Beggar of Love Page 12

  “I have a girl in one of my classes,” she told Ginger. “Gilleberta Konic, tall, so skinny you think her stick legs might snap out from under her. Gilleberta’s the daughter of someone at the UN. I watched her learn to dribble a basketball, weaving this way and that, lunging after the ball, tripping on it, bending so low it was rolling, not bouncing. I figured she’d be okay when she started pulling herself out of one of her rolls by lifting the ball like it was glued to her fingertips. I felt so damn proud to see Gilleberta out on the gym floor doing double-ball power dribbling. I knew I was doing the right thing, teaching PE.”

  “I don’t know which way to go, Jef.”

  “Yeah, you need a compass.” She considered saying aloud that she’d like to borrow it when Ginger was through, but how do you tell your lover that you need a moral compass?

  Ginger was in her thirties before she did throw the towel in on her performance career and accepted her dad and Jefferson’s offers to help start a school. The Neighborhood House had wanted to hire her full-time, but she would have had to take on all kinds of recreation classes other than dance. Once Ginger made her decision, she got to work. She went up and down probably every block in Washington Heights, where she’d been working, looking for studio space. Jefferson had scored a job as a swimming instructor for the parks department that summer, but got off at three and would go look at the spaces that appealed to Ginger.

  Once they found the spot, a second story on the edge of West End Avenue with level hardwood floors, a plate-glass window across the front for natural light, and wall space for mirrors and bars, she helped Ginger clean, paint, and polish the floors. This would be the most time they would spend together for several years. Ginger opened her little school and not only taught, but marketed, did the bookkeeping, the cleaning, grant writing, scholarship research, and kept up some classes at the Neighborhood House. The hours by the fire were gone, as were nights without the granny gown. Jefferson yearned for her as intensely as she had before she’d introduced herself at Ginger’s performance. She felt like something left to mold at the bottom of a barrel.

  She wasn’t surprised to find herself in bed, spirits again high, with a younger dancer, a woman physically like Ginger who was rehearsing for a Broadway show called Dancin’. The woman, Alexis, had grown up in Alaska, of all places, adopted by an evangelical minister in Palmer. Alexis had learned to dance at church camps. The woman was wild with her New York freedom, drunk every night after performing. She’d almost thrown herself at Jefferson in a bar and led her back to an apartment she shared with four roommates. Alexis paid the least rent and got a convertible couch in the living room for her space. When they opened the bed they would move two folding screens to shield themselves while they went about their business fervently, but in absolute silence. Two of the roommates, gay men, turned up the TV and occasionally called jokes about springs squeaking. It didn’t seem to bother Alexis. She taught Jefferson about multiple sequential orgasms and practiced what would have been exhibitionistic lewdness had the screen fallen down.

  Other women were golf and softball. Ginger was her first love, field hockey her second. Jefferson was her own goalie.

  A bit ashamed of herself, Jefferson invited Ginger to see Dancin’ soon after it opened, using two tickets the dancer gave her. She could understand why Ginger wasn’t up there. She couldn’t see her performing these rote audience-pleasers night after night. Ginger and modern dance fit a lot better; Ginger and Jefferson fit a lot better. She never saw the Broadway woman after the show and was pretty clear that she wouldn’t get stagestruck again. She relished having elegant Ginger on her arm at the theater, the cock of the walk.

  The neighborhood hadn’t had a dance school for many years, and enrollment was so crazy good the first year that Ginger hired her spinster great-aunt Tilly as clerical help. Aunt Tilly had retired from her lifelong job as a public-school clerk, so not only did she set up the office in a more professional manner, but she was tickled to get out of the house and back into the world again, as she put it. She was a big, boisterous florid-faced Irishwoman in voluminous, dark polyester dresses. Her hearing had declined with age.

  The first time Jefferson stopped by Ginger’s school after Aunt Tilly was installed, Tilly eyed Jefferson. “So you’re Jess. The roommate.”

  Jefferson froze. She knew, like she knew when a puck would make it straight into the net, that this woman had caught on that Jefferson was gay. She decided not to correct her name and flashed her winner smile. “Glad to meet you, ma’am. I’ll bet you’re Aunt Tilly.”

  Instead of answering, Tilly said, “My niece has a big family, Jess. Lots of strong men and willful women. None of us would be pleased to see our little Ginger hurt. By any one. For any reason.”

  “Not by me.” She answered softly and seriously. She would never hurt Ginger by seeing these other women. Ginger didn’t have to know, just as her mother had never known about Jefferson’s father. At least, she didn’t think Emmy had found out. If she had, Ginger would play it the same way: she’d live with it rather than divorce. Probably. It would never come up, though, so that was a moot point.

  The six- to eight-year-olds came clattering out of tap class then, and Ginger formally introduced her to Aunt Tilly. All three joked and laughed together, as if no smoldering warning had been passed, as if Jefferson had no reason to quake inside every time she ran up the loft steps two at a time and saw the harridan at her desk, guarding Ginger.

  It was hard to get time for the two of them in those early days, but whenever Jefferson returned from straying she would insist. It was the best antidote as well, she hoped, immunization from doing it again. If they didn’t go to New Hampshire, they might find their way to Fire Island or Provincetown. Once she booked a hotel off Broadway and they saw two shows, lingering late at an after-theater restaurant and getting into bed at the same time, something they could seldom do at home because of their different hours.

  Skin to skin with Ginger, she remembered all over again that Ginger smelled like home, tasted like home. She’d be touched with a comforting familiarity more satisfying than some frenzied orgasm brought on by a stranger’s fingers. After their days together, she felt cleansed and refreshed, ready to swear off the bars and the drinking, to get up early enough to eat breakfast before school and to come straight home.

  This would work for the first few nights. She’d get the laundry done, mop floors, peel cobwebs from the corners of ceilings, all while singing along with her Eagles albums. On the nights Ginger had no classes she’d have a pot of stew or baked chicken ready, and they would wash and dry the dishes together, smiling in their contentment, Ginger sometimes doing a few silly dance steps to celebrate new flip-flops Jefferson had spied outside a bodega.

  By Thursday night Jefferson would be half in the bag at her favorite bar of the moment, as likely as not dancing with her old standby Shirley or, if she’d caught enough hell at school for being late or smelling like last night’s alcohol, she’d be in the bar bathroom making out with some new woman in town for a convention, a fashion shoot, a news assignment. Her despairing moods pursued her. She would barely make it home before they felled her, and she’d topple into bed before Ginger got in from work. She would will herself to forget the feel of her fingers plunged to the hilt inside the roomy secrets of the suburban mother of three she’d entertained that night. She’d lie in bed, wanting Ginger until Ginger came to her, hugged, nuzzled, and turned on her side to sleep.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The first time Jefferson was fired from a private school had been the department head’s doing.

  Right out of Hunter College, she’d started as a swim coach for the school. Swimming was not her favorite sport, but she was mostly able to stay out of the water and dry as she demonstrated strokes and acted primarily as a lifeguard at the school’s indoor pool. She was hired to teach the next school year and found herself surveying groups of girls aged six to thirteen, clad in despised one-piece green gym suits, while
they dropped off ropes and jumped short of minimal marks as they tried to meet the guidelines of the newest fitness program. She wished there was more interest in competitive sports and volunteered to coach or referee almost every game that came up.

  It never occurred to her that enthusiasm wouldn’t make her popular. Two of the other teachers, who apparently counted on after-school fees to make ends meet, weren’t used to sharing their after-school pay. Mrs. Dove, the department head, said she liked the breath of fresh air Jefferson brought and expressed intense interest in her career, to the point of taking her out for coffee after work. Then it was a glass of wine at the chair’s apartment a few blocks away. She stayed for dinner, with wine during the meal, and met the husband, an insurance-claims adjustor. She and the chairwoman drank more wine when she stayed after dinner while the husband went to his chamber-music rehearsal.

  That was the night Mrs. Dove put “Moonlight Sonata” on the turntable and set it to repeat. Their talk became more intense—about sports they both loved and the classical music they’d grown up with. Mrs. Dove shared her philosophies on not having children, on the plague of men in the world who were the cause of war and destruction, and too much information about what her husband demanded of her in the bedroom.

  For all her swaggering lesbian ways, Jefferson knew nothing beyond her own experience. The romantic headiness of Beethoven, the intimacy and eroticism of Mrs. Dove’s revelations, the apartment lit only by the lights of the city outside were too much for her. She was still learning how hungry women were for butch hands, her butch hands. She thought Mrs. Dove was the most desirable of women, a sort of conquest. She didn’t pretend to herself that she was in love with her or particularly attracted to her. She was flattered that so urbane a woman, more conventional than Margo had been, a woman in her forties, would be, as Mrs. Dove said, fascinated by her. Although Jefferson had not come out to her, Mrs. Dove confessed, with a tipsy slurring of words, that she was attracted to her.

  They were sitting knee to knee in the dining alcove, wine low in its green bottle, a vase of flowers perfuming the furniture-heavy apartment, and Mrs. Dove was fingering the tips of Jefferson’s collar with the index fingers and thumbs of both hands. Jefferson knew the chairwoman had freshened her lipstick and perfume on her last trip to the bathroom so she, half in fear that she would lose her job but emboldened by her share of the bottles of wine, her hands itching with the need to touch, without actually deciding to move, reached under Mrs. Dove’s skirt, past her garters and the tops of her nylons, while the piano gently bumped along its notes, carrying their hot sighs into the air.

  Mrs. Dove had also taken off her panties. Jefferson slowly moved her hand from vertical to horizontal, thus prying apart Mrs. Dove’s thighs, and pushed her middle finger forward to lightly touch her clitoris. Mrs. Dove’s legs fell open, and right there, on their facing chairs, Jefferson brought her almost to climax, then almost again, and then let her come. Such a roar of pleasure rushed from Mrs. Dove it was all Jefferson could do not to jump and to keep her finger in place.

  She ran it down to Mrs. Dove’s wetness to tease inside. Mrs. Dove, nimble phys ed teacher, lifted her legs until both feet were flat on her chair and let Jefferson move fully inside her. The woman moaned and moaned with the “Moonlight Sonata” until she collapsed on Jefferson, who went to one knee to catch her and found herself facing that hot wet place that begged for her tongue, but of course that was not something Jefferson would do except at home with Ginger. Mrs. Dove climaxed this time with her legs tight against Jefferson’s ears, rocking her head side to side, three of Jefferson’s fingers inside her. This was exciting, but Jefferson was glad she’d numbed herself with so much wine; they hadn’t so much as kissed and she felt a little soiled.

  “He’s due home soon,” the chairwoman said when they were done, her voice deep as a man’s.

  Jefferson went into the bathroom and scrubbed her face and hands, feeling none of the euphoria that went with making love with Ginger. Instead, she imagined herself possessed of the thin strength of a badminton racket, the tools of sports: the exacting edge of an ice skate’s blade and the arc of a golf ball. She looked at the dexterous, sensitive hands at the end of her slender wrists and marveled at their mature authority in the ways of pleasure.

  Mrs. Dove was dressed and putting the dinner plates in the dishwasher. She’d cleared the table, replaced the chairs, straightened her clothing. Jefferson, sobering up, sensed that something inside her had changed irrevocably.

  “May I help?”

  “No need!” Mrs. Dove answered in a high voice that reminded Jefferson of glass wind chimes. “That’s why I have a dishwasher.” Mrs. Dove still had her back turned when she said, “I know you must have lesson plans to review and papers to mark. You probably want to be on your way.”

  “Well, no, I—”

  “That’s all right. Scoot along. I’ll finish up here.”

  The woman sounded like she was working up to a scream.

  “Are you all right, Mrs. Dove?”

  “Oh, my, look at the time. Mr. Dove will be here before you know it.”

  So that was the problem. Time to clear out before hubby came home. But why wouldn’t Mrs. Dove look at her? She backed toward the door, waiting for some sign, some acknowledgment of what they had shared, but saw nothing, not even a meeting of the eyes. And Mrs. Dove would be like that every time they were together, as if she could connect with Jefferson only in the ever-decreasing conversations before sex and then through her erogenous zones, not with words or fond looks. At school, Mrs. Dove never looked at her, not to supervise, not to praise, not to criticize. Jefferson had a lot of freedom, but she’d expected a little help in her first year of teaching, so she would know if she was doing it right. The chairwoman invited Jefferson to dinner every week that April and May, then stopped.

  At the end of the year, her contract wasn’t renewed. Mrs. Dove told her the school had decided they needed someone with a master’s degree in her position.

  “We’ll give you an excellent recommendation.” As she said this, Mrs. Dove handed Jefferson a sheet of paper. It was a job announcement at a school in the city. “I know the chairman.”

  “Hey—”

  “You do want a good recommendation?” Mrs. Dove’s cold eyes held a clear warning. “Really. It’s a step up for you. I only have your career in mind.”

  She was hurt and confused, but who could she talk to about it? What recourse did she have? No one, none. She got a summer job with the city parks, teaching little kids to play tennis. Come September she started all over again, working for Mrs. Dove’s friend, another middle-aged married woman. This time, when Mrs. Gatlin invited her to dinner with her husband, before he left for his stage-managing job, and bragged of the excellent wine they’d bought at a vineyard upstate, Jefferson declined. She had to start on her master’s so she could keep her job, she explained, without sarcasm, and expressed regrets that she had no time at all for a social life. She felt as if she were being passed around like a plate of hors d’oeuvres at a dinner party. No more older women, she swore. At least never again with a boss.

  Chapter Sixteen

  During her graduate school and early teaching years, Jefferson kept up her visits to the coffee shop where Gladys the waitress worked with the cook, Sam. Since she wasn’t close to her parents, she gave Glad pink roses every Mother’s Day and slipped Sam a cigar with each of her new achievements. The first time Gladys came to visit, Jefferson and Ginger had moved into Jefferson’s grandparents’ apartment in the west eighties.

  “I’ve lived in my Mott Street neighborhood all my life. This is the first time I’ve been in a place this far uptown,” Glad said when she handed her a birthday present one year.

  “You look like you’ve entered enemy territory,” Ginger said. “And the villains are out to get you.”

  “At least you’re not on the Upper East Side.”

  Jefferson popped open the pinot grigio that Glad had brought for t
hem and smelled the acid of the cork. “My grandparents are more about value than prestige, and they’re the ones who bought this apartment originally when it was dirt cheap.”

  Gladys exclaimed, “My place is three times this size. Which is why I waitress, or we couldn’t pay for it.”

  Ginger laughed. “It’s the size of our first dorm room, plus bathroom and kitchenette. We’re used to it.”

  “My parents don’t know I’m living with a girl yet,” Jefferson said. “They think it’s exactly my size.”

  Ginger said, “Oh, sure. You really think they haven’t figured it out, Jef?”

  Ginger’s hair was short and bouncy now around her bright freckled face. Jefferson adored her dancer’s legs—as long as her own—and her elastic body. Jefferson shrugged. “Without paying rent,” she explained, “we can afford to run the dance school.”

  “If they ever ask, we’ll tell them I sleep on the hide-a-bed. They think my clothes in the closet are Jef’s school clothes.”

  Gladys looked shocked as she laughed. “They don’t know you at all, Jefferson, do they?”

  She shook her head as she set out a plate of cheese and crackers. “Never have, never will.”

  “Doesn’t that make you sad? Your own parents?” Gladys asked.

  “I never thought about it. Should it?”

  Ginger had a pitying expression as she said, “That’s all she’s known. Her family isn’t loud and scrappy like Irish families.”