Hard Fall

by Pascal Scott

  “Earthquake month,” Maggie said. “Quite traumatic for everyone. But of course you had your own trauma to deal with.”

  “Yeah,” Stone said.

  Maggie rocked once in her chair. “I also saw on your information form that eventually you learned that Emily had died,” she said gently.

  “Right,” Stone confirmed.

  “It was suicide?”

  “No,” Stone said firmly. “That’s what they called it, but Emily wouldn’t have killed herself.”

  “I see,” Maggie said. “We’ll come back to that later. I want to return to your symptoms, to what brings you to therapy today.”

  “Okay,” Stone said. “I’m not sleeping. I’m exhausted all the time. I burst into tears for no reason. And I don’t cry. Normally, I don’t cry at all. I haven’t cried since I was a kid.”

  “That must make you feel overwhelmed,” Maggie said.

  Stone nodded. “Yeah.”

  “And I’m wondering what you’re doing to cope with these feelings of being overwhelmed.”

  “I try to tough it out,” Stone said. “And I drink. I suppose I drink too much.”

  Maggie made a note in her pad. “Have you tried talking to friends?”

  “No,” Stone said. “I don’t really have friends that I can talk to about this.”

  “Mm-hmm,” Maggie said. “Now you say you haven’t cried ‘since you were a kid.’ I’d like to hear a little more about that. Tell me about your childhood.”

  Stone settled back as far as she could on the couch. “Not much to tell. I grew up in the Mission. Mom is Mexican and Dad is Irish, so I didn’t really fit in. Mixed, you know.”

  “Yes,” Maggie said.

  “I stayed to myself in school, pretty much. And I knew I was gay. I think I always knew. That made me different, too. La machorra, the kids called me. I had to ask my mom what it meant.

  “What does it mean?”

  “Dyke. I found out later at school. My mom told me it means something nasty and that I shouldn’t pay attention to the mean girls who called me that.”

  “Is that what made you cry? The mean girls who bullied you in school?”

  “No,” Stone said. “That wasn’t it. It was my sister.”

  “What about your sister?”

  “My sister, Marie, was always in trouble. She had a terrible temper—like my mom—and got into fights at school. I’d see her out on the playground cornered by a gang of girls, and I’d have to go rescue her.”

  “You would defend Marie physically? Her name was Marie?”

  “Right, Isabella Marie McStone. She went by Marie. Yeah, between the two of us, we could usually brawl our way out of a fight. And then we’d get in trouble and be sent home, and Mom and Dad would pop us for fighting.”

  “Your parents hit you?” Maggie asked, alarmed.

  “Well, yeah, but just as a lesson. Kind of ironic, though. We’d get hit to teach us not to hit.”

  “Both of them struck you?”

  “Uh-huh. Dad with his hand and Mom with the back of a hairbrush.”

  Stone chuckled at the memory.

  “Now, I’m wondering about something,” Maggie said. “These are heavy issues that we’re talking about here, yet you’re kind of laughing about them. I’m just wondering—how do you feel talking about these memories?”

  “Oh, I can laugh about it now, but it felt pretty serious at the time,” Stone said.

  “And that’s why you cried.”

  “Well, I cried because I was frustrated, I think that was more of the reason.”

  “Frustrated how?”

  “Because my sister wouldn’t stay out of trouble. I did. I was the good daughter, even though I was a machorra. Or maybe because I was a machorra. My mom pretended like I wasn’t, but she knew. They were both in denial about my sexuality. Still are. Marie loved boys and hated girls. At least the girls in the Mission. So there was nothing wrong with Marie except that she was ‘hot in the head and hot in the pants,’ as Mom used to say. That was later, when Marie and I were teenagers.”

  “Marie is younger than you?”

  “Yeah, she’s my baby sister.”

  “And you feel protective of her.”

  “I did, yeah. I did.”

  “You did. You don’t any longer?”

  “No, Marie is married now. She’s her husband’s problem. Although she says it’s the other way around. She says she’s got two babies to take care of, the little one and her husband.”

  Maggie grinned, causing laugh lines around her eyes. “Coming back to you, so you cried when you were a child. When did you stop crying?”

  Stone had to think about this. “I guess when I was a teenager. Maybe fifteen, sixteen? I guess I toughened up. You know, I had to put on a hard shell.”

  “And when Emily died, the shell came off?” Maggie probed.

  “I guess.”

  Maggie nodded. She wrote in her notepad for what seemed to Stone like several long minutes. Then she looked up and smiled in a satisfied way.

  “I want to stop for a moment, Stone, to tell you that I think it’s great you’ve come here today. I know you said on your information sheet that you’ve never sought counseling before. And I understand that it’s hard to seek support for such personal issues, but that’s why we’re here, and that’s what we hope to accomplish in therapy. I want to assure you that you’re not being weak by seeking treatment. There is definitely evidence to suggest that psychotherapy can help with the kinds of issues you’re dealing with. Maybe at our next session we can look a little more closely at that shell you put on as a very young woman to see if it still works for you.”

  Chapter Five

  “Girlfriend,” Marcus said. “No offense, but when was the last time you saw a stylist?”

  Stone touched a strand of hair that had grown over the top of her right earlobe. She shrugged. “I don’t remember.” And she didn’t. It was sometime before Emily disappeared, nine weeks ago.

  “It’s time,” Marcus said. “Make an appointment.”

  Stone had worn the same cut since the early seventies—a short buzz of her straight black hair—and had used Quickcuts in the Stonestown shopping center near the university. The salon was convenient and affordable, and Stone had seen the same stylist for years. She paid two dollars more to book an appointment with Faith, but it was worth it. Stone called the salon and was surprised to learn that Faith no longer worked for Quickcuts.

  “Wow,” Stone said, caught off-guard. “When did this happen?”

  “I don’t know,” a girl named Trisha said from the other end of the line. “Maybe a month or two ago. But you’re welcome to come in and see one of our other stylists.”

  “Do you know where Faith went?” Stone persisted.

  “I’m not allowed to tell you that, ma’am,” Trisha said curtly.

  “Uh, okay. Well, I’ll just stop by after work and get whoever is available.”

  “We’re open until 8:00 tonight.”

  Stone was there by 5:30.

  “Don’t sit down,” Trisha said, moving to the front counter where Stone was signing herself in. “You don’t have to wait. I’m free.”

  Trisha was short and tattooed with a nose ring that distracted Stone from looking into her eyes. As she followed Trisha to an available chair, Stone wondered absentmindedly if Trisha was a lesbian. She could never tell anymore with the under-thirty crowd.

  “How do you like it?” Trisha asked into the mirror after covering Stone’s chest with a barber’s cape. “Faith took her client notes with her when she left.”

  “Buzzed,” Stone answered. “A clean buzz. Short as you can go.”

  “Uh-kay,” Trisha responded, spraying Stone’s hair from a plastic bottle.

  That was another thing Stone had liked about Faith. Faith knew how Stone liked her hair. She didn’t have to ask, and Stone didn’t need to worry about Faith doing it wrong. Plus, Faith didn’t talk much. Some stylists felt they had to chat up a clien
t the whole time she sat in the chair. Trisha seemed to be one of those.

  “How has your day been?” Trisha said as she worked.

  “Fine.” Stone closed her eyes, hoping Trisha would read her body language. She didn’t.

  “Mine too,” Trisha volunteered. “What do you do?”

  Clearly, Trisha wasn’t going to let Stone out of a conversation.

  “I work at State,” Stone answered, opening her eyes.

  “Yeah?” Trisha asked. “I’ve got a cousin going there. Studying computers. That’s the future, he says.”

  “He’s probably right,” Stone said.

  “You teach?”

  Stone sighed. The sigh went unnoticed. “No, I’m in administration.”

  “Administration, huh? Sounds important.”

  “It’s not.”

  “Is that too short?”

  “No. You can go shorter.”

  Trisha continued cutting, using a stainless steel comb and scissors. Stone noticed more combs preserved like formaldehyde fetuses in a disinfecting jar on the counter.

  “Yeah, too bad about Faith,” Trisha said.

  Now Stone was interested. “What about Faith?”

  “Well,” Trisha said and stopped her work, holding the scissors open as if they were legs doing the splits. Trisha lowered her voice confidentially, even though Stone was the only client in the shop. One employee had taken over the front desk position. Another lounged on a chair at the opposite end of the room reading a gossip magazine.

  “The reason Faith left was because of her husband. They were breaking up. Faith moved out of state just to get away from him. He beat her.”

  “That’s terrible,” Stone said. “I had no idea.”

  “Oh, I suspected something,” Trisha said in a normal pitch as she resumed clipping. “We all did. She came in once with her right eye swollen shut. But she wouldn’t talk about it. She never complained. Until the end, when she was leaving. That’s when she told us what had been going on.”

  “Terrible,” Stone said again. “Women shouldn’t have to put up with that crap from men.”

  “No, we shouldn’t,” Trisha agreed. “He showed up here once. Big guy. Good bod, nice looking. You could see what she saw in him. But a temper. He left his truck running right in front of the shop and came stomping in mad as hell. Yelling something about how Faith had forgot to pay the damn power bill again. How’s that?”

  Stone looked at the clean sweep of her head. All that was left was short black fuzz. “That’s good,” she said.

  “Here, let me neaten this up for you.”

  The electric razor buzzed on Stone’s neck. Trisha slipped the used comb into the jar of shining metal embryos. Faith was beaten. Emily was dead.

  Chapter Six

  “Tell me about Emily,” Maggie said.

  Stone’s chest collapsed like a blown-out balloon.

  “Emily,” she said, tearing up. She was still crying too easily. After three sessions, therapy hadn’t changed that.

  “Emily was…different, I guess that’s the word. Emily was different.”

  “Different, how?”

  Stone wiped a tear. She still felt embarrassed about crying, even in front of Maggie, who said it was natural and healthy.

  “Different from other girls I’ve dated. Emily was a woman-child. She could be sophisticated and sexy one minute and just incredibly naïve and immature the next. And then sometimes she would just disappear inside her head. She was mysterious. She was brilliant. She told me she belonged to Mensa, you know, the group for geniuses. She was the smartest girl I’ve ever known but smart in an intellectual way, not street-smart.”

  “Like you? Street-smart like you?” Maggie asked.

  “If you say so,” Stone said.

  “What else?”

  “She was the most stubborn girl I’ve ever been with, but at the same time, she was the most yielding. You know? When we had sex, all the stubbornness disappeared.”

  “The sex was good?” Maggie asked but without the gossipy interest Stone had learned to expect from a lot of lesbians.

  “Oh, yeah,” Stone said. “Best sex I’ve ever had—with anyone.”

  “You’ve had multiple partners?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Maggie made a note in her pad. “I want to hear more about Emily. She was different; she was stubborn; she was a woman-child. Your sex life together was good.”

  “Better than good,” Stone corrected.

  “Fabulous,” Maggie said. “Your sex life was fabulous.” Maggie chuckled before adding, “We should all be so lucky!”

  Stone watched as Maggie’s cheeks flushed.

  “I guess,” Stone said.

  Maggie fingered the beads of her mala. “I’m wondering what you’d say to Emily if she were here now.”

  Stone choked up. “I don’t know. I guess I’d tell her that I miss her. And that I’ll always love her.”

  Maggie nodded encouragingly. “What else?”

  “That I forgive her.”

  Maggie tilted her head in interest. “Forgive her? Forgive her for what exactly?”

  “Forgive her for dying, first off. And for not leaving that job.”

  “At the strip club.”

  “Peep show,” Stone corrected. “There’s a difference.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, with a peep show, there’s a window between the dancers and the customers. No window with a strip club.”

  “Oh,” Maggie said. “I didn’t know that.”

  “Why would you? It’s for straight men.”

  “And that’s why you feel the need to forgive Emily? For working in a club that catered to straight men?” Maggie interpreted.

  “Something like that,” Stone said.

  “Because straight men are…?”

  “Dangerous,” Stone supplied, without hesitation.

  Maggie nodded, pausing before speaking again. “We’re doing good work here, Stone. You should feel proud of yourself.”

  “If you say so,” Stone said.

  ****

  Stone was dreaming. She was walking through a big empty warehouse. As she walked, she passed long metallic sheets that were suspended from the ceiling. The sheets were twisting slightly, left to right. On each sheet, Stone saw a film in progress—a day at the beach or people laughing or candles burning on a birthday cake. Stone walked through the silent warehouse, moving between the gently twisting sheets, which partitioned the dark building into a kind of maze.

  Stone moved through the maze of sheets until she noticed one that was blank up ahead. Walking toward it, Stone’s gaze was led to something else. Next to the blank sheet stood a tall black box. Stone knew intuitively that inside the box she would find Emily, or at least an image of Emily, and that although the image wouldn’t be Emily—the real Emily whom Stone had known and loved in life—yet somehow it would be Emily. It would be a symbol, an icon of Emily. A signifier, as Emily would have said, a thing that was not the thing itself but pointed the way to the thing. Stone knew that somehow Emily was inside the shiny black box.

  Stone said to the box, “Do you want me to kiss you?”

  And the box communicated back without words, “Yes.”

  And Stone said, “How do you want me to do this?”

  And then she woke up.

  Chapter Seven

  Stone had always looked forward to the December holiday break, when the university closed its doors for a full week, but this year, she was dreading it. She made it through the weekend of the sixteenth and seventeenth by drinking at Mabel’s. Stone liked that bar, liked the crowd it attracted: blue-collar, tight-lipped, and unpretentious, the Dykes on Bikes gang. Stone didn’t ride, but she felt more comfortable with queer bikers than any of the other subgroups within the huge lesbian population of the Bay Area. Stone didn’t fit in with the Bay Area Career Women, those upwardly mobile social climbers. And not with the Berkeley Earth Mothers. Not the softball circle. No, Dykes on Bikes wa
s as close as Stone got to belonging to a lesbian clan.

  Starting on Monday the eighteenth, the week dragged. She had promised her mother that she would go to Most Holy Redeemer with the family on Christmas Eve, but that wasn’t until Sunday, the distant future. Even Maggie had abandoned her, canceling their weekly Tuesday evening session because of the holiday. During the week, Stone slept in until noon and sometimes never left the Victorian. She lay in bed and did nothing, literally nothing more than breathe.

  The only routine Stone could perform every day with any enthusiasm at all was feeding the cats upstairs, Missy and Hissy. Rick and Lynne Ketchum had asked that favor. They were good neighbors, the Ketchums—no loud music, no drunken fights, unlike some of the other renters Stone had known over the years. Every once in a while, the scent of marijuana wafted down from an open window when the wind blew it Stone’s way, but other than that, Stone barely knew the Ketchums were at home. Stone had said sure to the cat-feeding request. The couple was straight, but they were that kind of white liberal straight that Stone could tolerate, even though heterosexuals would always be breeders in Stone’s mind. The Ketchums hadn’t started breeding yet and contributing to the overpopulation of the world. The cats were their children, at least for the present.

  Rick had given Stone the key to the beveled glass door that stood parallel to the door to Stone’s lower level flat. Like so many Painted Ladies in San Francisco, the Victorian had been divided into two dwellings when the owner decided it was more profitable as a rental than as a home. Rick was a photographer. Lynne was a massage therapist. Rick said they were the perfect Bay Area couple—one was an artist, the other a healer.

  Missy and Hissy were spoiled Abyssinians. Each cat had its own bowl with its name engraved on the front. The bowls were glazed ceramic, cobalt blue, and looked handmade. Stone talked to the cats as she fed them kibble and Fancy Feast and refreshed their water (filtered, Lynne had insisted upon purified water, not tap).

  Vaguely and without much interest, each day Stone noticed the photographs on the hallway walls that led to the kitchen. Black and white landscapes, a few portraits. Clouds, leaves, Sutro Baths at the beach, the Cliff House, the Golden Gate Bridge. Rick wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t good enough to stand out among the hundreds of talented photographers in San Francisco.