The Journey Home

by K'Anne Meinel

  They were sitting in the quiet living room. The children were asleep and Margie had gone home for a well-deserved day off. With Cass staying in the house and recovering they felt she could help with the children and give the girl the time she needed to see her family.

  Cass was amused at the tone she heard in Stephanie’s voice. “Yes, I wrote you about her and Pamela, they were very kind to me in Pearl and then again in Wiquaqau."

  Stephanie was surprised that she admitted to that. Uncomfortable she looked at the radio they were listening to softly playing some big band music.

  Cass waited for Stephanie; she could see this ‘talk’ wasn’t going to be about what she wanted it to be. Besides, for her first day out of bed she was tired and would shortly go to bed. She had hoped they would air some of their problems before that happened. She hadn’t expected an attack or the jealousy she heard.

  “Was there more…was there more than friendship?” Stephanie finally asked, she didn’t want to look at Cass, she was afraid of the answer.

  Cass wasn’t sure she should answer. She wasn’t sure she wanted to answer. After all, Stephanie had married her brother. She had had his children. She hadn’t remained faithful. Her sense of fair play though acknowledged the situation wasn’t fully Stephanie’s fault. She had thought Cass was dead after all. “Yes, there was,” she answered quietly.

  Stephanie had been so hoping it was her imagination. She had been so confident that Cass had loved her, and only her. She hadn’t counted Marabelle, after all she married a man, but then so had she... The confirmation that there had been someone else, that there was more than friendship…she looked up at Cass. “Did you,” she swallowed, “Did you love her?”

  Cass nodded as tears sprang to her eyes. The old feelings of loving two women that had confused her so long ago came back. She had made her choice. She came home. Only to find her choice hadn’t waited for her. “But only as a friend. I knew there couldn’t be more, she did too. She knew about you, you see.”

  “You told someone about me? You told someone about us?” Stephanie’s voice rose in her agitation. The thought that someone knew what they really were to each other, the thought that someone knew the truth…

  “She guessed,” Cass told her watching her reactions. She was becoming upset as the conversation continued.

  “How is that possible?” she asked as she fidgeted, she looked decidedly uncomfortable at the conversation she had started.

  “I talked about you too much apparently, she figured it out.”

  “I don’t understand,” and she didn’t. “How does one figure out that we were…are…that we…?” she was confused.

  “Because she was a lesbian and recognized it in me and how I spoke about you,” she said quietly trying to keep the volume of the conversation down.

  Stephanie was shocked at the word ‘lesbian,’ polite conversation forbade its use. “I don’t consider myself a les…” she couldn’t even finish the word as she blushed.

  “That’s what we are when we make love to another woman,” Cass said amused.

  “I certainly am not, I’m just…” she said indignantly. Then she finally heard the amusement and looked at Cass alarmed. “You’re laughing at me!”

  Cass chuckled aloud as she answered, “Yes, now I am. This is a ridiculous thing to be arguing about. You and I are lesbians. That’s what two women who are attracted to women are called.”

  “Please stop using that word!” she said irately.

  She shrugged. “It is what we are but if you don’t want me to I’ll refrain.” She waited, still amused, for Stephanie to continue on.

  She calmed down, took a deep breath and then asked, “Did you ever kiss her?”

  Cass should have known this conversation would continue despite her amusement. She wasn’t so amused at the moment. “Yes we did. It was an impulse and we both stopped immediately,” she felt it was best not to make Stephanie feel any more insecure as she was feeling at the moment and Annette would never tell her the truth.

  “When? When did you…” she asked actually feeling betrayed.

  “We were stuck on an island together while we waited to be rescued.”

  “I don’t understand when was this?”

  Cass shook her head. Stephanie had been very self-absorbed since she had been home. She hadn’t asked and Cass hadn’t volunteered about what had happened to her. “After we got off of Wiquaqau we wound up on an island that we were eventually rescued from. The weeks together on it let us get very close, as friends,” she added when she saw the suspicion in Stephanie’s eyes. “I gave her a kiss for New Year’s,” she explained.

  “You’re making this sound worse than it should aren’t you?” Stephanie accused suddenly feeling like a fool.

  “No, we kissed but I’m being honest with you,” she told her, and then silently added, or at least as honest as I can without hurting you or myself. She still remembered Annette, very fondly.

  “But you called to her in your delirium,” Stephanie accused.

  Cass shrugged. “I really can’t be held accountable for what I said when I had a high fever now can I? We were friends. Close as sisters. I will always remember her with love. But it was you I was trying to get back to, not her! It was you I got wet for as I lay there in my bed on those hot nights remembering the passion we shared.” She leaned forward to emphasize her love for Stephanie and to make her point. “It was you that I thought of and came home for.” She then remembered the hurt she felt last summer. “When I saw you, that first time, and then I could see your belly, can you imagine how I felt?”

  Stephanie could. She had felt it too. Almost like a physical blow. She had wished at that moment that Cal had never existed, that she hadn’t impulsively given in. He would have stopped, he wouldn’t have continued if she had shown for one moment that she didn’t want him too. In that moment of weakness she had changed all of them. To see Cass standing there, the hurt in her eyes as they looked at her pregnant belly she knew how much she had hurt her and she wished Cal gone. But not dead! Never dead! The guilt overwhelmed her for a moment. “I never wanted him dead!” she cried softly and put her face in her hands.

  “How do you think I feel, it’s why I’ve avoided you for so long. I couldn’t let you invite me into your bed again when my brother, the father of your children, your husband had just died.”

  “How long?” Stephanie looked up with the tears pouring down her face and the anguish in it clear as day. “How long would you have kept me waiting? Would you have really left me? Were you going to go to her?”

  “I thought it was proper to mourn someone for a year.” At Stephanie’s incredulous look she held up her hand, they had waited years. “I was weakening and then you angered me so. It seemed you were mad about him not leaving you more.” She didn’t answer the other questions, not yet, not now.

  “I was angry about that but also it seemed like you two were ganging up on me. I wanted so much to be a Scheimer, I am one now.” She showed her ring that she still wore. “But I never wanted it like this; I never wanted Cal to die so we could be together again.”

  “I didn’t either, I don’t want him gone. I still think he’s on a long hunting and trapping trip and I’ll see him this fall. It hasn’t sunk in yet. I can’t imagine that he is really gone. And for what, so we could be together?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Cass couldn’t tell her. She couldn’t tell her lover, her brother’s widow, that the wounds she saw might have been self-inflicted. She couldn’t let her bear that burden. It was one thing she had to keep from her to save her soul. Cass would carry that alone. She also clung to the hope, the possibility, that she could be wrong about the wounds. “I didn’t want to wish him dead, I didn’t…I loved my brother,” she too was teary eyed.

  “But he is gone now, what about us?” Stephanie asked and then remembered the other questions. “Would you really leave me?” She was almost afraid to ask about Annette again. There was somethi
ng in Cass’s voice when she spoke about her…

  “I don’t know where you and I are going here. I loved you.” Stephanie didn’t like the sound of that as though it were in the past. “We’ve both changed. I guess I thought it would all remain the same while I was gone. It changed a lot while I was gone. More than I thought it could. It wasn’t just that you married my brother. You have changed.” She stopped and gave Stephanie a hard look. “I don’t like who you have become in a lot of ways.”

  “Someone had to take charge to make money,” Stephanie said defensively.

  “We were doing okay; Cal had a lot of money saved. He never spent any of his fur money. How do you think he could afford those workers?”

  “I know that, it was how we could afford to buy out Melanie when she wanted to move on.”

  “But the Stephanie I knew and loved would have been concerned enough to ask Melanie if she was okay, where she was going, what she was going to do?” She paused. She hadn’t wanted to lecture her but it felt like it at this point. “The Stephanie I knew would have cared.”

  “I care, I care a lot,” she sobbed.

  “Yes but do you care about you, this farm or me?”

  Stephanie looked up and was angry, she didn’t understand. “I care about you and the farm! I want to provide for my children. In a way they are your children now too…”

  “Stephanie, you aren’t seeing what I see, what others see. You are more concerned about profit and not the quality you once did. The quantity you can make out of the land is more important than the quality of the product you are selling. If you don’t take care the mistake of the juice will just be one that will get out there. What about the other things you are selling? If the word gets out there that Scheimer Farms sells bad products you will never recover from that. All you seem to care about is profit and that was why Cal left me half of his share instead of all of it to you. He wanted to make sure I would be involved to be sure there would be something left for his children.”

  “But you were willing to leave all that, to go, to…go to her?”

  Cass shook her head, “No, I would not have gone to Annette. She has someone else now. She wrote me and told me so. I’m happy for her. I would never want to come between her and her happiness. I wouldn’t jeopardize my friendship with her. That’s all we are, that’s all we ever were,” she maintained. “Close friends.” She almost believed it herself.

  “But you would have left wouldn’t you? You were packing to go when you cut your hand.”

  “Yes, I was that angry, all you do is boss people around. I am not your employee. I am not your boss. I am your partner. And not just in the business. I wanted to be your partner in all aspects of our lives, but the Stephanie who only thinks about profit is not the one I want to know.”

  “You said everything changed, I changed, what if I can’t be the Stephanie you liked,” she wouldn’t say loved, that sounded so much like it was in the past and that scared her. She wanted to be loved, and now. It sounded like Cass might not be so willing.

  “I don’t know, I don’t have all the answers. We can try Stephanie but I tell you now, if you don’t make an honest effort I’ll leave and before I go, I’ll put the farm up for sale.”

  Stephanie gasped at the threat. It was a real one. Cass had the power to do it. Then she remembered the monies from the life insurance policy. “I’ll buy it from you!” she said calling her bluff.

  “If you do that Stephanie you would be on your own. I wouldn’t be here to see you run it into the ground. I’ll go somewhere else and buy my own place and start new, without you.”

  Stephanie was devastated at the thought that Cass would leave her. “What about the children? What would you say to them?”

  “Don’t ever try to use my love for the children against me,” she said ominously. She was very angry now. She was trying to be reasonable and in her mind Stephanie was behaving like a spoiled brat. “I love them as I would my own. More so now that my brothers blood runs through them. They are however very young and would adapt as they did when they thought I was dead. They would remember me only vaguely and the twins not at all. I’d miss them but if you continue to push me Stephanie, I will have no choice but to go.”

  Stephanie collapsed against the back of her chair. “Do you hate me that much then?”

  Cass sat forward in her chair and knelt on the floor to take Stephanie’s hand in her own. “I love you, I will always love you. I don’t like the person you have become. I love your brilliant mind. That you think of so many things for us to produce with the Scheimer label. But I don’t like you being ‘the boss’ and I don’t like you bossing everyone around like they don’t matter. If that doesn’t change, I cannot live with you anymore.”

  Stephanie sat for a long time absorbing what Cass had said to her. The tears streamed down her cheeks but Cass didn’t reach any further out to her to stop them. She just looked at her from her position on her knees. Finally, defeated she said, “All I can do is promise to try.”

  “That’s all I ask,” Cass said smiling. “Now, can we go to bed, I’m exhausted.”

  Suddenly realizing how much time Cass had been up today and realizing that the exhaustion was real had Stephanie all concerned about caring for her once again. She wiped the tears from her face with the back of her own hand. Then she also realized Cass had said ‘go to bed.’ “Will you sleep with me from now on?” she asked hesitantly.

  Cass smiled as she got up off her knees and drew Stephanie into her arms. “Yes, since you’re inviting me to your bed I will.”

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  They had an uneasy truce over the following weeks as Stephanie tried, genuinely tried to amend her ways. She no longer ‘commanded’ everyone. She delegated where she could and suggested as often as possible. Cass took over more of the outside things once again and the kitchen things were left to Stephanie. Everyone seemed happier suddenly and Cass knew why. They weren’t afraid of being fired all the time and Stephanie was pleasanter to be around. She also knew that their lovemaking accounted for more of Stephanie’s pleasant mood.

  The first time they woke up naked after a late night of making love after a long day of work, they had been just too tired to dress again, Cass found Stephanie examining her skin inch by inch. “What are these scars from?” she asked curios at the almost perfect circles that were random all over her torso. She delicately touched them with the tips of her fingers causing a shiver in Cass.

  “Lava,” Cass said briefly. She smirked as she waited for Stephanie’s curiosity to get the better of her.

  “Lava?” she asked confused. “The volcano they wrote that killed you?” They had gotten a ‘full’ account of Cass’s death after the initial telegram in the form of a letter expressing condolences.

  Cass explained how the island mountain, a volcano, had finally erupted after a series of earthquakes. That the muddy rain that came down were rocks of burning ash and debris, how she and Annette were the last ones off the island that they knew of and barely made it out alive.

  “So that’s why you two are so close, you saved her life?” she sounded relieved to have put some of that relationship in perspective. After all, Cass was in her bed and not this Annette’s.

  “Well we had been friends before that, there were other nurses and doctors but Pamela, Annette, and I enjoyed paling around together. The Three Musketeers,” she joked. “Then Pamela got transferred, let out really and we talked her out of re-upping. We continued our friendship but yes, that trip to the other islands and the burns we got, that made us closer.” She didn’t want to go into detail about the fact that had Stephanie not been waiting for her she would have…she didn’t even want to think about it in case Stephanie somehow could read her thoughts.

  It did allow her to share some of the many stories that included Annette and Pamela of the islands she had seen. The things they had done and lived through. Many of the things she had thought she would share much sooner than this.

  ~ ~ ~
~ ~ ~

  Another day laying in Cass’s arms as she caressed her lengthening hair she asked about the rescue. “What took them so long to rescue you after all they knew you were on the island?”

  “The Father had told them supposedly but he didn’t tell about Annette or I and it wasn’t until he died that I went over to the other island.”

  “But why you?” she persisted.

  “The villagers didn’t like the Australians and I was the logical choice so I mimed going to the other island where the radio operator was. Boy was he surprised,” Cass laughed in remembrance of the Corporal, what was his name... She realized she was forgetting things she thought she would never forget. Paul! That was it. Paul Messerman! She smiled to herself at remembering that detail. She had blocked out so much already and no one had asked since she made her final report.

  “What’s so funny?” Stephanie asked feeling left out.

  “Corporal Messerman, he was an such a rough looking character, I suppose you have to be to be on an island alone like that monitoring troop movements or watching for the Japanese and radioing it in. I sure surprised him by showing up on his island.”

  Stephanie didn’t really understand so she changed the subject but little by little the story of what had happened to Cass came out as they shared the years they were apart. The little things they couldn’t put into their letters because it might come out and the sensors read it. Stephanie hadn’t wanted anyone to know of their relationship beyond housekeeper and farm owner. When she became Cal’s bride though she thought she could be a housewife again, after all they were expecting a baby together. She was ‘respectable’ again. She hadn’t wanted it though, not like that. They began to talk through some of the resentment both of them had felt.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  That fall was probably one of the hottest they all could remember. Everything dried out and the harvest except for the hay was poor as things died or dried on the vine, tree, or bush. Cass had trouble sleeping at night. It all made her uneasy. Stephanie slept badly over worrying about their profits but she kept that to herself as much as she could, she consoled herself that they had a lot of money in the bank to tide them over if they needed it.