Walking up the steps to the Hancock Park address – I’m always late, she’s always early – I dutifully knock on the red door. If this mysterious request to meet here is about our wedding plans, I wonder: Is it possible that no one heard a single word I’d said, when our ersatz wedding planners, Alice and Helena, had suggested their half-cocked idea of me and Tina ensconced in the back of a pink convertible – as Grand Marshals, if you can believe it, waving at the crowds during a four hour long Gay Marriage Day parade!?!
There’s not enough vodka in the world!
With my mood swinging from guilt at being late, I pivot over to feeling aggravated and misunderstood. I knock on the red door even harder. It flies open, and a woman in her sixties, sweeping a vintage Hermes scarf around her neck, steps aside. With a flourish she ushers me in.
Beyond me, and through an antique furnished parlor, Tina waves to me from a room at the rear of the house. Waving back, I follow behind my designer clad hostess.
There are paintings around me that are dreamscapes of mythical beasts dancing with masked human forms, and everyone of them much paler than their animal companions. All canvases depict moonlit nights. All with dancers and fires burning. All with moons and blue black darkened skies, and clouds and stars overhead. All exquisitely painted, but moody, and with the feeling that one misstep could trip you into the Dark Side – until it was good and done with you.
Interspersed, within the gallery of surrealism, are elaborately framed oils from the European eighteenth century Romantic Period, and in these the artist has expertly painted large breasted, luscious looking women, all nude, or barely clad. They lie in sultry repose with their friends, goblets of wine in their hands, they celebrate being together with a feast laid out before them. Beyond them, in the darker parts of the painting, stags and other hungry creatures watch their bacchanalia from the shadows.
My hostess, the collector of these erotic paintings, interrupts my inner critique. “In the library, I have a series of these lovely ladies, but with Pan spying on them, hidden behind the trees.”
And to think, I’d had his famed look of lust and hunger, well . . . just yesterday.
“I see, he speaks to you.” She reads my mind.
Before I can object, or qualify, or discover – truly what the fuck I’m doing here – I come to a full stop, and gasp at what’s in front of me.
A Spanish painting I’ve loved for years from La Belle Epoque’s Era. “But . . . the original’s in the Prado,” I stammer.
Ignoring me she says, “Tina, here’s your fiancée.”
Tina slips her arm around my waist. “Bette, I’ve wanted to introduce you . . . for such a long time.”
“Really? How long?” I ask suspiciously of Tina, while taking the mystery woman’s hand.
“My name’s Angelica, too, but Romanian people say it, “Ong’ gee -leh-ca.”
I practice saying it back for her, and finally she lets my hand free.
“Bette Porter, nice to meet you.” Then to Tina. “Is this about our wedding?”
“Back here, Bette, she’s invited us for tea.”
“Please join us.” Angelica leads the way.
As the tea pours, Tina squeezes my hand under the table, and draws it into her lap. Around us, an ancient fragrance from the steaming tea curls in my direction.
“Bette.” Tina shakes my arm to take a sip. “Angelica’s a Gypsy, and she’s my Fortune Teller.”
This news stuns me. Then, it hits! “I’m here for a psychic reading before we get married.” I sigh with relief. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
Followed by doubt striking me cold, when she doesn’t immediately answer. “Tina, are you having doubts? You’re not sure anymore, are you?” I stare suspiciously at the Gypsy, and convict her. This is all her fault.
“Oh, no, no, no! Don’t worry, I’ve been seeing her for months now.”
“Doing what?” I frown at her unusual secret. “And when?”
“Talking, listening mostly . . . learning things about myself.”
“Do I know these things?” My eyes must be slits by now. “Do you talk to me about them?”
The Gypsy’s east European accent focuses me back on her. “Drink another sip of the tea I poured for you, and first I’ll read your leaves.”
I slide a look over to Tina, and, as ordered, we lift our cups up to drink.
The leaves settle and then, she peers into mine and begins.
“There are many believers of the Old Ways.” She looks around us, as if they might step out of the walls for tea and a séance. “Might you be convinced – for a little while – to be one of them?” She cocks her eyebrows at me quizzically, and Tina lights the candles around the room.
Soon, every shape has softened.
On the table by me is the last candle, and as Tina blows out the match, my eyes shift out of focus – for only a moment – but when I come back the Gypsy has taken my hand in hers. Her thumb brushes across the plane of my palm. She shifts in her seat to get a better look, and draws the candle closer for light.
I feel the warmth from the flame, and the Gypsy’s cool fingers, as they trace over every inch, and somehow that relaxes me. I look over at Tina, and she meets my eyes with such love.
“It’s going to be fine. You’re fine.” She squeezes my other hand, and I wait for her to bite her lip in doubt, but she doesn’t.
“There’s so much here. Close your eyes, Bette, and wait to see an animal. Then, tell me what it is.”
I do as I’m told, and a bird flies by in my mind – on its way to somewhere – and below it’s wings, the bushes shake in a dark green forest. A black animal, with ruby colored eyes, stares back at me.
“Oh!” I suck in my breath too fast. “A black panther.”
“I see.” The Gypsy says.
My eyes flash open. “You do?”
“Bette!” Tina cries exasperated. “Come back down with us.”
“You’re there, too?”
“Yes, above you.”
“Okay, if you say so.” I close my eyes, and the panther stares back at me.
When I was a motherless young girl, the women in our Baptist church were superstitious old crows, all of them. They had looked at me, as if I’d been cursed. My Mother had just died and disappeared suddenly. I had a busy father, who slept around, and out of the blue, Kit’s mother had cycled back for another go . . . but I was not her child.
A strange woman in my house, the evil eyes from the women at church, and my isolation was complete. When I had cried, I had cried alone.
“This red-eyed animal of yours, a he or she?” The Gypsy asks.
“With a pretty good sized pair of balls on him, too.” And saying so, I follow him through thick underbrush, and come upon a white church, where my father and I had stood outside – for a long time together – as we’d watched my mother’s hearse drive away.
The Gypsy continues tracing my palm with her fingers, lulling me back to that afternoon, floating me back down to earth again, when I see the black shoes, I’d spent a long time before her funeral polishing.
I knew something wonderful had ended for me then. Whatever soothing from the meanness of life had gone, vanished, and was never to be mine again — until I’d had my own family. Then, the hole had scarred over. Only then, had I begun to calm down, and breathe with a rhythm that had begun to heal me.
I hadn’t thought – or not thought – much about marriage for most of my adult life. Who was there to marry, and when? Nobody! Who was there to date, and where? Anyone I’d wanted.
But finding it in myself for a commitment? A whole different story.
The underbrush in front of me moves, and the panther picks up his pace.
A dark place we go next, and his tail flicks sharply from side to side. Wary, too, I hunch down on the ground next to him. We peer through the windows of my bedroom, and tearing the clothes out of my closet is Tina. My mouth goes dry, as I witness her anguish, and my stomach wretches with hers as she crawls across our bedroom floor and vomits into a waste can.
Alice appears in the bedroom doorway with a glass of water for Tina, and seeing her on the floor sobbing – Alice rushes into the bathroom, and returns with a moist wash cloth.
Crumbled on the floor, Tina holds the cloth – like a blindfold over her eyes – and over the pounding of my heart she screams my name.
My head falls into my hands, and I weep, and nothing she says – no words that she’s forgiven me – can stop me from my shame.
______________
The Planet -5 pm – Shane
Folding my newspaper down in front of me, I look over the tops of it at Alice. “You know what we should do?”
“Oh, sure, I can think of a lot of things we should do! Like you should quit reading the movie reviews and figure out how to get us backstage passes for Jennifer Hudson’s concert in the Bowl tomorrow night.”
“How about a little higher?”
“You mean like plane tickets somewhere?”
“Something unselfish for a change.”
Alice is uncharacteristically quiet.
“We should surprise Bette and Tina and cook them dinner.”
“Really?” Alice taps her pen thinking. “But what do you know how to cook? I can only make latkes.”
“I don’t think Bette likes those.”
“Neither do I, so I don’t cook.”
Leaning over I search through the Times to find the Food Section. “Here’s a recipe! Look!” I open the LA Times’s full page spread on, “101 Things to Do with Bacon”.
“Shane, you’re a genius!”
At that moment, Kit walks up. “Hey, you’re her sister. What’s Bette’s favorite food, and do you think she’d like it better with bacon?” I ask.
“Girl, if she doesn’t, she’s an idiot. Where is she anyway? I’ve been calling her phone for hours.”
“I am the shittiest Earth Mother. I can babysit.” Alice offers.
“Wha. . .no, Baby Girl’s fine, it’s those fucking whores from the SheBar that’s put me in a mood.”
“I thought Joyce was helping you with that?” Alice looks hopeful, but Kit shakes her head.
“I don’t know what she can do, but she’s coming here in a minute anyway.”
“Kit let us know.”
“You all good with drinks? Need anything?”
“But what about the bacon topping?” I call after Kit, as she’s walking away.
“Oh!? Whatcha wanna know for? You cookin’ might burn down the house!”
“As long as I smoke grass, I’m fine.”
Kit laughs at me. “Sounds like a plan. Crumble it on top of baked yams with lots of butter. She’ll never forget you. I used to make it for her when she was a kid.”
Then, Joyce walks through the door, and I wave at her. “Joyce is an amazing cook. Alice, we want her over here.”
“Joyce, Joyce, Joyce! Just the woman we need to solve a riddle.”
“What riddle is that Alice?” Joyce peers down at us earthlings.
“What’s the most delicious dinner that you can imagine cooking with bacon?”
“Whoa!” Joyce rocks back on her heels and stares up at the ceiling, really giving this some thought.
“Now, wait a minute! You aren’t on the clock yet, are you? Because I ain’t payin for dis!” Kit chides us.
“Here’s what you should do – fry some soft shell crabs and pour a creole style shrimp and crab seafood sauce over them, and on top of each one put two crispy strips of bacon.” Joyce claps her hands that she’s given us a winner, and off she goes with Kit into her office.
“Yum-fucking-yum!” Alice, I can tell, is in. “You know, I think we can handle the yam part, but I know this sweet little chef who cooks just around the corner . . .and Shane, she’s gonna love you.”
Two hours later –
When we hear Bette and Tina pulling their cars into the driveway, I push Alice out my front door. “Okay, let’s go!” And we run out with our platters of food.
Tina closes her car door and with a surprised look on her face, waves at us. Bette lifts up out of her car, and it’s obvious she’s been crying. Alice and I skid to a stop. “Ah, bad time? We made you guys dinner.”
Alice peels back the foil to show Bette her baked yams with butter and bacon. “Will this make you feel better?”
Tina comes over with their daughter. “Babe, look at all this!”
“Yeah, Bette, man what’s wrong?” I ask.
Bette takes a long whiff of the yams, then the crab dish, and finally, I show her a whole tupperware container full of fried bacon. “You have no idea how much I . . . ” But her throat closes up on her words, and she looks pleadingly over at Tina to finish.
“It’s perfect timing,” Tina says for the both of them. “You guys are just amazing, and right on time. Come in.”
___________
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As I stare at the unknown number on the screen of my cell phone, Tina and Alice’s attention drifts back to discussing Molly Kroll’s unexpected appearance outside The Planet a few minutes ago, but more astonishingly, why she drove away with Bette.
The phone vibrates in my hand once more. It’s a Dallas area code, but my Mother never calls me this early.
First, a southern sounding woman’s voice, soft but direct asks, “May I speak with Shane McCutcheon?”
“I’m Shane.” I sip my expresso. Dammit, how quickly it grows cold.
“Ms. McCutcheon, I’m Dr. Matthews from St. Francis’ Hospital in Dallas. I’m calling about your mother. Is this a good time to talk?”
I wave my hands for Alice and Tina to look at me as I mouth the words, ‘hospital’ and ‘mother’, and we all wait as I hear the news: My mother, the on and then off again drug addict, needs a liver transplant, or she’ll die.
Alice breaks our frozen silence, “Wait a minute! Do they even know how dangerous that is?”
Tina comforts me, “It’s not dangerous for you, Shane. Painful to give the necessary tissue, sure. It’s surgery after all, but not dangerous per se.”
“Thank you, Meredith Grey,” Alice snaps. “but I was talking about for Shane’s mother. I mean, would you want Shane’s kidney?”
“Liver.” I correct.
For a second too long my best friends look doubtful. Quickly, Tina leans over and kisses my cheek. “Guys, I’ve got to get going. Shane, find me on set later if you want to talk.”
Stunned, I walk out of The Planet, and as I climb the hill back to my house my mind feels adrift and buzzy, when it should be clear and planning and my fingers tapping around online for a cheap plane ticket to Texas, but instead I listen the incessant humming in my head. A thousand bees circling again and again – a disturbed hive of thoughts.
California University – Phyllis’ Office – Bette
After Molly Kroll’s unexpected ride to work with me, I had hoped to dash past James, and straight into my office, but Phyllis ‘Shanghaied’ me in the parking lot. At this point, I’ve given up and settled in with her and Molly, and a morning tea tray for what I suspect will be an annoying conversion that will touch upon, “being a lesbian, being a mother”, and most dreaded of all: “What do I think about it?”
But instead, she wants to talk about the boots I’m wearing.
Suddenly, she grabs me by the tip of my slightly squared toe and fixes me with a stare of undeniable envy. “Bette, you both frustrate and fascinate me.” Followed by a long sigh I’m not sure I like the sound of coming from her.
Over the rim of my china cup, I stare back at Phyllis, and burn the holy crap out of my lip on the too hot tea. She pouts a little which is unnerving, and Molly, with lips of asbestos, takes a deep swallow, rolls her eyes, and stares up at the ceiling.
Like a pin prick into my forming blister, I suddenly spill out the whole story of my recent night in the moonlit canyons of New Mexico shooting off my mother’s Colt six-shooters at big fat rattlesnakes.
For once in her life, Phyllis is speechless.
Beverly Hills Rooftop Pool & Bar – Late Afternoon – Tina
It was inevitable that sooner or later I was going to run into the director, Kate Arden, again. I’d had to fire her, after Jenny’s massive sucking up to William made it clear – an opinionated director like Kate was never going to work on Jenny’s story, Jenny’s story, Jenny’s story – I only wish.
Kate motions to me in that too cool way of hers. “So, how’s the picture coming?”
“We’re just starting principle. Any big news with you?” I breeze back at her.
“My big news? Hmm, I’m headed to Ireland in a few days to start a movie, but I think yours is probably more interesting.” Kate cocks her head, and stares at me from under her hipster cap.
“Mine?” I feel a dry patch starting at the back of my throat and creeping over my tongue. Industry people are horrible gossips, and William and Aaron have been slipping away everyday at lunchtime. I had guessed seeking more investors, but the way Kate says it unnerves me.
A pregnant pause, as she lights a cigarette. “I guess you could say, I was surprised when someone sent me a YouTube link of you and Bette and Gloria Steinem.”
“Oh, that.” I look around me for other possible ambushes.
Kate presses on, “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you were an actress.” A smoke ring exits her lips. “It was great theater, your surprise when she showed you the ring. And I mean that in best of possible ways.”
“Of course you do.” I lift it up for Kate, and we watch as it sparkles in the California sun.
“Interesting, when you think about,” she rolls my ring finger between hers.”because two months ago you had a thing for me.”
Four Days Later –
Los Angeles to Dallas Flight – Alice
It didn’t take us long to make friends with the flight attendants, a Dallas based crew who were on their way home after flying God knows where all day long. Frankly, I don’t know how they do it. Smile and smile and say the same things over and over, but drawl on they did, and I’ve never heard directions about seat beats and tray tables sound so sexy, but then again, I was in a rare mood. It had felt good, very good, in fact, to send Tasha an email saying I was off to Dallas on business for a few days. Really. Screw her.
Shane, however, was not so brimming with cheer, and it was with some relief when I watched her across the aisle sprawl in her seat, take out her earphones, and close her eyes to the world.
Tina’s final words were, “Thank God, Nikki Stevens sprained her stupid ankle,” before she fell asleep on Bette’s shoulder, which made us look only slightly less like complete alcoholics, when we ordered a double vodka tonic for her, along with two for ourselves.
With our tray tables awash with cocktails and peanuts, and barely enough room for a game of gin rummy, I’m suddenly beginning to remember, Bette is very good at playing.
Competition.
I like to know it all. Bette likes to be absolutely right about everything, and Tina gets difficult when pushed too far, but today – with the control of our lives handed over for the next two and half hours to the pilot, and his lovely flight crew – we’ve given ourselves over to the inebriating effects of vodka, and matching wits at playing cards.
“I don’t know if I’d do it.” I blurt, and Bette flashes her eyes at me.
“What!?” I cry, causing Tina to stir.
“Dammit,” she hisses, “Are you looking at my cards, again, Alice?”
“Give my mother my kidney.” I set the record straight.
“Liver, Alice. Liver.” Bette corrects me as she snaps a card into her hand before laying down another fucking rummy. “Damn, I wish we were playing for money,” she smiles at me. “You shuffle, I can’t do it with her asleep on me like this.
“What’s up with her?” I nod toward Tina.
“Sleep deprived, I think.” Bette says as she cuts the cards.
“Newlyweds! Well, soon anyway.” I smile as I fan out my hand, and see that I have a fighting chance with this one. “Bette, drink up. The cart’s rolling back this way.”
“Not my fault,” Bette smirks in a rare form of sexual disclosure. “This time.” Followed by a tender kiss on top of Tina’s head. “All week they’ve been shooting at night. Stupid movie. She’s exhausted.”
“It’s the redheaded flight attendant, again.” I lay down my discard. “I wouldn’t mind another round, you?”
“I’ll play you for it.”
“Okay,” I nod.
“Gin!” Bette announces, as she lifts up the Queen of Hearts I just discarded.
“God dammit! How do you keep doing that!”
“Skill. Sheer skill, Alice.” Bette pushes the cards at me to shuffle.
Tina’s hand drops into Bette’s lap, and begins to rub her thigh. “Babe, are you and Alice getting drunk?” Tina whispers into her neck.
“I think so. Is that okay with you?” Bette winks at me.
“I’m not driving.” Tina sighs.
“Okay, but right now we’re flying – so, we’re good.”
“Who’s winning?” Tina asks drowsily.
“As if you need to ask,” Bette drops a six of clubs on the table. “Eight to nothing. My favor.”
Dallas, Texas – Outside the Hotel – Alice
Leave it to Bette to choose a hotel where a giant modern eye ball sculpture peers constantly into our windows. Awash with airplane vodka, I’m finding it particularly unnerving. That and the fact that Shane keeps visiting it, as she is doing now, and stroking the red vessels that crawl up its sides. But, we’ve got a silent, and as yet unbroken mantra going while we’re in Dallas. Let it Be. Let it Be. Let it Be.
So far, so good.
Tina pushes through the glass doors from the lobby. “We’re very close to St. Francis.” Tina says as the valet appears with our rental car, and she hands Shane the driving directions. “Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”
“Are you guys sure you want to come?” Shane looks at us one by one. “I can do this alone. They’re not sticking me with anything tonight. I’m just visiting her.”
“Unless you don’t want us to, I think we should all be there.” Bette says resolutely.
“I agree,” Tina adds, as Shane falls in line with us at the curb.
“Shotgun.” Bette calls as she opens the sedan’s back door for Tina.
Shane looks around the car before she turns into the early evening traffic. “Thanks, guys. I really mean it.”
“Dallas, Texas,” Tina muses from the back seat. “Last time my father called me, an Easter or two ago, he said my sister lived here now.”
And I watch as Bette’s knuckles turn white as she grips the dashboard in front of her.
Outside the Hospital – Shane
I stare at the signage out front, “Presence? What the fuck does that even mean?”
“I wouldn’t think about it too much.” Bette offers, and then clears her throat, as Alice skips up beside me.
“When was the last time you saw your mother? I’ve known you for eight years and I don’t remember you ever going anywhere, except up to the vineyards in Ojai.”
“And that’s not far.” Tina adds.
“Today was the first time I’ve ever been in plane.”
“What?” We all shout at once from under the glowing Presence sign.
“Do you think the nuns who ran the foster homes I lived in had money for plane tickets? It was bus rides to the county fair, and only if the tickets were free.”
“Did you like flying?” Tina asks me.
“It was fast.”
Bette stands at the elevator in her cowboy boots as several couples walk past admiring them.
“Hey! We’re in Texas.” Alice spurts cheerfully as a family in ten gallon hats saunters past.
I press the button for the transplant floor, and as the elevator whooshes us upwards, I feel my liver, along with my stomach, staying somewhere two floors behind.
The Hospital Room – Bette
When Sue Ellen McCutcheon turns away from her wistful stare out the window, I feel a hammer of ache hit my chest when I think of all those missing years without my mother. She opens her arms to her daughter, and for a moment our friend disappears as we watch tears stream down their cheeks. I begin to back out of the room, but Tina’s firm hand stops me. She whispers, “This is going to be okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. Keep walking.” Tina nudges me again, but I still feel trapped in something like a dream, as she gently pushes me farther inside.
“Lord, I must look nearly one foot in the grave.” Sue Ellen brushes her hands over her face. “Thank God, I put on my lips to meet you all.”
We all beam our best smiles back at her, as Shane begins to introduce us,
Tina’s the first to take Mrs. McCutcheon’s thin frail hand, and finally, it’s my turn.
“Bette Porter, nice to meet you.” I feel the papery texture of her skin.
“Bette?” She looks at her daughter, “The swimming pool, right?”
Shane nods as she looks out the window, and wipes the tears away with the back of her hand.
“Yes. The swimming pool.”
“There’s not too many places to sit.” Sue Ellen apologizes.
Alice drops down on the end of the hospital bed. “So, what’d she say about me? I’m her best friend.”
______
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The site doesn’t send you to this story following story when you click —–> Next Post. So, to read in order –
12. The New Mothers of Invention – Bette opens this story with a long windmill of thoughts and musings that was incredibly fun for me to write and imagine. Being in her head amuses me completely. Then, the story kicks off into a speedy sequence of events as Tina finds Bette in the hospital corridor and off they go into the humidity of a Dallas, Texas night. http://wp.me/p4AUvc-lB8
P.S. To catch the thread of this four part series again you may want to read the very amusing story preceding this one, Alice Surmises found here: http://bit.ly/AliceAmuses
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Enjoy, Blackbird
@Blackbirdwrite and on Facebook, L Word Behind the Scenes. Thanks to Jacky at LesFan.com who also hosts these stories there.
The early morning light streams through the windows of my mother’s house, and as I stretch my lingering dreaminess disappears and I realize suddenly: Everyone missing has been found. My long lost mother is upstairs with Angelica and Tina is lying next to me. The inner searcher inside me with no place left to look, and no where else to go vibrates restlessly under my skin.
Then I wonder, was blasting away at rattlesnakes with my mother’s six-shooter an initiation of sorts? Was cutting their heads off with the Bowie knife I’d bought to stab into Henry the real threshold I had to cross to find peace instead of prison?
I wonder for a moment if it could possibly be true. I’d happily grill snake every day if I have to. Just point me to flames.
A semi-delectable transformative host, an unbelievably coincidental crossroads, or a strange mystical fact? I stare up at the ceiling in wonder and soon the rattlesnakes disappear, and the blankness mirrors back my father’s face as he had gripped my small shoulders and told me, “Bette, your mother has died.”
But she hadn’t, and this morning I playback the events over and over again in my mind. It had been just another day at school. Classroom lessons and a chill in the air at recess before the news that afternoon. Before I’d smelled the lies on him.
That must have been its origin. When the part of me that unconsciously believed had remained vigilant, but always anxious had split off and been born.
This is why I wake up first. This is why Tina always gets her coffee in bed. And this is who’s been sending out those endless radar pings that eventually melded into my mind.
And now that I’ve prevailed? Found my mother and won Tina back? I’ve no clue whatsoever how to turn this uneasy inner watcher inside me off.
“Un-fucking-believable.” I mutter under my breath, as Tina stirs next to me. Everything about my life would’ve been different. It all would’ve changed if only he’d told me the truth that day instead of lying.
And then I pause.
What if I had spent my whole life in WitSec with my mother? How likely is it that while hiding and on the run from the murderous Gambino Crime Family I would’ve ever ended up at Yale? Ergo, no exotic artistic lovers; ergo, no lust for the fairer sex; ergo, no women whatsoever. That last bit is impossible, isn’t it?
Well, almost certainly in this scenario I never made it to LA, so no Tina. And that thought depresses me. But wait a fucking second! If I’m in WitSec with my mother then there’s no Bette Porter. Because Bette Porter has disappeared.
I swallow hard and taste the dry panic in my mouth. I don’t ever recall wanting a drink quite so early in the morning, and I need to be very careful about what I wish for.
I rub my face and try to crawl down from the ledge and back into the sheets where it should feel safe but doesn’t. Other paths, alternative destinies, different fates. These words feel perilous to me and impossibly hard to define, and I’m not sure I really want to anymore.
After Tina had left me the second fucking time I’d tried to make sense of things. Hours I’d spent staring at the reflections in my pool, drinking old Scotch, and wondering why the woman I loved had left me.
In this tortured reverie I was a beautifully tragic vision of my self pity. Broken but incredibly talented with a sly charismatic look that could net anyone for awhile, yet I remained incurable and fatally flawed. And the more Scotch I drank on those nights the more my outcomes never changed, and I’d fall into bed pissed off and usually alone. Unless I wasn’t.
That would the same bed Tina had insisted two weeks ago I throw out to further perpetuate our ruse with Jenny, when the truth was for both of us – it was an important symbol of our starting over.
I look away from the ceiling and out through the windows and think of soft new mattresses, and then the rough prickly landscapes of snakes and cactus plants that thrive outside my mother’s home.
Everything is different here and it all started with these boots. I swing them out from under the covers and knock them together a few times and wonder which do I prefer? Long leather sheaths of protection from this unpredictable environment, or my expertly tailored power suits that do the same things in a very different setting? And what could possibly be next?
Then an answer springs forth. I’m definitely wearing these to faculty meetings. One look at me striding in with these on will definitely snap the infuriating and willowy-spined art professors in my department into submission, and then, uncontested my plans for the new building and my department can definitely unfold!
Or not, I realize grimly. As long as Jodie Lerner is in my department’s nearby studio space screwing society’s discarded debris into disquieting sculptures there’s an obstacle with very powerful friends on my faculty. And this is why I should never sleep with people at work! And yet, I knew this gem of wisdom at the time. Still, I did it anyway.
I look over at Tina sleeping next me and wonder if Phyllis is playing power games with me? Is it a control thing with her that she keeps Jodie on, or is it that Phyllis is simply a woman who adores her drama?
My mood had been so dark and desperate the night of her “Coming Out” party. When I had heard my name whispered along with the susurrant title of Jenny’s movie I had cringed and headed for the shadows. On my way to the edge a waitress had brushed past me carrying a tray of champagne and Phyllis’ black brassiere had begun to spin over her head where it became the quantum wings of the butterfly that caused the tsunami. An hour later my clothes were in a heap on the floor by Tina’s bed.
But what if Phyllis had never stripped off her blouse and flagrantly waved her brassiere over her head? What if she’d never stood half naked at the end of her diving board whooping and crying up to the stars for her freedom? What if I hadn’t caught Tina’s eye just as she’d turned away smiling from Phyllis’ amusing spectacle? And if I’d never had the chance to ask, “Do you want to get out of here?”
Thinking back on it – it was more of a plea really. And what if she’d said no?
I tiptoe in my boots from rug to rug toward the closet and my bathrobe, and then silently behind me I close the bedroom door.
Time had stopped for a moment when we’d made love that night after Phyllis’ party. For the second time that day – after months and years apart – we’d found each other, and desperately at times – we couldn’t get enough.
I pour her coffee and make my tea. For the love of God how quickly can I marry her and be with her forever?
Ten minutes later – Tina
“Oh, Bette, thank you for this,” I smile at her as we lean back against the rustic headboard and I take my first sip of coffee.
“It’s good isn’t it? I had a taste to be sure I was doing it right. They like it out here with the smoky flavor of roasted chocolate in it.”
“How’d you sleep, Babe? Did you stay up and watch more of the Blood Moon?”
“Not too much. Once the animals had quieted down outside, and you were asleep I drifted off.”
“I don’t hear our child. While you were up did you look in on her?”
“Peaked in. I wasn’t quite ready for them yet. In a few minutes I’ll send up a flare that we’re awake, if that’s what you want.” Bette’s voice drifts as she looks over at me.
I smile before I blow on my coffee and take another sip. “I could say good morning to you if you’d like.” I lean into her kiss.
“I might. It’s awfully hard to turn down vacation sex, don’t you think?”
“And you’ve barely debriefed me. How’s reuniting with your mother been?”
“Fine. No more than fine. And she obviously likes you, whereas, I obviously love you.”
I place my cup carefully on the bedside table when I feel her hands begin to search me. Her head disappears under the sheet and rolling over my nipples I feel her tongue. I hold behind her neck as more and more pleasure comes from her mouth and then another long lick deepens my burning for her.
“You are so good at this,” I sigh and lie back.
She comes up from the sheet and rolls me on my side. Her tongue slides along my ear and she whispers, “I love you, Tina and I really want to marry you. Let’s do it soon.”
“You woke up hungry and stared at the ceiling for a long time, didn’t you?”
“It’s true. I’ve been all over the map this morning.”
I slide under her. “Obviously someplace interesting.” I manage before she opens my mouth to her again.
“I can’t live without you. Being away from you unravels me, and drives me a little crazy. You came back to me at the perfect time, and just before I lost my mind.”
“Babe, I was miserable, too.” I hold her close to me as we make love.
“Are we in heaven?” Bette asks after several minutes.
“I know. I smell it, too.”
“Bacon,” she says before she disappears again below the sheet.
“Babe, I don’t mind if you want to make it fast. It wouldn’t bother me at all if you did.” And without words she begins to answer me.
Mary Hardy’s Breakfast Room – Bette
“Mother, we’d like another ride out in the desert before we go to the airport this afternoon. Do we have time to drive up in the canyon and see your art studio?”
“After church we’ll go. It’s not far but dusty out there. And it doesn’t matter what we wear to church.” She turns away and opens her oven. “Put on whatever you want.”
“Church?” I ask as she places a tray of bacon wrapped poached eggs on the table in front of me. I look across at Tina who steadies Angelica’s cereal spoon.
“Yes, it’s what I do on Sunday mornings. You don’t?”
“We’d love to,” Tina answers quickly. “How will you introduce us? Does your disguise after all these years include a family?”
“It does and Bette I need to tell you two things before you leave.”
I slice into my eggs. “Now or later? And this breakfast is delicious. Thank you so much.”
“First, I want to tell you about your brother.”
“My what?” I blurt and a few crumbs spew out of my mouth. I drag my napkin quickly across my lips and stare in disbelief at Tina and then my mother. Tina sends me a warning look as Angelica stops eating and begins to fidget.
“He’s a good boy, Bette. Well, he’s thirty years old now, and a journalist. He travels a lot. He was here just last month to see me.” My mother hands me a photograph.
“His name is Sam. Handsome, isn’t he?” My mother smiles at Tina as I hand her the picture to see. “I may have had a screwy, screwy life but God blessed me with beautiful children.”
Church – Tina
As we enter the spacious church on the site of an old Spanish mission Bette’s mother stops inside the doors of the sanctuary and we take in the pinyon scented beauty of the place. “Thank you both for hurrying so we could get here early. There are friends of mine I want you to meet before we all sit down.”
“Take Angelica ahead, Mary. There’s a candle Bette and I want to light for someone first.” Then, I add in a whisper, “My first baby didn’t come to term. May we catch up with you?” I let loose of Angelica as Bette turns away.
Her mother’s face shows a stab of pain at my news. “I always sit in the seventh row on the left. Come find me when you’re ready.”
“We will.” I tap Bette’s arm and guide her toward the prayer candles by a shrine to the saints. “Babe, I appreciate the self control you showed after hearing you have a brother and not upsetting our daughter and your mother at breakfast.”
“Was she blasé about telling me this mind-altering news? Or was it my imagination that for her it was a “pass me the eggs and bacon, and by the way, you have a brother” kind of moment?”
“It was a soft bomb, Bette. No doubt about it. But I don’t think your mother has had much practice telling her secrets. She hasn’t been allowed to, don’t forget.”
“I’m in shock.” Bette shakes her head as she puts a wooden stick next to mine against the flame of a tall devotional candle.
“I know. I can see it on your face. And brace yourself, too, Babe, she apparently has another shoe to drop.” I fold up a dollar bill and slip it through the iron slit for our offering. “She said there were two things she wanted to talk to you about before we flew home.”
“Look, I’m not against the idea of having a brother. I mean it makes perfect sense that she had other children. She was your age when she left after all. Plenty of time to start another family.” But I hear a slight catch in Bette’s voice when she says it.
I slip my arm around her waist as we stare down at the rows of candles flickering up at the faces of saints. “Which candle should we light for the baby, Bette?”
“The one that has the answers.”
Forty-five minutes later – Tina
After the service Mary Windhorse walks me toward an incomparable spiral staircase where a number of women have gathered. “We have a group that meets here once a week. Knowing them and having a group when I needed one over the years has been helpful.”
“For so long, years really, I’ve barely thought about my sister. But now, the memories are coming back.”
“It happens for many reasons. We block things out and then, mysteriously something opens the door and it can be overwhelming. Knock you right off your horse because you never saw it coming.”
“Bette and I, we’ve been separated for a few years, and very recently we got back together.”
“And now, you’re getting married. Big changes stir up things. You’re old enough to know that.”
“I just don’t need disturbing, inner reflections right now. I’m in the middle of a movie, things are finally going so well with my family.” I stop and look in Mary’s wizened face. “I know that no one ever schedules themselves for prolonged periods of mental meltdowns, and I’m sure this denial is one of the great faults of modern society.”
“Do you feel unsteady still, Tina? Because yesterday I found you on the ground outside the Medicine Man’s tent and picked your ass up out of the dirt.”
“You’ve heard stories from the women in your group. You’ve been around women who remember, haven’t you? What happens to them when their memories start to rush back and return? Am I headed for something – I’m telling you in no uncertain terms – I don’t have time for?”
“How much of my help and advice do you want? I was all set to forget about it but you talked about your sex abuse last night around my campfire.” She stops and looks up the staircase. “You’re in Mary’s family now and she’s in mine.
“I’m an old Indian woman who believes in the power of the memories and dreams. The Sweat Lodge, for example, it’s a very sacred special place to hear from the Spirits.”
“Yes, I’ll do that with you.” I find myself saying too quickly before my reasoning can catch up.
Mary nods her head and looks at me, “It’s a way in and I will do it with you, be as much of a guide for you in the beginning as I can.”
“There’s another favor I want to ask of you.”
“Go ahead, I can see you’re on a roll.” She smiles at me before her wrinkled face returns to its usual sternness.
“We’ll be spending a lot more time here; I can see how much Angelica is over the moon with her new grandmother, and we’ve given her zero spiritual training or insight. We think it’s time, and yesterday I asked Bette if we should ask you to be our daughter’s Godmother, or whatever your elder term of stature is for what I’m asking you to consider. What is the word I’m looking for? I honestly don’t know, but we’d like to extend this to you as a honored person in our daughter’s life, in our lives, too.”
“She’s a beautiful little soul, isn’t she?” Mary Windhorse and I look across the church at Angelica. Bette holds her in her arms and from here, I can see their playful love for each other as something makes them both laugh.
Mary Windhorse turns back to me. “Godmother is fine. I know what you’re asking and I’ll do it, and I take this seriously even though you haven’t thought it all out. I see what’s needed. Now, come meet my friends. You don’t have to say or explain anything. Just say, Hello, and then, I think you’re headed out for the art studio.”
“We are and then we’re flying …” I’m interrupted when a woman’s voice calls from across the church, “Bette Porter is that you?” I turn to see Bette’s expression of utter surprise as she spins around toward an attractive woman walking swiftly toward her.
“Sarah Wilson?”
“Yes! Sarah MacPherson now, but yeah, it’s me! What on earth are you doing here? And is this your child?” She reaches up to Angelica. “Wow! I would have never imagined.” Sarah looks quizzically at Bette.
Sanctuary – Bette
My mother’s eye catches mine before I answer my old friend from Yale. “Vacation with my daughter and my fiancée, Tina. She’s walking over there by the staircase.” Sarah and I wave at Tina.
“Pretty, but of course, she would be.” Sarah smiles as Tina waves back. “I’m in DC now. Part of my job is dealing with tribal land rights and the bureaucracy in our “overly happy to study the matter further” government.”
“Hmm.” I mummer as I wonder what land mines await as she encounters my mother and Mary Windhorse some where down the line on this issue. “Have you been doing this for years? Do you come out here often?”
“My second trip. It’s a new job and my first tribe was the Crow and sometimes the Apache came to the table. North and west of here but God, it feels nice to able to fly into a nice little city and stay in a good hotel for a change. But what about you? Where are you living?”
“LA. I’m a dean at CU and Tina’s making a movie. We’re busy, and you remember my sister, Kit?”
“Impossible to forget. And that the night we had? When we took the train up to Boston, and Kit was on stage in a cherry red dress.”
“Most of it.” I laugh with Sarah.
“I have no idea how I got out of college.”
“Funny you mention it. I was just thinking about Yale this morning.” I look up into the arches of the church ceiling before I continue, “I’m getting married soon. I should be thinking more about the future, I suppose.”
“My work on the land rights – all those old claims with the territories and the tribes – it’s all about the past. Who said what, and when, and what they traded it for. Sometimes, you have to go all the way back before you can take the right way forward.” Then she laughs. “In theory, anyway.”
“Exactly. Well, look give me your card, do you have one on you?” I pat my pockets as I balance Angelica in my arms. “I don’t have mine with me today, but LA, Bette Porter, CU – Google that and you’ll find me.”
“Here, I have one. Let’s email or something and when, or if, you come back to Santa Fe in the next six months please look me up. That’s how long I expect to be in and out of here.”
Mary Hardy’s Art Studio – Bette
On the drive out into the desert I notice that Tina is unusually quiet. She doesn’t seem upset just pensive, and as I steer my mother’s old truck up through the canyon I wonder what she’s thinking about. I feel a twinge of sadness, too, that I’ll be leaving New Mexico soon, and rejoining my somewhat erratic life in LA.
“Mother, after our little picnic at your studio is there a place we can put Angelica down for her nap? I want her to sleep on the plane, but we should talk a little before I leave.”
“We should. It’s been on my mind for awhile how to tell you the story about what happened.”
“The medium long version is all I need. Or really, whatever you want to tell me is fine.”
“Any questions about your brother? I know I sprung that on you.”
“You spring a lot of things, Mother. Most of my first night here I was hyperventilating.” I laugh as I look across the bouncing truck seat at her. “But I haven’t formulated my thoughts on the bombshell that I have a brother.”
“Well, think about it, and I need to some more, as well. When you’re ready to meet him I need to break it to him, too.”
“He has no idea about me, either?” I asked shocked.
“None.” She shakes her head. “To keep my sanity I had to become very good at compartmentalizing, but everyday I thought about you.” She lifts her hand up to my cheek. “I really want you to know that.”
“Likewise,” I nod my head. “I can say the same.”
One hour later –
As Tina packs up the picnic basket from lunch and my mother talks softly with Angelica who’s fighting a little with falling asleep, I look through more of my mother’s paintings stacked against a wall. “This one I like, too, Mother. When did you do this?”
“Last spring it stayed cold, too cold for my hands, and I hate to say it, my arthritis, to paint much outdoors. So, I started some still lifes. Quasi-still lifes, anyway. That’s the only one left from that series, and I definitely could’ve sold it.”
“I can take a walk if you’d like me to, Mary.” Tina says as she snaps the picnic basket shut.
“No, you’re to hear this, too. If you want to that is, I’m not forcing this story on anyone.”
“Bette?”
“Of course, I want you here with me.” I slide down on the leather couch and hold my hand out for Tina’s.
“Of all the things I had to bury that afternoon how much your father irritated me has never been one I successfully put to rest.” She adds with a deep sigh, “You did know your father and I didn’t always get along, or did you know that?”
“I think I did, but I’ve papered over a lot. After knowing you a few days I can only imagine he must’ve been attracted to your free spirit and then tried to crush it.”
“Didn’t he try it with you?”
“Repeatedly, but I got better at it as I got older.” I glance at Tina when she clears her throat. “Well, maybe I didn’t after all.” I admit as my mother and Tina laugh with me.
“I had a great friend, Wendy was her name, and she had a place down by the river with a great big chaotic kitchen where we’d make dinners, and then later drink wine, bitch about our husbands, and try to beat the crap out of each other at Gin Rummy. She was a great card player and she never cheated.”
“Commendable but that should go without saying, don’t you think?”
Tina leans forward. “True, but you know how it gets sometimes with our poker group?”
“No, you’re right. You hate to think your good friends are cheating.”
“Well, mine didn’t and that was one of the reasons I really liked her. So, I was on my way there and I stopped in this liquor store, and it got robbed.”
“And you got shot.”
“And I got shot along with everyone else. I was the only one who survived and I did because I played dead.”
“What was the mob doing robbing a liquor store? That doesn’t make sense to me.”
“It was the younger son of a Capitano who was high up in the family. The kid was trying to prove himself, so, he robbed the place, and then started shooting everybody. It all went to hell real fast! One minute they were yelling about money, and the next minute he flipped, and starting gunning everyone down. Wine bottles were breaking all around me and a bullet zipped into my shoulder.” She points up to her right and her thin fingers pat her old wound, “Just up here.”
“I take it you couldn’t escape?”
“Word travelled very fast about what this kid had done and within minutes some very serious men came in to clean up his mess. And that meant, of course, dispose of our bodies. I hid under this poor man who wasn’t so lucky. I let the red wine that had spilled along with the blood all over the floor sink into my clothes, and I crawled under a dead man. Then, I smeared his blood and a lot of mine all over me, and they dumped me in the back of a laundry truck with the four dead bodies. We drove around for what seemed like hours. I was sure I was done for.”
“Jesus Christ! How long were you in that truck with them? Bleeding the whole time?”
“No, definitely not bleeding the whole time. When they slammed the door shut I took the belt off the man who’d been behind the register and made a tourniquet for myself, and then I didn’t know what I was going to do when the doors opened again.”
“Survival springs to mind.”
“That was definitely on the list. Luckily for me, the FBI had a man inside the family. When we got out to their farm where the plans were to bury us – he decided when a laundry van full of dead bodies showed up – it was time to break his cover.”
“So the Inside Man literally called the FBI?”
“He did and I don’t know how much longer I could’ve lasted. They were going to bury me, and I was very much alive. I kinda panicked about that.”
“I imagine so!”
“But this inside man, I think he knew I was still breathing. I must’ve looked different to him when he opened the door.”
“As in not turning grey, I’m sure.” I put my head in my hands. “All this I can’t imagine, but what was so important about your testimony? It was some kid, right?”
“And that’s called leverage. The Feds got his father to flip and inform on the Family for a few productive years while the Feds built an even bigger case. But they knew pretty quick they needed me, if they were going to twist him.
“Maybe I could’ve escaped into the arms of the Feds unnoticed, but when the Coroner came, and I was discovered still alive – it wasn’t handled so well. The Gambinos knew I was still kicking after lots of shouting from the Coroner’s staff, “We’ve got a live one here!” And then, an ambulance came. By then everyone had seen me.”
“And then you went away.”
“Yes, and then I went away. And I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry I had to do that to you, Bette, and that I’ve missed so much of your life.”
“I know. I know you are.” I take my mother’s thin hands and we cry together for a minute before she wipes away my tears. “And I’ve missed you everyday since, Bette. And you and Tina, along with this little one that you’ve brought into my life, I can’t tell you what it means to me.”
I lean back on the couch and look over at Tina. “I have some idea. There’s a grace to starting over, and this is ours.”
____
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As I walk into the grill on Sunset I brush off the last bits of dust still clinging to me from my trip to the storage unit with Shane. Phase One of Claire’s plan is in motion and I hope to God she knows what the fuck she’s doing.
Before she notices my entrance I lean backwards slightly to stretch my muscles. After fighting with my unwieldy mattress and its swaying back and forth between me and Shane my back all the way up to my neck feels achy and tight. Shane was helpful and her body is very long, but it definitely took all my muscle to wrangle my bed into the van and then back out again. The door behind me opens and I step aside and hear Tina’s voice.
”So, how did it go after I left?” Tina asks as she slips her arm through mine.
”I counted to thirty at the bottom of the pool and as I was dripping into the house I caught Jenny out of the corner of my eye at her window. They definitely heard us.”
”And to think we used to talk to each other that way every day.” Tina sighs as she leads me to the meet the clean cut young man sitting in the booth with Claire.
”Bette, this is Josh Stanley from E News,” Claire introduces the reason I’m not under the head of a shower right now. ”Josh is also a blogger for Gay WeHo and PrideLA.com. We’ve worked on a few special projects together.”
”Special projects.” I repeat back with a lilting wonder if that’s PR code for Gay and Lesbian.
A waiter appears at the table. Tina looks at the chalkboard specials on the wall. ”Bette, what are you having?”
”We’re going to be here that long?”
”Babe, I’m hungry. Do you want anything?”
”Okay, Linguini and a glass of Chianti, really good Chianti.” The waiter nods. As Claire and Josh place their orders I whisper to Tina, ”Who is this guy? Can we trust him? I thought we were keeping a very tight ring around this plan.”
”Bette, you can absolutely trust him.” Claire says I suppose hearing me with her third ear. ”And what’s more we don’t want to try this without his help.”
I rustle inside the grocery sacks from my raid through Whole Food for our spur of the moment beach weekend. Finally, I locate the bag that holds the wine. Just outside the door on the deck Tina holds Angelica in her lap and brushes the coarse sand off her feet.
“Tina, do you want to put her to bed while I cook the salmon?”
“You’re cooking?” She looks curiously at me.
“Oh, you’re getting a much improved version in our relationship redux. I cook now. And your salmon fillet is with tomatoes and shallots and something else that will come to me in a minute.” I look up as I drop an armful of vegetables on the counter.
“Astonishing.” Tina closes the door with Angelica in her arms. “Kiss your daughter, then by all means, please cook.” I bury my face in Tina’s neck for a moment, and then cradle Angelica’s chin in my hand, and kiss her good night.
“I’d like to start with a red wine, and then switch to white with the fish. But a nice glass of something red and wonderful when I get back?”
“So ordered.” I lift up several bottles of reds to choose from as I hear them moving down the hallway.
Malibu – 9pm
“Nice fire and you selected an excellent wine. Other pluses to add to your growing list of improvements.” Tina joins me on the couch with a tray of red grapes and cheeses. She puts a square of soft cheese on a cracker and pops it into my mouth. I chew. Delicious. We smile.
I’m in one of those moods where I could talk all night, or I could be happily mute and listen to the ocean surf outside the window, the fire snapping in front of me, and whatever Tina wants to say. I take a long sip of wine, and watch her as she settles into the cushions. She’s beautiful and I’m completely in love with her. We smile again.
“Are you being strange tonight, Bette? Or am I just completely exhausted from not much sleep and movie people all day long?”
“I have two years of things to say, or I have nothing but a blank slate with the next moment on it for you.” I lean in for another bite of cheese and cracker, and I make one for Tina.
“So, you are being weird.” Tina cocks her head at me.
“A little but not intentionally. But weird in a very, very friendly way.” I look seductively at her, and she smiles, and folds back into my arms. We stretch out on the couch and watch the fire. We sip wine.
“Do you remember why you fell in love with me? Is it the same reason that you’re back? That you rented us this wonderful house in Malibu?” I whisper in Tina’s ear as she settles across my chest.
“Honestly, the main reason I asked you to come here? I think Jodie is a little crazy, Bette. I didn’t want to worry the minute I got into bed with you that she wouldn’t show up, and beat on the door, or stalk us in the garden over the weekend.”
“And fucking Jenny with her ear always out the window.”
“This is going to sound so LA creepy that you have to promise me you won’t blast off and hit the ceiling.”
“I can’t think what would rile me from my near love coma with you but try, I guess.” I laugh and kiss the top of her head. I pop a red grape into my mouth.
“We should hire a media strategist to announce our getting back together.” Tina says seriously.
“A fucking media strategist? We aren’t famous!” I vent. “I never have understood why people are so obsessed with us.”
“Bette, your hot oil wrestling clip on YouTube?”
“Oh God.”
“Before Joyce’s people finally got it blocked? In the two days it was live it had forty thousand hits – something insane like that.”
I groan.
“And Jodie’s podcast with Alice?” Tina reminds me.
“No! It, too?”
“You’re great looking, Babe. Women were all over you, weren’t they when you were single? Me? I could hardly get a date.”
“That I never understood. But really that little freak director with the hat? You were wasting your time, Tina. She was an idiot.” I add flatly.
“And Jenny’s script.”
“What about Jenny’s script?” I roll off the couch to put another log on the fire. “Or should I ask, what else has our personal, Dark Tormentress done?”
“Jenny has written a scene, and this is going to hurt you to remember, and I’m sorry, but it ties into the other thing I want to talk to you about.” Tina says from the couch.
“I’m going to start dinner. Keep going.” I walk into the kitchen and begin by flipping on the oven and prepping a skillet to saute the shallots.
“We need to trust each other. We need to quit lying to each other.” Tina’s tone is firm as she locks eyes with mine.
“Tina, I know lying is terrible. I hear myself do it all the time. But I agree between us,” I look back at her on the couch, “we should always tell each other the truth.”
“Bette, we have to.” Tina exhales emphatically. “Babe, if we believe we are strong enough to move forward, and have a family together then, we have to believe that our relationship can take the truth. If not, we shouldn’t do this. It’s just an affair.”
“That’s not what I want with you, Tina.” I lean against the counter and look at her, “Years ago, I did things to protect you. Lied. Kept things from you, but you’ve changed. Your naiveté, it’s gone. And that’s fine. You’ve grown up.”
“I found a picture of us the other day. It was between the pages of a book I was reading. I know what you mean.” Tina says wistfully from the couch. “I was very young back then.”
“And very lovely, too. But Tina? A media strategist?”
“Bette, the movie starts shooting on Monday. They’ll be media buzz. Trust me. What if Jodie decides to get with Alice this weekend, and uses her unwittingly for a little revenge against you? I can’t imagine she’s very happy with you right about now.”
“Forty thousand hits? Goddammit! Who the fuck was there that day to shoot that? For the love of God! Hot oil wrestling! I paid so much money to get that video off the internet.” I splash tap water on my face to wash away the nightmare. “Joyce thought it was a fucking scream. I got over two hundred emails from women.” I shake my head sadly.
“I’ll pay for this weekend. Really, all along I have intended that this be my treat.”
“I accept. Trust me. I appreciate it. And we have some hefty tuition bill coming up soon, too, right?” I ask as I begin to prepare the salmon.
“An eight thousand dollar deposit. Yikes, I know.”
“God! Can we afford another child? Really!”
“We’re okay. I’m making lots of money. You’re fine. Yes, we can afford another baby.” Tina assures me.
“I really want one.” I look over at Tina, and give her a huge smile.
“Me, too. Right after the movie is finished in a month or two we can start planning.”
Dinner table – Bette
“Bette, this salmon is delicious. I’m very impressed.”
“I’m telling you, T, you are coming back at the right time. I’m much better – all around.” I accentuate.
“I can see that.” Tina smiles across the table at me.
“I was staring at the ceiling the other night thinking about you. I was alone up at Big Bear. Jodie was downstairs doing shots, or some shit with her friends, anyway, I was missing you terribly. And I thought of how I used to come home after work, and toss my briefcase down, and start yelling. Or worse charge out again after kissing you on the head, and treating you like a pet dog I’d put fresh food and water down for before I’d take off again to meet some museum director, or put out a fire somewhere.”
“I remember. I grew to resent it. But you know what?”
“No, wait! Really let me finish. That’s not who I am anymore. I will never do that to you again. You are the most important thing in my world. You and our daughter. But tonight, right now, I’m talking about you being the most important person in my world. I know that now.”
Tina leans slightly across the table, and threads her fingers through mine. She puts my hand up to her cheek. “You know what? I signed up for being with a person who thinks the world rotates around them, and bursts into a room like a comet.” She plays with my long curls as she speaks softly to me. “You think I want boring? I went there. It was very homogenized. I woke up and ran back to you.”
“Well, it’s true I haven’t had a lobotomy, but I’ve re-calibrated somewhat, and especially there. I love you, and I know what you mean to me.”
Tina kisses my palm.
“And you were going to tell me about Jenny’s script?” I ask her.
“There was an argument we had when I told you that Henry and I were thinking of starting a family.”
I wipe my hands on my napkin, and look at Tina. “And you said you weren’t going to let me adopt Angelica.” I feel a mixture of fear edging around me, and the sizzle of anger flashing up my neck.
“There were a lot of explosions that happened that afternoon around the subject of me, and men, and family, and what my plans were with Henry.”
“Tina, that shit with Henry, and the bitter taste that it left was so negating of everything that we were after years and years of being together.” I stare at her, and can’t keep the emotion from my voice.
“Goddammit, I felt you cut my heart out,” I press my hands against my chest and look at her entreatingly, “and that some how you were buying into the whole line that Gay People Can’t Be Parents. It truly freaked me out.”
“Well, Jenny’s story is that Bev and Nina after years together suddenly fall apart because of the plumber. Nina secretly hides her pregnancy, has an affair with an heiress, dumps her and then you again. Then she goes off with a man, Harry, and then throws everything in Bev’s face.” Tina pauses, and rubs her hand across her forehead, “And this is the new part that wasn’t in the New Yorker serialized editions – that she’s going to marry him, and take away Bev’s rights to their child because Nina realizes she’s not gay.”
“God, I fucking hate Jenny’s movie. And I swear to God, I hated my fucking life back then.” I exhale bitterly.
“The actress, Isabella, who plays Bev, she doesn’t have your range – trust me – but the line when I hear is you shouting, “Have you just been fucking brainwashed, Tina? How could you do this? Did nothing about the last eight years between us mean anything? Anything at all?”
“Baby, you have to answer that right now for me. You want a promise about lying. I raise my hand up and promise it to you. But you please, you have to look at me and tell me for the love of God, Tina, are you back? Are you in love with me? Is a family? Is a whole life with me what you want?”
“Yes, and I want you right now.” Tina says as she lifts off her sweater, and throws it on the couch a few feet away. I lift her up in my arms and we waltz backwards to the fireside and lie down on a bear skin rug. I unbuckle her pants and pull them free. They disappear somewhere over my shoulder. She pulls my shirt over my head, and unzips my pants. I feel her find me immediately and we kiss deeply.
“Take them off.” She says as she unclasps my brassiere. “I want you right now.”
“I hear you!” I lean back and wiggle out of my clothes and lie back on top of her. “Better?”
“You’re very warm on top of me, and the fire feels so good.”
“Kiss me, Tina and listen to how loud the surf has become.” Our lips meet, and Tina slides my leg between hers, and bites my tongue a little at the end of our kiss.
“Baby, take care of me tonight. This is where I want you to do that for me.”
“I will, I want to.” I move inside her as we kiss some more.
“Bette, I’ve felt you in me all morning, and then all afternoon after I booked this beach house. I’ve wanted you for hours.”
“I know how you get, baby.” I take her in my mouth, and she runs her hands through my hair, and holds the back of my neck pressing me to her.
“It’s not just that you’re a good lover, you are. Or how beautiful you are, and sometimes how you go off and act crazy.”
I lift up from making love to her, “Baby, I can’t really talk right now, but I’m going to need your attention in a minute, and if you don’t give it to me, I’m going to take it.”
“You should take it. And yes, to all your questions. I want only you, and only our family, and only us.” She lies back and sighs as her hands pull through my hair.
“Tina, last night when we were making love after the club and I had that strange feeling in my chest.” I lie on top of her and we move together in a steady rhythm as we slowly make love.
She rubs her hand down the muscles of my back, and begins to scratch me slowly just below my waist.
“It’s back but it’s not scaring me tonight.” I whisper in her ear.
“Good, because you’ve carried me right up to the edge.”
“I just do know how to do that, don’t I?”
“Flawlessly,” Tina whispers and then rolls our lips together.
“Here touch me, I need you, too.”
We lie in front of the fire and race each other along the edges, and then pull away.
“It’s my heart bursting, that’s what it feels like. Baby, God, I want you to marry me. Do you want to marry me?”
“Jesus! Bette! You’re proposing on the edge of an orgasm?”
“Here, let’s see? Am I?” I put my hand behind her head and lift her into my lap.”
“I really like fucking you this way. I like the way your thighs begin to shake when you can’t stop waiting anymore.” I bury my head in her neck as we make love. “Tina, I want babies, and trust with you, and a home. And I want to take care of you, and I want to stop, and slow down.”
“Baby, don’t stop now.” Tina cries softly into my ear.
“Sorry, I misspoke. I’ve got you. You feel it.”
“I definitely feel it.”
“Please marry me. It’s you I want for the rest of my life.”
“I will. Please let us go.”
“Not yet. I bought your engagement ring this afternoon.”
“An engagement ring? You’re not serious.”
“Where are my pants?”
“Christ! Behind me I think.” Tina kisses me. “Bette, I’m this close.”
“I’ve seen you multitask. Lean back and open my pocket. There’s a box inside for you.” I smile as Tina wraps her legs around my waist and leans back for the jewelry box.
“Cartier? No, you didn’t!”
“I know you love Tiffany. But this didn’t feel like a little blue box moment. I wanted something deep and red and …” Tina opens up the box, and sees her ring.
“You can’t be serious.” Her eyes open wide in amazement as she puts the ring on her finger. It catches the fire light and flashes.
“I will never, ever take this off.”
“Put your hand on my heart. Do you feel how strange it’s beating?”
Tina puts her hand with her ring over my heart, and kisses me deeply. “Your heart feels just like mine. Exploding.”
I take her in my arms, and in a moment we connect again. Through the west-facing windows I hear the beating ocean surf, and on my skin her breath coming harder and harder against my neck. My own heart, mixed with the sound of the rising tide, is loud and pounding in my ears. Inside her I focus on that one place I know she’s waiting for – that last pulse and ring of fire we always do together that pushes us over the edge.
“There’s only us.” I whisper to her as we let go in each other’s arms.
_________________
Click here for the L Word inspired Season 7 book’s first chapter, _Touch Tones: After Midnight bit.ly/betteporter
“Touch Tones’s” chapter one picks up an hour after this story, “Malibu’s” conclusion. “After Midnight” begins as the couple begins to envision their life together post engagement. Tina senses trouble ahead as the film, Les Girls, begins production and Jenny’s vindictive and unpredictable nature lurks.
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“Tina, I need a goddamn name.” I pace back and forth behind my desk and shout into my cell phone. “Tell your publicity people I’m coming over there and ripping every goddamn tattoo I see off their fucking arms until they help me get those pictures off the Internet.”
I hear James’ voice on the intercom. “Bette, it’s that reporter again from the gay press in Austin.”
“Why don’t your PR people care? Gossip bloggers are framing Lez Girls as a lesbian wrestling movie with me as its star!” I vent in disbelief.
I slap the button on my desk phone. “James! For tenth Goddamn time tell him to fuck off!”
I continue my tirade with Tina. “Just because you’re unrecognizable face down in that woman’s crotch you and your movie aren’t exposed? That’s actually Shaolin’s position?” I ask incredulously.
“At least you had your shirt on.” Tina says over the phone.
“What? As if that matters!” I stop dead in my tracks and look at the phone in disbelief. “Tina, okay, sorry I’m shouting. You just cannot believe the looks I’m getting around here! First, it was the fucking snickers and leers when Jenny’s book came out. Now this! So much worse,” I say inconsolably, “much, much worse.”
“I know it looks bad for a dean, for you. I don’t know what to say.”
Outside my office the phone rings again. James engages our intercom. I beat him to the punch. “James, if it’s that She Beast bottom feeder from TMZ calling back tell her I’m on my over there with the lawyer who ruined her fucking father!”
“Bette, it’s Joyce Wishnia. She says she put Phyllis on the plane to Chicago. Do you want me to take a message?” James asks.
“God! No! James, find when and where I can meet her today, tonight, anywhere, anytime. Just get me a meeting with Joyce!”
“Bette, what are you doing with Joyce?” Tina asks with a note of suspicion in her tone. Little wonder, Joyce was either our hammer or the nails into each other before we came to our senses.
“What do you mean? Of course, I’m paying her to get the photos of me off the internet! Tina, are you not aware that I’m smack in the middle of a major fundraising campaign? The timing couldn’t be worse. It just couldn’t be worse.” I sigh wretchedly .
“I didn’t see anyone else at the club, did you?” Tina asks.
“I saw no one else while we were there except, Alice.” I stop pacing as a clammy chill creeps up my spine. “Tina,” I ask deadly serious, “Alice wouldn’t, would she?”
“Noooo! I can’t imagine it, Bette. And don’t call her up and accuse her, or even ask. There’s something called metadata linked to everything posted. Ask Joyce’s forensic guys. They’ll know what it is and how to understand it.”
“Well, I know what it means in Latin. It means “beyond the facts” and if it can lead me straight to the little motherfucker that’s doing this then it’ll be supra-data.” I lean over my desk and make a note, “metadata” and then stash it in my purse.
“Bette, I’m walking into a meeting, the first Table Read with the cast, and of course, Jenny’s here.”
“Does Kate come to things like that?” Bette asks forgetting her other concerns for the moment.
“Kate’s not here.”
“Good. Goddamn this mess. Okay, okay, bye.”
Shaolin Studio Back Lot – Tina
As I hang up the phone with Bette I see how many text messages and emails I’ve got to answer. Things are starting to pile up on me and it worries me that Angelica has had nothing but stressed out Moms for the last few days. Oh, I’m so fucking kidding myself. It’s been for her whole short life! It never stops and for the next thirty-three days of production I can’t see myself being chilled out anytime soon. Maybe when Bette goes to Big Bear with Jodie. Maybe then I’ll have a day with Angelica and can swim and lie out by the pool. Even two hours would be welcome. Just two hours of not being around nearly hysterical, overly stressed, head-tripping women. Jenny has taken me over and beyond my limit.
I see one of my texts is from her new assistant, Adele, who’ll be worth her weight in gold if she’ll keep Jenny from disrupting my life even more.
“Pls U be there in 15 with Jenny. C U South Lot conference room.” I text Adele as I walk down the long line of production trailers and nod and wave good morning to the growing numbers in our movie crew. I think about Bette taking off soon for Big Bear. A weekend trip I do and don’t want her to take.
I couldn’t believe my luck when she told me over the phone yesterday that she was staying in a house built by Jodie’s best friend, Michelangelo, whose sobriquet had gotten on Bette’s nerves already. And it should because – and I didn’t tell her – but I’ve met the apish grinning, Michelangelo before. There can’t be two of them, even in Los Angeles.
It was years ago when I lived in Santa Monica and he used to bounce into the arts center off Michigan Ave when he was in town. His facile friendly way and cheesy anti-urbane manner of speaking Bette will see through and hate on sight. And if he’s still not bathing regularly that wind will waft unpleasantly around her, too. I laugh to myself. Bette has a nightmare weekend ahead of her and just when she could use some clean mountain air and a few good long walks along with all the other things we used to do whenever we went up there. Nope, instead she’s got Michelangelo and Jodie.
I hop up the three short steps into an unassigned production trailer and kneel down to check the small fridge for cold water. It’s unseasonably hot and it feels like earthquake weather. Even thinking that makes me nervous. I push the thoughts of tremors and wanting a Xanax from my mind.
I take a long sip of cool water and scroll through my messages. In Big Bear we always stayed in log houses with incredible views from the master suite’s bedroom windows. I shake my head and smile at the memory. It was late one afternoon way up a mountain pass, miles away from easy restaurant take out, when I first realized Bette had no idea how to cook.
We’d been lazing by the fire drinking wine when my stomach had growled.
“Did you like the omelet I made you for breakfast? Say the word and I’ll make you another one for dinner.” It was then I realized: If I didn’t want more eggs I was done for.
I sit down on the couch inside the empty trailer and put my head in my hands. How many times can I fall in love with her? Two, three, or four times? And which one is this? Two or three? Or is it the same one and now my head is clearer? Or is it?
The sharp edges of the trailer’s counter tops catch my attention and my Gypsy scar itches. I rub it against the cushions behind me. Going in and out of trailers all day long I can’t help myself. I think about Allsweld. And wouldn’t you know it? Nikki Stevens, the film’s star? A dead fucking ringer for my long dead cousin, Lucy. It’s just right in my face again and again all day long. But I had to cast Nikki. There was no way around it. Every time I look at her I control my urge to vomit. I let out a jagged sigh. Bette doesn’t know about Nikki either.
I remember a time during a winter holiday that I had lied to Bette about my jagged scar. We were by the fire on quilts and Indian blankets in that incredible big log house up on Big Bear. And it’s not that she hadn’t mentioned it as she’d licked past before, but I’d always been quick to deflect the need for an answer with a sigh or a lick of my own, but that afternoon – with the stillness around us, the quiet mountain air outside dampened by the snowfall, the long stream of delicious red wine she had poured into crystal goblets – she had lulled and enraptured me. I’d hesitated when she’d asked.
I remember deeply loving her, and the fire, and her body everywhere all over me and so warm against my skin. I’d almost told her the truth but that horrible story – it would have completely broken our beautiful moment. That’s what that cursed scar does. It kidnaps me.
I’d distracted her and fed her grapes and told her I loved her until I’d put the bowl away and had shown her instead.
I don’t mind a good blow-by-blow recap after a particularly great night in bed. Maybe finish off the wine and get in the mood all over again. And she’s absolutely used it with great effect to do exactly that. But every once in awhile she’ll become obsessed with talking about orgasms. I don’t know what the fuck gets into her. But more than once I’ve had to blow out the candles and put the pillow over my head and yell, “Quit! I can’t talk about this anymore. You’re wearing my fucking mind out!”
And now, in my first movie in a long time I’ve got Nikki Stevens who’ll forever remind me of Lucy’s death and now, Bette knows almost everything.
I wonder if I know all her secrets? Oh God, I don’t want to hear anything else, swallow anything I can’t take. It’s as if this next time with her if we ever do try again feels mined with dynamite and front loaded with angst and what’s beneath it all – the dark potential has dawned on her, too. I see it in her eyes all the time now: The fear that if we ever fail each other again how could we continue on as a family?
Devastation.
I’ve been there. I know how it feels when we hate each other. One of us would have to move and far, far away and that would be a disaster for Angelica. A snow globe image suddenly pops into my head of us frozen in time. My mind shakes it and a blizzard swirls around us. For just a few minutes more I want to remember the snowfall at Big Bear, the snaps and fizz of the fire, and her body all over me.
Joyce’s Office – Bette
I sit across from her polished wooden desk. “Are those little red T Rex dinosaurs on your tie, Joyce? That’s a little aggressive even for you, don’t you think?”
“T Rex? No, I don’t think so. Kangaroos, little tiny kangaroos I think Phyllis said. She just gave it to me earlier before she flew off to Chicago.” Joyce flips the yellow gold tie back down to her chest. “And she knows about the hot oil wrestling pictures, Bette.” Joyce shakes her head, sad for me.
“And what have you thought of? How can we stop this?”
Her voice gets cautious and serious. “Well, I made some calls on the way back from the airport and there’s the long way, that’s the legal way -all the ‘i’s’ dotted and all the rest to end up in court and sue them for lots of money – that’s if they have any.”
“And?”
“And there’s an article in this magazine you might want to read to yourself while I pour us a drink.”
I open the Tech Today magazine and see a note, “Hacker. Very fast. $6000 everything wiped clean” and a phone number. I let out a lilting whistle at the price. I don’t have time for a second job! Christ! My expenses are endless stairs to a roof I can eventually jump off as a broken woman!
“If you want to read the magazine Bette take it with you and here’s a phone. Only use it to call. If you don’t want to “read” the magazine put it back on my desk and I’ll explain our route through the courts. Meanwhile your picture stays up.”
“This is your best Scotch, Joyce. What other fees aren’t you telling me?”
“Bette, we’re just having a drink together. I’m in love. Your constant missteps for some reason this afternoon amuse the hell out of me, and I want you to kick your heels off and tell me how lucky I am to be madly in love with your boss, Vice-Chancellor Phyllis Kroll.” Joyce leans back in her leather chair and drinks deeply.
“I can do that for you, Joyce.”
“Thanks, Bette, and you’re coming to my party for Phyllis tomorrow night, I hope?”
“Yes, Kit’s planned a beautiful party. Great big flower arrangements, all of Phyllis’ favorites and we’re all coming – even Alice.”
“That’s no surprise. Alice, I take it, hates to be left out. But I gotta hand it to her, I heard how she handled Phyllis’ whimpering, crying husband.”
“The one you were suing for her but now you’re not?”
“That’s the one! And all because of you, Bette. Never took you for a matchmaker, though. Don’t know why. Well, actually I do.”
“What do you mean?”
“Take a long end of the dusty trail drink with me, Bette.” Joyce winks and waits as I lift my glass. I swallow a burning stream of Scotch and feel the tingle and buzz along little arcs of nerves under my eyes.
“What you and Tina had was a match, Bette. You saw it, but it was my job to break you into a million pieces and take the money from your bank. You should have hired me first!”
“Between my recent trip to New York and Angelica’s tuition, now these pictures of me all over the web! I’m looking at a second mortgage all of a sudden.”
“If you were single? Bette, I know you want them down but…” Joyce looks at me with amazement and then whistles, “Has your phone been ringing off the hook all day?”
“Journalists or the barest definition of the word. I’m not answering any numbers I don’t recognize.” I look at my phone and see forty-three missed calls and way over fifty percentage from LA area codes.
“I’ll bet you a thousand dollars right this minute if you play your voice messages that over half of them are going to be women with all kinds of other questions and trouble for you.” She tops off our drinks and winks at me as she spins around her computer screen with a picture of me leaning over an oil slicked blonde in a gold bikini taking pleasure in twisting her wrists back in pain.
Joyce slaps an affirming smack against her desk. “As I said, Bette, you amuse the hell of me this afternoon. Everyone of those women who called you.” Joyce lets out a huge and boisterous laugh. “They want you and will fucking beg you tie them up. Thank God for you Bette! I’m in such a fantastic mood!”
_____________________
The next chapter is titled, The Lucky Ones. Bette goes to Big Bear with Jodie and dreams of escaping. Kit is robbed at The Planet and Bette arrives home. At the SheBar opening she and Tina have a powerful reuniting moment.
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Alone in the Gypsy’s guestroom bath I look in the mirror at the welt on my forehead. It’s about the size of my thumb, and very red. God, I had pushed those memories about my sister so far down, and yet, the Gypsy had plucked them out from me immediately.
I moisten my hands and tap around my face, and catch the edgy expression in my eyes. An old sadness rises up inside me. Given air and brought into the light, after all these years my memories of those nights are going to take some getting used to.
I lean closer into the mirror and examine my lump. There’s nothing to be done to cover it up. If anyone asks I’ll think of something.
In some form or another – throughout my entire reading – Bette was either nuanced, which is hardly like her, or straight up as a woman bearing a sword, or in her case, a Bowie knife. She was everywhere, but in my area of work, and even there the chances were high she’d attempt to influence me with Jenny’s movie’s, so close to production on the horizon.
Then the Gypsy had turned over the last card.
The Chariot
I’d stared down at the circular ring of images that no longer appeared random to me. The symbolic part of my mind that holds their cipher had begun to understand.
”Hmm, this card complicates things.” The Gypsy taps as she’d studied it.
”What do you see?”
She hands me The Chariot card with the charging horses. ”When this appears, if you don’t make a decision fast, someone else makes it for you.”
”Who? Is this a warning about the movie I’m making?” I ask warily.
”No, this is someone close to your home. She may want to wait for you, but staying in stasis while you make up your mind puts her in opposition to her basic nature. She’s driven. Towards something or someone new. Her nature is restless – whether she likes it or not.”
”Oh, she likes it plenty.” And we share a laugh.
”Who’s she seeing romantically these days?”
This question I realize I have no answer for – at some point there will be someone.
As the tea pours, Tina squeezes my hand under the table, and draws it into her lap. Around us, an ancient fragrance from the steaming tea curls in my direction.
The L Word : Behind the Scenes 