by Lee Lynch
“Respectable! I don’t know if I’ve ever been accused of being respectable before.”
Dusty slowly strolled past the window where Verne still lounged, did a menacing half-step in front of her and moved on with a laugh. Verne hadn’t moved a muscle, but her face had gone pale. Annie, Cece, Hope and Chantal giggled together.
Maddy Scala was talking to Jennifer Jacob, using her arms and hands, bouncing on the balls of her feet as if she might spring through the roof at any moment. Annie nudged Chantal. “Are those two a number?”
“The kids? Isn’t that sweet! I give them twenty-four hours if they’re not.”
Over Chantal’s head, Annie’s eyes met Jo’s. “Hi!” she called across the noisy kitchen, then softly asked Chantal, “Do you want to meet her?”
“I don’t know. Should I, Sugar?” Chantal taunted.
She looked sharply at Chantal. “You’re not exactly rivals.”
Chantal just raised an eyebrow.
Jo left Gussie’s side and crossed the room. “You were great,” Jo told Annie. Her eyes looked glazed when she turned to Chantal, as if she’d caught Elly’s fever. “You’ve done political organizing before.”
“Not me!” said Chantal with a meaningful look at Annie. “I’m a respectable mother of two.”
“Do you think you can get some of your closeted business cronies involved?” Annie asked Jo.
“I just talked to Peg about that. She’s thinking of inviting a bunch of likelies to her place for a barbecue and conscripting them. They’ll be politely sloshed, feeling frisky. Maybe they’ll make promises they’ll be ashamed to back out of later. I’ll help her. She’ll probably ask you to be there so they can see you’re not some relic of the olden days.”
“Oh, but I am,” answered Annie, not hiding her annoyance.
Jo colored. “I could lend you dressy slacks.”
“No thanks, Jo, but if it’ll ease your mind I won’t smoke cigars while I’m there.”
“Annie, I didn’t mean you don’t look fine the way you are. I just don’t want to intimidate these women.”
Annie winced, opened her mouth to speak, then gave up with a smile and a shake of her head. “Traumatizing the closet brigade might be fun,” she said. She stiffened her fingers until they looked claw-like and advanced menacingly on Jo. If she was going to be a symbol, she might as well have a good time.
Chantal, as if to bridge unbridgeable chasms, held her back and changed the subject. “I’ll get my kids and Merry’s husband’s family and my best friend and her family to write letters to the editor. I wonder about Giulia’s fiancé. We were talking at the game and he owns property all over town. We could use people like that on our side.”
“Just think,” Annie said, afraid to be utopian, but unable not to, spreading her arms as if to encompass a universe, “if they all got their friends and families to speak up—”
Jo said with a bitter laugh, “Most families won’t say anything. Deep inside, a lot of them are ashamed of us.”
“It’s true,” Annie admitted.
They all looked at one another for several seconds. Then Annie ventured, “Well—” and Jo said, “Well—” Chantal saved them by excusing herself to use the bathroom. Toothpick sniffed Jo’s shoes, raising her little face with a grimace.
“Toothpick, be polite. You’ve smelled Rex before.” Jo didn’t seem to see the humor. Annie got serious. “I can’t believe you came,” she told Jo.
“I can’t either. Or that so many people want Morton River to be a better place for us to live. It makes me think about staying.” Too late now, Annie thought.
“I remembered,” Jo went on, “that you’d expressed some concerns about whether you’d acted appropriately with Lorelei. When Judy went in to work for a little while last week, Lorelei begged her to start a ball team at the farm. Once a week at lunch, there’s a game with mixed teams of workers and employees. Lorelei plays shortstop.”
Annie’s position. She tossed an imaginary ball up and caught it, grinning. “So she’s okay.”
“Unscathed by being crushed out on you,” Jo said with her smile. “Speaking of crushes, I talked to Verne about Elly. Verne admits to liking the groupie phenomenon that happens when she does residencies in the sticks, but she agreed to keep it professional around Elly. It was never more than a flirtation.”
The bite of anger she felt was at Jo as well as Verne. The two flirts deserved each other. She hoped Jo would follow Verne to Siberia. Aloud, she suggested, “Maybe you need to talk to Hope about getting a speaker for Peg’s barbeque. She’s taken that chore on.”
“I’m impressed. Let me see if I can catch her.”
With the announcement, “Sweatshop’s open in five minutes!” the Jimmies led a noisy exodus.
People hugged, shook hands, flowed out of the house so full of enthusiasm Annie imagined Rafferty Street lit like a Christmas tree.
At least, she thought, hands on her hips as she stood defiantly at the top of the porch steps, the neighbors would see their show of strength.
Chapter Fifteen
Annie’s head was foggy with too many emotions. She followed Chantal along Main in the Grape, so jittery she stalled at a light. She couldn’t decide if she was more nervous about committing herself politically or romantically. Chantal led her up Bank into the tangled streets of the low hills behind downtown, in the general vicinity of Puddle Street. This neighborhood was better than Rafferty Street, but wasn’t Park Avenue.
“I’ll never find this place again,” she told Chantal as she climbed out of the Saab, not surprised to find her mouth dry.
“I’ll top it with a pink neon triangle to make sure you can, Sugar.”
There was no sidewalk, no driveway, only a shallow stretch of grass. “Look at this street!” Annie exclaimed. “Two-stories, duplexes, that row of boxy brown Colonials! Steep roofs, flat roofs, bay windows, plate-glass windows, dormers.” Most of the windows were already darkened for the night. Brightly colored plastic tricycles and other toys, littered driveways and front yards.
“Does that mean you like our funny little valley?”
“It might,” she agreed, smiling into Chantal’s eyes. “It just might.” Chantal held her gaze, and Annie felt a steamy warmth. Simultaneously, they looked away.
Chantal’s place was a white wooden bungalow. Though the night was still cloudy, the rain held off until they got to the glassed-in porch. Inside, the living room was big enough for its blue couch, two patterned chairs, a console television and little else. There was a long mirror above the couch, though, which reflected the porch and suggested a room double the size. Annie sank into the protection of a wing chair.
“That wore me out,” she said.
“What, finding my house?” Chantal was obviously still revved up.
She laughed. “That meeting. The labyrinth was fun. Where are we anyway?”
“This is Violet Street. If you climbed the hill behind the house you’d be on Main again, where it turns north.”
“So no neighbors in back of you.”
“And a deep yard. My ex-husband always wanted to expand into it, but I was stubborn. I have a huge old weeping willow and an enormous cherry tree. I got him to dig us a pond in the shade, four feet across, just deep enough for the kids to splash in when they were small. Right now, it’s overflowing from all the rain, but usually it’s hard to keep full because the willow drinks everything in sight. In the summer, there isn’t a cooler place in the Valley. This is the reason I’m in the closet at work, to pay the mortgage on my little bit of heaven. Come on, I’ll give you the nickel tour. It takes about a minute and a half.” Chantal was a dynamo, chattering and demonstrating all her gadgets.
“It’s like a travel trailer, Chantal. Everything’s built to maximize space.” Annie kept her elbows against her ribs. “Did the house come like this?”
“No. I planned every detail.”
Chantal pulled out drawers from the wall under the staircase. “My hutch,” s
he explained with a dainty shrug, her futile attempt to mask her pride. Cutting boards slid out of the counters in the kitchen. Pots and pans hung on a rack that had to be pulled down from the ceiling. She pointed upward with a fingernail neatly painted pink. “The one place we had space was in height, so we have a lot of hanging lamps too.” The kitchen table folded out, panel by panel, to seat four, six and eight.
“Just imagining all those people in this house could give you claustrophobia,” she told Chantal.
Upstairs Chantal said, “I pored over the cute kid room designs in the women’s magazines. My ex-husband was good at do-it-yourself projects.” There were two tiny rooms with single beds that folded down from walls. “Merry and Ralph loved opening up their beds at night. This bathroom used to be a closet.”
Annie felt jittery as she did every time the kids came up. She hadn’t met Ralph, the soldier, yet, though he was due home on leave soon.
“Come on back down. You single butches are about as interested in homemaking as deadbeat dads.”
The bedroom downstairs was the last stop. “I had single beds jammed in here by the time I threw Ed out, but I always wanted a bedroom that was designed to spoil Chantal. I did it bit by bit.”
“Everything’s built in except the waterbed and vanity?”
“The queen-sized waterbed, I’ll have you notice.”
The walking space was tight on a plush lavender rug, the drapes were a textured velour, the waterbed was covered with purple sateen that Chantal touched to make waves. Redone or not, the room felt crowded with Chantal’s old heterosexual life. “I’ve never been with a woman who’s been with a guy through marriage and child-rearing…that I know of.”
Chantal looked worried. “Not your style?”
“I don’t even know what my style is anymore, to tell you the truth. It’s just that there’s nowhere on earth we can go to get away from heterosexuality, not even our bedrooms.”
Chantal smiled. “Lighten up, Sugar. Give me a night with you in this room and I guarantee you’ll feel different by morning.”
Annie tried not to stare at the bed. To change the subject, she said, “I didn’t realize you were so practical.”
“Practical?”
“Beyond practical,” she explained, her arms flung wide to indicate the whole house. “Like if you were formulating your philosophy of life, would it look like your house?” Here it came—her relationship-phobia exploded inside her. She felt sweaty and faint. Why was she here? She barely knew this woman with her children, and the imprint of a male on her home and life. Maybe single life wouldn’t be so bad after all.
They were standing in the narrow space between the bed and the vanity. Chantal walked her index and middle fingers up and down the buttons on Annie’s shirt. Annie made herself stay put. “Can a philosophy be practical on the outside and wild inside? That’s why I wanted everything in the house to be as useful as I could make it, so I could fit in the good stuff too. The yard, the bed.”
“We’re so different,” Annie observed.
“You know what would help your room?”
“An interior decorator?”
“A big old beautiful wardrobe and shelving, like this.” Chantal opened the door to a deep walk-in closet.
“Then I couldn’t see any of my stuff!” Annie objected.
“That’s the idea,” said Chantal, returning to lay her head on Annie’s chest, rubbing against her. “Less clutter.”
“But I like reading in the easy chair and remembering the moments I bought my toy taxis, the little stories of my life.”
“How I’d hate that! If I’m in bed I don’t want stuff interfering with my dreams.”
The room seemed to grow even smaller. Sweat trickled between Annie’s breasts. “I’m so confused. Jo wanted to dress me up; you want to dress up my room. Maddy wants me to be an Amazon warrior; Gussie thinks I should be a dyke Gandhi.” She was so tired and so worried about everything, she was almost ready to follow any woman’s lead. “My stuff is part of my dreams,” she challenged. “From souvenirs to old textbooks to memories of corner spas and cobblestones. I don’t expect anyone to understand that, but it’d be great if somebody would respect it.”
It was true. She loved her life and all the trappings of it despite its recent vicissitudes. Didn’t Chantal love hers? Or had she gotten in the habit years ago of locking it up—behind closet doors, inside a complex order—to keep it safe from all those people who were so foreign to the real, lesbian her? Hets don’t capiche anything, Maddy had said.
She edged out of the narrow space, but Chantal pulled her gently back, holding her forearms.
“I’m sorry,” said Chantal. “I like you just the way you are. I’m one of those people who ought to start a consulting business organizing other people’s lives, if only to keep me from volunteering myself unasked on friends.”
“Oh, Chantal,” she said. “You are such a nice woman.” Swallowing hard, she leaned forward with closed eyes. These were neither Jo’s cool closed lips nor Marie-Christine’s conquering kisses. Chantal, at least in this, invited without directing. She pulled Chantal closer. What a wealth of softness. She felt Chantal’s little hands at the small of her back, patting, smoothing, and roaming onto her buttocks. Her blood seemed to swell its channels, her body to sigh a long while.
She stopped kissing Chantal, and looked into her light eyes, which appeared even sleepier than usual. Chantal’s fingertips were on the back of her neck. Chantal’s mouth drew her. Chantal seemed to expand and her house’s boundaries to fall away. Annie straightened. Their breasts brushed together and she felt a faint hit of pleasure below. Their lips opened.
Her fingers barely touched the sides of Chantal’s breasts. Chantal made a squeaky little sound and pulled away. She cleared her throat. “Why don’t you go use the upstairs powder room? It’ll be faster than taking turns down here, especially if you want a shower.”
“The powder room?” she teased.
She climbed the stairs slowly, wiping the sweat at her hairline with her sleeve. Inside the stall shower, washing off the dirt of softball and the stress of the meeting, she took deep breaths. She dropped the soap twice, a third time. Why this fear? Was it Chantal’s total neatness? Her kids? The uncharted waters of her, of a woman like her? At that moment, Annie felt like she had nothing left to give anyone.
What’s your problem? Nobody’s perfect. You’re all grown up. What do you want, some unformed pretty-girl? Someone life hasn’t clawed at yet? So Chantal’s a grandma with an order thing. So she’s not going to be able to take you under her sophisticated wing and tell you what to choose in the fancy restaurants you’ll never go to with her. You could’ve fought for Jo or stayed with Marie-Christine, dancing on the edge of relationships. You’ve got your own quirks. What are you going to do, fly out of here with apologies and steal Peg’s niece away from Maddy?
Or was she still bruised by Marie-Christine’s faithlessness? She’d be more careful in her forties than she had been in her thirties. A lover simply wouldn’t get as much of her.
Part of her yearned for that old sneaking around, for the hungry one-night women she used to find back before AIDS, back before Vicky moved into her toothpick house. She’d spend the night at some woman’s place and slink out at dawn, then hole up, anonymous, in a greasy spoon to eat breakfast with the truckers and night owls, a midnight to five DJ on the next stool, still hyped by his all-night patter. Then she’d drive home in her noisy VW feeling cleansed, relishing her lonely space by the beach. She’d felt comfortable then with those out-of-sync people who lived among strangers, meeting at counters and pining for company at home. But was that how she wanted to live now?
Another part of her still worried that Chelsea was where she ought to be. She’d visited up there for a week to see if she needed to move closer to her folks. She’d trodden the streets where the trolleys used to run into Boston, the tracks sunken between cobblestones, just like in Morton River. The house had always tremble
d when the trains ran by Carroll Street, but now it seemed to shake.
Her mom looked so tiny. Her dad was more silent than ever, more disagreeable, but not as scary. She kept noticing his white hair, and his scalp, pink like a baby’s. He didn’t look a thing like the burly veteran of her childhood, always exaggerating about the roads he’d built, like he was some sort of Hercules, doing it single-handed. Chelsea had never exactly been upscale, but now she didn’t think her mom should be walking the streets even in daylight. With the city in receivership after all those years of corruption, she worried about what would happen to services for the Chelsea seniors.
But that was guilt working on her. Her parents were still very active and her aunts, Dad’s younger sisters, lived upstairs with their families in the second and third floor flats. In Morton River, Annie was closer than she had been in New York, and now she had a car. That was enough. The thought of moving back to that cold, silent Chelsea house made Morton River look like paradise.
Chantal was here and now. Chantal was big. Chantal was the unknown. At the same time, Chantal was a return to her own Chelsea roots. Going to bed with Chantal was like going to bed with Morton River Valley itself. No wonder she was scared. Chantal, like moving to the Valley, might be a mistake, might be wonderful. If Marie-Christine and the New York years had been adventure and no-strings romance, Chantal was comfort and strings galore behind that adventurous seductive manner.
Whatever happened, she reassured herself, she had a home on Rafferty Street. She stuffed her sweaty underwear in a back pocket, opened the bathroom door and, trying to ignore the ghosts of Chantal’s marriage, clattered back down to the bedroom built to spoil Chantal.
Chantal sat on a low stool before her vanity. The only light was a small lamp with a frilly shade. Chantal’s reflection in the vanity mirror glowed like a pulsating spirit. Annie hesitated in the doorway.
“You asked once why I took philosophy courses in New York,” she said. Chantal met her eyes in the vanity mirror. “Moving from idea to action is a major feat for me. Since I was a kid, I’ve been paralyzed at times like this by the chasm between thought and act. Sometimes I throw myself into action to avoid decisions. I thought philosophy would explore that.”