Waltzing at Midnight (19 page)

“You look scared,” she whispered. “Change your mind at any time, Jean.”

I would have liked to have said something to tell her how far I was from changing my mind, but words failed me. I was raw emotion. I just shook my head.

She led me to the bed where we sat facing each other. She unbuttoned my shirt. I sat stiffly, stupidly, watching her undo the buttons. She slipped the shirt off my shoulders. My breasts stood out greenish in the dimness, much smaller than hers. Looking at my body, her eyes full of emotion, she said, “God, you’re gorgeous!”

She pulled me close and kissed me again and our breasts enclosed each other in the softest of embraces. Then she slipped off her robe and drew me down to lie beside her. I slid my hands over her body, her back, her hips, then to her breasts with their pink nipples, pink like mine were as a girl. We touched and kissed 13

and sucked each other hungrily. She was passionate, but patient, leading me slowly into intimacy.

No matter how many times I had imagined this, my imagination had been inadequate. Imagination could not have involved all of my senses the way the real thing did. I saw the curve of her shoulder, heard her soft moans, smelled her warm skin, tasted her mouth, and felt the heat and energy of her body as my fingers tried to take all of her at once in their grasp. Whatever doubts I’d had about loving a woman were gone instantly. It was easy, and it was so natural.

“You’re very quiet,” she said at last. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “I’m incredibly okay.”

Rosie played me like a musical instrument, her hands and mouth touching all the right notes. I looked down across my torso to see the top of her head, her freckled shoulders. I felt her fingers open me up and I closed my eyes and lay my head back.

And then I felt her warm, wet mouth gripping me, her tongue running across and into me, probing, circling. As I became more and more excited, her hands found my hips, holding me in place under her mouth, her tongue moving expertly. My frantic body raced. She knew exactly how much pressure to apply, how fast to move, what stage I was in, when to take me over the edge. When at last the orgasm came, it was long and deep and drenching.

Lying still, throbbing from temples to toes, I listened to Rosie’s hard breathing and felt her moist breath on my thigh.

When she moved up beside me, I kissed her mouth, tasting and smelling myself.

“I want to do that to you,” I said.

“Please do.”

She was extremely aroused, her breathing erratic. From the moment my tongue found her clitoris and her body arched at the touch, I knew what to do and it felt like something I’d done all my life. I loved it. I loved the dark, wet earthiness of her filling my mouth. I loved the smell of her and the taste of her. I loved feeling her body respond to my slightest touch, and the way I could feel her gripping my fingers as I pushed them hard up 140

inside her. I could almost feel it myself, what she was feeling.

Once I started, I didn’t want to stop. She came and came as my tongue grew smarter, my fingers more adept. She knew how to teach me, wordlessly, where and how to touch her. I listened for the catch of breath in her throat, the gasp, the small cry, the deep moan. As had always been the case where Rosie was concerned, I learned from her effortlessly.

By the time it was dark outside, we were both exhausted and lay unmoving in each other’s arms for a long time, just listening to one another breathing.

“Where have I been all my life?” I said at last.

She smiled. “An interesting question. You do seem to be a natural.”

We ate the chocolate and drank wine from plastic water glasses without leaving the bed. I sat behind Rosie, my legs and arms wrapped around her, while she leaned back against me, her wineglass held loosely in her hand. I let my hands roam freely over her stomach and her breasts.

“You’re so sweet,” she said, her eyes closed, her mouth turned up slightly into a tranquil smile. “And so hot.” She took a drink.

“Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”

I held her ear lobe between my lips, sucking gently, then said,

“Maybe you’re just a good teacher.”

“Oh, no,” she said. “I have nothing to teach you.”

“Nothing?” I asked, amused. “So this is it, then? We’ve done everything that lesbians do?”

Rosie’s lips curled into a grin, her eyes still closed.

I slid a hand down through her pubic hair, teasing her gently with my fingers. I kissed her ears and neck, feeling the hunger returning to my limbs. I had already learned that there was a spot behind her ear, on her neck just below the hairline, that drove her wild. I touched that spot with my tongue and saw her body tense. I reached around and took her glass, setting it on the side table, then moved from behind her and kissed her mouth deeply, tasting the wine and chocolate.

“You’re insatiable,” she whispered, lying back agreeably.

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“I’ve been waiting a long time for this.”

A lifetime, I thought, as we made love again. And then Rosie protested that she could take no more, so I relented and let her rest. The sensations I was feeling were unfamiliar. My body seemed to belong to itself, like a growing thing feeding and flourishing by instinct. It tingled, it glowed, it radiated energy.

We both slept on and off, fitfully, unfamiliar with one another’s bed habits.

“Tell me about Catherine,” I asked at some point in the night.

“Catherine? Why?”

“I don’t know. Just curious. I bought two of her books, you know. I read every poem looking for you.”

“Did you find me?”

“I think so, vampire girl.”

Rosie kissed my neck and growled through her teeth. “You’re quite the detective,” she said. “I wouldn’t think I’d be recognizable in that poem. She wrote it after one of our many fights. A not too flattering view of our relationship.”

“She was in love with you?”

“I suppose so.”

“And you?”

Rosie nodded. “I met her at Berkeley. We were both graduate students. It was a fantastic time to be a lesbian poet, then, because those women were riding on the momentum established by the feminist movement. They had inherited the right to defiance.

She was one of a group of them, and they took themselves oh so seriously. Well, didn’t we all? They called themselves ‘The Third Wave’ because they fancied themselves the third wave of feminism, and they defined themselves as the most radical.”

Rosie stroked my shoulder gently as she spoke. “And it could have happened, perhaps, because they were right there at the locus of social change, but, as it turned out, there wouldn’t be a third wave of feminism. Well, I believe some more modern feminists have now adopted that term. But for Catherine, the time was past. Still, they did stir the hearts of some young coeds.

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I was impressed, at the time, with their conviction, and Catherine emerged as the most angry and outspoken of all, and therefore the most appealing to me.”

“I can certainly see that,” I said, imagining this young, impressionable Rosie caught up in the excitement of activism.

“She and I were on and off for years after that, but I changed more than she did, and we were left with almost nothing to agree about. Catherine is a terrific ego, impossible to get along with.

And we were both younger, so both of us were impossible to get along with. A rocky relationship.”

“It’s over, then?”

“Yes, absolutely. I love her dearly, but not that way, not for a long time.”

“Is there anyone else, now?” I asked with trepidation.

“No, sweetie, nobody.”

“Grace Carpenter?”

Rosie laughed loudly. “I can see you’ve been driving yourself insane with jealousy. Grace is eighty-seven years old. She was a friend of my mother’s, and, no, we were not having a romantic interlude last weekend. At the moment, I’m all yours.”

At the moment, I repeated in my mind. Not the most comforting of thoughts. And I couldn’t even say that much in return. After a few minutes of silence, I asked, “Rosie, when you first suspected that I was falling for you, before I knew it myself, why didn’t you send me away?”

“Oh, that’s a complicated question. The simple answer is that I didn’t want to. I convinced myself that it was safe. I figured you’d never acknowledge it for one thing. People don’t. They need to protect themselves. You were just so adorable with your tremendous enthusiasm, the way your eyes lit up when you looked at me. I was enjoying watching you discovering yourself, and I really wanted to be a part of that.” She stroked my face, pushing my hair back. “But the truth is that I could tell almost from the beginning that the two of us were connecting on a sexual level. I’ve no idea what
you
were thinking, and it’s always a sort of mystery to me how you straight women can’t see that 143

enormous pink elephant in the room. Do you have any idea how hard it is to talk about campaign finances to a beautiful woman with lust in her eyes?”

When I woke in the morning, Rosie was still asleep. I glanced at the clock—seven thirty. I slipped out of bed, pulled on my jeans and shirt, my shoes without socks, and silently left the room. As I rode down in the elevator, I was hit with the sobering realization that I would soon be going home.

In the breakfast room, I filled two cups with coffee, and then realized I didn’t know how the woman I loved took hers. No, wait, I’d gotten her coffee once, at the office. Black, I think, same as me. I took the coffee back up to our room, along with a couple of blueberry muffins.

Rosie was awake, watching me, her eyes puffy, her hair standing on end, holding a sheet over her chest. “I thought maybe you’d run away again,” she said.

“No, not this time.” I came over, kissed her on the cheek and handed her a coffee cup, crawling into bed with mine.

“Thanks. Just what I needed.” She swallowed a few gulps before asking, “So how does it feel in the light of a new day?”

I fed her a piece of a muffin with my fingers. “Beautiful. I can’t believe how perfect this feels.”

“Uh oh,” Rosie said with mock alarm. “Look out, ladies, there’s a new girl in town.”

I was so happy, I knew that it wasn’t me. Someone else had possessed my body. “Rosie,” I said as she sucked the sugar off my fingers, “how do you feel about me?”

She took my finger out of her mouth and looked puzzled.

“What do you mean? I’m sitting naked in bed with you, sucking your fingers.”

“Seriously, Rosie. Tell me.” I wanted something to hold on to. She was reluctant. “Well, I enjoy being with you. Right now, I’d rather be with you than anybody else. I try not to think beyond that because what’s the point? This is a complicated situation and I don’t feel like I’m in control. I’m worried about you, about how 144

you’ll handle this.”

“I don’t want to leave. I want to stay here with you forever.”

“Forever?” she said, amused. “Forever only happens in fairy tales.” Rosie took a swallow of coffee, then smiled at me. “I want you to know that I’ve enjoyed this very much. But I don’t make any claims on you, Jean. You’re a married woman and you’ve got a life that has no place for me.”

Was this was just a passing bit of fun for her? I wondered.

Was she done with me now? I didn’t want to think about any of that, not now, not yet. “I love you so much,” I said. “I can’t keep my hands off you.” I threw my arms around her.

“Lust,” she said. “It’s called lust.”

I buried my face in her neck, smelling sex, sweat and the faint odor of her skin, mingling together into an intoxicating elixir that stirred my most basic instincts. I kissed her, not caring what she called it, and as our lips closed in on each other, I felt my body filling with desire. I kissed her more deeply.

“Again?” Rosie said, setting her coffee aside. “I haven’t had a night like that since, well, since I was young enough to take it. I guess we have time, but then we really need to get going.”

“How am I going to tear myself away?” I asked.

“Ruthlessly, my darling.”

We lingered for a while in our room and then took a bath together before dressing to go back to the world. While we drove home, both of us were mostly silent. The nearer we got to Weberstown, the more bereft I became. I didn’t want to go back.

As we exited the freeway, Rosie turned to me and said, “You’re going to have to make a decision, Jean, eventually. If you decide that you want to be with women, keep in mind that it means a lot more than that your lover is female.”

Women? What did she mean “women”? There was only one woman on my mind.

“You mean like how to know who leads when you go dancing?”

I asked, trying to lighten the mood.

She smiled briefly. “It will change you. It will change your politics and your religion and your entire way of interacting with 145

the world. It has to. It will shift your center of gravity.”

“I don’t know that I’m being given a choice.”

“Perhaps you’re not,” she said sympathetically. “Perhaps you’ve come too far already.”

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Overnight, the world had changed. Though the buses still ran in the streets and the radio stations were still playing the same songs, everything appeared distorted to me, as if reflected in a carnival mirror. Arriving home Sunday, I stood on the front porch staring at the birch sign engraved “The Davises” as though I’d never seen it before. This is your home, I told myself. You’re Mrs. Davis. I turned to look down the street where Rosie’s car was just turning the corner. I should be going with her, I thought.

But for some reason, I had come here instead.

I went inside. In front of the living room window was a Christmas tree, an artificial Christmas tree that stood seven feet tall. The box it had come in lay on the floor. Apparently, Jerry had gone ahead with this purchase. The room smelled of a soapy, astringent aroma, the tree manufacturer’s idea of “a fresh pine scent.” The house was quiet. Jerry’s car was gone and, since there was no music playing anywhere, I assumed Amy was also out.