[Fiction]

[a/k/a]

An excerpt from Chapter Eight of a/k/a

By Ruthann Robson

I would have simply have died -- at fourteen, fifteen, sixteen -- to have been walking the beach and find what I can find now. Even before Penelope and her white stockings, I had fantasies of a beach full of mermaids, or, more frequently, a single mermaid with hair flat and wet against her breasts and with shimmering green eyes that matched her discrete scales. But those fantasies seemed more realistic than the possibility of this. Women in pairs or groups, playing catch or Frisbee or volleyball. Women bobbing in the waves or horizontal on the same kind of styrofoam surfboard that Malcolm has or splashing each other. Women sunning themselves on straw mats or faded quilts or beach chairs or spread on the sand as the waves deposit their little ponds of sand on their glowing thighs. Young ones with their lithe bodies tucked so neatly into their little bathing suits. And lots of not so young ones, not so lithe ones, not so neatly tucked ones. Older ones, singly or in pairs or groups, acting as if this women's beach was an ordinary place instead of a miracle.

I lapse into my best dyke walk. In my hot pink bathing suit, the slimming material gripping my flesh too tightly by now, what clue is there that I belong? That I am not some suburban housewife who watches soap operas, on vacation with her family, who just likes to walk on the beach and walked a little too far and found herself on this beach, and after a while, noticed the absence of men and remembered what her husband said: Habitues.

Without Lenore, what credential do I have? Lenore to hold my hand, although she is uncomfortable doing that in public now, even on a dyke beach. Lenore, who does not like to walk on the beach, who maybe doesn't like the beach at all, because if she did, wouldn't she be here with me already, instead of driving down today, probably on the New Jersey Turnpike at this very moment?

Of course, I must have had some credentials before Lenore. I remember stroking Penelope's dry thighs, dancing with Max, picking up prop girls, kissing women in a bathroom stall. But that was twenty years ago.

I reach the next jetty too quickly. I'm walking fast or the coastline is shrinking. On the other side of the rocks, the men control the sand. Singly or in pairs or groups. My squint reveals a little less athletic activity (the volleyball net is taut and lonely), but the same degree of swimming and sunning. I could walk there. I would be safe, feel safe. But that is the safety of knowing I would not be attacked, that these men's dangers are not interested in me. It is a comforting safety, but it is different from the safety of belonging.

So I stay on the south side of this jetty. On my side. With my kind. Where I belong. Or try to.

Sitting on a smooth huge stone. Near the white sign painted with cracked red lettering: DANGER STAY CLEAR. Which could mean the rocks, but I always think the dykes. Because all this safety and belonging is dangerous.

When a woman looks at me a moment too long, I smile. As if to disarm. I assume she thinks I am some former lover's former lover. Or someone she tried to pick up one night, ten years ago, or maybe even did pick up one night, ten years ago. Or someone who simply looks like someone else. For wasn't it true that just like cats, there were only really thirteen or so dykes in the world? They just reappeared and reappeared. The Jock. The Intellectual. The Bar Dyke. The Goddess Worshipper. It was at a party, I remember, and we had laughed as we tried to name the thirteen dykes. The prototypes, someone had said. "Stereotypes," some other dyke had complained, but laughed and joined in the game. Had that been Lenore? No, Lenore wasn't there. Wasn't she back in the hospital then? Or was she? I don't remember.

I don't remember ever going out again after Malcolm was born. But I must have. Some party for the cast and crew of In the Name of Love. A few prop girls would have been there. We would have told jokes and laughed. Probably lesbian jokes. Probably a joke about there only being thirteen dykes. I can't remember the details. I can only remember that none of the thirteen dyke types was undergoing psychiatric treatment.

"Excuse me." She's standing on the flat rock next to me. My face is level with a swirl of dark hairs curling around the crotch of her white bathing suit. "Aren't you...?"

"Hello," I say.

"Oh, you sound just like her."

It would be useless to ask "who?" I'm trapped, here on the jetty. I could scramble off, but that would be clumsy. And I don't really mind. She's pretty cute, actually. Part Jock. Part Intellectual. With that olive skin that tans so well. And those wisps of hair. I stand up so suddenly I'm almost dizzy.

"And you are?" Mavis Paige says this in her lawyer voice. A little formal, but revealing her sweet nature.

"Alexandra. Oh. I'm just so glad to see you here. I mean, we all admire Mavis. She has such an independent-woman presence, if you know what I mean." I could swear she winks.

I do? I do, really? Like a dyke? Some kind of dyke presence comes through Mavis?

But I say, "Well, I try."

"Though I have to admit I was disappointed to read about your husband."

"That's just publicity."

"Really? Oh, you mean like Rock Hudson? I just read this book about Rock Hudson and Hollywood and how he had to seem straight as an arrow."

I nod. If she wants to compare me to Rock and think glamour instead of grit, that's fine with me.

"Just wait right here. I've got to get my lover. She'll be so excited."

Lover. Such an intrusive word. But that's only an obstacle for BJ, not for Mavis Paige. Sure, Mavis acts like it's a problem, with all her sweetness and sincerity, but she' s been involved in more than a few triangles in her time. She usually loses, though. Of course, that was before. When she comes out as a lesbian on In the Name of Love, everything is going to be different.

It will begin with a dream sequence. All soft and blurry, so that the viewers have to resist the impulse to get up and try to clean their television screens. I'll be standing in a doorway. No, I'll be on the beach. Surf pounding in background the script will instruct. I'll have on a hot pink bathing suit. Bikini. I'll be sitting on a jetty. Sort of sexy and lost. And then she'll walk up to me. My lips will be level with her crotch. A few hairs will be visible -- just to me, not to the audience -- at the line of her leg. The camera will take my point of view and scan up her stomach, past her breasts, revealing her face.

But it's obscured in the mist. Even to me.

Alexandra? No. Not her, trotting after her lover.

Lenore? I can't even pretend it's her.

Some other character? Grace? Bethany? No. The sponsors will never go for that.

A mermaid? No. I'm too grown up.

I stand up. The focus is no longer soft and blurry; it's sharp; it's hard.

It's her. That woman who keeps entering my thoughts, as if I had no control of my own mind.

I whisper her name, although I don't know it.

Instead of sneaking looks at each other in some dim hallway, we're staring -- glaring, almost -- eye to eye in the brightest sunlight. The bluest band from the horizon approaches and then circles us, so that we are a cameo. We'll be appearing with the other cameos in future advertisements.

"Hey." Alexandra seems shorter. Perhaps only because the woman I assume must be her lover is quite tall.

"I love the show," the tall woman says. All Jock. I find out her name, the fact that they are both nurses, and they have always thought Mavis should be a lesbian.

"It must be hard with all that publicity," Alexandra sympathizes.

"Is it all false?" her lover asks.

"Just about," I admit.

"Even the part about the horses?"

I look past them, toward the horizon.

"You mean, you don't have miniature horses?" Alexandra sounds so petulant.

"Oh no. That part is true." My lie is as easy as a line from a script. Episode #999999.

"I knew it. I just knew it." Alexandra takes her lover's hand.

And then they are gone.

Before I think to tell them to write the show and say they want Mavis to come out as a lesbian.

Before I could persuade Alexandra to leave her tall lover and come home with me. Home to the beach house I bought for my mom and Mimi, for Lenore, and for Malcolm. He's probably still with his friends, but could be there waiting. And Lenore. Yes, surely Lenore will be there by now. Because if she isn't there soon, it probably won't be worth driving down.

I make crab cakes, in case anyone shows up.

I dial the rotary telephone; no answer. She must be on her way.

I dial again. I dial until my finger is sore and I believe push button phones are the greatest invention since sliced bread.

Malcolm's face is red with heat and happiness when he returns. We play a four-hour game of Monopoly. The time it should have her to drive.

The last lights streak the sky with a deep almost-red pink.

Malcolm is trying to convince me to take him and tow of his friends to the boardwalk when the phone rings.

We look at each other. He has a weak smile.

It's Lenore, of course. Of course, she's not able to make it. "Something came up."

"What?" I ask my lover, but she doesn't answer. Says something about the car and the yard and the traffic and the sofa. Doesn't say she wants to speak to Malcolm, even when I ask.

"What's wrong?" I ask my lover, again and again.

Until she is sobbing.

Until I stop asking.

And she is suddenly coherent, calm. Says everything is fine. She's just tired. and then there's that "situation with the sofa."

"Oh."

"Love you," she says. And hangs up as if I'm crazy to think anything could be wrong.

I should be used to this. I should never have agreed to her plan that she leave earlier to avoid the traffic and Malcolm and I would follow. I should pack Malcolm and our stuff back in the car and drive back home to see if she's fine.

I should, I should.

"Oh, fuck," I say. This is not a line from any script.

"Yeah," Malcolm replies.

We stand there, looking at the olive green rotary phone. As if we expect it to ring again.

"Let's go to the boardwalk," Malcolm finally suggests.

I win five stuffed penguins. Hit that clown between the eyes every time.

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