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Kate
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“MY GOD, KATE.” Anita stares at the new quilt hanging off the wall. “That is like the second coming.”
“Is that’s good? Or bad?”
“Bad for us sinners. Perfect for Claudia. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
The first week of her recovery, Kate had sat up in bed, her throbbing head dulled by vicodin, with her colored pencils and a pad of grid paper and sketched it all out. The result was enough for Samantha to exclaim that it looked like something out of a William Blake painting. Hopefully, that meant she was on the right track.
Samantha had helped her deconstruct some of the de-commissioned quilts she’d bought back from Mark. The ripping felt like hari-kari but she wasn’t going to spend another dime on this bogus hobby. And there was a lot of good material here. The slick satins on the outside would impress her mother-in-law’s ostentatious side and the soft flannel underneath would keep Claudia’s lean body warm. Claudia might be expecting a quilt with some symmetry to it, a saw tooth or a Jacob’s ladder perhaps, but with this design she would constantly face complexity. It was dangerous, of course. At what point had Kate gone from an obedience to craft to nosy confrontations? No wonder no one wants to use these things.
Kate feels feverish. “I’m not starting over. I can’t do this anymore. Last one.”
“Kate, I’m serious. It is beautiful. Like a thousand pieces of shattered glass, and sunbeams and color, and—it’s fantastic—I’m not lying.”
“It’s weird though, isn’t it?”
“Who cares. Claudia should be fucking honored. You poured your soul into this.”
“Actually that and about twelve pots of coffee.” Kate tears open the Velcro of her neck brace and moves to the middle of the room. She lowers to the carpet and takes up a crossed-legged position on the floor, then lightly sets her wrists on her knees, closes her eyes, and exhales. Her neck slowly drops sideways, ear to shoulder, as the air flows from her lungs and out her nose.
Anita cracks her toes on the floor and joins her.
Two minutes later, they reverse the pose to the other shoulder for another breath. And again Kate brings her chin to her chest. Her pelvic bones finally come to relax on the ground. Chuck Norris joins them, interrupting every quaking position with a lick on the cheek or closed eyelid. Anita collapses, laughing in a heap, unused to his affections.
After forty-five minutes of Hatha postures specifically assigned for the spinal column, they gather themselves back into the lotus position and bow to the quilt.
“Namaste.”
“Namaste.”
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AT THE DINING room table, over green tea, Kate blurts, “I’m bisexual.”
Anita snorts back a sip. “Um, random. But okay.”
“I mean, whatever that means, you know?” Kate says softly. “I love my husband but women are cool too.”
“Wow.” Anita stares into her cup. “This reminds me of The Hours, when Julianne Moore leans over and kisses Toni Collette in the kitchen.”
“Agh. I’m not trying to come on to you, ’Nita.”
“Phew.” Anita wheezes a chuckle. “I mean, you’re”—She wiggles eyebrows and with her palm makes a window-cleaning semi-circle motion at Kate’s tight lycra tank—“But no.”
“Right. Moving on. I’m talking about Lucy.”
“Veebee.” Anita clicks her tongue. “Yeah, I figured that out months ago. You ladies got it bad. You were like a couple of warped lovebirds in school.”
“Erik kinda sorta knows too. I keep avoiding talking about it completely. And he lets me.” Kate sips her tea. “Do you think it’s possible to love two people at once? I mean, not just sex, but love?”
“Sure. It’s the details that screw you up. This is exactly what pisses people off about bisexuals. You’re not supposed to love two at once.”
“Well, how do you do it?”
Anita scoffs. “Did you invite me over here to teach you cuckoldry? Got no time for that anymore. It’s all I can do to keep peace around the house, let alone outside of it.”
Kate lays a hand on Anita’s wrist. “Is everything all right?”
“Well, I don’t think Maddox should get off scot-free do you? Rob’s a mess. Thinks everything turned out fine in the end. Nobody got hurt and he wants him to get to play hockey in college. But I can’t get through to him. Kate, I think there’s something wrong with my son.”
Kate can think of nothing else to do but give Anita a little squeeze of the arm. She hears Claudia’s voice, damaged kids are a contagion, and she knows she wants this woman’s son nowhere near her own anymore. But she also thinks of Samantha and her youthful challenge to the hypocrisies of adulthood: Are we really good people if we’re only good to the people it’s easy to be good to?
“Maybe we all just need to keep a closer eye on him,” Kate offers, as much to convince herself as Anita.
“Yeah, I need to focus on my family right now. Stop fooling around. For a while.”
Kate nods. “Guess we all do.”
“Girl you’re just getting started. But maybe I’m some sort of lesson. Dear lord. Anita, the cautionary tale.”
“Do you do therapy?” Kate swirls her tea around. “I mean, I’ve thought about it, but I don’t want to freak Erik out.”
“Girl, therapy isn’t going to freak him out near as much as catching you with your head up the choir director’s skirt.”
This makes Kate chuckle because of course she has to picture it. Now that she’s cooled down a bit, she releases her hair from its hairband and shakes it out. Anita does the same.
“You’re going to have to talk it out,” Anita says. “Probably with both of them, at some point.”
“I know. But the thing is, I’m not sure what it is I’m going to be telling them. In the first place, what if Lucy is like, back off.”
“Well, there is that little matter of her being an ex-gay.”
“Oh, that’s all a lie. She’s still in love with me.”
Anita sits back, blinking. “You know, I kinda like this new, confident, sex-positive friend of mine. What if you suggested a threesome?”
Kate gently bites her lip. “Maybe.” Why can’t you consider sharing?
Anita leans back. “Are you sure this isn’t just about closure with all that high school crap? I mean, I’ve never known you to be attracted to other women.”
“Sure, I have. A few times. Nothing serious. I always closed it off. Same with guys. But Lucy is special.”
“Oh, she’s special all right.” Anita laughs. “Although I will say, she saved my ass on the Parade of Homes tour. She’s opening the Gainsborough for us. It’ll be our last stop. Le pièce de résistance. Do you know how long I’ve been trying to get in that place?’
Kate sighs. “Listen, it goes without saying that you’ll swear secrecy, right?”
“Of course, Kate. Please.”
“Lucy wrote a blog. It’s really dark. I need you to read it and tell me what it says.”
“Why can’t you read it?”
“I promised Erik I wouldn’t.”
Anita cackles. “Well it’s sort of the same thing, isn’t it?”
Kate cringes. “Oh, I hate this. You know, if she had never come back I probably would have just buried it further. Why did she have to come back?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
“Okay, go to bloggingmysojourn.com on your phone. I can’t here.”
“Now?”
“Yeah.” Kate rises and brews them two more mugs of green tea. She brings out a batch of peanut butter bars made with a new recipe using Stevia instead of sugar. They are awful of course. Anita takes one bite, sets it aside, and starts reading.
Kate leaves her to it for a half hour, to get the broad strokes, and starts supper. Two lasagnas. One with spinach, the other ground beef. It is slow going.
“Hold on,” Anita says. “Have you read these comments?”
“Yeah, but they give me anxiety.”
“Didn’t Mark play Rolf in Sound of Music?”
“Yeah?” Kate returns to the dining room table. Anita hands her the phone.
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Liesl, you came home for Vicky, not God. Be careful.
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“What the heck?” Kate scrolls back to Liesl’s first entry. Rolf68 has been commenting from the beginning. Kate stands in solid shock, mouth open.
“You think that’s him?” Anita rises, gathers her hoodie, and yoga mat.
“If it is, I’ll kill him.” Kate’s jaw hardens. “Anita, I’m so tired of always being the last to know stuff. Why does everyone think I can’t be trusted with the truth?”
“You need to let off some steam girl, and downward dog ain’t getting it.” Anita zips up her hoodie. “How about a night on the town?”
Kate and Chuck follow her to the door. “Erik and I are going to dinner this weekend.”
“No, I mean a girls’ night out. We’ll go to a gay bar. If you are unmoved by the abundance of queer T and A we will call this thing with Lucy a false alarm.”
“Um, I’m not sure that’s how it works but—”
“Oh, yes. I am so down for this. Then I can screw around vicariously through you.” Anita opens the door, steps onto the walk but then halts. “However—”
Chuck starts out the door, Kate holds his collar. “What?”
“You have to tell Erik.”
Kate groans.
“You can’t sneak, Kate. It’s too dangerous. Toxic. Bad karma.”
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THAT WEEKEND, KATE and Erik re-christen date night at the Sailing Club restaurant overlooking the riverfront. It’s a perfect evening on the back deck, the air as close and warm as baby’s bathwater and charged with the community joy at having survived another winter and a tricky spring. A polka band plays its merry swing inside the adjoining bar.
Erik fills Kate’s glass with a second shot of cabernet.
She twists off a hunk of French bread and mops up some olive oil.
He meets her glass with his frothy pilsner. “One kid down. One to go.”
“Cheers.” She takes a sip. The wine tastes smooth and smoky. “Did it seem like he grew up too fast to you?”
“No. Not really,” he says.
“Me neither.” Kate lays a fork into her salmon; the flesh is succulent and jeweled pink in the middle, a whole different beast from the canned variety. “The kids took the right amount of time. Why does everybody say it goes so fast?”
“’Cause they don’t make the best of it I guess. Life isn’t all that short when you think about it.” Erik loosens his yellow and navy striped tie. “We just waste too much of it.”
“What did you waste?” she asks.
“Not much.” He charges into his filet mignon. His hair is nice tonight, neatly trimmed, tousled with a little wax. He always knows how to keep and dress himself without any henpecking. His mother pecked enough to last a lifetime.
“Oh, come on,” Kate says. “Anything. How about Jennifer Turnquist? If you had the chance to sleep with her again, would you?”
“Who says I haven’t had the chance?”
“Funny. I mean if I didn’t mind.”
“Does it have to be Jennifer? I mean couldn’t it be . . . Scarlett Johansson?”
“Excuse me, she’s way too young for you.” Kate picks up a roasted asparagus stalk with her fingers and chomps it like a French fry. “Sorry, that’s wasn’t fair, was it?”
“S’okay. I’ll revise. Catherine Zeta Jones.”
“Mmm. Maybe. She is pretty hot.”
Erik’s fork hovers mid-air. “You think so?”
“I wouldn’t kick her out of bed.” She knocks back another slug of wine.
Erik stares. Kate feels her cheeks redden, further enabled by the wine.
“Who else would you approve of in our bed?” His white teeth flash in the candlelight.
This is going to be an interesting night. “Patrick Dempsey?”
Erik doesn’t flinch. “Needs a shave.”
“You could handle a guy?”
Erik searches the air. “In theory. All’s fair. But he’s not getting near my ass. No. Way.”
Kate sputters a thin spray of wine into her palm.
They are quiet for a while. Enjoying the meal, the paper lanterns, and the bells of the sailboats clanging on the river. A Harley Davidson rumbles past on the main drag.
He looks up. “You been back to her blog?”
“Not exactly.”
“I guess it’s not my place to say what you can and can’t look at.”
“Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t.” Kate looks down at her plate. “I want to go back to school.”
“Huh-uh. We can’t afford it yet.”
“I’ll take out a loan,” she says, sounding like a pleading teenager. “Borrow from my parents.”
“Let’s get Brace out of college first. Sam into it. It’s not that far off.”
She looks out over the river. Of course, he makes sense. He always makes sense.
“Anita and I. We’re thinking of hanging out in Minneapolis next weekend. A girls night out sort of thing.”
Erik nods. “Sounds fun.” He leans back and finishes off his beer. “Just a drink or two though.”
“Yeah, I know. So we’re gonna check out the Kitty Kat Lounge.”
He laughs. “Sounds like a strip club.”
“A lesbian bar actually,” she says quietly.
He slowly sets his glass down, cocks his head. “No.”
Kate sighs and gazes around at the other tables, to those who are laughing and gorging themselves, wondering why she ever listened to Anita. Anita, who couldn’t even raise a single child right telling her how to talk to her husband. Well, just fuck that. Of course Erik was going to say no. She wonders if she is well and truly going crazy for real this time. What is she doing to herself, to her marriage? Why can’t she let this thing go?
The waiter approaches with the dessert menu.
“Just the check,” Erik says.
The drive home is silent. The house dark and quiet, both kids still out on their dates. Brace with a girl he met on the docks, Samantha with Zev.
They don’t turn on the lights. Kate follows Erik to the backyard to let Chuck outside. They stand, staring into the night.
“You can go,” he says. “With Anita.”
“I was going to anyway.”
He turns to her in the shadows, and she can’t see the prevailing emotion: shock or anger. She can think of nothing else to do but reach up and kiss him.
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IN THE BEDROOM, Kate straddles Erik, hands gripping the headboard. Every time he tries to turn her over, she pushes him back. For once, he submits. He doesn’t look away this time and stares at her with wonder.
Jeez, this daily yoga thing is really paying off.
Kate never thought her marriage would evolve into a plot between two stubborn people to see their portion of an ancient pact through to the end. Daily forgiveness, implicit accountability, Erik will never betray her. Sure, he’s probably masking a few things to save her feelings and the marriage itself. But Kate is okay with that. She’s doing the same.
Erik’s body draws tight as an oak. He holds her hips still for a moment, eyes rolling back. His fingers find her and soon she begins to climax. But the tickling joy goes on and on and he removes his hand too soon. She collapses onto the bed, left with a dull ache.
His hand slowly falls upon her thigh and he drops quickly asleep in the same splayed position in which he came.
Kate stares at the ceiling.
I want . . .
There is no heterosexuality. There is no homosexuality. There is only sex, sometimes an indulgence, sometimes duty. And love is a bond radiating from primaries to secondaries, tertiaries and beyond. She doesn’t need to go enlightening anyone about the perfect simplicity behind the man-made drama, not Claudia, or even her own daughter, who will surely find it out sooner than she had.
B L O G G I N G M Y S O J O U R N
One Woman’s Journey from Gay to Straight
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F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that an artist has the ability to entertain two opposing viewpoints at the same time. Clearly, I’m no longer an artist.
This was all much harder than I thought it would be. Not just the small town, or Mom or the run-ins with my old teachers—though fuck knows those are awkward. It’s Vicky. She’s more of a temptation than if I were to walk into a nightclub and have three young hotties fighting to give me a lap-dance. I am hopelessly drawn to a woman rockin’ the mom jeans. What the hell? It’s probably just limerence interrupted, you know, but there it is.
I tell myself Vicky’s not my concern. Better that I should grow fallow on this hill because she sends a shiver down my spine with that deep green stare and those timid shoulders. That she’s not the awful person I thought she’d be makes this task ten times harder. I’m so pissed over the time I wasted. Plenty of people to blame. But none of it turns back the clock. I am tempted. She is discontented. I could take her like Boulanger took Madame Bovary.
Best to keep my distance. After all, why does sex have to be the ultimate end? If nothing else, Sojourn taught me that. Vicky’s age and wisdom endear me to her in a way young lust could not possibly maintain. She’s an amazingly strong woman, but will she still be at 80? Will Ed still be there to hold her elbow on icy sidewalks? I cannot divorce myself from that care. I don’t think I have to, do I? It isn’t all lust. It’s also care for another human being. I’ve rarely experienced that. Rarely wanted to see a person grow up and outwards even if it didn’t include me. I’ve rarely wanted to do everything I could to keep someone I love close to my heart. To make sure they are happy.
I’m still trying to figure out how to hit the restart button on my life. Step one? Going out to the only place in the city that serves girls like me. Guess I’ll have to settle for hotties instead of mom jeans. At least this, I deserve.
Posted by Liesl ~ 5:00 PM ~ 2 comments
InChrist commented:
It’s time somebody made herself a sojourn back to Texas.
Down4Jesus commented:
Liesl have you ever considered Ativan? Our family doctor prescribed it for me. Just one Ativan and a conversation with our Lord and I’m right as rain.