Beggar of Love (43 page)

She did then, letting her shoulders sag, her neck bow forward to Dawn’s wise fingers and words.

“Jefferson, I’ve fallen in love with you. No, I fell for you the first time I saw you. You’re what’s missing in me. I want to be yours in every way there is. Will you let me?”

She wasn’t dreaming, was she? How had she gotten so nuts about this woman?

Dawn began to unbutton her own fancy pearl-like buttons, but Jefferson stilled her hands under one of her own. “Hey, Dawn, let me,” she said, “when it’s time.”

“It’s time, Jefferson.” Dawn kept unbuttoning under Jefferson’s hands.

Jefferson let her and touched Dawn’s left nipple through the blouse with the flat of her pinky, sending all the electricity in herself into that light pressure. Dawn slumped against her, but straightened immediately, pushed her hand aside, and pulled up Jefferson’s sweatshirt.

Okay, she thought, sighing, the woman wants skin. When their breasts came together, Dawn’s were like little birds against her, not the proud crested birds of her prints, but darting wrens she could keep in her hands. Once they were undressed, Dawn did the femme thing, leading her by the hand to her bed, looking coyly but shyly back. Briefly, Jefferson remembered that Bonnie had lived there with Dawn, shared this bed.

Dawn turned some lights off and some on, arranged the bed linens and pillows, smiling and softly chattering. Jefferson, standing naked on a small patterned rug by the bed, worried again; her body was no longer that of a twenty-year-old. Dawn might not like what she saw, or felt, or smelled. She sagged and swelled where she never had before. Jefferson might not be able to keep up with someone years younger. Then she thought of what it would do to Shannon if she knew what was going on right now. Of what it would do to her if she learned about them during her recovery? Would it drive her over the edge again. She considered stopping, but Dawn had mounted the bed and sat, legs tucked modestly to one side, smiling widely. She was so obviously pleased with her catch she wasn’t thinking of the incident that had catapulted them into this moment, but only of their pleasure and a future of love.

Who could resist this slight, competent femme? True, she’d been with no one but Brandi since getting sober this time, including Ginger, but what had come of such self-control? First, Ginger had left her; second, left her for a guy; and last, left permanently. No, this was who Jefferson was: a lover of women, a body seeking heat, a heart unable not to love, a woman who felt she had never been loved for who she was, but only for her butchy poses, her intuitive hands, her good looks, for whatever it had been that Ginger thought she’d found in her. Maybe this one, this thirsty Dawn, really wanted to know who she was and could embrace more than her hands and lips, could love her as no other woman had, as her parents never did, as she herself could not. What exactly had Emmy wanted before she could love a daughter? A debutante?

She didn’t want to hurt Dawn. That would be like snapping her lovely tender neck, but how long would it be before she learned to stop begging for love on every street corner. It looked like she would find out.

Hope thrummed through her like blood as she caught sight of their clothes commingled on the floor at the foot of the bed. That was a powerful stimulant, that mix of blue-denim legs. Dawn had put a CD of Japanese drumming on the boom box. Jefferson dropped to the bed and enclosed the end of Dawn’s breast with her mouth as if suckling for love.

“Hey, Kitten.” She brushed her lips along Dawn’s incredibly smooth skin. “You’re as playful and independent as a kitten.”

Dawn laughed and called her a big old tiger, then growled and pretended to pounce on her. As Jefferson wrestled her onto her back and lay atop her to hold her down, she said, “I’m no ravenous tiger, Dawn. I’m a wounded lamb, but I’ll try.” She would try to be Dawn’s tiger.

Dawn reached for her head and pulled it down, then enclosed Jefferson’s lips as if to drink her in and pushed her tongue into Jefferson’s mouth, her pelvis grinding up into Jefferson. What was there, then, but Dawn? Everything was Dawn: she tasted, smelled, felt the miracle of Dawn. She couldn’t get enough of Dawn and heard her quick breathing, saw her closed eyes, a vein throbbing in her neck, her pretty breasts, her thin left leg, her little belly, her fluted labia, slick and puffy.

She was lost in sensation as never before. There was no leading, no following. She reached for Dawn, shaking with a deep desire she’d thought she would never feel again. Dawn reached for her. Dawn kissed the palm of her hand; she licked between Dawn’s fingers. Dawn entered her with one slow, gentle finger, and she found Dawn’s opening with her forefinger while her thumb stroked her clitoris and she kissed the inside of Dawn’s velvety thighs, betraying Ginger again with her mouth. They were seldom still in the next hours, and they moved as one. She felt astonishment at the ease of their lovemaking, how one action flowed to the next and each touch completed a circuit she’d never known was open. Dawn insisted on giving as much as Jefferson gave and knew how. She seemed to genuinely desire Jefferson. The woman was a talented, or perhaps accomplished, lover.

As Jefferson caught her breath, Dawn said, “Finally. Finally I found a woman who fits me.”

These were words Jefferson had wanted to hear. Now that they were said, she feared that she needed to feel so powerfully loved and wanted that she believed Dawn, whether she should or not.

Dawn became utterly wanton then, thrashing in Jefferson’s arms, twisting on her hand, loudly crying her name. That call, acknowledging Jefferson as the source of her pleasure, as her choice of lover, broke something in Jefferson, broke some raw tendon tie-down that had held a tent of self-protection over her all her life. She trusted this woman, whose boldness inspired her further, and she gave herself over to the force field that enveloped the two of them, to the undeniable power and honesty of their matched desires.

Dawn left her side for more and colder bottled water. Jefferson lay alone on the big bed, naked, uncovered, tired yet energized, and found herself grinning. Dawn reminded her a little of Angela in the innocence of her passion. Dawn’s deep sensual responsiveness was healing the lover in her.

“What?” Dawn asked when she returned.

Without thinking, she said, “I’m happy.”

They drank, each from her own bottle. Then Dawn lay beside her and gently rubbed her head on Jefferson’s breast. “Me too.” They lay silent for a while.

Dawn asked, “It’s not the sex, is it?”

“No, baby,” she answered with a confidence that surprised her. She was not lying. “It’s not the sex.” She tightened the arm that encircled Dawn’s shoulders and wondered how long she could keep her close and if keeping her close would preserve this startling happiness.

The next time Jefferson went out to the farm was like a walking-on-air celebration. She finally knew what walking on air felt like. She thought she’d been in love before, but no, except for Angela and Ginger, she’d had conquests, and Ginger had been a painful, muted kind of love. She’d been won herself and been paraded around like a trophy. She’d used and been used. Now she knew she’d never really loved and never really been loved. She was plain happy when she was with Dawn, when she knew she was going to see Dawn, when they spoke by phone, when she awakened in the morning and remembered that Dawn was in her life.

Dawn pulled on boots and went out to the muddy kitchen garden with one of her sisters, to surprise their mother by getting some Saturday chores out of the way. Mrs. Northway was shopping. She’d be making a Vietnamese meal for their guest that evening. Jefferson accepted the task of reading the newspaper to Mr. Northway, whose leukemia had affected his eyes. When she finished the first section, he asked her to look through business articles for mention of Vietnam.

Dawn joined them and Mr. Northway said, “I would love to go back there with Dawn. Her middle name is Mai: M. A. I., not M.I.A. It means cherry blossom.”

She was touched to be allowed into this family, to share this time with the Northways. “Does it bother you,” she asked, “what America did to Vietnam? That I was part of that America back then?”

“You weren’t a protester during the war?” Dawn asked, looking surprised.

“I barely remember it. Hippies taking over the streets, people setting themselves on fire. I was focused on winning field-hockey games. At one point, before college, I thought about going into the military, but Angela reminded me there was a war happening. After that, I guess I turned my back on the whole thing. I didn’t read the paper, I didn’t watch the news on TV. Now I can’t believe I’ve lived through all that history.”

Dawn gave her quiet laugh. “I love that sense of entitlement. I’m jealous of it. I can’t imagine the ease of it. But, if I’d been here during the war? I would have gone to every march. I would have demonstrated outside military recruiting booths. Would have yelled and written letters till my fingers bled.”

“Would you have blown up the recruiting stations?’

“Jefferson! How could you ask? Violence will never stop violence.”

“No? I guess you’re right.”

“Oh, Jef. You’ve been so protected.”

“Did I turn my back on the Vietnamese? On our soldiers? On your dad?” she asked, meeting his eyes.

“So many Americans take their easy lives for granted,” said Dawn.

“You must have hated us,” she said to Mr. Northway while thinking that she would have a hard time fighting for a county that ostracized her for being gay. She remembered the days when she could have been arrested for being herself.

He nodded. “We did. We were stuck in the slime, taking fire, burning, killing, destroying—dying.”

“I never thought about whether the kids I grew up with—the boys up the street that I played with—were over there.”

Mr. Northway patted her forearm. “Once I got back and got some distance from it all, I didn’t hate anyone. I promise you that I don’t hate you. It’s beyond my understanding why things happen the way they do.” He inhaled a cautious breath as if to avoid more coughing. “As long as my kids have love in their lives—that’s what matters to me now.”

Had that been a blessing of their love? This was new to her. The ghosts of would-be in-laws flickered through her mind, disapproving, disappointed, angry. She caught her breath, stunned with hope. Was she actually getting another chance here, a chance at a lasting, loving, sound union? She watched father and daughter spar affably until they heard Mrs. Northway arrive. Dawn dashed down to the cellar. Mrs. Northway fussed over Dawn’s dad and ordered Jefferson out of the room so he could nap. Jefferson washed pans in the kitchen, following crisp orders from the quick, exacting, but frequently laughing woman.

These people were, unlike her parents, adults. Jarvy and Emmy, she remembered again, were a couple of kids, playmates who palled around together. My god, she thought, no wonder I don’t know how to be an adult.

She went down to the basement, where Dawn was shelving her aunt’s preserves. She pulled Dawn to her and held her close while she told her what she’d realized.

“Do you still want me?” she asked.

Dawn stayed quiet in her arms for too many beats of her heart, then answered, “Yes. I can see where that could cause us some friction, but yes, I do still want you.” Dawn gave her that big joyful smile. “I can watch you grow up.” She pulled Jefferson up the steps and out to the kitchen garden.

“I think my mom likes you,” Dawn told her. “You pitched right in. Nothing impresses her more.”

“You learned a lot from her.”

“Oh, I did. I always loved to cook, but the bad thing used to be when dad called me Cookie. I hated that name.”

“I’ll have to remember never to call you that.”

“It’s what they called the cooks in the war. But, seriously, you name it, I can do it, from the kitchen to the orchard, getting cars out of ditches and helping a goat give birth. My mom and dad both love teaching their skills.”

“I can tell. I now know the right way to peel an avocado.” She held out the pail of peels and other refuse.

Dawn laughed. “And you’d better do it that way if you ever do it in front of Mom again. She remembers who she taught what. Dump those in here.”

Jefferson added her offering and pushed the wheelbarrow filled with weeds through the muck to a compost pile.

“Who cooked when you were with Ginger?”

“Neither of us. We were the kind of people they invented takeout for.”

Dawn laughed. “I always wondered who could afford takeout. I shared an apartment with two other women and we took turns cooking a lot of greens and rice. It was all we could afford.”

“We spent way too much on restaurants. We could have paid off the loans on Ginger’s dance school if we’d cooked. Including the money I put into the school.”

“Did you get paid off when she died? From selling the school?”

“A committee from the neighborhood wants to buy it. If they can raise the rest of the money I’ll forgive the loan so they’ll have operating expenses. As a memorial to Ginger.”

She off-loaded the wheelbarrow where Dawn told her to and they headed back.

“Do you mind me asking about you and Ginger?”

“Hey, ask away. Better you learn the worst up front.”

“The worst? I’m touched by your memorial, Jef. You really must have loved her.”