This Is Not for You by Jane Rule

wanting to do the right thing for you, but, if it involved your being at home, it was always the wrong thing for her.
    I was probably the only one a little sorry not to be going home. It was the only place where I could work without interruption. My comfort was quietly arranged by a housekeeper who took impersonal pleasure in her task, and my mother’s vague, affectionate company was always peaceful. But she often traveled now to give me more freedom from her loneliness or a more interesting holiday. I could never have told her that I did sometimes miss the innocent and reasonable life we lived together for the first few years after my father’s death. It was probably true only because I was free to miss it. And I had found a substitute in the orderly life at college, particularly when I could stay there after most of the students had left. I tried not to resent the number of other people who also chose to stay, but I was disappointed.
    “I won’t come knocking at your door,” you said. “I’m going to work all day in the studio and read all night. And Monk’s going to be tied up with rehearsals and her private life.”
    “Good.”
    “Was Sandy here last year?”
    “Yes, she was, rehearsing for the Bartok concerts. She wasn’t around much.”
    “She’s staying this year, too, working on her proficiency concert…”
    “And…?” I said.
    “I had a long, strange sort of talk with her the other day—the day you didn’t come in for coffee. She asked a lot of questions about you. When she heard you were staying on campus, she suddenly said, ‘Well, that’s that,’ and got up and walked off.”
    “Then let it be,” I said.
    “Do you think she’s queer, Kate? That’s what people say And it did sort of seem… I don’t know.”
    “That would be all you’d need, E.”
    “Then you do think she is.”
    “I don’t think anything at all. But then she’s never propositioned me.”
    “Well, she didn’t me. Monk’s just terrified of her.”
    “Why?”
    “She heard a rumor that it was Sandy’s ambition to sleep with every senior on our corridor, and about two weeks ago Monk saw her leaving the room right next to Monk’s about three in the morning. Monk kept saying, ‘I’m next. I’m next.’ When I laughed at her, she said hadn’t I noticed how friendly Sandy had been with her when we were all having coffee. Of course, she has been….”
    “Monk has only one thing on her mind, and that’s her problem. Maybe Sandy’s got another. You’ve got a sculpture show to get on and two papers to write. That’s enough.”
    “More than enough,” you said, but you weren’t finished. You sat, folding an empty match book into a flower. “Do you think I could be queer, Kate?”
    “Why?”
    “I don’t know—only it doesn’t seem to me odd for one woman to love another. I love you. It’s not sex or anything like that, but, if it were, I don’t know—I wouldn’t be shocked. When I thought that, thinking about Sandy, I suddenly wondered about me.”
    “E., don’t get involved with Sandy.”
    “Did you know Pete was queer?”
    “Yes.”
    “I didn’t. Andy had to tell me. I don’t mind about that, either. Maybe sex isn’t very important to me.”
    “Maybe not,” I said. “Not by itself, anyway.”
    You sat there, your face turned a little away, thinking, your cheek still softly curving like a child’s, your woman’s beauty still half sleeping in your eyes and mouth, but in your throat, in the line of your shoulder, breast, it woke, and you couldn’t ignore it much longer. I watched you, thinking, you are not to spend yourself on a Sandra Mentchen. I haven’t saved you from myself for that. If stopping it meant encouraging Sandy to think that you were already involved with me, that risk might better be taken. It would be strange, perhaps even difficult, after four years of being so careful about small details to be just as consciously careless, to allow an occasional gesture of affection,