Warm November

by Kathleen Knowles

  The chairs were set up in a circle, and she had a moment of indecision over which one to pick but finally settled on one that didn’t have a person on either side. Hayley smiled vaguely at the few women who were already there and tried to find a comfortable position for her butt. The chairs were just a small cut above cheap folding chairs. The other chairs filled up, and Hayley looked around curiously. She wasn’t sure what she’d expected, but most everyone looked pretty normal. The age range of the group members, she guessed, went from fortyish to over seventy. Coming out at seventy. Now that was something. Anything’s possible, she guessed. Even finding love at such an advanced age.

  Finally, a dark-haired, butch-looking woman spoke up and said, “Let’s get started. I’m Amy. Please everyone introduce yourself. If it’s your first time, please say so.”

  Hayley tried to find clues to remembering names, but it wasn’t her forte. She gave up.

  When it was her turn, Hayley said her name and that it was her first time at the meeting. A lot of people murmured “hello,” “welcome,” or “nice to meet you.” She was embarrassed but in a good way.

  Amy said, “This is a coming-out group. The format is modeled after the consciousness-raising groups from second-wave feminism. We focus primarily on issues relating to sexuality and age, although we do discuss other things. There are no rules, but we ask that everyone be respectful of others, not criticize or judge, and speak from her own experience. That’s how we help each other. Also please be respectful of time limits.” Well, that all sounded good to Hayley, but she wondered if everyone went along.

  “Let’s hear from Hayley since it’s her first time here. Tell us about yourself—where you came from and how you ended up here.” Amy gave her a great big encouraging grin.

  Hayley was speechless. She’d thought, somehow, she could just listen, at least at first. Not to be.

  “Oh, uh. Thanks. Yes, I uh. After, um.” Oh, great. She couldn’t even form a complete sentence.

  She haltingly told an abbreviated version of her history up to the point of moving in with Merle.

  “So how do you feel now?” asked Norma, the oldest woman.

  “Good, I guess. It’s wonderful to not be stuck in a worthless marriage. To be on my own. It’s nice.” Even to herself, she didn’t sound convincing. She could see some skeptical looks around the circle.

  “I was terrified,” said Amy.

  “So was I,” said someone else.

  “Petrified. Completely lost,” said a third woman.

  “I had no idea what to do.”

  “It was half agony, half ecstasy.”

  “More like ninety percent agony and ten percent ecstasy. And I think you can guess what part was the ecstasy.” The woman, whose name was Diane, smirked. A few women laughed, but most of them seemed to ignore the cynicism.

  “It was like taking a trip to a foreign country where you don’t speak the language and don’t even have a phrase book to help you translate.”

  Hayley absorbed their words and calmed down. This was the core of self-help, she supposed: you identified with each other. She’d thought maybe she was having a harder time than other women. Not the case. It was reassuring to know she was no more scared or inept than anyone else.

  “So,” Amy said, “we all agree it’s a scary thing to become a lesbian at our age?”

  There were lots of nods and muttered assents. Hayley joined in.

  “That said, what’s good about it?”

  This question perked everyone up, and this time the round-robin statements were far more positive.

  “You get to be yourself.”

  “You’re not faking anything anymore.”

  “It feels natural.”

  “It feels right.”

  “It’s like coming home.” The “coming home” phrase was arresting. To Hayley, it made sense. In an essential manner, she was coming home to herself, her true self. Up until the year before she’d been enacting some inauthentic version of herself. She was a person who looked like Hayley, talked like Hayley, but wasn’t truly real.

  Amy said, “Well, let’s do check-in, and then I think it’s Moira’s turn to pick a topic.”

  She turned to Hayley and said, “Every meeting, we do a drawing, and whoever’s picked comes ready to start a discussion at the next meeting.”

  “Sounds good,” Hayley said. “Uh-oh” was what she thought. Then she reminded herself that she’d come for some help and support. If she was going to get any benefit out of this exercise, she’d have to participate and quite likely be honest about what was going on with her.

  “Moira, you have the floor,” Amy said.

  “Right, what I want to talk about is coming out at work.” With that she launched into a long description of the various responses of her coworkers at the high-end store where she was an assistant manager. Hayley found it fascinating in a voyeuristic way. But it also made her think about herself.

  No one at Flaherty and McQuillen law firm except Britt knew about Hayley’s recent changes. Surprisingly, Britt was good at keeping her secret. She hadn’t asked herself why she hadn’t told anyone else. They all knew she was divorced, but that was it. She figured nothing else was important. Maybe. Maybe not. As she heard the rest of the group members describe their experiences, she realized that without exception, they’d tried to let everyone in their lives know about the radical change that had taken place.

  One woman said, “It almost made me pass out when I told my boss I wanted to bring a female date to the annual company dinner. He was fine with it, but it made me nuts. I assumed everyone was going to be like ‘Oh no. She’s a lesbian. Oh my God.’ But it was me who had the problem with it.”

  Hayley dreaded taking her turn, but when it came around, she took a deep breath and said, “No one but one person at my law office knows. But I don’t think it’s any of their business who I see outside of work. My son knows. He’s fine with it.”

  “I think,” Amy said, “the more people I can tell, the more real it makes it. It’s not 1972, and we don’t live in the flyover states. This is the fucking Bay Area! No one should have a problem with it. If they do, it really is their issue.” Many assents from the group.

  Hayley said, “Well, I suppose that’s true. I’ll think about it.”

  After the meeting was over, Hayley took time to talk to a few women and was struck by their friendliness. Her preconceptions were basically unfounded. No one hit on her. They were actually there to help each other through a big transition. It was as simple as that, apparently. She had no doubt some would date each other. It made sense. But no one there really sparked any interest for her. She wondered why.

  Her thoughts jumped all over the place as she drove home. She thought about work, she thought about Merle, she thought about her mom. She hadn’t come out to her mother. Yet. Why was she so reluctant? More teenage angst, she guessed, and snorted. When was she going to be a grown-up?

  Well, none of this was boring, that was for sure. And she didn’t have a time schedule. Where it would all lead, who knew?

  *

  Merle invited herself to Clea and Sigrid’s for dinner. They lived in the outer Mission, not far from Bernal Heights, in a brightly painted Victorian duplex they’d rented for years. Clea always said they’d missed the window of opportunity to buy and so they’d kept the same rent-controlled flat. They had a reasonably good landlord so it was okay. No pets allowed though. Merle wouldn’t be able to abide that, and she’d come to consider renting the equivalent of throwing money down a rat hole, but not everyone looked at home ownership as the ultimate goal.

  When the door opened, Merle handed Clea the gardenias she’d picked from her garden.

  “Oh, girl, you don’t have to do this every time. I told you.” They hugged. “But thanks anyhow.”

  They settled down to eat the roast chicken Sigrid had prepared. She was the cook in the family and was good at it, so Merle loved to eat at their house. Usually, they went out. It was much nic
er to be in a home though. Restaurants were fine, but Merle always felt like they had to get up and leave as soon as they finished eating so the restaurant could turn the table. She and Kay had gone to Spain a few years before, and it wasn’t like that in Europe. They’d had to practically beg the waiter to bring them the check.

  “So, Mer. What’s new? You dating anyone yet?” Sigrid asked brightly as she stirred what appeared to be a risotto.

  “Nope. I told you I’m not ready to go there.”

  “I know you’ve got some healing to do, but in the meantime, what’s wrong with dating or having sex with someone? I’m just a little concerned with you getting stuck in a celibacy rut. Better look out. Use it or lose it.” Sigrid shook her head. Then she dished up the risotto and some steamed veggies, and they sat down to eat.

  This remark aggravated Merle, but she quashed her irritation because Sigrid was only yanking her chain. Besides, it was too close to the truth, and she knew it didn’t apply just to her body. If she was too protective of her emotions, the romantic loving ones, that is, they, too, could atrophy. The breakup with Kay had shut her down emotionally. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life in a state of high alert in case someone might want to get close.

  “Spare me. I think I’ve still got a few good years of use, as you put it, left.”

  “Well. Sure, but get going is all I’m saying.”

  “Sigrid, love, leave Merle alone,” Clea said. “She’s got to go at her own pace. She don’t need you nagging her.”

  “Okay, then. I surrender. We’ll change the subject.”

  “Good. Because I’ve got something to ask you about Hayley.”

  “Oh yes, Hayley. What about her? Are we really changing the subject?” Sigrid speared a piece of asparagus, took a bite, and grinned.

  Merle glared at her. “She’s looking for women to date. I took her out to the hill with me a couple weeks ago, and well…” Merle described the consequences.

  “Sounds like she’s doing okay.”

  “Well. Yeah, kind of, but she wants to widen her net. Not surprisingly, she’s a bit old fashioned. She says she’s looking online, but I get the impression she’d rather have introductions. Got any suggestions?”

  “Yeah. You,” Sigrid said flatly.

  “Other than me. I told you I’m not interested. Besides, she’s not the kind of woman I’m looking for. She’s just coming out so she’s got a lot of living to do, you know? And we’re roommates.”

  “Oh, is this what she told you?” This time the skepticism was coming from Clea.

  “Well. No. I just think that’s what’s going on. She keeps talking to me about stuff. She went out with my friend Terry, though it didn’t go anywhere.”

  “So what’s the problem?” Sigrid asked. “Was there blowback from the date with Terry? What are you really asking?”

  “No, there wasn’t any blowback. I just don’t want to get into some codependent quagmire with her. I like to get involved with people. I like to help, as you know, but I have to not get pulled into the drama.”

  “What drama?”

  “Well, nothing. So far.” Sigrid was making her feel like her attitude was ridiculous. Maybe it was. Maybe she was way off base. She was running for cover when no actual bombs were falling.

  “So. She’s asking to meet people. That doesn’t seem too complicated.” Clea was eyeing her critically.

  Merle realized she wasn’t conveying the real ambivalence of her feelings. She didn’t want to get involved with Hayley because she did have feelings. Her two friends and their pointed questions were hitting her right where the problem was. She wanted them to tell her to back off, but she wasn’t being totally honest. They likely wouldn’t say that anyhow. Merle decided to drop the subject. She was going to have to monitor herself. She could be friendly and helpful to Hayley, but she couldn’t get involved with her. She was going to have to hang on until the feelings dissipated, which they would, eventually.

  “Yep. So if you can think of anyone, let me know.”

  “We can hardly help her find people to date if we don’t know anything about her.” Sigrid smiled brightly.

  “Uh-oh. What are you thinking about?” Merle asked.

  Sigrid glanced at Clea, who merely cocked an eyebrow. She generally went along with whatever scheme Sigrid cooked up.

  “We’re thinking about a hike in Point Reyes. Why don’t you ask her to come along?”

  “I love Point Reyes, but I’ll have to leave Arthur behind.”

  “No you don’t. Bring him along. If we get stopped by a park ranger, you can just play dumb.”

  “All right,” Merle said begrudgingly. She didn’t know why she was being such a dipshit about it. It was a perfectly reasonable suggestion. With Sigrid and Clea, they couldn’t get into trouble. It would just be a group of friends on an outing. Sigrid and Clea could get a better idea of what Hayley was like. Maybe they’d have some ideas for women for her to meet. Hayley also ought to see what a functional lesbian couple looked like.

  Merle reproved herself again for feeling like she ought to manage Hayley’s experience. She was having a very tough time between wanting to help Hayley adjust to her new life and trying to keep her distance emotionally. Furthermore, she’d come over to Sigrid and Clea’s to talk to them about how not to get involved, and now she planned to invite Hayley on an outing with them. Somehow, this wasn’t going the way she wanted it.

  *

  “Thanks very much for asking me along on your hike,” Hayley said as they got settled in the car for their drive out to Point Reyes. She caught Merle’s eye and grinned. Merle’s nod was affable.

  Arthur sat upright between them in the backseat of Sigrid’s Subaru wagon. He clearly knew they were going on an adventure, and his excitement was palpable.

  “Merle told us you’ve never been. We hope you like it.”

  “Oh, I’m sure I will.”

  When Merle had asked her a few days before, she was thrilled. Other than dog walks, they hadn’t done anything together besides eat dinner a couple of times. Taking a hike in Point Reyes struck her as a quintessentially lesbian thing to do, though she realized all sorts of people did it all the time. She was going with lesbians, and that made it special to her. When Hayley confessed she’d never been to Point Reyes or done any other kind of outdoor activity, Merle’s solemn instructions about what to wear and what to bring were endearing.

  “Are you sure it’s okay with your friends?”

  “Yes. Absolutely. They asked me to ask you along.”

  “That’s so sweet.” Merle had smiled vaguely but said nothing more.

  So here they were. Hayley felt like a kid being taken on a special trip, kind of like Arthur. She hugged him and he tried to lick her face. She looked up at the towers of the Golden Gate Bridge as they crossed. The movement made her dizzy, but in a good way.

  Other than crossing the bridge, the car ride wasn’t especially fun. They followed US 101 with all its traffic through the northern suburbs of Marin County, which consisted of nothing more than fast-food places and car dealerships for an interminable amount of time. Once they exited the highway and left San Anselmo behind and got on the back roads, it was far more pleasant.

  “Oh, look how cute!” Hayley exclaimed as they passed through the village of Olema with its Victorian B&B, the Olema Inn.

  “We can come back here for dinner or go into Point Reyes Station.”

  “Merle said you like this place in Point Reyes. The Pine Cone Diner?”

  From the passenger seat, Clea turned around and fixed her dark eyes on Merle and Hayley. “Merle is very good about matronizing businesses. Keep it in the family.”

  “What do you mean?” Hayley asked.

  Merle had been looking out the window at the passing scenery somewhat dreamily. What was she thinking? Was she remembering another trip at another time with her ex?

  “She means the Pine Cone diner is owned by lesbians. A couple.”

  “How nice. S
o you’ve been there?”

  “Kay and I used to come up here.” Merle looked unhappy.

  Hayley was sorry she’d said anything, but how was she supposed to know this was a sensitive subject? “Anywhere’s fine with me.”

  Sigrid asked Clea, “Should we go up Sir Francis Drake a little ways so Hayley can see Tomales Bay?”

  “Sure.”

  “How gorgeous is this?” Hayley said in wonderment. The two-lane road wound along a huge, flat body of water. It was so still, the hills on the other side were reflected perfectly on its surface. It looked like a lake.

  “So, Merle,” Clea said. “Tell Hayley all about Point Reyes.”

  Sigrid turned in her seat so she could look at Hayley.

  Merle gave her a tiny glare, but then she smiled brightly. “I’m the geek in this group. I always look up everything about everywhere we go. I want to know all about it.”

  “Oh, tell me. I want to know too.”

  Merle explained that the Tomales Bay was part of the San Andreas earthquake fault and separated the Point Reyes Peninsula from the mainland. She showed Hayley where Black Mountain was and Mount Vision and the village of Inverness.

  “We could drive this road for another hour before reaching the very end,” Sigrid said.

  “I wish we could go,” Merle said, “but it takes too long and not that many places are okay for Arthur. So we’re going to Bear Valley.”

  “It’s all wonderful. Why can’t we take Arthur some places?” Hayley asked.

  “Point Reyes is a national park and they have strict rules about dogs.”

  They parked and set off on their hike, which took them from the visitors’ center through the woods out to the ocean. As they found their pace, Sigrid engaged Hayley while Merle and Clea strode ahead. Hayley watched Merle from behind again. Was this becoming a pattern?

  “So Merle said you’re divorced and you think you’re a lesbian. Is that true?” Sigrid’s tone was friendly, but her directness startled Hayley.

  “Boy, you don’t mince words, do you?” Hayley didn’t know if she was relieved or annoyed.