So instead, I eavesdrop. I push the door open a crack in time to hear Dara speaking. "I couldn't love you any more if you told me right now that you were straight," she says. "And I don't love you any less because you told me you aren't."
I gently close the door. In the kitchen, I turn around, surveying the bowl of fruit on the counter, the cobalt blue toaster, the Cuisinart. Dara has left behind her dowsing rods. I pick them up, hold them lightly in my hands. In spite of the fact that the faucet and the pipes are less than a foot away, the rods do not jump in my hands or twitch or cross. I imagine having that sixth sense, the certainty that what I'm looking for is within reach, even if it's still hidden.
Movie theaters are wonderful places to be gay. Once the lights go down, there's no one to stare at you if you hold your girlfriend's hand or snuggle closer to her. Attention at the movies, by definition, is focused on the spectacle on the screen and not in the seats.
I'm not a PDA kind of person. I've never started kissing someone in public; I just don't have the kind of selfless abandon that you see in teenage couples who are forever making out or walking down a street with their hands tucked halfway down each other's pants. So I'm not saying that I'd necessarily walk down the street with my arm around the woman I love--but I'd sure like to know that, if I were so inclined, I wouldn't attract a trail of shocked, uncomfortable stares. We're conditioned to seeing men holding guns but not men holding hands.
When the movie credits roll, people begin to get out of their seats. As the lights come up, Zoe's head is on my shoulder. Then I hear, "Zoe? Hey!"
She leaps up as if she's been caught in the act of doing something wrong and pastes a huge smile on her face. "Wanda!" she says, to a woman who looks vaguely familiar. "Did you like the movie?"
"I'm not a big Tarantino fan, but actually, it wasn't bad," she says. She slips her arm through a man's elbow. "Zoe, I don't think you've ever met my husband, Stan? Zoe's a music therapist who comes to the nursing home," Wanda explains.
Zoe turns to me. "This is Vanessa," she says. "My . . . my friend."
Last night Zoe and I had celebrated a month together. We had champagne and strawberries, and she beat me at Scrabble. We made love, and when we woke up in the morning she was wrapped around me like a heliotrope vine.
Friend.
"We've met," I say to Wanda, although I am not about to point out that it was at the baby shower for the baby who died.
We walk out of the movie theater with Wanda and her husband, making small talk about the plot and whether this will be an Oscar contender. Zoe is careful to keep a good foot of distance away from me. She doesn't even make eye contact with me again until we're in my car, driving back to my place.
Zoe fills the silence with a story about Wanda and Stan's daughter, who wanted to join the army because she had a boyfriend who had already shipped out. I don't think she notices that I haven't said a word to her. When we reach the house, I unlock the door and walk inside and strip off my coat. "You want some tea?" Zoe asks, heading into the kitchen. "I'm going to put up the kettle."
I don't answer her. I am a thousand shades of hurt right now, and I don't trust myself to speak.
Instead I sit down on the couch and pick up the newspaper I never got a chance to read today. I can hear Zoe in my kitchen, taking mugs out of the dishwasher, filling the kettle, turning on the stove. She knows where everything is, in which drawer to find the spoons, in which cabinet I keep the tea bags. She moves around my house as if she belongs here.
I am staring blankly at editorials when she comes into the living room, leans over the back of the couch, and wraps her arms around me. "Any more letters about the police chief scandal?"
I push her away. "Don't."
She backs off. "Guess the movie really got to you."
"Not the movie." I turn around to look at her. "You."
"Me? What did I do?"
"It's what you didn't do, Zoe," I say. "What is it? You only want me when no one else is around? You're more than happy to come on to me when nobody's watching?"
"Okay. Clearly you're in a crappy mood--"
"You didn't want Wanda to know we're together. That was obvious . . ."
"My business associates don't have to know the details of my personal life--"
"Oh, yeah? Did you tell her when you got pregnant last time?" I ask.
"Of course I did--"
"There you go." I swallow, trying really hard to not cry. "You told her I was your friend."
"You are my friend," Zoe says, exasperated.
"Is that all I am?"
"What am I supposed to call you? My lover? That sounds like a bad seventies movie. My partner? I don't even know if that's what we are. But the difference between you and me is that I don't care what it's called. I don't have to label it for everyone else. So why do you?" In the kitchen the teakettle starts to scream. "Look," Zoe says, taking a deep breath. "You're overreacting. I'm going to turn off the stove and just go home. We can talk about this tomorrow, when we've both slept on it."
She walks into the kitchen, but instead of letting her go, I follow her. I watch her movements, efficient and graceful, as she takes the kettle off the burner. When she turns to me, her features are smooth, expressionless. "Good night."
She walks past me, but just as she reaches the kitchen doorway, I speak. "I'm afraid."
Zoe hesitates, her hands framing the door, as if she is caught between two moments.
"I'm afraid that you're going to get sick of me," I admit. "That you're going to get tired of living a life that still isn't a hundred percent accepted by society. I'm afraid that, if I let myself feel ecstatic about being with you, then when you leave me, I won't be able to pull myself back together."
In one move, Zoe is across the kitchen again, facing me. "Why do you think I'd leave?"
"My track record," I say. "That, and the fact that you have no idea how hard it is. I still worry every day that some parent is going to out me, and convince the school board I should lose my job. I listen to the news and hear politicians who know nothing about me making decisions about what I should and shouldn't be allowed to do. I don't understand why the most intriguing thing about my identity is always that I'm gay--not that I'm a Leo or know how to tap dance or that I majored in zoology."
"You can tap dance?" Zoe asks.
"The point is," I say, "you spent forty years straight. Why wouldn't you return to the path of least resistance?"
Zoe looks at me as if I am incredibly thick-headed. "Because, Vanessa. You're not a guy."
That night, we don't make love. We drink the tea Zoe brews, and we talk about the first time I was called a dyke, how I came home and cried. We talk about how I hate when the mechanic always assumes that I know what he's talking about when he works on my car, just because I'm a lesbian. I even do a little tap routine for her: step-ball-change, step-ball-change. We spoon on the couch.
The last thing I remember thinking before I fall asleep in her arms is This is good, too.
In spite of my disappointment over the X-ray vision glasses from the Bazooka comics prize cache, I wound up saving up for one more item that I simply had to have. It was a whale's tooth good-luck charm, on a key chain. What intrigued me was the description of the item:
Guaranteed to bring the owner a lifetime of good fortune.
I knew better, after my X-ray glasses, than to expect the whale's tooth to be either real whale or real tooth. Probably it would be plastic, with a hole punched through the top for the metal key ring attached to it. But I still found myself saving up my allowance again to buy Bazooka gum. I hunted on the floor of my mother's car for spare change, so that I could gather the $1.10 for shipping and handling.
Three months later, I had my sixty-five Bazooka comics and sent off my envelope for my prize. When the charm arrived, I was a little surprised to see that the tooth seemed to be legitimate (although I couldn't really tell you if it came from a whale) and that the silver key ring attached to it was heav
y, shiny. I slipped it into the front pocket of my backpack and started wishing.
The next day was Valentine's Day in school. We had each made little "mailboxes" out of shoe boxes and construction paper. This was in the era of transactional analysis, when no one was allowed to feel left out, so the teacher had a foolproof plan: every girl in the class would send a card to every boy, and vice versa. I was guaranteed, this way, to receive fourteen Valentines in return for the fourteen Tweety and Sylvester cards I had addressed to the boys in class--even Luke, unfortunately, who picked his nose and ate it. At the end of the school day, I carried home my shoe box and sat on my bed and sorted the cards. To my surprise, there was one extra. Yes, every boy had given me a Valentine, as expected. But the fifteenth came from Eileen Connelly, who had sparkly blue eyes and hair as black as night and who once, in gym class, had put her arms around me to show me how to properly hold a bat. HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, the card said, FROM, EILEEN. It didn't matter that it wasn't signed with "Love." It didn't matter that she might have given a card to every girl in the class in addition to me. All I knew at that moment--all I cared about--was that she had been thinking of me, however briefly. I was convinced that the only reason I'd gotten this bonus Valentine was that whale's tooth charm--which was fast acting indeed.
Over the years, every time I moved--from my home to my college dorm, from my college dorm to my apartment in the city, from my apartment to this house--I have gone through my belongings and sorted the wheat from the chaff. And every time, in my nightstand, I have come across that whale's tooth good-luck charm. I can never quite bear the thought of getting rid of it.
Apparently, it's still working.
MAX
There are four white marble disks at the far eastern corner of my brother's backyard. Too small to be stepping-stones, some are even covered with a tangle of brush--rosebushes that, as far as I can tell, have never been pruned. They are memorials, one for each baby that Reid and Liddy have lost.
Today, I'm putting down a fifth stone.
Liddy wasn't very far along this time, but the house is full of crying. I'd like to tell you I came out here so that my brother and his wife could grieve in private, but the truth is it brings back too many memories for me. So instead, I went to the plant nursery and found the matching marble disk. And I'm thinking that--as a thank-you for all Reid's done for me--I'm going to fix up this little area of the lawn into a garden, when the ground thaws. I'm thinking about adding a flowering quince and some pussy willows, some variegated weigela. I'll put a small granite bench in the center, with the stones in a half-moon shape around it--a place Liddy could come out to just sit and think and pray. And I'll stagger the flowers so that there is always something in bloom--purples and blues, like grape hyacinth and cornflowers, heliotrope and purple verbena; and the whitest of whites: star magnolias, Callery pear, Queen Anne's lace.
I have just started making a sketch of this angels' garden when I hear footsteps behind me. Reid stands with his hands in the pockets of his jacket. "Hey," he says.
I turn around and squint into the sun. "How is she?"
Reid shrugs. "You know."
I do. I've never felt so lost as the times when Zoe miscarried. In this, all prospective parents have something in common with the Eternal Glory Church: to them, a life is a life, no matter how small. These aren't cells, they're your future.
"Pastor Clive's in there with her now," Reid adds.
"I'm really sorry, Reid," I say. "For whatever that's worth." Zoe and I had both gone to the clinic to be tested for infertility problems. I can't remember much about the condition that caused my sperm count to be low, and made the ones that did show up for the party less motile, but I do remember that it was genetic. Which means Reid's probably in the same boat.
He suddenly bends down and picks up the marble disk I've bought. I haven't been able to chip at the frozen ground enough to set it in place. I watch him turn it over in his hands, and then he cradles it like a discus and sends it flying into the brick wall of the built-in barbecue. The marble breaks in half and falls to the ground. Reid kneels, burying his face in his hands.
You've got to understand--my big brother is one of the most unflappable people I've ever met. In my life history, when I'm falling apart at the seams, he is the constant I can count on to hold me together. Seeing him losing control like this paralyzes me.
I grab his shoulders. "Reid, man, you gotta calm down."
He looks up at me, his breath hanging in the frigid air. "Pastor Clive's in there talking about God, praying to God, but you know what I think, Max? I think God checked out a long time ago. I don't think God gives a rat's ass about my wife wanting a baby."
In the months since my baptism, I have come to believe that God has a reason for everything. It makes sense when the bad guys get their due, then, but it's harder to understand why a savior who loves us would make awful things happen to good people. I've prayed long and hard about this stuff, trying to figure it all out, and it seems to me that most of the time, if God gives us something bad, it's supposed to be a wake-up call--a way to let us know not so subtly that we're messing up our lives. Maybe it's because we're with the wrong girl, or because we've grown too big in our own heads, or maybe it is just because we've gotten so greedy about the here and now we've forgotten that what matters the most isn't self but selflessness. Just think of those folks you meet who have survived an incurable disease--how many of them start thanking Jesus right and left? Well, all I'm saying is: maybe the reason they got sick in the first place was because that illness was the only way He could get their attention.
I can tell you--although it hurts me to say this--I see now that I am the reason why Zoe and I couldn't have a baby. That was Jesus, hitting me in the head with a two-by-four over and over until I understood that I wasn't worthy enough to be a father until I welcomed the Son. But Reid and Liddy--they are another story. They've been doing everything right, for so long. They don't deserve this kind of heartbreak.
We both look up as Pastor Clive comes out of the house. He stands in front of Reid, casting a shadow. "She threw you out, too," Reid guesses.
"Liddy just needs a little time," the pastor says. "I'll come check on her tonight, Reid."
As Pastor Clive lets himself out the gate, Reid rubs his hand over his face. "She won't talk to me. She won't eat anything. She won't take the pills the doctor gave us. She won't even pray." He looks at me, his eyes bloodshot. "Is it a sin to say that, sure, I loved that baby, but I love my wife more?"
I shake my head. After all the times I found myself boxed into a corner and couldn't find a way out, only to notice my brother's hand reaching out for me, I can finally be the one to reach out to him. "Reid," I tell him, "I think I know what to do."
It takes me ten hours to drive round-trip to Jersey and back. When I pull into Reid's driveway, the light in their bedroom is off. I find my brother in the kitchen washing dishes. He's wearing Liddy's pink apron, the one that says I'M THE COOK, THAT'S WHY, and has a frill of ruffles around the edge. "Hey," I say, and he turns around. "How is she?"
"Same," Reid replies. He looks dubiously at the paper bag in my hands.
"Trust me." I take out the box of Orville Redenbacher's Movie Theater Butter popcorn and stick one bag in the microwave. "Did Pastor Clive come back?"
"Yeah, but she still wouldn't talk to him."
That's because she doesn't want to talk, I think. Talking only brings her right back to this nightmare. Right now, she needs to escape.
"Liddy doesn't eat microwave popcorn," Reid says.
Actually, my brother doesn't let Liddy eat microwave popcorn. He's a big fan of organic stuff, although I'm not sure if it's because there's a health benefit or because he just likes having the priciest items, no matter what the category. "There's a first time for everything," I answer. The microwave dings, and I take out the bloated bag, rip it open into a big blue ceramic bowl.
The bedroom is pitch dark and smells like lavender. Liddy i
s lying on her side under the covers of her big four-poster bed, facing away from me. I'm not sure if she's asleep, and then I hear her voice. "Go away," she murmurs. The words sound like she's at the bottom of a tunnel.
I ignore her and eat a handful of popcorn.
The sound, and the smell of the butter, make her roll over. She squints at me. "Max," she says. "I'm not really in the mood for company."
"That's cool," I tell her. "I'm just here to borrow your DVD player." I reach into the paper bag and pull out the movie. Then I load it and turn on the TV.
Bullets won't kill it! the promo promises.
Flames can't hurt it!
Nothing can stop it!
The SPIDER . . . will eat you alive!
Liddy sits up against her pillows. Her eyes drift to the screen, to the incredibly fake giant tarantula that is terrorizing a bunch of teens. "Where did you get this?"
"Just a place I know." It's a head shop in Elizabeth, New Jersey, that has a mail-order cult B-movie business. I've ordered online from them. But because I couldn't wait long enough for a DVD to be shipped to me, and because this was Liddy we were talking about, I drove to the store instead.
"This is a good one," I tell Liddy. "1958."
"I don't want to watch a movie right now," Liddy says.
"Okay." I shrug. "I'll turn the sound down low."
So I pretend to watch the television, where the teenage girl and her boyfriend go looking for her missing dad and find instead a massive web from a giant spider. But in reality, I'm stealing glances at Liddy. In spite of herself, she can't help but watch, too. After a few minutes, she reaches for the popcorn in my lap, and I give her the whole bowl.
Just about the time the teenagers drag the lifeless body of the spider back to the high school gym to study it--only to learn it's actually still alive--Reid pokes his head into the bedroom. By then, I'm lounging back on his side of the bed. I give Reid a thumbs-up, and I can see the relief on his face when he sees Liddy sitting up, engaged in the world of the living again. He backs out and closes the door behind him.