by Lee Lynch
Sheryl scoffed, “Like we can pass for white, right? Like Medipak is going to be writing in a domestic partner deal next week. Uh-huh.”
“She’s just trying to be a good parent,” said Chantal. “I was there once. What did I know about homosexuals,” she whispered, “that I didn’t read about or see on TV?”
“But I thought Connecticut was just a liberal New York suburb,” she protested. “Like people here were already educated.”
Chantal smiled again. “Where did you find this one, Cece? I didn’t know—” she lowered her throaty voice and looked around—”butches could be so naïve. Rush Limbaugh isn’t going to broadcast why you’re getting axed, but you have no way to check your bins, Sugar. If the error reports are coming down one after the other, you have no proof that they’re doctored. And you’re only allowed three before they put you on probation.”
“So has anyone actually been canned for being, you know, domestic partners?”
Chantal beamed and reached over to very gently straighten Annie’s collar. “Isn’t she adorable?” The touch gave Annie a chill of pleasure. Chantal folded heavy lids over her sleepy-looking eyes.
“Who knows why they can people? I can’t swear I haven’t made the mistakes they report,” Louie said, with resignation in his tone.
Cece agreed. “I’d feel a whole lot better if we had someone on our side in Q.C.”
“That’s the plum job, Sugar. Kurt likes to give it to his flock.”
The other workers started drifting toward the warehouse and Louie peeled himself from his car, combing his hair. “It’s too beautiful to go inside.”
“Car payments, Mr. Louie,” Chantal teased, moving to walk with Annie. She had a swing to her hips like Elly’s. Annie wondered what it would be like to fill her hands with those hips, then made herself look away.
“What’s a girl to do?” Louie said and led them inside.
Chapter Five
“Celibacy,” said Annie the next Friday evening, as she watched Gussie spoon chocolate sprinkles onto a mound of ice cream, “has never been part of my life plan.”
Gussie licked her spoon and lifted an eyebrow. “It’s pretty restful.”
Despite a spring chill, Venita Valerie had brought them a quart of coffee ice cream from Dogwood Farms Dairy. Venita hadn’t taken off her bright yellow cloche hat with its trailing tie. Hats, the wilder the better, were her passion.
“Ice cream is a pretty good substitute,” Venita commented.
“Celib-icy,” said Gussie with a laugh. Her cowlicks were brushed down for Venita’s visit and she wore a red-checked flannel shirt with her sweat pants. “Creamy, but no emotional entanglement.”
“Gussie!” cried Annie as she loosened her belt. “This woman has a mouth on her,” she told Venita.
“Isn’t that the point?” Venita said, her embarrassed whispery words tripping over themselves, her eyes all slitted up in mirth.
“Venita!” cried Annie. “Gussie’s a bad influence on you.”
“I could have used her influence when I was younger.”
“It’s not too late to come out,” Gussie said, her tone matter-of-fact.
“Tell my arthritis it wants to do bedroom gymnastics.”
“Exercise is recommended,” Gussie countered.
Annie pointed her spoon at Gussie. “I don’t see you luring anyone into your bedroom for therapy.”
“I’ve had enough,” Gussie announced, pushing away her bowl.
Annie listened to a motorcycle’s screeching brakes as it turned onto Rafferty Street and maneuvered the cobblestones. Would there be a time when she’d have had enough too? “I still can’t imagine doing it with anyone but Marie-Christine,” she confessed. “You get used to a woman. It’s not like switching brands of shampoo. Or it shouldn’t be.”
“Are you saying you and Jo—,” Gussie asked.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m getting priggish in my middle years,” Annie said, jumping up to distract Gussie. She did a quick disco dance shuffle to the big band playing “Chattanooga Choo-Choo” on the town’s old-time radio station. “I think I was a seventies pebble swept up in the wave of sexual liberation. Without that, I might have been as stodgy as my parents. About the only thing they ever agreed on was how unsafe the world was for a nice little girl like me. And they were right—about the unsafe part.”
Gussie said, “And the nice part, maybe too nice. I’d be getting pretty frustrated if I were you.”
“Nothing a cold shower can’t fix,” Annie lied.
Venita laughed. “There’s no need for that! You’re the most eligible bachelor in town.”
Gussie took her bowl to the sink, poking Annie’s arm on the way. “You should see the way the women cruise this one at the diner.”
“She’s blushing!” announced Venita.
Gussie laughed. “They like that too. Why don’t you ever go out tom-catting?”
“You two are just plain lascivious.”
“I’ve been called worse,” Gussie bragged.
They played rummy until ten p.m. Annie offered to take Venita home. She u-turned in the middle of the street to avoid the gathering of cars, motorbikes and people with boom boxes crowding her usual turnaround at the end of Rafferty Street. But she could see them watch her, could feel their suspicious curiosity.
Too fitful to go home once Venita was safely in her lobby, Annie cruised silent, almost vacant Main Street. Morton River sometimes looked as if it hadn’t left the 1940s—forget the fifties, sixties and beyond. Downtown was dark except for the Club Soda, a bar with an ancient neon sign. At the Mason’s building around the corner men in suits and ties smoked cigarettes on the steps. The sounds of a band wafted up from the basement. She passed the silent grey stone railroad station and found herself sitting in the parking lot across from the Sweatshop, the Jimmys’ after-hours gay oasis.
She closed her eyes, unable to deny her frustration another minute. She didn’t want to rejoin the hunt, was disappointed in herself, but there it was; the blood through her body sang like the river at the end of the street.
Before Venita had arrived with the ice cream she’d called Jo—about seven times, hanging up on her answering machine every time. It was true; she and Jo hadn’t gone further than heavy petting. Part of it was her own reluctance to get involved. The rest of it came, unexplained, from Jo.
She ground her starter, yanked the shift into neutral, then skittered out of the gravel parking lot, sliding around the corner onto Railroad Avenue without pausing at the stop sign. She rushed up into the hills above the Valley, feeling as crazed as a kid, on fire with restlessness, her thoughts splintered with distractions.
She hated this chronic love-sickness, this gnawing need for touch, for intimacy—for sexual release. Taking a break at work, falling asleep at night, she’d lose herself in labyrinthine fantasies of wrestling with faceless soft females. There were times when she felt like nothing more than a mindless embodiment of lust.
North of New Haven she found the café she’d heard about, amazed at how well she remembered the streets from her early cab driving days.
The DJ was playing some crazy punk music and the dance floor was packed. The heavy beat pounded through her, producing a jolt of lust. It was hot, the smoke was thick enough to sting her eyes, and she smelled rum through it, sweet, rich and astringent, as if someone had spilled a bottle of the stuff. She got a Coke, then found a space against the wall where she could watch, holding the cold glass first in one hand, then the other.
“Hey!” yelled a gritty voice at her side.
“Hi, Cece!” she shouted back. “Am I glad to see somebody I know!”
“Aren’t these teeny-boppers a bitch?”
“Don’t they card them?”
Cece looked at her with one eye. “Get real! They’re old enough.”
Annie tried to imagine herself out there dancing among the quick, supple kids with their lewd moves, their clown-colored stand-up hair, like life in the 1990s w
as a constant shock, their layers of flannel, their baggy, many-pocketed pants or skimpy black leather skirts and flailing earrings.
“Would we look like that if we were their age?”
“You better believe it,” shouted Cece.
Beyond the dance floor two tables of jock-looking women, a variety of ages, slopped beer in a cigarette haze, and laughed loudly enough to be heard over the crashing music. Jocks never changed.
The music stopped, the floor cleared. “They do jukebox breaks,” Cece explained. “It’s a great box. Come play a few.”
She was surprised at the number of kids who returned to the floor for Martha and the Vandellas and the Temptations. Cece snapped her fingers.
Annie felt a gentle hand on her shoulder and turned. “Jo!” She felt like tossing her hat in the air and doing a little jig.
“In the flesh,” said Jo, her lips going into their meltdown curve. In a loud whisper Jo said, “I saw your foot tapping. Will you dance with me?”
Formally re-introducing Jo to Cece, she said, “I’d have scoped out this place sooner if I’d known Jo hung out in sleazy gay dives.”
Jo’s gentle hand closed around hers like a fairy godmother’s blessing and they moved to the dance floor. “Do you know Karen and Dawn? It’s their eighth anniversary. Another couple and I took them to dinner up front in the restaurant.”
“So that’s where the old folks hang. I thought it was me and Cece lost in kindergarten land,” Annie said.
“You can at least hear yourself think in the restaurant,” Jo whispered, her breath cool on Annie’s ear. “I came back here when I heard the old music.”
They danced similarly, keeping the rhythm, but leaving the fancy moves to the kids. Annie thought about her yearnings tonight and wondered if she would’ve been better off with a stranger. At least the safe sex questions were out of the way with Jo, for all the good it did. They smiled and jounced around and watched the others until the slow old Rolling Stones song “Ruby Tuesday” came on.
This was the moment, she thought, an explosion of nerves and desire rising within her. Let the seduction begin. Jo must have sensed her mood. “Come to our table, Annie.”
She was relieved and disappointed at the same time. She pushed through to where Cece was teaching some of the teenyboppers to do the Bump and Grind and said goodbye.
“Fast worker,” mouthed Cece.
She followed Jo to the relative silence of the front restaurant. Jo’s friends were all dressed as carefully as Jo, in earrings, pretty pastel shells or tailored shirts that looked pricey. One, with a slight accent, was trying to teach the others Spanish, but they were all laughing too much to imitate her pronunciation. Annie, very conscious of the baggy chinos and unironed button-down under her black leather jacket, bought them a round of their fancy drinks.
“Did those two women who run the diner break up?” asked a woman with overpowering perfume.
Jo looked to Annie, eyes clouded.
“Not that I know of. Why?” Annie asked.
The woman nodded toward the tables behind Annie. She twisted to look over her shoulder. “Crap,” she said. Elly and the art teacher were in a booth, Verne’s hands embracing Elly’s, eyes locked, whispering. She started to rise. Both of those traitors needed telling off.
Jo darted a gentle hand to her arm. “This isn’t the time, Annie.”
“You’re right.” Annie sat down again.
“I hate to see something like that on our anniversary,” said one of Jo’s friends.
Annie turned away. “Twenty years. If Dusty and Elly can’t make it, why bother?”
Jo’s friends picked up their new drinks all at once. “I’m really sorry, Annie,” Jo said softly.
There was a moment’s silence from the back room and then the DJ kicked in a loud, thumping number. The two couples excused themselves to dance.
Annie growled, “I want to go over there and drag that amoral Lothario out by the collar.”
“Oh?” breathed Jo, eyes on the illicit couple.
“But I’m a wimp,” Annie confessed.
Silence stretched between them. Annie became aware of Jo’s hand on the table. Of the torrid beat to the back room music, like a not quite hidden agenda.
Jo asked, “What do you know about the immoral Lothario?”
“Verne?” Wasn’t Jo feeling the heat of the evening? She told Jo all she’d learned.
“What an interesting woman.”
Annie thought that was a strange reaction to the unflattering portrait she’d painted of Verne. They fell silent again, sipping their drinks.
“Jo—”
“Annie—”
They laughed. “Go ahead,” Annie said.
“I wanted you to know that I’m still working on your situation with the Farm.”
“What happened that night you went to their meeting?”
“Judy wasn’t there. She was ill and I really need to talk to her first. Is your new job all right?”
“I kind of like it. There are a lot of us there. But something is missing.”
“I guess the bobby pins aren’t going to run up and kiss you.”
“Or want to play softball.” She hesitated to bare her soul, but Jo needed to understand what was at stake. “I can’t get the Farm out from under my skin. I really liked working there. I never loved a job before.”
“I envy you.”
“I felt like I was into something important. A small part, but indispensable. Before, I’ve always felt like a misfit. Too smart to do drudge work, too gay to stay in school. So different from my family I thought Superman might be my brother, but so like my family I feel like a school dropout-street dyke around you. My parents own a house, but that was because of the G.I. Bill. I wasn’t brought up to be a banker or even to go to college. I never saw any reason to invest time in getting ahead. Even if I did, I’d still just be a dyke cabbie with a degree.”
“So the Farm wasn’t just a job.”
“Absolutely not. I might actually want to do MRDD work for the next thirty years. And not as a driver. I could go to school and get certified to teach, Jo. I could start up another Farm, some type of factory maybe. The Farm takes care of only a handful of people who could be out there working, feeling better about themselves. Feeling like I do because I’m finally part of something—like I did.”
Jo’s friends returned from dancing. Annie scraped her chair back, embarrassed about her disclosures. “I’d better go over to Puddle Street and see if Dusty’s okay.”
Jo rose too. “Are you huggable?” Jo whispered.
Self-consciously chaste, she held Jo loosely, but Jo pressed her full body to Annie’s for a moment, then a moment too long. “Do you want to come along to Dusty’s?” Annie asked.
Jo leaned back just far enough to look into Annie’s eyes, then stepped away. “I admit I’m having a little trouble letting you go,” she said with her dimpled smile, “but I don’t know Dusty at all. If she’s having a hard time it’s not a good idea.”
Annie realized that she still held Jo’s hand. “I’d probably just make it worse, too.”
“Then you’d consider one more dance?”
She could hear Gussie advise, Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.
“Here?” Annie asked.
“As opposed to?”
“Someplace more private?”
Jo gave a low, bubbly laugh and told her friends that Annie would give her a ride home. The Saab seemed to cut through the night like a Concorde on its way to Paris.
“Would you like a beer, some coffee?” Jo asked when they reached her condo. She turned on one small table lamp.
“Tea?” she said, just to break her own silence. With Jo out of the room, she sank onto the patterned couch and scanned the living room’s country-style furniture and the large collection of pig portraits, pig toys, and pig carvings. As usual, there wasn’t a lesbian title in the bookcase, or women’s music tape near the stereo—no sign that a dyke lived there at al
l. If Jo would just loosen up a little, she’d be much easier to be with.
The first time she’d seen Jo, at a gathering Peg and Paris had held to introduce Annie to their friends, she’d been taken with Jo’s contagious smile and big brown eyes. Peg, steepling her long slender fingers, had answered Annie’s whispered question. “We went to high school together. Jo’s branch manager for Valley Savings Bank. If you think these others are in the closet, Jo’s in a fallout shelter.” Peg had made see-no-evil, hear-no-evil, speak-no-evil gestures.
At her first visit to Jo’s, Annie had been too nervous to think of witty seductive patter. She’d asked questions.
“So you bought this place yourself?”
“About eight years ago, when Marsha and I split. We’d been together since our junior year in college.”
“So, uh, you made it quite a while.”
“Long distance. Marsha works for an insurance company in Hartford. We’d planned a bonding ceremony.” Jo lowered her eyes and shrugged slightly. “Then Marsha’s other girlfriend heard about it.”
“Yeah,” Annie said. “Been there, done that, bought the T-shirt.” She heard a scratching sound. “Your new friend, the pig?”
Jo beamed. “I’m crazy about her. Have you ever met a potbellied pig?”
“Different kind of wildlife in New York.”
“Come.” Jo took her hand and led her down some steps. Hugging the back door was a tall wooden enclosure strewn with straw. Rex had obviously been rooting in the dirt. About calf-high, black, with a short, wrinkled face, Rex greeted Jo with enthusiasm, then snuffled around Annie’s sneakers.
“Is she full-grown?” Annie kneeled to pat the bristly-coated pig.
“Close. They usually go from seventy to one fifty pounds, but Rexie was the runt. Come, Rex!” Jo said and led the pig upstairs to a dog bed in the kitchen. Jo tapped the bottom of the bed. Rex stepped in and curled up.
Without the pig between them, the mood had shifted. They’d looked at each other. Annie had raised a very tentative hand to touch Jo’s hair.
Tonight, when Jo returned with the tea she sat next to Annie on the couch, all brown hair, brown vest, long brown skirt, beseeching brown eyes.