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  When Rayann returned, Danny was opening a package that revealed a sweatshirt with an appliqued front. "Lou, it's stunning," Danny said as she lifted it from the box. Patches of purple and silver seemed to move in the light.

  It was beautiful, Rayann thought, its bold colors suited Danny's strong features and whipcord body. Danny immediately stood up, pulled off her well-washed plain blue sweatshirt and tried on her new sweatshirt. Louisa stood up as well, turning Danny to face her. Her fingers slid under the collar of the white shirt Danny was wearing underneath and she settled it, pulling the points of the collar out. She took Danny by the shoulders and studied her at arm's length.

  "I thought it would match your eyes," she said. "What do you think, Ray?"

  "Perfect. It looks really good." It did match Danny's tawny eyes. But Rayann could hardly stand to watch Danny kiss Louisa with her thanks. It wasn't jealousy — it just hurt.

  Louisa and Danny sat down again and Rayann accepted the wrapped box Louisa handed her, and, with a smile, handed her own offering to Louisa.

  "You first." Louisa watched as Rayann fumbled with the red ribbon on the small silver-wrapped package.

  Inside the box, nestled in green and red tissue paper was a strong silver chain. Rayann raised it and breathed, "Louisa, it's lovely," as an intricately etched silver phoenix emerged. The phoenix's wings were spread, and its tail was wrapped around a murky rose crystal the length of Rayann's little finger.

  "This wonderful store has really exquisite pieces, and I thought the symbol of a phoenix was appropriate for you in this stage of your life… you're starting over, free as the wind, no one holding you back. I'm not sure what all crystals are good for, but it can't hurt." Louisa smiled.

  "It really is beautiful. Thank you." Rayann slipped the chain over her head. Had she been naked the tip of the phoenix's tail would have rested between her breasts. She froze as Louisa reached over and lifted the pendant, admiring it again, and then let it fall gently back to Rayann's chest. Rayann managed to breathe out again.

  "Sometimes I wish I wore jewelry," Danny said. "That is one stunning necklace."

  "I'm overwhelmed," Rayann said. "A beautiful necklace and pearl earrings." She directed a smile at Louisa, but was unable to meet Louisa's gaze, which she could feel focused on her. "Your turn to open your present."

  Louisa slid away the ribbons on the package. Her fingers are so sure — they could be so gentle, yet so demanding — red warning lights flashed in front of Rayann's eyes. Stop it, stop it!

  "Ray, wherever did you find them? I've looked, but there isn't much demand for wooden hair combs these days and I can't stand the plastic ones."

  "Look on the back."

  Louisa turned them over and studied the insignia. "It looks like an R inside of a G — of course. They're exquisite," Louisa said. "I can't believe you made them." She held them up under the light.

  "I did, I promise. They're not finished."

  Danny whistled when Louisa handed the combs to her. "You did all this fancy stuff? What kind of flower is that?"

  "Lily-of-the-valley. I copied the shape from the combs Louisa wears all the time, then changed the flower carving."

  "How can you see what you're doing? This is beyond me," Danny said, handing them back to Louisa.

  "A magnifying glass," Rayann said. "But how Louisa can make these work is beyond me."

  "You just grab a hunk of hair, twist, stab, wrap and shove. It's easy." Louisa demonstrated. The comb held its position, displaying a beautifully shaped ear. "What's not done?" Louisa untwisted the combs and held them under the light again.

  "The edges. I was going to finish them last night, but... the pies..." Rayann's voice caught in her throat. It had not been pie-making that had stopped her. "Here, I can finish them now."

  She sat at the kitchen table and dumped the contents of the pouch containing her smallest woodworking tools and set up her magnifying glass in its holder, glad to have something to put some distance between herself and Louisa. She felt as if she stood on the edge of an exquisite precipice. She wanted to jump but it scared the hell out of her. The comb edges were sharp and it took her only a few minutes to bevel the sides. Her skin prickled and she was aware that Louisa was behind her, leaning over.

  "What kind of wood is it?"

  "English walnut. You can see how the black tone is just faintly broken up with paler streaks. I could stain them to a consistent black finish, if you like, but I thought the unstained grain was a better match for your hair."

  "Oh, no, don't stain them. Can I wear them today?"

  "Of course. They're done now." Rayann handed them to Louisa with a flourish.

  Danny said, "Well, I got more stops to make, but I wanted to spend the first Christmas cheer with you." She shrugged into her jacket.

  When Louisa came back from walking Danny to her car Rayann busied herself putting away her tools and cleaning up the minute curls of wood. She wiped down the table for good measure and made small talk with Louisa as Louisa moved around in her bedroom. She's making the bed. Unwelcome and all-too-vivid memories washed over Rayann as she heard the rustle of sheets and blankets. The part of Rayann that knew which fork to use told her she ought to help make the bed. Not a chance.

  Louisa's voice drifted back to the kitchen. "What are you going to do before you go to your mother's?"

  "I'm going to have a pagan festival. Loud music and trash movies. You've probably noticed I'm not overly religious."

  Louisa reappeared brushing her hair furiously. She had changed into a pair of gray slacks and turquoise sweater. "I noticed. I'm not exactly going to High Mass myself. But there's a big difference between being religious and being spiritual. I'd like to think I have the Christmas spirit all year... Christmas spirit the way Ghost of Christmas Present laid it on old Scrooge. Peace, goodwill, treating our Mother Earth well. The Mother Earth part is me, not Dickens. Your flyer brought in a good deal more business than usual so the checks to Greenpeace and the Women's Center will be accordingly larger this year. Nancy will be thrilled."

  "I'm glad," Rayann said. "I'm glad I did something good this year."

  Louisa swept her hair back, then twisted the combs Rayann had given her. "I'm sure you've done something good every year. You don't strike me as being spiritually defunct. When you're as old as I am you'll have more trouble keeping track. How do they look?" She tipped her head away from Rayann so the light shone down on one comb, nestled in the salt-and-pepper masses.

  Rayann clenched her fingers to keep from reaching for the sensuous textures that had swept her body last night. "They look great, if I do say so myself." Sapphire glinted at the delicate lobe of Louisa's ear. Rayann knew instinctively they were the Danielle earrings.

  Louisa started to reply but was interrupted by a honk from the street. "Goodness, it's late." She looked out the front window. "Yes, that's Teddy. I can't believe he insisted on driving over here because of the fog. I've been driving since before he was born, and in worse than this. I've never even received a parking ticket."

  "I think he considers himself the guardian of your welfare."

  Louisa frowned. "I'm only fifty-six, Rayann. I have another half of life ahead of me. I'm healthy and I don't need people looking after me." She stared directly into Rayann's eyes. "I don't need a daughter or son looking after me... not yet. Hopefully never."

  Rayann swallowed and tore her gaze away from Louisa's intensity. She could not recall such forcefulness in another person's eyes. "I'm not suggesting you do, not at all."

  There was another honk. "Tucker will explode if he has to wait any longer to open his presents." Louisa shrugged into the black parka that hung on the same peg as the denim jacket she had worn to the bar. Rayann wondered why she didn't wear the denim which looked so smashing on her — it was foggy but not really cold enough to warrant the parka. "Well, it all works out. Now you can take the car to your mom's. See you tonight."

  Rayann watched from the window as Louisa put her packages
in the trunk and then got into the car. She looked up suddenly and caught Rayann's stare. Louisa smiled and closed the car door.

  Rayann laughed when her mother groaned and pushed away her plate. "I can't eat another bite, but what a pie! It's so good I just want to dive face first into it."

  "I thought a second piece was beyond your strength," Rayann said, "especially after seconds of everything for dinner."

  "Let's open presents," her mother said. "I think I can waddle into the living room. We'll clean up later."

  They collapsed in separate chairs and remained still for a few minutes. Then Ann pointed at the lavishly decorated tree with her foot. "Your present's under there."

  "What makes you think I can get up?" Rayann patted her bulging stomach.

  "You're young."

  Groaning, Rayann got up and examined the two boxes under the tree. One was addressed to Jim and the other to Rayann. "Who's Jim?"

  "What?" Her mother sat up with speed Rayann hadn't thought possible. "Oh." Incredibly, her mother began to blush. "A man I've been seeing for the last few months."

  "Is he nice?" Rayann didn't know what else to say. As far as she knew, her mother had never dated after Ray Germaine's death. How silly of me to think so.

  "Yes. I'd like you to meet him sometime. He's rather special." Her mother lounged back in her chair again. "Open your present."

  Rayann put the gift on her chair and then went to get her mother's present. "Open yours, too."

  "You first." Ann sat up a little more and watched indulgently as Rayann shredded the paper and expert ribboning on the box. "I know you work in a bookstore and all, but..." Her voice faded with a nervous quiver that Rayann had never heard before. "I hope you don't have them."

  Rayann sat, stunned, then she slowly opened the books and fanned through them. The bookmark in one was a generous check like the others her mother had given Rayann every year, but Rayann hardly spared it a glance. Her mother had bought her two mysteries featuring lesbian detectives. She blinked back a rush of tears.

  "I remembered you liked mysteries," her mother said softly, "and the man at A Different Light said these were both good."

  "You went to A Different Light? Right into the Castro?" Her mother didn't answer and when Rayann looked up through the growing pool of tears she saw her mother wiping away tears of her own. It struck her then that their faces were becoming more and more alike as Rayann grew older. "Oh, Mom, I'll love them both."

  "I'm glad. It was hard... hard to go inside, but once I was there and I looked around at all the gay people I found myself thinking of them as different. And then it came to me that while I was there I was the one who was different. I understood, a little, then, how you — all of you must feel. Made to feel different everywhere you go. And I felt so terrible." Her mother stopped, her voice choking off.

  "Mom, don't…"

  "Let me get this said, please, Rayann. I have to. I didn't want to think of you as different. That's why I shut out what I'd known since you were seventeen."

  "You knew?" And I was so careful. I wasted so much energy hiding it.

  "Of course I knew."

  "Then why?" Why did you practically throw Michelle and me out? Why did you try to send me to a shrink? Why did you send me those hate-books?

  "I don't know why. I love you and I knew what a difficult life you were choosing."

  "I didn't choose. It's what I am."

  "I understand that a little better now. I wanted to tell you this after you left Michelle. I didn't know how to bring it up and you didn't really give me a chance."

  "I know I didn't."

  "I've done a lot of thinking, mostly about what it feels like to know my daughter doesn't want me in her life. I pretended it was your fault for a while, but that doesn't last." Ann stared at her hands. "Not when I knew I was the one who was playing the judge." Rayann caught her lower lip in her teeth. Her mother wiped her eyes and continued, "The largest confession of all is that, when you finally brought it out in the open, my reaction didn't have to do with you so much as Michelle. I detested her, Ray, and I could never tell you that, not until now."

  "Why did you dislike her so much?"

  "At first I thought I was having some weird Freudian competitive urge, not wanting another woman to replace me in your affections. But in hindsight..."

  "I see a lot of things about Michelle more clearly in hindsight," Rayann said with a half-laugh.

  Her mother smiled, her tears fading as if they had never been. "I'm sure you do. In hindsight I think I disliked her because she wasn't a good match for you. She was completely absorbed in her own goals, and you're so giving that I knew you'd give every ounce of energy you had to helping her, not helping yourself. That's when I realized she reminded me of me — driven to achieve the goals we set for ourselves — and I knew you and I didn't get along for some of those same reasons, although I'd like to think I'm not as shallow as she appeared to be."

  "I don't think I'm ready to deal with my relationship with Michelle on the level of Freudian analysis, Mom. She and I were simply not compatible in the end. I don't think it had anything to do with you." Rayann smiled. "And you're not shallow."

  "Thanks for the vote of confidence. Well, I think I learned something when I stood on Castro and looked around, feeling very left out and lost. I never look at French people, for example, and think of them as... alien. I just needed to give myself time to grow, to appreciate what I've never noticed before. Lesbian culture has a very rich history — I've been doing some reading of my own — and while I'll never understand it, just the same way I can't understand what it's like to be French either, I can appreciate it. And I can be proud you're a part of it."

  "That's it," Rayann said, trying to smile. "I'm going to start really crying now." She fished a linty tissue out of her pocket. "I'll never have your emotional control."

  Her mother turned shining eyes to her. "I'm not doing so well myself. But you've always been emotional — you're like your father that way. When you started dating I was going to keep such a close eye on you — but you never dated, not that I knew of."

  "I dated, but not the boys from the country club." Rayann blew her nose.

  Her mother laughed wryly. "I haven't belonged to the country club in years." She sighed. "I want so much for you, Ray. After your father died I knew it was all up to me. I want you to have a perfect life and find a perfect mate. Someone who would make you as happy and complete as your father made me. I don't care about who you spend your life with as long as the person's good to you. And I knew deep down Michelle wasn't good for you."

  "I guess, now that I'm older, I'll have to start giving you credit for good judgment and good sense. I was never willing to do that before." Rayann swallowed, the lump in her throat easing. "And Michelle wasn't good for me. Living together was just convenient. I attached more importance to the concept of a relationship than she did."

  "You can still come home if you want. I know living in Oakland suits you — you look so happy."

  "I know. But I want to stay where I am. It suits me very well."

  "The woman you work for sounds very nice."

  "She is." Rayann didn't know what to say about Louisa, so she groped for something her mother would understand. "She has some original Jimmy Dorsey recordings."

  Her mother's eyes grew wide. "Really? Would she let me tape them?"

  "I'm sure. I'll ask. But open your present now."

  Her mother's eyes shone again when she examined the detailed pendant and earrings Rayann had carved out of glossy ebony. The pendant was a mass of flowers, vines and small birds embellishing the letter A, patterned after a fourteenth-century illuminated manuscript. The earrings matched the flower and vine pattern.

  "I hope they're not too garish to wear to work," Rayann said tentatively.

  "Garish?" Ann shook her head. "Not garish — gorgeous. Darling, not to bring up a tedious subject on Christmas, but I know women who would pay quite a bit for something so exquisit
e and unique. You should design yourself a catalog and take orders. Custom-made items and craftsmanship are in vogue again."

  "Ill think about it," Rayann said. She would, too.

  "I just remembered something." Her mother left the room and returned with a small pasteboard. "I swiped this out of the product file because I wanted you to see it."

  Under the tissue covering the artwork was an ad for a new type of bank account. Rayann examined it for a few minutes and then said, "This is the same concept I developed just before I left Hibernia." Rayann had worked for the small, local bank years before.

  "This ad was carried in national publications. It appeared in locally purchased ad space in seventeen markets throughout the United States," her mother said, her voice growing more urgent. "It was wildly successful. Ray, it won three national awards. You were ahead of your time, dear."

  "I wish I'd stayed with it," Rayann said finally. "But I can't go back to it, not now."

  "Maybe if you found a company you liked... But I didn't show it to you to pressure you — just to let you know that what you were doing was good, and someone besides me thought so."

  "Thanks." Rayann felt a sting of regret, softened by a glow of self-esteem. She fingered her phoenix. Louisa had been right, the symbolism fit her. That makes quite a few wonderful gifts in one day. The thought of Louisa sent a hot flash through her body, followed by a cold flush. But I could wish for one more.

  "It's nice to see you again," Louisa was saying. The voice that answered, faintly accented and attractively husky, brought a tinge of embarrassed heat to Rayann's cheeks. She took a deep breath and got up from behind the shelves that had kept Zoraida from seeing her when she first came into the store.

  Zoraida smiled at her — an amused, knowing smile. "I am perhaps too optimistic, but could I hope you have no plans for the evening?"