Just Yesterday

by Linda Hill

  “Just yesterday,” she finishes my thought.

  For a moment, unbidden tears nearly erupt. Swallowing hard, I keep them in check. “Exactly,” I agree. I’m feeling less alone, validated somehow. We continue to stare, smiles small, insulated from the activity around us.

  Finally I see the flash of light on the gold of her watch as she checks the time. “I have to go.” The inflection in her voice is nearly a groan.

  I nod. The spell is broken. Almost.

  I jump from the car and am around on her side before she has a chance to close the door behind her. I stand inches away, looking up at the brown eyes, and a laugh spills from my lips. She quirks an eyeŹbrow, and I point to her heels. She catches the joke and returns my laughter.

  Then she reaches out and I step into her arms. Awkwardly. Always awkwardly. But she holds me this time. Close. The length of her body full against mine. Then she is stepping back, removing herself from the embrace, her smile sad as she lifts a hand to wave.

  “Thanks for lunch,” I say.

  She bows a quick you’re welcome. “I’ll e-mail you,” she calls, and I nod.

  “Take care.” I’m waving now, watching as she turns away, her walk brisk as she clutches her purse to her side.

  I wrap my arms across my chest, shivering in the cool spring evening. Watching as she goes inside the terminal. Watching until all I can see is the top of her head among the throngs of so many others. Watching until she vanishes from sight. Again.

  Chapter 7

  I double-click on the Internet icon, impatient as the modem does its negotiating and finally logs me onto the Net. I scan my e-mail, and know I’m smiling as I click on the message from GSULLY731 and read Grace’s message.

  Liz —

  Thanks for joining me yesterday for lunch. I enjoy your company.

  I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but they say honesty is the best policy, right? I hadn’t expected us to dredge up our past, and I’m sorry that I reacted the way I did. So much happened back then, things I can’t really explain, or even understand anymore. But there were moments yesterday, sitting there with you, that were so familiar to me. And in the car, it would have been so easy to lean over and kiss you, just like before. All those years ago.

  On the plane, I thought about everything that happened. I think I buried so much back then. I took real, genuine feelings and purposely twisted them into something negative to make it easier for me to let go. I am so, so sorry for that now. I did love you, Liz. Honestly, I did.

  I know it’s inappropriate for me to say these things to you. But you seemed so confused about what had happened that I thought you deserved an explanation of sorts. I was pretty messed up back then. I’m sorry. And regret, after all these years, that I hurt you. I don’t think I ever thought I had the power to hurt you then. I’m sorry.

  Anyway, please don’t read into what I’m writing. I’m just having a weak moment. (Not something I admit to easily.) We can pretend I never sent this e-mail, okay?

  — Grace

  p.s.

  Picked up City Magazine at the airport. Impressive stuff, my dear. You’ve come a long way from those

  pictures you used to take of the old dilapidated farmhouses. Remember those?

  I read the message three times before I believe that she’s actually written the words. I stare and stare, waiting for my reaction, an emotion of some sort, and find that I’m stuck between elation and sadness, carefully not feeling a thing. Her words are too unexpected. Maybe too late. Maybe I don’t believe them.

  I agonize over how to reply for a good twenty minutes before giving up and typing.

  Grace —

  I was never very good at pretending, but promise I won’t hold your confession against you. In fact, I’ll even admit that I felt it too, in the car. I’ll admit that it isn’t easy to see you, and spend time with you, without thinking of the past and wondering why we didn’t work out. For the life of me, I don’t understand it, and probably never will. But it was good to see you. Really. Thanks for the afternoon.

  — Liz

  p.s.

  I love my dilapidated farmhouse photographs. (Please note that they’re referred to as photographs, and not pictures, now that I’m a professional.)

  I hope I’ve ended the message with just the right touch of humor, and quickly send the e-mail before I can second-guess myself again.

  I spend the rest of the day running errands, talking to Kelly Wagner, comparing schedules, and finally agreeing on the first city of our tour. San Francisco. We decide to drive up the coast together in two weeks.

  Throughout the day, whenever I catch my mind slipping to Grace’s e-mail, I push the thought away. Focus. Her words replay in my mind, and I try my hardest to give them no meaning. But I can’t help the way my heart sings, or the smile that hovers on my lips. She felt something. Unbelievable. Maybe inconsequential. But after all this time, Grace still felt something. I wasn’t alone.

  That evening, as Joanna and I prepare dinner toŹgether, my mind continues to be preoccupied, drifting toward Grace.

  When the phone rings during dinner, I nearly jump out of my seat. “Let the machine pick it up,” I say, even though I am itching to pick it up. Just in case.

  Joanna ignores my suggestion and brings the receiver to her ear.

  “Hello?” Her brows pull together as she listens. “Sure. Hold on just a second.” She holds the receiver toward me and I take it, wondering if it really could be Grace after all.

  “Hello?”

  “Elizabeth? It’s Mona Kaplan.”

  “Mrs. Kaplan.” I hope the disappointment doesn’t show in my voice. “I’m so glad you called. I’ve been thinking about calling you all week. How’s Connie doing? Any change?”

  There is a long, drawn-out silence on the other end of the line. “She never woke up, Lizzy. The funeral’s on Thursday.”

  I can feel the top of my head blowing off as a whooshing sound explodes in my ears. I can’t breathe. “No. Oh, god.” I know I’m talking, but am not sure how. “Oh, god.” I’m doubling over now, my heart having slid down into my stomach.

  The rest of the conversation is a blur. I know I say I’ll be there. That I’ll be on the first available flight. I try to find words of comfort before hanging up the phone, but have no idea what I’ve just said.

  Joanna is taking the receiver from my grasp, wrapping her arms around me as I struggle to pull air into my lungs. “Fuck.”

  “Oh, honey.” Joanna’s voice above the roar in my ears. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Fuck.”

  I curl up into the safety of Joanna’s embrace, letting her hold me and rock me and tell me that everything will be okay.

  Chapter 8

  The bruises have disappeared from Connie’s face. She is still swollen and puffy, but she’s more recognizable to me now than she was three weeks earlier. When she was in the hospital. When she was still alive.

  Maybe it’s the makeup. Maybe they’ve covered up the bruises. I am morbidly curious but find that I can’t look at her for more than an instant at a time. My eyes dart to her forehead, noting that they’ve managed to cover the missing patch on the top of her head. And her hair, it’s back to its white-blond color. All traces of blood have been washed away.

  I’ve watched Connie sleeping literally hundreds of times in the past. But I still think she looks odd without her glasses. Doesn’t anybody else notice? Shouldn’t she be wearing her glasses? I know that I’m being irrational. I know that it doesn’t matter whether or not she’s wearing her glasses. I know that she’ll never open her eyes again. But I must find something to focus on. Something to occupy my mind so that I don’t have to think anymore about death.

  Wendy joins me beside the casket, and my eyes slide to meet hers. Red-rimmed. Her eyes are puffy, and no amount of makeup will hide this fact. She is no longer the proud, stoic woman I met three weeks ago. She is broken. Lost. I already spoke with her earlier in the evening, so I don’t speak now
. Instead I conjure up a tiny smile, incline my head, and turn to leave her alone with her lover.

  I look down at the carpet as I walk down the aisle to the back of the room and find an empty chair. From where I sit, I can see the back of everyŹone’s head as they bow and pray and wipe their eyes and grieve. This is the second time in two days that I have been to the funeral home and am almost past the initial shock of Connie’s death.

  Now I find myself observing. Observing the oddities and idiosyncrasies of individual behavior that occur only under circumstances such as these. My own behavior, I must admit, included.

  I have spoken with Connie’s mother, to Charlene, and to Wendy. I have seen and spoken with so many friends from the past that my mind and voice are exhausted. I’m overwhelmed but numb. Going through the motions. Watching the events that surround me as if I’m not really here.

  Tomorrow is the funeral. Finally. I don’t think I can possibly take any more. Joanna says that what I’m experiencing is a normal reaction, but I’m not so sure. I’ve gone from feeling the gut-wrenching, soul-searing pain when I first got the news, to intense emptiness and regret, to my current state of cold, detached emptiness.

  A loud sob reaches my ears from the front of the room. Wendy is crumbling now, and a small pain pierces my heart. Hyperventilation is threatening, so I step through the curtained doorway to my right and head for the lobby and the door that allows my escape. The spring air is brisk, and I breathe it in deeply, relishing it. Embracing it.

  When I arrive back at my hotel, the thought of being alone in my room sends me straight to the hotel bar. It’s nearly empty, so I prop myself up on a bar stool and order a gin and tonic.

  Before the bartender can pour the drink, I feel a presence beside me. I know without looking that it is Grace.

  “Hi.” She greets me quietly, her voice caressing the syllable. “Are you still mad at me?”

  I haven’t looked at her yet, am afraid to, actually. So I wait until the bartender returns with my drink. Wait until he recognizes and greets her. Wait while he gushes on and on and asks what it is he can get her.

  “A glass of cabernet, please,” is her reply. He scampers to pour a glass, filling it far too full, and places it on the bar in front of her.

  “On the house,” he winks. I know he wants to chat, so I muster up what I hope is a most withering look and throw it his way. Grace remains a virtue of charm.

  The bartender gets my hint and reluctantly slithers away. Grace picks up her glass and lifts it to her lips as she repeats the words she’d spoken earlier for my ears only.

  “Are you still mad at me?”

  I steel myself against her, against feeling anything, and risk a glance at her eyes. I’m completely disŹarmed.

  She is referring to a brief conversation we’d shared two days earlier, when I’d called to let her know about Connie. I had told her that the funeral was Thursday morning and asked if she’d like to go with me. Her response had been a cross between a guffaw and a chortle. “I’m not going to the funeral,” she stated simply, as if it were the most ridiculous suggestion she’d ever heard.

  I was appalled, and during the next minute or so, I gleaned that she was somehow afraid that she would be outed if she showed up at Connie’s funeral. She was a high-profile public figure, she explained, and how would it look if she attended the funeral of some lesbian who’d died on her way to the Women’s Music Festival. I told her that I personally didn’t give a shit what it would look like, to which she replied that it must be very easy for me to fly in on my shiny white horse, be the concerned and grieving ex-lover, and then blow out of town again. She, on the other hand, had to stay.

  I’d hung up the phone feeling more shaken than when I’d first called her. I damned her silently and wondered how she could possibly be so callous.

  Now I choose not to answer her question, but to pose one of my own. “How did you find me?”

  “I know a lot of people in high places,” she smiles. But when it becomes clear that I’m not in a jovial mood, her smile fades and her face becomes clear and earnest. “I followed you.”

  It takes me a moment to understand. “From the funeral home?” I’m incredulous.

  She is nodding, unashamed. “Look,” she begins. “You hung up the other day without giving me a chance to explain.” She pauses briefly, all traces of her smile vanishing as her eyes pierce mine. “I don’t mean to sound cruel, Liz. But I barely knew Connie. She was your lover. She was part of your life, not mine. I met her just one night. Other than that, the only way she ever touched my life was in a negative way, through you. So if I can feel any pain right now it’s over your loss. Not mine.”

  I take a moment to digest her words and know that she is right, no matter how difficult the honesty is to hear. Her eyes are searching mine, becoming wary. “I know I made it sound like I was only worried about being outed the other day. But that really isn’t the issue for me here. I’ve made no attempt to hide the fact that I’m gay. I was just using that as an excuse the other day. The truth is that I’m just not comfortable with going to the funeral, okay? Please just respect that.”

  Part of me understands. Part of me doesn’t.

  Grace continues to stare at me another moment, misinterpreting my lack of response before averting her gaze and reaching for her wine. “Christ,” she mutters. “I barely even recognized her.”

  Confused, I raise a brow. “You saw her?”

  “Yesterday morning,” she tells me quietly, her eyes focusing somewhere behind the bar. “I was there briefly.”

  “At the funeral home?”

  She is rolling her eyes in my direction, and I can tell that she knows I don’t believe her. She tosses back the rest of her wine and turns back to face me, her lips a tight, straight line. “Look,” she begins brusquely. “We can’t talk here. Can we go up to your room?”

  “Sure.” I slide from the bar stool and lead the way to the elevators, wishing with every step that I could shake the fog that surrounds me.

  Chapter 9

  “You’re right,” I tell her, finding a lame smile. We are in my hotel room. While Grace has settled down in the only comfortable lounging chair, I’ve dropped down without ceremony onto the bed. “Sometimes the past gets jumbled in my mind. I forget that you two didn’t really know each other.” I can feel the crease growing between my brows.

  “It’s funny. You two are so interconnected in my past,” I muse, lifting a finger to smooth the crease. “Sometimes I don’t know what was real and what wasn’t.”

  Grace is watching me, her face softening.

  “I mean, clearly what was real for me wasn’t necessarily real for you. We both remember it so differently.”

  She grins a little, eyes dancing. “You mean like how you keep insisting that I broke your heart when you know it was really you who broke mine?” Her smile is crooked, and I am suddenly reminded of who she is, what she has been to me, and the impossibility that we are here together. After all these years.

  I return her smile, although her statement is less than amusing and only adds to my sadness. “SomeŹthing like that,” I tell her. “For so long now, I’ve thought that you and Connie had this long, pasŹsionate affair.”

  “She didn’t tell you the truth?” Grace’s frown reappeared.

  “I don’t think I ever let her.” I could still remember the phone conversation. When Connie had blurted out the words I slept with Grace, the teleŹphone had literally slipped from my hands and fallen to the floor. My lungs had filled with a sudden, leaden weight as glittering spots erupted behind my eyes.

  “I don’t want to hear another word,” I had said when I was able. “I can’t fucking believe you’re telling me this, Connie,” I’d spat.

  “I thought you should know.”

  “I don’t want to know anything about you and Grace fucking,” I screamed. “How could you do this to me? Why are you telling me this?” I was blind with seething. “To gloat? Is that it?”

>   “Of course not, Liz. I —”

  “No more,” I interrupted. “I don’t want to hear any more.”

  Before she could utter another word, I slammed the receiver onto its cradle and sank to the floor, fighting the nausea that overtook me.

  It was several weeks before Connie and I spoke again. Our relationship became strained and distant from that moment on. And she never mentioned Grace’s name again.

  I recount the story briefly to Grace now, leaving out the part about how much it had devastated me.

  She is leaning forward, eyes narrowing as her elbows come to rest above the knees of her jeans. “You have to let go of all of that, Liz. You can’t keep feeling guilty for things that happened over ten years ago.”

  “I know that,” I tell her. “I just need to sort it out.”

  She shakes her head. “You think too much.”

  I’m not sure if she is kidding or not. “I know that, too.” My smile is satiric, until an image of Connie’s face, amid the soft pink pillows of the casket she now lies in, comes quickly to mind. Tears threaten to spring. “I just wish I’d known. I’ve blamed her all this time.” I wince, mentally kicking myself.

  Grace moves forward, moving from chair to bed in a single movement. “Hey.” Her voice holds that quiet sweetness that jars my memories. She lays a casual hand on my outstretched leg. “Stop doing this to yourself. Let it go.”

  I hear her words, but they don’t register. All I see is Grace’s unsmiling face, dark eyes intent on mine. She is trying to comfort me, and I’m struck by this fact. I realize in that moment that she is the only lover from my past that has not made the transition to friend. I’ve only been comforted by Grace the lover, never as Grace the ex-lover. I don’t know how to take it, how to react. But I know as I look at her that we will never be friends.

  I continue to stare, my mind thrown back in time to that first year. Before she’d grown up. Before cynicism had crept into her voice and into her heart. Before her eyes had grown scornful. Before her laugh had grown mocking. Before her wit had become cutting. She had comforted me often then. In the sweet adoring way that was so exclusively hers.