Pulp

by Robin Talley

  In hurt/comfort stories, something bad happened to one character, and then another character comforted them. Usually with lots of soft words and making out. Or more than making out, depending on the story’s rating.

  That evening, as she gazed into the sunset during the slow walk back from Linh’s house, Abby had reflected, This is my very own real-life hurt/comfort story.

  She’d thought putting a label on it might help. She was wrong.

  Abby and Linh had never spoken about anything that happened that afternoon. But a few days afterward, Linh started talking about breaking up.

  She was casual about it at first. So casual Abby got away with pretending not to understand, for a while. The problem was, Linh kept bringing it up. They were going to be apart for the summer anyway, she’d pointed out, with Linh off in Hanoi and Abby in Massachusetts—and everyone knew long-distance relationships were basically impossible. Maybe, she’d finally said one afternoon, casting a sideways glance at Abby, they were only delaying the inevitable.

  Abby didn’t let on how much that hurt. She hadn’t stopped caring about Linh just because her family was slowly imploding.

  But she didn’t want to fight about it, because the very idea of fighting made her think about her parents. When Abby’s mom and dad were fighting, they didn’t even seem to care if they were hurting each other. Sometimes, they almost seemed to want to hurt each other.

  So the night before Linh’s flight, when she oh-so-casually mentioned breaking up again, Abby closed her eyes and nodded. She was tired, and so she agreed, because agreeing was easy.

  She’d told herself it was temporary. That by the time the summer ended, Linh would realize how wrong she’d been, and they could pick up where they’d left off. For now, though, they’d agreed to be “just friends.” Abby figured that was better than nothing at all.

  They emailed every day that summer. At first, they kept it light. Linh told Abby about all the mistakes she was making as she struggled to learn Vietnamese, and about how every time she tried to cross the street she was positive she was going to get hit by a speeding motorcycle. She told funny stories, too, about how it was so oppressively humid that standing on the riverbanks watching the dragon boat races felt like standing in the middle of a thick wet cloud, and how she’d feared for her life the first time she climbed onto the back of her cousin’s motorized scooter, but once they started moving the adrenaline rush was so addictive she was thinking about borrowing the scooter and venturing out on her own.

  As the summer went on, though, Linh’s emails changed. She started writing Abby long messages late at night about how complicated her feelings were becoming the longer she stayed in Hanoi. She wrote about how frustrating it was when strangers greeted her in Vietnamese, then started politely treating her like an out-of-touch foreigner when they realized she didn’t understand. The language barrier put a constant strain on things at home, too, since Linh was spending all her time with her cousins. She was having a great time getting to know them, but communicating was still a big challenge. And as the end of the summer got closer, it was upsetting her more and more to think that this could be one of the last chances she’d have to spend time with all the relatives she’d grown close to.

  Abby read all of Linh’s emails closely. She spent hours looking up college cultural exchange programs and internships in Vietnam that Linh might be able to apply to next year, and she sent her long, detailed replies full of links and bullet points.

  She tried to read between the lines of what Linh was saying, too. Sometimes, sprinkled throughout the stories about her trip, there would be occasional less-specific comments. Comments like, It’s just so hard to know if you’re making the right decisions until it’s already too late. And, Lately I’ve been changing my mind so often I can barely think in a straight line.

  Those comments gave Abby hope. Maybe too much hope.

  But she knew better than to ask about that over email. That conversation should wait until they were in the same country, at least. So instead she told Linh funny stories of her own, like the one about the poetry reading her creative writing camp had gone to, and how all the boys had giggled and made inappropriate gestures during the poems about sex, and how it made her feel bad for all the straight and otherwise non-gay girls who had to put up with that kind of thing on the regular.

  Abby didn’t usually say much about her real life in those emails. There never seemed to be anything worth saying. She mentioned once or twice that her parents seemed to carefully coordinate their phone calls so that she never wound up talking to them both on the same day, and that she and Ethan only texted each other in emojis now. But she always tried to make those stories funny, too, using plenty of emojis of her own.

  Either way, all that emailing had brought her and Linh closer—or so Abby thought. She was sure that when the school year started up again, Linh would realize she’d been wrong to freak out about what happened, and things could go back to the way they’d been. Or at least some approximation.

  Abby wasn’t that concerned about the details of exactly how they’d get back together. Not as long as the end result involved being held again. Being held, and feeling like she mattered to someone.

  But that still hadn’t happened, and Abby was still trying to act like that was perfectly fine. In the meantime, her family was slowly, slowly, slowly falling apart—but she was supposed to pretend everything was fine there, too.

  And if Abby herself was also in the middle of a very gradual collapse, then hey, at least no one else seemed particularly bothered by it.

  Mom cleared her throat, but she was still giving Abby that expectant half smile. As though she genuinely thought they’d now launch straight into old-fashioned girl talk about Abby’s postbreakup social life.

  “Hey, so, um...” Abby tried hard to think of something to say. She had to throw her mom off track before she suggested they dig into low-calorie ice cream and pop in a Little Women DVD or something. “I think I’ve decided. Is it okay if I make my donation this year to the ACLU?”

  “Of course.” Mom smiled. She was always up for talking about charitable giving. Everyone in the Zimet-Cohen family chose a charity to give to out of their savings every year. “I might do the same thing, after I figure out how much to give to the Northam campaign. So, Abby, I wanted to let you know—”

  “Also, I meant to tell you.” Abby cut her off before she could launch into some other topic Abby didn’t want to talk about. “I finally have an idea for my senior project. I’m going to write a lesbian pulp fiction novel.”

  Mom stopped short and raised her eyebrows. “What exactly is that?”

  “Oh, I thought you’d know. They were big in the fifties.”

  “Believe it or not, I wasn’t alive in the fifties.” Mom laughed again.

  “Well, all I’m saying is, they’re old.” Abby rolled her eyes. “Plus it turns out some of them are pretty awesome. I kind of can’t stop thinking about this one that I read. Here, this is what they looked like.”

  She pulled up Satan Was a Lesbian and held out her phone. Mom peered at the screen, a crease forming between her eyebrows.

  “I know that one looks ridiculous, but if you can believe it, some of the books are really good.” Abby knew she was prattling on, but at least her mom wasn’t awkwardly trying to relate to her anymore. “I just read one about these women living in New York, and they’re both fascinating. Especially this one, Paula. She might be my new favorite fictional character of all time.”

  Mom was still gazing down at Satan Was a Lesbian, looking lost, so Abby switched to the Women of the Twilight Realm cover instead. “That’s Paula there.”

  “All right...” Mom zoomed in on the screen so she could read the text. “Is this an author who’s written other books you like, too? What does that say her name is—Marian Love?”

  “No, that’s what’s weird, she never wrot
e another book. That’s not even her real name—all these books were written under pen names because everybody was closeted back then. People have figured out who most of the writers really were, but Marian Love disappeared without a trace. And since it was the olden days, she didn’t leave a digital footprint, either. It’s as if she vanished into nothing.”

  It sounded glamorous when she put it that way. Although come to think of it, Marian Love probably was pretty glamorous.

  She must’ve been a lot like Paula. Abby could picture her perfectly—an older version of the women on those book covers, standing in a shadowed doorway in a chic vintage suit with one eyebrow cocked, holding a cocktail in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

  “Are you trying to find out what happened to this author for your project, then?” Mom asked, finally looking up from the phone.

  “Well, I don’t have to look into that specifically, but—” Although now that Mom had mentioned it, that did sound interesting.

  Maybe Ms. Sloane’s historian friend could help Abby do some extra research and track down the real Marian Love. It couldn’t be that hard to find her now that the internet existed. If she were still alive, maybe Abby could even email her. She could ask her about Paula and Elaine and what had happened to them after the book ended.

  Or maybe they could even meet. Marian Love probably lived in New York, and that was an easy train ride from DC. Abby imagined walking into some trendy coffee shop in Brooklyn where Marian Love was waiting. She’d be so impressed Abby had found her.

  “I bet I’d even get extra credit,” Abby mused, picturing herself shaking Marian Love’s perfectly manicured hand. “I could definitely use some extra credit.”

  “You could?” Mom cocked her head to the side. “Are you having trouble in your classes?”

  “Oh, uh...” Abby looked away, trying not to think about that paper on Danica Roem she still hadn’t turned in, or how close she was to missing Ms. Sloane’s deadline. “No, it’s just—extra credit’s always good.”

  “Of course.” Mom seemed satisfied with that answer. “Well, I definitely want to hear more about this project of yours. First, though, honey, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  Abby’s stomach jerked violently. She didn’t know what Mom was going to say, but she knew she didn’t want to hear it.

  She stood up. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Sure.” Mom got up, too. “I only wanted you to know that Dad’s trip is running longer than he expected. He’ll be back Friday instead of tomorrow.”

  “Oh.” That was all? “Okay.”

  Mom was watching her closely. “He’ll hate to miss coming with us to services, but he’s trying to get a ticket to one out in California.”

  “Oh. Oh...okay.” Now Abby understood why Mom was making a big deal about this.

  Thursday was Rosh Hashanah. Their family wasn’t particularly religious, but Mom, Dad, Ethan and Abby always went to the High Holiday services at the temple up on 16th Street, the one where Abby and her brother had gone for preschool. Even with all of Mom’s and Dad’s travel schedules, the whole family was always supposed to be together on holidays. “If he’s going to services there, why can’t he come back here instead?”

  “He has a very important meeting, sweetie, and it’s a five-hour flight. Don’t worry, you’ll see him Friday. He’ll be home by the time school lets out.”

  Right in time for Mom to leave on her next trip.

  Usually they were slightly less obvious about it. This week, though, they each kept going away and staying only one or two nights at a time. Did they seriously expect their kids not to notice when they pulled this kind of crap? Suddenly Abby was in the mood to hurl some water bottles of her own.

  She reached for the doorknob. “I really do need to go to the bathroom.”

  “All right.” Mom followed her, brushing invisible lint from her pants. “Then I want to hear all about this new book you’re writing.”

  “I don’t have time to talk about it. I have to email my first set of pages to Ms. Sloane tonight or I’ll get points taken off. Plus I have to do research on Marian Love.”

  Mom looked as though she wanted to argue, but she nodded. Abby walked down the hall as fast as she could and closed the bathroom door behind her. She leaned against it, staring at the ceiling.

  So Dad wouldn’t be home for Rosh Hashanah. Whatever. It wasn’t as if their family was especially into the holidays.

  Maybe Abby wouldn’t go to services, either. She could go to school instead. If doing stuff together didn’t matter to her parents anymore, she didn’t see why it should matter to her.

  She turned on her phone screen and ran a search for Marian Love. The first few results were stuff she’d already seen—articles about Women of the Twilight Realm and the mystery of how its author had disappeared—but farther down on the page was one she hadn’t spotted before called “Marian Love Changed My Life.”

  It turned out to be a blog. Each entry was a letter someone had sent to Marian Love, care of her publisher, since Women of the Twilight Realm first came out in 1956. The blogger must have gotten the letters from Marian Love’s publisher and scanned them, blocking out the identifying details.

  They were mostly scans of old handwritten pages, some with lines crossed out and notes scribbled in the margins. A few had been written on old typewriters and still had ink smudges. Some had dates in the corners—December 4, 1957; February 2, 1959; May 7, 1964. Abby had to squint to make out what the letters said.

  Dear Miss Love,

  I’m sure you’re very busy and probably don’t have the time to read my letter, but I simply had to write to you. I’ve just finished your novel, Women of the Twilight Realm.

  I thought I was the only one in the world who felt the way I did. When I read about the girls in your book, I realized I’m not alone. I would like to come to Greenwich Village the way Elaine did, but my children are so young and my husband is no help with them at all. How did you first learn there were other girls who felt the way you did? Was it from a book, too? If so, would you be able to mail it to me? I will of course pay the postage. My address is [blacked out square]

  Dear Mrs. Love,

  I read Women of the Twilight Realm. I want to say that you are a very good writer. I didn’t know there were books like this. I live in Iowa and it is very different here. There are no other girls who are like me. My father says if I stay this way I can’t live here anymore but I don’t know where else to live because I don’t have much money. I want to ask you to please write another book about girls who live in Iowa.

  Dear Miss Love,

  I came across your book, Women of the Twilight Realm, in a shop, and to say I was surprised would be a tremendous understatement. I admire your bravery in writing about such an unusual subject.

  I wondered if it would be too much of an imposition if I were to visit you in New York to discuss these topics further. It would be no trouble for me to travel there, as my husband allows me full use of the car most weekends. I would be very happy to take you for dinner one evening. Or drinks, perhaps. I stay at the Waldorf Astoria when I’m in the city, and you would be welcome to join me for a cocktail in my usual suite.

  There were dozens more.

  Some of the blog posts had comments, too, that people had submitted over the past couple of years since the site had been active. A lot of the comments mocked the letter writers for their spelling mistakes or blatant come-ons, but most of them were from women reminiscing about their own first readings of Women of the Twilight Realm and other books like it.

  Abby couldn’t believe how many women seemed to have realized they were gay from reading Marian Love’s book. Even more had read it and discovered, for the first time, that they weren’t the only non-straight people in the world. That there was a whole community out there.

  It was weird to think
that being gay used to mean being that isolated, but it was exciting to think a book could be so important. Maybe someday, someone out there would read a story Abby had written and be as affected by it as these women had been by Women of the Twilight Realm.

  A lot of the letter-writers talked about how they were afraid of being outed to their families. Abby wondered if Marian Love had ever come out to hers. All parents back in the fifties were anti-gay by default. If Marian Love had come out, her parents probably disowned her, like Paula’s had.

  Some parents were the same way even now. They talked about that in a lot of their GSA meetings. Homelessness was still scarily high for queer kids, and especially for trans kids, because so many families still kicked them out. Even some of Abby’s friends had problems with their parents, though nowhere near that level. Vanessa’s parents still refused to use “they” pronouns, even though Vanessa must’ve explained the non-binary thing to them a hundred times already. And last year when Ben told his mom he was going to prom with a guy she gave him this whole speech about how prom was something you remembered your whole life, and how as long as he thought he was bi he might as well go with a girl so the memory of prom night wouldn’t be ruined forever.

  When Abby had come out to her parents, though, it was a total nonevent. This was back in ninth grade when they still had family dinners, and one night Abby had reached for the platter of grilled salmon and nonchalantly announced that she was going to the winter dance with Linh. Mom and Dad had immediately started negotiating with each other about who was going to give them a ride, so Abby had jumped in to add, “By the way, you do know I like girls, right?”

  Dad had looked up, paused a moment, cleared his throat and said, “Of course, honey, and that’s perfectly fine with us,” and Mom had said, “Yes, sweetheart, and we love you, but do make sure you’re careful,” and Ethan, who’d been eight at the time but still old enough to know what “careful” meant, had yelled, “Ew! Ew! Ew!” And that was the end of the conversation.