Chapter Nineteen

THE FOLLOWING SATURDAY while Momma, Dad, Kenny, and Allan went to the hospital to visit Ricky, I went to see a certain social worker on a horse ranch. No one questioned me about going, which was good because I would have lied at least a little. I would have explained that I needed to take a kitten to Addie. Certainly, delivering the kitten was important, especially because I said I would and Addie had helped save those kittens from McGerber’s drowning scheme. Why did I think up a lie? Charity is done with me. I can visit anyone I want.

I wanted to know more about Marin England and I wanted to know something about myself. I wanted to know why I was both slack-jawed and infuriated during the same minute around her. I wanted to know how she could be so sure of herself and sure of me even though I had a girlfriend and I’d her told as much. Wait, Lorraine. You haven’t said shit about Charity to Marin. How did that sin of omission occur? Does it even matter now Charity avoids me? Well, I could clear up my present romantic entanglement. Whatever that is.

The horse ranch was within our county. I’d driven by it a hundred times before and I knew the family had kids and horses, but I hadn’t known the kids weren’t there as part of a vacation or camp experience. I supposed these teens were like Addie—parents absent or unfit and no other family relations suitable or able to offer a home. I couldn’t imagine not wanting my child or sending Allan to live at a place like this. Still, it seemed like an awfully pretty piece of land to call home. There were stands of trees dotted along the rolling hills. The pasture looked lush, some of it boggy and other parts had rocks heaving up from the ground like scabrous warts against the sea of green. A stream snaked through the land and in places cut through taller hills, giving the impression of a canyon with striated rock showing above the stream like layers of caramel, penuche, or fudge.

I didn’t approach the white three-story farm house although I’d like to see inside. Both Marin and Addie were in the yard when I arrived. They sat at a picnic table with a group of other teenage girls of varying sizes and ethnicities. Addie got up from the table, ran over, and gave me a quick hug and said thanks for everything, but her attention zeroed in on the kitten I’d brought her. She took the gray tabby and nuzzled him under her chin.

“His name is Bugs, but you can change it if you want.”

Addie smiled. “No, if you called him that, that’s his name.”

She looks well. Her clothes fit, she had color in her face, and she laughed and danced as she showed the kitten to the other girls.

Marin looks damn good. She hugged me too. Her hug seemed to last longer than Addie’s. Marin whispered into my ear that I smelled nice which made me instantaneously blush and start sweating buckets.

“Thanks,” I said. “You said something about me taking you out to lunch today.”

“I’m way ahead of you. The more I thought about you coming out here, the more I thought I didn’t want to share you with any restaurant. I made up a picnic basket for us.” Marin turned to where the girls crowded around Addie ogling her kitten and then looked back at me and winked. “Wait here with the girls while I saddle a couple horses for us.”

I joined the girls at the table. Addie introduced me to everyone—Tandy, Vicki, LaQueesha, and Debbie. They didn’t seem interested in me. They teased, pushed, and jostled one another. I couldn’t follow half of what they were saying. I got that one of them received daily letters from a boyfriend and the other girls nagged her about it. When their own conversation flagged, I became an immediate source of inquiry and entertainment. Tandy, a redheaded girl about seventeen and six months pregnant, surveyed me like I might be for sale or applying for a job. “So, Lorraine, I understand you’re here to teach the sex education class.”

“Looks like I’m late for that,” I said. Smarty pants. I wasn’t afraid. I’d wrangled with my own sister plenty.

Tandy blushed.

The other girls laughed and high-fived one another.

“Are you a social worker?” LaQueesha asked me.

“God no! Not that there’s anything wrong with social workers. I’m sure Marin’s good. I’m studying to be a vet. I’m better with animals than people.”

Tandy surfaced for more banter. “You should come back to the ranch tonight. We’re having a pageant.”

The other girls, including Addie, groaned.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Oh, they’re just mad because it’s my turn to pick the Saturday night group activity and I picked a pretend beauty pageant,” Tandy said.

“Yeah, and your beauty queen sash should read Miss Stick up her Ass,” LaQueesha said.

“Or Missed Period,” Debbie, a heavy-set dimple faced strawberry blonde girl, chimed in.

“Shut up, you fuckers. Tandy can’t help she’s pregnant. Her uncle raped her,” Melody blurted out.

“Shut up, Melody. I don’t want everybody knowing that,” Tandy said.

A chorus of “sorrys” was followed by silence. Any playfulness we had evaporated quickly.

What was I supposed to say to that? “If you asked my momma, my sash would read Misaligned,” I said. “If you asked my dad, it would read Mischievous. If you asked me, I’d write Misunderstood.”

“We could all probably wear that sash,” LaQueesha said.

“Misrepresented, misjudged. I could go on and on.” I winked at Addie.

“Not me, call me Misdemeanor or Misadventure. I don’t regret a damn thing I’ve done or blame anyone else for my life.” Vicki was tall, brunette, and brassy. I hoped her bravado would get her through life.

Marin emerged from the barn. “Could one of you girls take one of these horses and somebody else take this picnic basket?” Vicki, Addie, and LaQueesha hustled over to help Marin. I couldn’t take my eyes off the horses. They were beautiful and huge. I took the painted horse, the smaller of the two monsters. Marin mounted the black Appaloosa like it was nothing to lift her leg that high and nothing to muscle up onto the back of such a beast. It took all the flexibility I had to stretch up and get my foot in the stirrup and haul ass onto the saddle. Even then I nearly fell off the other side.

“You have ridden before, right?” Marin asked.

“Briefly. One time, Dad put me on a little too high on a horse. The horse lowered its head and I slid off the neck. Then he put me on again and the horse bucked me off on my butt. Does that count? Oh, and I should mention it was a Shetland pony. These horses probably shit bigger than that horse.”

To her credit, Marin smiled, but she didn’t laugh at me—the girls did. Thankfully, Marin didn’t cancel the whole excursion.

“Sorry, girls, I think you’re going to have to put these two back.” She stuck out her lower lip and then smiled. “Desperate times call for desperate measures. Bring us Herc.” Marin dismounted. I did the same, but not as gracefully. I thought I might have jammed my legs into my armpits jumping down from that height.

“What’s a Herc?” I asked.

“It’s short for Hercules. He’s a big quarter horse, strong, fast, but retired from racing. He can carry the both of us without any difficulty.” Then she leaned in and whispered, “You are okay if we have to ride seated really close together?”

“No, I don’t mind.” I’m sure I looked scared shitless, but it had only a little to do with the giant horse. I couldn’t have mounted Herc myself without a pole vaulting maneuver. Luckily, Addie and one of the other girls brought a small stepladder over for me. They giggled the whole time as I climbed and crawled onto the monster.

Marin didn’t need the ladder. She stretched up as far as she could, grasped the saddle horn, put her foot in the stirrup, hoisted herself on top of the horse, and snugged up behind me. She put her arms around me and took the reins. As she enveloped me in her arms, the seams of my jeans rode up against me and I was pressed against the saddle horn. I remembered what Ricky said about horse riding being good foreplay. I worried that if we rode very far my underwear would be permanently lodged up my netherlands or my eyes would roll back in my head.

The girls divided the picnic basket between the pouches of the saddle bags, opened the gate to the pasture, and waved to us. Marin said everyone else at the ranch was going to St. Wendell to a matinee. She said it was rare to have the ranch to ourselves. I wondered how that rare occurrence took place on the very day Marin asked me to come over. My face flushed at my audacity. She’s probably just being nice inviting me here. She probably doesn’t want to get in trouble for exposing impressionable girls to the town lesbian. Then again, I didn’t believe in coincidences.

“I hope you don’t mind my face so close to yours. I like the way my head fits over your shoulder. It gives me a clear view of the trail and I can smell that light perfume you wear.”

“It’s just my shampoo.” Dumb, dumb, dumb! She was flirting with me and I didn’t recognize it.

The motion of the horse was mesmerizing, but Marin’s voice so close to my ear and neck made my eyes cross. The hairs stood up on my neck, my arms broke out in goose bumps and my nipples were at attention. Christ, how long had it been since I was with Charity? I couldn’t remember. That wasn’t true. It had been four and a half weeks since I’d seen her. It had been six weeks since we had been together to even kiss or nuzzle. We hadn’t been together-together for nine weeks. By my estimate that was seven wasted years in lesbian time.

Marin told me more about the ranch, how a friend of hers from graduate school, another social worker, owned it. This friend gravitated to the treatment of trauma end of services. I wondered if Marin had any other connections to this person but didn’t chance asking.

“The kids pick up a work ethic from performing the chores on the ranch, but they’re caring for animals that have never hurt them or betrayed them,” Marin said. “The animals give back and the girls can decide what they want to take in.”

“Too bad the kids can’t be with their families, though.” I said it like I knew something about it.

“Is it? I know for me, getting away from my family ended up a good thing. Not every family is like yours, Lorraine.”

“That’s a relief.”

“Oh, come on, are you telling me you have it rough?”

“Well, my momma keeps bringing home bachelors for me to meet and hopefully marry. She knows I’m queer and I…” I started to say Momma knew I had a girlfriend, but I stopped myself. Why did I stop myself? “She knows I’m queer and I don’t need a boyfriend.”

“Well, we have being queer and not needing a boyfriend in common, Lorraine.” Marin squeezed me in her arms as she held the reins.

As we rode across the flat pasture Marin told me she too grew up out of her parents’ home. “My mom never intended harm or danger. She meant well, but after my dad died, when I was six, she couldn’t pick a boyfriend to save her life. She picked a few who could’ve ended both our lives. The worst one, Doug, drove drunk and hit a truck. Both he and my mom were killed. My first foster placement happened at age fifteen.”

“I’m sorry, Marin.”

The landscape changed from flat pasture to rolling hills with stands of pine and mixes of oak, maple, and birch trees. The leaves of the trees danced in the breeze and shone silver against a cloudless blue hydrangea sky. Marin prodded Hercules into a gallop, but the horse had no trouble carrying us. On the way up the hills, I leaned back into Marin and on the way down, she pressed against me. I couldn’t tell you a single name of a flower or bird I saw although I’d bet there were plenty, but I could tell you exactly every place on my skin that her hands touched me, the way her arms felt as they blanketed my own, and every place her breasts pressed against my back. It was all I could do not to turn around and kiss her.

“Here’s the spot I wanted you to see,” she said.

She pointed to the part of the creek I’d noticed from the road. Here the waterway narrowed to not more than twelve feet across and snaked through a small valley bending and straightening between thin sandy banks, swaying grasses, and wildflowers in blues, yellows, purple. Outcroppings of rocks and groups of trees lined the stream bed, but left a circle of bare ground, flat, partially shaded, like someone had recreated a museum painting of a picnic scene.

Marin dismounted and put her arms out to me. “Throw your leg over, I’ll catch you.”

I did as she said, my eyes glued to hers. I slid off the horse and fell toward the earth. My legs, then my thighs and hips slid through her hands, but she caught me at the waist and pulled me against her. We were face to face. My feet were off the ground and my head was somewhere in the clouds.

“Lorraine, you fit so nicely in my arms and hands.” She lowered me to the ground. I had sea legs. I staggered and my insides turned all gooey.

“Are you flirting with me, Marin?”

“Wow, I thought I was being pretty obvious.”

“Well, I didn’t want to presume, and I didn’t know if you knew about Charity, my girlfriend, kinda.”

“Yeah, I know. I also know she has been away a lot. Long-distance relationships are tough. Maybe you’re broken up?”

“How do you know stuff about me?”

“I have a confession to make. I know a lot about you because we have a mutual friend. Gerry Narrows is my aunt.”

“Well, I’m relieved you know Gerry and it isn’t because you have some file about me. You don’t have a file about me, do you?”

“Just in my head. No. I don’t have a file on you, but when I wrote Gerry I would be working here in Jewitt County, she thought I might want to meet her friend, Lorraine. I also admit after I met you, I asked Gerry whether you were seeing anyone. She told me she wasn’t sure and maybe there had been some changes in circumstances with you and Charity. Do you want to know what Gerry told me specifically about you?”

I nodded.

“She said you were kind, compassionate, smart, and a hard worker. All those traits are attractive to me. Then I saw how pretty you were. Well, I found myself smitten. If I may use such an old-fashioned expression.”

What are the names of shades of red and pink? I’m guessing all of them passed across my face. I felt like Rudolph when Clarice said he was cute and he jumped and impressed the other reindeer with his flying skills. But I worried something glaring about me would spoil the whole thing, like when Rudolph’s fake nose fell off.

Before any body parts fell off or I said anything dumb, Marin cupped my cheek in her hand and kissed me. Her kiss was soft and chaste. “I’ll get the picnic food. I have some bottles of pop cooling in the stream in a fish net. Will you find them for us?” She pointed to a section of water.

Drinks cooling in a stream, how romantic is that? That wasn’t all. While I retrieved the drinks, Marin laid out a red-and-white gingham checked blanket and a picnic spread of fried chicken, potato salad with black and green olives, and sliced watermelon. And she used cloth napkins. I felt like I’d fallen into the pages of a romance novel.

“You planned all this for me?”

“For us.” She lay back on the picnic blanket, laced her fingers together behind her head, and gazed up at me. “Lorraine, I believe in romance. I believe in all the little sweet things a person can do to make somebody feel special.” She sat up again. “But don’t get the idea I do this for lots of people. I only risk the sweet things on the sweet. I only lavish my attentions on someone I’m ready to care about in a big way and whom I trust has the capacity to do the same for me.”

Marin leaned in and kissed me. “Lorraine, I think you are sweet, kind, funny, incredibly sexy, and I am willing to take a risk on you even if you aren’t free to return my trust. For now, let me be sweet to you and let’s just have fun.”

Gulp. I could sure use some sweetness and fun. I didn’t feel guilty. Granted, we didn’t kiss any more that afternoon. We laughed. God, I can’t remember when I had laughed so hard, certainly not any time recent. I had expected lots of hard luck stories that would make me weep. Again, I was wrong. She told stories about her time in college at a state school known for partying more than scholarship. She told me her coming out story, her crushes and one three-year relationship that had ended a year ago, but she still had some residual emotional bruising. I told her about dehorning Killer, but the story made us laugh. I felt no anger or disgust for McGerber. I had survived and had a good story to tell from the experience. It was a win.

After lunch had settled Marin and I packed up our picnic—the things we had brought with us and the preinstalled romantic trimmings. She helped me onto Herc again. The horse seemed shorter to me. Marin put her arms around me and held the reins. I settled into her more than I had on the way there. During our mutual story telling I hadn’t said much about Charity. It felt too private, but I thought I could talk to her now and maybe understand something better myself.

“I have been trying to write a letter to Charity, but I can’t seem to finish it.”

“Oh, what is it you want to say?”

“It’s more what I want to ask. I feel like I need to ask her if we broke up and I don’t even know about it.”

“Well, it doesn’t sound like a ‘we’ thing. Sounds like she hasn’t been communicating with you as you would appreciate and expect if you’re partners together. Charity’s not the only voice in the discussion.”

“Maybe I already know the answer. Maybe I’ve had trouble asking the question because leaving it like it is means I don’t have to deal with us being over.”

“Maybe.”

“You know that Charity’s sister, Jolene, was in my class and my best friend. I had a baby crush on her for years. That was before I knew there was anybody in the world like me. Jolene is incredible, but she’s not queer. Then, I met Charity—she was so beautiful and assertive and queer—and she liked me. It seemed like the most natural thing in the world to get together. When we kissed, pardon me if this is too much information, but when Charity and I kissed I felt like all the fears I had about being the only queer in the world went away and I had a future with love and fun.”

“That’s not weird to say. It makes perfect sense.”

“I didn’t have a clue. Then when we made love, it seemed like we were together, and I liked it and figured that’s how we’d be, forever.”

“Yeah, I hear you. Where are queer women supposed to practice dating when it isn’t accepted to be gay? We take our patterns from the straight world, but it doesn’t fit so easily when your sexuality isn’t an accepted thing. Your sister could openly date the man she married and decide comparing him to millions of other men and examples of straight relationships in the world.”

“Becky did have choices I guess. They had to hide their making-out, but only because they were young and not married yet. They could at least date in the open.”

“There are jokes about lesbians moving fast into long-term relationships, but it’s true and it’s logical. Probably most or at least many women are interested in relationships not just sexual encounters. But without having an open way to meet other lesbian women it seems kind of natural that a woman might partner up with the first person she meets who also loves women.”

“Add to that the horndog factor.”

She squeezed me tighter. “Yep, there’s definitely that. If you’re brought up to believe you only have sex with your marriage partner, it’s natural you might see yourself as married to Charity. It seems to me marriage should be more of a conscious choice than that. Say a person impulsively has sex with someone, should those two automatically be considered married? Kenny and Becky had sex before marriage. Did that make them automatically married?”

“No, but once Becky got pregnant there was a big push to get them married as fast as possible.”

“Sometimes that works out okay I guess, but I think it’s a mistake for people to get married just based on a sexual experience with each other. There needs to be more time and more knowing each other.”

I didn’t say any more. I didn’t ask Marin if we were in that getting to know each other more time or if we were dating. I didn’t promise to finish my letter to Charity. I just rode along on the big horse with Marin’s arms around me, and I felt like I didn’t have a care in the world and I wished we could just keep riding.

 

WHEN WE RETURNED from the picnic it surprised me that Addie sat alone at a picnic table. She appeared sad or angry or maybe both. While Marin stabled the horses, I went to talk with Addie.

“Hey, I thought you were going to a movie?” I planned to sit down by Addie, but she abruptly got up.

Before she walked away she screamed at her phone. Then she shot me a look. “Why do we bother to love anyone? They all just use us or judge us and leave us. Men are nothing but dangerous liars. I wish I could be a queer like you and Ricky.” She stormed off toward the house.

I didn’t know if Marin caught any of that, but I didn’t wait to find out. I got in my truck and drove home. Who is Addie mad at? She sounded like she had a small crush on Ricky that day at the farm, but now she knows he’s gay. Where’s Addie getting her information?