Stranger On Lesbos

by Valerie Taylor

  Bake sat with her hands on the steering wheel, not making any move to start the car. "Do you realize that we haven't eaten all day? I'm starving."

  "I could use coffee."

  "Here, let me." Bake got the top off the thermos, slopping coffee over the edge of the plastic cup. "Put a little whiskey in it. It'll warm you up."

  "I'm not cold."

  "Let's go up to my place and cook a real meal. Let's not take the edge off our appetites with sandwiches."

  "All right."

  Frances sipped the coffee and Scotch, feeling dreamily agreeable to anything Bake might suggest. By closing her eyes she could see etched bare branches wind-tossed above the leafy forest floor, and one red maple leaf slowly falling. As long as she lived, she felt, she would have the imprint of that leaf on her retina. "Lovely," she murmured.

  "Hey, you're falling asleep.”

  Frances pried her eyes open. "I am not."

  "Lean your head against my shoulder if you want to. We'll be home in an hour."

  "You won't get sleepy?"

  "No." Bake said smiling. "I won't get sleepy.”

  Frances could feel the car start. Her knees braced automatically against the jar as they lurched back onto the gravel road. Then she laid her head against Bake's soft wool sweater, feeling the good solidity of bone and the warmth of living flesh beneath. The western sky was darkly pink against a bank of curly gray cloud. It was too much for one time. She sank down into a half-sleep, unwilling to relinquish consciousness but unable to stay fully awake.

  "Your hair smells nice." Bake said. She shifted to lay an arm across Frances' shoulders, whether for support or reassurance was not clear. She's driving with her left hand. Frances thought foggily, but she felt no alarm. She had utter confidence in Bake's ability to do anything she set out to do.

  Then without any apparent passage of time they were stopping in front of a brick apartment building. Frances struggled upright and sat looking owlishly at the street lights, the passing cars and the close-set buildings.

  "Here we are." Bake said. "Pull yourself together and see if you can get out."

  Electric light beat down on the lobby floor, set with black-and-white tile squares meant to look like marble. Bake unlocked the mailbox under her name card, found nothing, unlocked the inner door. They climbed a flight of stairs, their wet shoes squishing on the thin carpeting, and walked down a long hall past a double row of closed doors.

  "It's not very chic," Bake said, "but it's in easy commuting distance of most of my clientsand anyway I'd rather spend my money on books." It was not an apology. She laid her double armful of leaves and berries on the hall floor and fished in a pocket for her door key.

  "Oh, you carried my stuff up too."

  "That's all right."

  "What a nice room!" Frances said as they entered.

  The living room looked larger than it was because it was sparsely furnished and almost bare of decoration. A chair of woven leather strips and one of steel mesh flanked a nondescript studio couch with a Mexican blanket laid across it. The walls were lined with brick-and-plank bookshelves.

  "You can look at the books as soon as you get your wet shoes off," Bake said, smiling.

  A Navajo rug punctuated the flat black of the floor, and the windows were covered with inside blinds painted dark green. Best of all, there was a working fireplace, the brick hearth dusted lightly with ashes. Bake crumpled a sheet of newspaper, knelt to arrange it with three sticks, and lit it with one of the kitchen matches she carried in her shirt pocket. A tiny blaze leaped up, primitive in its beauty.

  "What is it about fire?"

  "It's a symbol," Bake said. "Home and safetyand other things too." She snapped on a light in the adjoining bedroom, plunged into the closet, and came back carrying a pair of soft flat slippers with elastic bands across the instep. "You're taller than I am, but I have bigger feet. Maybe you can keep these on."

  "They're so soft."

  "They're an acrobat's practice shoes." She wondered how Bake happened to have them, but she didn't want to ask.

  "Sit down in front of the fire. I'll fix us a drink before I start the steaks."

  Frances was looking dreamily into the flames when Bake came back with two full glasses. "Here, now let's put a real chunk of wood on the fire. Are you in any hurry to go home?"

  "No," Frances said. She opened her eyes wide, smiled contentedly at Bake. "I'd like to stay here forever."

  "I don't know why I used to think drink was a vice," Frances said, sliding down a little deeper into the cushions and flexing her toes in the thin slippers. "I feel wonderful."

  "Maybe that's why," Bake suggested. "Life is real, life is earnest, and all that jazz. We can't have people going around here all full of euphoria." She sounded a little vague, and her eyes were narrowed as they always were after a couple of drinks. She set her glass on the floor with exaggerated care.

  "Just as soon be full of euphoria, if it means what I think it does." Frances got up and walked to a bookcase. The bindings of the books, all soft bright colors, blurred a little in the flickering light from the fireplace. Bake had turned off all but one lamp, a small one on the corner of the desk, "so you can't see where I burned the steak." Now Frances said, pleased, "Oh, here's The Rainbow. I did read it, you know."

  "You didn't tell me. How did you like it?"

  Frances hesitated. She could find no words for the mixture of puzzlement and revelation she had felt, as though some truth unsuspected thus far was about to be revealed with the next page she turned.

  "I'm not sure. I didn't understand some of it very well."

  Bake looked at her intently. "What didn't you understand?"

  "Oh, a lot of it." She took a restless step. "The fire's going out."

  "I'll have to order more wood before you come again. Remind me, will you?"

  "Good heavens, it can't be twelve o'clock."

  "It probably is. I'll take you home if you really feel you have to go. Another drink first?"

  "Please."

  Frances wandered back to the studio couch and sat dreamily looking at nothing special, content to be there. Definitely, she thought, I've had too much to drink already. It's kind of a nice feeling, thougheverything soft and fuzzy around the edges. She accepted the glass Bake brought from the kitchen. They sat side by side, drinking slowly, not talking. She felt rather than saw the warm solidity of Bake's thigh next to hers on the cushion, and the even rise and fall of her chest.

  "You're the nicest person I know," she said sleepily, hearing her voice wobbly and small. "I like you too. Very much."

  "I wish you could be my roommate in college, or something.

  "Do you?" Bake got up and walked slowly across the room, glass in hand, leaving emptiness where she had been. Frances looked unhappily at her back. "I didn't mean" She fell silent, because she was not sure, herself, what she had or hadn't meant.

  "Look here. When you read The Rainbow, did you get to the part where Ursula and Winifred go down to the water together, in the darkness, before the storm?"

  "Yes, but"

  "That's the part you didn't understand, isn't it?" Frances was miserably silent, turning her glass around and around in her hand. "Isn't it?"

  "Well, yes."

  "Frances, didn't you ever hear of women loving each other?"

  Frances jumped up and went to stand beside her. "Look, Bake, that's not what I was thinking about. I mean, you don't have to worry about anything like that. I'm not like that." She seized Bake's hand in both of hers, almost crying. "Honestly, I don't even know what theylook, Bake, please don't give it another thought."

  Bake pulled her hand away. "People do feel that way sometimes, you know. It happens quite often."

  "I know, but don't worry about it. Even if I felt that way about you, I wouldn't say anything about it. Or make any trouble for you. I mean, I'd get over it. So that's all right."

  Bake stood looking away from her, pondering, like a grown-up trying to put an abs
tract idea into terms a child can understand. "You don't know what I'm talking about, do you?"

  "Do you mean"

  "For God's sake, don't you ever finish a sentence?" Bake moved away abruptly. She walked back to the couch and sat down, stretching out her legs in the mud-splashed navy slacks. "I do get into the goddamnedest situations."

  "Bake, please."

  "I love you," Bake said quietly. "I think I've loved you for quite a while. Come on, I'll take you home now."

  Frances' eyes widened. They looked at each other steadily. In the silence she could hear the ticking of the clock on Bake's bedside stand, in the next room. She came and stood awkwardly beside Bake, wanting to touch her and afraid to.

  "I don't want to go home. I think I love you too."

  "You don't know what you're talking about."

  "I know how I feel. You could show me."

  "I've always sworn I wouldn't do this," Bake said in a low harsh voice. She bent her head. "Apparently there are some things you can't help. They just happen."

  "Will you let me stay?"

  "Yes, of course. I don't seem to have any choice."

  "You won't hate me if I'mscared or clumsy?"

  "Oh, good God."

  They came into each other's arms like puppets moved by a single string. In the faint light from the desk lamp, Frances saw Bake's eyes close tightly, as though to shut away every sensation but touch. "I love you," she said again, and raised her mouth to Bake's in hunger and anticipation.

  CHAPTER 5

  “You have to go home now."

  "I know." Frances raised up on one elbow, watching Bake as she moved around the bedroom. "I don't want to."

  "But you have to." Bake's smile brought small creases to the corners of her eyes. "Come on, don't stop to think about it. The longer you put it off, the worse it gets."

  "I wish I didn't ever have to go."

  "Me too."

  Her clothes lay where she had dropped them, on the floor beside the bed. She stooped to pick them up, and was at once aware of her body, as she had never been with Bill. As though she had been thinking along the same lines, Bake asked, "Will you run into trouble at home?"

  "How can I have trouble? I called. It's not my fault there was nobody there."

  But she wondered how she could hide the experiences of that night. She got up and looked into the dressing-table mirror, seeing her color deeper and her eyes brighter, a thin veil of boredom or resignationthe habit of years, a thing she had come to carry without being aware of itstripped away. She looked like a girl; and she was glad, not for the sake of vanity but because she was a little older than Bake and afraid that the extra years would come between them.

  She said, "I wish I were beautiful."

  Bake came to look into the mirror too, as though the reflection might give back a deeper truth than warm flesh. "You are," she said seriously. "You have a beautiful sensitive mouth and winged eyebrows."

  "I look like everybody else."

  "You look like my Frankie."

  She stepped into the shower reluctantly, feeling that the warm water must wash off Bake's touch and leave her again the sterile, neutral creature she had been before last night. Don't think about Bill.

  Bake followed her into the bathroom. "Are you going to start feeling guilty about your husband?"

  Frances' eyes widened. "I don't think so. He doesn't want me anyhow, he's all wrapped up in his work." Was it only two nights ago that she had lain wide-eyed until almost morning, rebuffed and hurt? "I don't care, though."

  "I haven't got any other obligations, you see," Bake said. "I haven't had for quite a while now."

  Frances looked at the familiar classroom Bake in a skirt and tailored blouse, drawing a bright-red mouth over soft pink lips. "Am I going to see you again? I don't mean at school."

  "As soon as we can manage it. Francesyou're not mad at me, are you?"

  "Because you made me do it? Oh, no. I didn't mean to get scared. That was stupid," Frances said gravely. She sat holding the soaped washcloth, looking up at Bake with big eyes. "Only it was the first time."

  "Don't remind me." Bake went into the bedroom and came back with a pair of shoes. She bent to put them on, her face averted. "I'm not going to ask you what I want to ask."

  "You don't have to."

  "And so?"

  "As good as it ever was withanybody else. I mean it's not like in books anyhow, at least not much of the time." She paused, remembering the routine encounters of her married nights and the others, fewer, that were something special. "You do it and everything's all right, but not so wonderful. At leastwell, I don't know."

  "Sometimes it is," Bake said softly. "I promise you it will be better next time, when you're not scared. Come on, let's have some breakfast."

  "I don't want anything but coffee. I would love some coffee."

  They parted at the front door without a word or a touch, Frances watching Bake's cab carry her away to an early morning appointment. When the cab was out of sight she thriftily took a bus and sat down across from two teen-age boys. They reminded her of Bob, as boys his age always did, but she felt no upsurge of maternal affection or anxiety.

  For the first time since the nurse had laid him beside her on the bed, a small blanketed bundle with tight-shut eyes and a stubborn red face, she felt that he was a completely separate person. He's growing up, she justified herself. He's going to be making his own friends and spending even more time away from home from now on. When they get big they're in a hurry to untie the apron strings. This first loosening of the bond between them didn't make her feel lonely or regretful, as she had expected, but light and free.

  He doesn't need me. Bill doesn't either.

  Bob was in the kitchen, all wrists and ankles below his pajamas, when she let herself in. He had cooked a vast plateful of bacon and eggs and was putting bread in the electric toaster. "Hi, Mom. Where were you?"

  "Staying with a girl I know. And where were you at midnight, young man? I phoned home and nobody answered."

  "Oh heck, we stayed to see the show twice. Midnight Horror and The Ghoul from Outer Space. It was real cool." He took a long drink of milk, wiping his mouth on his pajama sleeve. "Dad went to a Saturday sales conference. I made him some joe."

  "Thanks, boy scout."

  She went upstairs and sat for a long time on the edge of the unmade bed, suspended in a happy nothingness that was better than thought or feeling.

  She expected to feel guilty and unhappy in the days that followed. She felt only hopeful and completely alive. This is infidelity, she told herself as she stood at the bus stop with an armful of books on Monday morning; I'm being unfaithful. And then: oh, nonsense. The words were meaningless.

  Maybe if I were involved with some man, she thought. But she couldn't imagine it. Even in Bill's days with the welfare board some of his colleagues had made tentative, half-joking passes at herthe playful kiss, the double entendre, the hand on her knee under the card table. These routine efforts left her cool and unresponsive, like the more serious approaches of the men with whom Bill now did business. Married men, mostly, looking for a little excitement; the single ones were chasing young girls or sleeping with someone regularly. Seeing or sensing her lack of interest, none of them ever pressed the matter.

  In fifteen years of marriage, she had never felt the slightest interest in any other man. For that matter, love, even as she explored it with Bill, had been a letdown. Marriage, so mysterious and desirable to a young inexperienced girl, turned out to be a matter of routine when the novelty wore offnot the grim sordid business she had seen it in her cramped and impoverished girlhood, but not magic, either.

  You married a man. In the daytime you cooked his meals and looked after his house. At night, behind locked doors, you submitted or perhaps took a more active part while he made love to you. That was all. It was pleasant if you were in the mood for it; it was a bother if he felt amorous when you were tired. At best it was messy and undignified. She sometimes
wondered if the movies and the advertising industry had dreamed the whole thing up, to make money.

  But thisthis loving someone like yourself, who knew what you wanted and how to give it to you! She felt her mouth curling into a smile, remembering the response Bake had wrung from her in spite of her fright and ineptness.

  She boarded her bus and sat hugging her books, beaming at the commonplace houses and stores as they slid by.

  For all the pleasure of remembering, she was a little shy about facing Bake. Reliving the hours in Bake's bed, she felt that the whole thing had been a dream. Things like this don't happen. I can't believe it. She took her accustomed chair and sat looking at the floor, with trembling knees and pounding heart, until Bake came in and sat down beside her, looking just as she always did. Then the fright dissolved. She felt cool and calm.

  "Hi."

  "Hi."

  "Everything all right with you?"

  "Everything is fine with me."

  "Really?"

  "Sure."

  Down between the chairs, Bake's hand brushed hers so lightly that the touch might have been an accident. "We might stay down for lunch, if you're free."

  "That would be fine." The ruled lines of Frances' notebook came into focus; the instructor's voice, which had been an inane buzz above Bake's whispering, made sense again. Everything was all right.

  CHAPTER 6

  “So then what happened?"

  "Oh, I don't know," Frances said a little vaguely. She came back to the present, looking around the living room with a slightly dazed expression. "I talk too much."

  "No, it's fascinating." Bake stood up, carried the coffee cups into the kitchen, and brought them back full and steaming. "I mean, you read about things like that, but I've never known anyone it really happened to."

  "It's nothing to brag about," Frances said shortly.

  "Poor baby. I wish I'd known you then."

  "But I had books. And then when I got into high school there was Miss Putnam." Tenderness crept into her voice. Miss Putnam, angular and strict like a comic-strip schoolteacher; where was she now? "She got me a scholarship to go to college," Frances said, cradling her cup in both hands and watching the tendrils of steam curl up into the warm air of the room. "A little denominational college where she'd gone. She knew somebody on the board, I think. She paid for my books and bought me a pair of shoes and lent me a suitcase to put my clothes in."