Free Venus Envy by Rita Mae Brown Page B

or volatile subject and declare yourself an unwilling victim of such upset. Upset equaled bad manners. “My letter, Mother? I know you must have gotten my letter.”
    “I did.”
    “Well?” Frazier’s tone hardened.
    “I am putting that right out of my mind because I think you must have been out of yours.”
    “I knew you’d say that.” Frazier crossed her arms over her chest. “If it’s not what you want to hear, then there’s something wrong with the person telling you. Right, Mother?”
    “I see no reason to continue this discussion. You’ll come to your senses. In the meantime I advise you to be prudent.”
    “Prudent? As in shut up?”
    “You said it; I didn’t.”
    “I wrote other letters.”
    “You did?” Alarm invaded every crevice of Libby’s body.
    “Carter, Daddy—which you know, since you pick up the mail—Kenny, Ruru. I think I forgot a few.”
    Libby gripped the sink. “And did you tell them …” Frazier remained silent, forcing Libby to go on. Nothing like giving your mother a dose of her own medicine. “Did you tell them what you told me?”
    “That I was dying? Of course.”
    “You know what I mean.”
    “I want to hear you say it. That’s probably why I stopped by. I figured you wouldn’t phone me or come to my house.”
    “Say what?” But Libby was losing at her own game.
    “Not a goddam thing, Mother.”
    “Don’t you swear in front of me. That you’re unnatural,” Libby shouted.
    Frazier walked away from her and gripped the doorknob. “Nothing is unnatural—just untried.”
    “Don’t you get smart with me. Why’d you come over here? To make me more miserable than I already am?”
    “You did that all by yourself. I came over here to warn you. I don’t know how the other recipients will take their letters. For all I know it’s all over town that I’m gay. I know it’s all over town that I’m alive. I thought you might like to pull yourself together, to organize your public response.”
    Icy fear clawed Libby’s entrails. Her friends. The whispers behind the hand. The seemingly innocent inquiries, the too-firm handshake from the pastor after service. She could see it all. The social embarrassment—that would be loathsome—but the true agony would be the pity, the sickeningly sweet smiles and the solicitous tone of voice. Oh, God. “I don’t understand you. I never understood you and I don’t understand this. Go to a psychiatrist. You don’t have to be this way. I don’t want you to be this way.”
    “What do you think I did one day, Momma? Do you think I woke up and said, ‘I’m going to be queer today. I’m going to upset my mother, baffle my father, jeopardize my place in the community, and lose a few friends in the bargain? I’m going to join the most despised group of people in America. Hooray for homosexuals. I can’t wait to embrace these sorrows.’ Do you think I did that? Do you think anyone does that? I regret your hurt, Mother. I regret even more being shoved into a category, being
Untermenschen
, as the Nazis used to say, less than human. But you know what? I am what I am. I can’t see that it’s the end of the world or that I’ve suddenly turned into a monster.”
    “Two thousand years of church teaching can’t be wrong,” Libby railed.
    “Until the last century, the same church justified slavery, Mother, because it was in the Bible. I am not going to a psychiatrist. I am not going to suddenly marry and produce the grandchildren you blab about day in and day out. Like I said, Momma, I am what I am. And like it or not, I am your daughter.”
    “Then I wish you had died!” Libby tossed the pot at Frazier’s head.
    Quick reflexes intact, Frazier ducked. The pot smashed against the door. That fast Frazier was out of the house, leaving Libby to bellow, “Look at this mess you made. You come back here and clean it up. Frazier! Mary Frazier Armstrong, look what you made me do!”

14
    F RANK ARMSTRONG, SILVER-HAIRED AND FIT AT