Original Sins (64 page)

“We were thinking it might be fun,” said her father, “to take you all to the Top of the Sixes when Matt and Justin get home.”

Emily was speechless.

“We could go pick up Matt if you'll tell us where the day-care place is,” offered her mother.

“He's going home with a friend tonight”

“Well, when does Justin get home?” inquired her father.

“Uh, he's staying in the Village for his Personal Growth Workshop tonight.”

Her parents looked blank. She viewed her life through their eyes. In context it made a certain amount of sense. In the context of Newland, however, it was sordid and irresponsible. Oh dear God, please keep Maria sleeping. She looked at her parents' wrinkles and greying hair. They were good people. All they wanted was a peaceful old age. Quiet deaths. And here they had her for a daughter.

“Tea!” exclaimed Emily. “Let me fix you some. But first let me put on some clothes.”

She raced into the bedroom and shook Maria awake. “My
parents
are in the fucking living room!”

Maria opened her eyes, then started laughing.

“Shut up, they'll hear you! Come on, you've got to hide in the closet.”

Maria frowned. “Sorry, but I'm not going into a closet again for anybody.”

“Please”
grunted Emily, dragging her from the bed.

“This is so childish,” protested Maria as Emily shoved her into the corner of the closet and stacked blankets on top of her. “You're a grown woman. Who you sleep with is nobody's business but your own.”

“In New York maybe. Not in Newland.”

Back in the living room she poured them bourbon instead of tea, and rapidly tossed some down herself.

“Is something the matter?” her mother asked.

“Oh, no!”

By the time they left, Emily was passing out on the couch.

Maria emerged. “I resent being treated like a runaway slave, Emily. Jesus Christ, I'm your goddam
lover.
Couldn't you have introduced us? Couldn't we all have sat down and had a drink together like grown-ups? Wouldn't they want to know how happy I'm making their daughter?”

No doubt Kate had taken Maria home to meet the folks. Emily panicked. Why were things everybody else found so easy such a trial for her? Constantly torn between two ridiculous cultures, each sure its ways were right. Weeping, she wailed, “Give me a break, Maria.”

Maria took her in her arms. “All right, never mind, darling.”

Maria and Emily sat in a restaurant eating hamburgers. Every time the waitress whisked by, Maria's eyes followed her. Emily had just about decided to ask Maria to choose between her and her various other women. Emily was pretty sure Maria would pick her, which was why she was giving her the choice. Emily couldn't take her own seizures of jealousy anymore. She was turning into a nutcase.

Maria was reaching into her jeans pocket. Emily studied her green eyes and greying hair and tanned face. She loved this woman. She didn't want to share her. Maria handed her a ring with three keys on it.

Emily studied them blankly.

“To my apartment,” Maria said.

Emily realized this was supposed to be a heavy moment. She remembered when Justin had given her the keys to his apartment. It was equivalent to a KT's giving you his la-valier. In a big city anyone who had your keys could rob you blind, rape you in the night, read your diary while you were away, interrupt your assignations. The giving of keys implied an extreme degree of trust. But Emily was from Newland, where doors were never locked, so the emotional impact eluded her. Nevertheless she grinned and said, “Thanks, sweetheart. I'll get copies of mine for you.”

They ate on in a silence that was presumably fraught with significance for Maria. Emily tried to get into the spirit of the thing by slipping her foot out of her clog and rubbing it up and down Maria's calf. Emily felt waves of desire and tenderness. So intense that she knew this woman was the love of her life.

Maria kept eating her hamburger and following the buxom waitress with her eyes. How
could
she when they were sitting there with these great rushes of electricity passing back and forth between Emily's foot and Maria's leg? Emily sat back and glanced under the table. Her foot had been caressing the wooden table leg.

She sat in silence.

Maria smiled. “What are you looking so perplexed about?”

Emily said nothing. What did it mean if a table leg could trigger these sensations she'd been labeling “love”? Finally she replied, “I was just thinking you're the nicest gift I've ever given myself.”

Maria thought it over, her eyes on the bustling waitress. “That sounds very sweet. But I'm afraid I don't much care for it.”

“How come?”

“The implication that I'm an object you can own.”

“You know that isn't what I mean.” Someone once said the unexamined life wasn't worth living. What about the overexamined life?

“I'm not so sure. You've been acting pretty weird ever since you stopped sleeping with Justin.”

“Have I?” She knew she had.

“You know you have.”

Emily nodded.

“I think you've got this slot in your head you fit people into—Raymond, then what's-his-name … Earl. Then Justin. Now you're trying to do it to me. But, see, I can't handle your undiluted devotion, Emily. We've got good things to
give
each other, but they're not everything.”

“Which is why you need Kate? And the others? Because I can't meet your needs?”

“What's Kate got to do with it?”

“What's Kate got to do with it? God, how can you compartmentalize your life like that? Whatever you do has ramifications on the whole. And I think your continued involvement with Kate is damaging us.”

“Honey, Kate was here before you.”

“Yeah, all right, fine. So why did you move on to me if things weren't over between you?”

Maria grimaced.

“What do you think this is, Maria—Malibu Beach or something?”

Maria looked at her plate for a long time. When she raised her head, she said, “Look, you're not working. And Justin and you are doing some weird trip. And you want me to make everything all right. But it's not within my power, Emily, as dearly as I love you. You don't need a man like that. You don't need a woman like that. Women have defined themselves through their relationships with men for so long that the temptation for lesbians is to continue to define ourselves through our relationships. I suppose to break out of this, we have to define ourselves through our work, or our politics, or our furniture or something.”

The Great Ear couldn't believe her ears. A woman insisting there were limits to what she could do for others?

Finally she said, “I feel patronized. I raise an issue regarding you and me, and you give me some theoretical rap. It's what you Yankees always do—duck behind your political analyses.”

“Oh, Christ, I'm in trouble now, I've just become a ‘Yankee.'”

“Damn right,” Emily snarled. “So what about Kate?”

“What about her?”

“Which is it going to be—her or me?”

“This is so childishe.”

“Childish?
You're the one who's childish. Like a kid in a candy store. You have to take a bite of everything, don't you? The way you've been devouring that poor waitress with your eyes.”

“I love women. I love their bodies. I love to watch them move. What's wrong with that? She's gorgeous.”

“Jesus!” Emily stared at her. “Is that what women's liberation means then? We're free to behave as exploitatively as men traditionally have? Free to turn other women into sex objects? Wonderful.”

“I'm not exploiting her, I'm admiring her. And if we met and enjoyed each other, we might go to bed. And it might be fun, or it might not. And we might continue for a week, or a month, or for years. All these rules in your head …”

“You people are sick.”

“Which people?”

“You Yankees.”

“Oh, Christ …”

“You treat each other like boxes of cereal. And when you go stale, or when you fail to find a prize at the bottom, you toss each other into the garbage.”

“I think the Southern Baptist in you is overreacting, Emily.”

“Fuck you!”

“I mean, sex isn't that important. It can be just another dimension to a friendship, a way to break down barriers and get closer …”

“General Foods ought to package it. Instant Intimacy! They'd make a fortune. What's wrong with you people that you can't get close without sex? It's pathetic.”

“What's wrong with
you
people that you think you have to marry for life anyone whose genitals you touch? When are you going to grow up and stop behaving like a romantic adolescent?”

Emily glared. “When are
you
going to grow up and realize that just because you have the power to seduce someone doesn't mean you have to exercise it? I became a lesbian in the first place because I love women. If I wanted to be with someone who behaved like a man, I'd be with a man.”

“Bullshit!” Maria hissed, bringing her fist down on the table. Silverware clattered to the floor. Heads turned. “Just because men have used sex as a weapon to dominate and degrade women doesn't mean we have to lock it away. Women can transform it into something sweet and sensual and pleasure-giving and life-affirming. And talk about male attitudes: this exclusivity of yours, regarding another person as a possession and trying to control her behavior. I don't want anything to do with it.”

“And I don't want anything to do with your compulsive womanizing.”

“So where does that leave us?”

Emily shoved the keys across the table.

“So you're determined to get on your high horse and ride off into the sunset?” Maria asked.

“I have no choice.”

“You're making one. Own it.”

“What? You can change, or I can change. But why should we?”

“No reason. Unless we care enough to want to stay together.”

They gazed at each other. Emily reached across the table for Maria's hands. Necks craned throughout the restaurant.

“Let's think it over,” Maria suggested.

Justin announced he was moving in with Shelby in the Village, would be filing for divorce, and wanted custody of Matt.

“Well?” he said. “Say something.”

“All right I'm upset. And what upsets me most is the discovery that if I won't let you instruct me, or sleep with me, or ramble on about your problems, you don't want to be involved with me. If I'm not doing something for you, you ‘have no use' for me. How do you think that makes me feel?”

“But I
do
want a relationship with you, Emily. I've been knocking myself out trying to establish one. I simply don't know how to act with you anymore. If I'm nice, I'm patronizing. If I'm in pain about you and Maria, I'm guilt-tripping you. If I'm firm, I'm a bully. You women are out of your gourds.”

“Your key word, Justin, is ‘act.' That's all it is with you. You've been trying to find ways to lure or cajole or scare me back into the same old mold. You've got this slot in your head that has to be filled by a woman who'll service you sexually and domestically. I'd ceased to do this, so some woman who would had to be found. You aren't interested in what I'm really like, or think about, or might want to do.”

“Crap,” he said, walking toward the door.

“Can I have your new phone number? Matt might want to call you.”

“Yeah.” He pulled out an address book. She handed him pen and paper. The number was listed under “U” for “us.”

“Thanks. Terrific,” Emily said, her teeth clenched.

“Bitterness doesn't become you, Emily.”

“Who's bitter?” she asked, laughing bitterly.

In the following weeks things deteriorated between her and Matt. All the characteristics he'd inherited and copied from Justin stood out in sharp relief and drove her crazy. The way his crew socks drooped. The way he sniffed when he woke up. Once when she asked him to pick up his room, he snapped, “You pick it up. You're the mommy.” She slapped him hard. He stared at her as a large red handprint appeared on his cheek.

She swept him into her arms, apologizing frantically.

Sammie's daughter, Angela, came over to play one Saturday. They were in Matt's room preparing to operate on one of his dolls. Emily had given up sleeping and eating by this time, in favor of pacing the living room floor smoking.

She overheard Matt say, “You can't be the doctor.”

“Can too,” Angela announced.

“Cannot.”

“Can too.”

“You have to be the nurse. Nurse, get the patient ready for the operation.”

“I'm the doctor, Matt.”

“Are not.”

“Are too.”

“Girls can't be doctors. Girls don't have penises.”

Emily raced into Matt's room and spanked him hard several times, saying through gritted teeth, “I don't ever want to hear you say that again, Matthew Lawson!”

Both children stared at her, terrified. She stopped in mid-spank. Matt began howling. Angela joined him.

Emily closed her eyes. “I'm sorry, honey,” she finally mumbled. “Angela is your guest. If she wants to be doctor, let her. Or take turns.”

Matt's makeup was half Justin. He was linked to Justin in a way Emily could never be. And what did it mean if she despised Justin? It meant she was despising half of poor Matt. To earn her approval, he would come to despise half of himself. Maybe she should give him up to Justin without a fight. So that he could grow up despising instead the half of himself he got from her …

When Sammie came to pick up Angela, she said, “We're missing you at meetings, girl. When you coming back?”

“Ah, God, Sammie, I'm having a bad time.”