Chapters 14, 15, and 16

This is, hopefully, for Anon. I know it's a long post: read at your leisure.

Chapter 14
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The letter continued:

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“After Mike gave me benediction—that’s what he did, Lily--“I was a basket case for weeks. I prayed the kids didn’t notice—I know Mike did—I just kept thinking what should I do? Do I dare call Lily? Tell the kids? Move to the other bedroom? Move in with Paula?

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I was too sick to go back to church, which is a laugh since I hadn’t gone in the two years before and haven’t gone since. For a fleeting moment I thought about calling that therapist you and I saw together—remember her?-- Lucille, I think her name was--she had those long eyelashes and that hot pink lip liner—remember we dubbed her Britney Spears’ mother and never went back? She told us to meditate and the answer would be there. We meditated ourselves right into trouble that weekend—another of so many times that were so wonderful and so painful for us both.

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I’ve come to know how hard my guilt and ambivalence must have been for you, Lily—I wish I could have reconciled the all the judgments and labels within my head—rightly organized them all and let the air in—but I couldn’t. I created a rock and a hard place for myself and everyone else I loved and I couldn’t handle it. Maybe it seemed like I just wouldn’t, but I really don’t think I could then. It was all too confusing for me. I’ve spent the years since knowing that some of the happiest moments in my life have been doing nothing with you, and I’ve wondered a million times if I, or anyone else in my circumstance, has the right to choose that kind of nothing happiness above all else.
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Sometimes after this horrid chemo, when I can’t settle down or eat or sleep or outpace the pain, I concentrate on our weekend in Provincetown when the car died, you lost your wallet, our reservation got screwed up, my steak was overcooked, the whale watch was a bust—hell, even my martini was too weak—and yet we laughed our way through every moment of it. I still laugh so hard now whenever I think of that, and I wonder if these tears rolling down my sweet dry cheeks are due to the chemo or because of that fantastic memory.”
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Chapter 15

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“If I fell in love with someone else, would you still be my best friend?”

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“Alex, you ask unfathomable questions.”

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“Well, would you?”

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“I have no idea”.

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“Well, what do you think?”

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By now Lily had heard this question in its hundred variations.

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“Alex, I think you should stick to loving me”.

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Alex curled her lip and slowly smiled.

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“Maybe”, she said.

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Chapter 16

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If you look on any map, you’ll find Provincetown on Cape Cod, sitting at the very tip of the Massachusetts boot. It is surrounded by water and for decades has served as a certain Mecca for artists, bohemians, homosexuals, and anyone else who finds him or her self there for reasons of either anonymity or simply for the splendor and solitude of the ocean’s edge. In season the town population swells to 20.000 and off season shrinks back to its 3000-4000 year round residents.

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Anything goes in Provincetown, where diversity and festivity reign. Along the three mile stretch of Commercial Street, which runs parallel along a singularly magnificent stretch of the Atlantic Ocean bay, families of all sizes and persuasions shop and eat and look for sea shells, and same sex couples slowly walk hand-in-hand and throw their heads back in safe laughter.
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One weekend in August, Lily and Alex are beaching it at Herring Cove, lying on a blue and red towel with a giant illustration of Betty Boop in the middle. They are side by side at this public but clearly designated “gay” stretch of the Cape Cod National Seashore, lulled by the sound of three-foot waves roaring in and then crashing out again, warmed by the 85 degree sun on their skin. They hear voices and conversation all around them, the kind where you don’t pick up the details but you understand and feel the festivity by the distant melody alone.
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They lie there like chopsticks. They have been together three years--the best of friends all that time, Alex would tell you--and, although they don’t speak too much about it, Lily and Alex are in love. Alex will force the words sometimes, will enthusiastically talk about and imagine their future together, will earnestly remind Lily of their most reverent soul mate status.
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Despite her reassurances though, for all this time Alex has waxed and waned. She is married, she has young children, she is Catholic. And, as if these were not enough reasons to struggle, she also worries about her reputation.

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She had been a virgin before Mike and faithful throughout their marriage, and she is often out-of-control unnerved by what she is doing. Betraying Mike was bad enough, but she could not bear to think about how the world would view her with another woman. This was just not who she was. It went against her upbringing, her religion, her values. She owns her own business, for god sakes. She couldn’t bare thinking about the stern judgmental faces of the parents who would no longer let their kids come to her house, or the wringing disbelief of anger and damnation when her mother and father, who would no doubt refuse to meet Lily, learned the truth. Her employees would drop their respect for her with the speed of a laser beam and they would gossip in secret whispers about her, “Did you know she’s a lesbian?” they would say, “That explains why she never wears skirts”. They would tell her new employees first thing, and maybe even their business associates, and Alex’ power in the world would diminish, and shortly after that she would lose her swagger.
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But this day in Provincetown at Herring Cove, with the blinding warm sun and sliver-near touch of Lily beside her, is too perfect to trap herself in fear. On this day and into the evening, Lily and Alex have a disastrously unsatisfying lobster dinner at Clem and Ursies, walk hand-in-hand along the Court Street Bay, recalling and dissecting every silly thing they have ever done together, and fall asleep in a king sized bed in a pitch black room with the soft safe glow of a far off light every which way around them.