Page 27 of Starlight & Dark Nights

“So…you’d call yourself unconventional, then?” Jude knew she was pushing, but there was something deep inside of her that made her feel rather unconventional herself. And no matter how hard she tried, Jude couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

“Sure,” Catherine said casually. “I would say that’s true enough. How about you?”

It was Jude’s turn, and she knew that honesty was her only real option here. “I think I’m…different. I don’t think I’m normal.”

This made Catherine laugh. “Okay, let’s not get carried away, Judy. No one is calling you abnormal. You’re not weird or anything.”

Jude bit her lower lip. “I think I am. I grew up without a mother for most of my life. And I never told anyone about this, but remember how I told you about when I came over on the boat from Japan? How I was with that woman and her son, Chester? Well, he did things to me. We were just kids, though,” Jude added hurriedly. “So it wasn’t like I understood. I didn’t like it or anything?—“

“Jude,” Catherine said softly. She reached out and took Jude’s hand in hers. “You don’t need to explain. I think most of us had some neighbor boy or a creepy cousin who tried things with us when we were young. You’re not alone.”

Jude blinked. This was the first time it had occurred to her that the same things might have happened to other girls. “Really?”

“Of course. My older sister’s boyfriend cornered me in the bathroom when I was twelve and made me touch it.”

“It?” Jude repeated. “How old was he?”

“Seventeen.” Catherine laced her fingers through Jude’s. “He told me that if I ever said a word about it to my sister or to my parents or anyone else, he’d drive his car off a cliff with my sister in it. I believed him.”

“What happened? Did she eventually break things off with him?”

Catherine laughed, though it lacked any joy. “Not quite. He left her when she got pregnant with my niece at eighteen.”

“God,” Jude said. She shook her head. “Men.”

“Boys,” Catherine corrected. “But I haven’t had any amazing experiences with any of them—boys or men. I don’t hate them or anything,” she clarified, “I just don’t think I get them. And I’m not sure that I want to.” Catherine shrugged and stood up, sliding her bare feet into the marabou feather slippers and walking over to close and lock her bedroom window.

With Catherine, there was no need to get to the bottom of these feelings; she seemed to simply accept things as they came to her, and she generally let things pass without judgment, which was something that Jude both admired and feared about her. A woman without judgment felt confusing to Jude: did she truly not care, or was she playing at some sort of zen state that wasn’t truly possible to ever reach?

“You mean you don’t want to fall in love and get married and really understand your husband?” Jude frowned. She thought this was ultimately what every woman wanted. In fact, she assumed it was what she herself wanted, though the image of her settled down, married, and entrenched in a life that she shared with a man seemed as foreign as another country.

Catherine was gathering discarded dresses and blouses from around the room, and as she stopped at a chair in the corner and picked up a pair of nylons still attached to garters, she looked right at Jude.

“No, Judith,” she said, a smile dancing in her eyes. “What I want is to take as many lovers as I please, and to live in Hollywood forever. I want a pool, and a bar cart with little tongs to pick up ice cubes, and I want a yellow convertible, and three cats. I want to hire a cook to make my dinner every night, and I want to see my face on a billboard. What I do not want is to be someone’s little wife. I am not washing a man’s laundry, listening to him talk about work, and I’m definitely not interested in raising his children. And if you pictured me doing all those things, then we don’t really know each other at all.” Catherine walks into her tiny closet and tugs the cord that turns on the overhead light. “What about you, Judy? Is it in the cards for you—marriage, kids, the whole shebang?”

Jude could hear Catherine but not see her as she moved around inside the small walk-in closet, and this gave her a sense of boldness that she didn’t normally have. The words she’d been holding in for months were right on the tip of her tongue, and the thoughts she had about her and Catherine suddenly didn’t seem far-fetched at all. “I’m not sure that’s ever in the cards for girls like us,” Jude said seriously. “Maybe we’re just built differently.”

The movement inside the closet ceased, but the light stayed on. Jude held her breath.

When Catherine finally appeared in the doorway of the closet, it was with a look on her face that Jude couldn’t quite name. It was a wildness and a questioning; it was a hunger and an answer.

“Maybe we are,” Catherine said. She was nearly breathless, and Jude swore she could see Catherine’s heart beating as it pulsed rapidly in her neck. “Maybe girls like us aren’t a dime a dozen.” She reached up and pulled the cord, turning off the light in the closet so that she was standing in darkness. “Maybe we just need something a little different than the other girls do.”

Jude felt lightheaded as she waited for Catherine to step out of the closet and into the light. Instead, she stayed there, halfway hidden in the shadows. She stayed that way for so long that Jude wasn’t sure what to do, and so she stood and brushed the front of her robe, smoothing the wrinkles from it.

This was enough for one night, and so she walked to the door of the bedroom, turning back to see Catherine leaning against the closet door.

“Goodnight, Judy,” she whispered.

CHAPTER13

Jo

“Josephine! Hey, Josephine!”

Jo stops in her tracks. She’s in the middle of her shift at Stardust Beach General, where she’s been volunteering now for a year and a half, and Dr. Chavez is gaining ground behind her. She stops and turns, pretending like she hadn’t seen him standing at the nurses’ station.

“Oh, Dr. Chavez,” Jo says with a big smile. “How are you?”

---