They crossed their own small, arching bridge over the river to the garden, a narrow strip that ran a quarter mile along the river. It amazed Rose to shout and see tiny, distant figures look up and wave. The farm girls taught her to weed without disturbing seedlings, to stake tomatoes and peas, to take the small, shaggy teat of a goat in the crook of her thumb and spiral her fingers closed in a rhythm that not only coaxed forth milk but also, they assured her, gave pleasure.
They lived outdoors, hauling food to the new gazebo in the meadow built by Dinah, who allowed Rose to help, ignoring her initial clumsiness, so that now, as they began work on the barn, she could whack in a nail with two blows. She wrote Ursula, rhapsodizing about the capabilities of women and, in detailed treatises with diagrams, urged Guy to take up gardening. They subsisted royally on so little, amazing meals from their own hands—mountains of greens, goat’s-milk yogurt and cheese, rhubarb sweetened with honey. Out in the orchard where the bees were kept, Rose stood transfixed while Wilma lit smudge pots and Noah pulled honey-comb drawers from the hives, his slender arms in their thin sleeves drip-ping with smoke-drunk bees.
In the heat of the day, they shed their shirts and worked, naked to the waist under the sun—all except Lila, who kept her bra on, as her breasts were heavy. At dusk, they went down for a plunge into the river where it turned below a limestone bluff and deepened into pools hollowed in rock. Shaded by the bluff, the water ran swift and cold there; overhead, chittering swallows popped in and out of nests in the bluff ’s limestone face, where there were baby birds, unseen but much heard. The swim was like waking a second time. Rose found the differences among their naked bodies marvelous—not that she’d be caught staring, but such variety: breasts of all different shapes and sizes, some barely there, a smooth rise of muscle, a tiny peak of nipple, some high, some heavy. Lila’s lolled on her chest, lifting a little in the river current, heavy breasts below that bearded chin of hers, just another form of womanhood.
Summer in full leaf and flower thickened sounds, complicated the wind, adding infinite sighings and slurrings. A beehive was like a tiny orchestra hall, the hidden musicians uniting in a humming, sizzling, endlessly varying chord that transferred swiftly to the music Rose was writing. New sounds woke up old sounds, her earliest melodies and rhythms, which told of her own journey. She had somehow gone back to her childhood, to the initial thrill of sound.
The whole place worked a harmony, yet remained full of mysteries. From an oval frame at the top of the stairs, Lila’s craggy-faced grandpa gazed down on them. Whatever he might think if he could actually see what his farm had become, he would have admired their industry. Every day of his working life, he’d strode out to make a success of the place, achieving, if not indoor plumbing, the purchase of a Studebaker sedan in a bright robin’s-egg blue for Lila’s grandma. Beneath coils of rope, amidst rusted junk, the old car still sat in the barn, the blue-green color showing in patches through dust and bird droppings. Nobody knew if it still ran. Dinah’s car was sufficient for errands, and now there was also Rose’s station wagon.
Lila, herself a mystery, sometimes rambled off in the middle of a workday. She was entitled: it was her farm. They were all free, in fact, to do as they pleased. Rose, for example, was not required to share the out-house, regardless that the seat had two holes. Occupied, she called, the door locked from within. Come again another day, she sang out against intruders. They went their separate ways as they liked, but usually preferred to be together, Lila and the farm girls and little Noah and now Rose, working and playing and merging, day by day, she felt, into a deeper and deeper harmony. Peggy was sometimes irritated by Rose’s habits, that she failed to screw jar lids on tight or used the wrong soap, confusing Basic H (Household) with Basic L (Laundry). The tiny disagreements were a part of everything, though, spice in the food.
Rose saw that, up to then, she’d looked upon other women as rivals, crudely classified by their power to attract men. She recalled herself gloating over Frances’s envy. So Frances was below her; Ursula on her level or a little above; and her sister, Natalie, far enough above to cause anger and fear? The Goat Pasture blasted all that away—any illusion of rank in luck or beauty or talent. If Rose wrote music for two hours every night, if she drafted a Composer’s Guild Concert grant proposal and enclosed Lila’s letter of reference, it was merely because it pleased her to do so, as, for instance, Peggy chose to devote hours and hours to the goats, currying and filing hooves and horns. Powers were many and varied; each person shone forth with an individual light.
Rose declared it paradise. Did they realize this was paradise? How long would it last? Why not forever, living together, into old age? She felt for the others a democratic fondness. Friendship seemed no longer suspect and love perhaps merely an extension of friendship, though she was not in love and did not miss it. The peace and freedom she now had seemed better than love, and she was almost never alone. It felt to her like the end of loneliness.
Needing little from town but hardware and what groceries they couldn’t produce themselves, they rarely left the farm. Instead, the world came to them. Josie’s college roommate came, a laughing red-haired girl who baked pans and pans of brownies. Peggy’s twin brother was the first to try the new guest quarters. One night’s sleep in a hammock in their barn, he said, was equal to sleeping a week anywhere else.
Rose wished for a visitor of her own, someone to show off to, and why not, when she had paradise to share? She wrote Alan and Frances as one, wishing she had done so before—been supportive of their love—and invited them “to Eden.” She invited her mother and her sister. So what if her mother was bitter? Women could have sharp thoughts. And as for Natalie, Rose could easily forgive her little sister for the trifling hurts of the past. Why, even the MacGregors could live peaceably at such a place as the farm. Neither her mother nor her sister answered her letters, how-ever. So one evening, before supper, she put aside self-consciousness and picked up the phone, the only telephone at the farm, which hung on the wall in the common room.
“Only women?” cried Natalie. “Don’t you miss men?”
“Do I miss men?” Rose repeated for the general entertainment. “Hardly even think of ’em.” She muffled the receiver against her chest and shushed the others. Lila’s laugh was loud.
“Here’s Mom,” said Natalie. “Don’t listen to her.”
“Well,” said Marion wearily, “you really should get a load of Natalie.”
“You guys have a tire swing out there?” said Natalie, recapturing the phone.
“Natalie, put Mom back on. There’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Look, will you, for once, let me handle things, myself—just for once, Rose?”
“Handle things? Is that what you call it?” said their mother in the background.
“You guys have a swimming hole?” Natalie persisted.
Of course they did. Rose had written to them all about the swim-ming hole.
“It’s so hot here,” said Natalie wistfully and hung up the phone.
They might come, Rose reported uncertainly. After all, who could resist paradise?
Rose was like a puppy, it was remarked. Still energetic after supper, she raced through the meadow with Noah in the fading light where fireflies flared in the grass like low-flying stars. All the while, Lila followed her with her eyes. Rose felt this and wanted to please, so grateful for the turn in her life, for the turn in her music.
Looking at Lila in open regard, Rose found nothing that should be altered. The beard and the smell were trivial. The smell Rose had noticed her first visit was not a chemical but a human smell, strong, rancid, almost burnt—Lila’s smell. Afternoons, they played side by side in the gazebo and Rose told herself she was used to it. Then it occurred to her that this might be the smell of fear. Why should Lila be afraid?
Rose undertook to draw her out. She brought one of Lila’s old concert announcements to the gazebo and set it on her music stand. “I wonder about this photo.”
“What? No beard, you mean?”
“No,” Rose scoffed. “You look like someone’s forcing you to play. Why is that?”
“You know something?” Lila set her cello aside and turned her gaze full on Rose. “People don’t like me.”
“What do you mean? People love you. You get invitations all the time—I know, I’ve collected the mail. They keep writing even when you don’t answer.”
“I’ve conducted a career in disguise.” She picked up the card. “I had to shave not just in the morning, but again, right before a concert, or it showed.”
“What a hassle,” Rose agreed.
“And I had to douse myself with perfume, as I’m sure you now realize.”
“Jesus. But why? I mean, what is it, Lila?”
“Oh, let’s not delve into endocrinology.” Lila let the card drop and glared. “I mean, yes, the Mayo Clinic is just down the road. Any time I care to surrender, they’re ready with heavy-duty electrolysis and pills for me to take the rest of my life just to keep from looking and smelling like myself.”
“All right. But look, Lila, you’ve got your friends.”
She thought a moment. “I have a farm. I’ve used it to buy friends.”
Rose rocked back in her chair, stunned. This was in no way true. “Forget it,” said Lila, getting up and stumbling back against her cello case. “I can’t stand myself half the time anyway.”
Rose stood and opened her arms and Lila clutched her hard, giving off such a smell it took her breath away. Rose made herself inhale and care-fully laid her cheek against Lila’s. The beard was surprisingly soft. After a startled moment, Lila thrust her away and rushed out.
She didn’t show her face at supper and Rose feared she’d caused serious offense. When she climbed the stairs to her room, Lila’s door was closed. But the next day, Lila seemed to follow her everywhere, sometimes watching her, sometimes turning awkwardly away. Rose started down a bean row, picking full-grown beans and leaving the little ones. Here came Lila, picking haphazardly, big beans and little, and flinging them wordlessly into Rose’s basket. At supper, Lila slid into the chair beside her, speared a piece of eggplant off Rose’s plate and, not looking at her, gob-bled it down, grinning. Rose grinned back and her stomach turned over.
“Oh, that Lila,” said Wilma, as Rose sat down beside her on the front steps, breathing in her cinnamon fragrance. It was like resting by a bakery.
“She says nobody likes her. I think someone must have broken her heart,” said Rose.
“No, I wouldn’t say so. Not yet, anyway. But I believe our Lila’s finally in love.” In the yard, Noah launched a cartwheel amongst the fireflies.
“Oh,” said Rose quickly. God, she was slow. She turned the thought over in her mind. The sudden ache in her belly—was that excitement, or dismay? She lay sleepless that night, aware of the rustling in the room across the stairwell, of the corn shooting up outside, the cabbages swelling and involuting, the crickets and katydids aggressively, helplessly sawing away.
Quite unexpectedly the next morning, while she was sweeping the haymow, a familiar gray-green Volvo pulled in. Alan! Giving him a tour of house, garden, and barn, introducing him, Rose regained composure. She was overjoyed to see him. He’d stay the weekend, wouldn’t he? They’d make stuffed chilies and raspberry pie.
He would. But all was not well with Alan. He was on the run from Frances. He’d broken it off with Frances. He was gay, as Rose well knew. He glanced at her nervously.
“Ah. So you’ve found somebody?” she asked.
“No. I thought I had. He was just a flash in the pan. But what a flash.” Still, Alan was terrified Frances would make hell for him in the department, with his third-year review upon him.
“I don’t think Frances would do that.”
“You’d be surprised. She thought she’d changed me. I’m afraid I let her think so.”
The morning was hot and they were sitting on the shaded bank of the swimming hole, dangling their feet in the water. He rotated a toe absently, his face pale and strained, staring into the water. “I want to apologize to you, too, Rose. I never should have touched you.”
“Alan,” she said, “I’m over it.” She reached down and splashed him. He regarded her. “And tell Frances from me, tough titties. She was warned.”
He snorted. “And you? What are you doing out in this nest of lesbians?”
She wanted to know how he first knew he might be gay.
“Lookit, Rose,” he said. “You aren’t.”
“How would you know?”
“No kidding—are you really? Which one?”
Rose hesitated to lay claim to Lila and felt immediate shame. He’d absorbed Lila’s beard and mustache without comment, but still, Alan was, well, so elegant.
“Nothing’s happened yet,” Rose admitted.
“Listen,” he said. “Don’t do it just to try it, no matter how logical it appears.” He was ashen. “God—poor Frances. I could never, you know, without pretending. I wanted her to hold still so I could fantasize—shit!” He brushed at his eyes. “She was always kissing me. And wasn’t that unreasonable. It would have been better if she’d been one of those big rubber dolls.”
“Spare me,” said Rose and took off her clothes and slid into the river.
Sweat and tears poured from his face. She reached up and pulled him in after her. He dived and swam upstream where, in his soggy clothes, he treaded water, looking up into the noisy swallows’ nests. Then he swam back to her. They embraced briefly underwater and she felt a long-for-gotten thrill as her breasts pressed against the flatness of his chest. She did miss men.
At dawn, he was up, playing his trumpet. He trooped to the garden with the rest of them, stripped off his shirt, and tied it around his head Gunga Din-style. At night, he regaled them with movie plots, whistled theme music, acted the parts and drafted the others into it—Lila as Ahab to his White Whale. When he had to drive back, they stood on the porch and waved him off.
“I like your friends,” Lila told Rose shyly.
The liking would soon be tested. After supper the next night, while Noah cranked the honey extractor and Rose and Josie played four-handed ragtime and Lila glided soundlessly back and forth in her rocker, there came a rap at the door and Frances stepped in.
She had updated her image: a leotard with a wrap-around skirt in some subtle Indian print, a pair of slim sandals that clicked as she crossed the threshold. She looked fierce and proud and incapable of tears. She looked, Rose thought, actually beautiful. She turned her head rapidly, searching the dusk-lit room.
“Rose,” she cried, “I know he’s been here. I want to know what he told you.”
“Why, Frances,” said Rose, getting up to embrace her, but Frances would not allow it. She had spotted Lila and was staring pointedly, her chin jerked upward in Lila’s direction.
“Perhaps I should introduce you,” said Rose dryly, “or maybe we could start with a tour?”
“Who is that wolf-woman?” Frances demanded quite audibly from the front step, shaking Rose off. Rose hustled her out to the barn.
“If you’re going to stay, watch your tongue. What’s the matter with you, Frances?”
“What’s the matter with her? What’s the matter with the whole fucking world? And who said I was staying?” Rose had never before heard Frances swear. Rose sort of liked it.
“Suit yourself,” she told Frances.
“I will,” said Frances, climbing to the barn loft, getting ahead of Rose as though she, Frances, were giving the tour. “By the way, have you looked in the mirror lately? You’re a mess. Who would ever believe you were once a professor?” Rose tried not to laugh. “You’ve got dirt in your nails and your hair is parted crazy.” In spite of herself, Rose raised her hands to her hair.
Frances dropped into a hammock, swung her knees up under her, and tucked her skirt beneath them. It was dark in the barn, but Rose refrained from lighting a lantern. Fun was fun, but she’d didn’t really feature a pro-longed session out in the barn with Frances.
“It’s you he loves, isn’t it?” said Frances, low and tragic.
“No, Frances,” Rose replied, aping her tone. “He’s gay.”
“How can I believe that,” she whispered, “after the way he’s loved me?”
Rose thought of Alan’s lovemaking, the awkward drop of his weight on her. “It’s probably not my place to say, but maybe you should expect more for yourself,” she told Frances.
“Then you don’t know what we had.”
“Frances,” said Rose, “if you persist in not understanding, you’ll force him to be cruel.”
“Who made you the authority on love?” Frances swung out of the ham-mock and marched to the stairs. Rose didn’t see how she could move so fast without tripping and falling in the dark. “He doesn’t love you,” Frances flung back over her shoulder. “At least he’s got that much sense. I’ll leave you to your wolf women,” she cried as she strode across the yard. “Go ahead, claw up the dirt. Howl at the moon! Grow hair all over your bodies, for all I care!” She hopped into her mother’s Rambler and was gone.
Rose stood in the yard. Not a sound came from the house. Then a gurgle of laughter came through the screen, and as she stepped inside, it turned into a roar. Josie hugged her. Dinah pounded her on the back. They’d all been through it. Not everyone could “get down with the farm girls.” And really, Frances was hilarious.
Almost before she could catch her breath, the next visitor arrived. At least a phone call came first—Guy asking when he might visit. Rose warmed to the sound of his voice but thought she had better broach it with the others. Was she having too many guests?
They didn’t count Frances, they said, and Alan was practically one of them.
She described Guy, his land, his lake, his stonework, and surprised her-self by blushing.
“An old flame,” observed Wilma.
Dinah’s interest perked at the mention of stonework. The barn foundation needed attention. Noah asked if Guy could bring his rowboat and take him fishing. They wouldn’t kill any fish, he assured his mother—they could throw them all back.
Wilma laughed. “Sounds like he’d better come.”
Lila sat, a thundercloud, in her rocker. The others drifted out, leaving her and Rose alone.
“If you’re going to fuck him, you’ll have to take it to the barn.”
“Oh, Lila, look,” said Rose. “And anyway, that’s all past.”
“What do I care? Do as you like.” She gazed out into the dark. “You’re neglecting your music.” It was true. Since the afternoon she and Lila had embraced in the gazebo, Rose hadn’t written a note. Alan’s visit had distracted her, and then Frances. “It’s got to be every day,” said Lila. “There’s the concerto to revise and the sonata to finish.”
It was startling, how closely Lila tracked her work, more closely than Rose herself did.
“Righto,” said Rose. “Start up again tomorrow?” She’d invite Guy, say, in a month?
Lila nodded. “Forget it. Forget what I said. You do whatever you please. It’s just—I have to hear them at night—Peggy and Dinah, you know,” she said in a defeated voice. Rose did know. Sounds from the downstairs bedrooms carried clearly up through the floor.
“Should I say something to them?” Rose asked.
“No. It’s not like I’m against it or anything.” Lila bit her lip and fled the room.
Again, they worked side by side every afternoon in the gazebo, speaking shorthand, cello to cello. And though their subject was music, Rose was newly aware of Lila as a creature and forced herself to consider that Lila might love her. If so, it was, at the very least, an honor.
On a bright noon at the end of August in the high tide of the vegetable harvest, Guy arrived, towing his boat. He took them all in at a glance, his eyes lighting up at the sight of Lila. She offered him a grand smile. Did Rose just imagine they were squaring off? Peggy and Wilma, haggard from a week of canning and freezing, groaned aloud at what filled Guy’s boat: bushels of corn, tomatoes, zucchini, and melons. He winked at Rose, who went red, recalling the garden behind his shack. Why had he let her preach gardening to him on and on in her letters?
Anyway, he wasn’t foisting vegetables on them. There was a farmer’s market nearby, and he would take his vegetables to market, along with anything they might have to sell.
“Honey,” said Noah. “Can I come too?”
“Of course you can,” said Guy. “Do you call everybody honey?”
“I mean sell honey,” Noah protested.
“All right, honey,” Guy answered.
“Shut up, honey,” Noah hooted and the yard resounded with laughter.
Guy was a hit and Rose was relieved. She watched him put himself at ease among them, washing vegetables for market, inspecting the hives with Wilma and Noah and then the barn foundation with Dinah. When the hour arrived for the afternoon swim, Guy shed his clothes without hesitation. Her heart began to pound and she had to look away from the whole naked lot of them. She wanted him to herself. After supper, she lit a lantern and they climbed to the barn loft alone together to settle him in for the night.
As they stepped into the big, airy haymow, he let out a rippling laugh. “Rose, Rose, who’s the dog in the manger?”
“What?”
“Well, they don’t think I’m a lesbian. You’ve got them all half in love with you.”
“I doubt it. And anyway, I might be. I could be bisexual.”
“Right,” he whooped.
“Shut up,” she said. But he was kissing her, and oh, she was kissing him back. He held her away from him.
“Are you sure I measure up?” he asked. “That swarthy one, what’s her name—Lyle? She’s got a better beard than I do.” She struck at him and he caught her wrists.
The hammock wasn’t much good for lovemaking. They loosed a straw bale and threw down a tarp and then sheets and a quilt. He’d brought condoms and her foam supply from his cabin. She wanted to know how he’d been so sure of her.
“Shine on, harvest moon,” he sang.
They loved by lantern light without hesitation, with such familiarity, not caring that the straw beneath them was lumpy. It was like a long-pent exhalation, loving and subsiding and loving again. And if she should get pregnant, why, she’d raise the baby there, among goats and swallows. She could share the raising of it with him, but there’d be no marrying. She didn’t even have to say it. Many months ago they’d collided and wrecked, but the broken bond between them seemed mended. Had anything broken, really? She couldn’t help how much she wanted him. Peace and work went only so far. Stroking his belly, she thought of the others in the house, and felt a bubbling exultation that she had something no one else was having—a man.
And then she was flooded with shame. And blamed him for it. In what she thought of as her better self, she was stung, even as she thrilled to his lovemaking. He didn’t know her quite so well as he assumed. She thought of Lila in the house and grieved, knowing that, though the lights were out, she would likely be awake and listening, aware that Rose had not come in again. An hour or so later, Rose heard, at a distance, a bow draw across a cello, bringing forth the sound that only Lila made. Lila, of all people, ought to have love.
For that reason, two nights after Guy had gone, very late, when she heard Lila pacing her room, Rose crept across the hall and, not letting herself know just what she was doing, let herself in.