Lilac Mines (15 page)

“Is this Meg?”

“Mmm,” says Anna Lisa. She props the picture up next to Lilac's postcard on the dresser, and they look at it together. Felix wishes her aunt were in the photo, too.

“Hey, Anna Lisa?” Her chest is tight as a corset. “Can I. um, I was wondering if it might be okay . if I stay here a little longer?”

Her aunt snaps her head toward Felix. Is this a bad time or the perfect time? “Why?”

Felix would not have a problem kicking Genevieve out of her apartment. She might even enjoy it. She shrugs. “I like it here. It's, you know, quiet, and people are friendly—” She's starting to sound like a newscast herself, one about the charms of small-town life, so she stops herself. “I like getting to know you, and I'm sort of maybe seeing Tawn. It's nothing yet, not really, but—”

Anna Lisa smiles knowingly. “Then it's settled. The room is yours as long as you want it.”

One Saturday morning in June, Al wakes with a hangover that can only partially be attributed to Pabst at Lilac's. Equally heavy in her stomach are the words and glances she and Meg slung across the dim bedroom. She remembers “drinking” and “butch” and maybe “bitch.” But she's not sure who said what—the words are a crossword puzzle she can maneuver in too many ways.

Still, the morning is crisp with possibility, and as she pads sock-footed to the porch, she wonders if the details of their life can save them. Yes, there are arguments about whether 95 cents is too much for a beer, but aren't there also pink-budded plants kissing the sides of their house, performing the glory of transformation? Aren't there Meg's old saddle shoes, the ones she announced she was exiling to yard work, sitting sweet and pigeon-toed on the bottom step? Mud freckling the bumper of Meg's car? The neighbors' orange cat glaring lazily in her direction? All of these things are part of her life, and if Al squints hard enough at them, the bigger questions disintegrate. She does not have to be a certain kind of person in a certain kind of world; she can just reach out her hand and scratch the cat between the ears.

He begins a rusty, rib-rattling purr. Then, with species-appropriate fickleness, he leaves her to go sniff something on the far side of the porch. With her own feline sluggishness, Al stands up to investigate. She's not in the mood for a dead mouse. She sees a bit of silky brown hair, but it's not a mouse.

It's a girl's braid. Tapered and innocent, except that it is in completely the wrong place. It's lying on the ground next to a bright green shrub and not on a girl's sloping shoulder. The top is secured with a rubber band out of which spiky, bluntly cut hairs extend. The bottom end is tied with a pink ribbon, which also holds a crumpled bit of paper.

Al touches her head. The braid on the ground is her color, the color of sugar pine trunks heading for the spinning saw blade. Sylvie cuts Al's hair every six weeks. She and Jody and Jean take turns in a kitchen chair like good little boys. Nevertheless, she feels as if the braid could have been sliced from her own head. The thought makes the short hairs on the back of her neck stand up, as if they are sniffing the wind for lost kin.

“Al? Darling? What're you doing out there?” Meg's voice penetrates the thin walls easily. It is like the house is talking to Al.

“Petting the cat,” she calls back, surprised how calm her voice sounds.

“Scandalous!” giggles Meg. She does not come outside. Nevertheless, Meg's voice always makes her want to
do
something. It's part of what she loves about Meg. “Well, if you need me, I'm just in here writing to Petra.”

Sometimes Al wonders if Petra is real. It's silly—she's seen the letters, the Kerhonkson postmark, the handwriting looping on about a junior prom dress
(No one else had silver, let me tell you!).
But Meg has a way of wielding her pen pal at just the right time. Petra is a faraway angel girl who always understands when Al does not. Al floated her theory for Meg once, in an offhand, half-kidding manner that nevertheless immediately revealed its true suspicions. Meg's face broke, as if Al had just repeated every insult Meg had ever received. As if Al were just like
them
after all.

Now Al touches the braid, gently, as if it were alive or recently dead. It inevitably belongs to someone who is one of the two. Her fingers trace its curves to the ribbon. Pink for a girl. She pulls. The slip of paper falls out. Unrolled, it reads DiKE.

The epithet's misspelling might have made it laughable, but somehow the effect is to unnerve Al even more. Whoever this threatener is, he or she is not one to research, to listen to reason. The note is written in black pen, block-lettered. The lettering is not quite stylish, but it contains no trace of doubt. Too, there is the fact that it says DiKE, not DYKES or even DiKES. She is sure, somehow, that only she has been named. Meg is the good girl who has been seduced.

Al squats, holding the paper, hands quivering. She's still in her nightshirt and someone is telling her what she is. Handing her fate to her like a fortune in a cookie. The cat slips between the rungs of the fence, and possibility slithers out of view.

Did the neighbors have anything to do with this? The Espeys are a childless couple in their 30s. Zeke Espey works at the mill and flirts with Meg. His wife, as a result, hates Meg, and both are cold to Al. It's hard to name the causes in such an intricate situation, what they know or don't know, what they're capable of and what they wouldn't waste their time on. Sometimes Meg flirts back.

“Come in, I'll make bacon… make-up bacon,” calls Meg.

Al knows she should tell Meg about the braid, about the maybe-murdered girl. Meg is brave. She would run down the road in bare feet. Al should say,
Call all our friends, it's us against the world.

Except right now it feels more like the world against us. Al feels herself shrink down to the i in DiKE. She will save her questions for later. She will not tell Meg—she wants to believe this is motivated by protectiveness of her femme, but she suspects its origins are bitter, sneaky. The product of a girl split in parts.

By August, Al is back at the church. Just over a year after arriving in Lilac Mines, she is tentatively tapping the heavy wooden doors, as nervous as when she first stepped into the bar behind Jody and Imogen.

“Can I stay here awhile?” she asks Imogen, who opens the door like a housewife expecting to hear a pitch about carpet cleaner. There's a dust rag in her hand. Clicking noises suggest the movement of curlers beneath her red headscarf. She's been leading a life behind those doors, and Al has interrupted it.

“Of course, honey. Come on in and tell me what's goin' on.” Her voice is softer, slightly country.

She guides Al to a table and chairs with calico seat cushions in the kitchen. These are new—or new to the church, at least. She pours her a cup of burnt-tasting coffee, and puts a carton of milk on the table between them.

“Meg and I have been fighting. A lot.”

“What about? If you don't mind my prying.”

“I don't know.” Al means she doesn't know what they're fighting about, but she doesn't know if she minds Imogen prying either. She wants to collapse into her soft arms, but she would need a reason, and she's not sure she has one. “Nothing? Everything? I thought it would get easier, the longer we were together, but it's not.”

In her head Al sees the Ford's headlights on Meg's pale face in the mine. Bessie Smith's record tilting in circles on the phonograph. The seams of Meg's stockings. The limp ribbon on the end of the braid and the months of quiet afterward. Meg tear-stained, then happy, then tear-stained. It doesn't add up to anything she could tell anyone. She wishes she could say,
Meg snores. Meg has eyes for another butch.

Imogen is studying Al closely. “Sounds like the honeymoon's over. I don't mean just the honeymoon between the two of you, but between you and this whole thing.” She gestures abstractly. “Me and Jody, we went through that. Some time ago. Had to say to ourselves, did we really want to sneak around our whole lives? To get mean looks even from other girls in the life?”

“And did you want to? Do you?”

“Some days. But at least in a place this small you can get to know everyone one by one. Eventually most of them stop thinking, 'Jody's with that Negro,' and think, 'Jody's with Imogen.' ” Her eyes angle toward the uneven wood floor in a way that is shy and tired and cynical all at once. “You stick it out 'cause you know you're not gonna find anything better. And sometimes I mean it in the best way, like what could be better? But sometimes I mean it like I'm just not cut out for an easy life.”

Al adds as much milk as she can to her coffee without making the mug overflow. Now it is almost palatable. “What if I'm not cut out for a hard life?” she worries. She wants Imogen to tell her,
Yes, you are.

“Then you'll find out, I guess.”

She makes Al a bed next to Sylvie and Jean's—a pile of thin blankets that add up to something soft—and the next morning Al rides to the mill in Jody's Edsel. Even with the windows rolled down, it's unbearably hot. Dust blows in and covers the vinyl seats, sticks to their sweaty faces. When Al steps out of the car and into the burning 9 a.m. sun, she can't believe the day is just beginning.

“So, are you and Meg still together?” asks Caleb, the bartender at Lilac's. His voice strikes a note somewhere between gossip and concern.

“Yeah, we are.” Al draws a squiggly line in the condensation on her beer glass. “We're just… I'm staying with Jody and the girls for awhile.”

Caleb nods like he knows something that Al is too young to learn. He's wearing a navy blue turtleneck tonight and the beginnings of a mustache. Al doesn't know him well. She doesn't know if he has only two sweaters or if he considers them his uniform and wears them only on Friday and Saturday nights, or if he has hundreds of identical turtlenecks lined up in a closet.

“Meg is a gorgeous girl,” Caleb says. “But she's a wild one. She burned Jean's clothes after they broke up.”

“That's not true,” Jody interjects. It's a Friday in September, not dark yet. They're drinking after-work beers. There are just a few butches in the bar, a couple of men, no femmes. “I thought it was true, but Imogen said no, that's just what people do to a femme when they decide her temper's too hot. They make things up.”

“I heard it from Jean,” Caleb says a little smugly. “Just after they broke up.”

Jody leans on her elbows. There are flecks of sawdust in the light hairs on her arms. “And what makes you think some brokenhearted butch is going to tell you the truth? Jean's my buddy, I wanna make that clear, but I remember those days, before she got together with Sylvie. She was capable of anything, too. She was just quieter about it than Meg was.”

It's strange hearing about this other Meg. Caleb makes her sound like a banshee, wild-eyed and match-wielding. Al tries to counter it with what she knows about Meg: the way she clenches her teeth when she's mad, the surprised giggle when Al scissors her own legs between Meg's in bed. But she hasn't seen Meg in four long days. Maybe her version is wrong as well.

Then, as if to set the record straight, Meg is suddenly there. The door to the bar lets in a small explosion of late-afternoon light. Meg is wearing the same pink and orange plaid skirt that she was wearing the first night Al saw her. For a second Al pictures them starting over, getting it right. Al will ask to buy Meg a drink. Meg will be impressed by Al's straight-backed walk, her leather wallet.

“Al, I just talked to your mother,” Meg says breathlessly.

“What?”
says Al.

“Ho boy,” says Caleb.

“Your mother. She called. She said your sister gave her the number—your sister called a few minutes later to say she was sorry, but it was an emergency. Your mother said your dad had a heart attack.”

Al puts her fingers on her forehead. They are beer-cold and her face feels hot. Now it is her father she tries to piece together: whenever she's pictured him over the past year, it's been at the little desk in the back room of the store, chewing on the end of his pencil as he tries to make sense of the finances. His red-brown hair mussed by his worried fingers. Somehow Al imagined he wouldn't leave that desk until she was there.

“Is he…” she whispers. It feels like something is sucking at the back of her head.

“He's not dead,” Meg says, her voice a little too loud. “Sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound worse than it is. He's in the hospital.” She reaches into her purse and hands Al a scrap of paper. Fresno Episcopal, where Al and Suzy were both born, is written in Meg's hard scrawl. Below that, her parents' home phone number, as if Al might have forgotten it. It's strange to see it with the area code.

Al closes her eyes and listens to what might be her own heart. Fast but functioning. Now when she pictures her father, she sees him in a hospital bed that looks like the metal-framed twin she still sometimes shares with Meg. Is this all that's left of her family? A crazy quilt of memories threaded deceitfully with details from her new life?
I need to restock,
she thinks, and it's almost literal. As if her hands would gain something from stacking chickpeas on shelves, four cans deep.

“What do I do?” Al asks. They're all staring at her.

“How would we know?” replies Caleb.

“Depends,” says Jody thoughtfully. “How much do you like your pa?”

“You go home,” Meg states, and Al is grateful for her decisiveness. Al slips off the barstool and into Meg's arms. Her embrace is so tight that Al can't catch her breath. “I'll loan you a dress,” Meg whispers into Al's ear. “I'll take it in and shorten it tonight.”

In early December Matty quits the Goodwill and moves to Vancouver. This surprises Felix, who sort of figured that a town as small as Lilac Mines would be static. She assumed that most people lived here by accident, and that if they were going to leave, they would have done so long ago.

“Bye, lezbirds. Don't forget to invite me to your big lesbo wedding,” he says on his last day. The door dings as he steps out of the store and into the rainy day.

Felix and Tawn are a long way from a big lesbo wedding, but they do seem to be really and truly dating, in a teenage sort of way—not that Felix actually dated anyone when she was a teenager. They make out in Felix's car and have quietly reached third base in Tawn's bedroom. Felix has learned a few unexpected things about Tawn: she's been more or less out since high school because, she says, she's a bad liar. She has an extensive collection of reggae CDs and dances to them with mellow, unselfconscious grace.

After Matty's long, soggy last day, Tawn counts out the cash register and locks the shop. They drive up North Main only to discover a road crew jackhammering at chunks of asphalt. The detour veers west, toward the newer part of town. The line of cars, brake lights blinking, is the first traffic jam Felix has seen since she arrived.

“It's okay, we need to head east anyway,” Tawn says. “Let's try going down Washoe Street.”

Washoe Street is a sort of shadow of East Main. The old buildings here are less restored, less like a tourist's idea of a small town and more like a small town's idea of a small town. There are hardware stores and shoe repair shops and a shooting range. Anna Lisa went there one night, and Felix was horrified.

“Your car is fucking freezing,” Felix says. “No offense.”

“Yeah, the fan is broken. It's actually better that it's cold out because at least this way it doesn't overheat.”

“Aren't you scared of getting stuck by the side of the road? There are freaks out there who might take advantage of a cute, stranded chick. Have you looked into getting a new car? Or like, a newer car?”

“Yeah, of course I'm scared,” Tawn says, glancing at her sideways. “I've looked at some ads, but anything that would be a real upgrade is too expensive. I did meet this girl with a year-old Beetle, though,” she smiles.

Felix puts her hand on the back of Tawn's warm, slender neck. Tawn jumps. The car zigzags.

“Oh my
God,
your hands are cold,” says Tawn when she's regained control of the wheel.

“Let's stop there,” Felix says, pointing to a low wooden building that says Nora's Unisex Salon on one side and Coffee - Cold Beer - Ammo on the other. “Let's get some coffee.”

“I hate coffee,” Tawn says. “It doesn't taste like something you're actually supposed to
drink.”

“We can just warm our hands on the cups,” she promises. “And pick up some bullets.”

The store is small and dark, crowded with dusty displays. The stringy-haired woman slouched on a stool behind the counter glares at them. Felix wonders if it's obvious they're a couple. She wonders if they are a couple.

She decides to be friendly. “Afternoon. Hey, um, how old is this building?”

The woman looks Felix up and down with small blue eyes the color of swimming pools. She takes in the rainbow of plastic clips twisting Felix's spiky hair, the bomber jacket, the pink wool pants.

“You're not from the Historical Society, are you?”

“Huh? No.”

“Good, 'cause they're always snooping around here. Guess they know how old this place is by now, though. They want to take it. Commies.”

“Why do they want to take it?” Felix asks. Tawn is investigating the store's lip balm selection, conveniently located next to a dangerous-looking—but powerful—space heater.

“Used to be the post office and the newspaper office. Back in olden times. They want to put some stupid plaque up that says '319 Washoe Street used to be the post office and newspaper office in 18-hundred-and-such-and-such.' Tell me, where're people gonna get their coffee and beer then?”

“And ammo,” Felix says, then clamps her mouth shut. Tawn giggles and studies a tube of Blistex intensely.

Three-nineteen Washoe Street. Why does that sound familiar? Her reading about the town has centered on the mine. One book mentioned a bank robbery, and another recalled a popular update of
Romeo and Juliet
at the Silver Bird Playhouse, but there's been nothing about a post office or newspaper office—and why would there be?

Then she sees the number written out in her mind—319, with a flat top on the 3, and a little flag on the 1. A soft-bottomed W.

“That's the address on the postcard,” she says aloud. She's giddy with the information, and embarrassed that she hadn't even thought about where the postcard was
sent.
Maybe Cal is just around the corner.

Tawn looks up. “Yeah, of course it is. It's the
post office.
They didn't have mailmen in a place like this, way back then. Even now, a lot of people farther up in the mountains come into town to pick their mail up.”

“Oh. Right. Duh,” Felix says. “I'm such a city girl. And she… you,” she looks at the beady-eyed clerk, “just said it was the post office.”

“Are you going to buy something?” asks the clerk. A cigarette smolders in an ashtray next to her.

There are two metal canisters of coffee next to a rack of heat-lamp-haloed pretzels, and Felix fills a styrofoam cup. Tawn buys a hot chocolate, and they sit down on the patio furniture that is the store's dining area.

“I really want to find out what happened to Lilac,” Felix sighs. “I know it's stupid and impossible, but it's like, I would just be so happy if I knew. It would feel so good to have a solid answer. Nothing else does.”

Tawn stabs at her drink with a skinny red straw. “This is definitely the powdered stuff.” She leans in. “That woman is watching us. Doesn't she know we're too young to be historical?”

Felix adds, “When I said nothing is solid, I didn't mean—I'm not saying we're not. I'm not saying we are. I mean, I'm not one of those U-Haul lesbians, I just—”

Tawn lowers her voice. “U-Haul lesbians?”

“You know, the joke—what do dykes bring on the second date?”

“Oh. Because they can't afford movers?”

“No, because they shack up right away. You haven't heard that one before?”

“Oh, I get it,” says Tawn. “You know, it's not like there's some big—I don't know—lesbian joke conference in Lilac Mines.”

Felix laughs. “Yeah, I picked that one up at the lesbian joke conference in L.A. The tenth annual.”

They're quiet for a minute. The clerk goes to the freezer case and fusses with the bottles of beer and soda.

“Um, there's something I wanted to talk to you about,” Tawn says. Felix thinks,
This is it, this is where she lays out the future.
Felix feels strangely calm. Like she might be ready for this.

“I'm going to be hiring someone to fill in for Matty pretty soon,” Tawn says, “and I think it would be a good idea not to mention that we're, you know, seeing each other.”

“Okay… “ Felix lets it sink in. Tawn was talking work-future. “Right. Well, that seems fair.”

But as her coffee burns her tongue and Tawn watches the parking lot, Felix starts to think about the reality. She will have to go into the Goodwill four mornings a week and not touch Tawn's arm and not call her “honey.” Not that she
does
call her “honey,” but suddenly she wants to. What if whoever Tawn hires asks if Felix is dating someone? A few months ago, when she was still jittery from the attack, she might have found forced silence shamefully appealing. But now she's ricocheted to the opposite end of the out-ness spectrum.

“I thought you said you were a bad liar,” Felix says.

“I am. But we have to be professional. I don't think we really have a choice.”

“Sure we do. We could be pioneers. We could really make a statement.”

“A statement about what? I'm not saying we can't be gay—it's not the Salvation Army—but I wouldn't like it if, like, you and Matty were dating. I don't want to be a hypocrite or a bad example to the new person.”

“I just believe in trying new things.”

“Felix, this is my
job.
I have to talk to people from corporate and stuff. I can't just screw around. So to speak.” She half-smiles, but her dark eyebrows are still clenched with worry.

Felix's first thought is that Eva would have put boundary-breaking principles above corporate principles any day. Of course, it's broken boundaries and a sizeable savings account that are sending Eva on her European tour. Felix's second thought is that this must be how her aunt felt. Back in the day. Or maybe today.

“I get it,” Felix says slowly.

“I'm not really sure you do, actually,” Tawn says. “If I ever want to get my own apartment, I have to stick it out at the Goodwill. My life isn't like yours—it's not some big, fun closet where I wake up and say, 'Hmm, what am I going to wear today?' ”

“Maybe you don't get
me.
I'm trying to be political here,” Felix says. She's hurt. Doesn't activism mean speaking your truth and all that? So why does her truth feel alternately shallow and impossibly, murkily deep in Lilac Mines? She takes a slow breath. “I mean, I
get
it, okay. I'm just not looking forward to going into work and acting like I wasn't at your house all night.”

“You don't have to
be
at my house all night if you don't want to,” Tawn says icily. “You're only here for another few weeks anyway. You'll last as long as a pair of designer jeans at the Goodwill. I know you're just slumming.”

“Tawn! I am not fuckin' slumming! Do you know how many local history books I've read since I got here? I'm trying to figure out what actually
happened
to Lilac Ambrose. Who hurt her. Lilac the person, not the mascot. Have you even read your grandfather's own book?”

Tawn wraps her arms around herself. Her eyes are huge and liquid. “If you're so into history, maybe you should realize that it's still real for some of us. The old, homophobic days are
now.”

Felix doesn't mean to touch the scar on her lip, to be so cheap and obvious, but her fingers gravitate to the white bump of skin. “Yeah, I know that, thanks.”

“Sorry,” Tawn says in a low voice. “But, well, there's still a difference between one really bad day and every day. I just feel like sometimes you don't even notice what's around you.”

“Whatever,” Felix sighs.

Tawn is shivering and looking hard at the parking lot. “Hey, is that your aunt?”

“Where?”

Tawn points. Felix sees the poodle in the truck bed, then Anna Lisa walking toward Nora's Unisex Salon. She's bundled in a shapeless blue jacket, as utilitarian as a unisex hair salon. Her hair does look a little shaggy.

Felix dumps the rest of her coffee and introduces Tawn to Anna Lisa on the freezing boardwalk that connects the store and the hair salon. It's strange to see them together, since she started working at the Goodwill partly to get away from Anna Lisa.
I could put my hand on Tawn's back,
Felix thinks.
I could hold her hand while I introduce her, show Aunt Anna Lisa how it's done.
But she doesn't feel like touching Tawn right now. She feels like letting her shiver.

“Nice to meet you,” Anna Lisa says with a nod.

“You too,” Tawn nods back, still clutching her hot chocolate.

“I was going to get a haircut,” Anna Lisa says.

“Is this a good place?” Tawn asks politely.

“The only other place I've gone is A La Carte Nails, which does hair too now, but it's not open Mondays and it's so… pink.”

Tawn laughs and Felix hates them both.

“I was about to leave,” Tawn says. “Felix, why don't you get a ride home with your aunt?” She turns, with a flip of her rain-frizzed hair, and walks across the parking lot.

And so Felix finds herself in the waiting area of Nora's with a year-old issue of
Good Housekeeping,
thinking about how little the magazine has to do with housekeeping, trying not to think about Tawn.

Nora Banister emerges, aproned, scissors in hand. She has a manic blonde perm and bright pink lips (raspberry? Pepto-Bismol?). Felix's aunt sits in what looks like an old dental chair, a piece of furniture that might be found in a particularly creative BDSM club.

“The usual?” Nora asks.

“Same old, same old,” smiles Anna Lisa. Apparently Nora's Unisex Salon doesn't shampoo. Nora examines Anna Lisa's dry hair with her fingers, and places her hands on Anna Lisa's shoulders when she talks. Felix watches them, thinking,
This is what it would look like if Anna Lisa had a girlfriend.

Felix grows bored with an article about “Jeans For
Every
Body.” How was it she used to spend every day writing this shit?

She stands up and walks around the salon. In addition to several hanging plants, there is a large wood and metal contraption in the corner of the waiting area. It's an architecture of keys and rollers, with one big flat area. It seems to fit with the old dental chair and the peeling windows, but she can't imagine what it has to do with the beauty biz.

“What's this?” she calls to Nora.

“Old printing press,” Nora says, continuing to snip. “From back when this was a newspaper office. It's been here since we opened, and I haven't gotten rid of it 'cause I think it's kind of cool. I keep meaning to paint it, though, and put some plants on it.”

Felix leans in. Ancient, inky fingerprints smudge the levers and even the legs of the press. Hands fed the news into the machine, following the same trails day after day. One day, she imagines, they arranged the letters to say LILAC AMBROSE LOST. Or (is this how printing presses work?) TSOL ESORBMA CALIL. The word HOGAN is scratched into the metal edge of the press, and Felix's mind wanders to that sitcom,
The Hogan Family.