Grumpy Old Ladies

"Oh fuck," Magda said, nearly cross eyed as she let her forehead rest against Donna's. "Now I'm all worked up again."

"I"ll go get the double dildo," Donna said, smiling impishly. "Meet me back in bed?" She took a couple steps backwards and smirked.

"But what about the coffee?"

"You know how I like mine," Donna said, turning and pulling up the back of her bathrobe to expose her ass. "Bring them both. Oh, and maybe some water!"

"How many hands do you think I have?" Magda called, as Donna giggled and zipped up the stairs.

***

Donna bit her lip and looked around. "It's the teddy bears!" she said, pointing at a booth. "You brought me here to win me a rainbow teddy bear!"

Magda just laughed and shook her head.

"Okay!" She threw up her hands and planted her feet. "I give up. Why are we here? Why not Chicago?"

Magda bit her lip. Whenever she did that, she always bit the side of her lower lip, slightly off center, which did just the cutest things to her mouth, but Donna would not be distracted. She'd really been looking forward to going to Chicago for her first Pride parade. Instead, at the last minute, Magda had cancelled their plans to meet up with Rhea and Laurie and driven them to tiny, podunk, barely-a-city, not-large-enough-to-have-a-parade-so-instead-they-have-a-fair, Lafayette.

She'd tried to stay positive, but it was hard even with Magda assuring her that there was a surprise. She worried that the surprise was that Janet would show up. She and Janet hadn't spoken in months, not since Janet insinuated that her and Magda's relationship was somehow taboo. She would certainly feel better if that little row was put to bed and she could call Janet once a week like she used to, but she was pretty sure that it wasn't just that it was two women, or even that it was two women Janet had been close with growing up; Janet had had a special relationship with her father. Both Laurie and Chrissy had tried to bring the subject up with Janet, and had gotten an earful for their trouble.

It was just a matter of time, but Donna had never been great at patience.

Lafayette Pride was being hosted on Purdue's campus that year, which was technically in West Lafayette, but the two towns were very closely intertwined. Donna had visited the campus once, with Ollie and Henry when Henry was in his junior year of high school, but nothing she saw looked familiar. It was hard to tell if it was because they were just on a different part of the campus, or if the place had changed over time, or if the Pride event was masking some landmark she would otherwise recognize. There certainly hadn't been so many rainbows last time.

As they moved through the crowd, Donna got the most incredible thrill from the simple pleasure of holding Magda's hand. She had certainly never faced a society hostile to basic levels of public affection between women, but there was something very supportive and rewarding about being surrounded by people who had found themselves like she had. They radiated joy, each of them, and it was hard not to feel like she was giving off some of the same as she walked alongside her girlfriend and squeezed her hand.

"There," Magda said, pointing.

A little further down there was a tent, probably the largest she'd seen since they arrived, but it took another minute of walking before Donna could read the sign, and when she did she shrieked and jumped. "No way!"

"Yes way."

"No way!"

"Yes. Way."

"But I love her!"

"She's your favorite author," Magda said. "I was looking at the weather last week, and it was saying there was a slight chance of rain in Chicago, but I really wanted to go to a parade with you. At first I was looking up Indianapolis, but then I checked this just because it's so much closer and whose name do I see but Mary Keats."

"But how?" Donna sputtered. "Why?"

Magda gave her a bemused look. "Did you not pick up on the tension between Avina and Daya?"

"They're..." Her brow furrowed heavily. "But... they're just old friends."

Magda shook her head. "There's no way Daya is that mad at her real early on in the story unless there was something else to it. And why do you think Avina is sooooo invested in getting back to her?"

"Well yeah, but she..." Donna's head fell a little to the side, like her neck was unable to support a brain thinking as hard as she was just then. "Ohhhh my God."

"I know you told me that book had layers, but yeesh. How many times have you read it?"

"Ahhh, ten? No. More. That's just with the hardback I have now. I used to have a paperback copy that I wore out. I don't even know how many times I read that one."

"Well," she said, half turning and gesturing toward the tent, "here's your chance to say thank you."

Donna read the sign again—An interview with local gay author Mary Keats on the subjects of lgbt representation and normalization—and sighed happily.

***

"I started reading her books in... what, high school?"

Magda leaned over, keeping her voice low, and said, "Eighth grade. I remember you carrying one around and talking about it a lot. I went to the library to check one out, but I had to get a different one from the one you had, and I didn't like it." She didn't need to be so quiet, there weren't that many people in the audience yet, but it was the polite thing to do.

Donna frowned and looked over. "You did?"

"No, I didn't like it."

"No, you..." Donna shook her head. "You looked into it because I liked it?"

Color rose in Magda's cheeks. She quickly pulled her phone out of her purse, looked at it, and then put it back. "At the party. The... At the Millers'? We had the same dress?"

"Yeah?"

"I saw you trying on that dress. At Nordstrom's, and I... I kind of went out of my mind? For a little bit? I... I stole that dress."

This time, Donna turned halfway around in her chair. "You stole it?"

"I could have afforded it," she said, her eyebrows rising, "but... I was obsessing. I had this little baggie in my purse that I'd carried some peanuts in and, for whatever reason, I hadn't thrown it out? I wrapped that around the dye pack. It didn't get it all, but the dress was blue and you can't hardly tell."

"Why would you do that?"

Magda just stared forward and licked her lips. "Why did you tell me Janet and Lennox had a kid together?"

Donna's breath caught in her throat.

"I thought I was losing my mind. I just kept thinking about you, and focusing on you, and I'd get so mad. So mad. It was all consuming. You were all I could think about. At the time, I was telling myself it was because I needed to wear it better, you know? The dress, I mean. Like..." She touched her fingertips to her forehead and laughed bitterly. "I had to win. If I didn't win, if I couldn't beat you, then... and-and so that meant I had to make it so that we were definitely competing as directly as possible, so I... I..."

"So you stole a dress," Donna said, softly.

"And then it didn't even matter. You looked gorgeous."

It took surprisingly little self-control to avoid arguing about who looked better in what on what day. Mostly, she just didn't like the way Magda looked sad. It hurt her heart, so she reached over and took Magda's hand.

"You looked gorgeous," Magda said, "and I felt awful."

"Hey hey," Donna said, softly, as she leaned in and put her head on Magda's shoulder.

Magda looked up, and shook her head as she carefully brushed her thumb through her eyelashes. "Sorry. I don't know what that was."

"Come on. We agreed."

"No, I know, but—"

Both of them turned as there was motion near the stage.

"I know we said no apologies," Magda whispered, "but I wish that I could take so much of it back. Like, going farther back than you even know."

Donna squeezed her hand extremely tightly, giving Magda one last very intense look, before her attention shifted to the stage.

The rows behind her were sparsely filled, and the small woman who came out when the interviewer announced her seemed to notice immediately. She was followed by another woman, slightly taller and similarly introverted, but the second woman was clearly more focused on the first. When they sat down, only one of them had a microphone attached to her shirt.

Mary Keats was smaller than Donna had imagined her, but with more than twice the amount of steel gray hair. The bulk of it was pulled back and tied up with a silk scarf, and then behind the scarf its true volume became apparent. Mary's eyes were everywhere, looking at everyone. She made eye contact with Donna three times, and each time Donna swelled with glee. She hoped it was written on her face how excited she was. She hoped she was cheering loud enough.

The interviewer, an older gentleman, waited until both Mary and her escort were seated. From the way the other woman clung to Mary's side, Donna thought she was either some kind of very devoted caregiver or a romantic partner. Maybe both.

"Okay," the interviewer said, collecting his talking point cards and situating himself comfortably in his chair. "For those of you who don't know, we've been trying to get Mary to come and speak at Lafayette Pride for years now."

A wave of excited cheering followed 'Lafayette Pride', but Mary just narrowed her eyes at the crowd. "We come every year," she said, in a surprisingly small voice. "Every year since the first one."

The woman seated next to her leaned in close to Mary, and though she wasn't mic'd and the PA didn't broadcast her voice, Donna could read enough of the woman's lips to know she was saying, "That's not what he's asking, dear."

"Oh," Mary said, sitting up very straight. "Well, um..." She crossed her legs very tightly, with the toes of her Keds on barely touching the stage below her. "All correspondence goes through my publisher first. So... sorry."

"No," the interviewer said, amicably, "I just mean that we're honored and lucky to have you!" To the audience, he added, "Mrs. Keats doesn't give very many interviews."

"Just Mary is fine," she said, voice shrinking back to a smaller version of itself.

"Thank you, Mary," he said. "We'll be discussing, specifically, your experiences writing diverse characters, how that's changed in the years since you first started publishing, and what kind of pushback you've gotten for the sensual, borderline erotic content in your stores. Each of your nine novels set a new bar for observational wit and insight, and—"

As he talked, Mary was focusing on him very intently. She had a laser focus, and indeed seemed to be looking more at the man's mouth than his eyes. Just as he was finishing up, Donna realized that the other woman, the caregiver, was moving in time with his words. She wasn't mouthing it out exactly, but her lips were sort of twitching and her head kept ducking slightly at the same cadence. There was no way this second woman could know what the man was going to say, Donna thought, unless they'd known what the questions were. Mary certainly wasn't acting like she knew what the questions were...

...which meant that the caregiver had written the questions? Which was strange?

"—through over forty years of writing and publishing, and over seventeen million copies sold." He paused slightly, turning toward the audience, and everyone clapped. "Then, at the end, if we have time, we'll hopefully be able to open it up to the audience and take some—"

"No," Mary said, sharply. "No questions."

The interviewer nodded easily, as if this had been a potential outcome, but the woman seated next to Mary frowned and looked worried.

"Please," Mary added, very belatedly.

"Of course, of course. Honestly, we're just so happy you're here. Whatever you're comfortable with, we're grateful for." He and the caregiver shared a very brief look, one that Donna was pretty sure she was the only person who noticed, and then smiled and looked down at his cards. "Okay. So. As I'm sure all of you know, Mary's first book, Years are Long, was first published in 1981, during the height of Reagan-era politics and religious fervor. Can you tell us about the process of trying to get a book published at that time that contained protagonists coded as lesbian, and the intertwined themes of feminism, female empowerment, and witchcraft?"

Mary looked down at the stage, and fidgeted slightly. "Um... Okay. Technically, Years are Long was my third book. I had another... um... hm. An-and then I had actually written Days are Short first. Days are Short is... well, um, contemporary. Set in, you know, 1977, but, you know, current at the time. It wasn't supposed to be retrospective, but it, um... That story was more explicit. It was about..." She trailed off, shook her head, and chewed on her lip. Then, she twitched when the caregiver next to her, whom Donna was increasingly sure was her wife, laid a hand on Mary's forearm.

"Days are Short was unpublishable," she said, having found some more conviction in her voice. "I heard that over and over when I was... Well, actually, I didn't send it out. I wrote it, and I put it down, and I just started writing another story. That's what I used to do. I would just write a story, and then... write another one. I didn't realize that my girlfriend was mailing copies out. I didn't even know she was making copies, but suddenly our little bookshop was going through copier paper at an astounding rate."

The crowd laughed. Mary didn't. She just blinked at them, and then painted a smile on her lips that didn't travel very much higher. She did seem to relax a little though.

"Um, then girlfriend, now wife. I found the rejection letters later, which was... It didn't matter, really. I was writing for my own reasons, but it..." The slightest pause. "It stung to see the parts of it that I was most proud of singled out with words like unpalatable, or unsavory. Lots of un prefixes."

Another round of laughter, and again Mary didn't seem to understand why. She wasn't frowning, exactly, but she was staring at some of the audience members as if she was trying to solve a puzzle. When her wife chuckled politely, that seemed to trigger a more genuine smile in the woman, but it still wasn't commensurate.

***

"This is gonna go bad," Magda said, turning slightly to look in directions Donna didn't.

"I'm doing this," Donna replied, curtly.

"No no," Magda said, eyebrows rising. "I'm on board with it. I love seeing you going after what you want. I just don't think it's gonna end how you want it to."

When it seemed like the interview had wound down, and Mary's patience for questions had worn thin, Donna had grabbed Magda by the arm and left early. The two of them were now standing beside the large tent, near an area where heavy duty power cables were running into the tent for the lights and sound.

"I'm okay if she gets upset at me. I still have to do it."

"This is some 4D chess stuff," Magda said, "being out in the back here before it's even over."

"All chess is 4D chess," Donna said.

Magda opened her mouth to argue, but there was sound on the other side of a flimsy bit of tent canvas, and Donna's heart leapt straight into her throat. Suddenly, it seemed like such a bad idea, and when Mary Keats and her wife came out through the back of the tent, both of them pulling off their official rainbow lanyards, their reaction to seeing two fans waiting was exactly what it seemed like Magda had been trying to warn her about.

"I'm sorry," Donna said, stepping forward, "I know you said you didn't want to take questions, but I felt like I really needed to say something to you and I didn't know if I'd ever get another chance."

Mary looked somewhere between petrified and horrified.

"I've read all of your books, many times. You're my favorite author, and you have been for decades."

"It's true," Magda said.

Donna gave her a brief, sideways glare, and waved her off. "I still feel like I'm learning from them. I've read Years are Short so many times that I wore out the binding on the first paperback version I had. The '85 print, with the two birds on the cover?"

Mary nodded, seeming at least a little bit less confrontational.

"I just wanted you to know that, even after all these years, I'm still finding new things. Things you put in your books that... sort of like easter eggs. It's not obvious, but I love it. Feels like a little victory every time I put something together."

"Oh," Mary said, blinking. This, it seemed, she understood. "Okay. Good. I'm glad."

"More than that, though," Donna said, barrelling forward, "I feel like your books have really been a part of me growing. You know, I was... I was married for twenty-six years, had four kids, and... and now, they're all grown up, and moved on, and..." She paused, turning back toward Magda and trying to figure out how to explain the last year and a half, and came up empty.

Mary was looking intensely back and forth between them when she turned back.

"There's bravery in your characters. They keep getting back up, no matter how many times life knocks them down, and I..." Donna ran out of words. She puffed out her cheeks, trying to make her brain make the words she wanted, but they weren't coming. And then Magda put a hand on her shoulder.

Magda smiled at her, and she smiled at Magda, and little by little the pressure let off.

Mary, who had been watching her intently the whole time, reached back and untied the silk scarf that had been holding back her hair. Her wife looked stunned as Mary loosened it, pulled it free, and handed it to Donna. The dense nest of curly gray went wild, bouncing up and around, and partially covering Mary's face.

"Babe," Mary's wife said, but Mary didn't say anything. She was focused on Donna.

Donna took the scarf, frowning in thought, and looked up, but Mary was already turning away.

"Babe," her wife repeated, but, again, Mary said nothing. She just shoved her hands into her pockets and started off in the other direction, along the backside of the large tent. The woman turned to Donna, smiled broadly, and said, "Thank you!"

Donna, bewildered, said, "You're welcome?"

"I don't know what you said that got through to her, but... Oh my God!" She seemed to come to her senses, and turned to follow Mary saying "Babe!" over and over until they were out of earshot.

Donna looked down at the scarf. It was old, surprisingly long, and a little frayed at the ends, but it was gorgeous. There was a multi-color tile pattern to it, and the colors were a little faded, but it had been well made once upon a time. She wrapped it loosely around her shoulders, letting it loop across her chest.

"It suits you," Magda said, giving it a tight nod of approval. "I don't know what the hell that was, but..."

Donna looked after the two of them, walking side by side with their arms around each other, and smiled. "I think she just... needed to hear that?"

The taller woman nodded slowly, and reached up to run her fingers through the short hairs at the back of Donna's neck. "You were right."

"That means I won," Donna said, brightening significantly.

"What? No. We didn't bet. That wasn't a bet."

"I won," Donna sang.

"This doesn't count!"

"You've gotta wear the cat ears!"

"I'm filing a petition as soon as I get back to my office. You'll be hearing from my lawyer."

Donna smirked. "I am your lawyer, and I'm not doing that, because I won."

"Total conflict of interest," Magda fired back. "I'll sue your pants off."

"Oh, well, You didn't have to sue me to get my pants off."

And then Magda was kissing her, and all was right with the world.

***

"It's a trick," Donna said, equal parts grabbing Magda's hair to keep her in place between her thighs and pushing her away. "A dirty, dirty trick. With tongues."