The intersection of law.., p.30
The Intersection of Law and Desire, page 30
She continued, “I don’t want to repeat old patterns, particularly destructive ones. And, yes, I knew that, saw it. A lot of your involvement with Cissy had overtones of you saving her from something no one had saved you from. Is that a fairly accurate guess?”
I shrugged again, then managed to utter, “Does it really matter?”
“Of course it does,” she replied. “Do you mind if I lean?” She waited for my quick nod before coming over to rest against the car. We were close, but not touching, as if she wanted to give me space without putting distance between us. “I realize that you’re not comfortable talking about this. I won’t push it. You may never feel comfortable with me. That makes me regret that I didn’t pay more attention to what you needed and less attention to what I wanted.”
“I’ll be okay,” I mumbled.
“Yes, you are okay and you will be okay,” Lindsey said. “That’s the amazing thing about people, the damage they can survive and still be decent and kind. As you are.”
“Thanks.”
“I am very sorry,” she said, looking directly at me. “If there’s anything I can do to make up for it…”
“Careful, I may think of something.”
“I hope you do. I hate living with guilt.”
“Can I ask one question?” Lindsey nodded, so I continued, “Were Peter’s lost keys planned or accidental?”
“He may have planned it, but I didn’t. To be honest, I’d considered seducing you for a while. I hadn’t planned our adventure on the couch. Carpe diem is a favorite saying of mine. If we hadn’t been interrupted, I would have suggested dinner—to explain a few things—and I wanted to spend the night with you.”
“That makes me feel less used. Can I ask another question? If it’s so over with you and Peter, why don’t you just move out?”
“Because I own the house,” Lindsey replied with a wry laugh. “Peter moved in with me. He thinks we can work it out. But unless he decides to make peace with my making the money and not being monogamous, I don’t see this relationship being saved.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why? I’m actually looking forward to the time alone.”
“Still, you didn’t start living with him in the hope it would end.”
“Is that a comment on your relationship or mine?” Lindsey asked.
“Touché. No wonder they pay you the big shrink bucks.”
“Good avoidance technique. But I’m not going to let you get away with it. Did you break up with her or did she break up with you?”
“Neither,” I admitted. “I was supposed to go with her to her best friend’s birthday and I stood her up at the last minute. I had to, something came up on the case, but…we haven’t spoken since.”
“What do you want?” Lindsey asked gently.
“I don’t know…I guess for things to be okay…like they were with us.”
“You want to get back together with her?”
“Yes, I guess I do,” I answered softly, afraid to voice the desire for fear the words would turn into faint smoke on the wind.
“If it was over, Cordelia would tell you. I know from experience.”
“What happened between you and her?”
“You really want the whole sordid experience?”
“Consider it payback.”
Lindsey snorted, then said, “Okay. On one condition. Can we sit in my car and get out of the wind?”
After we were settled, Lindsey turned in her seat until she was facing me. “I first met Cordelia when we were both residents. She was fresh out of medical school, on her first rotation. I was three years ahead of her. I saw her in passing. Cordelia was even more shy then than she is now. I ended up working with her and another intern for a few hours one night. She was useful, he wasn’t, but that was about it.
“An enclosed place like a hospital sometimes seems like four walls and a gossip mill. One night one of those awful cases came into the emergency room. A fourteen-year-old-girl, pregnant. Her family was in total denial, they’d written it off as weight gain. She probably didn’t know enough about sex to know she’d done anything to get pregnant. No pre-natal, nothing. It was a breech birth, the baby wasn’t coming out, the girl had been in labor for hours. She was bleeding. By the time she got to the emergency room, she had lost a lot of blood and was in shock. She didn’t survive and the baby strangled in the umbilical cord. Within an hour of their arrival at the hospital, they were both dead.”
“My God,” I said.
“Yeah,” Lindsey answered, then continued, “Her family, mother, father, some uncles and aunts, were all in the waiting area. The attending doc decides he needs to take a woman with him. Cordelia’s the only female doctor around. When they get in sight of the family, he suddenly cuts out, leaving Cordelia. He didn’t have a great reputation, but this was pretty high-handed, even for him.
“Cordelia, with no chance to prepare, told the family that their daughter was dead, she had been pregnant, and that the baby was dead, too. There was quite a scene. From all reports, Cordelia handled it well, certainly better than the other doctor would have, but the family was pretty upset. A couple of versions of the story had the father taking a swing at her. In any case, it was a mess.
“After I heard about it, I decided to go find Cordelia and see if she was okay. I finally located her in one of the crash rooms, a hole in the wall with some beds in it for the residents to crash during their overnight calls. By the time I got there, she had curled up in a fetal position.
“Words just seemed useless, so I crawled into bed with her. I held her and she cried. Then, it just seemed the right thing to do, I made love to her. I didn’t even think about the fact that we were both women. Worrying about sexual orientation seemed insignificant. She needed someone to touch her.”
Lindsey paused for a moment, then said, “I did the right thing. To this day, I believe that.” She sighed, then continued, “But people can’t always be noble and virtuous, at least, I can’t. Things went back as they were, our lovemaking confined to that one special need and time. I should have left it there, but I didn’t.
“Several weeks later, Friday, I had the weekend off, and I ran into Cordelia leaving at the same time. I asked her to dinner and we went out. After that, I suggested dancing and took her to one of the gay bars on Bourbon Street. We danced for a while, this was before my accident. I was in a devil-may-care, randy mood, drinking steadily and I didn’t want to go home alone. At the next slow dance, we stayed on the dance floor, and I let my hands rove to places that weren’t platonic. The song ended and I maneuvered Cordelia into a dark corner and got even more explicit.
“Then we stumbled back to her place, she lived on Dumaine Street, and we made love all night.” Lindsey paused in her narration, looking away from me into the night.
“So that’s how you became lovers? You were bored and Cordelia was available.”
“I’m not proud of it. I was Lindsey, the golden girl. I had a big career in front of me. A shy woman three years behind me didn’t fit into my plans.”
“You had your fun, you dumped her,” I interjected.
“We saw each other a few more times,” Lindsey explained, “but I stopped returning Cordelia’s phone calls, deluding myself that I was letting her down gently, when I was just avoiding being fair with her.
“I know,” Lindsey responded to my look of disgust. “It wasn’t the right thing to do. We saw each other occasionally at the hospital and we were polite. I was busy, I was co-writing a couple of papers, flying off to conferences, doing all the things a golden girl does.
“I began working with a noted doctor from Harvard visiting down here. Our intellectual passion turned into something else. At Mardi Gras, some of his distinguished colleagues came down to visit him.”
“Of course,” I snorted. “Men are so much more acceptable.”
Lindsey shrugged and continued, “We went to a party and we drank a lot. Then we went to another party and drank more, and left that party with drinks in our hands to go to another party. We got in the car. My lover was driving. I ended up in the backseat, half passed out. I vaguely recall driving up Canal Street, the blur of those bright lights.
“I remember that split second of panic, instant fear—I never saw the other car, but someone did, and his terror became palpable. Then there was the scream of metal on metal, and, when that stopped, the scream of pain and shock from those trapped in the twisted metal. I just remember that nightmare vision, everything broken and out of place and blood everywhere.
“Then a few scattered memories, being pulled out of the car, the intense pain, the bright lights of the emergency room and thinking it so bizarre that I should be a patient. The next few days were a blur, pain and numbness that never balanced into any rest, and a creeping fear that something was terribly, terribly wrong.
“My lover had walked away from the accident with only a few scrapes and bruises. I never saw him again. He quickly disappeared behind a barricade of lawyers.
“Two of the passengers of the other car, a mother and her son, were killed. The father and a daughter survived, although they were seriously injured.
“I wasn’t very golden anymore. I was crippled and I deserved it, an arrogant drunk who killed a child. It didn’t seem likely that I would be a doctor, let alone an important doctor.” Lindsey was silent for a moment.
I said nothing. I didn’t think Lindsey deserved the accident, but that was a road she had to walk.
Finally, she turned back to me, and continued, “The first time Cordelia came and visited me, I thought she was just being polite. A lot of people made quick, little runs by my room, then disappeared. But she came back. One night, when I was in pain and the on-call doctor was one who preferred me screaming to risking addiction to a narcotic, she stayed with me. Just holding my hand, until she finally convinced the doctor to increase my dosage.
“And once, when I felt sorry for myself and demanded of her, ‘Don’t you think I deserve this?’ she answered, ‘No, you’ve done nothing that deserves this.’ I will always carry guilt for my part in the accident, but Cordelia’s simple statement took me away from what I couldn’t change, and into the future.
“Cordelia was the one who took me home from the hospital, and, when I balked at physical therapy, she pushed me. I couldn’t walk. I refused to even try. One night, I sat in my wheelchair and moaned and wailed in my despair. Cordelia listened for a while, then she told me I was too much of a coward to try to walk.
“First, I was shocked that she would dare say that to me, then I was furious. I decided I would prove to her I couldn’t walk. I heaved myself out of the wheelchair and stumbled no more than an inch or two before I fell. Cordelia caught me and said, ‘See, it’s a start.’ She came almost every day. At times, she wold infuriate me, telling me I was weak and couldn’t do it when I would complain. I’d get angry again and I’d walk. It took weeks, but I could finally walk across the room. Then she opened a door and backed into my bedroom to make me go even further.
“Finally, she had to back up until she was beside my bed. When I made it to her, I pushed her back across my bed and fell on top of her. She started to protest, but I took her face in my hands and said, ‘No. I love you.’ We made love. It was terrifying and it was wildly passionate. I didn’t know what my body would do, if it would work. Cordelia was the only person I could possibly trust on that journey. When it was still there, when I knew I could give and receive pleasure, it was as if some dam had burst, some torrent of physical need.
“I kept her in bed for hours, we made love over and over again. I left bruises on her thighs and arms. She stayed the night, even though she had to get up early the next morning”
I felt a surge of jealousy. I knew I wasn’t Cordelia’s first lover, but that wasn’t the same thing as hearing Lindsey describe this.
“After that night,” Lindsey said, “I wanted to have everything I could have. To accept no limits except for the utterly implacable ones. I learned to drive again. Cordelia helped me. I knew I was safe with her, that she would get me home. But often, she would come through the door and we would make love, sometimes there on the floor.
“Finally, I was strong enough to finish my residency. That’s when things began to change. Cordelia and I were still at the same hospital. Perhaps no one would have fired us on the spot, but it was clear, at that time, in that place, that being queer wasn’t good for your career.
“We pretended to be just friends. We didn’t ask to change our schedules to be together. She ate lunch with her friends and I with mine. Since people assumed we were heterosexual, we heard the comments. Cordelia was warned, ‘The nurses are all dykes on the fifth floor. Don’t go into a room with any of them if the patient’s comatose.’ The horrible jokes about AIDS were starting. We couldn’t live together. Having the same address would be a dead giveaway. For two women.
“Cordelia and I hid that we were lovers. Little daily lies, a denial that permeated everything we did. A nice romantic dinner in some cozy restaurant? What if someone saw us? Grocery shopping? Do you know how intimate two women pushing one grocery cart is? If her car was in the shop, she couldn’t take mine. What if someone saw Cordelia James driving Lindsey McNeil’s car? Almost every day, in some way we had to deny we loved each other.
“And, bit by bit, Lindsey, the golden girl, came back, tarnished, with a limp. But I was co-writing papers, giving presentations, and people were paying attention to me.
“I was coming to the point where I had to make a career choice. New Orleans is not known for its psychiatric training. My ex-boyfriend’s guilt pulled a few strings. I was offered a coveted position in New York. Cordelia didn’t ask me to say no; she knew how much I wanted it.” Lindsey was silent for a moment.
“So you moved to New York?” I prompted.
“Yes, I moved to New York. I was terribly busy, terribly lonely, and I missed Cordelia terribly. One night the loneliness got to me. I went out for a drink with coworkers. One of the men made it clear he was interested in me. After a few drinks, I figured one little roll in the hay wasn’t going to hurt.
“Of course, Cordelia called and he picked up the phone.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in monogamy.”
“I don’t. But I had promised Cordelia not to sleep around on her. I cared enough to want to keep that promise. We talked. I wanted us to work out. She tried to find a residency in New York, but the only offer she got was a year away and she’d virtually have to start over again.
“I think if we’d gotten just the modicum of support that even the most wildly inappropriate straight couple gets, we might still be together. Love can have such odd requirements,” Lindsey mused.
She continued, “I got an offer to go to Europe. But it would have meant leaving six months after Cordelia moved to New York. We let it go. She stayed in New Orleans and I accepted Europe.
“One day she wrote, ‘Lindsey, I’m tired of being a shadow in your life. We’ve only seen each other a few weeks out of the last two years. I don’t know who you are anymore. Let’s not hold on to the past when there’s no future in it.’ After that she stopped writing me, I stopped writing her. I became involved with a French doctor, a woman. We had a grand, passionate affair that ended only when I returned to the States some two years later.
“On some days I think I owe Cordelia my life. It took me almost a year after I got back to America to find the courage to look her up.”
“Do you think you might ever get back together again?”
“No, we’ve changed. I knew Cordelia as a scared young resident, now she’s the director of her own clinic. We weren’t there for each other as we changed and grew, we lost that connection, being part of the dailiness of each other’s lives. Sometimes the only thing you can do is let the past go.” Finally Lindsey was silent.
“I don’t think I’d like you as a rival.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“I meant it as one. Thank you for telling me this.”
“You’re welcome. Besides, it gave me a chance to give you my version before Cordelia can tell it her way. I must have had terribly pious Catholics somewhere in my background, I find I rather enjoy confessing my sins.”
“I was raised as a Catholic. I hate confessing my sins.”
“Probably because you and the Church don’t agree on what sinning is. To love another person, to hold them, and touch them, is not a sin.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Now I must confess one more. Desire. I still want you. I don’t think that’s appropriate under the circumstances, but that doesn’t change it. So please get out of my car, before I do something inappropriate.”
“Thanks for the warning,” I said. I started to get out.
“Damn, I was hoping you’d say what the hell and stay around.”
“It’s the time and the place. Sex…isn’t free and easy for me right now.”
“I know. You have the right to say no. Don’t ever let anyone take that away from you. I hope we can be friends.”
“There are always possibilities.” I leaned over and hugged her. I didn’t trust myself to kiss her—that might keep me in the car. “Thanks for the offer, Lindsey. It does feel nice to be wanted.”
“Take care, Micky. I mean that.”
“I know.” I gently shut the door of her car, then got into my car. I glanced at her one last time as she drove away.
Chapter 32
The phone woke me up. “Hello,” I mumbled, sleep slurring my voice. I glanced at my clock—it was just after six a.m.
“Is this Michele Knight?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Who is this?”
“Is this Michele Knight?” she repeated.
“Yeah, this is Micky,” I responded. “Who is this?”
“Camille, the hurricane, you remember?” Her voice had an edge in it. Sounds of traffic were in the background.
“Of course I remember. What’s happened?”
“Betsy’s gone. She’s not at the house, not where she hangs. I thought maybe Heart of Desire, though I warned her to stay away this weekend. I drove by, the place is locked up, barricaded, the police have been there. I can’t find her.”
