In this intimate, sexy novel, two lesbian couples living next door to each other one summer in cottage country find each of their relationships at a crossroads. One woman celebrates her fiftieth birthday, which causes her to reconsider what she wants out of life and her partner; the other couple are the parents of a new baby, which cannot conceal the turmoil of their relationship. Weekend is a plaintive, moving exploration of the true nature of love?about trust, negotiation, and what's worth keeping in the end.
Jane Eaton Hamilton is the author of eight previous books.
This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.
In this intimate, sexy novel, two lesbian couples living next door to each other one summer in cottage country find each of their relationships at a crossroads. One woman celebrates her fiftieth birthday, which causes her to reconsider what she wants out of life and her partner; the other couple are the parents of a new baby, which cannot conceal the turmoil of their relationship. Weekend is a plaintive, moving exploration of the true nature of love?about trust, negotiation, and what's worth keeping in the end.
Jane Eaton Hamilton is the author of eight previous books.
This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.
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Overview
In this intimate, sexy novel, two lesbian couples living next door to each other one summer in cottage country find each of their relationships at a crossroads. One woman celebrates her fiftieth birthday, which causes her to reconsider what she wants out of life and her partner; the other couple are the parents of a new baby, which cannot conceal the turmoil of their relationship. Weekend is a plaintive, moving exploration of the true nature of love?about trust, negotiation, and what's worth keeping in the end.
Jane Eaton Hamilton is the author of eight previous books.
This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A Simple book with few images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781551526362 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Arsenal Pulp Press, Limited |
| Publication date: | 05/02/2016 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 294 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
AJAX
Beside Ajax, Logan was cool in the driver's seat of her turquoise Mustang, her pale small hand spinning the wheel as they tooled away from downtown, highrises, museums, galleries, businesses, buildings Logan herself had designed, Logan’s rooftop condo, down towards the lakefront.
Black lab Toby in the backseat.
It was hot in Toronto—rays right overhead, thermometer pushing 35. Heat came off everything in waves as if the day was half-mirage, sunshine turning windows in skyscrapers to blue pools. Ice evaporated into their lattes. Didn’t matter how fast Logan drove, there was no relief. Ajax stuck to the leather seat.
While Logan didn’t even sweat. Hard, she was, like a highrise. All shiny glass and style. All downtown angles.
All Danny Zuko and the Fonz, all boi smolder hard between her legs.
Great Dane in the backseat, tall and black and drooling.
They'd been driving all week since Ajax arrived, spooling it out through the percolating city with the top down. Passing dykes, femmes, queers, passing queens and kings and strippers and hustlers and people so sewn up tight they squeaked as they walked. Up and down Church Street. Danforth, Bloor, Yonge, the Beaches. Stopping for lunch, for dinner. Cabbing to bars for nightcaps.
Fucking on the conference table at Logan’s firm. Fucking in the alley behind a sex shop. Fucking on the beach. Fucking on the rooftop.
Parameters and no parameters.
Parapets and no parapets.
Some bridge over Lake Ontario glistening as they tooled past. Ajax wanted a photo, said so, watched it tool past. On her own, she would have found a way to turn around, to get back there.
But Logan pinched Ajax's thigh, a demand, cupped the steering wheel one-handed. Ajax was acutely aware of Logan’s hands. Thought of a time Logan had come home mid-day in a pinstripe suit, how Logan fucked her with just her right hand, the hand too high up now on Ajax’s thigh. Ajax jetting on Logan’s pant leg, the suit going back in the closet instead of to the cleaners just so Logan could smell her later.
“Spread your legs,” Logan said.
Ajax intook breath.
“Spread your legs,” Logan said a second time.
Ajax went into spasm, back arching, muscles contracting from her neck to her toes. Like a stone. Like a rock. Like a concrete pylon. This had been happening in public.
They were on the Gardiner—struggling through construction. Off the Gardiner, heading west and north out of Toronto, surprising Ajax.
“Where are we going?”
“Baby, this is your birthday surprise. Don’t ask questions.” Logan moved her hand into Ajax’s lap. Her hand there, where she knew Ajax so well, on her clit under her shorts. The clit that stood up like a building, the clit flying a white flag of surrender on top.
Driving, stroking. Driving, stroking.
Logan touched her clit over her pants.
“How do you do that to me?” said Ajax as she spasmed again.
Logan grinned. “You like it, birthday girl? How many more times can you cum while you’re still in your forties?”
“Jesus,” said Ajax. “Jesus.”
“T’ain’t Jesus, darlin’.”
Ajax thinking, Oh my god, oh my god. Vaguely aware of the road. Aware any time they stopped or passed a transport truck, people could see. Cumming finally on the force of boi-eurism, cumming hard in the blue Mustang so her vag throbbed and her clit jerked as her nerves rejigged.
Becoming less vague about her surroundings. “We’re going north? Now?” There had been indirect talk. “I didn’t pack.”
“I packed for you. Your suitcase is in the trunk.” Logan’s smile was the best thing. Black hair, pale face, heavy brows, a grin worth money. Logan engaged, Logan pleased, Logan smiling. Ajax would fight wars for those things.
“You’re crazy.”
North, north. To Muskoka. Her birthday weekend. Turning 50. Her attention distracted, she hadn’t really realized they were leaving the city. Rolling pastures with cattle and goats and sheep. Just-shorn alpacas. Fields of wildflowers--Shirley poppies, candytuft, Dame’s rocket, coneflower. Plentiful of daisies, white daisies, black-eyed daisies yellow as butter, brown centres soulful as cow eyes. Flowers shouting, This is summer! This is summer! Fertilize! Every time they stopped, bees lollygagging the blooms. Bluebells and phlox and coreopsis. An explosion of summer. Green. Carpets of green. Yellow wheat. Rustling corn. The cornflower sky puffed with cumulonimbus clouds, the horizon lined with cirrus. Ajax rubbing Logan’s neck. Logan touching Ajax’s cheek. Willow trees leaning over streams. Horses swishing tails against flies. A family of quail crossed the road, the babies round as tennis balls, causing Logan to slam on the brakes.
“You ready to cum again, sweetheart?” Logan said. “Take your shorts off.” No one else was on the road; Logan stopped the car, reached over and kissed Ajax hard. Pulling her in to the rhythm of fucking. Hard, release, hard, release, hard. “Climb on me, honey.” She moved her seat back so the steering wheel pressed into Ajax’s back when she clamoured over the gear shift.
Logan’s cock stabbed into her.
From the backseat, Toby butted Ajax’s head and spittle flew.
Ajax was nothing, stripped and vulnerable, a surrealist void, a clock dripping off a canvas, a cloud in a woman’s mouth, a ladder, a scaffolding to hold up pleasure, a one-woman construction site needing hard hats and tool belts, needing mortar and bricks and levels and squares. As Logan built her she was something, she was square and regular, she was someone who stood tall and firm against the elements. She climbed ever higher. With every thrust, Logan constructed her higher until finally Ajax touched the sky, screaming.
The dog howled.
Logan cried, “I love you I love you I love you I love you, oh yes, oh god yes.”
For a long time afterwards, the car still idling off to the side of the rural road, cows at the fence chewing cud, Logan held Ajax’s face between her palms. She feathered kisses across her chin, her cheeks, her eyelids, her forehead. “I rejoice that you’re in my life. I love your readiness, your humour, your steadiness, your bravery, your gentleness, your imagination, your clarity, your generosity. I love how smart you are, Ajax. I love that you clean up so well; I love that I can take you out in the world.”
“Jiminy,” said Ajax, grinning from compliments. “Who on earth have you been dating?”
“You don’t want to know.”
Ajax knew about Monique, about Josephine, about Elliot—the main loves over a lifetime. But not so much about the ones that came and went. Logan told her what she wanted her to know, left the rest out.
Ajax said, “I love your bluntness. Your honesty. Your drive. Your softness. Your intelligence. I love your architecture and good taste. I love that I can take you into my world, jeans or black tie. I love how much you give me—the meals, the courtesies, the praise.” She touched Logan’s nose. “I love how you ache.”
“I love that you notice,” said Logan. She closed her eyes.
Blue wolf, thought Ajax. Only half tame. “I notice,” said Ajax. “People are mostly roots. A bit of stem. Very little blossom. But oh, the blossom. Oh, the bloom. Most exquisite. When you grin, inside I sing hosannas. That’s your secret weapon, you know, for when I’m pissed off at you. Just grin. Speak softly and carry a big grin. I love that you’re game for anything.” A cowbell sounded. Ajax looked around, surprised. “We ought to get moving.”
“We have plenty of time, in fact, McIntyre. All weekend.”
“We’re not going back?”
“We're blowing this pop stand. We're going, baby, north, baby, all the way north,” said Logan.
JOE
Elliot pulled back the curtain and said, “Clear night.”
Joe looked up from the baby nursing. She felt Elliot’s restlessness and said, “Still?” The infant in her arms was somnolent, almost droopy, and, really, so was she, still, worn out by the birth. Maybe it was the hormones; books said they would rage. She’d been staring so hard at their little girl, at her wisps of red hair, at her birth-blue eyes, at the shape of her ski-jump nose and the vernix stick stuck between her fingers, that she’d gotten double-vision, baby-vision. Maybe she was trying to usurp some kind of message about what the hell she was doing here, on an island in the Muskokas, a mother for the first time at her age.
Elliot said, “So, Logan is coming up tonight.”
“With that woman?” That woman was Ajax, a woman like all the other women, but, for all that, a new woman, a woman about whom Logan was uncharacteristically closed-mouthed. They were both used to Logan’s conquests—the ceaseless waterfall of women that rolled predictably to the rocks of any relationship with her. Logan the Legend, they called her. Logain d’Amour. Joe had been crushed out on her the first time she’d met her—what was that now, 12 years, 13 years? Crushed out bad. Crushed out so she tingled in unexpected places even though she was long since Elliot’s partner. Crushed out embarrassing. Crushed out she did something she shouldn’t have at a party at a friend’s one night, walked into an occupied washroom and let Logan press her up against a wall and slide her fingers where it was wetter than a lake. She still remembers Logan growling. Don’t flirt with me, girl. I know what to do with you. It was the only time in her life she came without yowling, lips pulled inside her mouth, crushing her skin with her teeth so as not to scream.
She never told Elliot, polyamorous Elliot, who maybe wouldn’t even have cared. No, Joe never breathed a word. As far as Elliot was concerned, she had been faithful since the day they said their first hellos, because it wasn’t Joe’s thing, other women. Her partner having other women—okay. The two of them in bed together with other women—also okay.
But her personal choice was fidelity.
Except for that once. That once with Logan, Elliot’s ex and sometimes, the one woman about whom Elliot said, “I don’t care if you do. Go ahead and do whatever your heart desires just as long as it’s not with Logan.” Not with Logan. That time when she went behind her partner’s back with not a second of forethought and did the dirty with the sexiest woman on the planet. Logan, a 1950’s Elvis, all charm and snarl, pitch of black hair drooping across her forehead. Logan with the heartthrob fingers. Joe had seen her guilty reflection in a mirror as she exited and she was red-faced, hair-tousled.
Now, the baby yawned, her delicate red mouth opening in a perfect ‘O,’ and Joe yawned along with her. The birthing tub was still in the extra bedroom, barely dry, that deep blue hulk. The assemblings of a home birth—the Ina May Gaskin handbook, the nasal syringe, the stethoscope, the rope which descended from the second floor and which she’d held during labour as she bounced on an exercise ball—were still here.
Yet, just the mention of Logan, of Logan coming here, to the cottage, here, to Muskoka, to their joint property, where of course she’d meet the baby, Harper, made Joe’s clit jump, minnow leaping up to find the lake. Leaping up to find that much wet.
Elliot leaned down and Joe thought it was to kiss her forehead, Elliot the heavy equipment mechanic built like a brick shithouse, kick-ass Elliot, Elliot whom she was still and always hot for, but it was just to pick up some of the debris—the tea cups, the tissues. That idea—Elliot and Logan in bed. That idea. That thing between them that had never cooled, the double-butch dare. She never ever asked what they did and Elliot never referenced it; Joe never ever asked to join them. But Joe did use the fantasy to make herself come—and that was her bloody little secret. I’ve got the hots for your gf, she could say, honestly. I want to fuck Logan again.
Again? Elliot would say. What the fuck do you mean, again??And then holy hell on earth.
Elliot would be pissed and who could fucking blame her? Elliot would be hurt because Joe coloured outside the line, and lord knows, the lines were there for a reason. They were the foundation of their house. They were the front door and the front window and the daffodils in the yard. They were the baby and the white picket fence. The lines were how, over long negotiation, the two of them learned how to live together and love together and stay together.
Although maybe the whole thing was coming unravelled now. Now being… Joe didn’t know. It wasn’t information yet. It was just something she sensed: Elliot was going away. A way she felt prickly with fear. Wary. A way that Elliot was leaving her without even bothering to mention it. Ever since Elliot had turned 40; it had started going hooey when Elliot turned 40, and had gotten progressively worse. Joe just kept patiently waiting for her to pull out of it. Why not pull out of it? They’d been together nearly 20 years and were planning to raise this baby up together and grow old and lose each other to death however that came. It was a commitment they’d made and a commitment they kept making because their intimacy was just that deep. Troubles only brought them closer together. But maybe a mid-life crisis trumped everything. The last few years of infertility treatments with Elliot’s womb heart-shaped, useless, and Joe’s eggs dusty, all the things that could go wrong between two women when daddies were picked out of binders and treatments cost $17K a pop and then didn’t work. Maybe Joe was distant; maybe Elliot was distracted by someone she was seeing. Maybe they turned their backs to one another in bed rather more than they didn’t.
After all these years of boffing each other, they’d finally stopped having sex when Joe got pregnant and didn’t miscarry. Twins, and then she lost one, so the docs said, Uh uh, no sex. Twins, and then that one remaining baby threatened to come 10 weeks early and the docs again said, Uh uh, no sex. And then somehow Elliot and Joe were more used to the Uh uh than they were the Honey, come on me, all the thrills that had carried them so long. How long had they been trying? Through failed inseminations, through miscarriages for both of them, through more failed inseminations. Years. Eight years and they could cite chapter and verse for every attempt. That was just not shit you forgot. That was just not shit you went through without incurring trauma wounds.
If you’d told Joe it was going to cost her the vibrancy of her relationship, what would she have done? She was Ms Excessive to start with, Ms Obsessive, and come 36 she’d started jones-ing for a family. Elliot had said no, she’d never wanted kids, which Joe knew perfectly well, and it wasn’t okay just to switch the game plan mid-stream like they were made of money—which they were not. Babies were loud. Babies were messy. Babies were expensive. Tell her one good thing about babies that they didn’t already have.
“You just fall in love,” said Joe. She had heard that.
“Point for me,” said Elliot. “We’re already in love.”
“Crazy love,” said Joe. “Some different kind of love. So they say.”
Elliot said, “If this is not crazy love, I don’t know what would be.”
Joe said, “It’s something unimaginable from here.” She heaved a sigh. “What if I just long for one and I don’t even have a good reason? What if biology is destiny after all and my body knows I’m about to be menopausal and it just wants, and wants, and wants, gluttonous and primal?”
“Want to take back women’s right to vote, too?”
Joe laughed.
Elliot said, “Even if I had a kid, it would be through adoption. The idea of bringing a baby into this world of deprivation and need is just repulsive to me. This conversation is really over before it starts, Josephine.”
“Oh, god,” said Joe, hitting her forehead with the butt of her hand. “I can’t even talk to you. Why does it even matter why I want a baby, whether it’s just some urge to spill my genes on the earth? How many people have a good justification? They just want babies. It’s okay. It’s not immoral. It’s a lesbian baby boom out there, or haven’t you noticed?”
“Really? You want me to agree to have a kid because the Joneses are? Seriously?”
“Well, no,” said Joe. “How about because it would be good for us? They say you’ve never fallen in love till you fall in love with your own baby.”
“I’ve been living a shallow life, you’re saying,” said Elliot.
Elliot took Joe’s hand. Elliot worked out with weights at the gym; if she squeezed Joe’s hand in a way she found convivial, she hurt her. It was one of the things Joe loved about Elliot—her passion for lifting, the muscles.
“I just have a hankering that won’t quit,” said Joe.
“It’ll go away when you hit menopause, and meantime, we’ll still have our life.”
“Just come to one appointment with me,” said Joe. “Just one.” Just one just one just one. “K?”
And Elliot relented.