The Bride of Catastrophe (35 page)

I put a sheet of paper down on her desk blotter and did a rubbing with the side of a pencil. A phone number! I dialed with my heart in my throat, and got the dry cleaner. I went to the mailbox and brought the day's catalogues in to revel in the array of duvet covers, the models striding through the wheat in their “field jackets,” standing at their easels in “poet shirts.” Under the duvet, imagining myself at an easel in a poet shirt, I fell deeply asleep and dreamed spiders had spun the bed into their web, so that if I dared move I'd be trapped. And woke when I felt Lee standing over me, holding a hand to my forehead as if I must have had a fever, gazing at me with something like awe.

“I can't believe it,” she said. “I just can't believe you're here.”

Twelve

“B
EATRICE, I
am calling to lament the state of American manhood.”

“Oh my God, you had your date.”

“Yes, and he didn't, well, he didn't. He didn't do what normal, red-blooded American men are supposed to do, he completely let down his side of the deal.”

“What was that?”

“He
just sat there
, Beatrice. He
made no move
.”

“Maybe he was shy?”

“What if we were at war? Would you be saying ‘maybe he was shy' while he ran away from the battle?”

“I like to think that's not the right analogy,” I said. But I was afraid I was wrong.

“If you look back over history … even prehistory, the pattern is clear.…”

“Philippa, did you let him get a word in?”

“W … of course … I … of course. I always let you get a word in.”

“You listen, when I interrupt,” I said. “Which is a noble quality; I wish I were able to do the same. But on a first date…”

“A man has a responsibility to … shall we say … put the ball into play…” she said, with professorial authority.

“Philippa, did you smile up at him and say dewily, ‘I had a wonderful time'?”

“Well, no. I mean, I didn't have a wonderful time. Why would I say I did?”

“What did you two talk about?”

“The Crusades,” she admitted.

“Did you think of changing the subject to something more personal?”

“I love talking about the Crusades.”

“So, you admit it! You had a wonderful time!”

“I was able to correct some of his information,” she said grumpily.

“Oh, Philippa, what am I going to do with you?”

“He's six foot two, Beatrice. He has a Ph.D. in political journalism. He's been to Moscow five times. Surely he can get up the gumption to make the first move. What is going to become of this country? And then there's the whole question of lingerie.”

“What would that be?”

“Oh,
you know
,” she said, sounding sweetly, utterly vanquished, in despair at herself. “Little lace insets here and there, that kind of thing.”

She pulled herself up short, though, in soldierly fashion. “An interesting experiment, but lingerie is in the ascendant here, I'm afraid.”

*   *   *

THERE WAS
no law against walking down Aetna Boulevard, I said to myself stubbornly, and one afternoon I went in early to pick Lee up, left the car in the staff parking lot, and strode along the sidewalk toward town as if I had every right to be there. I couldn't bring myself to turn my head (it wasn't like I wanted to see Stetson), but as I walked by LaLouche, he came to the door. It was December. Silver reindeer lifted candelabra antlers in the window behind him and the mannequins were offering each other gifts wrapped in white silk.

“Is that you?” he asked, and my first impulse was to say “no.”

“I had to get a lightbulb,” I said.

“Oh, yeah, you went to Hazleton's? They've got an amazing selection. I got the fixtures for the dressing rooms there, they cast a really flattering light, warm—”

I had no idea how long a person could go on about light fixtures, nor did I expect
myself
to have so much to say on the subject, but I did, and finally had to stop myself in the middle of a sentence about wattage, asking—“So, how are you? How's it going here?”

“It's okay,” he said. “It's the holidays and that always helps.”

“Tracy likes working here?” I asked.

“She likes being a part of it,” he said, with a little sigh. “And she loves the clothes. Which does help.” He pulled the steamer out of the back closet and I could see that tension in his back and shoulders that used to precede one of his confessions. “She's in class now,” he said. “I have to admit it brings us closer, working together.”

Now this, for no reason, made me feel so terrible that I had no choice but to say, with wholehearted happiness: “That's wonderful, Stetson. She's so pretty. I'm sure she's a great saleswoman.”

“Thanks,” he said, sounding sort of disappointed. “And—how are you?”

“I'm good, good. I moved out to Willbrook with Lee. No job yet, but I've got some interviews coming up. I'm doing fine.”

His smile was no less radiant than my last one. He was grateful for the chance to show his open and liberal nature, and determined to be happy for me. “Congratulations!”

“Thanks, Stet,” I said, though there's nothing more infuriating than having all kinds of people rush out to pat you on the head when you're right in the middle of a transgression.

“You lucked out when you got rid of me! I'm sure Tracy understands all this in a way I just don't.” This was
(a)
an insult cleverly disguised as a compliment, and
(b)
a lie. I'd never lied to Stetson before and it made me feel as sick as when I'd dreamed I was drinking the Jackson Pollock painting.

He'd smiled sadly down at the floor when I said he'd lucked out, but now he caught himself. “Hey, you'll need some new clothes for those interviews,” he said.

“Well, Tracy's the one to help me pick them,” I chimed. Let those two fold shirts together until the end of time.

“Beatrice, I owe you an apology,” Stetson said suddenly. “I should never have hired you; you quit your other job for this and then—”

“Oh, don't, Stet,” I said. Because I didn't want to remember how warm it had been there, steaming out djellabahs and waiting for his next story.

“Can I take you to lunch sometime?” he asked. I must have looked perplexed, because he started explaining that I'd given him insight into the kind of person who didn't buy from LaLouche. “And Tracy won't object, seeing—”

“That I'm a lesbian,” I snapped.

“Exactly.” He caught my eye and smiled, and I felt, as always, that we had a body of secret knowledge between us that we acted on even though we couldn't have said what it was.

“Close to You” was playing on the radio and I said, “Oh, Stetson, I
love
this song!”

“It's the Carpenters,” he said, peering into my face as if to check for dilated pupils. “Are you okay?”

We laughed, and suddenly everything was easy. “It's like—” he said, glancing at me for reassurance, so I nodded and made a reflexive beckoning motion with my hand, coaxing his thoughts toward me. “These songs that run in your head, when you remember the words, you know why you're stuck on the tune.”

“Yes!” I said. “I never thought of it, but you're right”—that expression of raw need crossed his face, so I continued—“that is
so
true.”

“You know that old Isley Brothers song, ‘She's Gone'? When you left … I'd come in every morning, and…”

“Lunch, yes, let's have lunch!” I said, to divert the freight train that was heading straight at us, and ran out into the blue evening. Across the street two little girls in velveteen coats stood on tiptoe before the Christmas village in the toy shop window, and everywhere there was an air of extravagance, haste, anticipation. People were rushing along with the sense that something glorious was about to happen—it was going to be Christmas and love would assert itself over the foolish angers and wrongheaded notions that bound it in chains the rest of the year.

“I'll call right after Christmas,” he said as I went off up the street to Lee.

Thirteen

L
EE AND
I drove out to Dunbridge to the Christmas tree farm. There was a dusting of snow, and two kids with red mittens ran ahead of us, pulling an old wooden sled. All around us were excited children and beleaguered parents, people looking for the same communal reverence as we were, though their city shoes were too cold and wet to allow rapture.

“Come on, Lee,” I said—feeling that all the trees, or all the good trees, were going to be spoken for if we didn't act quickly—and that she was purposely keeping just a few steps behind me, pulling on some invisible harness to slow me down.

“These look kind of small,” she said, and looking around I saw she was right. It was a field full of dollhouse trees that would be lost in Lee's big white living room. “Maybe farther up.” We tramped on, leaving behind the heterosexuals who were willing to settle for little scraggly Christmas trees; we were entering unbroken territory, a brave new world of love. It was only a few weeks since Harvey Milk had been shot in San Francisco, and his kind, smiling face haunted me. (“Antinous, the beautiful martyr,” Philippa had explained. “It's a natural response.”) In another year I'd have dreamt of bringing him back to life by making love to him, but really this was better: the immense, silent candle-lit procession through the San Francisco streets reminded me that I belonged to a great movement, that I—
we
—were on the side of good.

High up, the trees were taller, fuller, and you could lean into them and close your eyes and smell the pine.

“This one!” I said, standing beside a very full one, all spangled with snow.

“Do you think…?” Lee asked, with a child's happy disbelief: Can it be, really?

“Yes!” I said stoutly, feeling it was my gift to her. I reached deep into it, took the trunk in my two hands, and realized it was growing there and could not just be picked up and carried away. “How do we do this?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, what do you usually do?” I asked, thinking that this was the sort of thing she was supposed to know, and that my toes were getting cold and it wasn't fair that there was never anyone to give me a little guidance, even about such a thing as picking out a Christmas tree.

“I don't,” she said. “I've never gotten my own tree. I go home for Christmas.”

“You do?” She'd seemed so grown-up and self-sufficient.

“I mean, I already have my plane ticket,” she said suddenly, and her face, whose stillness always had such a calming effect on me, crumpled into tears.

“You mean, we won't have Christmas together?” I was actually relieved to hear this because my mother would have gone crazier if I didn't go home to her at Christmas.

“I can't bear it,” Lee said.

“Lee, it's okay. We'll have a celebration before you go. We have our tree.” But she was really crying now and I let go of the tree and put my arms around her. She shook me off, taking her hands from her face for a minute to gesture toward the families farther down the slope who mustn't see us touching.

“We'll make cookies,” I said. “Would you like that? Real Christmas cookies with sprinkles. And cocoa, and we'll sing carols!”

“No,” she said. “That stuff only makes me sad.”

“Why?”

“It just—it's not Christmas. I'm afraid to leave you,” she said, and sniffled, stood up straighter. “That's all.”

I looked into her face, trying to see what she meant. “It's just for a few days,” I said.

“I just, I have the feeling you won't be here, when I get home,” she said.

“Lee, where would I be?” I started to say “I don't have anywhere else to go,” but changed it quickly enough that she couldn't feel it, I don't think. Though I know people do feel things the people they love don't say. “I live with
you
; I love
you
. I'm not going anywhere.”

She shook her head vehemently, like a child. “It's such a strong feeling.”

And strange, here in the midst of a Christmas tree farm, coming from someone who seemed on an even keel. There was something stilted about it: she was trying to show me a piece of herself that she usually took pride in concealing, so it sounded awkward and false. And I, who'd insisted she open up to me, wanted to shake her now she had—she'd tricked me into thinking she was one of those strong and able people I longed be, and now she was sobbing over nothing on a freezing hillside. As I listened I watched a mother hold a snowsuited baby up over her head to smell its diaper, then tuck it resolutely under her arm and head down toward the parking lot.

I took Lee's wrists and pulled her to face me. “I will be here when you get back,” I said, in a voice quiet with conviction. It was amazing how clearly I knew what to say. “I will be right where I am now, right beside you. Okay?” She nodded, head down, an abject child. “Okay. So, what about this tree?”

“I guess you're supposed to bring a saw,” she said. “Maybe they have saws in the shed. I'll go see.”

I stayed by the tree, to protect it—it was the last vestige of some old dream and I felt I'd kill anyone who'd try to take it from me.

Lee came back with a rough-toothed saw and knelt in the snow, but after much effort she said, “It's not really working,” in the droopy, disappointed way she had, so I realized she'd never expected it to work and was pleased now to see she'd been right all along. I got down and saw she'd only scarred a wide section of bark, without even cutting through.