Nolan, Vanessa, and Marina.
Alice almost laughs at how ridiculous it is to think of Van as a Vanessa. She’s not a Vanessa. She’s not anything but a Van. Blunt and to the point, unique, surprisingly soft, butch as the day is long. She turns her head, about to ask Van how old she was when she started going exclusively by Van—and by the way, why does her business card say Vanessa instead—but she stops short at the expression on Van’s face.
It’s pinched, something painful in the clench of her jaw, years of buried hurt in the way her shoulders are inching up toward her ears. Alice rewinds the conversation in her mind, trying to pinpoint what could have happened. They weretalking about the blankets. Nolan has one, and Marie does too. She’s about to ask about Van’s, but then she glances between Van and Babs, who are very studiously not looking at each other, and clocks the way Marie looks at Van and then guiltily drops her eyes.
Oh.
Van doesn’t have one?
She must not be very subtle—in fact, she’s pretty sure her jaw is hanging open as she stares between them all like she’s watching a horrifying tennis match of unresolved family trauma—because Babs says, “Nolan and Van didn’t care as much for theirs. I’ve held on to Nolan’s for him, and Van gave hers away years ago.”
A muscle jumps in Van’s jaw, but she doesn’t say anything.
It’s so painfully awkward that Alice considers leaping out the window.
“Why don’t you guys go get some food and fresh air,” Van finally says, looking at her mom and Marie. “Alice and I can hold down the fort for a while.”
It’s, of course, forty degrees and raining, but like all born and bred Portlanders, both Babs and Marie look excited by the idea of going outside. They troop out, and the instant the door closes behind them, Van sags down into the chair next to Nolan.
She looks so fucking exhausted that Alice has an absurd urge to drop into her lap, to cradle Van’s head to her chest, to stroke her hair until Van falls asleep against her.
But of course that would be weird, wildly inappropriate, and quite possibly unwelcome, so Alice forces herself to sit down in the other chair, the one across the bed from Van, and hold on to her own hands to keep them to herself. She doesn’t know what to say—to Nolan, to Van, about what justhappened, about all of the history that Alice doesn’t understand but is influencing everything happening in this room—so she doesn’t say anything.
It’s maybe three or four minutes, functionally an eternity, before Van says, “It was pink.”
Alice blinks a couple of times. She was going through her monthly budget in her head, trying to figure out if her small raise from the day shift will mean she can afford to buy a couple more fresh vegetables a week, so she’s a little lost. “What was?”
“My blanket,” Van says, finally looking up at Alice. She’s holding the edge of Nolan’s blanket, rubbing the soft yarn between two of her fingers. Alice can’t tell if she’s jealous or disgusted. Or both. “It was all pink. She was super pumped about having a girl, I guess.” She gives a tiny shrug, so small Alice wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been staring so hard. “I wasn’t quite what she’d expected, I guess.”
She grimaces up at Alice, almost like she’s trying to make it seem like a joke, but nothing has ever been less funny.
Alice swallows, hard.
“Anyway,” Van says, raising her shoulders again, this time like she’s trying to shrug it off, to let the heaviness roll off her like it doesn’t matter, even though Alice can still so clearly see the pain in her eyes, in the set of her mouth. “We got in a huge fight the summer after my sophomore year of college. A cousin was getting married and Mom was trying to force me to wear a dress to the wedding. I was living in Corvallis in this amazing, nasty group house with all my gay friends, deeply involved with the queer community on campus, finally coming into my own, you know, all that cliché shit of figuring out who I was and how I wanted to look.” She gives Alice a wry smile, andAlice’s heart melts. She’d love to go back in time to meet baby butch Van, see the light in her eyes when she first tried on a suit or men’s jeans, when she cut off her hair and saw herself in the mirror for the first time. “And then I came home for the summer, to this bedroom designed for, like, I don’t know. Barbie’s grandma.”
Alice almost does a spit take.
Van actually smiles at her. “I mean, white lace and pink everywhere. Walls, décor, everything. And then this fucking hideous pink blanket on the bed, a tangible representation of everything my mom hoped I was going to be, you know? Like she put all of her girly, ballet, pigtails, shopping spree, low-fat-diet partner dreams into every fucking stitch, right?” She shakes her head, and Alice can’t help it. She stands up and walks around the bed, sitting down on the edge right in front of Van. Nolan is behind her now, no longer between them. She’s close enough to touch Van, but she doesn’t.
Van doesn’t say anything about it, but something might loosen in her face at Alice’s proximity. “And anyway, I…Ilost it. I told her I wasn’t wearing the fucking dress and I hated the fucking blanket and no matter what I wore or what I slept under, I was never going to be straight and she needed to open her eyes and meet the kid she actually had instead of trying to force me to be the kid she wanted.”
Alice’s hands are on Van before she’s finished talking. One on her shoulder, one gently brushing the side of her face before dropping down and squeezing her arm.
“Anyway. She donated the blanket to Goodwill or something, I don’t know. And now we just…don’t talk about it.”
“Van,” Alice breathes, but Van shakes her head.
“It’s okay. I mean, it’s fine. I’m still, like, you know. Part ofthe family. She didn’t disown me or whatever. We…she’ll be perfectly nice to whoever I’m dating but call them my friend. That kind of shit.”
Alice squeezes Van even tighter. She can’t imagine being disappointed in Van, wanting Van to be anything other than the brilliant, kind, gentle, beautifully queer butch that she is.
“I never came out to my dad,” Alice offers softly, knowing there’s nothing she can say to make this any better, to ease three decades of Van’s pain. Van’s eyes flicker up in that way queer people’s always do when someone overtly comes out to them, even if they already suspected. That way that says,Hey, I see you. You’re one of mine.Alice nods back in that way queer people often do, the tiniest motion of her head that says,I know.We’re one of each other’s.
“My mom died when I was too little, obviously, but my dad…By the time I’d guessed that I might be bi, in high school, he was already so sick. I didn’t want to risk it, you know? Like, what if he wasn’t okay with it, didn’t want me around anymore, and then there was no one to take care of him?”
One of her hands is still on Van’s arm, and Van brings her own hand up to cover Alice’s, trapping it in her warm grip.
“So I didn’t,” Alice says, simple and true. “I’ve always wondered what he would’ve said. If he’d like who I am.”
