“I’m not sure what you mean. Blame for what?” Bree shifted in her seat and turned her entire body toward Linda.
“Take me, for example. Most people in town blame Mike, my ex, for our divorce because he had an affair.”
“Shouldn’t they?”
Linda slowed down as they entered the city limits and passed the high school on their left. “To some extent, yes.”
“To some extent?”
She mused as she drove past the city park and the large cemetery where her parents lay buried. “Yes. Our marriage died a long time before he started having an affair.”
“Why?”
“Obviously because I’m gay.” They entered the large intersection near town, where five highways came together, and Linda thought about how her own life had once intersected with Bree’s and now might do so again. At least she hoped it would.
“So you’re totally responsible for the failure of your marriage?”
Bree’s blunt question startled Linda. “I’ve never admitted this to anyone, but yes. I am.”
“Aren’t you being a little hard on yourself?”
And again, Bree’s hand lightly touched her forearm.
Linda pulled up in Bree’s driveway and killed the engine to signal her reluctance for their conversation to end. “Maybe I’m being a bit harsh. But who else can I blame? I’m the one who said yes when he proposed.”
“And why did you do that?” Bree’s tone was intense.
“I was young and inexperienced. He was handsome and able to provide for me and the children I thought I wanted to have. Society said women should get married and reproduce.” That was as honest as Linda could be.
“So you wanted kids?”
“Of course. I never questioned that part of marriage. I wanted what my parents had. They always seemed so happy, though they never seemed passionately in love. I thought their kind of happiness would be enough.”
“And it wasn’t?”
Bree’s front-porch light shone brightly, like the future Linda had fantasized about when she first married. “No. At first all the excitement of moving around and traveling to exotic places I’d dreamed of kept us connected. But after we settled down and started a family, I sensed something was missing.”
Linda gazed out the car window at the half-full moon. Tomorrow it would be less than half full, and the next night even smaller. She’d felt that way back then. And the feeling had grown until now she thought of herself as only a sliver of a person when it came to personal relationships.
“Like what?”
“I couldn’t put my finger on it. At first I thought the children had caused the problem.”
“Why them?”
Linda loved Bree’s sympathetic questions. She usually listened to others but rarely talked about herself. “They took up so much of my time and energy I didn’t have much left for Mike. He became more involved in his job and took more business trips.”
“And?”
“I’d get angry at times because he was able to still fly here and there, and I couldn’t.”
Bree pulled her leather jacket tighter around her. “Why didn’t you get a sitter and go with him?”
“I did, but when I was away, I couldn’t keep the children out of my mind.”
“Not exactly conducive to a romantic getaway, eh?”
“That’s right. I’d worry about them so much it became pointless to leave them.” Linda paused and stared at Bree. She hadn’t thought about those years in a long time. “But why am I telling you all this?”
“Because I’m interested. I could just as easily have had the same experience you did.”
Linda laughed. “You? No way. You always knew yourself and were never afraid to do exactly what you wanted to, even if it made people talk.”
Bree shrugged, as if she didn’t want to respond to that remark. “So that’s why you got married and stayed married? So people wouldn’t gossip about you?”
“I suppose so.” Linda held up both hands. “I’m a coward. I admit it.”
Bree blew out a heavy breath, as if disagreeing. “When you were younger, did having children with a woman ever cross your mind?”
“No, never.”
“What about having sex with a woman?”
“Yes. Absolutely. I fantasized about that quite a bit, from an early age.”
“Why didn’t you? Have sex, I mean?”
Linda thought back about some of the women she’d had crushes on—her brothers’ girlfriends, Ann’s friends…Bree. “Most of them weren’t available.”
“You mean your teachers, or older and married women?”
“Yes. All of the above. Or they talked about boys all the time and would have been horrified if they’d known I thought about them the same way they thought about boys.”
“So you never had any physical encounters with girls your age?”
Linda was glad Bree couldn’t see how deep the blush that suddenly heated her face was. “Well. I remember, in the fifth grade, how some of the girls I ran around with would touch each other.”
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Oh God.” Linda feared her face would burst into flames. “I can’t believe we’re discussing this. But yes, I did.”
“Didn’t that give you a clue about yourself?”
“No. Not at all.” Linda shook her head. “I quit associating with those girls and made a whole new set of friends.”
Bree sighed. “And that made you feel better about yourself?”
Linda remembered how she’d begun to get wrapped up in her homework and other after-school activities about that time. “Yes, but in a few years all my friends and I started dating, and I totally failed at that.”
“How?”
Bree appeared determined to see this subject through to the end, so Linda relaxed and just let herself enjoy talking about herself. “I couldn’t think of anything to say to boys on the phone, much less on a date. They didn’t seem to see me as pretty, much less sexy, so I began to view myself as ugly and undesirable.”
“And?”
“Finally, in high school, some of my friends and I started fooling around sexually like we had in fifth grade. You know, experimenting.”
“Yeah. Remember how, before the pill, everybody avoided having sex with boys because they were afraid they’d get pregnant?”
“I sure do.”
“So experimenting with other girls was safe but didn’t mean anything?” Bree sounded skeptical.
“Mostly. We had to do something with all those hormones.”
Bree chuckled. “That’s for sure. You never fell for any of those girls?”
“No. Not like I did for the ones I’d had crushes on and fantasized about having sex with.”
“The unavailable ones?” Bree seemed to be trying to understand.
“Right. Maybe I wanted to keep them on the pedestal I’d put them on.”
Suddenly Linda was ready for this conversation to end.
“So you married Mike because he paid attention to you and made you feel safe.”
“That’s about it.”
“And I’m sure you were the only one in your age group who did anything like that,” Bree added, her tone ironic.
Linda laughed, feeling uneasy. “Thanks for trying to make me feel better. And thanks for listening, but I better go. It’s getting late.”
Bree opened the car door. “Say, what’s the story on Tonda, the woman who came in late? Why don’t you come in and tell me what you have going on with her? Besides, you still haven’t told me much about Lou Anne and Kay.”
“I’d love to, but I really need to leave. It’s late, and I’m a little tired.” She moved around in her seat, which was becoming rather hard after all this time. “Besides, you’ve given me a lot to think about.” Linda turned the key to start the engine. “But let’s get together again, soon. I enjoyed being with you tonight.”
“It’s a date. This has been enlightening. Thanks for asking me to tag a
long.”
Bree stood in the driveway and waved as Linda pulled away. Linda waved back. What a relief to discuss her failed marriage with Bree. It had made her feel better about herself. But she wasn’t ready to talk about Tonda yet. That was too new.
She noticed the half moon again as it emerged from a bank of clouds. Its sudden brightness startled her from her thoughts. What would her life have been like if she’d become seriously involved with someone like Bree or Tonda instead of Mike?
Chapter Ten
Beep-beep. Beep-beep. Bree put her hands over her ears after she woke from a deep sleep. What the—? If she ignored the sound, maybe it’d stop.
She glanced over at her clock: 2:42. She went to the bathroom, then tried to go back to sleep, but after ten minutes, she tossed back the covers. Beep-beep, beep-beep. What could it be?
Maybe some type of alarm, coming from the attic? Back in Chicago she’d just phone her apartment’s twenty-four-hour emergency number, and someone would come make the obnoxious sound go away. But right now she was in an old house, responsible for taking care of whatever problem cropped up.
Reluctantly, she slid from her warm bed and felt the cold floor. Well, by Texas standards it was cold for early November. By Chicago standards, it was cool. But she could manage. Slipping on some tennis shoes, she headed for the attic.
Yep. The closer she got to the attic door, the more insistent the beep sounded—patient and regular. She wanted to strangle the damn thing.
At least she remembered where the attic door was, having once stored suitcases and Christmas ornaments in its cavernous space.
Inside the attic, the beep was louder. She flipped on one light switch, then another, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.
Part of the space was floored with plywood, but that luxury soon ended. She stared at a tangle of huge silver ducts, what looked like water hoses, and various types of wires and pipes stretched over bare rafters. And between the rafters lay insulation. Plus, the infernal beeps seemed to be coming from the opposite side of the attic, which wasn’t lit or floored.
Cursing, Bree went back downstairs and located a flashlight, took a drink of water, and, on a whim, grabbed a handful of paper towels. Then she trudged up to the attic again and stepped from one rafter to another until she reached the other side of the huge space, guided by the beep. She felt like Dante on his famous journey.
A large white tank loomed ahead, a pulsating red light faintly illuminating it. And in the beam of her flashlight she suddenly detected a light switch. Yes. Now she could see again, and the sight wasn’t pretty. The water heater looked fairly new, but a tiny white tank perched behind it like a pack on a hiker’s back spewed a steady stream of water into the air. Oh, shit. That’s exactly why she’d lived in rental property all these years.
She examined the still-beeping little box and found the off button. At last, blessed silence. But now she had to stop the leak. Bucket, she thought, and some way to divert the water into it. Turn off the water heater first, she told herself. Reading the directions pasted on the exterior of the tank, she didn’t have much trouble shutting off the heater, but the arcing stream of water kept spraying into the attic.
After picking her way back across the rafters as fast as she dared, she located a large red bucket in the garage and picked up a handful of rags, then hurried over to the leaking tank again. Bucket in place, she placed a rag over the leak but soon heard a loud plop as it became saturated and fell into the bucket.
So she tried the paper towel, her initial weapon of choice. It immediately became soaked but somehow stayed put, and miraculously the escaping water began to stream down the side of the tank and drip into the bucket.
Whew. She took a deep breath. As the water cooled, the pressure should subside and the water leak would stop.
But it didn’t. The bucket began to fill, so she hurried to find another one. Returning with its green twin, she waited until the red one was half-full, then substituted the green one and carefully walked the rafters again.
Carrying the sloshing bucket, she felt like a tightrope artist. One misstep, and she and the bucket would crash through the Sheetrock attached to the bottom of the rafters and fall fourteen feet onto the concrete floor of her parents’ living room. Not a pretty thought. She slowed her pace, dodging wires and climbing over air-conditioning ducts as if her life depended on it. Which it did, she finally realized.
After several trips, dripping sweat and her legs beginning to shake, she had to give in and call for help. Obviously she couldn’t fix this problem.
Back downstairs, she picked up her cell phone. “Carolyn. Sorry to call so late, but the water heater’s leaking. Do you know a plumber?”
Carolyn sounded groggy yet willing to help. “Have you turned off the water, honey?”
“No. The leak’s in something called a pressure-relief tank. I thought turning off the heater would relieve the pressure, but it didn’t.”
“Go turn off the water, in front of the house. You know how to do that, right?”
Luckily, Bree had watched her father perform that task several times, so she grabbed a pair of pliers and an old plastic glass and ran out into the front yard. After she yanked the plastic cover off the hole in the ground, she bailed out the water that stood in it, reached down with the pliers, and turned the metal lever.
Back in the attic, she sighed as she saw that the water had finally stopped filling the bucket. She emptied the final bucketful, turned out the lights, and staggered back downstairs to find Carolyn, in her housecoat, waiting for her.
“You look a sight, all sweaty in your old T-shirt and underwear.” Carolyn chuckled as she wiped a smudge of mud off Bree’s face. “Come on. You can take a bath and sleep over at my place tonight. We’ll call a plumber in the morning.”
Bree nodded, her arms and legs shaky. Thank God for Carolyn.
*
Linda sat eating a bowl of cereal when the phone rang. She looked at her caller ID, then answered.
“You’re up early. What’s going on?” she asked Ann.
“I have to run to Walmart for a few last-minute things for my trip to Hawaii and thought I’d stop by for a minute, if you’re decent.”
“Of course. I’m up and dressed. I’m scheduled to visit a couple of patients in town, but I don’t have to leave until nine thirty.”
“I’m almost there. Have any coffee?”
“You know I always have a supply of Dark Magic, just for you.”
“Bless you. See you in a few.”
Linda stood rinsing her empty bowl and juice glass when Ann burst through the back door. “What’s got you out and about so early?”
Ann threw her purse on the bar and walked directly to Linda’s Keurig. “Coffee first, questions later. It’s not easy for me to be up this early.”
Linda laughed at her sister’s dramatics. “Okay. How about a sweet roll?”
Ann assumed a martyred expression. “Oh, you know I shouldn’t. Why do you even have these things here to tempt me? I thought you’d sworn off sugar and flour.”
“I have. Check out this cereal bowl—Shredded Wheat.”
“Ugh. And why do you keep hanging on to your mother’s old Melmac dishes? You ought to toss them and buy yourself some nice new ones.”
Linda stroked the edge of the bowl protectively. “No way. And I keep sweet rolls for hungry grandchildren and people like you.”
Ann patted her teased bottle-blond hair and lit on a stool at the bar. “Like me? Whatever do you mean?”
Linda recognized her cue to heap praise on Ann. “People like you, who can eat whatever they want and never gain a pound.”
Ann beamed. “Can I help it if I have a high metabolism rate?”
“No, but sometimes I wonder if we’re even half sisters. I can just look at one of those rolls and gain five pounds.”
Ann took the pecan-studded gooey bun that Linda handed her on a paper plate and bit into it. “Besides, I get a lot of
physical exercise.”
“I’ve never seen you working out.” Linda selected a mug and fixed Ann’s coffee, then placed it in front of her.
“No. I usually don’t let people into my bedroom when I’m exercising.” She grinned like a teenager.
“Oh, Ann. You’re so bad.”
“Well, I’m excited. I really think this new man in my life is the one.”
“I hope so. You’re leaving for Hawaii, what, tomorrow?” Linda returned her cereal box to the pantry.
“Yes. We’re taking the puddle-jumper from Tyler to Dallas in the morning, then flying nonstop to Honolulu. It’s just eight hours.”
Linda wiped up a splash of milk. “You’re sure you don’t want to get married a little closer to home, so your family and friends can be there?”
“Oh, honey. Why bother? Weddings have become my vacations, and believe it or not, I’ve never been to Hawaii.” Her Pacific-blue eyes sparkled.
“I don’t want to be a downer, but Bree and I were discussing something last night—”
“You and Bree?” Ann pushed the remnants of her sweet roll away. “What were you two doing together?”
“I asked her to go to a women’s dinner with me in Tyler. You know, the one I’ve invited you to but you’ve always told me you weren’t interested in.”
“You mean with all those lezzies? No way. You’re determined to ruin your reputation by associating with those perverts, aren’t you?”
“Perverts? What’s your problem?” Linda turned on the dishwasher, which roared to life. “They’re as normal as any of my friends here in town. I truly enjoy their company.”
Ann pulled the rest of the sweet roll toward her again and pinched off a bite. “I suppose Bree felt right at home. Did she find somebody to flirt with?”
“Don’t be silly. Most of the women there are couples.” She finally sat down again, thinking about last night. “Though, now that you mention it, one of the few single women in the group seemed to be giving Bree the eye.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Ann’s perfect complexion had become a bit ruddy. “She really has a way with the women.”
“Well, if anyone knows, you should.”
Autumn Spring Page 9