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It was early fall 1953. In Manhattan, a high-rise luxury apartment building stood, proud and privileged, over the bustling streets below. Carol and Therese had been living together in a two-bedroom for less than a year, doing their best to seem simply friends. For the most part no one questioned it. One neighbor, unfortunately, was already suspicious. The blonde furniture broker couldn’t decided if she was relieved or upset to find herself face-to-face on a regular basis with one Mrs. Amanda Marshall. It turned out that the sour, silver-haired woman liked to come home from her shopping about the same time Carol came home from work, and that she was the local gossip.
Knowing how important it was to keep the air clear around herself and her secret lover, Carol made it a point to introduce herself and engage with Mrs. Marshall on a regular basis. Sometimes the information was quite useful: the couple on floor 3 had just given birth and could use a casserole. Sometimes it was dreadful: the three men on floor 8 were suspected of being communists, and were not nearly as deft at deflecting attention as Miss Aird.
Today, however, Mrs. Marshall hit a nerve: Therese. After exchanging pleasantries on the elevator, Carol had been trapped in a winding story about Mrs. Marshall’s cousin’s son. With deft eyes, the nosy woman finally felt comfortable enough to ask, like a would-be-Marple, “Why do you and Therese live alone together?”
Carol had a defense ready. “Well, it certainly isn’t safe for a woman to live alone, Mrs. Marshall, and I suspect that one day Therese might find a dashing boy and run off. For now, however, she is my dear friend and I am happy to be introducing her to the right people.” The tweed-wearing businesswoman felt a little oily just saying the phrase, but high-society airs were the maneuvers she knew best.
“Just don’t put any ideas into her head about divorce, Miss Aird,” the nebby nancy replied, wagging a deli receipt toward her neighbor, “She deserves an honest shot at a proper marriage. I know, what if we introduce her to someone?”
“I’ve been looking, but I just don’t see any men who will respect her career.”
Mrs. Marshall looked inflamed, leaning back on her heel the tiniest bit.
Carol continued, “It’s not as though women didn’t do their fair share during the war.”
“That was a grave emergency.” Fear shone in her eyes, framed by crow’s feet, met with hands that had known rations.
“Yes, but it showed the grit American women are made of. I don’t begrudge Miss Belivet wanting to find out her own limits as we did.”
“And who will raise her children? A nanny?”
Carol had just about enough. Time to start constructing terrible lies. She looked hurt, just a bit, as though her toe had been stepped on.
Mrs. Marshall gasped, “You don’t mean to tell me?”
Carol swallowed a bit and lowered her voice to above a whisper, “It’s a delicate topic for her, you see. She comes back from the doctor in a bit of a low sometimes.”
Miss Marshall bought it. She put a hand on Carol’s shoulder. “I won’t breathe a word of it.” Given the chance to play concerned grandmother seemed to calm Amanda’s investigative attitude.
“Thank you,” Carol feigned a co-conspirator’s smile, “I’m sure she’ll find her way, but until then I’m keeping a bit of an eye on her.”
There was absolutely no way in name of our Sainted Mother that Mrs. Marshall wasn’t going to spread that rumor all over the building and half of upper Manhattan. Carol was almost glad of it. It saved her from having to do it herself.
“I’ll let you know if I find a young man who will be understanding,” Mrs. Marshall said with a conciliatory pat. With that, she hobbled off toward her apartment.
Carol kept her facade until she managed to close the apartment door behind her, having to keep herself from giggling wildly as soon as it shut. Something about coming home always helped her drop her mask for a minute. It was a nice breath of fresh air.
Therese called from the kitchen, “I’m finishing up the dishes from last night. Would you like a drink?”
“Yes, but I can get it myself,” Carol set down her bag, took off her heels, and removed her blazer. With the floating ease that came only of hard training, she met her favorite brunette in the kitchen.
The apartment was well decorated in greens and yellows. There wasn’t quite as much molding as Carol would have liked, but it was painted a pristine titanium white. The curtains were brown to match the dark wood furniture, which was upholstered entirely in the olive green of the living room walls. The flooring was an ancient wooden flooring, possibly in need of replacement, but it would cost too much money and hassle to do so, so they had settled for rugs to pick up the yellow from the kitchen and entranceway.
With a kiss on the cheek, the older woman asked, “How was your day, angel?”
Therese replied without turning from the dishes she was washing, her voice upbeat and cheerful, “One of my pictures will be in the entertainment section tomorrow. How was yours?”
“Fine,” Carol poured herself a rye, neat, “Uneventful, until I ran into our dear neighbor Mrs. Marshall.”
“Oh?”
“I may or may not have implied that you were barren.”
Therese stopped scrubbing. Her voice dropped. “Oh.”
“She was asking questions,” Carol’s stomach had fallen out, “and we’ve never really discussed our cover story.”
“I didn’t think we needed one.” Therese still wasn’t looking at her lover as she dried her hands.
“We do.”
Now the two sets of eyes met, a lightning flash of anger into a sea of apology. “Did it ever occur to you that I might want children?”
“Do you?” Carol’s voice was calm, her arms crossed, drink on the counter.
“No, but I don’t like having assumptions made about me.”
“I am sorry, my angel, truly.” Carol lit a cigarette and took a long, nervous drag.
Therese took off her apron and walked off without a word; Carol knew better than to follow. The younger woman tended to shut down when her emotions flared up. It had taken Carol only two fights to realize that Therese did not respond well to caresses and overbearing apologies. It had taken much longer for the photographer to realize she could walk away into her own space if she needed to. Carol started to preheat the oven and put the apron on to take over washing. It gave her hands something to do while her mind went in circles.
She realized she was in the wrong, but that didn’t make it any easier to wait.
As if on cue, the upset party walked back into the kitchen just as Carol had finished setting the table for dinner: two oven-ready meals that had been transferred onto plates. Just because they were busy didn’t mean they couldn’t have nice things.
“Apologize again.” Therese said coldly.
“I’m sorry for lying on your behalf without consulting you first. I should have made an excuse to leave.” Carol’s arms felt bereft, and she wasn’t sure she could eat.
Still sullen, Therese walked into those arms like a ship into port. Carol tried not to let relief spill into a tear and focused on the smell of the shorter woman’s hair.
“I do like the story you concocted, for the record.”
“Oh? Why.”
“It’s easy to use.”
“You should have seen Amanda. She almost apologized when I told her.”
Therese smiled and let out a chuckle, “Make up another wild story about me?”
They were swaying now, still wrapped together. “You have a lead to a secret mafia fight ring. You could blow the entire case wide open any day now. Now if only you could find a secret location in which to develop the film.”
They shared a laugh and separated. Therese went to serve herself iced tea and food.
Dinner went well, the two sharing tales of their workday. The intern had almost ruined another roll of film by bursting into the darkroom again. One of the furniture store customers had actually fallen asleep in the armchair he was purchasing. Abby was finally starting to pick up from being dumped by the redhead.
After dinner, they went to the couch, leaving a record on on for a bit. Carol lay with her head in Therese’s lap and the brunette idly stroked the fair curls. Rarely, one of them would hum a part they particularly liked, and the cool fall air did nothing to dampen the warmth they felt. Time grew long and lovely, seeming almost to pause for them.
As Carol relaxed, grew unguarded by the feel of soft thighs under her head and the idle hair petting, the tears finally fell. It wasn’t until a shaking exhale came out of her roommate that Therese realized what was going on.
“Do you want to tell me?” It was the best way she knew to acknowledge the unusual show of emotion from the ex-debutante.
“I really wanted to have Rindy.” Came the reply, a surreal and pitiful whisper.
The hair stroking continued. The fingertips spoke, in the way only bodies can, to say that the divorcee’s grief was not out of place, would never be, that the tears had a place to fall, and the proper place for them was on Therese’s skirt.
“When Harge wasn’t around,” she continued, voice holding strong aside from the occasional warble, “I would tickle her, or let her have a chocolate. It was selfish of me; in a way I was trying to win her over from Harge.”
Therese could see it. She could see that what Carol lost was not these particular actions but what they would have grown into. As Rindy got older, tickling would have been exchanged for early makeup lessons, the sort where everything looked terrible and had to be washed off but the laughter more than made up for it. Chocolates exchanged for sips of sherry snuck after dinner.
It was too much for the young lesbian to put words to. She kept caressing, and counted herself lucky to see a box of tissues on the side table by her elbow. She handed one to her love.
Carol was slowing down now, the body pulling up out of its momentary grief. It was the first time tears had fallen, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last. She wiped her face with the tissue she had been given and sat up. Unable to face Therese with ruined mascara, she got up and walked toward the bathroom.
“I’m going to shower and get into something more comfortable.”
A few minutes later, Carol emerged from the bedroom in slippers and a robe, nightgown showing from underneath, face clean. She sat next to Therese, who had been reading a book, Simone de Boudoir or whatever her name was.
Therese shut her book and kissed Carol’s cheek. “Feeling better?”
“Much. Thank you.”
“Why don’t I shower and we can make an early night of it?”
“If by, ‘an early night’, you mean something entirely different than sleeping, yes.”
They shared a smile. Hand called to hand and fingers intertwined, just as their breaths mingled and the night air swirled around them. It was a quiet love, always would be, but it burned as only a well-kept hearth ever could.