Many things stayed good in their seventeen months of dating.

There were weekday evenings up late, marathoning monster movies and romcoms, curled on the couch with every part of their bodies close as could be. Too much popcorn on the stove.

You know, Edith said, I feel bad for Robot Dracula. He never asked to be a robot or a dracula.

That’s fair, but he did disembowel a math teacher.

They’d find each other’s eyes across crowded parties. Pass a smile like a kind of secret. There were all the keys to the world they cut together—inside jokes, fragmentary phrases. They’d had those as friends but now each took on more weight. Their loss would be greater.

At Tessa’s birthday dinner, Meghan accosted them about the Joan/Joni thing. It’s so weird. Edith and Tessa laughed and offered no answer. It would sound thin and silly if they explained: Joan Mitchell, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez. It wasn’t anything if you hadn’t been there. Some things needed to belong to just the two of you.

There were all the pains and pleasures of being a person. Edith figured out, more or less, how to ask for what she wanted in bed and, more or less, how to take it. They talked through their fights without raised voices or dramatics.

Do you think, Tessa asked, we might not listen to Prince during sex? He’s awfully corny, isn’t he?

But something did not work. A resistance to public affection. A reliance on partner. Tessa kept going to gay social spaces.

I mean, you’re not really a dyke.

Oh my god, you sound like Meghan.

That shut her up. But she wasn’t imagining Tessa’s new distance during sex. Less eager and less responsive.

Hey, she said, isn’t being uptight and distracted my thing?

Sorry, Joni, I’m only tired.

Edith didn’t miss sex much when they weren’t having it. Tessa was so beautiful and warm and lovely that it was enough for Edith to kiss her, to thread her fingers through her lover’s hair. Its absence wouldn’t matter if not for fear of what it meant.

Valerie had camped out for a month at a queer co-op in Cleveland. She was working as a night watchwoman at the art museum, waking around the time Edith got off work. Edith walked home, enjoying the crisp New England air as they chatted.

I can’t get past it, she told Val. Like, really? I’m the guy you give up being gay for.

I’m politically neutral in this. You know you’re being too hard on yourself, right?

You’re the one who told me not to pursue her.

What do you want, babe? I was wrong. The hissing and spitting of Valerie’s coffee machine in the background. I mean you did date a whole mess of lesbians in college.

I only dated one, the other two were just sex.

Wow, really?

This is what I’m saying!

You know, babe, sometimes I wonder. Valerie yawned. Her housemate’s dog whined for food. How about I come visit? Moss, Lexi, and Barn are looking for a new housemate anyway.

One of your housemates is named Barn?

It was supposed to be “Bran” but the clerk’s office messed up. Turned out he liked it better that way.

Valerie had stayed away since Edith and Tess got together. It was probably weird for her, the shift in dynamic. Having her there would be wonderful. A neutral observer.

All right. See you in four to six business weeks.

Edith had submitted all her grad school applications by the time Valerie visited. Places dotted across New England and the mid-Atlantic—only a train ride or Megabus between them and Boston. Almost at random, in the final week of December, she picked the school in Alabama as a sort of safety. Nowhere was safe, though, not really.

The three of them celebrated Edith’s accomplishment. She blushed when the girls toasted her. I might not get in anywhere.

You’ll get in, Tessa said.

I can’t believe you want to do more school.

Don’t worry, once I have a master’s I’ll be twice as annoying.

They feasted on buttered rolls and squash soup. There was a zucchini salad and meringues and a book-shaped marzipan Val had brought. You can get away with being annoying when you’re famous, she said.

I’m not going to be famous. She blushed harder.

Sure you are. Tessa reached for her hand. Look at that face.

Morning found Edith shoveling the sidewalk while Tessa slept. Valerie joined her in the ankle-deep snow.

How’s the old room treating you?

I’m going to trip over all your books and break my neck.

Well, it’ll make a great story at your funeral.

Edith loved the snow-packed city. The freedom to stay home. The world shut down and quiet. A reminder of her and Tess’s first days.

If you kick the shovel, you’ll break up that pack ice.

You’re welcome to take a turn. Nothing from Val but a wide grin. She scooped up twin fistfuls of snow and packed a snowball. What are you using all those farm muscles for?

Mostly winning Lesbian Fight Club.

Edith’s shoveling did not slow. You are not in a lesbian fight club.

Well, not anymore.

“Then Lesbian Alexander wept, for there were no lesbians left to conquer.” Silver powder shone as it fell. I feel like I have no idea what you’ve been up to.

You’ve been busy.

I hope that’s not it. Edith never wanted to be someone so absorbed by love that she ignored everything else. She was a man of few passions, but friendship was among them. Is that all we’re gonna get? Three years of school together, the time before and the time after only a shadow?

Oh you’re so fucking silly. I’m here now. Valerie insisted the untold things were not worth telling. Her own boyhood might as well have been a movie she’d seen once, late at night and broken by commercials. The cross-shaped scar was like her Texas accent—rarely apparent, quickly dismissed. Poor boy, she said, all swept up in the romance of a lifetime. Then the cracks begin to show and you need Auntie Valerie to come shore them up.

Now Edith did stop. She tried to lean on the shovel and the shovel leaned away. Are you actually mad at me? I can’t tell.

I don’t get mad, least of all at you, babe.

So?

The snowball became icy in her hands. A beautiful, almost translucent world. Do you remember that eighties dress that Tessa wore to every party junior year?

I thought it was from the fifties.

It only looked like it was. We all used to dress in the thirty-year cycle of nostalgia.

I remember she wore it to pieces. The hem got tattered and a tailor took it in. But the cloth—red and patterned in magnolia blossoms—became threadbare. She didn’t remember whose idea it had been to throw the dress into the year-end bonfires. People threw in things besides the intended notebooks and exams: photos, love letters, posters for films they’d come to loathe. Tessa, Valerie, and Edith had cut the dress into thirds; the threadless flowers bloomed with flame and all that remained after was the image of light.

Exactly. Clothes don’t do you any good hanging in your closet. But wearing them is how they degrade.

She’s been more careful since, to be fair. The shovel scraped asphalt. A long tear in the city’s silence. I never see her wear out clothes anymore.

Val, happy at last with her snowball, tossed it at the upper windows to wake up Tessa.

She never found another dress she liked so much.

That night, Valerie showed them pictures from her travels. Here was a library where she’d worked digitizing books. Here was a view from the top of a water tower, two smiling out-of-focus people caught in the camera flash. Here was a bowling alley engulfed in flames. Silhouetted figures watched while great sprays of water arced through the air. The guy who owned it wanted someone to burn it down, she said. He was going to be out of town as an alibi.

Did you do it?

No, it burned down on its own. A grin. He didn’t have an alibi, so no insurance.

In bed, waiting for sleep to come, Tessa turned over. Do you think her stories are true?

Why wouldn’t they be?

A million reasons. To make her life seem less sad. To justify the way she lives. To spark envy.

Do you envy her?

I don’t. Tessa rolled toward the bedroom door. The thinnest light came through its cracks: a nightlight so they wouldn’t stumble in the winter dark. Do you think she really makes money doing all those things? Can you see her in a library?

Feel like we’re going in circles here, Joan.

Tessa yawned; Edith felt very awake. She’d be good at sex work, I think.

What does that mean? Because she’s trans?

She’s good at giving people what they think they want. Tessa’s eyes stayed shut tight. Wouldn’t you pay money to sleep with her?

Edith cornered Valerie on the day she left. She was packing while Tessa loaded the car. So, what do you think?

Neatly folded sweater skirts, turtlenecks, socks balled into their pairs. Her coat spread across the bed like an expiring angel. There really were too many books in the spare room—Edith couldn’t close the door. The room had never felt like hers, even at the start.

The folding went on.

Val?

I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know.

That’s not very inspiring.

It’s not meant to be. Valerie zipped her suitcase closed. Half her worldly possessions in a beaten Samsonite. She crossed over mountains of books to hug Edith. Whatever happens you’ll be okay. I love you.

Love you too. Why had she thought Val would help?

What’s Winnicott say? “The breakdown you fear is the breakdown that’s already happened”?

Oh good, so it’s all uphill from here.

All downhill, babe. That’s the easy way.

Later, Edith would think about how Valerie’s first visit had inaugurated her relationship with Tessa. How less than a week passed before Tessa, her dinner untouched, said, I think we need to talk about the future. She would think about Winnicott, whom she’d never read, and how just because a breakdown has happened doesn’t mean it’s passed. But for those six days, she’d try to enjoy herself. Bake brownies, make lumpen snowmen. Bring Tessa morning lattes from Peet’s. Sit up late reading shoulder to shoulder. Wishing she might never get into grad school and these days might never end. Close, closer, closing.