Souvenir of Cold Springs

by Kitty Burns Florey

“Well, that’s something,” he said, sighing, and she knew he thought she meant she was sorry she wasn’t like other women. He picked up his suitcase and moved toward the door.

  “You are an ass,” she said.

  He left, closing the door gently. She moved from window to window, watching him. He walked briskly and purposefully, like a Fuller Brush man with a case full of samples, aware she was watching. He went down the front walk to the sidewalk, down the sidewalk to the driveway, down the driveway to the garage, into the garage by the side door that led upstairs. She saw the light in his studio go on. She imagined him methodically taking his stuff out of his suitcase. Summer pajamas, clean undies, shaving kit, library books. What would he do next? Turn on the radio and listen to Evening Concert Hall. Read his book on hermit crabs. Work on the surgeon’s wife. Tuck himself into his little cot early. Then what? Cry himself to sleep? Masturbate, taking pride in his wholesome heterosexuality?

  She remembered the fights he used to have with Caroline during the troubled year she had lived with them before she died. She had been, as Jamie put it, active until the end: he meant sexually active, of course. When she moved in she brought her big antique double bed with her—she hadn’t wanted to sleep in the bed Mother and then Dad had died in—and there was always one of her men around, lounging in front of the TV, joining them for breakfast, sitting on the porch while Caroline posed against the railing—still gorgeous and sexy in her fifties. “I don’t know what’s come over me, Nell,” she said once. “I never liked sex when I was younger. Back in my crazy prudish religious days. Now I can’t seem to get enough.”

  Nell didn’t mind. She had met Thea, and everything enchanted her—other people’s love lives, especially. Even Caroline, whom she decided she had spent too many years disliking. But Jamie was in a state of perpetual agitation.

  “She’s promiscuous,” he said to Nell. “She doesn’t care who she brings home.”

  “How do you know?” Nell countered, thinking whom. “Maybe she cares a lot, maybe she’s madly in love with all of them.”

  She liked Caroline’s men. They were more fun than Stewart, Caroline’s husband, had been. They were friendly and talkative, and they did things around the house—took down the screens, raked the leaves. More than Jamie did. And Nell liked their predictable, comfortable wit, based on insults and things they heard on TV. They always had the latest jokes, the one about Nixon, Mayor Daley, and Pope Paul in a lifeboat: it still made her laugh.

  But Jamie hated every minute of her stay. “Slut,” he finally called her, and she laughed at him. That was when he put the cot in the loft. It was also around that time that he stopped painting his beautiful, enigmatic abstractions and began doing portraits and making money.

  When Caro died—suddenly, swiftly, of a heart attack—Jamie had told Nell he couldn’t help it, he couldn’t grieve, he was glad she was gone, and for a while Nell had hated him for those words.

  As she watched, his light went out. After a minute she saw him leave by the side door. The old Chevy was in the driveway. He backed it out and drove down toward Wadsworth Street, the muffler growling. She stood in the front door watching the blinking red lights until they were out of sight, and then she stood there a while longer. Dinah came to rub against her legs. It was a soft spring evening. She could smell lilacs, earth, mown grass. She raised her arms above her head, clasped her hands and stretched. Then she picked up the cat and went inside to phone Thea.

  Nell was fifteen when her sister Peggy froze to death on the ice in 1938. Peggy had been her best friend, the only person on earth she loved without reservation. When Peggy came home from California early in December, she and Nell went Christmas shopping together. They had bought Mother a pair of slippers, Dad a scarf, Jamie the drawing pen he’d been wanting. There was so much she could still remember perfectly—the pen nesting in its box against purple velvet, the soft pink slippers. What did they get Caroline and John? That was gone. But they had stopped at Wells and Coverly for the scarf, and Peggy knew the clerk, some girl she’d gone to high school with. Louise something? Lorraine? Afterward, they had cocoa at Scrafft’s—cocoa with marshmallow—and Peggy told Nell all about San Francisco: the Golden Gate Bridge that was lit up at night like a necklace, the hilly streets of the city, the cable cars, the weird Chinese food. Aunt Alice had a cleaning lady. Uncle Ralph had a wine cellar. They had been good to her, taken her everywhere. Peggy made it sound like paradise, every minute an adventure, everything fun. She had loved California, but missed snow. It never snowed in San Francisco! When they told her that, she couldn’t wait to get home.

  When she died, a cold black hole opened up in Nell that wasn’t filled until 1950, that first summer in England. No: not really filled until she met Thea, ten years ago in March.

  Still, after more than forty years, she missed her sister. The night Jamie left, she lay in bed sleepless, back to back with Thea, remembering Peggy. How her first reaction had been a feeling of betrayal: the unfairness of it all, that Peggy should come home only to die like that, just when Nell was finally old enough to be treated like an equal, when they went shopping together, talked late at night while Caroline was out somewhere, made plans for the summer when they would both be helping Dad at the store, how they would have lunch together, trade clothes, do each other’s hair …

  She never got over it. Time never made it any easier to bear. She had been cheated, robbed, betrayed. She had missed out. She could never explain the particular fascination Peggy held for her. Peggy, who wasn’t pretty—not like Caroline—Peggy with her skinny legs and thick ankles, a long nose like Jamie’s, and wispy hair that wouldn’t stay put. And who was flighty, everyone said. They had always said it. Peggy was flighty the way John was a wise guy, Caroline was a beauty, Nell was smart, Jamie was artistic. What they meant was that you never knew what she would say or wear or laugh at. And then she decided college was boring, said she wanted to go to work and make some money. But first she wanted to see the world. So she took the train to California, and Aunt Alice and Uncle Ralph liked her so much they made her stay for three months.

  But she came home for the snow. And she and Nell became friends, more friends than sisters, united against Caroline. And then Peggy went ice fishing with Caro’s fiancé and froze to death in the middle of the lake, wearing her black coat with the frog closings and two pairs of black wool stockings and her red boots with the red-dyed fur around the tops and a striped stocking cap and a blue enameled ring no one had ever seen before. If she hadn’t died, everyone would have said that was just like Peggy to go off with somebody else’s boyfriend, to do something crazy like ice fishing when a blizzard was predicted. What a narrow escape, out there in the middle of it, she could have frozen to death. That girl has always been a strange one.

  As it was, they all said how terrible it was, what a tragedy, poor Peggy, poor Ray, poor Mother and Dad, poor dear Caroline, poor young Jamie. When it was Nell who was really poor, Nell who had nothing.

  She breathed deeply, adjusted herself against Thea. They wore their matching nightgowns: blue for Nell, pink for Thea. How silly they were. She smiled in the dark and reached for a tissue to dry her eyes. They didn’t often get a chance to sleep together. She had been so discreet all those years! And partly, at least, for Jamie, that twerp. She blew her nose softly, but Thea heard her and turned over, hugged her around the waist and snuggled her chin into her shoulder.

  “What’s wrong, ducky?”

  “That damned Jamie.”

  “Shh. Never mind.” Thea yawned, her warm breath on Nell’s neck. “He’s a fool.”

  “I know he’s a fool. But imagine how many people think like that. What a horrible world it is, Thea,” she said.

  “Ssh. No. No, it isn’t, Nellie. No.” Thea put her lips against Nell’s neck and tightened her arm around her waist. With her other hand she lifted Nell’s blue nightgown. “Not so horrible,” she said. “Is it, my little Nell?”

  In the morning they had their spe
cial breakfast. Cantaloupe. Whole wheat scones. The raspberry jam they made last summer. Poached eggs. Orange juice. Prince of Wales tea in the pot Nell bought in England. They sat in their bathrobes, eating and listening to the public radio station.

  “He’s so rigid, Thea. So intolerant.”

  “Maybe he’ll change,” Thea said. “Maybe this will be good for him. The truth can’t do any harm.”

  “Jamie’s not like other people,” Nell said. “His reactions are not normal reactions.”

  “Maybe you don’t give him enough credit.”

  Nell, lying awake after Thea went to sleep, had heard his car pull in at two o’clock. She would give a lot to know where he had been so late on a Saturday night. Jamie! Who spent his Saturday nights reading. But she would never ask.

  She sighed and said to Thea, “Let’s go to England again.”

  “When? This summer? Can I afford it?”

  “You could if you economized, Thea.”

  Thea was impossible; she loved to shop, loved clothes. She was tall and slightly stout, and she favored long caftans, bold jewelry, gold sandals, bright scarves tied around her gray-blond hair.

  “Is it worth it?” she asked.

  “England’s always worth it,” Nell said. “Aging lesbians are a dime a dozen over there.”

  After all this time, the actual word still made them laugh. “But it’s not as if we can walk hand in hand into a tea shop,” Thea said.

  “Maybe certain tea shops.”

  “But how will we know which ones? There should be some kind of newsletter.”

  “Or they should post a sign in the window. Lesbians welcome. Like the signs about dogs.”

  They were still laughing when Jamie walked in. “Whoops,” Thea said.

  “Good morning,” said Jamie. He went over to the stove and turned on the kettle. He didn’t smile and he kept his head unnaturally high.

  “There’s tea,” Nell said.

  “I think I’ll just make coffee, thanks.”

  “Yes, you’d better. We might have put opium or something in the tea.”

  He threw down the coffee spoon with a clatter, turned, and went out the door, his mouth pursed up like a raisin. The door slammed behind him.

  A Bach cantata came on the radio into the silence. They sat listening, then Thea said, “You shouldn’t have, Nell. He was trying to be civil, I think.” She got up to turn off Jamie’s coffee water.

  “Jamie’s idea of civil is most people’s idea of unbearable.”

  Thea leaned over Nell and put her cheek against her hair. “We should be patient with him.”

  “You’re too good for this world, Thea.” She took Thea’s hand and kissed it. “You’re a saint. Saint Thea. The first lesbian saint.”

  Thea laughed. “I doubt it.” She sat down and poured more tea for them both. The music swelled: a soprano-alto duet. O Jesu. O Meister. Nell watched Thea listening to it with her mouth open, lost in the music. She thought: she really is a saint, she is perfectly good, without her I would be an evil person. She remembered the first time she saw Thea: the new history teacher, older than Nell, a big, bosomy woman with a sweet smile and that amazing hair. She remembered how she had been drawn to Thea right away, couldn’t leave her alone, used to walk by her classroom just to hear her low, clear voice talking about the Greeks and the Romans. For ten years, she had been convinced that Thea had saved her from some sort of hell.

  When the music stopped, Thea said, “Really, Nell, I think we’re the ones who have to make the effort with Jamie. He’s upset. We’re happy. We can afford to be magnanimous.”

  “Oh, let’s just forget him,” Nell said. “If we’re so happy, let’s talk about something pleasant. Let’s do England.”

  They were poring over their favorite guidebook—the student guide they preferred because it listed everything that was cheap—when Jamie returned.

  They both looked up, without speaking. Jamie stood in the middle of the kitchen floor with his hands clasped in front of his crotch. The sun made his pink head shiny. He was wearing his seersucker jacket, wrinkled chinos, a clean white shirt, and his yellow tie with the regimental stripes. What a horrible outfit, Nell thought automatically. On the radio was harpsichord music. Perfect: she always considered harpsichord music effete and boring.

  There was an awkward silence. “So, Jamie,” Nell said at last. “Are you going to make coffee, or what?”

  “I actually came in to make an announcement.”

  “Well, get yourself some coffee first.”

  “Maybe I will have some tea.”

  He sat down at the table. Nell and Thea raised their eyebrows at each other, and Thea poured him a cup. He put in milk and sugar, frowning so that he looked older than he was. Smile, Jamie, Nell thought. It takes ten years off your age.

  “Scone?” She offered him the plate.

  He shook his head. Too agitated to eat, she thought. This must be a major announcement. She would say that to Thea afterward: the way he acted, I thought he was going to tell us he was pregnant.

  “Quite a coincidence,” he said.

  “What?”

  He nodded down at the guidebook. “England. That’s where I’m going.”

  “You, Jamie? You’re going to England?” She couldn’t believe it. Jamie had never been anywhere. He wouldn’t fly and wouldn’t sail. “There are only two ways to get there, you know,” she said. “Astral projection doesn’t count.”

  “I’m going to fly, Nell,” he said with dignity.

  “How wonderful,” Thea said. “You’ll love it, Jamie.”

  “That’s your announcement?” asked Nell. “I can’t stand this music. Anybody mind?” She got up and turned off the radio.

  He cleared his throat. “I’m going with Sandra. We’re getting married.”

  Nell and Thea stared at him, then at each other, then back at Jamie. He sat looking down into his cup, smiling slightly and trying not to, like a little boy who’s just confessed to some harmless bit of mischief.

  “Jamie? Am I hearing this right?”

  His smile exploded. He looked ten years younger—at least. “We’re getting married over there,” he said. “She called her parents last night. Woke them up. They’re delighted. They live in Somerset. The wedding will be in their village church. And then we’ll live somewhere in Cornwall, probably. Sandra loves Cornwall. She says it’s a perfect place to paint. I’m going to concentrate on landscapes for a while—forget the damned portraits. If I invest what I’ve got wisely, I’ll be in good shape financially. And of course Sandra will be working. She suggests I get drunk before I board the plane.”

  “Jamie, how marvelous,” Thea said. She put her hand on his, and he smiled into her face. “What a lovely surprise.”

  “Wait. Wait just a minute,” Nell said. “You are talking about Sandra Kilburn, your student?”

  “Obviously.”

  “And how long have you two been—whatever. Involved.”

  “Not quite as long as you two have,” he said—reproachfully, somehow, as if long involvements were particularly sinful. “Not for years. Months is more like it. Since last winter.”

  “Jamie—where? When?”

  She was stunned. It was like the revelation of another plane of existence below the one she knew, a sinister shadow world peopled by strangers. And then she realized that Jamie must have felt the same when he saw her and Thea embracing on the lawn.

  “The student-teacher relationship is often a highly emotional one, Nell,” he said. “Especially in the arts. Sandra and I have become very close. She’s an extremely gifted painter, as you know. Though of course her profession is that of art instructor in a school.”

  “Oh Jamie, don’t be so pompous,” Nell said. “This is wonderful news. I’m so glad. Do you mean to say that you two have been having a relationship up there in your studio? On that squeaky old cot? Since last winter?” She got up and went around the table to hug him. He smelled vaguely of aftershave—leftover from l
ast night. That too was a secret. “And you’re in love? And Sandra? She really—?”

  Thea frowned at her and she stopped. Sandra was no more than thirty, an Englishwoman who had come over with her American husband. They had been divorced a year or so ago. Nell had met her a couple of times—a stocky redhead, not unattractive in a gym-teacher sort of way, with an accent that sounded overdone. She had once complained to Nell that in America you couldn’t get milk with cream on top. Cream you don’t need, honey, Nell had thought.

  “Yes, believe it or not,” Jamie said, squirming away from her embrace. “She loves me, too. She’s most anxious to get married. And she’s very homesick for England. She’s given notice at the school. We’re going to leave as soon as we can get organized. In a month or so, we hope.”

  Nell sat down again. “Well, I’ll be damned, Jamie. All I can say is, it’s about time.”

  “I’ll bet that’s not all you can say, Nellie. I’ll bet you two will have plenty to say when I’m gone.”

  They sat looking at each other, and then they began to laugh. Thea joined in, and the three of them spontaneously took hands, like people at a seance, laughing like maniacs. Nell thought: this should have happened years ago, all of it, the truth should have come out, all the truth. Thea was right, truth is better. She thought of Jack Wentworth, who had died of cancer last winter—of the night she had revealed to him, a man she hardly knew, the great truth of her life. She squeezed Jamie’s hand and laughed with tears in her eyes. Then she saw that they were all crying a little, and that made them laugh harder and let go hands to wipe their eyes with napkins.

  When they calmed down, Jamie looked at his watch and said, “I should be going. I’m picking Sandra up for church.”

  “Church?”

  He grinned again—the new Jamie: easygoing, cheerful, a fiancé, a churchgoer. “Sandra goes to the Episcopalian church on James Street. She wants me to go with her so she can introduce me to the rector.”

  “My God,” Nell said. “Jamie, you’ve been an atheist since—”

  “Since Peggy died.”