After the movie, Anne planned on giving B a necklace her great-aunt had left to her: an antique-gold watch nestled inside a locket, which hung on a beautiful double chain. B had admired the pendant once while visiting Anne’s condominium, turning it over in her hands, and saying, “My God, Anne. It’s just gorgeous.” The watch face was about the size of a half-dollar, and the pearly white background looked like swirling clouds. The gold front had a pinprick-style etching of intertwined roses. On the back was engraved TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE. The risk frightened her, but she planned on saying it was a token of her love and respect, to tell how much their friendship meant.
And they were good friends; she knew as much and probably more about B than anyone: how B left one last sip in her Diet Coke cans, a half-inch of liquid, because she didn’t like to finish them (Anne found the cans throughout the house and poured out the remains before throwing them away); and how her feet stuck to the floor of the bathroom after B had been “getting ready,” because of the fog of hair spray.
And they were as emotionally close as she’d been with past lovers. She knew that B worried that she lacked some fundamental maternal instinct, that she’d failed her daughter; and that B’s parents controlled her by withholding love, so that she constantly sought it. And she was sure that she was the only one who knew that B’s husband’s last words before his heart attack, sitting on his bed in his thick terry bathrobe monogrammed with his initials, hands on his knees, had been, “I don’t think I’ll bathe tonight.”
The impetus for falling in love with B—a certain type, really—came from college, and her first sexual experience, an act that had caused a deep and permanent need. She’d been a freshman at the University of Southern California, a middle-class girl from Tustin. The other women on the tennis team had come from wealthy families, and she saw the things that wealth allowed: selfishness, a carefree attitude, and a basic ineptitude concerning practicalities. She didn’t envy them or hate them but was drawn to the way they moved in their environment: an aura that was intangible, associated with growing up with their needs and wants met, and a confidence that the future held the same.
Anne fell in love with a beautiful sophomore and an arrangement was made: Anne helped the woman with her math and science homework and was graced with the woman’s company; and if Anne expedited the process by doing the homework, she was rewarded with the woman’s attention. One night, they’d been drinking vodka and 7UP, and the woman said, “I’m using you; tell me something you want.” Anne said it was okay, she didn’t mind; but later, they were on the floor, lights off, and the woman put her hand inside Anne, first one finger, and then it was more fingers, back and forth, soft, then hard, whispering, “You like that, don’t you? You like that?” Anne moaned and cried, her eyes closed, and the tears came down her cheeks. Her body was all sensation and she had the terrible realization that she would do anything for this woman, anything at all. She’d never let herself go like that; but afterwards, the woman pretended that the experience had never happened and she ignored Anne. Anne spiraled into a lonely depression, and sometimes she would see the woman walking around campus, holding hands with her boyfriend.
From then on, Anne made sure not to reach those emotional depths, only developing relationships with women that were reciprocal: she’d had three long-term partnerships since college, each respectful and solid, in between long periods of being alone. Her last partner had been more like a sister than a lover. They’d broken it off after six years, amicably, when her partner had decided that she wanted a child (Anne had decided long ago that she did not). She still dog sat for her ex when her ex traveled.
Anne often warned patients about negative patterns: she’d recently advised a female patient in her thirties with a history of falling for abusive and neglectful men: “Desire can come from a repression of sexuality, even if that repression is in your best interest. It’s very lonely not having desire returned, and yet, against our better judgment, love can form from this dynamic.”
Anne rang the doorbell of B’s house and waited. B had been coming to her for advice concerning her unhappy and sexually promiscuous teenage daughter, Rosie, for as many years as she’d known her. People were always trying to get free therapy, yet with B she didn’t mind. But she didn’t like being near Rosie. In front of Rosie, her motives appeared base and exposed—she liked to think of herself as more noble—so she was glad when B answered the front door.
A FOR SALE sign was pushed in the grass of the front lawn, and B waved at it dismissively. “Come in,” she said, turning and walking into the living room. “I’m almost ready.”
Since her husband’s death, B had been a flurry of irrational decisions and inconsistencies, moving in a haze of grief, trying to sell her house, even though she and Rosie obviously needed a home base, and the house was her best investment. B wore a white sundress with faint lilac-colored embroidery, and Anne could see creamy white streaks on the backs of her legs where she hadn’t rubbed lotion all the way into her skin. “Rosie was supposed to come by,” B said. She paused and faced Anne. “She’s never home.”
Anne was numb, as though suspended in time, watching the seconds move beyond her. In her cardigan pocket, her fingers touched the crushed-velvet box that held her watch-in-a-locket pendant. She didn’t like being in a living room full of reminders of B’s deceased husband—like Rosie’s presence, it stirred guilt: glass brandy snifters, his collection of Who’s Who leather-bound books, scrimshaw artifacts, musical boxes, antique clocks, and porcelain figurines of doctors.
“I hope you don’t mind,” B said, bending to rub the lotion into her legs, “if we stop first at a storage facility.”
“Are you sure?” Anne asked. She didn’t understand why they would go to a storage facility before the house was sold. Lately, B’s actions tended toward the illogical, and Anne didn’t know how to remedy the situation. She blamed B’s friends and family for deserting her, as if B deserved her husband’s death since he’d been twenty-three years her senior, and she’d broken up his thirty-plus-year marriage. She’d been his wife for only five years. His son from his first marriage, a lawyer who specialized in financial transactions, was contesting the will, his hatred for B finally having a socially acceptable outlet.
“Yes, yes,” B said, looking around for her purse. “I want to make sure it’s the right storage facility.”
UKeepSafe was located at the end of a cul-de-sac on a street of drab buildings. As they pulled up in B’s Mercedes, Anne saw an Asian woman wearing glasses watching from the window of an office. The woman pushed on a device like a garage door opener and an iron gate began to clank open, but Anne had to get out of the car and pull at the gate when it stopped halfway through.
The storage sheds were beige with one bright orange stripe across the doors. At each shed, Anne lifted the door, turned on a light, and B stood at the entrance, in a type of stupefied awe, glancing around nervously, pointing out variations. “Why is the light switch on the wall when at the last one it was a cord that hung from the ceiling?” She was out of place in her lilac embroidered sundress, and her incompetence made Anne feel a weary responsibility.
They were walking to the last shed, number thirty-two, when a fight broke out right next to them at number twenty-seven. Anne’s instinct was to protect B, and she pulled her by the elbow to a safer position near a U-Haul truck. Anne turned to face the fighting couple, ten feet away. The woman held a rifle pointed at the man’s chest. Barefoot, she moved from side to side, swinging the rifle. He yelled something incoherent, it came out like a bark.
Anne had never seen a gun before. She felt as if someone was pricking her in the stomach, a spiky fear. She couldn’t see a way to cross beyond the fighting couple without being directly in their path. The woman waved the rifle, but the man continued to call her bitch and cunt. B moved closer to Anne and their arms touched. B’s hand reached for hers, then hesitated and withdrew.
But then it came back and held, tight and damp.
She turned and looked at B, saw her eyes, nose, and lips, and B acknowledged her by moving even closer. Anne tightened her bicep so that her arm would feel stronger. She looked back to the couple, and it was as if her head were covered in gauze: everything looked muted, except the rifle, which she saw as clear as if she were holding it, even as it bounced around. At the same time, she was satisfied with the way B needed her, and she was aware that the feeling might not last.
As soon as the police sirens could be heard, B’s hand let go, and her arm moved so that they weren’t touching. B had a way of making her feel as if what had passed between them was in her imagination, and for a terrifying instant she wondered whether she had made up B holding her hand. The man and woman calmed down, the adrenaline of the scene drained, and the woman placed the rifle on the ground even before the police cars parked. They left in separate police cars, moving slowly past Anne and B. The rifle woman stared from the back seat directly into Anne’s eyes. She had long dishwater blond hair, and there was no telling how old she was, her face aged from hard living. Her eyes seemed to say: this wasn’t supposed to happen to me. Anne wanted to tell her, I know what you mean.
B didn’t want to go to the French film after all. She had a headache and was shaken by what had happened at the storage facility. She didn’t want to go anywhere, not to dinner, not to Anne’s condominium; she was ready to call it a day. But they decided to pull the Mercedes over at the curb along the crest of a cliff and watch the sun sink into the ocean from Big Corona Beach.
The joggers and dog walkers who walked past the Mercedes pulled their sweatshirts on, hair whipping in their faces from the wind. “Maybe we’ll see the green light,” B said, her eyes concentrated on the dot of sun that melted, orange glow wobbling, as it sank. The green light was a flash, a speck of shimmering, at the last dip of the sun into the ocean-horizon; it was like the bluish green sulfur spark of a match when struck, and it lasted about as long. Anne had only seen it once.
A walkway sloped down to the beach, to the brown rocks and sand. The sand was darkest where the waves had hit, creating a wavy, delineating line all the way across the beach. They were quiet, and in their silence B also seemed aware of an impending change between them.
Anne looked at the expanse of sea, gusts of whitecaps blown along the ocean like powder. Near the shore was the unmistakable sleek black hump of a seal swimming, going under, disappearing, and coming up farther away. She wanted to point it out, but the seal went under, and she couldn’t find it again.
“Well,” B said, the edge of sun slipping past the rim of dark blue, “no green light—not this time.”
As they were about to enter B’s house through the back door, Anne said, “I have something for you.” She crossed her arms over her chest, instantly vulnerable. The timing was bad, but she’d promised herself not to let one more evening pass without recognition of what had developed between them, and the handholding at the storage facility had furthered her resolve.
“Come in,” B said, but her voice was wary. She left the back door open and moved through the TV room into the kitchen.
An island in the kitchen with a stove, and above it, a hanging rack of pots and pans, separated her from B, who was already kneeling, sifting through a cabinet drawer. She could just see the tip of B’s head and hear the clinking of pans. And then B came up, frying pan in hand, hair disheveled.
Anne pulled the crushed-velvet box from her pocket. She saw the way B’s shoulders sagged when she saw the box, and her spirit sank. “This is for you,” she said anyway.
B made a long noise, it sounded like oh no no no no no no no and shook her head. She set the frying pan on the island, and the way she placed it was unusually careful and gentle. She came around so that the island didn’t obstruct her, a few feet away, staring at the box, but making no effort to take it.
Anne opened the box and scooped the necklace so that the locket hung from the chain in her fingers. Her eyes were on B, and she saw that B pitied her. All at once, she knew that B was conscious of how she felt and had been aware for some time, that she’d let herself be used by B, and that it was over. There were layers to friendship, to love, to attraction, but she’d crossed a line.
“Take it,” Anne said.
B moved forward and embraced her. Anne almost lost her balance, holding the box against B’s back and the pendant in her other hand. They leaned against the island, the hug stiff and awkward. She knew that B was acknowledging that B had shaped a possibility between them when there’d never truly been one.
B said, “You can’t do that. You can’t. You can’t,” and then she was quiet.
B sometimes called her five, six, seven times a day, so it was noticeable when the phone stopped ringing. They had different friends, so it was easy not to run into each other. She only had to make sure to go to the tennis club on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead of Mondays and Wednesdays, and she didn’t ask about B, even if she wanted to. The absence of their relationship created a space within her routine, and she went through her days with a numb expectation of taking care of responsibilities. She had had the vague notion that B couldn’t survive without her, and most unsettling was the way life went on regardless; her newfound realization that B would be just fine without her. She began to understand that she’d been under a spell, succumbing to the conviction that B was a victim of a specific kind of world; she’d behaved even more irrationally than B, as if for a time span she’d been wearing what she termed MSB glasses: Must Save B. She’d been capable of perceiving why she might fall in love with B, but she’d been unable to do anything to stop it from happening.
But it wasn’t until a month later when she saw Rosie at Pavilions Grocery with a young man that she realized the extent of what she’d lost. The ache came sharp and clear. She didn’t want to be seen, yet she wanted to observe, so she pretended to read the label on a box of Raisin Bran, although she was fairly certain that Rosie was aware: an almost imperceptible acknowledgment in the space between where Rosie and the young man stood in the cashier line and where she stood at the end of the cereal aisle. A twelve-pack of Coors rolled down the conveyor, and she wondered how they could get away with purchasing alcohol when both looked so unabashedly underage. The young man wore no shoes and had long hair. Rosie looked like B in profile—she had the same nose and chin, but she didn’t have the same grace and assurance. She wore cut-off blue jeans and a shabby gray shirt. Anne felt bad for the teenager: it must be rough to lose a stepfather and then to have your mother behave increasingly recklessly. A sudden wave of guilt swept through her: all the times B had come to her for advice, she’d been biased and ineffectual.
Then Rosie turned to face her, and she saw that the locket hung between her breasts, the gold pendant watch face unmistakable. Her guilt swiftly distorted into a jagged hurt that went through her body, as if B were standing in the cereal aisle, denying what had happened between them. She had let B keep the locket because she loved her—and from pride; and B had accepted it, whether from graciousness or expediency or a combination. She wondered whether Rosie was purposefully letting her see, whether she was trying to hurt her, but she could read nothing in her expression, as if she were looking for someone behind Anne; and then she turned and whispered to the young man.
He looked over his shoulder, directly at Anne, his face sympathetic. She steadied her hand against a metal rack of cereal. It was only a second before he looked away, but in his glance she saw that he was aware that someone she loved had used her, and it made the truth indisputable. She remembered B watching the sunset, hoping for the green light, and against her willpower, the love she felt for B filled her chest afresh, mixing with the hurt, making it worse. She had lost herself to B in the way she was afraid would happen, and the self that remained was lonely and craving an implausible love. Her longing was sincere and deep, but it only intensfied the ache.
Her pain brought her to B, she could smell her and see her, and for the first time she fully comprehended what B
had gained, beyond Anne running her errands and washing her dishes. There was power in someone wanting you, unable to have you. For B, it didn’t matter if the person was a woman or a man; it helped her navigate grief, find her bearings.
Ironically, she felt as close to B as she ever had—compassionate—imagining what had happened clearly: Rosie, home for the first time in days, lifting the necklace off the kitchen’s island, handing it to B, asking, “What’s this?”
“Nothing,” B says, her expression a combination of vulnerability and arrogance. “Anne gave it to me.” She waves her hand dismissively. “Keep it,” she says, and now she looks disdainful, but it’s a practiced, defensive look; and because Anne knows B so well, she recognizes the masking of pain. “I sure as hell don’t want it.”
Joe/Christina
THE BOURBON STREET VILLAS apartment complex was at the end of the cul-de-sac on Bourbon Street, fourteen blocks from Orange Coast Community College in Costa Mesa. Above the Bourbon Street Villas, beyond the wall of shrubbery and palm trees, was the freeway. From the villas, the traffic sounded like the ocean. The apartments were dung-colored and each one came with a parking slot with matching decaled large black numerals. There was a steady chlorine smell from the over-sanitized pool and Jacuzzi. The pool was the nucleus, and next to it was a room with a washer and dryer, pool table, and lighted soda machine. Sixteen apartments bordered the pool, a turquoise eye, in a horseshoe pattern. Rosie’s was number two. The man with the long legs lived in number one. His apartment had a small gate-enclosed patio, and hanging next to his bright pink birdfeeder was a set of wind chimes with dangling silver shards that glinted in the sun and tinkled in the breeze.
Drift Page 18