by Jean Andrews
I literally jogged over to the Point, taking the road behind the cabins to avoid Judith seeing me headed along the lakefront in that direction. Besides, after what had happened with Frank on the wooded trail, I was wary about taking that route in the dark.
Am I actually involved with two lesbians in one night? The lake water must alter your hormones.
In minutes I was on the north side of Levade’s property, standing in her driveway. A car was parked there alongside her Jeep. Maybe someone getting a reading from her. I walked up the drive and whispered, “Hey, guys” to Charlie and Duke, who gave me a quick dog-sniff appraisal and then flopped back down on the lawn.
Across the screened porch, the living room was lit up and a small table set, and Levade and the woman from the horse show were having dinner. Levade seemed relaxed and was laughing, and she looked beautiful. The other woman appeared sophisticated and confident. Who is that woman? What is she doing here? If she’s from Duluth, she had to drive hours to get to the Point, which means she’s planning on spending the night. Well, obviously! The woman reached across the table and put her hand on Levade’s arm and kept it there as she said something. Levade ducked her head, appearing shy but happy.
I felt like sagging to the ground and whimpering. I was jealous, no question about it. One minute Levade was stalking off because I wouldn’t commit to her, and the next she was romancing some horsewoman. It’s good you saw this, my inner voice told me. You were getting in too deep, and this is your wakeup call.
I patted Charlie and Duke good-bye and walked slowly back to my cabin, surprised that tears were running down my cheeks. What the hell’s that all about? If Levade is happy, then I should be happy. At least she’s not alone. But now I’m alone, and I’ve never felt alone in my life.
* * *
At dawn, I heard a man’s voice shouting from the van to the red cabin, asking for items that Judge Robertson had forgotten. “She needs her sleeping pills,” the man yelled, and there was a pause as, presumably, Judith ran back for them. “Get a couple of baggies out of the kitchen, will you? And the brown sandals!” This went on for a while, and I got the giggles over how public it was and how strange the requests. “Animal Crackers on the counter!” That was the last thing I heard, proving she might be a judge, but she was also just an older lady who liked her cookies. The engine revved, and Judge Robertson shouted she’d be back in a week.
Literally half an hour later, I heard a knock at the back door, and Judith stood there in sweatpants holding a small thermos of coffee and two croissants. We drank and ate as I walked her around the cabin and answered questions about who’d owned it. Judith took big strides and waved her arms broadly, owning all the space around her. In fact, her mere presence seemed to shrink the cabin.
“My aunt Alice Armand and her husband Jake built it. Late in life, she sold it to her dear friend, who is also my publicist.”
“Why did she sell it?” Judith set her coffee down on the window ledge, making herself at home.
“She said it made her sad and lonely.” That memory popped out of my mouth, surprising me.
“We can’t have this beautiful place remembered as sad and lonely!” She pulled me in to her again and gave me a long, hard French kiss that would have decked a Frenchman. Then she shoved her hand down my pants and grabbed all my anatomy in her large hand, squeezed it, and said, “Dinner tonight. I can’t wait.”
I jumped back as if I’d just discovered a snake in my pants. “I don’t think I can come tonight, Judith.”
Judith gave me a wicked grin. “I’ll bet you can. And I have a surprise package for you. See you at six.” Then she kissed me again, winked, and walked out the door.
Damn, I’m not attracted to this woman. But it’s “a thing,” kind of like bear-baiting, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that I’ve occasionally thought I wanted to experience. I’d had very lovely women in New York proposition me, but sitting across a table from them, both of us fully clothed, I just couldn’t imagine it being any better than, well, Ben.
Regardless of the quality, sex with Judith might mean I could “try out lesbians” and not have to worry about emotional entanglements. For Levade’s part, she’d made it clear she wasn’t interested in a sexual relationship without my swearing allegiance to her for all eternity, and frankly that hadn’t worked out so well for me. Ben came to mind.
And now Levade clearly has someone else, and probably always has had someone else. That romantic dinner didn’t just happen spontaneously. This has been going on for a while, by the looks of it! So time for me to move on…I’m good at moving on…learning not to want what I can’t have. So, I’m free to see whoever I choose, without any guilt over Levade, and Judith seems…well, logical. Then I thought about what I’d just thought, and I felt bad. Has it come to this, a “logical” romp in the hay?
It’s the woods, I thought, blaming my outrageous behavior on a bunch of pine trees. I’m with people I’ll never see again, in the fucking forest, and presto, I’m into sexual experimentation, at forty-seven. That may be the unseemly part.
The phone rang, and it was Ramona. She was correct. I was breathing a bit heavily, arguably because Judith had just taken an unexpected swan dive into my pants.
“What are you doing? Who are you doing? That woman, Levade?”
“Judith was here. The law professor from Minneapolis.”
“Another woman? Are you seeing another woman?” When I giggled, she said, “You’re a slut!”
“Ramona, do you think there’s a chance I’m gay?”
“As opposed to confused or fucked up?”
“I’m being serious.”
“I suppose it’s always a possibility.”
“Did you know that some studies say that women in their late forties have fluid sexuality and often find themselves transitioning out of heterosexual marriages and into same-sex relationships late in life?”
“You’re spending an inordinate amount of time researching this topic.”
“Let’s see,” I said, only slightly tongue in cheek. “I could enjoy being belittled, picking up his underwear off the floor, pretending I had an orgasm when it was more like genital rug burn, and cooking ten thousand dinners, or I could have a soft, sensual woman make love to me. Which would you choose?”
“Honey, I’m hard-core penis. All they have to do is open the door for me, protect me from snakes, and not fart in bed.”
“Why didn’t you tell me I could be gay?”
“There’s a lot of things I haven’t told you.” And she didn’t laugh.
Chapter Eighteen
Judith’s cabin was the most poorly decorated of the ones Marney rented out. The walls were pine boards painted cabin-red, and here and there anachronistic, dime-store art hung at cockeyed angles throughout the living room—the ruins of Pompei on a thin canvas, a faded chuckwagon scene from the 1800s captive in a plastic frame, and a football-shaped plaque that said, GO BADGERS! It was a cabin, appropriately enough, having an identity crisis. This place is so boring it could actually benefit from a coat of white paint and a salt-and-pepper shaker of two copulating coyotes.
On the tiny patio, overlooking the lake, Judith was grilling burgers and making pleasant conversation about her home in Minneapolis and her dog, Wolfgang, whom she missed but couldn’t bring to the cabin, because he got distracted and chased squirrels. Me too, I thought.
I had barely finished eating when she began doubling up on the wine. Foreplay wasn’t exactly her strong suit. She tried holding my hand under the table during dinner, ruffling my hair as she cleared dishes, and then plopping down beside me on the couch, her arm draped over my shoulder, so she could rub my breast, all while asking me if I liked living in New York.
It seemed awkward, and I was clearly no help, because I was still trying to decide why I was even contemplating sex with Judith. Is it to get back at Levade? That would be infantile. Is it to get over Levade? I paused on that one, having to admit that losing Levade to the eq
uestrian-creature was painful, because I felt emotionally attached to her, more emotionally attached than I’d ever allowed myself to be toward anyone. And that in itself is ridiculous, I thought.
I had to get Levade out of my head because Judith was right there in front of me, and it was obvious she wanted to race through the niceties as quickly as possible and rush to the bedroom. Within minutes, she was towing me in that direction. The small bedroom was cabinesque, with narrow pine-slat walls, a small bed covered in a well-worn quilt, and a rustic dresser with a bear-lamp on it. She kissed me several times and then suggested I get comfortable, and she’d be right back.
While taking off my clothes, I mused that this must be lesbian sex at forty-seven—no intrigue, no foreplay, just prepare to be fucked. I was sorry I’d gotten myself into this situation, and, frankly, I wished I could just call the whole thing off. This is truly an ill-conceived experiment and beneath me. I even contemplated doing my retching trick that had worked on Frank, but before I could launch into a pretend-puke performance, I heard her leave the bathroom, and seconds later, she appeared in the bedroom doorway naked.
I hadn’t really seen her body during the infamous midnight swim, but now I had the full view and thought she looked better naked, without the 1940s clothes. A pretty face, small firm breasts, a narrow waist, and then my eyes traveled south. She was wearing a velvet harness around her waist with straps extending down and around each leg. On closer examination, at crotch level, I realized part of the apparatus held a strap-on dildo that seemed partially erect. The harness appeared custom fitted to carry two additional smaller dildos that were thankfully “at rest,” kind of like Snap-on tools, in case size was a problem. She braced herself in the doorway with arms outstretched, head cocked, and pelvis jutting forward.
“Surprise package! Can you handle this, baby?”
“Oh, my God!” I don’t know what came over me, but I burst out laughing, and the more offended she became, the more I laughed.
“I find this an odd and somewhat insulting reaction,” she said, slouching a bit in her full-regalia genitalia.
“I’m so sorry, Judith. It’s just that I’ve been with men all my life, so I’ve seen all manner of penises. Never three on the same person, I grant you, but for whatever reason, none of them excited me. Nonetheless, they were all the real deal. So I decide to take a foray into lesbian sex and meet a woman, a very nice and lovely woman, wearing an entire set of rubber penises.” I began laughing again. “Life is so ironic.”
She took a step forward and then launched herself into the air, landing on me and flattening me like a WWF wrestler, then quickly covered my mouth with hers, probably to shut me up. I pushed her away so I could breathe, and she tried to penetrate me with her dildo. It was rough sex with strange toys. “Judith, hold it. Stop it! Let me up.”
When she realized I was serious about leaving, she made a last-ditch effort to save the evening, grabbed the harness, ripped it off her body, and flung it across the room. The larger rubber penis bounced off the wall and landed on the bear-lamp, sticking out of the top like a foreskin finial.
“I get it,” she said, still trying to have sex with me. “I know a local guy, good-looking and clean, and he loves threesomes.”
“Not my thing.” I pushed her off me again. “This doesn’t work for me. Not your fault,” I said, in the way I said it to men, when in effect it was their fault. “It’s just too complicated.”
I grabbed my clothes as she kissed my back and tried to convince me to stay, but I was out the door and across the lawn in an Olympic sprint. Sass scattered as I blew through the door. “Pussy!” I panted to the terrified feline. “Stay away from it!”
* * *
The next day the older boy I’d seen playing pool at Jensen’s passed me on the sidewalk, as I was getting out of my car in front of the hardware store, and he gave me a wink and a low wolf whistle. Was this kid the one Judith was calling for the threesome? I was paranoid and remorseful. This is what happens when you have no relationship for four years—well, virtually no relationship.
I was so depressed that I did what all good women do in a stressful situation. I stopped at the drugstore soda fountain and ordered a chocolate sundae. Casey, the freckled teenage version of Emma Stone, served it up.
“That bad?” she asked slyly.
“Looking for love in all the wrong places.”
“This whole town would be the wrong place, so I hope it’s not here.” She pushed strands of her strawberry-blond hair back behind her ear.
“You’re pretty savvy. Aren’t you just out of high school?”
“Yeah, but it’s a small town. You see it all because you know everybody.”
“You have a boyfriend?”
“Used to.”
“Mind if I ask what happened?”
“He was into summer threesomes with some woman who was renting Jensen’s cabin every year. He thought it was all fine because it paid well. He’s a jerk.”
I blushed, thinking about who that woman might be. “I saw you going to the Point for a reading,” I said, happy to change the subject.
The fact that I knew she’d been there seemed to upset her. “That wasn’t me. You must have seen someone else.”
“Could be.” I thanked her for the ice cream and left. Why would she lie about visiting Levade?
I crossed the street to the hardware store and noticed, through the glass storefront, that Gladys, the owner, was behind the counter talking to Little Man, showing him some knives from the case. I was surprised that a Native American with access to an entire tribe of artisans wouldn’t just have the tribe make him a knife, which made me think that Nordic craftsmanship must be revered in this part of the country. I got in my car, making a mental note to go back to the hardware store and have a look at the artisanry when I had more time.
I turned on the radio, and the announcer, in a thick Norwegian accent, was welcoming listeners to the twenty-four-hour polka station, as he cued up the “Beer Barrel Polka.” What kind of loon listens all day to polka music? I thought, tapping my hand on the steering wheel and bobbing my head in time to oom-pa-pa and tra-la-la and somebody rolling out a barrel, surprised that, before I knew it, I’d polka-ed my way back to the cabin.
Chapter Nineteen
I dumped my dirty clothes into the ancient washing machine while I spent time working on the book. The female lover was completely captivated by the ex-wife, whom she realized she could never have. Their worlds were too far apart, their experiences too diverse, their relationship too painful. But if she couldn’t have her, she was committed to protecting her from the man she’d once loved, who was determined to kill her.
* * *
I heard the old washing machine make a whop-whop-whop sound and then flop to a stop. I jumped up and piled the wet clothes into a wicker basket containing clothespins and headed out to the clothesline, where I pinned jeans, T-shirts, and underwear up on the line, watching them flap in the wind. I smiled at the thought that a place still existed where you had to wash clothes on a day when the breeze was strong and there was no rain, pin them up, and then remember to go get them before tree sap and bugs adhered to them or rain set in.
When I rounded the corner with my empty clothes basket, Judith was sitting on the back steps.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Waiting for you. I want to start over.”
I felt bad for her. However she chose to have sex was fine. We just weren’t a match. “We can be friends, Judith, but I’m not up for anything else.”
“Of course we can be friends. We are friends.” She jumped up and wrapped her arms around me. I pushed her away decisively, but she wasn’t giving up that easily. “I read you wrong. I thought you wanted a little fun in the sun, sport sex, and see what develops.”
She was right about the signals I was sending out by going to her cabin for burgers, knowing full well I was bringing the buns. I was just “trying out lesbian sex,” which wasn�
�t fair, and frankly, I would criticize that behavior if anyone else did it.
“I’m sorry,” I said, but that didn’t change the fact that I’d already experienced it and didn’t want to experience any more.
“You can’t reject me over one rocky evening.”
As she tried to convince me to let her inside the cabin, a car pulled into the drive, one I didn’t recognize. The door opened and my jaw dropped.
“Ramona!” I shouted, as if she’d just found me at the bottom of a well after a week missing. She waved wildly, seeming to assess my dilemma, and made a beeline toward me.
“Darling, it’s so good to see you.” And she kissed me, dropping her big Louis Vuitton bag on the porch, signaling ownership of the territory and her intent to stay a while, and she looked fabulous in black. “I’ve missed you!”
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I had business in Chicago and thought how could I not come see you.” Her tone was just a tiny bit provocative, and I realized she was loving my dilemma.
“Ramona, this is Judith. Judith, my dearest friend and publicist, Ramona Ryder.” Judith shook hands but was already backing away, clearly trying to determine the relationship Ramona represented.
“Nice to meet you.” She broke eye contact with Ramona to give me a look. “I hope we’ll see more of each other, Taylor.” And she was gone across the lawn.
“How much of you has she seen so far?” Ramona quipped.
“You saved me. Come in. I’m so glad you’re here.”
“You look fetching with your little clothes basket under your arm. I expected you to break into four bars of “Oklahoma.”
“If you’d break down and buy a dryer, I could be less ‘fetching.’” I shot her a look.
“No dryer is part of the charm.”
Ramona slung off her jacket on entering and eyed the place with a quick swish-pan of her head. “I’m staying one fucking night in these woods to get you out of trouble.” She plopped down in the rocker and produced a small, silver flask of whiskey. “What an abysmal flight and drive. No wonder people never leave here. It’s just too taxing.”
