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It starts, of course, after Mark moves out.
A way to build trust back in the house. A way to make it their own again. If Jenny were just a little more spiritual – if she were that kind of gay person – she would say that the house had terrible juju, she would wave sage around it. How many hearts have been broken, in these walls? How much trust? If nothing else she wants to board up that fucking shed and never go in there again.
So she decides to have Shabbat dinner, her and Shane and the others.
“What is that, like, a ritual or something?”
“It’s dinner.” Jenny flexes her wrists, tries to shake out the carpal tunnel she is most definitely developing from writing by hand every day, and keeps kneading the sticky dough in front of her.
“Oh, cool.”
“Every Friday – at least, that’s how we did it while I was growing up. I’m going to call everyone and see who can come.”
“We’re gonna need another roommate soon.” Shane has her tiny dorky glasses on, she’s languishing on the couch with a clipboard in her hand as she roves over the bills. She’s better at these sorts of things than Jenny, who still isn’t completely sure she is paying her taxes right, and sometimes dreams of the IRS knocking on her door.
“Ooh, what about Feef?”
“Feef?”
“The actor girl? Remember?” Jenny has an eye on the dough, even though she knows that a watched pot never boils and she has to assume the same can be said for bread. Maybe there’s something in that. She itches around for a notebook, a scrap of paper, something, and comes up on a piece of junk mail. They say that a watched pot never boils, but that applies to so many things…
“Oh, God.” Shane pinches her temples. “If I never have to hear about fuckin’ Hollywood again-”
“Come on. She was sweet! And she wouldn’t…”
Then they both go quiet, because they have both gotten so very good at communication, with each other and with the people they love in their lives, but some things you just can’t talk about. Not easily, anyway.
“I’ll put her on as a backup. In the meantime I guess I can try to find some extra clients and you can pick up more shifts.”
“Right.”
Jenny punches the dough, and some of it sticks to her knuckles.
“Do you want to try?”
“Hm?”
“Kneading it.” Jenny punches the dough again, and she pictures several faces on the other side of her fist, melting against the impact. “It’s very cathartic. You know, I think that this might have been the way women let out their aggression before they were allowed to read. To create something nourishing, you first have to engage in the act of destruction.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I could write a short story about that.”
“You sure could, Jen.” Somehow, it doesn’t sound condescending when Shane says it. “I’ll give it a go.”
“Okay, just…punch it.” Jenny stands aside, folds her hands behind her back. Shane sets down her clipboard and takes off one of her rings and punches it.
“Now what?”
“You’ve really never done this?”
“When would I have had time to learn to make bread? One of my old roommates worked at Pizza Hut and she used to bring us leftovers sometimes. Other than that it was mostly, you know, Stoffer’s. Frozen meals, cup noodles, that sort’ve thing.”
“That’s sad.”
“I don’t need to make bread when I can buy it from the store. That’s all I’m saying.”
“You flip it over, you knead it out.” Jenny demonstrates. Shane’s hands are awfully close to her own - time-roughed, long, radiating warmth. “According to the LA Times this is a ‘no-knead’ recipe but it isn’t, and the photocopied version of my mom’s recipe is somewhere in Santa Fe right now.”
“Right.”
“So, punch it again. Picture everyone who has ever hurt you.”
“Okay.” Shane does, but there’s hesitancy in her movements. What Jenny has noticed - what she has observed, without a camera, without a speck of voyeurism, and simply entirely with being a perceptive person - is that Shane is a much gentler person than she pretends to be.
“That should do it,” Jenny says, after thirty or so seconds.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” Jenny smiles up at her, and Shane returns it.
“I’m gonna go over the rest of the bills.”
“I’ll let you know when it’s ready to braid, you’ll be good at that part.” Jenny spreads saran wrap over the bowl, crimps the edges. “You know, because you’re a hairdresser.”
Shane flips through the next page on her clipboard, furrows her brow, surely makes a couple of calculations in her head.
“You didn’t catch Feef’s number, did you?”
***
“Hey, babe?” Alice calls from across the house, hands busy with laundry, folding and folding. Dana’s clothes mixed with her own, white tank tops and patterned blouses and exercise shorts and skinny jeans, and it feels so bright, so fantastic.
“Yeah?”
“Are you going to Jenny’s thing tonight?”
“What thing?”
“You know, the, um.” Alice waves her hand around, even though Dana can’t see her. She’s back from a run, she’s in the shower. “Shabbat dinner? At her and Shane’s place. She called me about it earlier.”
“I thought we were staying in tonight.” Dana steps out of the bathroom, wrapped in one of Alice’s towels, and she feels that brand-new feeling again, the bright one. “Remember, I was going to be Sherlock Holmes, you were going to be…the woman in Sherlock Holmes?”
“Ugh, you’re right.”
“We can always do it another night?”
“I mean, it doesn’t start until sundown. I think. There’s definitely something where you wait until sundown. That might be Passover?”
“So there’s time.” Dana roots around in the closet, something of theirs that’s shared, too.
“We’d kill at Comic-Con.”
“At what?”
“Comic-Con? You know, the thing where everyone dresses up in spandex as their favorite superhero or whatever?”
“Alice, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“The whole thing’s so gay.” Alice finishes folding the laundry, frowns. She doesn’t procrastinate a lot, she’s more of a go-getter than that, but she was hoping it would take longer, so she wouldn’t need to get back into writing for The Chart this quickly. “But don’t tell the nerdy guys that.”
“Right.”
“My point being, yes. Please, Detective. I need you to solve the mystery…of my missing underwear.”
“Oh my God.”
***
Tina still has her apartment. It’s a means of establishing boundaries more than anything else at this point, it is her way of showing that she has not given in completely.
But now Bette is here, in her living room, with papers spread out in front of her as she plots out something art-related, as Tina maps out how to divide Helena’s grant money.
They will call it parallel play, in a few years. For now she calls it having some respectful degree of distance, before they do away with all propriety and fuck each other silly.
“It’s a nice place,” Bette says, glancing around like she’s seeing the apartment for the first time.
“I know it’s small.”
“No, it’s nice.” Bette lifts her hand from her art maps, then puts it down. “I mean it.”
“Thanks.”
They slip back into silence. It’s almost comfortable – it’s almost like nothing happened, not that she can pretend it didn’t. If it hadn’t, she wouldn’t be in this apartment at all.
Then Bette’s phone rings.
“Oh.”
“Is it the museum?” Because it usually is the museum.
“No, actually. I think it’s…Jenny?” Bette flips open her cell phone, holds it to her ear like it is a part of her. “Jenny. Is everything okay? What? No, I just worry.”
Tina thinks, briefly - brief enough that she can push it away - that Bette is going to be a great mom.
“Tonight? I mean, I can try. That sounds lovely. Your place?” Bette talks fast enough that it’s hard for Tina to picture anything on the other side of the line, but then again she can’t hear it. She tries to keep away from cell phones, anyway. It’s too hard to divide your life and work with work in your pocket at all times, in her opinion. Bette covers the phone with her hand, leans forward. “Do you want to come to Jenny’s for Shabbat dinner tonight?”
“With her and Shane?”
“With you and Shane?” Bette repeats into the phone. She mouths yes a few seconds later.
“Sure.”
“She says sure. Six PM? Do we need to bring anything? Great.” Bette snaps the cell phone shut.
“You really do care about her.”
“She’s a sweet kid. I hate how much the world’s already hurt her.”
Tina is sensitive enough not to mention the fact that there are other things Jenny and Bette have in common, less savory ones.
“I know,” Tina says, to smooth that over. She reminds herself, like a mantra, that Bette is here on her terms. That she did not acquiesce to her forced apologies and that they in fact met each other where they were.
She wants her. She wants not to want her. She is so glad that she still wants her, and that this thing growing inside her will be born surrounded by love on all sides.
***
“How’s the salad looking?” Jenny is running around the house like a cat or something, setting up candles in wineglasses and setting the table with their nice utensils, which are the ones that haven’t gotten fucked up by the dishwasher.
“Pretty good.” Shane tosses it a couple more times, for good measure. The doorbell rings and Jenny jumps a clean foot or so in the air, opens the door anyway. Hostess training kicking in, probably.
“Are we early?” Alice enters with Dana on her arm, held close. Shane kisses them both on the cheek. “Oh, how French.”
“You’re right on time. I mean, you’re the first ones here, but the only other people we invited were Bette and Tina, so.”
“Together?” Alice clicks her tongue, and Shane can see the gears turning in her head. She’s tuned in to her radio show every week, less because she wants to hear about her own exploits (she’s not that self-centered) but more because, hey. Alice is her friend. She wants her to do well.
(It’s the same rationale that’s seen Shane’s friends let her fuck up their hair, multiple times, she thinks)
“She called Bette, apparently Tina was there.” Shane shrugs.
“Don’t tell Bette I said this, but I’m of two minds about it.” Alice strolls inside and looks around. “Yes, it’s obvious to anyone with eyes that their reunion was completely inevitable, but Tina could’ve held out a little longer. Maybe it was that Helena chick, she’s always given me weird vibes. Nobody that rich is normal.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“Anyway, mazel tov!” Dana hefts a bottle of wine, store-bought, with the price sticker still on.
“Shabbat shalom,” Jenny corrects, softly.
“Right, yeah.” Dana lowers the wine, hand around the neck, at an angle that Shane would worry about but that doesn’t seem to bother her. She’s strong, after all. An athlete, still. “Very Catholic upbringing. You know.”
“I sure do, babe.” Alice pulls Dana in, kisses her hard. “What? We’re missing Sherlock Holmes night for this, you know.”
“I don’t think I want to know what that is.”
“I mean, you absolutely do, roleplay is a crucial means of spicing up your sex life, but I’ll save that whole convo for later. Jenny, where do you want the wine?”
“The kitchen table’s fine.”
“Ooh, look at this! Guys, this looks great! You really made a whole dinner.”
“You sound surprised,” Shane remarks, because she can’t help herself. That’s how it is, with her and Alice. They don’t really hold things back.
“Shane, how long have we known each other? And when have you ever known how to cook? This is impressive. Is that handmade challah?”
“It is,” Jenny says, proudly, wiggling a bit in her fur coat. Shane has no idea how she doesn’t overheat. Then again, Jenny’s very small and very slight. She could be like those tiny dogs that need sweaters, even in the LA summer.
“Wow.” Alice sort of wavers. She doesn’t sit down, she doesn’t really move. “This place is a major step up from the shed, by the way.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty nice.” Shane doesn’t need to go into more details than that. Won’t, anyway. The doorbell rings again. “I’ve got it, Jenny.”
She opens the door to Bette and Tina, standing next to each other.
“Look who we picked up along the way,” Bette says, and Kit steps in right behind them.
“Kit!” Jenny cheers. Shane thinks Kit deserves someone cheering her on every time she steps into any room, and she’s glad Jenny can give her this. “The gang’s all here! Come on, before the pasta gets cold.”
***
The dinner table is not nearly big enough for all of them – there’s four chairs, one ottoman, Dana most gratefully agreeing to stand the whole time (an athlete, always), and a full-sized armchair lugged over and scraped into the floor with so much effort that Jenny knows without a doubt that it will stay there for another week, at least, unless Dana deigns to visit again. They’re squeezed together, arm-to-arm and shoulder-to-shoulder, which Bette clearly loves and Tina is clearly feeling mixed emotions about.
Had Alice not taken up the mantle of group anthropologist already, Jenny thinks, she would do a very good job at it herself.
“When I was growing up we’d do that thing where there’d be a rhetorical question asked and answered. How many prayers do we say tonight?” Jenny holds up three fingers before any of her friends - her friends, she has friends who love her, she has this - can try to answer. “Three.”
Jenny closes her eyes, begins to murmur. “Baruch atah adonai…”
Alice murmurs along with her, Shane does her best to follow along.
Jenny enjoys the pageantry, at the end, when she whips the cover off the challah (the thing that she made, with her hands, with Shane’s hands too), “bread, challah, from the earth!”
The rest of it is dinner, more or less. Food passed around, chatter had.
“This is actually really good.” Alice heaps more pasta onto her plate. “Might have a spot at the Planet for you yet, Jenny.”
“I don’t think I want to stand in the space Marina stood in,” Jenny admits, “lest it stir up feelings I don’t want to feel again.”
Alice shrugs, nods.
“Fair enough.”
“We should all be so lucky not to have our exes actually there,” Dana groans, now sitting in Alice’s lap, grotesquely adorable.
“Oh, shut it, Lara’s great,” Kit says, “you need to try her kouign-amanns, they’re selling like…well, like hotcakes.”
“Invite her over next time,” Shane offers.
“Next time?” Jenny squeaks out. Too much to hope for, something she never would have expected, all of that. Oh, should she feel so excited for something so simple?
“Unless there’s no Friday next week for some reason, yeah.” Alice shrugs again. “I’ll clear my calendar.”
Something warms her. Something long-frosted melts over. Jenny will spend many fruitless hours trying to put this feeling into words.
“Anyway, more importantly,” Alice moves on, glides over it as she glides over most things (Jenny envies her for this), “Tina! Just when is that baby coming?”
“Soon, I hope.” Tina lays a hand over her stomach, and Bette does the same thing, both of them reverent. “The doctor said she’s due in about a month.”
“She?” Dana repeats.
“I know some people like not to know the sex beforehand, but we couldn’t help ourselves.” Bette looks at Tina with love. It is so simple, and it is so complicated, and it yanks at the fragile threads which comprise Jenny’s heart like a blade.
***
Bette finds Jenny sitting on the porch step after dinner, after Alice and Dana have gone home for something they call Sherlock Holmes night and Tina has insisted she can take a taxi back to her own place, because it would be silly for Bette to take her home when she lives right next door.
“That was nice.”
“Thanks.”
“I know lawyers, by the way.”
“What?”
“I know a lot of powerful lawyers,” Bette repeats. For a writer, she thinks, Jenny isn’t very good at picking up on subtext. “If you ever needed to call anybody. To sue.”
“Oh.”
“Say the word. We look out for our own.”
“Thank you.” They can both see the ripples of Bette’s pool, from here. “You know what’s funny?”
“What?”
“The day I moved here - literally, the very first day I moved here - I saw Shane in that pool. I thought she lived there.”
“No, she just has a key she won’t give back.”
“She was hooking up with a woman.” Jenny smiles, dreamily, the very picture of a baby dyke. Bette cannot remember when she looked at anything with such youthfulness, with such simplicity. “I don’t even know who the woman was, in retrospect. I never saw her again. But it was the very first time I had ever seen lesbians in real life.”
“I doubt that.”
“The very first time I had seen lesbians in real life and known,” Jenny revises, “that that was what they were. And now I know that this is more of a Shane thing than an all-lesbians thing, but the way that they just looked so…free. So happy to be themselves. I thought, Los Angeles. This really is a place where anything can happen.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Bette leans forward, rests her hands on her knees. “People can say what they will about New York. Personally, I think this is the art capital of the country.”
“And I would be inclined to agree with you. I mean, the amount of prominent writers alone – so much of Joan Didion’s work, for example.”
“I’m glad you understand.”
“Of course I understand! Art is the single most important tool we have as human beings. I would only ever be able to express myself through storytelling. I feel…wrong, if I don’t. Like there’s something humming beneath me, inside of me, screaming to get out. And then when I do it right, I can see myself reflected, warped and oftentimes ugly and yet I’m there, and that is the single most important gift that one person can give to another. The gift of being seen.” Jenny exhales, punctuates seen with her head thrown back in near-orgasmic ecstasy. “That’s part of your criteria when you’re picking art pieces, I’m sure. The degree to which a piece speaks to you.”
“It is, actually.”
“So we understand each other.” Jenny smiles, wide. “It feels so nice to be understood.”
And Bette can’t help but smile at that.
“It does, doesn’t it?”