Sappho's Bar and Grill Read online

  Isabel, eyes sometimes gray, more often green, warm and inquiring, now poured Hannah a shot of Bailey’s on ice, then tapped the rim with her own antique goblet water glass in a quick toast, another old ritual. “Salud et l’chaim. Thinking about your father this week?”

  Hannah knew then that she looked as sad as she felt. “No, thinking about Gail. Thinking about students who hate women’s history and who plagiarize facts on the founding of Rome from Italian restaurant menus. Thinking about the 106 papers I have to grade before the Valentine’s Day party here. Which I will once again attend ALONE, barring Cupid’s arrow in my ass between now and Friday.”

  “Ah. Same old, then.”

  “Yeah.”

  They sipped in silence, and Hannah lowered her eyes to Isabel’s hands, the flower rings she wore. Hands that had, regrettably, never explored Hannah’s breasts and thighs, despite her idiotic pleading during their one European vacation together back in 1986: Please, Iz, just once before I die. And Iz, what if I die tomorrow?

  Isabel moved away to ring up a beer for another bar patron who had entered, then returned to assess Hannah’s brooding. “Hey, you. I know you like to complain, and often with good reason; but at heart you like the pressure and you love teaching. You always did—more than I knew I would. Don’t you still?”

  “Yeah. But what do I do with all these student papers that begin, ‘There were no lesbians before Ellen DeGeneres came out’? They don’t see the history I teach them.”

  “Do you see the history you teach them?”

  This was a good question. Damn Isabel. Had Hannah lost her sense of the women she lectured on? “The great women of history.” No matter how she rearranged her ever-changing syllabus, shifted and split its sections like paramecia, adding women from this region and that era, struggled to balance Global North with Global South, women of color with pre-Christian Europe’s witches, inventors and healers, servants and slaves, athletes and queens, concubines and conservatives, innkeepers and film stars, some group was bound to be left out and she would always feel she’d failed in representing them. Where had her love of women’s history begun? As a child when she heard Shirley Chisholm speak? No. Earlier. The babysitter who read her the book about female pirates. No, she had loved the babysitter. The babysitter and the pirate were one. She was feeling the drink, though the drink was a very small one. Isabel always made her little fancy drinks with something extra in them that acted on Hannah like truth serum; here it was, happening again. She was relaxed, her worries and the stress of the empty apartment at home forgotten, but the unanswered question swirling around her like a drop of paint in a water glass. Who did she see? When she stood in front of the women’s history classroom, who guided her?

  In truth, her deepest muse was probably Sappho, if not another lesbian from the ancient past. The sense of obligation to get her own people into the record had been an urgent mandate since graduate school. For all their excellent education, Hannah and Isabel had just missed the coming wave of LGBT studies, had been too early, then too late, and the frosty paperwork demanded of anyone daring to attempt a lesbian dissertation so irked Isabel that she dropped out to serve the women’s community directly. “You write about us; I’ll nourish us,” had been her apology to Hannah. The homophobic pushback they encountered even in a women’s history graduate program had only made Hannah dig in further. She was the first in their cohort to grab her credentials and start teaching, young, enraged, her sweater always buttoned wrong, one earring falling out, but love of scholarship blasting from her fingers as she retyped lecture notes for her assigned classes. She felt motivated—indeed, haunted—by Sappho’s poetic fragment: “You may forget but/Let me tell you/this: someone in/some future time/will think of us.” Nearly every day, she stood in front of her students and wrote these lines on the blackboard in tough-looking purple chalk. Never mind the groans and the whispers: “Oh, no, not Sappho again.” “She’s obsessed!”

  The bar was a place to unwind with a few other professors and old friends. Gail had not really liked it; it was part of the reason they broke up, Hannah reflected now. The endless tug between The Community and The Relationship, between loving women and loving one woman. Hating conflict, Hannah remained passive, unhappily turning over their problems in her mind. Gail took action, demanding “Choose!” and then walking out.

  Hannah stood up. No wallowing in regret and failure: There were papers to grade. This was supposed to be a one-drink, quick-visit night. She felt woozy, though, and now Isabel pointed out that she had not eaten anything, had driven from work after a long teaching day, and then lit into a drink on an empty stomach. “Come and eat,” said Isabel. “I’m firing up the grill for a bunch of other women coming in later. They ordered roast vegetables with herbs. I set aside some potatoes and beets for you. And sour cream, of course.” She beckoned to what they called The Nook, a side room with a rustic table for intimate dinners or romantic discussions by candlelight. Lured by the promise of Jewish comfort food, grateful that Isabel always knew what she wanted and needed, Hannah stumbled around the back of the bar and sat down at the hidden wooden table.

  But someone was already there. It looked like—

  It was Sappho.

  No. It wasn’t. How ridiculous. Hannah blinked. It was some woman in a Sappho outfit. Now she recognized Jeri, one of their university friends from the art department, sprawled out in a toga and garland. “Surprise!” she shouted. “How do you like this costume? Isabel told me to bring it over for you. It’s for the Valentine’s Day party! If you want it, you can borrow it.”

  “Jesus, Jeri,” Hannah said faintly. “Where did you get something like that?”

  “Yeah, looks real, huh? I mean authentic. Got it on eBay, kiddo! I was one of the Muses at the art department graduation party last May, remember? Aren’t you always reminding us that Plato called Sappho the Tenth Muse? So we thought you could wear this next weekend.” Jeri was peeling off the toga and sandals, revealing her more familiar evening yoga clothing. “Ahhh . . . that’s better. You do feel the weight of women’s history in this rig!”

  “Hannah feels the weight of it all the time, even in her pajamas,” Isabel called over her shoulder.

  “Fuck you,” Hannah returned, quickly adding “I mean, desist, ye mocking toadstool,” and they laughed. “Okay. You’re right. Actually, I do like it. I’ll wear it to the party. After all, I’m between girlfriends, and my longest love really is women’s history. Let’s drink to that. Women’s history will be my date this year!”

  And Isabel, smiling to herself in the recess behind the bar, added: So mote it be. But nobody heard her.

  When Hannah showed up to the dance in her Sapphic toga, Jeri, Megan, Sylvia, Dog, and Yvette let out shrieks and whistles of appreciation. “Girl, you look ancient!” Dog called out.

  “Thanks,” Hannah replied. “That’s great. That’s sure to attract younger women.”

  “She means you look like a real lesbo, from Lesbos,” Megan assured.

  Should I have worn underwear? Hannah wondered.

  She took the drink that Isabel handed her (something pink, with gold-flecked red hearts in the beveled goblet glass, in honor of the holiday) and sipped sedately, mindful of not spilling on her borrowed finery. Couples entered the bar, laughing, guffawing as dykes do, hand-slapping and hugging, peeling off winter leather jackets and bulky down coats to reveal outfits clearly representing their alter egos and avatars: cowgirl, stripper, auto mechanic (but that was Sherry’s actual job—no fair, thought Hannah); Mafia don, Rosie the Riveter, the pope, Marilyn Monroe, Snow White. Old Letty arrived well-guarded against the occasion’s romantic flower arrangements, costumed in a skin-diving mask and snorkel, with her elegant partner, Glo, dressed as a giant clam (a pearl clenched in her false teeth.) The disco ball lit up in crimson-washed sparkles as Isabel’s eclectic music list for the evening drew new arrivals to the wooden dance floor platform: Etta James, “In the Basement”; Holly Near, “Bony Jaw Baby”; Lorrain
e Segato, “Mama Quilla”; Sheila E, “The Glamorous Life.” Rosie the Riveter and Snow White were soon making out on what they all called the pit furniture, low sofas always at the ready for impulsive necking (and impossible to get out of quickly, as Hannah had discovered once when she was wrapped in a new girlfriend and the woman’s ex stormed in.) The pope was on top of and then rapidly underneath Marilyn Monroe. The cowgirl and Xena Warrior Princess were dancing barefoot despite the snow outside the bar, confetti churning beneath their feet. Splashes of Isabel’s mystic cocktails reddened dancers’ cheeks—both faces and exposed rear ends in naughty-cut chaps. The disco ball turned, turned. And Hannah felt the approaching twin harbingers of a night out at Sappho’s Bar and Grill: a surreal wash of dizziness, paired with the sad knowledge she was once again alone among the coupled.

  In the corner was a middle-aged dyke who looked very familiar in a horrible sort of way. Hannah squinted. It must be someone who showed up fairly often. She seemed at home in the bar. Shoes like Hannah’s, probably ordered from the same hip-twelve-years-ago catalog. She wore a jacket like Hannah’s, too. Wait a minute. God damn it. A hot plume of embarrassment curled up Hannah’s collarbone. One of their busting, whaling prankster pals had actually come to the Valentine’s dance costumed as Hannah!

  The woman smiled. “Yes. I am you. No?”

  Oh, how embarrassing. How fucking embarrassing. The woman had to be one of the university’s graduate exchange students—or, more likely, one of the visiting faculty scholars Hannah had not met yet. She struggled to be polite. After all, any new academic colleague willing to come to the Valentine’s dance in a lesbian bar was worth knowing. Hard to place the accent: Croatian? Portuguese? Damn. Who had dressed her up like Hannah? It had to be impish Isabel. Only she would have in her possession an entire outfit’s worth of forgotten, unstylish garments Hannah had left behind at the bar over the past ten years. Sighing, she approached her doppelganger.

  “I must look hideous, daily, if that’s typical of the ensembles I throw together. Please trust me, I have nicer clothes at home. I have things that match; I do. Uh . . . like a black dress. Yeah. I don’t know why I dress so drab. I teach so much I never have time to go shopping . . .”

  The woman was laughing, and her laugh was beautiful. Bewitching, in fact. “But one’s own clothes look loveliest on oneself. So your own clothes may look lovely on you. Perhaps we switch now? I will disrobe and give you back.”

  “Well, but—whoa, no need to get naked, now,” Hannah sputtered, as the woman threw off her dowdy outfit, the sudden pile of fleece puddling on the scarred floor between them. “Wait a minute. Wow. You look great, but, hey, slow down. Look, I’m already dressed up. For once, I dressed up! Let me explain, and you can just put your clothes back on. I mean, my clothes. I can’t swap outfits right now; I’m in a special costume too. You see, I’m supposed to be—“

  “Sappho,” said the beautiful and now naked Greek woman, holding out her hand in introduction. “At last we meet.” She moved away from the cushioned club chair and toward Hannah, adding, “Yes, soon, you can dress me. As myself. But not yet.” She took Hannah in her arms. “Not yet, my darling one.”

  And then the disco lights faded. They were somewhere else. What had been the dance music of “We Are Family” was now the strum of a lyre. And the flavor in her mouth was not Isabel’s bar cocktail but an astringent retsina, a taste that seemed to seep from the wise, soft lips on her own open mouth. Hannah felt a Mediterranean wind and the hot light pouring over pines and olive trees, carrying a scent of olive wood and olive oil and grape vines and hyacinths. Everything was rustling, branches, togas, vines—and then the bits of confetti kicked up from the dance floor of the bar turned into a sudden shower of page fragments. Bits and bits of shredded, burnt pages were falling from the air, blown around Sappho’s hair and landing on her shoulders. Hannah, dizzy from the intense sensation of time shift, her breath buried under Sappho’s timeless kiss, reached down to hold the woman’s creased brown hands, rough from endless hours of weaving, but there was no skin to hold onto—only fragments of burnt paper. Sappho’s hands were poems.

  “I know they burned your writing,” Hannah said, not knowing what else to say or how long the moment might last. “I can’t think of anything more frightening, or more violent. To be erased by your inheritors, who should be teaching you.”

  “But you teach me every day,” said Sappho. “Don’t you? I am told you write my poems on your board almost every day. And every night they wash it off, erase me, and every day you write it out again. You are like a myth from my own time. Rolling the rock uphill, over and over, though it may roll back against you. I know these ways. Why are you bringing me back to life every day in that room?”

  “I have to,” Hannah fumbled to explain, aware of Sappho’s fingers on her body, warm fingers that were no longer paper poems. “I made a sort of commitment, when I—when I read you. You said someday someone would think of you. And I’ve made sure that others think of you.”

  “So,” the lyric poet smiled. “Of course I come to you tonight. It is the night of couples, is it not? And you are so convinced you are alone.” She gestured, and more fragments flew upward from her palms. “How do you like my island?”

  This can’t be happening, thought Hannah, her tongue in Sappho’s mouth. But when she reopened her eyes she saw them, three spare and sullen priests approaching through the grove, all holding torches. “Run!” hissed Sappho. “That way. To the cave. Run and write me! Write me on the board!” Then Hannah was in a rough cool hollow of cliff wall, her back to the damp stone and her heart pounding. A young girl looked up, startled, interrupted in the act of chalking lyrics on the wall. “Shhhh,” cautioned Sappho’s daughter Cleis. “Wait.”

  Seconds or centuries later Hannah was watching balls of burning parchment roll down the walls of Isabel’s bar. No—Sappho’s Bar. Isabel had bought the place and registered it as Sappho’s Bar and Grill. Once upon a time, though, in that ancient world, Sappho’s poetry had been both barred and grilled, grilled for public delight by self-righteous new believers who loathed her for her lyric love of women.

  “I love women, too,” Hannah told the air, which danced with paper, and it was not burning parchment after all. Just bright crepe paper Isabel had strung, loosed and torn by laughing couples kissing, dancing, eating cake. Sappho was gone, leaving Hannah’s bad clothes in a heap on the floor. But when Hannah looked in the mirror she had a love bite on her neck, just at the scoop of her Sapphic toga. It was the shape of a Greek letter: a lambda, the curving L of Lesvos. It lasted for five days.

  That was the first time; or what Hannah came to think of as the first incident. Other incidents followed, as regular or irregular as her own unpredictable menstrual period in appearance. And after a while it became normal. She would go to the bar after a particularly gruesome class, a lecture where she gave her all, and for some reason it just sat there, ignored and avoided by the students—and she’d feel the sting that women’s history now was so unvalued. Isabel would concoct some delicacy, some drink with just a hint of wonder, and strange things would happen. It seemed one night, for instance, that she, Hannah, was sitting at the bar gazing into her own reflection in the mirror behind the bar, observing how she was growing old and gaining strands of gray, and suddenly on either side of her were women in that mirror. Glorious women, figures from the past: queens from her own lectures, priestesses, or radical suffragists. One night she was certain she saw Joan of Arc to her left, their shoulders almost touching, and when she turned there was no one of course; all that remained was a faint scent of burning flesh. A scent Hannah would not forget.

  But they never talked about it. They never talked about where Isabel went when she disappeared for an hour at her own bar, or what the herbs were that made the drinks change colors in your mouth. A game had been set in motion on that night when Hannah came in and asked for truths to quench her sense of burnout. It was easy to play along with Isabel and float. It
was the way they once handled the attraction they had never acted on, feeling everything, saying nothing, Isabel in charge, Hannah completely clueless and out of control.

  Chapter Two

  The Passover Seder

  Can it be

  I am the only Jew residing in Danville, Kentucky,

  looking for matzoh in the Safeway and the A & P?

  Maxine Kumin, 1972

  “Hey, Al! AL! Do we have a price on this box of the giant-size Saltines?” the checkout clerk bellowed, impatiently waving Hannah’s box of matzah in the air until each delicate sheet inside cracked, split, and crumbled. Hannah felt her face burn as everyone in the grocery store turned and stared. Once again, she was going to be outed as the Jew at Safeway, forced to explain the culinary conditions of her foremothers’ flight from Egypt. Hannah heard the customer behind her sigh and mutter; her selection of lurid-pink marshmallow Easter peeps was recognizable, socially approved.

  The student manager hurried over to inspect and identify the mysterious groceries that were holding up the line on a busy Thursday night. On the conveyer belt, next to the “giant Saltines,” were Hannah’s neatly bagged selections of parsley, horseradish, apples, walnuts and Manischewitz wine. Aha!

  Al happened to be one of Hannah’s old students. Now he burst out laughing and lifted Hannah’s box of matzah for all to see. “‘This is the bread of affliction that my foremothers took with them out of Egypt,’” he quoted to the store of gaping customers.

  “Amen,” agreed Hannah, startled and grateful.

  “Matzah is the most important part of the menu for a Passover Seder,” Al told the checkout clerk. “These aren’t just big crackers. It’s the special unleavened bread for the Passover holiday week,” and he handed the box back to Hannah, reciting: “‘In every generation, it is the duty of each woman to consider herself as if she had come forth from Egypt.’ Happy holidays, Dr. Stern.”