Appetites Page 8
As she stood uncertainly on the curb (and it’s spelled kerb here, she reminded herself) the bar door cracked open and two Radclyffes spilled out, arguing. They glared at Hannah, who was blocking their path. Then, to her astonishment, a real horse and carriage appeared out of nowhere, and the more feminine of the two said to her companion “Really, John, I told you our driver would be here,” and they disappeared into a musty, curtained compartment.
Then Isabel was in the doorway, greeting Hannah with a beautiful, broad smile and a soft string bag containing everything necessary for a Radclyffe Hall costume. She drew Hannah inside. A huge crowd of dapper, rowdy lesbians had assembled for a staged reading of the entire Well of Loneliness, in the style of book lovers’ readings of James Joyce on Bloomsday, or Robbie Burns night celebrations.
“This only happens once every few years,” Isabel was explaining, “and I knew it would correspond to your birthday this time. Everyone’s waiting for you.”
“Everyone”, in this case, included several of Hannah’s favorite Brit writers, lesbian icons she recognized despite their varied and authentic Radclyffe Hall drag. Sarah Waters had her arm around Jeanette Winterson, who was goosing Amanda Donoghue.
How does she do it? Hannah marveled, watching Isabel’s bar wench gravitas cross cultures into another country altogether. Then she recalled how, back home at Sappho’s, Isabel kept books on lesbian culture and specialty bottles from global lesbian bars behind the counter. Why couldn’t a London bar have a souvenir from Sappho’s? As Hannah pulled the tweed blazer around her shoulders, admiring both its heft and its weft, the long dark bar packed with Radclyffe Hall lookalikes cheered and roared approval. Then Hannah saw that behind the counter, where at home Isabel kept a first-edition copy of The Well of Loneliness, this dear and mysterious pub called Lady Una’s kept a bottle of American apple brandy—and one of Hannah’s books.
Tears came to her eyes. Her own writing, known. Read. Here!
The Radclyffes shouted and stamped their welcome, some calling out “Author!” and others toasting her with whisky and ale. “Many Happy Returns!”
“It’s because you’ve honored our Radclyffe Hall in your classes and your writing,” explained one wispy drunk lass.
“Paid homage at her tomb, today, now didn’t you?” another praised.
“And you teach her life story,” nodded a severely cropped megadyke in tie and tails, offering Hannah a slice of birthday cake.
But then the serious purpose of the evening resumed, and the little stage was set with a reader’s high school and lectern, candlelit and ringed with folding chairs. “Your turn, Hannah,” said the Radclyffe-of-Ceremonies at the mic, handing Hannah a leather-bound first edition. “Page one, have a go.”
“Don’t snarl it up, now, Yank!” another Radclyffe bellowed good-naturedly from the bar.
She read the first page, blushing, hearing breaths and bottle-openings and the clink of drink around her, hands adjusting monocles, the smack of stolen kisses, pages flipping, pub grub passing around with forks for cake.
“Now read a favorite page,” instructed burly Radclyffe-at-the-Mic. “And don’t give us that same old ‘that night they were not divided’ bit that everyone picks out. Something that spoke to you and only you.”
Hannah turned automatically to page 271, to the paragraph she always read aloud to her own students:
And now quite often while she waited at the stations for the wounded, she would see unmistakable figures—unmistakable to her they would be at first sight, she would single them out of the crowd as if by instinct. For as though gaining courage from the terror that is war, may a one who was even as Stephen had crept out of her hole and come into daylight; come into the daylight and faced her country: ‘Well, here I am, will you take me or leave me?’ And England had taken her, asking no questions—she was strong and efficient. She could fill a man’s place...England had said: ‘Thank you very much. You’re just what we happen to want...at the moment.’
The room was quiet, each woman in it thinking of ways they too had been scorned or rejected, only to be found useful in some moment of crisis when homophobia was less pressing than service, effort, imperialist gain. Then they began to cheer.
It was too much. No birthday had ever been better. She mentally ranged through hideous or merely disappointing birthdays from age three upward, a catastrophe of humiliating images, some appallingly recent. The time she’d thrown up on the classmate she’d expected to seduce. The time her date broke up with her and left her by the side of the road with no underwear. The carrot cake that made everyone sick. The guest who wanted all of Hannah’s friends to boycott the hotel where they were heading to dance. The old boyfriend who showed up stoned on Ecstasy. The fire in the kitchen stove that sent two terrified mice blundering over her mother’s legs. This made up for it all. How had Isabel pulled it off? Why was she being so good to Hannah?
Embarrassed by her own display of emotion, Hannah pushed through the applauding dykes to the rear of the bar, fervently hoping for a bathroom stall in which to blow her nose and compose herself. Another Radclyffe Hall lookalike smiled and nodded to her as Hannah barreled into the loo and, observing Hannah’s crimson face, extended a perfectly starched handkerchief from a blazer pocket. “Here, miss.”
“Sorry,” Hannah sniffled, abruptly remembering that London’s better public venues often hired a ladies’ washroom attendant and that, having left her wallet and passport with Isabel, she now had no money in the pockets of her own costume. “I...don’t have any change for the toilet.”
The Radclyffe, amused, reached into another pocket and brought out a handful of coins Hannah had never seen before. Seeing her confusion, the handsome woman said, “An American, is it? That’s a ha’penny, that’s a tuppence, that’s threepence.”
“Man, you went all out,” Hannah blurted, admiring the coins long vanished from England’s updated currency system. “You even dressed in the change Radclyffe would have carried around.” But the woman regarded her with probing, hooded eyes, and the temperature in the bar bathroom abruptly dropped to the chill of a tomb’s air as the stranger dipped long fingers into yet another pocket and slowly, slowly drew out the slip of paper Hannah had pushed into Hall’s tomb earlier that day.
It was unmistakable. It was Hannah’s handwriting. It still bore the creases from being rolled like a joint and shoved through a slender tomb keyhole.
“You wrote to me twice,” said the real Radclyffe Hall, “both times knowing I could not possibly write back, for all I am is temperature and dust, no longer temperament and lust.” And then she smiled. “But keep trying. For as you read aloud just now from my old pages, we still recognize one another, do we not?” She leaned one hand lightly on Hannah’s shoulder, and the icy breath of tomb surrounded them. Hannah, suspended in disbelief, panicking, thought to herself: I can’t kiss the dead. Yet could there be a livelier birthday gift than making out with the ghost of Radclyffe Hall? But then wouldn’t Lady Una’s ghost haunt her forever? These thoughts were interrupted by Hall’s competent writing hand, which began stroking history and savvy into Hannah, soon fiercely pushing pressure into her velvet costume breeches, a cold pressure of wartime and rejection and scandal and superiority and ink that grew to a spread of heat at its circling point, and Hannah smelled good horses, polished leather, men’s cologne, the threads of costly hatbands, old tobacco, and the secret hidden sweat of one of history’s greatest butches, and Hannah felt the impossible waves of ghost-given desire unfold, and Hall was saying, “They all hate me now. They say the book depresses them, that it’s full of self-loathing. They all want other writers now, the young and the tutors alike. They hate me now—as they did then—but you—you keep assigning me, and keeping me alive—and if they hate you I will haunt them. Remember that. Write your truth, as I did, and when the critics lash you, as they will, know that I will haunt them; until they read you more—”
The toilet flushed, and Isabel came out of the stall, adjustin
g the tie of her Radclyffe suit. She looked at Hannah standing there, swaying, moaning, holding onto nothing, and gently said, “Love, you might want to wipe that graveyard dust off your rented boots,” and exited the bathroom. Hannah opened her eyes to find the bathroom mirror steamed over in dripping streaks, with one long handprint that was not Hannah’s slowly evaporating. And clutched in Hannah’s own chilled hand was something cool and slim. Where had that come from? It was a fountain pen.
Fucked by Radclyffe’s ghost, she thought. Happy birthday to me.
A Taste of Home
Liz McMullen
1996
Dark blues and sullen blacks saturated her brush. With each jagged stroke, paint slicked onto the canvas, speckling her forearm and her already stained white undershirt. The landscape was brooding, unlike the warm desert paintings left to collect dust in a storage locker not far from where she was in Arizona. Home was gone now, along with the sun-kissed reds, rich browns, and dusky whites of the desert. Rowan Knight could never return home, not even in her mind.
The room was dim. She had closed the windows and covered them with blackout curtains. A draft brushed the floor with icy fingers, raising gooseflesh on her arms, but the bite of cold didn’t touch her; she was too numb to feel anything. Fatigue weighed her down, her biceps burned, and the hand holding the palette trembled slightly.
A hiss of gritty sleet pelted the window and she flinched. New England weather was still foreign to Rowan, yet she found the constant cold and barren landscape of winter comforting. This suited her.
***
The heavy, metal door to the art collective scraped along the groove carved into the cement floor. Alise Waters shoved the door closed with a swift check of her hip. The large studio was dim, lit with a solitary bulb. Alise was about to turn on the overhead lights when she realized she was not alone. She started, her heart pounding hard in her chest. The stranger was working on a large canvas, which was nearly the height of the tall artist. Alise paused, biting her lip as she searched her mind for the name of the art collective's newest member. Rowan Knight. Her friends joked that Rowan haunted the former factory because no one ever saw her there. Considering that it was four o’clock on a Tuesday morning, Alise guessed that was by design.
Her eyes adjusted to the dark, allowing her to take a closer look. Rowan’s thin, sweat-dampened white t-shirt clung to broad shoulder muscles, tapering slightly at the waist. Her faded jeans were speckled with paint and filthy. They rode low on her hips, as if Rowan had recently lost weight.
The woman stood still, as if she were trying to blend in with the darkness. She gripped the brush in her hand, waiting. Her fingers were streaked a smoky grey with dark black tips, probably from charcoal.
Rowan looked tired. Her long, flowing, black hair was snarled and lifeless. The melancholy in the air was palpable, sending a rush of raw pain through Alise’s body. She took her time crossing the room, not wanting to startle Rowan, her chocolate brown eyes soft with concern. Rowan’s unnatural stillness called out to her. She guessed Rowan would not willingly respond to her presence—the woman's red-rimmed eyes and stark expression spoke for her. Rowan seemed too proud to shed tears in front of a stranger, the moisture defiant on thick black lashes.
Alise got close. She reached out and smoothed a smudge of charcoal from Rowan’s cheek. She inhaled an amalgam of scents, linseed oil from flecks of paint, acrid charcoal, and sandalwood incense, as she pulled the younger woman in for a hug. Rowan, stoic and still, did not return the hug at first, but her chin dropped, resting on unruly curls.
Rowan nuzzled her hair. “Apple pie,” she whispered, her voice sounding gravelly from as if from lack of use.
Alise chuckled, making Rowan tense. Still, it was as though the soft sound of joy lit an ember inside the young woman and she pulled back, looking at Alise. Alise craned her head slightly to meet her gaze. Rowan licked her lips, as if mesmerized. She traced Alise’s full lower lip with her thumb, lingering on the corner before filling her hands with brown and auburn curls, and sighed.
Rowan’s dark eyes sought permission, permission to kiss her. Alise stood on tiptoes, closing the distance between their mouths, sharing the same air. The kiss was soft, sweet, a light brush of lips. Rowan moaned as she caressed the small of Alise’s back. Her hands were so large that they spanned Alise’s back completely, while the edge of her palms brushed Alise’s firm hips.
Heat seared Alise, the claiming hands so light, yet certain. She opened wider, inviting Rowan into her mouth. The warm, slow caress of tongues made her tingle from the crown of her head to her curling toes. Alise was so lost in the kiss, she missed the subtle shift in Rowan, until the warmth of their kiss mingled with the salt of tears. She wanted to pull back, to check in, but Rowan held her firmly by the back of her head and kissed her fervently.
Rowan pulled at Alise’s shirt. The fabric resisted, nestled tight in even tighter jeans. One good tug freed the cotton, and paint-rough fingertips explored her skin. Alise moaned, nuzzling closer, her full breasts rubbing the underside of Rowan’s. She could feel Rowan’s eyes flutter as her hands brushed lightly up her back, pausing at the bra clasp.
“Yes,” Alise encouraged, then helped remove both bra and tee, leaving her bare from the waist up, revealing tan skin and generous breasts.
“So full.” Rowan tested the weight in both hands, encouraging the dark nipples to harden. “Exquisite,” Rowan purred, her attentions making the nipples harder still. She ducked her head, suckling one as she caressed the other. Her attentive mouth and fingertips made Alise breathless.
Alise’s heart was beating so quickly that she felt lightheaded. The shallow rise and fall of her chest telegraphed her mounting need as blood coursed hot through her body. Alise’s labia engorged with blood, passion slicking her boxers. “Please,” Alise whimpered.
Rowan bent at the knees, lifting until Alise wrapped her legs around her waist. She walked her to the wall, grinding her belt buckle where Alise needed her most. Rowan moaned deep in her chest at the feel of Alise’s teeth sinking into her bare shoulder. “Yes,” she hissed at the pleasure-pain. Rowan rolled and rocked her hips, using her belt buckle to please her lover.
Alise squirmed. The buckle was solid, the sensation harder than she normally liked, but it was working for her. She grinded in concert with Rowan’s determined, rocking hips, pressing back harder and faster, feeling her orgasm tingle her scalp as it rocketed through her body, her thighs closing vice-tight. Alise’s eyes rolled back in her head, “Dios mío.”
Rowan gasped, releasing her hold. Alise nearly fell, but caught herself.
***
“Dios mío!” Carolina shouted, but it was too late. The SUV slammed into the car, killing Carolina and her husband. Rowan was knocked out cold on impact, the last thing she heard was her mother’s cry, then the world went black.
“Ma’am, can you hear me?” the firefighter asked the driver.
Rowan’s breathing was shallow, nearly imperceptible. She tried to open her eyes, but they were swollen shut from the impact of the air bag. She tried to speak, but could only moan.
“The driver’s alive, but she is pinned by the steering wheel. We’re gonna need to crack this open to get her out.”
“And the others?”
Rowan’s hearing perked up at the question, her life hinging on the reply.
“No, they took it head on.”
***
Alise was startled at first, “What the...” But the raw pain she glimpsed made her catch her breath. Rowan appeared devastated, her eyes glassy and unseeing. Alise knew without a doubt that Rowan was in a dark place. “Querida, sweetheart, are you okay?”
Rowan blinked once, twice, then seemed to come back to herself. Her re-entry to the present was not smooth. She started shaking uncontrollably. Alise guided her to the threadbare couch, then joined her. She pulled Rowan into her arms and rocked her, whispering soothing words in Spanish. “Shhhhh...cálmate. No te preocupes, todo va a salir
bien.”
“No,” Rowan whimpered through her tears. She moved as if to break away from Alise, but stayed. “They’re gone,” Rowan’s voice broke. “It’s never going to be all right.”
***
Rowan woke with a start, taking in her surroundings. She was home, but not quite sure how she got there. She took a deep shuddering breath, then inhaled sharply as she caught sight of herself in the mirror above her dresser. She was clean, her hair brushed through. She lifted her t-shirt to her nose; it smelled fresh. She hadn’t done laundry in weeks and certainly had not taken care of her appearance. She shook her head in confusion, and silky black hair, no longer snarled, veiled her shoulders.
Rowan began to shake, a streak of fear pulsing in her veins, when she heard cabinet doors opening and closing. She stood quickly but had to stop, the quick movement giving her a head rush—her rubbery legs barely kept her upright. She rested her hand against the dresser, waiting for the spinning sensation to stop. And that was when the smells hit—fresh blueberry muffins, percolating coffee and bacon. “I must be dreaming,” Rowan mused, her mind still fuzzy. She couldn’t remember the last time she went grocery shopping, and as far as she knew, the only items in her fridge were stale pizza and a disturbing array of condiments.
Curiosity propelled her out of her bedroom, down the hall, and into her kitchen. She found a sexy Latina butch moving around the kitchen with such familiarity it seemed as if she’d walked into the woman’s home, not her own. The minimalist vibe of Rowan’s kitchen came to life by the woman's fluid dancing as she sang to herself. The salsa song reminded her of her mother, and for some reason, the thought of her did not make her feel as sad as it normally did. Carolina loved to cook. The kitchen in Rowan's childhood home was always warm with laughter and the sound of music as her mother swayed her hips to a lively tune while preparing a meal for her family. The woman singing in her house was definitely not her mother.