“I shouldn’t have touched you.”
Leslie got up on her elbow. “Alice, I wanted you to. I’ve never been touched like that before, or that turned on.”
“Well, neither have I,” Alice said, almost insulted. She sprang up and scrambled to get her jeans on. “I’ve never felt like this for anyone before, much less a woman. And I certainly haven’t done anything like this.” She tossed Leslie’s clothes at her.
“Me either,” Leslie said. “My husband is the only other person I’ve been with. I never even played doctor when I was a kid.”
Alice rolled her eyes. “If only that’s all this was.”
“We can’t be the first girlfriends who’ve done this,” Leslie said as she dressed, mirroring Alice’s frenetic motions.
“No, we’re not, but they’re called lesbians.”
“Lesbians?” Leslie’s face contorted like a tarantula was crawling up her leg. “We can’t be lesbians. We were both married. I’m still married, happily, I thought. Bill and I don’t have any problems. I mean, none more serious than the average couple.”
Alice glared at her. “You’re not making me feel any better about this.”
“Oh, God, did I just commit adultery? My husband—what if he finds out?”
“Hey, hey, calm down. He’s not going to find out,” she said to reassure them both. “It won’t happen again.”
“It won’t? We let it this time.”
“Well, maybe we’ve been spending too much time together.”
“You’re not saying we can’t be friends anymore?”
“No, no,” Alice stammered, surprised that was Leslie’s main concern at the moment. “We’ll just have to, you know, not skip crocheting anymore.”
“Right,” Leslie said. “That was a mistake.”
Alice looked at the clock on the wall. “You better get going. Crocheting probably broke up about fifteen minutes ago.”
“Crap, you’re right. Bill’s not home yet, but I want to be home before him, so it won’t look suspicious.”
“Leslie, you have to relax. If you go home all flipped out, then it will look suspicious.”
“You’re right, you’re right.” She absently gathered her crochet bag and her purse. “Where are my keys?”
“Les, please don’t panic,” Alice said as she felt her own panic rising.
“That’s easy for you to say,” Leslie said, dragging her fingers through her wild hair.
“No, it isn’t,” Alice said. “I just don’t know what else to say right now.”
“We’ll make believe this never happened. That’s simple enough.” Leslie’s eyes were dilated with fear as she ruffled through her purse for her car keys.
“Sure, sure, whatever you want,” Alice said helplessly as she followed her to the door.
With her hand on the doorknob, Leslie whirled around with tears in her eyes. “Please don’t say anything.”
“I promise, Leslie. I don’t want anyone to find out about this either.”
Alice leaned toward her to kiss her good-bye, but Leslie disappeared out the door. Resting her head against the closed door, Alice almost heard the crack in her heart at the rejection.
After a moment, Leslie barged back inside. “I don’t think I can pretend this never happened.” She kissed Alice with a slow burn that sealed that night in Alice’s memory forever.
Alice peered through the chintz curtains as Leslie backed her station wagon out of the driveway. Her eyes pooled. Although her body still trembled and her mind whirled from their night together, the ache in her heart watching Leslie drive away troubled her the most. She stood at the window long after Leslie’s car had vanished down the road.
*
When Alice finished sharing her recollection of that night, Leslie had turned to her from the cafeteria window, melancholy eclipsing the sun filtering in on her face. “God, Alice, I haven’t thought about that for years.”
“Neither had I,” Alice said. “It’s amazing what the mind is capable of when it needs to protect the heart.”
“After we broke up, I used to pray to God to help me understand why you came into my life if I was only meant to lose you.”
“What was His reply?”
Leslie smirked at Alice’s irreverence.
“Rebecca and I were talking the other day,” Alice said. “She was grilling me about you. She even asked if you and I were ever involved.”
“Did you tell her?”
“No,” Alice said, mildly offended. “But she’s a lesbian. Why haven’t you ever mentioned it to her?”
“That I had an affair while I was married to her father?”
“That’s not exactly the angle I’d use first, but I can appreciate your concern. She said she wishes you two were as close as you were when she was younger.”
“I know what she means,” Leslie said, wistful. “I wish that, too, but where do I start when I’ve had to conceal this part of me for so long? Secrets are walls meant to keep others out.”
Alice fought to conceal her growing frustration. All these years later and Leslie still felt the need to hide. She was single and her own daughter was a lesbian. How much better could her coming-out circumstances possibly have been?
She checked her wristwatch. “I should get going now. I have to meet my sister.”
“All right,” Leslie said, her voice flavored with disappointment. “Well, thanks again for coming. This was nice.”
Alice wheeled Leslie back to her room, steering the conversation away from any other dangerous recollections. And leaving without any future promises.
Chapter Nine
Once she got back from the rehab facility, Alice spent what was left of the afternoon in a chaise lounge on Mary Ellen’s patio in a malaise of summer heat and disappointment. It was her own fault, really. She’d been an old fool for even allowing the slightest germ of emotion for Leslie to form beyond friendship. What’s more, Maureen had only been gone a year, but Alice had been directing all of her energy toward Leslie.
“Alice?” Mary Ellen called as she stepped out onto the patio. “There you are. Are you coming out with Dave and me tonight?”
“Where are you going?” she mumbled from under the sun hat resting on her face.
“We decided to try this new place in the center of Branford. Dave likes the local beers.”
“Didn’t you say this morning you were ordering in?”
“Well, since we’re going to play drag-queen bingo tomorrow night at the Annex Club, we thought we’d go out for dinner tonight.”
Alice pulled her hat off her face. “Did I hear you right?”
Mary Ellen chuckled. “It’s a fund-raiser for the Gay Men’s Chorus. The Birnbaums took us a few months ago. It’s a riot—a bit raunchy but fun.”
“And Dave goes?”
“They serve alcohol.”
“Let me think about tonight,” Alice said, replacing her hat on her face.
Mary Ellen huffed. “By all means, take your time. What do I care that all I am to you is a sunny patio between visits with Leslie. Apparently, I’m running a flophouse for wayward widows with a Vitamin D deficiency.”
Alice stifled a laugh. “You’re an amazing sister and human being.”
“Don’t fall asleep. We’re leaving at six.”
“Roger that.” Alice turned over on her side and wanted to finish the memory she’d begun exploring earlier at lunch with Leslie.
August 1977
Waking early the morning after she and Leslie had made love, Alice threw off the covers but lay in bed listening to the birds chirping as the sky lightened. She’d never really fallen into a sound sleep the night before anyway—too many thoughts crowding her mind, or was “worries” the more appropriate word?
She wanted, more than anything, to be with Leslie.
She wished Leslie’s son Billy had a baseball game so she could show up and park herself on the bleachers next to Leslie like nothing was different between them. Maybe she should c
all her up later in the afternoon and discuss whether they would watch Starsky and Hutch or The Mary Tyler Moore Show like they’d sometimes done on Saturdays.
What if Leslie didn’t answer the phone? What if she told her to stop calling? Alice’s skin crawled as all the horrific possibilities swarmed her imagination. She hastened out of bed and gathered her laundry from the hamper. Physical activity was the only thing to keep her from totally losing her mind. As badly as she wanted to call Leslie, she concluded that if they were to talk, Leslie should be the one to call.
That night, after a long day of waiting for a phone call that never came, Alice met her cousin, Phyllis, for dinner before going to the movies to see Annie Hall. At the Greek diner across from the theater, Alice dug tracks into her mashed potatoes with her fork.
Phyllis pushed a strand of wiry, graying hair that escaped her tortoise-shell hair clip behind her ear as she broke off another piece of chicken pot pie with her fork. “Why did you order that big meal if you weren’t hungry?” She jabbed her fork into a mound of cooked carrots on Alice’s plate.
“I didn’t know I wasn’t hungry until I started eating.” Alice dabbed her mouth with her napkin and leaned back in the booth.
“What’s the matter?” Phyllis asked.
“Nothing. Everything.” Alice looked out the window into the diner parking lot.
“Everything all right at work?”
Alice nodded.
“Man troubles?”
“Not even close.”
“Are you gonna give me a hint?”
“I’d rather not,” Alice said. “There’s nothing you can do anyway.”
“That’s true with most problems, but the payoff comes with getting it off your chest.”
“This is big, Phyllis.” Alice’s full attention finally made its way back to the table. “The kind of problem people stop talking to you over.”
“Really?” Phyllis seemed intrigued. “Have you stolen Carter’s Little Liver Pills? Joined Patty Hearst in the Symbionese Liberation Army?”
Alice chuckled. “Phyllis, I’m serious.”
“What then? I’ve known you since you were born, babysat you till you were twelve. You couldn’t do anything bad enough for me to stop talking to you.”
“I think I’m in love with a woman. No, I am in love with a woman.”
“Oh.” Phyllis dug her fork into the remains of her chicken pot pie.
Alice sighed. “See? Told you.”
“Knock it off,” Phyllis said. “The crust is my favorite part.” She pulled out the last big chunk of flaky piecrust with her fingers and stuffed it into her mouth. “What does this woman think about you being in love with her?”
“I think she feels the same way about me.”
“That helps. So now what?”
Alice sipped her ice water. “Nothing.”
“What do you mean, ‘nothing’? If you both think you’re in love, what’s stopping you from finding out for sure?”
“Her husband.”
Phyllis waved her finger in the air. “Check, please.”
“I told you there wasn’t anything you could do. And frankly, getting it off my chest didn’t help much either.”
“Boy, when you get yourself into a pickle, you don’t mess around, do you?”
“Hey, you’re talking to a woman who only got straight As for effort in school.”
“Have you told your sister?”
“Are you out of your mind?” Alice said. “If Mary Ellen knew her big sister fooled around with another woman, much less a married one, she’d have a conniption fit. I’m a horrible person, aren’t I? I can’t imagine what you’re thinking about me right now.”
“I’m a professor of nineteenth-century literature. In Romanticism, we’re not big on passing moral judgments. Obviously, you’re not going to pursue it.”
That was obvious to Alice’s intellect but not to her heart. At the moment, she wasn’t quite sure which one was calling the shots.
“You’re not going to pursue it, right?” Phyllis said louder.
“No, of course not.”
“Good. I didn’t think you were into exercises in futility.”
“This whole thing is as surprising to me as it is to you, you know.”
“It’s not really that surprising.” Phyllis picked at her teeth with her pinky fingernail. “You’ve avoided men since Tony, and then, you know, all those feminism meetings.”
“What are you talking about? You got me into feminism. You’re the biggest feminist I know, and you’re not a lesbian.”
Phyllis tilted her head at Alice’s sensitivity. “I’m teasing you.”
“Ass.” Alice whipped a balled-up napkin at her.
“Do you think you’re a lesbian?”
“I don’t know, maybe,” Alice said, trying not to sound exasperated. “One minute I’m a divorcee minding my own business, going to work each day like anyone else, and the next I’m in love with a married woman who’s awakened me in every imaginable way—emotionally, spiritually, and especially physically. Good Lord.” She shuddered, revisiting the passion of the night before with Leslie. “Do you think that makes me a lesbian?”
Phyllis shrugged. “It’s the seventies.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“Since I’m not a lesbian, I’m not the best person to ask what constitutes being one, but I will say this: viva la sexual revolution.” Phyllis pulled her wallet out of the brown and orange crocheted purse Alice had made for her. “Dinner is on me tonight.”
August 1977
Alice had survived the weekend not calling Leslie. That Monday morning, she arrived at the office early, fatigued from her sleepless, emotional wreck of a weekend. The days at work were still lonely without her cohort, but that morning she was relieved Leslie had quit. How could she have faced her and then gone about business as usual knowing they’d made love only a few nights earlier?
As she shuffled papers on her desk, she overheard Julie and Marianne discussing the latest scandal on As the World Turns—Adrienne’s salacious affair with the married Haden. The girls chattered away about how exciting and immoral it was. What kind of woman would do that? Had that conversation occurred only a month earlier, Alice might’ve jumped right in and offered a resolute, “A slut, that’s who.”
As she eavesdropped, she wondered if her relationship with Leslie amounted to the same thing. Was Leslie cheating on her husband? Alice wasn’t a man and, therefore, didn’t do to Leslie what her husband would do. They were friends, after all. What they had wasn’t like an affair on soap operas. Was it? Alice was in love with her and thoroughly enjoyed making love with her, more than with anyone else. Did she actually prefer women to men, or was it just Leslie?
“Hey, Alice, I need that policy. The customer is coming in any minute.” Mr. Engle was standing in the doorway of his office.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Engle,” Alice said, flustered, and began rifling through the clutter on her desk. “I have it right here.”
“Then please bring it in,” he said.
“Here I come.”
When she finally located the forms, she took them into the office with her tail between her legs, unaccustomed to disappointing her boss in any way. Enough of this foolish daydreaming about Leslie. She returned to her desk with her head fully into her work and spent the rest of the morning typing dictation, her ears, mind, and fingers working in precise harmony.
Around lunchtime, she applied some Wite-Out to a document. As she was blowing it dry, she looked up to see the mirage of Leslie walking toward her desk with a smile fresher than a meadow on Little House on the Prairie. She placed a small African violet in gift-wrap cellophane on Alice’s desk.
“Do you have any plans for lunch?”
“Leftover meatloaf and mashed potatoes,” Alice replied, entranced.
“Gee, I hope the idea of lunch with me is more tempting than leftovers.”
Alice smiled, trying to keep her face
from shimmering like Donna Summer’s gold-lame hot pants. “Let me take these into Engle, and then we can go across the street.”
“Take your time,” Leslie said. “I’ll say hello to the girls.”
When Alice came back to her desk to collect her purse, she overheard the conversation Leslie was having with Julie and Marianne.
“How groovy that you can stay home, Leslie,” Julie said as she pressed a fake eyelash back into place. “I hope I can soon. I miss watching my stories every day.”
“First you gotta snag yourself a husband, Jule,” Marianne said, then turned to Leslie. “So how are you keeping busy now that your days are free? Getting into all kinds of far-out trouble?”
The girls laughed, and Alice bashed her leg into her open desk drawer.
“The usual routine. Laundry, cooking, the kids’ orthodontic appointments,” Leslie said. “Are you ready, Alice?”
Alice glared at her, rubbing her shin.
“That was smooth,” Leslie mumbled as they entered the elevator and the doors closed.
“Marianne’s comment caught me off guard,” Alice said.
“You? How do you think I felt? I was right in the line of fire.”
They relaxed into easy smiles and gazed into each other’s eyes.
“This is the best surprise,” Alice said.
Leslie surprised her further with a kiss and embrace that lasted until the elevator hit the ground floor.
At the sandwich shop across from the office, they sat at the crowded lunch counter eating soups and sandwiches. Alice had so much she wanted to talk to her about, but the venue bustling with hungry blue-collar and office workers on their lunch breaks precluded an intimate discussion.
“So, are you getting used to retirement?” Alice slurped some beef-barley broth off her spoon.
Leslie shrugged. “I’m having a tougher time readjusting than I thought.”
Because of me, Alice wanted to ask but instead opted for the less incendiary “Why?”
“Well, the kids aren’t babies anymore. They don’t need me as much as they used to. Billy’s been attending basketball camp every day for four weeks, and Rebecca is always off in her girlfriend Karen’s pool. Besides, I got accustomed to using my brain every day. I miss having that challenge. I mean, how many cakes do you think you need to bake before you know the recipe by heart?”
The Second Wave Page 10