Dry Your Smile (48 page)

She bore the tray like an offering to the bedroom, where a revived Iliana, re-ensconced in bed, watched with evident relish as Julian swiftly undressed again and then maneuvered both tray and herself through the bedclothes. “We'll be Romans,” Julian directed. They fell to, ravenously, stuffing their mouths and conversing with their eyes. But Julian's mind kept sparking with her new insights and she was impatient to share them.

At last Iliana exclaimed a small burp of satiation and leaned back against her pillow.

“That was delicious debauchery. An orgy for the taste buds.
Juliana,
” she enunciated with deliberate intensity, fixing her eyes on her subject, “I
never
so long as I live want to
ever
again hear you bemoan yourself as not being sensual. If you picked up that nonsense from Laurence, then he really—”

“No!
He
didn't—Well, he did say that he had come to believe I didn't live in what he called ‘a physical world,' because I was always in flight from physical pleasure. But it was true, 'Yana. I mean it's not his fault. That's mostly all he ever saw or felt coming at him from me. Denial—or at best a grudging admission. What you call the little workaholic he termed the puritan—but they
are
related, you know. I'm not talking about the real obsessive love I do have for my work. I'm talking about using that as escape. I've always assumed it was part of the legacy from Hope, my particular matrilineage of flesh-loathing.”

Iliana set down her coffeecup with a clunk. “If he didn't see or feel it, then he didn't elicit it. I'm sorry, but I—”

“No. He tried. He really tried. Oh, I don't know. I'll be years figuring all this out. All I'm sure of is, I've at last enrolled in Remedial Living 101.”

Iliana sighed and closed her eyes. “At the rate you are proceeding,
preciosa
, you must be aiming to graduate summa cum laude within weeks.”

“Ah well. Always been too goal-oriented, you know. But it
has
been said that I'm a quick study.” Julian arched one eyebrow rakishly.

“What you are, my dear, is an incredibly passionate sensibility enwrapped in an exquisitely fragile body. Holá, what a combination!”

“Holá, what a compliment! Don't anybody move till I get that engraved in granite.”

“No,
mi corazón
. “Iliana's smile softened. “I mean it. If only you could see what I see, love yourself even the tiniest bit the way I love you. The strength of you and the frailty. The pagan in you and the romantic.”

Julian edged the tray to one side so she could wiggle closer, then slid down under the covers so her head could rest on Iliana's shoulder. She inhaled that body's warmth and nestled deeper until her temple found the cushion of a breast's amplitude.

“Iliana,” she murmured, “I was just thinking about that. I'm so profoundly ignorant. It appalls me. God, how could anybody get to age forty-one and remain so stupid. Maybe I'm just the latecomer rediscovering what's already been obvious to others for a long time. But—oh, I don't know where to start. For one thing, I'm just so shocked at the
romance
of all this. You say I'm a romantic. But I thought I'd had to murder that part of myself, because it always led me to destruction, to melodrama. And it left a sour taste in the soul. Of … of
compromise
. This is so different.”

“It's love, that's all. It matters—and it's possible.”

“Larry and I also loved one another. I don't want to oversimplify
or
overcomplicate. But context really does have something to do with it.” She snuggled closer, then began haltingly, “Take romance.”

“With pleasure,” agreed Iliana.

But Julian was undeterred. “In these past weeks, we've walked in summer rain together, played Chopin nocturnes on the tape deck, we've … my god, it's been one great luscious melting
swoon
of romance!”

“I should hope so,” came the answer.

“But I haven't felt ‘compromised.' It's felt liberating, not the way it would if a man—even Larry—sent me flowers, champagne, perfume. I'd feel …
bargained
for in some way, pressured. And as much as I'd love the doing, I'd become suspicious of the doer. See what I mean?”

“Is that so complicated,
chica?
Those actions have
been
used by men as ‘bargainings'—the Don Juan cliché, the Casanova.”

“Yes. Exactly. But my point is that I'd still
long
for them. I longed for them from Larry—the little considerations as well as the grand gestures. What I'm suspecting now is that on the occasions he
did
do them, it felt foolish, it made me nervous. So he stopped. Or else he sensed I would have put them down as nineteenth-century corny male manipulations and consequently rarely did them in the first place.”

Iliana shifted position slightly. “Larry. Always Larry.”

“Anyway, it all comes back to
power
. I can revel in your heady swoonful actions
because
we're both women. The power is balanced … But then I suppose I've wound full circle into a feminist platitude: that women and men won't be able to understand one another, much less love one another freely, until the power imbalance between them is removed. Pretty obvious. But there's more
to
it than that …”

“Much more. You don't have to use a diaphragm. O brilliant feminist theorist, my arm is falling asleep. Do you think I can bestir you a few centimeters?”

“I'm
sorry,
” Julian cried, rearranging herself into a cross-legged sitting position but still engrossed in her ideas. “It all has to do with sameness and difference. I think of that lovely quote of Kate's—”

“Millett?”

“Yes. On one of her posters. Something like: ‘Because we're the same—different but the same—comes the danger, the perfume, risk, glory.'”

Iliana shrugged.

“All human need has its own veracity. The only thing we have in common is our difference.”

“But the thing is—I'm still
‘me.'
More ‘me' than ever. And there's a me that's
always
been, beneath the virginal Julian or the heterosexual Julian or the, now, I guess—how funny to think of it—lesbian Julian—”

“My dear,” Iliana interrupted, “forgive me, but you are so focused on these discoveries that your euphoria could be a little perilous. You do understand, I hope, that you will not necessarily be perceived as being ‘more you.' I mean, if you plan to go and do one of your Tell the World honesty pronunciations.”

Julian looked at her.

“You make it sound like … exhibitionism. A ghetto sensibility shouldn't be
fostered. 'Yana!
It's political!”

“That's what I was afraid of,” Iliana muttered, heaving herself up on her pillows. “Juliana. Darling. Listen to me. Please don't go babble all this to Larry because it is ‘political' and you're certain he will therefore understand—”

“But it's important that—”

“He won't understand. Believe me. He will be furious, even the great Bloomsbury-lifestyle-radical Larry. Most people will react negatively. Some of your women friends, even, will be made uneasy. A few may turn around and support Larry in this—”

“Oh Iliana, really. I haven't looked for approval to the outside world in years. If anything, I've looked too much for approval
within
the movement, large parts of which have castigated me precisely because I
wasn't
a—”

“Please. Hear me. I know all that. I don't wish to become a movement credential, for that matter, either. But it
is
the outside world I'm trying to warn you about. My love, I can't remember a time when I didn't live with the knowledge you're now discovering. I
know
that your whole life is involved with women and the movement, but that's not the same. It's not the same to wrestle with an issue like this intellectually as it is to live it. You will be astonished—and, I fear, hurt—at the way some heterosexual friends, even feminist ones, will be alienated from you.”

Julian was silent. Ginny, Leonora, Georgi, Edith. Oh god. Charlotte. She recalled with a flush of shame how she had used Iliana as an example to Charlotte during lunch, enumerating Iliana's bisexual credentials, praising Iliana precisely because she was able to “pass” so convincingly as a heterosexual friend. And were those qualities part of what made Iliana an acceptable woman to fall in love with? Oh god, Julian thought. And then would Julian herself be regarded …

“Or
you
will begin to alienate yourself from
their
friendship, for fear of being perceived … differently. Exotically. They will find that they have to explain you, and their friendship with you, to their husbands—especially since you are a heterosexual woman who will be thought to have ‘switched.' You will be perceived as a threat. Like what you call a domino theory. You will be feared.”

“But I'm still just
me!
” It came out like a wail. “I know all
about
the asinine bigotries: housing, jobs, child custody, the works. Iliana, I've been a women's organizer half my life!”

“And I am telling
you
, little lecturer, that the legalities are only part of it. I've rarely had to cope with that, at least not since I left Argentina. I move in the art world, among so-called bohemians and intellectuals. But as my old friend Celia says, you can't legislate consciousness.”

Julian fiddled with the sash of Iliana's robe, reknotting it.

“You're talking like some kind of separatist. I never thought you, 'Yana, of all people—”

Iliana sighed and reached for her. “Julian,” she said gently, “you know I'm no separatist. You know way back from the CR group that I've loved at least two men in my life. I'm just trying to protect you. You
must
develop a healthy vigilance.”

Julian sidled closer, her own voice mellowing. “'Yana darling, my greatest vigilance … well, I can say this to you
because
you've loved certain men … I confess that my—”

“You can confess in comfort,” Iliana snorted, pulling Julian's head down again to its nest. “Now. Make your confession.”

Julian hesitated for a moment.

“My worst terror is of tripping over some separatist ‘line' that reduces the intricate nuances of our loving into a … a bludgeon, to batter so-called straight women. I wear too many wounds, cranial
and
aortal, from that bludgeon to ever use myself or let myself be used that way: as a guilt-provoker, a one-upper, a pseudo-feminist paragon of contempt toward
any
woman's choice in loving. I've
been
there, on that ‘side.' I'm blessed—or cursed—with double vision.”

“So? Don't you think
I
am? Don't you think many women who love women are, whether or not they've ever loved a man? Don't you think we all had mothers? We're
all
raised to marry. No woman is
raised
to have a woman lover, you know.” Iliana's voice floated down to Julian through her own hair.

“'S just that, oh, I dunno … I'm
happy,
” Julian murmured to the smooth curve of Iliana's breast, “and I'd like the whole world to celebrate it. It's not
fair.
”

Iliana smiled at the ceiling. To such a core of simplicity had all her little organizer's ramblings come. She eased herself lower in the bed and ran her hand along the fine down on Julian's back, feeling the spine tense and then arch toward her with desire. Not all the barrage of fear and hate, not all the rhetoric of equality, she thought, can define this splendor—lips brushing lips and nipples rising against nipples, muscles knitting with eagerness, gossamer words of nonsense nibbling around the ear, liquidity melting toward liquidity, lungs swelling with breath ripe for the plucking, a glad dizziness that swirled them both up into blinding darkness.
Juliana, oh Juliana
.

Later, Julian mumbled into her shoulder, “Want to tell you something.”

“Tell me anything you want,” Iliana whispered, “so long as it's not another political lecture, please. By the way, do you know that it's fortunate we finished the coffee, because the tray is somewhere on the floor?”

“I want to tell you,” Julian persisted drowsily, “that all I meant before was … the erotic pull between us, it isn't … fragmented. I have as passionate a lust for—for the fullness of your mind and soul as I do for your body. I want to
work
with you on something that will change the world. I want to make love and have fun and cry and listen to music and share poetry aloud and learn to ski and sail and catch a damned ball and learn to ride a bicycle and a horse—
and
a camel and a burro and an elephant, if you like.” Julian heaved herself up to a sitting position, her eyes now glowing. “I want to eat garlic pickles with you, and argue, and probe our mutual neuroses together—if I can
find
any of yours—and plan political agendas and go dancing and to galleries and ballets and flea markets and conferences and marches. And jail, if necessary. I want—”

“Sí, sí, mi niña
. You just want joy. I don't like the jail part—and to a Latin the best part of skiing is the
après
. But it's
joy
you want. Oh, my
child.
”

Julian's eyes darkened. She stopped her frolicsome bounce on the bedsprings.

“Well. Enough of my blathering. Sorry. I don't usually foist philosophical conversations on people right after breakfast.”

“No, no, I love it. Why—What, where are you going
now?
”

“To take a shower and get dressed. It may be the Fourth of July to my countrymen and women, darling, but I have to make a visit to Hope and then go on into the office.”