Uncross My Heart (18 page)

I made the appointment for the next afternoon. Hightower wasn’t ecstatic about seeing me again so soon but agreed, perhaps hoping I was there to hand deliver my early resignation.

Eleonor asked how I was doing as I breezed past her, much as someone would ask how the funeral went.

“You got yourself all glued together, girl? If you don’t, don’t be goin’ in there, ’cause Mr. High Power got himself a ’tude today.”

“I’m fine.”

“Matter of speculation,” she muttered as I entered Hightower’s office and closed the door behind me.

He didn’t bother to get up from his desk but merely looked up.

“Well, I assume you got the e-mail. I wouldn’t feel too badly about it. I’m comfortable characterizing it as a function of budget cuts, really.

We’re trimming everywhere and I will, of course, give you a letter of recommendation when the time comes. We have some time before then, so let’s try to make the most of it.”

“I’ve decided I refuse to be fired.” I selected the words from my memory bank exactly as Dennis had put them there.

“Refuse? I’m afraid that’s not an option, Dr. Westbrooke, as indeed you are…fired.”

“I am asking you to reconsider.”

“If this is the only reason you’re here, then I will have to cut this meeting short as I have other important matters.” He rose to sweep me out of his sight but I stood planted.

“I know about the panties.” I could feel my own heart beating at the nonsensical nature of that statement and wondered if he knew I was bluffing.

“I beg your pardon.”

“Both times.”

“Well, very interesting, my dear Dr. Westbrooke. Then your source most likely told you there were no photos, no forms, no evidence, nothing. Everything expunged.” He paced and stared out the window across the campus as if reliving some moment I knew nothing about.

After what seemed like a very long time, he whirled on me and glared.

“So I drove around at night in women’s lingerie. So what? Do you think that makes me a pervert? No, thousands of men do it. A victimless crime. No one harmed. All hype. Arrests contrived to put money in the city-hall coffers.” He tapped his fingers on the desktop. “You, of all people, should understand that. You were arrested for protesting. And what if you’d been wearing men’s boxers at the time? Would that make you a pervert? Maybe you like boxer shorts. Maybe they make you feel sexy or excited, or maybe they’re soft.”

I carefully controlled my facial expression as I felt my eyebrows rise at the visual he conjured up, and I struggled to keep from glancing down at his crotch. I was aware I should say something but couldn’t get a word in and was fearful it might be the wrong word. My silence seemed to aggravate him, a condemnation. “Get out. I will be in touch.”

I turned and walked away.
Good Lord, driving around in women’s
underwear. Why? And what size were those panties?
I had so many questions
—Silk or merely cotton briefs? How did Dennis know? Does
this make me a blackmailer?
I never told him I would tell anyone. I never bartered with him. I simply said I
knew
about the panties.
I can’t
let myself off that easily. I used my knowledge as a weapon. So I am a
blackmailer. That alone would be reason to convert to Catholicism—

several Hail Marys and the slate wiped clean.

“Well?” Dennis was waiting at the bottom of the staircase.

“He drove around town in women’s underwear? How did you know about that?

“I picked them up for him.”

“Oh, Dennis, that’s—”

“He said they were for his sister, who was a shut-in. Then Emerson let the cat out of the bag because he knew someone on the police force who was there when Hightower was arrested.”

“So maybe Emerson was fired for more than being gay.”

“Maybe. Did he reinstate you?” he asked, switching subjects.

“Why does he do it?” I was more interested in his panty obsession than my job.

“Why does humanity do any of what it does? He wasn’t killing anyone or exposing himself or robbing a bank or doing drugs. He was just driving around in the wrong kind of underwear.”

“Oh, good grief.” Out of the corner of my eye I caught Gladys Irons coming at me like a heat-seeking missile, her hurt ankle obviously well, and before I could make a diversionary turn, she was on me, clasping my arm. Dennis started to say something on my behalf, as I shot him a furtive plea for help, but then suddenly he just gave me up, perhaps too worn out by the strangeness of today’s events to be up for a Gladys encounter.

“Call you later,” he said, and fled.

Gladys was moist, either from the brisk run to catch me or from some internal turmoil I did not want to contemplate. She asked how I was and why she hadn’t seen me and if my hand had healed and finally whispered that she hoped I’d received the flowers. I said that I had and thanked her as one would thank a pizza delivery person or a toll taker.

She tucked her arm through mine.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about what happened to you and me,” she whispered conspiratorially and I swallowed hard, not wanting to know what was coming next. “I think when two people have true feelings—not evil, anti-Christ thoughts, but true feelings—and they agree to be bound by the same rules as other people, then their relationship is acceptable unto God.”

“So you believe actively homosexual people can go to heaven?”

“Gay people? No. But you and I aren’t gay, Alexandra, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She gave me a little squeeze that struck terror in my heart. “We just have a special feeling for each other. A private feeling no one else has to know about.”

Alarm bells went off in my head. Horrible images of Gladys in bed with me praying in between each sallow orgasm. I shuttered involuntarily and my fight or flight mechanism kicked in. I had to save myself.

“I’ve just told Hightower I’m
gay.
I’ve just been fired for being gay
.
In fact, I think Hightower has several people watching me to see who I’ve been having gay relationships with so he can fire them…or perhaps have them killed.” I said the last few words just to make sure she would let go of me.

“Oh, my heavens.”

“And I intend to tell everyone I’m gay—including my students.”

Gladys staggered back from me as if she’d suddenly learned I was a leper. “Oh, Alexandra, you can’t be serious.”

“Serious beyond serious. Out, Gladys. I’m out, and everyone around me will be outed with me.”

Gladys, perhaps fearful she might breathe my same air, scurried away taking her dark, orthopedic soul from my sight.

I sagged to a stop and let the air out of my body in a silent depressive moan as I passed the bench where I’d first seen Vivienne Wilde the day she arrived on campus and was feeding the squirrels.

The empty bench felt like a hole in my heart. Never could I remember feeling so lonely. I rang her cell phone and this time she picked up.

“Hello,” I nearly shouted. “I need to see you.”

“I’m not—”

“I’ve outed myself to Hightower and he’s fired me.”

“He can’t—”

“I don’t care about that. Will you drive to my farm on Saturday or I’ll come pick you up?”

While she seemed to contemplate the disadvantage of seeing me again, my brain danced around trying to come up with something else to convince her to say yes. “What time do you want me there?”

“Any time, all the time. Come for breakfast, stay for lunch, and be there for dinner, and we would have time to do whatever it is we want to do.”

“I’ll be there midmorning, then.”

“Yes. That will be just…the best.” I hung up before she could change her mind and did a little hand pump in the air. A squirrel stared at me and I laughed out loud.

* * *

It was Friday noon in the campus cafeteria and I hadn’t stopped smiling in twenty-four hours and hadn’t slept all night. Now that I’d invited her to my farm, what should her visit be like? What should I wear? What should we eat? What should we do? Would she stay over?

And what would we do if she stayed over?

“You’ve got to help me plan it, Dennis.” I couldn’t eat, so I stared at him while he munched his lunch and tried to keep it from falling on his black cassock.

“Just pick up some chicken breasts and vegetables and do a little stir-fry or something.”

“She has a chef.”

“She’s not bringing him, is she?”

“No but—”

“I’m only kidding. You’re a wreck.”

I didn’t deny it.

He put his pizza down and pushed the plate back and wiped his mouth with a paper napkin before reaching over and taking my hand.

“Just be yourself. Wear what you always wear, say what you always say, do what you always do—”

“Last part, I think, is the problem. I don’t always do this.”

He frowned as if trying to get my gist and then grinned. “Oh, that. You’re worried about the s—”

“Yes, that,” I interjected to keep him from saying it out loud, then glanced around. “And you aren’t going to be any good at giving me pointers on that—”

“And why not?” He looked miffed. “Anatomy aside, I think I know what you’re up against.”

“You don’t, actually, since you’ve never been
up against
that particular anatomy.”

“Not true. I was married when I was very young.”

“What? Every time we talk about this you tell me something more startling. Next you’ll be telling me that you once drove around town wearing women’s underwear.”

“Just the dress.” He glanced down at his cassock and lowered his voice to a reassuring whisper. “It will all just happen.”

“Well, if it doesn’t happen she’s never coming back, she told me so.” “That’s pressure, for sure. Do you want it to happen?”

I tried to suppress a grin and made sounds as if to speak, but my voice squeaked and I ended up saying nothing. Dennis took over.

“I see no problem here, except with the food, which I think should be picked up in advance and heated. I’d love to stay here and play teenage girl with you, but I’ve got to go hear confession. As if this one hasn’t been enough.” He gave a little wave and left the lunchroom.

I glanced at the clock. In only twenty-one hours she would be standing in my living room. The very thought turned my body to Jello.

I tossed and turned all night, unable to regulate the rapid heart rate that had taken up residence in my chest. I flopped over on my right side and stared at the clock. It was two a.m.—twenty minutes later than the last time I checked.

I’m going to look like shit on the half-shell,
I thought, exhausted but unable to sleep. I counted backward from a hundred, then asked myself what I was worried about.
Frankly, that this is the beginning of the end
for me.
A non-practicing homosexual who’s started practicing again is
a church problem, particularly with someone like Vivienne, who isn’t
going to have a quiet, guarded relationship with anyone. So bringing
her remotely near my life will mean changing my life drastically—

perhaps never teaching in a seminary or even in a university. I’d have
to teach someplace where they like for lesbians to announce themselves
over the PA system. I don’t care. I’ll buy a PA system.

I flopped onto my left side, then onto my stomach, then rolled to the right side and onto my back, completing a 360 under the covers.

Will she be in these bed sheets tomorrow?
I needed to get up and wash them. I catapulted myself out of the sack and yanked the sheets off, dragging them across the floor as Ketch stared at me. As the washing machine innards rolled around brutalizing the bedding in the name of cleanliness, I curled up on the couch under a blanket and closed my eyes. Vivienne sitting next to me came into my consciousness.
Will we
make love on this sofa?
I picked up a soft throw pillow and noticed a slight stain on it. I sniffed it.

“Ketch, you’ve been drooling on the pillows. What if she smelled that?” I jumped up and took the pillow to the laundry, then came back and grabbed the blanket just to be safe and put it into the washer. I curled up on the sofa again and Ketch jumped up and lay beside me, and the last thing I remember was telling him to get down and to remind me to put all that stuff in the dryer.

Sunlight peeked through the curtains in what seemed like minutes later. Ketch yawned loudly, awakening me to the fact that I had a giant crick in my neck. Then it dawned on me that it was Saturday and she would be here midmorning. I leapt into action, staggering toward the shower, then remembered the dryer and went back to put the clothes in.

I hardboiled an egg so I wouldn’t dirty a skillet or the stove and pretty much wore myself out forgetting things and then going back for them.

Post-shower, I went to a lot of trouble to blow dry my hair so it looked, well, sexy. I put on a pair of khaki slacks and a sweatshirt that said Kiss a Seminarian
,
a clean, fairly new pair of tennis shoes, and makeup. I got fresh coffee ready and checked to make sure the sweet rolls I’d bought and left on the counter by the microwave were still fresh. That was brunch. I’d bought a variety of meats and cheeses for lunch and steaks for dinner, not certain how long she would stay, but hoping for the best.

Then I started pacing. Up and down the living room like a caged animal until Ketch, obviously thinking there must be something pleasurable to it, got up and joined me, and we both paced until he made me feel silly and I sat down. I was drained and it was still early.

The crunch of tires on gravel signaled her arrival and I jumped up, checked myself in the mirror one more time, and invited Ketch to walk with me to greet her. She smiled at me as she slowed and then parked, then swung the door open and slid out.

“This place is so beautiful in the morning light. Do you know how lucky you are?”

“Right now, I feel very lucky.” I would have kissed her, but she didn’t seem to need it or want it or even expect it, so I just stood there like a dummy.

“Will you walk me around before we go inside?”