Substitute for Love (8 page)

“Yeah, I’ve always admired your natural look. I take way too long to get ready in the morning.”

Holly took in, for the first time with more than a passing interest, how lovely Tori was. Her eyebrows were gracefully arched, and her eyelids dusted with a delicate mixture of browns and oranges that enhanced her bright brown eyes. Her olive cheeks were smooth and soft and Holly knew they would not burn her throat…

Aghast, she floundered for something to say and came up with, “I’m too lazy.”

Tori shrugged and picked up her purse. “It suits you and Geena both. I have flaws to cover. Show me where to put my stuff, Tish.”

Holly left with a promise to call soon and drove away with a sensation of escape. When she pulled into her driveway she was glad Clay wasn’t there. She turned off the engine and sat for a minute, her head on the steering wheel.

It was too much to take in. She could hardly wrap her mind around the idea that Clay was not the man she had thought he was. Her opinion of him, formed at sixteen, had been based on his persona as a teacher. It had not changed in all the years since, not until yesterday, when her image of him as a man and a partner fragmented like a smashed mirror. That alone made her feel as if she was walking a spit of land between the yawning chasms of past and future.

But there was more, more to bear, more to fear. More — she could not even comprehend. Murphy with Tori, doing something to her that three years later still made Tori blush. Holly could imagine Tori whispering what it was to Geena, asking Geena to do it, too. Their bodies merged in a midnight glow. What was it? Did it matter? Something wonderful, something she, Holly, had never had. And would never have with Clay. Might never have… with a man.

The car seemed suddenly airless and she hurried inside, trying to turn her mind to immediate needs. She needed to change for the wedding, and pack a few edibles for the long drive. It would take more than four hours to go a little over a hundred miles in rush-hour traffic, but not even half that to return home any time after nine.

She showered, the water as hot as she could stand it, shampoo suds cascading down her shoulders and stomach.

She was lost, abruptly, in the feel of her breasts under the slick lather.

A question formed. An equation wanted to be solved.

You could not even know what a thing was, she had thought only yesterday, and mathematics could express it. How to express this? The sensation of skin, the prickle of her nipples and the question — is this how other women feel?

Her fingertips felt alive. She turned off the water at last and toweled her hair. She looked at her body in the mirror, then gently touched her lips, her hips, at last her breasts. Is this how other women feel?

She had no way to solve the equation. The principles of mathematics demanded that an equation be solved by logical reduction, not trial and error. She could not logically approach this question. She could not substitute values when she had no idea of the variables and constants for the equation. It was beyond her mental grasp. But trial and error led to thoughts of Murphy and Tori… Tori and Geena.

She felt nauseous and grabbed the sink, striving for some semblance of calm.

The front door opened and closed, and she dug down very, very deep, to pretend. This pretense was far more important than anything she’d had to do before. She smiled at Clay and spoke and watched herself going through the motions of asking after his day and listening to the answer as if she cared.

While he showered she rooted around in the back of her drawer for lingerie she’d bought years ago, thinking it might… might change the way she felt when Clay touched her. She’d bought it for herself, but Clay had thought she’d meant to titillate him. He had been disappointed with her.

And like a fool, she railed at herself, you set aside how you felt. She wiggled into the cleavage-creating black bra. It fit since she still had not lost those fifteen pounds she’d been perpetually fighting. Black pantyhose, they had to be there somewhere. She carefully struggled into the hose, then put on the black pantsuit made of raw silk, her one item of evening wear. It had served her well for years at faculty parties and family holidays. They went out so rarely she did not need more, even though tonight she wanted more than she needed.

She wished she had something shocking red, with hair to match. She wanted to feel alive. The mouse that roared? Yes, she wanted to roar, mouse or not. Her simple haircut offered no real opportunities for change — it was wash and wear so as not to need a blow dryer. Then she remembered her grandmother’s jewelry, the only thing she had of her grandmother’s. The rose pendant and earrings. They would suit her mood.

Clay did not approve of jewelry. It distracted from the natural state of the human body, was spawned by consumerist notions of appearance and allowed for the casual flaunting of wealth.

Screw Clay, she thought. Or rather, she admitted, studying herself in the mirror, don’t. And she smiled at her reflection. These pieces weren’t the same thing as a Rolex — these were family heirlooms. They were her heritage, such as it was. She felt self-assured and attractive, and she liked the feeling.

She watched him come out of the bathroom and felt a surge of the same courage she had found yesterday, facing Jim Felker and his petty bigotry. She could tell him now that she was going to leave him. She almost did. But she would let this idea grow for a little while, to prove it wasn’t a mere brainstorm.

The last time — had last night been the last time she’d feel him inside her and count the minutes until it was over?

In life’s equation of what mattered, how had she thought her physical relationship with Clay could substitute for the value of love? How had she thought that was worth bearing? How could she discover what would make her happy, at least physically? Trial and error… Murphy and Tori… Tori and Geena…

The equation she could not solve seemed to have women as constants. And then she understood at least a piece of the puzzle. She was the variable for now. She was the thing that was changing and would change, until she found her own answers.

What made it hard, from the moment they got in the car, was that Clay was in a good mood. His semester was shaping up with interested students and he’d been asked to co-teach a graduate seminar under the aegis of the department head.

“I think I might try to get the all-important Ph.D.,” he admitted. “I know it’s just a piece of paper, about what you can research and not what you truly understand, but not having it is an unfortunate barrier.”

“One of those necessary evils that rob you of your essential humanity?” She took advantage of an 18-wheeler’s lag in acceleration to cut over a lane. The 405 was, as usual, a parking lot.

He didn’t seem to notice the ironic edge to her tone. “Just that. Of course, I’d feel like I could really go for it if your situation were settled.” He threw her a charming glance and all at once she remembered the way he had been the first time she had seen him. Profound and compassionate, he had been dedicated to helping his students escape from the relentless message of a consumerist society. His first question for the class, that first day, had been, “So, what did you buy today?” The follow-up had been, “Why did you buy it?”

It seemed ages ago, before he’d given her the presence of mind to accept herself. She amended her thoughts. To accept herself as he saw her. She had never accepted herself as she was. That much was clear. Of course, to accept herself as she was she needed to understand who she was. That equation was too complicated and frightening to approach rationally, so she put it away.

“My situation? Oh, you mean job. I’m going to look into the master’s degree I turned down. I haven’t kept up on the field, at least not much, and a lot changes in four years in the sciences. There may be opportunities I never foresaw. Certainly, there may be developments I can’t follow or understand.” It was an unsettling thought.

“So you really are going to do it? What are we going to live on? I don’t think my paycheck will cover the mortgage.”

“It does, you know,” she said softly. She wanted to explain to him that he would have to figure it out from now on. She felt as if she was being a little unfair to him. She knew a part of his future and he had no clue. “And we live so cheaply.” She felt a fraud to say “we.”

“You could get something part-time, maybe? That wouldn’t interfere too much with your studies.”

Dumbfounded, she realized he was being supportive. He was actually suggesting a solution that would allow her to pursue her dreams. “Would this all be okay with you?”

“I admit that last night I was taken aback. I meditated on it, and what you said was right. Just because I didn’t understand why someone wanted something didn’t mean they shouldn’t want it. Certainly not when it comes to improving the mind. You want this and if you are careful to avoid the negative applications of what you learn, you should be fine.”

She pretended the need to change lanes so she could look away from him. It had been four years since she’d dropped that letter into the mail and said good-bye to this future. Why did he have to be this way all of sudden? Understanding, encouraging even? She had not caved in yesterday, had not admitted that she had made what he declared a mistake. Had he finally realized she had a right to a mind of her own?

Had she misjudged him? Was all of this turmoil of her own making? She’d never been friendly with a lesbian before. Maybe it was just her libido talking — finally. Lesbian sex was foreign, forbidden, exotic. It was Murphy and her hands, and imagining them on Tori’s body. A fantasy, but nothing more. Maybe that was all there was to it. Yes, that could be all. She would plug that notion into a formula and see if she could live by it.

“Am I being presumptuous?” His sudden question made her look back at him.

“About what?”

“You said the degree you turned down. That was at MIT. That’s a long way from here.”

“I — I wasn’t considering colleges yet. I was going to step back and look at the field and try to measure what ground I would have to make up.”

His nod was approving. “That’s a good plan.”

She felt even more like a liar. He had obliquely asked if her plans meant she would consider moving. She had as much as said no. But she was going to move. Wasn’t she? Where had her anger gone?

It was well after sunset when they finally reached the Ventura Highway and turned north for the last time. The wedding was at one of the private estates that lined the cliffs from Oxnard to Santa Barbara. The two faculty who were marrying had had to move up the date because of a parent’s illness, and had taken a Friday evening at the elegant location instead of settling for another site. On a clear day the Channel Islands were plainly visible and the drive was soothing and beautiful. Tonight the ocean was silent and distant and a light drizzle had begun when they reached Glendale. Clay seemed to have dozed off. Holly was glad of his silence, but not the dark.

The dark was a palette and her mind filled it with images and fantasies. The dark made it too easy. Raindrops wandered down the windshield, becoming prisms in the lights of oncoming vehicles. Each flare of light was a moment from the past that she examined as if she was cleaning out her mental attic. Keep this memory, throw that one away.

Keep the part of Clay she could still respect. He was right about a lot of things — about pesticides, and testing cosmetics on animals. She remembered the first lecture that first day in class, when he had explained what ought to have been self-evident. A simple thing: for the price of lunch at McDonald’s, a person could buy tortillas, rice and beans and feed not just themselves, but four other people as well. So why not do that? Tuning out the relentless pace of modern life, which encouraged the belief that there wasn’t time to make your own sandwich, was ultimately rewarding to both body and spirit.

But she had to ask herself, When was the last time Clay had made himself a meal. Why would he, you idiot? He has you.

Oh, but he was right about the public love affair with technology. Much of what he’d said had come true. Technology wasn’t helping people transfer work to machines, it was making people and machines interconnected. Look how reliant she was on her Palm Pilot. Clay hated it, but it helped her manage her time. Sure, she could live without it, probably ought to.

Or not. Was he right about everything? Everyone probably would be better off disconnecting themselves from machines and living off the land. Of course if everyone tried it millions would starve. But he was wrong about strawberries in January. And electric blankets. And what he implied was her lot in life.

She’d been so proud when he’d organized a campus protest against invasion of privacy through the routine disclosure of medical records from the school medical center. As a result, the policy for the entire state system had been changed. He’d loved the signs she’d made, the food she’d brought to the all-night vigil. But did he make anything himself?

She wanted this to be Jo’s fault. She needed it to be Jo’s fault. She did not want to be twenty-six going on sixteen, still a child and discovering that her hero was just a man, as flawed as any, no worse than most.

Clay helped decipher the map when they turned off the highway. It was hard to shake away the last image she’d painted against the darkness, that of Geena holding Tori.

She found a parking space in the congested, narrow street outside the gates of the house and wished the rain would stop. She waited while Clay shrugged into his suit jacket, then they went up the wide marble steps together. The massive bulk of the house was lost in the night, but festive lights drew them to the front door. As soon as the door opened Holly was washed over by lively music from a small baroque ensemble. It was bright and warm inside. The darkness, with its forbidden pictures, receded.

They mingled and Holly chatted with people she knew from faculty parties, then followed the musical cues when it was time for the ceremony. It was simple and heartfelt and she liked it. She knew how Clay felt about weddings, but there was something deeply human about the proclaiming of commitment and loyalty in front of family and friends. Someday she wanted to do that. Maybe without the lilac-hued roses and long white gown and seven attendants, none of which was her style. But the declaration — yes, she would love to feel that way about someone.