Beggar of Love (47 page)

Did she have no responsibility to her primary relationship, then?

What had she just done? Stone-cold sober, she’d risked hurting Dawn horribly and losing the chance of a life with her, not because Dawn would ever know about this, not because Dawn wouldn’t forgive—she might—but because fooling around like this would prove toxic to the way she herself saw any relationship. The lake, too, she’d almost destroyed the peace of the lake, her Innisfree. She was so tired of this balancing act. So tired of herself.

Except—there was Shannon sleeping inside, full of life once more. And here she was, the lesbian, the butch, who Mother Nature had made this way perhaps with a purpose.

They went down to the city for their four-month anniversary, singing along with old disco songs as they drove. Shannon had gone off to war, apparently cheerful from the relief of having made a decision. So far all the news had been good, including the fact that her truck-driver buddy had divorced her husband, gone up in rank, and was keeping Shannon out of combat, getting her trained in some computer skills that she could use back home in addition to running the bed-and-breakfast. Either that, Shannon had e-mailed, or home would be wherever her buddy was stationed.

Jefferson’s heart wasn’t exactly simmering with cheer to be back in the city, but she could probably avoid running into most of the people she’d known with Ginger. Not so their ghosts, who inhabited her mind at each sighting of a familiar place. Briefly, she wished for amnesia, but without the life she’d lived how could she have been ready for Dawn or be who Dawn needed? She felt a distinct pull to the West Fourth Street Courts for a handball game. She’d have to teach Dawn some day, though where to find a handball court up at the lakes she did not know.

It was only in the forties that day so they walked into Central Park and back to Jefferson’s car for the sheer pleasure of it. This was terrific, she thought, having a chance with Dawn to be seriously new together. She’d considered telling Dawn about Shannon and decided not to. It was the very last time and Shannon was gone, possibly forever. With some struggle, she’d forgiven herself and was determined to prove she could trust herself.

Dawn had wanted to introduce her to some friends. To show her off, was how Dawn put it. The woman was in love. She was glad to see Dawn so happy; it enhanced her own elation. Dawn was smart, funny, appealingly exotic, stable, self-supporting, didn’t want to live together yet, imaginative in bed—a wonderful match fueled by more than the physical and, on Jefferson’s part, by a trust in someone else, as well as in herself, that she’d never before experienced. Someone had once told her, if you were persistent in love, love would come back with a willing woman. Maybe that was true.

She’d expected Dawn to broach the subject of a civil union, now, shockingly, legal in conservative New Hampshire. Not doing so was very smart on Dawn’s part: Dawn had heard the warnings in Jefferson’s stories—or confessions—and was appropriately wary.

Dawn was dressed in a spotless white nylon parka too light for fall at home. She had her hair up in a twist and looked sharp on Jefferson’s arm. Despite her doubts about this whole jaunt, she started to feel like her much younger self, promenading across from the park, near to skipping with glee at the sight of two striped cats in a window watching pigeons. Her leather jacket would never fit the way it had in her thirties, but she’d sloughed off enough new pounds to be comfortable in it again. When she squeezed Dawn’s arm to hers, a memory of walking like this with Ginger ambushed her, like a ghost who quickly left. She breathed in until her lungs would hold no more of this pretty air.

“What is it, Jefferson?” Dawn was watching her face. “That sounded like a sigh of regrets.”

She shook her head. “No.” She was denying the truth to herself as well as to Dawn. “Or maybe.” Her emotions were such a jumble. She clasped Dawn’s hand, that soft, always-yielding hand that seemed to exist to be cherished, and said, sadness taking on weight around her, “Not to have found this, not to have found you, until now? Part of me wants to cry because I had to wait so long, the other part wonders how I got so lucky.”

They walked past lamp posts and trash baskets and ornate apartment building entrances on their way to their distant parking space. They smiled at each other after they passed a woman in long boots and a gray fur coat walking her long-legged gray dog.

“You wouldn’t have wanted me then,” Dawn said, pressing her cheek to Jefferson’s shoulder.

Without hesitation she replied, “I would always have wanted you!”

“Oh, Jefferson, sometimes you’re such a goofy romantic. You never would have gone for a mousy librarian from Pipsborough.”

“Hey, Kitten, you’re not mousy.”

“You wouldn’t have noticed me long enough to find that out.”

“You would have gotten my attention somehow. Right?”

Dawn slowly shook her head as they waited for a light to change. “No, Jef. When you were drinking I would have run the other way.”

“Good girl,” she said. “That’s one reason I love you. Putting up with my shit is not on your agenda.” She put her arms around Dawn and hugged her hard, then let her go and leapt into the street, weaving through the traffic, Dawn’s hand in her own.

“Jefferson! You’re crazy,” Dawn called with a loving laugh.

They reached the sidewalk without any trauma beyond the shout of a cabdriver in a language they didn’t understand. She grinned at Dawn. She couldn’t wait to introduce her to Angela.

It wasn’t only Dawn, was it, she thought. It was laughing at the sight of another dog walker with a brace of four eager poodles heading to the park. It was knowing somebody was crazy about her again. It was the history they’d begun to accumulate, the anticipation of a rich life ahead. It was surviving, still being here though Ginger was gone. Yet Ginger wasn’t gone. Ginger, like her old friend Glad, was in the sunshine and the city, the walkers and this sweet lady beside her. Ginger seemed to share her every breath. She wasn’t glad Ginger was gone, but she was so happy to have this new life for herself, it seemed to balance the sadness in her. Dawn made her want to swing around lamp posts and serenade her. She’d missed her own exuberance.

Gloom, grief, guilt, she could let all that go. “I love you, little Kitten,” she said.

Dawn’s always surprising eyes, a shade not unlike the lake in sunshine, flooded with light, the way they always did when she was pleased beyond words. Jefferson relaxed, swung into Dawn’s mood, and grabbed her in her arms, singing “Our Lips Are Sealed.” They danced and dipped in circles until the end of the block. Dawn, as usual, tripped on her own and Jefferson’s feet, managing to smack a shin on a hydrant on their journey.

“I’m such a klutz,” Dawn said, laughing as she rubbed her leg. Jefferson went down on one knee, not as easy to do as it once had been, and pushed Dawn’s pant leg up to survey the damage. “No blood, but a good scrape.”

“My hero,” Dawn said.

Jefferson helped herself up using a lamp post, trying to disguise her need for the prop. She loved bopping around the city like this. “You are terrific for my confidence, Dawn.” It was true. Being loved was a powerful booster. Not always enough, but powerful.

“Come on, my dancing dyke. We need to get down to Chinatown for Mom’s shopping. Wait till you taste what she’s going to make us tomorrow night. Oh, let’s remember to stop at the notions store for Aunt Tuyat’s special thread.”

They drove to the library where Dawn once worked and said hello to two friends who were still there, then Jefferson got a tour.

“The staff is almost all straight,” Dawn told her. “Can you deal with husbands if my friends visit us up at the lake?” Dawn asked.

Jefferson made a sour face.

“They’re such great friends. These women are the ones who gave me the confidence to know I could run a rural library.” Dawn chattered on about how she had to do circulation, reference, be the children’s librarian, get very creative with grants. No wonder Dawn had such a fiercely loyal Friends of the Library in Pipsborough.

“You’re what I call a competent femme.”

“And this is a good thing?” asked Dawn.

She stroked Dawn’s head and ran her hand down her lovely loose hair. “You’re a good thing.” The irrepressible pleasure of being with Dawn Northway was a feeling she’d experienced in a few small tastes and moments before, but this continuum of happiness baffled and delighted her. She had to work to simply accept and enjoy it.

“Then why do you look sad? Is it Ginger?”

“No. Yes. A little. It doesn’t detract from us, though. Makes you more special, if anything.”

“It must be hard. Where do your feelings go when someone you love dies? They don’t disappear.”

“There was a lot of water under the bridge by the time that happened, Dawn.”

They were walking from their distant parking space to the notions store, and Dawn pulled her aunt’s list from her purse. Jefferson followed her into the shop at first, then wandered back outside. She hadn’t told Dawn her whole story yet. It was too humiliating, but Dawn needed to know that Jefferson’s sorrow was more complex than loss itself. Here she was, taking a chance again, risking her heart and risking Dawn’s too. Sometimes she felt too damaged, too beat-up by the life she’d lived to deserve the love of this bright-eyed gamin of a woman. Sprite, imp, a woman without artifice, who seemed to sparkle from the inside out—she feared she’d sully Dawn. Instead, when she added confessions to prior confessions, made it clear that she hadn’t been only with Ginger all those years, Dawn continued to act pleased and eager to hear more stories of her big-bad-wolf days.

The street was busy with shoppers from the ’burbs and buyers from the garment shops. So much of the industry had moved overseas, but a few diehard specialty stores were apparently keeping their heads above water enough to survive. So many women. So many women to admire. Should she tell Dawn that she couldn’t promise fidelity? She didn’t want to make Dawn worry.

The women shoppers, always in pairs or threes, were older. She wasn’t attracted to the kids. There was something so focused about the twenty- and thirty-somethings. Her peers had never been so hustle-bustle-all-about-making-money. The older women drifting by were laughing, sometimes arm in arm, happy to be out with their girlfriends. Some were real lookers. Their faces told such stories, weathered like her own. She wanted to hear the stories, to make them forget they’d ever been hurt, that they were aging, that they no longer had their whole lives ahead of them. She saw herself in bed with one—that one passing into the store where she stood—listening to her after-lovemaking tales.

The woman held the door while Dawn exited on Jefferson’s arm. She saw the woman look at them, at their linked arms, and smile as if in blessing. Jefferson tucked Dawn’s hand tighter in her own. God, she thought, spare me from myself. She’d used Dawn’s touch to connect with another woman and felt all too pleased about it.

She was getting the second chance she’d heard Glad whisper about, and she knew it. But did she know how to love Dawn? What did it matter when Dawn so obviously loved her? Dawn knew what love was and Jefferson felt like she’d never known. She would give this wholly, unconditionally loved business a chance—no, more than a chance. She wouldn’t let herself fight it. What if all the pleasant feelings she had toward Dawn were exactly what comprised love? She smiled at the sight of Dawn; she laughed deeply and genuinely with her. Dawn was a talented and attentive lover who seemed genuinely to revel in making love to her as well as luxuriating, to the nth degree, in Jefferson’s touch. Dawn had no hang-ups compared to most women who turned her on, and the more time they spent in bed, the more Dawn, without artifice, turned her on. Jefferson realized that Dawn was right; she’d had her doubts about getting together with a librarian, had harbored an image of a staid, dried-out kind of woman, but that had been a mistake. For all she knew she might have slept with librarians before.

Why shouldn’t she end up with a decent, caring, passionate woman who enjoyed pleasing her? Why not fall easy for once, instead of falling hard? Her ebullient self was returning. They planned to stay in the city for the weekend; her parents were on a cruise. She was excited about showing Dawn where she’d lived for so many years. Tomorrow night they’d go dancing. The old Lincoln Center cream-colored vest and tie no longer fit so she’d bought a deep red shirt, a black silk tie, and a charcoal gray wool-front vest for the occasion.

Could she stay with Dawn? Could she stomach a life on the lake where the biggest thrill was throwing a wake of white spume behind the boat into the clean lake air? Could she have a passion for a life without the trauma and drama she’d always created for herself? Could she pledge, to herself, to hold Dawn’s hand for the rest of her life, and no one else’s, like this?

If she could, was it because she’d stopped drinking, because grief had beaten her down, because her erotic adventures had left her jaded? Was it because, so close to fifty, she was just tired and ready for the shelter of Dawn? She told herself that while all of this might be true, she loved everything about Dawn and would be content with her.

They were passing Lincoln Center on their way back to the car after stopping for a supply of Manhattan Special sarsaparilla. The fountain wasn’t operating. She saw her younger self dancing there with Ginger on hot summer nights. There wasn’t a reason in the world she couldn’t do the same with Dawn come summer, here or at the band shell on the Pipsborough green after wandering the hospital white-elephant sale, with her young bride beside her.