"Good morning, Mr. Torres," Carrie called. "How many buses this morning?" Sydney and I paused at the gate while Carrie and a man hidden in the depth of a beekeeper's suit went over how many children were expected for the day and which bulbs had been brought in and which were mulched and whether the pruning of the white birches should wait until Indian summer had passed.
Some matter of concern must have come up, because Carrie gestured once, wildly for her, though it was just a flick of one arm. "Syd, I've got to go talk to the tree surgeon," she called. "Can you take Faith on a tour? I'll catch you up."
Sydney waved her consent. "They'll talk for hours," Sydney said, heading along the path that skirted the fence. "A hundred kids or so — not too many. We shouldn't be overrun. They're setting up a Halloween activity area in the main garden, so let's go over to the Moroccan garden, okay?"
I nodded my assent and followed her along the wide pathway. "Why just kids? Why not the general public?" I tried not to look at her and found myself instead noting the pristine crease in her blue jeans and the brilliant flash of her scarlet silk blouse in the sunlight.
"Follow me," Sydney said, and we walked around the inside of the fence to where more children were making their way into the heart of the garden. "Stand right here and watch."
The shoulder of her gray suede jacket brushed mine — I hated myself for being so aware of it. I couldn't take in the scene before me for a moment, but then I saw what Sydney meant.
A group of eight- and nine-year-olds came in from the main gates and around the planters of evergreens. They pushed and shoved, bickered and laughed as kids do, but when they came around the planters and saw the long plaza of brilliant colors, the flash of water in the fountain at the far end, and beyond that an open patio ringed with jack-o'-lantern lights, their mouths fell open. Arches crowned with different greens invited exploration of Old English, Japanese, Italian, and Moroccan gardens. Most of the kids went silent for a moment—then they laughed and rushed forward, even the ones who looked far too cool to think a garden would be any fun.
Two girls ran by us holding hands and giggling, their innocence and pleasure a tangible thing, bright and pure. Sydney took my arm and pulled me across the plaza toward the Moroccan garden, and for a moment I felt the sweet innocence of youth and took her hand.
"You have to see my favorite plant," she said, pulling me along. "It blooms in fall."
My palm tingled, and a searing happiness filled me. The sunlight was heavy with gold, and a light breeze redolent with the last of Indian summer lifted wisps of hair from Sydney's neck.
She showed me everything — the dormant rosebushes, salvia in crimson and bright blue, the herb garden that made us both sneeze and giggle as we blew our noses. Then we ran to the long meadow beyond the main garden where annuals and perennials were being turned to seed for next spring. Beyond the plantings was a long meadow of tall grains — barley and wheat and other grasses left to go wild. Sydney told me it hid a game fence that kept the wildlife sanctuary's herbivores out of Carrie's plants.
As we walked through the tall grasses, tiny gold seeds dropped from the heavy pods onto my hair and shoulders. I looked up for a moment and watched the tapered stalks brush at the sky. I felt seeds slip into my shoes and down my shirt and told Sydney they tickled.
"I know," she said. She walked ahead of me with her arms out, brushing the tall stalks as she walked, creating a' golden flurry behind her. She looked like an earth goddess. "We used to do this when we were kids. The grass seemed a mile high then."
We peered beyond the fence, but no wild creatures came out of the undergrowth to see us. As we turned back toward the garden, hidden from us by the wall of grasses, Sydney took my hand again with the same innocent gesture as before, but this time innocence fled me and I trembled.
"I'm sorry," she quickly said. "I — I shouldn't have."
"It's okay," I said.
She stood looking at me and I found myself lost in the velvet of her eyes. I couldn't say anything. I just looked my fill.
"I know better," Sydney said, biting her lower lip. "If I were Eric's brother I wouldn't just touch you like that — Eric might not like it."
"But you're not his brother," I said, puzzled.
She fixed me with her gaze again, and I saw her lips part with a soundless exclamation. "Eric hasn't told you, has he?"
"Told me what?"
"I'm a lesbian."
My body swelled, my skin trying to pull away from my bones, aching toward her, pulling me toward her, and I gasped, just loud enough for her to hear.
Her face flickered with a moment of anger, and then that passed as she realized I wasn't shocked. She realized what I was, what I was feeling, and she swallowed.
"It isn't just me, is it?" As she spoke I noticed a pulse beating in her throat and my lips trembled. "Dear God. I thought it was just me. I came home this weekend so I could get used to you being with Eric. So I could put my... feelings in the proper category. But it's not working."
"It's my fault," I said, the words breaking out of me. "I shouldn't feel this way. I can't help it. I don't want it. I've never wanted it."
"But you can't help it. Don't do this to Eric," she said softly.
"I won't. Not feeling this way."
"Don't do this to me," she said, as if I hadn't spoken.
"I'm not doing anything to you," I said.
Her hands came to my face and she cupped my cheeks. Her thumbs brushed under my closed eyes. I could tell she had stepped closer, my arms sensed the heat of her. I knew when she kissed me it would burn, and I might never recover.
"You look at me that way," she said, her warm voice coating my ears as I kept my eyes tightly shut against the glow of her, "and it makes me want what I've given up. Women. You."
I was shaking as if chilled to the bone, but my body was rippling with fire. Her thumb brushed a tear from my cheek. Into the whisper of the grain stalks moving in the breeze I said, "Don't make me beg. I can't do that again."
"Oh no," she said, her tone so alarmed I opened my eyes. "I wouldn't." I felt her fingertips tremble.
I said, "Kiss me."
My body rose to hers, and I felt as if I was coming out of my old skin and into the fresh new life of her arms. Coming home, coming alive, she seared my bare defenses as her arms came around me and then her mouth found mine.
I was hungry for the taste of her but was surprised by the sound of our kiss — my heart hammering in my ears, her low moan, my startled breathing, her fingers brushing down my face. Each sound so small, but they filled me with passion as fiercely as the pressure of her mouth and the warmth of her lips.
She kissed me again, and our mouths opened to each other, drinking deeply and sweetly until she drew back. A breeze stirred the grain, and a dusting of gold drifted over us. I couldn't take my gaze from her lips — peach with golden glints now — and this time I went to her and kissed her with all my pent-up need, then more softly as emotions were stirred that I hadn't experienced before — nothing like what I felt for Eric, and nothing like what I had felt for Renee.
"Faith," she murmured against my mouth. She pushed me away, then pulled me into another kiss as if she couldn't help herself. "Good God, what are we doing?"
She kissed me again. I pulled her to the ground, and through the flurry of gold I saw the vivid sky and reached up to pull it down over us. Safe and warm in her arms with her heart pounding against mine.
I lost track of time in those breathless, heady kisses. With a laugh of joy, she rolled over and pulled me on top of her, then drew my head down to hers, her lips calling mine. In this golden place, outside of time, I knew what I was and what I wanted. I wanted her. I shyly caressed her arms, and the softness of her ribs as we kissed. Sensing that she would not stop me, I lightly ran my hands over her breasts. They fit in my palms as I had thought they would.
Less shyly, she unbuttoned my blouse. I welcomed her mouth with a sigh of delight. She slipped my bra straps off my sho
ulders and kissed the newly bared skin.
"It's like I thought it would be," she murmured. "I knew your skin would taste like this."
I said the first thing that came into my mind. "You're melting me."
She looked up with a smile. "Am I?"
I nodded, feeling inarticulate. "It's the heat of your eyes."
She smiled again, and the velvet brown went purple. "I'll try not to burn you."
I pulled her mouth to my breasts and whispered, "You already have."
She went rigid, her lips so close to my skin I felt the tingle of her breath. "Oh Jesus."
"What?"
She looked up at me. Her eyes had gone brown again, a dark brown full of trouble and indecision. I wanted to pour myself into them and trembled when she licked her lips nervously. For a moment she inclined her mouth back to my breasts, then she rolled onto her side, covering her eyes with her arm. "Jesus," she said again.
I looked down at my half-naked body, dusted with golden seeds except where her mouth had been. With shaking fingers I rearranged my clothes and then looked at her. Her fists were clenched and her entire body was taut as a bowstring.
"Sydney," I said softly. I put my hand on her hip. "It's okay."
"Don't," she said violently, rolling away. "I can't. I don't... Eric's in the way," she said. "I can't do this to him. And I... I don't need this right now. I —" her breath caught with a half-sob. "I promised myself I would have a personal life sometime in the future. After I get the party nomination. After the election. After I make a difference. I can wait." She looked at me. "Oh damn. You don't want me. You can't want me."
"I do," I said quietly. "But this isn't going to work. I mean it would. Right now." I looked down at the crushed grass and grain. "Right here. But not after."
She rolled onto her feet and offered me her hand. I thought it more prudent to ignore it and scrambled to my feet.
"We can't do this," she said.
"No," I echoed. "We can't."
We stood there for a long moment, and I knew I couldn't be the one to turn away. Finally, Sydney said, "We'd better get back," and she led the way through the swaying grain, a flurry of fool's gold in her wake.
7
Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.
— Song of Solomon 8:7
"Help me get this thing on," Eric demanded.
I stood back to let him into my room and laughed as he tried to get the inflexible chain mail over his head.
"You'll lose an ear if you do that," I said. "Here, there are clasps on the right side. Then you can put your head through. Now you know what squires were for." I tugged the mail down on his broad shoulders. "I need some help myself. I can't get the wimple quite right."
Eric yelped. "Let me get my shirt into place — this stuff scratches like hell."
"Now imagine getting on a horse and riding for five or six hours to battle."
"That's so comforting." Eric grunted and rotated his arms to settle the chain mail. I stepped back to admire the final picture. He hadn't shaved in almost a week, giving him a close beard and a slightly devilish look. He looked like a medieval lord with hose and a fine silk shirt under the chain mail.
"You look good in hose," I said, teasingly.
He looked at himself in the full-length mirror and wiggled his toes. "I left the shoes and the tunic, but I can manage them alone."
"Then help me," I said. I had managed to get into the heavy, white damask dress. It was a simple design that fit snugly to my breasts and fell without waist to the floor. I had also managed to get the dozens of bracelets on. The heavy cabochon emerald earrings were rapidly stretching my earlobes. I hadn't realized paste would be so heavy. The real thing would have killed me.
I was thankful for my hair being both short and thick. The bobby pins holding the crimson kerchief on top of my head would stay in place. "I need the kerchief attached to the small snap on the back of the dress. Then wind it around and fasten it again — here."
Between us we finally managed to get the long piece of silk attached to my hair, draped over one shoulder with the corner ending at my wrist where it belonged, then caught through a series of loops to be attached to itself on the other side of my head. This final catch could be undone to show my face. When it was in place, the kerchief veiled my face from the point of my nose down.
"Very regal," Eric said. "And modest."
"Eleanor was never accused of being modest," I said, jangling the bracelets. "Did you know that when Richard Lion-Heart became king, Eleanor really ruled England? She was fifty-four at the time." When I wasn't thinking about Sydney, I was thinking about Eleanor.
"I can't wait to read your book, sweetheart. I know it'll be great."
We made quite a picture, standing side by side. It could have been so perfect, except that the eyes that stared back at me were eyes I'd never looked deeply into. I didn't know myself anymore, but I knew enough to know the picture was a lie.
I didn't know what I was going to do about it.
* * * * *
Carrie had told me that twelve hundred people were attending the party, which was the limit of the ballroom. To each side of the main ballroom were large rooms with buffet tables; I hadn't really understood the expression "groaning with food" until then. The ticket price to the fundraiser had been five thousand per person, and no one seemed to begrudge a penny. Carrie hoped the Children's Defense Fund would get at least four million in proceeds.
I had never been to an event like it. Eric and I were announced as Henry the Second and Eleanor, king and queen of England. We met Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn almost immediately, and then Louis the Sixteenth and Marie Antoinette. Both Anne and Marie had garish stitches in their throats indicating that their heads had been sewn back on. There were two George and Martha Washingtons and dozens of flappers and Gatsbys. There were Frankenstein monsters and Draculas, several stunning black cats, witches of all varieties, and at least two Vincent van Goghs — one with his ear and one without. I kept my veil up in keeping with the masks almost everyone was wearing.
The orchestra varied the music among waltzes, swing, and hit parade ballads. Eric complained that chain mail wasn't made for dancing to "Take the A Train," but he made an effort, and I danced with several of his friends. All the while I wondered what Sydney was wearing and if I would recognize her.
I ran into her finally, well after midnight, while I was raiding the buffet for cold water and several of the puff pastries with spinach and fontina. She was dressed as John Adams, the tight-fitting vest and breeches setting off her trim figure perfectly. Her long, full muslin sleeves and powdered wig made her the picture of Colonial romance. Though the outfit was masculine, there was no doubt that she was a woman, and I felt a clenching deep inside me far too pleasurable to be indigestion. She made me a deep, respectful bow, her sleeves billowing as she gestured.
"My queen," she said, without a hint of mockery.
"Oh stop that," I said. "You don't believe in monarchy."
"True," she said, straightening up. "I believe in revolution," she said passionately. "Independence from the tyranny of England."
"Piffle," I said. "You just want to get out from under the taxes."
"You wound me, lady!"
I feinted a stabbing motion with a toothpick, and she staggered back into the arms of one of the George Washingtons then faked a splendidly drawn-out death.
Eric appeared at my elbow and laughed. "Somehow I don't think we'd have won our independence from Eleanor."
I brandished the toothpick. "Not when I'm properly armed."
Sydney sat up. "Revolution!" she declared. She got to her feet, slapped George on the back and said, "Come on, fellow, I've got big plans for a vacation at Valley Forge." They disappeared into the crowd.
I started after her, then stopped, realizing she had left me as soon as she could do so. She didn't want to see me. And I couldn't see her.
Eric proffered a plate of chocolates.
"I found these in the conservatory. There's an entire dessert buffet in there."
It was after two when I saw Sydney again, her wig slightly askew as she talked earnestly to a small group of men around her. I recognized some of the faces but couldn't come up with names. I drifted toward them, hating myself for wanting to be closer to her.
The group laughed, and one of the men took over talking. They were having a political debate about municipal bonds for affordable housing — in the middle of a very swank party. I smiled behind my veil.
Apparently Sydney was one of those people who are always working.
"I'll convince you yet," Sydney was saying when an ethereally thin woman dressed as Veronica Lake cut in and took Sydney by the arm.
"Syd, dear, I haven't seen you in ages," she said from behind long, blonde hair covering one eye.
Sydney went rigid and said in a markedly unwelcoming tone, "Patrice, what a surprise."
"It's been at least ten years. You don't come to the Club anymore." Patrice managed to make it sound like an accusation. She dropped her gaze to Sydney's empty glass. "I've run out of Scotch, and so have you. I think we should go find more."
The men shifted uncomfortably, and Sydney said coolly, "I don't drink anymore Patrice. You'll have to find it on your own."
"I don't believe you," Patrice said coyly. I realized then that she was very drunk but hiding it well. "Any more than I'd believe you stopped doing all the ... other things you used to do."
Sydney lifted her chin. "You'll have to find someone else to have your fun with, Patrice. I don't believe in living in the past."
"Who's talking about the past? I'm talking about Scotch tonight and breakfast tomorrow. It'll be like old times."
"No, Patrice," Sydney said patiently. "There's no turning back the clock."
Patrice pushed Sydney away with a sudden, ill-tempered pout. "You're no fun anymore, Syd. You're boring. And rude. You never called." Patrice looked around as if she'd forgotten what she was saying. "I'll get a Scotch, okay?" She walked carefully in the direction of one of the bars.
There was a strained silence among the men with Sydney, then one, much older than the others, said, "Aren't ex-girlfriends a pain?"
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