Then there was Carmen, another woman who lived the opposite of her name, a buttoned-up writer who found the library to be the most erotic place on the map. Libby was constantly pulling up Carmen’s tweed pencil skirt, bunching it around her waist while they writhed in a distant carrel in the geology section. Or pulling stockings down to Carmen’s ankles, letting them hang accordioned from one foot. She laid Carmen back on the linoleum conference table in the basement closet that served as the office for the college lit mag. It was, as Carmen often said, steamy. There were no politics with Carmen. There was just Ana?s Nin, Colette, bell hooks, and, in their nostalgic moments, even passages from Judy Blume’s Forever.
And then there were years of no one special. After living with Carmen for a year, Libby felt that women demanded a kind of attention and closeness that made her skin dry, made her ears clog, made her lose her sense of balance and have to lie down on the couch with one foot on the floor to steady the room. Women came in every opening, through every door and window. Their belongings crept into drawers that had long been empty for the glorious pleasure of one uncluttered space. Their hair wove long strands into her sweaters, was brought gagging from the back of her throat. Not her own hair, no, these were great long red hairs that belonged to Carmen, then black waves that drifted from Patricia’s mane. Patricia’s hair, in its fullness, gave the look of someone perpetually turning her head, always a seductive bounce and sweep. Not lank and still like Libby’s own. Libby couldn’t even make a ponytail bounce when she walked. It hung stock straight like it was weighted at the bottom.
Libby’s fingernails were black with dirt, the lines in her knuckles too, exaggerating the topography of her hands. A worm hung from the side of a small hole her weeding had created. She pulled it from the soil and placed it under the shady fronds of the day lilies she’d planted the year before.
“What about you, Dan? You want kids someday?”
“Only if I can sell them.” Feeling anything, she thought, must be hard for him. Has he loved anyone?
Then there had been Riley. Riley with hair like August, dry, gold, and warm. She had loved Riley. Libby had brought her to the house one summer. Riley, who she loved so much her mother saw it in fifteen minutes, and saw her daughter wanting something no one should want. With Riley there had been something. She was the one. The one that comes back in your dreams, that you are afraid to see, but want to more than anything.
Riley was married, but wanted to see something. To try something that had been gnawing at her for years. Like a dying woman wanting to see Paris, Riley wanted to fuck a woman. They had started there. Just fucking. It began as the fifty-cent tour of Paris, a map and a croissant, just that.
It was in the ladies’ room at the Ritz café, of all places, after tea. Libby had chosen the swank spot on Newbury Street because they would never run into anyone they knew there. Tea had seemed safe, a place to put things on the table, a wedding ring beside a miniature berry torte, a steaming teacup, a slip of milk, the slow turn of the spoon. Libby’s slim ladies’ watch made of gold links keeping an eye on the time; Riley had to beat her husband home. Forty more minutes still. Fingertips touched. The top of a foot, the back of an ankle. The check paid while they folded and refolded their napkins. Leaving behind a good tip and two linen swans. Libby knew how to do that.
A week later in their tour of Paris, they had moved from the double-decker bus tours, a straightforward overview, to lingering afternoons getting lost in the Louvre. They were lost in Libby’s bed. Finally they planned the trip to Maine. They were going to play house in a flat on the Left Bank; for a whole week they were going to pretend to be French.
But after fifteen minutes with Libby’s mother they were not in Paris. They were on the cold green waters of the thoroughfare, and Paris was far away, a heat wave killing hundreds.
The sun came through her straw hat in thin points. This hat had been their mother’s. The light fell across Libby’s face, and she could see the shadows move over the bridge of her nose; when she leaned forward, they moved over her arms, her gloved hands. She wondered if the sight of her in this hat, in this flower bed, was making Danny sad. He sat back in the chair, legs out straight, propped on the low rail, eyes closed, the sun bringing out his freckles. There was nothing for her to point to, nothing that he said. Only his weight. And the registrar’s office. It was in the air around him, like walking into an empty room and knowing someone had just blown out a match or a candle, the trace of sulfur or tallow in the air. Here on the open portion of the porch, between the two covered areas, the sun was hot. He picked at something on the palm of his hand. She tapped the bottom of his foot with the spade, leaving a dark arrow of mud.
“Got a splinter?” said Libby. This house loves to leave pieces of itself under your skin.
“What? No, it’s nothing.”
“So, no girls I should know about? No one at school?” Or out of school. A possibility she hadn’t even considered. Maybe this wasn’t about their dead mother, the hat, the house. Maybe he’s heartbroken.
“There are so many I can’t keep ’em straight,” said Danny, not opening his eyes.
Maybe not. Libby wondered if he was this way with Gwen, with women in general. No wonder, no girls. Too bad.
Libby stood up, and as she walked the tops of her tall rubber boots tipped from side to side like ringing bells, like green channel markers. She stepped over the lilies and the worm and into the aggressively bright patch of marigolds. Her mother had been trying to eradicate them for years now; Libby didn’t know why. But if the marigolds posed some unknown threat, she would pick up the battle where her mother had left off. They smelled sour and left pollen tangled on the down of her arm.
Women were beautiful. Worth the time and effort. Men, with all their straight lines, were as intimate as an empty bookcase, everything out in the open. Women were curves and secrets and delicious melodies. As she walked, Patricia made a magical song, a downbeat, a quarter note, not so much bouncy as fluid. And breasts. That was the thing that made Libby feel sorry for gay men, no breasts anywhere. Not that she brought much to the table, breast-wise. But Carmen, Riley, and then Patricia brought forth cornucopias, a great feast set forth on the silver tray of lace and underwire, or better still in fresh sheets. This was something good, and kept her from pursuing the one or two men who asked her out, who called her in that desperate way men have when they can’t see why they are being denied what they want.
“Where’s your lady, anyway?” Danny asked, head rolled to one side so that his long hair shaded his face, one eye closed under the awning of hair, the other squinted at her. She kept digging, trying to find the edge of the fan of marigold roots.
“She had to work, couldn’t get away.”
Libby knew Danny didn’t need to hear the story, to hear about another person he might lose from his life. Patricia was becoming more and more a part of things. A place for her at birthday dinners, at brunch. It wasn’t anything she had planned.