A Thin Bright Line

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  Lucybelle wanted quite desperately to ask what a sensitive type was. Just the phrase tossed her back into her sunshine pen, naked, lacking.

  “So you divorced?”

  “Oh no. Nothing that satisfying.”

  They watched the last bits of sunlight leave the lake. Dark, flapping wings flew low over the water, the sound of air being displaced loud in the tension of silence.

  “For god’s sake,” Lucybelle finally said. “Do you need another drink to tell me the story?”

  “No. I just needed to know that you wanted to hear it.”

  This admission stunned Lucybelle. Her voice caught when she said, “Every detail.”

  “Susan was—is—terrified of life. She wouldn’t even travel with me. God forbid what someone would think if they saw two women traveling together.”

  Susan! “Women travel together all the time.”

  “Of course. Fear dictated her every move. Over time, a dissonance built up inside her, a great clanging of her emotional needs. In private, she became more and more clingy. In public, more and more jolly. But a brave kind of jolly, as if she were enduring some secret and deadly illness.”

  “You loved her?”

  “I told you: ten years.”

  “And you’re not the kind of woman who’d stay with someone for ten years if you didn’t love her.”

  “Thank you.” After another long pause, she said, “But your question is a fair one. What could possibly keep me in such a relationship? The early years were wonderful. Susan was smart and kind and even fun, if she felt safe.”

  “Safe. Sometimes I think I never want to hear that word again.”

  “Agreed. Who is safe, anyway? We could die of cancer next month.”

  “A tree could fall on us in five minutes.” Lucybelle meant to be funny.

  But Vera said, “Oh no. All my trees are quite healthy.”

  “Your pond is beautiful. I thought you were just putting me off when you said you were spending all your time looking for a place to live.”

  “Well.” Vera paused a long while and then said, “It’s not exactly my pond. I have Trout Brook to thank for delivering the water caught in the form of snow by Smarts Mountain. Not to mention the recession of the last glaciers twelve thousand years ago.”

  “I hadn’t meant to imply that you dug and filled the pond.”

  “I realize that. But I don’t even think that I own a part of it. I’m squatting here.”

  “You have a cabin.”

  “Yes. Agreed. But I’m only dwelling here. Fleeting, temporary.”

  “‘We still haven’t become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe.’”

  “Ah. You understand.”

  They sat in silence for several moments, and then Vera said, “About your other statement: I was putting you off.”

  “Thank you for that clarification.”

  “Do you hear the pileated woodpecker?”

  She did hear a distant tatting, in the woods behind the house.

  “Rachel Carson so loved the song of the veeries. I have them here.”

  “I don’t believe I know what a veery sounds like. Or looks like.”

  Vera bolted from her chair and into the house, returning a moment later with Birds of North America and a flashlight. She showed Lucybelle pictures of veeries, male and female, adult and juvenile. “I have black bear too. There’s a beech tree not far away with claw marks where the bears have climbed for the beech nuts.”

  “So you left Susan.”

  “No. She left me. For a lawyer.”

  “I guess he was a lot safer.”

  “She. And yes.”

  “She?”

  “They keep separate apartments and only spend a night or two a week together. They both date men. From what I can tell, any men they can find, although lately they seem to have come up with an arrangement with a couple of fellows who want a cover as well. I haven’t met them, but the lawyer praises them for being very masculine.”

  Night had arrived, but the stars weren’t quite out and the moon was new. Vera sat a couple of feet away, but Lucybelle saw only her shape swell and sag as she heaved a big sigh. “You wonder why I stayed so long, why I waited for her to leave me. The confusing thing about Susan is that she gets it all. She’s ashamed of her fear. She knows better. She’s wonderfully perceptive.” Vera’s voice quavered a moment before she regained control. “Don’t mind me. I’m not upset about her and me. I’m well over the relationship. I’m upset about her. She’d be capable of so much if she’d let herself. But her innate terror throws her into the arms of people like the lawyer.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I detest her.” Vera caught herself and added, “Not Susan. The lawyer. I suppose that’s wrong of me to harbor such intense . . . dislike.”

  “If you detest her, I’m sure she’s quite detestable.”

  Vera laughed! “Well, she is. She works for IBM. They’re developing computers, and she’s perfect for the job. Not a single uncalculated word comes from her mouth. She makes a pile of money. I feel as if she keeps Susan imprisoned. That’s actually not fair, though. Susan chooses the situation. So let them have their little purgatory.”

  “Strong language.”

  “Yes. Deserved.” Vera sighed, as if letting go of something. “They probably don’t have sex for fear of hidden surveillance cameras in the apartments. Whatever is between them, they’re intent on keeping it secret. They’re rigorous in their subterfuge. The lawyer is terrified I’ll somehow blow their cover. I swear, I could probably blackmail her for a tidy monthly sum, if I wanted.”

  “That’s so sad.”

  “Agreed.”

  “It’s not all that uncommon.”

  “No, it’s not. But I say, never again. No more sensitive types. No more secretive types.”

  A swath of the black sky shuddered across the yard, right above their chairs. Lucybelle gave a little cry of alarm, feeling as if she were revealing all her weaknesses in one outburst.

  “It’s just the crows. They’re alighting in the bitternut hickory.” Vera got up and waved her hands at the birds, calling out, “Shoo! Shoo!”

  “You don’t need to shoo them on my account. They just startled me.”

  “They harass the littler birds. I prefer that they have their conference elsewhere.”

  Vera didn’t sit back down in the Adirondack chair. She stood with her fists on her hips, looking out at the dark pond, and Lucybelle knew without having to be told that this conference too was over. She left quickly, not wanting to be shooed like the crows.

  Sunday, July 12, 1964

  The following Sunday, Lucybelle arrived at the appointed time, not a minute before or after, and knocked gently on the cabin’s front door. When there was no answer, she knocked harder. Vera clearly had said eight o’clock. It seemed early for a Sunday, but Lucybelle agreed because she didn’t want to sound like a slouch. Last week they’d met on Friday afternoon, which the colonel had given everyone off because of the holiday the next day. Lucybelle had suggested Saturday this week, hoping for more cocktails following their work, but Vera said she was busy.

  Apparently, she was busy today too. Lucybelle got back in her car and started the engine, revving it just in case Vera was home and hadn’t heard her knocking. She sat in the idling car for another couple of minutes and then shut off the engine. She imagined Vera inside the cozy two-room cabin with a friend, perhaps in the back room, the one Lucybelle hadn’t seen, having forgotten their work appointment. But no, that was silly, Vera had made it quite clear with both her words and by inhabiting this backwoods cabin miles from the lab that, above all else, she wanted her reclusive independence.

  Well. Good for her. Lucybelle got out of the car and slammed the door. She walked around the cabin to the back side, and there, emerging from the pond, water dripping off her like diamonds in the early morning air, was Vera. She wore a black bathing suit, no frills, and h
er hair was flattened against her head. She moved with a bold grace, backdropped by the shimmering surface of the pond. As she strode toward her cabin and Lucybelle, bare feet in the green grass, she said, “Is it eight o’clock already?”

  “Quarter past.”

  “I spent all day yesterday—and night, I might add—working on the rewrite. It’s on the kitchen table. You can get started. Help yourself to coffee.”

  She’d barely gotten seated when Vera joined her, toweled hair left all wonky, wearing a pair of blue jeans and an oversized T-shirt. Lucybelle felt prim in her cotton skirt and blouse.

  “Do you like to swim?” Vera asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “So should I spend a few minutes reading what you’ve done?”

  “I didn’t get any further than the first page.”

  “But you said—”

  “Yes, all day and all night. I know.”

  “I could have come later in the week.”

  “That would have only prolonged my misery.”

  Lucybelle flipped through the pages they’d marked up last week. Bader had said there were two papers in this pile, and Vera had agreed. They’d teased apart the differences and made two outlines. Half the pages would be images.

  “Let’s do the photograph captions today,” Lucybelle said. “Maybe that’ll help me understand what all this is about.”

  “Help you?” Vera said. “Don’t spare my feelings.”

  Four hours later, they’d written half of the captions and Lucybelle was starving, and she said so. As Vera made lunch, Lucybelle inspected the feathers, stones, and bones. She studied the books on the shelves—mostly natural history, not a single novel—and picked up the one on the coffee table, a technical treatise on flying. She looked up to see Vera drying her hands on a dishtowel and watching her.

  “Want to go up some time?”

  “You have a pilot’s license?”

  “Yep. We’ll fly over the White Mountains.”

  She imagined Vera in a little leather cap like Amelia Earhart’s, at the controls of a two-seater, herself flying shotgun. Below, the cold mountain peaks, and above, the endless blue sky. The fantasy left her with a vertiginous apprehension.

  After eating their sandwiches, Vera suggested a “short walk” and lent Lucybelle a pair of sneakers which, being a size and a half too big, felt like clown shoes. Nevertheless, they hiked for over two hours, often pushing through dense underbrush, all the while Vera pointing out the species of trees, a schist cliff, a bobcat den in a fractured ledge, and the tree where the bear scratched. By the time they returned to the cabin, Lucybelle’s legs were bleeding with a dozen scrapes and cuts, her feet were blistered, and her cotton skirt was torn.

  “Next time wear jeans,” Vera said handing her a box of Band-Aids. With anyone else, Lucybelle would have just taken the pile of paper home and unscrambled the data and verbiage on her own. She knew she was capable of that. But she left it all right there on Vera’s kitchen table and they planned to meet again the following weekend. The fact of the matter was, she enjoyed the look of helplessness on this capable woman’s face as they wrote together.

  Soon they both excused Vera from the process altogether, except to be available to answer questions, and Lucybelle buckled down at the table facing the pond and wrote the two papers, over the course of seven weekends.

  Saturday, August 29, 1964

  As long as they met at Vera’s cabin, and a manuscript sat between them on the kitchen table, Vera could pretend they had a strictly professional relationship, even if they did have drinks and take hikes. So when in late August, after the papers had been finished and submitted, one each to Science and Nature, and Lucybelle invited Vera over for dinner, she balked.

  “What for?” she asked.

  “Dinner,” Lucybelle repeated.

  “Dinner?”

  “I’m not much of a cook. In fact, I can’t cook at all, but I’d like to have you over to my place.”

  Vera stared without responding.

  Lucybelle was well aware that she should be hurt rather than amused. The problem was, she liked Vera’s walls. She enjoyed leaning against her resistance. In fact, she’d become quite infatuated with the walls, covered them in climbing roses, flew airplanes over them, took naps in their shade. She said, “Tell you what. Bring a briefcase and something you’re working on. We’ll lay it out on the coffee table.”

  “Very funny.” Despite her sarcasm, a rare defenselessness—this one more deep-seated than the bad writer one—seized Vera’s face. She turned away quickly but showed up for the dinner.

  “You’ve met L’Forte.” Lucybelle flourished a hand in the direction of her dog sitting upright, to the degree a dachshund can sit upright, in the wingback chair.

  Early on she’d asked if she might bring him out to the pond, and Vera had said fine, if he didn’t mind staying in the car. She said he’d be distracting to their work and also that he’d scare off her precious critters. Lucybelle did bring him a few times, taking breaks to let him out of the backseat and walk him on the road, but Vera had shown little interest in knowing him.

  L’Forte did not greet Vera now. Shrewd fellow that he was, he remained in the chair and appraised the visitor from a distance. He looked undecided.

  “Say hello to him,” Lucybelle instructed Vera.

  “He’s a handsome fellow.” That was generous.

  “You hear that, L’Forte? She thinks you’re handsome.”

  He wagged his tail (though not vigorously), hopped off the chair, and trotted over to Lucybelle’s side, announcing the possibility of approval and also his understanding that keeping a wide berth was a good idea. Lucybelle laughed and petted him. “His first impression is cautiously positive.”

  “You live like a Spartan,” Vera said taking in the sparse contents of her studio apartment.

  “True. No artifacts. But don’t worry about dinner: I got it all from the deli. It’ll be quite tasty. Martini?”

  “The truth serum.”

  Lucybelle laughed. “I think we’re past secrets.”

  “Too bad.”

  “I thought you hated secrecy.”

  “But I love revelation.”

  “I have stories. Do they count as revelation?”

  “I’m thinking yours will.”

  This brief exchange left Lucybelle reeling. What did Vera mean by “revelation”? Why had Lucybelle offered “stories”? What had happened to Vera’s walls? She retreated to the kitchen to make the drinks and regain her composure.

  “So?” Vera asked as soon as they were seated in the living room with their martinis. “Stories.”

  “Can we have a little small talk first?”

  “I hate small talk.”

  “I see.”

  “So do you.”

  This was essentially true, though Lucybelle was capable of making it, which apparently Vera was not. “Okay. So tell me what you know about the editors of Science and Nature. How likely do you think it is that they’ll publish the papers?”

  Vera shook her head.

  “Unlikely?”

  “That’s small talk.”

  Lucybelle didn’t quite agree. She really was interested, quite invested, in the outcome of all their work.

  Vera raised her martini, followed by her eyebrows.

  “What you want,” Lucybelle tried to tease, “is gossip.”

  “If you’re talking about yourself, it isn’t gossip.”

  It wasn’t the martini. She’d only had two sips. Everything, suddenly, was quite simple: Vera had accepted dinner, maybe even a date, but the terms were full disclosure. So they both lit cigarettes and she began.

  She’d already told her a restrained version of Phyllis and had admitted to an affair with someone else’s girlfriend, but relating just the outlines of those romances had left her feeling chagrined. Tonight, by filling in the details, by fleshing out the full human comedy of her romantic history, she shed the emotional
discomfort. Most of all, she loved making Vera laugh. She told about finding Fred in her kitchen, taking L’Forte to sleep in her New York office, four years later finding Phyllis and three-year-old Georgia on her doorstep in Evanston, and leaving her ex in possession of a second apartment. She heightened the humor of these stories with contrast, giving a full accounting of the unfunny moment on the Michigan Avenue Bridge, staring down into the dark passing river, and her despair. She told about meeting Stella there, about Wanda’s baseball bat. Telling these stories was cathartic, so many memories freed, sent off in their own little leather caps of wild flight.

  She laid out the pictures she’d taken of Stella a year ago, and Vera surprised her by enthusiastically admiring the Thunderbird convertible in the background. Lucybelle even explained why Stella had made the trip to New Hampshire. She watched Vera’s face as she told about the nude photographs, how they were an expression of Stella’s artistic vision but also a potent bond between them, and expected to see disapproval. She cared, didn’t want to see even a hint of displeasure on Vera’s face, but over the past few minutes, during her telling, she’d made a silent but vehement vow that not a single deception would slip between herself and Vera.

  “May I see the pictures?”

  “No!”

  “You’re the one who mixed and served the truth serum.”

  “And I’m telling you all the truths. But you don’t get to examine the primary documents.”

  “You’d better get us some food,” Vera said.

  They ate at the coffee table because Lucybelle didn’t have a kitchen table. She put out two plates, the heated up squares of lasagna, the container of coleslaw, and a bottle of wine.

  Vera’s laugh was surprisingly full-chested, and the more Lucybelle heard it, the more she wanted to hear it. She’d never talked so much in her life. While Vera ate with a robust appetite, she heard herself describing Clare and segueing right into how they’d stumbled into sex in a New York building’s entryway. She thought she’d gone too far, blown everything with this bawdy story, but Vera’s entire being seemed to slacken. She set down her plate, having scraped off all the tomato sauce, and just smiled at Lucybelle.