A Thin Bright Line

by Lucy Jane Bledsoe

  “I do love you. I do know you.” Her intonation made the words “love” and “know” sound like “hate.”

  The red sun set over Dorothy’s shoulder, giving her an inflamed aura, as if she were about to sizzle away in its heat. “I could get those pictures in a fast second,” she said. “I could share them with Bader. With the colonel. I could send them to your mother.”

  “The first two don’t want to see me naked. The latter already has.”

  “The disgrace of posing for that girl.” Dorothy sat down in the grass, as if the weight of her threat collapsed her. She picked through a patch of clover, maybe looking for a four-leafed one. “I could send them to Dr. Prescott.”

  “Why don’t you write a letter to Vassar, while you’re at it. Make sure you get revenge on Geneviève, as well.”

  “That’s what you think? This is revenge?”

  “I think it’s terror. Terror you’re turning on yourself and on others. On me.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. I have nothing to be afraid of.”

  “I know you’re an intelligent woman. I also know you have a heart.”

  “Now you’re the Wizard of Oz, are you?”

  “Can we talk about how you know Rusty?” When Dorothy didn’t answer, Lucybelle postulated, “You called Acme Transport and asked for a ride. Maybe you hoped for another interview with Stella. You lucked into Rusty as your driver. The two of you had a little heyday talking about me.”

  As Dorothy struggled to her feet, her shift hiked up to the tops of her thighs. She pulled it back down, cutting her eyes at Lucybelle. “Probably grass-stained,” she said, as if that too were Lucybelle’s fault, and walked slowly to her car, brushing off the back of her dress. She started the engine and drove forward.

  Lucybelle stood directly in the path of the Rambler, and a hot fear shot adrenaline to the tips of her fingers and toes. She jogged off to the side, but Dorothy turned the wheel and drove slowly toward her. The sky was dusky and opaque, too early for stars. An occasional car passed on the highway, but otherwise the evening was silent, hot, heavy. She couldn’t outrun a car, so Lucybelle just stopped and waited for whatever was going to happen next.

  Dorothy drew up alongside her and rolled down the window. “Do you really think I’d run you over? How many times do I have to tell you? I love you.”

  Saturday, August 13, 1966

  Lucybelle managed to sleep for about an hour and a half that night. She got up and dressed twice, intending to drive out to Vera’s. But without the right words, she stood to lose everything, if she hadn’t already. In fact, she had no words at all. At three in the morning, she called Acme Transport and Wanda answered. She pictured her at the phone in a nightgown, Stella sleeping through the call, the gorgeous dispatcher with the lilting voice already flipping through her list of drivers, choosing who she’d awaken to pick up this fare. Lucybelle cleared her throat and hung up the telephone.

  At dawn Lucybelle drove to the airport. She caught the first flight to Chicago and called Acme Transport from O’Hare International. Maybe Rusty had legions of riders who asked for her specifically; in any case, Wanda didn’t miss a beat, said she’d have Rusty at the airport in half an hour. It was more like an hour—an hour bloated with foreboding—before Lucybelle slid into the taxicab’s backseat.

  “What the hell?” Rusty said, recognizing her.

  “I want to talk to you.” Success in this mission depended on her keeping the upper hand, and that meant pretending confidence.

  “Get out of my cab. I don’t know you.”

  “Of course you know me, and we need to talk.”

  Rusty lifted the dispatch mic and said, “Wanda?”

  “You don’t want to do that,” Lucybelle warned.

  “Yeah, Rusty. What is it?” Wanda’s voice sounded silky even over the dispatch intercom.

  “Seriously,” Lucybelle said quietly. “You’d be wise to hang up.”

  “Got the O’Hare fare,” Rusty said, looking over her shoulder at Lucybelle, who shook her head and pointed a finger at the mic hook.

  “Well, that’s fine, Rusty. Now drive. What’re you calling me for?”

  Rusty signed off, turned around, and said, “Get out of my car.”

  “It’s Stella’s car. I’d rather talk to you than to her. But if you refuse to talk to me, I’ll be forced to resolve this thing with her.”

  A cop slid slowly by and leveled an unpleasant gander at Rusty.

  “I know all about you,” Rusty tried.

  “Good. Then we won’t have to waste time on me. I want to talk about you. Let’s go somewhere quiet.”

  “I said, get out.”

  “Your big mouth caused the raid of Stella’s home and darkroom.” Lucybelle watched the threat lodge in Rusty’s consciousness.

  “What are you talking about?” she asked, her quavering voice confirming some level of guilt.

  “Let’s go somewhere we can talk before that policeman bothers us.”

  Rusty pulled away from the curb and drove carefully, nervously checking and rechecking her side and rearview mirrors. Lucybelle leaned back in the seat and felt the swamp of exhaustion clog her brain. Was she doing the right thing? What was the alternative? Wait and see what might detonate? Less than twenty-four hours ago, she had been basking in the achievements of the last ten years and her hopes for the future. Sunlight and laughter.

  Dorothy had lurched into her idyll like a Frankenstein.

  Rusty pulled into an expansive and empty parking lot, a graveyard of cement and chain-link fencing. The closest building was a warehouse on the far side of the lot.

  “I don’t like it here. Take me to the lake. In Evanston.” An urge to see the brink of water and sky, that crisp convergence, spoke the words for her.

  “That’s too far. You want to talk? Talk.”

  “The lake. Evanston.”

  Rusty reached under the car seat. But she didn’t have anything there. The ridiculous bluff revealed her desperation.

  “Come on, Rusty. The lake. Now. Or I’ll call Stella.”

  Rusty parked facing the water. A brisk wind frothed the lake, freshening the hot August day. People walked along the shore in their shirtsleeves, smiling as if the world were a happy and benevolent place. Lucybelle opened the door and stepped out into the sunlight, intending to get into the front seat so she and Rusty could talk face to face, but when she reached for the handle, the cab shot backward, nearly hitting a pedestrian, who yelled and banged her fist on the side of the car. Rusty spun the steering wheel and took off forward, leaving Lucybelle standing by the lake.

  Then, before she even had time to consider what to do, Rusty put the cab in reverse and gunned back toward her again, causing yet another pedestrian to shout and leap. Rusty reparked the car and stared straight ahead at the lake.

  Lucybelle opened the front passenger door and got in. “I guess you changed your mind.”

  “I got a wife now,” Rusty said, still refusing to look at Lucybelle. “We got a kid.”

  “So you need to keep your job.”

  “What do you want?”

  “You hate me because I interfered with your family. That’s fair enough. It’s probably what caused you to talk to Dorothy about me.”

  “I don’t know a Dorothy.”

  “Dorothy Shipwright.”

  “I don’t know her.”

  Either Rusty was lying or Dorothy used an alias. That was almost funny, picturing Dorothy who was good at imitations, taking on a fake persona.

  “Maybe she used another name. But she told you things about me, probably a mix of true and otherwise. You bit. You went right for her bait.”

  Rusty’s freckles darkened and her knuckles lightened as she gripped the steering wheel. Her labored breathing caused her nostrils to flare.

  “Did she pay you?”

  “Hell, no!” The second the words were out of her mouth, Rusty closed her eyes and rested her forehead on the top of the steering wheel, realizing sh
e’d just admitted to talking.

  “I’m not going to do anything to hurt you or your family.”

  “As if you could.” Mumbling now, her face still pressed to the steering wheel.

  “I’m not going to tell Stella that you talked to Dorothy, or whatever she called herself. She’ll never have to know that you caused the raid.”

  “Stupid white bitch,” Rusty said, jerking upright in the seat, emboldened by a new wave of anger. “They raided her darkroom because her pictures show those racists for who they are. She’s a brilliant photographer. Her pictures are total indictments.”

  Lucybelle didn’t like being called a stupid white bitch, but she did like Rusty’s hot pride in Stella’s achievements. She was right: the raid might well have been based solely on Stella’s journalistic photographs; it might not have had anything to do with Dorothy. She would never know for sure. “The point is, you shouldn’t be telling stories to people you don’t know.”

  “Let me know when you’re done, because I need to get on to my next fare.”

  “You told Dorothy about those photographs. The ones of me.”

  Rusty swallowed. She put her hand on the key in the ignition, and Lucybelle saw that the hand was trembling. Rusty said, “That was just talk.”

  “You can imagine how that talk makes me feel.”

  “I don’t care how you feel.”

  “You say you have a wife and child.”

  “Just leave me alone!” There were tears in her voice now and she looked Lucybelle in the eye for the first time. “Get out of the cab!”

  “Okay. I’ll leave you alone. Get me those two photographs and you’ll never see me again.”

  “I can’t.”

  “You can’t what?” Lucybelle tried to calm her own voice.

  “Get you the photographs.”

  “You told Dorothy you could get them for her.”

  “I burned those pictures years ago. Wanda asked me to.”

  Lucybelle sat back in the plush car seat. She smelled smoke and saw fire. Whisper Their Love ablaze in the wastepaper basket at SIPRE, reduced to embers. The tar pots at CRREL, fire truck sirens screaming. May Sarton’s novel, the one she rescued, in her own wastepaper basket at home.

  She reached over and put a hand on Rusty’s shoulder.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  She didn’t remove her hand. “Are you telling the truth?”

  “Hell, yes. No one wants those pictures.”

  Lucybelle believed her. The disclosure blazed away the last of her fear, and she withdrew her hand. “Take me back to the airport.”

  Sunday, August 14, 1966

  The relief was biblical. Without the photographs as props, Dorothy could talk all she wanted to whomever she wanted. No one would listen. The accusations—of what? Perversion? Love? Refusal to love her?—would only expose Dorothy’s own misery. Lucybelle slept for nearly twelve hours. Then, in the morning, she took L’Forte and drove out to the pond.

  “Good,” Vera said. “Let’s just get this over with.”

  “You can’t break up with me. It’s my birthday on Tuesday.”

  “If you’re trying to be funny—”

  “Also, L’Forte couldn’t handle it. He’s almost fourteen, you know.”

  “This is too much work.”

  “Spoken by a woman who lives for work.”

  Vera pressed the butts of her palms into her eyes and then lowered her hands. She was crying. “What am I supposed to say?”

  “Nothing. I’d like you to listen.”

  “I don’t want to hear some tawdry story about you and that librarian.”

  It shouldn’t have been funny, but it made Lucybelle laugh, which in turn made Vera suppress a smile, despite the tears.

  “It sort of is tawdry,” she said, “but that’s not the embarrassing part.”

  She waited until Vera said, “Okay. What’s the embarrassing part?”

  “Just how stupid and ordinary the story is.”

  Vera leveled her gray, basaltic gaze, first out the window at her beloved pond, and then directly at Lucybelle, who added, “With a few unpleasant twists.”

  “You’re trying to make me laugh.”

  “As hard as I can.”

  “Did you sleep with her?”

  “Sort of.”

  No one could make a face of exasperation better than Vera, but she let the shoddy language pass and moved on to, “When?”

  “Five years ago on New Year’s Eve. Once.”

  Vera’s expression slackened in relief.

  “She sort of hasn’t let go, though.”

  This time the exasperation, at the repeated use of “sort of,” was combined with another suppressed smile.

  “And I wasn’t careful with her feelings. I should have been ever so clear from the moment I realized how she felt.”

  “When was that?”

  “That’s part of the problem. I never quite paid enough attention. I knew she was lonely. I occasionally noticed she fixated on me. But she fixated on other people too.”

  Vera still looked unsure, about everything.

  “So you want the whole story?”

  “I really don’t.”

  “What’s the alternative? You leaving me?”

  Vera looked back out at her pond. At least she didn’t say yes.

  “I’ll tell you everything,” Lucybelle said lighting a cigarette, which she handed to Vera before lighting another one for herself. “Then you can decide.”

  More tears filled Vera’s eyes and while she hated hurting her, Lucybelle was deliriously happy to see the tears, to know that Vera wouldn’t, couldn’t, leave her. The terms of their relationship, from the beginning, had been full disclosure and she knew she had to be quick and precise, like performing surgery, but rather than taking something out, she was adding information in. She told the stories of Dorothy, of Rusty, and of her trip to Chicago the previous day.

  When she finished, she put the manila envelope on the kitchen table.

  “What’s that?”

  “The pictures.”

  “Jesus.”

  “You once wanted to see them.”

  “That was before. I hardly knew you then.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. When it comes to emotions, logic fails you.”

  “That would be true of everyone.”

  “But especially of you.”

  Vera sat down at the kitchen table and picked up the manila envelope. She held it up to the light for a moment, as if she could cheat and look at the pictures through the veil of the orange enclosure. Then she cut her eyes at Lucybelle, who tried to make a funny face. Vera shook her head, no-nonsense, and undid the clasp. She slid out the shiny eight-by-tens.

  Lucybelle knew the pictures by heart. The one where the light cuts her in half. The one where her hair resembles a burning bush. The pale glow of her skin in all of them, the contrast with the shadows, the way she’s moving into the patches of sun, almost slinking, but head up as if she senses the radiance just beyond her reach. The experience of having that afternoon from eight years ago now in Vera’s hands was surprisingly soothing, her life becoming one organic whole, her loves overlapping, touching.

  Vera looked at each picture for a long time. Her shoulders loosened. She sighed repeatedly. She handled them gently, setting each one face down when she was done. Then she went through them again, looking for an even longer period of time, becoming absorbed, maybe seeing beyond the image of naked Lucybelle to the art that Stella had made. Or maybe just looking at naked Lucybelle.

  Finally she said, “Do I ever get to meet her?”

  “I hope so.”

  Thursday, September 29, 1966

  The bird screams pulled Lucybelle away from her typewriter and over to the west-facing window of her studio apartment. The full moon backlit the huge elm tree, silhouetting the murder of crows sitting in its canopy. There had to be at least a dozen of them, twitching and turning circles on their respective branches,
their scaly little feet nimbly negotiating the rotations, all cawing some urgent story.

  Lucybelle had left L’Forte at the pond a week and a half ago, on Saturday morning, and Vera said neither she nor the dog would see Lucybelle until she mailed the manuscript. Vera, who hadn’t allowed him out of the car in the beginning, now claimed that L’Forte was happiest where he could sniff tree bark and watch ducks. He was too old to chase anything. In fact, Lucybelle feared more for his life than she did for that of the wildlife living near Post Pond. An elderly dachshund might make a nice snack for a bobcat, for instance. Vera promised to keep him safe.

  Lucybelle finished typing the final draft shortly after midnight, her hands aching from the hours of pecking. She put the manuscript in the box she’d bought for that purpose, along with its cover letter, and set it on the end table that had been with her since Pocahontas. Harry knew an agent in New York who’d agreed to read the novel. Tomorrow she’d take it to the post office.

  Lucybelle stood eyeing the packaged manuscript, feeling a bit scared, tentative, doubtful. As long as her novel was in her own head, or at the very most on pages under the bed, it held a potency, a promise. Now it seemed like nothing more than a stack of paper, 454 pages to be exact, stamped with words. Still. There it was. Finished. Remembering that she hadn’t yet read the day’s mail, and that there had been an envelope addressed with a childish nine-year-old scrawl, Lucybelle scooped up the letter and dropped into her wingback chair.

  Dear Aunt Lucybelle,

  I started fourth grade two weeks ago. Mr. Ellison is my first man teacher. Shannon and I talk too much and so he made me stay after school yesterday. She didn’t get caught and I didn’t tell on her. He made me write, “Ask not what your classroom can do for you— ask what you can do for your classroom,” a hundred times on the chalkboard. My hand still hurts.

  Did you have a nice summer? I did. We went camping in the Wallowas, next to a lake, and we got to rent horses to ride. Mine was named No Name. I also went to Camp Namanu. My favorite counselor was Miss Jo. She wasn’t my counselor, but I liked sitting at her table in the dining hall. She sang the loudest of all the counselors. Mom let me cut my hair short-short like Miss Jo’s and I also got to buy Converse high-tops. The Campfire Girls slogan is WoHeLo. That stands for Work, Health, and Love.