Kristin Ashe: A Safe Place To Sleep Part 10

"Of course I'm right, but if you want, I'll call her and ask her if she wants to see you even though you're a lesbian."

"It is kind of absurd, isn't it, that this is what I worry about?" She gave me a half smile.

"It could be worse. You could be worrying that she's a lesbian, too."

We both laughed.

"What if I do see her, Kris? What next? Do I have to go to her house every Sunday for dinner? Do I have to drive her to church? Do I have to care for her when she gets sick?"

"Whoa, whoa!" I put up a hand to slow down her thoughts.

"I can't take all that. I really can't. That's too much commitment for me." The words spilled out of her.

"Destiny, slow down. You're way ahead of yourself here with worry. I'll set up a dinner, one dinner, that's all. You can just see how that goes first."

"One dinner?" she asked meekly.

"One dinner. I promise that's it. We'll take this one small, safe step at a time. We'll go as far as you can go, then we'll see if you can go any further."

"Okay."

'That means you'll do it?" I asked, letting the excitement creep back into my voice.

aIall do it...."

"Great!" I started to cross the room to hug her.

"Not so fast, Kris. I'll do it on one condition...."

Not so great. I stopped dead in my tracks.

"What is it?" I asked and this time, my arms were folded.

"You have to come with me."

"Me?" My voice cracked.

"Yes, you. Will you come with me?"

"But don't you want to be alone with her the first time you meet?" I asked, using my most persuasive sales voice.

"No, I don't. I'm scared to death to meet her. I need you to come with me. Can you do it or not?"

"Of course I can. How does tomorrow night sound?" The words were out of my mouth before I had a chance to consider them.

"That would work. Thanks for everything, Kris. You're a good woman. Now I've got to run. Call me when you've set a time, and do it soon before I change my mind."

"I hear you," I said.

I called Marie Kenwood back and told her Destiny and I would join her for dinner. I tried to talk her in to letting us take her out to eat, but she wouldn't hear of it. She insisted we come to her house for a home-cooked meal.

Briefly, I wondered if I was getting too involved in this case, but as soon as the thought entered my mind, I dismissed it.

Chapter 9.

Because I knew my way to Marie Kenwood's, I drove and picked up Destiny on the way.

She lived just a few miles from me in a great old mansion in Capitol Hill. Built in 1896 for one very wealthy family, the place was now home to Destiny and four other women, each of whom had a separate residence. With her parents' help, Destiny had bought the house a year earlier, when Denver's real estate prices were at their lowest. One of the women who lived there was a carpenter, so she renovated in exchange for rent. One room at a time, she was restoring the building to its original majesty. Destiny told me all of this as she gave me a tour.

She lived in what was once the living room, dining room, and receiving room (for receiving guests, not packages). In the old living room, she had a fifteen foot long fireplace, and an entire wall of windows. She slept in the former dining room, using the built in china hutch as a dresser. The ceilings in every room were twelve feet tall.

There was clutter everywhere, but the place wasn't messy. Just full. She had tons of furniture, none of which matched ("I have a weakness for garage sales and Capitol Hill has the best garage sales in the world"). But her place was comfortable and, for a second, I wished I lived there instead of in my high-rise, high-tech environment.

In the car, we didn't talk much. I tried to initiate conversation on a variety of topics: the front page news, her work, my work, but none of it seemed to interest her. When we were close to her grandma's house, I gave up on the mundane and got right to the heart of it.

"Are you nervous, Destiny?"

"A little. Do you think I'm doing the right thing?"

I nodded, though I wasn't sure.

"All day I've been thinking about this dinner," she said, never looking at me, her eyes riveted on the road ahead. "I've been wondering if what I'm doing is the right thing, if I should ever have hired you."

I didn't say anything. I had my own ambivalent thoughts about the merits of crawling back into the past.

"It's easy to wish I hadn't ever started asking the questions. It's easy to live my life as I've always lived it. What's much harder is this change, these confrontations. Without them, my life would go on as usual a" with holes in it, but without this risk. One day, I woke up and decided the holes were too big. That's the day I called you, Kris.

"But so many days since then, I've woken up, slapped myself on the forehead and said What the h.e.l.l were you thinking, Destiny? What are you doing to yourself?' Because this, what I'm doing here, this is the hardest thing I've ever done. So hard that most days, the holes don't seem so big after all, and I want to stop. Does any of this make sense?"

I nodded, afraid to say that it made all the sense in the world to me, that every day I asked myself the same question. I'd thought my life was empty, so I'd started looking into my past, hoping to find the source of the emptiness. Yet, the more I looked, the more sources I found, and the larger the emptiness seemed. The holes I'd sought to fill, instead seemed to grow bigger, big enough to consume me, I sometimes feared.

I knew all too well what Destiny Greaves was afraid of, but I couldn't say that to her. Not then. Not as we were pulling into her grandmother's driveway.

"I'll be right here with you," I reached over to squeeze her hand. "You say the word and we're outta here, okay?"

"Okay." She gave me a weak smile.

Before we could make it to Marie Kenwood's porch, the door flew open.

"You're early," the older woman said. She looked at her watch. "Three minutes to be exact."

What was it with this time fixation? Maybe it was her way of covering her nervousness, I thought forgivingly.

"We would have been here later," I said lightly, "but I knew my way this time."

My humor was in vain. No one was listening to me. She and Destiny just stood looking at each other. I couldn't read the emotion in either of their faces. I broke the silence with formal introductions.

"Mrs. Kenwood, this is Destiny Greaves a"" I began.

"Of course it is," she snapped. "Who else would it be? You look just the same."

"Do I really?" Destiny asked timidly.

"In the face you do. Come in out of the cold, both of you."

With that, without touching Destiny, she ushered us into the living room, took our coats, and carried them off into another room. I stole a quick look at Destiny, pointed to Marie's favorite spot on the couch, and raised one eyebrow. She understood perfectly. As she sat down in a burgundy wingback chair, she struggled to conceal her laughter. I sat next to her in the wingback's twin.

We'd barely made ourselves comfortable when Mrs. Kenwood came back into the room and ordered us into the dining room. There, we ate a pleasant dinner of ham and scalloped potatoes and managed to keep the conversation going with a minimum dose of awkwardness. I say "we" but it was mostly the two Kenwoods. Neither of them paid much attention to me and I accommodated their need to talk by limiting myself to innocuous smiles and head noddings. Destiny winked at me a few times to let me know she was glad I had come, but otherwise she was absorbed with knowing all there was to know about her grandmother.

They talked all about Destiny's work for the community, Mrs. Kenwood often interrupting with "You always were like that, Destiny."

After we'd eaten, Marie Kenwood impressed me and embarra.s.sed Destiny when she pulled out an alb.u.m of newspaper clippings, all articles relating to Destiny's accomplishments. The achievements began when Destiny was arrested for going s.h.i.+rtless in Cheeseman Park (she was part of a demonstration for equal rights for women) and ended with an award she'd been given a month earlier for her successes in furthering the rights of lesbian women.

At one point, Mrs. Kenwood delicately asked Destiny if there was anyone special in her life. Destiny looked squarely at me and smiled faintly before she answered, "No, I'm afraid not, but I have a giant crush on someone. I just haven't had the courage to tell her yet."

"Well, you should, honey. I'm sure she'd like you back."

"Maybe," Destiny replied and again stared at me, almost tauntingly, her gaze unflinching.

My G.o.d, I thought, I think she means me. But how could she? She was dating Mich.e.l.le, my friend often years. Maybe she was the one Destiny was talking about. But if that was the case, why wouldn't she tell the woman she was sleeping with that she had a crush on her. No, it couldn't be Mich.e.l.le. But G.o.d, don't let it be me. All of this raced through my mind at lightening speed.

To slow down the beating of my heart, I excused myself and went to the bathroom. Once there, I put the toilet seat down and sat on it, fully clothed. I leaned over and put my head between my knees, struggling to regain my breath.

"Calm down, Kris, I'm sure you're reading too much into this," I repeated to myself. When I was somewhat under control, I flushed the toilet for effect, checked my appearance in the rose-lined mirror, and rejoined Destiny and her grandmother.

I returned in time to see coffee being served in the living room.

Just as Destiny and I seated ourselves, Marie Kenwood excused herself.

"You were in the bathroom a long time, Kris. Are you okay?" Destiny asked me, almost teasingly, as if she knew exactly what had sent me running.

"I'm fine," I said, then quickly changed the subject. "What do you think of your grandma?" I asked in a low voice.

"I like her," Destiny whispered. "She's quite a woman."

"Now you know where you get it from."

She smiled.

"Does she seem familiar to you?" I leaned across the end table to ask her.

Destiny drew alarmingly close to me.

"Not in the least, but I'm having fun."

We giggled.

"Are you sure this is the right grandmother?" she asked behind a cupped hand, her lips almost touching my ear.

We giggled some more.

"It is. Or at least, it's the only one I could find on short notice."

With that, we laughed some more. For those precious few seconds, we were like schoolgirls. Everything we said seemed hilarious to us, perhaps because reality itself was so unreal.

"I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone, like I'm peeking in on someone else's life," Destiny said seriously.

Under my breath, I started humming the theme to the Twilight Zone, and we cracked up again.

Just then, Destiny's grandmother walked into the room carrying a large box. She motioned to us to join her on the couch and we did. Destiny sat next to her; I sat next to Destiny.

Mrs. Kenwood began to empty out the contents of the container. Non-stop, she talked as she showed us each item.

"Here's Mousie," she said showing us a stuffed mouse with one eye and one ear half chewed off. "Mousie went everywhere with you. This was my grandmother's wedding ring. I'd like you to have it." She carefully slipped the thin gold band on Destiny's little finger.

'These are pictures taken on your mom and dad's wedding day. Weren't they a happy couple? Here's your baby book. Your mother wrote in it faithfully. I saved all of this for you. All these years, Destiny, I knew I'd see you again."

It was clear Marie Kenwood was in another world, a world neither I nor Destiny understood well enough to visit with her.

When I first saw the box of memories, I'd gotten b.u.t.terflies in my stomach. "This is it," I thought. "This is what will trigger Destiny's memory." But it didn't.

As if she were detached from the life the mementos represented, Destiny playfully examined the merchandise. She held Mousie in her arms. She twisted the ring on her finger. She oohed and aahed at the pictures of her parents. She leafed through the baby book. And none of it had any emotional effect on her. Not one piece of it. The memories were hidden too deep to be touched, even by physical pieces of her childhood.

When I saw that she couldn't be touched, I was at once disappointed and relieved.

Soon it was time for us to go. We repacked the box and I carried it to the car and then came back to get Destiny. We thanked Mrs. Kenwood for an enjoyable evening. Not quite sure what to say next, we three were silent until Destiny's strong voice cut through the night's quiet.

"I really enjoyed myself tonight. I'm sorry we didn't see each other sooner."

Marie Kenwood reached out to embrace Destiny. "I've missed you, little one," she said quietly.

"Me, too, Nana," Destiny answered and then pulled back abruptly. "Where did that come from? Where did that name come from, Kris?" she asked, looking slightly hysterical.

"You remembered it, Destiny." And she had. I'd never mentioned the name in my talks with her.

"Oh, no," was all she could say as she trembled for a moment and then ran to the car.

Marie Kenwood just stood there stunned, her arms still outstretched, holding nothing. Then, her hands slowly fell to her side, almost like she'd given up. She softly said goodnight to me and then went inside the house.

After I got in the car and started the engine, Destiny instructed me to drive as fast as I could. Without delay, I got us out of there. I drove her home as quickly as was legal, the whole way torn between watching the road and watching her shake beside me.