No, she wasn’t ready. Maybe there were other women out there, other men. Not that she wanted anyone else; she simply wanted to be able to extract herself easily in case she did. But the idea of life without Patricia made her feel sick, congested, her ears blocked, her olfactory nerves deadened. Life without her would be a perpetual flu.
It was Libby who had stepped forward, put herself on what she imagined was a long government roster of women who fell in love with women. The list of women who fuck women was too long to maintain; women’s colleges skewed the data. Three years before, at a play, Libby had held Patricia’s hand. She was the one who reached out first. It was not like her. She was someone to wait, to let things develop, to give things space to breathe. On the day of her high school graduation, Libby’s mother had told her that she stood back from life, that if she weren’t careful it would go right by and she wouldn’t even know what it tasted like, smelled like; it would just be a breeze and then gone. So Libby had made moves before this, to be sure that life, one small corner of life at least, grazed her hand, her lips. Later, she realized her mother hadn’t been telling her to find Life, but to find a certain acceptable lifestyle.
Libby chose to take the version of the advice she preferred. She hoped for experience, for vibrancy, but didn’t believe it was a thing that could really happen. Or, rather, she knew that it could, just not to her. She could flip a switch in her living room, and the desk lamp would come on, but she couldn’t explain how electricity worked beyond an explanation that would suit her three-year-old students: it is made in a station and travels down the wires to your house, but you don’t want to waste it. Don’t waste it, she had thought, with Patricia’s hand in hers. Don’t let this current expire in an empty socket.
Days before the hand-holding, she had felt a current, a small charge rush through her feet. While Patricia was at lunch, Libby crept into her office and, something that shamed her like masturbation or childhood shoplifting, she picked up the lavender sweater hanging over the back of Patricia’s chair and pressed it to her face, inhaling deeply. It smelled like honey and musk. A charge swept through Libby and brought the arches of her feet up from the soles of her shoes.
So it was then, standing in the dark of the theater, after the curtain fell with the stuttering sound of applause all around them, when Libby had slid her hand into Patricia’s. Months later, she asked Patricia why she hadn’t been clapping. Why had they stood with the rest of the ovation, neither of them clapping, like the still spot of a stone beneath rippling water? The play was Twelfth Night, and some of its magic must have swept over the seats, over the little orchestra, and down the broad aisles to Libby’s fingertips. She wrapped them first around the corner of Patricia’s hand opposite the thumb and then slid them into the small bowl of her palm. Patricia’s fingers closed over hers, then opened as she slid Libby’s fingertips between her fingers, just there, pressing Libby’s rings down.
“Is Patricia coming up in August, then, with the rest of your crew?” said Gwen.
Libby opened her eyes, but everything was white and blurred at its edges. She picked up a pinecone, bent her knees, and let the pinecone roll down her thighs into her lap.
Patricia was supposed to have come with her to Maine for this trip, but after Libby said she wasn’t sure about moving in together, Patricia told her to go alone, to have a trial separation, to take her space and see how it felt.
It felt like home without her mother. Which she had expected to be liberating in some way, but it felt beautiful and sad and lonely. Libby shaded her eyes.
“Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Do you want her to come?” said Gwen.
“She asked me the same thing.” Libby let the pinecone roll down her calves so it tumbled into Gwen’s side.
The cedar shingles dug into Libby’s back. She crossed her legs and leaned forward, resting just her fingertips on the hot roof. The grit of the asphalt roof, the sticky flecks of pine sap and eddies of sand, made her long for a beach chair. Something else to add to her list. On the main porch the Adirondack chairs her father had liked best were warped and cracked; those would need to be replaced too. Now, they were closer to driftwood than furniture. Libby leaned against the wall again, but the shingles felt sharp and seemed to move with her. She turned around, facing the wall cross-legged, and pulled at the shingle. It came off in her hands, like an artichoke leaf.
“Uh-oh.”
“You broke it?” said Gwen.
Libby started to shove the shingle back in place, but the one above fell out too.
“Shoot!” Libby.
“Stop trying to fix it.” The two of them moved to the far side of the porch as if being close to the wall would cause more fall apart. Gwen pulled her shirt on. Libby went to her closet and came back with a small ladder. She had recently installed smoke detectors throughout the house. Apparently, Scarlet had planned for them to all go up in flames. Libby opened the ladder on the porch next to the wall and climbed up to peek over the roof. Her breath sucked in sharp. The roof sloping down away from her toward the bay windows was pocked with missing shingles, leaving shiny black patches, like gaps for missing teeth.
“It’s not just the walls,” Libby said from the top of the ladder. She climbed down and Gwen climbed up.
“Oh, shit. I’m no roofer, but I’m pretty sure there aren’t supposed to be holes,” said Gwen. “Could we just stuff umbrellas through?”
“That might be more of an art installation than a repair. I’ll call Remy and get him to come take a look. Maybe it can be patched.”
“Lots of patches,” said Gwen, coming down the ladder. “Now I want to do an installation of houses made out of umbrellas. You are totally a conceptual artist.”
“That’s what happens when you hang out with three-year-olds all day.”
“I don’t think Tom needs to hear about this.” Gwen picked up the shingle from the floor of the porch and waved it at Libby.
“The shingle that broke the camel’s back.”
“I’m worried about him,” whispered Gwen. “Last night was nuts.” They both sat down on Gwen’s towel.
“Be worried about us. He wants to sell this place out from under us,” said Libby.
“It’s not just last night. He’s been off lately,” said Gwen. Gwen leaned against the porch railing behind them; Libby tapped her shoulder and shook her head, no longer trusting that anything was as sturdy as she had thought. Gwen nodded and scooted forward so she could lie down instead.
“He keeps showing up at my place with Scarlet’s urn,” said Libby.
“That’s just ’cause I won’t let him leave it at my place; I don’t care what her will says,” said Gwen. There had been so much nodding, so much reassuring at the end, Libby hadn’t realized what they’d agreed to.
“I didn’t think we’d actually trade off. Who does that? But he wasn’t going to take no for an answer,” said Libby.
“Not from you, that’s for sure,” said Gwen. Libby thought they ought to be wearing suntan lotion. But she wasn’t willing to go look for it.