Beggar of Love Part 12

The first time Ginger left her, when they were in their mid-thirties, she hadn't gone as far as moving her things from the apartment, but Jefferson left too, sleeping for over a week on Gladys's couch. It was painful to be in the apartment without Ginger, though Ginger was not often there. That's actual y what she'd been counting on when she'd brought Taffy home with her, the one day Ginger managed to leave work on time.

It was a sil y thing to do. She didn't like Taffy, that spoiled preppy jock who'd grown up to be a fund-raiser for some big foundation, but some piece of Taffy was a magnet for some piece of Jefferson. She suspected that Taffy was someone she could have been, someone she might have liked being with.

Taffy was more comfortable in the world than Jefferson. She drank a lot, but had matured into one of those women who could juggle people successful y.

No matter who was actual y hosting a gathering, or if there was no host at al , Taffy kept the conversation going and the drinks flowing and made the introductions. She knew how to connect people, which ones would hit it off, and how to retreat graceful y once she could see they would be fine without her. Jefferson admired that skil .

Moreover, it was hard to deny a professional beggar. Taffy never stopped chasing her. And she never stopped succ.u.mbing to Taffy. That day she'd gone, after school, to one of Taffy's soirees. When Taffy had an education project, she liked to have some teachers around to show they were engaged in the process, as she'd told Jefferson. To thank her, Taffy treated Jefferson to drinks afterward, on top of the c.o.c.ktails they'd already been served. She introduced Jefferson to Russian vodka. It was only when Ginger walked in on them that she realized how badly her judgment had been impaired-by Taffy as wel as the vodka. Ginger arrived in time to see her on the couch, nude, licking Stoli from between the reclined Taffy's shockingly superior, golden-hued b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Ginger's quick departure both woke her up and stunned her. She was too drunk to respond quickly. She let her go. Taffy seemed annoyed at first, as if the surprise had been Jefferson's fault, but she recovered more quickly and Jefferson found herself lying with her head in Taffy's stil -naked lap, Taffy soothing her with rea.s.suring words as she stroked Jefferson's hair.

"She'l think I've been sleeping with you al along," Jefferson said, groaning at the irony. Her sad monster was threatening to engulf her.

"Jeffy, you have."

She groaned. "What am I going to do?"

"If you want her, Jeffy, you crawl back on your knees. You stop drinking and stop f.u.c.king me and whoever else's bed you share, and you promise her al the things you're incapable of giving her: sobriety, fidelity, stability. She'l risk giving you another chance and you'l be more careful." Taffy sighed. "And you'l stay away from me for the rest of your life."

"No, Taff," she cried, contrite now to two women. She felt so out of control, kind of crazy too. She held on to Taffy, afraid that she, Jefferson herself, would disappear altogether.

Taffy, who had retrieved the Stoli from the freezer after Ginger left, offered it to Jefferson.

She downed a swig, two swigs, a third and suddenly remembered what it felt like to be master of the universe. She parted Taffy's thighs and enacted a betrayal Ginger would never know about. Taffy fel back, legs excitingly open, her own hands spreading her center, an icing of opaque moisture decorating her persimmon-like parts. Jefferson real y liked this Russian vodka. She'd never made love so effortlessly or so effectively. Taffy responded with al the athleticism she'd displayed on the hockey field.

When she woke up, at about one thirty a.m., Taffy was gone. Slowly, she remembered that she was home and Ginger wasn't. She was stil fairly drunk, but sober enough to know she'd chopped the bottom out of her boat. She wished she were in the family boat up on the lake, hauling water-skiers or racing across the water, slicing the lake in half with a line of white, like the line of Taffy's cream. Shame engulfed her. She tore the covers and sheets from the bed and washed them, load after load. She raised every window in the apartment to air out the scents she and Taffy had left. The bed remade, she showered and went to the living room to await Ginger.

Ginger cal ed, midafternoon.

"Is she gone?"

"Yes. I'm so sorry-"

"My love for you is a curse and a blessing, Jefferson. I guess I'm trying to say, you're working hard to make your love nothing but a curse."

"Princess, it wasn't love, like with you. It was stupid drunken fumbling to prove-"

"What? That you're as good as a man?"

She was taken aback. "Why would I want to prove that? Do you think a man would be better?"

"I don't know what else you're trying to prove."

"No!" She was insulted that Ginger would think to compare her to a man. She didn't think before she said, teeth gritted, "That. I. Was. Wanted."

There was no response on the other end of the line. She ran the pads of her fingers along the light down on her jaw.

"Are you coming home, baby?"

After a silence, Ginger answered, "I don't know."

By eleven that night, she knew Ginger was gone, maybe for good. She wanted Ginger to be able to come home. More to the point, another night in the apartment, images of her life with Ginger warring with carnal images of herself and Taffy, was unthinkable. She jumped on the subway down to Gladys's.

Gladys took one look at her and said, "It's bad this time."

She hung her head.

"What did you do?"

"Russian vodka. And Taffy," who she had introduced to Glad. She told her about Ginger, hanging onto one of Glad's arms with her two hands. "May I bunk on your couch?"

"I should probably say no. I'm pretty disgusted with you, Jefferson. But you're sober at the moment, aren't you? And you know you made a mess of things."

"You know what, Glad?" She rose and went for her coat. "I can get a room at a hotel. I don't want to be a bother to you, or at home. Waiting."

"Sit down," Gladys ordered.

"Why can't I get it right?" she asked, complying. "Other people, you and Ernie, lots of people get love right." That's when she started crying. Glad persuaded her to try AA.

Today, outside the church, she pul ed the d.a.m.n tissues from her pocket, remembering that Glad had gone to get her a box of tissues that first time Ginger left. Other times she'd cried on her shoulder, Glad would hand her napkins from a dispenser on the counter. How could she go into that cold mausoleum of a church? I don't want you to be dead, Glad! If she didn't go inside, she could think Glad was out of touch for a while, that was al .

A cloud pa.s.sed over the sun and then moved on, like a gentle warning. She straightened from her stooped posture and pushed back her hair.

"Okay, Glad, I get it. It's the only way I can visit you now. In sunbeams." A breeze, so rare these last few days, blew back at her. She smiled. "And breezes." She stepped inside the church.

Her suit did hold a little warmth and she huddled inside it through the cool vestibule, into the stil , high-vaulted church. Mourners fil ed the first nine rows, then straggled back to where she settled. She shuddered. Church was another place where silence was more valued than truth. She recal ed going with her parents to hear the careful, empty sermons, as if those would teach her about life. She'd sit perfectly stil , yearning to be outside practicing her softbal pitch. "I hope you appreciate this," she silently teased Glad.

The organ played. There were flowers, sermons, hymns. She tried to think of Glad, to remember her, but the other mourners distracted her. She didn't want to look at the coffin. Then someone stood up in the family pew, made his way to the front, and bent to an instrument case. It was Gus, Glad's youngest, a man in a ful beard now instead of a boy in a basebal cap, readying a French horn instead of a toy rifle. So Gus had become a musician. How she'd envied Glad's kid growing up with such a woman. She let her mind wander back, back to the days when they'd met.

She shivered in the cool church al these years later, watching Gus prepare to play. Glad had come through that first operation, but there had been others, and Jefferson never knew the last few years when she'd gone away-for golf tournaments, an alcohol cure, for the women between times with Ginger-if Glad would be at the Lunchbox when she came "home."

Yet she never went to Glad's apartment and didn't know this son who would honor Glad or the other children or Ernie. She'd been afraid she wouldn't fit in on Mott Street, that the friendship couldn't be the same there. Glad had been proud to be her friend, but both of them knew that Jefferson belonged where she was in Glad's life.

Gus lifted his horn to his lips and began an excerpt from "Finlandia." She could sense Glad beaming and proud, watching how he fil ed the church with breath and emotion and sound for her. She felt elation at the way he returned to Glad the gift she had given him with his life.

Her thoughts drifted even farther back to her freshman self on the dormitory steps. Stricken with grief-and yes, it had been grief-to watch her own mother go, to watch her take off with the gifts she'd never given and to leave the heritage of fear. Of silent expectations. Of alcohol.

She bowed her head, not bothering to wipe away the tears. Glad's persevering acceptance had final y sunk in. Too late for Jefferson's athletic career, but not too late to succeed at being Jefferson. "I'm real y not afraid to be me now." She fixed her eyes on the sun ray stealing in through the stained-gla.s.s window, sighing with the breeze that entered when someone opened the church door. Glad and Ginger, between them, had been there when Jefferson was final y finished with drinking and on her feet again. It had been over a year now. She'd go from Glad's funeral to another AA meeting. And cry for a week if she had to.

She whispered hoa.r.s.ely, "I want to cry loud enough to fil this church with sound for you."

Were tears the only gift she could give to Glad, the woman who had first loosed them? She envied the boy with his horn, who had found his own voice, and who'd had a mother who'd heard him al his life. But her tears would have to do: the wrong gift, to the wrong mother. And Glad would accept them, as she always had.

The last of the music faded. Now, she thought, Glad would be at peace.

She left the pew, final y, but a hand touched her elbow as she reached the church doors.

"Here," Sam the cook said, eyes wet with his own sadness. He thrust a handful of napkins toward her. "I knew she'd want me to bring some for you too."

Chapter Nineteen.

I'm forty-one, Jefferson thought as she watched the twenty-year-old pitcher wind up. Once she'd been on the pitcher's mound, her body tal , powerful, no gray in her thick sandy hair, proud muscles in her arms. Now she was coaching. How in h.e.l.l did I get to be forty-one?

The batgirl trotted across the park's newly mowed gra.s.s carrying water. The hot sun felt good, heated the gra.s.s scents, made the spectators'

encouragement sound languid, undemanding. Jefferson drank, remembered to smile then into those adoring batgirl eyes. If this kid only knew, if those eyes had seen her at her depths, high on whatever combination of drinks she could get.

The opponents got a hit; Jefferson tensed, ready with her signal talk to guide the Lavender Julies up the last step from their two-year slump into winning the citywide series. Inside, she clicked, in perfect tune with her team. And they clicked with her. At last they were playing in unison, not like the beginning of the season when she'd agreed, once more, after a first year of failure and a season off, to coach the "Lavender Losers," as everyone had taken to cal ing them. "You're our only hope," Sal y the bartender had pleaded for the team she and Liz sponsored.

It had been twilight outside Cafe Femmes. Soho was shutting down for the night. A few lingering art-gal ery customers had been sitting outside sipping cappuccino or Irish coffee at the new sidewalk restaurant Liz had added to the bar around the time the team was born. Some of the gay kids who worked in local garment factories burst in, joking and laughing and jostling one another. Gabby was garnishing salads the customers had ordered; she had taken over the food preparation from the start, as if she'd at last found her pa.s.sion in life.

Jefferson, whose mood frequently resembled thunderclouds these days, had replied, "You're pretty desperate, then."

She was seven months into her third attempt to live sober.

Teaching again, commuting to the Academy she'd attended as a kid. They'd taken her when no one else would give her another chance, taken her at least partly on the word of her AA sponsor, an old woman who'd taught there herself when Jefferson was the school heroine, breaking records, leading the field-hockey team to victory after victory. Her memories had not led to a kind comparison with who she'd become.

"Yo." Gabby nudged her with an elbow as she settled her chunky body onto a stool next to Jefferson.

"How's my favorite daughter of the American Revolution?"

Once something like that got out, that her family had been in New York practical y since Peter Stuyvesant, she'd never heard the end of it. The kids were always kidding her about having "come out" twice. She shook her head, smiling, though she had neither grown up in the city nor been in the kind of family that would come out. They liked the idea of having a fal en blue blood in their midst, even if she wasn't a blue blood and had experienced no more introduction to society than matching chugs with Angela between kisses at the first gay bar they'd managed to get into with fake IDs.

"Tel me I'm not under duress," Jefferson had answered, gesturing to Sal y, who was fil ing beer mugs.

"You final y finished your master's degree, didn't you? You have more time now."

"I don't know if I can handle it, Gab. Coaching-losing."

Gabby laid a hand on Jefferson's shoulder. "It was too much for you last time, I know." She paused. "But when you were sober, were you ever good."

As always, Jefferson's heart warmed to this praise. She placed a hand over Gabby's. "Can I buy you a Julie?"

"You like my concoction," Gabby a.s.serted. She a.s.sumed ful credit for the drink the team was named after, although Sal y was the one who painstakingly created it to tempt Gabby away from liquor. They both watched Sal y pour the grape juice and seltzer over crushed ice, then add an orange slice, a lime, a cherry. "Hey," Gabby protested, and Sal y snapped her fingers, apparently remembering only then to add another cherry. Gabby toasted Jefferson. "To a winning season."

"But I haven't said yes."

"Listen, Jefferson," Gabby said, "it's the Julies. A magic team. If they win, so can you."

"What if they lose?"

Gabby looked at her appraisingly. "I'm betting you can lose one thing now without losing everything." She pul ed noisily on her straw. "Customers," she had added then, bustling away to a sidewalk table.

The other team cal ed a time-out; the Julies kept their energy high, as Jefferson had taught them to, tossing the bal back and forth. She turned and saw Sal y, tal , lanky, blond, blushing, probably at something outrageously flirtatious Marie-Christine, the outfielder's girl, had said. Jefferson pictured Gabby downtown tending bar so Sal y could be at the game. The winning game. Maybe.

Three teenaged boys stopped, jeered the teams, made clucking sounds at Marie-Christine. Jefferson tensed again. Once she would have laughed at the boys, but recently, she wanted to rave and rage and pummel. She turned away. Sober, she knew the team was her business. Marie-Christine and Sal y could take care of themselves.

The other team got back to work. The Julies' pitcher, maybe drowsy from the sun, threw the batter an easy one and the bal rose high, every head fol owing it. The outfielder, Annie Heaphy, caught this third out and jogged nonchalantly toward home, while Marie-Christine cheered wildly, tossing words -hero, savior, champion-like flowers toward her.

But Annie had always been cool to work with. When the team had seemed to band against Jefferson, Annie supported her, worked to convince the others that Jefferson could be trusted now and wouldn't let them down.

The way she had Ginger. That was about the time the Jeffersons put her in rehab, hoping to stop the drinking. She'd laughed at them, aware that her father would be stewed by dinnertime, but, engulfed by the heavy cloud of her newly diagnosed depression, she'd gone. Her memory of those years was like one of those gummy erasers, crumbs of events and women and jobs and students piled like rubble in her mind. Receiving her release after a few months, thinking she was sober and fit and raring to go again, she hadn't gone back to Ginger. No, Ginger was behind her. Then, having recovered from a drunken car crash, Jefferson decided to forsake team sports. She'd play golf again. She'd be a victor again, like in col ege golf, like in prep-school field hockey. Her parents paid for a coach. Rusty at first, she soon played local, then regional tournaments. She pursued the golfing ladies, gay and straight, and maybe that diversion contributed to her ever-fal ing rank.

Her age, her years out of golf, and liquor hadn't given her much chance to become a scratch golfer by a long shot. By the time she landed the local lady golf celebrity, wining her and winning her into bed, she'd begun to drink wine-so no one would feel uncomfortable-and eventual y returned to Jameson, her first liquid love, a taste she'd acquired under her father's tutelage. That led to the horrendous accident, to losing her driver's license and drying out, yet again, in the hospital where she stayed for ten days with a compound fracture of the ankle. There hadn't been a hint that she could succeed on the tour, and her parents, who had been supporting her financial y, gave up. She'd double-bogeyed her life yet again.

The huge lightless affliction that had bedeviled her off and on since childhood settled on her in the hospital. A drink would have lifted it like a magic potion, or always had when she was younger. It had grown less and less reliable in recent years. After she got out, she didn't want to drink, but her moods had been gray. Had she been medicating herself for something al those years-dejection? That free-fal thing that happened to her sometimes and left her scared? Where had that come from?

Thank goodness Ginger hadn't given up. She'd been at the uptown bar, frequenting the place after dance recitals and the bal et, as if waiting for Jefferson-who sought her out, pretending not to, and al owed her to escort her home, not letting on what she needed. That had been the second time she'd dried out. Cold turkey. Out of sheer determination. And she'd begun to teach phys ed again, had stayed with Ginger.

During that period Lily Ann Lee introduced them to Cafe Femmes. Sal y was an old col ege teammate; others in the bar remembered or had heard of Jefferson. And in the last few years together Ginger would always find Jefferson there, grumbling that it was the only place in the world where she got respect. Ginger would cal a cab-a.s.suming she found her at al that night-and escort her home. Until one night Ginger didn't come to Cafe Femmes and the next morning Jefferson found Ginger's note at the apartment: I've got to help me now. I know I can't be with you until you do something for yourself.

The women at Cafe Femmes who had watched al that had been on the softbal team that first year when Jefferson, stil drinking, had failed them so badly as a coach. Not a few had fal en for the stil -powerful Jefferson and hoped to win her from the memory of Ginger, had tried to cure her addictions -and had ended up being hurt themselves.

But it was Ginger who stil had Jefferson's col ege cap. The cap that had, at least partial y, drawn Jefferson back to the woman who'd kept and treasured a hat worn during the winning of so many games. If only she'd been able to work things out with Ginger. Why had Ginger waited so long, too long, to try and help? They'd been no more than roommates for so long. Why had she even wanted Jefferson back? Not that it mattered: that cap and her memories were al that was left of Jefferson's glory days.

Shielding her eyes with one hand, she watched the Julies get a hit, a strikeout, a walk. They'd learned to trust her, despite the way she'd been. They'd learned, too, what she'd taught. And they were up a long time before the umpire cal ed Mil ie out on strikes. They hadn't gotten another run. The score was two to two.

"You're good, Coach," Annie said as she prepared to jog to her position in the outfield.

"Thanks, Heaphy." But what, Jefferson wondered, am I doing here at forty-one, coaching a d.i.n.ky little amateur softbal team? What in hel did it matter if they won or lost? She'd cal ed Ginger when she hit six months' sobriety. And cal ed her monthly since then, to talk, to update her and maybe... She didn't even know why she wanted career-obsessed Ginger back.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Liz arrive. Sal y's partner at the bar and at home, Liz worked the night shift. She must have gotten out of bed and come directly to the game. She reminded Jefferson of Ginger: very feminine, yet tough and devoted to her woman and her dream. She'd told Jefferson that she saw Cafe Femmes as much more than a gay bar, as a place where gay kids could be together whether they drank or not. She watched Liz and Sal y hug, smile into each other's eyes. Their pa.s.sion never seemed to die, Jefferson thought as she turned back to the game. Like hers for Ginger. If only she hadn't treated her so badly. In AA, they said not to start a new relationship in the first year of sobriety. But she didn't want a new woman; she wanted the warmth and comfort of Ginger in their early days. And not because she knew her from back when. She wanted to be worth something to Ginger now.

She could see Liz focusing on the game, holding Sal y's hand. It mattered to Liz that the Julies won. That night last summer, after Ginger had left, when Jefferson was the only one in the bar and Liz apparently thought she was too drunk to notice-that night came back to her vividly.

Behind the bar Liz was sobbing in Sal y's arms. No-nonsense Liz, sobbing. She could see Sal y's hand stroke Liz's thick, dark hair.

"We can borrow more money," Sal y was saying.

"No," Liz mumbled. "We're not going under because of my dreams. Look what happens." She gestured toward Jefferson.

With no one else there, Cafe Femmes had felt like a cold cave. The jukebox was silent; the electronic game, like some night bird, beeped only occasional y; no sounds came from outside. There was no place in the world but this refuge, and its darkness seemed to thicken before Jefferson's eyes, shadows gathering to blot out her life, her world.

"The bar is stil healthy." Liz had dried her eyes. "I won't sacrifice it for some iffy sidewalk cafe the kids might not come to." She supported herself against Sal y. "Half a dream's better than none, right?"

"Wrong," Sal y had said quickly. "We'l make it."

"How?"

"Faith. You believe in what we're doing. I believe. We have to have some faith that our instincts are right, that this is exactly the right time for a s.p.a.ce where gays and straights can mix. The right place for a gay bar the neighborhood can be proud of."