The Second Wave

by Jean Copeland

  Leslie hesitated.

  “We’ve been going back and forth with this for months,” Alice said. “Now you’re finally ready, aren’t you?”

  “Alice, we have to end this. It’s torture keeping it going.”

  “So is not being together. Or was it only torture for me?”

  Finally a reassuring lip quiver. “Alice, I’m an absolute mess over you. But I’m a married woman, and we’re doing things that two women shouldn’t be doing, let alone a married one. I’m not very religious, but I’m pretty sure what we’ve done is going to land us both in hell.”

  “Fantastic. Then we can finally be together,” Alice said.

  “This isn’t a joke.”

  “I’ve never taken it as one.” Alice walked toward her cocktail cart at the end of the living room, preferring a display of stoic indignation to utter despair. “So tell me,” she said, pouring a shot of Jack Daniels, “is this religious awakening of yours real, or did you suddenly receive Jesus when Bill came home early last week while my face was between your legs?”

  Leslie covered her face with her hands and sobbed.

  Alice faced the wall, sipping the Jack as Leslie’s soft whimpers bit into her. She’d never felt anguish like this before, not even the day Tony came home and informed her he’d met someone else, an affectionate woman who made him feel like a man in a way that Alice never had.

  When Leslie cried, it was Alice who drowned in the tears. She wanted to abandon her there weeping as punishment for hurting her, for saying their love was going to land them in hell. Mostly, she wanted to punish her for being so kind, so beautiful, and so intoxicating that she’d rendered Alice helpless or reluctant to stop the plunge into her and into such turmoil. Instead, she walked over to her, wrapped her arms around her from behind, and kissed her hair.

  “I understand if this has to be good-bye,” she whispered.

  Leslie spun around and stretched her arms over Alice’s shoulders, clutching her as though Alice were the only thing stopping her from plummeting off a cliff. “I don’t want it to be,” she sobbed. “God, I love you so much.”

  “I love you, too, baby,” Alice whispered into her ear as she stroked the back of Leslie’s hair.

  “The thought of losing you makes me unspeakably sad.” She buried her face in Alice’s neck.

  “You know what makes me unspeakably sad?”

  Leslie wiped her eyes and looked at her. “What?”

  “Watching you walk away from me at the end of the night.” Alice gently pushed strands of hair wet from tears out of Leslie’s face. “You take a little piece of me with you each time you go. If we stay together, soon I’m going to be small enough to fit in your purse.”

  “I’m sorry, Alice, so sorry.” She held her tighter, digging her fingers into Alice’s flesh.

  They spent the rest of that night making love, Alice melancholy with the notion that it truly was for the last time. Leslie was her usual paradox—making love to her as though Alice were the air she needed to breathe, the water she needed to survive. And then when it was over, she would get up and go home to the man she’d promised her life to.

  As she watched Leslie dress, Alice lay in bed hugging bunched-up covers to her chest. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Leslie faced the mirror over the dresser and raked her fingers through her messy hair. A wife couldn’t go home to her husband with the back of her head looking like she’d been swept up in a tornado.

  Leslie turned and leaned against the dresser, staring back with a gaze that mirrored Alice’s misery. “Aren’t you going to walk me out?” she finally asked.

  Alice closed her eyes, releasing the tears she’d been storing. “If I don’t, will you stay?”

  “Don’t you know that’s all I want to do?”

  “But you can’t. I know.” Alice threw on a terry-cloth robe and hugged Leslie, trying to imbibe every last particle of her being.

  “Do you know the only thing good about driving home?”

  “What?” Alice said, her head still resting on Leslie’s shoulder.

  “The smell of you on me.”

  Alice chuckled softly. “That’s the only saving grace in going to sleep alone. When I turn over, I smell your perfume on my sheets.”

  Leslie cupped Alice’s face in her hands and kissed her delicately, sending Alice into a world from which she didn’t want to return.

  “I have to go.”

  Alice shrugged. “So go.”

  Leslie laced her fingers through Alice’s, and they headed down the hall to the kitchen.

  Suddenly, Alice jerked her hand away and shouted, “How could you walk away from me like this?”

  Leslie was startled silent.

  “How can you say you love me, make love to me, and then just go home?”

  “Alice, you know why,” she said softly, clearly unnerved by Alice’s mood swing. “I’ll lose my kids if I don’t.”

  “You should get that branded on your fucking forehead.” Alice rested her weight against the door, staring at Leslie.

  “Alice, please. I have to go home now.”

  “Not until you admit it.”

  “Admit what?”

  “That your kids are a convenient excuse not to abandon your cushy life with Bill to slug it out in the mud with me.”

  “Alice, where is this coming from? I’ve told you the truth all along. I know it’s hard for you to understand—”

  “Just come off it, Leslie.” Alice’s indignation was not to be dissuaded. “It’s different nowadays. Women with children can leave their husbands when it’s not working anymore and not lose their kids.”

  “They can’t if they leave them for another woman. Do you really think Bill would be okay with having his kids exposed to this? He’ll fight for custody and most likely win.”

  “Exposed? Is our love a goddamn disease or something?”

  “It’s not to me, but it is to society.”

  “Who gives a shit about society? All that matters is our happiness.”

  “If I didn’t have kids, I could afford to agree with you. Alice, this isn’t some philosophical feminist issue we’re discussing with the girls while getting high. It’s my life.”

  “It’s my life, too,” Alice shouted. “I’d make any sacrifice to be with you.”

  “You can’t compare our lives and our levels of sacrifice. That’s not fair. Now please stop trying to make me feel worse about this than I already do.”

  “You don’t feel so bad when we’re making love. Your conscience only seems to flare up when I need something more from you.”

  “I can’t give you more. You’ve known that from the start.”

  “I didn’t know anything from the start except that I woke up one morning head over heels in love with you and you telling me you felt exactly the same way.”

  “I do feel the same, Alice, but I’m not going to lose custody of my children. I couldn’t live with myself if I did.” Leslie began to pace, her voice quavering. “Look, I don’t know why this happened. I didn’t set out to have an affair on Bill. I didn’t intend to crash into you like this. I didn’t even know it was possible to love you so much, but I do, and now my heart aches for you, Alice. Desperately. I’m all torn up over it.”

  Leslie collapsed into a chair and sobbed.

  Alice rushed to Leslie and dropped to her knees. Resting her head in her lap, she cried with her.

  They had to stop before it was too late.

  Chapter Seventeen

  When Alice got back to Mary Ellen’s from the brewery, she was still annoyed. The most annoying part of her annoyance was that she was mostly annoyed with herself. For all the proselytizing she’d done to anyone who would’ve listened about age equaling wisdom, she hadn’t felt too wise at the moment. She stormed into the house, up the stairs, and into the closet of the guest room. After tossing her suitcase onto the bed, she started plucking clothing items from dresser drawers and flinging them into it.


  Mary Ellen appeared in the doorway. “Was it something I said?”

  “No,” Alice said dourly. “I need to put rubber to asphalt.”

  “Mind if I ask why?”

  “It’s just time, Mare. Staying here any longer will put me in a position I do not want to be in.”

  “Seems to me like you’re already there.”

  “Yes, but like colon cancer, it was detected early enough, so there’s an excellent chance for a complete recovery.”

  Mary Ellen grimaced. “Ugh, that’s morbid, even for you.” She positioned herself against the dresser to prevent further marauding by Alice. “Why don’t you talk to me about it?”

  Alice threw a pair of shorts into the suitcase and dropped on the bed. “Do you know what she told her daughter? That she thinks she’s a lesbian. Thinks. Can you imagine?”

  “Was that a wrong answer?”

  “If she were interested in pursuing anything with me, don’t you think she should’ve said she is a lesbian and maybe told her daughter that I mean much more to her than a friend? God knows, I paid my dues long enough to have earned that much.”

  “I think I’ve missed something. Friday night you said it was just dinner with a friend. Did something else happen?” Mary Ellen sat on the bed across from the suitcase. “Did you go to bed with her?”

  “No, no, nothing like that.”

  “Did you talk about rekindling your romance?”

  “No.”

  “A kiss good-night?”

  “All right, Mare.” Alice leapt from the bed and glared at her sister. “I see what you’re trying to do here, and I don’t appreciate it. I’m not overreacting. I’m being practical. There’s nothing wrong with self-preservation, especially after what I already went through with her. And what about Maureen? I’m behaving like she never existed.”

  “Alice, calm down. Don’t start pacing. Sit down.”

  Alice sat, chewing the inside of her cheek to keep her composure.

  “Nobody’s forgotten Maureen,” Mary Ellen said. “She’ll never be forgotten, by any of us. But she’s gone—for over a year now. You don’t have to prove your devotion to her by being sad and alone the rest of your life.”

  “But I am sad and alone without her.” Alice covered her eyes with her hand as she cried.

  Mary Ellen put her arm around her, resting her head against Alice’s. “I’m sure that feeling will always be with you to some degree, but I’ve also seen happiness and excitement in you with Leslie—whatever’s going on between you two. I’d hate to see you run off again before you have a chance to—”

  “Get my heart broken again?”

  “No, that’s not what—”

  “Do you know what it was like saying good-bye to Leslie back then?”

  Mary Ellen shook her head, chastised into silence.

  “Let me tell you about it, and then you can let me know if you’d be as blasé about giving it another try as you’re advising me to be.”

  July 1978

  One afternoon, Alice appeared at the local ballpark where Billy played his youth-league baseball games. After spotting Leslie’s family car and then homing in on her on the bleachers, she lingered by the concession stand, believing she was safely out of sight. Leslie was arresting in white sunglasses and straw sunhat, her tan legs peeking out of denim shorts.

  When Billy got what looked like an ordinary hit, Leslie leapt up and yelled and clapped like a woman possessed. Bill, appareled in a coach’s uniform, waved his arms at his son to come home. Billy slid in, beating the throw home, winning the game. Leslie bounded down the bleachers and joined everyone patting and hugging Billy at home plate.

  At one point, Leslie, Bill, and the kids stood in their own family huddle celebrating Billy’s in-the-park homerun. If shame could stop a heart, Alice would’ve dropped in the dirt right then and there. Leslie had once told her she couldn’t live with herself if she were to break up her family just so she could have something she wanted. Watching them, Alice asked herself how could she?

  As she crept back toward her car, Leslie called out her name. She stopped and turned around, averting her eyes as though Leslie’s face was the sun.

  “I thought that was you,” Leslie said. “You weren’t even going to say hello?”

  “I don’t know, Leslie. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

  “I’m glad you are.”

  “Are you really?”

  “In spite of everything, yes. I still miss you, Alice.”

  “As weird as it sounds, so do I.”

  “Do you want to try crocheting again?”

  Alice cocked her head. “You know what will happen if we do.”

  Leslie glanced over to where her family was still celebrating and seemed to choke back emotion. “I’m thinking of going to see a shrink,” she whispered.

  “That’s probably a good idea. I should give that a try myself.”

  “Want to make appointments together? A two-for-one special,” Leslie said, but neither of them was in a joking mood.

  Alice struggled to make eye contact. She’d only missed Leslie more as the days went on. To Alice, she was her lover and confidante, even though that woman had always been an illusion.

  “I don’t know what to do with this, Les,” she said, making swirls in the dirt with the ball of her tennis sneaker. “What keeps us holding on to something we know we can never have? I can’t figure it out.”

  “Sometimes I call your office just to hear your voice and then hang up.”

  Alice smirked. “I always pretended, hoped it was you.”

  “And drive by your house on the off chance I’ll catch you coming or going.” Leslie smiled mirthlessly. “Wow, I guess I really do need a shrink.”

  Alice smiled, feeling Leslie’s anticipation as she searched for words. Finally, she looked up, closing an eye against the sun. “I put in for a transfer at work.”

  “To where?” Leslie asked, almost demanded.

  “The main office in Hartford. I got an apartment in West Hartford.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can stop doing things like this. Leslie, I’m completely lost in you, and I have to do something to find myself again.”

  “You think you’re the only one,” Leslie said. “I am too, but I don’t get to pack up and run off like you.”

  Alice’s eyes rolled before she could stop them. “You don’t need to. You’re doing a killer job staying away from me now.”

  “You asked me to. What was I supposed to do, keep calling you? Honestly, Alice, you have no idea what I’ve been going through.”

  “Really? My heart’s been slit open and is bleeding all over everything, and I have no idea?”

  “So is mine, except unlike you, I have to act like everything’s A-Okay in front of my family every single day. Do you know what my new routine is?”

  Alice folded her arms in defiance.

  “I take a longer shower each morning so I can cry like I need to. I know I don’t deserve any sympathy. You didn’t force me into this situation. I was an all-too-willing participant, but I didn’t know I would fall so hard for you.”

  Alice swallowed against her tears. “Leslie, we keep saying the same things over and over. I need to get away. This past year has been insane. I don’t know who I am anymore, and it scares the hell out of me. I mean, I never in a million years believed I was the kind of woman who could have an affair with a married person.”

  “I can’t talk about this now,” Leslie said, fidgeting. “Can we meet for coffee?”

  “No. I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” Leslie’s eyes flamed. “Why did you come here and tell me this in front of my family?”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t intend to tell you at all. I didn’t even want you to see me. I just wanted one last look at you before I left.”

  “You were going to up and move away without even telling me?”

  “Leslie, it’s the only way I can move on. We need to get on
with our lives.”

  “You’re a coward,” Leslie spat.

  “Leslie, please try to…” She reached out, but Leslie jerked her body back.

  “Go to Hartford, Alice. Go and have yourself a nice life.”

  Leslie stormed off to her family without looking back.

  *

  Mary Ellen hung on Alice’s words even after she’d finished talking. “This story gets more tragic with every new installment.”

  “It got worse from there,” Alice said. “I had a stretch of promiscuity, abused alcohol, and for my encore, was arrested for drunk driving after I took out part of the guardrail on the Merritt Parkway.”

  “Jesus, Alice. Who the hell were you?”

  Alice smirked at the bitter precision of the question. “I was only beginning to find out.”

  August 1978

  After her tumultuous time with Leslie, Alice knew what she was. She imagined that Leslie did, too, but circumstance had her firmly implanted in a life she was not going to alter for Alice or her own individual happiness. Alice, on the other hand, was unfettered by any responsibility other than to herself. Even if she had been so inclined for convenience sake, she couldn’t have gone back to relationships with men. She was no longer for sale for membership in the exclusive world of block parties, PTA meetings, and picket fences.

  After she’d skipped numerous crochet meetings, Kathy tracked her down and asked to meet her for a drink at a lounge in Hartford. After about five minutes, Alice realized that the lounge catered to a specific type of clientele.

  “This is certainly an interesting choice of venue.” Alice eyed the young, slicked-haired waitress wearing a white tank top and black Dickie workpants with suspenders who delivered their first round of beers.

  “You have some sort of objection?” Kathy asked.

  “No. It’s eclectic,” she said, still taking in the scenery. “And there isn’t one man in the whole place.”

  “That’s sort of the point.”

  “I see.”