by May Sarton
“Thanks.”
It is odd to feel so close to tears. But after all it has been rather a strange day, half pain, half triumph, half good news, half fear. I feel all mixed up.
A little later Joe calls to say he will pick me up at six. I guess Joe is coming to fetch me so I will be protected. I go out rarely after dark, except to walk Patapouf. I decide to wear a red paisley dress and get out of my tweed suit and loafers for a change. And then, before I have a bath, I lie down on my bed and fall fast asleep.
Sleep doesn’t always “knit up the ragged sleeve of care,” but this little nap did me a world of good. Sometimes sixty feels young and sometimes it feels old, and when I wake up at five, I feel young and ready for anything. The curious effect of the last hours of crisis is a sense of relief. Something has happened that had to happen sooner or later, and now I am free in a new way and—I have to laugh at this—finally grown up.
So at a little before six I go down with Patapouf, who will guard the store while I am gone, feeling excited and happy to be going out to dinner with two new friends.
Fanny and Ruth are getting ready to close and there are only two customers in the store whom I am glad to see leave without fanfare. “What a day!” I say to Fanny, who is totting up figures. “You must be exhausted.”
“Nothing like when we have cleaned two houses in a day,” Ruth says.
“There!” Fanny closes the account book. “You know what you took in? Over a thousand dollars.”
“I can’t believe it,” I say. “That is almost as good as the day of the opening party.”
“People were so supportive,” Fanny says. “It was awfully touching.”
“We felt proud,” Ruth says, “and Fanny was great when one older woman came in and asked for you and said we could tell you that she had not imagined a degenerate beast would move into the neighborhood.”
“Oh my, I’m glad I was not here,” I say.
“You know what Fanny said?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“She said, ‘That’s odd, that’s what Hitler said of the Jews.’ And several people milling around applauded. So that woman left, and good riddance we all felt.”
“It’s the start of what may be rather a long battle,” I say, sitting down.
“Two nuns, Sisters of Loretto, they said they were, came by and told us to tell you they were thinking of you. They brought brownies—over there in a tin box.”
“Degenerate beasts love brownies,” I say, amused at the form Chris and Mary’s support has taken.
And now here is Joe knocking on the door. I introduce them and leave Fanny and Ruth to lock up from the inside with Fred’s new lock, and explain about leaving by my door. “See you next Saturday!”
“It’s been a wonderful day,” Ruth says, “maybe not for you, but we’re grateful to be working with you.”
As we walk along, Joe says that he came over twice to see how things were but there was such a crowd all seemed to be well. “No flack from that piece in the Globe?”
“Of course, but I have no regrets.”
Joe slips his arm through mine but says nothing for a minute. “You make me feel ashamed,” he says then. “I couldn’t help wondering if you had meant to be quoted or whether the reporter took it as open season on gays—or what?”
“Well, she did not misquote me, but I did not envision a headline, I must admit.” I stop to shift the bottle from my left arm to my right and Joe notices and takes it from me at once. “It’s wine,” I explain. “I hope you like Vouvray.”
“Love it. Eddie and I spent a week in the Loire valley two or three years ago. We were shown the caves back of Vouvray where they store the wine.”
And then as he tells me more about that trip, which had taken them also to the Dordogne and south to Albi, we reach the Victorian house where they have an apartment on the top floor. The rather dingy staircase does not prepare me for the charm and style of their quarters, including two ravishing Siamese cats. It is appallingly neat, I think, guilty about my own lack of housekeeping skill, and it is peaceful and beautiful as well. The living room is dominated by a magnificent Navajo rug hanging on the wall. The furniture is modern, two armchairs echoing the blue bands in the rug, the walls white.
“I’ve never seen a Navajo rug with blues like that,” I say. “It has to be an old one. Is it?”
“I bought it at an auction years ago,” Joe explains, “for a hundred dollars, believe it or not.”
Through an arched door I can see another room lined with books from floor to ceiling. “I brought you some wine,” I say to Eddie.
“Oh wonderful. I’m making coq au vin for you. This will be perfect.”
“What would you like to drink?” Joe asks when he has taken my coat and I am sitting on the nubby white sofa.
“Scotch with a little water.”
“Ah,” Eddie registers from the kitchen, “I was right. Joe thought it would be a martini!”
“Vicky and I used to drink martinis, so you were both right.”
“That Globe reporter said Vicky was a publisher and I recognized the name,” Joe says. “How hard that she is not with you now.”
“Well,” I fumble for the words and suddenly, a little shy, say, “Vicky would not have approved. We led middle-class lives in Chestnut Hill. It’s her money, so sometimes I feel anxious. I mean, what would she say or think?”
“But surely you must do what you feel, not what she might have felt,” Joe says. I remember now that he had said he is a psychiatrist, and the fact that he is does not alarm me as it might have. I feel very much at ease and am asking myself why, as I sip my drink and Joe brings in Brie and some water biscuits.
“What a wonderful atmosphere you create,” I say as he offers me a biscuit and spreads it with cheese. “Thanks.”
“Do we?” Joe asks.
“I feel I can say anything and you will understand, whereas my brother Fred dropped by to accuse me of letting the family down.”
“In what way?” Eddie asks as he comes back to sit down with a martini.
“That awful word in the Globe headline. I find it hard to say it myself,” and I realize that I am blushing.
“But did you say it to that reporter?” Joe asks. “If so, you are a brave woman.”
“And the saints come marching in,” Eddie sings, smiling.
“Watching all sorts of women come and go in the store, hearing their stories … I have learned a lot,” I say. “I have changed, I guess. Some people would say not for the better. By the way, have you had to erase any obscenities lately?” They exchange a look. “I have to know,” I say. “Come on, tell me.”
“Only two or three,” Joe says. “It’s always the same crap.”
I had felt so happy a moment before but now the reality hits me. Other people are being involved, other people at risk.
“Joe is a black belt,” Eddie says, smiling happily. “One day we caught some young men at it and one of them called us a dirty name, and the next thing he knew he was flat on the sidewalk. What a moment! I had always hoped to see Joe do his stuff. I wouldn’t have missed it … his face. Total amazement.”
“Wow!” I say. “The stuffed-shirt lawyer who runs my business affairs came by and he wants me to have some fancy security system installed. Ha! I’ve just had an idea. Maybe it could be rigged to pour water on the head of anyone painting the windows. That and a siren going off at the same time.” It is all so ludicrous suddenly that I am laughing almost hysterically. “Oh my,” I sigh, “laughter is the only way I can handle all this,” and now, because I really have had enough of it, “Let’s change the subject.”
I want to know more about Joe and Eddie, how they met and how long they have lived together. “It was so amazing the way you turned up to help me out, out of the blue like that. I can’t get over it.”
“Pure self-interest,” says Joe. “We need a bookstore like yours, people like you. The neighborhood is changing. I suppose gentrification is a dirty
word because it is putting workers out of some housing. But, on the other hand, the dreariness is beginning to be diluted, thank God.”
It is Eddie who tells how they met seven years ago when he was a student at Rindge Technical School. Joe was for a time the school psychiatrist and had helped Eddie leave home where his father, an alcoholic, used to beat him mercilessly and had nearly killed him when he found out that he was gay.
I listen, once more confronted by how sheltered a life mine has been. These two men are very different. What holds them together? “Seven years …,” I murmur.
“People think gays pick men up all the time. Some do, of course,” Joe explains, “but for some unknown reason, Eddie and I have felt happy being together, solidly happy.”
“Your apartment makes one aware of that somehow,” although even as I say it, I wonder whether it is not almost too neat, self-consciously so. “But are you both such good housekeepers? You put me to shame.”
“It’s a kind of outer skin,” Joe says, “the apartment I mean. A kind of safety maybe, a way of living at the center of all we want from our lives, which are, of course, way out in the wilderness from society’s point of view.”
When I am safely in bed at home I realize that I have never before been with people in a social situation where I could talk as freely, rarely, if ever, felt cherished and applauded in the way those men had, so in a single evening they have become, amazingly enough, family. It is extraordinary to feel that way, to be knit together so fast, so soon.
I have much to think about and sleep very little all night. Twice Patapouf bursts into loud barks and that is unsettling, but nothing sinister happens. When Vicky and I were living together as lovers I never felt the slightest guilt or apprehension. It is true what Fred said, that she was such a powerful woman in her own right nobody questioned her life-style, as it is now called, or mine for living with her. The odd thing is that I felt no guilt or apprehension then, but since the word lesbian has been fastened on me like the “A” on Hester Prynne’s dress, I do feel apprehension and if not exactly guilt, some self-questioning, although I am certainly not leading a lesbian life at present.
What this whole affair has done for me so far is to open me up for the first time to what society is doing to those who do live such lives, often in perfect dignity; contributors to the civilization as we are, how easy it is, still, to be unnerved, to be riddled by self-doubt, and in some cases, self-hatred. Joe, later on in our talk over dinner, had said something about how many of his clients were wracked by guilt and fear, about how enormously important it is for them to find a role model, to be witnesses of an ongoing partnership. “And the problem is,” he had added, “that so many such partnerships stay hidden.”
And I had said, “That’s why I decided I had to come out, since I have, comparatively speaking, so little to lose.”
“Only your store, only your life,” Eddie had said. “Don’t you see why the people turned out today to honor you?”
10
I am rather surprised when Andrew shows up this morning, which is Sunday of course. Ten years younger than I, a personnel manager for one of the high-tech establishments along Route 128, apparently always cheerful with a quirky sense of humor, it is strange that he has not married, but as he seems perfectly happy in his bachelor apartment, no one worries, and he is adored by his nieces and nephews. He and I have never been close, partly because he was intimidated by Vicky and perhaps did not like her or understand why I did. So it was a surprise when he came to the opening of the store and got quite absorbed in reading off in a corner. I have not seen him since, until today.
“What brings you here?” I ask when he has flung off his coat and sits drinking a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. He looks at me rather too intently for my comfort behind his thick glasses.
“Hot stuff in the Globe yesterday. So, my revered elder sister is a lesbian!” This comes from his exterior, always merry self and I know very well it is just a ploy.
“Quite frankly, Andrew, I dislike that word.”
“And you are not alone. If you used it on purpose, if you came out, as they say, you are the bravest woman I have ever known. If it was not your doing, then you are the greatest fool.”
I have to laugh, it all seems so senseless suddenly. “Probably a little of both. A brave fool. No, not exactly. You see, I am being attacked by these louts who live around here and are about as tolerant as crocodiles. I got mad enough to tell the truth. Some of the women who come here are lovers and even tell me so, but not all by any means. It’s not in my mind to be labeled as a lesbian bookstore, but a store for all kinds of women and, Andrew, all kinds of women come here. So now there is a dilemma and I am hoist on my own petard.”
I observe Andrew, who seems not to be really listening, bowed over his cup of coffee, playing with the spoon, which makes me aware not for the first time what beautiful hands Andrew has, the hands of a sculptor or a pianist. “What’s on your mind so early in the morning?” I say, for I sense that he has not come with condolences but with something more important to himself.
“It sounds corny,” he says, “but when I read that piece I had quite a strange reaction. I felt that I had a sister.”
“You have always had a sister, though you never paid much attention to me.”
“Vicky bothered me,” he says. “You seemed so safe and protected from all that was going on in the world around you, the emergence of a feminist movement, the attacks on the patriarchy, with which, by the way, I heartily agree.”
“I’ve learned a lot since Vicky died,” I say.
“So now I have a sister,” Andrew looks me suddenly in the eye with that troubling intensity with which he stared at me when he first sat down. “I can tell her that I am gay. I can at last tell someone in the family who can understand. Heigh-ho!”
Over the years it had occurred to me, of course, but then I had brushed the thought aside. “Well, thank you, Andrew. That’s one piece of good news that has come out of the Globe article.”
“You call it good news to have a gay brother?”
“It’s quite wonderful! I know it sounds crazy but I have been lonely, too, while all this bore in on me and I had to face all that I had not been willing to face as long as Vicky was alive. Emancipation is all very well, and healthy no doubt, but it is lonely, Andrew, isn’t it?”
“Damned lonely,” he says. “I’m sick and tired of being the odd man at dinner parties, of being teased by Fred about why I don’t marry.”
“Fred would find it hard to understand,” I say quickly. I am thinking aloud for a moment and it pops out. “As far as the words go, ‘gay’ seems to me even worse than ‘lesbian.’”
“Maybe,” Andrew says, stretching out his long legs as though he were suddenly at ease with me and scratching Patapouf’s ears while she groans with pleasure. “For some reason ‘lesbian’ seems primarily sexual.”
“Oh dear, yes, I suppose so. I suppose that is why I have found it so hard, next to impossible, to say it aloud.”
“We were brought up to total silence on such matters, weren’t we?”
Do I dare ask now what Andrew’s life is really like? Is he happy? Has he made his peace with his own self? Has he ever had a more or less permanent love affair? Asking myself these questions while he and Patapouf carry on their dialogue, I decide to tell him about Eddie and Joe.
“Last night I had one of the best times of my life, Andrew. You may not know that when obscenities were first defacing the store windows two men turned up one morning, saw them, and washed them off. Fred was actually here and met them before I did. And since then they have kept a lookout on their morning jog around the neighborhood and just clean up for me without ever mentioning it. Last night they invited me to dinner at their place. My first outing since the Globe revelation. They were absolutely dear, cooked a wonderful dinner. Eddie, the younger man, is the cook and made me feel loved and honored because I had come out, willingly or not.”
�
�What do they do?” Andrew asks.
“Joe is a psychiatrist and met Eddie when Eddie was a student in mechanics at Rindge, helped him get away from a sadistic father, I gather, and they have lived together for years. Eddie is an auto mechanic. But the point is the marvelous sense of community I felt with them, the relief of being able to be open. It was heartwarming, Andrew. And such a beautiful apartment, austere and elegant. I was impressed.” It spills out and Andrew listens intently but now he is silent, withdrawn, as he has always been with me. “Don’t go away, Andrew.”
“God damn it, Harriet, I’m fifty and I’ve never had a good relationship that lasted. I’m jealous, that’s all.”
“I’m going to ask these new friends up for dinner one of these days. Will you come and meet them?”
“What good would that do?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that we might as well all stick together.”
“I’m a loner, Harriet. You know that. I’ve always been a loner.”
And I remember how when we went off on a picnic en famille Andrew always disappeared into the woods or along the shore and seemed to choose not to be part of the fun. And his job, I suspect, is a lonely job, interviewing and selecting people for his firm, and not part of management except in a peripheral way. “I was so pleased that you came to the opening and then really looked at the books, as very few others troubled to do.”
At this Andrew laughs his merry concealing laugh. “I was forced into literacy by my shyness,” he says. “Your friends were certainly supportive that day.”
“Yes, I wonder what they are thinking now and who will be upset by all this. Angelica Lamb unfortunately is. She has been an enormous help, financially and in every other way.”
“Let it rest—it’s Sunday after all.” And we share a rather long silence while he pours himself another cup of coffee.