Outlander by Jane Rule

Author:Jane Rule [Rule, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-4804-2944-4
Publisher: Open Road Media

First Love/Last Love

I SAID, “NO.”

It was very clear to me, not even at all difficult at that moment. I had loved Marilyn for such a long time, since she was hardly more than a child, thinking of her as I might have of a child of my own, with catching wonder I didn’t have to express, not expecting to have to lose her as one does one’s own child or lover.

“I am not a tree in your garden,” Marilyn said.

It would have been unkind to remark how apt an image that was for me, watching her grow and flower. I did not expect her to notice and need me in any way but as a growing thing responds to space, rain, spring light.

Now I do see that she was not a tree. She is gone. I also see that I am not what I thought I was, simply part of the climate of her life.

I had forgotten what it is to suffer what she must be suffering now. It is not her pain that reminds me. It is my own. I am roused from sleep by erotic dreams of her, whom I have never held in my arms except to comfort.

“Don’t treat me like an innocent,” Marilyn said.

Only my dreams are obedient.

Awake, I see her everywhere, not only in a familiar gesture, angle of profile, but in the stupid, headless bust in a store, wearing the size and style of shirt she might have chosen. My womb, my breasts, the palms of my hands, ache so acutely I might think these were as much menopausal symptoms as sweating if I hadn’t once, a long time ago, suffered so similarly for love of Justine, a woman twice my age. It didn’t occur to me then that it was an experience we were sharing. Justine would never have admitted it any more than I would admit it now.

“I don’t want anything,” Marilyn said. “I mean, I don’t expect anything from you …”

She does not mean that my body is nothing to be given; she means she wants nothing of my life, as if my body were as free of my life as of my clothes, could shed habits, needs, commitments, for erotic joy, and put everything back on again without difficulty.

“This is 1979,” Marilyn said. “We don’t need to hurt anyone.”

I don’t suppose I claimed the year as my ally when years ago I stood on Marilyn’s side of the argument, as sure that we did not have to hurt anyone. I was thinking of other people, of course, not of myself or Justine, whom I desired and loved out of proportion to anything I have ever felt since … until now.

Then: Justine was a friend of my parents, well, really of my mother. My father liked her, but at those times when he was home, she disappeared into her own family life as wife of a lawyer, mother of large sons. The families did not mix, though perhaps we should have, my mother’s daughters and Justine’s sons.

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