The Shadow Wife (22 page)

San Francisco, 1957

L
ISBETH SAT ON THE CABIN TOP OF
G
ABRIEL’S SLOOP, MUNCHING
on a pear. For the first time in her life, she did not crave candy and ice cream and cookies. Although she was dressed in knee-high rubber boots, bib overalls over a jersey, a yellow slicker, hat and gloves, she could actually
feel
the difference in her body beneath all that gear. Certainly, she was still larger than she wanted to be, but there was some unmistakable definition to her waistline, and although her hips and thighs were hardly slender, she could fit into the overalls without looking like an elephantine version of the pear she was eating. She had forgotten how it felt not to be tired all the time from carrying around so much extra weight.

She and Gabriel had been going together for six months, but they’d only been able to start sailing about a month ago, when the wintry San Francisco cold began to soften around the edges, and they could get out on the water without either freezing or capsizing. Their inability to sail had not interfered with their dating,
however. They’d explored San Francisco together as though they were tourists, and met often for dinner at a restaurant after work. They had a few favorites, especially in the primarily Italian North Beach area where Gabriel lived, where the beats read their poetry in the coffeehouses, and where no one looked twice at a Negro man and a white woman walking or dancing together. She learned to play whist and bridge in the dark, smoke-filled clubs, and she fell in love with jazz and rhythm and blues.

She and Gabriel could talk all day and all night and never run out of things to say. He told her about growing up in the English Village section of Oakland, where a white Realtor had purchased the house his family had wanted and then transferred the title to Gabriel’s father, which had been the only way a Negro family could get into that neighborhood. His mother had been a housekeeper, his father a porter on the Southern Pacific railroad, where just about every man Gabriel knew worked. His father had died on one of the trains when Gabriel was eleven years old, killed by a fellow crew member during a game of craps.

Gabriel’s family had little money after that, and he’d worked his way through school and college. He’d met his wife, Cookie, at Berkeley, and they’d been married eight years when she discovered the lump in her breast. By the way Gabriel spoke of his late wife, Lisbeth knew he’d adored her, yet she never felt he was comparing her to Cookie. Gabriel knew how to focus on the future without letting the past get in the way, and he was teaching her, through his example, to live the same way. The fact that they both had suffered in their childhoods and their early adult years certainly drew them together, but it was their yearning to create a future that would be peaceful, bright and full of love that sealed that bond.

Dating Gabriel was not without its problems, though. Lisbeth had to find a new place to live after her landlord kicked her out the night she’d brought Gabriel up to her room. She’d only wanted to get him out of the rain while he waited for her to get ready for their date, but the landlord was livid, the tendons in
his neck taut as ropes beneath his skin. He had teenage children, he yelled, as if she didn’t know, didn’t hear them playing Elvis on the phonograph at all hours of the night and day. He did not want them to witness interracial dating, and he couldn’t have a colored man in his house. So she left, finding an apartment in North Beach, four blocks from Gabriel’s, with a phone that was available for her use anytime she wanted. Her landlady was a boisterous Italian woman who didn’t care a whit what color Lisbeth’s friends were, and whose house always smelled of tomatoes and olive oil and oregano.

Now that Lisbeth no longer spent her free time huddled in her room eating, the weight dropped off her without her even trying. Diets had not been what she’d needed. All she’d really needed had been the unconditional love of a man, and that she had found in Gabriel.

She loved being out on his boat more than she enjoyed dining with him or listening to music or dancing, because out here they were alone. There was never anyone staring at them, never a look of disapproval or shock from a stranger, as there was sure to be when they ventured out of North Beach. Occasionally, someone would make a disparaging comment loud enough for them to hear, using language that belonged in a sewer, and it would only make Gabriel hold her hand tighter. Sometimes, he would apologize to her, as though the rudeness of others was his fault, and that irritated her no end. He had nothing to apologize for.

At least once every couple of weeks they got together with Carlynn and Alan. They were a compatible foursome, and they’d play bridge at Alan’s apartment, or go to a movie, or meet at Tarantino’s for cioppino. Conversation often seemed to turn to the topic of healing. Gabriel had even taken the three of them to Oakland to meet his mother, who remembered more than he did about his great-grandmother, and who filled their heads with stories they would never have believed, were it not for Carlynn.

“So, Liz,” Gabriel said now, once they were sailing smoothly
downwind. “When is Alan going to pop the question to your sister?”

“This weekend,” Lisbeth said, licking a bit of pear juice from her thumb. “They’re going to Santa Barbara, and he plans to ask her sometime while they’re there.”

Alan had shown her the ring, a beautiful large diamond in a white-gold setting, and told her his plans. Lisbeth had been surprised at being taken into his confidence, but Alan had been anxious to tell her. He was a brilliant physician but a bit stuffy and private, and to see that sense of romance and excitement in him had touched her.

“Any chance she’d turn him down?”

Lisbeth laughed. “What do you think? She loves him to bits, and she’s dying to have babies.” Carlynn had found the right man, of that Lisbeth was certain. They were both bright, intense people with a passion for science and medicine and a shared curiosity about Carlynn’s ability to heal. Lisbeth herself would not have been happy with a man like Alan—not that Alan would have been happy with her, either. She needed someone like Gabriel, whose great joy in living was written all over his face.

Lisbeth was careful never to bring up the subject of marriage with Gabriel, although that was certainly where she hoped their relationship was headed. She was afraid he might think she was pressuring him, though. They had only been going out for six months, she would remind herself. Alan and Carlynn had known each other three times that long.

“Carlynn’s not a virgin,” Lisbeth said suddenly, shocking herself more than she did Gabriel. She clapped her hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe I just told you that.”

He raised his eyebrows at her. “And how did you find that out?” he asked.

“She told me a couple of weeks ago when we were driving home to see Mother. We had a very long, sisterly conversation in the car.” Despite her mother’s usual criticism, the visit to Cypress Point had been wonderful. She’d felt whole to be back at the
mansion, nourished by the scent of the sea and the cypress. She wished Gabriel could visit the mansion with her sometime, but knew that would never be possible.

“Were you shocked?” Gabriel asked her.

Lisbeth gazed in the direction of Angel Island.
We’ve been lovers a long time now,
Carlynn had told her, and Lisbeth had sensed that her sister was moving far, far ahead of her. Somehow, all of Carlynn’s medical skills, all her education and everything else she had accomplished that Lisbeth had not paled in comparison to this. Carlynn knew sex. Lisbeth had thought about the way Gabriel kissed her, his hands running up and down her arms or through her hair, never moving anyplace she could interpret as pushing her into something she might not want to do.

“No, I wasn’t shocked. But I was—” she lowered her gaze from Angel Island to Gabriel’s attentive face “—jealous,” she admitted, feeling the color rise into her cheeks.

“You mean, you want to make love with Alan?” Gabriel teased her, and she threw the rest of her pear at him.

“Don’t make this so hard for me, Gabe,” she pleaded.

“Sorry.” He smiled at her. “Is that something you want, baby?” he asked.

She loved it when he called her baby. “Don’t you?” She bit her lip, waiting for his answer. She’d wanted him to make love to her when he’d been nothing more than a voice on the phone.

Gabriel let out a long groan, leaning back in the boat and looking up at the sky. “Hell,
yes,
” he said. “But I’ve been trying to be a gentleman.”

“Well, stop it.” She giggled.

“I will, if you insist.” He glanced toward the shore, then grinned at her. “Think we should go in?” he asked. “Have you had enough sailing for today?”

She laughed. “We just got out here,” she said. “Besides, we can’t do it yet,” she said. “I have to get a diaphragm first. Carlynn told me about a doctor I can go to.”

“I could use a rubber,” Gabriel said, and she laughed again at his sudden enthusiasm.

“I didn’t even think you
thought
about sex,” she said. “That’s what I told Carlynn.”

He groaned again. “Why’d you tell her that, Liz? Now she’s going to think I’m queer.”

“Not for long she won’t.” She smiled coyly at him, enjoying the banter, but she hoped she wasn’t giving him the impression that she wanted sex for the sex alone. “I wouldn’t do it with someone I didn’t love, Gabe,” she said, the smile no longer on her face. “I only want to do it with you.”

“I know that, baby,” he said, his face just as serious. “And if I didn’t feel the same way about you, I wouldn’t have waited this long.”

That night, they made love in the double bed in his North Beach apartment. She’d been nervous at first, but Gabriel had taken his time. She’d read about sex, but he knew more than had been written in the books she’d analyzed until the pages had started to fall out. Or maybe it was love that had been missing in those books, maybe the men in those stories did not take the time to teach, and to learn, what pleased him, and what pleased his lover.

She remembered something she’d heard one time: sex would either make a relationship better or it would make it worse, but it would not leave it unchanged. She was certain it could only make what she and Gabriel had better, but when they had finished making love, Gabriel rolled onto his back and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke toward the ceiling, following it with his gaze. She knew something was wrong.

“What is it?” she asked, resting her hand on his bare chest.

He blew a smoke ring, then spoke without looking at her. “I’m afraid of costing you,” he said. “Costing you way too much.” He rolled his head on the pillow to look at her, and in the smoky, dark room, without his glasses on, he looked like a stranger.
“The whole world’s not like North Beach, you know,” he said. “You haven’t even told your mother about me.”

“Yes, I have,” she said, already distressed by the tenor of the conversation. “At least, she knows I’m going with someone named Gabriel. I’ll tell her the rest when I have to.”

“I don’t want to be a ‘have to’ for you, Lisbeth,” he said. “It makes me feel like a burden.”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“I know you didn’t. But that’s the way it is, isn’t it? That’s the reality.”

“It doesn’t matter what my mother thinks, Gabe,” she said. “She hasn’t truly been a part of my life for a long time.”

“But you still visit her, and Cypress Point is still important to you. I know you love it there.” He stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray on his windowsill and rolled over, bracing himself on his elbows to look down at her. “I’ve taken you to Oakland,” he said. “I’ve introduced you all around, to my family and my neighbors. I showed you the house where I grew up and the places I hung around. What can you show me from
your
childhood? I can’t meet your mother, can’t set foot in the house you adore unless I pose as a delivery boy, can’t walk through your old neighborhood without scaring people out of their wits.”

“I don’t care about that, Gabe,” she said fervently, worried that she was lying to herself as well as to him. “I’d give all that up for you in a heartbeat.”

“I don’t know that I should let you,” he said, sitting up and leaning back against the wall.

Lisbeth felt something precious slipping from her grasp. “Are you saying you want to break up with me?” She started to cry, silently, not wanting him to know.

“No,” he said. “I
don’t
want to break up. But I’m not sure about our future together, Liz.”

Before they’d made love, he’d been full of tender words for her. Now he sounded as though he was pulling away, ready to
end what they’d nurtured together for the past six months. And suddenly, she thought she knew the reason why.

“Was I not as good as your wife?” she asked, unable to hide the tears in her voice. “In bed, I mean. Not as good as the other women you’ve had?”

“What?” He looked truly surprised. “Oh, Lizzie. Oh, no, baby.” He moved toward her, pulling her up by her shoulders until she was in his arms. “You were perfect,” he said. “I didn’t mean that at all. I’m just thinking ahead, that’s all. Thinking about…how hard it could be to be married. How hard it would be on our children. I’m sorry, baby.” He lowered his head to the hollow between her throat and shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

She felt his tears on her shoulder then, and he pulled her even closer to him, so close she could barely breathe, and that was where she wanted to be. Always.

Although Carlynn was thrilled to be engaged to Alan, she knew there was trouble ahead and that it would take the form of Delora Kling. As soon as Carlynn told her mother about the engagement, Delora started planning.

“We’ll have the wedding on the terrace,” Delora said. “The weather in September should be ideal for it to be outdoors. I heard a harpist the other day who would be perfect. Wouldn’t that be lovely, dear? It’s so rare to hear a harpist at a wedding. Of course, if we have it here, that will limit the number of guests we can have. Would you prefer it to be in one of the cathedrals instead?” Carlynn
did
want to be married at Cypress Point, but she also wanted Lisbeth to be her maid of honor, along with Penny Everett as her bridesmaid. And Lisbeth was attached at the hip to Gabriel, as she should be. Carlynn had no problem with that—she adored Gabriel—but Delora was sure to have a fit if her “second daughter” showed up with a Negro by her side.