Beggar of Love Read online

  Gladys nodded. “Or like my Italian relatives.”

  A gray loneliness approached like fog. She finished her wine, topped off Gladys’s, and poured a second glass for herself. “This is excellent.”

  “I told you about my wine guy,” Gladys said.

  “And Jef is so jealous that you have one.”

  “I can have him put aside two when he finds something.”

  “Sure. Give me a call and I’ll make a trip down there.” She turned to Ginger, who was working a crossword puzzle, legs crossed, one flower-patterned flip-flop dangling. “We never get downtown to see the kids at Café Femmes anymore,” she lied. “Would you mind if I went without you?”

  “Of course not.” Ginger looked up at her. “They’re mostly Jef’s friends anyway,” she told Gladys. “They never liked her having an artiste-type girlfriend.”

  “Don’t be crazy,” she said. “They never said anything against you.”

  Ginger raised her eyebrows at Gladys, whose expression revealed nothing about all she knew. Gladys reached into the shopping bag by her side and pulled out a big box.

  “It’s Jefferson’s birthday, but these little things are for both of you.”

  Ginger was not one to get excited over gifts, but she sat on the couch and watched as Jefferson opened Gladys’s big gift box.

  “A garlic press!” said Ginger.

  “You are a winner, Glad. Look at this red spaghetti drainer,” Jefferson exclaimed.

  “Look at this unique cheese grater.” Ginger held it up.

  “A real Italian spaghetti bowl. Look at this design. Surely, Glad, you’re not hinting that we should ask you to dinner?”

  “And serve me what I’m used to,” Glad replied. “I’m going to turn you two into good Italian cooks.”

  “Not me.” Jefferson jumped up for refills. “I’m the bartender.”

  Ginger sighed. “Not me either. I only cook frozen dinners or nuke deli.”

  Gladys came back every couple of months over the years. At one of those jolly communal dinners Glad announced she was going in for a mastectomy.

  That night she and Gladys got drunk on Jefferson’s Irish whiskey. Her insides had turned as cold as her ice cubes at the news, but she managed not to show her alarm and sorrow. Smoothly, but in a voice that sounded tinny in her own ears, she said, “You’ll be fine, Glad. We’ll pickle you before you go in. You won’t feel a thing.”

  “Ernie says he’s tired of these old things anyway.” Tears were falling over her smile as she outlined her abundant breasts. “He says it’ll be like before the kids came, when I was a flat-chested broad.” She laughed. “Like you.”

  Jefferson couldn’t help but blush before that pointing finger. She was hardly flat, but didn’t advertise her breasts.

  Ginger held up her bottle of Coke in a toast. “To all you wonderful, flat-chested broads.”

  Soon after that, Ginger left for a performance.

  “So,” Jefferson said, “how are you doing with your news?” She refilled their glasses and sat next to Glad on the couch, hip to hip. Glad put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her tight.

  “I liked that wine you served earlier,” Gladys said. “I have to write down the brand before I leave. I’ll get us a bottle for Ernie’s birthday.” She went quiet. “I think I’ll still be around for Ernie’s birthday.”

  “Of course you’ll be around.” Jefferson tried to find something cheerful to say. The cloud of doom was back; if Glad could die, then… “I remember the first time I tasted whiskey,” she said. “I thought I had swallowed fire. I was with one of my teachers—”

  “The one you had an affair with? Margo was her name?”

  “You remember her?”

  “I even saw her once. At your graduation.”

  She ducked her head, embarrassed. Margo hadn’t been much to look at, not compared to Ginger. She cleared her throat. “We were in a restaurant and she had her usual wine. I was feeling young and inexperienced so I ordered what sounded like a grown-up drink, whiskey on the rocks. It was all I could do to keep the tears from flooding down my face. The last thing I wanted was for Margo to see I really was young and inexperienced.”

  They laughed at that and all the other stories they’d been repeating to each other over the years of their friendship.

  “You’re such a great person to laugh with,” she told Gladys.

  Gladys laid one hand on Jefferson’s arm. “You’ve turned into a good buddy.”

  She felt such warmth toward Gladys. She really loved the woman. Were she and Glad meant to be together, not with Ernie and Ginger? Life was such fun with Gladys and she was so comforting when Jefferson was a little down. And now, what if she lost her? Cancer! Not her Gladys. Blindly, drunkenly, she reached for Glad to kiss her.

  Gladys turned her cheek in time.

  Jefferson gave her a quick, tight hug. “Sorry. I got a little maudlin there for a minute.”

  “S’okay,” Gladys said. “It’s what I should expect, being with the gay Don Juan of the West Side.”

  “It wasn’t like that, Glad. I don’t go around seducing every woman I like.” Ginger hadn’t found out about that one-night fling with Taffy or the other drunken infidelities, but she told Glad about most of them.

  “What was this, then?” Gladys asked, pointing to the spot on her cheek where Jefferson had kissed her.

  “The truth is, I never meant to be lovers with most of them. No, the real truth is that I never went after even one of them, except Ginger—and Angela—and that hit me by surprise. I didn’t know I was queer till that first kiss with Angela.”

  “Don’t put yourself down.”

  “Am I?”

  “That word, queer.”

  She thought briefly. “I kind of like it. I’d rather be a queer than act the way a lot of these straight people do. Not you, of course.” She decided to tell Gladys about her father.

  “You have a point.”

  “I was saying something though. Something I wanted you to know. Can’t remember now.”

  Gladys was not quite as drunk as Jefferson. “About not really wanting the others? I guess you mean the ones you bring to the shop.”

  “Some of them I bring. The ones I can stand to see again. I’ve gone home with some doozies, Glad.” She shook her head.

  Gladys laughed. “I’ll bet you have, Jef, if the ones you bring are the good ones!” She moved her face closer to Jefferson’s, as if to see her better through the blur of the liquors. “Tell me. Why do you do it if you don’t want to?”

  “It’s hard to say. Hard to say.” She repeated, “All I know is that Ginger is the only one I ever pursued, except for the puppy love with Angie, and I didn’t have words for what I wanted then.” Dizziness started coming on and she grabbed her glass. The cold ice cubes helped shock her out of it. “I don’t know how not to. I don’t know how to be a friend without sex.”

  “Kind of like guys can’t help seeing women through their hormones?”

  “No. Not at all. Guys want the sex. I’m after the friendship, and it comes out all wrong. I don’t know how to tell a friend I love her without coming on to her.”

  “Like what you just did.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wouldn’t it simplify your life to hug someone?”

  “How do you hug? The next thing I know, my hands are running up and down her back or she’s confessing she’s been in love with me since the first day she saw me. Like it or not, we end up—well, you know.”

  “Aren’t you the hot stuff.” Gladys pinched her arm.

  “It’s not me, Glad. They actually say that.”

  “So you step back and tell them you’re sorry, you didn’t mean it like that.”

  “And hurt their feelings? I don’t have the heart to say no.”

  “And when you never see them again after a night together you think their feelings aren’t hurt? People know not everyone is going to be their true love.”

  “I know. It doesn
’t make sense. It makes me feel crazy. It’s easier to do it when they’re not in front of me. At least we had a nice time together.”

  “Always?”

  “What do you mean? Oh, the lovemaking? Yes, always. I don’t get complaints in that department. I tell them they’re great like that. And a lot of them are. Listen, maybe you don’t want to hear this kind of thing, but it’s the only way I can finish.”

  “You mean, come?’

  Jefferson looked hard at the floor. The rug’s rectangles seemed to be warping under her sneakers. She put the icy glass back against her cheek. “Yes. It never happened with Ginger.”

  There was a hesitation before Gladys spoke. She knew Glad was shocked. “Does she try?”

  “She did. Sometimes. But I could tell she wasn’t really into it. Either you’re passionate about making love to a woman or you’re going through the motions. These pickups, they mostly get passionate. There’s a lot more give-and-take with them. It boils up from inside me.”

  “Then I’d say you and Ginger have a problem.”

  “She doesn’t know that. I never told her.”

  “You pretend?”

  “I guess I did. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.” She decided she might as well tell Glad how it was. “When I went with Angela, Glad, she was all about touch. We learned about love by loving each other.” She realized she was searching Glad’s eyes for a sign of comprehension.

  “None of us had tutors, Jef.”

  “Don’t tell me that. You had movies and TV and books. They were depicting straight people wanting to have sex with one another or having sex with one another. Angela and I thought we were the first ones, the first girls to feel like that about each other.”

  “It’s that different?”

  “We didn’t know. We didn’t know anything is what I’m trying to tell you. So what I learned with Angie was that a girl likes to be touched and touched a lot, all the time, but Ginger wasn’t like that. Ginger wasn’t a hugger or big on kissing unless we were officially doing it. If I could touch her five percent of the time at first, by the last few years it was minus five percent.”

  “It sounds like making love is something in the past.” Gladys was shaking her head.

  She patted Glad’s hands. “What was your first clue?”

  “Oh, Jefferson, I know you’re hurting, but I have to tell you, you’re the biggest coward I’ve ever met.”

  “Coward? How?”

  “It’s not their feelings, or Ginger’s feelings, you’re trying to spare, it’s your own.”

  “I don’t get it. Nobody’s hurting my feelings.”

  “You’re protecting yourself too well to be hurt. Making love to these strangers is like giving them a present so they don’t feel bad that someone else got the prize. You want them to like you, but listen to Auntie Glad. They’re going to like you more if you say no right off the bat. You’re giving them something you have no right to give away because it belongs to Ginger. You know that, don’t you?”

  She had her head down and was massaging her forehead with her fingers. Glad was practically yelling at her. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “You have to talk to Ginger about what you need from her. And you never will as long as you think you’re getting what you need elsewhere. And you’re not getting it. Not really. Being with Ernie that way, it’s like walking through a gate to each other. You’re never going to get the gate between you and Ginger open this way. You’ll always be chasing her. Ginger will never feel truly connected with you.”

  “Because I couldn’t come with her? But I love Ginger, not all the others.” She offered her open hands, knowing her face was full of appealing innocence and acknowledging to herself for the first time that the status quo suited her fine. She loved being a Don Juan and she loved having Ginger. She simply wasn’t terribly interested in a marriage deeper or more devoted than the one she had. But she didn’t know if she’d lost interest because of Ginger’s innate way of distancing herself—the critical comment, the quick disapproving grimace, the long hours at work—a distance that more and more felt like rejection. “I swear, Glad,” she lied.

  “You don’t love her enough to tell her what you need.”

  “It’s not that big of a deal, Glad.”

  “Yes it is, Jef. I promise you it is.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  For their fifteenth anniversary, when they were thirty-three, with what Gladys said still on her mind, Jefferson and Ginger decided to fly to Florida. One of the women from Café Femmes, that arrogant little butch Frenchy, who’d dated Angela way back when, talked up the Clearwater Beach area where she had family. Florida in February sounded like a great idea: no slush, no freezing temperatures, no heavy jackets. She and Ginger had never traveled together except to dance festivals like Jacob’s Pillow in Massachusetts and the Jeffersons’ summer cottage in New Hampshire.

  “Girl,” Lily Ann Lee told her the night before they were to leave, which happened to fall at the same time as their monthly dinner, “you are excited out of your mind.”

  She swallowed a forkful of fra diavolo. “It’s more than a vacation, Lily Ann.”

  “Rekindling the flame?”

  She pondered that a minute. “How can I explain without—I mean—”

  “Spilling the beans about Ginger?”

  “That’s kind of it.”

  “How long ago did the romance leave?” Lily Ann kept her eyes on the fork and spoon she was using to lift linguini from her plate.

  “Since she opened her school.” Shame rose to her face in a blush.

  “That was what, six years ago, J? And you put up money for her damn school?”

  “Some of it.”

  “Like half. Some repayment.”

  “It’s her first love, Lily Ann.”

  “And you think a trip to the white sands of Florida will change that?”

  “Let me tell you something. But it’s between us, right?”

  “Everything is, J. You’re my best friend.”

  She smiled at Lily Ann, then cut her pasta into smaller and smaller pieces. “You know how, when you’re going to be with someone, you maybe do an extra shower before bed or sponge off the important places?”

  She snuck a quick look at Lily Ann, who was, as she expected, regarding her with amusement. Doing sex was one thing, talking about it was embarrassing.

  “Kind of like a magic charm?”

  She took a long sip of the dry red house wine. “I’ve been doing that at home every night for no reason ever since Ginger opened her school.”

  “Oh, J.” Lily Ann’s face was a quick display not of pity, but of tragedy observed. “That explains a lot.”

  She laughed, her gaze not leaving her plate. “My wayward path? Margo read me a poem once, about a picture on a vase, back in Grecian times, about how hot it can be to want without getting. The line that stuck with me was, ‘For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!’”

  “I’d be seducing every femme in the city too.”

  “If you were butch.”

  “Which I’m not.”

  She smiled. “I’ll drink to that,” and drank again.

  “But seriously,” Lily Ann asked, “you know how you’ve told me Ginger kind of likes guys? Do you think that might have something to do with it?”

  Although she shook her head no, she couldn’t look Lily Ann in the eye. She was in the grip of that lightless place where she was filled with silent screams. She reminded herself that she always lived through it and opened her eyes.

  Lily Ann asked, “Is it a worse betrayal because it’s with a man?”

  “All I know is I want to kill any man who touches her, even innocently. Not that I believe a man could touch her innocently.”

  “Don’t think about it.”

  “It’s her sacred body, you know? I never touched her without, what—awe, amazement, the beauty of her, like the best sunsets, the sweetest bird song, poetry.” It had been a long time since s
he’d dared touch Ginger even casually. She couldn’t stand to see her shy away. As much as Ginger liked sex, Jefferson’s desire seemed to disturb her. Ginger was just going through something, she told herself. Although Ginger denied it, she suspected she’d been touched in a bad way as a kid. Or something. Sometimes she would lie there sick with desire for Ginger and hope. Hope was the killer. She felt like a fool for hoping and she cherished it like a last embrace of her beloved.

  Lily Ann pursed her lips, looking disapproving.

  The conversation didn’t dampen her enthusiasm for the trip. She always dreamed that this time things would be different.

  While Ginger spent the boarding wait on a pay phone with her dance school and her family, Jefferson pictured the two of them wading in green-blue shallow waters and holding hands as they walked the white sands at twilight. In the heat of the afternoon they’d be in their room at Don Cesar’s, a baronial pink palace of a place that, from the brochure, looked like it had aged well and was posh in the lobby and well-appointed in their room overlooking the beach. She imagined the luxury of Ginger’s trim body, her long red hair spread as it used to be across the fine linen pillowcases, ready for Jefferson once again.

  And it was like that.

  The first afternoon they were in swimsuits. Jefferson had a little flab around her body, from all the whiskey, she supposed, and swore she’d cut back, maybe suggest she and Lily Ann have Chinese instead of Italian food. Sprouts and veggies and bean curd would be good. She could quit drinking if she wanted to, but why? Life was more fun with it.

  She didn’t wait for an excuse from Ginger, but stepped boldly up to her and slid her bathing-suit straps off her shoulders, leaving the wet suit across her breasts so the mound of them was half exposed to her kisses and their covered heft was in her hands. There was a radio in the room. She’d found the classical station earlier. “Afternoon of a Faun” was playing. Perfect.

  Ginger said nothing, only let her do what she wanted. She waited for some response, but Ginger stood there as if deciding whether to give Jefferson the gift of herself.

  No, Jefferson thought, unfastening the top and swallowing as much as she could of Ginger’s left breast, partly kneeling to capture it, moving her tongue around the nipple hard enough to rouse a statue and playing with the other nipple the way Ginger had liked when they were first together.