by Lee Lynch
“Frenchy,” Pam said, “I’d like to, but I don’t fit in. I don’t know what to say to them.”
“You don’t have to say anything. Just be my girl.”
It worked, somehow. Frenchy, reminded of Pam’s desirability, acted possessive and proud. Pam seemed to become comfortable with her own quietness and felt free to touch Frenchy, to lean over and kiss her, take drags on her cigarettes, wetting their tips to remind Frenchy of their intimacy. Soon the others were asking how they met.
“I’d never been in the Ace of Spades before,” Pam told them. She squeezed Frenchy’s arm, while Frenchy tried to look nonchalant. “And this cute woman from New York, she stuck in my mind all these years. When I saw her a month ago I knew just who she was. And,” she said, looking at Frenchy, “I knew I wanted her.” Frenchy looked back at her with sexy eyes.
Beebo asked incredulously, “You were at the Cape, but you were never in the Ace? What do you do at the Cape?”
“Visit friends, go to art shows, the beach.”
“You have friends up there?” asked Mary, looking impressed.
“Someone’s always renting a place up there. And then the rest of us visit. I lived there one summer. The summer I came out, as a matter of fact,” Pam explained.
“When was that?” Beebo asked innocently.
“Oh, years and years before I even met Frenchy.”
“You’ve been out years and years?” Hermine looked surprised, as if the group had decided Pam was new to the gay scene.
“Yes,” Pam said and from that moment the group opened more to her. Soon Pam began to tease Frenchy, apparently more comfortable.
“Cut it out,” said Frenchy the next time they danced.
“Why? I thought you liked it, lover.”
“Not in front of the kids,” Frenchy ordered.
Pam was hurt. “Why?”
“Because I said so,” Frenchy said, the self she always was at the bars, forgetting Pam didn’t know this side of her.
“I don’t have to take this from you,” Pam said. “I’m not your wife, you know.”
“Oh, shit. If only we had more than Saturday night,” Frenchy groaned.
“What do you mean? What difference does that make?”
“We have to get everything in on one night. I want to come here, you want to go to your places. We both want to make love all night. I wish I lived down here.”
“It would help, wouldn’t it,” Pam said. Frenchy for the first time felt it might be possible. Dancing slowly, they looked at one another for a long time. Could they make it work? Would it help to live together? Frenchy felt a surge of courage. She could work it out at home, she knew she could.
“Frenchy, why don’t you move in with me? Just to try it. Maybe you can get a job down here. I’d really dig living with you.”
The music stopped. “Let me think about it, Pam,” Frenchy said, wondering where this courage was coming from. She felt as she had on the prow of the ferry — master of her fate, riding into the city full steam, ready for anything. Suddenly, she didn’t want to go back to their table. She wanted to go home with Pam and stay there. Make love endlessly. Go out on Saturday morning and buy the News. Come back to Pam and make love, be fed, and stay, stay, stay with her girl.
Frenchy said, “Let’s go home.”
* * * * *
Later that week, Frenchy decided she could no longer put off the idea of moving out on her own. She had to tell her mother now, while her need fed her courage.
She stood outside the kitchen door. Her stomach felt like a meat grinder, churning and churning. She nearly lost her courage, but then she tightened her lips, fisted her hands, stepped into the kitchen.
Maman was in pincurls. Her grim little face surveyed Frenchy as if conducting an inspection. She pointed with her chin to Frenchy’s place at the table, then set a plate of pancakes next to juice and syrup.
Frenchy wavered, almost sitting, then decided to stand as straight as she could. “Maman,” she began, her voice barely audible. “Maman,” she said louder, “I decided.”
The face didn’t change, but Maman’s eyes rose to meet her own, as if daring her to say these words.
“I’m moving downtown. I want to try it out.” Now she would sit, hide behind her meal. She chewed automatically, longer than usual, as if trying to swallow sawdust.
Maman had turned her back, her little shoulders bowing under this mountain of suffering. “Je ne sais quoi,” she sighed as she scraped the griddle clean.
Frenchy knew she should answer something, anything, but she just stuffed more pancake into her mouth.
“Sacre Dieu,” said Maman. Was she about to cry, leaning over the sink? No, she straightened her back, not unlike Frenchy had a few moments before, and with a slight gesture of one hand disapproved, accepted, declined further talk on this subject.
Was this it, then, wondered Frenchy? No scene, no tears, no anger? Was this all she’d feared for so many years? Her mother must have been waiting for this news for as long as Frenchy had been avoiding it. Perhaps she’d suspected it was time. Perhaps she had plans of her own. Frenchy’s brother would be visiting that evening. Maybe she would learn her mother’s true reaction then.
She rose. “I’m late, Maman,” she lied, bending to have her cheek kissed. It would be better to leave now, in case her mother was only in shock and the worst was yet to come.
“What?” asked Maman, as if she’d been far away. Frenchy accepted the kiss and left, guilt as heavy in her as the pancakes.
* * * * *
Frenchy’s arms once had become tired ringing the register. Now she didn’t even know she was doing it unless someone watched her every move, trying to catch her making a mistake. But she didn’t make mistakes.
“I think you overcharged me,” said grumpy Mr. Regan from her building.
He always thought she overcharged him. “Look,” said Frenchy, “I don’t have time for this today.”
“What?” asked Mr. Regan, who was hard of hearing.
Frenchy considered all the rude things she could say without him ever knowing and chuckled despite her annoyance. She’d been remembering the scene with her mother and brother the night before.
“On the tuna fish!” Mr. Regan shouted. “It’s on sale. You charged me full price.”
“Must have been another item the same price,” she shouted back.
“No, no,” he yelled, almost gleefully pushing the tape at her.
“All right, all right, skinflint,” Frenchy muttered, examining it. She couldn’t believe what she saw. She took every item out of the man’s bag and checked it against the tape. The line at her register lengthened. The old pig was right. “Sorry,” she muttered ungraciously, rebagging the items and calling the head cashier for a void slip.
“Whatsa matter, Genvieve?” called Marion from the next register after Mr. Regan had shuffled away, counting the fourteen cents Frenchy had refunded. “You losing it or what?”
“I must be sick,” Frenchy joked. But she was worried. She didn’t make mistakes. Was it because she was upset over moving out of her mother’s house?
“Want to eat together?” called Marion.
“Sure.” She could use somebody to talk to. They met in the smoky, dirty lounge and grabbed two milk crates to sit on out in the alleyway beside the store. Unwrapping their sandwiches, they smiled at each other, glad to be off their feet and not having to say it after working together so long.
Frenchy remembered how attractive she’d found Marion when she’d first come to Frenchy’s store. Seven years later she enjoyed the warm comraderie she shared with Marion, since then a mother of two.
“Hey,” Marion said, “are you going to tell me what’s the matter or make me ask?”
“I told my mother I’m moving out. Then last night she tells me she’s moving out.”
“This is great news!” Marion said, neatly folding her lunch bag for re-use.
“Yeah, but it’s taking some getting used to. My brother Serge has
to move to Florida for his company. I didn’t know she wanted to go with him. And she thought she had to stay up here to take care of me.”
“So with you moving out she’s free to go.”
“Here I thought she’d be moping around the house... Still, it’s kind of a shock knowing she won’t be around at all.” She lit a cigarette. “What I want to do, see...” She drew nervously on the cigarette, “is move in with this friend of mine downtown even before Maman goes to Florida, just to try it out. Then I can decide to live downtown or not. If not, I could take my mother’s apartment. It’s rent controlled. Until she moves, I could eat supper with her, make sure she’s okay.”
“Sounds like you planned it perfect.”
“I’ll tell you, Mar, I’m scared about it. I don’t know how it’ll work out with this particular friend of mine.” Frenchy blushed. “I’d be paying half the rent downtown and my mother will just have to cough up her share out of the cash she’s been salting away for Serge and me when she dies.”
“I admire your guts, Frenchy, I really do. If I’d had what it takes five years ago I’d never have married that guy. But at least I got the kids out of that deal.”
They stared at the ground, Frenchy marvelling at how everything was suddenly working out for her. “Guts,” she laughed. “It took me so many years to do this.”
“What’s making you do it now?”
“I don’t know, Mar, to tell you the truth. Maybe just because I’m getting old. Maybe so I won’t miss any chances when they come along. Maybe because my friends are all settling down. This girl I might move in with, she’s been on her own for years and years. She never thought to do it any other way. Now that’s what I call guts.”
“Where’s she live?”
“Downtown.”
“You already said that. Where?”
“Morton Street.”
“That around Wall Street?”
“No,” Frenchy hedged further. Everybody knew the Village was full of queers. “Near Fourteenth.”
“Oh, the Village,” Marion said. Frenchy blanched. “Boy would I ever like to live in the Village. I love it down there.”
“You do?”
“Yeah,” she said, looking at her watch. “Hey, the half hour’s almost up and I got to go to the little girl’s room. Coming?”
Frenchy shook her head. She was always too embarrassed to share a bathroom with a straight girl.
“See you inside, you lucky stiff. Ah, to be single and on your own in the Village. What I wouldn’t give . ..”
What had Marion meant? Could she be queer? Or want to be? But she had two kids. She’d heard of lesbians who married and had kids. She’d have to keep her eye on Marion.
But meanwhile, she felt a little more sure of herself. Her plan seemed reasonable and she’d get along just fine on her own. Even if she wanted to, she couldn’t back out now. Serge had told her mother Florida was more like Marseilles and the old woman was anxious to move there now. She and her mother both would get by — she hoped.
At least it was Saturday again. In less than four hours she would be with Pam, telling her what she’d decided, free of her mother’s air of martyrdom and being told by Pam that it would work out, that they would have a wonderful life together in Greenwich Village — Frenchy hoped.
The next four hours went fast, without mistakes now that her mind was clear. With her heart beating to a bossa nova beat, she went downtown. Pam was home, waiting. She had even cleaned up the apartment. Frenchy didn’t know where to look first, at the impressively neat room, the shining kitchen, the drawings neatly matted and hung on the walls, or at Pam, who lay completely naked on the bed, fanning herself with a long green feather. On the stereo, Bob Dylan sang Lay Lady Lay.
“Close the door, lover. I may not be modest, but I don’t want to be arrested either.”
“Hello.” Frenchy couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“I thought since you couldn’t wait for me to get my clothes off last week, I’d save you the trouble.”
“Thank you,” said Frenchy, still standing in the doorway even after she’d closed the door, feeling vaguely repulsed at the sight of the naked woman on the bed. Not that she didn’t like naked women — but there was something wrong with this. It didn’t do anything for her. She preferred Pam in her sexy clothes, at least to start with. She walked over to the bed and sat uncomfortably next to Pam, looking down at her, knowing she should touch her.
“I can see you’re not in the mood,” said Pam, suddenly sweeping herself off the bed.
Frenchy had just noticed a row of drawings of herself Pam had hung on the wall. Smiling, she turned to see Pam put on an alluring robe. Then she was up off the bed and holding Pam. “You took me by surprise,” she explained. “I never walked in on a naked lady before.”
“I wasn’t naked, I was nude. And you didn’t walk in on me, I was expecting you.”
“Okay, I’m sorry. Want to try it again?” Frenchy asked, hoping Pam wouldn’t want to.
“No, the mood is gone.”
Pam was sulky. Frenchy was afraid they would have another fight. “I just wasn’t thinking about you that way when I came in,” she said. “I was excited to be telling you what’s happened this week.” She poured out the story of her mother’s move.
“So what are you saying?” Pam asked.
“That I can, I might. If you still want me to, that I think I could,” she stuttered.
“You want to live with me?”
“Yeah,” answered Frenchy, blushing.
“Far fucking out!” cried Pam, whirling, her robe swirling around her.
Frenchy grinned timidly, still unbalanced by her entrance, but feeling more like herself. “You’re glad?”
“Glad! Oh, Frenchy, darling, what do you think all this work has been for? Look at this place! Didn’t you even notice it? And me arranging a big seduction scene so you’d be glad to come home to me every day?” She paused, looking breathlessly at Frenchy. “I’m so happy!”
“But why?” Frenchy asked, genuinely puzzled, though pleased, that Pam wanted her there. Pam just wasn’t the type to settle down.
“Why? Because I want your body.” Pam hugged her ferociously. “And I like your company. And for however long we last I know we’re going to be white hot. And because I care about you,” she said, suddenly soft. “I want to make life a little kinder to you.” Quickly she raised her voice again. “Whatever my evil motive, this calls for a celebration. I got my unemployment check yesterday. Want to go out to dinner?” She laughed affectionately. “Some place other than the Automat?”
“Sure,” Frenchy said, uncertain whether she was being teased. She stood taller. “But I want to take you out.”
“But darling, it would genuinely give me pleasure to buy you a fancy dinner.”
“No.”
Pam looked hurt.
Frenchy was surprised. “You really want to that bad?”
Pam nodded. “Not if it would hurt your pride too much, though.”
Frenchy thought about her pride. No girl had ever wanted to take her out to dinner before. She was supposed to pay for the girl, but she was also supposed to give the girl what she wanted. What a dilemma. Was Pam really going to be hurt? “Listen,” she suggested, “what if we pool our money because that unemployment is all you got to live on, and take ourselves out to dinner?”
“You mean share the price of dinner? That’s okay with me. Are you sure it’s okay with you?”
“I’ll try it. Besides, I got to watch my expenses now.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t go where I had in mind, then,” Pam said, looking mysterious.
Frenchy was intrigued. “Where?”
“My Aunt’s Place. It’s a faggot restaurant a few blocks downtown. The food is very fine and the service makes you feel like you’re at the Ritz. Also, you might be more comfortable there without straight people hassling you.”
“Sounds worth it to me. One last splurge before I have to pa
y two rents.”
“Two rents? You mean you’re still going to pay for your mother?”
Pam sounded angry. Frenchy realized that she was right to be mad, that she shouldn’t have to support her mother. But she just couldn’t cut herself off from her like that. “Just half. I’ll explain over dinner. Okay?”
“All right. I’ll see if we can get... No, you’d better call, Frenchy. See if you can get us reservations. It’s in the book.”
Frenchy grinned. She’d never made reservations anywhere before. This would be the start of her new life on her own in the Village. She looked for the pile of clutter where the phone book usually was. “How am I supposed to find anything in this house now it’s neat?” she called to Pam who was already rummaging through drawers for clothes.
Pam laughed. “Make a mess, lover, then you can find it.”
* * * * *
A month after she moved in with Pam, Frenchy noticed when she woke up on a Sunday morning how last night’s tobacco smoke still hung in the air. The steamy heat held odors in the apartment. Almost as strong as the smoke smell was the garlic Pam had fried for dinner. It had smelled good at the time. Frenchy moved very slightly to get more comfortable, not ready for Pam to waken yet. The covers shifted and she smelled their bodies and their bodies’ smells on the sheets which had not been changed for three weeks. She was not used to doing these things for herself; Pam didn’t seem to see a need. She wasn’t dirty — nor was Frenchy scrupulously clean; but she could smell that it was pleasanter to change the sheets more often.
It was late Sunday morning, perhaps 10:30. Bright daylight filtered in through the break between drapes. Frenchy looked at the sleeping woman beside her, a mound of pale flesh with disheveled hair and a puffy face and breath that reeked of cigarettes, wine, garlic and unbrushed teeth.
She felt bad not liking to wake up next to Pam, especially as Pam was ready to make love most mornings, even the mornings Frenchy had to catch the train for her long ride to work. Pam’s heavy nakedness and sometimes unwashed body bothered her first thing in the morning; she felt her attraction much more at night. During the day, over breakfast, or sitting around the apartment, she also felt Pam out of sync with her life.