So Jefferson had served a purpose. Maybe that was as good as she could have hoped for, because love was not the word she'd use to describe how Ginger had acted toward her. Of course Ginger said she loved her and of course she'd said she loved Ginger and of course both of them had believed it at the time, but now, with the relationship gone, not so much, she thought.

Dawn, though, what drew Dawn to her? There were the obvious things: Jefferson was new in town, available, not bad-looking. She made it possible for Dawn to stay in Pipsborough, didn't she? The hunt was over. She was from the big city and had a polish and experience the local women lacked.

Dawn hadn't mentioned that she'd been with anyone when she lived in New York. Maybe she'd been too shy to find lesbians and was making up for it now.

Or maybe she found something lovable about Jefferson. The thought startled her. Here in New Hampshire she had been trying to be herself. No airs.

No more old smoothie, as one girlfriend had cal ed her. Dawn didn't seem to be in l.u.s.t. She seemed to like being together no matter what they did. And me, she thought, I've had a lot of lovers, but what do I know about love? Can Dawn teach me love?

This was frightening. The happiness she saw in her eyes when Dawn looked at her, the way Dawn wanted to do things for her, little things like make her a sandwich with her favorite mustard, like buying her favorite seeded bread, made her fearful of a trap. Dawn actual y wanted to give, as wel as take pleasure, whatever the pleasure. It wasn't the loving woman she was scared of this time. She feared that she would reject Dawn, run from the thing she'd most wanted, the thing she'd begged for al her life. The therapist at rehab told her she had a couple of kids for parents. For whatever reason, they had been unable to grow from lovers to parents, unable to include her in the family they had created for each other. They told her they loved her, but she didn't feel it or see it. Even as a kid, she'd been able to see that they wanted to remain the kids in the family. Both sets of grandparents pampered and spoiled their children, got them out of financial sc.r.a.pes, indulged their expensive tastes. She spent a lot of time sleeping over at her grandparents' homes while Emmy and Jarvy went out to play.

But her grandparents had finished with their child rearing. They had their perfect sons, their perfect daughters. If Cousin Ruth was unavailable to babysit, Jefferson would be delivered and put to bed. Going to Grandmother's or to Grandmother Jefferson's for any length of time had been like going to finishing-school seminars for perfect behavior. By the time she was twelve they gave up on her and she went off on her own on her bicycle with lunch money for whole days of exploring the river and the neighborhoods. Once in a great while, Emmy and Jarvy would hustle her into the city with them.

She was in front of Lord and Taylor's. Emmy had dressed her in a red plaid wool bonnet, matching coat and leggings. She had her hands in a white furry m.u.f.f to keep them warm. They'd been to see the tree and the ice-skaters at Rockefel er Center.

The scene behind gla.s.s was of a family of women, the older ones cooking, the younger doing something at a kitchen table. They wore old-fashioned clothes. They looked happy. She wanted to be one of the little girls in the warm kitchen where her aunts and mother cooked at a walk-in brick hearth.

In the cold night on the street side of the bright window, her mother loomed at her left and her father at her right. Jarvy was smoking. Emmy said how pretty the clothes were and Jefferson felt a chil . She would be dressed like Huckleberry Finn, barefoot at the table, the floor warm under her feet. She'd be fastening a fish hook to a line and tightening it around her bamboo pole. Jarvy was taking her fishing on the Mississippi come spring. They jostled her to the next window. Men in the parlor smoking pipes. She could smel the women's turkey cooking in the kitchen.

She pul ed them back toward the warmth of the ladies' window and woke up lying across a rumbling train seat, gritty-eyed, her m.u.f.f for a pil ow, her mother and father silent on the facing seats, wide-awake, Jarvy smoking, the paper folded on his lap, Emmy reading a ladies' magazine. Little Jefferson slept again, woke to a station cal , and neither her mother nor her father was there, across from her. That cloud, the dark purple one, hugged her like there was no tomorrow. She cried, cried silently and bitterly, huddled into herself on the train seat, hugging the m.u.f.f. By the time Emmy and Jarvy returned from the club car she'd gone numb. She hid her face, her fear, her abandonment in the furry m.u.f.f and slept until the next morning when she woke under pink sheets and blankets in her ivory four-poster bed, despised dol s arrayed around the room, December sun glowing weakly hot through thin, lacy curtains.

Her teddy-bear Michael was in her arms.

Al her life the Lord and Taylor scenes behind gla.s.s were like remembered dreams that had happened to others, and denied to her. She'd always believed that Cousins Ruth and Raymond had come closer to living such homey Christmas fable lives with their stuffy stay-at-home mother and father and each other, but Raymond was dead of lung cancer and Ruth had never stopped drinking. Her husband took the kids and left her. Ruth had moved to Florida where she got so heavy she ended up with diabetes and now had to have a leg amputated.

Dawn felt to her like the Christmas windows. Scared or not, Jefferson wanted to be happy at her side now, while they were both stil young and healthy.

They spent that Sat.u.r.day night in Jefferson's bed, in her cottage by the lake.

"This place is so comfortable," Dawn said.

Jefferson, forgoing electricity, made a fire in the woodstove, lit a lantern, and carried it to her bedroom. "It was built for leisure, for cold nights by the fire, hot days on the porch, and snuggling under a puffy quilt."

Dawn wore a lacy, low-cut bra that shaped her b.r.e.a.s.t.s into scoops of lovely pale gold flesh. She pushed Jefferson down and straddled her, letting the bra touch Jefferson's lips. The sight of Dawn engorged her whole being with desire, and she found a nipple through the bra, licking and sucking until the fabric was saturated. Dawn continued to bend forward, supporting herself on her hands. By feel, she rol ed Dawn's panties down and reached her with fore and middle fingers, tapping Dawn's hood until Dawn pressed down, squirmed herself open, and rode Jefferson's fingers, eyes closed, hair fal ing forward until she came with a happy yip and lay on Jefferson's chest.

In a moment Dawn was active again, moving backward to yank down Jefferson's jeans and pul them off.

"Open your legs, Jef." Dawn ran one lace-clad breast along the wet parts between her legs until Jefferson thought she'd come against the breast, but Dawn moved and pressed her mouth where her breast had been, keeping stil , forcing Jefferson to rock herself into o.r.g.a.s.m.

"You," Dawn said, easing up into her arms, dal ying at the highlights, "were built for pleasure."

"Everything has changed, since you," she told Dawn. Her voice was stil thick and low with satisfaction. "My mind has changed, my body has changed.

My future is rich."

Dawn's eyes shone. The sight of them enhanced Jefferson's feeling of radiance. Dawn whispered, "I'l love you forever, Jef."

"Dawn, Dawn. Don't go making promises. One day at a time, okay?" Those AA slogans held a lot of truth, she thought. "I've learned that promises don't mean anything because I've broken so many myself. After al , forever can be the best aphrodisiac."

"No, Jef. That was then. That was them. This is me, now. I recognized you right away. You may go away, but I won't."

Al those years she'd wasted trying to make Ginger happy instead of bouncing her heart around like a basketbal , slapping it like a handbal , spiking it like a vol eybal , kicking it. What a dog she'd been instead of deeply treasuring the woman she'd thought of as her one true love. She'd sunk her fingers into one after another shal ow pond, testing the waters of every flirty woman who crossed her path and some she just wanted to tease the flirtyness from.

Despair must have been plain on Jefferson's face because Dawn put her arms around her and said, "There, there, there," and held her, rocked her, made love with her until sleep melded them together with the contentment only warm, sated bodies and hope can know. It was al she'd ever wanted.

She couldn't say it, but Jefferson hoped she could stay too. "There's this empty place in me you're sliding into," she told Dawn. "It's always been there and I've tried every which way to fil it. In the past I thought I knew the way it should be done. I loved hard, partly, I think, to ensure that I would be loved in return. My loving was begging. It did no good, like knocking on the doors of empty apartments on Hal oween night, hearing the hol ow sound of their vacancy, my pil owcase open, a few stray Mary Janes and sour bal s down at the bottom. Now it turns out al this begging for love has been my impatience. When I gave up-abracadabra. Here you are."

Dawn moved closer to her. "Am I a sour bal or a Mary Jane?"

"Neither," said Jefferson, thinking about how generous and gentle Dawn was with her and with her friends and the Northway family. "You're the nice lady who opened her door and gave us little Milky Ways. You're al dressed up as a genie of love."

Dawn nuzzled her neck. Jefferson squeezed her hand.

"Dawn," she said, "I'm so afraid I'm never going to change. I come on so together, then fal apart in the dark. It'l always be Hal oween with me -costumes and masks-and I'l always be a beggar of love, on the prowl night and day, taking it from anyone who can give it. What if you give me everything and I'm stil not satisfied?"

Chapter Forty.

Jefferson was the only one, other than Mr. and Mrs. Wiley, who was free to pick up Shannon from the hospital. Shannon said she couldn't face her parents. Though Jefferson didn't know how she would face Shannon, she sympathized so much with her and was so guilty about being attracted to Dawn, she wanted to drive Shannon home and do whatever would help. The red tape to release her stretched for almost an hour. As they drove north along the lake, Shannon was subdued and sat like a huddled bundle abandoned at the door to a Goodwil shop.

"I've caused everybody a lot of trouble." Shannon was turning herself around. Gone were the limp bleached hair, the chapped lips, the pale, sunken face.

After a while Jefferson was able to put her thoughts into words. "I should have heard your desperation." She grasped Shannon's hand.

The sun was out, but few boats were on the water this late after the season. Wind-driven wavelets made the boats slap the water.

They stopped at a pharmacy for Shannon's antidepressant. Jefferson bought lip balm and gave it to Shannon, then walked the aisles while Shannon's prescription was fil ed. Shannon was slumped on a red molded plastic chair across from the counter, a long-legged waif with a bewildered fix-my-life look on her face that Jefferson found strangely appealing despite Shannon's butchiness. Several people paced around them as they waited. The pharmacy telephone rang, was answered, rang again.

She plunged out of the vitamin aisle and walked to Shannon. "I can't take you home. You aren't ready to be alone."

"Wings wil be there."

"Yolanda has your cat," she reminded Shannon, wondering if the lapses in Shannon's memory were permanent. Shannon's energy was so low this might be the best time to tel her that she was seeing Dawn. The drugs she'd been administered in the hospital might stil her reaction.

"I'l be okay. It'l be good to get home."

"Your mom went over yesterday. She said it wouldn't be the first time she cleaned up after you."

Shannon relaxed her face into a smal , brief smile.

"She was worried about you being alone in that little cabin, but she knew you wouldn't want to stay with her or your father."

"She got that right."

"I have extra rooms, Shannon. For a couple of days. What do you say?" She'd have to warn Dawn to stay away. If Dawn didn't have a cat of her own, Jefferson sometimes thought Dawn would never go home.

"It would be peaceful on the lake," Shannon said, her voice softer than Jefferson had ever heard it. This was not a butch beside her, this was a woman in pain. No, she wouldn't say anything about Dawn yet.

"You'd have to promise to cal me at work-or wherever-if you felt like offing yourself again."

"Not funny, Jefferson."

"I'm dead serious," she answered, straight-faced.

She got a real smile out of Shannon that time, and Shannon got up slowly, with a stiffness she'd only seen before in people many years Shannon's senior.

"Tel me about your back, Shannon," she asked as they walked past the vitamins, into books and magazines, then al the way to the household cleaners. Shannon seemed pretty wobbly, but she wasn't slouching as she had when they first arrived. She experienced the warmth that used to envelop her when one of her students made unexpected and exceptional progress.

"What about it?" Shannon's voice sounded smal and rusty.

"Where did you hurt it?" She had her hand on Shannon's back, pressing various points.

"In the Guard."

"How?"

"It was stupid, real y. A strap on my gear popped loose. I was supposed to be on this truck, but I stopped to fix the strap. The driver played catch-me. I ran for the open back, tossed my pack up, and missed when I tried to jump on."

"You fel ?"

"No, but I heard something pop when I leapt up for my second try. You know how you do? Get al twisted up throwing yourself up and forward at the same time?"

She nodded, remembering a vol eybal game that put her on the sidelines for weeks.

"Oh, yeah. That night I felt like the truck ran over me, not away from me."

"You had a base doctor?"

"Sure, but I didn't want to get the driver in trouble. She was my...you know."

"Girl?"

"Not real y. She was married to a guy at home, but we fooled around some."

"So you've been living with this messed-up back for how many years and the Guard doesn't know about it?"

"They know. I waited a day and blamed it on something else."

"Wiley," the pharmacy tech cal ed.

She stood back, running her knuckles up and down her cheek, hard, trying to decide how to tel her about herself and Dawn, while Shannon went to the counter. A moment later Shannon exclaimed, "You have got to be kidding."

"What's the matter?' She joined Shannon at the counter.

"They want a hundred eighty dol ars for thirty pil s!"

"Here. Put it on my credit card." She tugged her slim wal et from her back pocket.

"No." Shannon waved her away with more energy than she had demonstrated yet. "Can't you give me something cheaper?" she asked the clerk.

Eventual y, the pharmacist had Shannon cal the hospital to see if a generic could be subst.i.tuted.

"I am steamed," Shannon said, returning to the vitamin aisle after her cal and walking swiftly past the seasonal and toy aisles. "What was that doctor thinking? Didn't he know I don't have insurance?"

Jefferson smiled to see Shannon so energized. Whatever works, she thought, stopping herself from taking Shannon's hand as they walked, but not surprised at the impulse. She was so unused to spending time with another butch, except for Gabby, and she didn't find Gabby remotely attractive as anything but a friend. "Won't the VA pay for it?"

"I don't have veteran status so I'm not ent.i.tled. The only time I get good medical care is when I'm on active duty." She kicked a mop display and sent it crashing to the floor. "I'm thinking I might as wel go back in, Jef. I need to face up to it and take my chances. That way I'd get the benefits, such as they are."

She grabbed Shannon's elbow and faced her. Part of her wanted to encourage Shannon to do that, but she genuinely cared about her. It would make her own life easier, cowardly as she knew that thought to be. She gripped both of Shannon's elbows. "There's no way they'l reinstate you with your disability, is there?"

"Sure, they wil . They never acknowledged the accident enough to pay me for it. I wanted out, so I didn't pursue it. Why bother, when you could get shipped to the Mideast waiting for them to make a decision? Better to stay under their radar. They'l check me out enough to maybe keep me out of combat. I can hope for motor pool or a stateside a.s.signment."

"How about recruiting? Then you could stay here."

Shannon laughed, a lively laugh of genuine amus.e.m.e.nt as they pul ed up to Jefferson's cottage. "Dude," she said, "that job is harder than combat right now. n.o.body wants to join up."

Two and a half hours after going to get Shannon, Jefferson was back home with Shannon as a guest. Out of habit, she hit the answering-machine play b.u.t.ton.

"How're you doing, Tiger?" Dawn's recorded voice asked. "This is your Kitten."

Jefferson's stomach felt like it was plummeting past her ovaries and al her other organs. She turned her head quickly and saw Shannon standing outside, walking toward the dock. Ducks rose from the water to take flight, crying as they lifted. Close cal , she thought, and erased the message. After a moment she decided to turn the machine off. She'd go outside and use her cel to cal Dawn back later-after she hid the Prozac, ibuprofen, aspirin, and kitchen knives.

As she suicide-proofed the house, though, she realized how wrong it felt to lie about Dawn. Hadn't she learned that hiding the truth only hurt everyone? She would have to tel Shannon eventual y, but not tonight, not when she'd offered her shelter in her home. Now it was clear-she couldn't keep the lid on this. Shannon would only feel deceived when she found out Jefferson was protecting her from the truth.

How to say it? She'd never had to face up to such a situation before. The only time her flings got real y messy was when they were with someone from their immediate social scene. She simply disappeared from social life while the trouble lasted. Ginger was only marginal y interested in the bars so she could always tempt her away with dance recitals or a cozy night at home. It had never occurred to her, back then, that she should come clean to anyone.

On the contrary, the quieter things were kept, the less likely it was that someone would get hurt. This thing with Dawn, though, was more than serious. Plus Shannon was so fragile now and their circle of friends was so smal . There simply was no place to hide. She hadn't felt this exposed since she was a kid.

She looked toward the water again. It was deep off the dock, but Shannon was in sight. She found a couple of steaks in the freezer and stuck them in the microwave to defrost. She could at least make her a good meal, maybe share her bed with Shannon, to hold her and give her some comfort.

Shannon came back in from the dusk. Jefferson cooked dinner and Shannon, freshly showered, played with the kittens, who had become long, stringy adolescents.

"You get those pil s down yet?" she asked.

Shannon was shaking the bottle to catch the kittens' attention. "Can you believe they were sixty-seven ninety-nine? I should put them in my mom's safe-deposit box, not swal ow them. He said the other ones wouldn't kil me if I popped al of them. You think these would?"

Jefferson strode from the kitchen to the living room and, pushing Shannon down on the couch with one arm, s.n.a.t.c.hed the bottle from her hand.

"Dude," Shannon protested.

She straddled Shannon, face close enough to kiss her. "You are cut off, girl," she declared. "If I have to drive over to your place to deliver pil s daily, I wil , as long as you keep talking trash about taking pil s-or whatever."