CHAPTER 11
Here we go again, Jackie thought as she looked around at the sea of faces, all of them smiling.
It was always the same on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend. With the whole summer stretching before them like a magic carpet waiting to take them on the adventure of their lives, the women and men who came to wake the town from its winter slumber were high on the thrill of possibilities. Their voices glittered with hope, creating a swirling wave of sound that swept through the club and left its intoxicating touch on everything. Laughter spilled like champagne from the bar and the dance floor, while the more sedate dining room crackled with the clinking sounds of glassware and silver.
Jackie moved through her kingdom with the practiced grace of a woman who had been in the same position many times. She greeted familiar customers by name and new ones with a smile and a hand on their shoulders. This was what they all wanted, to feel as if they’d come home, and she was happy to provide the illusion. Not that she didn’t consider many of them family; she did. But she was finding it more difficult than usual to really care.
Maybe, she thought as she smiled and waved at a couple whose faces were familiar from previous summers but whose names she’d forgotten, it was because she no longer had a home of her own to go home to. She had a house, but that was just a shell that had once housed everything else that was really important to her. Now the house was largely empty. Karla had moved out that morning. With her teaching responsibilities over and her grades handed in, she’d had no more reasons to stay. The boxes had gone into the U-Haul, the cat into her carrier, and Karla had gone, off to her new life in Providence. Jackie had been left with the past and a house that echoed when she walked through it.
The actual leaving had been as civil as she could have hoped for. A quick, sterile hug and the return of her house keys, and Karla was off. Watching her drive away, the huge cheerful sunflower painted on the side of the rental truck to celebrate the beauty that was Kansas growing smaller and smaller until Karla turned a corner and disappeared for good, Jackie had tried to understand how someone whose voice on the phone had once had the power to take her breath away had been reduced to a box of old paperback novels left in a corner of the guest bedroom and a handful of empty hangers dangling in a closet. Where had they gone wrong? At what point had love slipped into indifference?
Maybe June was right. Jackie sighed. June was a whole other issue. Her older sister, June, was the one person in her family who had reacted to her coming out with stereotypical hostility. “It’s not right,” she’d said, looking across the table at the restaurant Jackie had taken her to lunch at, hoping the public setting might prevent June from having one of her all-too-familiar emotional outbreaks, “two sisters being together.”
“I’m not with a sister,” Jackie had told her. “Susan is white.”
She was nineteen at the time, a sophomore in college and a year out of the house she’d grown up in and the room she and June had shared their entire lives. It was Christmas break, and she’d decided the time had come to tell her sister a thing or two about herself. She’d arrived home with freshly shorn hair, a copy of the poems of Audre Lourde in her suitcase, and the taste of Susan’s good-bye kiss still on her lips.
“White?” June had said. “You’re doing this with a white girl?”
“She’s a woman, not a girl,” Jackie had snapped. “And ‘this’ happens to be love. I’m making love with another woman, and I’m not ashamed of it.”
It had all been very political. Thinking back on it now, Jackie had to laugh at the fervor with which she’d defended her relationship with Susan. But June had seen it as both a betrayal of womankind and a betrayal of blackness. “She’s just using you to work off some of her white guilt, and you’re letting her,” she’d said dismissively. Christmas dinner had been an icy affair, and Jackie had returned to school glad to have her family five hundred miles away. When, just before spring break, Susan had dumped her for a Hispanic sociology major, Jackie had been irritated to find herself shouting at her departing ex, “I guess you can check another minority off your wish list now!” She’d waited until she had a new, black, girlfriend to tell June about before bringing up the subject again.
After Jackie’s revelation, the relationship between the sisters had cooled. Where once they’d told each other everything, they now rarely spoke. As first their father and then their mother died, they saw less and less of each other, until finally their relationship was confined to the occasional holiday or birthday card, a signature hastily scrawled at the bottom or, more often, absent entirely.
Cancer had brought them back together. At forty-one, June discovered a lump in her breast. A mastectomy failed to eradicate the poisonous tendrils that had curled around her innards, and within a year she was near death. A call from her daughter brought Jackie back to Detroit, and they’d had three weeks together before the cancer launched its final, deadly, assault. Even then, as June had lain in the hospital saying her good-byes, she’d begged Jackie to reconsider her life. “You need a family,” she’d said, her voice ragged and her bony fingers clutching Jackie’s weakly. “You don’t want to die alone.”
Jackie hadn’t argued, too busy with grieving to try and convince her sister that two women together were a family, that there was more to love than the production of children and the leaving of legacies. But now, with Karla and a decade of her life gone, Jackie wondered if maybe her sister had been right all along. No, she didn’t think there was any sin in who and what she was. But maybe wanting it all was asking too much. Maybe the energy required to fight thousands of years of heterosexuality was more than she had in her.
The truth was, the last few years she’d been thinking about babies, and this terrified her. Her, a butch dyke, suddenly wondering what it would be like to be a mother? Jackie tried to imagine Franny’s reaction to the idea of her in a maternity dress, stomach plumped out like a down pillow and breasts swelling with milk. She’d never believe it, Jackie thought, picturing her mentor’s shocked expression and smiling to herself.
Still, she’d thought about it. She’d even mentioned it to Karla a few times, as casually as she could. But Karla was too busy with tenure and writing articles for various obscure academic journals to get that Jackie was serious about wanting to start a family, so the subject had died with a whimper. Besides, Jackie getting pregnant would upset the whole butch-femme construct of their relationship that Karla found so appealing. She herself would never even consider motherhood, believing it to be an outdated tradition that kept women confined and raped them of their potential. (“And who exactly gave birth to you?” Jackie had asked her once, receiving a long lecture on the lesbian responsibility to overturn the heterosexual ideal in return.) And should her butch lover ever reveal a longing for strollers and tiny booties, Karla would surely have felt it a betrayal of the worst sort.
How ironic, Jackie thought, that Karla had then been the one to bring about the end of their relationship, and not by leaving Jackie for another butch but for a woman even more femme than herself. “I can’t live within a definition,” she’d told Jackie during one of their breakup fights. “I need to explore other aspects of my being.”
Well, let her go exploring, Jackie thought. Maybe it was time for her to do some exploring of her own. Forty wasn’t too old to have a baby. Maybe there were a few risks involved, but they were minimal. She was in good health, especially since she’d stopped drinking. Really the only thing she lacked was some good, healthy sperm. And how hard can it be to find that? she asked herself. The stuff is practically flowing in rivers in this town.
“Jackie!”
Jackie turned and saw three men walking toward her.
“Ted!” she called out delightedly. “Ben! Good to see you.”
“Have we ever missed a Memorial Day opening?” asked Ted as the two men embraced and kissed her. “The place looks amazing.”
“Thanks,” Jackie replied. “I didn’t think they’d get it done, but they did. Of course, Jerry was putting the last of the paint on while the staff was setting the tables, but we made it.” She turned her attention to Ted and Ben’s companion. “And who is this?” she asked.
“This is our fabulous new friend Josh,” Ben told her. “He’s staying with us for a while.”
Jackie took Josh’s hand and shook it. “You’re a lucky man,” she said. “You couldn’t ask for better hosts.”
“I know,” Josh replied, smiling sweetly. “They’ve been great.”
“How about a table for my favorite customers?” asked Jackie. “I have one by the window just waiting for you.”
She led the men through the restaurant and to a table situated right in front of one of the big windows that looked out over the ocean. As they sat, she looked again at Josh. He was handsome, not in the way that a lot of the gay boys who came to P-Town were with their overly worked bodies and whitened smiles, but in a comfortable, normal way. He looked like the kind of guy who would go to a ball game without worrying what his hair looked like, or who didn’t have to get dressed up just to walk to the store for milk. Or the kind who would look good pushing a baby stroller, she thought idly.
“Let me tell you about our specials,” she said quickly, pushing the thought from her mind. What was she doing? She wasn’t on a man hunt, she was running a business.
Having fully described the Alaskan halibut with dill and capers, the duck breast with fig sauce, and the cioppino with lobster and scallops, Jackie excused herself to allow the men time to peruse the rest of the menu. Ted and Ben had been coming to the restaurant since Franny had owned it. They had quickly become favorites with Jackie upon her arrival, first because of the extravagant tips they gave her as a waitress and later because of the kindness they showed her when she came to know them better. They were her idea of the perfect couple, and she’d often looked at them and hoped that she and Karla would end up as happy as they were.
“So much for that plan,” she said out loud.
“Excuse me?”
Jackie turned around and saw Emmeline standing behind her. She was dressed in an elegant beaded black dress, and she was holding sheet music in her hand.
“Oh, not you,” Jackie said. “I was just giving myself a hard time.”
“Please. Don’t you have enough people to do that for you?” asked Emmeline.
Jackie laughed. “More than enough,” she said. “How are you doing?”
“Remarkably well, considering I think I’ve forgotten the lyrics to every song I’m supposed to be singing tonight,” Emmeline told her.
“You always say that,” said Jackie. “And you’re always wonderful.”
“I know,” Emmeline answered. “But before I only had to remember the lyrics to ‘Dancing Queen.’ This time I’m singing actual words. It takes more than just fabulous hand motions to distract the audience when you screw up Gershwin and Porter.”
“Trust me, you’ll be great,” Jackie reassured her friend. Inside, though, she wondered if it was true. Emmeline had previewed some of her set for Jackie earlier in the day, and it had been fantastic. Jackie had been wowed by Emmeline’s ability to pull off classics like “Too Darn Hot” and “A Foggy Day.” Her voice, a throaty combination of Julie London and Diana Krall with just the merest hint of Tony Bennett to betray her chromosomal heritage, was perfect for the material. If she could manage to stay calm, Jackie knew that Emmeline would give the people who’d come to see her—and those who’d stumbled upon her by accident—something amazing.
But she also knew that this was something new for her star performer. Emmeline was right, lip-synching to Abba was not the same as performing live with just a piano for support. Gone were the campy costumes and the outrageous gags that had made previous shows so popular. This time it was just Emmeline’s voice that was responsible for holding the audience captive. Would she be able to do it?
“I need a drink,” Emmeline said suddenly.
Jackie wasn’t sure what to say.
“I said I need one,” Emmeline told her, patting her hand. “Not that I was going to have one.”
“Don’t do that to me,” Jackie said sternly. “I have enough to worry about.”
“Karla?” asked Emmeline.
Jackie nodded. “Among other things,” she said. “I just can’t help feeling that I’m stuck in a rut. I mean, weren’t we doing exactly the same thing last year this time? And the year before that?”
“Not exactly,” Emmeline replied. “I had on a different dress.” She batted her impossibly long and totally false eyelashes at her employer.
It had the desired effect. Jackie smiled. “You know what I mean,” she said.
Emmeline sighed. “Yes, I do,” she said. “I also know that sometimes when we think things need to be shaken up what we really need is to just sit back and enjoy what we’ve got.”
“What kind of crazy drag queen Zen moment are you having?” asked Jackie.
It was Emmeline’s turn to laugh. “I’m just saying don’t go trying to fly over the rainbow just yet,” she said. “You might be surprised by what you find in your own backyard.”
“I hate that movie,” Jackie retorted. “And I hated it even more when Diana Ross did it. You’ll have to come up with something better.”
“Better than The Wizard of Oz?” replied Emmeline. “You are a hard one. I bet you laughed when Bambi’s mother died.”
“Life is not a Disney movie,” Jackie told her. “Even if all the fags in here want to think it is.”
“Watch it,” Emmeline said. “I’m one of those fags. So are you, when it comes down to it.”
“I know,” Jackie said. “That’s the problem. All my life I’ve been waiting for the happy ending, and now I don’t think it’s coming.”
“That sounds like Franny talking,” Emmeline said, suddenly sounding more serious.
Jackie sighed. “No,” she said. “I’m just talking. Everything will be fine.”
“All the same, I’ll be keeping an eye on you,” Emmeline answered.
“Okay, Mom,” Jackie quipped. But inside she was grateful to Emmeline. Theirs was a long friendship, and it was good to know that she had something she could count on to remain stable.
“How much time do I have?” Emmeline asked her.
Jackie checked her watch. “It’s eight-thirty,” she said. “I’ll have Robin shut down the music at nine and then they’re yours for an hour.”
“In that case,” said Emmeline, “I have to go powder my nose. I’ll see you in a bit.”
Emmeline retreated to the rear of the club and her dressing room. Jackie watched her go. If anyone had told her twenty years earlier that on the eve of her fortieth year she would be living on the ocean with no girlfriend and a drag queen for a best friend, she would have laughed herself silly. But there she was, at least for the time being. She still didn’t buy Emmeline’s assertion that her life didn’t need some changing.
First, though, there were customers to seat. Jackie picked up some menus, fixed a smile on her face, and went to greet her guests.