The Long Way Home

by Rachel Spangler

  “Yeah, hey, sorry I missed the GLBT social Sunday,” Raine said as she sorted through her mail, most of which was junk or flyers for sporting events and student performances.

  “You didn’t miss much. We didn’t have any fireworks this time around. It was just me, Wilson, and Beth.”

  “Is that unusual?” Raine hoped she hadn’t scared people off. She might not agree with the lengths they went through to stay closeted, but she didn’t want to add to their list of fears.

  “From what I understand, you and Patty were both recuperating from doing God only knows what.” Miles made sure no one else was within earshot before adding, “And Kelly is afraid to be seen with Beth right now, because she’s too risky.”

  “Beth is risky?” Raine laughed. “That’s not a word I’d use to describe her.”

  “Well, you know Kelly. She’s a hot paranoid mess. Sometimes she crawls even deeper into the closet for a few weeks until she feels like she’s reasserted her heterosexual cover.”

  “And Beth is supposed to wait around while Kelly freaks out?”

  “When Kelly gets suspicious, everyone has to prove their loyalty, especially Beth. Kelly is terrified of offending perfect strangers but doesn’t mind insulting her own lover.”

  Raine rolled her eyes. “Kelly is such a tool.”

  Miles guffawed. “You’re so bad. I love it. Have dinner with me next week?”

  “Are you cooking?” Raine didn’t want to go out anywhere in town, but she was tired of eating alone. It would be nice to have some company that she didn’t have to censor herself with.

  “I wouldn’t eat anything from the grease pits that pass for restaurants around here. You’d better believe I’m cooking, and on copper-bottom pots.”

  “You’re on.”

  Raine was so excited about making dinner plans with Miles that she didn’t finish reading her mail until she was halfway back across campus. A small note between two flyers read simply, “Call Dean Flores Molina.”

  “Damn,” Raine muttered. That couldn’t be good. She’d been on campus only two weeks, and the dean was already summoning her. What had she done now?

  *

  August 29

  Beth stood at the door to Raine’s apartment holding a box of pizza. She’d surprised Rory the weekend before but didn’t think she would fall for that again. Besides, she didn’t have the energy to be that brazen this time. Simply being herself might be the best option for approaching Rory, so she indulged her need to nurture.

  She didn’t feel obligated to reach out to Rory or crave her gratitude. She was drawn to her. She wanted to comfort her, longed to offer some kind of respite from the turmoil that always radiated from her. Beth felt a connection to Rory that had only strengthened in the few unguarded moments they’d shared since her return.

  She knocked on the door and got an immediate response. “Go away.”

  Beth laughed. “I brought a peace offering. Let’s start over.”

  “What is it?”

  “Open the door and I’ll show you.”

  “You’re up to something.” Rory’s voice was clearer now that she was obviously standing just on the other side of the door.

  “Sure, I am, but don’t you want to know what it is?” Beth suspected that except for her classes, Rory hadn’t been out of the apartment all week. That had to be wearing on her by now. She might not like this town, but she was an extrovert and wouldn’t be able to function for very long without social interaction.

  “I’m going to regret letting you in here,” Rory said as she unlocked and opened the door.

  “Probably,” Beth held out the pizza, “but at least you’ll enjoy the pizza.”

  “Oh, my God, is that from Encarnacion’s?”

  “Yup.” Beth smiled as Rory perked up. She was barefoot. The tattered hems of her faded jeans dragged the floor. She wore a faded Roosevelt University T-shirt that fit snugly enough to reveal she wasn’t wearing a bra. Beth turned away. She wasn’t the type of person who ogled women’s bodies. She respected them, enjoyed them, of course, but never ogled.

  Rory stood back to let Beth though the doorway, then followed right behind her to the kitchen. “I haven’t thought of this pizza in years. The stuff we get in Chicago is top-notch, but nothing compares to little ole Encarnacion’s.”

  “I know what you mean.” As if to accentuate her point, Rory’s stomach growled.

  Beth opened the box, awash with pleasure at Rory’s excitement as she stared at the pizza like the proverbial kid in the candy shop, almost drooling. “Go ahead.”

  Rory grabbed a square of pizza and shoved the whole thing into her mouth. “Hot, hot, hot!” She hopped from one foot to the other, her mouth open, and tried to cool it by blowing in and out rapidly. But instead of spitting out the scalding pizza, she swallowed it whole.

  Beth laughed. “You act like you haven’t eaten all week.”

  “You sound like my mother,” Raine mumbled, her mouth full of pizza.

  “Your mother?” Beth was shocked that Rory had brought up her family.

  “Yeah, she said I look starved and made me take food home.” Rory grabbed another pizza square. “I haven’t had pizza like this in forever. I can’t wait for it to cool.”

  Rory seemed so young right now, giddy over something this simple. So lighthearted, in fact, that even the mention of her mother hadn’t killed her joy. Beth wanted to hear more about Rory’s visit with her parents, but she hesitated. For the moment she wanted to enjoy this glimpse of the Rory she’d always wanted to know.

  “I love that they cut the pizza in squares. They cut them in wedges in Chicago. Squares are much easier to handle, especially when I was a kid.” Rory continued to wax philosophical between bites. “Do you remember when pizza was a special treat and not food you ate when you were strapped for cash or drunk?”

  “We only got pizza occasionally when I was growing up. It wasn’t until high school that I started to think of pizza as the fifth food group.”

  “Oh, yeah, Friday nights at Encarnacion’s before the football games. Good times.”

  “Really?” Beth asked.

  “Of course. Why?” Raine gave her a curious expression. “You didn’t think so?”

  “I did, but I got the feeling you don’t have any good memories of Darlington.”

  Rory pushed back from the table, leaned back in her chair, and clasped her hands behind her head as she appeared to consider the question seriously. “Sometimes it feels like that. I remember hiding who I was. I remember being scared someone would find out. I remember all the times I felt awkward while my friends went off with their boyfriends or at the dances where I tried never to dance with the same guy more than once because I was afraid he might get the wrong idea. I guess the good memories faded behind the bad ones.”

  “For me it works the other way around,” Beth confided, though she’d never put these thoughts into words before. “I felt all of those bad things too—the fear, the awkwardness—but in the end the good times I’ve had here always overshadowed them.”

  The gravity of the conversational shift settled on them, and they both grew quiet. Was Rory pondering what caused them to view the same basic situation in such drastically different ways? It was a question that would keep Beth awake at night.

  A loud knock on the door interrupted their musings, then Chris and Tyler called to them. “Let’s get this party started. No moping on a Saturday night.”

  Rory’s accusatory look made Beth realize she was blushing. “I forgot to mention that the boys were coming over too.”

  “Yeah, that must have slipped your mind,” Raine said sarcastically as she opened the door. Her shoulders were tense again, and her dimples had disappeared.

  Beth wanted to say that it really had slipped her mind. She’d intended to tell Rory about their plans for the evening, what she knew of them anyway. She hadn’t expected the time to pass so quickly. She hadn’t anticipated that a conversation about pizza would lead them wher
e it had. She’d become lost in Rory and forgotten about Chris and Tyler’s plan. How was she supposed to know that all it would take to make Rory feel comfortable was a box of pizza and a quiet conversation?

  She hoped she hadn’t lost Rory’s trust completely.

  *

  “I guess I got duped again,” Raine said as she let Chris and Tyler into her apartment.

  She shouldn’t have been surprised. She knew Beth was up to something when she showed up with the pizza, but she’d thought with her stomach and then been lulled into a false sense of security, again, when they settled into such a nice conversation. She’d felt comfortable opening up to Beth. She hadn’t expected to find an ally in Darlington, much less several of them. It almost upset her to enjoy parts of her time here. She wanted to stay distant and angry.

  Of course she’d run into bigots too, but she’d expected that. It confused her to talk to Beth so easily. They shared a common upbringing, job, and sexual orientation, but ultimately they viewed those things in profoundly different ways. When they were alone, though, their differences often faded, allowing moments like the ones they shared before the guys arrived.

  “Nobody duped you. We want to hang out,” Tyler said, throwing an arm over her shoulder. “We’re your friends.”

  Raine wondered if they really were friends. They’d been close in high school, but that was so long ago. They hadn’t spoken since then, hadn’t kept in touch or shared any major life events. Could someone be a friend if you didn’t know anything significant about the last decade of their life? Still, they’d welcomed her home and accepted her lesbianism, even stuck up for her when she was criticized. That counted for something. Plus, Raine was only two weeks into a sixteen-week semester, and she would be lonely if she spent it in isolation. Perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to consider the people in the room right now as friends, as least for the time being.

  “What would hanging out entail?” she asked, then quickly added, “And don’t say ‘going to the bar’ because that won’t happen.”

  “Give us some credit. We got the message when you ran out on us last weekend,” Chris said, helping himself to the pizza.

  “Yeah, we’ll be as far away from uptown as we possibly can.” Tyler grinned.

  “Where’s that?”

  “The country,” Chris and Tyler said in unison.

  “You nimrods.” Beth groaned. “That’s your big idea?”

  “You weren’t in on this?” Raine thought Beth was the mastermind behind these ambushes.

  “No, I was told to show up. Those two,” she rolled her eyes at Tyler and Chris, “were supposed to handle the rest.”

  “We did,” Chris said defensively. “We bought beer, gassed up the truck, and came to get you right on time. What else do you need for a night in the country?”

  “You want to go sit out in the country and drink beer?”

  “And listen to the radio and talk, get caught up with each other,” Tyler added. “We used to do that all the time.”

  Raine didn’t think the plan sounded like fun. It didn’t sound like anything, really. They wouldn’t have much to do, but her other option was sitting in the apartment, and she didn’t have much to do there either. At least the guys’ plan got her out for a while, around people, and she could relax and not worry about running into anyone she didn’t want to see. It wasn’t a terrible idea. “All right, I’m in.”

  Tyler drove out of town, turning from a county highway onto a country road that wound through timber and farmland. After a while he pulled onto a dirt path that led between two cornfields for nearly a mile and stopped abruptly where it met a large irrigation ditch.

  Raine got out of the truck and walked around the small clearing. Cornstalks rose all around them, their leaves rustling in the faint night breeze. The moon was nearly full and reflected off the trickle of water in the ditch. She couldn’t see streetlights or hear cars, and the aroma of damp earth had replaced the smells of town.

  “Wanna beer?” Tyler tossed her a can without waiting for her response.

  “It’s a long way from Michigan Avenue, ain’t it?” Chris propped himself against the open tailgate of the truck.

  “Yes and no,” Raine said. “In the city you’re just a face in the crowd. You don’t have to see anyone you don’t want to. The place is big enough to hide in plain sight, kind of like this. You can do what you want without having to worry about other people knowing your business. It’s the same concept, just a different method of achieving it.”

  “I’ll be damned.” Tyler cracked open his beer. “Never thought of it like that.”

  “I didn’t think you liked to be anonymous. I thought you were the famous Raine St. James,” Beth said, without mockery or judgment in her voice.

  Raine regarded her more closely while she tried to process the statement. Beth was sitting on the tailgate, swinging her feet. Her blue jeans and light blue polo shirt brought out the blue of her eyes, even in the muted moonlight. She was making an honest observation, and Raine adopted her tone. “It didn’t start out that way. When I got to Chicago, I wanted to disappear. I was tired of the scrutiny that came with living in a small town. I wanted to be where no one knew me or cared about who or what I did. I didn’t start to settle down and connect with people again until I met Edmond.”

  She hadn’t talked to Edmond in two weeks. She needed to call him soon. He probably thought she still wasn’t speaking to him.

  “Who’s Edmond?” Chris asked.

  “Her agent,” Beth said quickly.

  Did Beth remember details about everyone or just her? “He wasn’t my agent at first. He was in college, interning at the gay and lesbian center on Halstead in Chicago. That’s where we met. When I told him my story, he thought it was great.” Raine buzzed over the part about how she’d shared horror stories of growing up in Darlington. “He thought other people might like to hear it too, so he set up a speaking event at the center. Having people offer their support and approval felt good, so when Edmond set up another event at a center in Evanston, I spoke there too, and they paid me. Then everything took off.”

  “What about your articles?” Beth asked.

  “Those started when I was in college. Edmond had been promoting me to college groups, and a women’s studies professor at Roosevelt University in Ohio told him about a scholarship for kids who’d been disowned. Edmond did the paperwork, and I was off to college.”

  The story probably sounded like such a whirlwind. It even seemed a little crazy to Raine, and she’d lived it. “College taught me to research and write. My early articles all came out of my classes, and either Edmond or my professors sent them to magazine and journal editors. Every article I wrote brought more speaking requests and eventually a scholarship to work on my master’s degree back in Chicago. Before I knew it, I had a public-speaking career, several published articles, and two college degrees.”

  “Just like that?”

  Raine chuckled. “Just like that.” She didn’t add that everything fell apart the same way, that her life and career had slipped away from her just as easily as they came, that other people with new stories and younger faces entered the scene, that editors wanted something newer, something better, and the longer she went without a publication, the less she was called for speaking engagements until the phone almost stopped ringing altogether.

  “That beats the hell out of my story. I took over the family farm a little bit at a time. My dad hasn’t officially retired and probably never will, but I run most everything now,” Chris said.

  Tyler summed up his career path. “I went to junior college, but all that time butchering our own hogs at home was the only thing that stuck with me. I joined the meat-cutters’ union and the rest is history. Nowhere near as interesting as speaking all over the country.”

  Everyone turned their attention to Beth, who stared at the ground. “Nothing too significant about my journey either. It’s hardly worth telling, really.”

  “I’d still like to
hear it.” Raine wanted to be closer to Beth in any way she could. If possible, they would’ve continued the conversation they’d been having back at the apartment. But since the guys had opened the topic of their past, she decided to take advantage of it.

  “I went to Illinois State and loved it but couldn’t go back after Mama and Daddy died.” Beth shrugged as if trying to minimize her circumstances, but Raine could clearly see Beth’s sadness under her casual cover. “The church helped me get into Bramble College, but I had a hard time paying the bills after I sold the farm to pay for the house. I was either going to lose my home or be forced to drop out of school, so some people in town pulled a few strings and got me a full-time job at the library. They worked around my schedule so I could finish college. Everyone was so good to me there that I never left.”

  They were silent after Beth finished her story. Raine’s life had been so different from Beth’s, yet it had interesting similarities. Neither of them had set out to live the life they ended up with, but their circumstances sent them down different paths. Few of their choices had been their own. The fates spun them in unexpected directions, and all they could do was make the most of what they’d been given.

  “Damn, I think that calls for another beer,” Tyler said.

  “And a happier topic,” Chris added. “Anyone got laid lately?”

  “I did,” Tyler laughed, “in the livestock barn at the county fair.”

  “I meant with a woman, not a pig.”

  Tyler pushed him. “It was with Jenny Thompson. I was in the barn checking out some stock, and she came in pissed off at some college guy she’d been dating. You know how she gets when she’s mad.”

  “Oh, yeah, she’s a hellcat.”

  “Well, she got me good, there in the hay, and then again later in the bed of my truck.”

  Beth hopped off the tailgate. “Yuck, Tyler. God only knows what kind of STDs you’ve exposed us to.”

  Raine and the boys burst out laughing. “I don’t think you can get STDs from a truck bed.”

  “Still, it weirds me out to sit in the same spot where Tyler did it with Jenny,” Beth said, but now she was laughing too. Raine loved the contagious sound. Beth didn’t laugh often enough.