by Hazel Yeats
“That’s great,” Cara said. “But I’ve never skied in my life and I have no intention of starting now.” Also, she had never had any particular interest in old abbeys. Not enough to drive more than 200 kilometers to see one, anyway. There was definitely something fishy going on.
“Is there something you guys are not telling me?”
Myra sighed. “Cara, honey, could you just sit back and enjoy the ride? Could you do that for me?”
Inge started the engine.
“Are we taking the A2?” Alice asked as she fastened her seatbelt.
“No.” Inge shook her head. “The A2.”
“Didn’t I just say—“
“I know what you said!” Inge adjusted her seat. “I was trying to make a point.”
“What point?”
“That I’m driving, and that what I say goes. I’m not discussing my chosen route with any of you.”
As Inge drove off, Alice took the printout from the dashboard and studied it. “I can’t believe you’re not using normal, twenty-first-century navigation.” She flapped the piece of paper in front of Inge’s face.
“Not discussing it,” Inge sang.
Alice put the printout back on the dashboard. “Your route isn’t the fastest one, you do know that?”
“Today is not about speed, it’s about spending quality time together.” It was clear that there was no room for suggestions—Inge was at the helm and that was the end of it.
“This is going to be fun,” Alice said under her breath.
“It is.” Inge ignored the sarcasm. “We’ll make a few quaint stops along the way, don’t you worry.”
“Quaint stops where?” Cara said.
“Honey, I could explain it to you,” Inge said, “but since you have the sense of direction of a firecracker, I suggest you just enjoy the ride and leave everything to me, okay?”
“That sounds delightful,” Myra said. “But please, make sure there are plenty of gas stations along the way for me to use the restrooms at.”
“Oh yummy,” said Alice. “Germ filled, gas station restrooms.”
“No problem,” Inge said, driving off. “There will be lots of breaks. We have all the time in the world.”
“Maybe you should add a couple of hours to those three.” Alice leaned to the left and looked for Cara’s face in the rearview mirror. “We might not even get there before nightfall.” She took a tissue from her bag and tried to wipe the window clean. “Wouldn’t hurt to see a little something on the way.”
“I love it when we bicker.” Cara nestled comfortably in her seat. “It’s just like old times. Just the four of us, going on an adventure. I’m going to forget that there’s something you’re not telling me. Spending a weekend away with you guys is exactly what I need. What we all need.”
“That’s what this trip is all about,” said Inge. “We are, after all, the four musketeers. Musketeer…rettes.” She raised a fist in the air. “Divided we stand, united we fall.”
“Isn’t it the other way around?” Alice asked. “United—”
“Jesus,” Myra said. “Can we just get on with it? I feel queasy already, and we haven’t even left the city yet.”
Traffic was light and there wasn’t much to see—miles of ivy-clad noise barriers, billboards, distribution centers, grassland with grazing cows and sheep, a car crashed into the safety barriers with a police car behind it, a shoe in the emergency lane, a clear sky with puffy clouds. It was an uneventful, hazy, autumn day. Even so, Cara felt that there was something in the air. A promise. A glimpse of a future that was alive with light and joy. She couldn’t explain it, it was just a feeling.
Inge insisted they play guessing games and sing, but when nobody joined in, she turned on the radio. She scanned the frequencies until she found a station that played hits from the eighties and nineties. It wasn’t long before the music took them back and they started reminiscing, their thoughts drifting off to days long gone—high school, family life, crushes, sibling rivalry. Their hair. And their clothes. They laughed, both embarrassed and amused, as they remembered Cara’s cargo pants, Myra’s chinos and ballet flats, Inge’s Champion sweatshirts. The tight ponytails and the large hoop earrings.
“I wish I could have known you guys back then,” Alice said.
“Remember your grunge phase?” Myra eyed Cara lovingly.
“I’m surprised you even know I had a grunge phase,” Cara said. “You can’t have said more than four words to me during your senior year at high school.” She scoffed. “And if I remember correctly, those four words were ‘don’t touch my stuff.’”
“I’m sorry.” Myra put a hand on Cara’s knee. “I was just so busy back then. You have no idea.”
“Busy sneaking out of the house every night in your ultrashort miniskirts.” Cara smiled. “I know. I used to see you scurry across the grass when I looked out my bedroom window. I never told Mom and Dad, and you never thanked me.”
“I had that thing with Koen back then,” Myra said. “And I don’t think Mom and Dad would have cared one way or the other. They were too busy fighting to notice us.”
“Was it really that bad?” Alice asked.
Myra nodded. “Why do you think I got married so young?”
“Because you were crazy in love with my brother?’ Alice suggested.
Myra grinned. “That too.”
“But first there was…Koen?”
“Yes,” Cara said, “and Jan, and Tim, and Martijn, and Ivan, and—”
“Hey!” Myra shook her head. “Don’t make me out to be some kind of—”
“What?” Cara said innocently. “These are just the ones I know about.”
“I believe in playing the field a little before settling down,” Myra said. She looked at Cara critically. “And I think you’re hardly the person to be throwing stones. Anyway, before Arend came along, I was convinced that Koen was the love of my life.” She smiled dreamily. “He played hockey, he was politically active, and he had this really aristocratic hair.”
Inge snorted. “Aristocratic hair?”
“Yeah. You know, Hubbell Gardner hair. Hubbell was—”
“Yes, we know,” Alice said. “The guy in your favorite movie from 1814. And yes, we know it’s a timeless classic.”
Cara sighed. She didn’t know why.
Then Myra sighed too. “I wonder what’s become of him.”
“Maybe he has a Facebook page,” Inge said.
“Nah,” Myra shook her head. “I’m not going down that I-wonder-if-ex-has-a-Facebook-page road. I’m happily married, and I intend to keep it that way.”
“Who else did we have who was the love of your life?” Cara asked. “Who was the guy with the soul patch who used to bring Mom flowers when he picked you up?”
“Oh, God, yes, Evert!” Myra clapped her hands in excitement. “Evert with the soul patch and the cigarillos. He was dead set on becoming a poet but his father insisted he take over the family business. It was right out of a romance novel.” She stared in the distance, a dreamy expression on her face. “He drove a Honda CR-V. Great car.” She cleared her throat. “Interesting fact—did you guys know that I lost my…uh…you know? To Evert? In that car? He had the most amazing blue eyes. Like pools of clear water.”
“Really?” Inge half turned her head, momentarily taking her eyes off the road. “Evert? In a car? How very raunchy. And unbecoming.”
“It was different for you,” Myra said. “You got engaged at age three! You weren’t open to adventure the way we were.”
“I’ve always been happy to find my soulmate so early in life,” Inge said. “But anyway, all these years, I thought Kasper was the proud recipient of your flower.”
Myra looked disgusted. “Kasper? Honestly? Kasper, the king of BO?”
“Is it my turn to say ugh yet?” Cara asked. “
Can I crack open a window?” She stared at the overpass ahead.
“What about you then, honey?” Myra turned to Cara. “Who did you unravel the mysteries of Sapphic bliss with?” She produced a roll of Lifesavers from the pocket of her coat and offered Cara one. “And how exactly does that work?”
Cara almost choked on the piece of candy. “How it works?” she said, once she’d stopped coughing. She stared at Myra. “Do you want me to get…technical?”
“Please do,” Inge said. “For instance—”
“Please don’t!” Alice yelled.
Inge pushed Alice’s knee out of the way, opened the glove compartment and took out a piece of chocolate, wrapped in silver foil. She held it up. “Anybody?”
“No!” they yelled. Inge removed the wrapper, keeping just her elbow on the steering wheel, and put the whole piece in her mouth. She let the wrapper drop to the floor.
“Would it be too much trouble to keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road here?” Alice dug her nails into her thighs. “I don’t know about anyone else, but personally I do not have a death wish.”
“I’m an experienced driver,” Inge said. “I could actually do this with my eyes closed and my hands behind my back.”
“What a surprise it would be to our loved ones if we all came home in body bags,” Alice said.
Cara considered that if Alice came home in a body bag, her boyfriend would at least still have his wife to console him. And somehow, for the first time since she’d known about this, her heart went out to Alice for the hopelessness of her situation, regardless of any moral indignation anyone might feel.
Myra shook her head. “What I actually meant to ask,” she said, turning back to Cara, “is how you…met girls. How you hooked up. How did you recognize each other? Who asked whom on dates? I don’t mean now that you’re out and you’ve been around the block a couple of hundred times, but back then, when you were in that process of finding out how things work. Hell, you were new at this too, once. I never saw you as anything but a baby back then, and by the time you were old enough to start dating, I was long since married.”
“She was very secretive,” Inge said. “Even after she came out, I never actually saw her with anybody.”
“I went through my rites of passage just fine without you guys,” Cara said.
“Was it like in that movie?” Inge munched on the chocolate. She checked the outside mirror and changed lanes.
Cara shrugged. “What movie?”
“That movie that we saw about the two college girls who nurse a wounded bird back to health in some foggy, enchanted forest?” Cara saw Inge’s eyes rest on her in the rearview mirror. “I remember that it ended horribly, but I forget how.”
“They both got married to balding, overweight investment bankers,” Myra said.
Inge shook her head. “I think one of them killed herself.”
“Oh, come on, of course it wasn’t like the movie,” said Cara. “Nothing as dramatic as all that.” She sighed, like she always did, when confronted with straight people’s tiresome ignorance. It wasn’t so much that they were ignorant, but that they were both arrogantly and condescendingly so—using their indisputable right as the superior breed to ask stupid questions as often as they liked under the pretense of being open-minded.
“People always think that relationships between girls are either tragic and doomed, or all about sex,” she said. “While usually they’re neither. It’s just two girls getting together, no different from a girl and a guy getting together. They study, they argue, they do laundry, they even get colds. If you didn’t know any better, you might mistake them for regular people.”
“There’s no need to get snappy,” Myra said. “So who was it?”
“Who was what?”
“Well, you must have dated when you were old enough. So who was your first? I mean your first…interest?”
Cara paused for effect before she answered. “Remember Claire?”
“Claire…Claire…” Myra shook her head, then she punched Cara. “Not that sissy who lived down the street from us? What was her name? Welders? Belders? The one with the angelic face and the pink, frilly dresses? The Barbie?”
Cara smiled. “I can see why she might have slipped under your gaydar, but somewhere between her frilly dresses phase and her own grunge phase, we became really good friends. Really good friends.”
“Inge!” Myra hollered. “Did you hear that? Cara did a little parallel parking with Claire Welders!”
“Oh please.” Cara stuck out her tongue. “Do you have to call it that? Aren’t we a little old to resort to—”
“Claire Welders?” Inge yelled, keeping her eyes on the road as requested. “Goody-Two-shoes herself? Wow. That makes me so proud!”
“Stop screaming, okay!” Alice pressed a hand against her ear. “Do you want me to arrive in Limburg with a ruptured ear drum?”
“So how did you…?” Myra moved a little closer, touching Cara’s arm with her own.
“Well,” Cara whispered, “she invited me to her house one night—”
“For a playdate,” Inge hollered.
“She needed someone to help her prepare for a math test. Her parents were out for the night. She was wearing something that could easily be misconstrued as a negligée, and she was burning so many candles I was afraid I’d walked into a séance.”
“And then what?” Myra sounded breathless.
“Well, after it became clear to both of us that we shared a hobby or two, we made out.”
“You made out, huh?” Myra took a moment to let the information sink in. “So did you know how to do that?”
Cara laughed out loud. “How to do that? Actually, yes. Not to blow my own horn, but I’ve always been pretty good at that.”
“I thought that maybe, when you’re young, and you don’t really know what to expect from a woman—”
“That’s probaly one of the perks of being gay,” Inge interrupted. “You already know where everything is.” She giggled. “And how it works.”
Cara shook her head. “It’s not easy to keep the mystery alive around you guys, is it?”
“Wow,” Myra said. “Claire Welders was stunning.”
“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Alice said. “but Cara’s pretty stunning herself.”
Myra shrugged. “I guess you’re blind to that sort of thing when it comes to your own sister.” She cast a glance at Cara. “But now that you mention it,” she said, with barely concealed admiration, “she is kind of stunning.” She put her hand on Cara’s arm. “No wonder you landed a gorgeous and famous American writer.”
“Yes, well…” Cara squirmed in her carseat. “Could we…talk about something else? Please?” She was trying hard not to think about Jude as it was. The last thing she needed was someone reminding her. She wasn’t sure why Myra did. Was she afraid she’d forget Jude? Did she think that such a thing was possible? She shook her head. She didn’t want this. She wanted to focus on the weekend, on having fun in Limburg with her sisters instead. And why wouldn’t she? Surely she was leading a fulfilling life where the absence of romantic love wasn’t necessarily a problem? She had goals now. She had plans. The future was stretching out before her like a vast ocean of endless possibilities.
But as the radio started playing “Lady in Red,” they all fell silent, and she couldn’t help but think about Jude.
The trip down memory lane seemed to have made all of them pensive. They drove, for miles and miles, in a bubble of silence, each woman immersed in her own thoughts.
They made three stops at gas stations within the next two hours. Cara got out of the car to stretch her legs. Alice walked around talking on the phone; Cara presumed the calls were to her boyfriend. There was no way of knowing for sure, since she stayed well out of earshot. Every time she hung up, and Cara asked her if she was
okay, she blinked in that tired way of people who are actually not okay, but don’t want to talk about it.
Inge used the breaks to fill up the tank and buy candy. Myra, who kept insisting that she was feeling sick to her stomach and ‘generally weird,’ used every break to visit the bathroom.
When they got hungry, Inge exited the freeway and drove to downtown Den Bosch, where they had an early lunch and did a little shopping. At Cara’s request, they wandered into a very large bookstore. It was an old building, three stories high, with creaking wooden floors and cast iron, spiral staircases. It reminded Cara of Mrs. Beldam’s store, which had been like a miniature version of this one. She remembered how exciting that day had been, with all those unexpected wonderful things happening—meeting Jude, having Jude look at her with pride in her eyes, and amusement, and something that may have been love, even then. She struggled to keep her thoughts from going back to the way that night ended, knowing full well that it wouldn’t do her any good to relive those moments now.
She scrabbled for the feeling she’d had earlier, back in the car, the feeling of hope and contentment, but she couldn’t find it. She shook her head, forced herself into the here and now, and looked for the nearest distraction. Books!
She was leafing through an anthology of lesbian erotica, when Myra walked up to her from the children’s section with a book in her hand. Cara didn’t know why, for she wasn’t a particularly shy person, but as she saw her sister approach, she quickly put the anthology back. She picked up a random book from the table she was leaning against—a biography of Hillary Clinton, as it turned out.
“Did you know that Jude Donovan has a new book out?” Myra was frowning. She seemed almost indignant that she hadn’t been informed of this personally.
Cara swallowed hard. So Jude had obviously conquered her writer’s block. She realized that she’d been half hoping, half fearing, that Jude would never be able to put a word to paper again after their breakup. Now that she saw the brightly colored book with the bouncing white rabbit on the cover, her heart swelled with pride at the thought that Jude had come through regardless of everything that was holding her back. She had conquered her demons—she had, as Cara had so unceremoniously told her to do, ‘simply sat down and done the job.’
