Lana emerged from the kitchen carrying a mug of coffee, and when she handed it to Lily, she said, “I added a little whisky. I think you need it.”
“Thank you.” Lily sipped the coffee hesitantly. It was hot and sweet and left a pleasant warmth in her stomach.
Lana took a seat across from Lily. She reached for the Lucky Strikes and pulled one out, holding it between her lips while she thumbed the lighter. A flame shot out of the nude woman’s head. “This was a gag gift from one of Tommy’s friends,” Lana said. “It’s awful, isn’t it? At least you don’t have to squeeze her breasts to get it to work. I’ve seen one of those too.” She put the lighter back on the table and pulled the ashtray closer to herself. “Sorry for the mess. It’s been quite a day. But I think it’s been one for you too.”
Lily cupped her hands around her coffee mug. “I’m sorry to barge in on you uninvited.”
Lana waved her hand, the cigarette trailing smoke. “I have a feeling you wouldn’t be here unless you had to be.” She leaned forward to pour some wine into the smudged glass, then sat back, kicking off her slippers to tuck her feet up beside her, and took a sip. “Do you want to tell me what happened?”
It turned out, to Lily’s surprise, that she did want to tell her. The living room felt so intimate, and Lana seemed like someone who had heard everything and would be surprised at nothing. Lily found herself spilling out the whole story, from the moment she left Kath at the Telegraph Club to her confrontations with Shirley and her mother, to her chilly trek through the city to Lana’s front door.
“Do you think I should have done what my mother wanted?” Lily asked when she came to the end. “She kept saying that it was a mistake—as if everything would be fine as long as I called it a mistake. But that would be a lie. I don’t want to lie about it, but I can’t help thinking it would be easier if I did.”
Lana had listened quietly the whole time, smoking while Lily talked. Now she stubbed out the end of the cigarette in the ashtray and said, “If you lie about it, it’ll make it easier in the beginning, but your mother will never trust you again. Because she’ll know you lied to her. And every time you speak to her she’ll wonder if you’re lying—even if you’re talking about what you had for dinner, and especially who you went to dinner with. It’s better to be true to yourself than give her a reason not to trust you.”
Lily took another sip of her coffee. Maybe the whisky was working because she felt more at ease now, as if the clenched fist inside herself were loosening. “But she doesn’t trust me anyway,” Lily said.
“No, she trusts you. She’s having a hard time right now because you’re not what she expected. But we’re never what our parents expected. They have to learn that lesson.” Lana gave a short laugh. “My brother and I both taught our parents that lesson, and they didn’t like it with either of us. He was supposed to grow up and become a lawyer, just like Daddy, but instead he decided to go to New York to become an actor. They thought for sure it meant that Russ—my brother—was a homosexual, but it turned out I was the homosexual, and they didn’t like that either.”
“Did they—do they still not like it?”
“Oh, they’re coming around. It helps that Russ married a lovely woman and they have a beautiful little boy now. They’re still working their way around to me. At least they write to me now. For several years they didn’t.”
“They write to you—you mean they’re not here?” Lily asked.
“No, in Detroit. That’s where I grew up. I moved here when I was seventeen because I heard San Francisco was friendly to people like me. Russ said our parents were afraid I’d become destitute and end up working the streets.” Lana spoke dryly, but when she reached for the cigarettes again there was a touch of nervousness to her movements. “They’re happy I have a steady job now. Maybe if I looked like Tommy, they’d give up on me, but they keep hoping I’ll meet the right man. My mother tried to set me up on a date last week with a banker here who’s the cousin of one of her bridge partners. They won’t give up.”
Lily looked down at her coffee. “My mother said there are no homosexuals in our family.”
“Maybe there aren’t, but there might be a lesbian.”
It was a terrible joke, but it seemed so painfully funny to Lily in that moment. To think that she was sitting in Tommy Andrews’s girlfriend’s living room, hearing her life story! And then the reality of her predicament came crashing back down, and it wasn’t funny anymore. Here she was, in a near-stranger’s home, with nowhere to go.