Beggar of Love Read online

  Taffy threw back her head and laughed. “Don’t tell me you mean boys. I only go out with them to please Mom and Dad.”

  Their eyes held. It seemed to Jefferson as if the worshipful little girl in Taffy was doing battle with the seductive woman. She knew the woman had won out when she felt lured by her gaze. She tried, for a while, not to look at Taffy’s breasts or her swinging, nearly naked legs, not to touch, with her unquiet hands, the young siren body.

  Ginger joined them. It was the end of the game. All three worked to set out the food.

  “Why don’t you two stay up here at my parents’ house tonight?” Taffy suggested. “I’m going to a bar with a bunch of the kids after the game.”

  “A bar, eh?” Jefferson envisioned a long night’s laughter and dancing. She wouldn’t have to come down from her high.

  Taffy’s eyes narrowed with challenge above her raised chin. “You’ve heard of the Cliffs?”

  Jefferson shot a quick look at Taffy, trying to hide and at the same time reveal a knowing grin. The White Cliffs had been a gay bar when she was in school. So Taffy was definitely out. Still she fought against acknowledging, aloud, that she was gay. Oh, everyone knew it, but it seemed to be one of those unwritten lesbian rules that the minute you admitted it, you might as well disrobe and hold out your arms. For herself, coming out to another woman was a line.

  She told Taffy, “I guess it wouldn’t matter whether we went back tonight or in the morning.”

  While Ginger hesitated, assembling sandwiches, Taffy said, “Please stay. I’ll go call Mother and tell her you’ll be there for dinner. She’s been asking to meet my charming friend Jefferson.”

  She noted that Taffy hadn’t called her Jeffy in front of Ginger.

  “My famous girlfriend.” Ginger laughed. She fastened the leather thong that held her hair, never looking at Taffy, and raised her eyebrows.

  Jefferson stood relaxed, legs apart, arms folded, hoping hard to extend this glowing day. Her mouth tasted brackish with sweet wine and old whiskey. She reached for the bottle. “What do you say, Princess? Shall we?”

  Ginger blushed again before she spoke. “Sure, Taffy.” She leveled her eyes at Jefferson. “As long as we start back to the city early.”

  She raised her arms as if to pull both women to her. “Come with me, my pretties. The day is ours.” Her heart was alive again with excitement. “We might as well stay. Unless you’d rather go home?”

  Ginger rested one delicate hand lightly on her forearm. Ginger’s touch always made her light-headed. The smell of burning leaves mingled with Ginger’s scent, both warm and familiar in the afternoon sun. Ginger whispered, “I’m only home in your hands.”

  “Thank God,” Jefferson replied.

  Taffy leapt up and hugged Jefferson, then hugged Ginger too. Jefferson watched them: the smaller, alluring Taffy, the back of her thighs showing as she stretched up to Ginger; the elegant-looking redhead, gracefully, lightly holding the girl. No comparison, she thought, smiling into Ginger’s eyes, full of the warmth Ginger induced in her, certain that she was the woman for her. There is no way I’m going to lose that gem for some good-time kid who regards me as a notch in her belt.

  She pulled out the whiskey again and tipped a quick shot of it into a cup of Coke, then tipped it again.

  When they arrived at Taffy’s home, the early winter dark came as a shock. She stayed on the porch while Taffy smoked a cigarette. Except for the black chill through a light jacket, she felt dulled by a cocktail and wine with dinner on top of the afternoon’s drinking. Ginger was inside watching a televised ballet with Taffy’s parents. Out here high hedges obscured all but hints of neighboring lights. She felt enclosed. Her skin crawled. A blueness, the last sign of light from her perfect day, seemed to seep out of the night into her. She needed to run off the threatening thunder of her mood. Would it never be time to go to the bar?

  She sat heavily on a hanging wicker love seat. “What’s the matter, Jeffy?” asked Taffy, sitting beside her. Taffy had changed to tight, cuffed jeans, a lime-colored shirt open at the throat, and a madras jacket. They swung gently.

  She sighed after a while and, looking across the yard, spoke toward the hedges, to the specks of light that promised a world beyond her blues. “The day’s over, that’s all. I got up and the world promised me something. It staged a spectacular: trumpets, dancing girls, glitter, and song. But it was a sham. Look—the curtain’s down and it’s gone, every bit of it.” She held out empty hands.

  Taffy picked up one hand and laid it palm up across her own. She traced the lines of Jefferson’s palm. “No one with hands as beautiful as yours should feel bad,” Taffy said. “Look how strong, how sensitive. I’ll bet Ginger loves these hands.”

  A little thrill of pleasure pierced her fog. She was still so numb she ignored the sentry voice inside her, warning, warning of this beckoning stranger Taffy. But Taffy was touching her, liked touching her, and she’d become so addicted to touch, it was as if she’d been starved for it her whole childhood, as if the magic of touch could by itself lift her heavy mood.

  “Every day’s like that, Taffy. You wake up full of purpose, thinking this will be the day, and it ends, and it wasn’t. Someday I’ll have been shot down so often I’ll lose the ability to feel excitement.”

  Taffy’s face looked like the hockey players’ had, so intent on winning that no emotion showed. Nor was there a note of concern in her voice when she asked, “The day for what?”

  “Maybe if I knew that, I’d find it.”

  “Find what?” persisted Taffy.

  “Fame, fortune, success? An end to the search? Home?”

  “I can’t wait to get away from home.”

  “That’s the problem. I’m always trying to get away from what I think of as home too. Why do I feel so excited when I think I’m there, then lose interest?”

  “What are you talking about, Jeffy? Ginger?”

  Jefferson looked down at her hands, at Taffy’s small fingernails, daintily shaped and polished, ever moving across her own. How could these big hands ever make a home for Ginger when they were so restless, so uncontrolled themselves? What was wrong with her? She closed her hand on Taffy’s without considering consequences, to see how it felt.

  “Jeffy, Jeffy,” the girl said in a low purring voice. “I knew you wanted me.”

  “But—”

  Taffy had pushed Jefferson back and lay half on top of her, her lips assaulting Jefferson’s.

  She pulled her head away. She hesitated to reject Taffy, not wanting the girl to dislike her and, senselessly, not wanting to act in a way that would confirm that they’d been flirting.

  “Shh, Jeffy. I know.” She rubbed her breasts against Jefferson. “Ginger’s right inside. I don’t want to get you in trouble either.” Taffy moved off her and sat upright. “Wasn’t I smart? I didn’t wear lipstick, though I wanted to look great for you.”

  She knew that sparkle in Taffy’s eyes. The animation bred from winning. And certainly the touch of her breasts had been exciting. She moved to the rail as Ginger, with her graceful, spirited walk, came out onto the porch.

  Part of her resented Ginger’s entrance; the rest of her was relieved to be saved from her own wavering impulses. “I need to stop at a liquor store on the way,” she said, cheered by the feeling of escape, by the rush of adrenaline Taffy’s advances and Ginger’s arrival had stirred.

  She drove, bought more wine, and, house by house, filled the station wagon with half the hockey team. They flew through the clear star-sparkling night to the bar where once again there was promise in the air thick as the cigarette smoke. She kept close to Ginger, brought her drinks, danced with her, brashly elbowed a path to the bathroom for her.

  She was raucous, overbearing, and tried to quiet herself, to assume the air of a dignified alumnus. But, as she’d told Taffy, she was rushing to get to somewhere, and she shouted, and drank, to drown out the space between here and there.

  Then, all at once, as if
she’d quaffed a magic potion, she arrived. The golden day had returned. Life was hard no longer. She moved with ease, laughed low, and talked quietly, with an air of amused tolerance.

  Taffy came to the table, eyes glittering like the loud jukebox. “May I dance with your girlfriend?” she asked Ginger.

  Jefferson saw Ginger—dear, trusting Ginger—assent.

  “Hey,” she said, one hand closing around Ginger’s where it lay on the table. Her lips seemed to burn from Taffy’s earlier kiss. “I’m home.” It sounded, of course, as if she meant being close to Ginger, but really she was talking about the state, short of unconsciousness, where one movement sends the drunk toppling from her chair, from her peace, with the weight of her passions and will.

  “Time to go, Jef,” Ginger said a moment, or hours, later.

  She listed heavily toward Ginger as they walked to the car.

  Someone handed them coffee.

  “Can you drive?” Ginger whispered.

  In answer, Jefferson got reckless and kissed her full on the mouth, ignoring the way Ginger pulled back from her.

  A chorus of wolf-calls came from the back of the wagon. Jefferson began to drive smoothly, fearlessly, grinning crookedly, back to Taffy’s town.

  Once she’d delivered the tired gang, she drove to the hedge-walled house. At the sight of it her blues returned.

  Taffy showed them to a room. “Sorry about the single beds,” she said.

  They undressed in the dark, each collapsing into her own bed, as they did at the dorm. She heard Ginger drop her flip-flops to the braided rug between them.

  “Thank you for a fun day, Jef,” Ginger murmured, reaching for her hand and squeezing it.

  She lay, stupefied by liquor and exhaustion, the space between their beds a chasm. Taffy had caressed Jefferson’s hand furtively as she showed them her room. She’d pointedly told Jefferson, while Ginger was in the bathroom, “I could have stayed with Jody tonight.”

  Now she lay on her back, wearing only her white slacks, sleep nowhere in view, and reached down to the floor for the last crock of wine. Ginger slept, as always, deeply, peacefully. The peace wine had brought Jefferson—where had it gone? Where was her golden day? She couldn’t stand to lie alone, awake, empty-handed all night. Should she wake Ginger? No. She’d worn her out with her impulsive adventure and should let her rest.

  She could visit Taffy. To talk. It would fill the long hours. She reached for another drink. They said people who drank alone were alcoholics.

  “I’m only home in your hands,” Ginger had said, trusting all that talent, all that beauty, all that ambition and grace to her.

  She opened her eyes wide. Was she having nightmares? Why all these troubling thoughts? A chill crept through her like the sudden night earlier on the porch. She stared into the dark, horrified at the thin line between staying in bed and leaving Ginger’s side; between talking to Taffy and—

  Once again, she reached for the bottle, felt its round solidity in her grasping hand, drank. The wine trickled down between her breasts. She sat up, drank again. Ginger didn’t stir.

  She rose, heart thudding with excitement and fear. The braided rug cushioned her movements in silence. Trembling, she pulled the white V-neck over her head, picked up the bottle, and crept out to the hall. Taffy’s door was ajar, open on yet another promise.

  Chapter Thirteen

  After winning the intramural golf tournament, graduating from Hunter was a letdown. Playing golf, Jefferson had gotten a kick out of the hush of the onlookers when things got tense on the green. She’d been such a devoted team player, but somehow, with the friends in her life, with school, with required sports and hitting the bars and Margo, then Lily Ann, then Ginger and those in between—she had nothing to give a team. What does the team player do when her team is gone? Mope, she discovered, until she went out for golf. Shining in sports was like food to her, not something she could give up. Her solution, in her junior year, was to hike down to Brooklyn on the subway and play the Dyker Beach Golf Course with a woman who commuted to Hunter from the area. Rain or shine or snow they played or met at a driving range to practice.

  Graduation, in comparison, was noisy. Between her and Ginger, they filled a whole row of seats. They’d had to scramble for extra tickets, which the out-of-towners and international students had been willing to share or sometimes sell. Ginger’s three older brothers were there because Jefferson had bought their tickets, and her dad and mom and her Aunt Tilly, who lived with them. Jefferson’s parents and grandparents were there—she was the only grandchild—and also Gladys from the coffee shop had arrived with a bunch of flowers, which Emmy now held.

  Angela had asked to come. Her beautiful, lively Angela, who was now hitched to another Dutchess girl from Jefferson’s side of the tracks, Tam Thorpe, a distant cousin of Jefferson’s. Somehow, despite Tam going to school, they had gotten the money together to buy the Snip’N’Shape beauty salon. Angela, of course, had lots of customers because she knew everyone from her father’s candy store. Tam was a Dutchess Academy graduate and was an object of fascination for the wives of the movers and shakers in town. Jefferson remembered, as she watched Tam and Angie approach, that rough time after she moved to the dorm in the middle of her freshman year and gradually stopped seeing Angela. She hadn’t had the decency to break up with her, but kept telling Angie she was too busy to see her.

  One night, the fall after she and Ginger became lovers, they had, for once, been at their dorm-room desks, typing papers. Ginger had called, “Come in,” at the knock on the door. It was Angela. Jefferson introduced Angie to Ginger, and that was when Angela first introduced them to Frenchy. Angela hugged Jefferson while Frenchy posed in the doorway, tapping a Marlboro out of a crushproof box and lighting up with a silver Zippo, engraved with the initials F.T. They had stopped by, Angela told her, because Frenchy wanted to check out Angie’s first girl. Later, she guessed Angela visited to let her know she wasn’t home being a sad sack, that she had another lover and didn’t need Jefferson. Anyone could see, Ginger had said, that this Frenchy person was too hung up on Frenchy to stick with any girl for long.

  Tam was a better match for Angie: bright, good-looking, as good a dancer as Frenchy, and a little on the sulky side, her eyes never leaving Angie. Jefferson hoped they’d make it, like she and Ginger would. After all this time, though, she couldn’t say what made her split up with Angie. Maybe she was a little like Frenchy herself, but this time she would be true to the vow she’d made herself, to be a one-woman woman.

  The truth was, Angela’s tactic worked. After the visit to the dorm, Jefferson did call Angie up now and then to talk, and she did visit her at the shop whenever she went up to Dutchess. She loaned some of the money that she came into when she turned twenty-one to Angela and Tam so they could add stations in the shop to rent to other hairdressers. Tam had been hired for Jefferson’s old job and was doing the part-time college, full-time print shop route too. Her parents had money, but her dad was a boot-strap kind of guy and liked Tam’s approach—leaving home, moving in with a friend, supporting herself while her family paid her expenses at Barnard. Jefferson’s guilt over leaving Angela was eased by introductions to the lovers who followed.

  Angela and the coffee-shop waitress, Gladys, who were meeting for the first time, hugged Jefferson and cried and told her they were proud to watch her graduate. Jefferson wanted to crow: she liked making them proud. Her parents were hanging out with her golf buddy’s family, and she could see her father demonstrating his swing for them. He was sober today—so far.

  She went over to Lily Ann, whose mother was on her arm and smiling widely at everyone. She was surprised at how little Lily Ann’s mom was.

  “You take after your father?” She raised her hand flat in the air as if measuring Lily Ann’s height.

  Lily Ann introduced her to Mrs. Lee.

  “Congratulations,” she said. “You’ve got a smart, hard-working kid here.”

  “Oh, don’t I know it,”
said Mrs. Lee, who launched into an obviously often-repeated series of smart things her daughter had said and done since she’d been one month old.

  Jefferson had managed to become friends, maybe best friends, with Lily Ann. They’d had some hot and heavy months together, and it had been more than sex, but Lily Ann was smart about them too. She knew they weren’t meant for each other and told Jefferson she wanted to get into the gay social life now so she could eventually meet her dream woman. “Probably,” Lily Ann said, “she’ll be like my mama: small and made of steel. And,” she teased her, “though you’re a hunk, J, she probably won’t be a white girl.”

  “If she’s a woman of steel, Lily Ann, she won’t be a white girl,” she joked back.

  They said all this in front of Mrs. Lee. Back in freshman year, Lily Ann couldn’t wait to tell her what she’d discovered with Jefferson. Lily Ann and her mom were that close. Jefferson marveled at someone who didn’t have to hide what she was. All the time she was marching in the graduation ceremony she wanted to be marching up to her parents to come out to them, but her makeup really did not include steel. While they all waited for the “Pomp and Circumstance” moment, she pulled out a pink Spaulding ball and got a game of hit-the-nickel going. The graduating class had been told not to wear jeans or sneakers, but she’d never understood where they got off telling her how to dress. She’d chosen her black hightops and darkened the white soles with a charcoal pencil she’d bought for a sophomore-year art class. If her parents hadn’t noticed, the muckety-mucks on stage wouldn’t.

  Margo was in the crowd of teachers. She’d managed to get through one term of German class with her and then switched to Spanish with a male instructor. She’d used her high-school Spanish, which was pretty good, to meet the prerequisites. Margo didn’t speak to her, nor she to Margo, for the next three years. Now, with graceful, gorgeous Ginger in her life, she wondered how she could have become entangled with the plump, permed professor.