Beggar of Love (46 page)

“Yeah, like go back in.”

“Hey, this is not the best time to be making decisions like that, Shannon. Have a pill before the ones they gave you at the hospital wear off. Start getting well.”

Shannon used the arm of the couch to help herself stand.

“I don’t think so. I won’t need them now that I’ve made up my mind. It was the indecision that was killing me, no bones about it.”

Jefferson moved to her easy chair. “Playing soldier is going to wreck your back. You won’t be able to run a B-and-B hurting like that.”

“You know I hate this war business, Jefferson, but it’s what I signed on for. I tried to find an easy way out. I’d better grit my teeth and go for it.” She grinned a sick-looking grin. “You know the slogan: ‘There’s strong and then there’s army strong.’ That’s me. Sink or swim. I’ve been sinking and I need to learn how to swim.” Shannon had a look of despair. “You’ll find a home for Wings if something happens to me over there? Yolanda won’t keep her forever. She can be mama cat to your kids. Or maybe I could write a will, leave Wings and everything else to Dawn.”

Jefferson’s insides constricted. “I’ve got to talk to you about that, Shannon.”

“A will?”

“About Dawn.”

Shannon spun toward her, a kitten under each arm. Her eyes looked like broken windows in a ruined house. “No,” she said, carefully putting the kittens on the couch, as if afraid of hurting them—as if afraid she was about to be hurt. Jefferson searched her mind for the right words. She knew her face was full of the pain she was about to inflict.

Jefferson was twelve. The boys down the street were at Choate. Jefferson would start at Dutchess Academy in town next September. A new teenager, a nice clean-cut young man, Emmy said, had moved into the Elliots’ old place, the brick house with the glass atrium and a heated indoor pool. He kept inviting Jefferson to swim with him. She loved to swim, to dive and pull the water with her arms and kick till her body felt like a speedboat slicing the lake. She swam so fast she would try out for the swim team at the Academy. She bet she could practically tow a skier, swimming fast. That was something else she loved, water-skiing, timing her stand to the second, balancing on the skis, going as fast as the boat, feeling the muscles burn in her legs, kneeling and jumping, lifting one ski, turning on the rope, sinking slowly into the lake when she reached the shore and waiting, eager for her turn again.

She burst out of the water after a breathless swim across the pool and pulled herself up the steps by the silver rail, water streaming from her, a sea monster, smiling at the exhilaration of it—and there he was, the teenager, watching her, his swim trunks on the tiled surround—he was so hairy—examining her body like it was a property he was about to buy.

He said, “There’s nothing up here yet,” touching his own bare chest with his index fingers.

She looked at her flat front, felt humiliated. No, it was worse, she felt stripped, discarded—weak—then saw her strong thighs and wet feet and knew it was too slippery to safely run.

“Sink or swim,” her father had said over and over, teaching her to swim at age three. It was her most vivid preschool memory. Sink or swim. Her dive into the boy’s pool gave her the distance she needed from him. When she emerged she had enough time to grab her clothes. He was grasping at her as she opened the door to the garden and didn’t care what she trampled as she headed for the hillside into the woods, skirted the backyards between their houses, and pulled on her clothes before entering the screened back patio.

Her mother, listening to opera on the hi-fi, had asked, “Did you have a nice swim?”

She couldn’t tell her. There was every reason on earth to say something: so she wouldn’t have to go back, so the boy wouldn’t do that to other girls, so her mother would comfort her fear away. Emmy wouldn’t, though. She’d get upset. She’d ask questions and more questions and cry, as if it had happened to her. She’d tell her father! He’d have to talk to the boy’s father. The boy would get back at her.

“Great pool,” she cried, and went up the wooden stairs two at a time, frantic to get out of her wet bathing suit. She only realized when she got into her bathroom that she’d run all the way home in her white swim cap. She would go out for field hockey, not the swim team. In an instant, she’d switched from wanting to be a water-ski champ to wanting to pilot the boat that pulled the other kids at the lake. She’d learned all the good ski tricks already anyway. Boating, that would be her thing. You didn’t have to wear a bathing suit when you spun that wheel and learned where the rocks lurked.

Facing Shannon, she felt as weak and helpless as she had that day, and once again her head pounded with those words: sink or swim. She had to tell her. What words could she possibly use? She moved to her and pulled her close. Her rush of affection toward Shannon was so strong that she pulled her into a hug.

“I mean it’s not time to talk about Dawn and the will,” she said, her voice sounding, to her, thin and pleading. Nothing else would come out. “I guess the upside to going back in the service would be a chance to meet the love of your life.”

Shannon’s breathing seemed quicker. She’d put her arms around Jefferson’s back and now kissed her neck. Part of her recoiled and thought, Ew! This felt strange to her, like she was on the wrong side of a volleyball net, trying to spike the ball for her team backward. She had no sexual desire, only a need to repair everything for her friend. She hadn’t intended to make love to Shannon, didn’t want to, but lovemaking was her language. She didn’t know how else to speak these feelings of tenderness and comfort. Dawn would despise her if she found out. Hell, she despised herself. She’d thought herself capable of improving her play on this new course, not acting like a sandbagger.

Moving into automatic seduction mode, she framed Shannon’s face with her hands, sliding her fingers into Shannon’s yellow hair, still damp from the shower, and explored her lips with all sorts of kisses. This was interesting and repellent, performing passionate acts without feeling passion. It put her in a place where she could watch herself. It was true, the language of seduction was her most articulate and she could not stop the flow of it. She’d warned Dawn, more than once, that she might be a beggar when it came to love, but the minute she noticed someone getting too serious about loving her, she went running to the next bad girl. She explained that she had a certain fascination with a kind of woman, a woman who was adventurous and therefore exciting. Eventually she realized that only made her seem more attractive to Dawn, who had an amazing stash of lingerie in which to entice her when turned on. How lucky was she that Dawn was both a nice person and an adventurous femme?

And then Jefferson had to wonder. Was she some kind of monster incapable of love and fidelity? Had she been hunting for love all these years, or had she been learning to love? She had it in her to hit the line drives, to keep a handball in play, to teach a team to be more than its individuals, but she seemed sadly lacking in the skills she most needed.

She thought of Dawn with the fulfilled feeling that came of sinking a long putt. A hole-in-one was exciting, but putts were the most satisfying. Dawn loved her. That was the simple, magical, undeniable, and incomprehensible truth. Dawn loved her. Yet here she was.

She’d always assumed she was a bad person, first, from her mother’s discontent with about everything she did as a kid and from her father’s disinterest, and then, because she turned out gay. Gayer than gay, really, with her appetite for women. Was it possible that there was no lack in her? Maybe it was more about bounty. She was so full of—of stuff—happy stuff, loving stuff, how could she keep it all inside? She’d be glad to give it all to one woman, if one woman could accept it all and not run away. Had she overwhelmed poor Ginger, who wasn’t used to shows of affection, exuberance, so much focus on her—or to showing love? Ginger must have fled inside herself. She’d quickly thrown up the plywood and the two-by-fours as soon as the hurricane of Jefferson appeared in her life.

She sighed and gave herself over to what she knew best.

Shannon seemed comfortable with the way things were going so she let her hands follow Shannon’s tall, thin body. She was surprised by Shannon’s responsiveness. Probably it had been a long time for her, the way she had been obsessing about Dawn. This would be good for her, maybe break the pattern, get her thinking about other women. She reached under Shannon’s T-shirt and ran her thumbs roughly across her nipples, thinking she should feel guilt or confusion, instead of the hot bubble of excitement in her chest that rose and grew larger. The perfect rapture of making love was not something to be squandered, but neither was it something to be hoarded. She expressed herself more naturally through her hands and limbs than she did with words. This itch of hers for other women might look like betrayal, she thought, but was really a heart on the loose, directing hands that sometimes seemed to heal before they inevitably hurt.

Neither of them would expect to do this again and would not talk about it. Their friendship would be stronger for it. Was she kidding herself? Was she in for some screaming fits with both Dawn and Shannon? She was confident that wouldn’t happen, as she was confident that she and Shannon were supposed to be doing this. Here. Today.

She had her thigh against Shannon’s closed legs and that way guided her backward to the couch, hands on her hips. She was able to slip Shannon’s shirt over her head before Shannon fell back onto the couch and reached to unbutton Jefferson’s shirt. Butch, femme, it didn’t matter. At the first touch of breasts she always felt an explosion of lust that propelled her onward. Shannon was in sweatpants and was a wriggling naked treat for Jefferson in no time. Jefferson got out of her own pants and they lay, front to front, touching from lips to feet, holding each other on the couch for the longest time, making small, delicately exciting movements with their hips and thighs, breasts and bellies. Their hands stayed out of it.

She was drifting off when Shannon shivered. Jefferson quickly pulled the throw from the back of the couch over them. The light rubbing her movement caused made Shannon gasp. Jefferson scrambled to invert her body. Both expert at this, they parted each other’s moist lips simultaneously, and she felt the touch of Shannon’s tongue as hers touched Shannon. And then a rush of hot tenderness for the fine troubled woman Shannon was engulfed her. They both adopted a light, slow, rotating rhythm, matching each other. The tension built and she knew she would have no trouble coming, but they went very slowly, teasing each other until their breathing became quick and loud to her ears. When Shannon’s thighs tensed, Jefferson moved against her tongue enough to push herself over the edge she’d been avoiding and they breathed audibly together, Shannon bucking, Jefferson arching, coming powerfully, feeling exquisite pleasure for herself, without a worry about taking care of a femme, although that was normally part of her pleasure.

They both sat up then, looking under their eyebrows at each other.

“Are you hungry?” Shannon asked.

“I could do with something tasty. Hey, do you like strawberry ice cream?”

Shannon’s grin was like a kid’s. No, she thought, it was a kid’s.

They sat side by side on the couch, TV tuned to an old
Law and Order,
both acting silly. Now and then Shannon would poke her with an elbow and she would poke back. Neither of them stopped grinning except to suck pink ice cream off their spoons.

Jefferson chuckled as they got into bed together that night. “We’re pretty pleased with ourselves, aren’t we,” she said. As soon as the drugs leave Shannon’s system, she thought, Shannon would be gone to start her life over.

Shannon spooned her bottom against Jefferson. “It was really nice,” Shannon said before she fell asleep.

She thought for a long time as she lay beside Shannon. Thought about having the freedom to do what she had just done. Shannon had needed this release to her future. She was a bit honored that she could give her that. Yet it would hurt Dawn to know that she had. She needed to marry the two forces of her nature. She couldn’t reconcile deceit with honesty; she would have to choose. Was a life with Dawn worth sacrificing the freedom to indulge her impulses? Pick your sport, she told herself. Would it be softball or golf; would she be part of a team or move in the world as a self-styled one-woman wonder?

Wait. Wait. Wait.

In a moment, she was on her porch, pacing in the chill night. What made her think she was the only one who could give all these women what they sought? What did she think she was—some kind of super lover? Who said she could stomp on anyone’s heart: Dawn’s, Shannon’s, or her own, for that matter? All her career, she’d taught her students to play by the rules, and she thought she was exempt?

She sat heavily on the edge of an old wooden Adirondack chair. Good gravy, she thought, do I even want to do this anymore? Give it a rest, Jefferson, she heard Glad say. You’ve been handed a terrific second chance. Are you going to throw it away for some sleazy fun?

It wasn’t sleazy fun, she told Glad, told herself. Bringing women out, making love to lesbians, these were responsibilities and a privilege. So many, many times she’d acted as a bridge for other women. It was, she admitted to herself now, one of her greatest pleasures to hear their struggles and to ease them for a time, sometimes for longer. It made her feel good about herself. Comforting them, making them feel good was her most selfish act. It even, she realized now, turned her on.