Femmes Fatales restores to print the best of women’s writing in the classic pulp genres of the mid-twentieth century. From mysteries to hard-boiled noir to taboo lesbian romance, these rediscovered queens of pulp offer subversive perspectives on a turbulent era.
Faith Baldwin
SKYSCRAPER
Vera Caspary
BEDELIA
LAURA
THE MAN WHO LOVED HIS WIFE
Gypsy Rose Lee
THE G-STRING MURDERS
MOTHER FINDS A BODY
Evelyn Piper
BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING
Olive Higgins Prouty
NOW, VOYAGER
Valerie Taylor
THE GIRLS IN 3-B
STRANGER ON LESBOS
RETURN TO LESBOS
Tereska Torrès
WOMEN’S BARRACKS
BY CECILE
VALERIE TAYLOR
Published in 2013 by the Feminist Press
at the City University of New York
The Graduate Center
365 Fifth Avenue, Suite 5406
New York, NY 10016
feministpress.org
First Feminist Press edition
Text copyright © 1963 by Valerie Taylor
Originally published by Tower Publications, New York.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, used, or stored in any information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from the Feminist Press at the City University of New York, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover and text design by Drew Stevens.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Taylor, Valerie, 1913–1997
Return to Lesbos / Valerie Taylor.
pages cm
“Originally published by Tower Publications in 1963.”
ebook ISBN 978-1-55861-832-9
1.Lesbians—Fiction. 2.Jewish gays—Fiction.
3.Holocaust survivors—Fiction.I. Title.
PS3570.A957R4 2013
813′.54—dc23
2013017571
Table of Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
About the Author
About the Feminist Press
Also Available From the Feminist Press
1 KARLA’S PLACE WAS JUMPING. FRANCES OLLENFIELD stood at the edge of the sidewalk and watched the blue door swinging open and shut behind the couples: two girls in bermudas and knee socks, two slim boys moving gracefully in unison, more girls. Smoke and voices and juke music drifted out. Frances shivered a little, although it was a June evening in Chicago.
She hadn’t been in a gay bar for a year. She had promised never to visit one again. But her need was too strong. She took a deep breath and walked down the three stone steps, feeling her mouth go dry and her heart begin to hammer with excitement. The blue paint was flaking off the door and the gold scroll letters had faded. It’s been a while, Frances thought.
Inside, though, nothing had changed. The Friday-night crowd was out: all the tables were taken and there wasn’t an empty stool at the bar. The space around the jukebox was jammed with slowly moving dancers, boys with boys and girls with girls. The faces were different, but the crowd was the same.
Past a row of heads and shoulders she could see Mickey at the bar, rosy cheeked and as happy looking as ever, her curly dark hair combed flat and her Ivy League shirtsleeves rolled up. Frances felt better. Mickey never forgot a customer. Seeing a couple pocket their change and get up, she elbowed a path across the crowded room and took one of the vacated stools. She said in a low voice, “Hi, Mickey.”
“Well, hi. Martini?”
“That’s right.”
“You haven’t been around for a while,” Mickey said, swabbing a section of counter with a pink cellulose sponge. “You went back to your husband, didn’t you?”
She looked sharply at Mickey. Mickey met the look straight on. “I didn’t mean to be nosy, only you used to come in with that Baker chick all the time. I see her once in a while.”
With her new girl, Frances thought bitterly. She said, “Yeah, I went back to my husband. It hasn’t worked out very well.”
“Never does,” Mickey assured her cheerfully. She set the drink down and bustled off to the other end of the bar. Frances sat holding the cold glass in her hand, looking around hungrily. She had been away too long.
At the next table sat two girls who might possibly have been twenty-one, as the state liquor laws required, but she doubted it. One was small and delicate looking, with long fair hair hanging thick to her waist, the way only a hip type would wear it in a year of tortured and teased bouffant styles. The other, older, had a sharp knife-blade profile, Turkish or possibly Indian. They weren’t touching one another, but appeared to be set apart in a little capsule of time and space, existing only for each other. Here, at least, they could look their love and not be afraid of what outsiders would think. Frances’s eyes stung with envy and pity. They were so young—and so lucky—and so much sorrow still lay ahead of them.
Bake wasn’t there, or Jane. She was both disappointed and relieved.
The door opened and shut behind a new couple, a tall thin girl in the standard getup of tapered slacks, knit shirt, and loafers, her friend a slight redhead like the young Edna Millay. Behind them, alone, stood a third who was familiar to her even through the eddies of smoke and the shifting figures passing and re-passing. Kay.
She stood still for a moment, lighting a cigarette, sizing up the place as she always did, indifferent to what other people thought of her. Feeling she had to talk to her, Frances started to slip down from the bar stool. But at that moment Kay caught sight of her, signaled a greeting with lovely dark eyebrows and made her unhurried way across the room. People moved to let her pass. Her hands were warm and light on Frances’s shoulders. She said, “Hello, darling!”
“Hi.”
“Bring your drink to a table.” Kay caught Mickey’s eye. Mickey came over with a smile of real welcome. “Those fellows are about ready to leave,” she said happily. “Martini for you too?”
“Right.”
They settled down, beaming at each other.
“Kay, tell me everything.”
“Well, Bake and Jane are still together. Your girl and my girl; it looks like it’s lasting.” Kay unbuttoned the jacket of her office suit and relaxed against the back of the chair. “Jane looks fine. They both do. Naturally I hate to admit it.” She grinned. “Bake’s more or less on the wagon, and they’re talking about buying a place in the suburbs.”
Frances went silent. Three years with Bake, then the stormy breaking-up; had it all simmered down to this? Her throat hurt. She picked up her glass, seeing her hand tremble.
Kay went on talking. “I’m in the midst of packing. Got a government job in Iran. I’ve been cleared by security and everything, it’s lucky we don’t have as much trouble as the boys—if a boy looks the least bit swishy he’s had it, even if they can’t prove anything.”
“You’re going alone?”
“Sure. Maybe I’ll find somebody over there.”
Kay accepted a glass from Mickey and gave her a dollar bill and a warm smile. “Losing Jane hit me pretty hard. I’ve played around a little, but it wasn’t the same. So I decided it was time for a change of scenery.”
“Sounds exciting.”
“So what’s with you? I suppose you’re not 100 percent happy or you wouldn’t be here. Or are you slumming?”
“I’ve done my best,” Frances said. She was thinking out loud; the bitterness in her voice came as a surprise to her. “You know, my husband took me back the day our son got married. He was so noble and so forgiving—Christ, I’ve gone on being forgiven for a whole year now, and I can’t take much more of it! I don’t think he realizes yet, but it can’t go on. I’ve worked like hell for a year—”
“And what have you got to show for it?”
“A whole lot of nothing.”
Now it was in words. She had not been able to admit it before, even to herself, but Kay’s eyes demanded honesty. She said again, confused but insistent, “I did try.”
“And how’s your son?”
“Fine. It’s his first wedding anniversary today. He’s still in college—just finishing his freshman year.” Frances hesitated. “They’re going to have a baby in the late winter. I hate to think about it.”
“Oh well, you married young. You’re a good-looking girl, Francie.”
Frances shrugged. “It does me a lot of good.”
“No fun in bed? With Bill, I mean?”
“It’s the same old rabbit routine. He’s finished before I start to get warmed up.”
“And you haven’t looked for anybody else?”
“Honest I haven’t.” This was serious. It was important that Kay know she had done her best—if it hadn’t worked out, someone else was to blame. She shook her head to clear it. “I’ve truly tried.”
“I’m sure of it.” Kay’s voice was gentle. “The trouble is, Francie, you’re gay. What you had with Bake wasn’t just a bored housewife having a fling—I know that’s what your husband thinks. It was the real thing. You belong on our side of the fence, 100 percent.”
“I know it now.”
“I married a man too, you know. It’s true my husband was a son-of-a-bitch, but that has nothing to do with the fact that I’ve never wanted another man.” She looked hard at Frances. “I honestly don’t think an unhappy marriage ever made a lesbian out of any girl. It just brings out what’s already there.”
“You left your husband to be with Jane, didn’t you?”
“Yes, and I’ve never been sorry. It was worth it.”
Frances sighed. “Maybe you’re smarter than I am. I thought I could make a go of marriage.”
“Maybe you could if you’d thrown away your whole personality, everything you are and could be. I think that’s evil.” Kay reached across the table and touched her hand. “So what happens next?”
Frances’s smile was strained. “So now Bill’s being transferred out to the boondocks, and I’m supposed to go along and be a good little company wife. He’d be shocked to death if I told him I didn’t want to go.”
“Are you going?”
“How can I help it?”
“Sooner or later you’ll have to face up to it. You’ll meet a girl you want. It always happens. The only thing that surprises me is, it hasn’t happened already. Then how are you going to break the news to him?”
Frances said unbelievingly, “In Waubonsie, Illinois?”
“Anywhere you go,” Kay said patiently, setting down her drink, “you’ll find members of the club. Carefully disguised of course, you have to be discreet in a small place, you can’t keep your business and personal life separated the way you do in a big city. But you’ll find somebody you want to have an affair with. Believe me.”
“Will you? In Iran?”
“If I don’t, I’m coming back the minute my contract’s up.” Kay grinned. “Arab men are famous for it. That must leave the women with a lot of free time on their hands.”
Frances said in a low voice, “My contract’s for life.”
“That’s not a contract, that’s a prison sentence.” Kay raised her eyebrows. “Moving isn’t going to make a goddamn bit of difference. Gay in a straight world and hip in a square one. We ought to be glad we’re white, that’s one problem we don’t have anyhow.”
Tears came into Frances’s eyes and spilled warm and wet down her cheeks. She gave a little quavering sigh like a child’s. “Kay, I’m so miserable. I don’t know what to do.”
“Make up your mind,” Kay said. She beckoned to Mickey, who was waiting with two more drinks. “The thing is to decide what you are and then learn to live with yourself. Don’t try to make yourself over. There’s no percentage in it.”
Frances stared at her glass. She said resentfully, “You make it sound so simple.”
“It’s the truth. And I promise you,” Kay said, smiling a little, “if you really want someone to love, you’ll find someone. Never fails. That’s a promise.”
2 FRANCES WAS STILL CLUTCHING AT THAT PROMISE two weeks later, when she and Bill moved.
It was raining in Waubonsie. Mood weather, Frances thought, sitting upright beside Bill with her hands folded on her lap, looking like a housewife with nothing on her mind but packing cases. Or so she hoped. Maybe it always rained in Waubonsie—like Liverpool.
“Still worried about your dishes?”
“Why not?” She didn’t give a damn if every plate she owned got broken in transit. Life ought to be something more than dishes. You could always buy new ones—it was one way to pass the time.
“Tired?”
“Kind of.”
Suspiciously, “You’re not going to get temperamental, are you?”
Frances said sharply, “Not unless it’s temperamental to have your back ache from packing.”
“I told you to get a professional mover. You don’t have to put on the big martyr act.”
“I didn’t have anything else to do.”
She had been acting like a martyr. Might as well admit it. As though to punish herself for her perfidious thoughts by working extra hard. I will be a good wife, she resolved for the umpteenth time, looking out of the rain-drenched window. They were driving past a wood-working plant: soaked window frames stacked against the side of a low brick building, a pile of scrap lumber overflowing onto the sidewalk. Men stripped to the waist, their wet work pants molded to their legs, were loading backed-up trucks. Frances felt a qualm of envy as they disappeared from view. Silly, she thought, they’re no more free than you are, they probably all have wives and kids at home; they’re probably all making payments on those ugly little crackerbox houses and a lot of washers and dryers. But she envied them for a moment, working in the rain.
What waited for her at the end of the ride was even worse than she had pictured.
“Maybe you’re not going to be so crazy about the house,” Bill said, rounding a corner and peering through the rain at the street sign. “I guess you like modern architecture—well, some day we can afford to build, maybe. I told Bowers we’d sublease his place for a year; he’s made a big down payment and he stands to lose everything if he can’t find a tenant.” He sounded angry. It wasn’t in the picture of the successful American executive to be sick and harassed by money worries. “The damn fool won’t ever be able to do a full day’s work again; I might as well figure the job’s mine for keeps. Time we settled down and made ourselves part of some community, anyhow.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Anyway, there’s a nice big yard,” Bill continued. “It’s a good neighborhood, too.”
Frances cleared a segment of windshield with her hand and tried not to be nervous as he eased the car into a driveway between two square houses with bay windows. She said, “I’ll have to buy an aspidistra.”
“Huh?”
The house was large and solid, set firmly in the middle of a lawn with several trees in front and some non-blooming plants along the side walls. The first story had bee
n painted white, but not recently, and the second story was bright yellow under a roof of wavy tan and brown asbestos shingles. Like a layer cake with fudge icing, Frances thought. She had sense enough not to say so.
A wide, railed porch ran across the front of the house. A concrete walk led to the front steps and another, narrower strip of concrete led around the house, to a side door where a green plastic hose dangled snakelike from a faucet. Oh goody, I can spend the long summer evenings watering the lawn.
Bill said, “This is it. Might as well go in.”
She got out of the car gingerly, holding her storm coat around her, trying not to step on the rubbery, pink angleworms spread on the grayish walk. Not exactly a tropical paradise, and who’s going to mow all this grass? She started bravely for the front door, trying not to feel that every step brought her closer to the prison gates.
The door stood open. Beyond the cavernous hall, lights bloomed. As they stood hesitant—Bill not quite sure, she thought, that this was the right house—women spilled out to meet them. Only five women, but making enough noise and shedding enough goodwill for twenty. The Young Married ones, thirtyish, in capri pants that showed their backyard tans. Frances stood dripping in her old trench coat, which was overdue at the cleaner’s, while they came burbling up and told her their names. Rose Sanderson, wife of the credit manager at the plant. Tisi Murphy, whose husband was head of the shipping room. Betsy Chancellor, wife of the purchasing agent. And so on. She wondered, didn’t they have anything to do but be wives? She should have expected something like this. Stupid not to. The miners’ wives back home used to do it too—social customs apparently were the same everywhere, whether you were a plant manager’s wife in tight pink pants or the wife of a mine foreman. She didn’t quite know how to react. Her parents had lived on the other side of the tracks—in a company town the criteria are piety and cleanliness rather than managerial status, but the principle is the same.
It was different here. Her husband was boss over all these women’s husbands, he made more than they did—and, too, her figure was better than any of theirs. For a moment she shared and understood the concern of women for position, a leaky umbrella in a rainy world.
Return to Lesbos Page 1
