Button, Button

hick wasn't behind her counter when R sought her out this

time. She was at the back of Stage Street Mercantile where she'd come to get the plum corduroy fabric she'd ordered from Betty, an octogenarian who still ran the ancient family store. Chick had gotten worse after her trek up to M.C.'s enclave. Donny had suggested that she keep an antigloom list to help cure her depression. If something made her happy it went on the list and she'd do it, buy it, eat it, or find it. Making bright, soft clothing was right up there in her top ten. She ran an index finger along the yielding ridges of the corduroy.

"What are you turning this into?" R asked, fingering the fabric.

"Luxuriously large overalls." She swiveled, arms open, to embrace R's narrow shoulders. R's clothing smelled so strongly of a fabric softener Chick coughed and stepped back. So much for back to nature. "How are you, sweetie?"

"I've always admired your skill."

"It's more of a necessity than a skill." She forced herself out of the trance she'd been in at the button drawers.

This store had a hush to it, absorbing everyday town noises she wasn't aware of until she was inside. It smelled like her version of heaven, crammed with fabric and craft supplies, sewing notions, and old boxes of faded oddities like hatmakers' forms. She definitely needed to get the buttons on her antigloom list. She'd fill a glass jar with bright purple and red and sun-orange and key lime green and smoky blue buttons. She'd fill a dozen glass jars and line the windowsills upstairs. The thought made her smile.

"Finding the kind of clothes I like," she told R, "is truly difficult, and finding them in my size is impossible. I can get denim overalls like Donny's in a men's size, but I don't know how Donny can stand that stiff denim with the steel fasteners. What do you think?" She held the oversized coral-colored buttons to the purple.

"I'd use black," R replied without hesitation. "This looks gaudy to me."

Chick gave a warm gurgle of laughter. "Of course it's gaudy. I live for gaudy." She noted R's charcoal cape, her black high-water pants, and pilling navy turtleneck.

R looked toward Betty, who was folding and wrapping patterned remnants with quick, big-knuckled hands. There was a tiny TV on the counter, and Chick could hear a news story about Jenna Bush's drinking problem. Why didn't they leave the poor lamb alone? She'd drink too if she had that man for a father.

Dropping her voice, R said, "Donny told me you'd be here."

Chick grew more alert. She'd sometimes wondered if R didn't hang out longer at the store than a weekly restocking trip called for. And R never said no to an invitation for a cup of espresso. She seemed to know when things would be slow and Chick alone.

"Is something wrong? Is it time for us to come rescue Abeo from the lesbians? Or, on second thought, to rescue Spirit Ridge from Abeo?"

"Not at all." R surprised her by blushing. "I find Abeo fascinating." She held Chick's eyes with one of her intense green-eyed gazes. "I wanted to know how you are. Has Abeo's absence made a difference for you?"

"No, she wasn't a problem. I've thought some about you worrying over us. I don't think my depressions have anything to do with Donny and me. Some of it has to do with fifty coming on like a big neon sign saying, 'Get it together, you won't live forever.' But Donny loves me the way I think everyone wants to be loved. I feel so fully loved that I feel whole in a way I never did before. Does that make sense to you? It's as if now that it's finally all right to be who I am, I can be me in the world, doing what I'm meant to do."

R asked, "Which is?"

"Oh, R, it doesn't matter. I do everything from a foundation of love, and it makes me feel better and better about who I am and who I do it with."

"What a romantic," said R, shaking her head.

"There's nothing wrong with being a romantic. Donny once pointed out to me that I feel loved best when I'm giving love. When you run a store that sells whole foods, you can do it because that's what's hot this decade, or you can do it because you care about your customers. Once you get to be you there's no limit to the love you can hand out like the guy on the ice cream truck with his goodies."

"And does Donny get her investment of love back?"

"I can't help but do that. She fanned the flames and I'm a walking, glowing chunk of charcoal!" She thought for a moment. "I've seen this happen, though, where one woman loves another this well. The lover blossoms and thinks she has to move on, not realizing that she needs what and who she's already got. No, being loved like this may have set me free, but it's a freedom to grow in place, not to wander. I'd never find this again. If some fever moved me on, I'd only damage myself by trashing Donny and what she's given me."

"What a bunch of hokum."

"You think so? It may be hokum, but it's good hokum, hokum I can live with. We may not be in top form now and then, but more good times are right around the corner for Donny and me."

"Right around the corner." R shook her head. "I don't think in terms of straight lines and angles. I live in a spiraling world where good and bad blend instead of alternating."

"You're the most literal person I've ever met, R. It was only an expression. Why would you prefer curves anyway? They don't give you time to stop and sneak a peak at what's next. I need to know if it's safe to go on." A horn blared outside, a seldom-heard sound in Waterfall Falls.

"As if we have a choice. We always go on."

"Don't make it sound like such a downer. Determination is a good thing." She slid open another wooden drawer. "I personally am determined to find the perfect button. Wow. I've never seen anything like these." They were pink, with spiraling purple lines. "Do these have your name on them or what?"

"I've been meaning to mention how much I like the name of your store."

It took her a minute to make the leap to R's thought. She was hard to follow sometimes. "We named it after Aretha Franklin's 'Natural Woman.'"

"I don't think I know it."

"Oh, wow. Did your husband keep you locked up?"

R looked like she was sucking on a lemon. "He didn't have to. Heterosexist society did a fine job. I remember Helen Reddy's 'I Am Woman,' which I thought was more brassy seduction than radical challenge."

"I suppose 'Natural Woman' was about surrender, but what a great dance tune."

"Tell me about your name. Chick? How did that happen? It's such a derogatory term for a woman."

"I was a preemie, so small my mother said I looked like a fuzzy chick. Dad insisted on crowning me with his mother's name, Cicely, so it was either Sissy or Chick. It's a reminder of how much they loved me so I've always liked it. I almost changed it when I was a teenager, but decided to turn myself into a high femme chick instead."

"When I moved here from the city, I took a name that echoed my inner self."

"R! You don't see yourself as a poisonous reptile, do you?" That horn went off again. Not M.C. Chick's stomach clenched with dread. It couldn't be M.C., unless-had he made bail?

R went on in her deep monotone. "The snakes live communally, at least in cold weather. Otherwise they're solitary, even secretive. I'm told that I intimidate, or rattle, people. It's an honest name."

Donny would be nodding her head a mile a minute. Chick's wanton sympathy welled up with a warmth that replaced the chill of her recent sadness. She laid a hand on R's arm. "You're too hard on yourself, honey."

"Honesty is hard. And-" R turned her face away. Was she going to cry? Chick was horrified at the thought that this prickly, proud, and sometimes all-too-venomous community cornerstone might melt like a wicked witch right in front of her. "You've always been so accepting."

Chick took one of R's cold hands in her own and felt herself jump at the third honk outside the store.

R was too self-absorbed to notice. "I feel that you're another powerful woman and my only real peer in this area. I know what some women think of me and of my name. I respect my namesake. Rattlesnakes wander. The females don't go far, but they do go. It's simply part of who they are."

There were tears on her cheeks. Chick hugged her again, rocking her slightly. She could see the store's front window over R's shoulder, but a floral fabric display was blocking her view of the street.

"There are women who don't care for me. I know that," continued R, stiff in her arms and reeking of that fabric softener smell. She must have come to town to do her laundry. The thought of R using a fabric softener bugged Chick. It didn't fit. "Yet occasionally one comes into my life who glorifies me." She pulled back, but Chick didn't let go.

"Katie's a glorifier. It's flattering, but not enough. She only comes home late at night, and I need someone who's there for me all the time."

R's face was dark pink, almost the color of the spiral buttons Chick fingered on their card. "I'm surprised Katie puts her camera down when she comes home at night," she said with a laugh.

R gave her a surprised look. It occurred to Chick that she might have taken up with a journalist for reasons beyond Katie's personal charms. Calculated reasons. R's face relaxed into its accustomed passive expression, the one Donny called her what-me-worry? mask.

"At first our connection felt so deep. Katie wouldn't let me out of her sight. She claimed I was a lesbian land pioneer, that she wanted to document my life." R sighed. "Katie documents everyone's life, including her own. What I thought might at last be love as I'd never before experienced it was her unsustainable universal enthusiasm. She falls in love weekly," she said, making a clicking sound with her mouth, "sometimes with a woman, but as often with an idea or a thing. Currently it's this community profile she's doing, interviewing anyone who'll talk to a camera. She has no time for me now."

Chick closed the button drawer with more force than she'd intended. R hadn't been worried about how things were going with Donny-she'd come looking for Chick today because of her own distress. This was rattlesnake honesty. She had to smile at the depth of R's self-deception. What a character. "Where's Katie during the day?"

"She's off somewhere, everywhere while I meditate, work on the land, write in my journal, weave, spend time with my land partners. Today she filmed the men and your Donny doing something to reinforce Kimama's roof."

Chick shook the buttons toward R. "Katie's vibrant and ambitious. Did you really expect that she'd simply settle in your isolated world, adapt the schedule of a recluse? Of course she would make a life of her own. She's used to a high-pressure career and a social life in the heart of gay America." The horn rang out: shave and a haircut, two bits. Chick's heart pounded. "Who is that out there?" A car lurched into sight. It wasn't M.C. It was someone driving R's Volvo wagon. An impatient someone.

"And lately I've been spending time with-"

"Abeo?" Chick exclaimed. "What's Abeo doing out there in your car honking?" Since when did R tolerate someone rudely summoning her, not to mention commandeering her car?

R's face turned that spiral button dark pink again. She made a kind of fluttery gesture toward the window and turned back to Chick.

"I didn't want her with us at first, but I couldn't turn away the only black lesbian I've ever had on the land. Yet nothing about her is lesbian. She isn't really a woman, yet sometimes I think she's more womanly than I am. I abhor her and-" she looked pleadingly at Chick, "she's so profoundly spiritual." She looked quickly away.

"Abeo? Spiritual?" Chick stifled a laugh. "She's got your number, Miz Rattlesnake."

In an excited tone R confided, "She sang with a church group before she transitioned. She sang for me. I was moved, thoroughly moved."

Wait till Donny hears about this. "Of course you were. Abeo's playing you like a symphony. But I'm not sure that's all bad. Look at you. You're like a prism today, honey, flashing colors at me. I've never seen you so animated."

"I'm uncomfortable with these feelings of excitement. There's no depth to them. This half-man in women's clothing comes along and I'm rattled!" she said with a flustered laugh. The horn blasted. "I need to go."

"Ciao," Chick said, envisioning Katie crying over an espresso when she learned she'd been supplanted. She'd have to have her over for dinner, let her know she had friends. "Enjoy yourself, sweetie."

R pressed her hand. "Thank you." Her odd friend let go and hurried to the door. "I feel like a kitten chasing milkweed."

Kitten? Chick thought, knowing it was mean to laugh at the ridiculous notion of R as a kitten. Ah, but laughter was on her antigloom list, so, once the door closed, she let it explode out. Betty looked shocked.

"Dynamite buttons!" Chick told her, holding up her find.

She hoped to the Goddess R wasn't thinking of changing her name to Kitten for the sake of honesty. Donny was going to wet her pants laughing over this. She took the pink spiral buttons and the plum corduroy yardage toward the cash register.

"Outrageous," she said.

Poor R, always a little pathetically ridiculous in her dogmatic and pompous lesbian-feminism, was hung up on a trans woman. Chick stumbled over some loose linoleum, her insides reacting as if she'd nearly fallen down a long hole into an alternate world. Then she laughed aloud again. This was already an alternate world-her depression was missing. It had lifted before, so she expected that it would return, but maybe the ol' happy list was doing what prescription drugs hadn't. She was suddenly desperate to keep feeling this way. Cool it, lady, she told herself. R had simply reminded her how good it felt to be Chick.

"Life," she told Betty, "is a kick."

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO