Substitute for Love

by Karin Kallmaker

  It was from an outraged male client that she had learned about the monthly ladies’ night at the nearest gay bar. Wasn’t it outrageous that women who ought to be ashamed of themselves would parade around as if they had a right, dance to that disgusting music, cruise for perverted sex, and so close to where they lived? Reyna’s heightened perception had detected the undercurrent of salacious arousal at the idea. Coping with her own revulsion, she had almost missed what the information could mean to her.

  She cycled a cloverleaf to head west on the 405, leaning hard into the turn as the wind billowed her jacket open. The air was like ice but it made her feel even more alive. Orange County was the conservative center of California politics, and some neighborhoods were little better than restricted communities. The Putnam Institute was located in the county’s political heart, Irvine, and nestled deep in Bonita Canyon, a few miles from the University of California at Irvine.

  She left it all behind, whipped past the John Wayne Airport, then a short jaunt north to the border zone between Costa Mesa and Santa Ana. The bike didn’t want to slow down, but she followed the route she had memorized. Another generic L.A. boulevard gave way to a still busy strip where restaurants were only now beginning to close their doors. At the far end she turned into a parking lot choked with cars.

  She cruised slowly past the front door to Jack’s. A small sign indeed proclaimed it Ladies’ Night. Even over the vibration of the bike she could feel the bumping pulse of the music inside. She eased into a spot between the nose of a Subaru SUV and the wall of the club. With the engine off the music was even more pronounced. Above that she heard the babble of women’s voices.

  It hurt to be so close and not be part of it. She kept her helmet on until she was inside, then checked it, the gloves and her jacket with a pouty, bored blonde. The ten-dollar bill she tithed to the doorkeeper trembled in her shaking hand.

  She stepped inside and let Madonna carry her to the dance floor where it was dark and no one cared that she was dancing alone.

  She never learned the woman’s name. She didn’t have to know. It was better that way. What she didn’t know her father would never learn. It was just for tonight, just for an hour, maybe two.

  Her teeth felt sharp on Reyna’s throat. From a mutual recognition on the dance floor they had moved to the outdoor patio, which was screened from the outside world by thick shrubs, and dark enough to ignore what other couples were doing. She heard a gasp nearby, knew what it meant and wanted to feel that gasp herself, to take and be taken. She moaned and unbuttoned her blouse, eager to be naked, to be skin to skin with this stranger. She was a woman and that was all that mattered.

  “We’re going to get tossed if you show any more skin,” the woman murmured. “But if you want to show it, we could get more involved in my pickup — it’s parked outside.”

  In her father’s world it was sordid, but how could it be to her? She had to hide, lie, disguise herself to be here, and her father’s world drove her to those extremities. That she could find any kind of bliss, no matter how short-lived, under these circumstances was a matter of solace. If this was all there could be, she would survive on it. The mattress that occupied the entire bed of the pickup was meant for just this purpose, as were the thick curtains that darkened the windows of the enclosing shell. Privacy, anonymity — it was what she had come there for, and it felt like salvation.

  The kisses were as penetrating as the fingers inside her, stealing her breath, stopping her cries, holding yesses between their mouths. She filled her hands with hair and skin, with breasts and thighs. They coiled around each other, trading places but always entwined, moving together toward having enough.

  Longing and denial made her feel as if she’d never tasted a woman before, the salt of her, the wet, welcoming slick. How could anyone give this up? God had given her the capacity to love this, to share this intimate act with another woman. Wouldn’t turning her back on it be hubris? Who was she to deny how God had made her?

  Afterward she wanted only air, to breathe with happiness and savor feeling like a woman. Her companion seemed content to do the same for a few minutes.

  “Jesus,” the woman finally said. “You just about put me to sleep. Good lord.”

  The thigh pillow under Reyna’s cheek moved and reluctantly Reyna sat up, nearly bumping her head on the roof. Fingertips brushing her breast took her by surprise, but the hot swell of desire felt wonderful as it flushed her skin.

  “Let me say thank you,” the woman murmured, and Reyna let her.

  She walked the bike into Tank’s garage, then slipped the key under his door. Across the street, down the alley, to her car — she walked slowly as if Bergman had wearied her. She shook her hair around her face to hide what felt like a glow of peace.

  6

  Seventeen boxes and two carloads — Holly had gotten it right. The motel room was stuffed with sagging, bulging cartons, leaving her only the bed to rest on. Stretched out, she had no choice but to think.

  Clay had not taken it well. She could even see it from his point of view. He could easily explain it to a friend with, “She flipped out. One day she quit her job and two days later she packed up and left. I have no idea why.”

  When she’d come in out of the rain, the party had been winding down and Clay drove them home. He didn’t appear to notice that she was soaking wet. As she shivered in the car, she considered that she was lucky that their lives weren’t complicated by children or entangled financial affairs. Remembering what Tori said about realizing she’d never given her future to Geena, Holly knew the same was true of her and Clay. She’d never asked herself where they would end up together. They had worked hard to keep everything the same from day to day, as if tomorrows would never come and neither of them would ever change.

  She took a warm shower when they got home and was relieved that Clay had already fallen asleep. She dozed off, finally, but only for a few hours. She had left Galina’s card to dry on the table next to the bed. In the morning she tucked it back into her bra and tried to forget what it represented. Work clothes were the order of the day. She made him breakfast for the last time and then went to the garage for boxes.

  “What’s up?” Clay was frowning into the refrigerator, obviously not caring for its contents.

  “I’m leaving.”

  “Where to?” He closed the door and looked up. She did not flinch from meeting and holding his gaze.

  Calmly, carefully, “I’m leaving.”

  Abruptly, he looked like a balloon with all the air out. “You’ve had another one of your brainstorms,” he accused.

  She wanted to be gentle, but she also felt a tide rising inside that pushed her to this moment. “Call it that if you like. I realized in the last few days that we share the same space but hardly connect, and not even physically.”

  He was shaking his head. He always shook his head while she was talking. She jotted that onto her mental list of Why I’m Leaving Clay Today. “Are you giving in to socialization about romantic ideals? No one can live up to those images. Most of the world doesn’t equate love with passion, or expect them to arrive at the same time. It’s only expected in modernized countries, where a massive marketing machine keeps these ideas prominent in our psyches. So we’ll buy roses, and chocolate and greeting cards—”

  “I don’t want roses and chocolate, Clay. Christ.” It was cruel, but she would never get through otherwise. “I want an orgasm.”

  He flushed and she had to look away.

  More carefully, she went on, “At a very basic level, we’re not sexually compatible. I don’t think I — I don’t think you can give me what I want, and I will never agree that what I want is somehow wrong.”

  Harshly, he said, “What is it you want?”

  “Passion would be good — oh, stop looking like that. I’m as much to blame as you. I never told you that I didn’t — that it wasn’t working for me. I admired you, and I wanted to be there for you. And I was. You were the worst housekeeper I’d e
ver seen, so I cleaned for you. You never ate because you never shopped, so I did that too. You believed that growing our own vegetables was a good thing, so I did it. Whatever you expressed as lacking in your life, I tried to fill the void.” She wiped away a tear — it was just tension. “I worked at a job you hated so you could take a sabbatical, and I stayed at that job because we needed the money for the mortgage.”

  “I — I didn’t realize you felt it all such a sacrifice.”

  “I didn’t, not until recently. Then I had to ask myself, for all I gave up, for all the work, how did you balance it out? You were able to take on more classes, but you stopped your private studies. You’re pompous about what a simple life is and judgmental about everyone else who doesn’t have Holly the acolyte to make living a simple life so very easy. I’ve enabled all the worst things about you. I made you lazy.”

  “So you’re doing this for me.” He said it flatly and she could tell he wasn’t going to listen to much more.

  “No. For me. And I’m praying that in a year you’ll also be in a better place. We’ve become so stale—”

  His voice was sharp and bitter. “Because I don’t cuddle, or go down on you, or what?”

  “That’s not it —” It was, partly.

  “I never asked you to do that to me—”

  “I know. Maybe you should have.” There had been a time, she knew it, that she would have done anything to please him. But she had never thought it would, and it appeared she had been right about that. Abruptly she thought, I’m not the only one with a problem here.

  He shuddered. “We’re not animals.”

  “I can’t remember the last time you laughed,” she added softly. “I can’t remember the last time you hugged me for no reason at all. I understand if you don’t see that as a problem, but I do and I have to…” She floundered. “I need light. I need heat.”

  “And this all came to you out of the blue?”

  She had not foreseen this crossroad, and certainly not how hard it was to remain silent. She could tell him more, and be rational about it, probably. She could explain that she found his ideology contradictory, and his assumptions to be without merit on many issues.

  But she was angry now, and wanted to hammer at him that she was a human being, with a body, that he might have touched her, kissed her, told her that he loved the way her skin felt — God, anything. Any small thing that showed a moment of affection on his part. He was the one without any essential humanity.

  She was silent because she didn’t want to say any of those things. She was the one who had refused to see his flaws for eight years. The only person she could fix here was herself.

  She left the kitchen for the living room and began removing books from the shelves. When he followed her she said calmly, “I don’t want to quibble about what belongs to whom. I’m taking my books and clothes, of course. My music and the food I know you won’t eat. That’s all.” She blew dust off her Bertrand Russell texts and set them in the next box. “I can show you an accounting, if you like, of the household money. I’m not taking any of it. But I am keeping my savings account. It’s roughly equal to the extra I paid down on the mortgage, which is in your name, along with the house. You come out ahead if you count appreciation in. I just want this to be clean.”

  His voice was chilly. “Where will you be if I need to reach you?”

  “I don’t know where I’m going,” she admitted.

  “Typical of you.” From chill to acid.

  She sighed, held back the anger and said mildly, “Yes, of course, I’m wrong as usual. But in a few hours you won’t have me underfoot, needing a constant grade. I should think you’d be relieved.”

  “I was only trying to help you.”

  “To be like you, and that’s what I’m trying to tell you, Clay. I don’t want to be like you. Not anymore. I grew up, all at once.”

  “Fine.” He stalked to the kitchen.

  Holly paused in her work to write Tori’s phone number down for him. She didn’t want him calling Jo before she had a chance to tell her — Jesus, to tell her she’d been right. About everything. And thank her for caring enough to risk their friendship with truth.

  She carried the paper into the kitchen. “Leave a message for me with Tori. I’ll let her know you might have to call.”

  “Tori? I thought—” His gaze was all over her suddenly, speculative and furious. “Is that what this is really about? Because everything you’ve said so far is bullshit.”

  She turned back to the living room and he grabbed her arm. “Don’t, Clay!”

  “It’s about this dyke — she’s got you in a sweat and now you think you are one. That’s why you quit your job. There’s nothing wrong with me, you just want —”

  “Stop it!” She shook her arm free. She was blushing furiously but he wasn’t right, at least not about why she quit. “What I might want or not want from a lover has nothing to do with the fact that what I don’t want is you!”

  He thought he had her in a debate now. He surged in to take the advantage. “What will you do after her? When you no longer want to be queer?”

  “And you call yourself a liberal,” she snapped. He was towering over her now and she tried to hold back her panic; she had never seen him physically angry before. “Leave me alone!”

  “At least I’m normal!”

  She retreated, he followed. “Just leave me alone!”

  “Who would have thought that that angry, bitter woman was right about something,” he said insidiously. “She was actually right.”

  She stopped retreating. “Aunt Zinnia? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Ask her yourself.”

  She felt the blood draining out of her face. Last night, standing in the rain, she had felt there was something she hadn’t known. “Tell me,” she said intensely.

  He took his revenge by laughing. Then he had slammed into his study and though later she would smell incense, she hadn’t had to face him again, not even when she had come back for the second carload.

  So you’re holed up in a cheap motel, she told herself, going over the scene with Clay as if it will change something. Not exactly a good plan — okay, Clay was right about that. But she could not have managed another day. When dams burst, floods are inevitable.

  She didn’t look at the bedside table. Would not look. But she knew Galina’s card was there. “Call me when you’re not straight anymore,” she had said.

  Was she not straight anymore? What did that mean?

  Dinner, she had to go out to get something to eat. She was, in fact, ravenous. Yes, dinner was a diversion she badly needed.

  It was only convenience that took her to Tish’s. It was close and she wanted comfort food. She needed to call Tori, she remembered, to warn her that Clay might leave a message. There was a pay phone outside the restaurant. Yes, convenience was the only reason she was there.

  All the while she knew the truth — she was still walking the spit of land between the chasms of past and future. She even knew she was tottering toward the future at last. But she could pretend that coincidence and circumstance were at work. Even knowing that true coincidence was rare, she lied to herself, for the moment.

  The restaurant was mostly populated by women and the sight of them made her suddenly afraid. They would all think — they would all assume something she wasn’t. At least not yet. When will you be, she wondered. What’s the rite of passage? When will you not be straight anymore?

  She would get the food to go. Tish recognized her, though, and called out, “Tori, your friend’s here.”

  Tori had on an apron and bright yellow gloves. “Heya, Holly. Liked the food, didn’t you? I told you so. I’m still slaving away. It’s the cold and flu season.”

  “You’re a good dishwasher,” Tish admitted fondly.

  “For this I went to college?” She turned back to Holly. “I think I’m going to go the whole route and become an actuary. What do you think?”

  “I think that’s an exce
llent idea.”

  “Geena is behind me one hundred —” She stopped. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s just tension,” Holly said. She fumbled in her pocket for a tissue, even though she knew she didn’t have any. It was just tension. And she was here for convenience, not for the warm shoulder Tori offered as she drew her into the kitchen and away from prying eyes.

  It was a flood and her incoherent account told Tori only a little bit about why. She didn’t want Tori to know the whole truth.

  “This is all my fault,” Tori said after a while. “You fought because you quit and you quit because of me.”

  “No,” Holly mumbled. “I quit because it was the right thing to do. I didn’t know he’d be an ass about it. I didn’t expect that.” She raised her head at last from Tori’s shoulder. Tori smelled like oregano and disinfectant. There was something charming about the combination.

  “You can stay with us.” Tori’s offer was heartfelt. “Until you find a place.”

  She shook her head. “No, but thank you. It’s nice to know I have a safety net of some kind. I’m just looking for something simple and cheap until I decide what to do.”

  “Hey, I have a friend with an illegal motherin-law rental. You don’t tell the county and the rent is really reasonable. Great little cottage for one in the back yard. One big room downstairs, a complete kitchen, and a single room upstairs. I think it would suit you just fine.”

  It sounded ideal. Wary of leaping before she looked, though, Holly said, “I’d love to take a look at it.”

  “Her name’s Flo — you’ll die when you talk to her. She’s got a dreamy English accent. Gets me every time.” Tori found a pen and pencil and scribbled furiously. “Here’s her number. But I’m leaving here in about an hour. Why don’t you have a bite to eat and I’ll call her and maybe we can go see it. The previous tenant moved out this week and I don’t think she’s had time to clean and paint it, though.”