'It's just too precious, Lee, to allow strangers to poke their fingers into it. Yes, I'd love to go to your club with you, go to the coffeehouses, kiss you in public, but I just can't risk it. You tell me that my refusal to breathe the fresh air is stifling us both, but I know, as sure as I'm sitting here, that coming out would be the end of it. I'm not strong enough, Lee. I'm just not strong enough.'
Lee let it go that night, angry at herself for handling the confrontation so badly. It was out in the open now, though, and Lee knew that Kate's refusal fully to accept herself chipped at the foundations of their relationship and cut them off from the very community where they might find strength. She could not let it lie, and two days later, on a Friday night before two days off for them both, she approached the problem again, Kate was ready for her, and blew up.
The battle lasted until Sunday night, when Kate packed a bag and left the house, saying that she had to sleep or she would be dangerous on duty. She stayed away all week. Lee went through the motions of therapy with her clients for two days, and halfway through Wednesday realized that it was impossible. She went home to think.
It took her three days before she could see the truth, three days and nights before she was sure of her facts and could analyze the situation as she would a case. By Saturday night she had to admit it: Kate's mania for privacy, her phobia of self-revelation, would have to be the basic premise of any future life together.
Subject's job, she told herself as if dictating a case history, Subject's job is one which brings Subject into constant proximity with the worst in humanity: pimps who sell children as prostitutes; men who sell drugs to melt brains; large and angry men with various weapons; drunks who stink and vomit on their rescuers; bodies dead a week in August, smelling so awful the wagon men wait outside. Subject puts her body and her mind on the line daily, in exchange for which she is allowed to be a part of one of the most powerful brotherhoods there is, men and a few women who are united in the inhuman demands made on them, a secret society in which superiority is recognized and rewarded, where the bickering and back-biting inherent in any family structure does not weaken the mystique that—give it credit—had sustained Subject for two years until she had been brought up short by the ugly, inevitable end product of distancing herself from the rest of humanity. It is the most public and visible of jobs, with the most stringently demanding code for its members. Is it not understandable that Subject refuses to risk an action that threatens to leave her without support, leave her outside the fraternity? Further, is it not understandable that Subject, to avoid being completely consumed by the demands of her job and the unwritten demands of her brothers and sisters on the force (a telling appellation), guards her true self, her private life, with such ferocity?
So. If Kate remains a cop, she will continue to guard herself, by giving herself a nickname, by not socializing with other cops, by keeping her home life a hermetically sealed secret. The question was, then, could Lee survive in a vacuum?
Another day alone, and she had decided that living with Kate was worth the suffocation. It might not always be, and Kate would change, given time, but for now, it would have to do.
She telephoned Kate at her hotel, they had a brief conversation, and Kate was home in forty minutes. Patiently, Lee set out to change Kate. Stubbornly, Kate would be moved a fraction of a pace at a time. The house came to them then, took up all their time and most of their energy, and despite the shakiness of that one cornerstone in their lives, a strength grew in them, supported them, drew them on.
They were happy. Against all odds, two troubled people had found their place and worked hard to preserve it.
They had never had an overnight guest before. Kate's job, the more vulnerable, had never intruded before. Outsiders had never entered the heart of the home. And now, they were being invaded.
THREE
THE CITY
Contents - Prev/Next
26
Contents - Prev/Next
At five minutes before four o'clock Monday morning Kate's car reached the top of Russian Hill and rounded the last corner before home. With considerable relief she poked her finger at the button for the garage door opener and saw the light spill into the darkness as the door rose slowly to accept them. Her passenger's eyes flew open with the sharp turn and the abrupt drop from street level, and when the door had rumbled shut she slowly sat up and looked around in the sudden, still silence.
'Home.' Kate smiled at her. 'You wait here for a minute.' Kate got out and did a quick check of the garage— in the storage closet, in the back of Lee's sleek almost-new convertible, under the stairs. She then slid home the bolt on the garage door and went to open Vaun's side.
'We'll get you settled and I'll come back for your things.'
'I can carry one,' Vaun protested.
'Best not.' Kate, hands empty, led the way up the stairs. She punched the code into the alarm panel at the top, opened the lock with her key, and reached up immediately to still the little bell the door set to ringing as it opened. She bolted the door behind them, flipped the inside alarm switch back on, and turned to Vaun.
'I'll introduce you to the alarm system tomorrow. Can I get you anything to eat or drink?'
'I'd like a glass of water.'
Kate led her down the short hallway to the kitchen. Lights were on all over the house, as she'd told Lee to leave them, and she went across and filled a glass with spring water and added two ice cubes before she realized that Vaun was not behind her. She walked rapidly into the living room and found Vaun with the curtains pushed back, the magical sweep of the north Bay spread out in front of her. The night was clear, and every point of light from Sausalito to Berkeley sparkled. Alcatraz looked like a child's toy at their feet, but Kate pulled the curtains together in Vaun's face.
'Please don't stand in front of a window with the inside lights on. It makes me nervous. Here's your water.' Vaun looked like a startled deer, and Kate knew she had been overreacting. 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you, but it's one of the rules of the game. After I've checked the doors and windows we can turn off the lights, if you like, and you can look to your heart's content. You've got the same view upstairs,' she added, 'and higher up, though there are fewer windows.'
Vaun said nothing, just nodded, and drank thirstily.
'I'll give you a quick tour so you'll know what kind of place you're sleeping in, and then take you up. Okay? This, as you can see, is the living room. If you get the urge there's a television set and VCR behind those cabinet doors.' The room was the full width of the house, more than fifty feet, with high walls of virgin redwood and natural hessian and a magnificent expanse of oak floor inset with a complex geometrical border of cherry, birch, and teak. It was divided informally by a hodgepodge of mismatched furniture, a beautiful rosewood dining table with a dozen odd chairs at one end, pale sofas and chairs at the other, two inexpensive Tibetan carpets in rose and light blue and white, a number of large and healthy plants, and an enormous metal sculptural form bristling with a hundred delicate pointed bowls, each one supported by a tiny, perfect human figure. Vaun went over to it and eyed it curiously, and Kate laughed.
'That's one of Lee's treasures. It's a sort of oil-lamp candelabra, from South India. Each of the bowls is filled with oil and has a wick stuck into it.'
'Do you use it?'
'We lit it once, but either we had the wrong kind of oil or else it needs to be outside, because it smoked to high heaven and covered everything with black smuts.'
