by Lee Lynch
They had drifted back to the furniture. “Ginger left this beautiful dresser?” Lily Ann asked. “It’s gorgeous and in such great shape.”
“It was her grandparents’.”
“I’d use it, myself.”
“No, Lily Ann.” She bumped Lily Ann’s arm with her knuckles. “If it belonged to your ex you wouldn’t want to wake up in the morning and have it be the first thing you see.”
Lily Ann hefted her side and they walked a few steps, Jefferson backward.
“But it isn’t my ex’s,” Lily Ann said, setting the chest down. “Neither is Ginger’s family. I could call them, J. I could say me and my husband are coming to town for the weekend—”
“You’d do that? Pretend to be straight?”
“Why not? I could call right now.”
“They might have caller ID.”
“Tonight then.”
But when Lily Ann called Jefferson that night, before the Murder, She Wrote reruns came on, she said no one had answered and promised to try again the next day. “I’m not leaving a message, J, in case they think it’s strange of me to be too persistent or decide to get hold of Ginger about who I really am.”
“What if they know, Lily Ann? What if they give you a number to call? I’m not going to call it and have to talk to them.”
“We can Google the number. Or use a reverse phone directory, Jef. I have some resources at work.”
Jefferson closed her eyes and saw Ginger and Mitchell in the back of the cab again. “Do I want to know?” she asked, flipping the hood of her sweatshirt over her head and crossing her arms in a defensive pose.
“You want to know she’s all right.”
“Mitchell wouldn’t hurt Ginger.”
“But what is he doing with her?”
“Lily Ann, you’re talking like he kidnapped her for ransom.”
“For all you know, he might have. Or worse.”
“What’re you talking about? Mitchell is our friend.”
“Friends don’t ride off into the sunset with your partner.”
“No call. That’s what gets to me the most, Lily Ann. Ginger would tell me something, wouldn’t she?”
“If she could.”
“You’re scaring me.”
“What’s worse, J, her running off on you with a man or foul play?”
“Worse for Ginger or worse for me?”
“Gee-jus, Jefferson.”
“Well, it’s the truth. I assumed she and that turncoat wanted to be together. I may not deserve better after all the years I ran around on her, but I’m sober and faithful now.” She knew she was whining.
“She got bored? She did like you better wild?”
“But if Mitchell was up to no good, then when she comes back, we still have a chance.”
“You mean it saves your ego.”
“What’s left of it.” She looked at Lily Ann. “You don’t get it, do you?”
“I get being left, J. College. Remember? There was me, there was Ms. Big Hair—and goodness knows who else.”
“I was a kid. She was the bartender. And femme. I was swept off my feet.”
“Again.”
She touched Lily Ann’s short hair. “I wish I hadn’t treated you like that, but at least I didn’t leave you for a man.”
“Gets you where you live, doesn’t it?”
“She always said she could be bi, but a lot of women hang on to that idea, especially femmes. Like they have one foot on shore and can bail if the going gets rough.”
“So you’re saying it’s worse because she’s not leaving you, she’s leaving the gay life.”
“Something like that.”
“And you take that personally. A double rejection.”
“Everything I am. Everything I stand for. Everything being with me means, from the intimate stuff to her knowing how I brush my teeth.”
“It is not a failure for you, J. You’re such a catch.”
“It’s my failure. I’ve failed us all.”
“All like who—lesbians?”
She nodded. When was she going to find someone who really, down to her roots, understood, somebody queer enough to know the depth of what Ginger had done?
“It sounds like you’d rather she was dead.”
“Dead? Who said anything about dead?”
“That’s what it sounded like to me.”
“You’ve been watching too many cop shows.”
“I don’t watch cop shows. I hang out with some cops, though. The things they tell me.”
“You think I should report her as a missing person?”
“I don’t think you can. Not with her family refusing to talk to you.”
“That confirms what I think—she’s still with Mitchell. Why else won’t they tell me anything?”
“He could have threatened them.”
“And Aunt Tilly?”
“That’s where he grabbed Ginger from, her school, remember?”
“So you think I should go looking for her.”
“If you insist on wanting her. You’ve heard that Jamie Anderson song, ‘Her Problem Now’? Well, she’s his problem now.”
“But,” she said, looking for the words she needed. “It’s not even Ginger. It’s that sweet thrill of longing. No, that’s not quite true, but the two are bound together. With Ginger there’s the permanent pleasure of seduction.”
“I swear, you need therapy, girl. Even if she left to be with him—and the suitcases, unless they’re a smokescreen, might confirm that. But even then, J, wouldn’t you expect Ginger to come after you if you’d been gone this long with no word?”
“I never thought of that. She might be waiting for me to make a move.”
“She might have gone willingly with him and now be stuck.”
“You’re not thinking she’s gagged and bound somewhere.”
“I never trusted Mitchell. He was always showing up places with straight girls, like he needed to show the world he wasn’t as queer as the rest of us.”
“Where are you going with this, Lily Ann?”
“What if he—they—went to one of those fix-the-gays groups?”
“Ginger would never go along with that.”
“She might not have known what she was getting into, J.”
“But her parents might have.”
They looked at each other.
Lily Ann said, “A cult kidnapping?”
“Which would mean the family isn’t talking because they’re shielding her from me. They finally got her away from the big bad wolf.”
She sat thinking for a while, confused. This made more sense than anything else. Still, it didn’t sound like Ginger to go into some kind of cult deprogramming situation. She’d always scoffed at them. “Why would Mitchell have dragged Ginger with him to something like that? Why not work on himself?”
“He’s the type of guy who needs a prop.”
“He could have told her anything. That she needed to get away for a while. Or that they were going to a dance workshop and to let me stew because I’d done it to her enough. No, that doesn’t make sense. It’s not Ginger.”
“You don’t know what makes sense for other people, J.”
“For Ginger?”
“It’s midlife-crisis time, J. You had a soft landing. Ginger may be taking off.”
“I stepped back, didn’t I? I respected her choice and even expected her choice. I thought I deserved this. I thought if a man was involved I couldn’t fight back.”
“No, you assumed you’d lost.”
“Maybe I have.”
“And maybe you haven’t.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
The next spring, she waded, twice, through fallen white blossoms in one of those delightful pocket parks hidden in midtown before she completed a trip to Café Femmes. This was the first time she’d gone to the bar without Ginger in her life.
She sat with Gabby and Lily Ann, started to tell them how good it was to see them, and found herself cr
ying. Her companions went dead silent.
“I’m sorry,” she managed to say over a blast of rap out of the jukebox. “I don’t know where this is coming from. I never cry.”
“Du-uh,” said Gabby, who had taken off her apron and closed the food side of the bar. “It’s your first time back since—”
She could hear Lily Ann sock Gabby in the arm. She looked up. “It is, I know,” Jefferson said. “I was thinking about it. I mean, I came here so often without Ginger.”
“With good reason,” Gabby said.
Jefferson asked, “You mean you didn’t like Ginger either?”
Gabby looked embarrassed. “It wasn’t that I didn’t like her, it’s—”
“That you didn’t like her,” Lily Ann finished for Gabby.
“She was kind of a cold fish, I always thought,” said Gabby. “You loved her so much and Ginger—I mean she’d laugh and joke around and all with us, but it was like she was always playing a part and ready to leave the minute you would. If she was like that at home, no wonder you ran around on her.”
She scraped her fingernails through her hair. “So all those years I was trying to measure up and there was nothing to measure up to?”
Gabby shrugged. “Some things are too tough to do.”
“Or we make them tough,” Lily Ann amended. “You held that girl up on a pedestal and then couldn’t meet the expectations you thought she had.”
“But she didn’t have them?”
“You have to care to have expectations of a person,” Gabby said.
“She didn’t care? That’s ridiculous!”
“She couldn’t care,” Gabby said with finality.
“Why are you ganging up on her? I didn’t know none of you liked Ginger.”
“She wasn’t so good for you,” Gabby said. “She maybe wanted to be, but I would think about not going after her, if I were you.”
That was because she didn’t know the little girl in Jefferson. Only the lover knows the little girl who lets herself be held in the night and laughs at silly things over breakfast and admits it when she’s scared. She scooped petals from her pockets and drizzled their wilting whiteness from her hands to the table. “If I knew where she’s hiding. I don’t want to stalk her. I wouldn’t even try to talk to her, but this knowing nothing—she could be in trouble. She could be wanting to come home. I feel like she’s been gone for a lifetime and that she’s coming right back.”
“Ah-hem,” Gabby said.
“What?” Lily Ann asked.
“I heard something.”
Jefferson looked up. “Gabby,” she said, reaching for her. “About Ginger?”
“About Mitch.”
“Speak,” Lily Ann commanded.
Gabby picked up a second napkin to shred. “This trick was in his apartment last summer. He saw a brochure.”
“What trick?”
“A guy I run into because of work.”
“How well do you know him?” Lily Ann wanted to know. “Is he reliable?”
“What kind of brochure?” Jefferson asked.
“You know, one of those cult things.”
“A Kool-Aid cult?”
“No. Where they brainwash you straight.”
She stared at Gabby. “You’re kidding.”
“It was a brochure.”
“Did he say anything about it?”
“Who?” Lily Ann interrupted. “Who are we talking about? Somebody making this up to sound in the know?”
“No. I see this guy like, daily, when I pick up ingredients. He sells pestos and garlic spreads. Like that. We’ve been doing business for centuries.”
“What’s his name?”
“Nuncio. He’s cool. Really.”
Jefferson asked, “Do you think he made her go to one of those groups with him?”
“He said he and Mitch talked about it, about Mitch wanting to change, being tired of tea rooms and tricking, and being scared of HIV. He said Mitch thought he might find some, you know, calm and serenity. Like that.”
“And he needed a partner in crime,” said Lily Ann.
“My partner,” Jefferson replied.
Gabby asked, “Did Ginger ever say anything about that kind of thing?”
She thought back. “No,” Jefferson said. “She used to say she could go either way, but she happened to love me.”
“Oh, that’s an old tune,” Gabby countered. “I’m not gay. I only happen to have been with my girlfriend Muscles since 1953.”
They all laughed. “Maybe Ginger was a little like that, but I thought she’d gotten over it. As you said, it’s been a long time.”
“Mitch must have worked on her.”
“They were really good friends. I thought we all were, but he performed with Ginger sometimes, playing flute.”
There was a silence. Lily Ann asked, “Did Nuncio remember the name of the place?”
“There was more than one,” Gabby said. “And no, he didn’t remember details. I asked that.”
“We can find them,” Jefferson said.
“Do you really want to?” Gabby asked.
Jefferson said, “You’ll never get information out of one of those groups.”
“Oh, but I could,” Gabby suggested. “I could pretend I’m interested, get a tour.”
Lily Ann laughed. “They might have a wax museum—famous conversions.”
“The Gallery of Gay Conversion Failures: Ellen, Rosie, Sir Elton,” Gabby added.
Jefferson had to smile. “Sounds like fun. How’s Sunday for you?”
“Seriously,” Lily Ann said with a sigh that sounded like resignation. She reached under the table and pulled out her laptop. “A little Wi-Fi and we might get a handle on this.”
“But,” Gabby interjected, “Mitch might have gone there first, gotten fixed, and then dragged Ginger off.”
“How could she,” Jefferson moaned. “She might as well have stabbed me right through the heart. Not saying a word—it feels like an attack.”
Lily Ann reached for her hand. “No. It’s a retreat. This has been building for years, J.”
She stopped herself from whining. “You’re my friends. You’ve never criticized me for my acting the way I do. I hope you know me well enough to understand that I accept full responsibility for being an out-of-control dog. But I always came back. And never—how could she—”
“A man. Disgusting,” Gabby said.
To hear another butch say that was soothing. She nodded to Gabby in thanks. She felt such shame. It wasn’t something she could explain to anyone. Even Lily Ann didn’t understand how deep it went. Another woman was one thing, but this…
Lily Ann came up with a list of groups in the metropolitan area that Mitch could be working with. “They must go back for follow-up. We could get schedules.”
Gabby shook her head. “Five places. What are they, churches?”
“All but one,” Lily Ann answered.
“That’s the program then,” Jefferson said. “Mitchell is Jewish.”
“Observant?” Lily Ann asked.
“He didn’t keep kosher or anything, but he did a seder every year and was into cooking. He made a mandelbread you wouldn’t believe. Maybe if I’d cooked more—”
“J,” Lily Ann intoned. “It isn’t your cooking. It’s who you cooked with.”
She nodded. That truth was inescapable.
She had slowly realized that she’d never been hurt before. She’d skipped away from other women as she would from a drinking buddy, which some of them were, or a work friend when she changed jobs. Or she got too deep into their egos or dreams and they didn’t want to let go. Not one had walked away from her.
Now that it was her turn, she was stunned by her pain and jealousy; she had never learned this side of love and was completely defenseless. She might have to move. The city had become Ginger, pirouetting around her in long skirts, long hair, and tights, her colors always somber and her occasional bright laughter all the more startling.
&
nbsp; Even if she’d been hurt back in her drinking days, she’d been too pickled to feel much or to remember. She’d started drinking in her teens, and her sponsor told her that might be where she was stuck: her feelings all these years like a teenager’s.
That Sunday they actually went to the small box of a building in New Rochelle where Straighten Out held its seminars. Lily Ann Lee was driving and Gabby sat in back. There was a seminar scheduled for three o’clock. They were watching for Mitchell’s black Hyundai SUV, but the small parking lot was almost full and there was no sign of it. A row of forsythia bushes blazed yellow in front of them. She still saw their brightness when she closed her eyes to dim the spring sun and the sting of salt in the tears she refused to let fall from her eyes.
“This feels humiliating,” she said.
Gabby agreed. “What are we going to do, grab her back?”
“Jef wants to know where she is and if she’s safe. Seeing her here would give that to you, Jef, wouldn’t it?”
She nodded, eyes closed, one hand on each of her friends. “I could sit on the sidewalk with a tin cup, begging for information.”
“Maybe there’s a secretary inside—”
“What I was thinking,” Lily Ann said. “I’ll go in, say I was supposed to meet Mitchell here.”
She gave Lily Ann an encouraging push toward the door. “You go, girl.”
Gabby handed her a bottle of green tea from the cooler. She held it against her hot cheek, watching the doorway for Lily Ann now. “You guys are good to me.”
Gabby harrumphed in the backseat. “What the heck. Amaretto’s working today, there’s no games on the tube. It’s a nice ride in the country.”
“This is what you call country?”
The street was all but treeless, the pavement littered. A vacant lot stood to the other side of the yellow bushes, and across the street was a storefront church, abandoned after the morning services.
“New Rochelle was country when I was growing up.”
“No secretary,” Lily Ann said when she returned. “But there was a guy smoking outside the back door. Tried to register me. Told him Mitchell Para had recommended them. Nada. Not a flicker. He either really doesn’t know Mitchell or he’s a good poker player.”
