The cab made good time. Annie and Maddy were waiting for them outside. Maddy, festooned with political buttons, thinner, but just as hardy looking, leapt from the cab's hood and presented herself to Paris for a hug, then strutted over to Peg and shook her hand.
“This is Annie Heaphy,” Maddy told Paris, in her element as mistress of ceremonies. “Don't let the cab fool you, she's really a philosopher.”
Annie smiled with a bashful duck of her head and took one hand out of her pocket to punch Peg lightly in the arm. “How's it going, Peglet? When you letting your hair get grey?”
“With this new generation carrying on, very soon. Since when do you wear glasses?”
Annie looked surprised and pulled off the little round wire-framed pair. “They're just for driving,” she explained.
She tried dressing Annie as a radical from Peg's era, in a confrontational T-shirt with a lavender bandana around her head. Then she tried a longish skirt, frilly blouse and matching career-woman jacket as befitted a philosophy teacher. Neither fit. “Do you teach?” she asked.
Annie was wearing jeans and a bright rugby shirt. “Sometimes I get a new woman cabbie to train,” she answered. “But if you mean philosophy, no. That's just a hobby of mine.”
“An excuse,” Peg teased, “to hole up in your apartment and be antisocial.” Peg's hands were in her pockets too, but whereas Annie looked as if she were burying her hands, Peg looked like she was setting the style for dyke stance. Butch stance, Paris thought. Butch pockets must be to hands what negligees were to bodies, concealing and revealing all at once.
Annie grinned under a shaggy mop of blonde hair, the edges of her eyes all crinkly. “Maybe,” she replied. “Maybe.”
Paris carefully led them upstairs and wondered, while she heated water for coffee, if Peg was making a convert of her to this femme/butch thing. It seemed so natural once she'd started thinking in those terms, but it was disconcerting, not knowing exactly what being femme entailed.
“Don't you have any herbal tea?” asked Maddy.
She stifled a laugh. “Is that what you learned with the big city dykes? Yes, I keep some around for you crunchy granola types.”
“Count me among them, then,” said Annie.
“What brings you home, Maddy?” Peg asked.
Maddy seemed a little bit intimidated by Peg, though she stole admiring glances at her, as if to memorize her style. She answered without the old bravado, but with a confidence she hadn't expressed before she ran away. “I can't get anything but shit work in New York. Under-the-table stuff that pays less than minimum. Besides, there's political work to do outside the big cities and I know I can do it now.” She blew on her mug. “You know, when I told people in New York about Dusty and Elly and how they turned some of Morton River's homophobia around just by being strong decent out women, they were impressed. They said I ought to stay in town and make sure all that education wasn't lost.”
“So you're going to become the resident agitator?”
“Yes. Starting with Mama. Geeky old Giulia can go jump in the river. I'm going to be who I am where I live or I'll take off again.”
“I hope you're not planning any New York antics,” Peg said. Paris flinched inside. How could they be together? Peg had retired her political buttons. She probably sat around with pals like Annie Heaphy telling tales of the feminist wars. She'd either dampen Paris's spirit or throw her out.
Annie shook her head. “Haven't changed a bit, have you, low-profile Peg? This woman must've racked up a hundred pro-choice marches, but she won't set foot in a gay pride parade. Don't worry. Maddy knows outing's not the only tactic in the book.”
“Yeah,” agreed Maddy, her mouth full of cookie. “I know what it's like to be scared to death. And I know, Dusty and Elly or not, the Valley's still not the coolest town to be queer. People'll hear about it when I come out in school. If I live through it, maybe they'll decide they can.”
The adults were silent. Maddy was making the same decisions Paris had, only a lot earlier, and with a status-quo-challenging “butch” exterior. That was risky. She wondered what Peg was thinking—about her job, her family? And Annie, who just kept grinning into her Red Zinger and could walk away.
“Peg, my woman,” said Annie, “I'd love to see Elly again while I'm here.”
Paris asked, “Were you and Elly—”
“Not really,” Annie answered, “but we all hung out together for a long time, drinking and messing around, trying to figure out what life was about. We were pretty tight.”
“When you and Elly were speaking,” Peg said with a laugh. “Why don't you plan to bring Turkey up for a reunion sometime?” She looked at Paris. “I'll go over to the diner with Annie. Shall I take Maddy home?” In her hurry, she'd left the Jeep at Brockett Lake.
“Hold it, women,” Maddy said, their peer in queerness if not in age. “I need support. Won't one of you be my backup?”
Peg twisted up her face.
“Hey, I'll go in with you,” said Annie.
Paris hesitated briefly. Would Peg volunteer to be the adult gay who returned the lost sheep to her fold? She decided it wasn't her place to test Peg.
“The Scalas know me,” she said. “And Giulia already knows I'm gay.”
“She does?” said Maddy, eyebrows high with amazement.
“Peter left your sister while you were away. She's not the same person.”
“Wow. What happened? He didn't guess it was me who…”
“It had to do with Giulia, and being from different classes.” She'd get enough bitter details from her sister. She didn't want to reinforce Maddy's part in the breakup.
“We're not good enough for that stupid creep? We're too good for him. I bet it's because she wouldn't do it with him. You know what? I'm so glad he's gone I'm not even going to rub it in when I see her.”
*
But Giulia was at work when they arrived at Maddy's house. Maddy walked in yelling, “Hi, Mama! I'm back!”
Sophia came unglued. She cried and hugged and scolded Maddy for ten minutes before Maddy could talk. Paris felt embarrassed to watch such lavishing of emotion.
“Sit down, Mama,” Maddy said, pushing her into a chair. “I want to tell you something. Giulia wanted me to keep it from you, but that's not right. Why I left is because I'm gay.”
“Gay?”
“A lesbica.”
“Mia bambina?”
“And I like it. I don't want to change. I love women,” she exclaimed, throwing her arms wide. She moved more freely and Paris suddenly realized why. She'd gotten rid of her bra and no longer dug at its cruel straps. “Men are a stupid waste of time. Look at Peter. Look at Papa.”
Sophia's eyes finally sought Paris out in the doorway. She said nothing.
“And you ran away to do this?” asked Sophia.
“No. I ran away because I knew it.” She told her love story and she told of Giulia's betrayal.
Sophia just sat there, looking sad and confused. “No grandchildren? Giulia says she never marries now. And you want to be one of those women in men's clothes.”
“We don't all wear men's clothes, Mama. Look at Paris!”
“Paris?”
“I'm gay too, Sophia.”
The poor woman looked stunned now. Maddy went to her and knelt at her chair, putting her arms around her. “See?” she said. “Paris is a good person. It's okay to be gay. I didn't know that when I left, but I've been with lots of gay people and they're just like everyone else. You'll see, Mama. I'll be happy, even happier than Giulia. Than you.”
Sophia sat up then, drew Maddy in front of her, holding both her hands. “I am happy. You're home. You can change.”
“No, Mama. It's not something you change your mind about. You either are or you aren't.”
“I want you to go see your father.”
Maddy rocked back on her heels, almost losing her balance. She stared at her mother, then looked at Paris who waited to see the joy on her face. There it was, first in the eyes, then in that wraparound grin. “Daddy? Where is he?”
“Knee-brass-ka,” said Sophia, smiling, looking proud, as if she'd tracked him down herself.
“Nebraska? Is he coming home?”
“He makes better money there. He saves. In a few years we go back to Italy.”
“We? I can't live in Italy. It's even harder to be queer there.”
“Good. You marry an Italian boy.”
“No, Ma, that's not how it works. I want to see Dad. Let me get a map. I can hitch—”
“There is money. You can fly an airplane.”
“I'm dreaming, right?”
“He sends money.”
“For me? He wants to see me? You mean he asked for me?”
Sophia nodded, beaming.
Maddy stood, her face earnest. “No. I can't just skip out there in two seconds. I have to write and tell him who I am first. That I'm gay.”
“He doesn't want to know,” Sophia said. “Just go to him!”
“He'll care. And I care. I want to make sure he's not expecting your innocent little bambina.” She picked up her pack. “Wait. Did he learn to read English?”
Sophia shrugged. “I don't know.”
“I'll call, I'll call right now. Give me his number.” They argued, but Sophia gave in and pulled a postcard from her pocket. She looked toward, though not at, Paris.
“I got him to send his number,” she explained.
Maddy went to the kitchen. In a moment, they heard her yelling into the phone as if to make her father hear her halfway across the country.
Sophia wouldn't meet her eyes.
“It's true,” she said to Sophia.
“I don't want to know either.”
“That's fine with me, but Maddy's not going to let you ignore it.” She was so proud of Maddy she felt privileged to be there backing her up.
“There is nothing like this in my familia.” Just what Giulia had said.
“Of course there has been. It's the difference between now and then, Sophia. We're not hiding anymore. We want to see the light of day too.”
“It's a mortal sin.”
“The same force that made you what you are, made me.”
“I love you like a daughter. Now—” Sophia did look at her then, with narrow suspicious eyes. She knew what was coming and steeled herself against feeling insulted, against letting her rage show, against taking her disgust with breeder society out on this one uneducated woman.
“You did this to my Maddalena? You?”
“No one did anything to her,” she replied softly. “And no, Maddy announced it to me not much differently than she did to you. She hadn't done anything with anyone at that point. She just knew.”
“I tell you, Paris, I don't understand nothing. Is this the same world I wake up in this morning?”
“Having been thrown a few curves myself lately, I can sympathize with you.”
“Curves?” Sophia asked.
“No.” Maybe this wasn't the time, but she insisted. “I'm not explaining another expression to you, Sophia. School will bring you to 1990 faster than anything I can teach. Wouldn't it be great if you could read and write as well as you can speak? You could help Mr. Scala run a business here in America and stay near the girls.”
“I don't know,” she replied, wringing her hands. “He wants to go back home very bad.” The look in Sophia's eyes, though, was thoughtful.
Quiet came from the kitchen like a flash flood. Maddy returned, head hanging. When she looked up it was at Paris, her large dark eyes so hurt she didn't have to say what had happened. She turned to her mother. “He says to send Giulia, Mama. He says he doesn't want any gay kids.”
She could see Maddy shrug away the tragic slump of her shoulders. “I don't care. I'll finish school and on time. Then I'll go to college. I'll be a lawyer or a politician. Both. I'll be somebody famous who changes everything for gay people. I'll be president of ACT UP.”
Maddy, stiff-shouldered, marched across the room to Paris. The child might be standing taller, but she wondered if she'd ever see Maddy's special brand of unfettered joy in her eyes after this. “Don't you let me forget it, okay, Paris? I'm going to make it so no father ever says that to a gay kid again because they'll know better. I'm going to stay right here and fight it out.”
*
And the words of Maddy's last sentence, of course, were what she heard as she walked down to the diner in the balmy dark. Even a sixteen-year-old was digging in, making a commitment to roots and a goal.
She stopped on the bridge. The stars flared splendidly against the night sky in this idle, tense town. The Hillside glowed with lights like home fires burning. Spring was a faint sweetness in the air. The last several rainless days had calmed the river. It hummed against the banks lovingly, the time it spent in this town ceaseless yet hurried, like the span of a whole human life. Would it stop and settle if it could?
It had no expectations, that vast, mute, desireless body. What if she had none?
She felt dizzy. This was a new thought for her, giving up her expectations, free-falling on purpose.
What had she expected? That she would someday flow into a geography of perfection where everything would be in place for her to claim? Did she think her travels entitled her to some sort of finders/keepers code, some no-pain, lots-of-gain paradise? Giulia seemed born knowing what Maddy had just so early and painfully discovered. Maybe she, like them, needed to accept that sort of responsibility for creating the life she wanted right where she was.
The diner was a neon palace in the distance. She crossed its river moat, her sense of adventure strong, pumping excitement through her body, “Rhapsody In Blue” crescendoing, blending with the river's rising song. Even her knee felt more elastic as she strode ahead.
She didn't know any more answers than the river did, but she suspected Peg would be there with Annie, and Elly, arm through Dusty's, and the stragglers who attached and detached from that family, Giulia a reluctant member despite herself. Maybe Venita was there in her jaunty wide-brimmed straw hat, with news from Thor that the Jacobs had dumped Hermitage Park. Maybe Peg really would take the lead with her brothers and plant a seed about Rafferty's.
Okay, she thought, as she climbed the short steps to the Queen of Hearts, only a slight twinge in her knee, maybe she didn't need to leave town to avoid falling down those stairs again. She could hear the little passenger train pulling out of the Valley, calling whoo-whoo to whomever needed to hear its goodbye. She remembered the fantasy she'd brought to Morton River…and she remembered Peg's Thermopane windows, built-in bookcases, and the futon.
The diner was a soothing cool. In the staff booth at the far end Annie and Peg were laughing. Dusty had her arm around Elly. Giulia, straight-backed, the proudest waitress on earth, gave Paris a brittle, resentful smile. They'd probably told her Maddy was back.
Peg, always the formal gentledyke, got up from her seat and presented her with one white rose. Peg looked startled, but then enormously pleased as she let Paris kiss her hello on the lips. Dusty whistled.
“Have you ever,” she asked Peg, smoothing her culottes beneath her and planting herself in the booth, “considered installing a lavender hot tub in your house, just for the sake of decadence?”