Winnie
Seeing Raul and Clare had killed something inside me.
Hope, I think. Hope that Lincoln and I could be like them.
He and I had been together on and off for more than a decade, and we no longer had the happy, optimistic—even young and innocent—look of Raul and Clare.
And yet, they were not younger; all four of us were within three years of each other.
And Raul had fought in Vietnam! I had no right to feel world weary and shitty compared to him.
The torture of this loop of inadequacy made me feel worse and worse.
And yet, I clung to something that was no longer hope. I clung to our love, our shared history, my idea of myself as a rebel, an artist, a hippie, someone who rejected tradition and wanted more for herself than marriage and children.
After all, look where all that had gotten Mom.
Although, I had to admit that she seemed happy now in her non-marriage with Emilio. So, too, did Miranda seem entirely content with Tom.
And then there was Dad.
I was exhausted from suppressing the image of him that kept rising in my memory. Alcohol was the only thing that washed it away.
When Lincoln walked through the door, all I wanted to do was wrap myself around him and for him to wrap himself around me. No talking. I needed to feel his heart beating right up against mine, his breath in my ear, the shudder of his release inside me.
When he saw me in the kitchen, though, all he said was “Hey.”
No hug. Not even a smile.
He went straight into the bedroom with his suitcase and guitar.
Unable to stop myself, I followed him, and watched as he flopped on the bed and threw an arm over his eyes.
“I missed you,” I said.
“I missed you, too,” he said flatly.
If I crawled into bed next to him, if I ran a hand down his chest, would I get more than that?
I stood frozen in the doorway.
“I’m sorry about what happened with the song,” I offered, even though I wasn’t actually sorry for anything I’d done. It felt more important in that moment to hold out some kind of olive branch than to make him believe I’d done nothing wrong.
“I talked to the editor.” His arm was still on his face.
“You did?”
“He’s an ass. But once I explained, he seemed to get it.”
A panic rose inside me. “What did you explain?”
He pulled his arm off his face and propped himself up on both elbows. “I told him that we share work all the time.”
“That’s what I told him.”
“That’s not what he said.”
“Well, it’s what I said.”
“Anyway, he said he’d print something in the next issue that clarified that there was no plagiarism on either side.”
“That’s great. Thank you.” I told you it had to be a man-to-man. Even though that irked me beyond belief.
“It was such a hassle,” he said in a way that strongly implied the hassle was all my fault. I sensed that if I just took responsibility, it would all blow over.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I said as solicitously as I could, even though there was a voice inside me screaming, But it wasn’t your fault! He’s being a jerk!
I went to lie next to him and put a tentative hand on his flat belly. His body felt more taut than it had before the tour. “Mmmm,” I said, wanting more than anything for our intense physical intimacy to move us past this conflict.
Without another word, he turned toward me and devoured me whole. The first kisses felt hot and welcome, but as they increased in pressure and he started taking off my clothes with more hunger than art, I started to feel like he wasn’t really paying attention to me.
Even though the second time we had sex, later that afternoon, was more mutual and more familiar, I knew.
I knew I was losing him. Again.
Early in 1975, City of Lights Review printed
A final word on the subject of “Bacchus.” I spoke to Mr. Salyer and he corroborated what his muse Ms. Hartley had said, which is that—like Zelda and F.
Scott Fitzgerald—they regularly share work with each other.
There is mutuality on both sides. I must say that all of this inspired me to listen to The Cards’ album, and I was quite impressed by the eloquent lyrics and impassioned instrumentals.
I hate it when “muse” is used to describe a woman. Especially a woman who is also an artist.
I tried so hard to reel Lincoln back in. In the rare moments we were alone between his rehearsing and recording, I threw myself at him, letting him do things to my body I sometimes didn’t enjoy in the hopes that we could get back to being good again.
One morning over coffee, I suggested we share notebooks like we used to, but Lincoln looked at me like I’d grown an extra head.
“That’s over, Win,” he said. “You made damn sure of that.”
Bernard was outraged at this when I told him as I sobbed at work an hour later.
“Who does he think he is!? He stole your work.”
“I love him,” I hiccuped.
He rolled his eyes and sat down beside me, rubbing my back. “I know you do, sweetheart. We have to do something to break this spell he has over you.”
My dear friend and I went out that night and got so drunk and high I did actually go home with another guy. I don’t even remember him. But sleeping with someone else, feeling desired by someone else, blunted the pain of losing Lincoln little by little, for the third time.
So I did it again.
And again.
The sex worked the same way alcohol did, and in concert with it, to take the pain away, if only for a while.
The Cards went back out on tour, and Lincoln and I had sex one last time before he left, and it was great.
Warm and close, like it had been at the beginning, and as soon as he closed the door behind him, I sank into our couch and sobbed.
I felt so lost. I had no idea what Lincoln and I were to each other anymore, and I knew that as soon as he was on the road again, other women would keep him company.
Though I’d been with other men, I didn’t actually want them the same way Lincoln seemed to want other women—and why?
Why did he want them? I didn’t understand, and the double pain of knowing he wanted them and not knowing why drove me straight to the kitchen for a stiff cocktail.
By evening, Bernard and his merry band of San Francisco thespians had filled the apartment with music and chatter and rivers of wine, and I didn’t have to think about how much it hurt that Lincoln felt differently about me than I felt about him.
In March, I discovered I was pregnant.
Even though I didn’t truly know who the father was, I believed ardently that it was Lincoln.
I hadn’t had sex with anyone since he’d left, and we’d done it right around the time I would have been ovulating.
Plus, I’d used condoms, mostly, with the other men, and—as usual—not with Lincoln.
I was on the pill, too, but things had been so nuts and emotional, I’d missed a bunch of them.
When I told Bernard in another torrent of tears on his couch on a Sunday afternoon, he gave me a huge hug and a tall glass of orange juice, and said, “How can I help you?”
Which just made me cry all the more.
The image of Sera at brunch years ago, hungry and silent, came back to me on nightmarish repeat in those horrible days as I mulled over what to do. The last I’d heard about her, she was a holy terror in elementary school.
I told Bernard about Lincoln’s half sister, and his mother and stepfather, as well as his biological father, and asked what he thought.
My friend shrugged. “I have no idea, Win. I hope Lincoln sees this as an opportunity to do better than his own parents, but…” He didn’t need to say it. Bernard didn’t have any faith in Lincoln, and hadn’t for a long time.
“Will you sit with me while I call him?” I asked.
“Of course,” said Bernard.
Lincoln answered his hotel phone groggily. I’d obviously woken him up.
“Hey there, sleepyhead, how was the show?” I said sweetly. Bernard rolled his eyes theatrically and put a fortifying hand on my knee, which was bouncing up and down uncontrollably.
“It was good, good,” he said. “What time is it?”
“It’s two here in California.”
“So it’s…four here.”
Shit, I forgot it’s even later in Austin. And he’s just waking up now? “I have some amazing news.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah…I…I’m pregnant.” I smiled wide and expectant as if Lincoln could see me. Bernard mirrored my expression with his own raised eyebrows, and he and I stared at each other as the seconds ticked by.
I found some consolation in the total silence on the other end of the line. I didn’t detect anyone else moving in the room. The bed. Not that that meant anything.
“Win,” Lincoln finally said, “we can’t have a baby. We’re not…”
“But this can help us. A baby would be the best of us, and a chance to do things better than our parents did.”
“I’m not sure I want to be a parent,” he said in that same tone he used anytime he talked about his mother.
“I can understand that,” I said. “After all we’ve both been through, it’s natural to doubt. But I love you so much, and you’d make a wonderful father, and—” I couldn’t look at Bernard as I blathered desperately on.
“Win, Win, Win,” Lincoln interrupted. “Stop. We can’t.”
“You mean you won’t.”
“Don’t put this on me.”
“So this is my fault like everything else?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. The way you’ve been acting for months said it for you.”
“Things are…different between us now. I don’t know what happened exactly.”
You cheated and you stole.
Except I cheated too.
And I was lying to Lincoln right now about him being the father. What if he wasn’t?
The weight of my shame and grief bore down on me. I slumped over on Bernard, who put his arm around my shoulders.
“I’ll wire you as much money as you need,” Lincoln said with more tenderness than he’d shown me in months, “to go to a good doctor.”
“Will you come home and go with me?” I thought maybe, if he came back and we could talk in person, I could change his mind.
“Well, you have to go soon, don’t you? And I have shows.”
“Oh my god, Lincoln. You’re no better than your own parents,” I said, and then I slammed down the phone and immediately regretted my words—but I also determined they would not be true of me as well.