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They go to Therese’s, after.
After a dinner that Carol drew out ninety minutes longer than necessary through sheer force of conversational will. After barely any food and too many martinis. After that first glimpse of Therese’s inscrutable face sent Carol’s heart leaping into her throat, a location from which it has yet to descend.
In the back of their shared cab, Therese is silent and staring straight ahead, hands folded in her lap. Carol desperately wants a cigarette, but is already having trouble breathing, so she picks at the seam of her pocketbook instead. A waxy thread is unraveling from one corner, and it is something satisfying to tug on, to worry at, until Therese reaches over and presses one hand over her anxious fingers, forcing them flat against her leg. Carol only just contains a gasp at the touch.
“You’re always ruining beautiful things,” Therese says in that same cold voice she used at the Ritz.
Carol stares at her, but Therese’s eyes remain fixed on the windshield. She doesn’t move her gloved hand from Carol’s thigh. “I know,” Carol says. She hates the way her voice sounds – repentant, pleading. Pathetic.
“Let me hold onto it for you,” Therese offers, sliding her hand under Carol’s fingers and taking the pocketbook in one smooth motion. “We’re here.”
When Therese puts Carol’s pocketbook in her lap and opens her own purse to pay the driver, Carol knows better than to protest. She slides out onto the sidewalk after Therese and stands quietly to the side as Therese unlocks the front door; follows Therese upstairs to her apartment; hovers near the door as Therese turns on a lamp and lights a fire in the grate. She does not remove her shoes, though her ankles ache after a long day – the extra height they afford is an advantage she clings to like a terrified child.
She can hold herself quiet and still; she cannot, however, keep herself from drinking in the sight of Therese as she moves around the small space – her slim, straight shoulders revealed as she doffs her coat; the curve of her waist as she leans down to pick up an errant photograph near the kitchen table; the quiet confidence in her hands and wrists as she fills a tea kettle and sets it to boil. She feels greedy for every detail of Therese’s being, like a castaway stumbling onto an oasis after weeks without water. And so, when Therese finally turns to give her a penetrating look, Carol doesn’t blush or glance away, embarrassed at being caught. She stares on, hopelessly, helplessly; entirely at the mercy of Therese’s cool, appraising gaze.
“I don’t know why I came back,” Therese tells her after a very long silence. Her tone is not beseeching; she is merely offering Carol a fact.
Carol swallows against the lump where her heart remains lodged in her throat. “I’m glad you did,” she replies woodenly. “I wasn’t – I didn’t think you would. But I was very pleased to see you.”
Therese shifts her gaze to the floor and doesn’t respond for a moment. The kettle screeches into the stillness between them. Therese takes it off the burner and pours two cups of tea. She carries them into the living room, and Carol trails behind her. They each take a seat on the couch, one after the other, Carol sliding in recklessly close but not enough to touch. Therese hands her a cup, but she does not drink.
“Therese –“ she tries.
Therese looks up sharply, eyes dry and jaw tight, and Carol shuts her mouth. “I don’t want to talk about it,” Therese says. Another fact, this one delivered with almost overwhelming weariness.
Carol sets her tea on the coffee table and waits out another interminable silence. They’re stuck, the two of them, mired in so much doubt and anger and impossible circumstance that it will take a miracle to dislodge them from it. She sighs; asks, “Well, what do you want, then?”
To her very great surprise, Therese answers her with a kiss. It’s gentle, almost chaste, but Carol still feels a hot fluster of arousal shoot up her spine at the first brush of Therese’s lips against hers. Aching with abrupt and devastating desire, she nevertheless holds very still; doesn’t reach or grasp or push or pull; is very, very careful not to make any wrong move, until –
“Carol,” Therese murmurs against her mouth. “Kiss me.”
She doesn’t need to be told twice.
In no time at all, she finds herself being pressed down onto the sofa, Therese’s hands deftly unbuttoning her suit jacket and sliding under her blouse. Head spinning, she tries to wrap an arm around Therese’s waist to flip them over, but the couch is narrow and Therese seems to have no interest in deserting her perch atop Carol’s thighs. Eventually, Carol gives in and lays back and bites her lip to keep from making too much noise as Therese kisses around a particularly sensitive spot at the place where her neck meets her shoulder.
Therese works fast, methodically peeling every piece of clothing from Carol’s body until she is left in just her undergarments, trembling on the couch cushions. In the dim light filtering in from the kitchen, the only expression she can discern on the younger woman’s face is lust. If nothing else, it’s a welcome change from the suspicion and anger of before. Carol reaches behind herself to undo her own brassiere, pulls it off, and presents it as an offering. Therese sets it to the side and reaches between her legs.
It’s fast, too fast, and Carol isn’t twenty anymore, and no matter how much she wants this, it takes time, damn it. She squirms, trying to will her body into compliance. It doesn’t work – of course it doesn’t – and Therese withdraws. For the first time in the evening, she looks uncertain and a little bit lost. Carol’s heart shatters anew.
“Here, like this,” she says, and takes Therese’s hand and sucks her fingers into her mouth. When they’re slick, she guides them back to where she wants them. “Gentle, at first,” she suggests.
Therese listens – Therese has always listened so well – and soon Carol’s body is warm and the saliva is irrelevant and the room is spinning around them like a top. “Yes, just like that,” Carol gasps, and comes like a screen door swinging open.
She tries to touch Therese, but Therese doesn’t want to be touched, and so they lay quietly on the couch, stacked together like dominos. Carol doesn’t know what to say. Instead of speaking, she strokes her hands up and down Therese’s back, trying to memorize the shape and weight of her, just in case.
“There was a woman,” Therese mumbles. Carol’s breath catches in her throat. “At the party tonight. She would have liked for me to go home with her.”
Carol doesn’t doubt it. She’s not sure how any sentient person wouldn’t want Therese to go home with them, and she says as much.
Therese continues as though Carol hasn’t spoken. “She wanted to go home with me, and all I could think about was you.” She sounds deeply, brutally sad, and it wounds Carol to know how much Therese wants not to want her.
“You broke my heart,” Therese says. One more excruciating fact.
In the silence that fills the apartment like helium in a balloon, Carol dares to say, “I know. I broke my heart, too.”
Therese breathes in; Therese breathes out. She rests her head on Carol’s chest. Quietly, almost silently, she starts to cry.
They don’t move to the bed. Therese sleeps on top of Carol on the sofa, and Carol doesn’t sleep at all. When the first rays of weak, early light filter through the curtains, her eyes are gritty and her toes are blocks of ice. She is clutching Therese to her like small child with a stuffed toy.
Therese awakens not long after sunrise. She squirms out of Carol’s embrace and rushes into the kitchen to re-light the grate. When she returns fifteen minutes later, she is carrying two mugs of coffee and a plate of toast.
“Aren’t you hungry?” she asks, when she has polished off her slice of bread and sees that Carol has barely nibbled at hers.
“You should have mine,” Carol offers. She slides the plate closer to Therese.
Therese doesn’t touch it. She stares at Carol, who tries not to flinch.
“I will forgive you,” Therese tells her. “Not now. But I will, eventually. You should know that.”
Carol shuts her eyes. The little living room is bright in the morning, and she is too tired to mask her emotions. She cannot ask more of Therese, but she cannot survive on less, and that leaves her stranded in a strange, desiccated wilderness.
Something bumps against her lips. She opens her mouth, and Therese feeds her a corner of the toast. It tastes good – plain, but hearty. She chews slowly and swallows.
“I understand,” she tells Therese, eyes still closed. “There’s no rush.”
Therese answers with another piece of toast pressed to her mouth, and she eats it without complaining.
After breakfast, Carol asks whether she should go home, and Therese tells her to stay, so she does. They spend the day in the apartment. Therese gives her a book to read – The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – and leaves her on the couch while she tidies the rest of the small space. Carol tries to force herself to pay at least half as much attention to the story as she does to watching Therese move around. Through no fault of Carson McCullers, it’s a losing battle.
In the afternoon, she becomes restless. She thinks about her apartment, still mostly unfurnished, and wonders if Abby has called, as she had said she would. She daydreams about hanging prints of Therese’s photos in the living room. She imagines the small room that will one day, she hopes, be a place for Rindy to stay the night. It will have pink walls, and the curtains will be pale lavender.
“Are you hungry?” Therese asks.
Carol blinks and finds Therese standing right in front of her. The sun has dropped low, and she casts a tall shadow over the floor.
“A bit,” Carol admits.
“I don’t have much food. Do you want to go out?”
Carol is quick to agree, smoothing the wrinkles in last night’s dress and donning her coat. She considers ducking into the small bathroom, but decides against it – she already knows the state of her hair, and also knows that her vanity is but a tiny speck in the sea of her devotion to Therese.
Therese gives her a small but genuine smile as they leave. “You look beautiful,” she says.
Carol is well aware she looks anything but. “Thank you,” she replies. “As do you.”
Therese’s rosy cheeks are very becoming. She shakes her head a little.
“You do,” Carol insists. “Your hair – I like it like this.”
“Do you?” Therese brushes her hand over her neck self-consciously. “It’s so short.”
Carol wonders if there are any other women in Therese’s department at work; if she has any other girlfriends her age who talk about hair and makeup and the little dramas of their lives. Somehow, she doubts it.
“It’s very attractive,” Carol says. In any other circumstance, she would withhold a little; tease just enough to get under Therese’s skin. Today, she is completely sincere.
They walk for four blocks to a small restaurant of Therese’s choosing. The interior is warm, painted a deep, lovely red, and it smells wonderful. The middle-aged woman who takes their order clearly knows Therese. They exchange pleasantries, and Therese requests a bowl of soup and a plate of chicken. Carol follows her lead.
“She and her husband own this place,” Therese explains when the woman has gone back to the kitchen. “I came in here when I was walking home one night during a snowstorm, and they let me sit until I was warm enough to make it the rest of the way home. They’re very kind.”
Carol imagines Therese perched in one of these booths alone, shivering and red-cheeked, and her heart aches.
“Tell me more about your job,” Therese suggests.
Carol obliges, if only because she would rather face her own inane chattering than Therese’s stony silence. She feels foolish waxing poetic about furniture, of all things, but Therese seems genuinely interested. She listens closely to what Carol says and asks smart questions, and by the time their food arrives, Carol has actually remembered why she’s excited about the position. She has always loved beautiful things, to say nothing of the stories behind them.
“I also want to do something different with the catalog,” she muses. “It’s so stale.”
Therese slices into her chicken and waits for Carol to elaborate.
“The photography in particular is godawful.” She hesitates. “I know you’re quite busy these days, but if you’re interested in freelance work…”
“I don’t want to work for you, Carol.”
“Not for,” Carol protests. “With. A collaboration. I can rewrite the copy on my own, but it’s not worth the effort without good pictures.”
Therese narrows her eyes and chews thoughtfully.
“I wouldn’t be your boss. Franklin – the owner – would hire and pay you.” Carol picks up her spoon. The soup in front of her smells too good to resist any longer. “It’s just an idea I had.”
“I’ll think about it,” Therese promises. “You should eat before the food gets cold.”
She is halfway through her plate, and Carol has barely started on hers. It all looks divine. Carol dips her spoon into the broth, but doesn’t lift it to take a sip. She can’t tear her gaze away from Therese, whose beauty is as nourishing as any meal Carol can remember.
Therese raises an eyebrow. “I don’t remember you being so slow,” she says. For the first time, Carol detects a hint of humor in her voice, and it warms her from the inside.
“I keep thinking that if I look away, you’ll disappear,” Carol confesses.
Therese cocks her head. She has always seemed slightly birdlike to Carol, with those delicate-boned wrists and bright, curious eyes, and she seems especially so now. Carol gazes back at her, waiting for a reassurance that doesn’t come.
After a moment, Therese reaches across the table and taps the rim of Carol’s bowl with the tip of her finger. “Eat.”
When they’ve finally finished, Carol offers to pay for their meal and, wonder of wonders, Therese lets her. They bundle back into their coats, and wave goodbye to the owner, who tells them both to come back soon. Carol hopes they do.
On the sidewalk, Therese fixes Carol with a considering look. “I need some time to myself,” she says. “And you need to sleep in your own bed tonight. Are you going to panic if we part ways?”
Carol feels her heart freefall from her chest to her stomach to somewhere around her ankles. “Of course not,” she lies. Even she can hear how brittle and wretched her words sound.
Therese sighs heavily. Her hand twitches by her side, an aborted reflex to reach for Carol, but the street is busy and they can’t afford it here. “Walk me home,” she says. “Call Abby from there. See if she’ll meet you tonight.” She purses her lips. “I don’t want you to be alone.”
Carol’s throat is hot and tight, and her eyes burn with shame, but she nods and follows Therese’s lead without protest. She feels like a child; is acting like a child, she knows, but cannot for the life of her muster a better response. As they weave through the crowds down the block, she brushes the back of her hand against Therese’s, and Therese lets her. The small kindness helps.
In the hallway of Therese’s building, Carol calls Abby – dear, long-suffering Abby, who hears the way she says hello and immediately suggests meeting at a bar they both like. They set a time, and Carol hangs up. Therese has gone upstairs with instructions that Carol should follow when she’s done, and all Carol can think is that, someday, she won’t be able to keep moving from one woman she doesn’t deserve to the next with impunity.
Therese’s door is open, and she enters without knocking. “I’m in the bedroom,” Therese calls.
Carol dithers, trying to discern whether it’s yet another statement of fact, or an invitation. She can hear drawers opening and closing; a rustle of fabric. In the end, she walks down the hall slowly, with measured steps, until she arrives at the room in question and looks inside.
Therese is standing near her dresser, sifting through a stack of papers on its surface. She has removed the dress she wore to dinner and replaced it partially with a much more comfortable-looking pair of trousers, but hasn’t yet bothered to put on a shirt. Bare chested and slim, she cuts a gamine figure. Carol’s mouth goes dry.
“Look at this,” Therese says, picking up a sheet from the pile and reading it as she walks over to Carol. She is completely, gloriously unselfconscious in her nudity. Carol grips the doorjamb, trying not to swoon.
Therese holds out the paper. Carol makes a game attempt to grasp it, but it slips through her clumsy fingers and flutters to the floor. “Sorry,” she murmurs, shaking her head, trying to muster even a shred of clarity in thick fog of longing clouding her mind.
She bends down to retrieve the paper, realizing too late that Therese has done the same, putting their faces inches apart. They lock eyes, and in the seemingly endless moments that follow, Carol wonders if it’s possible to die from desire.
“When are you meeting Abby?” Therese asks, finally breaking the silence.
“Not for two hours,” Carol says. She had planned to go home and change.
“Oh,” Therese whispers, and Carol lunges forward.
They’re mere feet from Therese’s bed, but it might as well be in Siberia for all Carol cares, because Therese is beneath her and half-naked and finally, finally meeting her passion halfway. She wriggles out of her dress and her undergarments, aided by Therese’s eager hands. When their skin is finally pressed together, she almost sobs with relief.
Carol is at first too intoxicated by their kisses to attempt anything else, but then Therese rolls her hips and Carol sits up to help her out of her trousers. She kisses and bites her way back up Therese’s legs, and lays on her stomach on the cold, wood floor. Every breath Therese takes is a tiny, desperate sob. Carol bows her head, and the sobs turn to wails.
It all comes rushing back: that unremarkable bedroom in that unremarkable town; a hairbrush and a glass of champagne; beauty beyond description in the lines of Therese’s body, wracked with pleasure. Carol wraps one arm around Therese’s leg, and wedges the other under her own body, grinding down against her hand. It isn’t comfortable, but it is transcendent. Therese comes with a choked-off cry, and Carol does too.
They stay there, silent and prone, for a long time – long enough for Carol’s bones to start aching. Therese’s slender thigh, always so lovely in motion, makes for a poor pillow. Carol turns her head and kisses the baby-soft skin. Therese shivers.
“Was this all right?” Carol asks.
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Therese says. “But yes, it’s all right.”
They sit up, and Therese pulls on her trousers again. She puts on a shirt, too, to Carol’s mingled relief and dismay. “You should go,” Therese says. “Don’t keep Abby waiting.”
Carol looks at the clock. She won’t be late, but she won’t have time to stop home, either. Sighing, she steps into the bathroom, dragging a fingertip under her eyelids and prodding uselessly at her limp curls. Therese watches her from the doorway, a little smirk twisting her lips. As a rule, Carol does not like being made fun of, but she allows it in this instance, pleased to see a bit of the old spark in Therese’s eyes.
“She won’t let me hear the end of this,” Carol groans, tugging at the wrinkles in the front of her dress.
“Do you regret it?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Carol turns and steps closer to Therese, whose smirk is threatening to turn into a real smile. She leans in, and Therese doesn’t flinch away; they kiss. “When can I see you again?”
“Tomorrow evening?” Therese suggests. “I’d like to see your apartment.”
The only stick of furniture in the apartment so far is a bed, since Carol is still mostly living at the old house, and the rest won’t be moved for a week. She considers the possibilities. “That sounds lovely,” she says. “Six?”
Instead of answering, Therese kisses her again. Carol doesn’t object.
Abby is, as anticipated, insufferable. She takes in Carol’s appearance with shock and horror, then laughs her head off for five full minutes.
“I haven’t seen you this disheveled since you tried to fix that old lawn mower in Cassidy French’s garage,” she says. “You look awful.”
“I knew I could count on you to raise my spirits,” Carol says dryly.
In truth, Abby’s amusement is a balm, and the martinis she had waiting when Carol arrived don’t hurt either. They are in a booth in the back corner, mostly hidden from view of the other patrons, and if the waiter thought anything of Carol’s rumpled exterior when he took their order, he didn’t make any indication. The world could be, and has been, much worse.
“So you saw her,” Abby says. “And?”
“And what?”
Abby rolls her eyes and doesn’t deign to respond. Carol sighs.
“It was strange. Good in parts, dreadful in others. She’s very angry.”
Abby rolls her eyes again. “What were you expecting?”
Carol folds her hands and looks down. There’s a sharp, rough edge in Abby’s voice. It appears, sometimes, when the memory of their falling out swims to the surface, and Carol never knows what to say; doesn’t know how to keep apologizing for feelings she couldn’t produce in an affair she couldn’t sustain.
“She’s hurt, Carol,” Abby says, softening only a little. “She’ll be hurt for a long while.”
“But she came back. She wanted to see me.”
“Yes, and that’s a good thing,” Abby insists. “Doesn’t mean it won’t take some time. Doesn’t mean it’ll be easy.” She sits back against the booth. “Frankly, you’re lucky she’s even trying.”
Carol digests that. “I didn’t expect you to take her side,” she grumbles.
That provokes the biggest eye roll of them all. “I’m not taking sides, you nitwit.” Abby pauses, then smiles a little. “I do feel protective of her, in spite of myself.”
“You’ve always been a soft touch.”
“I know what Carol Aird heartbreak feels like,” Abby corrects her, without teeth. “If she survives this, she’s made of stronger stuff than I thought.”
The return of their waiter forces a pause in the conversation. Carol orders another round from him, and reaches across the table to take Abby’s hand as soon as his back is turned. “I’ve asked a lot of you,” she says quietly. “You haven’t said no, not once.” She takes a deep breath. “I want you to know how much – how very, very much – that means to me.”
Abby doesn’t respond immediately. She extracts her hand from Carol’s grip and withdraws her cigarette case, offering one to Carol before taking one for herself. She lights both. She draws on hers, exhales, and – their ritual completed – says, “For better or for worse, Carol, I love you. I’ve loved you for ages, and I’ll probably love you til the day I die.”
It’s nothing Carol hasn’t heard before. She nods, encouraging Abby to continue.
“It isn’t always easy,” Abby admits, staring off into the middle distance. “But at the end of the day, you’re my family. And the people you love? They’re my family too.” She brings her gaze back to Carol and smiles – a tender, genuine smile. “Rindy, Therese – you would do anything for them. So, I will too.”
Sunday passes slowly. Carol takes a blanket, a change of clothes, and a box of kitchen-related paraphernalia from the house and drives into the city at noon. She eats lunch by herself at a deli. It’s a sunny day, and the crowds outside flow fast as the world around them thaws. Carol sits for over an hour, watching, taking in the clothes and the faces and the moods. It’s spring, and everyone is happy to be alive.
She pays her bill and walks down the street to a florist she likes; buys a bouquet for Therese and a potted orchid for Abby. At the boutique next door, she acquires candles that look like they might fit in the holders she brought from home, along with a bundle of cloth napkins. Arms full of parcels, she contemplates the market across the road. She needs groceries, but fears it might require a second trip.
“Carol?” a familiar voice calls from behind her.
Carol turns and sees Therese standing on the curb, camera in hand. She blinks. Of all the people in all the places in this vast, teeming city…
Therese looks as bemused as she feels by the chance meeting. “It seemed like a nice day to take photos in Central Park this morning,” she says by way of explanation. “And I was just walking to the train.”
“I love that sandwich shop on the corner,” Carol replies. “And then I thought I’d run few errands.”
Having justified themselves to each other, they lapse into silence. Carol feels as though her brain, a locomotive moving steadily in one direction, is now stuck in its wheelhouse, waiting for the turntable to spin back around. She offers Therese an embarrassed smile. Therese returns it, then lifts her camera and snaps a picture.
“Oh!” Carol exclaims. “I got these for you.” She extends the bouquet to Therese, who takes it carefully. “I meant to give them to you tonight, but…”
“They’re lovely, Carol, thank you.” Therese buries her face in the flowers and inhales. She peers at Carol from behind a dahlia. “What are you doing now?”
“Well, I need to get some food for dinner, but as you can see, I’m rather encumbered. I might drive to the apartment to drop all this off and then go back out to the store.”
“Don’t be silly,” Therese says, hanging her camera around her neck and using her free hand to remove the packet of candles from Carol’s grasp. “I’ll help you carry.”
To Carol’s giddy, disbelieving delight, they cross the street and walk into the store side-by-side. She leads them through the aisles, pausing every so often to ask Therese’s opinion on a brand of sauce, or the ripeness of a tomato. At her suggestion, Therese selects a few pieces of fruit and a small cake for their breakfast. It’s the most basic, mundane activity they’ve ever accomplished together, and yet Carol feels as thrilled as though she has just won the lottery.
Therese notices her high spirits. “I’ve never seen someone so ecstatic about a wedge of cheese,” she teases.
“I do love a good parmesan.”
“An epicurean, then,” Therese murmurs, handing Carol an apple and letting their fingers brush together. “What else strikes your fancy?”
Carol bites her cheek and manages not to take the bait – not right off the hook, anyway. “Seafood, well-prepared,” she replies blandly, running a hand over a selection of various jams. “Lighter-than-air angel food cake. Toast with butter, of course.” She selects a jar and puts it in their basket; checks that they’re alone in their aisle. “You.”
Therese turns pink and ducks her head, pressing her chin to her chest. “You don’t play fair,” she says, in a voice so soft it’s almost inaudible.
Carol wants to reach for her; pull her close; remind her that, when it comes to this thing between them, there are no games – but the bell over the door chimes and a middle-aged man comes around the corner to peruse the condiments. She opts instead for a wink and a cheeky grin, hoping that Therese will understand the real sentiment that runs beneath. “Well, darling, that’s because I play to win,” she says.
Therese wrinkles her nose, but her eyes sparkle. “Is there anything else?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Carol says, leading them toward the register. “We have everything we need.”
There’s another moment of awkwardness when they get to Carol’s car – their date isn’t planned to start for three more hours – but Carol says, “You may as well come over now, unless you’d rather have some more time to yourself,” and Therese assents. She’s quiet on the ride over, gazing out the window as always. Carol glances over at every red light, but never glimpses more than the curve of her cheek.
It takes two trips to get everything up to the apartment, and Therese laughs when she sees how empty it still is. “Have you really been staying here?” she asks, peering into the cupboards at the lone plate and cup Carol keeps there.
“As much as I can. I go back to the house when I need fresh clothes and things, but I hate it there. Just one more week til the movers come, and then you won’t even recognize this place.”
Therese closes the cupboard door. “Were you very lonely?” she asks softly, not quite meeting Carol’s eyes. “These last few months, I mean?”
Carol nods. “I saw Rindy twice, both times at Harge’s parents’ house, and for no more than thirty minutes,” she tells Therese. “The rest of the time, I stayed cloistered. I wasn’t even supposed to see Abby. I did, of course, but only a handful of times. Keeping my nose clean, toeing the line, you know.”
Therese’s chin trembles. “I didn’t wish that for you,” she whispers. “Even when I was vexed, I hoped you were all right. That you were safe, and happy.” She takes a deep breath. “I hoped it was worth it.”
Carol presses her lips together, feeling a flare of white-hot rage – at Harge, at herself. “It wasn’t.”
The hurt is back, sharp and stifling, and it drives them out of the kitchen. In the absence of a couch or chairs or anything resembling the infrastructure necessary for a traditional social relationship, they undress and get into Carol’s bed. Carol presses her face into the pillow, shrinking away from the pain and anger swirling above them. Therese lays on her back.
“I felt so abandoned,” Therese says. “That was the worst part.”
Carol forces herself to raise her head. “I thought it would be less painful that way.”
Therese laughs – a harsh, barking sound. “Well, it wasn’t.” She shakes her head. “You made such a big decision for us, Carol, and without saying a word to me. Do you have any idea what that felt like?”
She doesn’t, but she can imagine. “Skydiving,” she mutters, mostly to herself.
“What?”
“Skydiving,” Carol repeats. “It’s something Abby told me once. She said whenever things feel out of control, I jump out of the plane with nothing by myself and my parachute, and I leave everyone else behind.”
Therese considers the idea. “Is that what you did to her, too?” she asks.
“Yes and no. It was different. But in some ways, it was the same.” Carol sighs. “Harge got something similar as well. He calls it my ‘scorched earth policy,’ but if I had to choose a metaphor...”
Therese says nothing. She watches Carol with big, solemn eyes until Carol can’t take the silence any longer.
“It’s a ghastly thing to do to anyone, not least someone you love,” she says. “I don’t know why I do it. I wish I didn’t. But I did, and you suffered, and I will regret that forever.”
Outside, a siren wails. They’re a few stories up, but not far enough to escape all the noise of the street. Therese rolls onto her side so they’re facing each other. “How do I know that you won’t disappear again, just the way you did before?” she asks. Her voice is as small and reedy as it was in the car after their encounter with the detective in Waterloo.
Carol reaches for her hand, unspeakably relieved when Therese doesn’t pull away. “I’m here now,” Carol tells her. “I can’t make you trust me, and I don’t blame you if you don’t, but I can tell you that I’m not going anywhere. I’m staying in the damn plane.”
Therese chuckles a little. Carol squeezes her fingers.
“What we do now depends on you,” she continues. “Tell me what you want, and we’ll do it.”
“What I want…” Therese muses, eyes turning up to the ceiling again. She exhales. “I want to stop feeling lonely. Even when I’m with you, I’m lonely. It wasn’t like that before.”
It feels like a punch in the chest. I always spend New Years alone, Carol thinks, nonsensically. “Abby says it will take time.”
Therese smiles. “She told me that, too.”
“You’ve been talking?”
“A little.”
Carol takes a moment to wonder at Abby and her seemingly endless capacity for tenderness. “That orchid in the kitchen is for her,” she tells Therese. “To thank her for everything.”
Therese snorts. “If that’s how we’re thanking her, we should go ahead and buy her a greenhouse.”
“Do you think she’s right?” Carol asks. “Is it really a question of time?”
She’s treated to a long, nerve-wracking silence. “Yes, I suppose so,” Therese finally replies. “Time in general, and time together. I already feel so much better, even just after these two days.”
“You do?” Carol is exuberant, and she doesn’t bother to hide it. Therese’s tolerant, affirming nod makes her feel ready to leap out of bed, pump her fists in the air, do a victory lap around the apartment.
She’s brought back to herself abruptly, however, when Therese remarks, “There is something else I want.”
“Anything,” Carol promises. “Favors, errands – you name it, it’s yours.”
Therese, face still and tranquil as a mountain lake, draws their clasped hands up and then under the blanket. Carol’s eyes go wide.
“Oh,” she gasps. “That.”
“Yes, that,” Therese says. Her face remains calm, but her voice is strained.
Carol needs no further invitation. She rolls Therese onto her back, slides on top of her, and sets to giving her exactly what she desires.
A week later, the apartment is a disorganized sea of moving containers and art and furniture. Therese picks her way across the living room carefully, balancing two plates on one arm and carrying an open bottle of wine in the other. When she reaches the couch – their little island in all the chaos – Carol helps her arrange everything on the makeshift coffee table (a crate that reads, ominously, “Miscellaneous”).
“I’ll go get some glasses for us,” Therese says, and turns to set off through the treacherous wilderness of cardboard boxes once more.
Carol snags the back of her blouse and reels her back in. “Let’s just drink from the bottle,” she suggests. It has been a long, exhausting day.
“Fine by me.”
Therese takes a swig, and Carol watches the way her throat moves as she swallows. A dribble of red liquid spills out of the corner of her mouth. She moves to wipe it away with her wrist, but Carol arrests her hand and licks it up instead. Therese sighs and tilts her head, letting Carol mouth at her jaw and throat.
“Thank you for helping today,” Carol murmurs between kisses. “You’re a darling to spend your weekend on such a dreadful task.”
“I’m getting the feeling I’ll be well-compensated for my time,” Therese replies, smiling faintly and humming as Carol sucks lightly at the spot where her pulse beats close to the skin. “I am hungry, though.”
Carol pulls back, content for the time being to defer passion for more basic requirements. She hands Therese one of the plates and they dig into their sandwiches. The first bite of turkey on rye makes Carol feel almost lightheaded; she hadn’t realized how famished she was.
Moving had been hard, much harder than she anticipated. Oppressive as the old house could be, it was also the place where Rindy was born, took her first steps, learned to speak, and so much more.
Partway through the day, Therese had found Carol crouched in the pantry, weeping over a drawing of three stick figures scrawled on the wallpaper near the baseboard. The figure on the left had a scribbled crown of hair and a bulging circle in the center of its body. “Rindy was three years old,” Carol explained, standing up and pressing a cloth dinner napkin to her eyes. “She was so excited for a little brother, and so devastated when I lost him.”
“Oh, Carol.” Instinctively, Therese had reached for Carol’s flat stomach, fingers splayed over the front of her dress. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Carol said bitterly. “At least it’s one less child to suffer through this godawful mess.”
She’d felt bad as soon as she said it – saw the flash of shame and guilt that Therese couldn’t quite hide – and checked to make sure the hallway was empty before gathering Therese into her arms.
“Not your fault,” she murmured. “None of it is.”
She felt Therese sigh and nod; heard her say, “No, but I wish it were different, all the same.”
Now, they lean against opposite arms of the sofa, legs tangled together, and pass the bottle of wine back and forth in comfortable silence. Therese’s gaze moves restlessly around the room, no doubt envisioning possible layouts. Her eye for composition has gotten even sharper, more discerning, in their months apart, and Carol looks forward to taking her suggestions.
“If I were to come live with you,” Therese says all of a sudden, the words popping like firecrackers in the quiet living room. “Everything with Harge and Rindy would only get more complicated and difficult.”
Carol rubs her left ring finger, a longstanding nervous habit that has outlasted the presence of any jewelry there. “That is true,” she replies. “But I knew that when I asked you. The offer still stands.”
“You’ve already given up so much.” Therese shakes her head. “You’d regret it.”
Despite herself, Carol smiles. “Are you trying to talk me out of doing this, Therese, or yourself? Because my mind is made up.”
Therese frowns, although the corners of her mouth turn up a little. She shakes her head again.
“If you aren’t comfortable with it, then by all means, let’s wait,” Carol says, when it become clear that Therese is planning to remain mute. “But dearest, I go into loving you with eyes wide open. I understand what it will cost me, and I gladly pay the price.”
There’s a tremor in the hard set of Therese’s jaw. “You shouldn’t have to.”
“No, I shouldn’t. Neither should you.” Carol shrugs. “Nevertheless, here we are.”
“Here we are,” Therese murmurs, more to herself than to Carol. She tips back her head to drink the last of the wine and sets the bottle on the floor. “We’re here,” she says, a little louder – like she’s testing the way it feels. “And we’re home.”
“Home,” Carol repeats. She wants to throw open the window and shout it into the street.
Therese stretches her legs out so that their ankles tangle together again, and smiles. “It does sounds rather lovely, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Carol agrees. “It’s the loveliest thing I can imagine.”