Where to, where to, where to? Richard's maid's room? Narrow, yellow, grim, and mean? That maid's room? Yes, yes. That's your home now, Margaret. You and Richard can grow old together, arguing about who left the ripe, fragrant strawberries out overnight to spoil. As the clocks toll the hours, all the hours at once.
What's going on? Margaret wondered. I used to be a happy, scholarly housewife. Now I am a frustrated adulteress wandering the streets, seeking shelter in shoe stores. She sat down and tried on a pair of oxfords. Now that she was a lesbian, she supposed she would need more oxfords. A whole closetful. Of course, she already had a closetful of oxfords, so there wouldn't be much point.
She had forgotten for a while that she was a lesbian, what with all the excitement of passing out in a strange man's bed. But she thought about it now, thought of Lily as she'd last seen her, and she knew it must be true. She could recall vividly the shape of Lily's breasts through a silk blouse—large, curved, a small round nipple showing, pop, in the middle of each one. Those breasts and nipples in white silk were part of a language, a language that, like all language, said something about the world, and Margaret had heard the language and she understood. To find the meaning, understand the use. She looked, she understood the use, she understood the meaning. Maybe, yes maybe, her understanding was not always all that it might be. Martin had clearly been speaking a different language, playing a different game from the one she had been playing, checkers to her chess. But with Lily, she would be more careful. She would limit herself to seeing what was really there. Descriptions, Margaret, not explanations. Then perhaps she would see the truth of the proposition: I am a lesbian, I am Lily's lover.
Martin was not the true end of her quest. That much she had demonstrated. The path led clearly now to Lily. And she felt anew the force of the odd, giddy determination she had experienced for the last few months, the cold desire. I must know; I will find out. Her failure with Martin made her more avid, rather than less. I must seek, and I must have, she thought. Fuck you, you fake frog. A world of women awaits me!
She went to Richard's to shower and eat some frozen brownies she found beneath the ice cube tray. And change her clothes. What did one wear? she wondered. For an encounter such as this? This was the other side of the moon. One took a step and flew, high in the air, waiting, waiting to land in the rocky darkness.
She wore jeans, how butch, and anyway she had nothing else with her except the wrinkled skirt of the night before, a night of confusion and inebriated solecism best left rumpled, with the skirt, on the floor.
Outside, the heat had diminished slightly and there was a breeze of just below body temperature. The sun was low and the buildings glowed with pink, as if they were healthy buildings. What a beautiful afternoon, almost evening, really. A beautiful time of day. Just right for a seduction.
Margaret took the bus across town, into the setting sun. She squinted and she felt warm, in spite of the air-conditioning. The sun was low but everywhere, poking its nose in where it didn't belong. Go away, this is a bus, a city bus. Go to Kansas. Or Abu Dhabi. Margaret put her arm over her eyes.
Uncomfortable in the sunlight, hung over, and nervous about Lily, she was breathing in a shallow, unsatisfying way and tried to catch her breath. Was it necessary, she wondered, to do what she was about to do? Simply because she thought Lily was attractive? Her collie had been a beautiful collie, but she had never tried to kiss it on the lips.
Margaret, Lily would say, you're in denial.
You lived in a dream with Edward, Margaret told herself, allowing him to look at you with his icy blue eyes and make you think that the reflection you saw there was really you. Now you can't look in his eyes, there is no reflection to bask in. You yourself must observe and let others bask in what they see in your eyes. Maybe you should teach more, stand in front of a room and look out at eyes waiting for you to speak, wanting something from you, demanding that you guide them, fill them with knowledge, make them whole.
She remembered going to a talk of Edward's, just after they'd met. She remembered how he walked to the front of the room, how he stood absolutely still for a fraction of a second, how his stillness caught the attention and the imagination of the entire roomful of young men and women, how they stared at him, how he seemed to grow as they stared, how he suddenly, absurdly, held out his arms.
He stood in front of his audience with his arms out as if he were greeting the dawn, as if a crowd were cheering him, as if Margaret were running toward him to be embraced, which she longed to do. Her heart had beat faster; her heart had literally beat faster then.
"Goood mooorning," he had bellowed in his richest accent. And he had started to speak and never stopped for the next two hours as Margaret watched, tense and overwhelmed.