, partially untucked.

  As soon as she could slip away, Lucybelle took refuge in her office. She lit a cigarette and flipped through the day’s mail. At the bottom of the stack was another book wrapped in twine and brown paper, the address painstakingly written in that same blocky printing. She said “For god’s sake” out loud and this time checked the canceled postal mark before tearing off the paper. Chicago!

  Even creepier was the timing: why had it arrived on the very day they were not only celebrating the occupation of Camp Century but giving her an award? It did seem as though someone were trying to intimidate her, remind her of her classified status and all that was at stake.

  Odd Girl Out had been published two years earlier, she saw on the copyright page, by a woman named Ann Bannon. Again the cover was designed to suggest lewdness, the blond girl hovering desperately over the brunette, her hands attending to the shoulders of the desired one.

  “Here you are,” Dorothy said, entering her office without knocking. “Why aren’t you at the party?”

  “Just taking a break. Look. Another book.”

  “Give it to me.” Dorothy snatched the book and stuffed it into Lucybelle’s purse. “Ugh.”

  “Ugh? Have you read it?”

  “Maybe, but—”

  “Maybe?” Lucybelle laughed and pulled the book back out of her purse.

  “All the brass is right outside your door. The last thing you need is for them to find you with this.”

  “You said you liked the Valerie Taylor one.”

  “It’s trash,” Dorothy said, but she sounded as if she were saying words she thought she was supposed to say, not ones she believed. “Look at the cover.”

  “It’s just a book.”

  “One that implicates you.”

  “It’s just a book.”

  Dorothy sighed, her fingers tapping the desktop as if she were searching for difficult words, but finally just said, “Come on. They gave you an award. You need to be out there. Bader needs you out there. You’re his best advocate. He certainly doesn’t do himself any good.”