TIR NAN OG
By Lisa Tuttle

* * * *

PEOPLE CAN CHANGE. 

People do. But some things remain the same — like my love for you. 

Once upon a time, when I first fell, I told you what we could have together was not exclusive and would not last forever. I never used the 1-word, and I drew away a little, disbelieving or offended, when you did. I told you, quite honestly, that I had no desire for children, and no use for a husband of my own. I was quite happy to share you with your wife. 

It’s not surprising if you never understood how much I loved you when I took such care to disguise my deepest feelings. I was a woman with a past, after all. A woman of a certain age, happiest living on my own (well, with a cat) and with plenty of lovers already notched into my belt. 

I was past forty when I met you, and the easy-loving days of my youth, when the times between men were measured in days or weeks rather than months or years, were gone. I had been celibate for more than six months when I met you. I was feeling a little desperate, and I fell for you hard. 

You probably won’t believe that, if you remember how hard I made you work to get me. Once I saw I’d caught your attention — the space between us seemed charged, remember? — I became distant, ironic, cool. I treated you with a casualness that bordered on the insulting. I was so desperate to be wanted that I didn’t dare let you suspect. Nothing drives people away more than neediness. And then, after we had become lovers, once you were well and truly caught, I guess it became a sort of habit, the way I was with you, as if you were an irritation to me, as if I suffered you to make love to me now and again as a very great favor. 

But our affair went on for nearly seven years. Think of it. And eventually, our positions became reversed. I was no longer the less-loving, the more-loved — that was you. You grew tired of my undemanding presence, and called me less, or made excuses at the last minute to cancel a date. Did you really think I wouldn’t mind? That I might even be grateful to lose you? That it wouldn’t nearly destroy me? 

Well, as I said before, people change. I might have shrugged and cut my losses — dropped you before you could formalize our break — and bounced back in my thirties, but, pushing fifty, the loss of you was the loss of the last of my youth, practically the loss of life itself. 

I was surprised by how hard it hit me. If I couldn’t win you back, I was going to have to learn some new way of living, to cope with my loss. 

I thought about my friends. Over the years that once large throng of independent single women who had comprised the very core of my city, my emotional world, had been whittled away by marriage, parenthood, defection to other parts of the country, and even death. Three remained, women I had been friends with for nearly thirty years, whom I saw regularly and thought of as “like me.” Janet was an artist, Lecia was a writer and Hillary was a theatrical agent. We had similar emotional histories and similar lifestyles, in our small apartments with our cats, in love with men who saw us in the time they could carve out from their real lives with their wives and children elsewhere. Over the years we had kept each other going, cheered and commiserated with each other, staying loyal to a certain vision of life while the men, the cats, the jobs and other details changed. 

Now that I thought about it, though, I realized that I alone of the sisterhood still had a lover. The other three were all “between men” —and had been for at least two years. What’s more, they seemed content. In the old days, celibacy would have been a matter for complaint and commiseration. I couldn’t think of the last time we’d had a good moan about the perfidy of men, or a plotting session devoted to fixing up someone with Mr. Right. Bits of subliminal knowledge, memories of certain looks, words unspoken, hints, fell together in my mind. I scented a conspiracy. They knew something that I didn’t. And I needed help. 

I went to see Lecia. Our friendship was based on straightforwardness, intellectual discussions, a liking for the same books, an interest in both philosophy and gossip. I felt we were a lot alike, and I knew I could be straight with her. When we were settled with our cups of decaffeinated latte, I asked if there was a man in her life. 

She chuckled and gave me a funny, assessing look over her cup. “No one except James.” 

James was her cat, purring in her lap. Lecia lived near Washington Square, and the cat had turned up in her life a few years earlier just after she’d embarked on her project of reading or rereading the entire works of Henry James. 

“How long has it been since you split up with...?” 

“Three years.” 

“And there hasn’t been anybody since?” 

She shook her head. 

“And it’s all right? You don’t miss...all that?” 

Her mouth quirked. “Do I look frustrated?” 

I gave her a careful inspection and shook my head. “You look great. Really relaxed. Is that the yoga? Hormones?” Lecia, who was a few years older than me, had elected to go for HRT when the menopause hit. 

She chuckled. “I think it’s contentment.” 

“You do seem happy, which is hopeful. But — wasn’t it hard at first?” 

“What’s all this about?” she asked. “William? Has William —” 

I shook my head. “Not yet. He hasn’t said anything, but...I think he’s met someone, or if he hasn’t, he’s looking. He’s tired of me, I can feel it.” 

“Poor baby.” 

She sounded so detached, as if she’d never had to worry about being left by a man in her life. It annoyed me, because I remembered when things had been otherwise. Three years ago. What was the guy’s name? Jim. His marriage had ended, his affair with Lecia continued, and then he’d been offered a job in Albuquerque — and he’d taken it, just like that. Not that she would have, but he didn’t even ask Lecia if she’d go with him. She had been devastated. Looking at her now, remembering her face distorted with tears and the sympathetic tension in myself, I could hardly believe it was the same woman. 

“How long did it take you to get over Jim?” I asked. “Did you just decide to give up on all men after he left?” 

“Something like that. I decided...I decided I’d never be at the beck and call of another man. I was going to be in control from then on, and get what I wanted, take what I wanted — ouch!” James went flying off her lap. Lecia put her hand to her mouth and licked the scratch. She grinned crookedly. “Well, of course, there’s got to be give and take in any relationship. There’s bound to be conflict sometimes. But why let him make all the rules, call the shots, decide to leave you?” 

“Are we talking about me or you? I mean, you said — are you seeing someone?” 

She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “You see me as I am, a woman alone except for her cat. And her women friends. You’re the one with man-problems.” 

“And you’ve solved yours. So what do you advise me to do? Drop him before he drops me?” 

“Only if that’s what you want.” 

“It’s not. I want him.” To my annoyance, tears came to my eyes. “And if I can’t have him, well...then I want to be happy without him. The way you seem to be.” I pressed harder, trying to make her acknowledge me and my right to know. “You and Janet and Hillary...you all seem so content to be alone. What’s your secret?” 

She looked at me, but there was a reserve, a withholding, in her eyes. “You should get a cat; then you wouldn’t be so lonely.” 

“I have a cat.” 

“Oh, yes, I was forgetting Posy.” She looked across the room at James, who was sitting in the corner washing his privates. I looked at Lecia’s face, which had gone soft, dreamy and sensual, and suddenly I saw that face on a woman lying naked on a bed, with the cat between her legs. 

The grossness of my imagination shocked me. I felt too embarrassed to stay longer. Lecia’s serene contentment certainly didn’t have its source in bestiality. I was agitated not only by the unwanted pornographic fantasy, but also by the certainty that there was something which Lecia did not trust me enough to share. 

I didn’t go home when I left her, but instead walked down to Tribeca, to the newish high-rise where Janet had her apartment. It was still Saturday morning, and I was betting I’d find her in. She was, working on one of her intricate black and white illustrations. Although she was trying to make a deadline, she seemed pleased for an excuse to take a break. 

“Red zinger, lemon and ginger, or peppermint tea?” she asked as I followed her back to the kitchen. Grey the cat was sleeping on top of the refrigerator. He opened one eye to check us out, then shut it again. 

“Red zinger, please.” I watched Janet closely as she made the tea. She was slim and strong and she moved lightly as a dancer, humming under her breath. If I hadn’t been there she would probably have been talking to herself, I decided, but apart from the scattiness which she’d always had, she looked serene and positively bursting with good health. 

“Do you mind being celibate?” I asked her. 

She looked at me sharply. “Who says I’m celibate?” 

“Oh. Well, when was the last time you had sex?” 

Spots of red appeared high on her cheekbones. “That’s kind of a personal question.” 

“I know. I thought we knew each other well enough after all these years to get kind of personal .... “Janet was one of the most highly sexed and sexually experienced women I knew, and she’d never been one to keep quiet about the most intimate details. She’d said nothing to me about sex or even romance for so long that I had assumed that there’d been no men in her life since the disappearance of Leland. 

“Let’s go sit on the couch.” 

“Goody.” When we were settled, I said, “So there is somebody? What’s the big secret? Who is he?” 

“Do you have some reason for wanting to know? Apart from prurient curiosity ?” 

I laughed. “Prurient curiosity was good enough in the past. Look, as far as I knew, after Leland dumped you there wasn’t anybody. For, what is it, two years?” 

“Not quite.” 

“Whatever — in all that time, as far as I know, you haven’t gotten involved with anybody else, and it seems like you haven’t wanted to, either. Same as Lecia. You seem so calm, so happy. I want to know your secret, because I have this awful feeling that William’s fixing to dump me, and the way I feel now, it’ll just kill me. If I can’t keep him, I need to know how to survive — more than survive — without him.” 

Her eyes searched my face. “You love him?” 

“Oh, God. Yes. More than anyone I’ve ever — yes.” 

“Could you live with him?” 

I hesitated. “I don’t know. It’s never been an option. He’s tired of me, anyway. If I pushed him, now, or tried to make him choose between me and his wife, I’d lose him for sure. I can put up with sharing, with uncertainty — I’ve done that for years. If I’ve lost him, though —what I really want is to be okay about it. Like you and Lecia and Hillary. You seem so together, like you know something. You do, don’t you? There is a secret?” 

She gave the tiniest nod, then shook her head as if frantically trying to cancel it. 

“There is! Oh, God, I can’t believe you know something and you haven’t told me. You and Lecia — I thought we were friends! What did I do to you?” We stared at each other like two kids on a playground, one the betrayer, one the betrayed, and I saw my anguish get to her. She couldn’t resist the claim of friendship. 

“You didn’t come with us,” she said in a low, pleading voice. “I know it wasn’t your fault, but that’s why, that’s the only reason. If you’d been with us, you’d know, too. We swore we’d never tell anyone else.” She hesitated, convincing herself. “But you’re not just anyone else — you should have been with us. It was meant for you, too. I’m sure I’m right. Wait, look, I’ll draw you a map.” She got up and went to her drawing table, found a piece of light card which was just the right size, and began to sketch and write something on it, muttering to herself. Then she presented it to me. 

“What’s this?” 

“It’s where you have to go.” She leaned close and spoke very low, although we were alone. “Take William. Any excuse, a nice hike in the country, just get him there, find the fountain, and make him drink. Not you. Just him. If you can’t get him to drink there, take a flask and make sure he drinks it later, when you’re alone together.” 

I’d known Janet to be loopy sometimes — she was the fey and temperamental artist, she believed in angels, fairies, witchcraft, magic, anything going, really. For a time she had lived in an occult spiritual commune upstate somewhere. 

“And what happens then?” I asked. 

“Shh! Just do it. I really shouldn’t be telling you. Now, go.” She pushed me toward the door, and I went without protesting that I hadn’t had my cup of Red Zinger. 

I looked at the card when I was in the elevator. The directions were to the Adirondacks, to the middle of nowhere, halfway up the side of a mountain where there was a magical fountain .... 

Then I remembered. The fountain. Three years ago, the others had gone on a camping trip, to a “magical place” with a “special fountain” that Janet had learned about in her commune days. It was meant to be a spiritual retreat and a bonding experience for us four friends. Only the night before we were to leave I ate a bad shrimp, and so while my friends were hiking through the woods I was laid up at home with a case of food poisoning. 

Something had happened to them, something they had never told me about, but which explained their solitary contentment. 

Outside, I crossed the street and walked past a couple of still unconverted warehouses with trucks in front and big, sweaty men unloading boxes and shouting at each other. I walked past, around, through them like a ghost. I can’t say I missed the whistles and sexual commentary my presence would once have inspired, but just then I could have done without the reminder that I was an aging, invisible woman. 

A garish green poster, plastered on a wall, caught my eye. It had a spiral pattern and the only words I could read at a distance were TIR NAN OG. That was what the Celts called the Land of the Ever Young, but probably it was the name of a band or a club — my not knowing, my recognizing it only as a reference from an ancient culture, was just another proof of how out of it, how past it, I was. 

This was not my city anymore, I thought. This was not my country. The problem was, I didn’t know where else I could go, or what else I could be, now that I was no longer a young and beautiful immortal. 

I looked at the card again. If it was the fountain of youth, why shouldn’t I drink it? Why should I give it to my lover? Janet had been so definite. But what did it do? If it was supposed to make your man love you again, why had Leland and Jim disappeared? 

Well, I had asked a question. Now I must make what I could of the answer. 

YOU WERE SWEPT AWAY, you were charmed, by my sudden insistence on a weekend away. It had been a while since I’d swept you off your feet. You were intrigued, too, because it was so unlike anything we’d done together before. A day of hiking in the mountains! As an excuse, I’d claimed that I needed to check on the existence of a spring-fed fountain mentioned in one of the books we were going to publish. You had so little notion of what a book-editor did, and, really, so little interest, that you believed what I said without question. I didn’t ask what you’d told your wife. 

At first it was like old times. The strain that had been between us disappeared, and we laughed a lot and touched each other as you drove us out of the city in the freshness of early morning. But the farther I got from the city and the world I knew, the more uneasy I felt. What was I doing? I’m a good walker, but only in the city, when there is some point to it, things to look at, places worth going to. I don’t like the country. It bores me and it makes me nervous; okay, there have to be farms, and places for wild animals and plants, but I don’t see the point of it for me. As for this magic fountain — did it follow that because I believed in romantic love I’d also believe in magic? I wasn’t Janet —what sort of desperation had made me believe in her magical fountain? 

Naturally, I took it out on you. Your enthusiasm began to irritate me. What were you getting so excited about? A walk in the country? I didn’t like hiking, why didn’t you know that? You wanted me to be something I wasn’t; you would have preferred someone else. Before long and I’m sure to your complete mystification we were arguing. 

By the time we reached the place where Janet had indicated we should leave the car, we were barely speaking to each other. You cheered up a little once you were out of the car, lacing on your new Danish hiking boots and inhaling the clean, cool air, but I felt an undissolved lump of dread sitting heavily in my stomach. But I was determined to go through with it now. I couldn’t imagine how getting you to drink some water would result in my feeling better, but I would try. 

I am a good walker in the city, but I wasn’t used to hills, or to pathways slippery with pine needles, damp leaves, loose rocks. Nor could I keep up the pace you set. I had to keep stopping to catch my breath; I had to keep calling you back. At first solicitous, you quickly became impatient. 

“If we don’t get amore on we won’t even make the summit before dark, let alone get back down to the car again.” 

“We don’t need to go to the summit,” I pointed out. The idea filled me with exhausted horror. “Just to the fountain, and that shouldn’t be much farther, as far as I can make out from this map...” Squinting at it, it occurred to me that scale was not Janet’s strong point. 

You were as baffled by me as I was by you. What was the point of going only halfway up a mountain? “Come on, it’s not that hard a climb.” 

“But I don’t want to go to the top.” I couldn’t keep the irritating whine out of my voice. “Will, I’m worn out already. I want to stop at the fountain and have a picnic and a rest before we go back.” 

Your face began to cloud, but then it cleared. “Okay. You stay at the fountain and rest. I’ll climb to the summit alone and then come back for you.” 

I didn’t like the idea much, but sometimes you have to compromise. 

We reached the fountain a few minutes later. First we heard the cool, gurgling sound of water, and then we found the source, hidden beneath a curtain of ferns and ground-ivy. I pulled back some of the greenery to reveal the smooth rim of a stone bowl that caught the water flowing up from underground. There was a channel that sent the overflow spilling into a small, bright stream that raced away over a rocky bed down the hillside. 

“Want a drink?” I asked. 

“From that?” You frowned. 

“Better than recycled city water,” I tempted. “This is exactly the sort of stuff that gets bottled and sold to people like you in restaurants.” 

“I might try it when I come back. I don’t want to stop just now. You’ll be all right?” 

“What about our picnic?” 

You sighed. “The sooner I go, the sooner I’ll be back. You can eat some of this stuff while you’re waiting for me, if you want. I’ll just take a candy bar and my water flask.” Then you dropped a kiss on my head, determined not to be caught and delayed by anything as time-consuming as a real embrace. 

For a while, I sulked, counting the minutes, wondering how long it would take you to get there and back again. I wished I’d brought a book. With nothing else to occupy me, I poked around the fountain, uncovering more of it from the encroaching plants. I scraped away the furry moss and found a figure carved in bas-relief: a cat, it looked like. Then there were markings that might have been writing, but the letters appeared to be Greek, which I can’t read. It could have been graffiti left by fraternity boys from Syracuse or Cornell. 

I was thirsty. The trill of water made the feeling worse. I fetched my little plastic bottle of Evian and drank half of it. More out of boredom than hunger I ate lunch, and finished off the Evian. Then I filled the bottle from the spring: my insurance in case I couldn’t get you to drink in situ. Then I sat down in the sun with my back against a rock and waited for you. 

I fell asleep and woke disoriented, hot and dry-mouthed. I thought that someone had been watching me and laughing, but that was only the music of the fountain, I was still alone, and really thirsty. I reached for the Evian bottle and then stopped, remembering that I had refilled it from the fountain. I licked dry lips and looked at my watch, which turned out to have stopped some hours earlier. The battery had been running down all day and I hadn’t noticed except to think how slowly time was passing. 

Where were you? I felt as if I had been sleeping for hours. What if you had fallen and hurt yourself, what if something awful had happened? I called your name, but the sound of my own voice echoing off the rocks in the empty air gave me the creeps. I advised myself to sit quietly and wait for you. If only I wasn’t so thirsty! 

It was late September and the day was pleasantly cool, but the sun blazed down, making me hot. I wondered if I could be suffering from sunstroke. I plunged my hands and arms up to the elbow in the fountain to cool myself, and dabbed water on my face. I had never been so thirsty in my life. What if I just wet my lips? But I needed a drink. 

I longed for you to come back and save me with the dull, flat, safe city water in your flask. But you didn’t come and didn’t come and finally I couldn’t bear my thirst any longer and I drank. 

That was the best water I ever tasted. I drank and drank until my stomach felt distended. I felt content and at peace with the universe, without worries. I was no longer thirsty and no longer too hot. The sun felt good. The smooth rock where I had rested before was still warm with the sun, so I curled up there and went to sleep. 

I was awakened by the sound of you calling my name. I opened my eyes and stretched, and you turned and looked straight at me, but the worry didn’t leave your face, and you didn’t stop calling. Were you blind? I got down and went over and pressed myself against you. 

“Well, hello. Where’d you come from?” You began to stroke me. “Have you seen my girlfriend? I guess she got fed up waiting and decided to hike back to the car alone. Only, if she did that, why’d she leave her stuff?” 

I wanted to explain, but no matter how I purred and cried and stropped myself against your legs, you just didn’t get it. Are women more intuitive than men, or what? I followed you to your car but you wouldn’t have me. 

One of the sheriff’s men took me home with him after a day spent searching the mountainside for me. You did the decent thing, regardless of the trouble it would make for you, and reported me missing. 

After many adventures I made my way back to Manhattan, and to Washington Square, and Lecia’s little apartment. I don’t think she recognized me; at any rate, she shooed me off with a shocking lack of compassion. I hung around anyway, to give her another chance. Maybe she’d put together my reported disappearance with the sudden appearance of a strange cat. I found a position on a fire-escape which gave me a view into her living-room window, and I hunkered down and waited. As soon as I saw her getting ready to go out I’d make for her door and strop her ankles and purr like an engine. She wouldn’t be able to resist me forever. So she had a cat already; why shouldn’t she have two? 

I watched and waited and finally, after moonrise, I saw James the cat turn, in the magic circle of Lecia’s arms, into the man who was her lover. 

Finally I understood the secret of the fountain, and knew that my only hope was to find you. If you want me, you can have me again. For you, I’ve left the city. For you, I’ll live in the suburbs. By day; I’ll be the family cat. But at night, in your arms, secretly, while your wife sleeps unknowing, I’ll be your lover. You can make me change, if only you want me. 

* * * *

By Lisa Tuttle 

Lisa Tuttle is the author of such novels as Familiar Spirits, Gabriel, and most recently, The Pillow Friend. Her most recent book is an anthology she edited, Crossing the Border, which has just recently been published in England 

Her new story, like Robert Grossbach’s (and Esther Friesner’s, for that matter), features a woman whose love life hasn’t been all she’d like it to be. But how come her friends don’t have such troubles?