Merry Gangemi is a writer, activist, editor, and the producer and host of Woman-Stirred Radio. She is currently working towards her MFA at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Her short fiction and poetry can be found in MatriFocus, Wisconsin Review, River Oak Review, Paterson Literary Review, Journal of New Jersey Poets, Sinister Wisdom, Harrington Lesbian Fiction Quarterly, Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, Off Our Backs, and Street Spirit.
December 10, 2007
The Night I Met Bill Casey
The drive to Locust Valley was interminable; 80 percent humidity, a yellow-green haze over the Long Island Expressway, and my almost father-in-law, Edmund, Behind the wheel, bleating his horn like the rest of the stalled herd. Edmund might have been a diminutive man, but he was nobody's fool. He had taught high school French to working-class students for forty years. He was a conservative's conservative and deeply involved in the Republican Party. Edmund McClure was a widower, a teetotaler, and he never exceeded the speed limit. Cruise control was his favorite automotive accessory. So there we were, creeping towards Locust Valley while WOR purred from the radio and planes from JFK screamed overhead.
Locust Valley was the summer location for many New York socialites and not far from Teddy Roosevelt's Oyster Bay home. I was twenty-one-years-old, engaged and already treading water in a role that was devolving into something inexplicably disturbing. I was also entranced by the invitation: four weeks at Fox Hollow Farm.
Sofia Gabriela Ocampo, was an elegant, Spanish Parisian, married thirty years to one Frederick Rodier, whose family fortune was built on the backs of South Africa's diamond miners. Rodier had known Edmund since World War II and the days of the fledgling OSS. But Fred, as Edmund referred to him, had cast his wife Sofia aside and taken up with one Olga Baraczak, the self-exiled child of Polish aristocrats just eight-years-older than me. Sofia refused to divorce him. But Olga and Rodier didn't faze me; I was trying to figure out what Sophia and Edmund meant to each other. More perplexing, I didn't understand why Sofia had invited me.
"Because she likes you," Nathaniel said the night before I left. "She doesn't know me," I said. Through the phone, I could feel Nathaniel's pause. Then he sighed. "Don't read anything into it," he finally said. "She likes you. Leave it at that."
Five hours after leaving Summit, New Jersey, we drove through the gates of Fox Hollow Farm. At the end of a long gravel driveway, we pulled up to the house. This so-called summer cottage was next door to the Doubleday's. It was a large, rambling, cedar-shaked house with a four-car garage, grounds keeper's cottage, greenhouse, guest house, and a large, secluded, in-ground swimming pool--but more on that later. Sofia was conferring with her grounds keeper, Jake Bird. Edmund beeped the horn and Sofia and Jake turned around.
At this point in my story, I suppose I should write: A beautiful smile bloomed across Sofia's face, but that would sound ridiculous and betray my awkwardness. As it was, I had a very hard time meeting people, let alone kissing them or hugging them. I didn't know, let alone understand, how her smile really did bloom across her face. "I wonder if calling the police is necessary!" she exclaimed, moving around the car to greet us. I scrambled out of the car. "Hello," I said. Sofia bestowed two light kisses, one on either cheek. "So our budding poet has arrived!" she exclaimed. "Welcome, Helen." She turned to Edmund. "You are late as usual," she said. Edmund grinned. "Police? For what?" he asked. "Some punks tore up one of the flower beds along the east end of the property," Jake Bird said. "Completely destroyed the holly hocks and angelica," Sofia said. My Aunt Harry would have been all over Jake Bird like a cheap suit, asking questions about flower beds and grape arbors, but not me. "What's angelica?" "The guardian of the garden," Sofia said, rather regally. "But for now let's get you both settled." As if on cue, the housekeeper appeared. "Bring Helen's bags to the Green Room," she told the housekeeper. "Edmund, you are in the carriage house." Sofia Ocampo had the voice of Capucine and the physiognomy of Lauren Bacall. I looked and sounded more like Sandy Dennis with a mop top, and tended towards baggy chinos and over-sized oxford shirts--a fashion failing for a young woman that was hardly appreciated by republicans circa 1980. But I was interested in everything, which gave me a certain latitude of eccentricity I took full advantage of. I dutifully followed the housekeeper. "What is your name?" I asked her. "Perla Mutter," she said. "Spanish and German?" "No," she said, "Brazilian and German." She put my suitcase on the stand at the foot of the bed. "Let me know if you need anything," she said, and quietly closed the door behind her.
I stood there for a moment, looking at the closed door, a nebulous sense of discomfort hanging in the air. What ruins are in me that can be found, I thought, remembering my Shakespeare. I was still standing there when Sofia knocked. "Come in," I called, and she opened the door. "So," she said. "I hope you will like this room. This was my room until I was married." She went to the windows and began adjusting the curtains. "Is that how long you’ve had Fox Hollow? I asked." "Much longer," she said, and opened one of the dormer windows. "My grandfather built this house over eighty years ago. It has always been my favorite place to be." "Mine is the ocean," I said. Sofia opened another window, tied back the curtain, and turned to me. Her marvelous smile bloomed again. "Then," she said. "We have many things in common."
Sofia looked around the room again and then turned to me. "You must be exhausted," she said. "Dinner is at eight, nothing formal." I looked at my watch. It was 3:30. "Thank you," I said. "Sleep well," Sophia said. Like Perla, she closed the door very quietly behind her.
Later that evening, we sat down to a casual supper in the screened-in rear porch. Edmund, awash with references to Solzhenitsyn, dominated the conversation for most of the meal, dragging his reductive-government ideology along with him to the veranda, where we had coffee and lemon poppy-seed cake. Eventually, Edmund finished his analysis of post-Nixon America and turned his attention to Ronald Reagan. He had high hopes for Reagan's candidacy, proclaiming him the most impressive candidate the country had ever seen. "More impressive than FDR?" I asked. Edmund stirred his coffee. "Roosevelt was a Democrat," he said flatly. "Well, I know that," I said. "But he did lead us out of the Great Depression." "He was a socialist," Edmund said, "a traitor to his class." I pulled a face, which made Sofia smile. "The renegade Roosevelt," she quipped. "Speaking of which, Edmund, why don't we go to Oyster Bay tomorrow? Teddy's summer cottage is an interesting day trip." "Well," Edmund said irritably. "You know I’ll be leaving after lunch." Sofia turned towards me. "Yes," she said. "Helen is an idealist, Edmund." "Right," he said, "my only chance of a daughter-in-law, and she turns out to be a bright-eyed idealist." I was surprised at how his words stung. I felt my eyes fill.
"Tell us about Nixon," Sofia said, changing the subject and giving me a sympathetic wink. "He's coming back strong," Edmund said. They should have impeached the bastard, I thought. "Everybody wants to see him," Edmund droned. "He'll be back sooner than we thought."
Sofia listened carefully, never revealing herself with expression or body language. I struggled to stifle my yawns and revive my dwindling attention span. Soon after midnight, Sofia gently shook me awake. "Go to bed," she said. I excused myself and went upstairs.
The next morning, I woke to the oddly soothing sound of Jake Bird raking the gravel. He was rhythmic as he worked, his measured strokes punctuated by the achingly lonely call of a morning dove. I imagined Jake as methodical and cautious, completely unlike the reticent, solitary gardener at my grandfather's summer house, who insisted on planting geraniums when my grandmother wanted roses and grew cabbages and carrots instead of tomatoes and green beans. I once heard my grandfather tell his canasta partner that Mr. Plutterman had been gardener to the king of Romania, which annoyed my grandmother no end and only fueled her contempt for him. The last straw for her was when he caught two rabbits and hung their gutted corpses, heads down, on the clothes line.
I lay there remembering all these things, and then wondered why I agreed to marry Nathaniel? His father was odious and I was a socialist. How was I to deal with a father-in-law like Edmund McClure? He fancied himself an intellectual. He disparaged anyone who did not agree with him about the evils of communism and the necessity of controlling bleeding-heart liberals and dangerous student radicals, who, he would complain, had no idea what they were protesting against or demonstrating for. They were cowards, he would say. They'd hand us over to the Reds. Nathaniel would roll his eyes and say nothing and I would be relieved that I, at least, was an honest, if idealistic, lefty-commie-pinko.
I looked over at the alarm clock. It was 7:15 and already humid. I couldn't bear to sit through breakfast with Edmund, so I decided a cup of coffee and a good run was a better option. Sofia was in the breakfast room with Edmund, who was reading the New York Times. He grunted good morning. “How did you sleep?” Sofia asked me. I smiled. "Like a rock." She laughed. "I always thought that was a funny metaphor," she said, and I agreed. "I'm going for a run," I told her. "There's a lovely path through the woods," she said. "Go right at the end of the driveway. It’s not far past the box hedge." I thanked her.
The path was well-maintained, clear of rocks and branches, and carpeted with pine needles and mottled leaves. I ran easily, in spite of the heat, for a good half-hour, and then turned back. I saw Sofia when I approached the box hedge. I slowed down and then stopped. "Hello," I said. "Did you enjoy your run?" She asked me. "Very much," I answered. "It was perfect!" "I thought you would," she said. "Edmund is getting ready to leave. He wants to avoid any midday traffic." My relief was palpable. "That's too bad." I said. Sofia laughed. "You are a terrible liar." I blushed, even though my face was already hot and red from running. "Ah!" she exclaimed, "You are a young woman who knows when she is impolite." "Am I that transparent?" I asked her. She laughed again. "Completely!" "Damn!" I exclaimed, and then said: "I'm going to be a terrible daughter-in-law, Sofia ." "Nonsense," she said. "You will figure it all out." I stood there, not sure of myself and suddenly startled by an feeling I could not name. Sofia took my arm, and we walked back to the house without another word between us.
Nathaniel called late that morning, but Sofia was out running errands and I was reading in the hammock on the far side of the back lawn. His voice on the answering machine sounded tired and strained. He was sorry we weren't at home and he missed me. I hung up the phone and frowned. "Does he miss you?" Sofia asked. "I don't know," I replied. "He always tells me he misses me, but actually, I never miss him." "Interesting," Sofia said. "I must admit to the same. My husband was always traveling and I was too busy with the boys to even think about missing him." I picked a sliced cucumber out of the salad she was making. She gently smacked my hand. We both laughed.
After lunch we went for a walk and then we went down the pool. Sofia went directly to the deep end. "Do you miss Paris?" I asked her. She looked at me. "At times," she said. "But I miss Barcelona far more than Paris." "Gertrude Stein loved everything Spanish," I said. "But she also liked Franco."
I don't know if she heard me. She dove in, releasing a spray of whiteness and rainbows into the humid air. I watched her from the chaise. She is so beautiful, I thought. I closed my book and watched her as she swam from one end of the pool to the other. A stream of words began to run through me: aqueous, aquiline, alchemy, amazement. She is, I thought, amazing. I put down my book and dove in. We swam laps, sometimes side by side, sometimes fast and sometimes slow; I stopped counting at twenty-five, and let another stream of words move through my mind: cantilate, curious, copious, conjure, comforting; but then I lost my timing, miscalculated my turn, and hit my forehead on the pool wall. I shot up out of the water. Sofia was gone.
Late that night, a ferocious, intractable parade of thunderstorms moved through the area, clearing out all the humidity. The rest of the month was filled with gorgeous weather. Only a few rainy days keep me inside. I ran every morning and I spent long sweet hours reading in the hammock. When Nathaniel called, I felt disengaged from him, distracted, and evasive. I found out later that he was furious about those phone calls. But I didn't care at the time and I didn’t care later. The physical space I was in, the distance from home, and the immediacy of Sofia and my days at Fox Hollow, were all that mattered. Only a few rainy days swept through, reminding me that the world was still not perfect.
But then there was the night Sofia hosted Bill Casey and his wife for dinner. Bill Casey was, of course, one of the legends of the OSS and the fledgling CIA. He would soon be Reagan's choice to head the CIA, but at the time I didn't fully understand the significance or his power. I was excited at the thought of meeting him. Sofia was very clear that casual was not on the menu. She lent me a string of pearls and matching earrings to emphasize that fact.
I was in my room when I heard the flurry of their arrival. And not long afterwards, Sofia knocked on my door. "It's too bad Edmund isn't here," she said. "He adores Bill." "Edmund knows Bill Casey?" I asked. "Yes," Sofia said. "They worked together during the war." "Were they both in France?" "No," Sofia said. "Bill and Edmund were OSS, Edmund in Washington and Bill in London."
She fastened the pearls around my neck. Her fingers lingered and then her hands dropped gently to my shoulders. The sensation was electric. I had to force myself to step away. I turned around to look at her. I met her gaze. Then the moment passed, and we went downstairs together.
Bill Casey was very tall, and pale. He had a long, unpleasant face. His cheeks were flaccid and poxy, his handshake was limp and cool. His wife was unassuming and very nice. After an hour or so, we went into the dining room. Sofía sat me on her right, across from Mrs. Casey. Bill Casey took the seat at far end of the table. Sofía reigned at the head. The dining room was cool and dark. Candles illuminated the beautifully set table. Several bottles of wine stood on the sideboard. From the kitchen, I could hear Perla moving about. I began to feel small, and hyper-vigilant, as if I was moving down a dimly lit hallway and could not find any doors. But then I could feel Sophia's presence: attentive and protective.
Bill Casey droned throughout the entire meal in an annoying, pedantic voice. In turn, Sofia was aggressive or vexed; she challenged Casey several times, particularly about money and Reagan's candidacy. Mrs. Casey said very little but smiled at me quite often. Aside from polite answers to questions from Mrs. Casey, I was silent. But then I had a question. "Don't you think Nixon was guilty?" I asked Mrs. Casey. She looked at me. For a moment or two, no one said anything. Then Bill Casey spoke directly to me. "What the Left has done to Nixon is despicable," he began. "There has to be respect for what Richard Nixon has done for this country. You'll do well to think of that." Then what? I thought. But I said: "Don't you think he went too far?" Casey looked sharply at Sofia and then at me. "No," he said. "He didn't go far enough." Then Mrs. Casey said, "Tell us, Helen, are you enjoying Fox Hollow?" "Yes," I answered. "I'm enjoying it very much." She asked me about running and what I had studied in college. Sofia was quiet. Bill Casey sniffed and then speared some green beans. The tension hovering over the table was frightening. My mechanism of self-protection, strings of random words, began to flow again. Conflagration, I thought, chastisement, scintillating, scorn. And then Sofia touched my arm, asking if I cared for anything more, and the word, "sensuous" ran through me. Sensuous, sensational, secretive, serious, shame, shattered, shimmering. I felt myself redden and took a drink of wine from the glass in front of me. That last word had made me blush: shimmering; not sensuous or shame, but shimmering. I took another drink of wine.
What happened next, while we were waiting for coffee to be served, was extraordinary. Mrs. Casey stood up and excused herself, "to freshen up," Would I care to join her? I was intractable. I would not leave the table no matter how intense Bill Casey's anger hung in the air. Every nerve in me began to vibrate. Sofia put her hand on my arm. "Feeling all right?" she whispered. "Yes," I said, very quietly. She nodded, and then directed herself to Casey, who was still muttering on like a priest at High Mass mumbling incomprehensibly in Latin. Casey was now excited and more animated. They were arguing about something. Sofia was angry. I looked from one to the other, wondering why Mrs. Casey was taking so long. I saw how beautiful she was, how fine the lines that coursed her forehead, her simple, elegant hairstyle, her hands still smooth and unmarked, the way she meeting Bill Casey head-on, her beautiful dress. But Sophía didn't seem to notice me. She was completely engrossed in whatever she and Casey were arguing about.
And then I felt afraid because I realized that I could not follow what they were saying, even though I knew they were speaking English. There seemed to be no structure to their sentences. Words were scatterings and slivers of sounds: sharp, stinging; empty, specious; elusive, vacuous. I looked from one to the other in bewilderment: I could not understand what they were saying.
And then Sofia broke in with a storm of French. Casey stopped talking. He glared at her, enraged. And then he got up from the table, excused himself, and left the room. Sofia and I sat there. We heard him call to his wife; Perla rushing to get his umbrella; a rustling of hurried movement; the front door open, and the front door close.
Shortly afterwards, Perla came in with the coffee and quietly poured us each a cup. She asked if I wanted dessert. "No," I said, "nothing for me." When Perla disappeared back into the kitchen, I turned to Sofia . "Don't concern yourself with Bill Casey, darling," she said. She sipped her coffee and then smiled. "I think we should have some brandy," she said. She got up and went through to the kitchen, returning a few minutes later with snifters and a bottle of brandy. Perla came in to clear the table. "Perla," Sofia said, "This was a lovely, delicious meal. Thank you. Don't fuss too much about the kitchen and we won't need anything else. Will you be here Tuesday?" "Yes," Perla said, "Tuesday."
We could hear her moving about the kitchen and then we heard her car pull down the gravel drive. Sofia and I sipped our brandy. We did not talk about dinner, or Bill Casey, or republicans. We talked about the intangibles of character and integrity, the innovation of the Phoenician alphabet, the genius of Hannah Arendt, and the perfidy of colonialism. But while the brandy dulled my anxiety, my mind raced and my body struggled to keep up with it all. Eventually, I stopped trembling. The clock chimed midnight. We said goodnight to each other and went upstairs.
I could not sleep. I lay there for hours, watching shadows thrown so randomly on the ceiling by the moonlight. I recited poems and the lyrics of songs. I remembered the opening lines of Oedipus Rex, the words Antigone hurled at Creon, Lorca's luscious poem, "Dos lunas de tarde." I thought of Juliet's passionate recognition of Romeo's voice: "My ears have not yet drunk a hundred word’s of thy tongue's utterings, yet I know the sound." And then of Dickinson, and Bishop: Dream dream confronting,/now the cupboard’s bare./The cat's gone a-hunting./The brook feels for the stair. At 3 a.m., I gave up. I took a towel, quietly let myself out, and went down to the pool.
The air was cooler that night and the surface of the water was smothered by a mist that rose from the warmer water. I remembered Faulkner and the first time I read the word "effluvium." I slipped out of my pajamas and into the pool, careful not to make noise. I was careful not to splash. I floated on my back and then swam breaststroke, languidly and quietly, back and forth. I tried to think of nothing but I thought of Nathaniel and Edmund. I heard what my name would sound like if I married him: Helen McClure. It felt flat; it had no life to it. It was a name I could never get use to. I could not marry Nathaniel. Caught between Nathaniel and his father, I would suffocate. I would never write another poem. I would never see Sofia again. I felt that last thought like a sin; knowingly horribly honest. Standing by my bed/In gold sandals/ Dawn that very/moment awoke me. I knew of Sappho, and I knew of Rich, Pratt, and Broumas. I knew what it meant. I stopped at the shallow end of the pool, and I cried. It was grief and loneliness that fell into the water, because I understood what had happened. I understood who I was. I couldn't marry Nathaniel or any other man. If I did, I would never write anything that was true again. I would become broken.
After a while, I rinsed my face in the water and turned to begin another lap. Sofia was sitting, there, at the other end of the pool, watching me. I didn't breathe as she slipped into the pool and swam towards me, her strokes strong and deep. I waited, in the shallow end of the pool, for her to reach me.
September 16, 2005
The Rush of Memory Thinking
DRAFT
Just write she said and it flew and I was struck by the sound of her sound of her smile felt it cool the way water does running free from the faucet without expectation of comfort or reimbursement.
It must have been awful waiting like that knowing something so terrible.
I fell into your hemisphere and the world spun the other way and I remembered your skin cool and my breath ragged. We were walking towards the national museum and the clouds were pearl gray over the plaza and we kept walking and the light changed and a motor scooter on the sidewalk spun around and a woman wearing a yellow helmet spat and the curve of her neck, as she blazed past us, was spectacular.
Do you remember that or was it imagination finding another way to realize this could not have happened, and the ticket was voided and you would not unpack.
Strange, I was sure you had a reason and it wasn't me as much as it was you your mind, always, always ready to spring, the punch line unsung, unheard, and never memorized.
I listen to tapes made years ago and I still can't convince you that I understand.
I have listened to every tape, again. The first of May, 80 degress hot and your voice and that lyric was cool water running clear. cascading down that mountain top deafening furious and sweet sweet sweet.
Stop, I say. Stop. But we can’t. Anything you say, it can be and for awhile it was because it was never about anything vaguely reminiscent of discreet tradition. And I listened as if my life depended on it.
And it does.
It will be all that I have.
And it is.
Post and Read Comments (0) | TrackBack (21)July 19, 2005
A Subtle Madness
The following story has been published in Harrington Lesbian Literary Quarterly, 2006, Vol. 7, no. 3
Moira Jean Gingrich, from Albany, New York, was five-feet-nine, had dark brown eyes, and favored velvet leggings and faux leopard skin leotards. She was the student assistant I inherited from my predecessor, who had quit mid-way through one of those endless projects well-endowed university libraries were known to indulge in. But I liked multitasking and doing things other people avoided.
NYU was my alma mater and had been my last employer before I divorced the only man I had ever been with. He was seven years older than me, fairly cute, and owned a burgundy Morgan roadster, complete with a wide leather strap that secured the hood, black running boards, and a spring suspension. After I left him, I went to Denmark and stayed for almost two years. When I got back, in the mid-70s, I called my old boss at NYU. As luck would have it, there was a job opening.
Before I went to college, I had gone to only one school for twelve years, an all-girls Catholic academy. All of my sisters went there. We could jump out of bed at 7:45 and make the last bell at 8:15. But to this day, I struggle with a vague sense of unease when faced with the complications of dressing for success, and my color schemes still tend towards navy and white.
After the freedom and detachment of Europe, I decided that routine was a wonderful thing. I found I was thinking way too much about too many things I couldn’t explain. I read only books written by women. I immersed myself in the poetry of Adrienne Rich and Minnie Bruce Pratt, and I started therapy with a woman whose ad I saw in the Village Voice. She had an office on Gramercy Park and every Monday afternoon at 1:45 I pushed open the heavy, paneled door with creaky hinges, sank into an overstuffed blue chair, and tried to explain why I was thinking what I felt and how I felt what I was thinking. At 2:47, I would close the big black door behind me and head back towards the university.
Mondays were reassuring and maddening. But Moira Jean Gingrich, with a large shiny safety pin embedded in her beautiful, smooth cheek, a four-hundred dollar racing bicycle, and dark chestnut hair was all that was needed to disrupt my carefully measured life.
The periodicals department was a blend of career librarians, MLS candidates, and former students like me, who had stayed on long after our work study grants had expired. The landscape of my journals began with L and ended with Q. I sat between Nina and Rochelle and directly across from Hassan and Pete. If I turned my head just a little to the left, I had a clear view of the back room where dour Marilyn, who supervised the work study students, skulked and harassed her minions. Marilyn always had a cold and wrote memo after memo detailing the tardiness, deportment, and fetching skills of the students she tried to control. But she was also the first person I ever met who brewed Melita coffee in a drip pot. Marilyn detested Moira for reasons unknown, and because Moira was working on my endless project, Marilyn obligingly detested me too.
"Mary Anne," Moira said to me early in our collaboration, "do you have any idea how long it takes to ride a bike from New York to Boston" "No," I said and dragged a box of back issues of anthropology journals over to the work table against the wall. We were in the back end of the stacks and the constant jingling of the six or seven thin silver bracelets on Moira's wrist was very annoying.
"I'm going this Friday." "Where?" I asked. "To Boston with Andrew. On our bikes. I'm going to meet Buckminster Fuller's daughter. Andrew took her to his senior prom. We'll take the train back" "Good idea," I told her.
They were gone for a week and had dinner with Buckminster and his daughter. But on the way back they had a terrific fight. Andrew's black eye was incredibly hideous but he was very discreet about what had happened when he explained it all to Jim, Fabrizio, and me at the regular euchre game we had in the staff room every Tuesday between twelve and one.
On Wednesday, Moira was more forthright about it all. "I caught them together," Moira told me as she pulled damaged journals from the shelves and threw them in a box to be repaired and bound. "Right there in the boat house while Buckminster was explaining the practical genius of Inuit design."
I arranged the abused journals carefully in the box, closed it up and taped it. "Where was Mrs. Buckminster?" I asked her. "Somewhere," she said, and sat on the table. "They pretended nothing happened," she said, looking at me straight in the eye. "Do you believe that?" "Are you together?" I asked her. "We’re supposed to start living together this spring." I stretched masking tape over the top edges of the box flaps. "Maybe not," I said.
In the background, I could hear Marilyn talking to Jeffrey and Rochelle's high, ringing laugh. I knew Moira was staring at me and fingering her safety pin as I heaved the box onto a library cart and pushed it towards the elevator. "Who do you live with," she asked me, "your mother?" I pushed the up button and turned to face her. "None of your god-damn business," I said.
The doors opened and I pushed the cart in. When I turned around she was still staring at me, her lips curved in a queer, thin smile. Moira was wearing green velvet leggings and a faded black Danskin. The doors closed slowly and the vision of her tall, elegant body was compressed into nothingness by the polished steel grey doors. As the elevator lifted, I involuntarily looked down. I knew she was still standing there. I knew she was looking up. I knew she knew I was looking down.
The fact was I did live with my mother and my grandmother but in the apartment upstairs from them. And I certainly didn't have dinner with them every night, just several times a week and always on Sunday, along with all my other sisters and their assorted husbands and offspring. I was perfectly content to be where I was. Being Auntie Mary suited me just fine, and besides, my mother was a lot more interesting and fun than most people I knew.
I was still fuming over Moira the next morning when I saw Andrew on the PATH train. He was standing by the rear door reading Phyllis Chesler's Women & Madness. He smiled when he saw me; his black eye like a hole had been blasted into his face.
"That's an interesting tome for a guy to be reading," I said as I moved to stand next to him. "Not really," Andrew answered. "Moira said I'd find it interesting." "Really? Why?" I asked. He flipped through some pages. "Here," he said without looking up. ‘The lesbian's yearning for her mother's love is always put in jeopardy through the existence of a male…." "Phyllis Chesler wrote that?" I asked. Andrew opened the book again. "No. Dr. Charlotte Wolf, Love Between Women."
"Oh," I said.
The train turned sharply and the wheels shrieked. Andrew closed the book. "She’s really mad at me," he said. I looked around to see if anyone was listening to our conversation and then I looked at his bruised eye. I was jolted by how smooth his face was; how young he was. "Andrew," I said, "it always works out." "Yeah," he agreed.
The train pulled into Christopher Street and he moved towards the door. "Do you want to walk?" "No," I said. "I like to get off at 9th Street."
As the train pulled out of the station I watched Andrew walk towards the entrance. Then I saw Moira. She was leaning against the wall on the other side of the turnstiles and as the car I was in passed her, she turned to look at me, that same queer smile on her face.
NYU's Bobst Library is a huge, red stone structure with an imposing open lobby that reaches up hundreds of feet. I'd heard that it was a favorite site for student suicides, but in all my years there, I never knew of one. They were only lurid legends and dark, muttered rumors that always circulated among the freshmen around finals and always involved young women who couldn't take the pressure and always left long excruciating suicide notes for their boyfriends or fathers to find.
It was a Friday afternoon, and for some reason, I had been asked to help out at the circulation desk in the main lobby where boots and shoes scraped and clicked on the polished marble floors. Everything in that lobby echoed. I was checking out books at a constant pace. The lines were long; it seemed as if the entire university was moving through the building. The steady whoosh of the revolving doors was rhythmic.
I had only an hour left before I could leave. Time had passed quickly and nothing was wrong but all of a sudden, I felt terribly uncomfortable. I felt as if someone was watching me. I looked up and saw Moira standing in line. It was a very long line that snaked from the revolving doors to the circulation desk. She was wearing her green velvet leggings and a bright, starched white shirt; the kind Shakespeare might have worn, or Katherine Hepburn in Sylvia Scarlett; full sleeves, open neck, the slightest hint of a band collar; her safety pin gleamed against her cheek like the blade of a stiletto. I began to sweat and my hands felt clammy. I noticed Moira did not have any books. I felt my stomach tighten. For the first time in my life, I had an undeniable, incomprehensible sense of impending doom.
Eventually, Moira reached the circulation desk. I looked at her as calmly as I could. "Yes?" I asked her. She smiled. "Moira," I said, "where are your books?" Moira stood up very tall and placed both her hands on the top of the marble counter. "Mary Anne," she said in a loud, resonant voice. "Mary Anne, I am a lesbian!"
The next thing I knew, someone was holding my head and a guard was asking me if I was all right. "Yes," I said, "yes." I got up slowly and the guard steadied me. I looked around. The revolving doors were still spinning but they were empty and Moira Jean Gingrich was no where in sight.
Post and Read Comments (0)June 27, 2005
Stealing
The following story was published in the Harrington Lesbian Literary Journal* Vol. 6 no. 4
My daughter and I moved to Short Hills in September, when everything in the world was folding into autumn and the long, sun-rich days of summer were beginning to withdraw into smaller, more manageable slices of time and space. The quiet, mundane evenings were cooler and a pretentious, more dignified mood was filtering down and melting into everyone. I had taken a new job in New York City and as I walked down Church Street towards my office it seemed to me that everyone in the world was happy or happily married, single or very content, maybe even brain-dead.
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