The One That Got Away (21 page)

“Thank you, André,” I said. “I hope this wasn't too much trouble.”

“Not at all,” André said. “And if the
pain au chocolat
does not heal your heart, stop by this afternoon—I'm making éclairs.”

“Now,” said Eduardo, sitting down at the small, round cast-iron table, “tell me. What happened?”

I recapped the scene at the party, and then the one in the car.

Eduardo shook his head. “A classic mistake, B.D. Never take sides. Leave loyalty to Lassie.”

I called Bridget from the office, and got her answering machine. The following day she left a message on my voicemail. When I called her back, she picked up.

“The third time is a charm,” she said.

“I'm sorry. I was out of line.”

“Apology accepted,” Bridget said. “Want to have dinner?”

When we met again, it was as though we were in a newly whitewashed room; both of us were being careful not to do anything that might mar the pristine surface. We talked about books and movies, nothing personal—until the end.

“I really like hanging out with you, B.D.,” Bridget said. “I want us to be friends. Please. I know how this is going to sound, but I really don't need another woman with a crush on me. I need a friend.”

I could tell that Bridget was speaking from her heart. But in order to give her the response she was hoping for, I couldn't speak from mine. “I want us to be friends too,” I said.

Of course, I still wanted much more than that. But if it were an all-or-nothing choice, I'd settle for having Bridget as a friend over not having Bridget in my life at all.

Chapter 24

I was watching
An American in Paris
. Gene Kelly and Georges Guétary sat at a small, round café table, waxing eloquently about love, while Oscar Levant sat between them, gulping coffee, calling for brandy, and fumbling with cigarettes—because he knew that Gene and Georges were in love with the same woman, and on the verge of finding that out.

As the first strains of “'S Wonderful” filled the room, Angel said, “Look at them—dancing in the street with complete disregard for traffic. B.D., I don't understand how you can watch these things.”

“Sssshhh!” If I were watching the movie with Bridget, she'd probably be singing along. At least she loved a Gershwin tune.

Thinking of Bridget inspired me to create a lesbian subtext for the film. Muscular Gene Kelly was Bridget, while Leslie Caron was a kinder, gentler Natalie, waiting in the wings. Georges, exuding joie de vivre, represented Maxine, though I'd never describe her as joyful. Once I had heard Maxine tell Bridget that she could match her lyric for lyric, any day—she just didn't choose to do so. And of course I was Oscar Levant, waiting
and dreading the inevitable collision of people and emotions.

By the end of the movie, all of Oscar's fears have come to naught; Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron wind up together.

But the following night, Annalise phoned to tell me that Bridget was in the hospital.

“What happened?” I asked.

Angel looked up from the book she was reading.

“Mushroom poisoning,” Annalise said.

“Mushroom poisoning?”

“You know Bridget had a football party last weekend.”

“No, she didn't invite me.”

“Well, it was a football party, B.D. Anyway, Natalie made pizza with wild mushrooms. I have to say, that pizza was really delicious.”

“But the party was four days ago,” I said. “When did Bridget get sick? When did she go to the hospital?”

“There are lots of poisonous mushrooms, B.D. Maxine said the doctor explained that Bridget must have eaten one of the really bad ones—the fatality rate is something like fifty percent.”

“Oh, please, don't say that,” I said.

“The doctor said it was already too late when her symptoms showed up. There's no antidote. It doesn't look good. Bridget probably won't make it.”

“What about the other people? My god, Annalise, you ate the mushroom pizza too!”

“That's what's so weird, B.D.,” Annalise said. “There were about ten of us. But no one else got sick. Bridget was the only one.”

I put the phone down as though it were made of glass.

“Bridget's in the hospital with mushroom poisoning,” I said to Angel. “Annalise said she's probably going to die.”

“Is there anything I can do?” Angel asked.

“Hold me,” I said.

“Sure.” She cradled me, gently stroking my hair.

“Bridget's strong,” I said. “Maybe she'll make it through this.”

“Maybe,” Angel replied.

When Angel went to bed, I turned out the lights and curled up on the sofa, hugging one of the small pillows to my chest. I remembered the fight I'd had with Bridget after the Pride party, and our subsequent reconciliation. Though we'd agreed that we wanted to be friends, I had found it difficult to keep up my end of the bargain. We never talked about it, but I think Bridget suspected that my feelings for her hadn't really changed.

Later that night, with Angel's arms around me, I lay waiting for tears but none came. Despite Angel's physical presence, I felt alone.

In the dark, something wet touched my hand. Betty Boop had come to keep me company. She licked my hand several times and then I stroked her head and neck. I thought of Bridget's cats, Gertrude and Alice B. I wondered who was taking care of them.

The next day, I stayed in Angel's house, reading without comprehending, watching television, making lists of things I needed to do for work, while I tried not to think about the phone call I was dreading. It came around nine o'clock; Annalise told me that Bridget was gone.

I sat in the dark on a chair in the living room for most of the night, remembering the good times and the bad times I'd had with Bridget. I wondered if she'd known she was dying, and if she'd been afraid. I realized that the only picture I had of her was the one I'd cut out from the paper. In the morning I called Annalise to ask if she knew what was happening with Bridget's cats.

“I think Dana's taking care of them for the time being,” Annalise said. “She usually looked after them whenever Bridget was away.”

But would Dana want to take care of them permanently? I knew Natalie didn't like cats, and I suspected that Maxine wasn't all that fond of them herself. I called Natalie's number. Maxine answered the phone.

“How's Natalie doing?” I asked, after I had expressed my shock and condolences.

“Natalie's a very private person,” Maxine said. “Even though she seems to be okay, I'm sure she's hiding a lot of what she's feeling.”

“I understand,” I said. “Look, do you know what's happening with Bridget's cats?”

“Dana's taking care of them,” Maxine said. “But we need to find them a new home.”

“I'll take them,” I said.

I hadn't been in Bridget's home since the Halloween party, almost a year ago. It felt wrong, being there without her. Natalie and Maxine were putting Bridget's clothes into bags to take to the thrift shop, at her mother's request, when I arrived to pick up the cats.

I surprised myself by asking if I could have one of the shirts. “One of the flannel ones,” I said. “It might comfort the cats in the new space, to have something with her smell on it.”

“Then you should take one of the ones we were going to wash before giving it away,” Maxine said, rummaging through one of the bags. She handed me a rumpled shirt.

Alice B. came into the room, yowling. It was a plaintive, piercing sound, almost as though she was asking, “Why?” Tears welled in my eyes; I brushed at them with my fingertips, smearing them over my cheeks.

“Shut up already,” Natalie mumbled. She saw me looking at her, and seemed to realize how uncaring she sounded. “Alice B.'s been doing that the entire time we've been here. It's getting on my nerves,” she said to me.

I found the cat carriers, set them on the floor and
opened them. Alice B. walked right into one and lay down. Gertrude was much more recalcitrant.

Truffle wasn't too pleased about what he considered to be intruders into his territory, but after a few initial spats, the three of them settled down, and at night my bed got pretty crowded. Truffle liked to lie against my left side, his head on my arm; Gertrude curled up at my feet. Alice B. would lie on my chest until I fell asleep; then she moved to my pillow.

As it turned out, neither Gertrude nor Alice B. was interested in Bridget's flannel shirt. When they first arrived I left it spread out on my bed, but they didn't go near it, and at the end of the day I hung it in my closet.

The following night, I held the shirt in my hands, pressed it to my face and smelled it; rubbed my cheeks against it. Then I slipped each arm into a sleeve, as reverently as a priest putting on vestments. I wrapped my arms around myself, sank down into a chair, and finally cried.

Chapter 25

I hated funerals. I hated clerics intoning false intimacies from notes jotted down on an index card. I hated open coffins displaying the discarded carapace of the body, irrefutable evidence that the soul animating self has seeped away.

So I was relieved when Natalie told me Bridget's family had agreed to cremation, which Bridget had specified in her will, and a memorial service a month after her death.

Angel insisted on accompanying me to the latter. “You've talked about Bridget so often, B.D., I feel like I knew her.”

I didn't have much contact with Natalie or Maxine in the month that had passed. Maxine had called me, once, to ask how the cats were adjusting, and Natalie had offered to give me the angel I had admired at the Halloween party. “I think Bridget would like for you to have it, B.D.”

I was glad to see that Maxine, not Natalie, was going to give the eulogy. In all the time I'd known them, I'd never heard Natalie say anything nice about Bridget in public.

Bridget's memorial service wasn't much different from any other New York City lesbian gathering—almost every woman there wore black. The outfit of choice seemed to be a black pantsuit with a tailored shirt, but a few women wore plain black dresses.

Natalie was all in black, right down to her pearls. A simple silk blouse, sheer enough for allure, yet without even a hint of the slutty, and wool crepe pants with a crease that didn't quit.

I wondered if she'd had the pearls all along, or if she'd zipped into Tiffany the morning of the memorial service.

But Maxine was all in white—pants, shirt, and vest. Despite being drenched in the color of purity, she still gave the impression that the devil had come a courtin'. Someone must have remarked upon her choice of color, for I overheard Maxine say, with her typical asperity, “White is the color of mourning in the Shinto religion.”

“Oh, are you into that now?”

“My spirituality is not limited to a particular theism,” Maxine replied.

I felt my lack of a hat. I would have liked something with a dense, draped veil, like Jackie wore to JFK's funeral, but that might have been a little too melodramatic, even for me. After all, Bridget and I had just been friends. So I wore the purple cashmere sweater that I'd bought to wear to dinner with Bridget. She noticed when I wore sensual fabrics.

Nancy, obviously pregnant, said she hoped her child would have the same adventurous spirit as Bridget. She quickly amended that to, “a little bit of Bridget's adventurous spirit.”

Then Maxine stepped up to the podium, which had a vase of yellow, long-stemmed roses, sent by Robin, in front of it. “Bridget and I shared many things,” she began.

Someone in the row behind me murmured, “Including girlfriends.”