Beatrice padded into the kitchen, crept up behind Abby at the stove, and wrapped her arms around her stomach with a squeeze.
“Good morning.” Abby twisted to give Beatrice a peck on the lips and then popped a strawberry into her mouth.
“You spoil me,” Beatrice said, chewing.
“I love spoiling you.” She placed Beatrice’s plate of pancakes smothered in fresh strawberries on the table.
Beatrice smiled and sat, deciding to approach the touchy subject that always made Abby squirm after Abby had started on her second cup of coffee. “These strawberries are so sweet,” she said with a smile to match the berries.
“I’m glad you’re enjoying them,” Abby said. “Should we take the rest to your mother’s for shortcake?”
“I’m sure she’ll have dessert, but sure, we can.” Beatrice sipped her coffee, watching Abby cut a piece of sausage with her fork while scanning the Lifestyles section of the newspaper.
After a few minutes, Abby looked up. “What’s going on, Bea?”
“Why do you assume something’s going on?”
“I can feel you staring at me.”
“Maybe I’m admiring your beauty.”
“Okay.” Abby grinned knowingly and sipped her coffee. “Does this have anything to do with visiting your mother today?”
“No.” Beatrice casually swirled a triangle of pancake around in a pool of syrup before eating it. “But as long as we’re on awkward subjects.”
“I knew it. What is it?”
“I was just wondering how much longer you want to pay someone else’s rent.”
Abby crunched the paper down into her lap. “Unless you’ve inherited a building from a long-lost uncle, I don’t see how we can avoid paying someone to live somewhere.”
“You know that’s not what I’m talking about, Abby. Doesn’t it make more sense to pay a mortgage company for something in our names?”
“You know, along with the mortgage in our names comes all the responsibility of keeping it up, too—mowing the lawn, broken pipes, leaky roof. Here, if something goes wrong, we just call the super.”
“But it’s not our place, Abby. You lived here with Janice a long time before I moved in.”
Abby’s expression relaxed. “Oh, well, if that’s what’s bothering you, we’ll find another apartment. We don’t have to stay here. That’s another good thing about not owning. We can pack up and go whenever the place no longer suits us.”
“I don’t want to keep packing up and going. If we buy the right place, we won’t have to worry about it not suiting us. I want a garden, a place to have friends over for barbecues, a place we can call ours.”
“Like your brother and Gwen?” Abby got up to refill her coffee cup. “Now look, Bea, we’re not them, far from it, so I wouldn’t go getting carried away in some Ozzy and Harriet daydream.”
“Daydream? Abby, we’re a couple, aren’t we?”
“Sure, we’re a couple. We don’t need to own something together to make it real. It is real.”
Beatrice studied her. “If I didn’t know any better, I might think all this opposition to a house was part of a ruse to hide your fear of commitment.”
Abby’s mouth hung open for a moment. “What?”
“Maybe you like the idea of being able to pack up and move on from me if the notion strikes you. Nice and easy, a clean break.”
Abby took her plate to the sink and leaned against the counter. “How could you say that? These last three years have been the happiest of my life. I’ve never been more content with anyone. As far as I’m concerned, this is ever after.”
“Me too, baby.” Beatrice approached her and threw her arms around Abby’s neck. “That’s why I don’t see why we can’t have what other couples have. We both have good jobs. We can afford a mortgage.”
“Sure, we can afford a mortgage, but who’s going to hand one over to two women? What are we supposed to tell the realtor is the reason why we’re buying a house together?”
Beatrice released her grip and countered her, leaning against the stove.
“First of all, we may have to search around, but we will find a bank that’ll give us a mortgage. Secondly, who cares about what the realtor thinks? All he needs to know is that we qualify and that he’s getting his commission.”
“What world do you live in that says homosexuals can just go about life doing everything that normal couples do?”
“What world do you live in that says we can’t?”
Abby flung her arms out dramatically. “Uh, this one.”
“Oh, right.” Beatrice glared at her. “Boy, has your tune changed since you gave me that pep talk back in New Haven. ‘There’s nothing wrong with us, Bea. We’re not the freaks everyone thinks we are.’ Oh, really, Abby? I guess that was a nice speech so long as you were hiding out in an underground bar.”
Abby ran her hands through her messy hair. “I don’t know what to do with you, Bea. Do you realize once everyone knows we bought a house together, our secret will be out. What excuse can we possibly give then?”
“Maybe I’m tired of making excuses.”
“Well, go ahead then, drop a bomb on everyone we know, and see who’s still standing by us when the smoke clears.”
“Our gay friends will be. So will anyone else who matters.”
“Oh, good. Hopefully they’ll be the ones who’ll put us up, because when we both get fired from our jobs, the whole mortgage debate will be a moot point. Is that what you want?”
“No, Abby, that’s not what I want. I want what everyone else wants.”
After a long silence, Abby shook her head. “We’ll have to talk about this later. I have to get in the shower, or we’ll never make it to your mother’s on time.
*
Beatrice tightened her grip on the steering wheel as she and Abby drove on Interstate 95 toward New Haven. A preoccupation with the untold horrors that might arise during dinner with her mother had temporarily eclipsed her desire to further campaign for a house in the suburbs. She stared straight ahead squinting in the glare of an unmerciful afternoon sun. Abby leaned over and flipped down the visor for her.
“Thanks,” Beatrice said, ending the stretch of uncomfortable silence.
“Sure.”
“I really tried to come up with an excuse to get out of this visit. But I’ve used up all the plausible ones.”
Abby smirked and patted Beatrice’s knee. “I know you did. I also know you’re sick of making excuses. That’s why I don’t know why you insisted on bringing me.”
“It’s important to me that we don’t live separate lives.”
“It’s dinner with your mother,” Abby said. “It wouldn’t be a big deal to leave me home if having me come along is going to make us both nervous wrecks.”
“I wanted you to come,” she said in a whisper, and grasped Abby’s hand. “Abby, I want to tell her about us. I think it’s the right time.”
Abby withdrew her hand like she’d unwittingly stuck it into a viper’s nest. “Oh, Bea, not this again.”
Beatrice dug her fingers into the hot steering wheel.
“Abby, she should know. You’re as important to me as Gwen is to Quentin. Frankly, I’ve had it with all the deception.”
“That’s a lovely thought, dear, but she’ll never accept me like she does Gwen because she’ll never view us as a couple like them. In this society, a couple consists of a man and a woman. Two women are just close friends, even if they are screwing each other.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“My God, you can’t be that naive.”
“It’s a matter of principle. You’re my family, like Gwen is Quentin’s.”
“You’re taking a huge risk to stand on principle.”
“What exactly am I risking? The warm, affectionate relationship she and I’ve always shared?”
“Sarcasm noted, Bea. This is what I don’t understand about you. Your relationship with her is already strained. Why would yo
u want to reveal something that’ll only widen the chasm?”
“She’s my mother. She should know who I really am. Besides, this business of always having to make up lies is degrading. I feel like a naughty child.”
“Can’t you have this conversation over the phone, when I’m not around?”
“Oh, I see what’s going on here. You don’t want to be caught in the crossfire. I thought I could always count on you to stand by me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Bea. Of course you can, but sometimes you can’t tell the difference between a battle worth fighting and a lost cause. You seem to have forgotten I’ve already been through one of these horrid family confessionals. It was a disaster.”
“But—”
Abby gently pinched her lips shut. “Look, I used to think honesty was the best policy, too, until I learned that most people don’t want honesty. They want to preserve the delusions they’ve created for themselves in their own little insulated worlds. When you mess with that, Bea, that’s when the problems start.”
“I’m twenty-six years old, Abby. I shouldn’t be sneaking around anymore, afraid I’ll be caught doing something wrong, feeling guilty just for being me. I don’t like how it feels. I’d rather take what comes with being true to myself.”
“I’m thirty-nine years old, Bea—too old to be undermined by people’s ignorance or scorned by someone’s mother because I’m not the lawyer husband she always dreamed of for her daughter. I don’t need it, and after my own family fiasco, I decided I wouldn’t take it anymore.”
“Someone’s mother?”
“Oh, Bea, you know what I mean.”
“I feel like you’re not even trying to understand where I’m coming from.”
“How can you possibly say that? I know exactly where you’re coming from. I was there myself fifteen years ago. I used to be idealistic, too, but it’s amazing how fast your father telling you you’re dead to him can wipe the luster right off that idealism. Don’t you remember the story?”
Beatrice was quiet for a moment.
As Abby continued, her face became an unfamiliar sculpture of stone. “When my father found out about me, he said, ‘Get out of my house, you sick bitch. You disgust me.’ When I tried to walk toward my mother, tears streaming down my cheeks, he slapped me across my face, pulled me by the arm, and literally pushed me out the door, the back door so the neighbors on the street wouldn’t see the ugliness of our family’s dirty laundry.” Her eyes pooled as she recounted the haunting scene. “I felt so dirty, so ashamed. After I finally stopped bawling, I swore to myself that I’d never let anyone make me feel like that again. Personally, I don’t think anything’s worth serving yourself up for that kind of judgment.”
“I still can’t believe he actually said that to you and meant it. How could any father say something so awful to one of his children? I know my father never would.”
“You think he wouldn’t, like I used to. But then my parents thought they knew me until I revealed this dark, sinister side of myself. It changes the game. You become a stranger to them, and suddenly disowning you isn’t so far-fetched.”
“There’s nothing dark or sinister about either one of us.”
“Preaching to the choir, doll.” Abby shrugged. “My father has two other daughters who are carbon copies of my mother. He could afford to toss one of us into the ash heap.”
Beatrice drifted back to being six years old, watching her father yank Quentin’s arm when he shoved her down on the wet lawn after a summer downpour. Quentin had run crying to their mother, sparking a bonfire of anger in the kitchen between her parents.
“Even if my father had ten daughters, he never would’ve felt that way.”
“Look, if you’re hell-bent on going through with this, you better prepare yourself for the same reaction from your mother. She sounds as self-righteous as my father.”
Beatrice shook her head in resignation as she negotiated the exit ramp into downtown New Haven. “Does this mean I have your support today?”
“Well, there isn’t a lot I can do about it now that we’re a few blocks away, is there?”
Beatrice smiled in spite of herself. “I’m not just doing this for me, you know. It’s for us and for my three-year-old niece, whom I’ve seen only twice since she was born. I want her to know the real me.”
Abby nodded impatiently. “That’s great, Joan of Arc. You know, I can only carry so many buckets of water.”
“Every movement requires its martyrs.” She reached over and tickled Abby’s stomach.
“Can we please discuss something else?”
“Like what, the cocktail menu for Ricky’s party next week?”
Abby beamed. “Now you’re talking.”
Beatrice groaned.
“Oh, Bea,” Abby said, squeezing her knee, “you take life too seriously.”
“You don’t take it seriously enough.”
“What’s more important than having fun and enjoying life?”
“Living an authentic life.”
“I happen to think it’s pretty darn authentic finding happiness in a world custom-designed for your misery.”
“Not if you’re finding it by pretending to be something you’re not.”
“Now you’re splitting hairs.” Abby rolled her eyes.
“I’ve decided I’ll tell her after dinner but before dessert,” Beatrice said, nodding her resolve. “Seems like an appropriate time for something of this nature.”
Abby grabbed Beatrice’s hand and squeezed. “You’re a dreamer, Bea, a hopeless dreamer. I think I love that about you.”
Beatrice smiled. “A perfect match for your incurable pessimism.”
“I think so, too.”
Abby was about to lean over and kiss her on the cheek but stopped when a flood of pedestrian traffic flowed into the intersection.
Chapter Fourteen
After dinner, Beatrice and Abby exchanged tentative smiles once Mrs. Darby had gone into the kitchen to prepare dessert. Beatrice even risked a playful tickle on the nape of Abby’s neck as she gathered the glasses and crumpled napkins her mother left behind.
“My lip finally stopped twitching,” she whispered. “How are you doing?”
“Not bad, but let’s hold off on the celebration till the Packard hits the pavement,” Abby replied in a whisper. “Does your mother have Bromo-Seltzer? Anxiety is bad for the digestion.”
“Welcome to dinner at the Darbys’.”
In the kitchen, Mrs. Darby stood at the sink filling the coffee percolator with water. She seemed shorter to Beatrice, a little wider and a lot grayer. She was only in her mid-fifties, but her perpetually distressed face created the illusion that she was older. How bitterness had its way of strangling youth and beauty like a weed. Beatrice scrubbed the dishes with a soapy rag, knowing her effort would inevitably fall short, and her mother would rewash them later. It was merely a stall tactic anyway.
“What do you think of Abby?” she inquired without turning around.
“Nice girl. Pleasant mannered,” her mother replied.
Beatrice stared at her mother’s back as she spooned coffee into the percolator basket. “That’s it? Pleasant mannered?”
“What else shall I say about her? It’s not like you’ve introduced me to my future son-in-law.”
By now, Beatrice could almost recite her mother’s responses in unison with her. “Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you yet again.”
“It’s all right. I’m getting used to it.” Her mother added in a whisper, “But I’ll tell you one thing. Spending all your time with your friend out there isn’t going to help your cause any.”
Beatrice reached for another pot and a scouring pad so her mother wouldn’t see her teeth gnashing. Although she was moments away from enlightening her once and for all, she couldn’t suppress the urge to strike back.
“You’re contradicting yourself, Mom. First you tell me I shouldn’t settle for any old boy who proposes to me, and now you’re sugge
sting I better get on the ball because time’s running out. Which is it?”
“Oh, Beatrice, you’re exasperating sometimes. I can’t for the life of me understand why you broke it off with that handsome salesman, James. What a catch.”
Beatrice recalled with dejection how she’d used Ricky’s boyfriend, James, as a beard at last year’s family picnic, an obligation she’d fulfilled only two months ago by posing as his date for his sister’s dreary wedding.
“I told you why I had to dump him. He fooled around on me.”
“Oh, they all do that before they get married. He’s a young man. You’re lucky if you get one who’s sown his wild oats before he marries you instead of after.”
“Sowing his oats. What a charming euphemism for cheating.”
“Your problem, Beatrice, is that you’re unreasonably picky. If you’re waiting for some knight on a white horse to knock on your door and sweep you away like they do in the movies, I can save you the trouble. He doesn’t exist.”
Beatrice took a deep breath and stepped out on the ledge. “Um, about that, Mom, look, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”
“Bea, don’t bother drying those.” Her mother plucked the plate and dish towel out of her hands. “I’ll have to rinse them again myself.”
“Mom, did you hear me? I need to talk to you about something. It’s important.”
“Of course, dear, but let’s get the table set for dessert first.”
Beatrice rubbed her palms on her pants as a film of sweat blanketed her body. “All right, then. Do you want me to take out the apple cobbler?”
“Yes, please. I’ll bring out the coffee in a minute. Oh, by the way, I have a little surprise for you.”
Beatrice stopped short, nearly smashing the plate of cobbler into the swinging door. “Don’t tell me Mrs. Keebler’s bringing over her club-footed son, Warren.”
“Honestly, Bea. Warren is a gentleman and very smart. But no, that’s not the surprise.”
Beatrice pushed through the door and grumbled, “Forget Bromo-Seltzer. I need a Valium.”
Before Abby could react, the doorbell rang. Quentin walked in holding three-year-old Joanne in a flowery pinafore, followed by a very pregnant Gwen, her skin more peachy and radiant than ever. The air in the room stopped moving as Gwen and Beatrice noticed each other.
The Revelation of Beatrice Darby Page 19
