Emma Who Saved My Life (21 page)

EMMA said that?

“Well she was just talking, thinking aloud…”

No. No.

“Oh Gil, don't worry, she's not going to sleep with Tom. It'd kill Lisa to see her boyfriend act like such a jerk.”

Yeah, but Emma's trying to break those two up. Maybe she'd lead him on, thinking she was doing Lisa a favor, then … then, really follow through. And start to enjoy it. And Tom spending money on her. And
Emma
will move out, Lisa won't speak to her—Emma and Tom will get married and live on Long Island—

Mandy slapped my arm: “You're getting carried away.” Mandy was staring out to the sea oddly.

What is it? Something more?

Mandy went on, preoccupied. “It's odd you should say Emma was a lesbian. Ironic. I mean, Janet and I were talking about this—well, fighting actually—about this today, whether Emma had lesbian tendencies. You know I thought
I
wanted a celibate lifestyle and then discovered
I
was just lying to myself about
my
lesbian tendencies. Then Janet and I disagreed over some other stuff.”

About Emma's maybe being a lesbian?

“No, about whether we should sleep with her if she is. Or try to seduce her. I mean, I'm an old-fashioned kind of dyke, a one-woman woman. Lots of women are into bringing in a third, sharing lovers—there's this whole ethos of lesbians not being jealous of one another, not competitive like men. Rivalry is phallocentric. Panlesbianism is vulvacentric, all encompassing, no jealousies, lots of sharing.”

Do you go for that?

“I think it's bullshit,” she said heatedly. “Janet however thinks like that. She wanted us to try to get Emma to have a threesome with us, and I said—perhaps a little jealously, I'll admit—that she just wanted to sleep with Emma, and she said of course she did and what was wrong with wanting to sleep with women, and I said not when you're with me sugar. And it was a fight. She thinks I'm immature and haven't been ‘out' long enough, that I'm still uptight. What do you think?”

Nothing wrong with being loyal, I said.

We walked back to the house, walked up the stairs, went out on the upper porch and saw Tom and Janet coming back from the other direction.

Mandy grimaced. “What are those two up to?”

I had a horrible suspicion: sharing facts.

Mandy whispered, “Quiet, I can almost hear them.”

When they got closer, we could hear them laughing about something. “Thanks Janet,” said Tom, “you cleared up a lot for me.” Janet told Tom he'd cleared up a lot for her too. Mandy scowled.

9:10 p.m. Emma and Chris and Susan go for a walk to town to get sparklers and illegal fireworks if they can dig them up. Lisa has come back from the store to make new blender drinks, most of her brand-new recipes resembling Purple Sludge.

“Gil, hand me the blueberries,” said Lisa, stationed at the whirring blender, not able to take her hand away from the top lest what she was making spray all over the place. “Tom said that you two had a nice little talk, man to man. What did you boys talk about?”

Uh, baseball?

“Oh you did not! Don't fool me for a minute, Gilbert Freeman.”

Then what did we talk about then?

“Me, I suspect.” She winked, acknowledging the immodesty. She turned off the blender and put in the frozen blueberries. “I've got too much goo in here…” She poured some into another bowl for later pulverizing. “You probably gossiped about me which would only be natural. I just hope you said nice things, that's all.”

All kinds of nice things.

“I'm in a better mood about this weekend. Emma likes Tom and I'm so happy. I thought she was making fun of him all night, but I see she really, really likes him.”

I didn't have a pleasant look on my face.

“She says he's a Greek god. And…” Lisa started giggling. “I went and told Tom she said that about him…”

Bet Tom liked that.

“Well he
is
a Greek god, isn't he?”

(The man could not be the God of Kitty Litter, Lisa.)

“And you know what else?” Then she started laughing that kind of yuck laugh someone laughs when their lover does some silly crazy wacky adorable thing. “He said he was becoming liberated by all this countercultural company. He said he wouldn't mind it if I had a lesbian affair. Get that! Wouldn't be jealous or anything if I had an affair with a woman—I think that's remarkably liberal. He said,” more laughter, “that he thinks Emma and I should hook up and we all ought to be a fun
threesome
—he's just crazy! Imagine Emma and Tom and I in a threesome! He's crazy!”

Tom, you're public restroom filth. I swear before God you will NOT sleep with Emma—you got Lisa, I lost that one to you, but there is no way you will get Emma. She is mine all mine, and if she sleeps with anybody it will be me—

“Gil, can I see you a minute?” Mandy said, poking her head into the kitchen.

We got out of earshot. What was it?

“Janet told me what Tom told her and we're in trouble now.” Mandy spoke seriously, as if responsible for a military mission. “Can anyone hear us? Let's go to the porch again…”

We went to the porch:

“… Tom was asking Janet about lesbianism and whether it meant a woman couldn't enjoy sex with a man because of it. Janet, who thinks life is her weekly column in the
Womynpaper,
who has no shame, who looks at every woman as a—”

Go on, go on.

“Sorry. Tom told Janet you said Emma was gay, and Tom then asked Janet if he should make a pass at Emma anyway. Janet, very kindly, said don't waste your time and at this very moment is running into town after Emma, fixing to work her evil charms.”

Well tell Janet Tom was wrong and that I lied and made it all up …

“I did tell her.”

And?

“She said I was jealous and was making
that
up to keep her from going to find Emma. When I get my hands on her … Oh god, look. Here they all come.”

9:45. Chris and Susan and Janet and Emma return with fireworks.

I drifted toward the living room.

“Oh Chris you don't think I will, but you're wrong,” Susan was saying. “I dare you to skinny-dip too—I'm going to do it, just you watch. I bet Gil will go with me…”

I drifted away from the living room.

“Gil, come here,” said Emma, putting a sparkler into my hand, leading me back outside, down to the shoreline. “You'll never guess who wants to sleep with me.”

Janet—I was about to say, but then caught myself. If I knew about Janet it meant that I knew etc. etc. and all that would lead to my initial lie. Who, I asked?

“Chris.”

WHAT?

“He's been gay all his life. And he wanted to sleep with a woman because all his friends were women and—oh it was very sweet, you had to hear his reasons. Women were beautiful and he was an assistant designer of women's clothes and he understood so much about them except them sexually and he thought perhaps we could have a small fling, just once, to see what it's like.”

If he wants a woman, why not Susan?

Emma looked at me.

All right, all right, dumb question. But what did Susan have to say about Chris's fling idea?

“She supports him. Remember she can't overtly chase him because she's still going around pretending to be a lesbian separatist, creating something-or-other within her own womanspace, you have to hear her newest thinking. She came along on the fireworks expedition to support Chris in asking me, help him tell me.”

What are you going to do? I asked Emma.

“Politely refuse of course. He's a long way off from Elvis. Tom, after all, has at least got Elvis's body, he looks a little like him around the eyebrows too—”

WAS SHE GOING TO SLEEP WITH TOM?

“What is your problem, Gil?” she cried, stepping back, then smiling. “Don't be so worried I'm going to have sex—it's a big deal after not having it for two years, so I'm not going to have it lightly. When I have it, it'll be with someone I can deal with—”

WHEN? The vocabulary up to this point has been IF, and NEVER AGAIN.

“Well that's ridiculous, isn't it? I mean eventually one day, inevitably,
sometime
I'm going to have to have it again. Just not now, not until I'm ready.”

Back to the beachhouse I stormed, frantic. Whadya bet Emma was going to be ready TONIGHT? Oh, all this comes from flaunting Monica (whom I'm not even doing anything with) in her face. Ah, I reap the reward here! Oh boy, here comes Susan from the house.

“What are you up to, Gil baby?” Susan toddled over, a Purple Sludge in her hand. “Did you get some fireworks?”

Yeah I got some.

“What's wrong? Is Emma down there? I'm going to have a talk with that girl I've been meaning to have. It's obvious, isn't it? She's a lesbian. Bound to be. And I got confirmation on this from Janet who thinks so too,
knows
so.”

Yeah I think so too, I said happily. Why don't you go down there and pursue this topic, Susan, as only two women can do? Take her away from the house, far far far far away and have a long long long long talk and show her what her true feelings are. You alone, Susan, could do this—she listens to you, she trusts you—

“She does?” Susan brightened.

Oh yeah. If you put it to her in the right way, gently, take your time, maybe she'll see the light. Go, go to her now …

I went back up to the house.

In the living room Chris and Janet and Tom and Mandy were sorting out fireworks, lining up the most impressive for last. Lisa was wholly occupied making drinks, drinking most of what she made, getting drunk and being silly.

“Where is that Emma?” Janet asked, hand on hip. “She just slips away on us.”

“Yeah I was going to take a walk with her,” said Tom.

“Uh-uh Tom, I got dibs on her first,” Janet laughed.

Mandy formed a gun with her hand and pantomimed blowing Janet away without Janet realizing it. I went into the kitchen to talk to Lisa.

“I'm sooooo drunk, Gil,” she said, sloshing her current red drink onto the floor. “Here have one of these.”

I accepted it, tasted it, spat it out into the sink.

“Don't like it?”

What the hell is this?

“I didn't think the ketchup would work. But we're out of mixers. I thought if I put enough sugar in it it would be like a Bloody Mary.”

WELL I GUESS YOU WERE WRONG.

“Yeah, guess so. Gil,” she began again, walking over to hang on me affectionately. “Guess what. I'm drunk.”

Coulda fooled me. Did she want to be put to bed?

“No, not before the fireworks at Asbury Park. Gotta set off the fireworks and all, don't we? Where's Emma?”

With Susan.

“If you were going to have a homosexual affair with someone of your own sex … who would the person of your own sex be? That's the question.” She propped herself against a kitchen cabinet. She apparently expected an answer.

Uh, Jim Morrison in 1967.

“No, like now, like alive.”

No idea, I don't have many male friends.

“I think I'd be a lesbian with Emma. Does that shock you? The idea of like lesbians and all?”

No actually, after tonight, I think the WHOLE WORLD is a lesbian—all the women, all the men, I'm a lesbian, my mother's a lesbian, you name it, they're lesbian.

Mandy came in, still a frown on her face. “What's all this about lesbians?”

“We're just having a discussion about sleeping with women, I mean women doing it with … I mean—”

“Yeah I know what lesbians do, Leese. Let's get you to a couch and let you lie down. Before you fall down.”

Mandy led Lisa away to a sofa in a dark room, Lisa whining the whole way about fireworks, missing the fireworks. I went out to the porch.

10:45. Fifteen minutes until the fireworks.

Mandy came out and shared her newest tactic with me: “I think
I
better seduce Emma.”

I begged her pardon.

“No, I think it has to be done. I'll show Janet how it feels to have your girlfriend run around and want to sleep with everything. If
anyone
is going to be lesbian with Emma, it better be me…”

Come one come all! The more the merrier!

If you had known, Emma, the intrigues, the drama, the Byzantine plotting and scheming all for you, all to sleep with, to win the affection of, to woo and court and seduce and make love to YOU YOU YOU, would that have satisfied you? Would it have satisfied you that everyone on the Planet Earth wanted to make love to you? With all the suffering and all the self-induced misery, I'm just curious if it might have made a difference if we all had had one Big Bicentennial Orgy with you—would it have gotten through your head, Emma? That people loved and cared about you?

“I'm going to kill you Gilbert Freeman,” said Emma, barging up the porch steps, hands out ready to throttle me.

What did I do? (Better question: Which of the many things I've done did you find out about?)

“You sicced Susan on me. Do you know what it is like fighting her off, her propositioning me, crying, every hysterical trick in her book, trying to get me to neck with her on the dunes? There was less fighting on the sands of Iwo Jima, for christ's sake. And when I asked what had gotten into her she said YOU, you Gilbert Freeman, had put her up to this.”

Nonsense, Emma. You believe everything Susan says?

“Can I have a sip of your drink?”

Emma borrowed my glass and finished it off.

“You're looking tense, Gil. Is something going on in the house?” Emma looked at her watch. “Almost eleven. Just enough time for that walk I promised Tom—”

DON'T DO IT.

“Why not?”

He wants to sleep with you, throw Lisa over for you. He told me so.