Both women lay back in the ease and comfort of their home as the turquoise and deep blue of the evening drew in. So much had happened already in twenty-four hours or more that had swiftly propelled their relationship rapidly forwards. It was as if they'd been constrained, held back by forces which had suddenly disappeared and they'd been suddenly released. They ought to have felt vertigo at their relationship moving forwards so quickly but they didn't. They were happy to ride this emotional groove together all down the line, having each other to hold onto. Each woman inside herself felt that their world was right and if there shouldn't be anything to worry about, what was the problem?
"I remember the music that I heard paying from your room. It was really cool," Annabelle said dreamily as she lay on the sofa before breaking into soft laughter."I never expected it first day when I met you that I'd get to like your music."
"And why was that?" Simone said softly, no trace of reproach in her voice.
"I'd been packed off to yet another school. I saw what I was looking to see. I figured you out as just another teacher and didn't open my eyes at first. When I heard your music, I should have guessed what was coming."
"Why don't you pick out something you like? I trust to your taste,"came the gentle words with those dreamy inflections in her voice that made Annabelle feel all soft inside.
Annabelle's curiosity had been niggling away at her all the time she'd lived in the beach house. To her mind, music and books told a lot about the person and this time, she worked in the reverse direction. This fair-haired beauty of hers must have music that would touch her soul. Even if she hadn't heard of some of the music in the rack before, she felt she ought to give it a try. Her eye zeroed in on a cluster of CDs by a certain Tori Amos. She immediately picked out one CD and the vivid image of a slim woman with long, tousled red hair in the open flat countryside immediately caught her eye. Something about the picture told her it was all about freedom and that pleased her.
"Can I put this on? I've never heard of her before," Annabelle said, with the utmost respect. The CD called Scarlett's Walk felt more of an art object to her and she slid the cover out of the case with the greatest care and started to examine the lyrics.
"Wow. I thought the Walt Whitman poems you taught me were hard enough. What can this music be like?"
"Do you want to wait till you're ready to hear it?" Simone quietly asked to be greeted by a grateful look of understanding. Annabelle loved her lover's delicate sense of timing and understanding and smiled and nodded in response. She continued to pore over the lyrics with great care and Simone felt a very astute poetry appreciation mind reverently at work. Finally, Annabelle indicated to the fair haired woman to click on the CD player and inclined herself sideways across the settee to lay her head across the other woman's lap, her legs bent double. Simone realised that this device was the way her lover best felt music going through her. Suddenly a sweetly singing woman's voice came out of nowhere accompanied by rolling piano with the same texture of the waves that broke upon the beach in every living moment of their lives together. Finally the bass and drums gently locked into the piece like a heartbeat, gently pulsing its way through the music. Simone looked tenderly down on her lover whose lips were parted and her eyes were shining like stars. It was only when the fourth track had faded away when the younger woman suddenly reached above her head to click off the CD.
"What's the hell wrong?" Simone asked, her voice slightly raised, her eyebrows knitted. She couldn't understand Annabelle's bizarre reaction, her apparent three hundred and sixty degrees emotional reversal."I thought you loved it..."
"I do," the younger woman interjected passionately, twisting round to fix Simone's gaze. "It's too perfect. I can't take that much intense music and poetry and flip through it like it was some magazine. I really want to take my time to hear everything she's singing."
A slow smile spread across Simone's face. She'd forgotten how intensely she'd felt when she'd first heard Tori Amos's music. It all made sense to her as she ran her fingers through Annabelle's long tresses who turned on her side and snuggled up contentedly.
"That doesn't stop me feeling hungry. Just because you're an art lover doesn't mean you have to starve," suddenly came that mischievous voice out of the magical hush that hung over the room. Simone laughed out loud. She might have expected it.
"Guess it's my turn to cook us dinner,"she said lazily as Annabelle twisted herself around
, a broad grin threatening to split her face into two.
After dinner, Simone noticed her lover suddenly look shy and tongue-tied. This was very abnormal for such a forward thinking and precociously talented woman. Finally, she stopped biting the corner of her lip and found her voice.
"I've still got some books and CDs in my case. I wasn't sure what to do with them."
There was more to it than this, Simone thought. What she deduced was that Annabelle feared that her taste in books and music might appear immature in the eyes of this older, sophisticated woman. Certainly, Annabelle's eyes were downcast as Simone drew the first CD out of the case. It was Nirvana's 'Nevermind" CD. Simone could feel the younger woman crawling out of her skin at the impact of her gaze. Annabelle jumped when she felt the older woman lay her hands on her forearm. She must say something quickly and get it right, she thought, seeking inspiration.
"'Smells like Teen Spirit' "she said, pointing out to the famous track off it. "Perhaps I need some of your anger as much as you like my culture,"she said with infinite tenderness and slow deliberation"There's so much I want to learn about you and from you. I'm not that insecure to be frightened by it."
Annabelle rushed into Simone's outstretched arms. This was a demonstration of simple, heartfelt affection for this infinitely understanding woman who had the kindness not to place herself far above her reach. She clung onto her lover with all her strength and didn't want to let her go for a very long time. Simone could feel tears soaking onto her white shirt and felt enormously privileged to be let into the secrets of this extraordinary woman who was blindingly gifted with talents she so much wanted to explore. When they finally came up for air, the younger woman still draped one arm around the other woman's shoulders. Tears had streaked Annabelle's face but it was a mark of how far they'd both come together that she wasn't bothered one bit that she'd blown her cool. There was no one in the whole wide world but Simone in front of whom she'd so easily let down her guard.
"Let's put them in the case. Everything's all ours now from now on,"she said softly, a gently light in her eyes.
"I'll help you darling," Annabelle said, her voice still raw with emotion. She tilted her head against Simone's and a big, soppy grin spread over her face. She smiled at the vision of this rock chick who once would have sooner have cut off her right arm than verbalise such feelings. When she thought about it she realised to herself what the hell was holding her back? Simone's gentle smile and a soft kiss of her forehead showed how much she had read her thoughts. Ammabelle's response was to draw the other woman closer into herself.
In this mood of exploring each other's emotions ,Annabelle's attention was suddenly attracted by a corner of the living room where she realised that Simone kept her precious books. Her face broke into a smile as she moved towards it and Simone followed her. Of course, her one time teacher would have a discerning book collection from what she'd taught her in class. Even in the circumstances following her arrest, she knew that Simone would move heaven and earth to retrieve her precious books from the clutches of St Theresa's High School. She wondered why she'd never noticed beforehand.
"I'd be really interested to see what books you've been carrying around. You might have blown me away with how right you'd understood my poems but even a prodigy like you must have done some reading," Simone gently interposed with her understanding thoughts and words.
"I'm not all that intellectual,"Annabelle started to say when she felt the other woman's gaze on her. She would never need to apologise for who she was.
"It's all a part of who you are. It matters because you matter,"Simone said with those soft blue eyes that Annabelle had noticed way back when. The younger woman felt weak in the knees. How the hell could this woman of hers read her so well, she wondered? It must have been why their first real verbal exchange way back when had mattered more than she knew. 'Don't say I didn't warn you. Good luck,' she had said when she'd first presented herself outside the Mother Immaculata's door. There was something about what Simone, or rather Miss Bradley, had said and the way she'd said it that had really piqued her interest.
"What's on your mind sweetheart," the voice said in the same even tones, the same way as she did back then. Oh how things had otherwise changed so much in so short a time, Annabelle thought dreamily, as her hazy mind started to frame a response.
"It sounds stupid but I was remembering when you first told me outside the Mother Immaculata's office to take off my nose ring and Buddhist prayer beads. It wasn't what you said but the way you said it."
Simone hadn't expected this conversational development but something, somewhere had given her a fluidity of thinking that she guessed she'd never felt before to track this out of left field train of thought. She was sure that this was Annabelle's doing, not so much by what she said but because of who she was. It made her feel good inside to be so positively influenced by her.
"It's weird thinking of myself that far back, Annabelle. I thought of myself of this very understanding teacher who'd not forgotten how it felt to be young. In fact when I came to think about it, I reconnected with my seventeen year self who really made it hard for the Mother Immaculata to control me,"Simone replied, an undertone of pleasurable pride in her voice. This younger girl didn't know everything she'd got up to but she would tell her. There wasn't anything holding her back now.
"But she did eventually got to control you,"the younger woman said. Instantly, she felt Simone's deflation of spirit and wished she'd shut up. Annabelle quickly embraced her lover to try and squeeze some of the hurt out of her and gently pressed herself to to her.
"Darling, you can tell me what happened if you want or if you don't want, you don't need to say."
The mature woman, more than ten years older than Annabelle felt that she was really only the fourteen year old schoolgirl who was telling the story. Pretty soon, Annabelle clued herself in to what was going on and continued to comfort her with all her natural affection which came natural to her now she could let it out.
"You know the Mother Immaculata was my aunt though she lived in a different neighbourhood. I mean, I grew up with my parents a couple hundred miles away, going to the local school and she was busy with her calling. She looks like my mother and felt like a warmer hearted version of the cold fish that is my mother. My father was no better as both of them raked in the dollars like crazy," Simone started to say in halting tones. Annabelle shuddered, feeling her lover's pain for her. She knew what Simone was saying only too well from her own experiences.
"I realise now that I've always needed love but only on terms I could relate to...I fought against rules which didn't have anything to do God's love for me but I also wanted to be accepted. I was a bright, talented girl and a credit to the school...I used to have long talks with the Mother Immaculata as I naively thought she knew so much I could learn from her but she never knew everything there was to know about me, Amanda for instance. Something in me let her control me even from afar so when I graduated, went to college and taught in schools, yet what I thought of as a pure spiritual pull drew me back from afar. I rebelled yet I conformed...I don't understand it."
The bright alert woman's feelings were overflowing with pity for her poor sweetheart and any thoughts of what had happened to herself were pushed to the background. She knew that this was all too much for Simone's head to deal with in one go but she would have to revisit the very complicated mix of emotions another time. She vowed to herself to be more prepared to deal with a lot of unresolved feelings. She drew Simone tenderly towards her, making gentle,soothing sounds into her ear as she cuddled this troubled woman.
"I'll never treat you the way I got exploited emotionally by her. There'll never be a younger naïve woman, older experienced woman routine between us," Simone cried into her shoulder, fingernails pressing against her shoulders. "I even tiptoed past her door one night and when she called me in to sit awhile and keep her company and ran her fingers through my hair. She'd been drinking, you know. I made the very convenient excuse to say I was tired and wanted to go to bed. I wanted to break away from her like I wanted to break away from that guy at the End of Year dance."
Annabelle was brought up short by the very unpleasant mental picture that was being painted for her. Her immediate impulse was to jump right in and ask the first words that jumped into her mind, probably the right way to put it.
"Honey, what's wrong,"Simone asked softly as she luxuriated in the feel of her lover's skilful touch as she continued to caress her, to sooth her feelings. Annabelle sighed, thought very carefully and looked into those gorgeous blue eyes while holding her round her waist.
"You did ask me, Simone. I can't help asking you a question. You'd better hold onto your hat for this one,"Annabelle replied in her easy joking way that she judged as her best intro.
"And what's that?"
"Let's put it this way. Did you ever feel that the Mother Immaculata was hitting on you? I know that's a crazy, stupid thing to say."
Simone loved the dark-haired woman's reticence and sensitivity. It was one of the trains of thought she'd pursued in the weeks she'd been on her own without coming to a proper conclusion. She needed the sharp intelligence of this woman to bounce her thoughts off.
"It's not stupid at all, Annabelle. It's very brave of you to ask me. You could have let it alone. I've wondered about it the past few weeks and now I think," Simone said and here, her voice slowed down to a very soft deliberate delivery as she squared up to face this complex emotional conundrum,"Yes I think that she always has hit on me emotionally, from when I very first came here when I was thirteen. She didn't hit on me sexually or not in such a way that couldn't be denied or rationalised over because, of course, she's head of a Catholic High School devoted to the spiritual care and education of young girls from important families in the State of California. There are a lot of prying eyes but also very important forces that will protect her from scandal so long as she's not thought of as expendable. And of course, she's my of course, none of my partners were ever good enough for me except for Amanda who she never knew about. The irony as we know now that she was right."
"In other words, she might have hit on you in her way,"Annabelle was emboldened to say, feeling this woman of hers wince as she came out with those final words. She hugged Simone all the tighter.
"She might indeed without me being conscious of it. That's what held me in," Simone said in a very serene manner. She mildly surprised herself by this conclusion but being lovingly embraced by her girlfriend did help so much. The pause that followed felt utterly peaceful and tranquil. Annabelle loved to feel her lover's spirits lighten
"Thank you so much darling. I'd have never got this far if it hadn't been for you," she added. She moved her right hand which had been loosely cast round Annabelle's shoulder and gently brushed the side of her face. She pressed her lips against Annabelle's and gave her a soft, long deep kiss that lasted for eternity in the gentle glow cast by the sidelights.