Lunatic Fringe (6 page)

Lexie hid in her chair, happy to have
survived Renee’s digestive tract-scathing Bloody Mary and an
unending sequence of small talk with all-too-forgettable women
about majors, relationships, and career ambitions. She hated
feeling unwilling to count herself among those girls, but the truth
was, she couldn’t care less. Nonetheless, in a masochistic sort of
way, Lexie was happy to be among the women of the Pack.

A cool evening breeze rushed across the
lawn. Lexie nudged the zipper of her hoodie up a few more
inches.

“
This is that time of the
year when the days start getting noticeably shorter.” Blythe strode
across the grass to Lexie’s lawn chair. She looked as fresh as a
fairy, alighting on the end of the lawn chair and wrapping her hand
amiably around Lexie’s ankle.

“
Yeah, I hate this part of
the year,” Lexie said with a labored sigh.

“
I love the autumn. It’s my
favorite season by far. The woods stay lush with these smatterings
of vivid color,” Blythe gestured to the forest’s edge, where bright
blotches of yellows and oranges flamed against the darker greens.
“The rain, the clouds, the longer nights. Lovely. I’m from San
Diego. You pray for weather there, and it never comes. It’s death
by perfection,” she said with an arched brow and a
chuckle.

Lexie noted the small irony: Blythe,
with her impeccable face, deriding the beautiful and the pure.
Lexie felt aglow by sheer reflection. Everything about Blythe cast
its own opalescent aura, purity reflected with the grace of
sculpted steel.

“
So,” Blythe continued.
“How do you like the Pack?”

Lexie struggled for the right
adjective. Terrifying, she wanted to say. Invigorating. Petrifying.
Inspiring. And on and on in a steady stream of unease. The simplest
truth was that she liked them, so she said so.

“
You were getting along
well with Renee,” Blythe pressed.

“
Yeah. I’ve never met
anyone like her before.” Lexie gauged her pitch and pace, pleased
to find herself holding it together.

“
How so?”

Lexie choked on a response. Would it be
racist to say she’d never met someone who looked like Renee before?
To say she liked her hair? Her freckles? The simple question caused
her brain to crash.

“
She’s so . . . beautiful,”
Lexie stammered. This was also true, though not the complete truth.
Separating her beauty from everything else about her undermined the
veracity of the statement, and she cringed as she said it. Yet,
within those words was an admission of allure, of aesthetic
intrigue that could be considered, what? Attraction?

Blythe’s blue eyes brightened. “She
thinks you’re pretty, too.”

Lexie couldn’t seem to make her voice
work. It wasn’t just that someone considered her pretty, but that
someone like the unflappable Renee had mentioned such a thing to
Blythe. It was a pleasant feeling, though it did nothing to assuage
her anxiety about the kinds of feelings Renee had ignited in
her.

“
Stick with the anatomy
class you mentioned. Renee T.A.s for a bunch of the labs. Smart as
hell. If you’re headed down the Bio track, she may be able to offer
you some academic guidance, if you’re in the market.”

Lexie screwed up her mouth. “I don’t
know what track I’m on. It’s hard enough for me to navigate the
day-to-day here. Any thoughts about the future just give me a
headache. I’m not ready to label myself yet.”

Blythe eyed her. “Oh, we don’t do
labels here. But if not academic, Renee could give you some
extracurricular ‘guidance’ that you’d really enjoy. Unless,” Blythe
raised an eyebrow, “you’ve got yourself a girlfriend.”

“
Why does everybody keep
asking me that?”

“
It’s an honest question. A
couple of the girls want to know if you’re available.
I’d
like to know. That’s
all.”

“
But why not ask if I have
a boyfriend? Why is everyone assuming I’m gay or
whatever?”

Blythe’s spine straightened and she
adjusted her glasses. “I don’t think anyone’s assuming anything,
Lexie. Except maybe you.”

“
Me?”

“
Labels are just part of
the patriarchal code of binary bullshit. They’re a way of
categorizing things so people can know exactly who to hate, who to
war with, and who to eliminate. Labels mean nothing to
self-actualized womyn.”

Lexie rested her head on her knees.
Before coming to Milton, Lexie had never heard most of the
five-dollar words that Blythe dropped like bread crumbs for
pigeons. Perhaps this was a language she could speak, too, if she
only listened hard enough. But the listening made her more
frustrated. What mysteries of the world did the women of the Pack
grow up understanding that had eluded Lexie? She wondered if those
slumber parties would have been worthwhile, after all, if only she
had ever been invited. Now, she sat at the table of the erudite,
wishing that she had the wherewithal to know what questions to ask.
Lexie’s stomach lurched with anxiety, or perhaps it was the
remnants of the Bloody Mary. Either way, she felt a sudden pressure
to absorb all she heard to make up for lost time.

Lexie took a breath. “What do you
mean?” she asked.

“
If you have a binary,”
Blythe said, “you have opposition. Place values on those things,
good versus bad, and you have conflict. White is good, black is
bad. Straight is good, gay is bad. Male is good, female is bad. And
on and on. That shit serves no one but the people who deem
themselves the good ones, i.e. White, Straight, Men.” Blythe’s
white teeth glinted as she sneered through those words.

“
You see what I’m saying?”
she asked.

Lexie nodded. “Yeah, I do.” Which was
true for Lexie in fact, if not in vitriol.

A soft and heavy quiet sank between
them. “I don’t have a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend. No ‘friend’ of
any kind, really,” Lexie said.

“
Alright.” Blythe’s tongue
skimmed along the crests of her incisors. “But I don’t care about
your relationship status, Lexie. Though I’m happy to hear you’re
unencumbered by such exhaustions as love. I should be so
clever.”

Lexie let another silent, weighty
moment pass between them before asking, “So, are all of you, like
lesbians? Or whatever?”

It was obvious to Lexie that Mitch was,
and that Blythe had to be by transitivity. But the rest . . . it
was confusing.

“
Again with the labels.
Female sexuality is so terrifying to men that they need to
designate those women they can sleep with, and those they can’t. It
places women in a hierarchy: If you’re available for sex, you have
meaning to men. If you’re not, well, what good are you, right?
That’s the beauty myth, plain and simple. A woman’s worth in this
society is only how attractive and sexually available she is to
men.”

“
But,” Blythe said with a
wink. “To answer your question, I am.”

Lexie sighed. Whatever nerve she had
when Blythe had first joined her here, she was losing. She wanted
to run home and leave this day behind. Lexie opened her mouth to
put this plan in action when she spied Renee wandering toward them.
Lexie felt doomed by the sway of Renee’s hips as she strode
barefoot through the grass. Her blue cotton shorts rode so high on
her thighs that they may has well have been underwear. Yet she
strode so calmly, Lexie could have been fooled into believing she
was on a beach in the height of summer.

Blythe smiled, “Speak of the
devil.”

“
And here she is,” Renee
said, raising her fresh beer.

“
How about you?” Blythe
said with a sly smile. “You a lesbian, Renee?”

“
Not at all,” Renee
replied. “That’s just a vicious rumor spread by all the women I’ve
slept with.” The two chuckled as Lexie tried to bury her face
between her knees.“We were just talking about you,” Blythe said as
Renee lowered herself to the ground, her legs folding up like tent
poles beneath her. “Lexie was saying how beautiful you
are.”

Lexie prayed for the sky gods to crack
open the clouds and drench them in a great, cold rain, to create
lightning and thunder and mass chaos, so she could flee in peace.
But no rain came, only Renee’s voice, “Likewise, ladies.
Likewise.”

Renee rested her head on Blythe’s
blue-jeaned thighs. Blythe peered over her, their faces in reverse,
and leaned down for a kiss. Their chins grazed each others’ noses.
It was a sensual kiss, moist and soft, and Renee uttered a nearly
imperceptible sound of pleasure. Lexie’s eyes rested on Renee’s
lips, as soft and inviting as an overstuffed sofa upholstered in
satin.

The two women separated and turned to
Lexie, her face scrunched up with pitiable confusion.

“
Yes?” Renee drew out the
word, turning the syllable into a bemused question. Lexie shook her
head, hoping they’d drop the subject.

Renee picked at the label of her beer
bottle as Blythe tangled her fingers in her thick, fluffy
hair.

“
It’s okay to be confused,
Lexie,” said Blythe, “but there’s no dignity in self-censorship.
The rest of the world is all too willing to silence you. Don’t make
it any easier for them.”

“
What about Mitch?” Lexie
blurted, then lowered her voice, worried she might summon yet
another one of them to her lawn chair refuge. “I just thought that
you and he . . .”

“
She is my partner, yes,”
Blythe corrected.

“
Oh,” Lexie replied, her
confusion mounting. “Sorry, I just asked, um, her and she said ‘he’
works, too.”

“
She’s mistaken. There is
no place for the male pronoun in the Pack,” Blythe said. Lexie
cringed. She regretted having brought this up, particularly without
Mitch present to defend his point of view on the matter. But then,
something about Blythe’s domineering bluntness made Lexie think
that, even if he were here, he would keep quiet.Blythe moved on.
“To address what I believe was your original point, Renee and I
love each other deeply. We are sisters until the end, like all the
women here. Renee is closer to me than most; inner sanctum, you
could call it. We’ve been through a lot together.”

Renee smirked, “Nah, babe, I think she
meant, ‘Are we sleeping together?’”

“
No! I wasn’t--”

Blythe smiled and looked down at Renee.
“Either way, the answer is yes. Sex is something we share . . .
have shared.” Blythe stroked Renee’s freckled cheek, and Renee
purred. “It’s something we all share. It’s nothing to be ashamed
of. Women giving pleasure to one another is the most subversive and
beautiful thing we can do together. No one can please a woman like
another woman. And women feeling joy, pleasure, and love without
male aggression, oppression, or their ridiculous organs--it’s
downright revolutionary.”

“
And a hell of a lot of
fun,” Renee interjected. She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her
pocket and shook one out, bringing it to her lips to light
it.

“
Sisterhood is powerful,”
said Blythe. The two girls snickered at her joke.

“
So, is this a sorority?”
Lexie asked.

Renee snorted, the first plume of smoke
swirling out of her mouth as though she were a disgruntled dragon.
“Hardly.”

“
A sorority is based on a
hierarchy, just like any other political organization,” Blythe
said. “And we reject all hierarchy out of hand as one of the more
pernicious aspects of the patriarchy.”

“
But aren’t you in
charge?”

At that, Renee smirked, but she kept
her eyes trained on the mouth of her beer bottle and massaged away
the moist particles of the disintegrating label.

Blythe answered. “No leaders. No
proletariat. No chairwomen or pledges. Equal footing all
around.”

It sounded good, but Lexie had a hard
time believing it. Sure, Renee was captivating, Hazel was fun, and
Jenna was sweet. Each of the other girls had their own vibe, but
Blythe was clearly the leader. Lexie recognized that her first day
on campus when Blythe commandeered her moving boxes. Whether it fit
their ideals or not, the women of the Pack looked to Blythe as
their leader, and she did nothing to reject that role.

“
Okay,” Lexie conceded.
“So, you live here together in. . ?”

“
We call it The Den,”
Blythe said.

“
The Den of Iniquity,”
Renee joked.

“
The Den of Ubiquity!”
Blythe countered.

“
The Den of Inequity!”
Renee lobbed back.

“
What? More like the Den
of
True
Equity! We
role-model equality.” Blythe’s feigned offense earned her another
sympathetic kiss from Renee.

Lexie struggled to follow the women as
they lobbed jokes back and forth. Even if her own powers of
discourse flailed in comparison, the women seemed to like her, and
that was enough for now.

The way Blythe touched Renee made Lexie
think of her mother, who had left to pursue a man who offered her
nothing but the chase and some pain. She had followed him first
across the country, then further still. She might still be
following him; there was no way of telling. Years ago, Lexie
stopped wondering if she’d ever hear from her mother again; it had
become clear that she wouldn’t. So she buried her mother in her
mind, while holding on to a few select memories. Like her voice,
which occasionally drifted through her dreams, sometimes in song,
sometimes in dream-language gibberish.The day her mother left,
taking nothing more than a backpack, Lexie’s tiny family had been
sundered. Summer Pace had left nothing more than a fleeting kiss on
Lexie’s forehead and a squeeze of her husband’s hand before walking
out the door. With the wisdom of time and distance, Lexie now saw
the weakness, the fear, and the pain that drove her mother’s life.
Summer Pace was constantly pursuing a dream that never could be, a
dream based on her own incompletion. Lexie had vowed never to
become like her mother; she would never follow love anywhere. She
thought instead of the peace and simplicity of living with Blythe
and the women of the Pack. What a relief it would be to finally
have a home where she felt like she belonged.