The Secret of You and Me - Melissa Lenhardt Page 0,53
reading to other things. Nora loved the classics, which I would have never touched with a ten-foot pole. When I think of falling in love with Nora, it isn’t our first kiss, or the first time we, you know, but it’s those moments when she read to me. There was an intimacy to it that is hard to explain. Watching her for all of those hours, I felt like I could see into her soul.” I paused. “That probably sounds really stupid.”
“Not at all. I fell in love with Ivey watching her care for a patient.”
“Ivey is a saint, of course you fell in love with her.”
“She is, and she’ll be tickled when I tell her you said it.”
I cleared my throat. “Our senior year we were a couple, in secret, of course. But, we’d always been so close that no one suspected much. Our friends had joked about us being lesbians for years, and we’d always hammed it up and laughed with them. Charlie was there to attest that Nora wasn’t gay in the least.”
“Hang on. Charlie, as in Charlie Wyatt, your husband?”
“Yep.”
“So, Charlie and Nora were boyfriend and girlfriend?” At my nod, Todd said, “Wow. This is some All My Children–level shit.”
“Yeah, it kind of is. So, nothing really changed when we got together except the lesbian label wasn’t a lie anymore. We managed to fool everyone for our entire senior year.”
“That’s impressive.”
“They guys never believed it, and if some girl was adamant it was true, that our relationship ‘just wasn’t normal,’ I could always wave it off as jealousy. Nora and I were kind of the it girls, and I’m ashamed to admit that we used that to our advantage the entire year. Oh my gosh, what a great year it was. Best of my life. I’d found the other half of my soul. When we’d made it through football season, the prom, graduation, we could see the light of freedom at the end of the tunnel. Then, my mother caught us. Twice.” My voice was thick with emotion, at the reliving of the moment as much as the telling. “The first time we were asleep. Naked and intertwined, but Brenda believed us when we said it was a one-time thing. She decided the best thing to do, to keep it from happening again, was to separate us. Mother threatened to tell Nora’s father unless Nora joined the army. Brenda knew they were after her to join, and she knew I hated the idea.
“My punishment was attending Oral Roberts instead of Tech.” When Todd looked confused, I clarified, “The Jesus university with the praying hands?”
“I still don’t know, but I get the drift. Go on.”
“Neither one of us liked the options, but we decided the only way to be together was to do what Brenda wanted. Or let her think we were. Nora would join the army and go to boot camp. When she found out where she would be stationed, I would come to her. Get a job, go to whatever college was nearby. Then, my mother caught us a second time.”
I closed my eyes and grimaced at the memory of Brenda grabbing Nora by the ankle and dragging her off me and onto the floor. Grabbing my tennis racquet and hitting Nora with it. Me, throwing myself over Nora to protect her. My father coming into the room at the noise and finding his daughter and her best friend, naked and cowering beneath his wife’s wrath.
“There was no denying what we were doing this time. My father calmed my mother down, told Nora to get out and never come back. They locked me in my bathroom. Tiny window, you see. I begged and pleaded through the door, asking them not to tell Nora’s dad. I told them I would do anything they wanted, just to leave her alone. I could hear them talking low in my room, then nothing. An hour, maybe two later, my father came back with an empty suitcase and told me they were taking me to a conversion camp.” I straightened and moved slightly away from Todd. I couldn’t look at him. “I threw Nora under the bus to avoid that. ‘I’m not gay. I didn’t even really like what we did together. She seduced me. I only went along with Nora because she was my best friend blah blah blah.’” I shook my head. “I saved myself, but I ruined Nora’s relationship with her father.”