Unforgettable (15 page)

Rett’s arms were tangled in her clothes, but she could still twine her fingers into Cinny’s hair, holding Cinny to her breasts while she gasped for breath. Alarm bells were ringing. She should stop this before it was too late. It was already too late. She was trying to form the words, but her body was screaming at her to give in.

Cinny’s lips were at her throat. Give in, the throb between her legs commanded. Her mouth was thirsty for the taste of Cinny’s lips. Her breasts ached to be stroked and teased. Cinny’s every move was unraveling her. She was dizzy with a primal lust that made her head pound and legs open.

There wasn’t enough air in the room. Rett found what little voice she had left. She formed the words “please fuck me” in her head but she heard her voice saying, “Stop. I can’t.”

Cinny’s tongue trailed along Rett’s jaw. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do.” Rett was panting. “I mean it. Please stop.”

Cinny looked stunned as she sat back on her haunches. “Is this some sort of payback? Not that I don’t deserve it.”

Rett shrugged back into her jumpsuit. A large part of her couldn’t believe that she was trying to be less naked. “No — I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have invited you back here. I have a rule. I’ve never broken it. You’re married and I am not going to be the other woman.”

Cinny looked as if Rett had slapped her. She swallowed hard. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

“Very. I’m not going to lie and say I don’t think I’m being a fool.” She fumbled with the zipper and had no luck. “You’re married and I think I’m—” She stopped. How to explain about Angel? They weren’t even dating. They didn’t even have an arrangement to see each other again. Angel had practically ordered Rett to get into bed with Cinny. It was inexplicable that she felt as if she was cheating on Angel. So instead of “I think I’m in love with Angel” she said, “I think I’m going to regret this.”

Cinny slowly got to her feet. She leaned over Rett in the chair and said in a low voice, “I’d like to try to change your mind.”

Rett shook her head. “It won’t work. I swore a long time ago that I would not make my mother’s mistakes.”

Cinny straightened and Rett was dizzy all over again at the lush curves outlined by the clinging blouse. “You’re hardly your mother, Rett.”

“I don’t want to be her or anything like her. You’re in a relationship, a marriage. And that means no.”

Cinny’s voice trembled with tears. “I like Sam a lot. He’s — In another world he’d be perfect for me. But I’ve never stopped wanting… women. I’ve only been married for four years. I dated women almost exclusively for a long, long time, but nobody since I got married.”

“By that you mean you dated men just enough over the years to pass for straight?” Lord, Rett thought, how tawdry was this scene? Cinny was just getting her lesbian sex fix before she ran back to her heterosexual world.

Cinny’s eyes flashed. “You have no right to judge me. You have no idea how hard it is.”

“I’m not going to be the woman who tides you over for a few more years.”

“That is so unfair. You have no idea what it’s like to be me.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” Rett struggled up from the chair, pulled up the zipper and stepped past Cinny to the air conditioner. She found the On switch and basked in the rush of icy air.

“I’m perfect.”

Rett turned to look at Cinny. “I won’t argue with that.”

“I mean it, Rett. I’m perfect. I’m the all-American girl. Perfect tits, perfect ass, perfect nose. Homecoming queen, self-made businesswoman, always ready to work for charities. I even read books to kids at the library.”

“Sounds like a good life.” But part of it was a lie, she wanted to say.

“Sometimes I hate it so much I think about cutting my face open.” Cinny was shaking. “I’m trapped in this perfect body, in this perfect little world, and you think I can just announce to the world that I’m a lesbian? That I would have a hope of going on with the life I’ve built? Who would buy real estate from me? I could have any man I wanted and so I must be really, really sick to want women instead. Who’s going to let me be around their kids? I’d be a pariah. You, you could get away with it. You’re the sexy outlaw everyone wants to screw. You and Angel — you get to be whatever you want, but I have to be fucking perfect!”

Rett was stunned at Cinny’s vehemence. “You could move. You could start over.”

“Leave my parents and my brothers and all my nieces and nephews? I’ve already disappointed them enough by not having kids. I have an obligation to the gene pool.” She smoothed her blouse with shaking fingers. “There was a moment when I was chosen to be freshman homecoming queen — I wanted to say no. I knew even then that it was a trap. I knew that it meant I’d be on the cheerleading squad and everyone would expect me to date football players, and I didn’t want to ride down Main Street on a goddamned tank. I was only sixteen. How was I suppose to know what I was agreeing to was everyone else’s expectations for the rest of my life? How was I suppose to know it meant having to be perfect forever?”

Rett said softly, “I tried to get you out of the trap.”

“You made me realize I was caught in it for life.”

Tears spilled down Cinny’s cheeks and Rett wanted to hold her. A hug—no, it would lead to kisses and kisses to frustration. She was not going down that road again and she didn’t want to take Cinny down that road either. “It’s never too late.”

“I thought if I made things right with you I’d be able to let go of my regrets. I do love Sam in a way. He’s a good husband. But when I’m with him I’m not. It’s not fair to him.”

“Why did you get married, then?”

Cinny dashed away tears. “There was someone, a woman. She wanted to live together. She wanted me to move to St. Paul and be a couple. Her church would have married us. I couldn’t — I couldn’t do it.”

“Just like you couldn’t come with me when I left?”

Cinny’s tormented expression was tinged with nostalgia. “I’d forgotten you’d asked. I should have run then. It’s too late now.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I treated her so badly. I gave her up and married Sam. A girl’s wedding is supposed to be the best day of her life. I had to take Valium to get through it. I can’t just come out to everyone now that I’ve involved Sam in my life. I would mean I did it all for nothing.”

Rett felt unexpectedly sad. First Angel and now Cinny was making her realize that high school hadn’t been easy for any of them, and she had been too centered on her own misery to notice. “I’m sorry I seemed to judge you.” She didn’t condemn Henry for staying in the closet. She accepted that he understood better than she did the harsh realities he would face. Why couldn’t she accept that Cinny knew her own realities just as well?

Cinny swayed slightly. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished with all my heart that I didn’t feel this way.”

“As far as I know, wishes and prayers don’t make a difference. I am what I am.” She gave Cinny a gentle smile. “You can learn to live beyond your code, you know.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“You can be more than you believe you can. Now that I think about it, I’ve only become truly comfortable with who I am and who I can be in the last few months. I finally realized that what I’d taken for the gospel was written by other people.” Had she been better off, she wondered, having never questioned her sexuality, but instead having questioned her value as a singer and as a human being?

“I have to go.” Cinny picked up her things, then turned back for a long look. “Please don’t shut me out. The reunion has made me think — has made me realize … well. I have to go.”

Rett was still searching for something meaningful to say when Cinny closed the door behind her.

Her body ached and nothing she did helped. She took a cool shower and found herself writhing against the pillows, her mind steeped in sex and her body as frustrated as it had ever been. Cinny’s breasts, her mouth… no, Angel’s mouth. Angel’s legs around her, Angel begging please, Angel inside her.

She tossed and turned, but sleep eluded her. Sounds of some sort of blissful union in the next room made her reach for the TV’s remote control.

It was almost noon when Rett opened her eyes. She’d fallen asleep around dawn, bleary from infomercials and televangelists who hawked and preached the same formula for happiness — part with your money. She staggered through her shower feeling weak with hunger and strung out on emotion. With another night’s performance at the Top Hat Club ahead, Rett decided she would not drive out to Woton today to see the old sites and perhaps her mother. Definitely not her mother — she could not cope with that today.

Instead, she navigated the drive-thru at the nearest Mickey D’s to stave off her grumbling stomach, then visited all the places she used to go when she’d lived in Minneapolis. If her own evening had been free she’d have gone to the Guthrie Theater, which was famous in the region for its repertory performances. Instead, she took the short drive to the Eloise Butler Sanctuary. When she’d been a starving artist, the free admission to the expanse of wildflowers and birds in the middle of endless city and suburb had been a blessing. Much to her surprise, she had missed the open skies and rolling hills and farmlands of Woton, and the sanctuary had helped conquer the homesickness.

Little had changed. Late-summer wildflowers carpeted sunny spots, while vibrant lady’s slippers still bloomed in cooler, shady groves. Though the air was smoggier than she remembered, it was still bluer than anything she’d seen in L.A. in a long time. Even the humidity didn’t seem as unbearable today. She put Angel and Cinny out of her mind and stared up through the green branches at the sky. She felt thoroughly refreshed after an hour, then headed for her next favorite place, the Sculpture Garden. From there she walked across Whitney Footbridge into Loring Park, then past the Orchestra Hall where she had once been lucky enough to get SRO tickets to hear Leonard Bernstein conduct.

Walking made her hungry again, so she treated herself to an early dinner of freshly caught lake trout. The long walk back to the car helped her digest the meal so that she would be singing on an empty stomach. Like many singers, she found it easier to maintain her breathing that way. She was at the club by eight-thirty, invigorated and ready to cope if Angel or Cinny showed up again. She could admit that she would be much happier if neither did. She felt caught between extremes she didn’t fully understand and even the tiniest measure of control over the situation was nowhere to be found. The only place she was fully in control these days was on the stage.

The owner gleefully waved a glowing review in front of her — she’d forgotten to look for one. She told him to contact Naomi if he wanted her to do another two nights two weeks from now. She was willing to change her plane ticket home if he and Naomi came to an agreement. When he toddled away Rett quickly called Naomi at home.

“I should think he’d be glad to have you two more nights,” Naomi said. “He got you at bargain-basement prices.”

“Don’t up the price too much — the margin has to be pretty thin. But they’re turning people away out front and I’m guessing he’s over the fire law maximum seating by twenty-five percent.”

“So you’re okay with next weekend?”

“No, it can’t be next weekend. The one after that.” She was having second thoughts. Another entire week in Minneapolis? What would she do with herself? “Next weekend is the big dance and I think I’m going to a slumber party. So it would have to be the weekend after that.”

“How horrible for you.” Rett knew Naomi was rolling her eyes. “How are you holding on?”

“I’m doing very well,” Rett assured her. It wasn’t that big of a lie. “Don’t worry about me, okay?”

“Manager’s prerogative. By the way, I settled with Trish. It was somewhat more than we owed her, but she was threatening to get a lawyer. She’s signed a complete waiver of any claim on your future, which is what I wanted. The last thing we needed was her claiming some role in the Henry Connors deal.” “That’s a relief, then. Out of my life for good.” “And I’d have paid more than I did. So knock ‘em dead, sweets. I’ll make you a good deal.”

The band members greeted her enthusiastically and Rett went onstage to a greeting of anticipatory applause. There was no sign of anyone she knew and she slipped into the first song with a wave of relief.

The next morning she slept late again, but finally woke up refreshed. If she dawdled over Sunday brunch, she would be late enough for the picnic to have no time for driving by old haunts, or even her old home. She knew she was procrastinating about seeing her mother, but it was a long week ahead. There would be time some other day. No one said she had to get all the pain over with all at once. Angel and Cinny would surely both be at the picnic, which meant it was no picnic for Rett.

She managed to tune in the university channel on the feeble rental car radio and lucked into a worldbeat music program. She cranked up Jai Uttal as loud as the tinny speakers could stand. State Route 12 had two more lanes than she remembered, and she was in Litchfield before she knew it. St. Cloud — the real Lake Wobegon — was just to the north. The drive had seemed much longer way back when, and the Twin Cities had always been a faraway place visited are rare occasions. Now it seemed no longer a drive than what many Angelinos commuted every day.

There were tract homes clustered around the highway, but as she got closer to Greenleaf and Cedar Mills the rolling hills and farms seemed just the same. The grain silos and water towers bearing the names of their towns seemed as permanent a part of the landscape as the lakes and clusters of shady pines. The sameness made her feel better.

The back road into Woton was only wide enough to allow two small cars to pass. It would have been faster to go the front way from Strout, but not nearly as nostalgic. Here and there were short dirt roads where enterprising lovebirds could park out of sight. Rett knew several of them well — each one was a site where Cinny had said yes, then said no.

She could let it go now. Cinny had had conflicts she had never guessed at. She might not have made Cinny’s choices, but she could understand that Cinny felt as if she had no choices at all. It was enough that they had both survived when it seemed that today so many kids like them did not.