Beggar of Love (45 page)

Dawn’s eyes shone. The sight of them enhanced Jefferson’s feeling of radiance. Dawn whispered, “I’ll love you forever, Jef.”

“Dawn, Dawn. Don’t go making promises. One day at a time, okay?” Those AA slogans held a lot of truth, she thought. “I’ve learned that promises don’t mean anything because I’ve broken so many myself. After all, forever can be the best aphrodisiac.”

“No, Jef. That was then. That was them. This is me, now. I recognized you right away. You may go away, but I won’t.”

All those years she’d wasted trying to make Ginger happy instead of bouncing her heart around like a basketball, slapping it like a handball, spiking it like a volleyball, kicking it. What a dog she’d been instead of deeply treasuring the woman she’d thought of as her one true love. She’d sunk her fingers into one after another shallow pond, testing the waters of every flirty woman who crossed her path and some she just wanted to tease the flirtyness from.

Despair must have been plain on Jefferson’s face because Dawn put her arms around her and said, “There, there, there,” and held her, rocked her, made love with her until sleep melded them together with the contentment only warm, sated bodies and hope can know. It was all she’d ever wanted.

She couldn’t say it, but Jefferson hoped she could stay too. “There’s this empty place in me you’re sliding into,” she told Dawn. “It’s always been there and I’ve tried every which way to fill it. In the past I thought I knew the way it should be done. I loved hard, partly, I think, to ensure that I would be loved in return. My loving was begging. It did no good, like knocking on the doors of empty apartments on Halloween night, hearing the hollow sound of their vacancy, my pillowcase open, a few stray Mary Janes and sour balls down at the bottom. Now it turns out all this begging for love has been my impatience. When I gave up—abracadabra. Here you are.”

Dawn moved closer to her. “Am I a sour ball or a Mary Jane?”

“Neither,” said Jefferson, thinking about how generous and gentle Dawn was with her and with her friends and the Northway family. “You’re the nice lady who opened her door and gave us little Milky Ways. You’re all dressed up as a genie of love.”

Dawn nuzzled her neck. Jefferson squeezed her hand.

“Dawn,” she said, “I’m so afraid I’m never going to change. I come on so together, then fall apart in the dark. It’ll always be Halloween with me—costumes and masks—and I’ll always be a beggar of love, on the prowl night and day, taking it from anyone who can give it. What if you give me everything and I’m still not satisfied?”

Jefferson was the only one, other than Mr. and Mrs. Wiley, who was free to pick up Shannon from the hospital. Shannon said she couldn’t face her parents. Though Jefferson didn’t know how she would face Shannon, she sympathized so much with her and was so guilty about being attracted to Dawn, she wanted to drive Shannon home and do whatever would help. The red tape to release her stretched for almost an hour. As they drove north along the lake, Shannon was subdued and sat like a huddled bundle abandoned at the door to a Goodwill shop.

“I’ve caused everybody a lot of trouble.” Shannon was turning herself around. Gone were the limp bleached hair, the chapped lips, the pale, sunken face.

After a while Jefferson was able to put her thoughts into words. “I should have heard your desperation.” She grasped Shannon’s hand.

The sun was out, but few boats were on the water this late after the season. Wind-driven wavelets made the boats slap the water.

They stopped at a pharmacy for Shannon’s antidepressant. Jefferson bought lip balm and gave it to Shannon, then walked the aisles while Shannon’s prescription was filled. Shannon was slumped on a red molded plastic chair across from the counter, a long-legged waif with a bewildered fix-my-life look on her face that Jefferson found strangely appealing despite Shannon’s butchiness. Several people paced around them as they waited. The pharmacy telephone rang, was answered, rang again.

She plunged out of the vitamin aisle and walked to Shannon. “I can’t take you home. You aren’t ready to be alone.”

“Wings will be there.”

“Yolanda has your cat,” she reminded Shannon, wondering if the lapses in Shannon’s memory were permanent. Shannon’s energy was so low this might be the best time to tell her that she was seeing Dawn. The drugs she’d been administered in the hospital might still her reaction.

“I’ll be okay. It’ll be good to get home.”

“Your mom went over yesterday. She said it wouldn’t be the first time she cleaned up after you.”

Shannon relaxed her face into a small, brief smile.

“She was worried about you being alone in that little cabin, but she knew you wouldn’t want to stay with her or your father.”

“She got that right.”

“I have extra rooms, Shannon. For a couple of days. What do you say?” She’d have to warn Dawn to stay away. If Dawn didn’t have a cat of her own, Jefferson sometimes thought Dawn would never go home.

“It would be peaceful on the lake,” Shannon said, her voice softer than Jefferson had ever heard it. This was not a butch beside her, this was a woman in pain. No, she wouldn’t say anything about Dawn yet.

“You’d have to promise to call me at work—or wherever—if you felt like offing yourself again.”

“Not funny, Jefferson.”

“I’m dead serious,” she answered, straight-faced.

She got a real smile out of Shannon that time, and Shannon got up slowly, with a stiffness she’d only seen before in people many years Shannon’s senior.

“Tell me about your back, Shannon,” she asked as they walked past the vitamins, into books and magazines, then all the way to the household cleaners. Shannon seemed pretty wobbly, but she wasn’t slouching as she had when they first arrived. She experienced the warmth that used to envelop her when one of her students made unexpected and exceptional progress.

“What about it?” Shannon’s voice sounded small and rusty.

“Where did you hurt it?” She had her hand on Shannon’s back, pressing various points.

“In the Guard.”

“How?”

“It was stupid, really. A strap on my gear popped loose. I was supposed to be on this truck, but I stopped to fix the strap. The driver played catch-me. I ran for the open back, tossed my pack up, and missed when I tried to jump on.”

“You fell?”

“No, but I heard something pop when I leapt up for my second try. You know how you do? Get all twisted up throwing yourself up and forward at the same time?”

She nodded, remembering a volleyball game that put her on the sidelines for weeks.

“Oh, yeah. That night I felt like the truck ran over me, not away from me.”

“You had a base doctor?”

“Sure, but I didn’t want to get the driver in trouble. She was my…you know.”

“Girl?”

“Not really. She was married to a guy at home, but we fooled around some.”

“So you’ve been living with this messed-up back for how many years and the Guard doesn’t know about it?”

“They know. I waited a day and blamed it on something else.”

“Wiley,” the pharmacy tech called.

She stood back, running her knuckles up and down her cheek, hard, trying to decide how to tell her about herself and Dawn, while Shannon went to the counter. A moment later Shannon exclaimed, “You have got to be kidding.”

“What’s the matter?’ She joined Shannon at the counter.

“They want a hundred eighty dollars for thirty pills!”

“Here. Put it on my credit card.” She tugged her slim wallet from her back pocket.

“No.” Shannon waved her away with more energy than she had demonstrated yet. “Can’t you give me something cheaper?” she asked the clerk.

Eventually, the pharmacist had Shannon call the hospital to see if a generic could be substituted.

“I am steamed,” Shannon said, returning to the vitamin aisle after her call and walking swiftly past the seasonal and toy aisles. “What was that doctor thinking? Didn’t he know I don’t have insurance?”

Jefferson smiled to see Shannon so energized. Whatever works, she thought, stopping herself from taking Shannon’s hand as they walked, but not surprised at the impulse. She was so unused to spending time with another butch, except for Gabby, and she didn’t find Gabby remotely attractive as anything but a friend. “Won’t the VA pay for it?”

“I don’t have veteran status so I’m not entitled. The only time I get good medical care is when I’m on active duty.” She kicked a mop display and sent it crashing to the floor. “I’m thinking I might as well go back in, Jef. I need to face up to it and take my chances. That way I’d get the benefits, such as they are.”

She grabbed Shannon’s elbow and faced her. Part of her wanted to encourage Shannon to do that, but she genuinely cared about her. It would make her own life easier, cowardly as she knew that thought to be. She gripped both of Shannon’s elbows. “There’s no way they’ll reinstate you with your disability, is there?”

“Sure, they will. They never acknowledged the accident enough to pay me for it. I wanted out, so I didn’t pursue it. Why bother, when you could get shipped to the Mideast waiting for them to make a decision? Better to stay under their radar. They’ll check me out enough to maybe keep me out of combat. I can hope for motor pool or a stateside assignment.”

“How about recruiting? Then you could stay here.”

Shannon laughed, a lively laugh of genuine amusement as they pulled up to Jefferson’s cottage. “Dude,” she said, “that job is harder than combat right now. Nobody wants to join up.”

Two and a half hours after going to get Shannon, Jefferson was back home with Shannon as a guest. Out of habit, she hit the answering-machine play button.

“How’re you doing, Tiger?” Dawn’s recorded voice asked. “This is your Kitten.”

Jefferson’s stomach felt like it was plummeting past her ovaries and all her other organs. She turned her head quickly and saw Shannon standing outside, walking toward the dock. Ducks rose from the water to take flight, crying as they lifted. Close call, she thought, and erased the message. After a moment she decided to turn the machine off. She’d go outside and use her cell to call Dawn back later—after she hid the Prozac, ibuprofen, aspirin, and kitchen knives.

As she suicide-proofed the house, though, she realized how wrong it felt to lie about Dawn. Hadn’t she learned that hiding the truth only hurt everyone? She would have to tell Shannon eventually, but not tonight, not when she’d offered her shelter in her home. Now it was clear—she couldn’t keep the lid on this. Shannon would only feel deceived when she found out Jefferson was protecting her from the truth.

How to say it? She’d never had to face up to such a situation before. The only time her flings got really messy was when they were with someone from their immediate social scene. She simply disappeared from social life while the trouble lasted. Ginger was only marginally interested in the bars so she could always tempt her away with dance recitals or a cozy night at home. It had never occurred to her, back then, that she should come clean to anyone. On the contrary, the quieter things were kept, the less likely it was that someone would get hurt. This thing with Dawn, though, was more than serious. Plus Shannon was so fragile now and their circle of friends was so small. There simply was no place to hide. She hadn’t felt this exposed since she was a kid.

She looked toward the water again. It was deep off the dock, but Shannon was in sight. She found a couple of steaks in the freezer and stuck them in the microwave to defrost. She could at least make her a good meal, maybe share her bed with Shannon, to hold her and give her some comfort.

Shannon came back in from the dusk. Jefferson cooked dinner and Shannon, freshly showered, played with the kittens, who had become long, stringy adolescents.

“You get those pills down yet?” she asked.

Shannon was shaking the bottle to catch the kittens’ attention. “Can you believe they were sixty-seven ninety-nine? I should put them in my mom’s safe-deposit box, not swallow them. He said the other ones wouldn’t kill me if I popped all of them. You think these would?”

Jefferson strode from the kitchen to the living room and, pushing Shannon down on the couch with one arm, snatched the bottle from her hand.

“Dude,” Shannon protested.

She straddled Shannon, face close enough to kiss her. “You are cut off, girl,” she declared. “If I have to drive over to your place to deliver pills daily, I will, as long as you keep talking trash about taking pills—or whatever.”

She got up, filled a glass with water, and handed Shannon one tablet.

“Nah,” Shannon said, refusing both. “Once you start pills like that you can’t stop. I’d be on them all my life. I’m already into you for these. Who has an extra seventy dollars a month? Besides, who needs pills? The bad guys will put me out of my misery soon enough.”

Beside Shannon on the couch, she grabbed her arms again, but this time pulled her, roughly, close and kissed her. To her surprise, Shannon didn’t struggle. “You really want to give this up? Think of all the women waiting out there for you.”

She was startled to see the desire come into Shannon’s eyes, kind of a blue cloud that left her looking unfocused.

“The state will help with the costs. Come on, Shannon, we’ll find some way to do this by the time these pills run out.” She let go and moved back to the kitchen.