Ethel's

by Terry Brewer

  Angela spoke to Connie about there being two sides to Paula. There was the Paula who Connie knew, and loved. And there was the Paula who allowed herself to be abused. Wanted or needed to be abused. Connie just listened. It was all foreign to her. Ultimately the two stopped and faced each other.

  “I don’t know where this is going to go. I don’t know where this is going to lead. But, Con, I won’t blame you, nobody will blame you for baling. Paula has issues, to put it mildly. But she loves you. I think we need to support her in helping her find herself.”

  And she explained what Maggie told her and said that it was best to get professional help for Paula. To let Paula discover who she is.

  “I love her,” Angela said. “But it’s in a way that’s worlds apart from how you love her. She loves us both, but in different ways. She fucked up. She cheated on you. She doesn’t deserve to get a second chance from you. That’s all I’ll say about that. Okay. What I am going to do is help her get help. She may not come out of the rabbit hole. I hope—think—she will. But it’s your call.”

  They resumed the walk, both silent. As they approached Connie’s building they stopped again.

  “You know her in one way.” This was Connie. “I know her in another. If she decides to go in…a different direction, I’ll understand. But I can’t live with myself if I’m not there if she decides to go in my direction. I’d be a shit if I did. I need you and her therapist to tell me what I can and can’t do for her. I won’t get in the way, but I will not get out of the way and I will be there for her at the end.”

  They both knew this is exactly what Connie would say, but that she said it did not make it any less meaningful or difficult.

  The two walked into Connie’s apartment and sat down with Paula, who hadn’t moved since they left.

  April: One Wedding

  As they entered the hall, Connie put her arm around Paula’s waist.

  “Whatever happens today, know that I love you more than anything.”

  The couple followed the signs to the ceremony. There are Bride’s Magazine events and there was this. Sherrie and Tracy had, not surprisingly, decided to go all-out for their wedding. And they succeeded.

  Angela promised that she and Nicole would be there before Connie and Paula arrived, and Connie saw them shortly after they entered where the ceremony would take place. The decision was taken on Thursday to keep the ceremony inside in light of an adverse weather forecast, but the rain ended by noon and the French doors that surrounded the room were open to the estate’s yard, and a seasonably chilly air.

  The four exchanged hugs and kisses before finding a seat. As with most of the non-relatives, their relationships were much the same for both brides, but seeing four empty seats on Tracy’s side, that’s where they went. They were in the fifth row, along the side aisle. As they glanced through the program, each canvassed the room, waving to those they recognized.

  They were not there long when there was a commotion. The judge who was presiding walked down the aisle and turned. Because Tracy’s parents refused to come, the couple decided that they would come down the aisle together, with Sherrie’s father between them. Sherrie’s mother came in before the three and she was followed by one of Sherrie’s close friends as her maid-of-honor and Tracy’s sister Lily as hers.

  A string quartet played the “Wedding March” and all eyes turned to the back. Sherrie, Sherrie’s father, and Sherrie’s love slowly walked in, the two women sometimes breaking into smiles when they recognized someone particularly special to them.

  It was a wonderful ceremony with vows written by the brides themselves and everyone adjourned to a large room where dinner would be served and toasts would be made.

  Paula panicked several times during the ceremony. She and Connie went to Ethel’s now and then, but this was a real test. She feared word had gotten around regarding what had happened, but it had not. This was a community that was good at keeping secrets about what members experienced. With something like what Paula did, the few who knew never breached the confidence.

  After the ceremony, Connie and Paula went for a walk.

  “If you want to leave we can.”

  “It was less frightening than I thought it would be, so let’s go back.”

  Angela could not resist telling them, and Nicole, a few days before the ceremony about the wedding where she met Sherrie and Tracy. How Sherrie had finger-fucked Tracy in the ladies’ room of a fancy place in Westchester at a wedding. Throughout dinner, both Angela and Connie had funny looks their partners did not notice. When the plates were cleared, Connie reached into her bag and pulled out a quarter, which she had placed in a pocket for this very purpose. She asked Paula to join her in the ladies’ room and when they got there and found it was empty Connie tossed the coin and said: “Call it.”

  Paula called “Heads” and it was heads and Connie pulled her into a stall, grabbed her right hand as she lifted her dress, and put it against her panties.

  “I lost. Now you have to fuck me with your fingers.”

  Paula figured this out as Connie was speaking. She put her hand around the front of Connie’s panties.

  “No. You have to take them off.”

  Which Paula did and with them clutched in her left hand she put one and then two of her right fingers inside her lover until Connie, staring at her, crested in a beautiful and quiet orgasm, the two women ignoring the three or four women who came into the bathroom while she did.

  For Paula, it was a strangely liberating act. She was in a public place, not unlike where she’d run into Julie, and her love had wanted her, Paula, to please her and Paula wanted to please her because she loved this woman with every bone, every cell in her body.

  When the coast was clear, the pair returned to the table, Connie without panties, which Paula discretely placed in her clutch when they got back, and Angela exchanging a knowing smile with Connie. Before excusing herself and Nicole for their own trip to the ladies’ room which lasted a bit longer than Connie and Paula’s.

  Upon her return, Angela whispered, “Turns out with both lost.”

  The wedding was held at an estate in western Long Island, and cars were arranged for guests coming from the City. The four women decided to share one, with Connie staying with Paula in Jackson Heights and the other two going home to Astoria. They were all a bit drunk. Angela sat upfront. All four were left with their thoughts for the drive.

  All four were exhausted when they got home, and each fell quickly into a deep sleep as soon as she was in bed.

  June: “Scarface”

  “Scarface?”

  Connie’s head shot up and her glare nearly pierced the woman who spoke.

  “Shit. I’m sorry. That popped out. Con, please forgive me.”

  The speaker was one of Connie’s many tormentors from where she grew up.

  “What do you want Britney?”

  “May I sit?”

  Connie was at a small table with Paula, and Britney had seen her as she was going to Ethel’s bar from the ladies’. Connie nodded.

  “Paula, this is Britney Clark. Britney, this is Paula Wilson, my fiancée.”

  Britney noticed the rings as she nodded.

  “Britney was one of the types I’ve told you about.”

  “I was an asshole, okay? We all were—”

  “Not everyone but you definitely were. We were friends and then…But I should thank you and the rest of your little gang. If you’d been halfway-decent people I might have stayed in that town and I wouldn’t have come to New York and I wouldn’t have met Paula and I wouldn’t have known the person that I love was in New York. So thanks.”

  She took a mouthful of her wine.

  Britney wasn’t surprised at Connie’s torrent. She deserved it. She had been Connie’s friend but had gone along with the cool kids. She was, yeah, an asshole.

  “I can just say I’m sorry.” And she stood to head back to the bar.

  “Wait. I got that off my chest. I sort of missed
you for a while.”

  She turned to Paula. “I had a crush on her for—”

  “Why didn’t you say something?” This was Britney

  “Like that was going to happen. Everyone hated me for the scar. Imagine what I’d be called if they knew I was gay. You know what kind of place this is.”

  “Yes. This is my first time here. I heard about it through the grapevine. But I didn’t know you were gay. Were you back—?”

  “I’ve always been. I only came out here in New York.”

  She addressed her the girl she helped torment. “I fucked up. I wish I had known. I admired how you took our shit and not let it fuck—”

  “You don’t think it fucked me up? I hated every minute I was there.”

  “Well, you did a good job of hiding it. And then you were just gone to New York.”

  Paula excused herself. These two needed space.

  “You helped me decide to leave too. I was embarrassed about how we treated you and others. We thought we were so cool. College, too, had its cliques but when I was done and in the real world, God, what a shit I was and how insignificant I was. I got a job in Indy, but it was the same. I met some nice girls there, but we were all so tense, you know? ‘What if we ran into someone we know?’

  “I didn’t know you were gay, but I knew you’d come here. I did some sleuthing and from what I could find you seemed to be doing okay. I wondered whether I’d ever run into you. To apologize. Well, here I am. I live in Jersey City and work at a small boutique investment-house on Broad Street.”

  Connie reached across the table. Taking the other woman’s hand, “We okay?”

  “We’re okay.”

  “Good. Let me show you around.”

  Which is how Britney Clark met people at Ethel’s.

  As they were on the subway heading home, Paula said she wouldn’t have been so forgiving.

  “Yes, you would have. It’s part of why I love you,” and Paula placed her head on Connie’s shoulder until they reached their stop.

  July: Sag Harbor

  Sag Harbor is a village that sits on the bay between the north and south forks of Long Island, north of East Hampton. It has long been the anti-Hamptons, frequented by West Village types and beginning life as a whaling port in the nineteenth century.

  Just before reaching town from East Hampton, a right turn gets you to a small beach on the bay. There, on a Thursday afternoon in early July, two women were lying down. They were in running shorts and sports bras and wore plenty of sunblock. Connie and Paula were spending the week at Connie’s family’s place nearby. Each afternoon they walked down to be together and by themselves with only a few others, mostly families, around. Neither spoke as they lay next to one another, their hands variously holding and rubbing one another, each in her thoughts. For Connie, those thoughts were about her love’s thoughts and the turmoil that still haunted Paula.

  What Connie did not know was that Paula’s mind was calm. After that horrible weekend, she had gotten help. Professional help. Only a small group knew what happened. In addition to Connie, Angela, and Nicole, only Maggie and Michelle did. None of them smothered Paula. The pair still went to Ethel’s, but not as often and Angela explained their absences as them wanting to spend time alone. By Sherrie and Tracy’s wedding in April, the two’s relationship was largely free and clear of the turmoil.

  Through therapy, Paula came to understand that her need for submitting was her attempt to justify who she was. Her upbringing was not strict but she saw in how her mother and her neighbors and even her friends treated gays a disgust with the person who Paula knew she was but who they did not. If her yearnings were forced upon her, she could convince herself that she was not like that. She was just weak and had succumbed to that weakness. It wasn’t her fault. It had not happened often, but it happened, that this woman usually comfortable in her lesbian skin would come to doubt herself.

  Julie was Paula’s attempt to justify her falling in love with Connie. She was so in love that she could not help but think something was wrong with her, that something was wrong with Paula-and-Connie: Lesbian freaks. It was not that she felt she didn’t deserve Connie. She was confident enough to know that was not the case. She reached the point, for those moments when Paula was sitting alone in her apartment that weekend when she feared her need for Connie was, as had been drummed into her, unnatural. The happenstance of running into Julie was for Paula a means to confirm that her need for Connie was something over which she had no control and thus something for which she bore no responsibility.

  Over the weeks, the layers came off. As that process continued, Paula understood that for her submitting to a dominant woman was what was unnatural. What was natural for Paula was the need to be with another woman to complete who she was. She saw that now. In her new world and with the aid of a therapist and her new “family,” she saw it all. It was like awakening from a bad dream or a coma and opening her eyes to see a woman she could and did love smiling down on her. It was not so easy, of course, but ultimately it was real.

  So Connie did not know how calm Paula’s mind was, how calming Paula found the sound of Connie’s simple breathing and the light touch of her fingers.

  Joining that breathing was the light lapping of the bay’s water against the beach and the sound of a dog—probably a black Lab barking at the mailman—and kids playing. When Connie opened her eyes she noticed the lowering sky to the northwest and with a shake got Paula’s attention. The rain was coming.

  They walked the two blocks to the house. They often walked holding hands in silence, and they did so now. Once through the door, Connie turned and placed her arms around Paula and pulled her close, whispering “I love you” into her ear, an echoed “I love you” coming in response.

  The two got glasses of water and then headed upstairs. It’d be a heavy but, they hoped, brief storm. As had also become routine on this vacation they undressed in their room and Connie got onto the bed. It had become her habit. She always wanted Paula to feel in control, but Paula had long since been onto this and as often as not would shake her head and say “I know you want me to do all the work but I’m older so get up.” Connie hopped up and Paula took her place, with Connie getting back onto the bed and above the older woman.

  Today, as the rain started battering the windows, Connie lowered her mouth to Paula’s and they kissed and held the kiss, tongues dancing until Connie fell down Paula’s body, stopping, briefly, to kiss and bite the nipples she passed and then her face was between Paula’s spread legs. Connie kissed one thigh and then the other before licking her way up to Paula’s shaved pussy. Sometimes their eyes were locked when this happened but today Connie saw that Paula’s were closed. She heard Paula’s insisting moan.

  Connie knew what Paula liked. She licked up one side and down the other of the labia, taking care to avoid the clit. Her tongue poked into Paula’s pussy, languidly drawing letters as she did. Paula’s hips began their rocking. Connie’s right hand reached up and ran along Paula’s perineum, lightly touching her anus, which increased the moan. Connie knew how Paula enjoyed this. Never penetration, only a light touch.

  Connie felt her lover’s hands grab her head and pull her tighter. She was close and when Connie tried to tease her, pulling her head away, a “don’t you fucking dare tease me” brought Connie’s mouth back and she was sucking on the clit she so loved and her fingers were moving between the anus and the vagina and two, then three were penetrating and turning to find the G-spot—Paula loved this—and in a moment she shook violently, shouted obscenities to the ceiling, and tightened her grip on Connie’s head until, after thirty seconds or so, pushing down and her away.

  Connie, once her head was released could not resist giving the clit a peck before slithering back up, her tongue dragging its way, poking into the navel and encircling each nipple on the heaving chest until it crossed Paula’s jaw and reached her lips where her own lips gave a peck and Paula got a taste of herself. Once there, Connie turned on he
r left and looked deeply at the profile of the wonderful specimen beside her, a view she would never tire of.

  Paula tapped Connie’s hip with a “gimme a minute.” Connie placed her head on the pillow, still staring at and still overwhelmed by Paula.

  Paula needed to take care of Connie but it was now a need for her completeness and not a need from her emptiness. She did, much as Connie had done except Connie had confessed that she did enjoy a bit of anal penetration when she was close and as the rain was easing up she nearly hit the ceiling the moment the tease that was her lover slipped her middle finger into her ass while she gnawed on her clit. It was close, but her explosion was a wee bit louder than Paula’s.

  When Paula joined Connie at the head of the bed, she, too, was enthralled by the view of her lover’s breath returning to normal, beads of sweat sliding unnoticed down her forehead. She caressed the scar, which caused Connie to smile softly. Before either knew it they were in deep sleeps in each other’s arms.

  There was one thing that they never did. Neither woman was ever on her knees before the other. It was symbolic, of course, and unspoken but neither could ever be subservient to the other.

  Friday: Shelter Island

  They took the short, ferry ride to Shelter Island on Friday and drove around the island. On the way back, as the ferry crossed the bay, the pair stood on the side looking out to the east, France somewhere over the horizon.

  “Paula. Can you promise me that you will come to me the moment you are tempted? I am not saying you will be”—and Paula interjected that she had not been since that horrible night—”tempted but you have to come to me first. Promise?” Paula promised.

  “Paula. Will you marry me?” Connie, of course, had virtually no experience with other women. It did not matter. She found the only woman she wanted.