they’d never met, or venture off by themselves to faraway cities.
Besides, it was beyond her wildest imaginings that she might actually go to New York and meet Dolores Wood herself. That she might enter a bar and see other girls like Janet and Marie. Girls who “engaged” in “practices” like the ones the Bannon Press letter had mentioned.
Janet’s mind spun. She closed her eyes, and all at once she saw a story unfolding.
A nondescript bar with no windows on a quiet Greenwich Village street. The type of place workingmen hurried past without looking up. Those men wouldn’t notice the girls who walked in and out of the bar with their eyes trained down, their hands tucked discreetly into their coat pockets.
Janet could see it all perfectly. As though she’d visited this bar already, where girls danced with other girls, as though that were a perfectly normal thing to do.
Behind her closed eyelids, Janet pictured two girls sitting at a small, grimy table, slightly removed from the other patrons. One of the girls had dark, curly hair and glasses. The other had blond hair and reminded Janet of a girl she’d once seen on television—the daughter of a contestant on some quiz show. The girl on the program had worn bright lipstick and a lovely dress, and as she’d smiled and twirled before the cheering audience her skirt had billowed out, offering the briefest glimpse of her knees.
Something about that girl had captivated Janet in a way she hadn’t quite understood, but now she saw that she was exactly right for the story forming in her mind.
The blond girl in the bar had met the brunette that very night, Janet decided. It was the first time either of them had dared to enter the place. Which was called... Penny’s Corner. And the two girls were... Paula. And Elaine.
Their story was only just beginning.
Janet opened her desk and reached in blindly, grabbing her old home economics notebook and a pencil. She turned to an empty page. A strange, tingling feeling flowed into her fingers as she wrote the first words.
I’d never come to an establishment like this one before. At first, I was so nervous I could barely see straight, but when I spotted the blond sitting in the back, looking lost and lovely at the same time, I knew I’d made the right choice.
As Janet’s pencil scratched across the paper, the tingling sensation crawled up to her chest. It was just like the night before, when she’d climbed onto that streetcar with Marie.
Janet lowered the notebook, gazing down at the pencil marks on the page. She’d just written the first sentences of her first novel. From here, the story could only grow.
A new set of lines began to take form in her mind. They were for later in the story, so Janet skipped her pencil down the page.
“There’s something I have to tell you, Elaine. Something I’ve longed to tell you.”
I was so breathless I could barely speak. “What is it, Paula?”
“I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment I first saw you.”
I closed my eyes and tasted each word.
Elaine and Paula would fall in love. Janet could see it as clearly as she saw her own reflection in the mirror. The tenderness the two girls shared would be deep, true and undeniable. Until, tragically, society came between them, as it always must.
A title drifted into her mind, too. Alone No Longer. Janet wrote it across the top of the page.
She kept writing, the words coming to mind faster than she could scrawl them out. She jotted down notes for later, too. Scenes she would write soon, about love and loss and heartbreak.
Sometime later, her grandmother knocked on the door, but Janet claimed a headache and wrote on. She wrote all through the evening and the night that followed, until her eyes refused to stay open and the pencil fell from her limp fingers. Yet even as she finally felt herself passing into sleep, that tingling sensation never went away.
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
“It’s for the best.” Paula shrugged. She’d told this story to other girls before Elaine, enough times that she could say the words without them hurting much anymore. “They wanted me gone as much as I wanted out. They’d just as soon have nothing to do with me, and I feel the same way.”
“Even so.” The night’s chill had crept in through the dark window. Elaine shivered in her thin blouse. She tapped out her cigarette, the ashes pooling in the tin with those they’d already smoked that evening. “It must’ve been hard, leaving. Knowing you were never coming back.”
“Plenty of people have it worse.” Paula shrugged again, but the movement took more effort this time. She suspected Elaine could tell she was putting up a front. Elaine, it seemed, could always tell what she was really thinking.
“I don’t know what I’d do if my parents ever found out.” Elaine shivered again. “Or the others back home. I suppose you’re right—that’s how it is for everyone—but that doesn’t make it any easier. What did your parents say when they found out? How did you tell them?”
“I didn’t tell them.” Paula let out a long, heavy sigh. “They found out. I’d gotten a letter, from a...a friend. I should’ve thrown it away, but I was careless. It was a sweet letter, the first sweet letter I’d ever gotten from a girl, and though I hadn’t seen her again after that, I saved the letter so I could remember. I was young, and, well—that letter was the thing I loved most in all the world.”
Elaine nodded. Paula took in a deep breath.
“Well.” Paula dropped her eyes, studying the tin of ashes. She’d never told anyone this part of the story before, but she wanted Elaine to know the truth. “What happened was, my mother found it in my dressing table. She was prowling around my things, probably looking for evidence I was up to no good—she was always sure I was bad news. That afternoon, she came down to the living room where I was doing my homework by the fireplace and shoved the letter in my face, asking why a girl was writing those sorts of things to me. Before I could even think of what to say, she threw it in the flames.”
“She burned your letter?” Elaine reached out to take Paula’s hand. Suddenly her touch was the only thing holding Paula to the ground. “The letter you loved so much?”
“Like I said, it was my own fault.” Paula drew a cigarette from the pack with a shaky hand. “I should’ve known better than to save it in the first place.”
“I don’t think it was your fault at all.” Elaine stroked Paula’s hand, leaned across the table and kissed her lips. Her mouth was warm and soft. “Someday, I’m going to write you a new letter. One nobody can burn.”
Abby closed her computer, the scene still echoing in her mind.
She traced her fingers over the stickers on the laptop’s protective case. It was old stuff, mostly—a rainbow flag, a Bernie logo from the primaries and a Hillary one from the general, the “Feminism Is the Radical Notion That Women Are People” illustrated quote Ms. Sloane had given her last year after she told off one of the guys in their workshop for submitting his third story about a superhot robot babe.
It all dated back to when she and Linh were still together. Maybe that was why none of it felt right anymore. Abby wasn’t the same person she’d been then.
She should probably peel off all her stickers with some Goo-Be-Gone. Start fresh. The way Paula had started over when she moved to New York.
Except...the past always followed you. Right?