“Whorehouse. Your mother—your mother thinks you’re a whore. She put you here. Brothel. Dear God.”
The head tried violently to nod between jerks of a neck that kept shuddering it sideways.
“Y’ss! Y’ss! Ya unndersd’nd! Y’ss!”
Somewhere in this whole vast bleak merciless universe there must be a space free of suffering, somewhere.
“Awww, h’ney. Thas’ nice. Ya cry’n fa me? Fa’ me? Aww. Nice frien’. Nodda hore. C’n ya he’p me?”
Feed her the lines. Collaborate. Feed her the lines as you would the soup cold now by the side of her bed, like cues for a script, feed her, nourish her. You know how to do it.
“Yes. Yes, I’ll help.” Julian cleared her throat and dropped her voice to the conspiratorial level of Hope’s. “Well, first of all, you’re not a whore. Anybody can see that, plain as day. Now. Tell you what. I have a plan.”
The black eyes brightened, watching her with rapt attention.
“We’ll smuggle you out, okay? But it’ll have to be very well planned, you understand?”
The eyes blinked rapidly with excitement.
“The trouble is, you’re weak right now, see? And we can’t get you out of here if you’re so weak. We’ve got to build up your strength first. It’s very important, you understand?”
Frantic nodding.
“So I want you to let me feed you some of this soup here. Don’t worry, it won’t burn you. It’s room temperature by now.”
“Mide be p-p-poy-poy—”
“No, it’s not poisoned. I’ll have some first, so you’ll know it’s safe. See? It’s all right. I swear to you.”
The eyes opened wide again, trusting. A split second of almost recognition, almost mistrust. Then it passed, and Hope began, spoon after slow spoon, to swallow the soup.
Exhausted by this effort, she fell into a doze almost immediately after Julian put down the empty bowl and sat, her head drooping, her arms loose in her lap. You must come now not just once a day but twice at least. She will eat for you, for the friend you can convince her you are. Only you can keep her alive.
She stared at the black-and-white tiles of the nursing-home floor. No ambiguities now. No time now for anything but this. No time for the sweet wild freedoms of long-ago last night, or the would-have-been writing of this afternoon. No time for anything but Hope: her life and the losing of it, her fears and the calming of them, her soul and the reaching of it. Strip it down to this. One last try.
She rose and tiptoed toward the door, but froze at the scream that cleaved the air behind her.
“I see ya Joolyan! I see ya tryinna s-sneeek oud affer steeelin’ all ma forchun! I woan leaf ya nuth’n—ya hear? I see ya!” But when she turned, Hope only glared at her for an instant, then shut her eyes like a mechanized doll and fell to sleep again.
Mrs. Costello, the day floor-nurse, approached Julian as she waited for the elevator.
“Miss Travis? May I speak to you for a moment?”
Julian gave her an automatic smile. “Certainly, Mrs. Costello.”
“Did you—Have you seen the doctor today?”
“Yes. And I got her to finish the soup you’d left. I’ll come both at lunchtime and after work each day now. In the mornings, too, whenever possible. To try and get her to take food from here on in.”
“Oh good. Though I know it’s an awful strain on you. But that wasn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”
Julian straightened for whatever would be coming. She noticed the copy of an Athena book tucked under the nurse’s arm.
“Your mother’s been a bit of a problem lately. Oh, she can be terribly charming when she wants to be. But you know, well, she’s been upsetting some of the other residents.”
“How?”
“She … she sings. Quite a bit sometimes. Quite loud, too, sometimes.”
Julian began to laugh.
“No, really, Miss Travis. At first we thought it was pleasant. Cheerful, you know. I mean better than having them rave or cry. But your mother never seems to know when to stop, she—”
Julian was laughing uncontrollably now, leaning against the wall, her knees sagging. The nurse giggled.
“I know, sometimes it gets to you. But there is a serious side. Truly, Miss Travis. Let’s be realistic.”
It sent Julian off into another gale of laughter, brought to a halt only by Mrs. Costello’s voice cutting through.
“She’s been exposing herself.”
“What—do—you—mean.” Each word came out of the laughter as if suddenly drenched with freezing rain.
“Just what I said. She exposes herself. To the nurses, the doctors, the male aides when they come to wash the floors. Even to the window-washer-man. She somehow manages to throw back or kick off the covers, lord knows how, and lies there with her private parts exposed, and even—well, she deliberately winks. Last night she shouted for about half an hour that she was ‘Queen of the Whores.’ Unfortunately, her speech was perfectly clear at the time. It took a while to get her settled down, I assure you.”
Julian looked at the nurse. A closet feminist. Keeps herself sane by reading Athena books. A nice woman. Compassionate. Possessed of a sense of humor. Tired.
“Mrs.—Ms. Costello. I don’t know what to tell you, but there’s nothing I can or would do at this point to stop my mother from doing whatever on earth she wants. If singing loudly gives her pleasure, I suggest you all learn somehow to enjoy that with her. I can imagine the awkwardness her other actions create for you, and I’m sorry for any inconvenience. But frankly, if that’s her way of affirming what’s left of her body, then I applaud it. It’s her body, her voice, her labia and clitoris, and if she wants to sing out any or all of them to the whole goddamned world, it’s about time. She’s paying a considerable rent to be here, and she has a right to her … eccentricities. Don’t take this wrong, please, Ms. Costello. It’s nothing against you. But do understand clearly that if I ever see her put in restraints for this harmless behavior—however socially unacceptable others may find it—I’ll sue Peacehaven for one hundred thousand dollars per every pubic hair of hers that’s been ruffled. I’m on her side, Ms. Costello. Let’s never forget that.”
The elevator doors opened. Julian stepped in and turned around, pressing the lobby button. As the doors began to slide shut in a narrowing frame around the stunned nurse, Julian called, “Happy Independence Day.”
CHAPTER TEN
Autumn, 1983
Twice a day then, for the rest of the summer, while Manhattan turned livid with August and the streets seemed in danger of buckling from concrete-reflected heat, Julian appeared at Peacehaven. She brought flowers three times a week, marking time by the seasonal shift: as tulips had given way to lilacs, so iris ceded to freesia, roses to tiger-lilies. Chrysanthemums began to bristle in the shops, heralding autumn. Every day she brought offerings of sustenance—custard or ice cream, soft Chinese noodles, breast of chicken—whatever might tempt the interest of the old woman who was waiting for her, waiting to get strong again, waiting to go home.
Julian was waiting, too, though for what she wasn’t sure. The remainder of her hours not spent at Peacehaven volleyed between Athena, house-sitting friends’ apartments during their vacations, weekends at the office trying to work on her book, and time spent with Iliana—or with Laurence. Each time she saw Laurence, she came away convinced she was waiting for the breakthrough which would permit her, too, to go back home. Each time she saw Iliana, she came away suspecting she was waiting for something else, some definitive sign or act that would propel her forward. Each time she saw Hope, she came away with the unsettling belief that such a sign would come neither from the husband nor the lover, but from the mother.
By the end of August, Hope’s plaintive refrain, “Home, go home,” seemed the sign, though Julian chided herself for falling prey to infantile magical thinking in interpreting it as such. But being in Hope’s presence had become a peculiarly safe activity. There, desp
ite the grief and pre-death mourning that characteristically prevail at such a bedside, a restful cocoon enwrapped both mother and daughter. Some evenings Julian would simply sit watching Hope sleep, a slumber so deep she might already be exploring the outskirts of a region distant from consciousness. Some days Hope would listen, with the intense absorption of those who don’t comprehend, while Julian told bedtime stories of a future, shining and peaceful, that waited as soon as Hope was strong enough to be smuggled out of the brothel.
Weeks had passed since the mother last recognized her visitor as her daughter. Julian wondered whether that was not the reason for the serenity between them; she was now “Friend,” the familiar stranger who could be trusted to watch over the baby in the crib, who brought food safe to eat, who had miraculously been sent to help plan an escape. The ache of longing to be recognized as Julian, to be perceived as herself by her mother, was acute. But it was an old ache, after all, and she was becoming reconciled to the certainty that recognition would never now anoint them both with a mutual healing. Instead, the autonomy and authority this new role of Friend conferred on Julian was its own relief. Somewhere buried beneath the ache, she was as grateful to Hope for freeing her from Julian’s identity as Hope was to Friend for promising freedom from the brothel. The eagle of guilt at last seemed to have lifted its wings from the two women, while they waited, suspended in time, ignorance, and merciful pretense, for the perfecting of their relative liberations.
But the eagle perched on the nursing-home portal, to hover over Julian the moment she stepped out through the door. Guilt about Laurence. Guilt now about Iliana. Guilt about myriad details which seemed daily to sift through her fingers.
She had not been able to do a penny’s worth of fundraising for Jenny’s state-assembly campaign. She was late on her deadline in writing the promised foreword for Sabrina’s book. She had reneged on attending the press conference for the Reproductive Technology Alert Network and even forgotten to send a statement of support. She had declined countless invitations to lunch, dinner, coffee, “just talk.” She did manage to get out to Staten Island to visit Anna, recovering from a hysterectomy, only to find Anna accusing her of being anti-social, withdrawn from everyone: “You’ve changed, Julian.” It made her wonder whether the grapevine was onto her relationship with Iliana—“another heterosexual bites the dust”—but decided that was paranoid and attributed the accusational tone to Anna’s depression. There was no way to explain her own crises without still further exposure, further provocation of advice. Besides, Julian was finally bored with talking about her own crises.
Had she changed so much? She told herself she was not being irresponsible, that there were other priorities, that she was merely trying to survive, that the sheer expenditure of energy involved in juggling emotional and physical demands depleted her. As much for practical support as for affection, she spent more time now at Iliana’s, which contented her lover but increased Julian’s guilt—especially whenever she saw Laurence. The Independence Day revelations already had faded dim as if they were epiphanies of a previous incarnation. She told herself that her salvation would be honesty, so she kept Iliana informed about the relaxation of tension with Laurence. But this was done at the cost of increasing tension with Iliana. There was only so much space for air in the balloon; if you compressed it in one place it bulged in another. There was neither time nor space to integrate all these rapid, drastic rites of passage. Obsessively, futilely, Julian interrogated herself. How had she got herself into this triangle? Did she secretly relish it? Was she reenacting center-stage melodrama at the cost of real people’s real pain? Which brought her full circle under the beak and wings of guilt again, until she looked forward to those sheltered moments at Hope’s bedside, where the priority of performing Friend convincingly was so great as to cleanse her awareness for a time of all other considerations.
“Home. Go home.” Julian knew it was the cry of an old woman wanting to return to cluttered rooms that no longer existed, to walls no longer bedecked with images of The Baby but now freshly painted and hung with artifacts of new inhabitants who walked the scraped and gleaming parquet floors. Yet despite Julian’s knowledge, “Home, go home,” sounded like a mantra of wisdom mystically communicated from one who stood now at the final gates of awe, one who no longer had any need to lie.
But where was home for her? Not with Iliana, at least not yet, not for a long time. Not the briefly dreamt-of apartment of her own: no money, no time to apartment-hunt, no energy or vision for the enormity of such an endeavor. Back to Laurence, then, and the loft which had been home for so long? She was afraid. Just that, afraid—of more scenes, more possession, more repetition. But Laurence had changed …
There would be one step, perhaps, a test of both herself and him, which might hint a prognosis about their marriage. There would be one step—simultaneously a defiance of Iliana’s advice, a gesture of the sort Laurence claimed she no longer offered him, and an act of ethical integrity. There would be one step, she told herself, which might show her if only by default the direction she really wanted to follow—the way a child plays chance counting games when unable to make a decision, and discovers in the process what was desired all along. Not until the last number falls does the child realize that this choice confirms or disappoints the real wish—and if the latter, the child can always count again, until coincidence and desire cohere. She would take the step. She would tell Laurence about Iliana.
It was a Saturday afternoon, when she had come back to the loft to pick up a book from her study. Laurence was home. He asked if she wanted some coffee. So they sat in her old study, drinking coffee and chatting amiably, as if at home together again. The atmosphere was peaceful, the tone intimate. She told him.
“I assumed as much, Jule,” he said hoarsely, “and if it’s what you want, I’m glad for you. Honest … But I wish—” He looked up at her from where he’d been staring into his coffee cup. For a moment, intensity radiated from his eyes the way his lust to change the world once had. He took a deep breath. “I wish,” his words spilled out, “that you’d give us another chance. At least as much a chance as anybody new, even if it is a woman. We’ve come so far, changed so much, together and apart. What a loss. That there’s no Kent Campbell around to introduce us. That the person you are now and the person I am now won’t even get a chance to meet.”
Whether it was her own lack of marginal strength, or Hope’s chanted instruction, or what shone through his eyes in that appeal, Julian didn’t know and no longer cared. A sense of inevitability, a fatalistic optimism, were at work in her. That evening, in tears, she told her lover she would be returning to her husband.
Iliana smiled and shrugged, not trying to hide her attempt to hide her pain.
“I expected this. I knew it. Well … you must try again if you feel you must. Whatever you suspect about me, Juliana, I do want to love you in freedom, not in captivity.” Iliana permitted herself a philosophical laugh, but it emerged trailing an afterbirth of sarcasm. “How I do abhor clichés, and how I’ve walked right into one.”
“You could never be anything but an absolute original,” Julian cut in fiercely.
“Oh no, my love. A cliché as tedious as a photograph of a baby nose-to-nose with a kitten. The lesbian lover who infuses her heterosexual belovèd with energy—which. then gets drained from that relationship and reinvested in the belovèd’s worn out marriage.” Iliana laughed again, openly bitter this time.
Julian cast an unconscious, desperate look around her, searching for a way out. “That’s not what’s happened—I never meant—I never promised—”
Her anguish seduced Iliana away from her own. Iliana felt the strengthening self-preoccupation of irony ebb from her like a donation of blood for transfusion. She reached for Julian, knowing herself a battlefield between warring armies of lofty and base love, but unsure which was which.
“I know, mi sueño, I know. You never promised. You never meant. Forget what I said. We’re nei
ther of us clichés. It’s just that … I will worry about you. You will be careful regarding Larry?”
Fresh tears, a more urgent clinging.
“I’ll be careful, yes. I love him, Iliana. But not in the old way. It will take a long time, I’m afraid, to build back my trust of him. But I’ve got to give it one more try, ’Yana. And I’m too tired to run anymore. I want to go home.”
The silence was a din of words checked, reined, unsaid.
“You—You will call me?”
“I will call you every single day, ’Yana, if you permit it. I can’t endure the thought of not seeing you, of not—May I? May I continue to see you during this … whatever, this trial period?… As a friend?”
“As whatever you see when you look at me, mi amada.”
So they had wept together in each other’s arms. Another mourning, Julian thought, another murder, more pain I’ve caused. Another stereotype enacted, another straight woman returning to her man after playing with a woman who loved her. But there were other ghostly refrains, too. I made you, I taught you, I showed you. Then Julian would think of her desk, her bookshelves gleaming in the lamplight, her own doorkey. If it was all to turn out the same, then why not the familiar mode? Why fly to others that we know not of?
At first it did feel like coming home. At first she and Laurence talked—about everything: Hope and Iliana and the money burdens, the politics and pain and caring and the waste it would be if they failed one another. At first they tried making love, awkwardly, finding their way back to one another like strangers, but lacking the armor of superficiality strangers wear. At first, when she met Iliana for coffee, she had to admit that yes, they were really trying and yes, it seemed to be working. At first, when her friends at Athena congratulated her on having “worked it out,” that felt good.
Never to know or comprehend why knowing and comprehension weren’t enough; when or how it began to dissolve. Never to fathom how, so swiftly, toward the end of September, it already was re-enacting a quiet hell. Reopening the scabs. Debridement.
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