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I.
One morning Greta wakes up, and Carson isn’t in bed.
“Carson?” she calls.
“In the kitchen!” Carson yells back.
Greta sits up, arms reaching over her head in a deep stretch. She pulls the heavy comforter off of her thin legs and climbs out of bed.
Their bed.
Carson and Greta live together now.
She still finds that so hard to believe.
It is a Sunday morning in April, and Carson is making pancakes for the two of them. It has been six months since she came to New York. Their apartment smells like butter and maple syrup, and the breeze drifting through the open window brings the evidence of spring.
Greta makes them a pot of coffee and pours it, steaming, into mugs. Two sugars and a little cream for Carson, three sugars and a little more cream for her. They hold the warm cups in their hands, with eyes only for each other, and talk about the future of the League.
II.
One morning Carson wakes up, and Greta isn’t in bed.
“Greta?” she calls.
“Bathroom,” yells Greta, voice cracking.
She’d had another date with a man last night, one of dozens that she has gone on to keep up appearances. She’d drunk far too much alcohol at the bar, pretending to be interested in him when in reality she couldn’t care less. At the end of the night, he’d kissed her hand, put her in a cab, and sent her home.
Carson is sitting next to her in an instant, rubbing soft circles on her back as she trembles over the toilet bowl. Greta leans into her touch, closing her eyes, and the waves of nausea begin to subside.
She still can’t believe that this life is possible, that this is the life she gets to lead.
Greta puts on a carefully crafted mask for the rest of the world, but she’d never needed one for Carson. Not ever.
Because Carson has always looked at Greta like no one ever had before. She can read the pain in Greta’s face when she gets lost in her own past, and the pleasure in her body when Carson makes love to her, her touch lighting Greta up like a flame.
It is a Saturday morning in October, and they have been Peaches for four summers now. They have been unofficially married for nearly eighteen months. Jo officiated, and their closest teammates were there to see. Sergeant Bev’s contract with the League prevented her from attending, but they all knew she approved. She’d disclosed her support to Carson in private with a small gift: a pair of elegant gold hairpins for Greta and a book of poems by Emily Dickinson for her.
It has been years since Greta has thought about running away.
III.
One morning Greta wakes up, and Carson isn’t in bed.
“Carson?” she calls.
“I don’t want to be awake yet,” comes Carson’s voice from the second bedroom.
Greta pushes through the door into the nursery, sunlight spilling in through the cracks in the drawn yellow curtains, and gazes across the room at her wife. Their baby in her arms, suckling her mother’s warm milk. The sight grounds her, and she remembers all the times she escaped with Jo, leaving everything behind. But she has never felt like running away from Carson, only towards her, forever.
“Ellie give you a hard time last night, sweetie?” she asks, standing behind the rocking chair, deft fingers untangling the knots in Carson’s neck. She leans down, letting her lips brush the exposed skin of Carson’s shoulder.
She thinks that Carson has never been more beautiful than she is right now.
It is a Wednesday morning in June, and they are taking this baseball season off to take care of their daughter. But they never miss a game on the radio, and they cheer so loud for their friends sometimes that the whole floor can probably hear their shouts.
“God, yeah,” Carson groans. “She’s a menace. Remind me why we put up with her?”
“Because we wanted to start a family,” Greta whispers, circling back around the chair and kneeling in front of her wife. She pulls her in for a heated kiss, careful not to disturb the baby on her lap, and leans her forehead against Carson’s.
“You’re the most stunning person I’ve ever met,” Carson murmurs in response. “Thank you for believing in me.”
“No, thank
you
…for coming all the way to New York just for me.”
“I did it for us,” Carson says simply, and Greta has never felt more in love.
IV.
One morning Carson wakes up, and Greta isn’t in bed.
“Greta?” she calls.
But Greta is away on a business trip this week, and she won’t be back for another few days.
Carson is a middle-school softball coach at PS 110, and Greta owns a beauty parlor on the Upper East Side. They’ve been married for more than twenty years now, and together for twenty five.
Ellie comes into the room, peeking her head around the door like she always has first, and sits down on the edge of the bed. She is sixteen years old, a junior at her high school. She has always known the truth about her mothers.
“You really can’t live without her, can you, Mom?”
“I’d never want to,” Carson replies, and Ellie knows it’s true.
It is a Monday morning in the fall of 1969, and the world is changing around them. Changing, enormously, in important ways, but not fast enough. If all the people in their lives knew the truth about Carson and Greta, they could lose everything.
“I wish everyone was kinder to each other,” Ellie says, and Carson beckons the teenager into her arms. Ellie leans into Carson’s embrace and lets out a sigh.
Carson wishes Ellie didn’t have to see the things she does, nor have to experience the things she has experienced. That she didn’t know how hateful people could be. She and Greta did their best to shield their daughter from their pain as she grew up, but they couldn’t hide the truth from her forever.
“I know, sweetheart, I know. I do too.”
Ellie smells like love, like cinnamon and oranges and a warm summer breeze. Carson picks up, too, a hint of rose, when she drops her nose to Ellie’s hair.
“You been stealing some of your mother’s perfume recently?” Carson asks her with a grin that she can’t see. Ellie looks up at her sheepishly, but Carson only rolls her eyes and runs her thumb along her daughter’s arm. “Just don’t get caught, or you’ll have to face the Wrath of Greta.”
“I’ll be careful, Mom, don’t worry,” Ellie replies. Carson lets out a gentle laugh.
“Don’t be late for school, kiddo,” Carson says, motioning her daughter off the bed and begrudgingly pushing herself up behind her.
She watches as Ellie grabs a bite to eat and heads out the apartment door, thinking about how fast she has grown, about the beautiful young woman she has become. She thinks about how quickly the years have passed with Greta in her arms, raising their child together. How thankful she is that they met on the streets of Chicago that day.
V.
One morning Greta wakes up, and Carson isn’t in bed.
“Carson?” she calls, voice feeble from lack of use.
But there is no answer this time, only silence, and Greta remembers that Carson is gone.
She cries the way that many do, silent and uncontrollable. The pain in her heart grows stronger.
“I’m here beside you, my love, don’t worry,”
Carson whispers, into an ear that can no longer hear her voice.
In the end it was cancer that took her. By the time the doctors found it, it was far too late. The infection spread like storm clouds in her lungs, stealing her breath away.
On the baseball field, and at home in New York, Carson was always solid, reliable, tough. You could always rely on her support. But when she got sick, everything changed. Carson herself changed.
Her last few months were the only time she ever really managed to ask for help.
It is a Thursday afternoon in 2003, and Carson has been gone since 1982. Their marriage is, as yet, not legal, but the governor of New York has just signed a law preventing discrimination based on sexuality in the workplace.
23 years too late, and still not enough,
Greta thinks.
Ellie is 50, and lives in a building just down the road. She teaches English at PS 182. She visits often, checking up on her aging mother, making sure she’s eating enough and taking her pills. They talk about Carson, sometimes, but it is usually too painful, especially for Greta, who is 84 years old. Her hair has turned gray, and all the times she smiled over the years are written in the lines on her face. All the times she has said, “I love you”; to her friends, to Ellie, to the love of her life.
They don’t know it, but Carson is always with them, listening, watching, present. She tries to give them signs sometimes- a rainbow after a thunderstorm, a flower blooming on Greta’s windowsill.
Greta looks right at her sometimes, gaze soft, memories of their life together lighting up her eyes, and Carson wonders if, just maybe, Greta can
see.
But then she looks away with a quiet, wistful smile, and Carson’s heart breaks a little more.
“I love you, my darling,”
Carson murmurs.
She knows they’ll be together again soon.