“What do you mean?” Lara asked.
“I mean, could they
be
any more gay?” Bree shook her head, laughing. “Gender-neutral toys? They’re like a parody of themselves. And that hideous fresco. And the rainbow flag!”
“We have a rainbow flag in our kitchen,” Lara pointed out.
“I know, but that’s totally different. Ours is a wall hanging that
we’ve had since college. Theirs is roughly the size of the Goodyear blimp.”
“What’s wrong with gender-neutral toys?” Lara asked.
“Nothing! But that kid’s toys weren’t gender neutral—it was all girl stuff! I bet you if they had a daughter, they wouldn’t let her play with Barbies in a million years, you know? But here’s poor Dylan, and it seems like a swell idea to load him up with pink plastic. His future wife will thank them? There ain’t gonna be a future wife if he stays on this track.”
“I think he’s a really bright kid,” Lara said.
“So do I.” Bree laughed. “It’s just—”
“Are you trying to pick a fight?” Lara said.
“No!” Bree said. “God, I thought you’d think it was funny too.”
Bree knew there was a time when Lara would have laughed along with her. They had often joked over the years that they both came from the sort of Southern homes where political correctness goes to die. But lately things had gotten tenser than ever. It had started with Sally’s wedding more than a year earlier and grown worse with every passing month.
“You know, you’re so critical of my boss, but I’ve never even met anyone from your office,” Lara said after a long pause.
She said it as if she had just thought of it, when in fact this complaint recurred on a near-weekly basis.
“The people I work with aren’t like that,” Bree said for perhaps the six-hundredth time.
“What do you mean? You all go out drinking together every week.”
“Yeah, but people don’t bring their significant others along. It’s more for stress relief than bonding. It’s like parallel play for adults.”
“Do they even have significant others?” Lara asked.
Bree’s coworkers at the firm were mostly single guys in their twenties and thirties, something she knew irked Lara.
“The partners are all married. But otherwise, I don’t really know,” Bree said.
“You don’t
know?
How is that possible? You’ve worked there for two years!”
Bree shrugged. “Because we just don’t talk about our personal lives.”
Lara bit her lower lip. “So you’re saying it’s normal that none of them knows about me,” she said.
Bree instantly felt terrible. “Like I told you, sweetie, that kind of stuff hardly ever comes up.”
“I feel like you don’t want me to meet them,” Lara said. After a long pause, she added, “When are we ever just going to have a normal relationship?”
“Never,” Bree snapped.
They rode in silence the rest of the way home.
In truth, she didn’t really want her coworkers to know about Lara. When they all went out for beers after work on Thursdays, Bree actually put on makeup and flirted with her office mate Chris and their boss, Peter. She enjoyed feeling the appreciation of men once in a while. One night after too many margaritas, Chris told her he thought he had fallen for her. They ended up kissing in his car, though she never told anyone, not even Celia, because telling someone would make it real.
Bree had no idea why she had done it, and the guilt weighed heavily on her. When things with Lara were at their worst, she often thought back to their easy, happy days at Smith. Why couldn’t they get back there again?
Some parts of their world accepted them as a couple—Lara’s family and most of their college friends and the girls from their soccer team and book club. And some people just didn’t get it—Bree’s family and Celia to some extent, and, Bree assumed, the guys from work. She saw no point in shoving the relationship in their faces. Lara was out and proud of it wherever she went. But for Bree, it never felt that simple. She was in a lesbian relationship, but she was not a lesbian. She loved Lara, but could she really live in a house with a rainbow flag out front and raise sons who slept in canopy beds and played with baby dolls?
She realized that Nora and Roseanna were extreme—most lesbians they knew were pretty normal parents. She knew Lara wasn’t asking her for a naked lady fresco, just for her commitment. But the older Bree got, the more conservative she felt, the more she
understood and valued the very heteronormative (as April would say) way in which her parents had raised her. She had gone off to Smith and become a lawyer and found this person she loved, and yet a huge part of her just wanted to be home at night, cooking dinner while her husband read the paper at the kitchen table and the little boys played Tonka trucks at his feet.
On the Saturday following their dinner with Nora and Roseanna, Bree and Lara woke up early to go for a run. The night before they had had sex for the first time in two weeks, and they’d gone for a long dinner at a little French place in their neighborhood, drinking wine and holding hands, laughing at old stories, and flirting with the pretty Parisian waitress. These bursts of happiness never seemed to last very long, but each time they both hoped that maybe some spell had been broken and they would just be happy now, like old times.
As they headed out the door, the phone rang.
“Let it ring,” Bree said, but Lara answered it, and then, looking puzzled, handed the receiver to Bree.
“It’s Tim,” she said.
Bree’s brother was about to start his senior year of college. He had never gotten up before ten on a Saturday in his life. Besides that, they rarely corresponded except through e-mails—he would send Bree some inappropriate joke or a link to a disgusting video of a guy having sex with a horse, and she would write back telling him that he was probably going to get her fired if he didn’t quit it.
“Timmy?” she said into the phone. He was breathing hard.
“Mom’s in the hospital,” her brother said.
He told her that their mother had had a heart attack while tending to her garden in the front yard. A neighbor saw her lift an enormous clay pot of tulips, and then suddenly collapse.
“Is she going to be okay?” Bree asked.
“We don’t know yet,” Tim said, his voice wavering. “She’ll have to have surgery in a few days, once she’s stable. I think you should come home.”
Bree thought of how young he was. She should be making calls like this, not him.
“Of course,” she said. “Tell Daddy I’ll catch the first plane I can get. And tell everyone I love them. And Timmy, I love you.”
He sort of grunted at that, and Bree smiled for a moment, thinking of him, goofy and unsentimental as ever. It felt vaguely comforting for some reason.
When she hung up the phone, she turned to Lara.
“My mom had a heart attack,” she said.
“Oh sweetie!” Lara said. “How is she?”
Bree shook her head. “Tim said they don’t know yet. I’ve got to get there.”
She ran into the bedroom, pulled out Lara’s old soccer bag from under the bed, and began filling it with clothes. Lara followed close behind.
“I’ll book a flight right now,” she said, and she wrapped her arms around Bree. “It’s going to be okay,” Lara whispered. “Honey, it’s okay.”
“A heart attack,” Bree said. “My mother? This is the kind of thing that should be happening twenty years from now. She’s still so young.”
“It’s awful,” Lara said.
A while later, Lara kissed her, then left the room and went to the computer to buy tickets. Bree sat down on the bed and thought of her father. He had met her mother in grade school and never spent a day away from her since. He couldn’t do anything without her—tie a tie, or write a letter, or make a sandwich, or talk to one of his children about something important.
“Do you think we can make it to the airport for the nine o’ clock?” Lara called from the den.
“We have to,” Bree said, and just then she was struck by an image of her mother waking up to see the two of them standing over her together. She might have another heart attack right then and there.
On holidays and other occasions, Bree took a stand. She knew she couldn’t be with both Lara and her parents, so she chose Lara. But this was different. Her mother needed her, the version of her
that the family loved. She pulled her long hair over her shoulder, and then went to Lara. She knew this wasn’t going to go over well, but what choice did she have?
“Baby, I think I need to do this solo,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Lara said.
“I think I should go home alone. You know how they feel about us, and—”
Lara looked stricken. “You shouldn’t have to be alone right now,” she said.
“I won’t be, I’ll have my family there,” Bree said.
“What if I just come and stay in a hotel by myself?” Lara said. “That way we wouldn’t be sleeping in sin under their roof or anything.”
Sleeping in sin
. She had meant it sarcastically, and Bree found this enraging given the circumstances.
“I’m sorry, but I’m going alone,” Bree said before she turned back into their room and finished packing.
Lara went into the bathroom and slammed the door.
Bree knew this habit of hers rankled Lara more than any other—her ability to make a decision and announce that there would be no further discussion was, in Lara’s opinion, “Cruel and selfish behavior, the type usually enacted by men with small penises.”
At the airport, Bree watched families pass through security and thought of how she had become an outcast in her own family five years earlier. The separation had been heartbreaking, and yet it had never seemed quite real to Bree. Now she was going home for the first time since leaving for law school. She wished it could be for any other reason.
Bree bought an enormous Hershey bar in the duty-free shop and started eating it square by square. This made her think of the way Sally used to nibble cookies like a mouse and, in turn, of how Sally had lost her mother at such a young age. If her own mother died, Bree thought, she would never forgive herself for these years of virtual silence they had wasted. For a moment, she wished Sally were
there with her. They hadn’t spoken in a year. Bree had not heard from April either, but she heard of them through Celia, ever the peacekeeper. Bree kept meaning to call Sally, but she wanted to do it when she had good news to share, when she knew she could prove Sally wrong about Lara. Sally was pregnant now, five months along. Another mother born, Bree thought. She was hurt that Sally hadn’t called her, that she had had to hear the news from Celia.
Bree felt tears forming in her eyes. She hated crying in public. She dug her cell phone out of her purse and called Celia, who always said the right thing. True to form, she sounded soothing but not patronizing. She didn’t tell Bree not to cry or worry. She offered to come down to Savannah right away.
“Thank you, but I’ll be okay,” Bree said.
“Are you guys going to stay at your parents’ house?” Celia asked.
“It’s just me,” Bree said. “Lara didn’t come.”
“Why not?”
“She wanted to, but I said no,” Bree said. “I just thought it would be best to avoid all that family drama.”
Celia grew silent.
“You think that’s fucked?” Bree said.
“It’s a really tough situation, and you should do whatever you need, sweetie,” Celia said.
“But am I being awful to Lara here?” Bree said. “Come on, brutal honesty, please.”
Celia sighed. “Look, you’re my best friend, you’re my priority. I’m not really concerned about whether you’re being awful to Lara. I’m just thinking that one of the only reasons to have a significant other in the first place is so you don’t have to be alone at times like this. If you’re shutting her out now, well, then, what’s the point?”
Bree didn’t know how to respond.
“Listen, my plane’s boarding,” she said at last. “I’ll call you when I land.”
She hung up the phone and knew right away who she needed to call. Despite how long it had been, she dialed the number and listened to six rings, then seven. Finally, the machine picked up.
“You’ve reached the Browns!” Sally’s recorded voice sounded
tinny, but so so happy. “Leave a message for Sally or Jake after the tone.”
Bree hung up.
A moment later, her cell phone rang.
“Bree?!” Sally said. “I was bringing in the groceries. I just missed you! What’s going on?”
“It’s my mom,” Bree said, starting to cry.
She told Sally about her mother, about Lara. She asked about Sally’s pregnancy, and Sally surprised her by sounding utterly unsentimental about the whole thing—she said that every morning she woke up feeling like she had thrown back a bottle of cheap tequila the night before.
Twenty minutes later, before she hung up the phone, Bree whispered, “I’m sorry for what happened at the wedding. And I’m sorry for not calling sooner.”
“Love means never having to say you’re sorry,” Sally said dramatically, and they both burst out laughing, because of all the stock phrases in history, this one was the most ridiculous.
“Seriously, though, I’m sorry, too,” Sally said.
“Thanks for making me laugh,” Bree said.
“Anytime,” Sally said.
At twenty-four, Bree’s brother Roger had their father’s long, lean body and dark hair. When she walked into the terminal in Savannah, he hugged her tight. Her brothers had visited her in San Francisco a few times, and each time she saw Roger he looked more and more like a man.
Bree’s parents had never been to her apartment. It had been nearly six months since she last saw them, at a big family reunion in Tennessee. “Neutral territory, so hopefully World War Three won’t break out,” she had said to Lara, hoping she wouldn’t ask to come along. She didn’t, and when Bree saw her family alone like that, she felt overjoyed. Her father had kissed her cheeks. Her mother had held her hand like they were schoolgirls. She realized then that they still loved her, as much as ever.
“Oh, it is so damn good to see you,” Roger said. Then, looking past her, he asked, “Where’s L-Dog?”
L-Dog, Bree thought. As if the two of them were old poker buddies or something.
“She’s not coming,” Bree said.