Tag: Women’s Fiction

Fiction X

The Ballad of Lisa and Lacey (Part X)
(for Part IX click here)

But that was the problem.  Plagued with good intentions, Lacey had decided to do the right thing and everything had gone to hell from there.  Actually, that wasn’t strictly true.  She hadn’t planned any of it.  She’d kinda fallen into it, like Alice down the rabbit hole.  But that wasn’t true either — not really.  Alice had never been to Wonderland before, and Lacey’d been going there for nearly ten years.  She was an accomplice, not just a participant, and in the cold, dark soul of 4 o’clock in the afternoon, she knew that.  Sitting on the brown sofa, looking out the window on a chilly all alone Christmas Eve, she knew, despite the stories she’d been telling herself, she was just as responsible for Lisa and Lacey as Lisa was.  After all these years of living two different lives, juggling half-truths and lies, keeping her time with Lisa safely on the other side of the Atlantic, Lacey understood that.  There was no longer any distance between the two women, and there was no use dressing it up in good intentions.  She remembered way back when, on the boat — the first boat — down the Rhone, she’d asked:

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“You’re so complicated.  There’s all these layers.  But I still don’t know what kind of a person gives all this to someone they hardly know?”

Lisa didn’t hesitate:

“The same kind who accepts it.”

She should have known then.  She did know then.  The truth was, she just didn’t want to admit it.  She didn’t want to think too hard about what makes a person put their real life on hold to play house once a year.  Lisa understood and was willing, but Lacey had spent years diligently avoiding even thinking about it.  It had been so simple.  She had been so happy.  So…  But now — now was different, even though Lisa had called, several times, and every time had managed to reassure Lacey that everything was fine and that things were alright — now was Christmas Eve.  Christmas Eve and without Lisa, Lacey realized she was no longer a girl, and she was sitting alone with a bottle of Cote du Rhone — and she had never intended to end up this way.

Next week the conclusion of The Ballad of Lisa and Lacey

Fiction IX

The Ballad of Lisa and Lacey (Part IX)
(for Part VIII click here)

And they went to Rome like two pilgrims looking for a private eternity.  The apartment was small but it had a balcony, and if you leaned the right way, you could see St. Peter’s — so the next morning they walked it.  It wasn’t very far, but they stopped at every opportunity, and by the time they found the long wall of the Vatican, the tourist lines were too long to conquer.  So they abandoned organized religion, found an alley full of trattoria and put their feet up.  They ate bread and cheese and spicy sausage, drank a couple of thick glasses of wine, and after that they were never really tourists again.

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It was easy to live in Rome.  They called themselves sisters and said they were teachers.  They drank coffee in the morning and red wine at night.  They ate and laughed and told each other stories.  They flirted with the men in the shops on their street.  They walked and got lost and walked again, seeing most of the “sites” by accident.  They discovered they liked churches, dark with Caravaggio, and weekends in the park loud with children.  They danced behind Fendi sunglasses and watched the rain from their balcony.  It was spring.  They bought flowers.  The two single beds were on opposite walls and they stayed that way.  Sometimes, Lacey would see Lisa, look at her and wonder if this was the woman she wanted — or was supposed — to be.  And without ever trying, Lisa showed Lacey the quiet confidence of power — raw and deliberate.

“Never.  It doesn’t matter what Bert thinks; he’s not going to divorce me.  I’ve got a roomful of lawyers who play golf with Satan … and win.  He’d end up with a handful of dental floss — and he knows it.”

And sometimes Lacey saw Lisa looking at her.  She’d seen that look before — boy-shy and uncertain — and that wasn’t the Lisa that Lacey wanted to see.

They thought of taking the train to Venice, but never really did it.  Although they did take a bus tour to Pompeii and had a picnic.  They went to a flower show, saw a parade, watched fireworks, and late one night, crashed somebody’s wedding and danced with the bride.  But mostly it was easy to live in Rome, and then one day, unexpectedly, it was time to go home.

Lisa left Lacey at the airport and Lacey watched her go, shouting “Arrivederci!” into the crowd. She saw Lisa’s hand in the air, laughed, turned on her heels, and with abrupt purpose, went home.

That year, Lisa came to Lacey’s graduation, sitting smiling, up front and incognito. They went for drinks after the parents went to bed.  Lacey got a job with an investment company, but the hours were brutal and she had to dress for success.  Six months later, she quit and went back to the coffee shop fulltime.  Lisa called on Christmas Eve, and in May, they went to Spain.

That year, they really were pilgrims, walking the Camino de Santiago until, muscled, tanned and tired, they caught a train south.  They bought bikinis in Malaga and spent the rest of the month drinking sangria and playing on the resort beaches of Costa del Sol.  One night, far from sober, they got tiny matching “LOL” tattoos, just below the tan line.  It was the year Tony got fired, and Lacey became assistant manager.  It was the year the parents decided to sell the house.  It was the year Ben went to Dental School.

“No, Lace. Bert isn’t Ben’s father.  Haven’t I told you that story before?  Ben’s father was a paper salesman from Chicago.  I was a senior in high school, working weekends at the plant, and this guy — you should’ve seen him, Lace! He was drop-dead gorgeous.  He drove a silver Vette and he had a smile that was just pure panty remover.  Anyway, he’s selling paper — uh — I don’t really remember the details.  But he took me to lunch and then he took me to dinner and he was from Chicago and … Don’t give me that look.  He didn’t know I was 17, and he definitely didn’t know  I was the owner’s daughter.  Besides, I kinda launched myself at him.  The poor guy really didn’t have a chance.  Anyway, a couple of months later, all hell broke loose.  Trust me, Lace, you don’t want to be rich-bitch pregnant in a small town.  It’s amazing how many faces your friends have.  So my parents and Bert’s parents got together, and we were married that summer.”

“What about Ben?  Does he know?”

“Well, since Bert and I are the only ones left who actually know the truth, we decided to just leave it alone.  Sometimes the truth isn’t the best way to go.”

The next year they went to Amsterdam, or was it London?  London — then Amsterdam?  Amsterdam, then London?  Lacey couldn’t remember without thinking hard.  But somehow that’s what happened; somewhere, without Lacey realizing it, the years just starting clicking away.  Ben finished school and went to work with his father.  The parents did sell the house and moved into that stupid condo nobody liked.  Jerry and Jennifer had another baby.  Wayne and Madison split up, got back together and finally divorced for good.  Courtney got accepted at UCLA, moved to California and Lisa cried and cried and cried on the telephone.  And somewhere, after Amsterdam (or was it London?) unable to control herself, Lacey found a lesbian lover — in fact, more than one.  In fact, now that Lacey thought about it, quite a few more than one.  It wasn’t that she felt the need especially, or even cared, but it just seemed like the right thing to do.

 

Fiction (Part III)

The Ballad of Lisa and Lacey (Part III)
(For Part II click here)

Later, back in her apartment, Lacey looked at the open, empty suitcase, closed her eyes to think and the next thing she knew she was sitting in a cafe with a bottle of red wine and Lisa — and the spring sunshine warm in her hands.  At least, that’s what she remembered — even now what she remembered.  Everything else was just waking up and sleeping and waking up again in the white noise confusion of airports and airplanes and jetlag and the foreign sounds of travel.  It was Monday or something, in this movie, but nobody seemed to care.  People were eating soup and smoking and making noises she’d never hear before.  But it was her movie too, and Lisa was laughing in French and the waiter smiled at Lacey like a grandfather and poured both glasses full.  She refocused her eyes and it suddenly occurred to her that the big church sitting next to her was Notre Dame — from all the movies.  But the river wasn’t a movie: it was the Seine — and the people were French, and that was Lisa, and she was Lacey, and for the first time in forever the world was pinch-me real again.

Lisa lifted her glass and touched it to Lacey’s.  Tink.

“Paris.”

Lacey lifted her glass.

“Paris,” she repeated.

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After that, there was no beige-green apartment anymore, no fruit smell in the stairwell, no winter wet buses, no back-row bored lectures, no stand around coffee stained evenings — no — no anything.  Those were all more than an ocean away and belonged to Lucy, a third year admin student with a plague of good intentions.  She liked Lucy — she really did — but they barely knew each other.  Lucy was Lucy — somebody else.  She was the girl Lisa called “Lace.”  And Lace spent her days wandering through centuries of tour-guided art and architecture, until, utterly overwhelmed by beauty, she and her mother had to stop and sit and try and make sense of where they’d been and what they’d seen.  The first day, they rejoined the tour later in the evening, but after that they didn’t.  They went off by themselves to eat and drink and flirt with their laughable French.  On the second night, they meet a couple of unlikely lawyers who bought them blonde Belgium beer but gallantly made their goodbyes when Lace called Lisa ma mere.  Luckily, nobody laughed — until “les avocats” were gone.  The next night, they followed detailed instructions to an around-the-corner subterranean club called La Fee Verte  where they danced into the morning to ferocious Techno-Dutch DJ music and got lost going back to the hotel which was only three streets away.  On the last night, they hired a taxi that drove them deep into the Paris night, twinkling with magic.  He charged them outrageously but waited patiently at Sacre Coeur and again while, starlit and sleepy, they had a last glass of wine in the empty shadows of Montparnasse.  The next day, Lace and her mother left Paris, the two of them sleeping quietly behind their sunglasses, as the tour bus swayed its way to the Rhone Valley. Seeing the two women curled up together, nobody on the tour believed the mother and daughter story anymore.