Strange Women, The by Miriam Gardner Page B

spare body, she found herself thinking again, with muted grief and tenderness, of Pammy. Her father had feared a lesbian might corrupt his daughter. Yet it was normal married life that had destroyed Pam—
    That is absolutely the most neurotic… if a patient said that, I'd tell her to run, not walk, to a psychiatrist!
    Jill was buffing her nails before the mirror. She said, without looking up, "Nora, I—I wrote Mack today and told him about the baby."
    "Good," Nora said affirmatively, and realizing this meant surrender, she did not dwell on the point.
    "The baby ought to be born early in August. Will you—make an appointment with Dr. Demorino for me?"
    "Oh, Jill, of course!" Nora held out her arms and they hugged each other.
    "Nora, I—last night I behaved like a spoiled brat."
    Nora was breathless at the complete capitulation in this. They clung together; Jill smiled up at her shakily.
    "How long will it be before I start to—to get big?"
    "Oh, there won't be much gross change before March. Maybe April. Let me see—" she put her hands around the slender waist. Her heart was pounding. Then, without a word, she unfastened the robe at the throat and slipped her hand into the neck of Jill's nightgown, cradling the small breast in her hand. It felt very warm.
    Jill laughed nervously. "See? I do need a brassiere now, don't I?" Suddenly she flung her arms around Nora again, with such violence that Nora fell back on the bed. Nora pulled Jill down to her.
    "Jill—Jill, I've been hateful, for weeks I've been pretending—"
    Jill stopped the murmured words by kissing her. They lay close together for minutes, holding each other; then Jill, her hands shaking, untied the belt of Nora's robe and flung it toward the foot of the bed.
    Nora had not moved. Jill came back to her mouth, and their lips fastened and fused together. Her hands, small and soft and gentle, moved caressingly down Nora's shoulders. Nora heard herself gasp aloud with an almost painful delight, as Jill shyly repeated her own gesture; cupping her hand around Nora's breast. She caught Jill close, pulling the girl down heavily across her, feeling the sudden, sweet, savage ache all through her body.
    Their feet were still tangled in Nora's robe. Nora said in a roughened voice, "Wait, darling," and reached to snap out the light. With her other hand she swept down and pulled away the tangled clothes, flinging them off on the floor. Then with impatient fingers she jerked off the coat of her pajamas and threw it after them.
    The room was flooded with the pale, lustrous light of the moonlight outside, reflected from snow. Nora heard Jill make a strange little sound, halfway between a sigh and a sob. Then Jill’s bare arms closed around her, and the ache and tension of anticipation suddenly melted and flowed. She went limp all over with the anguish and delight of surrender.
    Her hands, instinctively seeking softnesses, seemed to have a life of their own. She pressed Jill's head to her breast, feeling the soft lips close over the hardening nipple with strangely pleasant pain. And then she lost track of separate sensations, conscious only of softness, of sweetness, of wave after wave of spreading small shivers that carried her along on their crest.
    Through it all she was conscious of immense surprise, of growing tenderness like a counterbass chord pattern to the singing in her nerves. As the diffuse patterns swept to their summit, she heard her own cry, hardly more than a whisper, like a final, explosive cadence; then silence.
    It was a long time before either of them moved again. At last Nora turned and reached across Jill for a cigarette. She lay on her back, smoking, the confusion of thought and feeling slowly clearing. But the tenderness, and the surprise remained.
    She had always clung, down deep, to a half-formed notion that no woman could possibly give another woman genuine sexual satisfaction. In spite of Kinsey, she had believed the alleged pleasure felt by