Chapter 7

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 481.

Keeping busy had always been Andi's answer to stress and for the rest of that week she left home early and came back late. Although loathing herself for the hurt she had caused Gill, she was nevertheless determined not to let her heart convince her head to go against her own rules. Still she tossed and turned restlessly at night with dreams of spaniels with big sad eyes featuring prominently. On Thursday night she let herself wearily into her unit and picked up the mail as she headed for the kitchen. Amongst the junk and the bills was a plain white envelope with just her name handwritten on the front and, curious, she opened it first. In an untidy scrawl Gill had written:

Dear Andi, I'm sorry I made a mess of the other night but I'd really appreciate a chance to explain. Would you like to drop by for a drink on Friday night, I promise to stay six feet away from you at all times. J/k OK? Anytime after you get home will do. Gill

Andi sighed resignedly. Whether she deemed it a smart move or not, she knew she would go and listen to what Gill had to say tomorrow night. Just as she also knew she would argue with herself right up to the moment that she went. What was it about this gal that had her so hot and bothered, Andi mused? She may not have dated much of late but it hadn't stopped her noticing some fine women who came in to get their taxes done, several of whom had reminded her very obviously that she now had their addresses and phone numbers on permanent record. But no one she had met since her break up with Lana had turned her world upside down like this pint-size dynamo next door. Just being in the same room with Gill had the effect of robbing her of coherent speech and thought, as well as filling her body with an ache that demanded to be satisfied.

It was a noticeably subdued Gill who opened her door on Friday evening and invited Andi in to sit on the couch. Gill remained standing; enquiring awkwardly about drinks and seeming somewhat relieved when Andi suggested that a beer would be fine. It distressed Andi to see the strain lines around Gill's mouth and the black smudges under her eyes and her heart lurched painfully with the knowledge that her harsh words had most likely been the cause of them.. Why hadn't she been less abrasive in her manner of speech? Invariably she tended to speak first and repent at leisure and somehow age just didn't seem to be bringing with it the wisdom it so blithely promised. It was time to suck it up and apologize.

“Gill, I'm so sorry for what I said the other night. It was as much my fault as yours and I should have known better than to tear into you like I did. I would appreciate it if you would please accept my sincere apology” She had planned on suggesting that they take a step back and attempt to just be good neighbors when Gill interrupted, her voice pitched a little higher than usual as the words tumbled over themselves in her efforts to be understood.

“No, no, Andi, I didn't ask you here for an apology. I wanted to explain that I am, I mean that I was, I mean I'm not what you think. Well, I was married, that much is true but you see there was once --” Exasperated by her failure with words, Gill snatched up a photo album from the kitchen bench top and slid it across the coffee table to Andi, pointing to a page of fading Polaroids.

“Here, this is me and that was Kendall, my best friend back then,” she explained, pointing to a page of fading Polaroids.

Two young girls gazed out of the photos: one, dark haired and uncomfortable with the camera, was obviously Gill. The other, blonde, blue eyed and pony-tailed, smiled confidently into the lens. Frozen together for all time, they sat on the hood of an old Mustang, posed in front of the school gym, stood side by side at a football game, played with a pet dog on someone's front lawn. They could have been any two girls, anyplace, anytime and, after studying the photos, Andi looked up at Gill feeling somewhat perplexed. “They're lovely, but I'm not sure what it is I am supposed to be seeing here?” she commented.

Her hesitancy finally brought Gill out of her comfort zone on the other side of the coffee table to turn the page to the final photo in the album. It was a group shot of three girls on a blanket at the beach; two of them bikini clad and laying on their stomachs with eyes closed as they dozed in the sunshine. But it was the figure to the side and foreground of the shot that drew Andi's attention. It was Gill, dressed in shorts and a tank; she sat staring pensively at the closer of the two prone figures. From the blonde ponytail Andi picked her for the same gal in all the previous snaps. What did Gill say her name was, Kendall? Her eyes were drawn to the expression on the young Gill's face: there was no mistaking the yearning, the longing, and the love shining from those brown eyes. Startled she looked up, and searched those same brown eyes, nearly twenty years on and finally understood what was being told.

Gill nodded gently. “I loved her so much. We'd been friends since we were eight years old and from the day we met, nothing mattered more to me in the world than making Kendall happy. We were inseparable and so miserable when parted that our parents used to joke that we were obviously twins separated at birth. We wore the same clothes, had to have the same toys, read the same books and went everywhere together; if I wasn't sleeping at her house then she was at mine. Me, I'm an only child,” Gill explained. “but Kendall had three brothers and her parents thought it was good for her to have a girl to play with.” Gill snorted and almost smiled. “Trouble was, I was such a tomboy when we played I was always the cowboy rescuing her from the Indians, or the knight slaying the dragon. Just the same I still suffered through quite a few Barbie parties because that's what she wanted. Hell, I couldn't deny her anything.”

Gill was now sitting on the edge of the coffee table, her body tense and her eyes fixed on a spot somewhere on the back wall. Andi knew that posture and the far away look in Gill's eyes only too well; she had been to that place herself, suffering the pain of recalled memories, so she sat back and quietly waited.

“It was the year we were both thirteen that I began to realize what I felt for Kendall was not quite the norm.” Gill addressed the wall as she spoke. “Sleepovers excited me and I found any excuse to touch or stroke her skin and cuddle up. Eventually our parents decided that we were too old to be sharing a bed and I had to be content with just being in the same room, talking and giggling, listening to her fall asleep. It was enough. Well for a few more years anyway, until Kendall discovered boys, or should I say the boys discovered her. I didn't really blame them in an odd sort of way, she was so beautiful.” Gill's voice trailed off and her fingers gently caressed the photo on her lap.

“I was losing her from then on; no matter how hard I tried she was slipping away from me. Looking back it was rather pathetic.” Gill finally looked up and caught Andi's eye with a wry smile. “I pretended to be happy about each new boyfriend she found. We sat up late at nights extolling all their finer points when she was ‘in love'. And even later nights discussing what bastards they were when they broke her heart, or she dumped them. It became such a pattern that I started to believe she would always come back to me. I'd buy her flowers or chocolates, pick her up for movies, take her out to eat and insist on paying. Kendall would always laugh and say that I made a much better boyfriend than any of them. We were so very young, too young for me to realize that it couldn't last.”

After a few moments silence Andi enquired casually. “Did you two have a falling out then? Over one of the boyfriends?”

“Yes and no.” Gill replied somewhat shakily. It was obvious tears were not far from the surface.” The boyfriend came later; it was what happened first, between us that changed everything. One night, she came home from a party in tears because some jerk had stood her up. She'd been drinking and she crawled in through the window and into my bed. Oh God, Andi, she felt so good in my arms. I was holding and stroking her, wiping her tears like I had so many times before and that was when it happened .She kissed me! Just hauled off and kissed me full on the lips and I kissed her back. I wasn't thinking about anything other than someone had finally opened the door to heaven and let me in. I remember her whispering in my ear that she had been right, I was much better than the boys she had been with.”

The room was silent for several minutes till Andi spoke up again.

“Hey, so what happened then? You've told me this much, there's no point in stopping halfway.””

“Nothing happened.” Gill's voice was flat and devoid of emotion. “Nothing at all. After kissing me Kendall passed out and in the morning she pretended nothing had ever happened. Who knows, maybe she didn't even remember. But after that, she began distancing herself from me, bit by bit. She stopped coming over, stopped calling, made excuses for anything I suggested we do and very quickly found herself a new boyfriend, the captain of the football team. I started waiting by her car after school, desperate to see her; I was crazy enough to think I could talk her out of this infatuation and win her back. What a stupid little idiot I was.” The vehemence with which Gill spat out the last few words startled Andi into taking her by the shoulders and shaking her gently.

“No, Don't say that about yourself hon. you weren't much more than a kid, you couldn't help how you felt,” she admonished.

The warmth of Andi's hands melted a little of the ice that had been crushing Gill's heart and she gave a watered-down version of her usual high- powered grin.

“Oh, I was stupid all right, these days I'd most likely be arrested for stalking. I used to leave notes in her locker, waylay her in the corridors, camp on her doorstep, ring a dozen times a day. I had totally lost the plot. Eventually things got nasty, really nasty. Kendall's boyfriend and a few of his buddies cornered me one afternoon in the gym. They told me if I didn't leave her alone they would tell everyone in school that I was a dyke and make sure my parents heard it too. You need to understand, that back then I didn't even have a name for how I felt. All I knew was I loved Kendall but these crazies were threatening to destroy my world. I panicked and began cutting classes, days, sometimes whole weeks. I told my parents I was ill and in a way I was. I couldn't eat, I wasn't sleeping well, so scared that any moment someone would look at me and see the word ‘queer' tattooed on my forehead. Panic was rapidly giving way to paranoia and it was during this time I met Rick.”

“Your husband?” Andi prompted and Gill nodded in reply.

“Rick worked in the market down the road from my home. He was seven years older than me, already a Manager and very ambitious and hardworking .Plus a nice looking guy. He started talking to me whenever I went in and seemed interested in why I wasn't in school, that sort of thing,” she said sitting back with an expression that clearly said how could I have been so stupid? Andi was rapidly coming to the realization that there were no artifices at all surrounding Gill, everything she thought or felt showed as clearly on her face as if she had spoken the words out loud.

“Soon he was actively courting me. He knew just how to charm my parents by coming around in the early evening and sitting talking to them, before requesting permission to take me for a walk or down to the Dairy Queen. He never kept me out late or gave them anything to worry over”. Gill explained. “Well, I guess they were concerned about the age difference but at that time they just didn't know what to do with me and were grateful for his intervention. What they didn't know was that he was coming around to the house during his lunch break and we were…” Gill's voice broke slightly and she flushed before clearing her throat and carrying on. “We were having sex. I was bowled over by his interest and his persistence. I wanted to be normal, Andi, you need to understand that. Back then I had some half-assed idea that if Kendall knew I was going with a guy, somehow we could be friends again! But she just didn't want to know me period. I guess I was an embarrassment, a reminder of something she wanted to forget.”

Gill was on her feet now, pacing the floor. “Getting married just kind of happened. I had missed so much school that I was suspended and looking at having to repeat, but I was truly terrified of someone outing me there. Rick offered me an escape; he wanted a wife, a very traditional wife, to stay home and keep house, cook his dinner, darn his socks even, and I grabbed it with both hands. Looking back, I can only guess that I was in denial about my sexuality, figuring it was just a phase that I'd grow out of. And for the longest while, it seemed to work. I cleaned, polished, baked, sewed and gardened like I was about to be awarded Homemaker of the Year status. Richard got promoted, several times in quick succession and when he got a transfer interstate, I was as pleased as he was. It got me away from Kendall. I couldn‘t handle seeing her around, it still hurt too much.”