Chapter 24 Now Diana
NOW: DIANA
January was the perfect time of year to feel the way Diana did: bitter.
She truly felt insane. The whole situation was insane.
She was a grown ass woman for crying out loud!
She felt foolish, like she’d been holding on to the same dream she’d had since she was seventeen, and here she was thirty years later still chasing it.
It didn’t help that now, after all this time, after all the shit, it felt so close.
Maggie was so close.
And yet, she hadn’t heard from her at all, but to be fair, there had been the holidays. And there was whatever she was doing to “try”.
I’m trying, okay? Those words haunted Diana and made it impossible not to hope.
The holidays had been a nice distraction.
She had spent Christmas with Julia and Lily on the retreat property in northern Vermont again.
Jay and Michaela and the kids had been invited, but they’d opted to do something back on the orchard while they continued to figure out some more items that came with uprooting your life from one oppressive society to another.
Besides, Diana knew it was important for them to spend time as a family and have some sense of closeness and normalcy for the youngest of their children.
They had planned to go upstate at the beginning of the year, but Lily had begged Julia, who could never say ‘no’ to her niece, for the house for a few days.
And so Jay and the family had stayed with Diana a little longer.
It had been nice having them around into the new year, but now that they were in the first full week where society started up again, Diana was once again alone.
Jay, Michaela, and the kids were upstate working with Julia on solidifying a few official things to start what they now knew would be a school, with tolerance being at the main crux of their education.
Given everything happening to “sanitize” education and society becoming more and more intolerant, Diana loved the idea and had plans to figure out financially what she could contribute, but Julia had the space and the infrastructure already at hand.
She would miss having Jay so close, but given she’d been in London for the past couple decades, she was just happy to be in the same country, let alone the same state.
Besides, she and Julia saw each other frequently, and Diana was happy to know she’d be able to visit her friends more often.
Today, Julia, Michaela, and Jay were having a meeting to go through the logistics, but considering Diana was really just writing a check, she hadn’t joined.
Now she wished she had; the silence of her home threatened to smother her.
She wondered if she should get a dog or a cat or both.
She had never really been a pet person, mainly because her mother had never allowed her and Julia to have pets growing up, but she could now see the appeal.
Eyeing the clock she saw that it was just past seven.
Winter had made the night come early as it did every year, and Diana figured a little nip wouldn’t hurt, though she rarely was one to drink alone.
She thought about maybe video calling Lily, but then again, she was always trying to make sure she never smothered or controlled her child, not the way her mother had tried with her and Julia.
Lily was a young gifted artist who would inherit the family business one day, should she want it, and with that in mind, Diana wanted to give her as much space and freedom for her to explore the world around her as possible.
Drinking alone it was then.
Maybe she could put on a movie, something fast and action-packed. In an instant she had decided to watch all of the Terminator movies, from start to finish, or most recent, she didn’t put it past a content-desperate Hollywood to green light yet another installation.
Pouring herself a glass of wine and cueing up The Terminator, Diana lay back on her couch while a very young and sexy Linda Hamilton graced the screen. She remembered that she was one of the few heroines in the 90s who she thought really handled her shit. And looked good doing it.
Julia had always cited the movie Pretty Woman as the point at which she thought she was gay, and then that scene in Titanic had really sold her on how gay she was.
Diana thought Sarah Connor might have been her first crush on a woman, though she hadn’t known that’s what it was.
God she missed having these conversations with Julia.
She pulled out her phone and texted her sister.
Diana
Sarah Hamilton will always be my Julia Roberts/Kate Winslet
Julia
I approve this message
Diana
The 90s had such hot women, lots of fem rage undertones
Julia
Oh who are you telling? Alanis Morissette can still get it, Queen Latifah — sign me tf up, even early 00s Lucy Lui? What I wouldn’t give to have that woman step on my face.
Kate Winslet will always be a fave.
Diana snorted at how ridiculous her sister was.
Diana
I miss you all
Julia
You miss me more than Jay
Diana
I miss you both the same
Julia
WRONG ANSWER
Diana
How?
Julia
I’m sorry, the number you are trying to reach has been disconnected.
Diana
Fine, I miss you more!
Julia
So weird, my phone cut out for a second.
Diana
We are texting…
Julia
Service is so weird up here. Anyway, you should join our next meeting re the school, I think you’d really love listening to Jay and Michaela, Michaela is low-key, actually highly brilliant.
Diana
Yeah, I think I will, text me when it’s decided?
Julia
Will do, now leaving you and Sarah alone with your wine
Diana
How do you know I am drinking wine?
Julia
Julia
Kate Winslet foreverrrrr
Diana chuckled as she realized that her sister basically was rocking a very modernized Leonardo DiCaprio Titanic look these days, and wondered if it would bring her Kate Winslet, or Queen Latifah, or Lucy Liu.
Julia dated but she never did so for long.
When Diana used to try and pry, her sister always lamented being a hot soft-butch lesbian who was rich.
She unfortunately attracted lots of young women who were interested in her for that.
It mainly was because most of the single women she met were through her work, those who came to stay at the retreat.
Julia often complained all the older, mature women were coupled up and exclusive, save for the fun pair here and there.
All the single women, however, tended to be on the younger side, and once they realized who she was, were looking for a ‘mommy’, which Julia had no problems with in theory, she just didn’t want that.
Diana understood, they’d both grown up wanting the warm and loving family they hadn’t exactly grown up with.
Her parents had retired and signed everything over to them, and then took their share and fucked off to travel the world. They’d never been particularly close, and Diana and Julia never really heard from them outside of the occasional piece of mail that still came to the orchard for them.
It had been something she and Maggie had in common: the white picket fence and familial security aspect of things.
Sure, for Diana, an actual white picket fence was not required because, well, she had an orchard, and a huge house on the orchard.
But she had spent a good amount of time in high school thinking about how she and Maggie could have made this place a home.
She had no idea how or by what means. She knew, at the time, they couldn’t have gotten married, but perhaps they could have just found a way to live happily.
Even if Maplewood hadn’t started out tolerant, it had gotten much better by the time her sassy, proud and gay daughter had come along.
Diana never would have stayed otherwise.
But what was done was done, including Diana’s glass of wine.
She really should have just brought the bottle into the room with her.
She got up and poured a second glass. On her way back to the living room, something made her go the long way and pass by the front door.
She had no idea what was outside of it, other than being akin to a mental itch.
When she rounded the corner, she was surprised to find Maggie standing outside her front door.
She’d know her silhouette anywhere, even if she could only see a portion of it through the small windows on the side of the door.
She was pacing and looked to be doing some breathing exercises.
Diana couldn’t help the swoop that happened in her stomach, and while she wanted to walk to her door and wrench it open and demand Maggie finally fix all of this and just let them be, she remembered that Maggie had been trying, and that she wanted to let her.
Diana doubled back through the kitchen and went back into the living room and unpaused the movie, praying her doorbell or her phone would ring.
Ten minutes later, she got her wish.
Making herself walk and not run to the door, Diana finally opened up, the cold air washing over her.
“Hey,” Maggie said, and then she did a little look around Diana as if trying to make sure she was alone.
“Hey,” Diana said, and she crossed her arms over her chest. She was trying to convince herself that she was going to make Maggie work for it.
Maggie took a couple of deep breaths and then closed her eyes for a few more before opening them and saying, “Can I come inside?”
Diana cursed herself as she moved aside.