Megan’s hands upon her shoulders, Megan’s lips against her own. She stood, stunned, and was kissed. And Megan ended the kiss and took a short step backward. Rhoda stared at her wide-eyed. She did not know what was happening.
“Do you see?”
“See what?”
“Oh God,” Megan said. “God in heaven.”
“Why did you kiss me?”
“Because I wanted to. Very much.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re beautiful. Sometimes you move as though you don’t know that. You are beautiful, Rhoda.”
“Why did you kiss me?”
“Because I’m in love with you.”
Her heart was pounding. She didn’t understand, did not even want to understand. She said, “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Why not?”
“Because…because we’re both-”
“Yes?”
“Both girls.”
“So what?”
“But Megan touched her shoulder. The contact was electric, slightly frightening. “You’d better sit down,” she said softly. “There are some things you have to hear.”
They were sitting on the couch. Rhoda wanted a cigarette very badly. She took one from Megan’s pack and lit it and wondered why her hand was shaking. She seemed to be afraid but did not know what she was afraid of. Megan loved her, Megan had kissed her. She did not understand anything.
Megan said, “There’s no way to say this. No way at all. I don’t know how to get started, Rhoda.”
She waited.
“Do you know what a lesbian is?”
“Of course. I’m not a child.” And then suddenly she stiffened and the cigarette dropped from her fingers onto the couch. She snatched it up, drew on it, then leaned over to stub it out in the ashtray. She could not believe it.
“Are you-”
“Yes.”
She closed her eyes. “Lesbians are girls who wear dungarees and men’s jackets,” she said levelly. “Lesbians have low voices and short hair and they swear a lot. You see them at night on Macdougal Street, walking along arm in arm. They have a mannish walk. They look like men, act like men.”
“Some of us are like that.”
“But you-”
“I’m not that kind, no. I’m not a butch. But I’m gay.”
“Gay?”
“Homosexual.”
“I can’t believe it. You’re not like that, you’re a woman.”
“Yes, I’m a woman. So are you.”
“But-”
Megan touched her arm very briefly, then withdrew her hand. “Let me talk,” she said. “This is hard to say. Will you let me talk and try to get things straight? This isn’t easy.”
She nodded.
Megan said, “Not all people are the same. Ordinary people are-normal. Ordinary women fall in love with men and marry them and sleep with them. But some woman…some women can’t love men that way. Some woman fall in love not with men but with other women. They don’t have to be mannish to do this. They can be completely feminine, even as you and I.”
She wanted to say something. All she could think was that Megan had said she loved her, that Megan wanted to sleep with her. This seemed to be a fact, a very definite fact, and yet it was so startling that she could not entirely accept it as such. Her mind fought with this thought, struggled with it, and she could not think of anything else. Megan loved her. Megan wanted to sleep with her.
It was incredible.
“That’s the way I am, Rhoda. A lesbian. I can’t have sex with men, I can’t find them attractive, I can’t bear the thought of all those things the world calls normal. I know that they are normal, but they are not normal for me. For me, for Megan Hollis, sexual relations with a man would be a perversion.
“Something quite different is normal for me. For me normal sex is sex with other women. Normal love is love for other women. Some people find this disgusting. Others are afraid of it. A great many people think that it’s morally wrong, a sin, evil. But I know that it’s right for me. It would be sinful for me to make love to a man, it would be evil and everything else. I am a lesbian.”
She looked at Megan, at the blonde hair and fine features. She looked at Megan’s lips and remembered their touch when Megan kissed her. How had it felt? Soft, warm. How had she felt about it? She realized that she did not know. She had been too confused to react, favorably or unfavorably.
“I think that you are like me, Rhoda.”
“Oh, no.”
“I think so.”
“Why?”
Megan lowered her eyes. “A feeling, partly. When I saw you I felt it. I wandered into your shop just by accident. I was looking for a gift for a girl I had been…very close to.”
“A girl you loved?”
“Yes, a girl I loved. You asked me if it was a wedding gift that I wanted. Do you remember that I smiled at the thought? And in a way it was a wedding gift. Not that Carolyn was getting married. Girls like us don’t marry. But Carolyn had been living here, and then she fell in love with another girl and left me, and that was my farewell present to her. A very appropriate one. A heart, jealousy-green, with red streaks like blood.”
“Did you love her very much?”
“Very much.”
“And you came back to see me today because you wanted-to make love to me?”
“Partly that. Partly because I liked you and I wanted to know you. I was surprised when I realized you weren’t an overt lesbian. And then I figured you out.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I decided that you were gay without knowing it. The instincts are there. The way you reacted toward your husband, the way heterosexual relations did nothing for you. You were a lesbian but no one had shown you the way.”
“Maybe I’m just frigid.”
“No.”
“You seem so certain. How do you how that?”
“You know it yourself. You’ve had sexual feelings. You’re a sexual person, Rhoda. It shows in the way you talk and the way you move and everything else. It shows in your own awareness of your own body. You couldn’t possibly be sexless.” She smiled. “There are sexless people, Rhoda. I’ve met some of them, women with no feelings in their bodies. Some of them play with lesbianism when nothing else works for them, and lesbianism leaves them just as cold. They can’t love, they don’t have love living inside them. I’ve met them and I know what they’re like. But you’re not like that, Rhoda.”
“I don’t know.”
“I do.”
She lit another cigarette. Her hands were steadier now. She felt excitement percolating within herself, but she had no immediate fear, no odd feeling of anxiety. The discussion was a calm and cool one now. They were talking about her sexual impulses, analyzing her possible homosexuality in a slightly dispassionate fashion, and she was quite relaxed about it. The undercurrent of tension and excitement was not unpleasant or disturbing.
“You were made to love,” Megan told her, “You tried to give that love to a man. You know how impossible that is. Why don’t you try giving it to me?”
“I-”
“You can’t bury it. You’ve been trying to do that. You know how it works out.”
“It hasn’t worked out so badly.”
“Hasn’t it? You have the same nightmare over and over again. You live a lonely life and you feel the loneliness of it. You’ve been trying to starve your own need for love and you need to give love and you need to receive it. It’s a stubborn force, Rhoda. It won’t let itself be starved out. It’s too real a need to be dismissed that easily.”
She started to say something, to offer up some objection, then changed her mind. She smoked her cigarette and asked if there was any coffee left.
“I’ll get some.”
Megan brought back two cups of coffee. The coffee was hot and strong. Rhoda sipped hers, set the cup down in the saucer. She took a last drag on her cigarette and put it out. A line from Eliot- I have measured out my life in coffee spoons. In coffee spoons, in cigarette butts, in days awake and nights asleep. She had been measuring out her own life, parceling it out piece by piece. Years were passing, filled with nothing, and she was twenty-four years old and unutterably alone.
How much was Megan offering her? And how much would it cost her to accept Megan’s offer?
She sipped more coffee. “I’m all lost,” she said.
“Poor girl.”
“Poor girl. Yes. I had such a sweet time tonight. Dinner, the wine, being with you. I haven’t had an evening like that since I left Tom. Or since longer than that. I needed it, the friendship, all of it. I thought you would be my friend.”
“I am your friend.”
“I thought that was all you wanted.”
“I want that and more. I want to be your friend. And your lover.”
“My lover.”
“Yes.”
“What would we do? I don’t understand.”
“Does it matter?”
“I-”
“I would make love to you,” Megan said, “I would make you feel like what you are, like a woman made for love. I would show you the dark side of the moon, I would make you laugh and cry. And we would be close and warm and nothing would matter, nothing at all.”
“You make it sound beautiful.”
“It will be beautiful.”
“Will?”
“Will. Because you can’t deny yourself the world, Rhoda. You can’t cut out a part of yourself. And sooner or later you’ll realize this.”
“I can’t.”
“You will.”
“I can’t.” She lit another cigarette, nervous again now, afraid of what she might do, more afraid of what she might desire to do. She smoked nervously and missed the ashtray when she went to duck her ashes. She tried to scoop up the ashes and brushed them onto the floor in her clumsiness. Megan told her to forget it. She looked down at the ashes on the rug and thought that she was going to cry. She didn’t know why she ought to cry but she felt tears welling up behind her eyes and was afraid they would spill out momentarily.
“I feel so funny,” she said.
“Of course you do. Poor girl, you have to look at yourself all differently now. It’s a new world, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what it is.”
“A brand new world. Right now it’s frightening because it’s so unfamiliar. When you learn to know it you’ll find out that you belong in it, that it’s the only world for you. The world of shadows, the twilight world. There are a great many cliches for it. But it’s my world. And yours, Rhoda.”
“I feel like crying.”
“Go ahead.”
“I-”
“Let it out. Don’t try to hold it in, baby, just relax and let it out. You can cry in front of me, Rhoda.”
She cried. She couldn’t help it.
“I have to go home, Megan.”
She was standing now, her tears washed away, fresh lipstick on her lips. It was late and she was tired and frightened and she had to go home.
“Stay.”
“I can’t.”
“Sleep here.”
“Oh, Megan, no I can’t. I honestly can’t.”
Megan was holding her arm. “Don’t go now,” she said. “It’s late and the streets are dark.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“And you’ll go back to a sterile little room and lie awake all night. Or fall asleep and dream bad dreams. You can’t be alone tonight, Rhoda. Too much has happened to you already. You need a settling time, a time to digest it all, and you ought to have somebody near you. Letting yourself cry was part of it. Being with someone is another part of it. You’ve had quite a night. You got drunk and you got shocked, and you’ve been forced to start seeing things in a different light, and this is no time for you to be alone.”
“But I can’t-”
“What?”
“I can’t let you make love to me, Megan.”
Megan smiled. “You silly girl.”
“I-”
“Silly thing. I in not propping you, honey. No propositions. I want you to stay here. That’s all.”
“Is it?”
“Yes” Megan turned from her, walked over to the window. She said, “I don’t want that kind of a seduction scene, baby. I’m not the rapist type, really I’m not. I’m no sex maniac. If I had wanted it that way I would have let you stay drunk. I wouldn’t have poured a bucket of coffee into you. I would have poured in some more wine, and before you knew what was happening I’d have had your clothes off and I’d have had my way with you, as the books so coyly put it.”
Megan turned, faced her again. “But that’s not exactly my style. I don’t want to make sex to you, I want t make love to you. And I have to be honest. I’m not good at deception, not at all. I could have let tonight go by without tipping my hand at all, you know. I could have let a very firm friendship come first, and then by the time you found out I was a lesbian you would have been too emotionally involved to resist me. Believe me, I could have done that. But I’m not like that.”
Megan smiled gently. “I want you to sleep here. That’s all, Rhoda. You’ll take the bed and I’ll sleep on the couch. It’s a comfortable couch. If you want to talk, I’ll be here to talk to. If you have bad dreams you can wake me and I’ll hold your hand and tell you that everything is all right. Whatever you want, I’ll be here.”
She didn’t say anything. Her heart was beating furiously now. She felt choked inside. A lump in her throat, tremors in her hands. She swallowed.
“Are you afraid of me?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you trust me?”
“I trust you.”
“Then what are you afraid of?”
She swallowed again. “Maybe myself.”
“Don’t ever be. Will you stay?”
But she didn’t sleep in the bed. She insisted on that much. She took the couch and Megan took the bed. They sat talking for a few more minutes, and then Megan gave her a nightgown and she went into the bathroom and got undressed and washed up and put on the nightgown and went back to the living room. Megan had made up the couch as a bed. Megan looked at her, and she felt Megan’s eyes flash very briefly over her body in the nightgown, and she felt suddenly self-conscious, as though she were nude and a man was looking at her.
“If you can’t sleep-”
“I’ll sleep.”
“If you can’t, wake me. If there’s anything you want, wake me.”
“All right.”
She got into bed. Megan hovered over her, and for a tiny moment she thought that the blonde girl was going to stoop over and kiss her goodnight. This did not happen. Instead Megan straightened up and turned out the lights and left the room. A door opened and closed. Later she heard water running, and then doors opened and closed and Megan called goodnight to her, and then there was silence.
She couldn’t sleep.
Who was she? What was she? She did not know. She tossed all these questions around in her mind and none of the answers came. In the beginning, the world had told her that she was a woman. Then she had learned that she was not a woman, that she was frigid and sexless. And now Megan was telling her that she was something else.
A lesbian.
She tried to imagine herself with Megan. It was hard to do. She did not know what Megan would do to her, what sort of love they would make together. She remembered Megan’s words: I would make love to you. I would make you feel like what you are, like a woman made for love. I would show you the dark side of the moon. I would make you laugh and cry. And we would be close and warm and nothing would matter, nothing at all.
A poem, she thought. A poem. And she let herself imagine not the mechanics of it, but the feeling of it, the feeling of sharing love with a woman, with Megan. It seemed somehow less strange than it had seemed at first. Now it seemed possible.
But could she? Could she let herself do it? It was forbidden. It was wrong. It was not normal, and all the gods in all the heavens made normalcy a religion in itself. Could she stand that kind of life? Could she be that kind of person without dying a little inside?
It would be hard. But was it any easier to be the kind of person she was now? She lived a life that was no great pleasure, a life without a future, a life that promised eternal sameness. She measured out that life in coffee spoons and cigarette butts and lonely days and lonelier nights. Megan was offering a way out of that. Megan was offering a life that might be better.
Did she dare to try?
Did she dare not to?
Once, she almost slept. She felt herself drifting off, and she may have dozed, and then she was awake again. You can trust me. I won’t do anything that you don’t want me to do.
What did she want?
She fought with herself. And there was a point at last when she knew that sleep was impossible, that a great many things were impossible. That, for the moment if not forever, only one thing was possible.
The nightgown rustled gently as she walked. She opened Megan’s door and slipped quietly into Megan’s room. She spoke Megan’s name.
“I’m awake, dear.”
She took a small breath. “I’m ready,” she said, moving over to Megan’s bed. “I’m ready. Love me.”