Beggar of Love (24 page)

“Gets you where you live, doesn’t it?”

“She always said she could be bi, but a lot of women hang on to that idea, especially femmes. Like they have one foot on shore and can bail if the going gets rough.”

“So you’re saying it’s worse because she’s not leaving you, she’s leaving the gay life.”

“Something like that.”

“And you take that personally. A double rejection.”

“Everything I am. Everything I stand for. Everything being with me means, from the intimate stuff to her knowing how I brush my teeth.”

“It is not a failure for you, J. You’re such a catch.”

“It’s my failure. I’ve failed us all.”

“All like who—lesbians?”

She nodded. When was she going to find someone who really, down to her roots, understood, somebody queer enough to know the depth of what Ginger had done?

“It sounds like you’d rather she was dead.”

“Dead? Who said anything about dead?”

“That’s what it sounded like to me.”

“You’ve been watching too many cop shows.”

“I don’t watch cop shows. I hang out with some cops, though. The things they tell me.”

“You think I should report her as a missing person?”

“I don’t think you can. Not with her family refusing to talk to you.”

“That confirms what I think—she’s still with Mitchell. Why else won’t they tell me anything?”

“He could have threatened them.”

“And Aunt Tilly?”

“That’s where he grabbed Ginger from, her school, remember?”

“So you think I should go looking for her.”

“If you insist on wanting her. You’ve heard that Jamie Anderson song, ‘Her Problem Now’? Well, she’s his problem now.”

“But,” she said, looking for the words she needed. “It’s not even Ginger. It’s that sweet thrill of longing. No, that’s not quite true, but the two are bound together. With Ginger there’s the permanent pleasure of seduction.”

“I swear, you need therapy, girl. Even if she left to be with him—and the suitcases, unless they’re a smokescreen, might confirm that. But even then, J, wouldn’t you expect Ginger to come after you if you’d been gone this long with no word?”

“I never thought of that. She might be waiting for me to make a move.”

“She might have gone willingly with him and now be stuck.”

“You’re not thinking she’s gagged and bound somewhere.”

“I never trusted Mitchell. He was always showing up places with straight girls, like he needed to show the world he wasn’t as queer as the rest of us.”

“Where are you going with this, Lily Ann?”

“What if he—they—went to one of those fix-the-gays groups?”

“Ginger would never go along with that.”

“She might not have known what she was getting into, J.”

“But her parents might have.”

They looked at each other.

Lily Ann said, “A cult kidnapping?”

“Which would mean the family isn’t talking because they’re shielding her from me. They finally got her away from the big bad wolf.”

She sat thinking for a while, confused. This made more sense than anything else. Still, it didn’t sound like Ginger to go into some kind of cult deprogramming situation. She’d always scoffed at them. “Why would Mitchell have dragged Ginger with him to something like that? Why not work on himself?”

“He’s the type of guy who needs a prop.”

“He could have told her anything. That she needed to get away for a while. Or that they were going to a dance workshop and to let me stew because I’d done it to her enough. No, that doesn’t make sense. It’s not Ginger.”

“You don’t know what makes sense for other people, J.”

“For Ginger?”

“It’s midlife-crisis time, J. You had a soft landing. Ginger may be taking off.”

“I stepped back, didn’t I? I respected her choice and even expected her choice. I thought I deserved this. I thought if a man was involved I couldn’t fight back.”

“No, you assumed you’d lost.”

“Maybe I have.”

“And maybe you haven’t.”

The next spring, she waded, twice, through fallen white blossoms in one of those delightful pocket parks hidden in midtown before she completed a trip to Café Femmes. This was the first time she’d gone to the bar without Ginger in her life.

She sat with Gabby and Lily Ann, started to tell them how good it was to see them, and found herself crying. Her companions went dead silent.

“I’m sorry,” she managed to say over a blast of rap out of the jukebox. “I don’t know where this is coming from. I never cry.”

“Du-uh,” said Gabby, who had taken off her apron and closed the food side of the bar. “It’s your first time back since—”

She could hear Lily Ann sock Gabby in the arm. She looked up. “It is, I know,” Jefferson said. “I was thinking about it. I mean, I came here so often without Ginger.”

“With good reason,” Gabby said.

Jefferson asked, “You mean you didn’t like Ginger either?”

Gabby looked embarrassed. “It wasn’t that I didn’t like her, it’s—”

“That you didn’t like her,” Lily Ann finished for Gabby.

“She was kind of a cold fish, I always thought,” said Gabby. “You loved her so much and Ginger—I mean she’d laugh and joke around and all with us, but it was like she was always playing a part and ready to leave the minute you would. If she was like that at home, no wonder you ran around on her.”

She scraped her fingernails through her hair. “So all those years I was trying to measure up and there was nothing to measure up to?”

Gabby shrugged. “Some things are too tough to do.”

“Or we make them tough,” Lily Ann amended. “You held that girl up on a pedestal and then couldn’t meet the expectations you thought she had.”

“But she didn’t have them?”

“You have to care to have expectations of a person,” Gabby said.

“She didn’t care? That’s ridiculous!”

“She couldn’t care,” Gabby said with finality.

“Why are you ganging up on her? I didn’t know none of you liked Ginger.”

“She wasn’t so good for you,” Gabby said. “She maybe wanted to be, but I would think about not going after her, if I were you.”

That was because she didn’t know the little girl in Jefferson. Only the lover knows the little girl who lets herself be held in the night and laughs at silly things over breakfast and admits it when she’s scared. She scooped petals from her pockets and drizzled their wilting whiteness from her hands to the table. “If I knew where she’s hiding. I don’t want to stalk her. I wouldn’t even try to talk to her, but this knowing nothing—she could be in trouble. She could be wanting to come home. I feel like she’s been gone for a lifetime and that she’s coming right back.”

“Ah-hem,” Gabby said.

“What?” Lily Ann asked.

“I heard something.”

Jefferson looked up. “Gabby,” she said, reaching for her. “About Ginger?”

“About Mitch.”

“Speak,” Lily Ann commanded.

Gabby picked up a second napkin to shred. “This trick was in his apartment last summer. He saw a brochure.”

“What trick?”

“A guy I run into because of work.”

“How well do you know him?” Lily Ann wanted to know. “Is he reliable?”

“What kind of brochure?” Jefferson asked.

“You know, one of those cult things.”

“A Kool-Aid cult?”

“No. Where they brainwash you straight.”

She stared at Gabby. “You’re kidding.”

“It was a brochure.”

“Did he say anything about it?”

“Who?” Lily Ann interrupted. “Who are we talking about? Somebody making this up to sound in the know?”

“No. I see this guy like, daily, when I pick up ingredients. He sells pestos and garlic spreads. Like that. We’ve been doing business for centuries.”

“What’s his name?”

“Nuncio. He’s cool. Really.”

Jefferson asked, “Do you think he made her go to one of those groups with him?”

“He said he and Mitch talked about it, about Mitch wanting to change, being tired of tea rooms and tricking, and being scared of HIV. He said Mitch thought he might find some, you know, calm and serenity. Like that.”

“And he needed a partner in crime,” said Lily Ann.

“My partner,” Jefferson replied.

Gabby asked, “Did Ginger ever say anything about that kind of thing?”

She thought back. “No,” Jefferson said. “She used to say she could go either way, but she happened to love me.”

“Oh, that’s an old tune,” Gabby countered. “I’m not gay. I only happen to have been with my girlfriend Muscles since 1953.”

They all laughed. “Maybe Ginger was a little like that, but I thought she’d gotten over it. As you said, it’s been a long time.”

“Mitch must have worked on her.”

“They were really good friends. I thought we all were, but he performed with Ginger sometimes, playing flute.”

There was a silence. Lily Ann asked, “Did Nuncio remember the name of the place?”

“There was more than one,” Gabby said. “And no, he didn’t remember details. I asked that.”

“We can find them,” Jefferson said.

“Do you really want to?” Gabby asked.

Jefferson said, “You’ll never get information out of one of those groups.”

“Oh, but I could,” Gabby suggested. “I could pretend I’m interested, get a tour.”

Lily Ann laughed. “They might have a wax museum—famous conversions.”

“The Gallery of Gay Conversion Failures: Ellen, Rosie, Sir Elton,” Gabby added.

Jefferson had to smile. “Sounds like fun. How’s Sunday for you?”

“Seriously,” Lily Ann said with a sigh that sounded like resignation. She reached under the table and pulled out her laptop. “A little Wi-Fi and we might get a handle on this.”

“But,” Gabby interjected, “Mitch might have gone there first, gotten fixed, and then dragged Ginger off.”

“How could she,” Jefferson moaned. “She might as well have stabbed me right through the heart. Not saying a word—it feels like an attack.”

Lily Ann reached for her hand. “No. It’s a retreat. This has been building for years, J.”

She stopped herself from whining. “You’re my friends. You’ve never criticized me for my acting the way I do. I hope you know me well enough to understand that I accept full responsibility for being an out-of-control dog. But I always came back. And never—how could she—”

“A man. Disgusting,” Gabby said.

To hear another butch say that was soothing. She nodded to Gabby in thanks. She felt such shame. It wasn’t something she could explain to anyone. Even Lily Ann didn’t understand how deep it went. Another woman was one thing, but this…

Lily Ann came up with a list of groups in the metropolitan area that Mitch could be working with. “They must go back for follow-up. We could get schedules.”

Gabby shook her head. “Five places. What are they, churches?”

“All but one,” Lily Ann answered.

“That’s the program then,” Jefferson said. “Mitchell is Jewish.”

“Observant?” Lily Ann asked.

“He didn’t keep kosher or anything, but he did a seder every year and was into cooking. He made a mandelbread you wouldn’t believe. Maybe if I’d cooked more—”

“J,” Lily Ann intoned. “It isn’t your cooking. It’s who you cooked with.”

She nodded. That truth was inescapable.

She had slowly realized that she’d never been hurt before. She’d skipped away from other women as she would from a drinking buddy, which some of them were, or a work friend when she changed jobs. Or she got too deep into their egos or dreams and they didn’t want to let go. Not one had walked away from her.

Now that it was her turn, she was stunned by her pain and jealousy; she had never learned this side of love and was completely defenseless. She might have to move. The city had become Ginger, pirouetting around her in long skirts, long hair, and tights, her colors always somber and her occasional bright laughter all the more startling.

Even if she’d been hurt back in her drinking days, she’d been too pickled to feel much or to remember. She’d started drinking in her teens, and her sponsor told her that might be where she was stuck: her feelings all these years like a teenager’s.

That Sunday they actually went to the small box of a building in New Rochelle where Straighten Out held its seminars. Lily Ann Lee was driving and Gabby sat in back. There was a seminar scheduled for three o’clock. They were watching for Mitchell’s black Hyundai SUV, but the small parking lot was almost full and there was no sign of it. A row of forsythia bushes blazed yellow in front of them. She still saw their brightness when she closed her eyes to dim the spring sun and the sting of salt in the tears she refused to let fall from her eyes.

“This feels humiliating,” she said.