It’s the opposite of the usual line. A simpler time. A time when a lady was a lady.
“Maybe. I hadn’t really thought about it.” I rub the edge of a tablecloth between my thumb and forefinger but feel only the friction of my age-softened gloves. “I suppose it depends on where I was, too. I wouldn’t want to get burned at the stake as a witch.”
“Oh, but can you blame them? You are a witch. I don’t doubt you would have poisoned the village crops, salted their fields, and led their daughters into temptation.”
My breath freezes in my lungs. But Ellis isn’t even looking at me—she has a painted figurine in hand and seems very interested in the whittle-work.
For a second all I can do is stand there, sucking in air and clenching my fists; the leather creaks as it stretches over my knuckles.
And then, at last, I manage to push the words past my throat:
“Just their daughters?”
Ellis glances back. She’s taken off the pince-nez; the frames dangle from one idle hand. “It takes one to know one.”
It isn’t an accusation. It isn’t anything. It’s…a statement. Of fact.
I take off the gloves.
Ellis is still watching. She watches me fold the gloves and place them on the table, watches me pretend to look at the tablecloth embroidery.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she says.
A dry laugh rasps out of me. “I know that.”
“Are you ashamed?”
“Of course not.” The words are sharper than intended. I grit my teeth and try again. “No. But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to tell everyone.”
Ellis holds up both hands, palms out: a surrender. “Fair enough. Forget I said anything.”
Only now that the seal has broken, it’s impossible to go back. And maybe I don’t want to forget what she said.
Ellis heads into the next room, and I trail behind her like a second shadow. She hasn’t told anyone, either. If she had, I’d have heard about it. It would be in the interviews, the profile pieces.
“My girlfriend wanted me to come out,” I say, standing there in the middle of a Persian rug as Ellis drops into an emerald-cushioned armchair. “I wasn’t ready. But she kept pushing.”
“She sounds like a bitch.”
I shrug. “She wasn’t. At least…not most of the time. Not to me.” I don’t want to say Alex wasn’t a bitch. That wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. But bitch felt like a harsh word to apply to a girl who was fighting so hard to make space for herself in a world that didn’t want her. Alex was many things. She contained multitudes. And to say she was a bitch sometimes was to erase everything else she was: brave, stubborn, passionate, affectionate, a girl who would destroy empires to save someone she loved. “She was of the opinion I didn’t want to tell anyone because I was worried I wouldn’t be popular anymore if people knew.”
“I doubt that would have been the case.”
“No. It wouldn’t have. Alex was out, and no one cared. Everyone worshipped her.”
I realize I’ve said her name only after it’s already fallen from my lips. Ellis is unfazed, her knees crossed and the top leg swinging: a feudal marchioness presiding from her throne. Maybe she’d already figured out Alex and I were together, our relationship inevitable as any plot twist in Ellis’s book.
I shake my head, an odd smile twisting at my mouth. “I don’t know. I’d rather wait until after I’ve graduated. It seems like such a cliché, doesn’t it? Lesbians at a girls’ school.”
“Hey now. I happen to like that cliché.”
I laugh. “I bet you do.” All at once I’m giddy, as if buoyed up on champagne fizz. The chandeliers seem brighter; the brass seems brassier. The dust flickers like diamond shards in the window light. On impulse I steal Ellis’s hat, tipping down the brim to gaze at her from under its shadow with a cocked brow.
“I’d have smoldered at the stake right next to yours, no doubt.” Her smile is more subdued than mine, but it’s still there. It’s real, crinkling the edges of her eyes. She seems younger suddenly, just a girl wearing a ridiculous pair of glasses, sitting in the middle of a shop filled with everyone else’s castoffs, all the memories no one wanted to keep.
I offer her the hat back; she shakes her head and says, “It looks better on you.”
We move into the next room, which is full of books—everything from leather-bound tomes with gold foil lettering on the spines to frayed mass-market paperbacks. I pull out a particularly thick one and let it fall open to the middle page, bury my nose against the paper, and inhale.