The words go together to make a complete sentence, but it’s a sentence that doesn’t make sense. It’s absurd. It’s—
With each other.
With only three words, Louise has set off a series of firecrackers in Claire’s brain.
Jackie and Susan had spilled out of the bathroom together that night at the party, looking rumpled. Claire has hardly thought of it since, but when she starts to think harder about the source of that rumpling, her thoughts echo with conversations she thought she’d forgotten. Jackie at her kitchen table, rollinga joint and sayinglots of things are illegal, Claire. Jackie promising illicit birth control, putting her arm around Claire’s shoulders and sayingthat doesn’t make it wrong, remember? Jackie in her darkroom, tracing the acacia on her wrist and murmuringI didn’t get it for a man.
Jackie standing in the rain, all the light gone from her eyes.I’m a bad influence on you.
“I should have known someone like Jacqueline would be spreading that lifestyle through the neighborhood,” Dorothy says. It sounds muffled to Claire, like she’s hearing it from underwater. “It’s too bad that she’s infected Susan.”
The firecrackers have set off an avalanche. Understanding hits Claire in a great tumbling mass, and one by one she follows the chain reaction.
Claire has always felt like she was missing something when it comes to Jackie, some final puzzle piece that would bring the whole picture together, and here it is. The vagueness in the way Jackie has always talked about love—never saying too much, never giving specifics. The lipstick mark on her neck at that first party—Susan’s shade, while Susan had looked at Jackie as if she was a delightful plaything. The woman at the moon landing party that Jackie led towards her bedroom by the hand. That strange conversation with Theo at the pool, where Jackie got so angry at whatever he came close to revealing. It must have been this.
Jackie denied sleeping with strangemenat her parties, yes, but she didn’t mention women.
Claire’s world shifts on its axis. It’s like one of Jackie’s ambiguous images, a change from a photo negative to a positive image—she’s been looking at Jackie a certain way for so long, and with no warning, everything has flipped.
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” Louise says, seemingly unaware that Claire’s entire world is moving from under her feet. “That woman has struck me as a freak since she first moved here.”
“Claire lives right next to her,” Dorothy says. “Did you ever suspect she was like that?”
All eyes land on Claire.
Claire’s mouth has gone dry. There’s sweat pooling at the small of her back. There’s too much going on all at once, too much to think about, too much to possibly come up with an answer, and she’s grateful when Martha cuts in.
“Maybe we should get back to the book,” Martha says.
Louise pays her no mind. “Susan has been bragging about the whole thing, apparently, to make her husband angry. She seems to think it makes her look sophisticated, experimenting like some kind of homosexual.”
Claire flinches.
Intellectually, she knows what that word means.Homosexual. A man who does things with other men. Like Theo. Or a woman, who—
Claire swallows hard. The reality of it isn’t quite connecting with Jackie. Those people are the ones she sees on the news, protesting and rioting with what Pete calls thefreak parade. He’s been saying for years that they’re part of why society is declining. She’s gotten very used to Theo, but Jackie? If Jackie is one of them, what does that mean?
And what does it mean that Claire had wanted to kiss her in the pool?
Little Daniel, God bless him, lets out an ear-shattering cry just then. In the sudden fuss of shushing him and getting a bottle, the subject drops. When he won’t settle down after feeding, Martha ends the meeting early.
Claire tries to dart for the door before anyone accompanies her home, but before she’s even reached the sidewalk, she hears Martha’s stroller catching up behind her.
“Are you all right?” Martha says, rolling up on Claire’s left.
“Fine,” Claire says. She’s still thinking about Susan’s lipstick on Jackie’s neck.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that about your friend,” Martha says.
“No, you aren’t,” Claire says shortly. “You hate Jackie.”
Martha’s steps falter.
“I did. You’re right,” Martha says. She looks rather ashamed of the admission, when Claire turns around to wait for her to catch up. “You’ve been so reclusive since she came to town, and I thought…well, it doesn’t matter now, does it?”
Claire can tell Martha is trying. It’s a big step forward for her, and normally Claire would be grateful for it. Now it’s all she can do not to sprint to the quiet safety of her own house. The marks in her palm are still fresh from a bout of frustration last night, and when her nails land there again it sends spikes of pain up her wrist. “Did you know?”
“That she was a homosexual?” Martha says.
