Beggar of Love Part 9

Chapter Fourteen.

During the next few years after col ege, Jefferson was no less in love with Ginger, no less determined to live her life with Ginger. She stil went though the horrible doldrums that had fol owed her out of childhood. She drowned the awful sinking of her moods at the bars and, sometimes, with the excitement of the chase. It had started with Taffy, but then, stil in her junior year, Jefferson had found Patti so cute, and a senior, already out at school. Patti had slipped love poems to Jefferson in their history-of-music cla.s.s. Jefferson had already known that material inside out from growing up with the parents she had and had been bored.

Drinking coffee together after cla.s.s, Jefferson told her she was involved. Patti ignored this. Patti had a car. She was a golfer too and drove Jefferson and her golfing buddy to the course where they played as a threesome. Ginger, with her jobs and rehearsals and performances, could never go and had never played golf.

One day, Patti had a flask with her and by the time she pul ed into a spot down by the water, deserted in winter, Jefferson was raring to get her into the backseat. She made love to Patti quickly, but would not let Patti under her clothes. The thing with Patti was over within weeks, when Patti, infuriated that Jefferson wouldn't split up with Ginger, tricked her into getting out of the car at one of the old stone-faced gas stations on the Henry Hudson Parkway and drove off. Jefferson had a flask of her own by then and, high on a combination of the half she drank after their game and her new secret freedom from secret Patti, she bounded through the streets of Washington Heights until she found the A train.

Jefferson got off at Ginger's stop and rented a hotel room. It felt so good to have Ginger in her arms that night. Her naked back, the firm curve of her waist, her undemanding desire were al so familiar and right that Jefferson knew she would never be attracted to another woman again. She was twenty- two by that time and much better at knowing what she wanted.

In her senior year, that Thanksgiving night when Minerva Castle, the little Englishwoman who helped Grandmother Jefferson, led her to her live-in room to show her the awkward but flattering sketches she'd done of Grandmother, Jefferson was drunk, like her father and mother and grandfather downstairs.

Minerva offered her more wine. She knew where that would lead; it always led there. Women were so hungry. Especial y the mousy ones like Minerva, who she would never a.s.sociate with s.e.x or guess would be interested in being gay. Yet they were the most wild for touch and release.

"You're gay, aren't you?" Minerva Castle had asked. This was a woman in her thirties, exotic with her British accent and disproportionate b.r.e.a.s.t.s, kind of a lightweight in the brain department, but earnest and kind. "Me too," she said when Jefferson came out to her.

She missed Ginger, but of course neither could present the other at home for the holiday, like a straight couple. They hadn't even talked about the possibility. Jefferson found herself being made love to in Minerva Castle's twin bed. She didn't like it this way, preferred giving pleasure to receiving it, but Minerva was determined. The woman's clammy hands and oily facial skin had put Jefferson off, but the experience was exciting and she couldn't help responding. Minerva preferred penetration, so she didn't have to reciprocate oral y and felt as if she hadn't been unfaithful. Minerva also liked a little a.n.a.l penetration, just with Jefferson's pinky.

"Where did you learn that?" Ginger asked, breathless, when she used that trick at home.

"Honors s.e.x 300, Princess," she'd responded. "Miss Parsons teaches it on Sat.u.r.day nights."

"Miss Parsons?"

Jefferson gave Ginger an exaggerated wink.

"Sure. You're kidding. I'm so gul ible with you, Jef."

"Miss Parsons would wet her gym shorts. I can't imagine her-I mean, can you?"

They laughed, then Ginger tried it on her, but Jefferson couldn't come. She never could with Ginger, as if her emotional excitement was on a different track from her s.e.xual response. She didn't let on to Ginger, of course. She never wanted to hurt Ginger.

She looked forward to seeing Minerva Castle on holidays. The woman made no demands on her time or company outside of bed, but one day in Jefferson's senior year Grandmother teased Minerva about her boyfriend the gardener. Minerva, usual y as pale as Grandmother's chicken broth, turned the same pink that o.r.g.a.s.m gave her. Jefferson was repel ed. Every time she saw Minerva after that she wanted to drench her in bug spray.

Ginger lived with her parents the year Jefferson was a senior. She had already graduated, but couldn't find an apartment she could afford and stil survive. It was tough because they'd been so happy rooming together at school. Jefferson fought with Emmy and Jarvy to live off campus at the family's city apartment, but they wanted her to wait until she had a job so she didn't get used to depending on them. They did agree to buy her a car, a 1971 Chevy Nova.

It had been Uncle Stephen's, then Cousin Raymond's. It was old and smel ed of cigarettes, but Jarvy had the transmission replaced and the engine overhauled. Al that year, it carried Jefferson and Ginger back and forth to the family place on Sat.u.r.day Lake in New Hampshire, through the depth of winter in the snow and ice. Ginger had to drive what they cal ed their chariot of ashes then because Jefferson had a horror of losing control of the car in weather, and Ginger, though Jefferson had to teach her, was a born driver and sailed through the worst storms, fearless, as if it was high summer.

After Minerva, there was no one but Ginger her whole senior year. She and Ginger had three seasons of love by the fireplace at the lake, three seasons of isolation on the long drives, during the long nights and on Sat.u.r.day Lake after the tourist season, then in early spring as soon as the lake thawed. Cla.s.ses were a dream to be slept though when she got back. Ginger had been able to find only part-time work during the week, teaching dance at the Neighborhood House, and without col ege performances, her gigs were few. They planned for her to give private lessons after Jefferson graduated and after they went to France and the British Isles that summer. Jefferson had already been offered a job teaching at a cla.s.sy private school in the city through someone her mother knew. Her parents planned to let her live in her grandparents' apartment then. Ginger could move in and only have to help with utilities. She could rent a loft s.p.a.ce for lessons.

When they visited the house in New Hampshire that winter, they learned to keep their clothes on until Jefferson got a fire started and Ginger made up the Castro Convertible in the living room. They lived on deli food and takeout that they'd gather on their way out of the city. She made sure she scheduled cla.s.ses offered only Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday so almost every week they would have four days together, a nine-month-late honeymoon on the lake, watching the red oaks lose their leaves, the bright red winterberries arrive, ice fishers suited up for the freezing air, and lilac bushes bursting into l.u.s.ty bloom. Sometimes they hiked or boated or ice-skated, but mostly they stayed in the knotty-pine house with nothing but their nubile minds and splendid bodies to entertain them. Jefferson had never been happier.

Despite the way dance displayed Ginger's body, she had that Irish-Catholic shyness about moving around the house naked and shocked Jefferson the first night she donned a granny gown. Now she knew why relationships died. Someone put on a granny gown or one quit drinking when the other didn't. A curtain closed and shut one person out, or a curtain opened and revealed too much. The first time she saw Lily Ann Lee's b.r.e.a.s.t.s with the moles on them, it shouldn't have mattered and didn't for a while, but now they were friends instead of lovers, partly because Jefferson could live without ever seeing that body nude again. Everyone, she thought, has a right to her own aesthetic.

Ginger's body was beyond compare. Jefferson could spend days, weeks, years of her life watching Ginger walk, bend, reach, scratch her bottom.

The gown smothered the fire in her, but there was so much more to Ginger and to what they had together. With praise and encouragement someday Ginger would get over that self-consciousness. Would it be too late by then? Or would she automatical y pul a granny gown over her own eyes, look away or not see what she was looking at?

When they were together they were by turns comfortable, playful, s.e.xual, but mostly asleep. During the week Ginger was al about dance. As much as she adored Ginger, as close as Ginger came to being everything she could want in a woman, sometimes she felt like she was married to Tinker Bel .

In those early years, they didn't have s.e.x, they made love. Ginger was open, eager, easily roused and satisfied. She fol owed Jefferson's lead as pliably and as graceful y as she danced. Ginger professed her love, col apsing like a telescoping cup into something like a loving little animal, warm, so close she might be under Jefferson's skin or curled around her heart. She whispered her ardent feelings and pa.s.sionate promises of forever. Ginger made it clear that she knew their bond was beyond breakable. She used the term "soul mates" and Jefferson agreed that they were, although she had somehow imagined a more consistent devotion on both sides.

She would get out of bed while Ginger slept-afterward-and sit down with the bottle of Jameson. She'd sip it over two ice cubes and replay the way tal , wil ful Ginger went al soft and yielding in her hands that night. The contrast excited her beyond anything she'd ever experienced and she felt like a top- of-the-line lover-creative, sensitive to Ginger's every desire, as if she were an extension of Ginger's perfect body, as if Ginger was some other self she could please.

Yet the next morning she could find little sign of her fiercely loving Ginger. With Ginger's mother's disappointed coldness-she'd gotten her first job as a chorus girl on Broadway when she became pregnant with Ginger-and her father's work-above-al ethic, where could Ginger have learned that sweetness can carry over into the daylight hours? She probably had al she could do to save the loving little kid she must have started out as from withering completely. With Ginger turning to a wil -o'-the-wisp come daylight, Jefferson felt a little less guilty about her own absences, like she was ent.i.tled to them, d.a.m.n it.

Ginger worked hard and spoke of quitting performance, opening a dance school. "I want to earn my keep here," she told Jefferson, though with Jefferson's teaching wage and her family's deep pockets, they weren't hurting. Ginger picked up money giving dance cla.s.ses, especial y after school hours and on Sat.u.r.days, when Jefferson was off.

"Keep performing," she urged Ginger. "Princess, it's your dream, your mom's dream too, and I'd miss watching you dance." In truth, she'd been bored at the last few performances, but Ginger didn't have to know that.

"Sure. As long as I have a steady income," Ginger had answered.

"But you're a dancer. How could you cut that off? If I had a talent like yours and didn't use it, I'd fade away."

"Teaching is a talent too, Jef. And coaching."

"Teaching is a job. Maybe some day there wil be gay softbal teams to coach and I'l love what I do, but right now, it's part of my job. A fun part, but nothing like your name up in lights."

"I can't get satisfaction out of dancing unless I know I'l have solid ground under my feet, like you do."

"I can coach til I go blind and deaf, Ginge. You won't be able to dance that long. Now is when you need to be performing."

"I don't know." Ginger moved away from her and crossed her arms. "Of course I want to perform forever, but I'm an ironworker's daughter from the Bronx. I know my limits. Do you see my brothers getting al artsy? Joseph can draw like he was born to make a living doing portraits on Sixth Avenue in the Vil age. He and Kevin fol owed my father into the union. It's their best shot in this life. We're not in with the people who go places. Maybe if I'd been a tiny bit more talented, wel connected, more of a hustler, more outgoing, maybe I could reach the big time and earn enough to keep me for the rest of my life, let a husband support me-"

"I'l support you, d.a.m.n it."

"I know you would, sure, but I couldn't live with that. You've got your own way to make. Your family may have money, but you're not the idle rich. If you supported me I'd feel like a failure. I need to prove I can succeed in the dance world, and if I can't do it as a dancer, I'd like to do it as a teacher. I have to ask myself, too, how long can I realistical y keep up performing? What wil I do when my body gives out?"

"You don't believe enough in your own talent," she said, not asking the hard question: why did Ginger think it was al right to be financial y supported by a husband, but not by her?

"My biggest talent is work. I watched my dad rack up the overtime year after year, with no life beyond work except a beer, the TV, early to bed, never a complaint. He was my model, his are my values. It's how I earned col ege and paid my way through. It's how I got his respect. I couldn't believe it the other day when he said he'd borrow on his retirement to invest in a dance school when I'm ready."

Had she been attracted to Ginger because she thought Ginger would be some kind of star? Okay, a little bit. Maybe there was a spot of tarnish now, but it wasn't like Ginger would have to give up dance to be a used-car salesperson or something. She'd seen Ginger teach at the Neighborhood House and she was good. She had the nine little ones in her beginning tap cla.s.s moving like mini-Rockettes. Even the real y heavy teenager in Sat.u.r.day-morning modern dance was learning to carry her body graceful y, thanks to Ginger. She couldn't knock it. Ginger clearly delighted in giving away what she knew and loved, just like Jefferson got into it too when she was teaching.

"I have a girl in one of my cla.s.ses," she told Ginger. "Gil eberta Konic, tal , so skinny you think her stick legs might snap out from under her. Gil eberta's the daughter of someone at the UN. I watched her learn to dribble a basketbal , weaving this way and that, lunging after the bal , tripping on it, bending so low it was rol ing, not bouncing. I figured she'd be okay when she started pul ing herself out of one of her rol s by lifting the bal like it was glued to her fingertips. I felt so d.a.m.n proud to see Gil eberta out on the gym floor doing double-bal power dribbling. I knew I was doing the right thing, teaching PE."

"I don't know which way to go, Jef."

"Yeah, you need a compa.s.s." She considered saying aloud that she'd like to borrow it when Ginger was through, but how do you tel your lover that you need a moral compa.s.s?

Ginger was in her thirties before she did throw the towel in on her performance career and accepted her dad and Jefferson's offers to help start a school. The Neighborhood House had wanted to hire her ful -time, but she would have had to take on al kinds of recreation cla.s.ses other than dance.

Once Ginger made her decision, she got to work. She went up and down probably every block in Washington Heights, where she'd been working, looking for studio s.p.a.ce. Jefferson had scored a job as a swimming instructor for the parks department that summer, but got off at three and would go look at the s.p.a.ces that appealed to Ginger.

Once they found the spot, a second story on the edge of West End Avenue with level hardwood floors, a plate-gla.s.s window across the front for natural light, and wal s.p.a.ce for mirrors and bars, she helped Ginger clean, paint, and polish the floors. This would be the most time they would spend together for several years. Ginger opened her little school and not only taught, but marketed, did the bookkeeping, the cleaning, grant writing, scholarship research, and kept up some cla.s.ses at the Neighborhood House. The hours by the fire were gone, as were nights without the granny gown. Jefferson yearned for her as intensely as she had before she'd introduced herself at Ginger's performance. She felt like something left to mold at the bottom of a barrel.

She wasn't surprised to find herself in bed, spirits again high, with a younger dancer, a woman physical y like Ginger who was rehearsing for a Broadway show cal ed Dancin'. The woman, Alexis, had grown up in Alaska, of al places, adopted by an evangelical minister in Palmer. Alexis had learned to dance at church camps. The woman was wild with her New York freedom, drunk every night after performing. She'd almost thrown herself at Jefferson in a bar and led her back to an apartment she shared with four roommates. Alexis paid the least rent and got a convertible couch in the living room for her s.p.a.ce. When they opened the bed they would move two folding screens to shield themselves while they went about their business fervently, but in absolute silence. Two of the roommates, gay men, turned up the TV and occasional y cal ed jokes about springs squeaking. It didn't seem to bother Alexis. She taught Jefferson about multiple sequential o.r.g.a.s.ms and practiced what would have been exhibitionistic lewdness had the screen fal en down.

Other women were golf and softbal . Ginger was her first love, field hockey her second. Jefferson was her own goalie.

A bit ashamed of herself, Jefferson invited Ginger to see Dancin' soon after it opened, using two tickets the dancer gave her. She could understand why Ginger wasn't up there. She couldn't see her performing these rote audience-pleasers night after night. Ginger and modern dance fit a lot better; Ginger and Jefferson fit a lot better. She never saw the Broadway woman after the show and was pretty clear that she wouldn't get stagestruck again. She relished having elegant Ginger on her arm at the theater, the c.o.c.k of the walk.

The neighborhood hadn't had a dance school for many years, and enrol ment was so crazy good the first year that Ginger hired her spinster great- aunt Til y as clerical help. Aunt Til y had retired from her lifelong job as a public-school clerk, so not only did she set up the office in a more professional manner, but she was tickled to get out of the house and back into the world again, as she put it. She was a big, boisterous florid-faced Irishwoman in voluminous, dark polyester dresses. Her hearing had declined with age.

The first time Jefferson stopped by Ginger's school after Aunt Til y was instal ed, Til y eyed Jefferson. "So you're Jess. The roommate."

Jefferson froze. She knew, like she knew when a puck would make it straight into the net, that this woman had caught on that Jefferson was gay. She decided not to correct her name and flashed her winner smile. "Glad to meet you, ma'am. I'l bet you're Aunt Til y."

Instead of answering, Til y said, "My niece has a big family, Jess. Lots of strong men and wil ful women. None of us would be pleased to see our little Ginger hurt. By any one. For any reason."

"Not by me." She answered softly and seriously. She would never hurt Ginger by seeing these other women. Ginger didn't have to know, just as her mother had never known about Jefferson's father. At least, she didn't think Emmy had found out. If she had, Ginger would play it the same way: she'd live with it rather than divorce. Probably. It would never come up, though, so that was a moot point.

The six- to eight-year-olds came clattering out of tap cla.s.s then, and Ginger formal y introduced her to Aunt Til y. Al three joked and laughed together, as if no smoldering warning had been pa.s.sed, as if Jefferson had no reason to quake inside every time she ran up the loft steps two at a time and saw the harridan at her desk, guarding Ginger.

It was hard to get time for the two of them in those early days, but whenever Jefferson returned from straying she would insist. It was the best antidote as wel , she hoped, immunization from doing it again. If they didn't go to New Hampshire, they might find their way to Fire Island or Provincetown. Once she booked a hotel off Broadway and they saw two shows, lingering late at an after-theater restaurant and getting into bed at the same time, something they could seldom do at home because of their different hours.

Skin to skin with Ginger, she remembered al over again that Ginger smel ed like home, tasted like home. She'd be touched with a comforting familiarity more satisfying than some frenzied o.r.g.a.s.m brought on by a stranger's fingers. After their days together, she felt cleansed and refreshed, ready to swear off the bars and the drinking, to get up early enough to eat breakfast before school and to come straight home.

This would work for the first few nights. She'd get the laundry done, mop floors, peel cobwebs from the corners of ceilings, al while singing along with her Eagles alb.u.ms. On the nights Ginger had no cla.s.ses she'd have a pot of stew or baked chicken ready, and they would wash and dry the dishes together, smiling in their contentment, Ginger sometimes doing a few sil y dance steps to celebrate new flip-flops Jefferson had spied outside a bodega.

By Thursday night Jefferson would be half in the bag at her favorite bar of the moment, as likely as not dancing with her old standby Shirley or, if she'd caught enough hel at school for being late or smel ing like last night's alcohol, she'd be in the bar bathroom making out with some new woman in town for a convention, a fashion shoot, a news a.s.signment. Her despairing moods pursued her. She would barely make it home before they fel ed her, and she'd topple into bed before Ginger got in from work. She would wil herself to forget the feel of her fingers plunged to the hilt inside the roomy secrets of the suburban mother of three she'd entertained that night. She'd lie in bed, wanting Ginger until Ginger came to her, hugged, nuzzled, and turned on her side to sleep.

Chapter Fifteen.

The first time Jefferson was fired from a private school had been the department head's doing.

Right out of Hunter Col ege, she'd started as a swim coach for the school. Swimming was not her favorite sport, but she was mostly able to stay out of the water and dry as she demonstrated strokes and acted primarily as a lifeguard at the school's indoor pool. She was hired to teach the next school year and found herself surveying groups of girls aged six to thirteen, clad in despised one-piece green gym suits, while they dropped off ropes and jumped short of minimal marks as they tried to meet the guidelines of the newest fitness program. She wished there was more interest in compet.i.tive sports and volunteered to coach or referee almost every game that came up.

It never occurred to her that enthusiasm wouldn't make her popular. Two of the other teachers, who apparently counted on after-school fees to make ends meet, weren't used to sharing their after-school pay. Mrs. Dove, the department head, said she liked the breath of fresh air Jefferson brought and expressed intense interest in her career, to the point of taking her out for coffee after work. Then it was a gla.s.s of wine at the chair's apartment a few blocks away. She stayed for dinner, with wine during the meal, and met the husband, an insurance-claims adjustor. She and the chairwoman drank more wine when she stayed after dinner while the husband went to his chamber-music rehearsal.

That was the night Mrs. Dove put "Moonlight Sonata" on the turntable and set it to repeat. Their talk became more intense-about sports they both loved and the cla.s.sical music they'd grown up with. Mrs. Dove shared her philosophies on not having children, on the plague of men in the world who were the cause of war and destruction, and too much information about what her husband demanded of her in the bedroom.

For al her swaggering lesbian ways, Jefferson knew nothing beyond her own experience. The romantic headiness of Beethoven, the intimacy and eroticism of Mrs. Dove's revelations, the apartment lit only by the lights of the city outside were too much for her. She was stil learning how hungry women were for butch hands, her butch hands. She thought Mrs. Dove was the most desirable of women, a sort of conquest. She didn't pretend to herself that she was in love with her or particularly attracted to her. She was flattered that so urbane a woman, more conventional than Margo had been, a woman in her forties, would be, as Mrs. Dove said, fascinated by her. Although Jefferson had not come out to her, Mrs. Dove confessed, with a tipsy slurring of words, that she was attracted to her.

They were sitting knee to knee in the dining alcove, wine low in its green bottle, a vase of flowers perfuming the furniture-heavy apartment, and Mrs.

Dove was fingering the tips of Jefferson's col ar with the index fingers and thumbs of both hands. Jefferson knew the chairwoman had freshened her lipstick and perfume on her last trip to the bathroom so she, half in fear that she would lose her job but emboldened by her share of the bottles of wine, her hands itching with the need to touch, without actual y deciding to move, reached under Mrs. Dove's skirt, past her garters and the tops of her nylons, while the piano gently b.u.mped along its notes, carrying their hot sighs into the air.

Mrs. Dove had also taken off her panties. Jefferson slowly moved her hand from vertical to horizontal, thus prying apart Mrs. Dove's thighs, and pushed her middle finger forward to lightly touch her c.l.i.toris. Mrs. Dove's legs fel open, and right there, on their facing chairs, Jefferson brought her almost to climax, then almost again, and then let her come. Such a roar of pleasure rushed from Mrs. Dove it was al Jefferson could do not to jump and to keep her finger in place.

She ran it down to Mrs. Dove's wetness to tease inside. Mrs. Dove, nimble phys ed teacher, lifted her legs until both feet were flat on her chair and let Jefferson move ful y inside her. The woman moaned and moaned with the "Moonlight Sonata" until she col apsed on Jefferson, who went to one knee to catch her and found herself facing that hot wet place that begged for her tongue, but of course that was not something Jefferson would do except at home with Ginger. Mrs. Dove climaxed this time with her legs tight against Jefferson's ears, rocking her head side to side, three of Jefferson's fingers inside her. This was exciting, but Jefferson was glad she'd numbed herself with so much wine; they hadn't so much as kissed and she felt a little soiled.

"He's due home soon," the chairwoman said when they were done, her voice deep as a man's.

Jefferson went into the bathroom and scrubbed her face and hands, feeling none of the euphoria that went with making love with Ginger. Instead, she imagined herself possessed of the thin strength of a badminton racket, the tools of sports: the exacting edge of an ice skate's blade and the arc of a golf bal . She looked at the dexterous, sensitive hands at the end of her slender wrists and marveled at their mature authority in the ways of pleasure.

Mrs. Dove was dressed and putting the dinner plates in the dishwasher. She'd cleared the table, replaced the chairs, straightened her clothing.

Jefferson, sobering up, sensed that something inside her had changed irrevocably.

"May I help?"

"No need!" Mrs. Dove answered in a high voice that reminded Jefferson of gla.s.s wind chimes. "That's why I have a dishwasher." Mrs. Dove stil had her back turned when she said, "I know you must have lesson plans to review and papers to mark. You probably want to be on your way."

"Wel , no, I-"

"That's al right. Scoot along. I'l finish up here."

The woman sounded like she was working up to a scream.

"Are you al right, Mrs. Dove?"

"Oh, my, look at the time. Mr. Dove wil be here before you know it."

So that was the problem. Time to clear out before hubby came home. But why wouldn't Mrs. Dove look at her? She backed toward the door, waiting for some sign, some acknowledgment of what they had shared, but saw nothing, not even a meeting of the eyes. And Mrs. Dove would be like that every time they were together, as if she could connect with Jefferson only in the ever-decreasing conversations before s.e.x and then through her erogenous zones, not with words or fond looks. At school, Mrs. Dove never looked at her, not to supervise, not to praise, not to criticize. Jefferson had a lot of freedom, but she'd expected a little help in her first year of teaching, so she would know if she was doing it right. The chairwoman invited Jefferson to dinner every week that April and May, then stopped.

At the end of the year, her contract wasn't renewed. Mrs. Dove told her the school had decided they needed someone with a master's degree in her position.

"We'l give you an excel ent recommendation." As she said this, Mrs. Dove handed Jefferson a sheet of paper. It was a job announcement at a school in the city. "I know the chairman."

"Hey-"

"You do want a good recommendation?" Mrs. Dove's cold eyes held a clear warning. "Real y. It's a step up for you. I only have your career in mind."

She was hurt and confused, but who could she talk to about it? What recourse did she have? No one, none. She got a summer job with the city parks, teaching little kids to play tennis. Come September she started al over again, working for Mrs. Dove's friend, another middle-aged married woman. This time, when Mrs. Gatlin invited her to dinner with her husband, before he left for his stage-managing job, and bragged of the excel ent wine they'd bought at a vineyard upstate, Jefferson declined. She had to start on her master's so she could keep her job, she explained, without sarcasm, and expressed regrets that she had no time at al for a social life. She felt as if she were being pa.s.sed around like a plate of hors d'oeuvres at a dinner party. No more older women, she swore. At least never again with a boss.

Chapter Sixteen.