Tomorrow Never Comes
by
Dixie Binning
The airport, still called National Airport in those days, was relatively calm that night. I was grateful. I needed a few quiet moments before meeting Annie’s plane. I checked the arrival boards and noted that her flight was on time, 5:35 p.m.
The note I had received from her earlier in the week had been brief, but so like her. Scribbled on the back of what appeared to be an old grocery list, she had said:
Hi Jess,
On my way to visit family in Maine. Will be at National Airport evening of 13th, United # 927, due in at 5 something. Will have several hours lay-over and would love to see you. I know it’s short notice, so if you’re not there I understand. Hope all is well.
Love, Annie.
I had left school in time to arrive early, an hour ahead of the plane. I wanted time alone, time to bathe in the luxury of waiting, time to play with words to describe the sea of strangers, giving myself time to warm up to the idea of later describing myself to an old friend.
I got a cup of coffee and sat in a quiet corner where glass separated the cafeteria from the rest of the airport. I felt shrouded in the privacy of watching without being watched. The coffee was too bitter and not hot enough, but it felt good to have the time and inclination to notice. I sat with my back to the cafeteria crowd and looked out onto the main corridor. A flower cart was seductively positioned a few yards from entrance-exit doors, just close enough for those entering to be caught by the impulse, “Say it with Flowers,” and just far enough away for those leaving to be lured into softening the good-byes.
I watched a woman, younger than me, alone also, approach the exit doors, hesitate before stepping onto the pad that splinters apart the glass divider of the two worlds, turn and walk back to the flower stand. She observed it from a distance at first, a slight hint of self-consciousness on her face. I felt a mild pang of guilt at my intrusion on her privacy, but it didn’t keep me from continuing to watch her.
Her face had that tired look—not of one tired from work and too much to do, but tired of saying hello and good-bye, tired of feeling the bittersweet of it all, tired of knowing the next airport scene would take place all too soon. Yet her face was also soft, still full of longing. Once up to the flower bins, she seemed to make her choice automatically—not the particulars but the general. There seemed no doubt in her mind that it would be jonquils she chose, but she was careful and deliberate about which three. She purchased her companions with money from her raincoat pocket and carefully laid them wrist to elbow, now armed to face the exit glass and all that lay beyond it. Her face was quieter as she left, closer to the acceptance side of resignation.
The doors snapped shut and once again I was alone, locked away forever from my secret companionship with the stranger. I settled into another cigarette, pacing my internal clock to one more cup of coffee before making my way to Annie’s arrival gate. Time was still on my side and all that awaited me beyond those brittle doors could be held in abeyance yet a bit longer.
“Jessica? Jessica?”
From somewhere came a faint and vaguely familiar voice, pulling me from my second-cup-of-coffee musings. Then all too abruptly I realized the actual sound was not faint or far away, not imagined or part of my daydream; it was just my mind’s resistance that made it so.
“Jessica! I didn’t think you’d even be here yet. My flight was way early. We caught a tailwind. I was just going to grab a cup of coffee and then get back to my gate to meet you—but I see . . . .” She was talking fast, a little too loud, her voice growing higher in its pitch. It was Annie. She had shorter hair and different glasses, but it was Annie nonetheless.
She stopped in mid-sentence, awkwardly pausing, suddenly aware that I was still in some far-off world of my own. I recalled later that she had had a brief look of realization during that pause, as if she flashed back to remembering that my timing for things was always carefully planned. She started to mutter some apology, but already I was recovering, coming out of my reverie.
I got up and gave her a warm hug. “Mm, it’s good to see you,” I said, now fully present and looking forward to the coming hours with her. It had been such a long time since we’d been in touch.
She leaned back in my arms and looked at my face. “And you too Jess,” she said warmly. I felt her eyes searching mine, making that connection we seemed always to be able to make, leaping over or through the boundaries time lapsed might have set between others.
“Well, what shall we do with our time?” I asked.
“I’ve got a couple of hours at Kennedy too, so it would be great to get out of the airport if you don’t mind. Besides I haven’t seen D.C. at night for years.”
“That’s fine with me. Is your luggage checked through, tickets confirmed, and when do you have to be back?”
“Yes, no, and I don’t know. Give me five minutes and I’ll meet you back here while you decide where to take me around the city and where to have dinner, okay?”
I remembered how Annie had often done that—tossed out a proposal for how to spend our time together as casually as she tossed her hair over her shoulder and then left all the details up to me. I smiled as I recalled that she had often also walked away, just as she had now, leaving me to either execute the plan she had suggested or come up with a better one.
And how perfect a plan it was I thought—spending a balmy spring night driving past the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials and then on to our old favorite restaurant in Georgetown for a late dinner. I made mental notes of the route I would take, gathered my trash, and left my corner just as I had found it not yet an hour ago.
Annie met me at the café entrance. “I don’t have to be back until 9:30, so that leaves us about 4 hours. Shall we go?” Her voice was light and airy, as I’d known it to be many years before.
“Ready!” I answered and off we marched, arm in arm, out to the parking lot.
We chatted easily as I drove--me about my teaching, her about her social work. She wanted to walk for a while around the Tidal Basin, so we parked near the Jefferson Memorial and began to amble along the walkway. The cherry trees had finished blooming a couple weeks earlier, but the ground was still covered with the soft petals, now turned rusty brown with age. The lights of the monument and the city beyond cast a hushed reverence over the water.
We walked slowly, unhurried, refusing to acknowledge the short time we had to spend with each other. A sense of enchantment moved over me, as always in this place at this time of year, and it was peaceful to surrender to it. The chatter had ceased in us both, and I was reminded that silence had often been our best friend. I smiled, realizing we had fallen into a matched step, something so remarkable to us both in those first few weeks of falling in love so many years ago that I had written a poem about it.
I looked at Annie, wondering if she too was feeling the nostalgia, the comfort of the memories. She returned my gaze, soft and steady, reassuring me without words that some things can always be trusted.
When we got back to the car, we shifted back to communicating with words. On the way to Georgetown we filled each other in on our lives since we’d last been in touch. I noted that in our respective story telling, we each placed limits on how far back we went. So to each of us, the other’s year after our parting remained a question mark; yet a question either respectfully or comfortably (and perhaps both) left alone. No doubt we had each for so long held our own perspectives that recounting that time now would only have disturbed the peace we had each made for ourselves.
We arrived at Mr. Henry’s, a restaurant that had been such a treat to us those many years ago before regular salaries allowed the luxury of eating out. We asked for a quiet table in the back and settled in.
“So, it sounds like your relationship with Rob is going well.” I ventured, wanting to know about her life since our parting, yet respecting whatever privacy she needed.
“Yes, Jessica. It’s been a long time coming. After you, I didn’t think I ever even wanted to fall in love again. But in time I came to understand that you and I just weren’t right for each other. Even though I was head over heels in love with you, in my heart of hearts, I think I’ve discovered that I’m basically straight. Things feel right with Rob. And he’s a good man. Someday I hope you get a chance to meet him.”
“I hope so too,” I answered genuinely.
Annie excused herself to use the restroom, asking that I order her a glass of red wine if the waiter came while she was gone.
It felt good to have her say it out loud for both our ears—after you. It confirmed it all, rendering it natural, tender, accepted, forgiven, cherished. I remembered how Annie had always been the one to acknowledge things first, to speak the unspoken first, even for those feelings so strange to each of us during our junior year in college back in 1966.
Annie had been the first to liken our growing friendship that autumn to a kind of falling in love—“falling in like” she had called it as we crossed the campus one clear, crisp dusk on our way to study at the library. And as fall turned to winter, she had been first to hold my gaze across a roomful of people longer than convention allows, first to hug me closer than is customary, and first to move from that precarious balance between the embracing of friends and the caressing that comes with wanting more.
And when winter became spring, the caresses became kisses, soft and warm and searching. I felt myself melt into her more sweetly than any poetry of the experience I had ever read, and it was Annie who first produced the words to calm my panic at the intensity of my feelings. “There’s so much love here, Jess. It just has to spill out through our bodies, whether we’re both women or not. Maybe love doesn’t discriminate sexually.”
Finals, families, and summer jobs back at our respective homes, mine in the Midwest, hers on the East Coast, parted us. We wrote to each other regularly, but afraid parenting eyes might find our letters and see the lovers we wanted to be, we avoided the subject on paper altogether. When our budgets allowed, we did call each other, but afraid parenting ears might hear, we never spoke of our feelings except in riddles I couldn’t trust.
Time crawled for me that summer. I worked at the town grocery store during the day and after helping with chores and dishes, I took long walks around the farm watching the sun set. Just when I’d get settled on the porch swing in the cool of the evening, wanting to be alone with my memories of Annie, Mother would come outside to sit with me. She’d been reading about the importance of spending quality time with your children and, bless her heart, just assumed I would value it as much as she did. But it was okay. She would chatter on endlessly about the grandkids and the neighbors and I would listen with half an ear, the other part of me biding time until I could return to college and my beloved in the fall.
As each day blistered the Illinois cornfields, I was thrust deeper and deeper into the pool of doubt about Annie’s feelings for me. I would read and reread her letters, gleaning them for some shred of evidence that she felt the same way about me that I felt about her. Maybe I was making more of our relationship than she was. Maybe I had misunderstood her kisses last spring. Maybe she wouldn’t want our relationship to continue the way it had started. She even mentioned once in a letter that she’d gone out on a date with a guy who was the son of friends of her parents.
By the end of summer I was an emotional wreck. One evening from her chair on the porch Mom broached, “Honey, you seem awful anxious of late. Is everything okay with you?”
I was startled at how perceptive she was, but quickly answered, “I’m fine, Mom. Just getting senior year jitters I guess.”
“Well, dear, you know I’m happy to listen if you ever want to talk about anything.”
“I know, Mom. Thanks.” But inside my stomach was churning, knowing this was definitely not something I could talk to my mother about—or anyone else for that matter. I had gone to the local library to research what I could on homosexuality, but the small-town library had nothing on the subject beyond its rather archaic set of encyclopedias. Abnormal was the message I came away with and decided to wait until I returned to the college library for more information on the subject.
I clung to Annie’s explanation of our kisses being a result of our love spilling over into our bodies. But maybe she was having second thoughts about that now, realizing it might mean we weren’t normal. Maybe that’s why she was dating guys. Maybe she would be sorry we were going to be dorm roommates. Maybe she . . . . Maybe she . . . .
I thought September would never come. But as always, it did come and with it the long awaited day of our reunion. Annie’s parents had driven her straight through from New Jersey and my folks brought me up from the farm. After we all had a late lunch together, we finished unloading the cars and our parents went their respective ways.
I had stolen a couple of looks at Annie over lunch, but could tell nothing from her face. I had hoped that when our parents left, we’d have some time alone, but the dorm was bustling. Annie seemed quite enthusiastic about helping everyone else unload and get settled. She happily chatted away the day with old friends, finding out about their summers, comparing class schedules, obviously not needing to spend any time alone with me.
My stomach churned. My body ached with the tension it held. By the time we gathered downstairs to end the day with the traditional welcome-back dorm meeting, the pool of doubt I had swam in all summer became an ocean of fear. When at last the hallways quieted and everyone filed off to their respective doorways, we were alone together for the first time since last spring.
Annie had begun taking things out of boxes earlier in the day in her helter-skelter fashion leaving scarcely room to walk through the array. As I closed the door, she sighed deeply, looked at me across the room, and said, “Howdy!”
“Hi,” I laughed nervously, but Annie seemed oblivious to my anxiety.
“What a day, huh?” She moved boxes into the closet as she spoke. “And what a mess!”
I agreed with her about the mess, but I was talking more about my emotions than the state of the room.
“Gosh, it was good to see everyone, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah, it was,” I managed, wondering how I was ever going to muster the courage to find out what I was so desperate to know.
She chattered on as she cleared boxes off one of the beds. When she finished, she said, “I’ve got a major crick in my neck from the long trip and everything. How about a backrub?”
“Sure,” I breathed a sigh of relief. At least she wasn’t afraid to let me touch her, not that I would have known that from the impersonal bear hug she had given me when we first saw each other this morning.
She cut off the light, slipped off her blouse and pushed the curtain aside to let the warm late summer breeze drift in through the open window. She lay face down on the bed, pulling her bra straps down off her shoulders. The campus lights cast a dim glow across her summered back as I began to massage her shoulders. As I worked she talked more about the lifeguard job she’d had all summer and the friends we’d seen today, while I wondered if she felt the trembling in my hands.
She stopped me with “Ummm . . . that’s fine. Thanks. You want one?”
I shifted around and seated myself on the edge of the bed. “Not now, thanks,” I said, hoping the tautness in my stomach was not evident in my voice.
Annie turned over and lay on her back. She put one arm behind her head and propped herself up on the pillow. I became acutely aware of the white bra against the tan line on her chest. She looked at my face, shadowed now in the moonlit room. “What a perfect September night,” she said softly. “Just like I imagined it would be.”
My eyes and ear were tuned to her every gesture, her every syllable for some clue. She sighed deeply again and closed her eyes. God she was beautiful. Her long dark hair, now tousled from the day’s activities, softened the angular features of her face. Her long, supple body lay at ease, apparently completely free of the tension that filled mine. I longed to wrap my arms around her and bury my face in her neck.
Silence fell between us. All the thousands of hours all summer I had waited for this moment, and now it was trickling through my fingers like sand through an hourglass. The muscles in my stomach tightened. My heart pounded in my ears. My hands turned clammy.
Suddenly I realized that Annie was watching me, intently. “What’s going on with you, Jess? You’ve been unusually quiet all day.”
The breeze quickened and blew the curtains close to my shoulders. The air carried the sweet smell of decaying leaves. I could almost taste the memory of her on my lips. Now was my chance to scream forth the questions tearing me apart.
I took a deep breath and plunged in. “It’s just that it’s been such a long summer. Every day I waited for tomorrow to come. I waited and waited and at long last tomorrow has finally come,” I stammered and swallowed the lump that was rising in my throat. Finally I looked directly at her. “Annie, there are things I need to know.”
My voice sounded hollow to my ears. Suddenly I wished I had said nothing. Funny how I had not known until this moment that no matter how much I had told myself otherwise, I could not bear the idea of simply being this woman’s roommate. But I didn’t think I could bear losing her altogether either.
Annie looked at me with that deep, tender smile I so cherished. Her voice was soft, yet commanding. “Tomorrow never comes, Jess. It’s always today.” She put her hand up to my face and cupped it around my chin. “And today I still love you.”
I said it over and over in my head, trying to make sure I wasn’t dreaming, not quite trusting that I had really heard what I so longed to hear. I studied her face, searching her eyes, pushing my chin into her waiting hand, moving her hand closer to my lips.
“Oh, Annie. I love you too.”
Now there was no need for words. All my questions either didn’t matter or would be answered. All the waves of doubt that had nearly drowned me vanished as quickly as fog on a summer morning. Our love had not been imagined. And the form it took today, tomorrow, and in all the tomorrows to come didn’t matter either.
Annie continued to caress my face. “I’ve missed you so much Jess,” she whispered. “I didn’t think the summer would ever end.”
She looked out the window then, the moonlight catching the glimmer in her deep blue eyes. I sensed she was weighing something again in her mind, mulling it over, as if for the last time. Finally she looked back at me. “Jess, do you know how two women make love?”
There was a long silence between us then. I felt her patience with me. I felt her assurance that she understood that I had not thought this far ahead. And she was right. I had not thought beyond the kisses. I had not considered in any real way what this road might mean for each of us if we chose to go down it.
But some part of me knew even then that I no longer had a choice. This road stretching out before me was the only one I could take. “No,” I said. “Do you?”
She paused and smiled that smile I could never take my eyes away from. “Then we’ll have to make it up as we go along.” She entwined both her arms around my neck then and pulled me to her on the bed.
And even now, here in this restaurant in Georgetown after all these years and all we’d been through, it was of course Annie who found the right words at the right time. After all these years of not speaking of it, she acknowledged for us both not only that we had loved and that it was not to be erased, but that it would be embraced as part of it all—all the living and the loving thereafter.
The End
