Love Lessons Read online

  “Mother.” Elena dropped her fork quickly but quietly on her plate and looked at her parents each in turn. “I have very little on my social calendar. There’s no danger of it overwhelming my studies, I’m sure. Jane will tell you from her own experience how difficult it is to eject me from the library.”

  “It’s true, she won’t even stop working to eat sometimes, unless I plead with her,” Jane added, hoping it was not a terrible mistake to speak at all.

  “Well, she must eat. Thank you, Jane, for encouraging her not to starve,” Mr. Whitman said and smiled.

  And Mrs. Whitman declared it was time for dessert.

  “Your parents don’t like me,” Jane bit her lip and frowned over her lunch in the dining room of the Hotel Vendome. It was three days after Christmas.

  Elena sipped her wine. “It isn’t you in particular, it’s me, having—someone like you in my life. They’d rather I was a spinster devoted to nothing and no one but my work.”

  “If I were a man…” Jane began. In fact, she was dressed as a man today—as she often was when she left the confines of college and went about the city. Today, she had worn a suit not unlike one a young man at Harvard might wear to take his girl for a Christmas lunch.

  “If you were a man, they’d feel the same way,” Elena insisted. “They might not mind me marrying—when I’m forty and have a successful career.”

  “They married each other,” Jane objected.

  “Yes, but they were mutually devoted to the cause of education. They are colleagues as well as husband and wife. They grew up together. They understand each other.”

  Jane frowned. “We understand each other. We may not know everything about each other…” Jane bit her lip to remember all the things she had yet to explain. “But you know me.” Jane reached over the table and picked up Elena’s hand. “You know me and I know you.”

  “Yes.” Elena assented almost inaudibly. Jane knew her—knew at least a part of her that no one else did. And whatever the details that remained to be discovered between them, it was that part that mattered most.

  “I want your parents to see it. How can I convince them to trust me?” Jane asked.

  “Don’t let it concern you. It doesn’t matter to me.”

  “It matters to me then,” Jane said.

  Elena changed the subject. “Let’s go back to your uncle’s house before you take me home. I want to play for you.” And she smiled.

  ***

  Elena didn’t play.

  Instead she found herself in Jane’s room, tearing away her clothes like a fallen woman in one of the French novels she’d secretly read as a girl. When Jane took her in her arms, Elena might have dropped to the floor, so weak was she for wanting, but Jane led her to the bed, and made her cry out three times before she finally whispered “enough, Jane,” with a weary smile.

  “You’re sure? Jane grinned, propping herself on her elbow as the girl caught her breath.

  They were quiet for several minutes.

  “Jane?” Elena said at last.

  “hmm?” Jane trailed the back of her hand down Elena’s throat, across her breasts and over the soft rise of her stomach.

  “I want to touch you,” Elena whispered. And she reached up and slipped her hand under Jane’s right suspender strap and slid it over her shoulder. The gesture unbalanced Jane and she tumbled back onto the pillow.

  “Ellie, no—” Jane began, but Elena stopped her with a kiss.

  “Shhh…” she hushed her, then whispered, “please, Jane,” pushing the other suspender strap down as Jane pulled her arms out and reached them up to the girl.

  “Ellie…” Jane tried again, weakly as Elena unbuttoned her shirt, reached through and found the fastening of the bandage that Jane had wrapped tightly around her breasts.

  “It’s alright,” Elena whispered, kissing Jane by her ear as her fingers worked gently to loosen the bindings. She sat up, pulling Jane with her and slowly drew the bandage away, dropping it beside the bed.

  Jane squeezed her eyes shut and took a shuddering breath. “I can’t—” she whispered, but made no move to stop the girl who was now pushing the shirt down over her shoulders. Instead, she pulled it off by the cuffs and let it fall, as Elena pushed her back again and leaned over her, making little circles with her tongue around the very parts of Jane she most wished would disappear.

  She took Elena’s head in her hands and raised her face to kiss her. “I love you, beautiful boy,” Elena whispered, and her hand slipped to the buttons on the front of Jane’s trousers.

  Jane reached down and stopped Elena’s hand. “I can’t,” she whispered again urgently.

  But Elena put her lips very close to Jane’s ear and said in a low voice, “John, my darling boy, your girl only wants to please you.”

  Jane gasped and all her will turned to liquid as Elena unfastened her trousers and slipped her hand inside to the warm, wet place between her legs. “Oh my god, Ellie—oh…” Jane breathed as Elena found the tight, slippery button beneath her tangle of hair and stroked it gently at first, then harder as she felt Jane panting under her.

  “John,” Elena kept up a whispered monologue in her lover’s ear as she touched her, “handsome young man, your Ellie wants you so…”

  Jane bit down on her lower lip as she almost involuntarily pushed her hips up to meet Elena’s hand. “Elena…” she whispered again.

  “Brilliant John—how I want you—lovely John, beautiful boy,” Elena whispered as if chanting a spell, weaving her words like clothes around Jane’s nakedness until at last it seemed to Jane that every muscle in her body convulsed hard, then melted to water beneath Elena’s touch.

  Jane pulled Elena’s hand from her trousers and wrapped her tightly in her arms, flesh against flesh, shaking hard, as tears streamed silently down her face.

  “How did you know?” she breathed roughly, “How did you know?”

  Elena smoothed Jane’s hair from her brow over and over. “Shh…,” she comforted Jane gently, “I see you, my love. Your Ellie sees you, beautiful boy.”

  The name had been Jane’s secret since she was four years old. She had never told anyone about it.

  As a child, Jane had found certain things easier to do if she called herself “John” instead of Jane. It was her magic word. When Jane was afraid in the dark, creaking house late at night while her parents slept, John was brave. Her little sister would crawl into bed with Jane after nightmares of her own and John would comfort her. Later, on the ranch, Jane would use the name when the boys dared her to keep up with them in the kinds of work they were sure no girl could do. Jane invoked John and learned to hold the branding iron to a poor colt’s flank as it burned. She called herself John when she took her turn to sit awake at night by the fire, shotgun across her lap, watching for coyotes and bobcats.

  She had tried to forget it since coming to Boston, imagining it as something to be put away with childhood, like a beloved toy.

  But Elena had found it. She had whispered it like a sorceress and had transformed Jane into herself. Elena had washed it of shame and set it glowing like a jewel.

  Elena knew her all right. And she knew Elena.