Kinflicks by Lisa Alther

Author:Lisa Alther
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2010-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

9

Divided Loyalties

Eddie’s and my life after Worthley stood outside of time. Contrary to popular belief, there are really three kinds of people in the world: those who wear watches, those who don’t wear watches, and those who sometimes do and sometimes don’t. Eddie was firmly entrenched in the second category and was compulsively late in everything she did; I am in the third category, but that year I was decidedly watchless.

Our apartment was on Broadway in Cambridge, on the third floor of a decaying tenement that was slated for urban renewal some time in the next decade. The pipe to the gas stove leaked, so that we had to leave the kitchen window cracked, even in the winter as snow drifted in. We were limited to sponge baths because the shower leaked into the apartment below, which was occupied by a frazzled welfare mother of five who had enough problems without her plaster ceiling’s collapsing as well. The narrow porch off the living room, which overlooked the busy trash-strewn street, was infested with squatters — pigeons who cooed and shat all day long. The entire place, advertised by its unscrupulous owner as furnished, was fitted out with the rejects from some furniture store’s Fire Damage Sale. The gas oven was so slow in lighting that it threatened to blow up the dreary linoleumed kitchen.

In short, it was squalid. Eddie and I loved it. We were finally living arm in arm, cheek by jowl, with The People. Was it our fault if all The People in our neighborhood had applications in for the high rises in the redevelopment areas? Could we help it that they moved out as fast as they could, only to be replaced by people like ourselves? Were we to blame that the welfare mother below us scowled and guarded her small children behind her back when we passed on the stairs, muttering under her breath, ‘Filthy dykes’? I had to keep reminding myself that I was now officially a lesbian. I felt that, although I now wore wheat jeans and turtlenecks and sandals and a braid like Eddie’s, basically I hadn’t changed. Faces glared as Eddie and I strolled to the Stop & Shop with our arms around each other; necks craned with outrage in movie theaters when we held hands. Public indifference to me had shifted to disapproval since I had left Worthley; but I was still me, whoever that might be.

Our only heat was an aging kerosene space heater in the living room, and the only really cozy spot was our bed with its endless layers of ratty quilts salvaged from trash cans and institutional blankets ripped off from Worthley as our parting gesture. Since we were paying our rent and meager expenses with my dividend checks, we had no appointments to keep. Consequently, we spent most of our time huddled in this bed, not particularly knowing or caring if it was day or night.

Eddie did, however, continue to play her guitar two nights a week at a coffee house in Cambridge, as she had when she was at Worthley.

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