Carolyn had been living here, and then she fell in love with another girl and left me, and that was my farewell present to her. A very appropriate one. A heart, jealousy-green, with red streaks like blood.”
“Did you love her very much?”
“Very much.”
“And you came back to see me today because you wanted-to make love to me?”
“Partly that. Partly because I liked you and I wanted to know you. I was surprised when I realized you weren’t an overt lesbian. And then I figured you out.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, I decided that you were gay without knowing it. The instincts are there. The way you reacted toward your husband, the way heterosexual relations did nothing for you. You were a lesbian but no one had shown you the way.”
“Maybe I’m just frigid.”
“No.”
“You seem so certain. How do you how that?”
“You know it yourself. You’ve had sexual feelings. You’re a sexual person, Rhoda. It shows in the way you talk and the way you move and everything else. It shows in your own awareness of your own body. You couldn’t possibly be sexless.” She smiled. “There are sexless people, Rhoda. I’ve met some of them, women with no feelings in their bodies. Some of them play with lesbianism when nothing else works for them, and lesbianism leaves them just as cold. They can’t love, they don’t have love living inside them. I’ve met them and I know what they’re like. But you’re not like that, Rhoda.”
“I don’t know.”
“I do.”
She lit another cigarette. Her hands were steadier now. She felt excitement percolating within herself, but she had no immediate fear, no odd feeling of anxiety. The discussion was a calm and cool one now. They were talking about her sexual impulses, analyzing her possible homosexuality in a slightly dispassionate fashion, and she was quite relaxed about it. The undercurrent of tension and excitement was not unpleasant or disturbing.
“You were made to love,” Megan told her, “You tried to give that love to a man. You know how impossible that is. Why don’t you try giving it to me?”
“I-”
“You can’t bury it. You’ve been trying to do that. You know how it works out.”
“It hasn’t worked out so badly.”
“Hasn’t it? You have the same nightmare over and over again. You live a lonely life and you feel the loneliness of it. You’ve been trying to starve your own need for love and you need to give love and you need to receive it. It’s a stubborn force, Rhoda. It won’t let itself be starved out. It’s too real a need to be dismissed that easily.”
She started to say something, to offer up some objection, then changed her mind. She smoked her cigarette and asked if there was any coffee left.
“I’ll get some.”
Megan brought back two cups of coffee. The coffee was hot and strong. Rhoda sipped hers, set the cup down in the saucer. She took a last drag on her cigarette and put it out. A line from Eliot- I have measured out my life in coffee spoons. In coffee spoons, in cigarette butts, in days awake and nights asleep. She had been measuring out her own life, parceling it out piece by piece. Years were passing, filled with nothing, and she was twenty-four years old and unutterably alone.
How much was Megan offering her? And how much would it cost her to accept Megan’s offer?
She sipped more coffee. “I’m all lost,” she said.
“Poor girl.”
“Poor girl. Yes. I had such a sweet time tonight. Dinner, the wine, being with you. I haven’t had an evening like that since I left Tom. Or since longer than that. I needed it, the friendship, all of it. I thought you would be my friend.”
“I am your friend.”
“I thought that was all you wanted.”
“I want that and more. I want to be your friend. And your lover.”
“My lover.”
“Yes.”
“What would we do? I don’t understand.”
“Does it matter?”
“I-”
“I would make love to you,” Megan said, “I would make you feel like what you are, like a woman made for love. I would show you the dark side of the moon, I would make you laugh and cry. And we would be close and warm and nothing would matter, nothing at all.”
“You make it sound beautiful.”
“It will be beautiful.”
“Will?”
“Will. Because you can’t deny yourself the world, Rhoda. You can’t cut out a part of yourself. And sooner or later you’ll realize this.”
“I can’t.”
“You will.”
“I can’t.” She lit another cigarette, nervous again now, afraid of what she might do, more afraid of what she might desire to do. She smoked nervously and missed the ashtray when she went to duck her ashes. She tried to scoop up the ashes and brushed them onto the floor in her clumsiness. Megan told her to forget it. She looked down at the ashes on the rug and thought that she was going to cry. She didn’t know why she ought to cry but she felt tears welling up behind her eyes and was afraid they would spill out momentarily.
“I feel so funny,” she said.
“Of course you do. Poor girl, you have to look at yourself all differently now. It’s a new world, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know what it is.”
“A brand new world. Right now it’s frightening because it’s so unfamiliar. When you learn to know it you’ll find out that you belong in it, that it’s the only world for you. The world of shadows, the twilight world. There are a great many cliches for it. But it’s my world. And yours, Rhoda.”
“I feel like crying.”
“Go ahead.”
“I-”
“Let it out. Don’t try to hold it in, baby, just relax and let it out. You can cry in front of me, Rhoda.”
She cried. She couldn’t help it.
“I have to go home, Megan.”
She was standing now, her tears washed away, fresh lipstick on her lips. It was late and she was tired and frightened and she had to go home.
“Stay.”
“I can’t.”
“Sleep here.”
“Oh, Megan, no I can’t. I honestly can’t.”
Megan was holding her arm. “Don’t go now,” she said. “It’s late and the streets are dark.”
“I’ll be all right.”
“And you’ll go back to a sterile little room and lie awake all night. Or fall asleep and dream bad dreams. You can’t be alone tonight, Rhoda. Too much has happened to you already. You need a settling time, a time to digest it all, and you ought to have somebody near you. Letting yourself cry was part of it. Being with someone is another part of it. You’ve had quite a night. You got drunk and you got shocked, and you’ve been forced to start seeing things in a different light, and this is no time for you to be alone.”
“But I can’t-”
“What?”
“I can’t let you make love to me, Megan.”
