by Bogi Takács
Danae remained silent for a few seconds, staring at the strawberry in Evelyn’s hand. “I will apologize to Serena,” she said, sounding half-dazed, half-enlightened. “And when I am done making amends to a giant plant that hates me, I am going to take a very long nap.”
“Sounds good, you earned it.” Evelyn chuckled. “Oh! But first… Did you say that the cake was only one of my birthday presents? If I wasn’t supposed to hear that, don’t worry. I have a very convincing ‘joyful surprise’ face.”
“I know,” Danae said as a slow, devilish smile spread across her face. “I’ve seen it. And don’t worry. Part two comes later. When the three of us are alone.”
“My favorite kind of surprise. Mmm, you, me, and Rose…” Evelyn grinned to match now. “I don’t care how the rest of the day goes if it ends with the three of us in each others’ arms.”
“You mean the four of us. I’ve been thinking, and I bet I can come up with a way to make it up to Serena and give you a sexy present all at once.” Danae held her gaze, all decisive planning and steady resolve—for around a second. Then the snort was too much to hold in, much less keep a straight face. “Surprise!”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“You love me.”
“I do.” Evelyn pulled her close, first kissing the top of her head, smearing crumbs and icing all over her own face, then her lips. Danae tasted exactly as sweet as she expected. “I really do.”
A small distance away, Rose sank down into the overstuffed couch cushions and watched and listened to her wives relax and celebrate in their own, quietly doing the same in her own. From here she could see Jack putting the finishing touches on his drawing from this morning. Nearby, Jay smiled when Stefanos held out his synthetic hand for Seven to sniff, then laughed when she started licking his fingers, rough metal tongue giving off tiny sparks. He pulled the big man down into a deep kiss, then started speaking words she couldn’t hear. Or begin to guess at. She couldn’t imagine what it would take to make Stefanos blush like that. But then, CyborJ was supposed to know every secret in Parole…
Steel feet up and the rest of her surrounded by soft pillows, Rose finally let herself breathe easy. No cake (she didn’t care if she never saw it ever again after today, quite frankly), no stress, and for a little while, no problems. She’d be awake again in time for that surprise later, after their guests had gone and Jack was in bed, but right now she was content to bask in the glow of a job extremely well done.
And a house that would need a serious day of cleaning tomorrow. But that could wait. It could all wait.
“Hey, sweetie,” she whispered to Jack as he set down his crayon and began to study his drawing, four-year-old face serious and focused in intense scrutiny. “Is your present ready?”
“Mm-hmm!” Jack quickly pushed it into her hands, folding his small arms and looking up at her expectantly.
Rose smiled and looked down at the drawing—then her smile froze.
There was the strawberry cake in the middle of the paper, right where it had been this morning. But now someone was holding it.
A man. Wearing a top hat with a wide brim. Red sparkles drawn all over the wide, pointed collar. Gold. White gloves. Red cuffs. His smile stretched almost to the edges of his face. The lines were elaborate, not just in detail but with cross-hatch shading, hundreds of red and gold stars and circles to represent sequins and glitter. No four-year-old Rose had ever seen drew at this level, but that in itself wasn’t what made Rose shiver.
“This is so beautiful,” she said when she could keep the tremble out of her voice. “Mama Ev’s gonna love it. When did you find the time to draw this, baby? With the cake and Toto-Dandy and everything?”
“Right after you left,” he said proudly, smiling. “I was quick. I almost got done!”
“You’re getting so good,” Rose said, staring at the man whose sharp smile she recognized, no matter how distorted. The truth was staring her right in the face. It could only be Garrett Cole. “Why don’t you go grab your moms—we can show her together.”
“Okay!” He hurried off, and Rose hurried to find her center before she had to think very fast and explain yet another potentially ominous wrinkle in their lives.
But she did find it. After just a few deep breaths, Rose could smile again, and mean it. That was the nice thing about feeling safe and surrounded by unconditional love; it was always easier than expected to leave the gnawing fear behind.
Rose looked up as Jack hurried back, pulling his other two mothers by their hands, and resolved not to let gnawing fear or ominous possibilities ruin this night. Danae and Evelyn welcomed her with open arms and berry-sweet kisses, and Rose forgot her worries in moments. Everything else seemed so small. Vague feelings of foreboding, chaotic days of hungry giant plants and runaway cats—it could wait. Just like the house cleaning, everything else could wait.
Tonight belonged to Evelyn, and the people she chose to share her life with. They could take a moment for themselves to simply be together and celebrate their lives together, the ones they loved, and the fact that they were all still here for one more year. Like the stains on the floor and the crumbs in the carpet, all the complications would be there when they got back.
Parole never stopped being Parole. Not even for a day.
The Way You Say Good-Night
• Toby MacNutt •
I moved in with the goddess in spring, after a month and a half of cautious emailing and coffee shop conversations. She had placed an ad in the classifieds: “Seeking housemate: 2br bungalow, countryside, owner occupied. Artists, writers, LGBTQ, introverts welcome. Quiet hours & amiable presence a must; mutual support preferred.” The rent was reasonable, utilities were included, and the explicit mention of queers and introversion intrigued me. Mutual support sounded nice, but I had my reservations.
We emailed, and emailed, and finally in April met. I didn’t notice straightaway. She hadn’t said, in her ad or in her emails, and she wore her strangeness subtly—I’m not sure how I would have responded, either, which I guess is why she didn’t mention. Everything odd about me, on the other hand, is right there on the surface. Even the most sheltered of country-mice could probably recognize my queerness, marked as it is in my name and hair and clothing, even inked into my skin. I don’t hide it and I never have. You can read my disability in my body now, too, without much effort. It was hidden once, camouflaged, but it has accumulated visible accessories: the splints, the sticks, the wheels. And most of the time now, I don’t try to hide the pain. I’m up-front about it. Her bungalow was single-story, step-free; that had been the first question I asked.
Her name was Arielle—“call me Ari”—and she was a slight, unassuming woman. Dark hair framed her pale face; a tousled sort of look, just beginning to grow out from a short crop, maybe. She cradled her mocha to her chest, and kept her hands around the mug even after it was empty. In her emails her tone had been formal, reserved; in the coffee shop, she looked nervous—her narrow shoulders tensed tight, her eyes not quite finding mine, she’d picked a shadowed corner—but her voice was even, low and velvety. We talked about the vacancy. It sounded perfect.
She asked to meet again. Spring was burgeoning; the sun was out at last, and the pale blue of winter skies had just begun to deepen into one a little more succulent. The sunlight was still watery, but warm enough that the breezes couldn’t steal its heat. Ari was inside, despite the fine weather, and tucked into a corner once again. The sunlight didn’t quite seem to reach her. As she leaned from her niche to hail me, her hair swung forward and I did a double-take. It was past shoulder-length, curling over itself. It had been short, last time, I was sure—or maybe just pulled back, I supposed, some kind of messy and unobtrusive up-do.
“Thanks for meeting me. Sorry for all the runaround, but, I just need to be careful, you know?”
“It’s all right, better safe than sorry, I know.” I settled in.
She drew a deep heavy breath. “I feel pretty good about yo
u. I think we’d do okay living together. But,” and she hesitated, hands tight around a mug she’d emptied before I arrived, “I haven’t been entirely honest with you, there’s something I still need to tell you.”
I felt myself guarding—my belly tensed, my shoulders pulled forward. “Okay…”
“And I guess part of why I think we’d be okay is, I think you might understand. I hope. So—all right. The thing is, what I need you to know is—I’m not quite normal. You know I’m a night person? There’s a reason, I was born with an aspect. Night-aspect, particularly.”
I relaxed. “Is that all?”
She startled, clearly surprised. “…yes?”
“Not so different, I don’t think.” I shrugged. “I’m a mutant of sorts, and queer, and I haven’t found a gender that fits. We aren’t the same shapes, you and I, but we both got made with odd molds, and we’re living with what that means.” I could see her evaluating this statement, suspiciously, slowly coming to terms with the fact that someone might say that and mean it. I guess acceptance had been rare for her; that’s people for you. But this wasn’t the first coming-out I’d been privy to, and goodness knows I’m strange enough in my own way. Aspects aren’t that different from mutations, just less well-understood, and carrying baggage of prophecy more so than medicine, though our histories twine some there, too—in visionaries, the possessed, those who spoke in tongues; those who were seen as crazy, malingering, fraudulent. And they’re still so rare, even now. I’d never met one, not knowingly.
“You’re sure? That doesn’t bother you?”
“Does it bother you that some days I can walk and some days I can’t? Or that strangers on any given day might address me alternately as ‘sir’ or ‘ma’am’?” She shook her head. “Then, no, I’m not bothered. Does it affect what it’s like to live with you? Just to be practical about it. I don’t know much about the everyday life of aspects.”
“I wax and wane, a bit. Night tends to stick to me. I don’t sleep much… Really, it changes, over the course of the year. It’s stronger in winter, when it’s dark so much. Summer’s easy, almost like being normal, I think.”
I shrugged again. “Sounds less eventful than some basic-human roommates I’ve had.”
So I moved in with the goddess—with Arielle, not a goddess, not really, but a woman of night—in May.
Summer evenings were easy. Ari got a duskiness about her as the sun kissed the horizon each night; not a blush or a glow, but something between the two, a quiet liveliness. It was a good time of day to tackle her unruly shadows, as they lengthened. Our back porch looked out westwards, toward sunset. She sat on the deck to watch the sun go down, a glow in her eyes and darkness streaming behind her, while I sat with her, combing shadows out of her hair. Left ungroomed, they coiled up in the bottom of the bath or balled up in corners, leading to stopped drains and stubbed toes and missteps—dark, tricky little dust bunnies. They stuck to her; it was hard for her to separate her shed shadows from her fingers, but easy for me, with my mundane human hands. I liked the task. It had a simple intimacy, and we chatted or sat in sunset quiet as I worked.
Other than shadow-combing, she was particular about touch; I noticed the care she took to avoid bumping into anyone if we were out and about, and she rarely touched me directly, either. But how much would one touch a housemate, anyway?
Not long after the solstice, I asked her about her hair. Not the shadows—those seemed self-evident, an element of her aspect—but its inconstant length. It had been short again when I moved in, grown down to her low back by late May, and then just—diminished, down to a pixie-cut length, barely there. At the end of June it was long again, full of shadows easily tangled.
“It’s a moon thing,” she said. “The shadows get stronger when the moon’s dark. It’s sort of the same inside, I guess, I feel it more, but you see it in my hair. Less right now, because it’s midsummer. There’s so much light all the time.”
“Will that change? This winter?”
“Yeah, it’s a bit more…dramatic.”
“Well, god help us if our cycles sync, then, huh?” I chuckled. “Do yours match the moon, just sort of—automatically?”
She shifted uneasily, and I cringed inwardly. I’d fucked up; been too cavalier, too intrusive. And presumptive. I forget sometimes that even people raised female get uncomfortable talking about menstrual cycles, and of course not everyone who reads as “female” has one—I know better than that. Or I should. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything, if it’s uncomfortable for you…”
“No, it’s—I’m just, I don’t,” she gestured vaguely around her belly, “I don’t cycle like that. I don’t bleed, I’m not built like you.”
“To be fair, most people aren’t.” I grinned wryly. “I am not exactly factory standard.” That earned a smile, to my relief. “I’m sorry if it’s a sore topic for you, though. It’s a personal thing, I shouldn’t have asked. Or assumed.”
“Oh, it’s a source of embarrassment long past… I just don’t talk about it much, so everyone just assumes. It was hard, as a teenager, but these days I don’t think I miss it.”
“You can have mine, if you like. I’ve often thought I’d give it up happily, to a trans woman or someone else who’d appreciate it.”
Ari chuckled. “No, really, I’m fine. Shadows are enough as it is!”
Conversation moved on, and she relaxed again.
Sometimes conversation would happen that way. It had something of a pattern to it: I’d bumble into some unique element of her aspect, some difference, without knowing; she’d explain, nervously at first, then more confidently. I shared what I could about myself, in return; sometimes she’d be the accidentally awkward one. It got easier for us both as time went on. She saw me walk on two legs or three or four or none; she saw me whirling with activity and flattened by fatigue. She heard about ex-boyfriends, ex-girlfriends, ex-queer lovers of all stripes, in triads and quads. She saw me in ties and dresses and heels and faux sideburns. The strange and fluid things about me I had writ large, exaggerated in preemptive self-defense; Ari lived hers close and quiet. Both were paths we’d chosen to keep us safe in a world where we had never quite fit.
We talked about change: both of us seem mercurial to the outside eye, in flux, maybe even unstable. But there’s a constancy to each of us, internally—a familiar, intrinsic pattern, albeit a complex one. I don’t even like change, as a rule. Surprises make me anxious; unexpected alterations to my environment set me on edge. I make my plans in advance, and it takes me ages to learn and remember new things. I was still asking Ari for reminders of our mailing address come July.
We built routines together. She picked up my morning blackberry-sage tea habit; I joined her for sunsets. We read poetry, swapped our favorites. I started noticing the moon. Our conversations and our silences alike grew easier, over the summer months. Brooding dust bunnies and all considered, I’d never had an easier roommate.
One day in early September I came home cheery, humming to myself. The sun was ripe and golden and the trees were just beginning to turn, punctuating the waves of green with little bursts of autumnal color. The living room was dim, though. Ari was balled up in the corner of the couch, looking quietly miserable.
“Hey.” I sat down next to her. She barely moved. “You okay?”
“No.” Well. Okay. That had been self-evident.
“What’s wrong? Want to talk about it?”
There was a long pause—I wanted to reach out to her, stroke her back or offer her some sort of comfort, some companionship. But she did not ever touch, and I wasn’t sure if I’d help, or hurt.
Slowly, she spoke. “It’ll be worse soon. The winter, it’ll be dark this year, I can tell, and I hate the change. So cold.”
“But it’s not here yet, right?”
“Soon. Equinox in two weeks, and the moon’s going dark.”
“That’s all right… We’ll figure it out, okay?”
She hunched furth
er. “You won’t want to be here for that. I should just stay away, be alone. Nobody wants the winter-dark.” I could hear tears unshed in her voice, and my heart ached.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, huh? After all, my lease runs till spring!” It was not a good attempt at levity. “We’ll figure it out, okay?” Silence, a tiny nod. “Hey. I don’t know, exactly, but you look like you could use a hug. Would you like a hug? No pressure.”
She started to move toward me, shifting in place, and then froze, eyes wide. I saw her eyes track my shoulders and my arms, bare—I was taking advantage of late summer while it lasted, enjoying the days of tank tops, sun-kissed skin. I heard a tiny whisper, just barely audible. “I can’t.”
“That’s okay. No pressure, all right? But the offer’s good anytime, if you need it.”
She shook, a little, sniffling; I could see the tension in her, trying to pull toward and away all at once. I sat back a little distance, to give her space.
“No—please. Stay?”
“Of course.” So I sat nearby, quietly, trying to exude a grounded calm. “It’s okay, Ari, really it is.” A few quiet breaths. “Would you like me to talk to you?” She shook her head, so I just stayed there near her, quiet together.
She shifted again in a few minutes, just the tiniest fraction of movement. I saw it, and read it; my own body has taught me the importance of little, hard-won movements. She’d moved, barely, but moved, a little bit more upright, a little bit nearer, just the adjustment maybe of one or two vertebrae, a twitch of the shoulder. I could hear her breathing shallowly, and swallowing hard.
“I want to,” she said, in that tiny whispering voice.
“Yeah?”
“But I can’t,” and she cried, and it took everything in me not to gather her up into my lap and hold her close.