Burning Butch by Mertz

Author:Mertz [Mertz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Personal Memoirs, Lgbtq, Family & Relationships, Literary Collections, General
ISBN: 9781951213503
Google: HWB_zgEACAAJ
Publisher: HewesHeiser
Published: 2022-04-15T20:49:37+00:00

When I got to the library to pick up my paycheck, the sweet librarian, Loretta, told me that Dr. Madison had come by and left something for me. I thought it must be a book we’d talked about, but the package was soft. It was a dark, stripy scarf, the European-looking kind that all the cool kids in Austria had. Loretta looked impressed and smiled because I was smiling. As the scarf unraveled, I found a postcard with a beautiful angel painting printed on it, but not a kitschy, corny angel—this one was by a real painter, a majestic angel standing next to a fence in a field that looked American, like two worlds colliding. On the other side of the postcard was the writing I recognized from my homework, telling me she’d been cleaning out her closet and found this scarf I might like, which wasn’t her style.

I threw it around my neck dramatically and asked Loretta how I looked.

“Very you,” she said warmly.

That night Heather and Natalie and I sat drinking wine together. I wore my scarf. Heather was graduating that semester and traveling to France for eight weeks before starting a graduate program in Pittsburgh the next year. Natalie would graduate that May, just after I got back from Oxford, and move back to California. Natalie was sad, but Heather was glad to be leaving Steubenville, maybe forever. When Natalie went to bed, Heather told me that, since she’d graduated now, she and Frank could be together.

“He’s looking into flights to France,” she said. “He might be able to visit me there, and we could actually spend a few days together … We talked about it, but I don’t know if it could really happen. And I think he’d rather wait until he and Matilda are separated.”

“What do you want?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just want him, I don’t really care about the rest of it anymore.”

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