It's awkward now, and you step backwards to the door. Betty steps forward and there's a moment of seizing in your brain as she reaches around you to get the handle. Her face is so close to yours but she's focused on the doorknob behind you and she doesn't even notice, doesn't pay it any mind. Once the door's open she looks up and smiles a bit. She seems taken aback by your expression and backs away, as do you, out the front door.
"I never meant to hurt you, that was never my intention," you start, trying to justify your past actions that were pretty unjustifiable. You just need to know that it didn't come from a bad place, that she doesn't think you hate her, like you thought she did after she got out of jail.
"I figured," she says, looking down again. "I read those letters you sent Glad."
There was a lot you wrote in those letters; you can't recall it all right now but you know you wrote something about needing to find out who you were without standing in the safe shadow of Betty.
There's footsteps pounding down the hall and a tiny person hurls herself at Betty, is caught and picked up, settled on a waist. Betty's hair, in the daylight, shines in a way it never used to. She's a different person, away from the cordite.
Betty reads your face, in that snapshot moment, and steps forward, quickly puts an arm around you and pulls away as fast as she can. In this case, it's the least she can do; it's the most contact she could offer.
"You made me a better person," she says, and half-smiles. She chucks you under the chin, then steps back.
Betty stands at the door, Kitty on her hip, both waving a hand each as you walk away and try not to think about Betty shutting the door once you're off the property, Betty handing Gladys her child, planting a kiss on Kitty's forehead, then one on Gladys' mouth, now that the door is shut. Now that the door is shut, you can pick you your pace, swipe at where your makeup has smeared; is still smearing.
There is love in that house, and you can't remember the last time you felt love. Maybe in your bed, with Betty comforting you. Or in the hospital, with Betty again. Maybe the last time she looked at you.
Ivan said he loved you, but he moved on remarkably fast. He also said he loved Betty, and again, moved on awful fast. It still hurts to think about Ivan. You're glad you made peace with him but what your replacement told you hurt; he shouldn't have been there, but then she shouldn't have been planting live bombs in a bomb factory. You can't see, really, how she thought that could work out in her favour.
You shouldn't have come here. It's bought up a myriad of feeling and memories, not least of which is the way Ivan screamed and screamed, the way Betty never strayed more than two feet from your hospital bed.
Ivan always wanted more than you could give. Betty was patient, and once she knew you didn't want her as a suitor, she kept her intentions honourable. Most of the time she was just Betty, then you'd catch her looking at you and you'd remember and blush and turn away.
Betty once said that the kind of singing you were interested was only done by a certain kind of people. You thought it was racist when she said it, but she was right. You've had countless negresses eye you off, only to tell you to stick to white music. "Why you gotta take that away from us too?" One asked. You had no answer. You just knew what felt right, and it felt right, friendless in lonely towns, to fill the rooms with your voice until you felt less alone.
You've made it to the streetcar stop now, and it takes a few minutes to reorient yourself with Toronto. You never strayed far from the boarding house, but you can tell it's nothing like Gladys' old neighbourhood. The houses are a little run down, the lawns are a little too long. You climb onto the streetcar from force of habit, eye fixed in the direction you think Betty's house is in. You wish now that you'd gone to see Betty box, just once. You've seen her fight before, usually for you, so you know she can handle her own. She fought for Teresa too, fought pretty hard, judging by the state of her face. The amount of times you held ice to her bruised left eye, you were scared she'd lose vision in it one day.
She fought for Teresa, but she was fighting for something else. You could see the way it hurt her to have to be secretive when she finally had something she was proud of.
And now she and Gladys live together in a little house with a child they're raising together. She seems more comfortable now, like she's settled in. She and Gladys both seem... settled and grown up now, in a way they hadn't been before. You can't see these solemn adults dancing at Sandy Shores. You've lost something you hadn't known you'd valued, two people that used to mean the world to you.
Their world is so vastly different to yours now.
You can see the grocery store, and hop off the streetcar, buy some tea. You'll make it yourself this time. Maybe it'll taste like the past didn't go anywhere.