by Lee Lynch
The ocean swells and falls in front of me. So blue, so big. All on top of it the curves of water roll and bounce and run in and out. The sunlight is like a yellow see-through dress on top of it.
I look down on Mercedes who’s moving like I’m making love to her. She’s really into it. I guess I must be doing okay. Not being too clutzy, as Pam would say. But me naked under a woman who isn’t Pam? I’m embarrassed. Ashamed, for a minute. Then the bits of fire in my thighs reach up and come together in one burning spot. Then streak up further, until they reach my heart. My whole chest feels full of flames, my head a place groans come out of.
The water rolls toward me. All the little waves come one on top of the next. Break on the shore, wash back, join the sea. The little waves get bigger. They blend into each other, more and more and more of them. They look beautiful, make me feel beautiful. I feel my chest lift, my head fall back. The one big wave they make gets bigger, bigger, till I’m scared it’ll be a tidal wave. It stands over me, ready to break, and the fear drains out of me as the wave turns into a world full of blue soft water with sun shining through it.
And it rolls down over me, warm, loosening, lifts me to float in it. I’m happy, so happy and warm and safe; it takes me out of myself. I’m in it with Mercedes, but I am it. Our hearts melt inside it. Our spirits touch, I swear, I can feel it happen. And I feel such love for the woman whose mouth lifts, wet and glistening from me, whose eyes are full of love and gladness for me, whose brown body lies all warm against me while I return to my own body and use it to lift my head toward Mercedes.
* * * * *
The air was cooler on the dock than in the City. Frenchy dawdled, feeling languorous after her spate of fantasies and still nervous about meeting Mercedes before she was ready. For the first time she looked in the direction her friends were supposed to be. Could they be that small group struggling over the sands overburdened with beach supplies? She ought to go help. But she had her own to carry, she couldn’t help much. Or did her hesitation have more to do with Mercedes? ...
When she reached the dock, she saw no one she knew. These days she didn’t know nearly as many kids as she once had. She thought back to her days of table hopping as if she’d been a movie star in some bygone era. Everybody had known Frenchy Tonneau. She’d been with half the girls in any bar at any one time. All those girls had settled down now, except for a few who were still looking, still eyeing Frenchy, but probably had her pegged as no good. Probably never figured her for the type to be mooning over some girl she couldn’t have.
A girl she couldn’t have. The sun beat down on Frenchy’s head and she curiously lifted her hand to feel the heat in her hair. Once the thought of not having any girl she wanted had been inconceivable. There was no such creature. Like in the love stories, mused Frenchy, you always want what you can’t have. So look at me now, seven years later. I’m not the same person. Maybe the new Frenchy could have exactly what she wants. But how am I going to tell Mercedes? How can I show her I’ve changed without acting like an ass?
She lit a cigarette and settled in to wait until the next ferry came. She’d make her way down the beach with a crowd, be invisible as long as she could. Besides, the hot sun felt good with ocean breeze laced through it. A gust of wind left her hair disheveled and she patted it back in place. But it didn’t seem worth it to rebuild her pompadour; the wind would just knock the starch out of it again.
* * * * *
Finally the blankets were spread, the coolers arranged, the beachballs blown up, and last but not least, the teddy bear hung from the umbrella, dangling from a piece of rope Jessie had lassoed under its arms when Lydia objected to hanging it by the neck or leg.
That kid, Mercedes thought affectionately. She won’t kill a spider, an ant, and she’s even kind to stuffed animals.
Mercedes looked down toward the water where everyone else had gone for a first dip. When Frenchy came, she wanted to be dressed and protected, not in a dripping, uncomfortable bathing suit with sand all over her legs. Besides, she’d just gotten her hair the perfect length for this cut and, despite the wind, she knew it looked great.
The waiting had begun; she hardly knew whether she wanted Frenchy to come sooner or later — whether it would be better to be alone or in the group when she arrived.
And then she saw she had no choice at all. In the distance an embroidered jacket was bobbing from side to side through the crowds and blankets.
How in the world do you carry all that stuff and still diddybop, she asked silently, admiringly. Her heart hurt at the sight of the small butch, her hair blowing in the breeze, her head turning this way and that looking for the teddy bear. Mercedes remembered her fantasies on the boat and lost her breath a little. Would — could — any come true? Maybe Frenchy hadn’t changed. Maybe nothing, still, was possible for them. I won’t turn femme, Mercedes pledged again, feeling a little crazy at the thought, feeling threatened and vulnerable.
Slowly, keeping her eyes on Frenchy, Mercedes slipped the teddy bear out of its rope. She could still hide it, she thought, and immediately dismissed the idea. Frenchy would inevitably find her. If only because Mercedes was going to make damn sure she did. She raised the bear in her hands over her head, swinging it from side to side until the motion drew Frenchy’s eyes and she started toward Mercedes.
* * * * *
Frenchy was remembering her walk through the sand the day she’d met Mercedes long ago. How her feet had burned, how stubborn she’d been about the pain. She glanced down at the sandals Pam had finally persuaded her to buy. Why hadn’t she owned a pair long before? Because they didn’t fit her image, that was why. Butches didn’t wear sandals.... When she looked up a teddy bear was swaying in the air, a pair of light brown hands wrapped around its stout body. She kept walking toward the bear casually, as if she saw Mercedes every day of her life. For real. Not just in dreams.
* * * * *
Frenchy and Mercedes stood face to face, inches away from each other, looking into one another’s eyes. Frenchy was remembering that Provincetown night when she first fell in love with this face. There was still something wild about it, but it was softer, as were the eyes. Their light was different, not so distracted, pained. Had Mercedes found the peace she was looking for, without Frenchy? At the same time Mercedes was aware of a great gladness welling up inside her as she noticed a new confidence in Frenchy: her eyes were more clear, she seemed no longer to be hiding her self. Had Frenchy gotten stronger and braver without Mercedes?
“How’ve you been?” asked Frenchy in that way she had of talking out of the side of her mouth.
Mercedes fought with her fear, shrugged casually and talked from the side of her mouth too. “Not bad at all. How about you?”
I’ve missed you, Frenchy wanted to say. “I’m doing okay,” she said instead. “We got a lot of catching up to do.”
“Yes. We have,” said Mercedes slowly. She knew it was up to her to take the next step. Frenchy had risked last time, and lost. “I’d like to. Catch up, that is.”
“Frenchy!” cried Lydia, throwing herself, cold and wet, against Frenchy. Hugging her, Frenchy looked past her at Mercedes.
“Some kid you’ve got here,” she said, smiling and rubbing Lydia’s dripping hair.
“I know. Though I don’t know how, with all her Ma put her through.”
“I’m sure it was worth it,” Frenchy said, her arms around Lydia, still smiling.
Still clinging to Frenchy, Lydia looked from one to the other of them. “Hey, you two want to swim?”
They answered with nervous laughs.
“I just got here,” objected Frenchy.
“I’m going to wait till I’m so hot I need to,” said Mercedes, quickly regretting how she’d said it, not looking at Frenchy.
For the first time hope soared in Frenchy as she realized that Mercedes was embarrassed and why. So she thought of her that way too ...
“Isn’t it great here?” asked Lydia.
“Not
so pretty as Florida,” said Frenchy.
“You liked it down there?” asked Mercedes.
Frenchy wondered, for the thousandth time, if Mercedes had read her letter to Lydia. “It’s okay. But it’s not New York City.”
“You’re damn straight,” agreed Mercedes.
They smiled at the bar phrase. “Maybe we won’t have much to catch up on,” said Frenchy, then worried she was assuming too much. Maybe people hadn’t told Mercedes everything about her. “News travels fast in our club. Like about my trip to Florida,” she explained.
Jessie, Edie, Mary and Esther had come up from the water, and all grabbed for their towels at once. “How you doing, old pal?” asked Jessie, snapping her towel toward Frenchy.
Suddenly everyone was greeting her, like the old days down at the bar. Edie hugged her. Small, burly Esther shook her hand and Mary stood in the background looking from Mercedes to Frenchy and clapping her hands excitedly.
“I’m starved,” said Jessie.
“It figures!” Frenchy teased, and they all laughed and began to rummage for food and drinks.
Beebo found them and called over to the crowd from the bar, to Hermine and the two girls they were with. Frenchy’s group decided to move to the larger group’s site and that caused a half hour’s confusion. Frenchy helped, glancing now and then at Mercedes who was in the thick of the move, and managed to avoid her eyes.
Frenchy was very glad she had come. Not only for the hope she felt about Mercedes, but also the great feeling she had seeing all her friends together.
In the midst of carrying a heavy cooler, Mercedes stopped and looked at Frenchy smiling at all the activity. Frenchy Tonneau, she said to herself, her tongue feeling the name. Frenchy was not looking cool, even with a beer can in her hand. Her hair was a mess and she stood in such a relaxed way you couldn’t tell if she was butch or not. Mercedes picked up the cooler again.
Frenchy saw her struggle with the cooler and started toward her. No. She stopped herself. No gentleman stuff. She turned away. Mercedes wouldn’t do it if she couldn’t handle it herself.
Noon came and with it a huge feast. Other groups had arrived, the barbeque provided by the bar was going, everyone was drunk on beer and sunshine. All the depression and heartache from nights at the bar seemed to have dissipated. Friendships were renewed, old lovers hugged one another, no one wanted the day ever to end.
Except Frenchy. There was no way to be alone with Mercedes. Both were surrounded by the crowd, and no one had seen Mercedes for so long that she had considerable catching up to do. Frenchy remembered back to the days when she’d stand outside the House of Detention with a girl, arguing that she couldn’t go home with her. Now she had a home of her own — how could she get Mercedes to it?
But Frenchy too, despite the changes in her life, seemed to know everyone on the beach whether from her bar or not. Once she walked to the water’s edge and hoped Mercedes would come to her. By the time Mercedes was able to break away, Frenchy had been joined by someone else.
Their energy slowly disappeared. The sun had burnt their bodies and their faces to discomfort. They had stopped drinking; Mercedes especially did not want to get drunk. Women from the bar were firing up the charcoal again for supper when quiet finally descended.
“Are we staying for supper or what?” Jessie asked her group.
“I want to stay!” cried Lydia.
“So do I,” said Jessie.
Mary looked at her very red face disapprovingly. “I think you’ve had enough.”
Mercedes said to Lydia, “You want to stay, little one?”
Lydia hung her head. “I met this kid,” she admitted shyly. “She’s from Jersey. I’ll probably never see her again after today.”
Mercedes was amused and concerned. “Can I meet her?”
“Sure! Her mother’s gay too! She’s fourteen,” Lydia added, obviously impressed a fourteen year old would be interested in her.
Hermine shouted over from her blanket, “Let’s all take a nap. If we feel like it when we wake up, we’ll stay for supper!”
Activity began again, but more quietly. Mercedes got up to go meet Lydia’s friend. “Can I come?” asked Frenchy, a tremor in her voice Mercedes had never heard before.
Lydia took her mother and Frenchy by the hand and led them up the beach. A tall young girl ran swiftly between the blankets to meet them.
“There she is!” cried Lydia.
She and Lydia hugged as if they hadn’t seen one another for years. Frenchy looked at Mercedes. Both smiled. Both envied the spontaneity of children. Both were aware of the emptiness of their hands now that Lydia had flown from between them.
Doreatha gravely shook their hands and invited them to meet her mother. Frenchy worried briefly that Mercedes would have all too much in common with another gay mother, but the meeting was polite. Frenchy saw that the mother, also tall, was well into her forties and not Mercedes’ type at all. They exchanged invitations and phone numbers and by then the girls had wandered off. Unbelievably, suddenly, Frenchy found herself alone with Mercedes.
“I’m bushed,” said Mercedes. “We got up at five this morning.”
“Me too.”
“Want to find a place to sit for a while before we start back?”
“Suits me fine,” Frenchy said coolly. Mercedes looked at her with a little of the amused love she felt for Lydia, but with a breathlessness her daughter did not inspire.
They wandered to a slightly more secluded spot and sat together looking out toward the water.
“I remember walking on the beach outside the Ace of Spades at P-town,” said Mercedes.
“Do you?” asked Frenchy. “I think of it all the time.”
A while later Mercedes, unable to stand the heavy silence, the promise of touch, asked, “Ever been back there?”
“No. I don’t know if I want to now.”
Mercedes heard her say “without you” in her mind. “I guess it wouldn’t be the same.” She paused, deciding what to say next, then spoke almost despite herself. “Lydia said you thought that weekend changed your life.”
Frenchy went red, but Mercedes was looking away from her. Gulls cried above them. The crowds seemed far away. Frenchy began to play with the sand between them. “It did. I found out I have the ocean in my blood.” She looked up at Mercedes. “My family lived by, worked on, the sea. Being up there I felt — at home. I never wanted to leave. It made me see everything different, made me feel like I was living my life in a little shell. I don’t mean I figured that out right away. It took a long time.” She was silent, scooping up sand and letting it fall from her hand. She said, “And of course I met you.”
Mercedes knew she would hear the small whispered choking sound of those words in her mind over and over the rest of her life. She picked up some sand in the spot where Frenchy was digging and let it fall over Frenchy’s hand. Frenchy stopped digging. She slowly turned her hand until she could catch the fine sand that fell on her sensitive palm. When Mercedes’ hand was empty she lay it flat, palm up. Frenchy spilled the same sand back onto it, leaving her hand in the air. Like a quick bird, Mercedes’ hand came up to touch Frenchy’s, to brush it and fall down again. Swooping after it, Frenchy’s hand fell also. The two hands lay there. The women watched them, as if they had a life of their own, as if their hands would play out their fate.
More? thought Mercedes. Must I do more? If only she were femme, and didn’t have to initiate again. She could let her fate rest in Frenchy’s next move. But she had taught Frenchy well and now it seemed she needed a new way to do things with her, a new language to speak in, to show desire. “Frenchy,” she said, in her own choked whisper, “Frenchy help me.”
Frenchy looked at her, at her strained eyes, her chest rising and falling as if she were out of breath. And she understood. Mercedes didn’t want to be butch, she didn’t want Frenchy to be butch. Like Lydia and Doreatha, Mercedes wanted them to come together equally, somehow.
Frenchy smil
ed. She felt light and free and wise. No longer did she dread being passive, nor did she need to restrain her desire to act.
She leaned toward Mercedes, her arms coming up as Mercedes leaned toward her, her arms rising also. They touched lips, then each other. They lay back together, relaxing into one another. How familiar it felt, how comfortable, home-like. How they fit. They lay there, melded together, their hands still, breathing together. They held together tightly. Suddenly, Frenchy began to tremble, then cry. Mercedes held her, nearly crying herself to see Frenchy let go like this before her. She stroked Frenchy, soothed her. “It’s okay,” she said, over and over as Frenchy murmured, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” in her arms.
Frenchy wiped her face, moving away. They smiled, shyly, and Frenchy leaned to kiss Mercedes, used her body, her hands in ways she was used to, while Mercedes drew her down, held her close again, stroked her back. Moving against one another like the night they danced, their passion built. When they could stand it no longer they relaxed again, kissed long, gently, touched and exulted in one another until they could laugh delightedly each time they touched something new: an earlobe, an eyelid, a wrist. They had, after all, a lifetime ahead.
They sat up finally. “Hey,” Frenchy said, winking, “we had such a long engagement, wouldn’t you feel better waiting for the wedding night?”
Mercedes laughed and jumped up, pulling Frenchy with her. Alight with happiness, they ran toward Lydia, who was playing a giggling, clumsy game of catch with Doreatha. The three caught one another in embrace. Lydia motioned Doreatha to join them.
Aware of how they must look: the tall, dark Doreatha, the shorter, lighter Lydia, the even lighter and shorter Mercedes, and then herself, smallest, palest, Frenchy told them what she saw and they laughed.