Pulp

“I didn’t know people were allowed to smoke on book covers,” Linh said, studying the screen.

“Everyone smoked everywhere in the fifties. They didn’t know it was gross yet.”

“Whatever. Turn to the beginning. I want to read about the strange love these two ladies get up to.”

Abby clicked into the text and read the first line out loud.

“Elaine had already had her heart broken once. From now on, she was keeping it wrapped up in cellophane.”

Abby stopped reading. “What’s cellophane?”

“You don’t remember that song from Chicago? ‘Mr. Cellophane’?”

“Oh, right.” Abby and Linh had both done theater in middle school, before their schedules got so packed. “Well, is cellophane bulletproof or something? Why would you wrap your heart in it?”

“How would I know? Come on, find the sexy parts.”

“Here, you can look.” Abby passed her the computer.

“Okay...” Linh clicked through the pages. After a minute, she frowned at the screen. “This is all just talking so far. Everyone’s sitting around in a bar with all their clothes on.” She clicked again and again, still peering down. “And...that’s the end of chapter one already. What kind of porn is this? These covers are false advertising.”

“Keep going. Maybe the porn’s in chapter two.”

While Linh clicked, Abby turned to her phone to look up cellophane.

The characters on the cover of Women of the Twilight Realm didn’t look that much older than Abby. She wondered who’d broken Elaine’s heart so badly that she needed to protect it.

And would that even work? Wrapping your heart in metaphorical armor? Maybe you could keep yourself whole just by concentrating hard enough.

Before she could find anything, her class-reminder chime popped onto the screen.

“Shit!” Abby’s panic bubbled, wiping away all thoughts of vintage lesbians. She snatched the computer from Linh and shoved it into her backpack. “I forgot. I’m supposed to meet with Ms. Sloane in three minutes. Shit, shit!”

“Ms. Sloane?” Linh didn’t get up, but there was alarm in her eyes. “Isn’t she your project advisor?”

“Yes. Shit, shit!”

“Wait—is this your meeting about the project proposal? The one you still don’t have a topic for?”

Abby pinched the bridge of her nose. “Yes.”

“Abby, this is serious! You could get in real trouble!”

“I know, I know. I’ll figure something out on my way there.”

Abby threw open the door without waiting for Linh to say anything more and charged down the hall, ignoring the sophomores who turned to stare from the doorway of the art room.

She tried, desperately, to come up with an idea. Any idea.

Maybe she could write fanfic after all. She’d posted a Flighted Ones story back in middle school that had ninety-seven chapters, and some of them had even been good. Maybe she could pull out some of the chapters, change the names and rework them into something Ms. Sloane would find acceptable.

It wasn’t a great idea, but it was all Abby had. She raced across the hall and down the stairs to the third floor, her platform Mary Janes thundering on the tiles. She’d probably have to take the story offline before she turned in her project, in case Ms. Sloane ran one of those plagiarism searches. It would suck to lose all those reader comments, though.

“Abby?” Ms. Sloane stepped through her classroom door. Abby came to an abrupt halt. “Are you all right?”

“I’m great.” Abby tried to smile, but she could barely catch her breath.

“What were you doing? Did you go for a run during your free period?”

“Um, yes.” Abby cursed inwardly as Ms. Sloane peered down at her Mary Janes. Her creative writing teacher was an old-school lesbian, and Abby should’ve known she’d have strong opinions about sports attire.

Ms. Sloane was Indian-American, and in the wedding photo she kept on her desk, her dark curly hair was striking next to her wife’s sleek blond chignon. The effect made their matching cream-colored wedding dresses look that much more practical-lesbian-chic. It was obvious they’d planned every last detail to maximize the striking visuals while also making sure there would be no long trains to trip over or bobby pins poking their ears. The two of them probably shared a whole closet full of affordable yet top-quality and carefully coordinated running shoes.

“All right, well, come on in.” Ms. Sloane held the door open. At least she wasn’t dwelling on Abby’s feet. “I’m excited to see what you’ve got for me. The rest of the seniors have already started their projects, so we’ll have to play some catch-up. I was surprised you signed up for the last advising slot. Last year during our workshops you always tried to be ahead of the game.”

Abby tried to breathe evenly as she followed Ms. Sloane inside. This classroom was her favorite place in the whole school. It was narrow and cozy, with a long, oval-shaped table where everyone sat for their discussions. Abby used to relax the second she entered this room, but today it was having the opposite effect.

“Um, well.” She tried to think of what to say. Teachers never understood that homework couldn’t always be priority number one every second of every day. When you were deep in postbreakup withdrawal, were you seriously supposed to work ahead in every single class? “Nothing to fire up the creative muse like tight deadlines, right?”

“Wrong, in my experience. Nonetheless...” Ms. Sloane smiled and sat at the head of the long table, gesturing for Abby to sit beside her. She’d always been easy to talk to, and she was the main reason Abby had stuck with creative writing, even when the boys in last year’s workshop had made her roll her eyes into the back of her skull when she was forced to critique their pretentious wish-fulfillment hetero foreplay scenes. “So, let’s see your proposal.”

Ms. Sloane held out her hand. Abby stared at the outstretched brown palm.

Riiiiiight. She’d somehow forgotten she was supposed to turn in a written proposal.

Shit.

“Um, well...” Abby tried to act as if this was all going exactly as she’d planned. “I wanted to ask if I could have until Monday for the written portion. My computer had a meltdown last night when I was going to hit Print.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” Ms. Sloane didn’t blink, but she glanced down at Abby’s backpack. A corner of her laptop poked up through the zipper. Shit, shit. “You know, I’ve been told I’m talented with computers. Why don’t you let me take a look. I’ll see if I can get the file to load, and then we can review it together here on your screen.”

Shit shit shit shit shit.

Abby tried to think rationally. What was the adult thing to do in this situation? Whatever it was, she should do that instead of freaking out.

But Ms. Sloane was wearing her you-won’t-fool-me expression. No matter what she said, Abby was going to disappoint her.

Abby gave up on being an adult and just focused on not crying. “I... I’m sorry, Ms. Sloane.”

“You’re sorry,” her teacher repeated. After a moment of pained silence, she sighed. “Abby, this isn’t like you. Last year, you turned in all your assignments early. You always came to class prepared, even eager, to join the discussions. Is anything wrong? Maybe something going on at home?”

“It’s nothing. I’m sorry. It’s senioritis, that’s all.”

“Senioritis comes in May, not September.” Ms. Sloane’s expression was so serious it was making Abby’s head hurt. “You can talk to me, Abby. If there’s a problem, I want to help.”

Ugh. Adults could seriously be the worst. If they weren’t ignoring the fact that you existed, they were falling all over themselves acting like they knew better than you.

As if Abby couldn’t be just plain heartbroken. Of course, in Ms. Sloane’s mind, there had to be “something going on at home.”

When, in reality, nothing was going on at home. That was kind of the definition of Abby’s home, in fact. She could barely remember the last time anyone in her family had voluntarily interacted with anyone else.

“No. There’s nothing.” Abby shook her head forcefully. “Can you please just take points off my grade, or whatever?”

“That’s not how senior projects work. It isn’t about earning points, it’s about creating something worthwhile. It’s about coming out of the year with a concrete result that’s meaningful to you on a personal level.”

“I know.” Abby wished desperately that she were somewhere else. Anywhere else. Words like worthwhile and meaningful always made her want to hurl.

“All right, well.” Ms. Sloane leaned back in her chair and frowned. “We’ll talk through your plan today and you can email me your formal proposal over the weekend.”

“Okay.” Abby began to frantically rework her Flighted Ones story in her head.

“I must say, I’m already looking forward to reading your new work,” Ms. Sloane went on. “I know you’ve been struggling to break away from the fanfiction you used to write and create something wholly yours. Not that there’s anything wrong with fanfiction, of course—I always tell my younger students that it can be a lot of fun, and a great way to develop your writing skills—but this new project is a real opportunity for you to force yourself out of your comfort zone so you can mature as a writer. You’ve been on the verge for quite some time, and I hope that with this project you’ll truly allow your creativity to take hold.”

Shit. Ms. Sloane had seen through her again.

Abby tried to think fast, but the only story on her mind just then was Women of the Twilight Realm.

“I—um, well. I’ve been thinking lately about lesbian pulp fiction,” Abby heard herself say. “You know, those books from back in the fifties.”

“Have you?” Ms. Sloane’s eyebrows shot up. As though Abby had genuinely surprised her for the first time today.

“Yes.” Abby tried to figure out where to go from here. She’d always been good at bullshitting. “I’ve been researching the genre, and I thought it might be interesting to try to reclaim it from a modern queer perspective. I mean, apart from the gorgeous clothes the fifties were basically awful, especially for marginalized communities, so I thought it would be worthwhile to examine the books from a contemporary point of view.”

“Well, the genre’s already been reclaimed, of course.” Ms. Sloane’s usual I’m-an-expert-in-everything tone had already returned. “Although surely you came across that in your research. Lesbian-owned publishers have been rereleasing the pulp classics specifically for queer audiences since the eighties.”

“Of course.” Abby hoped she didn’t look as thrown as she felt. If that was true, she had to switch tactics fast. “Well...what I want to do is write one of these books that’s genuinely, you know—good. I want to break away from the gay tragedy trope.”

Ms. Sloane nodded. “Some would argue that many of the books from that era are already good, if that kind of value judgment is possible with literature, but I understand your perspective. It’s an unusual proposal, but I think it has a lot of potential. My concern, though, is that this could wind up simply being another fanfiction exercise for you. It’s important that your senior project be written entirely in your voice. That it be unique, not simply following a formula or imitating an existing style.”

“Oh, I agree. Ah...” Abby tried to think of what else Ms. Sloane might want to hear. “I was thinking I’d invert the formula. Take a critical look at the conventions of the genre and turn them on their heads. Examine the notions of romance and oppression and come up with something unique. Particularly in light of the election, and how so many people’s opinions on social justice seem to have started regressing in the past year or so.”

Abby only had a vague idea of what she was talking about, but it must have sounded as if she did, because Ms. Sloane raised her eyebrows again.

“All right, you’ve sold me.” Her teacher held up her fingers and began ticking things off. Abby took the hint and reached for her pencil. “You’ll still need to submit your formal proposal, and since you’re writing historical fiction, you’ll need to research the period as well as the genre. Which of the pulp books have you read so far?”

“Women of the Twilight Realm, by Marian Love.” She’d read a few sentences, at least.

“Only one? Okay, then you’ll need to read at least three more before the end of the semester. Aim for a wide range—no two books by the same author. One of the books you read should be The Price of Salt, but you can get that from the public library. Patricia Highsmith had a lot of terrible beliefs, but the writing itself is unparalleled. You’re familiar with the conventions of the genre already?”

“Totally.” Abby tried to remember what the article had said as she jotted Ms. Sloane’s instructions into her binder. “Lesbian romance novels that ended with the characters dying or turning straight.”

“Of a sort. Still, a lot of them, whether intentionally or not, also touched on the bigger issues facing the LGBTQ community in the fifties and sixties. That means you’ll need to spend even more time at the library. Read up on the bar raids, the Lavender Scare here in DC, all of it. Start a research journal to keep track of what you learn. Remember, this was pre-Stonewall and pre-second-wave feminism, so there’s a reason all the pulp authors wrote under pseudonyms—it might as well have been the Dark Ages for queer women. It was also the Jim Crow era, so you’ll need to read about racial segregation, too. The pulps were overwhelmingly white, but you’ll need to know about the real world of that time regardless. And you should study up on the overall postwar American economy while you’re at it.”

“Uh.” That was a lot of research. It was a good thing Abby liked the library.

“After you’ve made some headway, let me know and I can set up a meeting for you with a friend of mine,” Ms. Sloane went on. “He’s a historian focusing on LGBTQ political movements. He can point you to more resources.”

“All right,” Abby said, though she had no intention of meeting Ms. Sloane’s historian friend. She hated going up to strangers and asking them for stuff.

“You can work on the research over the next few weeks, but I’ll expect your proposal by email tomorrow, and an outline for the novel and at least twenty hard copy pages from your first draft a week from Monday.” Ms. Sloane stood up. “Don’t worry. We won’t critique them in the workshop until I’ve given you notes and you’ve had a chance to revise.”

“Okay.” Sensing the meeting was over, Abby climbed to her feet. Ms. Sloane held up a finger.

“And...” Ms. Sloane watched her pick up her backpack, her fingers fumbling as she wound the straps over her shoulders. “I’m here. If you ever need to talk.”

Abby nodded briskly and left the room.

There were still five minutes left in her free period, so Abby found an empty spot in the courtyard and took out her laptop. Women of the Twilight Realm was still open on the screen.

Elaine had already had her heart broken once. From now on, she was keeping it wrapped up in cellophane.

Abby wanted to know who had broken Elaine’s heart. But most of all, she wanted to know if the cellophane had worked, and where she could get some of her own.

She clicked through to the next page.

Chapter 2

Monday, June 27, 1955

Janet had made a terrible mistake.

Two weeks ago, when she’d written the letter, she’d still been flush with her discovery. She hadn’t been thinking clearly.

But her mother was always telling her she was rash and reckless, and Janet had finally proven her right: it was only after the postman had already whisked her letter away that she’d realized a reply could come at any time. That it would be dropped into the family mailbox alongside her father’s Senate mail, her mother’s housekeeping magazines and her grandmother’s postcards from faraway cousins. That anyone in the family could reach into the mailbox, open that letter and discover the truth about Janet in an instant. And that they could realize precisely what that meant.

So Janet had spent every afternoon since perched by the living room window, listening for the postman’s footsteps on the walk.

Each day, when she heard him coming, she leaped to her feet and tore out the front door. Sometimes she beat him there and burst outside while he was still plodding up the steps to their tiny front porch. On those days, she forced a smile and held out trembling fingers to take the pile of letters from his hand.

Other days she was slower, and stepped outside just as he’d departed. Those days she pounced on the stuffed mailbox, flinging back the lid where JONES RESIDENCE was written in her mother’s neat hand.

Then there were afternoons like this one. When Janet was too late.

She’d made the mistake of getting absorbed in her reading, and when she heard the slap of brown leather filtering through the window glass she’d told herself it was only the next-door neighbor, a tall Commerce Department man who left his office early in the evenings and never looked up from polishing his black-rimmed glasses.

And so Janet’s eyes were still on the page in front of her—it was one of her father’s leather-bound Dickens novels; Janet’s parents had been after her to read as many classics as she could before she started college in September—when the mailbox lid clattered. Before she realized what had happened, her mother’s high heels were already clacking toward the front door. “Oh, there you are, Janet. Was that the postman I heard?”

Janet bolted upright, the Dickens spilling from her lap. She bit back a curse as she knelt to pick it up, smoothing back the bent pages as her mother frowned at her. “Really, Janet, you must take more care with your father’s things. And what is that getup you have on? You know better than to wear jeans in the front room, where anyone walking by could see you.”

“Sorry, ma’am.” Janet tucked the volume under her arm and stepped past her mother, narrowly beating her to the door. Janet was an inch taller than Mom now, and her legs were still muscled from cheerleading in the spring.

She jerked open the front door and slid her hand into the mailbox before Mom could intervene. Three letters today. Janet tried to angle her shoulders to shield the mail from view.

The first two letters were for her father, in official government envelopes with his address neatly typed on by their senders’ secretaries. The third letter bore Janet’s name.

It had come.

A short, sharp thrill ran through her as her fingers reached for the seal. Would this be the day everything changed?

Two weeks ago, she’d discovered that slim paperback in the bus station. That night, she’d read every page and found herself so enraptured, so overwhelmed, that she couldn’t help writing to its author. Now here it was—a reply. The author of that incredible book had written a letter just for Janet.

But Mom was still standing right behind her. Could Janet slip the letter into her blouse without her seeing?

“What’s gotten into you today?” Mom reached over Janet’s shoulder and plucked all three letters from her hand. Simple as that. “What’s this one with your name?”

“It’s nothing.” Janet ached to snatch the letter back, but forced herself to breathe instead as Mom tucked her finger behind the seal. Everyone in the family had always felt free to open Janet’s mail. She was eighteen years old, but still a child in their eyes. She’d have to think of a lie quickly.

The letter had been addressed to Janet by mistake. That was what she’d say. Whoever had sent it must have found her name on some list of recent high school graduates.

No, of course Janet couldn’t possibly imagine what the letter might refer to. She’d never heard of any “Dolores Wood” or “Bannon Press.” As a matter of fact, the letter could be a cleverly disguised Communist recruitment tool. For safety’s sake, they really ought to burn it before the neighbors saw.

Though the idea of burning that letter, before she’d even had a chance to read it, made tears prick at Janet’s eyes.

“Oh, it’s from the college.” Mom withdrew a single sheet of paper from the envelope and scanned it. “It isn’t important. Only a packing list.”

“The college?” Janet hadn’t even glanced at the return address on the letter, but there it was. The letter was from Holy Divinity.

Janet couldn’t believe she’d been so foolish.

“Well, you won’t be needing this.” Mom tucked the letter into the pocket of her apron. “They must send it out to all the new girls, without regard for which will be moving into the dorms.”

Janet nodded, hoping her mother couldn’t hear her heart still thundering in the silence.

“Are you all right?” Mom frowned again. “You look flushed. Your father and I had planned to go to the club for dinner, but if you need us to stay home—”

“It’s nothing, ma’am.” Janet shook her head, but she could feel blood rushing to her cheeks under her mother’s scrutiny. “I, ah—I have to get ready for work or I’ll be late.”

Mom’s frown deepened. “I didn’t realize you were working tonight.”

“I am.” Janet wasn’t. Another stupid, rash thing to say. Now what could she do? Put on her uniform and show up at the Soda Shoppe, ready to trot milkshakes out to station wagons on her night off?

To put off that decision, Janet dashed past Mom into the row house and ran up the narrow wooden stairs, her footfalls echoing behind her. Dad was always after her not to run in the house, saying it would disturb her grandmother’s rest, but Dad wasn’t home. Besides, Grandma always said it did her heart good to hear a child scurrying about the house and that Dad should shut his cake hole.

Janet reached the second-floor landing and threw open the door of her small bedroom, the hot air hitting her like a steaming kettle. The room was the same as always—the bed neatly made with its delicate pink spread, the flowered wallpaper that was starting to peel around the edges after a decade of Washington summers, the round mirror over her dresser with photos tucked into the frame. They were school portraits of her friends, mostly, plus an old yearbook photo of Janet and Marie in their cheerleading uniforms with pom-poms at their hips, their bent elbows lightly touching.

That photo was Janet’s favorite.

Marie, her shiny hair framing her dark-rimmed glasses and always-gleaming smile, had been Janet’s best friend all through school. For years they’d done everything together, sitting side by side in every assembly and every lunch period. In junior high they’d been the only two girls to enter the science fair at the boys’ school, growing mold in carefully labeled jars and winning a red ribbon for their trouble. In high school they’d practiced their cartwheels and splits on the football field, giggling every time they fell onto the grass and making up silly variations to the official St. Paul’s cheers. Janet had never been happier than when one of the chants she made up provoked a fresh bout of laughter from Marie.

Marie was a year ahead of Janet, though, and after she graduated Janet’s senior year had been lonely indeed. Marie had spent the year at secretarial school, learning to type and take stenography and do other important things while Janet sat in Latin class again, wearing her childish uniform blazer and holding out her palm for the nun to strike when she forgot a conjugation.

That morning, eager to hear her voice again, Janet had tried to call Marie, but she was out, as usual. Janet had been forced to leave a terribly awkward message with her mother instead. Mrs. Eastwood had always seemed to think Janet was somewhat odd, and she could only have made that impression worse with the way she’d stumbled through the quick call.