Lilac Mines (33 page)

The envelope is flat, letter-sized, and adorned with small green squares.
F.I.T. has the most stylish rejection stationery I've ever seen,
Felix thinks. She flops down on the couch to open it, already thinking about what sort of dessert food she will comfort herself with. Her parents are driving up next week. After a white Christmas in the Sierras, they'll help her move home. L.A. will be, at best, weird. She hasn't talked to her housemates Crane or Robbie in ages, and somewhere the men who broke her ribs are still walking around. She had hoped she could go to New York, start a new life in her knitted bones. She runs her finger under the flap of the envelope, and removes the letter.

Dear Ms. Ketay:

Thank you for your application to F.I.T.'s Museum Theory: Costume and Textiles program. The MT department is pleased to offer you a Wesley R. Coates Memorial Scholarship, presented annually to three students who demonstrate unique abilities and are members of historically underrepresented populations. The scholarship will pay for one half of your tuition expenses for both years of the Master's program.

Please note that your scholarship, which is awarded by the department, is contingent on your acceptance into the university. You will be notified of your application's status by February 15, 2003, at which time you will receive any applicable registration information. While we can make no guarantees regarding the university's decision, students who are accepted at the departmental level typically receive acceptance packages from the university as well. Please call the number below if you have any questions. Congratulations on this honor. We hope you will seriously consider attending F.I.T..

Sincerely,

Ellen Doherty

Dean, Museum Theory

By the time Felix finishes reading the letter, she is no longer lying on the couch. She's pacing the room, throwing in a gleeful little skip every few steps. Unique abilities! Historically underrepresented population? In her essay, she'd mentioned that she was “interested in blending masculine and feminine aesthetics in service of a queer sensibility that transcends commoditization; i.e., an empowered and defiantly queer style that is not simply 'lesbian chic.' ” She had no idea how she would accomplish this, but she supposes they read between the not-very-subtle lines. Despite the fact that she rallied in favor of affirmative action in college, it feels strange to be on the receiving end. Well, why not? She's spent the past four months confirming that history is not big on representing lesbians. She calls Anna Lisa at work to tell her the good news.

In the weeks since her fight with Tawn, Felix has worked only a handful of shifts at the Goodwill. There's been a lot to do, since Matty is gone and Tawn has been busy with interviews. This has kept them in different rooms. Felix has spent her days in thick, mothball-scented silence.

Today when Felix arrives, a resignation letter folded in her green vinyl purse, the first person she sees is Blanca Randall, Anna Lisa's muumuu-wearing friend, although today she's dressed in a polyester blouse and black slacks. Just what Felix needs first thing on a nerve-wracking Wednesday morning. Felix slips her apron over her head and takes her place behind the counter.

“Can I help you?” Maybe Blanca won't remember her. She hopes she'll be in and out quickly.

“Oh, I'm just waiting for Tawn. She's getting some forms for me. You're Anna Lisa's niece, right? I'm Blanca, in case you don't remember. And I'm your new co-worker.” She smiles, forehead wrinkling and tugging on her taut hairline.

Felix pulls her purse to her chest. “Really? Okay. It's really nice to see you again.”

Her face must not be very convincing. Blanca laughs and winks. “Don't worry, I won't spoil whatever fun you young kids have here by telling your aunt.” Felix's heart pounds. What does she know about Felix and Tawn? Has Felix somehow failed to live up to Tawn's wishes before even getting a chance to try? “I remember my first job. I was a shop girl in Placerville, and the other girls and I… we used to go out dancing until all hours. And how the young men used to flirt with us! That was before I got married to my you-know-what of a husband, of course, and before I really knew what it meant to be a Christian.”

Tawn emerges from the back office, paperwork in hand. Felix gives her a how-could-you glare, but Tawn just looks at her blankly. “Oh good, so you guys have met,” Tawn says. “Felix, I told Blanca you'd be able to train her on the cash register.”

“Sure,” Felix says through her teeth. “Um, when you're done with those forms, can I talk to you in the office for a minute?” She heads to the back room and waits in an old, crushed-velvet arm chair next to Tawn's desk. A CD is spinning in Tawn's boombox, a tropical song with snowy lyrics.
I'm the song that my enemies sing,
the Jamaican singer concedes.

“Joe Higgs, right?” Felix asks when Tawn walks in.

“Yeah,” she says, eyeing Felix cautiously.

“See, you've educated me,” Felix says brightly. “I wouldn't have known that before.”

“What do you want?” Tawn asks. Not quite hostile, just pragmatic.

“I can't believe you hired her,” Felix hisses. “My aunt knows her. I think she's, like, a huge homophobe. Or at least kind of born-again.”

“Well, you can't really ask those things in an interview,” Tawn remarks, rearranging the papers on her desk. “There are laws about that stuff, and you might remember that I like to follow the rules. You
also
might remember that we've been short-staffed for weeks and we're working our butts off.”

It's a moot point anyhow. Felix opens her purse and hands Tawn the letter. “It's kind of formal. It's not what I would say if I were saying goodbye as a… as someone you were dating. It's an employee goodbye.” She waits while Tawn reads. “I got into F.I.T., I'm going to go.”

Tawn doesn't look up from the letter. “Congratulations.”

Behind Tawn, the front door dings. Customers chatter and hangers slide across metal racks. Tawn seems infinitely strong, as cold and still as a glacier. The brassy, scratchy song admits,
I'm bewildered all the time.

Felix thinks of her long, icy night in the mine. What does she have to lose? “Okay, well, even if you don't want to hear it, here's what I want. I want to go to F.I.T. and I want to call you every night after class and tell you about all my annoying classmates and my really cool professors. And you can tell me about Blanca and Matty and the people who used to wear these clothes. You can remind me that the fashion world is just
a
world, not
the
world. And I'll fly out and visit you on my breaks, and you can come to New York and stay in my too-small apartment in Brooklyn, and I'll give you the dress I've made you in one of my classes…”

“I never wear dresses,” Tawn says, looking at her now.

“Okay, I'll make you a top.”

“That whole plan, that would be nice for you, wouldn't it? Then you could have the best of all worlds. I'd be your keeping-it-real girlfriend, and every now and then you'd swoop down and pay me a visit.”

“Tawn, I'm saying I
like
you. Why can't you just
get
that?” Felix's voice is escalating. Tawn closes the door to the office. “Why are you so suspicious of everything?”

“Here's what
I
want,” Tawn says, thin-lipped. “I want to live an on-purpose kind of life. You have, like, this checklist. You do things because they're Good For You. I do things because they Happen To Me. And I don't want my life to be one big accident, I don't want it to be the sum of what's leftover after I avoid all the things I'm afraid of. But I don't want to be like you either, just so you know. I don't want to be an item on your checklist.”

“I'm not saying you should be like me,” Felix says defensively, but she's aware, for the first time, that she's walking in on something old and deep in Tawn. She thinks of her aunt, choosing Lilac Mines, the accident that became purpose. “Life is pretty fucking random for all of us, you know.”

“You don't know anything about me.” Tawn puts Felix's letter in one of the desk's long drawers and slams it shut.

Somehow Felix gets through the day. Tawn leaves early, claiming a dentist appointment, even though she once told Felix that electric toothbrushes made her skin crawl. Felix and Blanca move the $1 sale rack in from the sidewalk and count out the cash register. Blanca tells Felix about her grandchildren as Felix locks up.

“Telly is such a quiet little thing, but he's a good strong reader, so he'll probably do well when he's older. And Mitch, he's in fourth grade this year.” Blanca moves carefully across the snowy parking lot. “I'm going to the Christmas sing tomorrow night. Oops, the
Winter
sing. Have to be PC, right? They learn Chanukah songs, too, these days. I'm all for it, actually. It would be awful if the little Jewish children felt left out.”

Felix sees Blanca trying to accommodate this strange new time. It gives Felix a feeling that is not un-Christmas-like. She pushes the remote on her key chain and her car beeps at her.

“Uh-oh,” says Blanca. “Is that your car?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Look, you seem like a nice girl, so I should probably tell you: my daughter told me that the gays are using rainbows now as a symbol of, well, of being gay. Can you believe they went and made something dirty out of a nice innocent
rainbow?
You ought to be careful. You wouldn't want people to get the wrong idea.”

Tough-love concern clouds Blanca's face in the dim light of the parking lot. She is 65, plump, still wearing her blue Goodwill smock. Six months ago, Felix wouldn't have been able to take her seriously, but her newfound respect for small-town residents allows her stomach to lurch. She feels a curling sense of dread that she is about to be told she should not be here, not be her.

“It wouldn't be the wrong idea,” Felix says carefully. Is she betraying Tawn? All day no one asked, and Felix did not tell. But now it's after-hours, now it's nighttime, and so much more—good and bad—seems possible.

“What do…? Oh.” Blanca's face twitches, takes this in. She takes a deep breath and clasps Felix's hands in hers. “Oh, lord. You know, if this is something you'd like to talk about with people, my church has excellent counseling services.”

Felix shifts her weight onto her hip, the strong ground beneath her. “I'm actually just fine with it, thanks.” She feels how this is truer than it was six months ago.

Blanca shakes her head. “I never thought I'd see this sort of thing in Lilac Mines. Your poor aunt.”

Felix sidesteps the contemporary examples of lesbians in Lilac Mines she might cite. That's Anna Lisa's thing, Tawn's thing. She points to a roof on the horizon, purple-black in the hazy dark. “See that building? That used to be a lesbian bar. Back in the early '60s, back when North Main was still Calla Boulevard. And your church is like a block from where this other church used to be, where a bunch of lesbians lived and God never evicted them.”

Blanca frowns. “I don't know where you got a story like that. I've lived in this area my whole life and never heard anything of the sort.”

The light is on inside Felix's car. She could go to it, seal herself away from Blanca. It would be so easy to say,
I have to go.
But she's tired of going. It's time to do some staying. She would like to tell Blanca about Lilac and Calla, too, but her theory is so shaky, the story she still cannot own.

“Maybe you just weren't listening,” Felix says.

Blanca fishes in her big shoulder bag. “Let me just write down the phone number of my pastor. He could refer you…”

Felix pushes away the crumpled piece of notebook paper Blanca tries to hand her. “No, thank you.”

“If you're not comfortable going to church—though I think you'd find it quite welcoming; they didn't look down on me in the least when I got divorced—but if you aren't ready for church, there are books that could help you, Felice.”

“It's Felix.”

Blanca throws up her hands and looks heavenward. Her town and her God and her own ghosts occupy the same space as Felix's, side by side, battling for the present.

“Well, if you don't want to help yourself, I don't see what I can do. I suppose I'll see you at work tomorrow.” She presses her pale lips together and heads toward her own car.

Felix leans against her Beetle, exhaling white puffs of air. She watches as the lights of Blanca's Cadillac switch on, as the car inches across the slick parking lot and into the street. It's not as if Felix could fight off two strong young guys now, but she
feels
like she could, like she has a small, fierce army behind her.

And she knows, suddenly and not suddenly, that she will stay. She's been walking a road made of crushed bits of history: purple glass bottles, rosebud hair ribbons, ivory dresses, rumors, songs, erasures, names. She will stay, not for Tawn or Anna Lisa but for the whispers she can almost hear on the thin winter wind. If she stands still enough, listens long enough.

Felix asks Anna Lisa to help her find an apartment.

“You're really going to give up F.I.T.? That's no small thing.” Anna Lisa is concerned.

Felix has the classified ads in front of her. “I
know
it's not a small thing. That's the whole point.”

Anna Lisa leans across the table and takes the newspaper. “Alright.” She gets down to business. “This place you circled on Moon Avenue? Nora's husband's ex-boss owns that house, and he's a jerk. You don't want to rent from him. This place on Coyote Drive could be nice. It's just a couple of blocks from here. One of the math teachers at the school lives on the 1200 block.”