Beggar of Love

by Lee Lynch

Her cell rang. She popped her Bluetooth headset into her ear and retreated to the side of the garage. It was someone rescheduling an appointment to look at a house.

  “Shannon Wiley!” Dawn said when the stringy, shambling surfer-dude dyke strode into view, pushing her bike. The sun followed Shannon, who wore a silver-and-blue Xena T-shirt.

  “I got a flat a block from here,” her visitor said, pulling a small tool kit from the saddle bags and flipping the bike onto its handlebars. “Here.” Shannon took a bunch of forget-me-nots from a pocket inside her jacket and handed it to Dawn, cheeks dimpling in an obvious struggle not to smile too widely.

  While the flowers weren’t a blatant courting gesture, they were more than what most friends would do. Instead of accepting them, Dawn lifted her black hair, with its strands of gray, up from her eyes, and said, “Would you fill the jelly jar on the shelf over the sink and stick them in it? I’m feeling too lazy to get up.”

  Shannon always did what Dawn told her to and had the jar of flowers by her feet in seconds, then walked to the other side of the driveway and rolled a tree stump over to her bike, sat down, and started fiddling with the flat tire. Dawn looked at the flowers and shook her head, smiling at Jefferson. She held out her hands, one with the bird, one empty, as if to say, “What can I do?”

  To get past her awkwardness about Dawn making a co-conspirator of her, Jefferson asked, “Where’d you get all these stumps? There must be a dozen.”

  “When I moved here, the back lot was full of them. It’d been logged off decades ago, from the looks of it. I hired a little backhoe and dug them out. The next year, when they were dry, I used my chain saw to flatten the bottoms. I like them for sitting and for chopping wood, for drying flowers, for sawhorses, to look at.”

  Jefferson had never met anyone like Dawn, so feminine yet unafraid of guys’ work. “And you learned to operate a backhoe where?”

  “My dad has one at the farm,” Dawn replied, intensely sanding a bump on the bird’s tail.

  Shannon said, “Geeze, my father won’t let me near his circular saw, much less heavy equipment.”

  “I was the eldest. I got to teach the boys when they came along.”

  “Are all country girls like you?” Jefferson asked Dawn.

  “Why? Do you need a couple?”

  “A couple of country girls?” Jefferson asked, trying to pass herself off as an innocent.

  Someone laughed, and Dawn looked up under her glasses at Jefferson with a smile. “I was offering tree stumps.”

  When Jefferson said thanks anyway, Dawn tried Shannon. “How about you?”

  Jefferson realized her hands were hot and glanced around. Who was setting off her desire alarm? It had to be Dawn. She stuffed her hands in her hoodie pocket. Dawn? Really? She wasn’t ready for this.

  Shannon was saying, “I have real sawhorses and real lawn chairs, thank you very much.”

  “How can you fit all that in that cabin you’re renting?” Dawn asked, an edgy sharpness to her teasing. She wondered if they were exes.

  Shannon looked down. Was she embarrassed about where she lived? “My landlady lets me have space in the old barn.”

  A cloud bumped the sunlight. The day was both cool and not cool, kind of indecisive, the way spring could be. Shannon was following Dawn’s hands as they whittled. The poor kid might start drooling if she was deprived of those hands another minute.

  “Killer carving,” Shannon said. “Can I see it?”

  “Not till I’m done.”

  “I can live with that,” Shannon quickly said, pursing her lips and nodding, while obviously thinking the opposite.

  They sat in silence while Dawn gently carved shavings from the bird’s breast. Now and then Jefferson cupped a hand underneath and caught them. They smelled like something from her past; she couldn’t name what. She could see Shannon’s attraction to those delicate yet sure hands. But a librarian? Maybe the stereotype put her off, but as much as she liked Dawn, she couldn’t think of her as a lover. The truth was, she didn’t think of anyone as a lover. That part of her was still dormant.

  Shannon’s hair, Jefferson thought, must really get noticed in conservative Pipsborough. Shannon had told her she’d moved back to the lake from Nashua less than a year ago. Jefferson suspected you could be a little weird in a town that size, but not here. If Shannon stayed in Pipsborough with long brown hair for the rest of her life, she wouldn’t live down the impression of wildness her current do gave. Here or anywhere on Saturday Lake. Lake people seemed to have a memory for anything different, unless you were actually from the lakes, like Dawn, who had told her that her family had a farm over near Stillwater Lake. She’d promised to drive Jefferson out to see the farm and Jefferson was curious, but very leery of getting closer. She could feel Dawn’s interest coming off her like waves of warmth from a woodstove. Dawn wasn’t interested in Shannon, the one who wanted her. She smiled: lesbians were the same everywhere.

  Rayanne came around the corner, ignoring the stop sign. She parked her silver PT Cruiser well away from the other cars. Rayanne and Dawn had met at UNH Plymouth about a thousand years ago, Dawn had said, and had a thing going, but Rayanne was a squabbler, so they graduated not speaking to each other. A few years later, after Rayanne’s agency decided to open an office in Pipsborough, they ran into each other outside the post office and got in the habit of having lunch on a bench by the water in good weather and at the Oar Stand, a breakfast and lunch place, all winter. Rayanne, Dawn told Jefferson, had turned out to be a good friend.

  “Greetings and salutations, comrades,” Rayanne called. “If I’m at Dawn’s, it must be Saturday afternoon.”

  “Hi, girl,” Dawn said.

  “What is that article of clothing you’ve got on?” Shannon asked. “It looks like a cross between cutoffs and capris.”

  “She thinks she’s the fashion maven,” Dawn pointed a thumb toward Shannon, “because she’s seen the world.” At Jefferson’s raised eyebrows, Dawn explained, “In the National Guard.”

  Rayanne had hips like the handles on a bowling trophy. When she walked, the hips seemed to roll her along. Her oversized T-shirt read “Olivia XXX Leisure Dept.”

  “They’re Saturday-afternoon-at-Dawn’s pants.”

  “Après-mowing is what they look like,” Shannon said. “What did you do, fall on your butt in the clippings?”

  Rayanne struggled to walk a stump into the shade of the garage. Shannon got up to help her and placed the stump between Dawn and Jefferson.

  “Where’s Yolanda?” Shannon asked.

  Dawn answered with a laugh. “Getting the beer, probably.”

  An earnest look appeared on Shannon’s face. “Should we be worried about her drinking or what?”

  “Shan,” Rayanne said, “because you and Jefferson don’t drink, the rest of us aren’t necessarily drunks.”

  Dawn laughed. “Rayanne, you and Shannon ought to be lovers. You wrangle about every subject under the sun.”

  “This makes us compatible?” Rayanne barked. “Not my idea of the perfect marriage.”

  “Besides,” Shannon said, twisting something on her bike tight with a wrench, “we’re both butch.” She staggered a bit as she rose from her bent position. For such an active woman, Shannon must find having a bad back inconvenient.

  “Speak for yourself,” Rayanne countered. “That is so old-school. We’re past roles now.”

  “Rayanne,” Dawn asked, “how could you not know you’re butch?”

  Rayanne scowled. She really was one of those naturally scrappy women. Jefferson could imagine Dawn laughing while Rayanne tossed verbal spears at her. Jefferson could also see how Dawn might be drawn to Rayanne’s take-charge attitude. She asked, “How’s New Hampshire Private Financial doing?”

  “Hot,” answered Rayanne, who worked Saturday mornings. “Really hot. I don’t know where people are getting the money in this economy and with the dollar worth shit in Europe, but they’re investing. The terrorists don’t scare th
em off. Americans can’t accept that we’re no longer safe in the world—thank you very much, Mr. Bush. I think more investors are using us to avoid the real-estate market. Of course, now I’m competing against the online services, so I have to give a little extra in the special-attention department to—”

  “There’s Yolanda.” Shannon was making a transparent attempt to turn off Rayanne. Once you got the woman talking about the world of finance, Jefferson noticed, there was no end to it. She felt a sad little smile move her lips. She’d love to dish this crowd with Ginger.

  Yolanda Whale drove a red, long-bed Toyota pickup outfitted for her one-woman landscaping business. She was reaching into the truck bed, inevitably, for the cooler of Golden Loon, a local ale she sucked on all day. She had two bumper stickers on the back of the truck. One was for Hillary Clinton, and Jefferson could see the part of the other that read, “and magic is afoot.”

  “I can’t decide if Yolanda is an alcoholic,” Dawn said. “She’s so fussy about what she drinks.”

  They all looked at Jefferson. She’d told them her history, but all she could do was rub her jaw, then say, “You can’t tell someone she has a problem, no matter how worried you are. She has to find out herself. I mean, you can tell her, but that doesn’t do any good till she’s ready to hear it.”

  “I’m not saying she has one,” Shannon replied. “She seems so close to her beers, I don’t know where she’d ever fit in a girlfriend.”

  Rayanne asked, “And what’s your excuse for not having a girlfriend?” Of course, they all knew perfectly well that Shannon’s reason was hopelessly wanting Dawn.

  “Do you guys look like a meeting of the Lesbian Lonely Hearts Club or what?” Yolanda said, offering bottles to Dawn and Rayanne. Rayanne accepted. Yolanda pulled a strawberry Yoo-Hoo out of her back pocket and gave it to Shannon.

  Jefferson laughed. She was re-creating the Café Femmes crowd here in rural New Hampshire. She glowed with fondness for both groups. Friends, kittens, the lake—what else could she want? She glanced at Dawn. She decided she was drawn to Dawn, to her calm, her groundedness, her acceptance of and by her family. She thought Dawn was interested, but was she?

  “Oh, cool,” said Shannon, opening the bottle quickly and gulping half the beverage down. “Thanks,” she said to Yolanda.

  Jefferson had brought the Manhattan Special sarsaparilla that she imported by the case from the city.

  “I don’t know why you like that pink chalk so much,” Rayanne said.

  Shannon answered with a gurgling strawberry chuckle. “Yoo-hoo’s better than that slug bait you guys swill. Thanks, though.”

  Dawn’s eyes just touched Jefferson’s before she refused the ale.

  “PMS?” Yolanda asked.

  “No, I don’t want to hurt the baby,” Dawn replied, with a straight face.

  She watched as every head turned to stare at Dawn, locked in place until she laughed. Dawn’s laughter sounded so delighted, so contagious, that even Rayanne couldn’t stop long enough to scold her.

  “You got us,” Yolanda finally managed to say before her giggles started again.

  Jefferson spent another hour listening to her new friends open bottles, bicker, and joke. Sleepy, she watched as the woman across the street weeded at the side of her house, a wide straw hat shading her face. Ginger should be here, she thought again, cruising into a dream.

  Early in their relationship Ginger had always been ready to stroll down to the lake, go for a swim, help with a cookout, making it all fun because they were together. But then if Ginger were still around they wouldn’t be in New Hampshire, they’d be in the city; they wouldn’t be with this group. On a spring Saturday afternoon they’d be watching the gang play softball. No, she’d be watching softball. Ginger would be teaching unless the game ran late. Saturday was a big day for dance lessons and recitals.

  Ginger had liked to stay in on Saturday nights, the night Jefferson most liked to party. It was seldom that she could get Ginger to go to Café Femmes with her, and, to be fair, she usually didn’t go with Ginger anymore to the dance performances Ginger loved. Symphony Space, the Joyce SoHo, the Kitchen—she’d been to so many with Ginger, but the truth was that if Ginger wasn’t dancing, or if they weren’t dancing together, she was pretty bored. The best time of year was summer, when they went to the Midsummer Night’s Swing at Lincoln Center and danced outdoors to all kinds of bands with hundreds of people. Ginger gave early evening dance lessons there, and on those nights Jefferson would join her as her demonstration partner, dressed in a black shirt with cream-colored silk tie and vest. They would go to eat and return to dance for fun to swing music, salsa, and everything in between.

  Those nights had been highlights in her life. Not much could compare to the high of leading Ginger, a fantastic dancer, on a summer’s night, publicly, in a salsa. Ginger would wear a flared skirt and a light top—Jefferson’s favorite was a sleeveless V-neck orange pullover that slipped down Ginger’s shoulders as they danced. Ginger’s long red hair swept across her bare shoulders. When they went home, Jefferson anticipated that she would be unusually inspired in her lovemaking, the rhythms of the night dictating the placement of her lips, her hands on Ginger’s body, how she’d slide a thigh between Ginger’s legs, how she’d run the arch of a foot along Ginger’s calf, the pulsing of her tongue on Ginger’s narrow labia and the tiny clitoris that made her feel so tender each time she exposed it. Year after year she forgot, until the cab ride home, how worn out Ginger would be, how she wanted nothing but sleep.

  Now and then on those dancing nights, Ginger pinned a rose to Jefferson’s vest, usually pink, for its erotic contrast with the androgynous tie. For years now, Ginger hadn’t done that or wanted to make love after dancing. Jefferson felt a wave of separation anxiety, but from what? The dream? A constant hope? A habit of expectation? Every night for all those years she hoped there would be a lover in their bed.

  After so many years of conflict and distress—running after women, Ginger walking out—after her drinking stopped and they relaxed into the conflict of their crazily enduring love, after hitting their stride together in so many ways, Ginger had to die?

  One of the neighbor’s cats came by. It was the stubby little tiger who always begged for affection. She lifted him to her lap and scratched under his chin.

  “You okay, Dawn?” Yolanda asked. “You’re kind of quiet.”

  Dawn laid her head back on the bunched-up hood of her navy blue sweatshirt and blew air through her pursed lips, a sound the little tiger stopped purring to attend. “I’ve been offered the job in Concord.”

  Yolanda looked away, her mouth open. Rayanne said, “No.” Shannon looked at her like she’d announced she was going straight.

  “It’s a director position. More money, more variety, more challenge.”

  “But,” Shannon said.

  “Is that why you went to Concord the week before last? For an interview?” Yolanda’s voice was tense with accusation.

  Dawn looked at her hands, gouging little bits of wood to form a lifting wing. “I didn’t want to say anything in case it didn’t work out.”

  “You’re leaving us?” Yolanda said. “But this is my family.”

  “How much are you asking for the house?” Rayanne asked.

  Jefferson scratched the kitty behind its ears. The lake seemed to be rapidly draining, the landscape altering beyond imagination. A lawnmower droned up the street.

  All the delight had gone out of Dawn’s eyes. It was clear to Jefferson she didn’t want to work in Concord. What was going on? She was happy in her work and had friends. Was there a problem with her family? Weren’t they all, as American lesbians, hard-wired to leave their hometowns to seek romance and their fortunes?

  “I don’t want to leave all of you,” Dawn explained, “or my family. But I’m treading water here.”

  Shannon’s voice had a plea in it. “You love your job.”

  Jefferson knew Shannon would be hardest hit, because Shanno
n thought she had a chance with Dawn. She slung an arm over Shannon’s shoulders to commiserate.

  “You think you’ll meet somebody in Concord? Somebody better than you’ll find on the lake?” Yolanda asked.

  Dawn shook her head. The sweet tan pit bull from up the street ambled by and sniffed a rosebush. The tiger spat and launched itself off Jefferson’s chest, raking her skin through her shirt. She swallowed her startled cry to listen to Rayanne.

  “You’ll be able to retire earlier,” Rayanne said. “And get a bigger pension. You’re almost fifty—I can see why you’ve got to go. And it’s only an hour and a half away.”

  “Thirty-eight is not almost fifty,” Shannon, thirty-six, protested, as if defending Dawn from attack.

  Rayanne said, “I can rent you my little guest cottage when you come to town to see us. I’ll give you a good break.”

  “Geeze, Ray, listen to yourself,” Yolanda said. “If you come back to visit, Dawn, you’re staying in my guest room.”

  “Or in my cabin? I could go stay with my dad,” Shannon offered, staring at Dawn as if willing her to stay and share her bed.

  Dawn interrupted. “Sometimes you’ll want to come to the city, won’t you?”

  “Shopping,” Rayanne exclaimed. “We can do Steeplegate Mall.”

  Yolanda opened another ale and glugged down a good portion of it. Jefferson knew how that went—Dawn’s plans were another excuse to drink more. No one knew better than she did that removing the femme from the equation would ruin everything. She could see that the four of them had a tender balance, house-sitting for one another, hosting round-robin weeding parties, meeting at Dawn’s as a kind of anchor to their weeks. She’d learned, too, that Shannon cleaned gutters for Rayanne, who was afraid of heights, and had been roped into cleaning all the others’ too. Yolanda hauled everyone’s trash in the pickup, Rayanne did their taxes, Dawn did basic house repair.

  For herself, the thought of starting out again on her own, even as a real-estate seller, still scared the socks off her. Zoloft or no, she needed these new friends and didn’t want to see the foursome melt away. Then, too, there was the strange tug on her heart Dawn’s announcement had brought. But look at her, the funny little tomboy. Dawn reached down to pull up her soccer socks and brushed wood chips off her knee. She wore what she’d said were her brother’s old red soccer shorts and a huge tie-dyed T-shirt in swirls of primary colors. Dawn clearly wasn’t interested in projecting femme allure to this group, but damn, Jefferson thought, feeling a spark of her old self, she looked inexplicably good in that getup.