North Coast: A Contemporary Love Story

by Dorothy Rice Bennett

  The band warmed up and talk became difficult. “Want to dance?” Gina asked.

  Valerie shrugged. “Sure,” she said with apparent lightness.

  Gina took her hand and led her to the dance floor. The first number was fast. They faced each other and shook and moved to the beat, their faces both flushing pink from the exertion.

  The next number was slow and close, and Gina encircled Valerie with her arms. Val could smell Gina’s subtle perfume and she could feel the warmth of her body. Almost as soon as they touched, the electricity between them started to spark.

  Valerie looked into Gina’s eyes and for a moment she saw the old Gina there, a young woman both excited and scared. Then the look passed and Gina smiled at her. They held each other tightly through the rest of the number, their bodies doing all of the talking.

  Later, when Gina dropped Valerie off at her house, she kissed her goodnight on the doorstep. A deep, passionate, longing kiss that Val returned.

  When they separated, Gina put her hands on Valerie’s face and looked at her deeply. “If we decide to go all the way, the first time has to be at my place,” she said. “We have to break all the old patterns from my days as your roomer.”

  Valerie nodded. “I’ll have to bring Sam,” was all she said.

  Gina grinned. “Sure.”

  And Val knew in her heart that the deed was as good as done.

  Valerie closed the front door and stood in the hallway, shaking nervously. An emotional bomb was exploding inside her. The roller coaster was now in free fall and she wanted to scream for dear life. She trembled and broke into a sweat.

  Thinking about Gina, allowing her back into her life, all that was fine. But the core of her being had not yet spoken. Her gut suddenly filled with a pain so intense that it almost pulled her to the floor—a pain that she was sure was entirely emotional. An agony both old and new told her that she was crossing an abyss so wide that she could never return. She was about to change, finally and forever.

  Doreen. No matter what she had done with her life to this day, Doreen had always been somewhere in the background, in her memory, in her feelings, in her heart. If she let Gina into her bed, if she opened her mind, her soul, and her body to Gina, then Doreen’s hold on her would be gone. At last she could see herself moving on with her life, and the pain of letting go became suddenly and terribly intense.

  As she struggled with her searing emotions, Valerie sensed what she needed to do.

  After a tormented, restless night, Val showered just before dawn, dressed neatly in slacks and a sweater, and prepared her Volvo for a trip. She packed food and a warm jacket and cap, grabbed Sam’s leash, and with the dog in the passenger’s seat, headed south on Highway 101 to San Francisco. She had not been back to the City since Doreen’s death and the sale of their Marina home.

  Valerie sped down the highway like a madwoman. It was 277 miles, about five and one-half hours on paper—but more in reality—which would put her there in mid-afternoon, if she didn’t get stuck behind too many semis or RVs and campers. The 101 was sometimes a real freeway for a few miles and sometimes a winding two-lane road deep in the midst of coastal redwoods. The clouds to the southwest looked threatening. Thankfully for her, the rain held off and the road remained dry and reasonably safe.

  She sailed through the small communities on the 101, barely slowing for Willits and Ukiah, then Cloverdale. Her mind was a blur, lost in a past that she had been pushing below consciousness. Doreen’s parents, who lived in the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles, had never been supportive of their relationship. Distant, sometimes hostile, they had never welcomed the two into their home. The awkwardness of communicating led to fewer and fewer contacts over the years. Doreen had expressed sadness about it, but she was so happy with Valerie and their life together that she refused to allow her traditional family to destroy what she and Val had together. Finally all contact ceased.

  When Doreen became ill, Val now recalled with renewed pain as she clung to the roadway, white knuckles on the wheel, she had tried to reach out to that family with no success. They didn’t answer or return calls. Val stayed by Doreen’s side and had done what she could for her, as she quickly slipped into the grip of the disease. Doreen had faded away without ever seeing her mother and father again.

  While it was still possible, they had talked to each other about what each of them wanted if something ever happened to the other. Doreen wanted to be cremated and have her ashes spread in the Pacific Ocean. Earlier in their relationship, Doreen and Valerie had made plans to be buried together but cancer had denied that option. “If you wait to be buried beside me, you’ll never allow yourself to have a life,” Doreen had wisely said before her death. “This way I can release you.”

  Valerie had agreed to take care of the cremation. They owned everything jointly, with right of survivorship, and even though California didn’t allow lesbians to marry at the time, they thought they were well-covered. But Doreen’s illness had spread so rapidly that Val, who was by Doreen’s side most of their remaining time, didn’t have time to update a will or put in writing what Doreen had decided for herself.

  After Doreen passed one gray morning, Valerie stayed with her for a few moments and then realized she had not had food or anything to drink for so long that she was about to pass out. She left the room to go down to the cafeteria to get some coffee and a sweet roll, something to give her a little energy to deal with the arrangements she and Doreen had made.

  When she returned to the room, Val was shocked to see the empty bed. She went to the nurse’s station and asked what had happened. One of the regular nurses, Joanne, came around the counter and asked Val to join her in a nearby conference room. Perplexed, Valerie followed her.

  “While you were gone,” Joanne said, putting a hand gently on Val’s arm, “Doreen’s brother was here. He had a lawyer with him and a representative from a funeral home. They said they came to claim her body and that they had a right to take it. They waved some papers around, and two men from the funeral home entered her room. They put her body on a gurney, covered it, and left down the hallway. There was no chance for any of us to find you or to do anything.”

  Gritting her teeth and pounding the steering wheel with one fist, Valerie found her mind reeling with the memory of that moment as if it were yesterday. She had felt so vulnerable, so helpless, so unprepared to deal with what had happened. She had collapsed into tears, and the staff had gotten permission to give her a sedative and find a place for her to rest for a little while.

  The intrusion of Doreen’s family had led in part to the long depression that Val had endured after Doreen’s passing. It had had a lot to do with her eventual selling of the condo and moving away from San Francisco. She had needed the closure of seeing that Doreen had been cremated as she had wished and that her ashes had been spread where she wished. Valerie had been denied that and that fact still stuck inside her like a raw wound.

  Only when she left the Bay Area did she begin to forget, to see things more positively, and to begin to build a world for herself. She knew she wasn’t finished with the past but she didn’t know what to do about it. It had been stored mostly below the surface of her subconscious, until Gina had showed up on her doorstep a few weeks earlier.

  Val pushed the edge of the envelope, but thankfully traffic was light and nothing got in her way. Just after 3 p.m., she arrived at her destination, a large cemetery outside the city of San Francisco proper. No one had been buried inside San Francisco for many years. Except for two cemeteries, the Presidio and Mission, all other burial grounds—some 16 of them—were in neighboring Colma.

  Doreen had been cremated, but the family decided her ashes would be placed in the family crypt. Doreen’s grandparents had been from San Francisco and they had purchased several spaces for their family in a Colma mausoleum.

  Valerie left Sam in the car once she reached the cemetery. She put on her warm cap and pulled her heavy coat closely about her. The wind w
as sharp on this cold, gray day. The cemetery seemed deserted except for flowers here and there that left a footprint from earlier visitors.

  Val entered the mausoleum and stood misty-eyed before the vault. She too had brought flowers—tulips, Doreen’s favorite. She placed them on the small ledge. How ironic, Valerie thought, that the gorgeous pink blossoms—so delicate like the woman who adored them—would have a brief but brilliant life.

  “I’m here, Doreen,” Val said. Tears began to stream down her cheeks as she reached out to touch the gray marble crypt. “I’m back. You’ve been in my thoughts and dreams and memories every day, but this is the first time I’ve come here. The pain was too great, but now I’m finally here.” She stopped, using the back of her hand to wipe away the tears.

  “I’ve been angry for a long time,” she admitted, almost choking on the words, “at you, for dying, for leaving me. I know that’s irrational, because you didn’t want to go. But I’ve also been angry at your family for invading our private world and taking you from me, keeping me from having closure, preventing me from doing what you had asked me to do. I felt so helpless not being able to do anything to stop them. So I ran, and I avoided, and I tried to go on as if nothing had happened.”

  She heaved a sigh. “But of course everything had happened. Our life together was gone, you were gone, and I was left to deal. I haven’t always done too good a job of it, but something in me is finally beginning to change.”

  Valerie sat in silence for several moments. “I’m sorry” she sighed, “if you’ve known that I’ve not been here, if you are out there somewhere in space, some sort of spirit, watching. I’m sorry if I’ve let you down. I didn’t mean to. It just hurt too bad.” She cried again for a moment and suddenly began to shiver.

  “I love you, I’ll always love you, and I will always miss you.” She stopped, choking on her words, but quickly began to speak again. “But you told me that you wanted me to have a life after your death, and I think it’s beginning to happen. I didn’t look for it, I didn’t expect it, but someone found me. Her name is Gina. She can’t replace you. No one ever could. But I think she is a good person. She wants to build something with me if I can allow it.”

  She touched the tulips tenderly and her body heaved with deep sobs for several moments.

  “It’s time, Doreen, to let go of the pain, of the anger,” she finally said. “Not the love, not the respect, not the memories, but the bad things. I want to remember the good now.”

  Valerie stood and let go a deep sigh. She wiped her tears and put her palms against the marble crypt one last time. “Now I’ve come. I’ve done it and I’m still standing here—alive, sad but alive. It’s time for me to seek the life you wanted for me. But I’ll visit more often, I promise. And I’ll never forget you.”

  Then she sighed, squared her shoulders, and turned back toward the Volvo and Sam, who was waiting faithfully for her.

  Valerie made sure that Gina was blissfully unaware of her emotional trial, which was how Val wanted it to be. Her devotion to Doreen was baggage from the past. If she was going to be with Gina, to give that relationship a chance, she had to go into it totally dedicated. When she got home late that night, she found Gina had left a message on her home phone. When Val returned Gina’s call the next day she was careful not to sound awkward. She did not mention the real reason she had been unavailable that day. She wasn’t sure she would ever tell Gina, but aside from that discomfort, she began to feel better. She had gone through what some people would call a “dark night of the soul”—a private moment—and she believed that she had come out stronger on the other end. Stronger and for the most part, free. She knew it would take days, weeks, months even, before she was truly beyond all of this. But she had made a start, the most difficult part. She was ready to face her own demons.

  A week later, Gina had an evening and the following day off from work. She knew she would need every minute of that free time. Ever since she had decided to return to Eureka, she had dreamed and fantasized and planned for this day.

  Even the weather cooperated. She picked up Valerie and Sam and they went down to the waterfront for a long walk, talking about this and that—friendly talk that went in no particular direction. The sun was just setting in the West when they returned to the Beetle.

  Gina drove them to her one-bedroom apartment, which Val seemed to like. It wasn’t fancy, but it was clean, spacious, decently furnished, and in a modern complex near the mall. Gina had prepared a salad and lasagna in advance and had Italian rolls and a bottle of red wine ready. Big bowls of water and kibble were waiting on the kitchen floor for Sam.

  They ate quietly. Soft music played in the background.

  Finally Valerie admitted, “I really like your apartment.”

  Gina smiled. “That’s good. When I was planning to return to Eureka, I thought about moving back to your house and I knew I couldn’t do that. If I was ever to have a chance, if we were ever to have a chance with each other, I had to find a way to even the playing field. I decided to get my own place and promised myself that I wouldn’t even think of moving in with you until I could pay my own way. Half of the expenses.”

  Valerie looked at her for a long time. “That’s daring of you. What if I had a huge mortgage?”

  “Then we’d have to work it out.”

  “Thankfully, you lucked out on that one,” Valerie kidded. “I don’t have a large mortgage and I don’t have really high expenses. I think you might have half a chance.”

  Gina laughed. “This sounds like the lesbian moving company—two dates and we’re moving in together. But that’s not really true. We’ve known each other for a long time. And we’ve seen each other with our hair down so to speak. We know a lot about each other that many partners starting a relationship don’t. Right?”

  “Right,” Valerie agreed with a nod.

  Gina thought for a moment. “You know you really impressed me when you took Josie into the house after her fall. I saw how nurturing you were, how you went out of your way to make sure that she was cared for and had a chance to recover fully. It was very selfless of you to do that.”

  Val smiled. “So it’s the mother in me that you like?” She seemed to be teasing, at least partly.

  Gina blushed. “That’s part of it, the nurturing part. But that was a special thing you did. I’ve never thought of you like a mother, or my mother, or whatever the psychological mumbo-jumbo would be. You’re older, yes, but you’re very attractive. And smart. And you don’t judge people. I really like that.”

  “I think I can be just as judgmental as the next person,” Valerie countered with a laugh.

  “Well,” Gina replied, a bit flustered, “you hide it well. You may think it, but you don’t say it.”

  Valerie was silent for a moment, then shrugged. “So you find this 50-plus body attractive?”

  Gina really blushed this time, nervously pushing her glasses up as she had the first day she appeared on Valerie’s doorstep. “Yes. You have a pretty face and beautiful hair. And gorgeous eyes. And soft curves, and well, you smell good.”

  Val laughed. “They say it’s all about smell, anyway, so I guess that’s a good sign.”

  Valerie looked at Gina for a moment, studying her closely. “I wasn’t sure what to make of you when you first came to Eureka. But when I saw you juggling those three jobs, I really started to notice. With the background you had, it would have been so easy for you to give up. But you handled everything without complaining, and I watched you do it. I was awed by your determination. You say you get scared, and I know you do, but you are so strong-willed. Like a bull. I suppose you’ll tell me you’re a Taurus.”

  Gina grinned. “Is it all right if I am?”

  Valerie just smiled and shook her head. She was silent for a while. Then, “You’re good looking, too. I’m so pleased that you’ve started to take pride in your appearance. I especially like seeing you in your new manager’s uniform.” She giggled. “Even with the glasses.”
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  Gina smiled. “I’m going to get rid of those one of these days.”

  “I didn’t mean to offend you,” Val said, putting a hand on Gina’s arm.

  “You didn’t,” Gina replied with a wink.

  They finished dinner and sat for a few moments, sipping their wine. Sam was curled up on the floor beside them.

  Finally Gina touched Valerie’s shoulder. “Would you like to dance?”

  Val offered a tentative smile, and Gina knew she was not the only one who was nervous. “Sure,” Valerie managed to say.

  Gina picked out a CD and put some soft music on the boom box, turned the living room lamp down low, threw her eyeglasses on the table, and led Valerie to the center of the room. They held each other for a long time, dancing almost in place, allowing their heat and desire to build.

  Gina was trembling, and she wondered if perhaps Val would have to make a first move. Nope, if she had to she could bluff her way through it. She knew where she was going and kissed Valerie gently on the cheek. Then she turned her face toward Val. Their eyes met, then their lips, which soon parted in passionate probing. Their sustained kiss was crushing, and Gina could feel just how much pent-up desire she had pushed down inside her until now.

  In what seemed like seconds they moved toward the bedroom, then onto Gina’s bed. They hugged and kissed each other, fighting out of their restraining clothing, touching and stroking and touching again. Gina began to explore Valerie’s mature body, with its rounded breasts, soft curves, and sweet smell. Val touched Gina’s slender, firm, muscled form, with an obvious desire she had not previously allowed herself to recognize or express. She could feel her nipples rise and harden with the intensity of their lovemaking.

  Their passion was unrestrained. They inhaled each other, exploring and experiencing a mounting excitement. Licking and kissing each others’ breasts, nibbling necks, stroking between legs, and finally going down on each other—Gina first, Valerie next, until each had reached an explosive climax. They fell backward, collapsing together, their bodies intertwined. Exhausted, but not sated.