Give, a novel

by Erica Carpenter Witsell

  Katherine stepped forward. “Well, look. What about this one?” She picked up a large, dark blue dildo from the display. Despite the color, it was very realistic. And big.

  “Um, doesn’t it seem a little big?”

  Katherine shrugged. “I like big.”

  “You do?” Emma was unprepared for the rush of jealousy that flooded her. Her cheeks burned.

  “What’s wrong? Why? Don’t you?”

  “I can’t talk about this here.”

  Katherine sighed. “Okay. Well, I like this one.”

  “It’s the first one you looked at. What about these?”

  Emma walked over to a corner display and picked up a more moderately sized gray dildo. The material felt different, not hard rubber like the other one. Like suede, almost.

  “Here, feel this. I like this better, I think.”

  Katherine nodded. “Okay.”

  Just then the spiky-haired woman appeared beside them. “Those are from our new silicone line,” she said.

  “I like the way they feel,” Emma said, forcing her voice to sound nonchalant. “The material, I mean.”

  The woman nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, they’re designed to be more realistic. Sort of like skin. But, just so you know, you do have to use a condom.”

  Emma and Katherine looked at each other. Emma put the dildo back on the display.

  “I know,” the woman said. “Most people have the same reaction. It’s a major disadvantage.”

  In the end, they settled on the blue dildo Katherine had picked out initially and a simple black harness.

  “We can get something different for you, you know,” Katherine whispered, but Emma shook her head.

  “That’s okay.”

  “But if you think it’ll be too big—”

  “It’s okay, Katherine. Let’s just stick with this one for now, okay?”

  When the cashier rang up their total, Emma was shocked. With the harness and the lubricant that the spiky-haired woman had recommended to them, the total was one-hundred sixty-nine dollars. Katherine reached inside her purse, but Emma elbowed her out of the way.

  “I’ll get this,” she said.

  Katherine put the plain brown paper bag on the back seat of her car, then opened the door for Emma to get in. When she got into the driver’s seat, she buckled up but didn’t start the car.

  “Now what?”

  “Could you drop me off at BART? There’s a station right up there,” Emma said.

  Katherine looked at her strangely. “You’re going home now?”

  Emma shrugged. “I guess. It’s almost three already. And I wanted to run. And get some grading done for tomorrow.”

  Katherine sighed. “All right.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I just thought . . .”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. That’s fine. But I can just take you home, you know. You don’t have to take BART.”

  “I really don’t mind. It’s not on your way.”

  “It’s fine. It’ll save you some time.”

  They rode in silence for a while. Finally, Katherine asked, “Is everything okay?”

  Emma put her hand over Katherine’s on the stick shift. “Of course.”

  Katherine glanced at her. “You’re acting . . . I don’t know. I thought you wanted to do this.”

  “I did. I do.”

  Katherine sighed. “It doesn’t seem like it.”

  Suddenly Emma understood. “You thought we would . . . Right now?”

  “I just thought—”

  “Well, we can. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

  “No, it’s fine. You’ve got stuff you want to do. I get it.”

  “No, Katherine. It’s okay. I’ll run tomorrow. You can come up.”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s fine. Just do your stuff. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Katherine, please. Just come up. You wanted to—”

  “And now I don’t.”

  “Katherine. I’m sorry. I just didn’t think we had to try it all out right away.”

  “We don’t.”

  “But you wanted to.”

  “And now I don’t. Will you drop it already?”

  “Fine.”

  Neither of them spoke as they drove the last few blocks to Emma’s apartment. When they arrived, Katherine stopped the car but did not turn off the engine.

  Emma reached for the door, then paused. “You sure you don’t want to come up?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, when will I see you?”

  “I don’t know. This week is pretty packed.”

  “What about Wednesday?”

  “I wanted to try out that yoga class.”

  “Thursday?”

  “Let’s just see, okay?”

  Finally, Katherine turned to look at her. “Bye.”

  Emma opened the door and climbed out. “Bye.” She was already moving away from the car when she heard Katherine call her back.

  “Emma.”

  Emma’s heart gave an extra little beat of expectation.

  “Yeah?”

  “You forgot the bag.” Katherine tossed her head, gesturing to the back seat.

  “Oh. That’s okay. You can hold onto it for us.”

  “But you paid for it.”

  “So what?”

  “So it’s technically yours.”

  “Just keep it, Katherine,” Emma said, turning away.

  The rest of the afternoon, Emma’s gut felt hollow, like a pumpkin that has been scraped out before carving. She ate peanut butter on toast for dinner, but afterwards, when Katherine still hadn’t called, the feeling was worse. She made herself some decaf tea and forced herself to sit down with a pile of her students’ essays, but her mind kept slipping back to those last few moments in the car with Katherine. She could hear Katherine’s words—Let’s just see, okay?—and the coolness in her voice, as if Emma had no claim to her. Emma was glad that she had not agreed to take the bag. Simply knowing that it was in Katherine’s possession was a small comfort to her. At least there was that: some tangible thing that connected them, the anonymously wrapped package a small assurance that Katherine would not, now, be able to slip out of Emma’s life as quickly as she had slipped into it.

  Emma fell asleep in the armchair, waking when the pile of essays she had been grading fell from her lap. It was only 9:20 p.m., but she went to bed anyway, although not before checking her answering machine. Its double zeros peered at her in the dark like two empty eyes.

  By Tuesday, Katherine still hadn’t called. On Tuesday evening, Emma finally dialed her number and waited through all six interminable rings before leaving a forcedly cheerful message on her voicemail. Katherine did not call back.

  On Wednesday morning before she left for work, Emma opened her laptop and searched for the phone number of a florist in Bernal Heights. When she got home, there was still no message from Katherine. She called the florist and ordered a dozen stargazer lilies to be sent to her at work.

  “Would you like a personalized message, dear?” the woman asked her.

  Emma hesitated. “I’m sorry,” had come first to mind, but a stubborn part of her would not permit it. What had she done, after all, to be sorry for? There was also no way of knowing if Katherine’s three days of silence meant anything at all. They had not been in the habit of speaking every day.

  Perhaps everything was completely normal, Emma thought. Perhaps their parting Sunday afternoon had simply been a single note of discord, and Emma alone was guilty of replaying it again and again. She could almost hear Katherine dismissing her anxiety of the last several days: “Silly, you thought I was leaving you over that?”

  “Did you want to include a message, dear?” the florist asked again.

  “Uh, yeah. Um, ‘I’m excited to see you.’ No, wait. ‘I can’t wait to see you.’”

  “Any name?”

  “No.” Emma wasn’t sure if Katherine
was out to her colleagues at work. “No name. And—” Emma hesitated. “Actually, could you change the message to ‘Thinking of you’?”

  “Thinking of you. Of course.”

  All three versions were equally true, but Emma didn’t like how eager the first two sounded. If Katherine was taking a step back, Emma didn’t want to be the one who couldn’t wait to see her again.

  CHAPTER 41

  Emma

  Emma couldn’t wait to see Katherine again. That night as she lay in bed alone, she thought of how soft Katherine’s skin was when she rubbed her cheek against her belly, the weight of her breasts in her hands, the nub of her clitoris against her tongue. Emma shut her eyes and felt her desire billow up in her and then settle against her skin, like a sheet hovers in the air above a bed before coming to rest at last.

  “Katherine,” she whispered into the empty room. “Please call me.”

  The next morning, the fog was so thick she could not see the end of her street. As she rode her bike to the BART station, she could feel the tiny droplets colliding with her face. By the time she got to the station, her eyes and nose were streaming. She found a crumpled napkin in her backpack and blew her nose.

  The train was crowded and warm, and Emma felt herself begin to sweat as she maneuvered her bicycle through the car.

  “Sorry. Excuse me,” she said again and again, as she jostled her way through the crowd. She tried to ignore the looks of annoyance the other passengers gave her as they dodged the handlebars of her bike and moved their bags out of the way of its wheels.

  Eventually Emma made her way to the end of the car, where she could push her bike against the wall and keep it out of everyone’s way. She steadied it with one hand and grabbed a handle that hung from the ceiling with the other. Her underarms felt damp.

  “Would you like to sit down?” she heard someone ask. “I can move over so you can still hold your bike.”

  “I’m fine,” Emma said, glancing down, but the owner of the voice had already gathered up her bag and was sliding over, making room for her at the end of the row.

  “Thanks,” Emma said, sitting down next to her. The young woman wore faded jeans that had a swirly design snaking its way down the side of her thigh. Her short hair was bleached blond with black roots, and a tiny diamond stud glittered in her nose. She bent over suddenly and reached into her bag, then handed Emma a small rectangle of pink paper.

  “I don’t know if you like punk, but here.”

  Emma glanced at the paper. “Sorry?”

  “It’s for my band. We’re playing tonight at the Black Bird. Do you know where it is?”

  “Yeah,” Emma lied. Girls like this intimidated her with their easy style and perfectly unkempt hair.

  “Actually, no,” she admitted. “But my girlfriend probably does.”

  The woman nodded. “Good. Bring her, too. We need as many fans as we can get. I’m Samantha, by the way.”

  “Emma.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Samantha said, rising. She put one arm up to brace herself against the slowing train, and, when she did, her shirt rose up. Another jewel blinked at Emma from inside the perfect well of her navel. She glanced down at Emma. “Nice bike.”

  “Thanks. Nice belly button ring.”

  Samantha laughed, tugging her T-shirt down.

  “No, really,” Emma said. “It looks great.”

  The train stopped. “Don’t forget the show,” Samantha said. She flashed Emma a smile. And then she winked. It was a perfect wink, the lid closing effortlessly over a startling blue eye.

  Emma was too startled to respond, and in another instant, Samantha was gone. She was flirting, Emma thought. She almost laughed aloud. There she was, feeling sweaty and awkward and decidedly uncool. And then someone like Samantha flirted with her. She leaned back in her seat and grinned.

  When Emma got back to her apartment late that afternoon, there were two messages on her answering machine. Emma hung up her helmet and unpacked her lunch bag before she hit play.

  “Hi, sweetheart. It’s, um, six-thirty or so. A.M. Sorry I never got back to you yesterday. Work was crazy, and then I had to rush to make it to yoga, and then afterwards I just passed out. But I was hoping I’d catch you this morning. I miss hearing your voice. Call me.”

  Six-thirty? Emma was sure she had still been home at six-thirty this morning. How had she missed the call, and then not noticed the message? But it didn’t matter. Katherine had called, and her voice, although sleepy, sounded perfectly normal. There was none of the coolness Emma had dreaded. Emma did a little dance around her tiny kitchen.

  The other message was from her sister. “Hey, Emma. Just wanted to talk to you about something. Call me when you have a chance.”

  She was still dancing when the phone rang. She dove for it, collapsing into her armchair.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi. It’s Katherine.”

  “Hi.”

  “Is this a bad time?”

  “Of course not.” Emma’s heart dropped. “A bad time for what?”

  “I don’t know. You just sound out of breath.”

  “Oh. I was just . . . dancing.”

  Katherine laughed. “You didn’t have to do that, you know.”

  “What? Dance?”

  “No, silly.” She hesitated. “They were from you, right?”

  “Oh, right. The flowers.”

  Katherine laughed again. “You forgot you sent them?”

  “No. Well, just for a minute. Are they okay?”

  “They’re gorgeous. It was very sweet of you.”

  Emma grinned. A moment passed; neither of them spoke.

  “So, how’s your week been?” Katherine said at last. “I’m sorry I never called you back on Tuesday. Every time I had a chance, I knew you wouldn’t be home. I wish you’d just get a cell phone already, Em. It would make it a lot easier. Did you get my message this morning?”

  “Yeah. Just a minute ago.”

  There was another silence.

  “Do you know where the Black Bird is?”

  “Isn’t it that place on Telegraph? Next to the bookstore? Why?”

  “This girl on BART invited me to go to her show there tonight.”

  “What girl?”

  “I don’t know. I just met her this morning on the train. Her name’s Samantha. She’s in a band, I guess.”

  “So . . . are you going to go?” Katherine asked. The coolness was back in her voice. Emma sat up so quickly the blood rushed to her head.

  “Katherine! I didn’t mean it like that. I meant . . . do you want to go with me?”

  Katherine snorted. “I don’t think that’s what she had in mind, Em.”

  “But I told her about you. She said you should come, too.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  Emma hesitated. “Nothing. I just said that you were . . . my girlfriend. Well, actually I said that my girlfriend would know where that club was.”

  “Really?”

  Emma let out her breath. “Yeah. Was I right?”

  “That I know where it is or that I’m your girlfriend?”

  “What do you think?”

  They both laughed.

  “Yeah,” Katherine said finally. “You were right. About both.”

  “Katherine—” Emma said. “I’m sorry about Sunday.”

  “Don’t apologize. It was me. I was just . . . disappointed, I guess. And embarrassed.”

  “You sounded so cold. I was worried . . .” Emma didn’t finish the sentence. She didn’t want to let on just how far her fears had gone.

  “Yeah. I’m good at cold, unfortunately. Sorry about that.”

  Emma lay back onto the worn cushions of her chair. For a moment, neither of them spoke.

  “So, what about tonight? Do you want to go?” Emma asked at last.

  “What time?”

  “Hold on,” Emma put the phone down and rummaged through her backpack for the little pink flyer. “Eight-thirty.”

&n
bsp; “Sure.”

  “Want to just come here first? I can make us some dinner.”

  Emma and Katherine ate pasta and salad at the tiny table by the window. They spoke of everyday things, of Katherine’s job at the dot-com and how dry she found the writing, of Emma’s middle school students and the other teachers she was slowly getting to know. They smiled at each other often and nodded earnestly while the other spoke, but as they talked Emma felt a weight begin to settle in her stomach. The ease of their first few months together had shifted. Why were they being so polite?

  “Katherine,” she said, putting down her napkin.

  Katherine glanced at her watch. “You’re right. We should go.” She took a last sip of her wine and stood up. “That was excellent. Thank you. Let me just go to the bathroom and I’m ready.”

  Emma waited for her in the kitchen, putting the dishes in the sink.

  “Do you want me to help you clean up first?” Katherine asked. Emma turned. Katherine’s lips were glossy with lip balm.

  “No, that’s okay.”

  “Should we go then?”

  “Katherine?” Emma stepped forward. “You look great.”

  Katherine smiled. “Really?”

  “Can I still kiss you?”

  “Of course. Why couldn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. It just feels different tonight . . . Like we’re trying to be friends.”

  “Why shouldn’t we be friends?”

  Emma shrugged and looked away. “We should, I guess.” She hesitated. “I do want you to be my friend, Kat. But I also want—”

  Katherine gave her a look then that eased, in an instant, the heaviness that had weighed Emma down all evening. It was a teasing look, full of knowing and invitation.

  “What do you want, baby?” Katherine said, stepping toward her and letting her bag slide down her arm onto the floor. “What do you want?”

  And then Katherine was kissing her, her cool hands slipping beneath her shirt.

  Emma pulled back for a second. “We’re not going to be just . . . friends?”

  Katherine laughed. “What do you think?”

  “I think,” Emma said, reaching for her. “That we’d better not go to the show.”

  “But Samantha—”

  “Be quiet, Katherine. You know what I want.”