Authors: Nancy Thayer
After that, an amazing thing happened: her life took on the floating, inconsequential quality of a dream. Nothing could affect her. She was not furious when her children fought or angry when a neighbor’s dog ruined the last of her garden. She was not tired or hungry or anything at all except an automaton who moved through the necessities of each day until she saw Madeline Meade again. Then the world became clear and real. Everything in her daily life was equal in value except the need to be in class: that was primary. So she seemed serene, because she was always waiting.
She studied furiously and worked on her course paper as if it were a document with the powers of saving or costing her life. Still she did not articulate to herself just what it was she felt. She moved through a life now that was marked by the time of the next class.
She could not sleep, but she didn’t jump out of bed to bustle around accomplishing tasks; she just lay there. More remarkably, she could not eat. It was not a matter of choice, of dieting; she could not swallow. Her throat closed as tight as a fist against food. She did not stop to wonder what was going on. She just kept moving forward. She was always thinking: three more days, six more hours, two more hours, until I will be in class. For that was the way she thought of it: in class. The class seemed to be the important thing, as if the room and all the people in it were magnetic and charmed.
But one evening toward the end of the course, Dr. Meade entered the classroom, leaned on the desk, smiled at her students, and told them that the following week she had
to be gone for several days to deliver a paper in San Francisco. Dr. Hower would be substituting for her. When Suzanna heard this, something plunged inside her; she felt bleak, bereft. She did not know how she would summon up the energy to get out of her chair and out of the room and to her car. Madeline Meade’s announcement forced a discovery that brought despair: the time would come when this course would end and Suzanna would no longer be able to schedule her happiness according to the days of attending class.
So it was not, in fact, the class or knowledge that she loved. Nor was it the novelty of being a student once again, nor being in the company of interesting adults. She could have all those things with her next class, the one she was scheduled to take on new techniques in elementary education.
That day broke her dream-life open. Suzanna walked out to her car holding herself tightly as if she had been wounded. More than anything, she needed and craved privacy so that she could admit to herself just what it was she felt. She was a normal woman, used to discovering the secrets of her soul through conversations with friends. This was different: she had to do it on her own. There was no precedent for a secret as threatening as this. She drove home, paid the babysitter, talked to her children, moved through the house normally, but as she stood in her kitchen cutting up bananas and apples for her children’s snack, she was in a fury of fear and delight as the seditious knowledge began to spread through her. She gave her children their snacks, sent them to their rooms to rest, and told them she was going to take a bath.
She went into the bathroom, shut and locked the door, and began running the bath water. Then she turned and looked into the mirror.
For a long time she studied her face, not in the superficial way she checked her face before going out in public or in the critical way she searched the superficialities of her face for stray eyebrows or dry skin. She looked into her own eyes and let herself acknowledge the truth: she had fallen in love with a woman.
But after all, what could be done about it? It was silly, once she admitted it. Love a woman? What a humorous idea.
Suzanna mocked herself in the mirror. She pulled her mouth to one side in derision. She turned away from the mirror and stepped into the tub and forced her body down into water that was so hot it seemed to purify. She lay back, stretched out full, with mounds of white bubbles covering her like an iridescent blanket. She stared at the blue
bathroom tiles, at the sedative white ceiling, and thought.
She had heard the words: lesbian, homosexual, gay. They had meant nothing to her, they were just words used to describe people so far beyond the pale of her life that they had no relevance to her whatsoever, no real existence at all.
Yet now she could remember a scene from her childhood. She had been about fourteen, and her father had taken her with him on a day trip into Boston. It was one of those almost miraculously rare times when both her brother and sister were invited somewhere else and she had her father to herself. They rode together in the family car comfortably, talking. Suzanna read a book in the reception room while her father conducted his business in an inner office, and then they drove back home. It was a two-hour drive, and a hot day. On the way home, they stopped at a roadside café. Her father ordered coffee and Suzanna a hot-fudge sundae.
Sitting at the counter was a strange creature: a woman with hair chopped short as a man’s, wearing gray trousers and a shirt, with a pack of cigarettes rolled up in the left sleeve of the shirt, exposing a very muscular arm. The woman was fat and homely and sinister in appearance. “Yaaaah,” she was saying to the man sitting next to her, “they’re all turds, every one of them.” Suzanna had stared at the woman—she looked so freakish, and most horrible of all, she wore a pair of men’s wing-tipped shoes.
Finally Suzanna’s father noticed the direction of her gaze. “Don’t look at her,” he said. He was embarrassed, so embarrassed that Suzanna sensed that something sexual was involved here. “That woman’s sick. She thinks she’s a man. She’s—a homosexual. She loves women.”
So that was it. Women who loved women were sick; they were unattractive to men, disgusting, and one should look away.
But then another image surfaced. Suzanna remembered it from a text on the modern novel which she had studied in an undergraduate course. Virginia Woolf. She had been in love with a woman named Vita Sackville-West; they had been lovers. Virginia Woolf had not been ugly or dumb or unable to attract the love of men. In fact, she was beautiful and brilliant and married to a man who adored her. On the other hand, she had not been exactly a model of sanity and the normal life.
What
kind
of woman loved a woman? Suzanna wondered, and as the bubbles from her bath began to dissolve, she saw her body pink and real beneath the water and her thoughts raced. What kind of woman loved a woman, what did it mean to love a
woman
—how
did one love a woman? Did she want to
touch
Madeline Meade?
Oh, yes, she did. She did. Very much.
Suzanna rose from her bath shaking and frightened. She wanted to touch Madeline Meade, and she wanted Madeline Meade to touch her with her long, elegant hands.
That night, Suzanna could not sleep, but fell in and out of dreams of Madeline’s hands. When she rose on Sunday morning, she was dizzy from lack of sleep, but strangely refreshed and eager; it was as if some reservoir of energy had suddenly cracked open inside her. She went to church, but did not hear the sermon. Instead she sat staring up at the minister as if entranced: she was trying to decide whether or not God played tricks in love.
She made it through the day by doing laundry, housecleaning, baking, all her weekend chores, but once again she found she could not sleep at night. She was exhausted, but alert, she could not rest, her mind was vivid with dreams of Madeline Meade’s hands and face and voice. When she awoke on Monday morning, she did not know how she would make it through the day, she was so tired, yet so tense, but as she stirred her coffee in the kitchen, she considered her calendar and saw that that afternoon, after school, both Priscilla and Seth were invited to a birthday party. They would be gone for two and a half hours. She smiled a mad smile at the kitchen door where the calendar hung, and a lovely desperate daring drove her into the day. She taught. She dressed her children in party clothes and dropped them at her friend’s house. Then she drove to Southmark very carefully, but very fast.
The college, as she approached it, looked larger and brighter to her than usual; it seemed to beckon and shine. Desire had now possessed her completely, and it also made her dull. She had no thoughts except that she must speak to Madeline Meade. She did not worry about her children, her parents, her friends, her God; she was intent on one thing only. She did not even stop to wonder whether or not she, Suzanna, was lovable. She only knew she had to see this woman, to present her with the knowledge of her love, and to see where life would take her then.
Madeline was in her office, seated at her desk, talking on the phone. She was laughing. Suzanna stood with mute appeal in the doorway until Madeline looked up, noticed her, smiled, and mouthed, “Come in.” Madeline pointed to a chair, and Suzanna sank down into it. The actual presence of this woman she loved did not frighten or calm
her; it only made her feel more strongly the need to get this thing done and said before the hidden knowledge broke her apart.
When Madeline hung up the phone, Suzanna said, “I need to talk with you. May I close the door?”
“Of course,” Madeline said.
Suzanna shut the door, sank back into the chair, then faced her professor and said, “I think I am in love with you.”
Madeline’s expression did not change. Finally she sighed. Then: “That’s very flattering. I’m not sure how to respond. This sort of thing happens, you know, between students and professors, or patients and therapists. I think what you mean is that you admire me, because I am a professor, because I teach—”
“No,” Suzanna said. “Please give me more credit than that. This is not a schoolgirl’s crush. I do admire you. But I
love
you. I want to touch you.”
Madeline hesitated. “Well, then,” she said. And she stretched out her hand across the desk, her long slim hand with fingers wearing two thin silver rings, her wrist dangling gold and silver bracelets, her arm elegant and easy in its gesture.
Suzanna gently placed the palm of her hand against the palm of Madeline’s hand, and with that most delicate pressure, her entire body went warm and wet; her mouth filled with saliva.
Suzanna held Madeline’s hand—their flesh touched. “I love you,” Suzanna said. She did not feel courageous or frightened; she felt completely alive.
“You know,” Madeline said, smiling, “this could get complicated. I think we should go get some coffee, and walk together, and talk.” She withdrew her hand.
“I’ve horrified you, haven’t I?” Suzanna said. “But I can’t apologize.”
“No, you haven’t horrified me,” Madeline said. She rose from the desk and crossed the room and opened the door. She looked sad. “Please. Let’s go get some coffee.”
They said nothing as they walked over to the student union; they did not speak until they were seated in a booth with their coffee cups in front of them.
“Now,” Madeline said, “listen to me. I do not take what you’re saying lightly. But it’s all a little bit crazy, you know. I don’t know you very well, even though I’ve enjoyed having you in class. You’re a good student. You’re smart. You’ve got good instincts. Still—Suzanna, you’re a mother. You’re part of a community. You teach little children.
You need to think of all these things.”
“I can only think of you.”
“What makes you think that I could love a woman?”
Suzanna was stunned. “I—I didn’t
think
you could. I guess I didn’t consider that at all. I mean”—and she smiled—“that I’m a woman. I mean you know I’m a woman. I’m not making sense. I mean that I only thought that I love you, and that you are a woman, so this is—strange—for me to feel this way. But I don’t know, I didn’t think—
could
you love a woman? My God, I know so little about you. I’ve assumed from what little you’ve said about yourself in class that you’re not married, but—oh, God, are you in love with someone? Are you living with a man—someone?”
Madeline smiled. “I want to be so careful,” she said. “
You
must be so careful. If I tell you things about me, then we will be making some kind of relationship, and there’s real danger there. Please, listen to me. It does not matter whether I’m living with someone or whether I can love a woman. It does matter that you were married to a man, you have little children, you teach in public schools. Please stop and think of those things.”
“Oh, I do think of them. I love my children—I love my life. But I
am divorced
. And now I love you, and I can’t stop. Couldn’t we—couldn’t we have an affair?”
“I can’t answer that now. I think you should take some time to consider the implications of what you’re saying, and to imagine all the possible consequences. You must be aware that homosexual love is not acceptable in this society.”
“But—”
“It was once viewed as a disease, an illness. Now it is considered only a sordid aberration.”
“Please—”
“Do you want to be called a lesbian, a homosexual, a queer, a dyke? Do you want to be thought of as weird, an outcast? Do you want to have a judge take your children from you? Do you want your children called names by other children because of what you’ve done? Could you live with yourself? I’ll tell you, an affair is one thing, but a homosexual affair is something completely different. It can destroy your life forever.”
“But do you think you could love me?”
“Oh, Suzanna. I think you are beautiful. You seem good, intelligent, and full of grace. If I didn’t admire you and care for you a little already, I wouldn’t be so frightened
for you.
You
should be frightened. You must be careful.”
“Then you are not saying that you could not love me.”
Madeline grinned. “You
are
persistent.”
Suzanna smiled back. “I am obsessed.”
The two women were quiet for a moment, caught up in a strong and mutual steady current of desire, and their smiles both widened slightly as they understood the fierce and subtle acknowledgment of their state.
Then Madeline turned her head aside and said softly, “Obsessions seldom cause people anything but grief.”