by Amy Briant
“Sarah and I have had a long talk,” Maggie told her. Okay, Dorsey thought.
“And she spoke with her mother in Chicago as well,” Maggie went on.
Dorsey didn’t know for sure whether that was a good thing or a bad one, but she felt something icy start to wrap its fingers around her heart.
“We’re meeting with the pastor this afternoon,” Maggie said. She seemed to be having trouble making eye contact with her old friend. Dorsey found her own gaze drawn to one of the dirty puddles. An iridescent streak of oil made it look almost pretty.
“We?” she said to Mags.
“Sarah and Mother and me. This is a family matter now, Dorsey. You know we all want the best for Sarah.”
Dorsey looked incredulously at Maggie. “You’re going to pray the gay away? Are you kidding me, Maggie? You know that’s not how it works. You know me better than that—”
“This isn’t about you, Dorsey. It’s about Sarah. And giving her a chance for a good life. She’s been through a lot, Dorsey. She just needs a chance to get her head on straight.”
Dorsey stared at her best friend in the world, with tears that wouldn’t quite come stinging her eyes.
“Nice choice of words, Mags.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I don’t. I don’t know what you mean at all, Maggie. All I know is you’re my friend. You’ve always been my friend and I love you. And I thought you would want me to be happy.”
“You can’t be happy with Sarah, Dorse.” Maggie’s voice was loud in the ugly little alley. Her words bounced off the brick walls and the Dumpster.
“Why not?” Dorsey flared back at her. “Because she’s your cousin?”
“Because she’s fragile right now. She’s vulnerable. I told you all this before. She needs our help and support, not you mixing up her mind with all this—”
“All this what, Mags? Gayness?”
“Look, Dorsey, I’m trying to tell you she’s confused right now. She’s going through a hard time and maybe she’s not making the best decisions these days.”
“So I’m a ‘bad decision’?” Dorsey demanded. “Is that what you want to call it? Is this really you talking, Mags, or is this your mother’s voice I’m hearing?”
“I think you better leave my mother out of this,” Maggie said coldly.
Dorsey knew she had crossed a line, although she thought she was right. Vivian Bigelow must have been overjoyed to finally see the rift develop between her daughter and Dorsey. She’d been trying to break them apart for more than twenty years.
“Okay, you’re right, I’m sorry. But, Maggie,” she said pleadingly, “please try to see this from my point of view for just a second. I mean, did you ever think maybe you’re being a little bit selfish, Mags?”
“Selfish?” Maggie said, clearly astounded by the idea. “What do you mean? That I want to keep Sarah all to myself? That’s crazy.”
“Maybe you don’t want to keep her all to yourself,” Dorsey said.
Maggie started to nod her agreement, but Dorsey’s next words stopped her cold. “Maybe you just want to keep her away from me.”
“Dorsey, I—”
“Is that it, Mags? Tell the truth. You owe me that.”
Maggie looked at the brick walls on either side of them, then up at the sky, then finally back at Dorsey. Just like Sarah in the kitchen, in that moment just before discovery, when she had frantically looked for an escape route. But there was nowhere to go, for either of them. The truth catches up with all of us in the end, Dorsey thought bitterly.
“Fine, Dorsey,” Maggie finally said quietly. “If that’s the way you want it.”
“There’s nothing about this the way I want it,” Dorsey told her, her anger now edged with despair. “But I want you to tell me the truth.”
“The truth…” Maggie started. She swallowed, then began again. “The truth is—no, I don’t want you to be with Sarah. I, I can’t stand the thought of the two of you together like that. I’m sorry, Dorsey, maybe I shouldn’t have told you that, or maybe I should try to understand—but I can’t! I don’t. I just…don’t. And I can’t stand to think of her with you. Like that.”
Maggie was crying now, but Dorsey’s not-quite-tears had disappeared. Despite the sun shining overhead, she felt a chill inside. Like she’d never be warm again. She looked at Maggie, crying in the alley, rooting in her purse for a tissue. She didn’t look like the Maggie who had been her friend for all those years. She didn’t look like someone Dorsey knew at all. Dorsey felt an ice-cold rage building deep in her gut. Without another word, she turned and strode back into the building.
Chapter Thirteen
The only upside to all the drama, Dorsey thought, was that she channeled all her wrath and pent-up feelings into her work on the Bartholomews’ deck. She finished it three days ahead of schedule, working odd hours and late into the night, hammering, sanding and sawing by work lights clamped to the railings.
The last nail was driven after dusk on Saturday night. Dorsey swept the deck one more time, then loaded all her tools and materials into the back of her little pickup. She’d turned out all the lights but one, and left the bug-repelling mister going as the evening insects began to swarm. The night air was sweet, the sky starting to darken to that deep midnight blue she so loved. She sat on the steps of the deck, drinking a beer and watching the stars come out one by one.
She hadn’t seen or heard from Sarah all week, nor Maggie either, since that fiasco in the alley. Which was fine, since she didn’t think she could stand to see Maggie right now. She wondered what she would have said if Maggie had asked her to stop seeing Sarah, instead of more or less forbidding her. Would she have granted her best friend that favor? Sacrificed what was probably just a summer fling for the long-term good of her friendship?
No. She wouldn’t have. Couldn’t have. Sarah had come to mean too much to her to just let it go. How many chances at real love does a person get in her lifetime? One? Two? Zero for a lot of people, Dorsey thought. She knew what she felt for Sarah was love. Knew she had to take her chance—maybe her one and only chance—at making it work.
She was so damn angry with Maggie she felt sick, like she was coming down with the flu or something. The nights were the worst, when she lay awake wrestling with impossible questions. How could Maggie turn on her like that, after twenty years of playing the dutiful and supportive friend? Had it all been just a lie? How could she expect Dorsey and Sarah to deny who they were? And who the hell had made Maggie queen to tell Dorsey to stay away from Sarah? What business was it of hers?
And yet…a part of her wanted to be fair, to give Mags a chance, to try and see it from her point of view. That objective part of her could see what a shock Maggie had endured. Dorsey knew she wasn’t the only one who’d had her whole world turned upside down. As furious as she was with her best friend, she still thought Mags was a good person.
But that didn’t make it right. In fact, it kind of made it worse. Maggie was wrong about this. Terribly, disastrously, cruelly wrong. Dorsey knew that in her heart even as she grieved for their devastated friendship.
And there was no one to turn to. Sarah had let her go. Just like that. Had bowed to the pressures of her family. Maybe, Dorsey told herself, what I felt was love and what she felt was—convenience. Sarah had played with Dorsey’s heart, gotten what she wanted and moved on when things got tough.
Dorsey looked up at the thousand stars twinkling above her, but her vision was blurred by tears. They say it’s your heart that gets broken, she thought—but she felt like every fiber of her being had been trampled, snapped, cut to the bone. Her hand shook as she raised the bottle to her lips.
Headlights swept the house as a car turned off the highway onto the driveway. Dorsey dully wondered who it could be. Not Maggie, she hoped. She knew they would talk again—there was too much history between them and it was too small of a town for them not to talk again, but she wasn’t ready yet. Was it one of her brothers? S
he stood up, but could not identify the vehicle in the near darkness. Not until it pulled up behind her truck and parked could she make out the distinctive shape of the VW Bug. The driver’s door opened, then closed.
“Hello, Dorsey,” Sarah said from the foot of the steps. She looked tired and solemn. But beautiful.
Dorsey stood stock-still on the deck, her heart pounding in her ears. She felt almost like she was in the presence of a wild animal, like she shouldn’t make any sudden movements and frighten Sarah away. She looked carefully over Sarah’s shoulder into the Bug to see if anyone else had come along for the ride. With relief she saw that it was empty. She searched Sarah’s face for a clue as to why she had come.
“Can I come up?” Sarah said, gesturing toward the deck.
“Okay,” Dorsey said. That was all she could manage.
They sat down on opposite sides of the picnic table.
“I snuck out,” Sarah said, with a trace of the mischievous smile that had had Dorsey’s heart (not to mention other body parts) doing backflips over the past month.
You’re a grown woman! Dorsey wanted to shout at her. You don’t have to sneak anywhere. But she said nothing. Could not make herself speak. The pain was too intense.
The lone light on the deck brought Sarah’s cheekbones into high definition. Her black hair had never been in such stark contrast to the paleness of her skin. Her eyes, though, were in shadow. Dorsey wondered if her own thoughts were as well hidden.
Sarah tried again. “I’m sorry, Dorse,” she said, unknowingly echoing Maggie. “They’ve practically had me on lockdown all week. Between Mags and Aunt Viv, and my mother on the phone nonstop, not to mention that moron of a pastor, I haven’t had a moment to myself.”
Dorsey didn’t know whether to believe her. Although she certainly looked worn down and sad…harassed and in pain. Dorsey had seen the same look on her own face in the mirror a lot lately. Sarah seemed worried at her continued silence. Afraid, almost.
“I wanted to call…wanted to see you,” she went on anxiously. “But it’s been such a hellish mess at the house. They wouldn’t leave me alone… I finally just snuck out tonight when Maggie was in the shower and Aunt Viv got a phone call. I tried to call you from the pay phone at the grocery store, but your brother said you were out here. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to find it by myself in the dark, but I did…” Her voice trailed off uneasily. “Say something, Dorse, for God’s sake, just say something,” Sarah pleaded.
Dorsey could only think of one thing to say. “Why are you here, Sarah?”
“To explain, I guess. Try to explain. My family, Dorse—well, they mean as much to me as your family does to you.”
“I would never let my family make me deny my very identity, Sarah,” Dorsey said as gently as she could, trying to take away some of the sting of the words. “Or try to make me into something I’m not.”
“I’m not denying it,” Sarah said. “Not anymore. If nothing else, this awful mess has freed me from that.”
“So, Maggie—”
“Maggie knows I’m gay now. As does Aunt Viv, although no doubt she’ll go to her grave still trying to find me a husband.” Sarah laughed shortly, without humor.
“So, then—” Dorsey felt a surge of hope.
But Sarah shook her head. “They’re totally freaked,” she said grimly. “But they’re still my family. I can’t change that no matter how much I sometimes want to. Aunt Viv’s a lost cause, she’s in complete denial that anyone in her family could ever be a homo.” Again that humorless laugh.
“But Maggie?” Dorsey asked.
“Mags is too smart to not get it. She does get it. She knows now that I’m gay and always have been. But that’s not the problem.”
“Well, what the hell is it then?” Dorsey asked with frustration.
“It’s you, Dorsey.”
“Me?” She looked at Sarah in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“It’s just too much for Maggie to handle. It’s hard enough for her that I’m gay, that I’m not the perfect paragon she’d built up in her mind. It’s not even that I’m gay, I think—it’s that I’m not what she thought I was. She told me she always wanted to be just like me—and now here I am, the exact opposite of what any red-blooded Bigelow would apparently want to be. Something her mother has always told her is abhorrent, as you well know. It’s a shock to her system. And, on top of that, here I am running around with her best friend. She feels like you lied to her, Dorsey. Like we both lied to her. And I guess we kind of did.”
“But she’ll come around, don’t you think?”
“I don’t know, Dorsey. I don’t know if she can do that. She’s hurt and overwhelmed and confused, all at once.”
Well, so am I, Dorsey thought. But she didn’t say it. She wanted to, but the words just wouldn’t come. She’d built up such a wall her whole life, having to watch every word, every action, be so careful. But now, when she wanted to speak, wanted to pour her heart out to Sarah, her carefully crafted wall was suddenly her enemy. She could not break through.
Sarah looked away, off into the night, then said in a quiet voice, “She told me she can’t stand the thought of the two of us being together. She asked me—well, told me, to tell the truth, to stay away from you.”
“She told me the same thing.”
They looked at each other across the table for a long moment.
“Maybe she just needs some time to process,” Dorsey said earnestly, but not sure if she believed that herself. “Maybe if we just wait awhile, she’ll be okay.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know, Sarah. What do you think?”
“I don’t know either, Dorse. I don’t know if she’ll ever be okay with it. What I do know is how I feel about you. You know I care about you. And I want to be with you. But…are we both willing to wreck our relationships with Maggie on the chance this might be a long-term thing between us?”
Pain pierced Dorsey like a dagger when Sarah said those words.
“Might be a long-term thing?” she echoed haltingly.
Sarah spread her hands in a gesture of appeal. “Well, come on, Dorsey, would you seriously run away with me if I offered? Your whole life, your job, your family are in this town. Would you leave them all behind just for me?”
“Sarah, can’t you see—” Dorsey began, painfully.
“Look, let’s be reasonable, okay? I can’t stay here. You know that. I have to find a job, for one thing. You’ve known from the start that I was only here temporarily. Right?”
Dorsey nodded, unwillingly.
“I’ve loved the time we spent together, Dorse. But what happens when I have to leave? And even if we could figure that out, how can we build something together if it means we both have to cut our ties to Maggie?”
She sounded sensible, reasonable, laying out the facts. But who cared about the facts when what they’d had felt so good? Had they brainwashed her in one week, Dorsey wondered wildly. Had she forgotten so soon what it was like when they were together? The laughter they’d shared, the looks between them that said more than words ever could. Those moments in the dark, when it was just the two of them, entwined in warmth, the feeling of skin on skin?
Or had she never cared at all?
Dorsey felt stunned, felt as if she were turning to stone. Expressing her emotions had never been her strong point anyway, had never worked out well for her. Better to keep it inside, where people couldn’t see, couldn’t judge, couldn’t make fun of you and insult you and hurt you. Couldn’t disappoint you over and over again… But she had to try one last time. She wondered if her one chance at happiness in life was slipping away right before her eyes.
“Sarah,” she said imploringly, trying not to sound frantic, “can’t we at least try? Maggie loves both of us. Maybe with a little time, she’ll change her mind. I can’t believe she would purposely stand in the way of our happiness…” She reached out and took the other woman’s hand. “Please, Sarah,” she sa
id, one last time.
Sarah looked doubtful. “I know she loves us, Dorse—but she’s Aunt Viv’s daughter too. That’s hard to overcome. Her whole life she’s heard nothing but how evil and wrong gay people are, from her mother, from her church, from this whole damn town. I mean, I know she’s your best friend, and I know she knows you’re gay, but she’s never really seen you be gay, you know what I mean?”
Dorsey did know. She’d thought about that before herself, long before Sarah ever arrived on the scene. She’d wondered how Maggie would react if she ever actually had a real girlfriend. Would Maggie have been supportive? Repulsed? Friendly? Jealous? Meaning jealous in a totally nonsexual way, of course, because Dorsey had never thought of Maggie as anything but a friend and Maggie was one hundred percent straight. But jealous, nonetheless, in that possessive way women sometimes have when it comes to their closest friends. The question had never been put to the test, because all of Dorsey’s liaisons had been away at camp, at festival or otherwise out of the public eye. She’d never even introduced Maggie to any of the women she’d been involved with. None of her relationships had ever made it to that level.
“You’re not leaving town yet, are you? Maybe if we give it a few weeks…or if the three of us could talk it out…”
“I’m trying to do what’s best for all of us, Dorsey,” Sarah said, holding Dorsey’s hand tightly. Her voice cracked as she struggled to continue. “I think…I think we shouldn’t see each other for a while. Let’s give everyone some time to cool down and see how it goes, all right? You need to give me some time to sort it out with my family—please. I’ll give you a call.”
But she had said something like that before—and hadn’t called her all week.
“I have to go now, Dorsey,” Sarah said quietly, slipping her hand out of Dorsey’s. “They’ll be worried about me.” She waited a moment and then when Dorsey didn’t respond said, “Are you going to be okay?”