I Dwell in Possibility by Toni McNaron

Author:Toni McNaron
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781558614178
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
Published: 2016-08-02T00:00:00+00:00

Around the edges of these two intimacies, I developed a special friendship with a woman named Katherine, whom I met in a class. A graduating senior, she seemed far more worldly and self-reflective than I. As had been the case with my college roommate, Jean, so many years before, we began by liking the same British writers—Thomas Hardy and Wilfred Owen in this case. Gradually we formed a pattern that greatly pleased me: as soon as Professor Wiley, the pacer who grew progressively more caged during the semester, finished lecturing, Katherine and I went for tea. The longer we did that, the more I wanted to talk about other things, even ourselves. She met my interest with her own, and our friendship developed to a level of closeness that frightened me because I feared I would lose her as I had April. But I stayed put and waited.

As Katherine took me into her confidence about the man in her life, I became keenly aware that I never spoke about my sexuality. No one at Madison “knew” except Jim Stathis, and I planned to keep it that way. Now I felt this woman searching with her eyes and inviting through her trust. Dare I tell her who I was? Would she not vanish in disgust or at least retreat to the safety of war poets and the Wessex landscape?

While I was agonizing over whether to disclose, Katherine was introducing me to her old friend Jane, with whom I wound up sharing an apartment my second year in Madison. Always expecting the best from people, Jane was often disappointed but never lost heart. We lived together for a year in genuine amicability, splitting chores, shopping, cooking. She loved my southern grits and fried ham with red-eye gravy; my favorite was her English boiled dinner: big peeled potatoes, some cheap cut of beef, a few carrots, and a whole green cabbage simmered for hours in nothing but salt, pepper, and water.

When she and her fiancé married, I drove from Madison to Elmira, New York, taking them something far too expensive for my budget—a large Orrefors vase—but feeling glad for my sweet friend and her happiness.

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