Read Online A Place I've Never Been by David Leavitt - Free Book Online Page B

said to no one in particular. “There’s no chance no way no one’s going to get me to say one word.”
    Diana and Ellen. Ellen and Diana. When we were together, everything about us seethed. We lived from seizure to seizure. Our fights were glorious, manic, our need to fight like an allergy, something that reddens and irritates the edges of everything and demands release. Once Diana broke the air conditioner and I wouldn’t forgive her. “Leave me alone,” I screamed.
    â€œNo,” she said. “I want to talk about it. Now.”
    â€œWell, I don’t.”
    â€œWhy are you punishing me?” Diana said. “It’s not my fault.”
    â€œI’m not punishing you.”
    â€œYou are. You’re shutting me up when I have something I want to say.”
    â€œDamn it, won’t you just leave me alone? Can’t you leave anything alone?”
    â€œLet me say what I have to say, damn it!”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œI didn’t break it on purpose! I broke it by accident!”
    â€œDamn it, Diana, leave me the fuck alone! Why don’t you just go away?”
    â€œYou are so hard!” Diana said, tears in her eyes, and slammed out the door into the bedroom.
    After we fought, consumed, crazed, we made love like animals, then crawled about the house for days, cats in a cage, lost in a torpor of lazy carnality. It helped that the air conditioner was broken. It kept us slick. There was always, between us, heat and itch.
    Once, in those most desperate, most remorse-filled days after Diana left, before I moved down the peninsula to my escape-hatch dream house, I made a list which was titled “Reasons I love her.”
    1. Her hair.
    2. Her eyes.
    3. Her skin. (Actually, most of her body except maybe her elbows.)
    4. The way she does voices for the plants when she waters them, saying things like “Boy was I thirsty, thanks for the drink.” [This one was a lie. That habit actually infuriated me.]
    5. Her advantages: smart and nice.
    6. Her devotion to me, to us as a couple.
    7. How much she loved me.
    8. Her love for me.
    9. How she loves me.
    There was less to that list than met the eye. When Diana left me—and it must be stated, here and now, she did so cruelly, callously, and suddenly—she said that the one thing she wanted me to know was that she still considered herself a lesbian. It was only me she was leaving. “Don’t think I’m just another straight girl who used you,” she insisted, as she gathered all her things into monogrammed suitcases. “I just don’t feel we’re right for each other. You’re a social worker. I’m not good enough for you. Our lives, our ideas about the world—they’re just never going to mesh.”
    Outside, I knew, her mother’s station wagon waited in ambush. Still I pleaded. “Diana,” I said, “you got me into this thing. You lured me in, pulled me in against my will. You can’t leave just like that.”
    But she was already at the door. “I want you to know,” she said, “because of you, I’ll be able to say, loud and clear, for the rest of my life, I am a lesbian,” and kissed me on the cheek.
    In tears I stared at her, astonished that this late in the game she still thought my misery at her departure might be quelled by abstract gestures to sisterhood. Also that she could think me that stupid. I saw through her quaking, frightened face, her little-boy locks.
    â€œYou’re a liar,” I said, and, grateful for the anger, she crumpled up her face, screamed, “Damn you, Ellen,” and ran out the door.
    As I said, our fights were glorious.
    All she left behind were her braids.
    Across the dining room, Diana stood with Charlie, holding a big knife over the wedding cake. Everyone was cheering. The knife sank into the soft white flesh of the cake, came out again clung with silken frosting and crumbs. Diana cut two