Sing You Home Read online

  So instead, I eavesdrop. I push the door open a crack in time to hear Dara speaking. "I couldn't love you any more if you told me right now that you were straight," she says. "And I don't love you any less because you told me you aren't."

  I gently close the door. In the kitchen, I turn around, surveying the bowl of fruit on the counter, the cobalt blue toaster, the Cuisinart. Dara has left behind her dowsing rods. I pick them up, hold them lightly in my hands. In spite of the fact that the faucet and the pipes are less than a foot away, the rods do not jump in my hands or twitch or cross. I imagine having that sixth sense, the certainty that what I'm looking for is within reach, even if it's still hidden.

  Movie theaters are wonderful places to be gay. Once the lights go down, there's no one to stare at you if you hold your girlfriend's hand or snuggle closer to her. Attention at the movies, by definition, is focused on the spectacle on the screen and not in the seats.

  I'm not a PDA kind of person. I've never started kissing someone in public; I just don't have the kind of selfless abandon that you see in teenage couples who are forever making out or walking down a street with their hands tucked halfway down each other's pants. So I'm not saying that I'd necessarily walk down the street with my arm around the woman I love--but I'd sure like to know that, if I were so inclined, I wouldn't attract a trail of shocked, uncomfortable stares. We're conditioned to seeing men holding guns but not men holding hands.

  When the movie credits roll, people begin to get out of their seats. As the lights come up, Zoe's head is on my shoulder. Then I hear, "Zoe? Hey!"

  She leaps up as if she's been caught in the act of doing something wrong and pastes a huge smile on her face. "Wanda!" she says, to a woman who looks vaguely familiar. "Did you like the movie?"

  "I'm not a big Tarantino fan, but actually, it wasn't bad," she says. She slips her arm through a man's elbow. "Zoe, I don't think you've ever met my husband, Stan? Zoe's a music therapist who comes to the nursing home," Wanda explains.

  Zoe turns to me. "This is Vanessa," she says. "My . . . my friend."

  Last night Zoe and I had celebrated a month together. We had champagne and strawberries, and she beat me at Scrabble. We made love, and when we woke up in the morning she was wrapped around me like a heliotrope vine.

  Friend.

  "We've met," I say to Wanda, although I am not about to point out that it was at the baby shower for the baby who died.

  We walk out of the movie theater with Wanda and her husband, making small talk about the plot and whether this will be an Oscar contender. Zoe is careful to keep a good foot of distance away from me. She doesn't even make eye contact with me again until we're in my car, driving back to my place.

  Zoe fills the silence with a story about Wanda and Stan's daughter, who wanted to join the army because she had a boyfriend who had already shipped out. I don't think she notices that I haven't said a word to her. When we reach the house, I unlock the door and walk inside and strip off my coat. "You want some tea?" Zoe asks, heading into the kitchen. "I'm going to put up the kettle."

  I don't answer her. I am a thousand shades of hurt right now, and I don't trust myself to speak.

  Instead I sit down on the couch and pick up the newspaper I never got a chance to read today. I can hear Zoe in my kitchen, taking mugs out of the dishwasher, filling the kettle, turning on the stove. She knows where everything is, in which drawer to find the spoons, in which cabinet I keep the tea bags. She moves around my house as if she belongs here.

  I am staring blankly at editorials when she comes into the living room, leans over the back of the couch, and wraps her arms around me. "Any more letters about the police chief scandal?"

  I push her away. "Don't."

  She backs off. "Guess the movie really got to you."

  "Not the movie." I turn around to look at her. "You."

  "Me? What did I do?"

  "It's what you didn't do, Zoe," I say. "What is it? You only want me when no one else is around? You're more than happy to come on to me when nobody's watching?"

  "Okay. Clearly you're in a crappy mood--"

  "You didn't want Wanda to know we're together. That was obvious . . ."

  "My business associates don't have to know the details of my personal life--"

  "Oh, yeah? Did you tell her when you got pregnant last time?" I ask.

  "Of course I did--"

  "There you go." I swallow, trying really hard to not cry. "You told her I was your friend."

  "You are my friend," Zoe says, exasperated.

  "Is that all I am?"

  "What am I supposed to call you? My lover? That sounds like a bad seventies movie. My partner? I don't even know if that's what we are. But the difference between you and me is that I don't care what it's called. I don't have to label it for everyone else. So why do you?" In the kitchen the teakettle starts to scream. "Look," Zoe says, taking a deep breath. "You're overreacting. I'm going to turn off the stove and just go home. We can talk about this tomorrow, when we've both slept on it."

  She walks into the kitchen, but instead of letting her go, I follow her. I watch her movements, efficient and graceful, as she takes the kettle off the burner. When she turns to me, her features are smooth, expressionless. "Good night."

  She walks past me, but just as she reaches the kitchen doorway, I speak. "I'm afraid."

  Zoe hesitates, her hands framing the door, as if she is caught between two moments.

  "I'm afraid that you're going to get sick of me," I admit. "That you're going to get tired of living a life that still isn't a hundred percent accepted by society. I'm afraid that, if I let myself feel ecstatic about being with you, then when you leave me, I won't be able to pull myself back together."

  In one move, Zoe is across the kitchen again, facing me. "Why do you think I'd leave?"

  "My track record," I say. "That, and the fact that you have no idea how hard it is. I still worry every day that some parent is going to out me, and convince the school board I should lose my job. I listen to the news and hear politicians who know nothing about me making decisions about what I should and shouldn't be allowed to do. I don't understand why the most intriguing thing about my identity is always that I'm gay--not that I'm a Leo or know how to tap dance or that I majored in zoology."

  "You can tap dance?" Zoe asks.

  "The point is," I say, "you spent forty years straight. Why wouldn't you return to the path of least resistance?"

  Zoe looks at me as if I am incredibly thick-headed. "Because, Vanessa. You're not a guy."

  That night, we don't make love. We drink the tea Zoe brews, and we talk about the first time I was called a dyke, how I came home and cried. We talk about how I hate when the mechanic always assumes that I know what he's talking about when he works on my car, just because I'm a lesbian. I even do a little tap routine for her: step-ball-change, step-ball-change. We spoon on the couch.

  The last thing I remember thinking before I fall asleep in her arms is This is good, too.

  In spite of my disappointment over the X-ray vision glasses from the Bazooka comics prize cache, I wound up saving up for one more item that I simply had to have. It was a whale's tooth good-luck charm, on a key chain. What intrigued me was the description of the item:

  Guaranteed to bring the owner a lifetime of good fortune.

  I knew better, after my X-ray glasses, than to expect the whale's tooth to be either real whale or real tooth. Probably it would be plastic, with a hole punched through the top for the metal key ring attached to it. But I still found myself saving up my allowance again to buy Bazooka gum. I hunted on the floor of my mother's car for spare change, so that I could gather the $1.10 for shipping and handling.

  Three months later, I had my sixty-five Bazooka comics and sent off my envelope for my prize. When the charm arrived, I was a little surprised to see that the tooth seemed to be legitimate (although I couldn't really tell you if it came from a whale) and that the silver key ring attached to it was heav