Free Haunted Houses by Lynne Tillman Page B

I do not even know.” Edith argued briefly, defending the necessity of education, then let it go, glad that she didn’t think about Kafka anymore, and never had just before bed.
    Emily wrote a poem about receiving and sending letters that was so romantic it surprised her. She was aware of this tendency in herself, but it was usually mixed like a salad dressing with a lot of other tendencies and wasn’t so naked. The naked truth: the oil separates from the vinegar. She laughed and shoved it into the drawer she optimistically called To Be Published, and shut it. She never showed her work to anyone, although she didn’t consider herself a secret writer. She said she wasn’t ready and squirreled her poems away keeping them to herself even keeping them from Christine. It was another thing they fought about. You’re not a writer, Christine intoned, if your work sits in a drawer and no one sees it. When it’s ready I’ll show it, Emily would respond, as if her drawer were an oven in which her poems were baking. Christine and Emily fought and made up, fought and made up. Generally, they fought about intangibles, the ineffable. When Emily realized that she hadn’t seen one of her very closest friends in nearly a year, she startled, called her, and made a date. Christine acted like a lover betrayed. Emily went anyway. You don’t have to obey her, her other friend told her. I don’t understand what she wants from me, Emily added, to which her friend countered, What do you want from her?
    Are we lesbians and we don’t know it, Emily deliberated when walking home, walking fast to speed up her thoughts. Her mind sorted things back and forth, a shovel digging up stuff and separating it into discrete piles. Except nothing was discrete. She’d been too demanding. On the other hand, I can’t stand it when she disappears for weeks with a new guy. That means I’m possessive about her too. She felt as if she were in a cave and she had always hated the dark. She visualized herself: a child, lying in bed, the blanket up to her eyes, no light in the hall, no light anywhere. What bothered her most was that there was no way to determine right and wrong, or to determine if those categories applied to relationships. She supposed that this was what was meant by mystery. They made up, they made up as they always did. They spent as much time as they could together. Movies, bars, school. They went to see
Persona
. When the two actresses’ heads merged, Emily screamed. Several people turned to look at her. You’re so emotional, Christine teased. Me? Emily asked, defensively, deciding in her mind that poets should be, a thought she kept to herself hopefully.
    For Emily was hopeful, it was astonishing how much hope she had, Edith reflected as she washed the dishes, carefully drying the paper towels though she knew Emily thought that was cheap. Emily hadn’t grown up during the Depression. Edith always thought that thought and sometimes decided that that thought might be too convenient for all the questions it was supposed to answer. Well, it certainly was a part of it, she continued to herself as she put each dish away in the yellow cupboard. This was a rent-controlled apartment and she blessed the day she’d moved in, a young woman, with a husband and two small children, over twenty years ago. Finding herself staring at the cupboard, she shut it, conscious that the way her arm moved now was the way it moved then. She was never going to move. She could be very stubborn; her husband could have attested to that. And her children. “They’ll have to take me away,” she had said to her husband, who had been a sociologist. “You can’t stop change, Edith,” he had answered. “I’m not stopping it, I’m just not going to be a party to it.” Then, she remembered, he’d touched her on the arm and laughed. He had such a wonderful laugh, Edith thought, and left the kitchen,
    “Makeup”—Christine smiled—“makes some of my imperfections