“Police,” Maureen scoffed.
“Yeah, exactly. They said they didn’t have the ‘manpower’ to send cops out.”
“Sounds about right.”
“So on the day she came home, my mom and Jo-Ellen went inside while my dad stood guard. Paul wasn’t supposed to be there, but he drove up anyway. My dad just stood there in the driveway. I was watching from my window the whole time: Paul started to pull in, but my dad didn’t move. It was the bravest thing I’d ever seen. I mean, I was scared because I thought this guy would run my dad over, but wow. My dad just stood there and didn’t move, and eventually Paul drove away. He was only a big man behind closed doors, I guess.”
“Wow,” Maureen repeated.
“I never saw Jo-Ellen again, after that, but I always knew she was safe. And I always admired my parents for helping her instead of doing nothing. Too many people do nothing.”
Maureen nodded, feeling suddenly selfish and morose. Now that she knew what inspired Carly to apply for that college program, she didn’t mind stretching the truth on her recommendation form.
At least, that was her mindset as she left the sub shop.
She spent the whole walk home second-guessing herself: what if Carly made up that whole story? What if all the smiles and flirtation and the long, lingering hugs were a kind of quid pro quo for a good recommendation? Once Carly had that form in hand, she would never call Maureen for coffee again.
Turning on her computer, Maureen looked over the form for the billionth time. She read the first three gradient questions and scanned the rest, then turned the computer off. She burrowed under her covers and pictured Carly’s smiling eyes, lips, mouth... breasts, belly, thighs...
Hopeless.
When Maureen didn’t reply to her texts, Carly phoned and Maureen answered, though she’d told herself not to.
“I’m so sorry to bug you,” Carly said. There was a supplicant whine to her voice and Maureen could feel her desperation through the phone lines. “Just wondered if you did my reference. I’m putting together my submission packet and I really don’t want to hand it in late.”
Admirable. That made Maureen feel ten times worse. She tried to think up yet another excuse and finally just settled on, “Sorry. I’ll work on it tonight.”
“I can come over and pick it up after work,” Carly offered.
Maureen took a deep breath. She couldn’t put it off any longer, could she? “Okay, I’ll have it ready when you get here.”
This was well and truly the end, wasn’t it? Carly would have no reason to extend her goodwill, her time, her smiles. After tonight, there would be no more.
“You know, I was thinking about something else,” Carly said before hanging up. “When you were talking about your old girlfriend Jana and how she spent your money and took advantage of you... well, it just made me think how hard it must be to trust people after something like that. I bet it’s really, really tough.”
Maureen’s throat closed up as she digested that sentiment, which had been floating just below consciousness for so many years. Carly was brave enough to call her on her baggage. Gently. Just what she needed to hear, and how she needed to hear it.
“You’re going to make a really great counsellor some day,” Maureen said.
Once she’d hung up the phone, she made her way to the bed, put her face down on the pillow, and cried.
When her pillowcase was soaked on both sides, Maureen got out of bed, made herself a nice cup of tea, and worked on Carly’s recommendation. Thank goodness there was a category called “unable to judge” that she could check off for qualities like “Ability to organize and express written ideas.” That wasn’t the sort of thing a person could judge from text messages. As a burger joint manager, Maureen didn’t feel at all qualified to be filling out this form. The more she thought about, the more honoured she felt that Carly had asked her.
Maybe this was about more than just a reference form. She could only hope...
She’d just licked the envelope when Carly arrived. Pressing the seal with shaking hands, she let Carly inside, never so attracted to a girl in a sub shop uniform. “It’s done! I just need to sign the seal.”
“Thank you so much,” Carly said, hugging Maureen in that hard, inescapable way of hers. “You really have no idea what this means to me.”
Kicking off her shoes, Carly sauntered into Maureen’s small apartment. She took a seat on the bed. Maureen froze with her mad crush sitting there, right there, right on the edge of her mattress.
“I just need to sign,” Maureen said. “Sign the seal.”
She didn’t want to. It was the last step in this process, and she was still afraid Carly would evaporate from her life like a puff of smoke the moment this was all done.
“I hope it didn’t bug you, what I said on the phone.” Carly inched back on the bed until her head met the wall. She crossed her legs one over the other. “You know, about trust and all that. I really like you, Maureen, and I get this feeling you want the same thing I want, but you won’t let yourself have it.”
Maureen froze beside her computer desk, watching Carly take off her cap and fluff her short hair. It was all true, of course. She was enormously afraid of what might happen if she let her guard down and allowed love into her life.
“Look, I really want to thank you,” Carly said, folding her hands in her lap and squeezing so hard her knuckles turned white. “No, that’s a stupid excuse. I really want to go out with you—that’s the truth. Can I take you somewhere nice? Like that Italian place down the block. Can I buy you a fancy dinner? I think we’ve both eaten enough fast food for one lifetime.”
“Buy me dinner?” Maureen staggered to the bed, envelope in one hand, pen in the other. “No, you’re saving for college. You shouldn’t be spending money on me.”
“The sub franchise has a scholarship I’m applying for,” Carly said with a shrug. “And my parents are going to help me with school costs. So are my grandparents. I’ve got enough that I can spend some on things that are important to me... and people who are. Like you.”
Carly smiled gently, her eyes smoky yet hopeful, and Maureen wondered if the heavy sense of waiting on the air was a plea for the envelope or for a kiss. She dashed her signature over the seal and handed it to Carly, but that look, that aching want, remained.
“Thank you,” Carly said, placing the envelope at her side. “Now when can I take you out, hmm? Enough of this playing hard-to-get.”
In all her life, Maureen had never been taken to dinner. She’d never been rich, but she’d always felt like other women looked at her and saw Ms. Moneybags. Now this girl she’d hired and fired and despised and adored was offering her something she’d never had and asking in return just a little trust, a little faith.
Could she take the leap?
The salty aroma of tears still clung to Maureen’s pillow as Carly kissed her slowly, deeply. Carly wrapped her arms around Maureen’s middle while their tongues writhed, making Maureen feel warm and safe and wanted.
By tomorrow morning, those tear-stained pillows would take on the full, fruity aroma of Carly’s hair. And, in time, all of life would smell so sweet.
5
Even If
The city is a toilet.
Okay, you caught me—that line’s from Seinfeld. They were talking about New York, but the sentiment applies equally to Toronto, if you ask me. Not that I have much point of comparison. I've never been to New York City.
I've never been anywhere, really. I grew up in the suburbs. We camped, when I was young, in provincial parks across Ontario and Quebec. One year we drove down to Florida—went to Disney World, if you can believe it.
I can't.
What I remember of that summer feels like a dream—one of those dreams that's somewhere between a nightmare and an acid trip. Not that I've ever done acid. Most people don't believe this, but I've never even smoked a cigarette.
Wait—there's one thing I do remember, very specifically, about t
hat Disney vacation: I remember my dad downing bottle after bottle in our motel room. He promised he wouldn't. But promises were cheap.
I remember how my mother tried not to see what was right before her eyes, and how silently irate my siblings and I were. How ashamed. Devastated. Even the happiest place on earth couldn’t slow him down.
It's funny how alone you feel when you're a kid. You don't realize how many other people are experiencing some variation of your life. I sometimes wonder if I’d have felt less like I was living in a black hole if I’d grown up in the age the internet. There are forums now, sites were you can chat anonymously with people who understand.
I guess there’s still a good amount of shame inside me. I would never walk up to a living, breathing human being and tell them about my childhood. Not even in a church basement with free coffee and Oreos. Not even “anonymously.” Because this body of mine is not invisible, as much as I’d like it to be.
Online is a different story. Nobody can see you if you don’t want them to. It’s freeing. Truly. You can open yourself up just enough to let someone inside, and if they understand, you open even wider. Like a flower. People always make that comparison, women and flowers, but it’s true. You feel the sun of that person’s sweet presence on your face, and you open your eyes, and suddenly the ugly old world is bright and beautiful. Everything is different.
I met a girl on one of those forums. Could you tell? If you saw my face, you’d suspect it by my smile. And if I told I was waiting for a flight to the Northwest Territories, then you’d know it for sure. Love takes us places, more than anything else in the world.
Well, I said I met a girl, but technically Annie’s a woman, not a girl. She’s an adult person, I just never much liked the word woman to describe a romantic partner. Too intimidating. Makes it sound like I’m some kind of highfaluting grown-up. And I most certainly am not. Sure I’m thirty...something... but that doesn’t make me an adult.
Annie doesn’t act like a know-it-all the way city girls do. City girls are above it all. Whatever it is, they’re above it.
Not Annie. She isn’t possessive or mean. She’s got nothing to prove, to me or to anyone else. In my life I've dated older men and I’ve dated younger women, and Annie is like a combination of the two.
She laughed when I told her that, because it wasn’t the first time she’d heard it. When I close my eyes and think of Annie, I feel the earth under my feet and I see the sky lit above me. Annie is my North Star. From that spot on top of the world, she can see it all. She has perspective like no one I’ve ever known. And balance.
It sounds trite to say she understands me, but it’s true.
“We come from the same place,” she says.
Everyone, everything, this whole world of wonders was born of the same entity with more names than we are able to speak. Annie of the North, Keri of the South. She and I share a common memory, a similar experience, but we are still divergent enough that there’s a lifetime of listening ahead.
I never feel silly talking to Annie. There have been nights, sitting at my computer in the southern spike of this cold country, when I’ve felt so drawn to the warmth of her company that I’ve cried for her. She sees me across time and space, and she tells me not to miss her. No need. She’s always with me. We hold special seats in each other’s lives. For us there is no apart, there is only together.
That’s easy enough to believe when you’ve got nothing else to hold on to, but my shoulder still aches for the welcome weight of her chin. I want to close my eyes every night feeling the warmth of her breath on my skin. The city is such an empty place without her.
The craving expanded over time. It wasn’t just a matter of wanting Annie, but of wanting everything that surrounded her—the solid earth beneath her feet, the heavenly lights above her head. Her earth would ground me, too. Her rainbows would cascade between my eyes and a velvet sky. I could hardly imagine a night without noise. Breathable air. Space. No more sirens. No more smog.
So I quit my job. I sold my condo and my furniture and most of my shoes.
When I told my mother I was moving up north, she threw her head back and laughed. “You’ll get there and find out she’s married,” she told me. “Chatting up pretty girls online—that’s what they do, you know.”
They who?
Didn’t matter. The idea made me furious, but it also made me question Annie and everything we shared.
I tried to shake those evil seeds. Why did my mother have to poison my mind like that? How dare she? All a ploy to keep me in the city, I bet. Keep me on a leash. But it wasn’t lost on me that I’d never asked Annie if she was married, or if she ever had been. Because... well, of course she wasn’t married. She wasn’t.
But even if she was, which I knew with almost absolute certainty that she wasn’t, it wouldn’t change my plans. The north winds swept across my skin, beckoning. There was space for me there, so much space. Nothing but space.
My bags were packed.
6
When Hailey Met Sashi
“I have herbal teas, too.”
“Orange pekoe is fine.”
Hailey wouldn’t stop sorting through tea tins at the back of the pantry. “Oh, look! Some fruit teas. I forgot I had these ones. Do you like fruit teas? I don’t. That’s probably why they’re crammed at the back of the cupboard.”
“Just plain tea is good, Hailey.”
“I have Earl Grey as well. Oh, look! This one’s called Lady Grey. Must be a lighter aroma or something.” She seemed so flustered, taking in the scent of each bag before holding it to Sashi’s nose. “Lady Grey smells like bergamot, too, but the bouquet is a hint more subtle. Would you like to try a cup?”
It was torture, seeing Hailey like this: anxious, frenzied, stirring up a panic over nothing. She flapped about the kitchen like newspaper caught in an updraft. Her broad brunette ringlets bounced against her shoulders as she hurried from kettle to pantry, from pantry to dish rack, from dish rack back to kettle. The kitchen timer buzzed with Hailey in the midst of warming the pot, and she nearly scalded herself.
“Gives me a heart attack every time, that thing!” she said, with a breathless laugh.
The skirt of her vintage frock swirled, wrapping itself around her legs as she spun toward the oven. When Hailey pulled out a fresh batch of oatmeal cookies, the kitchen filled with the childhood aroma of butter and cinnamon. If only she’d take a moment to enjoy the scent of nostalgia.
But Hailey was a one-woman whirlwind.
Sliding the cookies onto a cooling rack, she picked up the tea conversation. “So, we have Earl Grey, Lady Grey, orange pekoe, green tea, blackberry, apple spice, aniseed, peppermint or chamomile. The herbal ones would match oatmeal cookies well, in terms of flavour. Apple spice seems like a good option because...”
“Make whatever tea you want,” Sashi snapped. “I like them all. It’s up to you.”
Hailey’s mile-a-minute ramblings made Sashi feel like she’d run a marathon. She had an agenda, and she’d never get to it at this rate.
The cinnamon-infused air settled under a blanket of silence as Hailey stopped shuffling about the kitchen. Her eyes grew wide. She glanced at Sashi only momentarily before focusing her attention on the cooling rack, but that single second of direct eye contact struck Sashi to the core. Now all she could see was the wounded animal in Hailey, the hurt she’d caused.
Hailey plucked hot cookies one by one from the rack, pinching them between plum-coloured fingernails. She dropped them, with surprising disregard, onto a cracked china plate.
Sashi hadn’t meant to blow a fuse, but she didn’t know how to react when Hailey started spinning like that. It made her uneasy. Hailey was her own little tornado, working into a frenzy for no good reason.
“I only meant it’s all the same to me,” Sashi said. “I can’t taste the difference between this tea and that tea.”
Looking up from the plateful of cookies, Hailey offered a benevolent smile. “You are such a g
uy.”
Sashi shrugged, relieved she’d managed to lift Hailey’s mood. “I just wish you would relax for once. Why do you go to all this trouble for me? You shouldn’t.”
Hailey poured hot water from the teapot to the sink, popped in two bags of Lady Grey, and refilled it from the boiling kettle. “What trouble?”
“All this! The preheated teapot and the freshly baked cookies. You won’t stop doing stuff. Relax for two seconds, will you? Come on.” Sashi reached out to wrap caring fingers around Hailey’s wrist. “Come over here, hayseed. Sit down for a sec.”
Hailey gazed at Sashi’s hand with laughable innocence. It wasn’t lost on Sashi that this was the first time they’d touched. Of course, the desire had been hovering tongue-tied for a while now, but Hailey was awfully skittish, and Sashi had never been all that touchy-feely.
It would have been stupid to advance too abruptly, anyway. She might scare Hailey off and, no matter what happened in their personal lives, they still had to work together. Bad enough when a simple friendship gets sacrificed to the fires of lust, but who would risk forfeiting a career in education for a single night of passion?
Aside from Sashi, that is...
At school, Hailey was stealth. With her students, with their fellow teachers, with administration and staff. She was a she and that’s all they needed to know. Anyway, Hailey Rose was a she, plain and simple. Only Sashi knew about her past, because there was trust between them. Trust and affection. That’s why Sashi knew stuff nobody else did. Like how, when Hailey had discreetly bounced the idea of transitioning off her former school board in the prairies, they’d been surprisingly receptive. They helped in every way they could. Still, she decided to pick up roots and begin a new life in a new province. The board helped her secure a position in the big city and she hauled ass way across the country.
When she sold her house in the prairies, none of her “boy clothes” came along for the ride. Hailey left that life in the canola fields of Saskatchewan.
Sweet Lesbian Love Stories Page 5