Sadie laughed with no hint of self-consciousness. “I have a theory that he’d make more of an effort in bed because he needs to. What can I say? The idea appeals to me.”
“Great,” Anne said wearily. “You’re attracted to Steve Buscemi. I’m going to pretend I understand that and move right along. Are you telling me it’s always been men for you, until—recently? You’ve never been interested in other women.”
Sadie made an affirmative noise. “If we’re being precise about my sexual interest, Steve Buscemiet al.aside, historically it’s been mostly centered on Fred.”
Anne sat up a little straighter as preposterous envy began to crawl inside her.
“From the moment I locked eyes with him at that dialogue workshop, it was Fred. Something in me just recognized something familiar in him. I remember thinking it felt like a reunion. Not ‘Nice to meet you,’ but ‘Oh, I’ve missed you.’”
Over the years, Anne had heard smatterings of this history from Sadie, typically alongside generous praise for her ex-husband. She’d told Anne half a dozen times that Fred Hampton Clark was brilliant, gentle, dedicated to the fight for Black liberation, a loving father, and the most talented nonfiction writer in America.
Good-looking, too. Sadie had a few family photos on the wall of her living room that proved it.
Incredibly, Sadie had never once expressed direct anger at Fred for leaving her. But surely there was some resentment buried under all that inexplicable good will. Anne had pressed Sadie several times, asking outright why she didn’t hold a grudgetoward Fred, and Sadie had shaken her head, saying it didn’t pay to be angry at someone simply because he didn’t want to stay.
Anne still didn’t know exactly why Fred had left. And now didn’t seem like the right time to ask. Nor, honestly, did she want to.
“You really loved him.” It was just ludicrous for Anne to feel that much jealousy over a dead marriage. “Not everyone gets to have that.”
“I did love him,” Sadie said simply. “He was my first and only, you know. Sexually speaking.”
“Youronly? You’ve never been with anyone else?” Anne struggled to comprehend this new information. No wonder Sadie had avoided dating since her divorce. Other men probably didn’t interest you when your only point of comparison was the Greatest Man Alive.
“I take it your tally’s a lot more impressive? Feel free to amaze me with it.”
Silently, Anne counted. James, of course, and the two men she’d slept with in the last four years. Losing it to Chris Hodges in twelfth grade, when it had been as good a time as any to get it over with. At Dartmouth, she’d gone with Buck Degner for more than a year, keeping him at bay until his respectful admiration for her self-restraint slid into puzzled frustration. And Anne’s biggest regret: the naval officer she’d met at her father’s retirement party, just a handful of years into her marriage. Anne had thought he might’ve been the solution to the stain of loneliness spreading in her life, but he’d dumped her after a few weeks of sneaking around. For a little while, the guilt and humiliation had blessedly stopped her from feeling anything else.
“Six,” she said.
“All men, I assume.”
“Ofcoursethey were all men. What, do you think that I’ve been sleeping with other women this whole time? That I’ve spent my entire life as some sort of secret—” Anne stopped, her cheeks warm.
“You can say the word.Lesbian. It won’t hurt you. It’s not going to grab your purse in some gay alley and run off butchly into the night. You don’t have to claim it for yourself either. It’s just a word.”
No. Sadie was very wrong about that. It wasn’t just a word. Not at all.
“But, yes,” Sadie continued, “I have to confess, I’ve been wondering. Are you telling me you haven’t been intentionally hiding any feelings?” She turned away from Anne and toward the passenger window. “Like me?”
Anne turned up the air-conditioning a few notches. Too warm. “I didn’t know about any of it before this afternoon.”
“So this is completely new for you, then.”
“I—no, I don’t think that’s exactly right either. The thing is”—Anne could give herself permission to say this—“I’m starting to think about the men in my life. How I felt, or how I didn’t feel about them. And then there are these memories I have, with girls. Women. I don’t know what it all means yet.”
“Which women? Oh, that disgustingly pretty woman from Purple Poppy who delivered your birthday party flowers. Iknewshe was flirting with you! Were you attracted to her?” The immense envy in Sadie’s voice was undeniable. “Did she purple your poppy, Anne?”
“Absolutely not! Nothing happened with that woman, and nothing’s happened with anyone before. I’ve never acted on anything because I never knew I had anything to act on. Oh God, I feel so incredibly dense.” Her voice shook. “I’m sixty, Sadie. Sixty goddamned years old. Isn’t that way too late in life to be having this kind of crisis? If I’m—if I’m really likethis”—she couldn’t get any more specific—“if this is really what I want, shouldn’t I have realized something long before now?”
“Possibly. Possibly not. Want to be as hard on me as you are on yourself? ShouldIhave figured it out before my mid-fifties?”
Anne exhaled.
“Middle age isn’t some ditch at the dead end of Discovery Road.” Sadie crossed her legs. “If I’m not having major epiphanies right up until my last breath, then I’ve failed myself.”
“But aren’t you—?”Overwhelmed. Confused. Embarrassed by your own ignorance.“Isn’t it hard for you to re-evaluate yourself?”
A pause while Sadie considered this. “Truthfully? No. I’ve always believed that most people have the capacity to be attracted to multiple genders. It just took me a little longer than some others to realize that possibility for myself.” She hesitated. “It was far more painful to realize that my feelings for you posed a threat to our friendship. And far more difficult to keep those feelings hidden once I knew about them.”