The Long Way Home

by Rachel Spangler

  Beth had never really told anyone she was gay. She hadn’t had to speak the words to Kelly, and she had an unspoken understanding with other gay faculty like Miles and Patty. Even when Rory came to town, Beth hadn’t told her. She had figured it out on her own.

  Nothing in Beth’s own experience suggested she’d have come out to her parents, and yet she’d always assumed things would’ve been different if she could’ve told them. Would she have had the strength to say the words to the most important people in her life, even knowing the possible consequences? If she couldn’t tell them, would they continue to be the most important people to her, or would they have joined the long line of people she kept at a polite distance?

  The thought broke Beth’s heart. Who had she become? If she’d asked that question a few months ago, she could have said she was a friend, a neighbor, a girlfriend, a librarian. Now she wondered what other words she should add. Coward? Fake? Liar? What if she managed to add lesbian to that list? Would she have to give up her other identities in order to fully claim that of lesbian? She’d lose friends, and she’d no doubt lose Kelly. Could she still be the good citizen she’d always tried to be? What about the people who’d given her so much over the years? Would they feel betrayed? And did that even matter?

  Rory wouldn’t think so. She couldn’t understand why Beth didn’t shout her sexual orientation every time she entered a room. It wasn’t enough for her that Beth was trying to open up or that she’d gone against Kelly’s wishes and strained their relationship. Rory didn’t even care that Beth had gone to St. Louis and into a gay neighborhood with her. She didn’t notice the way Beth lost the ability to control herself when she was in her arms.

  In that moment when their bodies pressed together, Beth would’ve let Rory kiss her, and she would’ve kissed her back. Beth had shuddered at the flash of warmth that surged through her, but Rory hadn’t been fazed. Rory was so lost in her own self-preservation that she couldn’t see past her demons. Where did that leave Beth, other than alone and crying on the side of the highway?

  Beth couldn’t handle the turmoil any longer. She wouldn’t find answers here, but she’d run out of places to look. She covered her face and let tears of frustration fall.

  She was so lost in her own unrest that she didn’t notice Rory until she put an arm around her shoulders. God, she feels good. The thought was out before Beth could process where it had come from. She was upset and exhausted, and a strong, beautiful woman was there to hold her.

  She rested her head on Rory’s chest, soaking up her warmth and listening to her whispered shushing sounds. Rory offered the comfort she was seeking, and Beth wanted so badly to accept it. Her body begged her to give in and enjoy the moment with Rory, and this was most certainly Rory. Rory was kind, gentle, and intuitive. Beth wanted to enjoy her before she changed back into Raine.

  Raine. That thought jolted Beth, giving her the energy she needed to push away and stand on her own.

  “What?” Rory asked, surprise and confusion in her deep green eyes.

  “It’s you, Rory. You make me crazy.”

  “I’m sorry I made you drive.”

  Beth laughed. “You didn’t make me drive. Raine did.”

  Rory stared at her as though she’d lost her mind and began to get to her feet slowly, as if she feared sudden movement might spark another outburst. “I am Raine.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re being sweet. Raine is self-centered. You’re being introspective. Raine is brash. You’re apologizing. Raine never apologizes for anything.”

  “I don’t know what you want from me.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know anymore either,” Beth admitted. “You’ve done nothing but cause trouble for me since you got here. Every time I reach out to you, you put me down. Every time we get close, you withdraw. Every time I see something genuine, you hide it behind some façade you’ve created.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. I’m not Rory anymore. I’m not here to get in touch with my past. I like who I’ve become.” Rory glanced away, as though she couldn’t bring herself to look Beth in the eye. “And even if I didn’t, I don’t know why you’d care.”

  “Fine.” Beth threw her hands up. “If that’s really the case, I was wrong about you. From now on I’ll leave you alone and focus on putting my own life back together.”

  She turned her back on Rory and got in the car. It was too hard to watch her close herself off, but obviously Beth couldn’t stop her. She needed to move on. She’d been happy before Rory arrived, or at least content. Surely she could go back to the way things had been before, couldn’t she?

  *

  September 27

  Raine was angry that she was back in Darlington. She was angry at Beth for picking fights with her, and she was angry that she was awake at five o’clock in the morning thinking about her. Who the hell was Beth Devoroux anyway? Beth didn’t know her. She didn’t understand what it was like to be thrown out of her own home. Beth had no idea what she was talking about when she continued to bring up Raine versus Rory. No one wanted her to be Rory—not her agent, not the women she dated, and certainly not Raine herself. Rory was a country girl. Raine was a hero. Rory was boring. Raine was exciting.

  Well, maybe that wasn’t completely true. She hadn’t been exciting lately. Ali had accused her of being dull. It wasn’t her fault that she liked baseball games more than the theater. The girlfriend before Ali had called her a fake when she found out that Raine preferred burgers to tabouli. And the woman before that? Reba McEntire. Raine chuckled at the memory of that fight. She’d wanted to go see Reba in concert when her ex had symphony tickets.

  Raine paced around her bedroom, enjoying the cool hardwood floors under her bare feet. Maybe women didn’t like Raine as much as she’d thought, or maybe they just didn’t like the residual aspects of Rory that always popped up no matter how hard Raine tried to drown them. Except for Beth. She claimed to like Rory better. How could that be? Why would someone prefer the woman Raine had worked so hard to bury? Beth had it backward. This whole town was backward.

  Raine tried not to think about Chris and Tyler, who had welcomed her without question. She didn’t let her mind wander to her students or her colleagues, who accepted her without reservation. She especially didn’t focus on Beth—the way she smiled, the way she looked in the moonlight, the pain in her eyes when they argued, or the way her body fit perfectly against her own.

  She needed to pull herself together. Darlington was hell. She needed to remember that. She was a mess from being submerged in its small-town culture for too long. She had to stay focused on why she was here and what she needed to do to get out. She had to write her article.

  The library wouldn’t open until noon on a Sunday, but she could work all evening with no chance of running into Beth. She thought briefly of her promise to Davey, but didn’t let herself dwell on it. The last thing she needed was to spend another Sunday dinner with her parents. They were almost as confusing as Beth. Still, she couldn’t blow them off, so she grabbed the phone book and dialed Davey’s number without regard to the time. He was a farmer, and they were always up before the sun.

  “Hey, Davey,” she said when he answered. “It’s Raine. I mean Rory.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked suspiciously.

  “Nothing. I’m going to have to miss dinner tonight.”

  “Jesus, Rory.” Davey sighed. “I told Mom and Dad you’d be there.”

  “I’m sorry. I just can’t make it tonight.”

  “When will you make it? Or do you plan to keep jerking them around, getting their hopes up and then destroying them all over again?”

  “It’s not that big a deal. They barely notice I’m there. They won’t miss me.”

  “Pull your head out of your ass,” Davey yelled. “If you paid attention to someone other than yourself for one minute, you’d see what you’re doing to them. They walk on eggshells around you. You can’t buzz in and out of our lives when it’s convenient for y
ou.”

  “Convenient for me? Do you think getting kicked out of my home at seventeen was convenient for me? You think I like feeling like a stranger in my own family? I’m the one on eggshells around them.”

  “If we’re so damn awful, why don’t you stay gone instead of hanging around and wrecking us all over again?”

  “Fine,” Raine shouted, and slammed the phone down only to pick it up again. This time she knew the number to dial.

  “Leave me alone,” a sleepy voice answered.

  “Edmond, get me out of here.”

  “Raine?”

  “Yes, it’s Raine.” Though she wasn’t sure who she was at the moment. “You gotta get me out of this town.”

  “You signed a contract.” He yawned.

  “You’re my agent. Get me out of it.”

  “I can’t, and even if I could, what would you do?”

  “I’ll flip burgers.”

  Edmond snorted. “You’re a craptastic cook.”

  “I don’t care. This place is killing me, and apparently I’m destroying everyone’s lives.”

  “Whose lives have you destroyed?”

  “My parents’, my brother’s, Beth’s—”

  “I should’ve known there was a trick involved. Who’s Beth?” She heard the sheets rustle and knew Edmond was sitting up.

  “She’s not a trick. She’s this girl that I knew in high school. She’s amazing and sweet, and she’s such a closet case, and her girlfriend is a total douche bag.” Raine felt her already high frustration level rise yet again.

  “Are you sleeping with her?”

  “No. It’s not like that.”

  “Do you want to sleep with her?”

  “No,” Raine said, but her chest tightened at the images that ran through her mind, images of Beth and her beautiful curves and delicate skin pressing unrestricted against hers.

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is I have to get out of here,” Raine stated again.

  “I’ll see what I can do, but you’ll have to wait awhile. Why don’t I come visit for a weekend?”

  Raine considered his offer. If she couldn’t get out, at least Edmond might help her remember who she was. “Yeah, I’d like to see you, but you have to work on the contract too.”

  “I promise,” he said calmly. “Now let’s both get some sleep, okay?”

  “Okay.” She hung up, but between Davey’s accusations about her family being nervous around her and the images of making love to Beth, she’d be awake all night.

  Chapter Fourteen

  October 4

  Beth sat behind a podium to the right of the communion table. The church choir sang “Here I am, Lord,” in the loft above her, and Beth hummed the familiar melody. She couldn’t see the congregation from her vantage point, so she scanned the row of stained-glass windows opposite her seat.

  They were beautifully intricate and well over a hundred years old. She’d seen them every Sunday for as long as she could remember, and she still noticed something new in them occasionally. As a child she’d searched the pictures for entertainment during the sermons. At her parents’ funeral and the months afterward, she searched them to distract herself from the fact that she was there to worship a god who’d taken her family. Now searching was a comfortable habit in this quiet sanctuary away from conflict. The faces of saints and martyrs watched over her and offered messages of peace.

  She needed peace. The last week had been an emotional minefield of wanting to apologize to Rory, or Kelly, or both of them while simultaneously feeling hurt and betrayed that neither of them recognized the position they’d put her in.

  The choir finished its song and Beth rose to face the podium. She’d been the liturgist hundreds of times throughout her life, but she still trembled at the sight of the congregation turning their attention silently to her.

  She cleared her throat. “A reading from the Gospel of St. Matthew. ‘When the Pharisees heard...’” Beth read clearly the passage she’d practiced.

  She took her task seriously. The Word was a gift from God, and she had been chosen to share it today. She might not be able to please Rory or Kelly, neither of whom had spoken to her since her trip to St. Louis last weekend, but she was up to the task before her now, and it was an important one. “‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’”

  The pastor rose behind the pulpit. He was a frail man in his late sixties whose white hair and wire-rimmed glasses made him resemble George Burns.

  “Love the Lord,” he said. “Folks, I hope you’re here because you love the Lord.” The congregation chuckled. “It’s that second commandment we have trouble with. ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ We certainly hear it enough. People say it, pray it, and cross-stitch it onto throw pillows, but do we ever stop to think about it?”

  Beth didn’t want to be boastful, but she liked to think she loved her neighbor. She liked to care for the sick, help in times of trouble, and be a good listener. She loved her neighbor to a fault at times, which was clearly evidenced by her disastrous attempts to help Rory.

  “The commandment has two parts,” the pastor continued. “Love of neighbor and love of self. I bet you’ve always been told to focus on the neighbor part.”

  Beth nodded as though he were speaking directly to her. She did focus on her neighbors. She worked selflessly for them. She sang in the choir, she worked at the soup kitchens, she dragged Raine out of her apartment, she hid large parts of her life to protect Kelly. Wasn’t that what she was supposed to do? Wasn’t that the Christian thing to do?

  “We don’t like to talk about love of self. For some reason it is seen as synonymous with self-absorption or egotism. But folks, if you do not love yourself, you cannot possibly love your neighbor the way God intends you to. You can’t give what you do not possess.”

  Surely that didn’t apply to her. She didn’t hate herself. She wasn’t depressed. She was happy with her life, mostly. She overextended her energies regularly, but always for people she cared about. She didn’t abuse herself.

  “If you’re not fair to yourself, you cannot offer fairness to your neighbors. If you’re not honest with yourself, you cannot deal honestly with others.”

  Okay, maybe he is talking to me. Beth was being unfair to herself by trying to please everyone but herself, but she didn’t want to disappoint anyone. She was a pleaser, a peacemaker, though she hadn’t made much peace with Rory or Kelly, and she certainly didn’t feel very peaceful. And she wasn’t completely honest with anyone. Not with Rory about her involvement in bringing her to Darlington. Not with Kelly about the time she’d spent with Rory, and she wasn’t honest with anyone else about her sexual orientation. Did she need to be honest with herself about her own fears and desires before she could be honest with them?

  “You can’t give what you don’t possess,” the pastor reiterated.

  When he put it like that, it seemed simple, but it would be anything but. Beth had spent a lifetime denying herself and fulfilling the needs of others. When it came to loving herself, she didn’t know where to begin.

  The pastor closed the sermon by quoting Jesus. “‘On these commandments hang all the law and the prophets.’”

  Oh, come on, Beth moaned internally. Nothing like piling on the pressure.

  After the service almost everyone in the crowd of mingling parishioners greeted her. A few even invited her to join them for lunch at their home. She’d been a member of the church her entire life, and her fellow congregants had watched her grow up. They’d helped care for her when her parents died, and many of them played the role of surrogate family members. She loved them dearly, but today she had too much on her mind to visit with them.

  She was tired and confused about her priorities. She needed some time and space
to sort out her feelings. Even though she could have helped with some chores at the church, Beth got in her car and headed home, a small step toward showing herself the compassion she had always showed others.

  *

  October 8

  Raine was going stir-crazy again, and she still had a day and a half until Edmond arrived. She’d been able to focus on her new article for a week and had been extremely productive, stopping only to teach her classes and meet with the GLBT student group. Without Beth or her family interrupting, she’d scratched out a first draft, her own angst fueling her diatribes about self-hating gays and lesbians. She’d used existing models of identity development to paint such people as stunted and unable to reach any level of self-actualization until they freed themselves from their limited worldview. It was a nice blend of sociology and memoir. She’d loved it at first. From the completion of her early draft she knew the article would be well received in her former circles. Now, though, on day eleven, she wasn’t so sure.

  She was starting to regret her fight with Davey. She’d broken her promise to attend family dinners, so he had a right to be angry. He simply didn’t understand what their parents had done to her. He didn’t know what it was like to have to choose between being true to himself or his family’s values. He’d obviously misread their parents’ discomfort for fear. Why would they fear upsetting her? They’d done nothing to stop her from leaving the first time. They wouldn’t care if she disappeared again.

  Then there was Beth. How had things gone so wrong with her? One minute they were laughing and sharing a real connection; then all those feelings surfaced. The attraction that resulted from her touch, the confusion at her reactions, the anger they’d directed at each other—none of it made sense.