“It was an accident,” Claire protests. “The photos were—I didn’t mean to.”
“Sure you didn’t, Nancy Drew,” Theo says. “Look, figure yourself out. Fuck her over, spread this around your little suburb in some twisted attempt to pretend you’re not tangled up in it, and I will personally take a monumental shit in your favorite kitchen appliance.”
Claire is left with a dial tone, and far too much to think about as she relies on muscle memory to prepare an angel food cake in the afternoon. Rita’s fifty-fourth birthday party is tonight, and Pete’s entire family is going to be there. It’s the last place she needs to be thinking about the fact that Jackie apparently cares enough about her to be given the ‘run-around’.
Does Jackie mirror Claire’s feelings? Does she too lie awake at night, thinking about how close their lips had been? Does she dream of Claire, and wake up shaking?
The thoughts persist as Pete drives them to his parents’ house, and as Rita comments that she prefers chocolate cake over sponge. They spiral through Claire over dinner, where thankfully everyone is too preoccupied feeding and calming down the kids to pay much mind to the fact that Claire has barely touched her beef bourguignon. Theo’s words stick with her when everyone gathers in the family room to take a group photo.
Is she attracted to Pete? It’s not a question Claire has ever been asked before. It’s not something she ever thought to consider. Looking at him, red-faced from the wine and laughing at some joke with his father, Claire doesn’t feel a stirring of anything Theo talked about. Heat. Desire. She’s not sure she’s ever felt it for him, even when they first met.
Their courtship hadn’t exactly been electrifying. He asked her to a dance in junior year, and Claire said yes, flattered by his interest—nobody had ever expressed any in her before. She’d always been the tallest girl in her class, a tomboyish childhood turning into lanky awkwardness in her teenage years. But people looked at her differently when she was with Pete. Having a manby her side made all of those shortcomings ease, back then. She blended in.
But if this life is what it means, does she want to blend in? What was it that Jackie said, when they first met?Don’t bother with the background.
Wondering if it might just be Pete she isn’t stirred by, Claire considers his brothers, too. Handsome men, all. His oldest brother John has always been kind to her, kinder even than Pete. He’s broad-chested, with a neat beard and a wife who by all accounts seems to adore him. He looks like the perfect father, bouncing his youngest son on his knee. Is that attraction? Noting his nice qualities, his good looks?
Pete’s youngest brother Alan is clean-shaven, with hair almost to his shoulders that Rita continually tells him to cut. He’s jovial and quick to smile, but he doesn’t make her laugh like Jackie does. And Bill, two years Pete’s senior, is so similar to Pete that Rita often jokes they’re simply twins who weren’t born together. They even have similar moustaches.
They’re all strapping men. Perfectly acceptable. So why, in looking at them, does Claire feel nothing?Lessthan nothing? In comparison to the feeling that grips her when Jackie smiles at her, let alone the day in the pool when they’d been close enough to kiss, those men might as well not exist.
It’s only later when Pete is sound asleep and Claire is alone in the bath that she allows herself to consider the obvious conclusion.
If attraction really is the way Theo describes it, then she isn’t attracted to her husband at all. She’s never met a man who sparked that in her. But Jackie?
Even the slightest memory of that day in the department store changing room, of Jackie’s breath against her face and her nails scratching Claire’s scalp, sends a tingling through her. An excitement that Pete has never stirred. That antsy, restlessfeeling in her gut when Jackie smiles at her—is that attraction? Or the tightness in her chest when she saw Jackie in a bathing suit for the first time? When she leaned against the laundry basket and felt that explosion of sensation, conjuring memories of her dreams—is that what Theo means?
What would it mean to embrace whatever she’s feeling, and step into this great and terrible unknown? Jackie and Theo would be her only life-rafts, and she hasn’t even spoken to Jackie in weeks. If this is really who Claire is, if she’s like them, she’ll lose everything. Her house, her marriage. Her friends, such as they are. Pete has made it clear what polite society thinks of those people.
But why, Claire thinks suddenly, should she only be listening to Pete’s opinion on the topic?
Jackie is a good person. One of the best Claire has ever met. She doesn’t put on the same airs of fake kindness that Martha and the other neighborhood ladies do—she’s genuine. And Theo isn’t the downfall of society. He’s funny and witty, even if she rather wanted to hit him at first. He put effort into helping her today.
Why shouldn’t she want to be like them?
The idea of a life without Pete, stranded on her own with no husband to provide, has always terrified her. Divorce always seemed like a death sentence. She can’t drive, and she has no savings. It would be an end to life as Claire knows it. But maybe if she had the kind of community Theo talked about, that wouldn’t be so bad. She could find a job somewhere, make her own money and support herself. She could come home after a hard day not to a husband demanding dinner and drinks, but to someone like Jackie, who makes her feel more at ease than anyone she’s ever known. She could hold Jackie close when she needs comfort.
She could kiss her. Fall asleep in her arms. Even take her to bed.
The very idea fills Claire with a longing so sharp that it kick-starts a gut-wrenching sob. And then another. They feel good, in a way. Rather than holding back Claire lets it happen, lets herself fall apart in the downstairs bathtub until every confusing emotion she’s been trying to quash has been wrenched out of her.
It’s a cleansing sort of cry. An all-out sobbing mess, the kind that leaves her exhausted and dehydrated and blissfully empty in the lukewarm water. It’s strange to be relieved by something so life-shattering, but she is. Finally, after months of confusion, there’s anexplanation. She’s not losing her marbles.
She’s just like Jackie. She’s gay. She’s aqueer.
What she doesn’t know is how on earth she’s supposed to decide what to do about it.
Chapter 21
Usually, Pete spending a Sunday at the golf course would mean Claire gets a rare weekend day to herself. She’d listen to music, or more often these days sketch or paint. Once, she might have visited Jackie. Now it seems she’s destined to do nothing but spiral over the same worries.
Instead, Claire seeks out company.
“I’ll be back to pick you up in the afternoon,” Pete says. The car is idling in the library parking lot, and Claire is already halfway out. “Don’t get too many books, I don’t want to have to haul them back here to return.”
Claire doesn’t kiss him goodbye. He doesn’t seem to notice—he zooms off, intent on catching his tee time. The moment he turns the corner she veers in the opposite direction, crossing the street and heading off to her real destination.
The bell above the door of Anita’s shop jingles as Claire pushes it open.
