Beggar of Love (39 page)

“I don’t think I could read it. Blogs make me feel like I’m reading people’s diaries. Tell me why such an active person went into library work?”

“Oh, it’s exciting! I’ve always read a lot and I think reading is the cure for all ills in this society. Look at the prejudice against gays. It comes from lack of education. If we could get books about us into the schools and libraries it could be our era of enlightenment, Jefferson.”

“That simple, is it?”

“No, it’s not simple at all, but it can be done.” Dawn emphasized her point with a gentle touch on Jefferson’s leg. “My first job was as a worker bee in the NYC Public Library. I was only a page so I had a lot of public contact, and I saw all sorts of kids looking for books about themselves.”

“You were in the city?”

“I got my master’s from the School of Information and Library Science at Pratt. I interned at the Yorkville Branch of the New York Public Library. It was between Second and Third avenues.”

“I know it.”

“Do you?” Dawn gave a buoyant little laugh. “Everyone around here seems to think I made up this fairy tale about living in New York or else why wouldn’t I still be there?”

“Good question.”

Dawn looked over at her. “Why aren’t you?”

She thought for a moment of a way to say it all in a nutshell. “I’ve only known the city and our summer place. The city stopped working for me. I needed to start fresh, to leave some things behind.” She paused to see if she wanted to share more, but, no, talking about Ginger wasn’t in her game plan today. “I feel more alive here now than I do in the city, though when I was younger, I felt more alive there.” She checked herself for the truth of this and found she felt exactly that way. “And why didn’t you stay?”

“Oh,” she said, with that openness of hers that made Jefferson feel like she could trust her in everything. “My parents paid the tuition on the condition that I come back here when there was an opening I liked. They don’t exactly grow on trees, small-town library jobs. So it didn’t happen for a while. We tend to stay till we retire.” Dawn laughed again. Jefferson noticed that her blue eyes appeared streaked with light. “And on our wages, we don’t retire young, us stuffy old librarians.”

Jefferson laughed with her, all too aware that she was guilty of imposing the stuffy stereotype on fun-loving Dawn. She spotted a foal huddling near its mother.

Dawn cried, “Cute,” and, in her chatty way, launched into yet another anecdote about growing up on the farm, this one having to do with a kitten who thought a foal was his mother.

“I haven’t laughed this much in years,” Jefferson admitted. How could she not respond to such open expressions of joy?

“I have to say,” Dawn replied, “you’re easy.”

Laughing yet again, she said, “Tell me about working in the city. It must have been different for you, after,” she spread her arms to indicate the farm, “this.” She found herself missing the city or maybe missing her coaching days. She still had her national credentials. She’d have to think about getting back into it here in New Hampshire.

“In the city? I worked up from the circulation desk to collections development,” Dawn said as they rolled past a collapsed barn. “I did materials selection, programming, bibliographic instruction, community outreach, and helped patrons with the Internet. The volume of users and shortage of staff made me feel like a production worker in a factory. I got to know a few patrons, and I still get together with some of the staff when I go to library-association conferences and when I go to the city. Surviving that crazy busy job gave me the confidence to know I could run a rural library, even a small, underfunded one. It seems like I work all the time now, going to meetings at night to keep the town’s goodwill, filling in for volunteers who don’t show up, but I love my job.” Dawn laughed again. “If I move to Concord I’d work as much, but get paid better. And I’d be away from this board, or at least from the bitch on wheels.”

“Someone’s bugging you?”

“Donna Green, the book-banner. She and her husband retired and built a gigantic McMansion over on Winnipesaukee. She doesn’t want a lesbian running her library. I’d rather leave than get fired for some trumped-up reason that covers up homophobia.”

“I remember going through that. You’re damned either way.”

“You are. She’s driving off other board members—they can’t work with her. Why don’t you volunteer for the board?”

“Me? Oh, Dawn, thank you for the compliment. They want respectable people on boards, not gays.”

“Jef.” Dawn used her nickname for the first time, a sign of warmth that gave Jefferson unexpected pleasure. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you
are
respectable. You’re a home owner with roots in the area, people know your parents, you’re a realtor, a volunteer coach—how much more respectable could you be?”

“It’s hard to forget, you know: getting fired so much, blowing my chance at professional golf, the drinking, all the women.”

Dawn was smiling with what looked like affection. “You sound more proud than worried about your sordid past.”

She realized Dawn was right and grinned. “I did relish certain parts of being the big bad wolf.”

“I’ll bet you did,” Dawn said with a knowing grin. “I think you’re trying to get out of being on the board.”

“I’m not much for sitting around listening.”

Dawn said nothing. This, thought Jefferson, is how femmes get me into bed. “I’ll give it a try,” she conceded.

“It would be so terrific to have one more vote. I mean, this woman was livid when she saw my banned-book-week posters. She wanted to burn them.”

“If she quits, I get to resign?”

Dawn smiled. “We’ll revisit it if and when, okay?”

She shook her head as Dawn changed the subject. “There’s Stillwater Lake. It’s always been too shallow and mossy for swimming, but it makes canoeing interesting.”

She imagined paddling with Dawn to the treed island she could see partway across the lake. But no, she had to get out of the habit of viewing every femme as a potential fling. That wouldn’t do in a small town where you were likely to see the woman the next day at Food Fresh or couldn’t borrow a library book without an awkward encounter.

What a bummer. She was free. She could see whoever she wanted and without guilt. Here was this lovely woman whose eyes, raised at the corners and narrow-lidded, hinted of her Viet-French ancestry.

Jefferson’s hands felt so empty these days. She spent parts of her wakeful nights longing to press her body against another woman’s, longing to hold her hands and to feel her lips, as she had longed for Ginger, sleeping beside her, but unattainable most of their years together. The need for a lover had an urgency like a powerful spring fever that consumed her. It had always been like this, from Angie on, and during the day her restless vision darted into shadows, searching. She felt like some sort of love missile, on fire herself, seeking heat akin to her own. She was reemerging after Ginger and was bowled over by the raging emotions and urges of a seventeen-year-old. She didn’t want to leave the cocoon of her safe solitude. It’s no wonder I drank back then, she thought. Was there no escape from longing?

At the same time she felt worn-out, too old for love games. Her body, once so like an adolescent boy’s, was breaking down. Her knees hurt when she walked. Lifting her grandmother’s heavy frying pan brought back her golf elbow. She was growing softer and rounder, but early arthritis limited the exercise she could do. She wasn’t golfing these days either. Who would want to be courted by someone turning gray in all the wrong places?

Dawn was explaining more about her job. Jefferson was trying to listen, but really was deciding that she was kidding herself. Being a lover was for kids, yet she felt like a kid. What was up with that? Was it menopause coming on like an enormous fast ball, messing with her hormones so she didn’t feel the urge one day and it slammed her the next? Its timing was good, given that she was going to live here, so far from cruise central, where she’d either be prowling every night or completely out of the loop, home moping. She sort of missed the edge cheating gave her. There was no getting away from it. She was still, when she was switched on, a compulsive lover and a chronic seducer. Ginger had been perfect for her: a permanent challenge and frustration. Jefferson lived in hope, always at the ready, seduction refined to something so subtle Ginger could not be offended at Jefferson’s overtures. Jefferson waited and tried and went elsewhere, but always came back, burning for Ginger.

The burning had not disappeared; only Ginger was gone. Ginger was the dance of love, always dancing away, Jefferson always in pursuit.

Dawn had grown silent. Jefferson glanced at her. She really was a pretty woman. Sitting by her side was a pleasure. Dawn looked her way. They smiled. She kissed her fingertips and touched Dawn’s cheek again, overcome with a shyness she’d never experienced before.

“Your farm,” she said as it came into view, “is picture-perfect.” They had passed miles of summer corn and now she saw a herd of hefty cattle off in the distance. Herefords, Dawn told her. The two-rail picket fence along the road was a pristine white, and the stone wall by the entrance to the driveway was in perfect shape. As they drove around to the back of the house she noticed that the kitchen garden had rows of lettuce, squash, green beans, strawberries, spinach, and more. The deer fence around it must have been eight feet high. The house glowed white with neat dark blue shutters and clean many-paned windows that looked like originals.

“Dawn,” cried a small woman with rouged-looking tan skin darker than Dawn’s.

“Aunt Tuyat.” Dawn put her arms, black purse dangling, around her aunt.

“You stay for lunch?”

“We had lunch, Aunty. This is my friend Jefferson.”

“Jefferson?” Dawn’s aunt seemed to be tasting the name. “How do you do?” She looked at Dawn. “Older friend,” she commented, smiling at Jefferson.

“I am very pleased to meet you, Ms.—”

“Call me Aunty, like Dawn does. Come in, come in.”

Dawn whispered, “They never know who’s a friend, who’s a lover. She thinks you’re too old for me.”

Following Dawn into the house, Jefferson nodded, even as she admired the slight shimmy in Dawn’s walk. Aunty was probably right.

The Northways’ kitchen was big. A young boy sat at the table eating from a bowl with a fork.

“My nephew, Tong,” Dawn said. The boy smiled and nodded, mouth full.

A woman very like the one who had greeted them outside entered the room with a tray of empty dishes.

“Mom, meet my friend Jefferson. Is Dad awake?”

“Yes, yes. He is still awake, finishing his coffee and his cigarette. He will sleep soon. Go see him.”

Mr. Northway was in bed, gaunt, pale, his legs long under a dark green comforter. The room smelled like rubbing alcohol and was very hot. Her dad had given Dawn her height and then seemed to have run out of the tall gene, as her siblings were shorter. He smiled broadly as Dawn hugged him.

“He smiles all the time,” Dawn said as she led Jefferson out a back door. “No matter how bad he feels. He treats my mother like a porcelain doll. That’s their song together, ‘China Doll,’ the Grateful Dead song, not the old one. He’s a happy man. It’s like, he is still so happy to have gotten through Vietnam alive and to have found something beautiful to bring back from his experience, he’s content despite being so sick.” Chickens ran up to her, away from her, and under Jefferson’s feet. “These are Rhode Island Whites. They’re good layers and hardy in the cold, except for their combs. Come on, girls, let us through.”

The barn was next, clean and modern. Dawn hugged one of the young men working there. “Another cousin,” she explained. “Eric.” Once outside, Dawn lowered her voice. “Mom brought over as many of her relatives from Vietnam as were left. Her family worked so hard on the farm with Dad that he was able to expand it. Now that he’s so sick, there’s plenty of help. Northway Farm doesn’t have to sell out to developers like so many of my friends’ parents have.”

“This place must be as big as Central Park,” Jefferson said. They were headed toward woods that bordered one side of the Northway land. She remembered the tiny space behind the candy store Angela had lived in with her parents and thought of how far they both had traveled from that first glorious kiss.

“Oh, at least twice that size. Dad and Mom own 1,560 acres and raise corn, soybeans, and hay. They have 110 head of dairy cows and a good-sized herd of sows over across the road.”

“That’s all the same farm? With a road running through it?”

“Happens all the time.” Dawn looked to their right and said, “Race you to the wall.”

Jefferson, with her menopausal weight gain, felt cumbersome running after her. “I used to be faster than that.” She was laughing and out of breath, rubbing a stitch in her side.

They stepped over another stone wall, then climbed a hill. She wobbled a little going over, but caught herself before Dawn looked back. That darned arthritis again. Dawn pointed to another farmhouse some distance away along the road that split the farm. There was no mistaking that Dawn loved the place; her eyes shone with that gladness she so often saw in Dawn.

“Dad and my uncles built the other big house. The Vos—Mom’s maiden name is Vo—live there. Two of my nieces and nephews are going to college, but four want to be farmers. Lan, my oldest cousin, has already bought adjacent land and is working it with Dad’s equipment in exchange for her labor here. She wants to get into heritage seeds and sell to restaurants and gourmet shops.”