Journey to a woman

By Ann Bannon

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Title: Journey to a woman

Author: Ann Bannon

Release date: February 6, 2026 [eBook #77871]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: Arno Press, 1960

Credits: Adam Buchbinder, Jens Sadowski, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOURNEY TO A WOMAN ***




                               JOURNEY TO
                                A WOMAN


                    An Original Gold Medal Novel by

                               ANN BANNON


                            Gold Medal Books
             FAWCETT PUBLICATIONS, INC., _Greenwich, Conn._


   Copyright © 1960 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.

   First Printing, March 1960

   All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
   or portions thereof.

   All characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to
   persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

   Printed in the United States of America




                              Chapter One


She lay in the dark and cried. She lay close and warm in her husband’s
arms while their breath slowed to normal and their hearts quieted
together and she wept silently at his sigh of relief. She had learned to
cry without making a sound. It had taken a while but she had had plenty
of opportunities to learn. If he caught her crying there was always a
terrible scene. He started out by questioning her love and ended by
questioning his own manhood.

“Goddamn it, Beth!” he had cried to her once, when they had been married
only two months, “if I’m doing it wrong, _tell_ me! How do I know what
you want me to do if you don’t tell me? A woman isn’t like a man. I
can’t tell if it’s any good for you or not.”

He was blaming her for his own faults of love, she thought, and, stung,
she snapped back, “What am I supposed to do, give you a play-by-play
analysis? Can’t you figure it out for yourself, Charlie? You did well
enough before we were married.”

“So did you, before we were married,” he flung at her. He got out of
bed, lighted a cigarette in the dark, and sat down on the floor. They
could not afford chairs yet, and he didn’t want to share the bed with
her for a few minutes. Not until the anger wore off.

“Beth, you’ve got it just backwards,” he said. “Most girls can’t enjoy
it until they’re married. Their consciences hurt, or something. They’re
afraid they’ll get pregnant. But not you. Not Backwards Beth. The minute
we get married it’s no fun any more. Does love have to be immoral or
illegal before you can enjoy it, honey?”

Insulted, she turned her back to him and pulled the covers over her
disappointed body. She was afraid to think of what he had just said. It
had too much the shape of truth and she had had to work very hard to
forget it completely. Charlie finished his cigarette and climbed
gingerly back into his place in bed, more chilled by his wife’s behavior
than the night vapors.

It had been nine years since the first such quarrel. There had been
others, but Beth had learned fast to hide the tears of frustration. True
to her contrary nature, there were times when she loved Charlie—if love
can be an on-again, off-again affair. And sometimes, when she didn’t
expect it, desire sneaked up on her and made the moments in his arms
unbearably lovely, the way they had been in college. But that was only
sometimes, and sometimes was not enough.

On this night, like so many others, she got up after he had fallen back
to sleep and went into the bathroom and washed herself. It comforted her
obscurely to tidy herself up this way. And when she went back to bed,
she dreamed. Beth dreamed often and vividly.

But tonight it wasn’t a dream like any other. She dreamed of Laura. Just
Laura, sitting on the studio couch of the room they had shared in
college, looking at Beth and smiling. Laura with her long light hair and
periwinkle eyes. Laura, who didn’t know herself until Beth discovered
her. Laura, who loved her and who had disappeared from her life like
frost from a spring lawn, and who never came back.

That was all. Beth spoke her name, trying to make her answer and explain
herself, but Laura only sat and smiled. Beth repeated the name until
suddenly she wakened and pressed a hand over her mouth. Had she spoken
aloud? But Charlie slumbered undisturbed and she relaxed again, leaning
back on her pillow and staring at the dark ceiling.

_I haven’t even thought of her for months_, she pondered. _How strange.
It’s been years since I dreamed of her. I’d half forgotten. I wonder how
she is ... where she is. In Chicago with her father, I suppose. He
always ruled her life like a tyrant. She wouldn’t have married, of
course._

In the morning she told Charlie, “I dreamed of Laura last night.”

“Oh?” He looked up from the financial page of the paper. He spoke
casually enough, although he stiffened inwardly. Charlie remembered
Laura, too. A man does not easily forget a rival and for a few months,
many years ago, when they were all in college, that was what Laura had
been. A strange cool girl she was, with a capacity for violent love that
Beth had almost accidentally roused. It had only lasted a short
while—the space of a semester—and for Beth it had not seemed serious,
for she was falling in love with Charlie at the time, and Charlie won
her handily. That was when Laura had disappeared.

Beth and Charlie had talked it over, had even tried to help Laura. There
was little about the curious affair that Charlie didn’t know; little
that he couldn’t forgive. And, it should be added, little about it that
he understood.

When he and Beth married he was confident that she would forget it, and
to a large extent she had. At first, anyway. She liked men, she was
married to one. She had children now and a stable home. Most important
in Charlie’s eyes, she had _him_. And besides, she was a sensible girl.
When Laura dropped out of Beth’s life physically, Charlie had faith that
she would drop out emotionally as well.

Beth had rarely mentioned Laura over the years, and now, when she spoke
of her dream at the breakfast table, it was the first time Charlie had
even thought of Laura in over two years. So he was startled, but he
didn’t want it to show.

“What was the dream?” he asked.

“Not much. Just Laura, sitting there.”

“Where?”

“That room we had on the third floor at the Alpha Beta house.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. Polly, damn it, don’t wipe your fingers on your dress!” Her
four-year-old daughter grabbed a paper napkin guiltily.

“Don’t swear at the kids, honey,” Charlie said mildly.

“Don’t scold me in front of them,” she said.

He sighed, feeling a quick hot frustration, a sensation that was much
too common for comfort these days, and picked up the paper again. “What
else about Laura?” he said.

“Nothing else. Silly dream.”

But it haunted her. And Charlie had a feeling there was more to it than
she told him. He kept his eyes on the paper another five minutes and
then rose from the table. “Got to get going,” he said. He kissed his two
children goodbye and then came around the table behind Beth.

“’Bye, honey,” he said into her ear, and blew into it gently.

“Have a good day,” she said absently.

He wished gloomily that she would see him to the door.

“Daddy, when you get home will you make me a kite?” Skipper said
suddenly. He was five, just a year older than his sister, and he looked
very much like Beth.

“Sure,” Charlie said, still looking at the short dark curls on the back
of his wife’s head. He stroked her neck with his finger.

“Yay!” Skipper cried.

Beth squirmed slightly, irritated by Charlie’s wordless loneliness and a
little ashamed of herself. Charlie left her finally and went toward the
front door, slipping into his suit coat as he went. Beth felt his gaze
on her and glanced up suddenly with a little line of annoyance between
her eyes.

“Something wrong?” she said.

“No. What are you doing today?”

“I’m flying to Paris,” she said sarcastically. “What else? Want to
come?”

“Sure.” He grinned and she softened a little. He was handsome, in a
lopsided way, with his big grin and his fine eyes. The kids set up a
clamor. “Can I come too? Can I come too, Mommy?”

And when Charlie went out the door he heard her shout at them in that
voice that scared him, that voice with the edge of hysteria in it, “Oh,
for God’s sake! Oh, shut up! Honest to God, you kids are driving me
insane!”

And he knew she would slam something down on the table to underline her
words—a jam jar or a piece of tableware, anything handy.

He drove off to work with a worried face.




                              Chapter Two


Beth loved her kids the way she loved Charlie: at a distance. It was a
real love but it couldn’t be crowded. She had no patience with intimacy.
The hardest years of her life had been when the two babies arrived
within eleven months of each other. One was bad enough, but two! Both in
diapers, both screaming and streaming at both ends. Both colicky, both
finicky eaters.

Beth was completely unprepared, almost helpless with a screaming
nervousness that put both Charlie and the kids on edge. She never quite
recovered from her resentment. A few years later, when the worst was
over, she began to wonder if her quick awful temper and desperation had
made the children as nervous as they were. She blamed herself bitterly
sometimes. But then she wondered how it could have happened any other
way.

But when Polly shut herself in a closet and cried all afternoon, or
Skipper threw a tantrum and swore at her in her own words, or when
Charlie sulked in angry silence for days on end after a quarrel, she
began to wonder again, to accuse herself, to look wildly around her for
excuses, for escape.

Beth had just one friend that she saw with any regularity, and that was
the wife of Charlie’s business partner. Her name was Jean Purvis, and
she and Beth bowled together on a team. Beth had been searching for ways
to get out of it since she had started it. Bowling bored her and so did
Jean. But you couldn’t help liking the girl.

Jean Purvis was a good-hearted person, a natural blonde with a tendency
to plumpness against which she pitted a wavering will power. She had two
expressions: a little smile and a big smile. At first Beth envied her
sunny nature, but after a while it got on her nerves.

_She must have bad days like other people_, Beth thought. _She must get
mad at her husband once in a while._

But if Jean ever did it never showed and her eternal smile made Beth
feel guilty. It was like an unspoken reproach of Beth’s sudden wild
explosions and cloudy moods, and it made her resent Jean; it made her
jealous and contemptuous all at once.

Jean Purvis and her husband Cleve were the only people that Beth and
Charlie knew when they first moved to California. Cleve and Charlie were
business partners now, manufacturing toys, and it had been Cleve’s
drum-beating letters that encouraged Charlie to give up his law
apprenticeship and move to the West Coast.

Beth reacted angrily at first. “I like the East!” she had exclaimed.
“What do I know about California? Everybody in the country is headed for
California. It’ll be so crowded out there pretty soon they won’t have
room for the damn palm trees.”

“Cleve has a good start in business,” Charlie said.

“Charlie, what in God’s name do you know about making toys? I’d be glad
if you’d make one decent slingshot for Skipper and call it quits,” she
told him.

But his stubborn head was already full of ideas. “One craze, one big
hit—we’d strike it rich,” he said. “One Hula Hoop, one coonskin cap,
something like that.”

“You sit there like a grinning happy idiot ready to throw your whole
career, your whole education, out the window, because your old
fraternity buddy is making plastic popguns out in Pasadena and he says
to come on out,” Beth cried, furious. “I don’t trust that Cleve Purvis
anyway, from what I’ve heard about him. You always said he was a heavy
drinker.”

But he had made his mind up, and with Charlie that was the same as doing
a thing. He could not be moved.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Charlie left Beth and the two babies in Chicago with her uncle and aunt
while he went out to Pasadena to join Cleve and find a place to live.

Beth loved it. Her Uncle John was fond of spoiling her. Beth was his
daughter by proxy; he had no children of his own. She had been dumped in
his lap, sobbing and runny nosed and skinny at eight years, when her
parents were killed. Miraculously, she had learned to love him and he
returned her love. With Aunt Elsa it was all a matter of keeping up good
manners, and she was automatically friendly.

For four months Beth slept and ate and lazed around the house. It was
delicious to be waited on, to have civilized cocktails in the afternoon,
to let somebody else pick Polly up when the colic got her. To go out for
whole evenings of food and glittering entertainment and know there were
a dozen capable baby sitters at home. Beth refused to join her husband
in California until she threw him into a rage.

She realized with something like a shock that she didn’t miss Charlie’s
love-making at all. She missed _Charlie_, in a sort of pleasant blurry
way, and she loved to talk about him over a cold whiskey and water,
laughing gently at the faults that drove her frantic when they were
together. But when she heard his anger and hurt on the telephone it came
to her as a surprise, as if she would never learn it once and for all,
that a man’s feelings are urgent, even painful. She remembered feeling
it like that once, long ago, in college. Was it Charlie, was it really
Charlie that did it to her? Or was it somebody else, somebody tall and
slight and blonde with soft blue eyes, who used to sit on the studio
couch in their room at the sorority house and gaze at her?

Charlie was in a sweat of bad-tempered impatience when she finally,
reluctantly, agreed to come out and resume their marriage.

_Marriages would all be perfect if the husband and wife could live two
thousand miles apart_, she thought. _For the wife, anyway._

And Charlie missed the kids. “He misses them!” she cried aloud,
sardonically. But she knew if they were far away she would miss them
too. She would love them at her leisure. They would begin to seem
beautiful and perfect and she would forgive them their dirty diapers and
midnight squalling sessions.

It scared her sometimes to think of this streak in herself; this quirk
that made her want to love at a distance. The only person she had ever
loved up close, with an abandoned delight in the contact, was ... Laura.
Laura Landon. A girl.

Charlie drove her home from the International Airport in Los Angeles. He
was bursting with excitement, with things to say, with kisses and relief
and swallowed resentments.

“How’s business?” she asked him when they were all safely in the car.

“Honey, it’s great. It’s everything I told you on the phone, only
better. We did the right thing. You’ll love California. And I have a
great idea, it’ll sell in the millions, it’s—oh, Beth, Jesus, you’re so
beautiful I can’t stand it.” And he pulled over to the side of the road,
to the noisy alarm of the car behind him, and kissed her while Skipper
punched him in the stomach. He laughed and kept on kissing her and they
were both suddenly filled with a hot need for each other that left them
breathless. Beth felt a whole year’s worth of little defeats and
frustrations fade and she wished powerfully that the children would both
fall providentially asleep for five minutes. She was amazed at herself.

They got home after an hour’s driving on and off the freeways. It was a
small town just east of Pasadena: Sierra Bella. It was cozy and old and
very pretty, skidding down from the mountains, with props and stilts
under the oldest houses.

It was quite dark when they drove into their own garage and Beth
couldn’t see the house very well. But the great purple presence behind
them was a mountain and it awed and pleased her. She was used to the
flat plains and cornfields of the Midwest. Below them were visible the
lights of the San Gabriel Valley: a whole carpet of sparklers winking
through the night from San Bernardino to the shores of the Pacific.

“Like it?” Charlie said, putting an arm around her.

“It’s gorgeous. Is it this pretty in the daytime?”

“Depends on the smog.” He grinned.

Inside the house she was less impressed. It was clean. But so small, so
cramped! He sensed her feelings.

“Well, it’s not like Lake Shore Drive. Uncle John could have done
better, no doubt,” he said.

“It’s—lovely,” she managed, with a smile.

“It’s just till we get a little ahead, honey,” he said quickly.

Beth fed the children and put them to bed with Charlie’s help. And then
he pulled her down on their own bed, without even giving her time to
take her clothes off. For fifteen minutes, in their quiet room, they
talked intimately and Charlie stroked her and began to kiss her, sighing
with relief and pleasure.

Suddenly Skipper yelled. Bellyache. Too much excitement on the plane.
Beth jumped up in a spitting anger and Charlie had to calm the little
boy as best he could.

Beth was surprised at herself. She was tired and she had had an overdose
of children that day. And still she responded to Charlie with a sort of
wondering happiness. She didn’t want anything to intrude on it or spoil
it. Maybe this was the beginning of a new understanding between them, a
better life, even a really happy one.

A half hour later Skipper woke again. Scared. New room, new bed, new
house. And when Beth, nervous and impatient, finally got him down again,
Polly woke up.

Beth’s temper broke, hard. “Damn them!” she cried. “Oh, damn them!
They’ve practically ruined my life. They’re driving me nuts, Charlie,
they’ll end up killing me. The one night we get back together after all
these months—” she began to cry, choking on her self-pity and
outrage—“those miserable kids have to spoil it.”

“Beth,” Charlie said, grasping her shoulders. His voice was stern and
calm. “Nothing can spoil it, darling. Get a grip on yourself.”

Polly’s angry little voice rose over Charlie’s and Beth screamed, “One
of these days I’ll croak her! I will! I will!”

And suddenly Charlie, who adored his children, got mad himself. “Beth,
can’t you go for a whole hour without losing your temper at those kids!”
he demanded. “What do you expect of them? Skipper isn’t even two years
old. Polly’s a babe in arms. Good God, how do you want them to act? Like
a pair of old ladies? Would that make you happy?”

“Now _you’re_ angry!” she screamed.

He clasped his arms against his sides in an expression of exasperation.
“You were in love with me five minutes ago,” he said.

Beth didn’t know quite what had gotten into her. She was tired, worn out
from the trip and the emotions, fed up with the kids. She had wanted
him, coming home in the car. Now all she wanted was a hot bath and
sleep.

She walked out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. But
Charlie swung it open at once and followed her, turning her roughly
around at the door to the bathroom.

“What’s that little act supposed to mean?” he said.

She stared at him and the kids continued to chorus their sorrows in
screechy little voices. Charlie’s big hands hurt her tender arms and his
eyes and voice had gone flat.

“I won’t argue,” she said, her voice high and shaky. “I won’t argue with
you. You don’t understand anything about me. You never have understood
me!”

He looked into her flushed face and answered coolly, “You never have
understood yourself, Beth. If you knew who you really were it wouldn’t
be so hard for me to know you. Or anybody else.”

That infuriated her. She hated to be told that she didn’t know herself
and it was one of the things Charlie always told her when he was mad at
her. She hated it the worse because it was true.

“You lie!” she cried. “You bastard!”

Charlie pushed her back against the wall, so hard that her head snapped
and hit the plaster with a stuffy thump. He kissed her. He was not very
nice about it.

“If you think you’re going to make love to me, tonight, after the way
you’ve just been acting—” she panted furiously at him, struggling to
free herself—“if you think I’ve come two thousand miles just to let you
_rape_ me—”

“You shut up,” he said harshly, and kissed her again. He nearly crushed
her mouth and she would have screamed again if she had been able. When
he released her she slashed at him with her nails and he pulled her by
her wrists back into the bedroom.

Beth tried all the old favored tricks of crossed women. She kicked, and
flailed with her dangerous nails; she tried to bite him; she whacked him
with a knife-heeled pump, thrilled to see a slightly bloody scratch
bloom on his shoulder.

But Charlie smothered her with his big body. He just rolled on top of
her and told her, “Shut up. You’re noisier than those poor kids you
complain about all the time.” The sheer weight of him overwhelmed her.
Struggle was futile, arguments were useless.

While he fumbled with her underthings she said, “You’re a brute. You
bring me home to this miserable little cracker-box, you drag me all the
way to California for this. _This!_” She tried to gesture at the four
walls, to make him feel her disdain. “At least in Chicago I’m treated
like a human being.”

He kissed her angrily.

“I _am_ a human being, in case you didn’t know.”

He kissed her again, and his hands found her breasts.

“If you touch me I’ll be sick. I’ll throw up every goddamn thing I ate
on that plane. Including the biscuits.”

But he touched her. He touched her all over, shivering all through his
large frame and groaning. Beth began to sob with hurt and confusion and
rebellion. And most dreadful of all, most humiliating, with desire. She
wanted him. He was wonderful like this, the live weight of him on her
yielding flesh, the thrust, the warmth, the sweat, the sweet moaning.
When he took her like this, like a master claiming a right, she
submitted, and she experienced relief. She did not know who she was, but
for a little while he made her think she knew. He made her feel her
womanhood.

And when he had forced her to surrender once, she gave in again without
fighting. He kept her busy for a long time. If the kids kept up the
noise their parents didn’t know it and didn’t care. Charlie wouldn’t let
her out of his arms. He wanted her there where he could fill his
nostrils with the scent of her, his arms with the smooth round feel of
her. Four months is a damn long time for a husband in love with his wife
to make love to a pillow.

It had not been quite like that between them since their college days
and it was not like that again very often.




                             Chapter Three


They fell into the routine then which became so dull and empty to Beth
over the next few years. At first she was too busy getting settled in
her new home to be bored. She inspected the holly, the palms, the
poppies, the bamboo that grew, rare and exotic, in her own back yard.
She breathed in the mountains in back and the sparkling valley in front.
But little by little she grew used to them. You can’t live with the
marvelous every day and keep your marvel quotient very high.

Charlie and Cleve worked hard on the toys, and Charlie loved it. He
liked keeping his own hours, being the boss, running the show. Almost
imperceptibly he began to take on the lion’s share of the work and, with
it, the lion’s share of the decisions. He was willing to spend nights in
the office working out new plans or briefing new men. It made Beth
cranky with him. And the crankier she got the more he stayed away. It
was the start of a vicious circle.

“It must be my fault. I must bore you to death!” she cried.

“No, Beth, you don’t bore me,” he said, climbing into his pajamas while
she watched him from her place in the bed. “You scare me a little, but
you don’t bore me.”

“I _scare_ you! Ha!” She said it acidly, but only to cover her chagrin.
She didn’t dare to ask exactly what he meant, and he didn’t bother to
tell her. But her fits with the children, her depressions, her lack of
interest in the love that should have sparked between them, had
something to do with it.

Charlie reached the point where he couldn’t tell if Beth ever wanted him
or not. She got him, because he didn’t have the strength or the patience
to turn monk. But there was none of the old smoldering response that had
used to thrill his senses and reassure him of her answering passion. She
was quiet and she made the minimum gestures mechanically. As he had
blurted unintentionally, it scared him. Dismayed, he had tried once or
twice to talk to her about it. Not knowing how to be subtle, he simply
exclaimed that something was wrong and she had damn well better tell him
what it was before it got worse. But Beth had given him a smirk of half
amusement and half contempt that had withered his pride and driven him
to silence.

So things rolled along. The business was never quite good enough to get
them a bigger house or the flashy sportscar Beth wanted. Cleve was never
quite drunk enough to botch his job. Beth didn’t have enough love and
Charlie didn’t have enough insight. And that was their life.

For Beth it was dismal. She yearned for a diversion, an escape hatch,
_anything_. Travel, a new car, an affair even. But all she had were her
boisterous children, her irate husband, and bowling twice a week with
Jean Purvis. Her mood was desperate.

Things took an odd turn finally, one night when Jean and Cleve invited
Beth and Charlie to a birthday party. It was for Cleve’s sister, Vega
Purvis. Beth remembered Vega very well. She had met her shortly after
she arrived in California, and though she had never gotten to know Vega
well, she was interested in her.

Vega was a model. She was a very tall girl, at least as tall as Beth
herself, and excruciatingly thin. Throughout her twenties she had worked
at modeling in Chicago and then suddenly came down deathly sick with
tuberculosis, ulcers, and Beth had never known what else. Everything. It
had meant the temporary finish to her working days and a long trip to
the West Coast, where she went directly to the City of Hope for help.
She was there for over two years.

Vega had sacrificed a lung to her tuberculosis, a part of her stomach to
her ulcer, and perhaps more of herself to other plagues. And still she
was stunningly beautiful. Still she smoked two or three packs of
cigarettes a day—something that struck Beth as insane but rather
wonderful, as if Vega had taken a bead on Death and spat in his eye.
Nobody else would have gotten away with it. Vega brushed it off,
laughing. “The first thing I asked for when I came out of the
anesthetic,” she said, “was a cigarette. The doctor gave me one of his.
Tasted marvelous.”

Vega had deep-set eyes, almost black, and fine handsome features, and
she was witty and interesting. She was running her own model agency now
on Pasadena’s fashionable South Lake Street—mostly teen-age girls, with
one or two older women who took the course for “self-improvement.” Or,
perhaps, self-admiration.

Beth recalled the night she had first met Vega. They waited for her,
Cleve and Jean and Beth and Charlie, in a small restaurant near her
studio. Vega came late. It was necessary to her sense of well-being that
she arrive late wherever she went. So Charlie and Beth and the Purvises
waited for her in a small booth in the Everglades, where everything was
chic and expensive.

Vega swept in at last, forty minutes late, wrapped in a red velvet
cloak, and she was so striking that Beth had stared a little at her. She
sat down and ordered a Martini—double, dry, twist of lemon—before she
greeted anybody.

She had a lovely face but it was, like the rest of her, painfully thin,
with the fine bones sharply outlined. It soon became apparent why she
didn’t put on weight. Vega rarely ate anything. She drank her dinner,
though they had ordered her a steak. She seemed to depend on booze for
most of her calories. Cleve persuaded her to take one bite, which she
did, promising to finish the rest later—but of course she never did.
Charlie and Cleve finally split the meat and ate it, but the rest was
wasted.

Charlie was interested in her too. Beautiful women interest almost any
man without making much of an effort.

“What do you do here, Vega?” he asked her. “Cleve said something about
modeling.”

“I _teach_ modeling,” she said, accepting a fourth drink daintily from
the waiter. “Women are my business. Men are my pleasure,” she added,
smiling languidly.

Charlie smiled back, unaware of the silly look on his face. Beth saw it,
but it didn’t alarm her. It struck her funny, and before she had time to
think about it, she was laughing at him. And suddenly the fun and flavor
went out of the game for him, and he turned his attention to his meal.
Beth saw his embarrassment and rebuked herself.

_I should have been quiet, damn it_, she thought. _I should have let him
have his fling. Such an innocent little fling. What’s wrong with me?_
But it was too late. Charlie was carefully casual with Vega the rest of
the evening. It didn’t console him much, when he got home that night, to
check his muscles in front of the mirror or stretch to his full six feet
two. He was baffled and shamed by his wife, who laughed at even his
normal masculine reactions. He was almost defeated by his inability to
make Beth’s life mean something.

On Vega’s birthday night they waited, as before, at the Everglades for
her entrance, drinking whiskey and waters, and talking. Beth felt warm
and relaxed after the first two drinks and she squeezed Charlie’s arm.
It caused him some concern, instead of reassuring him, because it was
unexpected.

“Good whiskey?” he asked, nodding at her glass. That must be the source
of her pleasant mood.

“The best,” she said and smiled. “Why aren’t you nice like this all the
time?” she teased clumsily.

“I’m only nice when you’re a little tight,” he said. “The rest of the
time I’m a damn bore.”

It was so short and sad and true that it almost knocked the breath out
of her. She looked at her lap, despising herself for the moment, feeling
the tears collect in the front of her eyes. When she had to reach for a
piece of tissue to stem the flood he murmured, “I’m sorry. God, don’t do
that in here.” He had a masculine horror of scenes, especially in front
of Cleve and Jean. Jean had noticed the little exchange between them and
her smile—her permanent smile—wavered, but Cleve was talking to her and
didn’t see.

“Come on, honey, this is a birthday party,” Charlie whispered urgently
in Beth’s ear, exasperated and helpless like all men before a woman’s
public tears.

Beth pulled herself together. She would save her bad feeling for later.
Now she wanted to enjoy herself, to let the liquor take over, and the
muted lights and the piped music. She wanted to forget her kids, forget
she was married. Charlie lighted a cigarette for her.

“Peace pipe,” he said. And when he snapped out the match he saw Vega
coming and added, relieved, “Here comes the guest of honor.” He got up
as she approached the table and took her coat for her.

“Thank you, Charlie Ayers,” Vega said with a smile. She had a habit of
calling a man by his whole name, as if it made him completely special,
unique, valuable—and perhaps a little bit labeled. But the men loved it.
It sounded foolish when you tried to explain it to somebody else,
because it was impossible to imitate Vega’s intonation, her peculiar
lilting voice in its contralto register; but when she said your name,
your whole name soft and low and very distinct, the whole company
reacted. You were looked at, and the beautiful woman who had spoken to
you was looked at, and it was a wonderful, slightly silly, but charming,
ceremony.

Vega sat down between Cleve and Beth, and the waiter, who was an old
buddy of hers, came up, as soon as she had adjusted herself, with her
usual order: a Martini, double, dry, with a twist of lemon. The waiter
went up to the bar as soon as she had thanked him for it and began
mixing the next. She always took the first three or four on the run. It
amazed Beth to watch her. Oddly, Vega never seemed drunk.

Vega was all in black with a single small diamond clip at her throat and
diamond earrings. On her they looked real, whether they were or not.
Vega looked very very expensive, though she was quick to tell you the
price of anything she was wearing. Her clothes were usually bargains
picked up at sales in the better shops. Some of the shops gave her
discounts, in return for which she told people she bought her clothes
exclusively from them. She had this arrangement with at least five
shops, all of them unaware of the others, and she lied to them all with
charm and grace.

Beth watched her with an interest that intensified as the total of
highballs went up. There were two gifts in the center of the table, one
from the Ayerses and one from the Purvises. Vega ignored them.

“I’ve been teaching my girls how to walk,” she told them. “To rock and
roll records. Are you familiar with Elvis Presley?”

“Polly’s got a crush on him,” Beth said. “I think he’s godawful myself.”

“You’re wrong,” Vega said. “He’s very useful. Especially with a gang of
teen-age girls. You put one of his records on and suddenly you’ve
got—cooperation.” She emphasized the word and smiled. “They walk around
the studio like so many duchesses—just what I want. I used to play Bing
Crosby for them but all it got me was a slouch and a lot of
behind-the-hands giggling. Now I play crap and suddenly they’re ladies.”
She turned to Cleve. “Explain that to me, brother,” she said. “You know
all about ladies.”

Cleve ran a finger over his moustache in the wrong direction. “Simple,”
he said. “You have one rule: treat a bitch like a duchess and a duchess
like a bitch. Never fails.”

“What has that got to do with Elvis Presley?”

“You didn’t _ask_ me about Elvis Presley.”

“Cleve, are you drunk?” Vega said. “It’s against the family rules. You
can’t be. We never get drunk,” she explained to Beth and Charlie.
“Limber, but never drunk.”

“You’re right.” Cleve ordered another round and when the drinks came he
stood up and Beth saw that he really was pretty high. “A toast,” he
remarked, “to my charming sister, who is thirty-nine years old today.
For the fifth time.” He glanced down at her and Vega smiled seraphically
at the ceiling. “Her company is charming,” Cleve went on, while heads
turned to grin at him from across the room, “her face is beautiful, her
manners are perfect. Thank God I don’t have to live with her. Vega,
darling, stand up and take a bow.”

Vega stood up with a lovely smile and told him tenderly, “Go to hell.”
They both sat down and drank to that while Jean laughed anxiously.

“They’re always like that,” Jean said. “It strikes me so funny.”

Beth wanted to put a gag on her. Jean only wanted to make it seem
friendly, teasing. Everybody in the Everglades had heard her husband and
his sister. She wanted them all to know it wasn’t serious.

But Beth liked to think they really hated each other, for some weird
romantic reason. It gave an edge to the scene that excited her.

They ordered their meal and Vega, as always, ordered with them. Beth
wondered why she bothered. Maybe it was just to give the men an extra
helping. Maybe it was to ease her conscience about her drinking. At
least if she had a plate of food in front of her she could always eat;
she had a _choice_. If she didn’t order anything her only choice would
be to drink, and the people with her would take it for granted she was a
lush. That would never do, even when she was with her own friends, her
own family, who knew the truth anyway. It just didn’t go well with her
elegant exterior, her control.

So she ordered food, and ate one bite. It was a sort of ritual that
comforted her and shut up the worriers in the party who tried to force
French fries or buttered squash down her. When they had all finished she
could divide her meal among the men unobtrusively.

Beth yearned to ask Vega how old she really was, but she didn’t dare.
She wondered at her own curiosity. Everything about Vega seemed valuable
and interesting that evening. The glamorous clothes, the strange feud
with Cleve, the dramatic entrance, the illnesses, the modeling.

_I wonder how she’d like being a suburban housewife_, she mused, and
almost laughed aloud. Vega, with kids. Vega, doing dishes. Vega,
with—God forbid—a husband! On some women all the feminine ornaments and
virtues only look out of place. Those women seem complete in themselves,
and so it was with Vega. Beth couldn’t imagine her, sleek and tall and
with a hint of ferocity beneath her civilized veneer, being domesticated
by any man. There was something icily virginal beneath her
sophistication that made Beth doubt whether Vega had ever given herself
to a man.

Vega opened Beth’s birthday gift to her while the rest of them ate. “How
did you know?” she said, so quietly that Beth almost missed it.

“It’s only a book,” Beth murmured.

“You picked it out yourself. I’ve been wanting to read it, too.”

It was such a personal exchange, almost intimate, that Beth was taken
aback. Vega treated the book like a private present from Beth—as if
Charlie, who after all paid for it and wrote his name on the card with
his wife’s, had nothing whatever to do with it.

Beth found herself oddly drawn to this lovely, rather secretive woman;
to the warmth of her voice and the way she spoke. Vega articulated
carefully, conserving the small quota of air in her one remaining lung.
And yet her voice carried. She had turned the handicap into an asset,
learning to develop and project her voice with the skill of a musician.
It was pleasant to hear her talk, and she arranged her breathing so
artfully that one was never aware that it was a chore, or that her very
life’s breath came to her in half doses.

At the end of the evening the three women went to the powder room
together. Beth found herself impatient with Jean, wanting her out of the
way.

_What for?_ she thought, amused at herself. And still her impatience
persisted. She stood next to Vega at the mirror while Jean leaned
against the wall and waited for them to finish with their makeup. Beth
wanted to say something, something memorable and witty and complimentary
to Vega, but her mind was too busy admiring the woman. She only stared
at Vega’s large brown eyes and parted lips and puzzled over her.

“You know,” said Vega, startling her, “you should model. You have a good
figure for it.”

Beth was nonplussed. When could Vega have studied her figure? But Vega
was adept at observing people without seeming to. She had seen the
restlessness in Beth, just as she had seen the ardent mouth and purple
eyes and short brown curls, without apparently even looking at her. Now
she turned to appraise her.

“I speak purely as a professional,” she said, her mouth showing a
humorous twist at the corners. She gazed frankly at Beth now, up and
down, stem to stern. “Turn around,” she said.

Beth said, “Vega, I could never model. I’m too old.”

“Nobody’s too old. Except my mother, and she was born fifty years B.C.
You have nice hips, Beth.”

The remark, so casual, sent an unwelcome tremor through Beth, who tried
to shrug it off. “I’m thirty,” she said. “Who wants to show their
clothes on a thirty-year-old when they could show them on a teen-ager?”

“You’d be surprised,” Vega said. “Me, for one.” Beth stared at her. “Oh,
not my own clothes. Only a scarecrow like me can squeak into those. I
mean I like the way a woman your age wears her clothes, and so do the
men who hire them. They have something no teen-ager has.”

“A woman my age?” Beth repeated dolefully.

Vega laughed. “You still look like a college girl, Beth. You aren’t, of
course, let’s face it. But you look it.”

Beth gave her a wry grin. “I don’t know the first thing about modeling,
Vega,” she said.

“I’ll teach you.”

Beth was secretly pleased, very pleased. But she wasn’t thinking of the
makeup tricks, or the poise she might acquire. She was thinking, in
spite of herself, of the pleasure of spending some time in Vega’s
company. She had never been able to bring herself to form a lot of
friendships with women. It was not possible for her to be friendly with
them, curiously enough, just as it is rarely possible for a man to be
friendly with women. Beth had known Jean Purvis for years now and knew
her well, but they were still only acquaintances, not friends. And Jean,
though she regretted it, understood this, and had given up long ago
trying to pull Beth closer to her.

“I don’t know if I could afford it—” Beth began, but Vega interrupted
her.

“It’s free, darling,” she said, with an injured air, and Beth,
transfixed, felt the “darling” echo through her head with a dangerous
delight. She hardly heard Vega add, “Charlie won’t mind. You have a
housewife pallor, anyway. You need to get out. Come on down next week
and we’ll make you over. Not that you need much remodeling.” Vega
glanced again at Beth’s trim torso and smiled. Beth smiled back and
there was a single brief electric pause before Vega said quickly,
“Everyone all set? Let’s go.” And turned to leave.

The three of them filed out, Beth so close behind Vega that she stumbled
against her once.




                              Chapter Four


Beth, riding next to Charlie on the way up to Sierra Bella, put her head
back and pondered Vega’s offer with a smile.

“What’s up, honey?” Charlie said, seeing her expression in the red glow
of a stoplight.

“Nothing.”

_She wouldn’t tell me to save her own skin_, he thought resentfully, and
a wave of hatred for her secretiveness, her airs, came over him. He
tried to swallow it down. He didn’t want to ruin another evening, and
this one held promises. Just a few, but still, a few. She had been
receptive, pleasant with him, at the Everglades.

“Have fun?” he said, starting the car up again as the light changed.

“Um-hm.” _How can I tell him so he won’t say no?_ she wondered. For she
felt instinctively that he would object to her desire. It seemed to Beth
that all the things she truly wanted to do, he didn’t want her to do.
Travel—“You can’t leave me!” Work—“Your place is at home with the kids.”
Hire a nurse—“_You’re_ their mother!” Get a little tight—“Beth, you’re
turning into a damn souse.”

She thought he was staid, stuffy; he thought she was wild, or would be
if he didn’t keep a tight rein on her.

They undressed quietly by the light of one dresser lamp, and Charlie,
watching the clothes slip off her scented flesh, revealing the fluent
curves of her back and breasts, felt his body flush all over. He was
overcome with tenderness, with a desire for wordless communication.

_Just be gentle with me, yield to me this one night_, he thought, trying
to press the idea into her head with the sheer force of wishing. He
would never have spoken such a wish; it would have aroused her contempt,
or worse, her amusement.

Beth pulled open the wardrobe door, reaching around the corner for her
nightie. But he pulled her arm away. “You don’t need it,” he said. “Not
tonight.”

She let herself be held, submitting quietly to his kisses. When he
seemed all warm and loving and tractable she whispered, “Charlie, I’m
going to study modeling with Vega. Starting next week.”

He only half heard. “Let’s not talk. Let’s not spoil it,” he said.

But she felt that if he didn’t acquiesce now, in the mood he was in, he
never would. “If you don’t say yes I’m going to do it anyway,” she
whispered into his ear.

“Do what?” he murmured, pulling her closer.

“And we’ll have one hell of a fight over it.”

“We’re not going to fight, darling,” he told her with the confidence of
his passion. “Never again. We’re just going to make love twenty-four
hours a day.”

“Where? The toy factory? That’s where you spend most of your time.” Her
sarcasm cut through his euphoria and the words registered harshly in his
ears. He shut his eyes tight, shifting his weight a little. “Not
tonight, Beth,” he begged her. “Please, not tonight.”

The pleading in his voice irritated her. If she had been another kind of
woman she might have responded with a wealth of sweet reassurance; she
might have been _able_ to respond that way. But instead she felt disdain
for him, the sort of scorn most women reserve for a man who shows
himself a weakling. Charlie was not a weakling and Beth knew it. And yet
it seemed that over the years, as the ominous cracks developed in their
marriage, he had made most of the concessions to keep them together, and
that too aroused her scorn. It was true that she would have suffered
fits of guilt and loneliness if he hadn’t, and she was grateful to him
for his “tact.” But the very role she forced him to play and thanked him
for in her secret conscience, lessened him in her eyes.

Dimly, Charlie realized this too. But he was caught in the squirrel cage
and there was no way out.

Carefully Beth said, “I just want you to say it’s okay.”

With a weary sigh he loosened his embrace in order to look at her. “Say
what’s okay?”

“If I model with Vega a couple of days a week.”

His eyes widened then as he heard and understood, and he turned away
from her, picking up his pajamas and carrying them in front of him. His
unwanted love was too obvious and it embarrassed him. “Vega Purvis is a
Class-A bitch,” he said.

Beth’s cheeks went hot with indignation. She whipped her nightie out of
the closet and slipped it over her simmering head. If she threw her
anger in his face now he would never agree to it. But to call Vega a
bitch, when he hardly even knew her!

“I think she’s delightful,” she said haughtily, when the covering of the
nightie gave her some pretense to dignity.

“Sure. Delightful. What in hell do you want to learn _modeling_ for?
From that winesop?” He climbed under the covers and lighted a cigarette,
and there was a flood of misery in him at the sight of her drawn up
stiff and chilly in her resentment.

“You say modeling like you meant whoring!” she flashed.

“Well, what _does_ it mean?” he asked with elaborate courtesy. “You tell
me.”

“I’d probably go down there once or twice a week,” she said, suddenly
softening in an effort to bring him around. “It would be just for fun,
not for money. I’d never model professionally. But it would be something
to get me out of the house, something really interesting for a change.
Not that goddamn interminable _bowling_ Jean dotes on.”

“I can’t see that walking around with a book on your head is so damn
much more interesting than shoving a ball down an alley.”

Her fleeting softness vanished. “I _knew_ you’d be this way!” she cried.
“Just because _I_ want something, you _don’t_ want it! When in doubt,
say no. That’s your motto.” She continued to berate him for a moment
until it became clear that he wasn’t listening. He was staring past her,
beyond her, at nothing, thinking. And his eyes were dark and heavy. He
held his cigarette in one hand, so close to his chest that she had a
momentary fear the hair would catch fire and scorch him.

“Charlie?” she said, after a moment’s silence.

“Beth, tell me something,” he said seriously, and his eyes, still aimed
at her, focused on her once again. “I want you to explain to me what is
the matter with our marriage.”

For a long minute neither of them spoke. And then Beth sat down on the
bed, at his feet, biting her lower lip. “You explain it to _me_,” she
said.

“I’ll gladly tell you all I know,” he said. “I know we have two lovely
children. I know we have a pleasant house to live in, even if it is
small. I know _I_ love _you_.” There was a significant pause, in which
she should have said, _Of course I love you too_. But she didn’t. He
sighed. “I know we _should_ be happy. There isn’t anything specific you
can put your finger on that’s out-and-out wrong with us. So why do we
argue all the time? Why, when we’re still together, we still have each
other, and things are going along the right way—_why_ aren’t we happy,
Beth? Because we’re not. We sure as hell are not.”

Beth couldn’t look at him, at his frowning face. “If you’d pick up after
yourself once in a while,” she said. “If you’d agree, just once, to let
me do something I really want to do.” The spite in her voice piqued him.

“Oh! Now I understand. This would be a gloriously happy household if it
weren’t for me, is that it? If the husband and father would just get the
hell out, the family would be perfect. Right?”

“Cut the sarcasm, Charlie,” she said. She tried to sound firm but her
chin trembled.

“I get it from you, dear. It’s catching,” he said. “Besides, I’m not
convinced that you’ll swoon happily in my arms if I pick up my socks in
the morning.”

She made a helpless gesture with her hands. “All right, Charlie, I’m at
fault too. Is that what you want me to say? I fly off the handle, I’m
cross with the kids. I—I—”

“You kick me out of bed three or four times a week.”

She turned a blazing face to him. “Charlie, goddamn it, I’m your wife.
But that doesn’t mean that any time you feel like having me, I feel like
being _had_. Three or four times a week is _too much_!”

“It didn’t use to be,” he said, his voice as soft as hers was loud.
“What happened?”

Tears started to her eyes for the second time that evening and she
turned away. “Nothing,” she exclaimed.

“Something must have happened, Beth. You just don’t want it any more.
Ever. You give in now and then to shut me up—not because you really want
me.”

She covered her face with both hands and wept quickly with fear and
confusion. “I don’t _know_ what happened,” she admitted finally.

He leaned toward her, hating to hurt her. “Beth, I’d do anything for
you,” he said earnestly. “I’d let you go model in Timbuktu if that would
make you happy. But it won’t. All these things you think you want so
badly—did you ever stop to examine them? What are they? So many escapes.
You’re running away. The one thing you can’t stand, you can’t bear to
face or live with or understand, is your relationship with me. Your
home. Your kids. But mostly me. Are you sorry we got married, Beth? Tell
the truth.”

There was a terrible, painful pause. It took all of her courage to
admit, “I don’t know. That’s the truth. I don’t know.”

He shut his eyes for a moment, as if to recover a little.

“Do you love me, then?”

She swallowed. “Yes,” she said. Her courage would not stretch so far as
to let her hedge on that one.

“Do you love the kids?”

She caught her breath and bit her lip. _I will be truthful, I’ll be as
truthful as I can_, she told herself sharply.

“Do you love the kids, honey?” he prompted her.

“When they’re not around,” she blurted, and gave an awful sob, covering
her wicked mouth with one hand. When she could talk a little she said,
“I love them, I love them terribly, but I just can’t _stand_ them. Does
that make any sense?”

He lay back on the bed and gazed at the ceiling. The sight of Beth tore
his heart. “Not to me, it doesn’t,” he said. And seeing her despair, he
added, “But at least it’s the truth, Beth. Thank you for that much,
anyway.” There was no sarcasm in his voice now.

Beth got up and walked back and forth at the foot of the bed. “I know
I’m not the world’s greatest mother, Charlie. Far from it.” She wiped
her eyes impatiently. “Or the best wife. I guess I hound you all the
time because I’m ashamed of my own behavior. At least that’s part of it.
You’re no dreamboat yourself sometimes.” She turned to look at him and
he nodded without answering.

“The trouble is, I just don’t know what I _would_ be good at,” she said
helplessly. “I don’t know what I want to do. I wish I could want
something, good and hard, and it would be the right thing. Sometimes I
wish somebody would _tell_ me what I want. Maybe my ideas about
traveling and the rest of it are just daydreams. Escape, or whatever you
said. But Charlie, that’s not criminal. I _need_ an escape. I really
do.” She felt a note of semi-hysteria pulling her voice higher and
higher and she stopped talking for a minute to catch her breath.

“I wanted to go to Mexico last year. You said no. I wanted to get that
MG we saw in Monrovia. You said no. I have a couple of cocktails by
myself in the afternoon and you blow your top. You think I’m headed for
Skid Row. I ask to go home and visit Uncle John. No again.”

“The last time you visited Uncle John,” Charlie pointed out with heat,
“I didn’t see you for four whole months.”

“And those four months saved my sanity!” she cried, thrusting her angry
chin toward him.

He lighted another cigarette in offended silence.

After a moment she resumed, trying to keep her voice level, “Now I want
to model a couple of days a week. Is that so very awful? Am I really a
case for the bughouse because I want to _escape_ once in a while?” She
tried, with her voice, to make it seem ridiculous.

“If it were only once in a while,” he said sadly. They were silent
again. Beth had stopped her pacing and he looked at her lovely figure,
shadowy beneath the nylon film of nightie. He wanted her so much ... so
much. At last he said, quietly, “Well, I guess it’s better than losing
you to Uncle John for half a year.”

She turned around slowly and her face was grateful. “Thanks, Charlie,”
she said. “I would have done it anyway, but—” She was sorry she had said
it. He looked so despondent, utterly stripped of his husbandly
influence, almost a stranger to her. “But I wanted you to approve,” she
went on hastily. “I wanted to be able to tell you about it and
everything.” He refused to look at her. “She—she’s doing it for
nothing,” Beth added, hoping to make it more acceptable to him.

He laughed unpleasantly. “She’s doing it for _something_, Beth. Not
money, maybe, but _something_. Vega’s not the kind of girl who does
things for nothing.”

She went around the bed and sat down beside him. “Look at me, honey,”
she said. “I want to thank you.”

“I know,” he answered, but the thought of her kiss suddenly made him
weak and a little sick. He sat up, turning to give her his back and was
suddenly mortified to feel her lips on it in a brief shy salute. He
froze.

“Beth,” he said sternly. “Vega is a strange girl. You should know....”

“Know what?” she said eagerly.

“Cleve has told me,” he said reluctantly. “She’s been married a couple
of times.”

“To whom?” Beth interrupted, astonished. Vega? _Married?_

“Well, I didn’t know them. The first marriage was ideal, by your lights:
she lived in Chicago and he lived in Boston. For eight years. Cleve said
she never let him in her bed. His name was Ray something. She calls him
ex-Ray.”

Beth had to grin at his back. It began to sound more like the elegant
enigma she knew. “Who was the other one?” she asked.

“Some good-timer, backslapping sort of guy. A roommate of Cleve’s once,
before I knew him. Younger than Vega. It’s only been two years since she
divorced that one. I guess he didn’t get past the bedroom door either,
but he did get into her bank account. Spent all her money and then
disappeared. Nobody knows where he is. She never talks about him.”

“Well,” Beth said cautiously, “that’s not so strange. I mean, she
obviously wasn’t a good marriage risk, but lots of women have behaved
that way. Maybe the men she picked weren’t such prizes either.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.” He turned to look at her. “She lives alone with
her mother and her grandfather. Cleve says they’re a trio of cuckoo
birds. You can’t get him over there. Except Christmas and birthdays, and
he only goes because he feels he has to.”

“Do they really hate each other—Cleve and Vega?” Beth asked.

“Only on the bad days,” he said. “Now and then they quit speaking to
each other. But then their mother breaks a leg or Gramp poisons the stew
and they get back together. Takes a family calamity, though. Right now
they’re as friendly as they ever are, according to Cleve. I don’t know
why it should be that way. Doesn’t seem natural.”

“They’re both such nice people. It’s a shame,” she said.

Charlie couldn’t stand to look at her any longer and not touch her. He
put his arms around her and felt her nestle against him with a
shattering relief. After a few minutes he heaved himself over her to
turn out the dresser lamp, returning fearfully to her arms, only to find
them open.

“Is this my thanks for giving in?” he said. It was flat and ironical. He
couldn’t help the dig. But she took it in stride by simply refusing to
answer him. He made up for several weeks of involuntary virtue that
night.

Before they slept, Charlie had to say one last thing. He saved it until
he knew they were both too tired to stay awake and argue. He didn’t want
to ruin things. She lay very close to him, in his arms, too worn out for
her usual tears of frustration, and he whispered to her, “Beth?”

“Hm?”

“Darling, I have to know this. Don’t be angry with me, just tell the
truth like you did earlier. Beth, I—” It was so hard to say, so awkward.
He was afraid of humiliating her, rousing her temper again. “I keep
thinking of Laura,” he said at last.

“Laura?” Beth woke up a little, opening her eyes.

“Yes. I mean, I can’t help but wonder if you—you know how you felt about
her—if it’s the modeling that interests you or if it’s—Vega.”

In the blank dark he couldn’t see her face and he waited, fearful, for
her answer. _God, don’t let her explode_, he prayed.

Beth turned away from him, her face dissolved in tears. “It’s the
modeling!” she said in a fierce whisper. And they said no more to each
other that night.




                              Chapter Five


Vega’s studio was located on the second floor of a building that housed
an exclusive dress shop and a luggage and notions shop. It was an
expensive place to rent and Beth was rather surprised to see how bare it
was. There was a small reception room which was tastefully decorated,
though there was space for more chairs in it. There was a door marked
“office,” which was closed, and there was a large, nearly empty studio
room with eight or ten folding chairs, the kind you sit on at PTA
meetings.

Beth peered into the studio hesitantly, and instantly Vega materialized
from a small group of high school girls who had surrounded her while she
spoke to them. There was silence while she walked, regally lovely in
flowing velvet, both hands extended to Beth. The teens examined the
newcomer with adolescent acuteness, and Beth took their silent appraisal
uneasily.

Vega reached her. “Darling, how are you,” she said in her smooth
controlled voice, and kissed Beth on the mouth. Beth was shocked
speechless. She stared at Vega with big startled eyes.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Vega laughed, seeing her expression. “The doctor says
I’m socially acceptable. The TB has been inactive for almost two
years—really a record.”

But it wasn’t the infected lung, the possibility of catching TB, that
upset Beth. That, in fact, never occurred to her. It was the sudden
electric meeting of mouths, the impudence of it, the feel of it, the
teen-aged audience taking it all in. Beth was piqued. Vega had no
business treating her so familiarly. Still, it was impossible to make a
fuss over it, as though she were guilty of some indecent complicity with
Vega.

“How are you?” she said uncertainly.

The knot of girls began to talk and giggle again, and Vega turned to
them. “Okay, darlings, you can go now,” she said. “That’s all for this
afternoon.”

She took Beth’s arm and led her into the studio while the girls filed
past them and out, still staring. Beth began to be seriously disturbed.
Vega behaved as if they were sisters, at the very least, and at the
worst.... Beth turned to her abruptly.

“Vega, I hate to say anything, but really, I—I—” She paused,
embarrassed. Vega would surely take it the wrong way. Who but a girl
with a problem would take the kiss, the familiarity, so hard? What,
after all, was so dreadful about a kiss between two women? Even if it
was so unexpected, even if it was so direct that a trace of moisture
from Vega’s lips remained on Beth’s own.

_I’d only look like a fool to complain_, Beth thought. _She’d think I
was—queer—or something._ How she hated that word!

“Something wrong?” Vega said helpfully.

“I—well, I’m just not so sure I should do this, that’s all,” she said
lamely. “Charlie said—”

“Charlie be damned. Charlie’s as stuffy as Cleve. They make a beautiful
couple,” she shot at Beth, who was startled by the sharp emphasis.
“However....” Vega turned away, walking to one of the folding chairs to
pick up her purse and fish out a cigarette. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe you
shouldn’t try to do this.”

“_What?_” Beth exclaimed. “After all you said—”

“Oh, just for today, I mean,” Vega laughed. “I don’t feel much like
giving another lesson. I get so sick of this damn place,” she added
plaintively, and her change of expression impressed Beth. Vega looked
tired for a moment, and perhaps not as young as usual. But her face
smoothed out quickly. “You don’t really mind, do you?” she said.

“Well, I—I do a little,” Beth admitted. After what she had gone through
to get Charlie’s approval she minded a lot. But Vega intimidated her
somehow, and she hadn’t the nerve to show her irritation. “But if you’re
tired....” She paused.

“I am,” Vega said. “But I have no intention of abandoning you, my little
housewife.” She swung a plush coat over her shoulders. “I’m tired and
fed up and sick to death—not really,” she added with a brilliant smile
that did not reassure Beth at all. The edge in Vega’s usually soft and
low voice made her words sound literally true. _Tired, fed up, sick._
And those eyes, so deep and dark and full, had turned lusterless again,
as if Vega were defying her to look into them and see her secrets.

“Let’s go slumming,” she said, and the way she said it, the quick return
of life to her face, the odd excitement so tightly controlled, was
infectious.

“Where?” Beth said, intrigued.

“Well, you look so nifty we can’t go too far astray,” Vega said, looking
at her professionally. And yet not quite professionally enough. “Do you
have your car?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll show you where my girls hang out. My teen-agers.” She spoke
of them with visible affection. “It’s a caffè espresso place—The
Griffin. It’s not far. Have you been there?”

“I’ve heard of it but I never thought I’d see it. It’s the last place in
Pasadena that would interest my adventurous husband.”

“Let’s go!” Vega spoke gaily and caught Beth’s arm. They left the studio
together, walking down the narrow flight of stairs to the street, and
Beth thought, _My God, I never even got my coat off_.

“I like your studio, Vega,” she said, because the silence between them
was becoming too full.

“Do you?” It was almost a listless response. “I’m going to redecorate
it. That’s why it looks so bare.”

Beth tried to look at Vega’s face but they had reached the foot of the
stairs and she had to pull the door open for her instead. Vega would not
release her arm, even through the clumsy maneuver of getting out the
door, and Beth was peeved to find her clinging to her still as they
walked down the street toward the car. She was grateful when they
reached it for the semi-privacy it afforded.

“Where to?” she said, starting the motor.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The Griffin was dark and dank, jammed with very young, very convivial
people very sure of themselves. In a corner an incredibly dirty minstrel
twanged on a cracked guitar and sang what passed for old-English
ballads. There were beards aplenty on the males and pants aplenty on the
girls. Only a few females, Vega and Beth among them, wore skirts. And
there was coffee of all kinds but no liquor. Not even beer.

“Coffee—that’s all you can get in here,” Vega said. So they ordered
Turkish coffee and drank it while Vega told her about the place. “It’s
just an old private house,” she said. “The kids have redone it all
themselves.”

“They did a godawful job,” Beth commented and immediately sensed,
without being told, that she had injured Vega, who seemed actually
rather proud of the place.

“Yes, I guess they did,” she admitted. Vega looked around, her eyes
bright and probing, wafting smiles at the familiar faces and studying
the strange ones. Beth saw her nervous pleasure, her fascination, quite
plainly in her face. So it startled her to see that same lovely face
cloud over abruptly, with angry wrinkles spoiling the purity of her
brow. Vega glanced at Beth and realized her emotions were showing.
Rather diffidently she nodded at a tableful of girls about ten feet from
them.

“See those girls?” she said. There were five of them, all in tight
pants, all rather dramatically made up, with the exception of one who
wore no makeup at all. Her hair was trimmed very short and she had a
cigarette tilting from the corner of her mouth. Beth’s gaze rested on
her with interest. She looked tough, a little disillusioned. Her blonde
hair was unkempt but her eyes were piercing and restless and her face
made you look twice. It wasn’t ugly, just different. Quite boyish.

“They’re disgusting,” Vega said. “I can’t bear to look at them.”

Beth saw her hand trembling and she looked at her in astonishment. “For
God’s sake, why?” she said. “They’re just kids. They look pretty much
like the others in here. What’s so awful about them?”

“That one with the cigarette—she ought to be in jail,” Vega said
vehemently.

“Do you know her?” Beth said, glancing back at the tough arresting face.
Vega’s heat amused and scared her a little. Vega was so frail. How mad
could you get before you hurt yourself, with only one lung, a fraction
of a stomach, and a bodyful of other infirmities?

“I don’t know her personally,” Vega said, stabbing out her cigarette,
“but I know enough about her to put her in jail ten times over.”

“Why don’t you, then?” Beth asked.

Vega looked away, confused. Finally she turned back to Beth and pulled
her close so she could whisper. “That lousy bitch is gay. I mean, a
Lesbian. She hurt one of my girls. Really, I could kill her.”

“Hurt one of your girls?” Beth could only gape at her. What did she
mean? She sounded tense, a little frantic.

“One of my students. She made a pass at her,” Vega fumed.

“Well, that couldn’t have hurt very much,” Beth said and smiled. “That’s
not so bad, is it?” She looked curiously at the girl.

But Vega was displeased. “I don’t imagine you approve of that sort of
thing?” she said primly, and Beth, once again, was lost, surprised at
the changes in her.

“I wouldn’t send her to jail for it,” Beth said.

Vega stared at her for a minute and then she stood up. “Let’s go,” she
said. “If I’d known she was in here I wouldn’t have come.” She was so
upset, so obviously nervous, that Beth followed her out without a
protest. They walked to the car, neither one speaking.

“Take me home, will you, Beth?” Vega said when they got in, and lapsed
into gloomy silence. Beth began to see what Charlie meant by strange.
Moody and restless. In fact, Vega’s mood had changed so radically that
the bones seemed to have shifted under her skin. Her face looked taut
and tired and much older now. She slumped as if weakened by her angry
outburst.

At last Beth asked softly, “Why do you go in there, Vega, if it bothers
you so?”

“I didn’t expect _her_.”

“What did you expect?”

“My girls, of course. They’re in there all the time.”

And Beth could hear, in the way Vega said “_my_ girls,” how much her
students meant to her, how much she needed their youth around her, their
pretty faces, their respect. “I like to let them see me in there once in
a while,” she added, trying for a casual sound in her voice. “Gives them
the idea that I’m not a square. You understand. You see—I mean, well,
they mean a lot to me,” she went on, and there was a thread of tense
emotion in her voice now. “Everything, really. They’re all I have,
really, I—” And unexpectedly she began to cry. Beth was both concerned
and dismayed. She reached a hesitant hand toward Vega to comfort her,
controlling the car with the other.

“It’s all right, Vega, don’t cry,” she said. “Do I turn here?”

Vega looked up and nodded.

They turned down the new street and Beth ventured softly, “You have your
mother and grandfather, Vega. And Cleve. Your family. You aren’t alone.
And you have friends.”

“My family is worthless! Worse than worthless. They hang like stones
around my neck,” Vega said and the bitterness helped her overcome her
tears.

“I’m sorry. I should keep my mouth shut,” Beth said.

“And I haven’t any friends,” Vega cried angrily. “Just my girls. They’re
sweet to me, you know, they bring me things—” and abruptly, as if
ashamed, she broke off. “I’d like you for a friend, Beth,” she said. “I
really would. I liked you right away. I’ve never been much good at
making friends with women, and for some reason I get the feeling that
you’re the same way. It makes me feel closer to you. Am I right?” She
paused, waiting for an answer.

Beth was alarmed by her behavior, afraid to aggravate her, and yet she
felt it served her as warning not to get too close to Vega. The older
woman was lovely, quick and charming. But Charlie was right—she was
strange. Beth had a premonition of that wild fury with the world that
displayed itself against the Lesbian and against Vega’s family turning
on herself someday. But she couldn’t delay answering. You offer your
friendship gladly, without deliberation, or you don’t offer it at all.

“I’d like to be friends with you, Vega,” she said, but it sounded hollow
to her.

To Vega it sounded beautiful. “I’m glad,” she said, and Beth felt that
the mood had passed. Vega put a hand on her arm and left it there until
they reached her house.

“Come in for a cocktail,” she said. She was telling Beth, not asking
her, and Beth was unable to refuse. “There’s just one thing,” Vega
cautioned as they walked up the driveway to the small bungalow. “Mother
can’t drink anything. But _anything_. Really. It would kill her. She’s
an absolute wreck. You’ll love her, of course, but she _is_ a mess. I
sometimes think she just keeps on living to remind me of the powers of
alcohol.”

Beth blanched slightly at this, but Vega laughed at her own remarks.
“Anyway, Mother drank like a fish for twenty-three years and suddenly
she went all to hell inside. Liver, bladder, God knows what-all. The
doctor tried to explain it to me, but all I know is she aches all over
and she has to make forty trips to the bathroom every day.”

The little crudity brought Beth up short. It was so homely, so out of
place on Vega’s patrician lips. But Vega was full of contradictions;
they were, perhaps, her only consistency.

As they paused, they were approached abruptly by a slight shadow of a
man in worn corduroys and a jaunty deer-hunting cap. His arms were full
of cats and his eyes full of mischief. What cats couldn’t find room in
his arms sat on his shoulders.

“Gramp!” Vega exclaimed. “You scared me to death.” She relieved him of
two cats, the ones that were having the most trouble hanging on. “This
is Beth Ayers,” she told him. “Beth—my grandfather.”

“How do you do, Mr. —?” Beth began clumsily, holding out a hand to him.

“Gramp. Just call me Gramp.” He ignored her hand. Even with two of the
cats transferred to Vega’s arms he was still too loaded to let go and
pursue the normal courtesies. “My best friends,” he grinned, nodding at
the soft animals.

“Your _only_ friends,” Vega amended. “The only ones he trusts, anyway,”
she told Beth. “We were just going in for a cocktail, Gramp. I was
telling Beth about Mother.”

“_What_ about her?” His eyes snapped with good humored suspicion.

“Just what a mess she is.”

“Well, forewarned is forearmed,” he said to Beth. “She’s really quite
harmless.”

“Except for her tongue,” Vega said softly.

The three of them headed for the front door again. “Fortunately she’s
much nicer than she looks,” Gramp explained. “She likes to laze around
in nothing but an old beat-up bathrobe. Saves pulling down her pants all
the time. You see, she has to take a—”

“I know, I know, Vega told me,” Beth said quickly. Why did they take
such a delight in exposing all the ugly comical little family weaknesses
to her? Did it make them easier to bear? Or were they punishing
themselves for something? Beth stopped where she was.

“What’s the matter?” Vega and Gramp asked with one voice, pausing and
looking back at her.

“Vega, your mother doesn’t want any visitors,” Beth said. “She’s
_sick_.”

“Sure she’s sick. We’re all sick. It’s part of the family charm,” Gramp
said. “Come on in and join the fun.”

“You’ll see what I’m going to look like in another ten or twelve years,
according to Mother,” Vega said.

“The last thing she’d want is visitors,” Beth tried once more, but Vega
shushed her with a laugh.

“Bull,” Gramp commented. “Hester’s sick and proud of it. She likes to
show it off. She gave up appearances years ago. Actually takes pride in
being a wreck. She’s delightful. You’ll love her. Even the cats enjoy
her company.”

And Beth, reluctant, bashful, but overwhelmed with curiosity to see what
Vega would “look like in ten years,” followed them in.

“Don’t mention liquor,” Vega hissed just before she pushed the front
door open. “_Remember._”

Beth’s first impression was that the house was stiflingly hot; and the
second, jampacked with rickety furniture. Vega flitted around the room
lighting lamps and dissipating the gloom, and Beth suddenly became aware
of an old woman sitting in a corner who appeared to be broken into
several pieces. She wore a gray, once-pink dressing gown; she had been
listening to a speaking record until she heard Vega and Beth enter. Vega
kissed her head briefly in salutation.

“Mother, this is Beth Ayers,” Vega said. “I told you about her. Mother’s
blind as a bat,” she said cheerfully to Beth, who advanced to take the
old lady’s outstretched hand. “I forgot to tell you that.”

“But not much else, hey?” her mother said, holding out a hand. “How do
you do, my dear?”

Beth murmured something to her, grasping her hot hand gingerly. And then
Vega said, with a wink at Beth, “Let’s all have a Coke. Mother, you
game?”

“Are you kidding?” Mrs. Purvis said. “It’ll have to be Seven-Up, though.
Gramp busted the plumber one with the last Coke. There’s still fizz all
over the john.” And she cackled with pleasure. Gramp, unperturbed, was
arranging himself in a harem of cats on the couch. Beth stared at Mrs.
Purvis, repelled and fascinated and amused.

_Vega in ten years?_ Utterly incredible! Never.

“What the hell did you do that for, Gramp?” Vega called from the
kitchen. “The plumber hurt one of the cats?”

“No, they disagreed about the plunger,” her mother answered, cutting
Gramp off. “Gramp said the head was German rubber and the plumber said
they don’t make rubber in Germany. So Gramp pickled him in fizz.”

“He deserved it. He was wrong,” Gramp said mildly.

Beth smiled uneasily at them all, slipping out of her coat and feeling
the sweat already trickling down her front. _God, it must be a hundred
degrees in here_, she thought. _How does Vega stand it?_

Vega came out of the kitchen, apparently standing it very well, with
some glasses on a tray and a bottle of Seven-Up. She poured it for her
mother and handed Beth a glass with two inches of whiskey and an ice
cube in the bottom. Gramp got the same and settled back into the cats
with a conspiratorial sigh.

“Tell us what you did today, Mother,” Vega said, while Beth made signs
to her that she wanted some water in her drink. Vega took the glass back
to the kitchen while Mrs. Purvis answered.

“Listened to a book,” she said.

“A good one?”

“Good book, but a lousy reader. They cut out all the good stuff anyway.
I guess they figure we poor blind bastards will die of frustration if we
hear the good parts.” She chuckled. “With me it’s all a matter of
nostalgia, anyway,” she added. “How old are you, Beth, my dear?”

“Thirty,” Beth said, taking her glass again from Vega.

“On the nose? Any kids?”

“Two,” Beth said. “Boy and girl.”

“Ideal,” said Mrs. Purvis. “Just like the Purvis clan. You know,” she
said, leaning toward Beth, “what a harmonious family we are.” There was
a mischievous leer in her smile.

“I’m sure you are,” Beth said politely.

Mrs. Purvis roared amiably. “Everything we ever did was immoral,
illegal, and habit forming,” she said. “Until Cleve turned straight and
earned an honest living,” she added darkly.

“God, Mother, you make us sound like a pack of criminals,” Vega
protested.

“We’re all characters. But not a queer one in the bunch.” Mrs. Purvis
took a three ounce swallow of Seven-Up. “Too bad you never knew my
husband,” she said to Beth. “A charmer.”

“Daddy was a doctor,” Vega said, and Beth noticed, uncomfortably, that
she was working on a second drink of straight whiskey.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Purvis energetically. “Specialized in tonsils. Once a
week he went down to his office—Monday mornings, usually—and sliced out
eighteen or twenty pairs. That was all. Never did another thing and
never lost a patient. Made a pile too, all on tonsils. Kept us quite
comfortably for years. It’s a shame he wasn’t around to carve Vega up
when the time came.”

“My tonsils are the _only_ things they didn’t cut out, Mother,” Vega
reminded her.

“Well, it was a good life,” Mrs. Purvis said. “Lots of leisure time,
lots of money for booze and the rest of life’s necessities. Of course, I
drink tamer stuff these days. How’s your Seven-Up, girls?”

“Oh, it’s delicious,” Beth said quickly, but something in the old lady’s
face told her that Vega’s silent boozing didn’t escape her mother.
Whiskey didn’t _sound_ any different from Seven-Up, but it _smelled_
different.

“I hope you split them up fairly, Vega,” Mrs. Purvis said. “There were
only two.” She smiled inwardly at herself, slyly.

“There were three, Mother. One in the back of the shelf. You missed it,”
Vega lied promptly, with perfect ease.

“Oh.” Her disappointment seemed to remind Mrs. Purvis that it was time
for another of her incessant trips to the bathroom, and she heaved
unsteadily to her feet.

“Can I help you?” Beth exclaimed, half rising, but Mrs. Purvis waved her
down.

“Hell no, dear,” she said. “This is one thing I can still do by myself,
thank God. When I can’t make it to the john any more I’m going to lie
down with the damn cats in the back yard and die.”

“If they’ll have you,” Gramp murmured.

“Besides, she needs the exercise,” Vega said. “It’s the only walking she
does, really.”

“I get more exercise than you, my dear daughter,” said her mother from
the door. “You just sit around on your can all day and tell other people
how to walk. You should try it some time. Every twenty minutes. Never
gives the circulation time to get sluggish. There are many advantages to
being old and diseased, as you will soon discover,” she said, chortling
with expectation at Vega. “Not the least of them are virtue and
exercise.”

“All right, Hester, get the hell in the bathroom before you lose it,”
Gramp snapped impatiently, and Beth saw Vega’s temper rising too. Beth
didn’t know whether she was amused or repelled by the whole scene: the
ugly crumbling old woman, the way Vega lived, the wise-cracking with the
hint of violence under the humor. She didn’t understand why she said yes
when Vega fixed her another drink, then another. And Vega drank two for
her every one.

Beth began to forget, or rather to get accustomed to, the hothouse
atmosphere. She unbuttoned her blouse at the top and pushed the dark
hair off her perspiring forehead, and talked and laughed with Vega and
Mrs. Purvis. They were both a little daffy, she decided, but in a
macabre sort of way they were fun. And Vega was so beautiful ... so
beautiful. Beth saw her now with slightly fuzzy outlines. Vega became
animated in a careful sort of way, even laughing aloud, which was an
effort for her. Every little while she would disappear with their empty
glasses and come back with a couple of inches of liquor in them. Mrs.
Purvis had long since finished her Seven-Up.

“No, thanks,” Beth said finally, laughing in spite of herself when Vega
offered her another. “I can’t, really, I’m driving.”

Vega raised an alarmed finger to her lips, and Mrs. Purvis said, “That
crap will kill you, dear. It’s the bubbles—they’re poison, I swear.
Whiskey is much better for you, believe me.” And Beth thought her
sagging old face looked crafty and pleased with itself—or was it just
the effort of trying to figure the two young women out?

Beth rose to go, throwing her coat over her shoulders.

“Oh, wait!” Vega pleaded. “Wait a little while. I’ll make some dinner
for us.” She put a hand on Beth’s arm and this time it didn’t bother
Beth at all. Or rather, the bothersome sensation was welcome; it was all
pleasure. They smiled at each other and Beth felt herself on the verge
of giving in. She felt at the same time a warmth in Vega that she hadn’t
suspected.

“Stay and have some dinner with us, Beth,” Mrs. Purvis said genially.
“Vega’s a lousy cook unless she has company to fix for. The damn pussies
eat better than we do.”

“They’re healthier, too,” Gramp interposed.

Beth looked at her watch. It was past six o’clock, which struck her
funny. “I can’t, thanks,” she said. “My kids, my husband—”

“Can’t he cook?” exclaimed Mrs. Purvis. “Hell, I used to make the doctor
sling his own hash three or four times a week. And we were sublimely
happy.”

_But what happened?_ Beth wondered. _Your family split up and went all
to hell. Everyone but Cleve, and even Cleve drinks too much. Charlie
gripes about it._

“Charlie can boil water,” she said, “but that’s all. It’s past
dinnertime now.” She adjusted her coat and headed for the door.

Vega scooped up a couple of mewing cats from the couch and followed her,
balancing her drink precariously at the same time.

“Tell her to stay for dinner, Gramp,” Mrs. Purvis said.

“Canned cat food. The finest,” he offered with a grin.

But Beth suddenly felt the need to escape, and Vega, seeing it, took her
hand and led her outdoors. “That’s enough, you two,” she called back to
her family. “Don’t scare her off!”

Beth turned and looked at Vega one last time before she left. She felt
giddy and silly and she was aware that there was a smile on her face, a
smile that wouldn’t go away. “Thanks, Vega,” she said.

“You know, you don’t need modeling lessons, Beth,” Vega said slowly, as
if it were something they had a tacit understanding about. “I like the
way you walk. It’s not quite right for modeling—too free swinging—but I
wouldn’t change it for anything, even if I could. It would ruin you—the
lovely effect you make.”

Beth stammered at her, unable to answer coherently, only aware that she
was deeply flattered.

“Tell Charlie you had a first-rate lesson,” Vega went on. “Tell him you
walked three miles back and forth in a straight line and you learned how
to treat your hair with olive oil. Tell him anything, only come back on
Friday.”

Beth, smiling and mystified and pleased, said softly, “I will.”




                              Chapter Six


She drove home like a punch-drunk novice, laughing at the panic she
caused and feeling light, giddy, peculiarly happy in a way that almost
seemed familiar. She was unable even to feel guilty when she got home
and found that Charlie had had to feed the kids and was waiting with
stubborn hungry impatience for her to feed him.

She did her chores with a smile. Everything seemed easy. Even the
children. The bedtime routine charmed her, the way it would have if she
had to go through it only once or twice a year. She put her arms around
her children and cuddled them, to their surprise. And Charlie, who was
ready to bite her head off when she came in, traded his wrath for
astonished love two hours later.

It did something to Beth to be in the company of a desirable woman, a
woman whose interest was obviously reciprocal, and the first thing it
did was make her happy. Her kids reflected the lighter mood gratefully
and innocently, but Charlie ... Charlie wondered where it came from and,
knowing his wife, he worried.

Beth was surprised two days later when Cleve Purvis called her. She had
been in a state of wonderful tickling anticipation all day, picking out
a dress, pondering what to say when she got to the studio. And now, at
two o’clock in the afternoon, Cleve called.

“I know this is goofy,” he admitted, “but could I talk to you?”

“Sure,” she said. “Go ahead.”

“Not on the phone.”

“Why not?” she said, surprised.

“Don’t ask me, I feel like enough of an ass already. I’ll pick you up in
half an hour.”

“But Cleve—”

“Thanks,” he said and hung up. So she got her clothes on and decided
that whatever it was she’d make him drop her off at Vega’s afterward.

Cleve took her to a small key club bar and sat her down at a table in
the rear. They faced each other over the table. Strangers? Friends?
Acquaintances? What were they exactly to each other? Cleve had left
college before Beth met Charlie and they had only known each other
fairly well since she had come to California. They had seen each other
often, they had exchanged a few jokes, and now and then when Cleve was
tight they danced together. But never alone. Never had they had a
private talk. Charlie or Jean or the kids or somebody was always with
them.

It made Beth feel odd, unsure, to be with him now in a private bar.
Nobody knew about the meeting, apparently, and no one was there to see
them but a few late lunchers and early imbibers. It gave the meeting
something of the character of a secret tryst.

Cleve ordered a couple of Martinis. “I know this must seem funny to
you,” he said, and covered his awkwardness with a gulp of gin.

“Does Charlie know you asked me here?” she said.

“Not unless you told him.”

“No,” she said, and somehow the fact that both of them _could_ have told
him and neither of them had made her feel part of an illegal conspiracy.

“Well, don’t, Beth,” he said. “Just keep it to yourself. I may not have
any right to stick my nose in your affairs, but when your affairs get
scrambled up with Vega’s, somebody’s got to tell you a few things.”

Beth felt the hair on her scalp begin to tingle. “What things?” she
said. Cleve finished his drink and ordered another. He drank like
Vega—briskly and for a purpose. Beth looked hard at him, studying the
face she thought she knew so well. It seemed different now, pensive
under the thick dark blond hair. His mustache drooped and the deep cleft
in his chin gave a droll twist to his frown. Cleve was not a handsome
man, although Vega was a beautiful woman and they looked a good deal
alike. It happens that way sometimes in a family. Two of the kids will
resemble each other, yet the features that go so harmoniously in one
face are awkward and out of proportion in the other. And still, Cleve’s
face was pleasant enough—not out-and-out ugly. Beth liked it. She liked
the tired green eyes and the small wry grin he usually wore, and now and
then, when she thought about it, she wondered why in hell such a man
would marry a giggling good-natured idiot like Jean. Maybe her endless
smile comforted him. Maybe it bucked him up through the dismal periods
Charlie said he had, when he was more interested in booze than selling
plastic toys.

Up until the present it had not interfered with his business. Charlie
was willing to let him drink what he wanted, as long as he could do his
job. So far, it appeared, he could. Beth, looking at him, wondered what
strange, strong hold liquor held over the Purvises. Vega and Cleve both
worshipped the stuff, and Mrs. Purvis was blind and crippled and leaking
because of it.

Cleve had trouble telling Beth why he had brought her there this
afternoon. It was easier after a couple of drinks, and by that time they
were both looking at each other through new eyes.

“By God,” Cleve mused. “I never realized you had violet eyes before. I
always thought they were plain blue.”

“Is that why you dragged me down here? To tell me that?” she asked.

He grinned sheepishly. “That’s probably as good a reason as any. Better
than the real one.”

“You were going to tell me something about your wicked sister,” Beth
said. “And you better had before I get drunk. I have a date with her
this afternoon at four.”

“A date?” The phrase seemed to rock him a little. “Well, what the hell,
drink all you want, you won’t be any up on her. She’s never sober.”

“She’s never drunk, either,” Beth said.

“Yeah, how about that? I wish I were that kind of a drinker,” he said
enviously. “Never sober but never drunk.”

“It doesn’t seem to make _her_ very happy,” Beth observed. “Maybe it
would be better not to be a drinker at all.”

“No doubt about it,” Cleve said, grinning, and ordered another.

“Cleve, I can’t sit around all day,” she said, giving him a smile. “Tell
me about Vega, or I’ll leave you here with only the booze for company.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Beth, I—I—Vega’s queer.” He threw it at her,
curt and clumsy, as if it were hot and burned his mouth.

Beth stared at him, her face frozen with surprise, with a sudden fear
and wariness. “That’s a lousy word, Cleve. _Queer._”

“It’s a lousy condition. I only tell you because she won’t.”

“Well, give her the credit of a little kindness, anyway,” Beth snapped.
“She’s your sister.”

“Nobody needs to remind me,” he said. “Beth, this isn’t a nice way to
put it and I wish to hell I could laugh it off or forget it or put it
some genteel way. But when Charlie told me she asked you to come in and
model I thought somebody had better let you know.”

“And that somebody was you? Is this what you tell all her girls? Must be
great for business.” She put all her scorn into it.

“No.”

“Well, then why tell me? Why not let me find out for myself? If the
other girls can be trusted with her, why can’t I?” Her temper ignited
quickly.

“You’re special,” he said. “You’re different from the other
girls—_better_, I mean. And she likes you more. That’s obvious.”

“Well, if Vega’s so damn dangerous she probably would have made it clear
to me herself.” She was angry; her innocent idyll with Vega was
jeopardized by his harsh words. How could she fool around now, just play
a little, if Vega’s own brother watched every move with morbid
suspicion?

“That’s the hell of it, Beth,” he said, leaning toward her over the
table. “Vega doesn’t realize it. She doesn’t know she’s gay.”

Beth’s mouth dropped open slightly. “Good God, how can you be gay and
not know it?” she exclaimed.

And it was Cleve’s turn to stare. “I wouldn’t know,” he said finally,
slowly, still staring. “I don’t know anything about it, frankly. I’ve
never felt that way.”

Beth felt her whole neck flush and her cheeks turn scarlet. She was
suddenly embarrassed and irritated. “Is that all you came here to tell
me, Cleve? Vega’s gay? Nobody in the whole world has figured this
mystery out but you, of course, and you ‘don’t know anything about it.’
Not even _Vega_ knows about it. Just you. Not your mother, not Gramp,
not the people who live with her, not the models who study with her.
Just good old Doctor Cleve, expert analyst. He doesn’t know anything
about the subject, by his own admission, but he’s willing to damn his
sister and smear her reputation on the strength of his own intuition.
Oh, Cleve, come off it,” she said, disgusted and disappointed.

He wouldn’t argue with her. “I know she’s gay,” he said simply.
“Shouting at me won’t change that.”

“Nuts!” said Beth—but she believed him. “Can you prove it?”

He smiled, a melancholy smile. “I’m glad you’re defending her,” he said.
“I’m glad you’re mad about it. I wouldn’t have liked to see you take it
for granted.... No, I can’t prove it. I can only tell you things.... I
say this, not because your eyes are violet, not because you have such a
lovely mouth, not even because we’re both a little high. I say it in
honor of your innocence. I say it to spare you shock. I say it because I
hope you and Vega can be friends, and nothing more. She needs a friend.
She really does. All she has is Mother, and Mother has run her life
since it began. Vega adores her as much as she hates her, and that’s a
lot. She can’t get away from her, even though she wants to. In her
heart, in her secret thoughts—I don’t know—maybe she has some idea she’s
gay. But Mother hates the queers, she’s always poured contempt on them.
How can Vega admit, even to herself, that she’s the kind of creature
Mother despises?”

“Your mother doesn’t despise alcoholics, or quacks, or physical wrecks.”

“Yes, but you see, none of those are _queer_,” he said earnestly.

“Oh, Cleve, that word! That ugly, mean, pitiless word!”

“I’m sorry,” he said, studying her.

Beth finished her drink with a quiver of excitement and desire and
disgust—all the feelings that Vega roused in her.

“Vega’s going broke,” Cleve said. “That’s why the studio’s so bare.
Looks like a barn. She’s had to hock a lot of stuff and return a lot.
She used to support Mother and she told me they didn’t want my goddamn
charity. Now they’re getting it—they can’t live without it—but they let
me know every time I hand them a check that they run right in and wash
their hands as soon as it’s deposited at the bank.”

“Why?” Beth said, shocked.

“Mother thinks I’m a bastard because I didn’t study medicine like my
father. Gramp thinks whatever Mother thinks. And so does Vega.”

Beth began to see what a tyrannical hold Mrs. Purvis, in spite of her
debilities, had on her children.

“Vega and I understand each other,” Cleve said. “We’re both
contemptible.”

For a moment it seemed like he was begging for sympathy and Beth said,
rather sharply, “Oh, you’re not so bad. When you’re tight.”

Cleve gave a dispirited little laugh. “We know each other better than we
know ourselves,” he said. “Someday you’ll understand us, too,” he said,
looking into his glass. “If you keep on running around with Vega.” He
sounded almost jealous. He sounded almost like a man warning another man
away from his wife, not a friend warning another friend of his sister’s
emotional quirks.

Beth cautiously steered him back to finances. “Why is she going broke?”
she asked. “She has a nice studio, lots of students.”

“Not so many, not any more. Their mothers are worried about them. There
was a scandal a couple of years ago.”

“I never heard about it,” Beth declared, as if that proved it a
deliberate fib.

“You don’t hear about everything in the Purvis family,” he retorted, and
silenced her. “One of the girls had an affair with one of the others.
Vega knew about it and she didn’t exactly discourage it. And then some
of the others found out and told their parents. Vega should have quit
then and there and tried somewhere else, but she hates that kid who
started it all and she wants to stay here and make a go of it in spite
of what happened. Show everybody. Show the girl herself most of all.
Damn!” he said, and finished another drink.

Beth thought suddenly of the strange tough little blonde with no makeup
and a cigarette drooping from her mouth in the caffè espresso place.
“Who was the girl?” she asked.

“P.K. Schaefer is her name. Vega hates everybody but she hates P.K.
worse than poison.”

“Is she sort of a beatnik type? I mean, does she hang out in the coffee
houses, does she dress like—”

“Like a goddamn boy,” he finished for her, with the sound of his
mother’s disapproval plain in his voice. “Always has a cigarette hanging
out of the corner of her mouth, as if that would make a male of her. As
if that would take the place of—oh, hell.” He ordered another drink,
staring moodily at the floor.

And Beth knew it was P.K. she had seen. Did Vega love her or hate her?
Or, as with the other important people in her life, did she feel both
emotions for her? Beth felt a spark of jealousy.

“Vega doesn’t hate everybody, Cleve,” she said. “Maybe you two have had
some bad arguments, maybe life with her wasn’t all sugar candy when you
were growing up, but, my God, she’s a nice girl. She’s fun, she’s a
lovely person. If you think you’re going to make me drop her just by
throwing a few old scandals and half-baked suspicions in my face, you’re
wrong. We get along fine and I enjoy her. After all, it wasn’t Vega who
had the affair, it was her students. She’s not making any passes at me.
And from what she’s said about Lesbians I think she’d put the whole damn
clan in jail if she had her way.”

“Ah, she’s had you over to The Griffin to see P.K.,” he said, shocking
her. “Exhibit A. She works fast, I have to say that for her.”

“How did you know that?” She was mad again.

“She’s given you her famous lecture on the beastly Lesbians.”

Beth blushed. “Thanks for the drinks, Cleve,” she said sharply, starting
to rise, but he caught her wrist and pulled her down again. “Why do you
think she talks about them if she doesn’t have it on her mind all the
time?” he said fiercely, his face close to hers. There was a high pink
of excitement in his cheeks, as if he really, secretly, hated these
women who were rivals for his sister’s affection; as if he were
admonishing Beth, for his own selfish reasons, not to become one of
them.

“You said she didn’t even know she was—_gay_, herself,” Beth protested.

“Right,” he said. “She’d quit spouting all that crap about putting them
in jail if it meant she’d be going along with them.” He sighed and gazed
intently at her, and she smelled the whiskey on his breath. “Beth,
you’re a damn nice girl,” he pleaded. “You’re a lovely girl. You’re
bored as all hell with your life, it sticks out all over you. You
stumble across my sister and she’s charming, she’s different, she shocks
you a little and interests you a lot. You’re looking for kicks; you’re
sick of that little house and that great big husband and those noisy
kids, and Vega looks like heaven. She’s got all the sophistication, all
the glamor anybody could want. Hell, yes, I can understand it.”

And Beth, thunderstruck, only gazed at him in silence, too surprised
even to wonder when he had been observing her, when it began to matter
to him what she did. _Not until Vega began to matter to me_, she
thought, full of wonderment.

“Beth, she’s nuts. Please believe me. She’s goofy and she’s pure
trouble. I know; nobody knows like I know. I nurse her through her
emotional storms; I have all our lives. She gets these desperate crushes
she won’t admit, or can’t admit, or doesn’t understand, and I go through
hell with her. I don’t want it to happen with you. Life has been too
pleasant these past few months. No complications. Vega’s been getting
along so well.”

“Why do you fight with her so much?” Beth said softly. “If all you’re
trying to do is help her. That _is_ what you’re trying to do, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said, and looked away. “God knows I love her. I just fight
with her when I find out what she’s done.”

“Like what?” She felt as if he was almost on the verge of a confession
of some kind to her.

“Like socking Mother right out of her chair. It’s the only way she has
of getting back at Mother for dominating her life. Or like getting
stewed at seven in the morning when she’s supposed to be at a Chamber of
Commerce meeting that’ll mean jobs for her girls. Like bugging me all
the time about the money situation. And that goddamn blind spot of hers
a mile square! If she’d only admit what she is and arrange her life
accordingly. At least maybe she could live like other human beings
then.”

“How? What do you mean?”

“I mean face the fact there are two things she can’t live with—whiskey
and women. Put them out of her life. Get back to normal.” He sounded
bitter.

“But Cleve, _you’re_ normal, and _you_ drink.”

“Not like she does,” he said quickly, untruthfully. “I can go to sleep
at night without a bottle by my bed.” There was pride in his tone.

“Is it that bad?” Beth said. _Oh, Vega!_ It made her want to nurse her,
comfort her.

“She’s sick,” he said. “I don’t mean the TB, I mean up here,” and he
tapped his head at the temple. “You can’t provoke her, you can’t cross
her. She comes unglued. You haven’t seen that side of her yet. You keep
after her, you will.”

“You’ve accused her of some pretty ugly things this afternoon, Cleve,”
she said quietly.

“I’m not accusing her of anything. I’m trying to show you what she’s
like. What she’s capable of. I’m telling you not to let yourself get
mixed up with a woman like that.”

“You don’t think I can handle myself, do you?” she said.

He shrugged. “I don’t know. But Vega can’t handle herself, that’s
certain. She leaves it up to me.” He laughed, looking at his drink, but
the laugh was mirthless. “Maybe it’s from being so spoiled all her life,
from being a favorite child and a worshipped wife who kept two husbands
out of her bedroom for years.”

Beth wondered, looking at him, his face dark and brooding, why he had
really asked her there. Was he just trying to forewarn her of her
potentially unhappy situation? Or was he threatening her? Beth eyed him
suspiciously.

“You’re warned now, Beth, and that’s all I can do,” he said. “Except,
thank you for listening. And—ask you not to mention it to anyone.”

“Are you afraid Charlie’d think you’re as daffy as I think you are?” she
said.

He laughed again, a short sad noise. “I’m afraid Charlie knew that years
ago,” he said. He leaned across the table and took her hands. “Beth, why
in hell do you suppose I went to all this trouble for you? Exposed
myself and my shameful family to you? Because I want to get laughed at,
because I want to hear you say how buggy I am?”

“I don’t know why you’re doing it, Cleve. I really don’t.”

“You don’t need to freeze up,” he told her, his voice softening. “I just
don’t want to see you hurt, Beth. Jesus, I know _you’re_ normal. Don’t
get the idea I brought you down here to make you feel uncomfortable.
You’re as wholesome as cherry pie, you’re no neurotic self-blinded
Lessie. You’re sweet and healthy. I guess I just like you that way. I
guess I just don’t want to see Vega _change_ you.” But Beth had the
uncanny feeling that what he _really_ wanted was to keep them apart,
keep her away from Vega. Why?

“She won’t change me, Cleve. I am what I am. It’s too late for her to
make me over, even if she tried.”

“Thanks,” he said, as if she had promised him she would never see his
sister again. And then he let her go.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Vega’s lips met hers a half hour later and this time Beth felt none of
the resentment she had the first time, no desire to scold her and run.
Instead, it was Vega who was irritable, rushed and nervous. She was
preparing for a fashion show that night at the Hollywood Knickerbocker
Hotel, and there were clothes and girls all over the studio.

Beth knew, without being told, that there was no time for her today, and
it aroused a keen hunger in her for Vega’s company. She watched the
lovely woman glide smoothly about, her excitement showing only in her
eyes, and Beth experienced an unwelcome qualm of jealousy for the second
time that day. The girls, the young models, were so lithe and fresh. She
found herself imagining their sweet young bodies full of tender untried
places, and a sort of fever came over her.

It came as a shock when Vega asked her to leave. She pulled Beth aside
and said in a warm whisper, “Darling, really, I’m up to my ears in this.
I forgot all about it Tuesday. I just forgot everything Tuesday, all I
could think of was you.” And Beth wanted suddenly, urgently, in a sweat
of fear and delight, to put her arms around Vega and kiss her indecently
until her desire was satisfied.

“I hate to ask you,” Vega said, “but—well, let’s put it off till next
week. I’ve got so much to do. Beth, don’t look so disappointed!” She
smiled like an angel of the devil and Beth said, almost humbly, “Don’t
kick me out, Vega. Can’t I help? I’ll do anything.”

“No, you don’t know a damn thing about it. I’ve got to do it myself. Now
go, darling. Be a good girl and go.” And she gave Beth a kiss on the
cheek. Beth nearly suffocated for one lovely moment with the urge to
pull Vega back into the shadows and tell her how beautiful she was, how
unfairly beautiful.

But Vega left her and Beth was soon completely alone in the swirl of
frenetic activity. Girls in tulle, girls in tights, girls in skin-fitted
sheathes—all so young, all so feather-headed with excitement. Beth
watched them a moment, enjoying the practiced movements, the bursts of
nervous giggling, the fascinated preening at mirrors. Until she was
jostled once too often and felt her solitude in the inconvenience she
caused.

Shortly afterward she left. But she spent the whole evening in a misty
fantasy of Vega that even Charlie could not penetrate with his
grumblings about Cleve.

“I think he was out somewhere swilling booze this afternoon,” he said.
“He came in about five and he was loaded. If it happens again I’m going
to raise the roof.”

“Why does he do it?” Beth asked vaguely. “He’s happy with Jean, isn’t
he?”

“I guess so. At least she never complains. He could shove a knife in her
ribs and all she’d do is hand him that same old smile. But that isn’t
it. Something is bugging the guy. Always has been, since I first knew
him, like he’d committed murder and gotten away with it, and then
discovered he couldn’t live with his conscience. It almost seems
sometimes like he’s trying to tell you about it. But he just ends up
telling you to be careful.”

Beth looked up at this, remembering her afternoon with Cleve. “Be
careful of what?” she said.

Charlie shrugged. “Who knows? He never gets it said.”




                             Chapter Seven


Beth and Charlie both jumped when the phone rang at one-thirty in the
morning. Charlie grumbled, “I’ll get it,” but Beth had a sudden
premonition and said, “Oh, never mind. I’ll go.”

Willingly he turned over, muttering, “Probably a wrong number. Some
drunk, or something.”

It was Vega and she sounded hysterical. “Beth! Oh, darling, thank God
you’re there.”

“Where else would I be at this hour of the morning?” she said, keeping
her voice low so Charlie wouldn’t hear the conversation. She was both
thrilled and alarmed to hear that cautious smooth voice, charged now
with desperation.

“Beth, you’ve got to help me. I’m in a ghastly predicament. I’m just
frantic.”

“Where are you?” Beth asked.

“At the Knickerbocker.”

“The hotel?” Beth was relieved; the trouble couldn’t be too serious.

“Yes. It got so late. Some of the girls wanted to stay, so I said it was
okay. Oh, I called their mothers and everything. You have to be so damn
careful with them, with all these repulsive conventioneers around. It’s
like trying to smuggle a hoard of diamonds through a convention of
international jewel thieves. And if anything happens to any one of my
angels—holy God, it’d ruin me! I’d be run out of town on a rail.” She
stopped talking suddenly, as if to catch her breath, as if the tension
in her had drained her resources.

“Vega, tell me what happened!” Beth demanded, worried.

“Well, I—we—” For a moment Beth feared Vega would burst into tears. Her
honeyed voice broke and Beth grasped the phone in sweating hands,
imagining the worst.

“Vega, did some bastard try to—” she began but Vega interrupted.

“No, nothing like that, I just—Beth, darling, would you mind driving
over here?”

In the astonished silence Charlie called out, “Beth, for the love of
God. Who is it?”

“It’s Vega. And shut up, you’ll wake up the kids,” she hissed at him.

“Vega!” he spluttered. “What does _she_ want?”

“I don’t know. Please shut up.”

“Well, tell her to go cram it, and come to bed.”

“Beth, I need you. Will you come down?” Vega asked, her voice rough and
soft and tantalizingly near to Beth. Beth stood in the dark, feeling her
heart skip and a queer concentrated pleasure flash through her body.
_Beg me, Vega, beg me_, she thought. _Work for me. I want you so._
“It’ll take an hour,” she hedged.

“Not at this time of night. Oh, darling, I’m so miserable. Please come
to me. I haven’t got a single cigarette and those s.o.b.s at the desk
won’t send any up. I haven’t even got enough whiskey for a lousy
nightcap. You _will_ come, won’t you? And bring me some groceries?”

And Beth understood then why she was calling. Cleve had already warned
her: Vega couldn’t sleep without a bottle by the bed. There was a moment
of acute disappointment when she wanted to throw the phone down and
smash it. And then it came to her suddenly that Vega could have called
somebody else, even Cleve. But she chose her instead.

“I’ll come,” Beth said weakly. “I’ll come, Vega.”

“Bless you, Beth, you’re wonderful. I swear, nobody else is crazy like I
am but you. I _knew_ you’d do it. Darling, you make me feel so much less
lonesome.”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can,” Beth said, and hung up.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beth tried to find her clothes in the dark without waking Charlie. But
he was listening for her. Suddenly he switched on the reading light over
the bed. For a second or two they were both blinded: Beth on one foot in
the closet, pulling on a stocking, and Charlie leaning on his elbow
against the pillow. When he opened his eyes and saw her he got out of
bed and went to her without a word. Beth felt him come toward her and
she was afraid of him; really afraid. He was a big man with a hard body
and a strong streak of jealousy in him. His love for her was still alive
but it was uncomfortable and a little the worse for wear and
disappointments over the years. He was in no mood to deal gently with
her.

She felt his angry hands close on her arms and jerk her forward so that
her face snapped up to his. “Now what’s all this about?” he said.

“I’m going downtown,” she said.

“To Vega’s?”

Beth looked away. “Let go of me, Charlie.”

“_Answer_ me, Beth!” He had no intention of letting go until she
confessed what she was up to. And maybe not then.

“Vega’s downtown, at the Knickerbocker. She wants some cigarettes and
things, and I told her—”

“Cigarettes!” he flared. “And _things_! What things?” When she refused,
panting with indignation, to tell him, he said disgustedly, “And booze I
suppose. And you’re going all the way into Hollywood in the middle of
the night to take them to her. Good God, Beth, I didn’t know it had gone
_this_ far.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean!” she cried. “I haven’t done anything
wrong! You have no right to hint that I have.” She was furious with the
strength of her fear; the fear that always rose in her like a red wall
at the suggestion of abnormality and shut off her judgment and good
sense. Her voice stirred the children, asleep in the next room.

“You haven’t done anything wrong _yet_,” he amended. “But you go down
there tonight and you will.” He was so cold, so bitter, so chagrined
that she quailed at the sight of him. The moment his hands dropped from
her arms, as if she were too wretched for him even to touch, she turned
and fled from him, snatching up a coat from the hall closet. The liquor
and cigarettes were ready in a paper bag on the hall table and she
grabbed them on the way out.

In the bedroom Polly woke up and began to cry. Beth heard her when she
started the car, and she wondered at every panicky second why Charlie
didn’t stop her, why he didn’t run after her and shake her till her
bones came loose, or strangle her. She could feel his fury like a
tangible thing wafting to her through the mild night air. Backing out
the driveway with dangerous haste she felt that if she had not been
fighting mad herself, desperate and determined, his anger would have
swallowed her up and subdued her.

She drove down the Pasadena freeway and into Hollywood, her mind
stewing. _If Charlie hadn’t made such a fuss there wouldn’t be any
trouble. I’ll be home in the morning, the kids don’t ever need to know
the difference. And if he could only realize—oh, God, make him
realize—how happy I can be if I just have somebody to love. To have fun
with. Somebody like Vega. Why doesn’t he understand how good I can be to
him? How patient with the kids? If he could only share me, just a little
bit, just once in a while, with ... with a woman._

She was amazed to find herself reasoning like this: Beth, who hadn’t
given a conscious thought to other women for nine years; Beth, who
thought she was solidly normal for so long, who even married a man on
that conviction; Beth, who had turned Laura Landon out of her life one
day many years ago with such reassuring feelings of superiority and
normalcy. That Beth, that very same girl, was tearing through the night
on a fool’s errand at the whim of a beautiful spoiled woman who probably
didn’t give a damn what her personal feelings were.

Vega: Beth saw her in her mind suddenly, whole and clear, every detail
of her, as she had seen Laura in her dream some weeks before. Strangely,
life was worth living for a woman like that. Problems could be solved,
boredom could be faced, chores could be accomplished, if Vega could only
love her. With love, with passion, with romance in her life again,
Beth’s children would be more bearable. She could love them again
because love was being reawakened in her and there would be plenty to go
around. Why couldn’t Charlie see it that way, see what joy and peace his
family would know if Beth were only satisfied?

She felt a flare-up of stinging resentment at his apparent selfishness.
He’d understand one of these days; he’d _have_ to. Beth was so eager for
Vega’s company, so full of pleasure and trembling anticipation, that
nothing could have stopped her then, not even the thought of Charlie’s
wrath.

She pulled off the freeway and into the stop-and-go traffic on Hollywood
Boulevard. The great avenue was a strip of brilliants pasted on the
black night. It might have been past two in the morning but it was
Friday night, too, and the big brassy street was humming. Lights
twinkled and flashed, announcing a hundred shows, a thousand succulent
and sinful beauties, a million laughs. Posh shops displayed their slick
wares in a weird radiance unknown to the daytime hours.

And the people swarmed down the walks and across the street looking
urgently for fun, dressed in their courting clothes or their tourist
sport shirts. They smiled at every light, every open door, every burst
of commercial good humor. Beth watched them when she had to stop for
lights, and they did not strike her as pathetic or lost or bored. They
were having fun, they were all dressed up, and they were doing Hollywood
right. She even found herself envying them.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The night clerk buzzed Vega’s room for her, giving Beth a narrow-eyed
examination all the while. “She says come up,” he said, leaning toward
her on the counter.

“Thanks.” Beth turned away, but he called her back.

“Miss,” he said and smiled at her sparkling eyes. “She’s been giving us
a rough time tonight. We’re not supposed to take stuff up after
midnight. And those girls with her are pretty noisy. I wonder if you’d
tell her to tone it down a little. Would you mind?” He glanced at the
paper bag full of whiskey under her arm.

“She’ll tone it down,” Beth said. “You won’t hear a damn thing, I
guarantee.”

“Thanks,” he said, and watched her fanny as she walked away toward the
elevator.

She was full of a reckless elation, a taut and wonderful excitement that
she didn’t dare to analyze. She rode up in the elevator and all she
thought about was Vega: the sight of her, the scent of her, the smile.
Not what she would do once they were alone in that room together; not
what she would say. Just a mental vision of that fine-featured face,
that elegant body, too thin, almost too well kept, too pale. _But oh,
deliver me! So beautiful!_ Beth thought.

She knocked lightly on Vega’s door. The hall was rather noisy, with
half-suppressed laughter and an occasional squeal floating from the
adjacent rooms. Beth had just time to hope that none of the girls was
sharing Vega’s room when the door opened and Vega herself nearly fell
into Beth’s arms.

“Oh, you’re here!” she cried. “Thank God! Did you bring it?” Beth could
feel the tremor running through Vega and watched her with fascination as
she seized the package of whiskey.

Beth stood just inside the door, her coat and gloves still on, content
to be in Vega’s presence, content to smell her perfume and feel the air
she stirred when she moved. Vega was swathed in a full peignoir of
several varicolored layers that floated and swirled around her. It gave
the illusion that she was rounder and softer than she was.

Vega busied herself with the bottle, opening it with a finger nail file
and pouring herself a drink in the bathroom glass. Beth realized slowly
that they were completely alone. The girls had banded together in the
other rooms, and the fact that she and Vega were there by themselves,
locked in a hotel room at nearly three in the morning, exulted her. She
felt wonderfully strong and strange, gazing at Vega, who had softened
and relaxed with the warmth of the whiskey and was settling herself on
the bed.

Vega smiled up at Beth and said, “Come and sit with me and tell me how
evil I am.” Her smile was both sad and inviting, and suddenly the
curious strength Beth had felt washed out of her and her knees began to
tremble. She was afraid to move, afraid any move she made would be the
wrong one.

Vega frowned slightly at her, perplexed. “Beth, darling, you can’t just
stand there in your coat for the rest of the night. Take it off and come
here.”

It was such a frank proposition that Beth wondered suddenly how Vega
could be gay, as Cleve said, and not know it. It just couldn’t be. She
wanted to rush to her, grasp her hands and sink to her knees and say,
“Vega, Cleve has been lying to me. He says you don’t know yourself, he
says—”

“What do you mean?” said Vega, and Beth realized, with a little gasp of
horror and surprise, that the words had virtually spoken themselves, so
intensely was she involved in her thoughts. Her face went a hot deep
pink and she moved at last, slipping out of her coat, wordlessly
embarrassed.

“What did Cleve say to you, Beth?” Vega was strung up tight again,
leaning forward to catch each word.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Beth murmured. “I—I just had a drink
with him this afternoon. He told me a lot of guff. I think he was just
tight.” She went anxiously toward the bed and suddenly Vega burst into a
beautiful smile and laughed in her cautious, lovely way.

“He told you how charming you are and how wicked and depraved I am, no
doubt. He thinks it’s his mission in life to warn decent people away
from his nefarious sister.” Her laughter brought a breath of relief to
Beth, who smiled gratefully at her. It gave her the courage to come and
sit beside her, and when Vega offered her the glass and poured her a
drink, she took it as a sign that there were no hard feelings. She
didn’t want the liquor, just Vega’s esteem, Vega’s warmth and favor. But
liquor was one way Vega had of showing her approval and it had to be
accepted.

“He’s been telling people for years how rare I am,” Vega went on. “How
immoral. How faithless and frigid. I ... was married, you know,” she
added abruptly, her eyes bright on Beth.

“I know.”

“Oh, so he told you that too.” And she laughed again, putting her head
back a little. Her hair was loose, not wound into the graceful roll she
usually wore, and it fell, two feet of it, in silky luxury down her
back. Beth had an almost uncontrollable urge to touch it, and she was
relieved when Vega straightened up and resumed her story. “I was married
twice, Beth. They were nice enough guys. That wasn’t the trouble.”

“What _was_ the trouble?” Beth said and felt her throat constrict with
excitement. It was such a perfect opening for a confession.

Vega turned her bottomless brown eyes on Beth and touched her knee
gently, letting her hand rest there. “You blurted out a minute ago—to
your own embarrassment, obviously—that Cleve thinks I don’t know
myself.”

“Vega, I’m so sorry, it was thoughtless, I just—”

“No darling, I don’t want you to explain.” Her hand tightened on Beth’s
warm knee. “I just want you to tell me what Cleve thinks it is I don’t
know about myself. Tell me, Beth.”

Beth opened her mouth to speak and found no voice. How could she
possibly say such a thing? _He thinks you’re a Lesbian, and you don’t
know it._ It could be torment for a sensitive person to have something
that shocking, that personal, thrown at her from the blue.

“I can’t say it, Vega,” she admitted, and Vega read her pale face
accurately.

“Well, then, I know what it is,” she said. “And he’s telling you what he
honestly believes.” Her face became pensive suddenly and she gazed
downward at the whiskey in the glass tumbler. “I have never let him
understand me very well. I have good reasons for it. He _thinks_ he
does, of course. It’s rather painful sometimes, he thinks I’m so dense.”

Beth felt herself in a state of tremulous anticipation. She didn’t want
to talk, only to touch, only to feel. And yet talking like this might
bring her closer to Vega, help her understand her.

“If I tell you, Beth,” Vega said slowly, “that I have never been
attracted to men ... I hope it won’t give you wrong ideas.” She glanced
up to see how her remark was taken, but Beth said only, “Wrong ideas?”
She sat holding her hands together tightly to keep from reaching out for
Vega.

Vega smiled at her suddenly and said, “Relax.” The squeeze she gave
Beth’s knee tickled her and they both laughed. “You didn’t come here to
get a lecture on me, anyway,” Vega added. “You deserve some reward for
your effort. Here, have another.” She offered Beth the glass and Beth
tried to turn it down. But she saw a quick shy retreat in Vega’s eyes,
as if Vega feared Beth were disapproving, and she took the glass anyway
and drank.

“Was Charlie mad at you for coming?” Vega asked.

“Yes,” Beth said simply. Her head was getting light.

“I’m sorry,” Vega said. Her voice was tender and grateful.

“You know, I had an odd thought on the way over here tonight,” Beth
said, to change the subject.

“Tell me.” Vega leaned back into the pillows and gazed up at her, the
whiskey glass resting on her stomach. She held it lightly, almost
casually, as if she could easily give it up, as if she could go to bed
without a drink, without a bottle on the table beside her.

“I’d like to get lost with you in Hollywood. I mean—” Beth laughed,
flustered. “See the sights, like the tourists.”

“You don’t go wandering in Hollywood at night without a man unless you
want to get picked up, darling. Is that what you mean?”

“No, I just want to share it with you. You’re fun to be with. I guess—to
be frank—that’s why I came tonight.” She took the proffered glass again,
avoiding Vega’s penetrating smile bashfully, and when she returned it
she felt quite dizzy. She leaned toward Vega slightly, steadying herself
with both hands pressed into the bed in front of her. She found herself
tilted close to Vega.

“Feel okay?” Vega asked. “You look way out. No need to keep up with me,
you know. I’m more or less immune to the stuff. Ask Cleve.”

“I feel fine. Wonderful,” Beth said, raising her eyes to Vega’s. She
felt reckless, even. Their closeness was like a challenge, a dare that
brought her pulse up high and visible in her throat and made her work
for her breath. “Vega, you—you are the loveliest woman,” she whispered.

Slowly Vega placed her glass on the floor and then her hands went up to
Beth’s shoulders, more to subdue her than encourage her.

“Beth?” she said, and the name itself was a question. “I never thought
_you_ of all people....”

In one quick painful second, Beth saw that she was caught; her
fascination, her desire were clear and hot in her eyes and mouth. Vega
could see them. There was nothing for it but to declare herself or
retreat and run, spouting half-baked excuses that would fool neither of
them. Back to Charlie she would go, back to the kids, back to Sierra
Bella, humiliated and disappointed beyond her capacity to bear it. She
could not give up so easily; she had come too far, risked too much.

“Vega, let me, you must let me,” she said, trying to lean closer to her,
but Vega’s thin arms restrained her. Beth was afraid of hurting her and
she paused.

“You know how I feel about this,” Vega said, and there was something
sharp, almost fearful, in her voice. Her eyes were quite wide. Beth felt
her own strength and Vega’s weakness and she forced Vega’s arms down
suddenly.

“You ... of all people, you,” Vega moaned. “No, Beth. _Please!_”

“Vega, forgive me,” Beth said wildly. “I love you, I can’t help it!” And
she bent her head in one swift hungry movement and kissed Vega’s
exquisite mouth.

For the space of a heart beat there was no response, only a chill, a
palpable terror. And then suddenly Vega returned her kiss, and Beth,
murmuring insanities, kissed her face and her mouth all over, holding
her tightly and panting with the sheer forgotten glory of it: the
marvelous sweetness and suppleness of a woman’s body, the instinctive
understanding that surpasses words, the indescribable tenderness two
women in love with each other can create.

She became aware only slowly that Vega was desperate for breath. The
weight of Beth’s body was too much for her, and Beth rolled off
suddenly, exclaiming, “Vega, darling, did I hurt you? Are you all
right?”

Vega swept to her feet and nearly fell back again. Beth leaped up after
her and caught her from behind, putting her arms around Vega and rocking
her gently, her lips against Vega’s throat.

“Come sit down,” she said, and when she had Vega safely into a chair,
she knelt and put her head down in Vega’s lap, her arms around that tiny
waist and her lips moving still against Vega’s warm body, exploring,
caressing, reverencing.

Until Vega pushed her head back and said, as if her breath had only then
come back to her, “Stop it! Will you _stop_ it?” with such anguish that
Beth pulled away in alarm.

“Oh, I hurt you,” she said, dismayed.

Vega got to her feet. “No, don’t help me,” she ordered. “Don’t touch
me.”

“But Vega—”

“Shut up!” Vega turned a tormented face to her. She walked to a window
and pulled it up, gasping up the air. “I told you not to get any wrong
ideas,” she said finally, when some measure of calm had returned to her.
She gazed stonily at the street eight stories below, her face almost a
mask now.

“I didn’t know that was so awfully _wrong_,” Beth said, rising and
coming toward her.

Vega looked up at her and her expression changed again, the fear showing
quite plainly in the quiver of her muscles. “Beth, stop, hear me,” she
said. “It’s not that I don’t _know_ what I am. It’s just that I can’t
stand _being_ what I am. If you do this, if you insist, you’ll destroy
me.”

“All I want to do is love you, Vega,” Beth said, and felt tears of
frustration and passion struggling for supremacy in her. “Can love
destroy a person?”

“The wrong kind can!” Vega said.

“But this _isn’t_ wrong.”

“You only say that because you want it, because you’re too weak to deny
yourself,” Vega cried.

“I’ve done without it for more than nine years.”

“I’ve done without it for more than _twenty_ years!” Vega said. But
something in the parting of her lips, in the warmth of the kiss she had
returned, gave Beth courage. Perhaps Vega feared her mother, perhaps she
couldn’t help knuckling under to her mother’s ideas. But her body, her
secret heart, seemed to beg for that proscribed love.

“I don’t believe you,” Beth said. “Your own beauty would trap you in a
score of affairs.”

“I’m not that beautiful,” Vega said candidly. “I might have been once
but I’m not any more.”

“I never saw anyone lovelier,” Beth said. “I never saw anyone I wanted
so much.” The thought of Laura flashed before her eyes and reminded her
that she was lying. But that had been so long ago, this was so here and
now. “Vega,” she said in a voice husky with pleading, with need. “Please
come to me. Please, don’t let me stand here alone in this strange room
speaking love to a stranger. Let me know you, darling. Let me be close
to you. Don’t shut me out. Vega, do you know how long I’ve waited,
turned this out of my mind and lived like a robot? No, _worse_—a robot
can’t suffer. I did it because there was no one I could love.”

“You did it because Lesbian love is wrong and you knew that,” Vega said,
and Beth could hear the echo of her mother’s voice speaking, the way she
had heard it in Cleve’s speech. “And it’s still wrong, Beth. More for
you than for me. _You_ have a husband. And children.”

“That’s why I need it so!” Beth cried in a storm of misery. She was
ready to explode with the feeling inside her, a whirlwind of
contradictions and desires.

“Yes. You need _it_, not me,” Vega said bitterly.

Beth couldn’t stand it any longer. She rushed toward Vega, but Vega very
swiftly and unexpectedly opened her diaphanous dressing gown, holding it
wide away from herself so that Beth should see every detail of her white
body.

Beth stopped abruptly, within a foot of her goal, and stared. She made a
small inarticulate sound, and Vega searched her face with horrible
anxiety. “If you can make love to that,” she whispered, “then I’ll
believe you love me. I’ll accept it.”

She was a complex of scars that twisted every which way over her chest,
like yards of pink ribbon in snarls. She had no breasts, and the
operation to remove her lung had left a bad welt that Beth returned to
once or twice with a prickle of revulsion. Even Vega’s dainty little
abdomen had its share. And the bones, the poor sharp bones without the
ordinary smooth envelope of tender flesh that most girls take for
granted and even rail against when there’s too much. Vega’s bones were
all pitifully plain and frankly outlined.

Beth put her trembling hands over her mouth, to stifle her horror, and
let the tears flood from her eyes. She shut them tight for a moment, but
when she opened them Vega was halfway out of the open window.

With a little scream Beth lunged at her and caught her, pulling her to
safety over the most violent protests of which Vega was capable. Beth
held her, struggling and swearing hysterically, in her arms for some
time, thinking all the while of Cleve and his unhappy eyes and his talk
of Vega and their mother. She stroked Vega’s hair and let her own
unhappy tears fall.

After a while sheer exhaustion forced Vega into silence. Beth felt her
drooping and she bent down and put an arm under Vega’s legs and another
around her shoulders and lifted her up. She was surprised at how slight
the burden was. Beth was a big girl and she was strong, and she had
always been proud of these unfeminine qualities in herself.

There was plenty of whiskey left, and Beth, after laying Vega down
tenderly on the bed, poured her a drink. Neither of them had spoken a
word.

Vega gulped the drink and then handed it back; she turned her face away
and put one hand over it. Beth let her weep undisturbed for a while. At
length Vega murmured in a broken voice, “You don’t need to tell me how
you feel now. I saw it in your face.”

“Vega, you damn fool,” Beth said gently. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why
did you spring it on me that way? I could have taken it, if you’d only
let me know. If you’d only prepared me a little for it.”

“No,” Vega said, reaching for a tissue from her pocket and wiping her
eyes. “No, what you mean is, you could have controlled the look on your
face. You could have made up a kind little speech and said it right
away, before your silence spoke for you.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Beth protested.

“Don’t you see, Beth,” she said, turning to look at her and forcing
herself to face those eyes that had seen her saddest and ugliest secret,
“if I had told you beforehand you would never have confessed your love
to me at all. You would never have tried to know me or touch me. That
counts for something, believe me. That’s one thing to be grateful for,
even if it can’t last. But aside from that it wouldn’t have made much
difference. You might have hidden your disgust a little better, that’s
all. No matter which way I did it, the ending would have been the same.”

Beth lighted a cigarette. “This has happened before, hasn’t it?” she
said quietly.

“Yes,” Vega sighed. “Now you know why I’ve been waiting twenty years. It
wasn’t pure virtue.” She gave an acrid little laugh. “You thought my
mother was ugly, didn’t you?” she said. “I’ll bet you didn’t know how
ugly a woman could be until now.”

“Vega, please,” Beth said, exasperated with her and with herself. She
was in a state of tremulous nervousness, keyed up to a fever one moment
with aching desire, and almost nauseated with shock the next. Somehow,
in the space of a few short weeks, this lovely woman she had known well
enough for a period of years had appeared to her as a lover. Suddenly
Vega, who had been only Cleve Purvis’s sister since Beth came to
California, was all the promise of love, of womanhood to her. Vega
became Beth’s own passion resurrected in the flesh.

And now, with brutal suddenness, she had seen her mutilated body,
repellent and pitiable, and she could not find her desire any more. It
had dissipated.

_But surely I loved her_, Beth told herself miserably. _When you love,
you love more than a body. You love a mind and heart, too, or your
emotion is a cheap fake._ She knew this was true. She knew that if her
“love” had been real it would somehow have survived, even in platonic
form. But all she wanted now was to get out, to leave, to breathe the
open air, to be free of her cruelly misshapen dream.

The very sight of Vega, the small sounds she made, drove Beth’s
disappointment through her like a knife. She was ashamed of her
selfishness but quite impotent with it. She had wanted a whole woman,
warm and yielding. She had dreamed that her hands would touch the smooth
perfumed flesh of a body that knew how to love. It had been a vital part
of her desire and now she had little more than a face to hang her dreams
on. Vega’s face, covered with tears.

“You’d better go,” Vega told her suddenly, and Beth wanted nothing more
than to obey. But shame and pity held her to the spot beside Vega on the
bed.

After a moment Vega turned and gazed at her. “Surely you can’t stay,
after what you’ve seen?” she said in a leaden voice.

“Vega,” Beth said painfully. “I said—I said I loved you. I’ve grown very
fond of you over the last few weeks. I don’t know how or why it
happened. I only know that I can hardly bear to hurt you, to see you
lying there in despair.” It was meant as solace, to ease Beth’s parting.
Nothing more. But Vega in her desperation took it for more. She turned
to gaze at Beth and there was a new look on her face. The eyes were less
empty, the mouth less tragic.

“You mean you’ll stay?” she whispered almost inaudibly.

Once said, the words trapped Beth. For a moment she couldn’t answer and
her mind flew frantically from lie to lie, but there were no excuses,
none that wouldn’t hurt Vega mortally. She had seen Vega’s ugliness and
she had been sickened. Her passion had flickered and gone out, and now
she was tired and ashamed and she wanted to be gone.

“Of course I’ll stay,” she said softly, hopelessly, to Vega. It was her
conscience, her compassion, that spoke for her. If the incredulous
pleasure, the stammering gratitude she produced in Vega could have
reawakened the needs of Beth’s body, Beth would have fallen on her with
delight. Instead she lay wordlessly beside her, taking Vega into her
arms and murmuring kindnesses to her.

“I knew you were better than the rest,” Vega said, and her voice broke
with emotion. “Beth, darling Beth, I knew it somehow. I had a feeling
about you. Maybe because I wanted you so much. I did, you know. I do.
Oh, Beth.”

And Beth, as she kissed her, wondered with sad irony why Vega couldn’t
have said that to her before when she wanted so much to hear it, why she
couldn’t have played the game gently and broken the secret mercifully.
Perhaps she hoped she could catch someone like Beth someday who had too
much pride and pity to treat her like an outcast. Perhaps she hoped her
pathetic condition would finally snare somebody the way it had Beth. She
had waited a long lonely time for this, and she clung to Beth as if to
let go for even an instant was to lose her forever.

Beth made love to her. It was restrained, partly because she saw with
awful clarity in her mind’s eye every part of Vega that her hands
touched, and partly because Vega herself had not the breath or strength
to throw herself into her feelings. Beth clung tight to her composure,
swallowing her tears of frustration and giving Vega all she could muster
of tenderness and patience. Vega could not be satisfied unless Beth
appeared to be so, for otherwise it would be too clear that Beth was
doing this for her out of charity. So there was the fatiguing necessity
of pretending to enjoy it, pretending to feel the thrill that was
nothing but a gruesome parody of the happiness she had anticipated.

Vega lay in her arms throughout the rest of the night and she slept like
a guiltless child. Beth, beside her in the dark and afraid to move and
disturb her, did not sleep at all. She stared into the night and cursed
the unkind fate that had promised so much and delivered so little. All
the dormant fires of her younger days had sprung to life and they burned
in her still, tempting her, torturing her, until she knew she would have
to find release somewhere or die of it. She even went so far as to
imagine the young girls in the next few rooms and to wonder if it were
possible to see them, to make friends.

_At five-thirty in the morning?_ she said it to herself, and smiled
wryly at the dawn.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beth drove home in the morning, dropping Vega off first and seeing her
go with a sigh of relief. She was ashamed of her feeling of resentment
and to cover it up in her conscience she berated Vega. _Jesus, I wanted
to make love to a woman, not a carved-up scarecrow!_ she cried to
herself, and her own hard words dismayed her. Her attitude toward Vega
was fast becoming one of bitter disappointment. She had been betrayed
and she was near to loathing the object of her betrayal, so great had
been her hopes and her needs.

At home in her empty house she put her head down and cried. They were
tears of fury, tears of frustration, but not tears of despair. Not now.
Her temper was too high and the blaze in her too hot.

For an hour or more she stamped around the house, picking up objects
aimlessly and smacking them down again, kicking chairs and doors, and
thinking. She walked out into the yard and pulled up a few flowers just
because it felt good to ruin something. And then she went back into the
house and threw herself down on her bed and slept.

She dreamed of Laura.

Just Laura, sitting on the studio couch in the sorority room they had
shared, gazing at her. But though she didn’t move, though she didn’t
speak, she was vibrantly alive this time. Beth could smell the
remembered heady scent of her hair, and when she approached her and held
out her hand she could feel Laura’s breath upon it. She spoke to her,
just her name. And Laura smiled, ever so faintly, over the gulf of years
and the famous “well of loneliness.”




                             Chapter Eight


Beth went through a period of nearly two months, as spring edged into
summer, of emotional upheaval and torment that were all the harder to
bear for being secret. There was no one to talk to, no one to explain
to, no one to confide in. Charlie would never understand. His reaction
would surely be one of anger and contempt for her. Her exclusive
behavior, her moods, had already come close to damning her in his eyes.
And _Vega_.

_Oh, God!_ Beth thought with acute irritation. Vega was rapidly becoming
a stone around her neck. She pestered her on the phone two or three
times a day. She begged Beth to spend more time with her, and Beth, who
was speedily growing sick and sorry about the whole affair, tried every
machination to get out of it. But then came threats. Vega would sob over
the phone, and her lovely voice, tangled in the gasps for air that
plagued her when she was excited, would moan, “You love me. You _said_
so. If you love me come to me, Beth. My God, I’m out of my mind I want
you so much.”

And Beth found herself yearning for the days when she and Vega were
hardly more than acquaintances; even the days when she wanted Vega and
couldn’t have her were better than these when an unhappy and jealous
Vega tried to force herself on her.

“I have to take Skipper to a birthday party,” she would say. Or, “I
can’t, Vega, I’m bowling this morning.”

“Oh, hell!” Vega spat. “You gave that up weeks ago. Jean told me. She
said you just called up and quit and she thinks you don’t like her any
more. She called me to cry on my shoulder.” Her voice was hard with
jealous suspicions and Beth was obliged to concoct ridiculous fibs for
her. Anything to keep her at arms’ length.

But she couldn’t keep her there always. There were meetings, awful
exhausting affairs. Beth approached them with a dread that included an
element of physical revulsion she found it hard to hide. Vega, who was
sharp-eyed in spite of her infatuation, could see that Beth’s response
to her was only slight and that her thoughts were always with something
or someone else. But she had fallen for Beth and there was no backing
out. It was almost a fanatical attachment. Their relations became more
and more trying, more strained, with Vega weeping pathetic angry tears
and Beth snapping at her with wild impatience. They had really trapped
each other and there seemed to be no way out.

Vega’s most desperate fear was that one day Beth would simply refuse to
see her at all. “I’d _kill_ you if you did that to me,” she told Beth
once, thinking that by mentioning it before it had a chance to happen
she might miraculously stave it off.

But Beth offered her no consolation, not even an answer. She knew quite
well that soon it would come to a parting; that she had only delayed the
break out of shame, cowardice, and a desire to lessen the pain for Vega.

Vega would often call her when Charlie was at home and Beth would be
forced to talk quietly to her, to agree to her plans, just to avoid a
revealing argument in front of Charlie. Beth upbraided her royally for
it when they met.

“Good God, Vega, I can’t let Charlie know what’s going on,” Beth shouted
at her. “That is, if he doesn’t know already. Do you want me to stop
seeing you altogether? He’d insist, you know.”

“Beth, if you’d call me once in a while instead of forcing me to call
_you_. Just _once_ in a while. If you’d act like you cared—”

“Vega, don’t throw a lot of sentimental pap at me.”

“Is that what you call it?” Vega sprang to her feet, her face white. “Is
that what you call my love for you? This affair was all your idea, Beth,
in case you’ve forgotten. _You_ insisted. _I_ surrendered. And now
you’re obligated to me. I swear to God you are!” She would have gone on
but lack of breath stopped her and she paused, panting, a hand to her
throat.

“I’m not going to stand around and be hollered at,” Beth said, picking
up her coat with an angry sweep of her arm. “You’re turning into a
shrew, Vega.”

“Beth, don’t go! Please!” The last word was almost a sob and Beth didn’t
dare to turn around and see her face. She would have succumbed to her
own sympathy and weakness again and hated herself for it afterward.

“Beth, I’m warning you here and now, if you leave me I’ll tell Charlie
all about this. I’ll tell him everything.”

Beth paused, her back to Vega, and her heart skipped a beat. She kept
her voice under control when she answered. “He won’t believe you.”

“You know damn well he will. You said yourself he already suspects
monkey business. Well, it won’t take much to convince him.”

“Try it,” Beth said, still bluffing, still afraid to face her.

“You’re goddamn right I’ll try it,” Vega said, with all the meager force
she could muster.

Beth turned around slowly, reluctantly. “Vega,” she said. “You’re a
viper. I can’t think of anything else to call you. You’re nothing but a
lousy snake. You make me sorry I ever laid eyes on you.”

“You’ve laid more than eyes on me, Beth, and don’t forget it,” Vega
said, trembling with the fatigue of her feelings. “You owe me
something.”

“You owe _me_ something, too, Vega,” Beth said. Her voice was soft but
furious. “You waited twenty years for somebody, remember? For some poor
idiot like me to take pity on you—”

“Stop!” Vega cried, visibly hurt and beginning to reel slightly. Beth
was forced to care for her, to help her to a chair and bring her a shot
of whiskey. “Beth, don’t say it,” she begged. “Once those things are
said there’s no unsaying them. They hang there in the air and poison
things. They destroy even the little white lies you tell yourself when
things look blackest.”

And Beth was touched by her misery in spite of herself. “You mean,” she
said quietly, “they make you face the truth.”

“Hurt like that goes beyond the truth,” Vega said. “When you’re trying
to hurt somebody else you kill them with truth like that. I couldn’t
bear it if you left me, Beth. I can’t believe you will. I was so lonely
before. It’s not much better now, but it’s better. When you’re in a good
humor I almost faint with love for you. I want to lie in your arms and
die of joy. I wish we could live somewhere together, just the two of
us.”

And Beth, for whom the whole situation had taken such a sickening turn,
was caught between pity and disgust. “I—I don’t mean to leave you,
Vega,” she said at last, hoping that her phraseology would leave her an
out. “But don’t call Charlie. Things are bad enough as it is. Please,
leave him out of it.”

She hated to say it, for it gave Vega a powerful ace to play, but she
spoke the truth when she admitted that things were already bad enough at
home.

There had been a sort of armed truce declared between Charlie and
herself. They had very little to say to each other, but for the
children’s sake they put on a show of life-as-usual. Beth reached a
point where she hated to leave the house, as if her love affair—if the
word “love” belongs there—had changed her physically and might give her
away to her neighbors. She did the marketing and took the children out,
but that was all.

Housework seemed an interminable chore to her. She had never liked it,
any more than she liked cooking. But she had always done what was
necessary. Now even that oppressed her to such an extent that she would
often let things go until the last moment, sometimes failing to make up
the beds until just before Charlie got home, and letting days, weeks, go
by without dusting or vacuuming. The worse the house got the harder it
was for her to do anything about it. She wanted to shut her eyes and
forget it.

And all the time, every day, at every hour and in every imaginable
posture, she dreamed of Laura. She dreamed of the romance, unfettered
with family obligation or dishwashing, free of all the daily drudgery
she so despised, free of a husband who was jealous and narrow-minded,
free of children who were noisy and nerve-wracking.

Beth yearned for Laura. She was almost possessed with her. It was as if,
out of the blue, she had fallen in love with her all over again; and, in
a way, she had. She was in love with her own lost freedom, her own
smooth young face, her college sophistication, her exotic love for a
strange and fascinating girl. All the things that were once but were no
more, all the things Beth had been and was no longer. These she loved.
And Laura personified them.

To while away the hours, she read. On her shopping trips she picked up
books—every book she could find on the subject of homosexuality and
Lesbianism. She read them with passionate interest, and found a release
in them she had not expected. Most of them were novels with tragic
endings. Some were even dull, at least for those whose ruling interest
in life had nothing to do with their own sex. Some of them depressed
her, but all of them interested her and she gained a feeling of
companionship with some of the writers which alleviated her solitude a
little. She wrote letters to a few, the ones who impressed her most, who
seemed to understand best what it was like to be gay and to be alone and
starved for love; for less than love, even—for sympathetic
companionship.

A handful of them wrote back to her and she established a correspondence
with one or two that relieved her a little. She looked forward to their
letters eagerly and poured out her desperate lonesomeness and
bewilderment to them. After a few weeks they had all deserted her but
one, who seemed really interested in her, named Nina Spicer.

Nina’s letters came in oversized envelopes with the name of her
publisher in the corner, and Beth read each one avidly. She knew dimly
that although Nina Spicer was gay there was very little else they had in
common. That became clear from her letters. But Nina had become
intrigued with her and Beth was grateful for the interest. It was a
bridge into another world where she longed hopelessly to be, and it
comforted her.

The thought began to grow in Beth that the only way out of her
depression was to go back to Chicago and search for Laura. Charlie would
refuse, of course, and he’d fight it all the way, but she had to get
out, shed her present life, try to find herself in a new environment
with new people.

Chicago ... it sounded beautiful, romantic as a foreign port to her, for
the first time in her life. She had grown up there, she knew her way
around. But it had never appeared as anything but huge and dirty and
familiar, with sporadic excitements available.

Laura had grown up there, too. And suddenly Beth knew that she _had_ to
get to Chicago. She would go if it meant a divorce; even if it meant
giving up her children. No sacrifice seemed out of line to her. Uncle
John would take her in. She could always feed him stories and hide the
truth from him. The idea of actually seeing Laura again awakened a
trembling hope in her that came very near, at her best moments, to being
happiness.

She spent three days trying to figure out a good way to broach the
subject. Nothing had changed between herself and Charlie. He spoke to
her when necessary and he spent the nights on his side of the bed, never
touching her except by accident. His silent suffering both touched and
exasperated her, like Vega’s. Mostly it made her mad.

There was a secret woman in Beth, a woman capable of a wonderful and
curious love for other women, and she wanted to dominate Beth. But,
tragically for Charlie and her family, this tormented woman could not
feel more for a man than a sort of friendly respect. If that was spurned
she had nothing else to offer. And Charlie wanted passionate love and
devotion, not a buddy who was more woman-oriented than he was.

It all came out in a single bright and anguished explosion. Beth had
cast about for a way to explain herself to him; a hopeless job before it
was begun, for she could not begin to understand herself. And when she
saw the futility of it, she gave up and recklessly threw the whole range
of her misery before him, like a picture on a screen.

She waited until the children were in bed and Charlie was watching the
TV in the living room. She came in and sat down in a chair facing him.
He was stretched out on the couch with his head on a hill of pillows,
looking intently at the glowing screen in hopes of forgetting his
problems for a little while.

“Charlie?” she said, and because she had not approached him for any
reason for several weeks he turned his head and looked at her with
surprise.

“What?” he said.

Beth swallowed once, to be sure her voice would come out clear and
determined. “I’m going to go home. To Chicago.”

He stared at her briefly and then turned unseeing eyes back to the set.
“I doubt it,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to leave Vega that long.”

“Vega can go to hell. She’s driving me crazy,” Beth confessed. He
already believed the truth, although he had no proof of it. _So why in
God’s name am I pretending?_ she thought defiantly. Suddenly it seemed
easier and even cleaner to be frank.

“Don’t tell me the great romance is fading?” he said, still not looking
at her.

She gazed at his face she had once so loved and she wished, for the sake
of that decaying love, that he would be kind, that he would say things
that would not make her hate him.

“The great romance never existed,” she said.

“If you’re trying to tell me it was all platonic, don’t bother,” he
said.

“I’m trying to tell you I’m not in love with Vega Purvis,” she blurted.
“I never was.”

“That’s funny!” said Charlie. “I got the other impression.”

“Well, I thought I was in love with her,” she said awkwardly, thinking,
hoping the confession would unburden her at the same time that it
destroyed Vega’s worst weapon against her. But suddenly the words were
ugly and hard to shape and she wished she had simply told him she was
going away and left it at that.

“I—I thought I loved her the night I took her the whiskey, at the
Knickerbocker. And I discovered that I didn’t. That’s all.”

“After a little mutual exploration?” His voice was sarcastic. “Shall I
send you a gold plaque in honor of your extra-marital affairs?”

She stood up and stamped her foot and started to speak, but he added
quickly, “And don’t talk to me the way you talk to your children. I’ll
take you up and beat the hell out of you, I swear I will. For their
sakes.”

“Charlie, I’m going to Chicago!” she said flatly, finally.

“You’re not going to run out on this, Beth. You have a responsibility to
me and the kids. Nobody held a gun to your head when we got married.
Why, you weren’t even pregnant. You married me because you _wanted_ to
marry me, and by God, you’re _still_ married to me. And you’re going to
_stay_ married to me until you grow up and learn to face your
responsibilities.”

“Charlie,” she said, suddenly earnest and almost scared, “I can’t
_stand_ this any more.”

“Can’t stand what? No lovers? None of your lady friends suits you?”

For a second she thought she would explode with grief and fury, but she
clamped her eyes shut and controlled herself. “I can’t stand living with
a man,” she said, and suddenly the tears began to flow. She went on
speaking, ignoring them. “It’s not your fault you’re a man—”

“_Thanks_,” he snarled.

“And it’s not my fault I need a woman. You have to understand that,
Charlie. I’m not doing this because I want to hurt you. I’m not gay
because I enjoy it. I don’t even know if I’m gay at all. I wish to God,
I wish with all my heart, that I could make a life with you and the
children. I wish all I needed to be happy was what other woman need—a
home and a man and children. I thought I _was_ like other women when we
got married, or I never would have committed myself to a lifetime with
you. I thought it was what I needed and wanted, or believe me I would
have spared us both. I would have climbed aboard that train with Laura
nine years ago. But I thought _she_ was different and _I_ was normal.
And I was in love with you.”

He sighed deeply, covering his face for a moment with his hands.

“I remember Laura,” he said then, gazing into space. “I remember her so
well, with that pale face, rather thin, and those big blue eyes. I
remember how she adored you and how pathetic I thought she was. I
remember how shocked I was when I found out that you had encouraged her.
But I was always so sure, in spite of everything, that you were
basically normal and that being married and having a couple of kids
would straighten you out so easily. I was so sure of myself,” and she
saw his self-doubt and confusion now and it touched her. “I thought
because I was a man and because I loved you so terribly that we’d be
able to work out anything together. I thought that living with me would
give you a lifelong preference for my love. Real love, a man’s love. The
kind of love that only a man can give a woman.”

“That’s not the only real love, Charlie,” she said, sinking to the chair
again, and leaning toward him, tense with the need to make him
understand a little, now, at long last. “I thought I’d get over it too
when Laura went away, and I thought I had. It was years after we were
married that I began to feel like this, and at first I didn’t even know
what it was. It wasn’t till Vega that I even realized what was wrong
with me. Charlie, maybe if I could just have a sort of _vacation_ from
you.”

“Vacation? How can you take a vacation from a marriage? It’s a permanent
condition,” he said, and she could tell from his voice that it didn’t
make the first glimmer of sense to him.

“I know it isn’t sensible, and I’ve tried to fight it, but it overwhelms
me,” she said. “I wonder, ‘What in hell am I married for anyway? My kids
are miserable, I’m miserable, Charlie’s miserable.’ If I were doing any
good with all this suffering it might be worth while. If it made Skipper
and Polly happy, if it made _you_ happy, maybe it would be worth it all.
But it doesn’t. We’re _all_ unhappy. Charlie ... please understand.”

“You can help yourself, Beth,” he said coldly.

“No, I can’t,” she said. “That’s the awful part of it. That’s what
scares me so. I feel my irritation turning into hatred, almost. I want
to get away so badly that I don’t think I can stand it sometimes.”

“Get away from what? Yourself? You have to take yourself with you
wherever you go, you know.”

“No, I want to get closer to myself, I want to _know_ myself, Charlie. I
don’t even know who I am. Or _what_ I am.”

“You’re _my wife_!” he said sharply, as if that were the argument to end
them all, to end all of her doubts with one stroke.

“I’m myself!” she cried, rising to her feet again, her fists knotted at
her sides. “And all I’m doing by staying here is creating agony for the
four of us.”

“The five of us. You forget Vega. Apparently she’s not too happy with
things, if you wish she were in hell.”

“Oh, Charlie, spare me! God!” she shouted. Her voice sounded nearly
hysterical.

“Keep it down,” he said. “If you don’t wake the kids up you’ll scare the
neighbors to death.”

For a long trembling moment she stood there, unable to speak through her
sobs and unable to look at his tired and disappointed face. Finally she
said, whispering, “I don’t know who I am, Charlie. Just saying I’m your
wife doesn’t tell me any more than I’ve known for years, and that isn’t
enough.”

“You’re either straight or you’re gay, Beth. Take your pick.” He
couldn’t yield to her, he couldn’t be generous. He had been through too
much and his restraint ran too high. He stood to lose a wife he loved,
through that wife’s lack of self-understanding. He might see her
transformed into a type of woman he neither understood nor liked, before
his very eyes.

“It’s not that easy,” she said, appalled at his attitude. “You aren’t
either black or white, you’re all shades of gray in between. It might be
the kind of thing I could get over and learn to live with, and it might
be the kind of thing that will change my whole life irrevocably.”

“What if you find out you’re nothing but a goddamn Lesbian?” he said in
that rough voice that carried his grief so clearly, and he wounded her
heart forever with his words.

Her patience snapped like a stick bent too far. Without a word—words had
never seemed so inadequate, so meaningless, so useless between two
people born to the same native tongue—she turned and went into the
bedroom and emptied all of her dresser drawers on the bed. Charlie
watched her while she marched in white-faced fury into the basement and
hauled two big bags up the stairs.

She dragged them through the living room and he leaned forward to say
softly, “You fool, Beth. You fool!”

But she couldn’t look at him. She thought she would either faint with
her hatred or somehow kill him with the frenzy of it.

In the bedroom she stuffed things into the bags helter skelter. What
didn’t fit didn’t go. The rest was left behind in a tangle.

Halfway through this frenetic task she went to the phone and called the
Los Angeles International Airport. Charlie watched her, still on the
couch, immobilized with disbelief. She made a reservation for that very
morning at three o’clock.

And then she called her Uncle John and told him to pick her up at
Chicago’s Midway Airport the next day. Her reservation on the plane was
for one person only.

“Just you?” Charlie said softly, staring at her. “You mean you’d really
leave me here with the kids? You mean you really don’t give a goddamn
about your own children?”

“You said I couldn’t take them with me!” she cried. “I’d take them if
you’d let me.”

“Never,” he said. “But I thought—God, Beth, I thought you’d try a little
harder to get them than this. You’ve given up without a struggle.” He
was truly shocked; it blasted all his favorite concepts of motherhood to
see her behave this way.

“I’ve struggled with you until I haven’t any strength left,” she said
hoarsely.

“You never loved them,” he said, hushed with shock and revelation. “You
never loved them at all.”

“I haven’t a strong enough stomach to get down on my knees and beg for
them,” she cried. “I’ve begged you long enough and hard enough for other
things.”

“But they were _things_. These are _kids_. Your own kids!”

“I want them,” she cried, “but I want my freedom more. I only make them
unhappy, I’m not a good mother.”

“Well, what sort of a _mother_ do you think I’ll make?” he shouted, and
now it was Charlie whose voice was loud enough to wake the children.

She left him abruptly and finished her packing. In the children’s room
she could hear stirrings and she prayed with the tears still soaking her
cheeks that neither of them would wake up and break her heart or change
her mind. She forced her suitcases shut with the strength of haste and
fear, and half shoved, half carried them out to the car.

Charlie stood in the center of the living room and watched her with his
mouth open. When she passed him he said, “Beth, this isn’t happening. It
can’t be. I couldn’t have been that bad. I _couldn’t_ have been. Beth,
please. Explain to me, tell me. I don’t understand.”

But she gave him a look of hopelessness, and once she snapped, “Is that
all you can say? After nine years of marriage?”

_Is he just going to stand there and let me go?_ she wondered. A sort of
panic rose in her at the thought that he might suddenly regain his
senses and force her to stop. But he let her get as far as packing both
bags into the back of the car and actually starting the motor before he
yanked the door open and shoved her over so that he could sit in the
driver’s seat.

“Beth,” he said, and his eyes were still big with the awfulness of what
she was doing to him and their children. “You aren’t going anywhere.”

Suddenly he kissed her urgently, holding her arms with hands so strong
and fierce that they bruised her flesh. She felt his teeth pressed into
her tender mouth and something in the despair of it, the near-terror she
sensed in him at the thought of losing her, brought an uprush of
unwanted tenderness in her heart.

He tried to kiss her again, but Beth struggled wildly, trying to hurt
him. And all the while he was wooing her with violence, almost the way
he had when they first met, as if he knew now too that words were long
since worthless between them.

At last Beth grasped one of her own shoes and pulled it off. Desperately
she struck him with all her strength on the side of the head. The sharp
heel cut his scalp and he gave a soft little cry of astonishment. He
pulled away from her at last and they stared at each other, both of them
shocked at themselves, at each other, at what was happening, both of
them crying.

Finally, without a word, he got out of the car and slammed the door.

Beth dragged herself over to the driver’s seat and rolled down the
window. “I’ll write,” she said, but their two white faces, still so near
one another physically, were already separated by more than the miles
Beth would fly across that night. He flinched at her promise, as if he
knew that an envelope full of words would do no more good than those
they had flung at each other in a huge effort to create understanding.

“Take good care of the kids,” she said and immediately she began to back
out because she could hear one of them starting to cry.

He walked along beside the car, one hand on the window sill, as if that
might keep her there longer. “What shall I tell them this time when they
wake up and find you gone?” he asked.

“Tell them I’ve gone to hell,” she wept. “Tell them I’m a no-good and
the only thing they can hope for is that life will be happier without me
than with me. It will, too.”

She began to press the accelerator, gathering speed until he had to let
go or run to keep up. He let go.

In the street she straightened the car around and gave one last
trembling look to her house, her yard and garden, the lighted windows of
the living room where the TV set played on to an audience of furniture.
Skipper’s little voice wailed through the night for a glass of water and
Charlie stood at the end of the drive, a silhouette with silver trim,
watching her.

Beth drove away. _God, let me never feel sorrow like this again_, she
prayed. _Let this be my punishment for what I’m doing. I can’t bear any
more._




                              Chapter Nine


In Pasedena she stopped and called Cleve. It was past eleven o’clock and
she hesitated, but she had to talk to somebody about Vega and had to
make some arrangements about Charlie, and there plainly wasn’t anybody
she could turn to but Cleve.

“I’m in a little all-night joint on Fair Oaks, at Colorado,” she said.

“God, Beth, you’re on Skid Row!”

“Sh! Don’t wake Jean up! Can you come down?”

“Sure, but you’d better find a cop to protect you till I get there.”

“It’s not a bar, it’s a coffee place,” she said. “Hurry, Cleve.” And the
catch in her throat warned him to heed her words.

He got there in less than fifteen minutes. She was waiting out in front
and when he arrived they went in and took a booth and had a cup of
coffee in the dirty brilliance of the fluorescent light.

“Cleve, it’s not fair of me to dump my troubles in your lap,” she said,
“but you’ve got to help me. You’re the only one who can.”

He was alarmed by the look of her. Her eyes were heavy and scared, red
with weeping, and her hair hung about her pretty face in neglected
confusion. She breathed fast, as though she had been running, and she
stammered—something Beth, with all her poise, had never done.

“If you’re in trouble—”

“It’s private trouble, Cleve. I’m leaving Charlie.”

His jaw went slack and he stared at her amazed while the waitress placed
the coffee in front of them. After a moment he lighted them each a
cigarette, passing hers to her, and then he said to the coffee cup, “I’m
really sorry. God! I thought you two were sublimely happy.”

“Not everybody’s as happy as you and Jean!” Beth said, and there was
more wistfulness than envy in her voice.

“Thank God for that,” he said wryly, but she was too wrapped up in her
pain and perplexity to notice it. “Tell me about it?” he said.

“No,” she said, shaking her head and making a tremendous effort to
control herself. “You wouldn’t understand any better than he did.”

“What about the kids?” His voice was cautious. He had been handling
Vega’s flare-ups so long that frantic women were not new to him. He had
some idea what to do.

“I—I left them. I’m no proper mother, Cleve. It was cowardly but I swear
I think they’ll be happier.”

Like Charlie before him, Cleve was shocked. “But what in hell will
Charlie _do_ with them?”

“I don’t know. I came to talk to you about Vega,” she said quickly. If
he persisted in that obvious shock she would go to pieces. His sister’s
name silenced him, threw him off the track.

“I went ahead and saw her, Cleve. I’ve been seeing quite a lot of her
lately.” She didn’t know how to proceed. She couldn’t blurt out the
truth to him, and yet she had to say something. In her frayed emotional
state Vega was likely to do anything, even scream the facts to
strangers, unless she could be reassured that Beth at least thought of
her before she left.

“I know,” Cleve told her.

“You _know_?” Beth gasped. “_What_ do you know?”

“That you’ve been seeing her,” he said, and he was not pleased. “Who do
you think gets the brunt of her bad temper?”

“I thought I got all of it.”

He shook his head. “You don’t even get half.”

After an embarrassed pause she said, “I’m sorry, Cleve.” She wondered
how much of the truth he knew.

“So am I.”

“She thinks she owns me. We’ve gotten pretty close. I can’t disappear
without giving her a message. Tell her I’m sorry, will you?”

“Okay.” He looked at her. “Is that all?”

And she knew from his voice, his face, that he was disappointed in her;
perhaps his feelings were even stronger.

“Vega took it all wrong, Cleve. She took it too hard.”

“She did that with Beverly, too. The girl P.K. Schaefer took away from
her.”

It took Beth a moment to place P.K.

“I don’t want her to do anything awful, Cleve,” Beth said, pleading with
him.

“Neither do I,” he said and gave her a twisted little smile.

“I guess I loused things up for you, didn’t I? I never meant to. It just
happened. It got away from me. Will you talk to her?”

“I’ll try.” He was already bracing himself for another siege of fury and
erratic temper and threats. When things like this happened to Vega he
always had to nurse her through them. Her mother was too sick and Gramp
was too frail and neither of them understood the problem. Mrs. Purvis,
to judge from Cleve’s description of her attitude, would have disowned
her daughter at the very least had she known her true nature.

When Cleve made a move to get up she caught his hands, searching for the
warmth, the desire to help her, that she so needed. But he was chilly,
preoccupied with the problem she had thrust at him.

“Cleve, there’s one more thing,” she said and he paused.

“Beth, I told you not to get mixed up with my sister, but you went ahead
and did it. Now you’re sorry but it’s too late. Don’t you think that’s
enough?”

She was surprised and shamed by it. But not silenced. “I _must_ ask
you—you’re the only one. Write to me,” she implored. “Tell me about the
kids and Charlie. He won’t write, I know that. Besides I don’t want him
to know my address, if I should leave my uncle’s house. Oh, Cleve,
please! You _can’t_ turn me down!”

He looked at her a second longer, at her pale tremulous mouth and
shaking hand, and then he took the address from her. It was one of Uncle
John’s cards from her wallet. He folded it solemnly and put it into his
pocket.

“Thank you, Cleve,” she said ardently. “You’ll be my only link with
them.”

Cleve stood up. “I told Jean I had to go down to the corner drug store,”
he said. “I’ve told her that so often she thinks it means the corner
beer parlor. I’d better get home and give her a nice surprise. Nothing
but coffee on my breath.” He was making an effort, at least, to be kind,
to take the awful heaviness out of the atmosphere. She knew he would do
as he said for her, and she was moved and grateful.

He took her arm and led her to her car. At the door he told her, “If
this is half as hard on Charlie as it is on you, he’s going to crack up
fast. You look like hell, Beth.”

“I know,” she said. “I never did anything so awful—so hard—in my life. I
feel like I’m going to die of it.”

“Then you’re a fool. Whatever your reasons were, they aren’t worth it.”

“That’s what I have to find out,” she said.

“Sure you won’t tell me?”

“Yes, Cleve.” She held out a hand to him and after a minute he grasped
it and squeezed it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “For you both.”

“Thank you. Goodbye, Cleve. And write to me.”

He nodded and then he turned and walked away and she watched him for a
second, thinking how much he looked like Vega and what a hell of a mess
she had handed him. Subconsciously she realized that her train of
thoughts was enough to shatter her mind, her emotions. The load was
already too great. She had to turn to something else, she had to move
and do things and act ordinary and sensible or she would fly to pieces.

                   *       *       *       *       *

The plane took off three minutes behind time. She felt the ground fall
away beneath her and the wide steel wings rise, heard the captain’s
voice moments later and saw her seat neighbor light a cigarette—all with
a feeling of eerie unreality reinforced by the small morning hour.

“We are circling over Catalina Island,” the pilot announced, “waiting
for air traffic to clear over Los Angeles. In about five minutes we will
be heading due east.”

Beth looked out of the window and saw a wavy ribbon of orange lights—the
shoreline of Catalina Island—and a cluster of white lights winking
around the town of Avalon. She was on the side away from the mainland
and couldn’t see Los Angeles, but soon afterward the plane turned
eastward and they headed inland again. She looked down, looking for
landmarks in the night, and after a moment she recognized a few: the
Colosseum, the brilliant green-white strips of the freeways, and then
Pasadena with the winding pattern of Orange Grove Avenue discernible
below. She followed it carefully with her eyes to where she supposed
Sierra Bella began, and looked at the bouquet of lights there against
the mountains, looked at it more with her heart than her eyes.

She closed her eyes then and for a short painful moment she could see
the little town as it would look in tomorrow’s daylight, bright with the
colors of early summer, the lavender flowers of the jacaranda trees
glowing over the streets, the pink and white oleander with its pointed
leaves, the long palmy street up the mountainside to their small house,
the sun frosting the purple mountains in the early morning, the sounds
of her children tumbling out of bed and shouting for their breakfast,
Charlie shaving and grumbling at the mirror.

Beth lighted a cigarette and said softly to herself, “Laura, I’m coming
for you. Don’t fail me. Be there, darling, or that’s the end of me. I’ll
be destroyed, for I can never come back here.”




                              Chapter Ten


Uncle John, genial and bustling and worried, picked her up in Chicago.
He had to be content with the briefest and barest explanation from her.
She was utterly exhausted and all she wanted was to collapse and sleep.
She even took sleeping pills when it developed that her bitter
self-recriminations would give her no rest. And for two whole days she
refused to leave her room.

“I’ll just say this,” she told Uncle John when he pressed her. “I’ve
left Charlie. He has the children; they’re all fine. Everything is my
fault. It would kill me to have to talk about it now. I’ll try to
explain it later. I’m so tired and miserable I just want to be alone.”

So they gave her their hospitality and let her have her way. Uncle John
was anxious and he even thought of calling Charlie and demanding the
facts. But his wife restrained him. “Let’s at least hear her side of it
first,” she said. “She _did_ say it was her fault, after all.”

Beth had no intention of explaining to them what couldn’t be explained.
She wrote to Charlie, just a note. She said she would be with Uncle John
for a while and she’d let him know any new plans. Cleve wrote to her
within a couple of days to say the kids were well but missed her badly,
and Charlie had become very taciturn at the office. He had found a woman
to care for the children during the day. Beth wondered impatiently what
sort of woman she was—whether she was kindly and whether she liked
children and whether she fixed them their favorite breakfasts, and what
she looked like. There was no mention of Vega in Cleve’s letter.

As soon as she had a little strength, a little sense, she determined to
find Laura. The place to start was with Laura’s father. Beth didn’t
suppose that Laura was still living with him; they had never gotten
along, and Laura, when she left Beth nine years ago, had been an
entirely different girl from the one her father thought he had raised.
She had found herself and had begun to live for the first time, and Beth
guessed that her first move had been to leave her father.

But Beth had to start somewhere, and so, when she had been in Chicago
two days, she called Merrill Landon. It was mid-afternoon; it had taken
her till then to get up her courage. She wasn’t sure whether she was
more afraid of finding Laura or of not finding her. What would Laura
think of Beth, now that her former lover was no longer a radiant college
girl? Of course Laura would be older too, but she was still four years
younger than Beth, and Beth had lived with a mountain of dissatisfaction
and discontent that had left its mark on her pretty face.

Merrill Landon was not in. Beth had to call again at seven. She
approached the phone in a nervous sweat, afraid that her voice would
break or her throat go dry and betray her nerves to him. She had to be
very casual.

This time she got him from his dinner.

_Damn!_ she thought while the servant summoned him. _He probably hates
to be interrupted._

“Hello?” he said, and his voice was deep and rough. He spoke in the same
tone he would have used to bark an order to a subordinate at the
newspaper where he worked. Beth gasped a little before she could say,
“Mr. Landon? My name is Beth Cullison. I—I mean Beth _Ayers_.” Her
maiden name! _God_, she thought in dismay. But there was no time to
scold herself.

“Well, which is it?” he boomed.

“Ayers. Mrs. Ayers,” she answered, trying to sound calm. She raced on,
hoping to smooth over his first impression, “I’m an old college friend
of Laura’s. I’m visiting in Chicago and I thought it would be nice if we
could get together.”

Her voice went dry and she had to stop. There was an awkward pause. “A
college friend?” he said, as if there were no such things.

“You _are_ Laura’s father, aren’t you?” she asked timidly.

“Yes.” He waited so long to answer that it made her wonder. “What do you
want with Laura, Mrs. Ayers?”

“I just wanted to talk to her. If she’s there.”

“I haven’t seen Laura for the last eight years,” he said, and Beth’s
heart went cold. He added thoughtfully, “You said your name was
Cullison. Were you one of Laura’s roommates at the university?”

For some reason she was afraid to answer yes. Could it possibly be that
Laura might have told him about the curious love that had sprung up
between them? It was unlikely that he would remember her name unless it
had special significance for him. What if he had forced the truth out of
his daughter?

“Well?” he said, surprise and impatience in his voice at her delay.
“Maybe you can’t remember that far back.”

“Yes. Yes, I was her roommate. Excuse me, I—where is Laura now?”

“Mrs. Ayers, why don’t you come over here tonight? I’d like to talk to
you.” And when she hesitated again in a welter of uncertainty he said,
“Are you far from here?”

“I have a car,” she said. “I’ll come.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

She took Aunt Elsa’s Buick and drove out to the Landon house. It wasn’t
far; it was on one of the pretty shaded streets of Evanston. Merrill
Landon lived there alone with his two servants. He had been there since
he and Laura’s mother first married and nothing could tempt him away.

There was nothing left of Laura’s mother now but memories. But they
bound Landon to her and kept him in the home she had furnished, where he
could still see traces of her taste, her touch. No other woman had ever
replaced her for him. Except, in a strange and uncomprehended way,
Laura. And because she couldn’t _be_ her mother, because she was only a
sweet shadow, a photo transparency, he blamed her and was very hard with
her.

When Laura had at last understood where she had unwittingly failed him,
she left him. She was his daughter, not his wife; that was her crime.
And because he couldn’t have her he couldn’t forgive her for living. She
was a constant threat to his virtue, a painful reminder of his dead
wife. The knowledge of his tormented desire gave her the courage to turn
her back on him and run.

He had found her once, after that, almost by accident, and they had it
out in words, the awful incredible words that had never been spoken
between them before. The rupture had been complete after that. He
admitted that he wanted her. He took her in his bearish arms and kissed
her mouth brutally. And Laura, in her shock, told him what she was, a
Lesbian. And who had done it to her; her own father. So they knew the
very worst of each other, had known now for years, and had lost each
other. But the knowledge, though it hurt, had washed away the
bitterness.

Over the chasm of years and miles, Merrill Landon had come to love his
daughter in a new way. He had never tried to pursue her, after that one
shattering night in a New York hotel room when they had revealed
themselves to each other, but he had spent the long years since then
wondering about her, imagining how she might be living and with whom.
His thoughts were mostly tender, sometimes resentful, always lonely. But
he was proud and a little afraid of himself with her, and he would not
seek her out again.

Beth rang his bell, ignorant of all that had passed between him and
Laura in the years that preceded her visit. No servant opened to her, as
she had expected, but Merrill Landon himself, as though he, too, was
anxious for the meeting. She had never seen him before in her life but
she knew him instantly. His flesh was Laura’s and her whole body was
suddenly covered with shiverings.

He was a huge man; not big like Charlie, not tall and long-muscled, but
just big. Square-chested, slope-shouldered, powerfully built, with his
dark hair and heavy beard. He stood high from the ground but you didn’t
realize it until you came close to him; the chunkiness of his
construction gave him the look of a shorter man. In his heavy features
she saw very little of Laura, who resembled most her mother. And yet
there was something there, faint but visible, that kept the shivers
coming in Beth.

He sized her up like a seasoned journalist. “Come in, Mrs. Ayers,” he
said, and showed her into a comfortable den stacked high with books and
papers. It was apparently his study, the work room where he wrote his
daily editorials, read his books, did his dreaming, perhaps. Beth sat in
a large ox-blood leather chair. She was afraid to lean back in it for
fear of getting lost, of making herself look small and shy to this man
she wanted so much to impress with her social ease. It would have helped
immeasurably if she could have guessed by looking at him how much he
knew of her love for Laura.

Landon mixed her a drink. “What are you doing in Chicago, Beth?” he
asked with his back to her, and the sound of her proper name startled
her.

_Now he thinks he’s got me_, she thought. _I’m here in his house and he
thinks he’s going to find out about Laura and me once and for all. I’m
not even Mrs. Ayers any more, I’m just Beth. Just a school girl._

She told him she was visiting her uncle, she was living in California,
she had two children. That was all. His questions were brief, as though
she were a socialite he had to interview for the next day’s paper, and
she tailored her answers the same way. But Beth wanted to ask her own
questions. She was the one who urgently needed to know, who had left her
home and kids and husband and come all this way to find this man’s
daughter—and perhaps, at the same time, herself. She gazed around the
room, taking in the working disorder, the handsome, slightly worn
furniture. Laura knew all this, Beth thought; it was as familiar to her
as her own room, and the thought made Beth ache for her.

She interrupted Landon to ask him, “Where is she, Mr. Landon? Maybe
there’s still time for me to see her tonight.” He smiled at her
over-bright eyes and somehow she expected his answer.

“I doubt it. She’s not living in Chicago any more.”

_Of course not. Goddamn! That would have been too easy. I should have
known._ “Where is she?” she demanded, and again he smiled at the pink
flush in her cheeks, the line between her eyes.

“I’d like to know myself,” he said. He was almost teasing her.

“You must have some idea,” she cried, desperately afraid that Laura
would slip out of her fingers before she ever touched her again. If she
had been more observant she would have seen the understanding that began
to show in his smile. He was needling her for a purpose.

“I do have some idea,” he said calmly, sitting down behind his desk.
“I’ll gladly share it with you. If you’ll do something for me, Beth.”

“If I can.”

“You can.” She watched him while he listened to his memories. He could
hear Laura’s voice in his inner ear crying, “And that’s not all!
Remember Beth Cullison? Remember my roommate at school? Her too, Father!
She was the first! I loved her! Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
That voice, sharp with the saved-up sorrows and frustrations of a young
lifetime, crying at him through tears and fury of what she had become,
what her true nature was! And he had understood her, at last. His
perverted love for her had twisted her whole personality. He had
controlled his terrible desire for years, but it had cost Laura a normal
childhood.

“When you find Laura,” he said, “I want you to tell me where she is.
That’s all. Will you do that?”

Beth stared at him. “When I find her?” she said. “Where do I have to
go?”

“Tell me her address, that’s all,” he bargained.

And she knew then that he could see plainly how badly she wanted Laura.
She struggled to keep her face smooth, her passion under wraps. “Yes,”
she said. It was a whole confession of love, that word. It said, _Yes,
I’ll find her, I’ll go to the ends of the earth, I’ll do any favor for
you if you’ll tell me where to start, where to look._

He smiled. He had her. “She’s in New York,” he said.

Beth’s mouth fell open. “New _York_!” She was dismayed. She had only
been there once, when she was a little girl of ten. She didn’t know the
city at all. And the size of it! “But, good God, Mr. Landon, there are
millions of people in New York!” she exclaimed.

“There’s only one Laura. She’s been there a while, she knows people.”

“What people?” Her discouragement showed now, too. She couldn’t have
hidden it from her extraordinary host.

“If I were you I’d start in the Village,” he said. “She lived down there
a while.”

“I don’t know the Village,” she protested. “I don’t know New York at
all. I can’t fly to New York just to scare up an old roommate of mine.”
It was supposed to throw him off the track, demonstrate her normalcy.
But Merrill Landon was too far ahead of her. He knew too much that she
didn’t know. He saw the strength and determination in her chin, the
trembling of her sensual mouth, and he smiled once again.

“You can’t, but you will,” he said. “Isn’t that why you’re here?” There
was an embarrassed silence. She didn’t know how to answer without
exposing herself to him. “Beth,” he said, and the gruff voice softened
slightly, “I know you were in love with my daughter.”

She gasped, and as he went on she gulped the rest of her drink.

“She told me so. You have a right to know that I know. She—well, she had
to tell me; she didn’t do it to hurt you. I’ve kept it to myself. I knew
you from the pictures she used to have of you.” She began to cry, and
into the sniffly silence he added, “I love her too. Only I can’t go find
her now. Someone else will have to do that for me.”

When they were able to look at each other again he said, “Did you come
all the way from California to find her?”

She was undone. She had no secrets. He was too much for her, with his
bright eyes that penetrated hers and saw so much and suspected so much
more. “Yes,” she confessed. “I had to get away from my husband. I was
nearly cracking up. I just wanted to see Laura again. Everything was so
wonderful then, so awful now. I thought it might help. I thought maybe
that was what was wrong with me.”

He lighted a cigarette for her and one for himself. “Laura doesn’t want
to see me again,” he said. “With you it may be different. If you follow
her to New York, Beth, you’ll find her, somehow. I want you to tell me
about her and where she’s living. I won’t give you cause to regret it.
I’ve messed up her life enough as it is. Just tell me when you find
her.”

“All right.” She seemed to have no will now. Only a need for Laura, a
need for her love so great that it would propel her onward until she
found her. “Mr. Landon,” she said, looking at him with all her
subterfuges stripped from her. “Why are you kind to me? Why don’t you
despise me for what I did to your daughter?”

“For what _you_ did to her?” He gave a scornful little laugh that turned
against himself. “If I were guiltless myself I could despise anyone I
pleased. I could blame anyone I pleased. But I’m not guiltless.” His
words made her feel braver. “If it hadn’t been you it would have been
somebody else, Beth. You know that, of course. Laura is a Lesbian.
Sooner or later she would have understood that, whether with your help
or without it.”

It was logical, it was sensible. But it had never struck Beth quite that
way and it hurt. She stood up with a little gasp and walked away from
him. “No,” she blurted. “It was special, it was—almost sacred.”

“To you perhaps.”

“To both of us. She couldn’t have done it with anyone else.” She spoke
positively because she was suddenly so unsure.

“I didn’t mean to shock you,” he said. “I thought you would have
realized long ago that somebody had to be first with her and it just
happened to be you. It was no divine choice, just blind accident.”

Beth lighted a cigarette with trembling hands. “I guess it’s because
I’ve never known any other woman the way I knew Laura,” she said,
talking fast to keep the tears back. “I guess it’s because there never
was anybody else I wanted like that.”

“And you just took it for granted that Laura never wanted anybody else,
either? You’re fooling yourself, my dear. That’s her nature. That’s her
life. For you, with a husband and a family, life has been very
different. Now, when you want her again, you’re resentful to find that
Laura’s life has gone on without you. That she’s found other women, a
whole new mode of living, other interests that you don’t share.”

It knocked her ego into a corner. “Oh, you spiteful bastard!” she cried
in pure self-defense. And then clapped her hands over her mouth, sinking
to a small straight-backed chair and weeping angry startled tears that
nevertheless broke the tension and relieved her.

Merrill Landon laughed softly and she was unnerved to hear Laura’s
inflection in the sound. “You have a little spirit, after all,” he said.
“Good. You’re mad because I’m right. Isn’t that so? Of course.”

And of course he was right, to her chagrin.

“I didn’t even think about her after I’d been married,” Beth said
brokenly. It was the first time in all these weary months of wondering
and experimenting with the wrong person, of deceiving Charlie and
perhaps her own self, that she let go and spoke of it. And it felt good.
Landon understood her language. That alone made it possible to speak.

“I was dissatisfied,” she explained to him. “Oh, hell, I was just plain
sick to death of the whole mess. The little things with a husband
aggravated me even more than the big things. And the kids nearly did me
in. When it got so I couldn’t stand to have Charlie touch me, I knew
we’d had it. _He_ didn’t, though. He still thinks I’m going through a
phase.

“I guess when _I_ changed so much it seemed to me Charlie should change,
too. But that was unreasonable of me. Here I am, a completely different
Beth, and he’s just the same old Charlie.”

“You fell in love with him that way,” Landon reminded her.

“In love and out,” she said.

“When did it occur to you that Laura might cure your ills?” He handed
her a fresh drink and she took a swallow before she answered him.

“I began to dream about her,” she said. “Just a little at first, but
then all the time. I met another woman and I tried to find with her what
I had known once with Laura, but it didn’t work. Made me think that no
other woman would be right for me.” She glanced at him shyly, suddenly
recalling that he ought to be shocked and disapproving, wondering where
she found the guts to confess as she did. The whiskey? The house,
Laura’s house? The man, Laura’s father? She saw no shock in his face,
only interest and a certain remote sympathy, and it gave her a new
respect for him.

“The other woman didn’t love you?” he asked.

“Yes, she did,” Beth said. He saw her chin quiver and knew she was
understating things for him.

“When you find Laura, do you think she’ll be just the way she was when
you knew her in college?” he asked.

“No. That’d be pretty naïve of me,” Beth said.

“And yet that’s what you’re looking for in her. You don’t know her the
way she is now. You’re setting out to find your old college roommate.
Laura may disappoint you like this other woman did. Just by being
different from your memories of her. Then where will you turn, Beth?”

It was a dismal thing to face. She had resolutely ignored the
possibility until now.

“You’d better make plans,” Landon continued. “A thing like that could
crack you up if you’re not prepared for it. It’s been a while, Beth,
quite a while. Nine years?”

She nodded. “She hasn’t forgotten me, has she? Could that be?”

“She hadn’t when I saw her. She remembers a college girl with no real
experience of life, the way you do. She remembers an ingenuous romance.
She remembers that you jilted her for a boy you knew, and probably
married the boy. End of story. You’ll have to take it from there
yourself when you find her.”

“_If_ I find her,” she said and emptied her glass again.

“You will, if you still want to as much as you did when you came in here
tonight.”

She put the glass down. “I do,” she whispered.

He smiled. “You may get to New York and find her right there in the
phone book. Who knows?”

Beth gave a wry little laugh. “Sure,” she said. “I was thinking, on the
plane, ‘What if I get to Chicago and there she is, at home with her
father.’ It would have been too easy, though. But I _did_ think she’d be
living in the city, at least. Now ... New York. God. When I get to New
York they’ll tell me she’s living in Paris. And if I ever make it to
Paris, damned if she isn’t already on her way to Hong Kong.”

“She’s not much of a vagabond,” Landon reassured her. “She’d have stayed
here in Chicago if I’d made it tolerable for her. This was her home. She
liked it here.... Have you any money?” he asked abruptly, looking
directly at her.

“A little,” she said with some pride.

“A little doesn’t last long in New York.”

“I have about three thousand in my bank account.”

“Well, depending on how you live and whether you work or not, that might
see you through a half year.”

“I don’t gamble,” she snapped. “I don’t eat at the Stork Club. And I
don’t throw the stuff away.”

He laughed. “Okay, my dear. Go to New York with your three thousand
dollars and live on it for the rest of your life if you can. I wish you
only luck—the best kind. I was just thinking, if you should need a
loan....” And seeing her face storm up he added, “I’m not laughing at
you, Beth. I think you’re a better girl—a braver girl—than I did at
first. Maybe I hoped you’d be a disappointment. You see, I haven’t liked
you very well, over the years, since Laura told me she loved you. Simple
jealousy. I haven’t liked any of the others she told me about either.
But I suppose it’s only fair. I had her all to myself for eighteen years
and only made her miserable.” He turned away as he spoke. “When at last
I had to share her, it was with her own sex. I was shocked when she told
me, but after a while I found I preferred it to sharing her with men.”

There was an awkward silence. Beth stared in surprise at his broad back
in its brown tweed lounging jacket, feeling that his admission bound her
to him, as hers bound him to her. They had a little something on each
other now. They owed each other some small allegiance.

“I’ll send you her address, if I find her,” Beth said.

“Thank you. And your own. I don’t think I’d better write Laura. I’ll
have to depend on you for news. Do you mind?”

Beth began to laugh and made him turn around to stare in his turn. “Is
that funny?” he asked.

Beth shook her head and when she found her voice she said, “No, life is
funny. I can’t write to Charlie either. There’s a friend in Pasadena
who’s doing for me what I’m doing for you. Writing to tell me all the
news.” They gazed at each other a little guiltily and still with
amusement. “Are we a pair of cowards, Mr. Landon?” she said. “Or are we
braver than everybody else?”

“Cowards, of course,” he said. “We aren’t really brave at all. But we do
have a certain strength. You set out to find yourself, and that takes
strength. I found myself long ago and had the strength to live with what
I found—not a pleasant task.” He grinned at her and suddenly she liked
him. She liked him very much and in that instant she saw Laura in his
face, his smile, again.

They were a pair of conspirators. If Beth found Laura and won her love
again, she would be an ally for Merrill Landon. Through Beth he might
come close once again to the daughter he adored; once again before time
caught up with him and closed his life. For he was in his late fifties
now and he had lived too hard. He was tired. He wanted a few years with
her, and the idea had struck him when he interviewed Beth that this
might be a last way to achieve the goal. He couldn’t approach Laura
himself. She would turn and run before he could speak, and she had a
right to. But Beth might speak for him. She liked him. He could see it
in her face.

They parted with an understanding—friends.




                             Chapter Eleven


Beth withdrew her money from the bank. There was nearly four thousand
dollars. That was plenty. She felt extravagantly rich with the money her
parents had left her lined up neatly in traveler’s checks in her wallet.
She took the precaution of getting the funds before she broke the news
to Uncle John. Not that he could have stopped her; the money was hers,
free and clear. But he could have slowed things down, and she wanted to
be able to go now, at once.

“I’ve been thinking,” she told him the next day, “that I’d like to take
a trip.”

“A trip?”

“Yes. To forget. To think about something else. I want to see some new
places, Uncle John. I want to roam a little. I think it’ll do me good.”

He appeared unconvinced. He was a cautious man by nature and a
provincial. If you could stay at home with your own comfortable bed and
the food you liked, why go anywhere? His days of patient silence
weighted his spirits down, too, and he suddenly asked his niece, with
straightforward concern, “Beth, what about your children? How can you go
traveling and just leave them?”

“They’re all right,” she said, looking away.

“How do you know? How long do you intend to be away from them? Is that
good for children? Damn it, you haven’t explained any of this to me yet.
I don’t like it.”

“Uncle John, quit worrying!” she cried irritably. “The kids are with
their father. They’re better off with him, you must understand that.”

“Why don’t you take them away from him? You’re their _mother_, for God’s
sake. If you’re going to divorce Charlie you’d better start doing
something about it instead of running around the country. Are you going
to go through life married to a man who’s unworthy of you, who won’t let
you keep your own children?”

“That has nothing to do with it. I told you it was all my fault!” she
cried.

“What did you do, then? Just _what_, exactly, did you do? What’s the
_matter_ with you, Beth? I have a right to know. I’m feeding you and
sheltering you—I’m supporting you. Your husband should be doing this.”

“You mean if I don’t tell you everything you don’t want me here?” she
demanded, stunned.

“I mean you owe me an explanation!” he said, and she saw that his slow
temper was finally roused. His balding head reddened. “Are you in love
with some other man?”

“No!”

“Did you disgrace yourself? Or Charlie?”

“No!”

“Do you want your children, do you love your children?”

“Yes!” She was furious. Her voice broke.

“Then why in God’s name don’t you get them? It’s unnatural! How is it
that Charlie can keep them from you?”

“I gave them up!” she shouted. “I gave them up in exchange for my
freedom. There! Make sense out of that if you can!”

She ran upstairs to her room and began to pack.

                   *       *       *       *       *

She made a one-way reservation to New York City and then she sat down
and wrote a letter to Nina Spicer, the writer whose books about Lesbian
life in New York had attracted her. She had almost forgotten Nina until
her talk with Merrill Landon. Now, suddenly, the writer appeared to her
as a possible starting place in her search. Nina knew New York; you
could tell that from the books she wrote. She knew the Village, and she
knew gay life both in and out of the Village. There was no reason to
suppose she knew Laura, but perhaps she knew _of_ her, knew where she
could be found.

Beth had been candid, in a way, with Nina. She pretended she was gay,
even when she wasn’t sure of it herself. She painted a picture of
herself as beautiful, lost, misunderstood, yearning for a passionate
romance with any compatible female. When she wrote the words she
believed them true and her belief carried conviction, for Nina answered
her with a certain condescending kindness and sympathy.

So Nina Spicer had a passel of half-facts from which to form an opinion
of Beth. And Beth knew even less of Nina—only what she could guess from
the books: a half-dozen violent, lively, coarse stories, loaded with
deaths and beatings and perversities. They had some of the interest of
good newspaper reporting, with a sort of gusto in the gory details and a
lot of tormented screwballs for characters. Occasionally the love scenes
were moving; more often, blunt case histories, skillfully dissected.

Beth pictured her as a casual hard-headed girl, fast to take up an
affair, fast to drop it; hard to know and only partly worth the effort.
But she was grateful, terribly grateful, to Nina for her letters. She
wished there were some way to know her without having to meet her, for
she sensed a bridgeless difference between herself and Nina that might
make enemies of them. But she needed help now and Nina was the only
person she knew who could give it to her.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beth escaped at mid-afternoon the next day, taking a bus from the Conrad
Hilton on Michigan Boulevard to the airport. It was that simple. No one
even saw her leave the house.

There was no crushing despair, no gnawing panic and indecision this
time. This time she was on the last leg of the journey, the
all-consuming quest to find Beth Cullison Ayers and make a human being
out of her. Laura was at the other end.

But Laura was not in the Manhattan directory when Beth checked it at the
airport.

_What if she died? What if she got sick and died, or left the country,
or went to jail? What if she can’t stand the sight of me?_ But she
banished such painful musings as fast as they came up. She couldn’t
really believe in them or there would be more point in jumping out of
the plane than riding it to New York.

                   *       *       *       *       *

She went directly to the Beaton Hotel on First Avenue near the U.N.
Building. She remembered the name from the time she and Uncle John and
Aunt Elsa had stayed there when she was a youngster of ten. It had
seemed like the marvelous castle in the fairy tales to her then, and the
name remained in her memory.

They gave her a room on the fourth floor. She took the least expensive
one they had, the kind where you share the bathroom with two or three
other rooms. Perhaps it was an unnecessary economy, but she had Merrill
Landon’s sardonic warnings about money ringing in her ears and she
wasn’t going to be caught spending hers foolishly.

She unpacked a few things and hung them in the closet, and all the while
her heart was high and going a little faster than it should have. She
was in New York. Laura was in New York. Things would work out, they had
to.

And what if they did? What if Laura could be found, and fast? And what
if she fell into Beth’s arms as though the nine years between them
didn’t exist, their lives apart didn’t exist? Then what?

_Then_, Beth thought, almost timidly, _divorce. I’ll have to divorce
Charlie. I’ll never get the children back. My children. My babies. My
own flesh. But I’ll have Laura again._ Was it worth it? It had to be.

Quickly she went to the phone book, the Manhattan directory, and looked
for Laura Landon. Maybe the one in Chicago was wrong. After following
her shaking finger down several columns she got the answer she secretly
expected; the answer the phone book at the Chicago airport had already
given her: no listing. She sighed and lighted a cigarette. It was not
going to be a cinch, this strange mission of hers. She checked the book
again for Nina Spicer’s name.

Nina was there. With relief and some trepidation she dialed the number.
It was ten-thirty in the morning, but the voice that answered was
obviously newly roused from sleep. It was a low pleasant feminine voice,
almost sultry. Beth liked it. It made her curious to meet the owner,
curious to see what she looked like.

“Nina Spicer, please,” she said.

“This is Nina.”

“This is Beth Ayers, Nina. Do you remember me?”

“How could I forget? The girl with all the problems.”

“I’m sorry I woke you up.”

“Sure.” Her breezy lack of courtesy threw Beth for a moment.

“Did you get my note?” she asked.

“I did.”

“Could we meet for lunch?” _Damn, I sound like a question box_, Beth
thought. But Nina was playing things her way. Beth had to go along.

“Let’s make it dinner. I’m tied up at noon,” Nina said.

“Okay. You’ll have to name the place. New York is all new to me.”

“Where are you?”

“The Beaton.”

“Good enough. They have a decent bar on the top floor. I’ll pick you up
in the lobby about four-thirty. We can go on from there.”

“Fine.” Beth was both repelled and attracted by the girl on the phone.
The voice was lovely, but the attitude was hardly warm and welcoming.
Curious, amused, a little supercilious, somewhat intimidating.

Beth hung up. She wasn’t afraid of Nina, just on her guard. And she was
so eager to meet her, to ask her about Laura, that the day dragged
unbearably. She was too excited to rest. She ended up writing letters,
one to Merrill Landon, one to Cleve.

“Did you have much trouble with Vega?” she asked Cleve reluctantly.
“Tell me everything’s okay. It would mean so much. I’ll send you a box
number in a day or two. Don’t know how long I’ll be in New York.”

When there was nothing left to write and no one to write to, she walked.
She saw the United Nations buildings and she poked around the shops. A
tailor across the street from the Beaton sewed a button on for her and
told her about his international clientele.

She was in her room by four, in case Nina should come early, but Nina
was late. It was a quarter to five when she called Beth’s room, and
Beth, almost beside herself with impatience, went down to the lobby to
meet her. She looked for a light blue linen suit, which was Nina’s
description of herself, and found her standing by a square pillar near
the desk.

Beth walked straight to her and took her hand, pleased to see that her
directness threw Nina offstride slightly. Nina expected to have that
effect herself, mainly by fixing people with a go-to-hell stare. But
Beth was not interested in Nina for Nina’s sake and it made her less
susceptible to Nina’s notions of who was running the show.

They went directly up to the bar, speaking softly, feeling their ways
with one another. They ordered Martinis.

“How long will you be in New York?” Nina asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“A lot of things. You, maybe.”

Nina smiled at her Martini glass. She was not a pretty girl, though her
eyes were green and well shaped, and she wore her brown hair long in a
soft bob. Her nose was too sharp and prominent and her mouth too small
and irregular to be pretty, but she had a nice figure. Unusually nice,
Beth had noticed on the way up in the elevator.

“What have I got to do with how long you stay in New York?” Nina asked,
sizing her up silently. “You don’t even know me.” She spoke
suggestively, with the hint of a smile on her face, as if she had only
to keep leading a little and Beth would soon take a pratfall.

“I’m looking for someone,” Beth said. “I thought you might be able to
help me find her.”

“Oh. Romance?”

“No,” Beth lied, speaking briefly and annoyed at Nina’s tone of voice.

“You’re not at all horsey, are you?” Nina said, changing the subject
suddenly and grinning.

“_Horsey?_” Beth stared at her. “Should I be?”

“Frankly, yes. I got the impression from your letters.”

“It’s not the impression I meant to give.” Beth didn’t like Nina’s
expression. It was too cocksure, too well acquainted with all the
ins-and-outs of gay life in New York City that Beth yearned to know
herself. She felt suddenly reluctant to bring Laura’s name up. Maybe
later in the evening, if Nina got more congenial.

“So you’re leaving your husband, hm?” Nina said. It was part of her
technique with people to startle them, embarrass them, leave them
stammering.

“I didn’t say that,” Beth protested.

“You don’t need to. Your letters said enough. He isn’t here in New York,
is he?”

“No. But that doesn’t mean I’m leaving him.”

“From the things you wrote me, I’d say you could hardly wait to ditch
him.”

“I haven’t written you for a while,” Beth said in a chilly voice.
“Things change.” Beth was being played with, to see if she would snap or
take it in stoic silence. She was aware of this, aware that no matter
how she reacted Nina wouldn’t care—just as long as there was some
reaction. Nina didn’t give a damn for anything else. It was seeing
people squirm, seeing them enmeshed in their own poor little problems
that amused her. Beth was a good case history. And she was new and
different to Nina. She would help to pass the time. She might even show
up, slightly distorted, in Nina’s next novel.

Beth made up her mind to ignore it. Nothing mattered but finding Laura,
and if Nina could help, Nina would have to be catered to.

They had another Martini and then Nina took her out to dinner. It was a
little place down in the Village, but expensive; the tourist trade had
discovered it. But the food was excellent. Beth ate gladly. The lack of
rest and the Martinis made a bad combination, and she felt a little slap
happy.

“I want to learn my way around down here,” Beth said. “I want to get to
know the Village.” Just being in it gave her a tingle of hope, of
excitement. The Village. The end of the rainbow. How she had wondered
about this place! And Laura had lived here; Laura knew it, too. Perhaps
better than Nina.

“Sure,” Nina said. “Sure you would. Just like the rest of the tourists.”

“I have a special reason.”

“What’s her name?”

Beth finished the drink beside her, distinctly nettled. “She may not
even be here,” she said tightly. “I lost track of her years ago. The
last I heard she was in New York.”

Nina put her head back and laughed and Beth knew, with tongue-tied
resentment, that she was being laughed at again.

“So you gave up your husband and kids to come on a wild goose chase
after your long lost love,” Nina said. “How romantic! That’s why you
wanted to meet me, I suppose. So I could lead you to her.”

She laughed again and Beth thought with disappointment that she could
never like this peculiar girl. It was apparently not possible for Nina
to be friendly. You made her acquaintance and then you either knuckled
under to her or else you had to drop her. One way or the other she got a
good show, and that was all she wanted out of life, besides a few
affairs. She didn’t need friends and she didn’t especially want them.
Lovers, yes. Friends, no. Lovers kept boredom out. Friends let it in. At
least, that was the way Beth sized her up.

Somehow the mere idea of exposing Laura’s name to the malicious laughter
of this worldly girl who faced her over the dinner table disheartened
Beth. She couldn’t do it; not just then. She looked at the writer,
feeling sure that Nina would tolerate her good humoredly as long as Beth
was still “new,” still good for laughs. And Nina looked back at her,
always with her mocking little smile, so different from Jean Purvis’s
endless good-hearted grin.

Physically Nina and Beth pleased each other. Nina took in her visitor’s
long strong limbs, well shaped and smooth, and her intense violet eyes.
She was ever so slightly, even fashionably, boyish. And Nina laughed
softly to herself at the idea of filling Beth full of moonshine and bull
and letting her find her way out of the mess.

After dinner Nina took Beth around to some Lesbian bars. It was the
first time in her life that Beth had ever been in such places. They
recalled scenes from Nina’s novels to her and she asked ingenuous
questions, unaware of the fact that her voice carried too far, far
enough to make one or two other customers smile.

“Not much noise tonight,” Nina said, after shushing her. “Monday night,”
she explained. “Always dead.”

Beth was thinking, _What if Laura’s here somewhere? At least she’s been
here before. Did she meet people here? Fall in love?_

They took in three places. The first was another tourist trap. There was
a long dark bar in front and a dining room with sketchy floor shows in
the back. No show on Monday nights. But the waitresses were interesting.
Beth found herself staring at them in fascination, as they lounged
against the walls waiting for the sparse crowd to fill out. She even
wondered if they drank orange juice in the morning like everybody else.
It shocked her to realize how far out of her depth she was, how far
removed from her collegiate sophistication. She wondered how obvious it
was to Nina, but a glance at her revealed only the supercilious little
smile.

Nina watched her closely and her scrutiny made Beth nervous. _She wants
me to put my foot in my mouth_, Beth thought, and it made her stammer a
little. But it didn’t stop her from asking questions.

Beth was surprised to see so many men sitting at the bar. “Who are
they?” she asked. “Johns?” She remembered the word from one of Nina’s
novels and she asked her question in a firm clear voice that made Nina
duck and laugh.

“Quiet, for God’s sake, they’ll think we’re cops,” she said. “Or a
couple of gaping hayseeds.”

“Well, are they?” Beth said. “Do they hang around gay girls all the
time?” But she lowered her voice.

“Um-hm,” Nina said, her eyes wrinkled at the corners.

In the next place there were only women, except for the man behind the
bar, and he apparently enjoyed the confidence of the girls he served.
There was only a handful of young women there when Beth and Nina
arrived, and Beth looked them over quickly, always with Laura’s lovely
face in her mind. But Laura wasn’t there.

Nina seemed to know everybody. She was getting more gregarious as she
had more drinks. Not loud at all, just bold; bold in the way she looked
at people, in the things she said.

“So you want to go back to your husband,” she needled Beth.

“I didn’t say that, either.”

“You don’t say much, do you?” Nina laughed. “What’d you get married for
in the first place if you’re gay?” she said. “Think it would cure you?”

“I didn’t know I was gay,” Beth said.

“You seemed to in your letters.”

“They were easier to write that way.”

Nina laughed at her and called one of the waitresses over. “This is
Billie,” she said to Beth, and the girl sat down and talked with them.
She was extremely pretty; very small and dainty-looking, but with
cropped hair and a decidedly aggressive swing in her walk. She spoke
softly, however, almost timidly, and left the bulk of the conversation
to Beth and Nina.

“Beth is looking for her long lost love,” Nina said, pleased to see the
consternation her announcement created in Beth. “What’s her name again?”
She glanced at Beth.

“Maybe she comes in here,” Billie said helpfully. “I know them all.”

“I doubt it,” Beth said.

“Come on, her name,” Nina demanded.

“She’s not here,” Beth said, feeling cornered and stubborn. She hated
the phrase “long lost love,” so lightly, even sarcastically, spoken.

“So maybe she comes in other times,” said Billie, innocently unaware
that Beth and Nina were sparring with each other.

“Bring us another drink, will you, Billie?” Nina said, still staring
Beth down. As soon as the girl had left their table she leaned over and
said confidentially to Beth, as if making it up to her a little, “Do you
like her?”

“I don’t know her,” Beth said warily.

“She likes you,” Nina said. “She’s been cruising you like mad since we
came in.”

“Cruising me?”

“Looking you over, sizing you up.”

Beth didn’t believe her. Nina only wanted a rise out of her.

“She wants to be a boy,” Nina said. “She boards with a family on
Bleecker Street. She thinks _they_ think she’s a boy. She always wears
pants.”

“She had on a skirt tonight.”

“That’s because she has to wear one in here. City ordinance. No women in
bars in pants. But she won’t wear the skirt to work. She carries it in a
paper bag and changes in the john.”

“She’s crazy if she thinks she can pass for a boy,” Beth said seriously.
“She can’t be over five-feet-three. And she’s so pretty. Her features
are very feminine.”

And again Nina laughed at her. And again Beth realized she was being
made a fool of. Was any of it true? Was Billie so blind as to think she
could transform herself into a boy with a pair of pants? Or was Nina
showing her at least part of the truth, a sad, even pitiful, intensely
interesting little corner of life, cut from the Village pattern?

At the last bar there were other men, but they never seemed to join the
girls at the tables. They rather intrigued Beth, who wondered why they
spent all their free time sitting quietly on bar stools watching the
flirtations, the loves, the dancing and socializing of these women they
could never touch. Some of them seemed to know the girls and were
greeted affectionately with a nickname or a slap on the back. But they
never presumed to follow a girl or to talk before they were spoken to.
It was their solitary pleasure simply to watch, and now and then to be
permitted a few words, a little sharing of this odd way of life.

Beth observed one who seemed particularly pathetic. He was overweight by
quite a bit, balding, and with blue pockets under his eyes, and he
looked not only sad but outright bored—something none of the others did.
She wondered why he bothered to come by at all if it depressed him so.
His face stuck in her mind later, and she pitied him. This third and
last place they were in had a larger clientele than the others, probably
because it was eleven o’clock by the time they got there.

Beth was absorbed by it. She wanted to wander all night around the
Village, look into all the windows and share all the secrets. Behind
some curtain, in some doorway or shop window, she might find Laura.

But when she stood up suddenly to go to the ladies’ room she realized
with a start that she was drunk. Quite drunk. Nina had been telling her
to quit for some time.

“You don’t want to be hung over tomorrow,” she said.

But it was so condescending, so solicitous for the “country cousin,”
that Beth had defiantly ordered another. And another. She knew now,
gripping the table with both hands, that Nina was right, aggravating
though her attitude was. Beth should have stopped early in the evening.

Nina appraised her skillfully. “You’re going to feel like hell in the
morning,” she said. “Too bad. I was going to take you out for lunch,
too. One of my favorite places.”

“I’ll make it,” Beth said. She _would_ feel rotten, all right—that was a
cinch. But she’d go. She had to learn her way around here somehow, and
doing it with Nina, however embarrassing or even upsetting, seemed safer
than going it alone.

They drove home in a taxi, and Beth was disconcerted to find that the
warmth and closeness of Nina’s body in the rear seat pleased her. Nina
said nothing and that made it easier to enjoy her. When she opened her
mouth it threw Beth on her guard automatically and destroyed the sensual
pleasure.

Beth left her with a queer feeling of dislike and desire that disturbed
her sleep, tired as she was. She couldn’t fathom Nina and the only thing
she thought it was safe to count on was that Nina was playing the game
only for herself. She had no special favors to grant Beth Ayers, and
when Beth ceased to interest her, that would be the end. Kaput. End of
guided tour through the Village, and end of information, such as it was.
Beth thought fuzzily that she had better ask Nina about Laura, whether
Nina laughed at the idea or not, before Nina got it into her head to
drop her. For, strangely, on this first night of their acquaintance, she
felt the break coming. It was inevitable with a girl like Nina. Things
never last, things aren’t meant to last. That would be her way of seeing
it. So why not break it off as soon as it bores you? And Nina’s
philosophy, Beth was soon to learn on her own, was typical of many a
weary Greenwich Villager. It was not the attitude that comes with
sophistication, but the attitude of boredom and disappointment.




                             Chapter Twelve


They had lunch the next day, though Beth felt gray with the hangover.
And somehow, over the salad and crackers, she found she couldn’t speak
of Laura. It was like trying to swallow a pill that was too big for her
throat. She made the usual try at it, but it reached the back of her
mouth and suddenly scared her, and she choked a little and finally gave
up.

But several nights later, things changed. Nina unexpectedly asked her to
come to her apartment for dinner. Beth had been hoping to see where she
lived, how she lived, even what she ate. Nina was her link to the gay
world, and though she couldn’t quite like her she still was deeply
interested in her, in the things Nina could teach her. She accepted the
invitation gratefully, and was astonished, when she got there, to see
that Nina had cooked the dinner—or was in process of cooking it—herself.

Nina fixed her a drink and Beth stood in the tiny living room looking at
the books that banked one whole wall from floor to ceiling. It made her
feel more comfortable with Nina to see that she read or, at least, had
books around. Beth liked to read and when she found others who did she
ordinarily cottoned to them. It helped her get over her suspicions with
Nina, the shadowy feeling of being _had_, of being taken for a ride,
that she couldn’t quite pin down.

They ate in a corner of the bedroom, a room that was even smaller than
the living room and literally gorged, like an overfed animal, with a
bed, a desk, and three typewriters, to say nothing of the card table
from which they ate.

“Apartments up here are damn cracker boxes,” Nina said. “If you want a
good address, you pay for it.” She was in the East Seventies, just off
Fifth Avenue, in a staid old building that was eminently respectable. It
was like her to look down on the Village, part of her philosophy to get
out of it, or, at least, to _live_ out of it. She could never stay away
full time.

The dinner was good, to Beth’s surprise. Nina had put candles on the
table and turned out the lights, and Beth began to feel, in spite of the
shivers of warning that flashed through her when Nina smiled her
knowledgeable little smile, a curious intimacy. After all, they had
written many letters to each other. Nina had been kind, in her
off-the-cuff way. Nina was being good to her now, taking time off from
the book she was working on, showing her around.

_Maybe I’m taking the teasing too hard_, Beth thought, as she ate.

“Lord, I’m stuffed,” she said, when Nina offered her more. They smiled
at each other and there was a small pause. Nina’s was a different kind
of smile. There was almost warmth in it; at least, there was an absence
of the mocking twist that bothered Beth so.

Perhaps out of uncertainty, or stubbornness born of unaccustomed
shyness, Beth refused to drop her eyes first. And Nina, her bluff
called, had to keep her own eyes on Beth. And somehow—as though the two
pairs of eyes, one sparkling green, the other misty violet, were
magnetized—they leaned toward each other. Beth reached out without
consciously directing her hand and cupped it gently behind Nina’s neck,
pressing the warm brown hair beneath it and pulling Nina closer still.

In utter silence, in the calm light of candles, over the steak plates,
in the night of the city, they kissed each other. And leaned away again
slightly to gaze at each other. Beth was inanely surprised to see that
Nina’s lipstick was smeared. And Nina smiled, the good smile, and they
kissed again. And then she suddenly rose, as if it occurred to her she
was risking a true affection for Beth by playing with her, and began to
clear the plates as if nothing had happened.

Beth picked up a stack of plates and followed her into the cramped
kitchen. She put the slippery crockery on the little table and her arms
around Nina, and a voice inside her urged, _Tell her. Tell her it’s
Laura you’re looking for. Tell her now, before she gets bored and you
lose her._

_But I can’t_, Beth thought. _She’d burst out laughing at me if I asked
her now. It would ruin the mood, it would make her sarcastic again. And
I’d hate myself for asking._

Nina slipped away from her and brought in the rest of the plates, and
they did the dishes together, speaking softly of small irrelevancies,
enjoying each other’s physical presence.

And still Beth hesitated, with that name on the tip of her tongue and
some ineffable misgiving freezing it there.

Nina showed her an album full of snapshots she had collected, and
startled her by pointing to a nice-looking crew-cut boy and saying
off-handedly, “That was my husband.”

“Your husband? You never said you were married.”

“I’m not. I was. Besides, why should I tell you?” And for an instant
Beth felt the wall of sarcasm rising.

“No reason,” she said. “What happened?”

Nina shrugged. “What happened with you and Charlie? It didn’t work. We
divorced years ago.”

“Did you love him?”

“Hell, no. He was just a nice kid. We had fun.”

“And no children.”

“And no children. You were a fool to have children, Beth.”

“I love them,” she said humbly.

“Ha!” Nina cried. “Then what are you doing here? Why aren’t you with
them?” After a suggestive pause she prompted, “Was the old long lost
love _that_ tempting?”

In the midst of such sharp and painful needling Beth couldn’t speak
Laura’s name. She couldn’t bear to have it laughed at and she clammed up
for a while. When she could control her voice a little she tried to
explain.

“I left my kids because I treated them badly. I was unjust, I was
unreasonable, I hurt them over and over. Even if there had never been
any ‘long lost love,’ I think I would have left them. The more I hurt
them the worse I hurt myself until I thought we would all go crazy.”

Nina saw what a whirlpool of guilt and resentment she had stirred up,
and, interested, she stirred it a little more. “So your solution was to
dump the kids in the river and run to New York in search of a girl you
haven’t seen in nine years? Not very sensible, was it?”

“Not very!” Beth conceded. “Not much fun, either,” she added sharply.

Nina dropped her smile at once. “I’m not laughing,” she said with a
solemn face. But of course she was, inside, in the dark and silence of
her private self. “My first husband and I had it worked out a little
better than that, that’s all. You should have used your head.”

“Your _first_ husband?” Beth snapped. “Where in hell is your second?”

“Oh I mean my _ex_-husband. My _former_ husband,” Nina corrected
herself.

“Well, say so, then.” Beth had caught her lying. She had never married.
It simply pleased her ego to say she had, to make Beth feel that no
experience Beth had ever had was unique or different from any Nina had
had. Nina had to be one up on you, or at least on a level with you, or
she couldn’t enjoy herself. Ordinarily she lied to this end with great
skill, gracefully and casually. It gave Beth her first peace of mind
with Nina to catch her in a blatant fib, to see that startled look
flicker over her face.

Nina had the good sense to take it lightly. She passed over it, coming
to the couch where Beth sat and settling beside her. She cocked one foot
against the coffee table and said slowly, “Would you like to spend the
night?” The conflict of desires on Beth’s face tickled her, restored her
self-assurance.

“I don’t think so,” Beth said.

“Why not? Afraid of me?”

“Not of you.” _Damn her! She would make a test of it, a challenge. How
can I turn her down now?_ But Beth wasn’t absolutely sure she _wanted_
to turn her down.

“Afraid of what, then?”

“You don’t really want me to stay.”

“Why do you think I asked you?” Nina had made her mind up. Beth was
moody, she was pretty, she was new. Nina smiled at the swell of her
breasts beneath the simple suit she wore and wondered how they looked
undraped.

“Stay,” she said. And when Beth didn’t answer she added, “I have a
nightie you can borrow. Go take a shower and I’ll get you a towel. Go
on!” She shooed her as she might have a wayward child or a chicken, and
Beth got up and obeyed her. It exhausted her to try to make a decision.
It was easier to let Nina make it for her.

She showered and dried herself, gazing at herself critically in the
mirror of the medicine chest, wondering just how big a fool she was to
stay, to walk into whatever trap Nina might be laying for her. The small
consolation was that you could only walk into Nina’s kind of trap once.
Nina had a way of stripping your innocence off with both hands. It hurt,
but Beth was learning. She sensed that the lessons Nina taught her would
bolster her when she faced the gay world alone.

“Finished?” Nina called outside the bathroom door. “Here’s some
pajamas.”

Beth opened the door a few inches and grabbed them and saw Nina grin at
her modesty. She slipped the blue cotton pants on and found they were
too short. The jacket was too tight through the bust and she laughed
silently at the picture she made in the mirror.

Nina was waiting for her, curled up on the foot end of the sofa-bed she
had pulled out from the love seat in the living room.

“You can sleep in here,” she said. “There’s plenty of room.” There was
in fact room for two, but Nina had her own bed in the other room and
Beth was relieved to know they would sleep apart.

She sat down on a pillow as far from Nina as the length of the bed would
permit, and Nina fixed them both a nightcap. They drank in silence for a
moment, and then Beth spoke. Maybe it was the liquor that prompted her,
or the informality of the pajamas that were too small and looked silly,
or just the need to know. At any rate, she spoke of the things closest
to her then.

“How do you know if you’re gay, Nina?” she asked.

“Simple. You go to a fortune teller,” Nina said.

“Is that how you found out about yourself?”

“No.” And Nina’s face became more serious. “No, I did it the hard way.”

“What’s the hard way?”

“I got hurt.”

“Well, I’ve been hurt before,” Beth said. “A thousand times, a thousand
different ways. It didn’t teach me a thing.”

“You weren’t a good student, then.”

“I don’t mean with women, Nina.”

“I thought you were in New York trying to find some woman.”

“I am. But she never _hurt_ me. I hurt her, but she never did a thing to
me.”

“Well, there must have been others.”

There had been Vega, of course. But Beth couldn’t talk about her, and
there seemed no reason to confess that sordid little chapter to Nina,
who would only have laughed at it anyway.

“No,” Beth said. “No others.” She finished her drink quickly and Nina
reached to refill it, but Beth held back.

“You mean that once nine years ago you had a fling with some girl,” Nina
said, letting her hand drop, “and now you wonder if you’re _gay_?” She
spoke with exaggerated incredulity and the curl in her small mouth was
not kind. But it was amused.

“I loved her very much,” Beth said. “I just happened to meet my husband
at the same time. I’ve been wondering all these years if I made the
right choice. Lately, with things so bad at home, I thought seeing her
again would help me make up my mind. Help me understand myself.”

“What makes you think she’ll be so eager to see _you_? Or help you out?
What makes you think she cares a damn about you after nine years?
Especially if you hurt her the last time around?”

“I have no idea how she’ll react,” Beth said. She resented the probing
mockery Nina subjected her to, but if it was the price of knowledge she
was ready to pay it. “I only know she was a very gentle, affectionate
girl and when we parted there were no hard feelings.”

“Oh, swell,” Nina said. “She’s had nine years to sit and stew over it,
remember. She’s known other women by now, if she has any sense. She can
evaluate what you did to her. She couldn’t before when it first
happened. Or weren’t you her first?”

“Yes. I was.” Beth glanced up at her. It was true. Laura had experience
to measure Beth with now, but Beth had nothing but memories with which
to judge Laura. Memories and one abortive sad little romance with a sick
woman that only made Laura look the lovelier in her imaginings.

“She may look good to _you_,” Nina pointed out, “but you may look like
hell to her. What if you barge in on a new romance? What if you finally
find her and the poor girl is madly in love with somebody new? How glad
do you think she’ll be to see you? You could louse up her whole life,
throw a monkey wrench into her romance. What’s she supposed to do, laugh
it off for old time’s sake? Welcome you with open arms and let the other
girl go jump?”

In a burst of irritation and arrogance Beth leaned across the bed, her
hands planted deep in the mattress just inches from Nina and the rest of
her weight on her knees. “You know something?” Beth said. “I don’t give
a damn. I don’t care what I do to her life, as long as she lets me back
in it. I want her so badly I can see her in every female I meet. I can
smell her the way she used to be after her shower at night when she was
covered with scented powder and her hair was still damp. God, God, I can
even taste her!”

And Nina twisted her mouth into a laugh. When Beth started to protest
she put a hand up and exclaimed, “No, I believe you. You’re in love.”

Beth came down to a more reasonable sitting position. “Does that make me
gay?” she asked seriously.

“For the time being.” Nina sized her up. “Why do you worry about it,
Beth? Why are you so anxious for a label? What do you care what category
you fall into? Just be yourself.”

“I don’t know myself.”

“Then just be however you feel like being and pretty soon the pattern
will emerge.”

“I’ve been doing that for thirty years,” Beth said. “There is no
pattern, there’s only chaos.”

“Well, maybe that comes from living with a man. Maybe you were never
meant to settle down. I know some perfectly nice girls, all straight,
who can’t live with men. They can’t live without them, either, of
course. It’s a matter of balancing their lives between the men who are
important to them, and the other things. It doesn’t necessarily mean
you’re gay. It doesn’t necessarily mean you should go live with a woman
and make love to her, just because you’ve made a flop of your first
marriage. So maybe you got the wrong guy. Try somebody else.”

“It isn’t that easy. If you’d ever been married you’d know that.”

“I have been married. I told you,” Nina said quickly.

And Beth, seeing that she meant to stick by her fib, said, “Oh, sorry. I
forgot.” She hoped Nina liked the sarcasm in her voice. Nina was used
enough to dishing it out. But Beth was glad for her words. They put a
new light on things, made her see them from an angle that had been
closed to her when there had been just her own ramblings in the dark to
guide her.

“If Charlie was a mistake, I’ll be paying for it all my life,” Beth
said.

“Don’t be silly. What did you pay him for this trip?”

“A lot of misery, Nina. A lot of soul searching and misery.”

“You’ll get that out of life anyway, Beth. You have no corner on misery.
That’s everybody’s business. That’s the growing-up process, you might
say.” It sounded familiar to Beth. She wondered if she might have read
it somewhere in one of Nina’s books. “Your long lost love can probably
teach you a few things about misery. Anybody who’s gay knows that
subject backwards and forwards.”

Beth reached over to a small end table to squash out her cigarette. When
she sat up Nina unfastened the central, cornerstone, button on the tight
pajama tops. It was accomplished with one quick movement that caught
Beth off guard and the straining button yielded gratefully before she
had time to catch Nina’s hand and stop her. At once, the whole thing
came unbuttoned, the jacket top falling open over her bare chest.

Rather than protest or lose her temper or button the thing up again, or
even use the gesture as an excuse for making a pass, Beth just sat there
as if nothing had happened. Her expression, her attitude, were a dare to
Nina. She gazed into space, apparently preoccupied, and Nina, who was
fishing for a hard reaction, was nonplussed. Beth could sense it without
looking at her. She continued to sit, inwardly amused and relieved to
see Nina’s consternation. Beth’s full high breasts were disturbingly
visible and Nina could neither move away nor mention them until Beth did
something without making herself look idiotic. So Nina sat still beside
Beth, both exasperated and interested. The gambit forced an unaccustomed
respect for Beth on her. Perhaps Beth was something more than a
passionate hayseed trying to scare up an old crush. Perhaps she was good
for something besides laughs.

At last Beth leaned back into the pillows, settling down with a sigh,
her arms and legs flung out and the unbuttoned jacket flung carelessly
out on either side of her. She shut her eyes and said, “Forgive me,
Nina. I’m beat.”

“Sure,” Nina said. Released by the words, she got up and took the
glasses and full ashtrays into the kitchen. Beth listened to her moving
about, smiling to herself. She felt better about Nina now, less at her
mercy.

“I’ll be in the next room,” Nina said. “If you have any bad dreams, that
is.”

“Thanks. I’ll remember,” Beth said. She heard Nina take a few steps and
stop, and make a few odd noises with her tongue and then with an
ashtray, as if to attract Beth’s attention, make her open her eyes. But
Beth kept them shut, ignoring her. “Did you like the dinner?” Nina said.

Beth had. She had said so several times. So it was plain that Nina was
looking for an invitation, a more intimate talk, a caress, maybe even a
night in bed with Beth. And Beth was both surprised and flattered. But
she had no idea of yielding her small lead then. Let Nina squirm. It was
her turn.

“Yes, thanks,” she said noncommittally. “It was delicious.”

And seeing that she would get no further without stating her intentions
in plain English, Nina gave up with a smile, put out the last light, and
climbed into her own bed.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was black early morning when Beth was slightly roused by a movement
of the bedclothes. She continued to breathe slowly and softly as if she
were still asleep, letting Nina slip under the blankets and lie beside
her. Nina didn’t touch her and didn’t move for fully ten minutes, for
fear of waking Beth.

They played cat and mouse for a while. Beth was at first dismayed to
feel Nina’s presence. Not so much because she didn’t desire her as
because she didn’t _want_ to desire her. She didn’t want to feel an
attraction for this odd girl who was teaching her some valuable facts in
such a humiliating manner. And yet she did. She couldn’t imagine living
with Nina or sharing the things that mattered with her. But she could
imagine, vividly, making love to her. She could see in her mind’s eye
the well-shaped legs and trim torso, the long brown bob and green eyes,
the small passionless mouth that nevertheless felt so strangely soft and
sweet when they kissed over the steak plates.

It was a lovely body that lay next to her, not like the poor tortured
thing that was Vega, with her heart all twisted inside by the
mutilations on the outside. After a while Beth knew she wanted to touch
Nina; she knew she would have to pretty soon if Nina didn’t make the
move first. She wanted extremely to control herself, to withstand the
temptation, to prove the stronger, and this desire gave her a few
moments more of resistance. She wondered if Nina meant to sleep beside
her all night, without making a single gesture toward her. Maybe she
wanted merely to wake up in the morning with Beth beside her and enjoy
Beth’s surprise. She wondered if it was just another trap to make Beth
look silly.

Beth held her breath for a second and then her breathing came faster
with the speed of excitement and even fear. Nina heard it, lying so near
her in the bed, and she tensed, knowing there was nothing more she
needed to do. But Beth startled her by reaching over her and snapping on
the small pink lamp on the end table, flooding the room with a soft rosy
radiance that made them both visible to each other. Beth couldn’t have
explained the action; it seemed better somehow than simply grabbing Nina
like an animal after bait. Maybe it was just another effort to resist,
to do anything but touch Nina.

Nina rolled over on her back and stared at Beth, her eyes opening wider
slowly as they became accustomed to the light. “What the hell did you do
that for?” she asked. But she wasn’t angry.

“What the hell are _you_ doing in my bed?” Beth said.

Nina smiled. “I had a bad dream,” she said. And Beth had to smile too.
Nina looked boldly at her. “You’re still unbuttoned,” she said. In the
sudden intimacy it was possible to speak of it.

“I like it that way. Your pajamas are too small for me.”

Nina reached up slowly and put her hands on Beth’s warm breasts. “You
can never know for sure if you’re gay, Beth,” she said softly, “unless
you can respond to more than one woman. You’ll never know if you save
yourself all for the long lost love. How do you even know you’ll find
her? Maybe she’s gone for good and you’ll go home to Charlie and never
know what you left him to find out.”

There was a pause. In a way it was true, and in another way it was a
satin-covered, thorn-lined invitation to infidelity. Beth wondered if
she would be unfaithful to Charlie by making love to a woman. It had
never seemed so to her with Vega, probably because making love to Vega
was a depressing chore. But Nina made her feel suddenly that she was a
faithless woman. Nina made her feel that the things she was doing were
both silly and wicked, and wonderful. At the same time, she made her
believe they were natural and inevitable.

Beth looked down at her, with her soft brown hair scattered on the
pillow. Her eyes were very green in the rosy light and her skin was very
fair. Beth caught her hands, pulling them gently away from her breasts
and kissing the palms. And then Nina took them back to slip out of her
own pajamas. Beth watched her in silence, letting things happen as if
she had no will to stop them; she didn’t even try.

Nina wriggled out of the bottoms and threw them on the floor, at the
same time pushing the covers off her body with a couple of long quick
thrusts of her legs. Suddenly, almost unexpectedly, for Beth was not
well prepared for anything that happened that night, Nina was lying
beautifully naked beneath her, her fine legs crossed at the ankles, her
sharp restless eyes searching Beth’s.

Beth looked away and said in a low voice, “Do you want a yokel like me
to make love to you? I don’t know what I’m doing, Nina. I’ll disappoint
you.”

“You couldn’t, honey. Try it.”

“You mean, in the mood you’re in, _nobody_ could disappoint you.” Beth
gave a sad little laugh. “It just happens I’m the one who’s with you.”

“In the mood I’m in, nobody could touch me but you.” Beth felt the
smooth tingling drift of a hand over her back under the loosened
pajamas. She bore it for a moment in silence and then, with a little
groan, she struggled out of the tops, nearly tearing them in her hurry.
She turned on Nina, leaning over her and bending nearer until her weight
rested partly on her, and then she kissed her and a flash of pleasure,
as sharp and dreadful as a sword, impaled her. She had wanted to tell
Nina, “Don’t laugh at me. Don’t make me feel clumsier than I am. I think
I could kill you for that.” But there had been no time and now there was
no need.

Nina, for once, was not laughing. She was spread beneath Beth like a
carpet of warm silk. She moved with her, she murmured to her, she was as
absorbed as Beth was in the fantastic luxury of sexual pleasure. When
she tried to pull away a little Beth caught her from behind and kissed
her bare neck and shoulders, her fingers pressed around Nina’s lovely
breasts and their legs entangled. Nina was surprised at the strength she
felt in Beth’s arms, and let herself be pushed back down on the bed with
a sigh of ecstasy.

Nina showed Beth things that night that Beth never dreamed existed. “I’m
going to do things to you you never even heard of,” she whispered, and
she did. With her mouth, her fingers, the warm tickle of her breath, she
called up feelings in Beth that had never been there before. She made
Beth aware of parts of her body, her own familiar comfortable body that
she thought she knew so well, that Beth had never discovered for
herself. A thousand sensual subtleties were revealed to Beth in Nina’s
arms: all the tricks and caprices of a lovely body, all the scented
shapes, the astonishing joy of uncontrollable physical reactions, the
enormous force of a woman’s ecstasy flowing unfocused through her whole
body, claiming her absolutely and reverberating in her for hours after
the act of love.

Beth kissed Nina with a hungry mouth, amazed at her own appetite, at how
much it took to satisfy her. She would settle against Nina, holding her
in her arms and thinking _now_ sleep would come. And she would half doze
off for a while and then shift her weight a little and the mere feel of
Nina’s hair brushing her face, or a length of perfumed leg, would jolt
her desire to the surface.

“Nina,” she murmured wildly once in the night, “am I exhausting you?”

“No,” Nina whispered. “You surprise me but you don’t exhaust me.”

And once Beth tried to recall if it had been this way with Laura, if it
had been this good, or if it could be. There wasn’t any reason for
anything to be so beautiful. After what she had done, after what she had
been through, Beth could hardly believe this was happening to her at
all. It seemed as if all her days were fated to be gray and worried, all
her nights empty and tragic. And now suddenly she was incredibly happy.
There was no time to wonder whether the happiness was purely physical.
She didn’t stop to think about her ambivalent feelings for Nina, about
how Nina might look in the daylight, with irony in her air again and
sarcasm on her lips. There was no daylight, no night, no time, nothing
but that moment on the bed with Nina in her arms. Beth was unable to
think ahead or to care what happened.

Nina’s voice came softly out of the dawn to her. “You’re gay, Beth,” she
said positively.

“I know.” It came as a wild wonderful relief, just to know for sure
after years of tormented wondering.

Nina stroked her cheek with one finger. “What was her name?” she asked.

After a long pause Beth answered her. “Laura.”

Nina smiled. “Good,” she said. “I don’t know any Lauras.”

Beth felt a small stab of dismay. And then she wondered if Nina could
conceivably be jealous now, unwilling to share Beth, unwilling to reveal
anything she might happen to know. Beth considered Nina’s curious
incapacity for friendship. Nina might be able to come close to her as a
lover but never as a friend. She might even learn to love Beth for a
little while, but she could never like her and it would never last.

“You know what you’d be if you let yourself go?” Nina said playfully
into her ear. “You’d be a butch. You’d cut your hair off real short and
live in the Village. Oh, yes, you would. Don’t smile. And I’ll bet
that’s exactly what you will do, too. You won’t be interested in me very
long. Not after you find out how many beautiful women will be interested
in _you_.”

Beth squirmed uncomfortably at the idea. “I don’t want a lot of
beautiful women, Nina,” she mumbled.

“What do you want?” Nina asked, and when Beth hesitated, silent for over
a minute, she teased, “Me?” And then, with spite in her voice, “No.
Laura. _Laura_ she wants, after all I did for her last night.”

“I don’t know,” Beth said. “I really don’t know ... now.”

“_Now?_ You mean now that I’ve corrupted you?” Nina laughed quietly.
“I’m glad I mixed you up a little. I hope you don’t find your Laura. Not
for a while anyway.”




                            Chapter Thirteen


When Beth left Nina’s apartment two days later, she found a letter
waiting for her in the post office box she had rented. She half expected
Nina to ask her to move in before she left. But it would have
inconvenienced Nina too much, with the lack of space and the long hours
she had to spend at her typewriter. She didn’t want to be bothered and
Beth understood, even though she was sorry not to have been asked. Nina
should have known Beth would refuse, out of consideration for her. But
Beth never got the chance.

The letter was from Cleve, and Beth tore it open in the elevator on the
way up to her room at the Beaton. She got as far as, “Dear Beth, How do
you like New York? Charlie and the kids are as ever. Not very happy but
getting along. The kids like Mrs. Donahue pretty well now that they’re
used to her. Charlie works like a dog—too damn hard if you ask me. Puts
all of us to shame and gives me a guilt complex.”

Beth asked herself if he might not be drinking still more and neglecting
his job down at the office. Of course, he was still half boss; Charlie
was the other half. But she knew Charlie would be hard on him if the
alcohol became more important than Ayers-Purvis Toys.

She stepped out of the elevator and went to her room, fumbling with the
key in her purse and pushing the door open with her shoulder. The
morning sun was coming in her windows and she sat down on the bed to
finish reading the letter.

“Charlie has some big idea for a new toy,” Cleve went on. “He wants to
call it ‘The Scootch.’ It’s a sort of spring, a great big thing you can
crawl inside or sit on top of and bounce. It travels when you bounce on
it, or you can roll down hills in it. Sounds kind of goofy probably, but
the neighborhood kids go for it in a big way. So do your kids. Skipper
says it’s better than a kite any day. Charlie is hoping it’ll take up
where the Hula Hoop left off. If it does we’d make a fortune. He’s been
working on it night and day, trying to get the right materials and
colors, and working up a marketing scheme for it. I haven’t seen all the
plans yet. Jean and I have been away on a vacation, and I haven’t been
feeling so red hot lately. But don’t worry about me. You have enough on
your mind.”

It was kind and restrained, with hardly a trace of reproach. Beth
lowered the letter to her lap for a minute, not quite finished with it,
and stared out the window at the shaded side of the building across the
street. “Not feeling so red hot.” _Drunk, maybe?_ She hoped not. She
liked Cleve too well, she owed him too much, to wish him any ill. But
the thought of his mother, ravaged by liquor, and his sister, who
devoted her life to it, frightened her.

“You ask about my family,” he went on in reference to one of her notes.
“Mother is about as ever. Gramp still feeds his cats and vents his
temper on the delivery boys or the plumber or whoever gets in the way.
Vega is at Camarillo. We all thought it would be for the best—”

Camarillo! _Camarillo!_ All the sense was suddenly shocked out of Beth.
Camarillo—the state mental institution. “Oh, God!” she cried aloud, too
stunned to read any further for a minute, unaware that she spoke aloud.
“Oh, good God! _Vega!_”

“We all thought it would be for the best since the studio folded two
weeks after you left. Do you remember P.K.? The girl she said she hated
so much? Well, P.K. managed to spread some pretty ugly rumors about her,
and that, on top of the shaky state of her finances, did the trick. The
students she had left, and there was really a surprising number—they all
liked her a lot—had to leave. Their parents heard about it and
disapproved, and that was it.

“The doctors say she has an excellent mind and she is very reasonable
most of the time, and they hope she can come home in another few months.
The oddest part of it is, she copies Mother all the time. I mean, all
Mother’s sicknesses. She acts as if she’s crippled, has to run to the
bathroom every five minutes, even says she’s blind and can’t see a
thing. The doctor says it’s almost as if she wanted old age to catch up
with her and incapacitate her to punish herself for her feelings. Or
maybe to stop her from _having_ any feelings. Another angle occurred to
me. If she is Mother, how can she be anything Mother _disapproves_ of?
Like gay? I don’t know—make any sense?

“Don’t worry too much about this, Beth. It’s been in the wind for many
years now. I’m surprised myself it didn’t come sooner. She’ll be okay.
The important thing for you is to get yourself straightened out and come
home. Charlie needs you. He used to be a nice guy but now there’s no
living with him.

“Best to you, Cleve.”

_Vega at Camarillo!_ Of all the things in the letter none affected her
any more than that. Vega had had to bear the loss of her lover and the
loss of the girls she adored and her business, her only means of
support, within two weeks of each other. Beth bowed her head and cried,
without bothering to cover her face or wipe away the tears. Vega had had
to face the scorn of a teen-age torturer in the person of P.K. all
alone. It must have been godawful, terrible even for Cleve, who had to
hear it all from her hysterical lips, who had to try to comfort her and
care for her.

P.K....

“Oh, Vega,” Beth said. “Vega, I’m so sorry. Forgive me. I wish you could
hear me, I wish I could undo what I did to you. Please Vega, get well.”

Just telling it to the walls was better than keeping it all inside and
getting sick on it. Even at that there was a sick feeling in her stomach
and it didn’t go away for a long while.

                   *       *       *       *       *

For three days she stayed in her hotel room. Not the lure of seeing Nina
or even the search for Laura Landon that had propelled her this far
could stir her. She simply lay on her bed and tried to disentangle her
thoughts. Now and then she had some food sent up.

She told herself that nothing that had happened was her _fault_,
exactly. It was fate, it was an accident, it was foul luck. But one
single person couldn’t have caused it all. The Purvises were wrong to
drink so much, Charlie was wrong to be so bad-tempered, Uncle John was
wrong to be so inquisitive. Laura was wrong to have walked out of her
life nine years ago. Everybody was wrong but Beth, who was only an
innocent girl trying to find herself. She had to see it that way or get
sick on herself.

                   *       *       *       *       *

She had been in New York for over a week but she hadn’t found Laura.
There was Nina—an unexpected discovery—but Nina wasn’t what she came
for. It was time, and overtime, to find Laura.

Beth thought about these things as she rode up Fifth Avenue in a bus.
She was on her way to Nina’s apartment just off Fifth, near the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, sitting wedged between two ample women with
their arms full of bundles, and silently cursing the humid warmth of the
late July day.

It was early afternoon. Nina would still be sleeping but Beth wouldn’t
disturb her. Being away from her for several days had generated a number
of feelings in Beth, all of them at odds. She had to get back and try
herself against Nina again. She had to know for sure what she already
suspected: that her desire for Nina was mostly a desire for physical
love, a desire that required only a pretty body and a certain skill in
using it.

Still, and most important, she wanted to find Laura. She had only been
down to the Village once, but she would make Nina take her again.
Tonight. If Nina didn’t know any Lauras there must be plenty of people
down there who did. It was a Saturday night this time and things would
surely be busy. Maybe Laura herself.... But it both frightened and
excited her too much to think about it, to visualize that actual meeting
that would come, had to come, some day, when she and Laura would be face
to face again, when they would search for the right words, the right
gestures, to show their love. It would all be so clumsy at first and
then so beautiful, and Beth ached to have it happen. Soon.

Across from her on the bus sat a small heavy man suffering so visibly
from the heat that Beth almost smiled to herself. He looked enough worse
than the rest to make Beth almost feel cooler. He was balding, with
shadows of weariness under his eyes and a hopelessly rumpled seersucker
suit, and he reminded her sharply of one of the “Johns” she had seen
with Nina the night they had met and gone bar hopping in the Village.

_Forlorn and hot and friendless_, she thought. _He’s probably on his way
home to a wife he can’t stand. He’s probably mired in a life that bores
the hell out of him. But he hasn’t the guts to get out of it._

She pitied him, for it seemed to her then that escaping from a life you
didn’t like was a matter of courage. She had that courage and she was
trying to be proud of it. She didn’t dare to wonder if she had the
_right_ to leave her life and everyone in it. Or if the dumpy little man
across the aisle had that right. She only saw his dissatisfaction and
she scorned him for enduring it. Everything that touched her now she saw
in terms of her own problem.

The rest of her thoughts were of Nina as she approached her apartment.
They had had three days together, three strange long days and nights
when Nina didn’t write anything on her new book or call anyone or even
go anywhere. They had simply lain around, not bothering to make up the
beds or dress themselves. They had made love and talked and when they
got hungry Nina ordered sandwiches from a nearby delicatessen and that
was what they lived on.

Nina had made her keep her voice down for fear her neighbors would hear
them. “I don’t know what they’d think,” she said. “I can’t afford to
have them thinking _anything_. I had enough trouble finding this
apartment and I don’t want any nosey cops coming around answering
complaints. It’s not the same as the Village. You can do things there
you wouldn’t try uptown.”

Beth had stared at her. “I’m not making any noise,” she said.

“Well, don’t.”

Beth thought back on this, bemused. Nina had dodged any commitments to
her. She was lavish with compliments, telling Beth how pretty she was,
how delectable her body was, how Charlie probably didn’t appreciate her.
But she never had a word to say about how much she really liked Beth,
how often she wanted to see her, what her presence meant to her. Beth
was in the dark. All she knew was that Nina thought she was pretty and
had handled her life like a fool.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beth wasn’t prepared for what she found when she walked into Nina’s
apartment ten minutes after her bus ride and found Nina in bed with a
girl of eighteen. The girl was still asleep but she woke up hard when
Nina sat up in bed and said, “Who the hell told _you_ to come over? At
_this_ hour?” Her eyes were narrow with anger and Beth recoiled,
shocked.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ll leave.”

But before she could turn around and get the door closed behind her Nina
said, “No. You’re here now. So stay.”

Beth looked at her doubtfully and at the sleepy-eyed and rather scared
girl beside her. “I don’t think that’s the best idea,” she said, but
Nina’s anger had passed as quickly as it had come. Suddenly she saw the
possibilities of the situation: Beth’s embarrassment, the charming
consternation of Franny, the girl in bed with her, and herself, Nina,
mistress of their feelings. What a scene! It was worth playing out.

“Make yourself some coffee,” she told Beth. “We were just getting up.”

And Beth could tell by the sudden change in Nina’s voice, by the look on
her face, that she was playing with her two guests.

“I didn’t expect this, Nina,” she said frostily. “I have no claim on
you, I realize, but I didn’t expect _this_.”

“Oh, come off it, Madame Queen. What _did_ you expect?” Nina asked,
smiling at Beth’s white-faced annoyance. “I don’t wear a chastity belt,
you know.”

Franny, the teen-ager, got up abruptly, sitting down again in
humiliation as she remembered her nakedness, and then covering herself
with a blanket and going into the bathroom. Beth collapsed in an
armchair and preserved a chilly silence while Nina dressed herself,
smiling all the while, wondering whose temper would blow first.

Franny came out of the bathroom a few minutes later with her clothes on.
She walked over to Beth and spoke, facing her. “I didn’t know I was
muscling in on anything,” she said. “This just happened, almost by
accident. We weren’t even going to sleep together. I feel as bad about
it as you do, believe me.” And she gave Nina a dirty glance but it only
made Nina laugh.

“Thanks,” Beth told her softly, surprised at the dignity the girl had
mustered. “But never mind. I didn’t come for that, anyway.”

“For what, then?” Nina said cheerfully, going into the kitchen.

“I want to go back to the Village tonight, Nina. I want to see the
places we missed last time.”

“There are quite a few,” Nina said ironically. “Couple of dozen, at
least.”

“That doesn’t matter. I want to see them all.”

“Laura, hm? Got Laura on the brain,” Nina said. She was fixing some
frozen orange juice.

“Yes,” Beth said simply.

“Well,” Nina grinned. “I didn’t make such a big impression on you after
all. Did I?”

“Let’s forget it,” Beth said. The whole episode made her feel mildly
nauseated. The sight of Nina no longer aroused desire in her—just regret
and a powerful longing for Laura. She wasn’t sure exactly what caused
it—the other girl in Nina’s bed, the fact that Nina held Beth’s regard
so cheaply, or Nina’s selfish and peculiar pleasure in running people.

“I have to find Laura,” Beth said in a flat, positive voice. “Will you
help me?”

“Sure,” Nina said airily. “We’ll do the town tonight. Franny, want to
come along?”

Beth expected a pointed “No” from the girl, but she said, “Yes, I’ll
come,” instead. Beth looked up to find that Franny was gazing at her,
not Nina. Nina saw it too, and was not so amused. For what reason Beth
never clearly fathomed, Nina dressed as nearly like Beth as her wardrobe
would permit—same color dress, same style of shoes, similar white bag.
Was it to show Beth that Nina could wear the same things and look better
in them? Was it because she thought Franny was admiring Beth’s clothes?
Beth stared at her curiously but Nina gave no hints away.




                            Chapter Fourteen


In Nina’s phrase, they did the town that night. Beth drank very little
at first, but as the evening wore on the little mounted up and she
realized, some time shortly after midnight, how tight she was. She was
quite fascinated, as she had been before, with the people she saw. Many
of them knew Nina and came over to talk to her. There was one pretty,
rather boyish girl at the bar whom Nina had never seen before who caught
her eye, and Nina kept calling her “Farley,” after a movie star she
resembled, until Beth in embarrassment asked her to quit.

The rest of the time Nina needled Franny. Beth was glad it wasn’t
herself that night. She thought she couldn’t have taken it. She would
have lost her temper in one big spectacular blast and that would have
been the end. She would have had to walk out on Nina and maybe on her
chances of finding Laura.

For Nina asked everyone, all her friends, if they knew any Lauras. And
some of them did, but none of them knew Laura Landon.

“It’s going to be all over the Village that there’s a great search on,”
Nina said. “Maybe that’ll help you.”

“Thanks, Nina.”

Toward two A.M. Nina succeeded in getting Franny on a crying jag and
Beth told her indignantly to stop torturing the girl. But Nina laughed
and said, into Franny’s face, “She’s enjoying it.” Whereupon Franny got
up and ran into the ladies’ room and didn’t return for a half hour.

Beth had nothing to say to Nina. She was afraid any words between them
would be angry and she kept quiet, answering Nina in monosyllables. Nina
saw it and was both amused and annoyed. When she got drunk she liked a
fight. She felt mean. At the very least she wanted to embarrass
somebody.

“You don’t really think I give a damn if you find that girl, do you?”
she asked Beth.

“I don’t care what you think.”

“You know something? I don’t believe there is any such person as Laura
Landon.”

Beth shrugged, determined not to get nasty.

“I think you’re just leading me on. You just want a free tour of the
Village,” Nina said. And when Beth still maintained silence she went on,
“You think you’re something, don’t you, Beth? Just because Franny has
been eying you all evening.”

“Has she?” Beth was surprised. She hadn’t noticed it.

“Don’t play innocent with me,” Nina said, and Beth wondered if she was
jealous. Perhaps Nina had dressed herself like Beth in at least a
partial effort to snag Franny’s eye.

But when Franny got back she slipped a little penciled note into Beth’s
hand under the table. Later Beth got a chance to read it. There was a
telephone number and a plea for a call scrawled in pencil on lined
paper. Beth smiled slowly across the table at Franny, largely for Nina’s
benefit.

And just then she noticed, out of the corner of her eye, the entrance of
a woman whose face and manner captured her interest entirely. She was
big, nearly six feet tall, wearing slacks and a man-cut jacket. She was
a little over her best weight but strikingly handsome with the
black-and-white hair—still mostly black—curling closely around her head,
and light eyes. She walked with a slight swagger, her hands thrust into
the pockets of her pants, and Beth wasn’t the only one who turned to
look at her as she made her way up to the bar.

The bartender apparently knew her and fixed her something to drink in
response to a nod she gave him. She stood alone at one end of the bar,
seemingly preoccupied, although now and then she smiled at someone near
her who spoke to her.

Beth watched her, captivated by her manner and the world-weariness in
her face, for five or ten minutes. Finally she leaned over to ask Nina
who she was.

Nina gave a quick glance at the bar, reluctant to turn her attention
from Franny, and said, “Oh, God! Beebo Brinker. You don’t want to talk
to her.”

“Why not?” Beth demanded.

“You won’t get anything straight from her. I mean that both ways.”

“Do you know her, Nina?”

“Hell, yes. Lousy bitch.”

“Why lousy?” Beth asked.

“Oh, it’s a long story. Leave her alone, Beth, she’s no good.”

“She might know Laura,” Beth said.

“If she does, Laura’ll never be the same. They never are when Beebo gets
through with them.”

“What does she do to them?” Beth said.

“I don’t know, Beth. Don’t bother me about it.”

“I want to meet her,” Beth said stubbornly.

“Okay, damn it!” Nina flared suddenly. “Go meet her, I don’t care a damn
what you do. She knows everybody in the Village. If Laura Landon is
living here she’ll know.”

“Nina,” Beth protested, “you brought me down here to help me find
Laura.” She stared at her bewildered. “Now you don’t want me to find
her. Is that it?”

“Go on, Beth. Go talk to her. It’s about as bright as most of the things
you do. But for God’s sake don’t bring her over here. I can’t stand
her.”

Beth looked at her a moment longer, and then at Franny, who was afraid
to talk to her. She turned on her heel and walked away from them.

Beebo had found a bar stool and was sitting down by the time Beth
reached her. Beth stood a little behind her, nervous and hesitant for a
moment, and then she touched her sleeve. Beebo glanced up and to one
side, seeing a girl there but not looking at her.

“Hello,” Beebo said. Her face was nearly expressionless.

“Beebo Brinker?” Beth said.

“The same.” She didn’t seem to care who Beth was.

“Beebo, I’m looking for a friend of mine. It’s urgent that I find her.
Someone told me you knew everybody down here.” Beth knew she sounded
breathy and frightened but her voice, her manner, were out of her
control. “I was wondering if you could tell me where she is.”

“Try me.” Beebo lighted a cigarette and Beth watched, mesmerized. Her
gestures were perfectly masculine right down to the snap of the match,
almost more masculine than a man’s, carefully learned, carefully
studied, tellingly imitated.

“Well....” Beth leaned against the bar on one elbow, facing Beebo’s
profile. Beebo still had not really seen her face. She smoked, or drank
from her whiskey and water, and gazed into the mirror behind the bar.

“Well, her name is Laura,” Beth said, once again with the frightening
feeling of exposing her love to laughter.

Beebo’s eyes narrowed and in the mirror she looked at Beth for the first
time.

“Do you know a Laura, by any chance?” Beth said.

After a long tense pause Beebo said, “Laura? What’s her last name?”

“Landon.”

Slowly, very slowly, like someone moving in a dream, Beebo turned around
and looked her full in the face. Her lips parted slightly and she
studied Beth so closely that Beth involuntarily drew away a little,
clinging to the edge of the bar for support. She felt suddenly weak,
although Beebo’s gaze was not unkind and Beth liked her face. It even
seemed to resemble Beth’s own in some ways, though Beth’s was softer and
smaller and feminine. Beebo, still in her early forties, looked like a
college boy—gray-haired to some extent, but still collegiate.

“Beth,” Beebo said, very softly, and it sounded like thunder in Beth’s
ears. “You’re Beth. _Beth!_ Goddamn! I never thought we’d come face to
face, you and I.”

For a long bewildered moment Beth simply stared at her. “You know me?”
she murmured at last. There was no other sound for her in all that noisy
bar but Beebo’s voice.

“Know you?” Beebo grinned. “Honey, I know you better than you know
yourself. I’ve spent the best years of my life hating you. You were the
only real rival I ever had with Laura.”

Beth’s eyes grew huge with astonishment for a moment and suddenly full
of tears. She turned her head away, one hand over her eyes, and Beebo
explained gently to her.

“I met Laura when she first came to New York,” she said. “I thought I
brought her out. I mean, I thought I was the first woman she had ever
loved. Until she called me ‘Beth’ in bed one night. That was how I met
you. Beth Cullison.” Beth looked at her again, unable now to look away.

“That is your name, isn’t it?” Beebo said.

“It was. It’s Ayers now.”

“Married?” Beebo said.

Beth nodded and Beebo gave her a little grin. “It figures,” she said.
“Laura used to tell me about how wonderful you were, how kind you were
to her when she was so young and scared and didn’t know what she was.
She never talked about you except with love. God, how I used to hate the
sound of your name. Have you ever had a rival that didn’t exist, Beth?
Have you ever been jealous of a shadow, a snapshot? I could tear up the
snapshots but there were always more. She had dozens of copies lying
around. She showed them to everybody. When I gave her hell for it she
said I should be glad we looked alike. And you know something? We do. I
didn’t use to think so from the pictures she had of you, but seeing you
now.... Of course, you’re pretty. And you’re a woman.” She turned away
and drank the rest of her drink.

“Have something with me?” she said.

“Thanks. Scotch and water,” Beth said, still too shocked to think
sensibly. Beebo ordered it for her.

“So now you’ve come back to find Laura,” Beebo mused. “Why?”

“Do you know where she is?” Beth said eagerly, her heart floating over
the things Beebo had told her. “Is she still living with you?”

Beebo laughed a small private laugh. “No,” she said. “Not for the past
seven years. We broke up long ago.” And something she left unsaid made
Beth feel that, though they had broken up, Beebo still felt love for
Laura. “She was an extraordinary girl,” Beebo said. “I loved her very
much.” And then she stopped abruptly and Beth knew she would speak of
that part of it no more.

“What happened to her?” Beth said. “Is she all right? Where is she?”

“She’s in New York,” Beebo said.

Beth gave a sigh of relief. “Where?” she said urgently. It was almost a
groan of impatience.

Beebo swiveled in her seat again to look at her. “Why do you want to
find her so badly, Beth? Who’s Ayers? Doesn’t he have anything to say
about this?”

“I—I left him,” Beth said. “It’s all over.”

“Do you think it’s such a good idea to take up with a woman just because
you left off with a man?” Beebo said.

“I’m gay,” Beth said quickly. “It was never right with Charlie.”

“Any kids?” Beebo said. Her skeptical eyes went deep and made Beth feel
suddenly guilty.

But she answered with a brazen show of assurance, “No.”

Beebo took a drag on her cigarette, watching Beth through narrowed eyes.
“That’s good,” she said at last. “You’d be in bad trouble otherwise.”

Beth had a momentary spell of sinking, of sickness, that made her shut
her eyes and wipe her forehead with one sharp nervous gesture. The faces
of Skipper and Polly were very clear before her during that moment.

“Something wrong?” Beebo said quietly.

“I—I guess I’ve had too much to drink,” Beth said.

“Where are you staying?” Beebo said.

“The Beaton.”

“Are you here alone?”

“No, I came in with Nina Spicer. Do you know her?” She looked up at
Beebo then to see if her reaction to Nina was as harsh as Nina’s to her.
But Beebo only grinned and said, “Sure I know her. Everybody knows her.”

Beth liked Beebo’s face even better, now that it was becoming more
familiar to her. She felt secure with Beebo, as if Beebo were a friend.
It wasn’t logical. Beebo had frankly admitted an unreasonable hatred of
her of some years’ standing—something Nina had never felt. And yet there
was nothing fishy, nothing odd and egotistical about Beebo.

“How did you meet Nina?” Beebo said.

“I wrote to her, after I read some of her books. When I left Charlie I
came here to find Laura and I thought Nina might help me. She knows the
Village.”

“Well, she can teach you a few things. But they won’t have much to do
with true love and happy endings,” Beebo said. “Still, I guess that’s
something to know. There isn’t much true love in the world. Did she give
you a few scars?”

“A few, I guess.” Beth smiled a little. “Nothing I won’t recover from.”

“Good. You’re lucky. Now tell me one more thing. Since you won’t tell me
why you want to find her, are you sure you do want to find Laura?”

“Yes. Absolutely.” She spoke ardently and made Beebo smile again, but
such a different smile from Nina’s! Warm and friendly and concerned,
somehow.

“What do you think it will accomplish?” Beebo said.

“I still love her. I want her back.”

Beebo finished the drink she had before her and then she said gently,
“Beth ... Laura is married.”

There was a moment of deafening silence between them and then suddenly
it seemed to Beth as if the whole bistro was coming apart at the seams.
She staggered a little and Beebo got up quickly from her stool and
steered Beth expertly onto it.

“You’re okay, baby,” she said when Beth had recovered a little. “Don’t
tell me it never occurred to you. Don’t tell me you never thought of it.
Damn, you got married. It happens, you know. Here, drink this.” And she
forced half a glass of scotch and water down Beth’s throat.

After a moment, when she could talk, Beth whispered, “I thought of
everything. Everything but that. I thought she might have gone to Europe
or somewhere. I thought she might be in love with somebody else. I
thought she might have disappeared. I even thought she might be dead.
But, God help me, God help me, I never thought she would be married.
Married! I hate him!” She whispered the words with near-despair, too
stunned even to cry.

Beebo half lifted and half pulled her off her stool. “Come on,
sweetheart,” she said in her hoarse low voice. “You’re coming home with
me. I’ll tell you about it. Believe me, I felt just the way you feel now
when I found out. But that was seven years ago, after she left me. I
didn’t think I could stand it but I did.” She spoke with a sweetness
that amazed Beth in one so gruff and strange, and Beth clutched at her
words for courage. She never thought to argue with Beebo about going
home with her. She never even tried to stop and tell Nina where she was
going.

But Nina saw her go out with Beebo’s arm around her and Nina said softly
to herself, “Damn!” She knew that was the end of her influence on Beth,
and Beth had held promise for more pleasure. It was for that reason that
she had tried to discourage Beth from meeting Beebo. Nina liked to
control her visitor, and she loved to make love to her. It piqued her
vanity to see Beth so easily slip out from under her only to go to
someone she disliked and feared. With alcoholic malice she watched the
two of them leave.

Someone else watched them go: a small rotund man, balding, with bags
beneath his eyes and an air of fatigue and boredom that seemed never to
leave him. When the door of the bar swung shut behind Beth and Beebo,
the small heavy man got up and walked slowly toward it and followed them
into the night.




                            Chapter Fifteen


Beth stayed with Beebo that night and they sat up and talked through
most of it. Beebo told her about the two years she and Laura had lived
together, what a paradise it had been at first, what a red hell it had
become when Laura had fallen out of love.

“She was looking for a substitute for you when I met her,” Beebo
admitted. “When I turned out to be myself, not you, she was
disillusioned. She held it against me, in a way. And in another way,
after a while, I think she learned to love me for myself. But it was
never good enough. I was so much older; I’d done my running around and I
wanted to settle down. Laura was It as far as I was concerned. The end
of the trail. I was through looking over the field, through chasing
after new affairs.

“But for Laura it came too soon. She was too young. She hadn’t seen more
than a little corner of life and I wasn’t enough for her. She needed
variety, she needed to know other women, and that was more than I could
bear. And at the same time, she needed security. Somebody had to take
care of her, watch over her, provide for her. All of that. I wanted to
desperately, but I didn’t qualify. I was a woman and I was a
disappointing lover to boot. She needed a man, one who understood that
she was gay and would always be gay, and not interfere with that part of
her life.”

“Where did she meet him—her husband?” Beth asked. She was sitting
cross-legged on the floor in Beebo’s living room, drinking the coffee
Beebo had fixed for her, while Beebo sat on the couch above her with her
legs split casually over the long coffee table. She was still drinking
whiskey and water.

“She met him on a blind date,” Beebo said. “And a few weeks later he
introduced me to Laura. He lived down here at the time.”

“What’s his name?”

“Jack. Jack Mann.”

Beth memorized it. “But you and Laura lived together for a couple of
years before she married Jack?”

“Yeah. They loved each other all along, though. They got very close. The
worse things were between me and Laura, the closer they were between
Laura and Jack. She always ran to him when anything went wrong.”

“Was she _in_ love with him?”

“No. And he isn’t in love with her. Maybe that’s why they’re so happy.
No romance, no jealousy. No matter what passionate affairs they may be
having on the outside, their marriage is sacred to them. And it works.
It works a hell of a lot better than a lot of straight marriages I
know.”

“Do you mean Jack’s gay too?”

“Yes, honey. He’s gay.” Beebo looked down at her, and smiled. “He had
‘Beth’ problems when he married her, too. She was still thinking about
you even then. Used to drive him nuts. I remember he finally gave her a
lecture about it. Said you’d never see her again, you were gone out of
her life and probably married, and Laura had better grow up and realize
it.”

“Did she?” Beth asked shyly.

“I’m inclined to think she did,” Beebo said. “As a matter of fact, I
can’t help wondering what good it’ll do to open a closed chapter, Beth.
If it’s no good for Laura it can’t be much good for you.”

Beth hung her head, watching her cigarette burn and feeling the smoke
sting her eyes, without moving the thing or blowing at it.

“Maybe no good at all,” she admitted. “But I have to know. I’ve come so
far and I’ve had to face so much. I can’t run out now when I’m so close
to finding her. I wonder how she thinks of me now.”

“Probably pretty much the same way, _when_ she thinks of you.
Romanticized. You symbolized everything good, everything wise and
beautiful for her. You were an ideal love that, just by accident, wasn’t
so ideal after all. If you ever hurt her or crossed her up, you were
forgiven. As far as Jack and I could see you never did any wrong.”

Beth smiled ironically at her.

“I think she realizes now that you weren’t perfect, if only because you
were human. She’s not in love with you any more, but she still idealizes
you to some extent. That’s the way I see it, at least.”

“Is she still so beautiful?” Beth asked softly.

“Yes.” Beebo was watching her carefully, deeply interested in this
pretty young woman who had caused her such exasperation and heartache
years before. “Some people don’t think she _is_ beautiful, you know.”

“Some people are blind. She’s lovely—I mean, unless she’s changed?”

“No, not so much. Not to look at. But in other ways she’s changed a lot.
Remember, when you knew her before, you were the sophisticated one. You
were the one with experience and you taught Laura. Now it’s the other
way around. Laura’s the woman of the world and you’re the provincial
housewife. Do you want to start all over with her on that basis? Can
you?”

It was an acute observation. Beth had never thought of her relationship
with Laura. “Well, I—I’m not _that_ provincial,” she said in stammering
defense of herself. “I’ve been married, I have a couple of children.
That counts for some experience, doesn’t it?”

“Laura’s married too. Laura has a daughter six years old. And why the
hell did you lie to me about having children?”

Beth flushed crimson, overcome by the revelation of Laura’s maternity as
much as her own lie. After a moment’s confusion she said, “Beebo,
I—forgive me. I didn’t know you, I didn’t know whether to trust you. I—”
and she had to cry. It was the first time since she had met Beebo that
evening that her feelings unwound enough for her to let the tears come.
The storm was brief and hard but it cleared the air. “I love them
terribly, but I can’t live with them,” she confessed brokenly when she
could talk. “I left them with Charlie, my husband.”

“You ran away?” Beebo frowned at her.

“Sort of. He knew I was going; I didn’t try to hide it. But he doesn’t
know where I am now. He thinks I’m with my aunt and uncle in Chicago.”

“And where do they think you are?”

“God knows. I blew up at my uncle and when I left, I sneaked off like a
thief in the night.” Beebo tossed her a white linen handkerchief and
Beth blew her nose gratefully.

“That’s too bad, honey,” Beebo said gently. “You’re in a hell of a
situation. Me, I told off all my relatives twenty-five years ago, and
left before I had any obligations. They all predicted I’d go straight to
hell. But when I look back on it, I’m not sorry, strange to say. Some of
it’s been hell, all right. But some of it’s been ... wonderful. Just
wonderful. Makes the rest of it worth the pain. Like the first year with
Laura.”

Beth gazed up at her and caught a faraway smile on her face. “You must
be lonely, Beebo,” she said. “Living alone like this. Or aren’t you
alone?”

“I live alone,” Beebo said. “But I have a lot of company. A lot of
drinking buddies.”

“That still makes you pretty lonely, doesn’t it?” Beth knew that
loneliness, and she sympathized eagerly.

“Yes, honey, it does. I had a couple of dogs, once. Dachshunds. They
helped for a while. But they died.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“Actually, they were—killed.”

“How awful.” And Beth sensed a whole story, a whole miniature tragedy
behind the words. But she dared not press Beebo for it.

“What’s Laura’s little girl’s name?” Beth asked.

Beebo came back from her reverie and smiled at her, pouring herself
another inch of whiskey from the bottle by her feet. “Elizabeth,” she
said. “What else?”

“For me?” Beth said.

Beebo nodded. “They call her Betsy, though. Jack put his foot down on
Beth.”

And oddly it struck them both funny and they laughed together, and Beth
found herself reaching for Beebo’s hand. Just to grasp, just to hold for
an instant in gratitude. “God, I’m so glad I found you,” she said. “I
was so depressed. It all seemed so hopeless.”

“I can imagine,” Beebo said with a humorous edge in her voice, “if Nina
Spicer was showing you around town.”

“Is she like that with everybody?”

“She tries to be. Too bad. She’s a shrewd girl and she’s made quite a
success of this writing bit. But she has to analyze everybody. She
learns enough about human nature to use people but not enough to help
them. It’s not in her nature to give a damn what happens to them after
they cease to amuse her. She just likes to pull the strings and see them
hop. That’s not saying she can’t teach you a few things, Beth. But she
can crack your ego at the same time and it’s not worth the aches and
pains involved.”

“Are most gay people like that?” Beth asked.

“No. But a lot of them are. Too many. That’s the most valuable lesson
Nina can teach you, honey. It doesn’t last long in the gay world and
when it’s over it keeps on hurting for a long time. You’re on your own.
You watch out for yourself. You haven’t any of the safeguards or the
consolations or the help that straight people have. There’s nobody you
can run crying to when you’re the loser.”

“Nina taught me something else. I’m gay,” Beth said.

“Oh, hell,” Beebo said and laughed good-naturedly. “You learn that
yourself, nobody teaches you.”

“She said if I cut off my hair and went to live in the Village I’d be a
butch.”

“Good God, you’re no butch!” Beebo exclaimed. “She’s filling you full of
bull just to amuse herself.”

“I thought so,” Beth sighed. “But I’m so damned ignorant. I’m not sure
of anything. I thought maybe Laura could help me understand myself. Show
me what I am.”

“Nobody’s going to draw you any diagrams, sweetheart,” Beebo said.

“I’ve been wondering about it for all these years. Wondering if I did
the right thing in marrying Charlie and leaving Laura.”

“Why did you marry him?”

“I loved him.”

“Do you still?”

“I don’t know. Yes, in a way. I hate him too, though. There were times
when I think I could have killed him.”

“How do you know it won’t be like that with Laura?” Beebo asked. “How do
you know you weren’t cut out to be a loner? Bisexual, maybe. Or the kind
who can only love from a distance, no matter which sex, no matter how
much passion?”

And Beth had to turn away from Beebo’s brilliant, absorbing eyes, too
troubled by her ideas to face her squarely. To change Beebo’s train of
thought she asked, “Why doesn’t Nina like you?”

“I jilted her once. A few years ago. And I don’t read her books. And, I
suppose, she didn’t want me to waltz off with you tonight. Sort of lets
the air out of her balloon.”

Beth smiled silently into her near-empty coffee cup. “Beebo,” she said.
“Will you tell me where Jack and Laura live?”

“Made up your mind?” Beebo said.

“Yes.”

“You’re going to see her?”

“Yes.”

“In spite of all the pitfalls?”

“I’d walk through hell to see her,” Beth whispered.

Unexpectedly Beebo reached over, putting a hand on each of Beth’s
shoulders and pulling her back so that she leaned against the couch
between Beebo’s knees. The hands were strong and firm as a boy’s,
disconcerting in the warm grip. Beth could feel Beebo looking down on
the top of her head and she wished she could see her face.

“Okay, honey,” she heard Beebo say. “I’ll call them and tell them you’re
coming.”

“Oh, God, no!” Beth cried. “No, Beebo. Please. I don’t want her to know
in advance. I want to surprise her. If she knows she’ll change things,
she’ll clean the house, she’ll fix a big dinner, she’ll have something
fixed to say to me that won’t be genuine. It just won’t be the same.
Please, let me surprise her.”

“She won’t thank me for that,” Beebo quipped. “But if that’s the way you
want it.”

“That’s the way.”

“Okay, okay,” Beebo sighed. “They’re up at 528 North Lexington. Eighth
floor. His name is J.F. Mann. And Beth—just for the record—she’s
interested in somebody right now. I don’t know how seriously.”

“Okay. It’s okay. That’s something I expected,” Beth said. She turned
her head to Beebo’s leg and kissed it fervently, impulsively. “Thank
you,” she said, and experienced a strange, unexpected flash of pleasure
at her own boldness, at Beebo’s nearness and warmth.

She stayed the rest of the night, sleeping in spite of her excitement.
Beebo gave her the bed and slept on the couch in the living room. She
had gone out by the time Beth got up the next morning, but there was a
note for her to help herself to some breakfast and to keep in touch with
Beebo. Beth scribbled down her room number and phone at the Beaton on
Beebo’s telephone pad and drank some orange juice. Her mouth was dry
with excitement and she found it hard to eat, but she made herself take
something. At the same time she riffled through the pages of Beebo’s
telephone directory. And there it was. There it had been all along, but
without Beebo’s help she wouldn’t have found it. “J.F. Mann,” and the
address. Beth tore another sheet of paper off the phone pad and made a
note of the number, slipping it into her purse.

Before she left she cleaned up her dishes and the ones Beebo had left,
including the coffee cup and the whiskey glass from the night before.
She made the bed, thinking as she did it that Laura must have slept in
this bed too, once. After that she straightened up the living room. It
wasn’t the same as keeping house for Charlie. She actually enjoyed the
tasks, enjoyed the feeling that Beebo would come home to a clean house
and a tidy kitchen, and it would be due to Beth’s care.

She took a long look at the rooms before she closed the front door after
herself, and she had the feeling that sooner or later, some day, she
would be back. She hoped so. She liked Beebo, she had learned from her,
and it hadn’t been the sharp, painful sort of lesson Nina Spicer taught.
But just as effective. Perhaps more so.




                            Chapter Sixteen


Beth walked over to Seventh Avenue to get a taxi. She walked with a
light, swinging step, feeling a small new joy in her heart that almost
amounted to hope for a happy ending to it all—the mess and bewilderment
and misery of the past few months.

As she walked she noticed a short balding man ahead of her with a
noticeable aura of ennui about him, standing baggy-eyed and uninterested
before a window full of leather-work. He looked familiar, though she was
sure she didn’t know anybody in the city outside of Nina and Beebo.

_Still.... Maybe I saw him at one of the bars_, she thought, vaguely
disturbed by his face yet unable to recall it. She walked briskly past
him as if she had not noticed him at all. _He probably lives down here.
He probably goes bar hopping at night. I’ve seen him in a bar, that’s
all._ But it piqued her not to remember where.

She had the taxi driver let her off at Fifth Avenue and 38th Street,
near the public library. She wanted to buy something, some little house
gift for Jack and Laura that would make her appearance less awkward,
give them all something to say. For half an hour she wandered from store
to store, north and south, trying to find the appropriate thing,
ignoring Merrill Landon’s strictures about budgeting her money. It had
to be something really nice or it just wouldn’t do.

She stopped to look into the toy window at F.A.O. Schwartz, thinking
suddenly of Polly and Skipper and wondering if she could send them
something without upsetting them. In the middle of the window,
prominently displayed, was a big, gaudy, orange giant spring, with an
elaborate bow attached to the top like a gift wrapping. A big sign
leaned against the bottom: “THE SCOOTCH—bounce on it, roll in it, dive
through it. The new sensation!”

After a moment she went in and asked one of the clerks about it.

“Yes, it’s quite unusual, isn’t it?” he beamed. “We can’t keep them in
stock. The kids adore them. Just like those hoops a couple of years ago.
I’d be willing to bet the Scootch will outsell them.”

“Who makes it?” she asked faintly.

“Who? Uh—let’s see.” He up-ended a carton behind the counter.
“California firm,” he said. “Ayers-Purvis Toys.” He read the name
slowly. “That must be a new one, I don’t recall it,” he said. “All the
new ideas come from California,” he explained, smiling. “Don’t know why.
They breed out there like cats.”

“Thank you,” she said, turning to leave.

He called after her, “Excuse me, wouldn’t you like to buy one? I
mean—you’ll have to get one sooner or later for your own kids.”

“My own kids probably have twenty of them,” she said, and left, knowing
he would go to the back of the store and tell the others about the wacky
customer he had.

She felt a tormented tenderness for Charlie, standing there gazing at
his supreme achievement in the window. It was so silly. It was so
ingenious. It would make him and Cleve a fortune. She wished him well;
she wished for the first time in a long time that she had been able to
adapt to him better than she had. She wished fervently that they might
have made each other happy, that the children could have brought a sense
of fulfillment to her life. She wished that she had been there when he
came home with his face lighted up and that happy, abstract look in his
eyes to tell her about his wonderful new idea, wished she could have
seen Polly and Skipper with their daddy’s great invention.

She leaned momentarily against the wall of the toy shop and a woman
stopped to inquire if she needed help.

“No,” she said, and straightened up and walked into the crowd. She
finally bought a pair of crystal candlestick holders at Black, Starr,
and Gorham’s. While they were being gift-wrapped her spirits revived a
little. She thought of Laura, thought of her very hard. Tried to picture
the man she married. Was he good to her, was he rich, was he
intelligent? He was gay—did that make him swishy, too? A nancy? Or could
a man be gay and reasonably masculine at the same time? She burned to
meet him. She was prepared to hate him.

At the hotel she collapsed on her bed and slept the rest of the day.
When she awoke, late in the afternoon, she wrote Merrill Landon a note
to say that Laura, his lost Laura, was found. She gave him Laura’s
address and told him she was married. “And you have a granddaughter,”
she added. “Betsy.” She asked him to forward a note she enclosed to
Charlie, so it would have a Chicago postmark on it.

To Charlie she wrote: “I saw the Scootch in the shop windows today. For
what it’s worth, I’m proud of you. I hope you make a million dollars.
The kids must love it. I’m fine, don’t worry about me. I haven’t made my
mind up yet on anything. Take care of yourself and give the children my
fondest love. Beth.”

She cried while she wrote it, knowing she had no right to the tears.
They were tears of self-pity more than anything else. She had given up a
lot when she gave up her children, her home, her conjugal rights. She
had given them up on a gamble, in the hope that she might someday find
something else, something that would mean more to her. But she hadn’t
found that something yet and it scared her to feel herself suspended
between two worlds, belonging to neither. And she had done it all,
deliberately, to herself.

                   *       *       *       *       *

Beth took a taxi to Laura’s apartment building. It was a short ride in
the pleasant twilight, with the sun almost down and the air cooling.

She asked at the desk for Mr. and Mrs. Mann.

The clerk telephoned up and then asked Beth who was calling, one hand
judiciously placed over the receiver.

“Mrs. Ayers,” Beth said doubtfully.

“Mrs. Ayers,” the clerk repeated, gazing down at the floor and speaking
into the receiver. He glanced up again at Beth and then handed the phone
to her.

“Hello?” she said, her heart pounding, rising in her throat, her ears
geared for Laura’s light voice.

“Mrs. Ayers?” It was Jack. He sounded rather growly, but pleasant.

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know you.”

“I—I’m an old school friend of Laura’s,” she said, wishing the trembling
in her would go away just long enough for her to make a serene first
impression on him.

“Oh,” he said. And then, with just a hint of enlightenment, “_Oh._ Well,
then, won’t you come up?”

“Thanks, I’d love to.”

She got into the elevator, feeling the light nervous sweat break out all
over her body, trying not to clutch her present too tightly in her
clammy hands and ruin the wrappings. She watched the numbers of the
floors flash above her until they got to four. It seemed an eternity.

She found the door promptly, but it was another matter to ring the bell.
She felt suddenly faint and hated herself, trying to take up her courage
and smooth her dress and compose her face with a multitude of
ineffectual fluttering gestures. At last she stopped and stood rigidly
still for as long as she could bear it, her eyes tight shut and the
sweat loosed uncontrollably all over her. And then she reached for the
bell.

Before she could push it the door opened and she gave a small but
audible gasp. A short dark man, crew-cut and horn-rimmed, smiled at her.

“Took so long I thought you must have gotten lost,” he grinned. “Mrs.
Ayers? Come on in. I’m Jack Mann.”

“Thanks,” she said from a husky throat, and followed him into the living
room, grasping the box with the candlesticks in it so closely that the
white tissue paper pulled apart under one of her thumbs. She looked
about the room with quick scared eyes, her whole being prickling with
the possibility of Laura’s presence.

“Sit down,” Jack said. He watched her with a mixture of amusement and
curiosity that was friendly enough. Beth obeyed him, lowering herself
halfway into her chair and suddenly remembering her gift.

“Oh, here,” she blurted, rising abruptly and thrusting it toward him.
“I—I brought you a little something. I remember Laura used to like
crystal and cut glass, things like that.”

“Thanks,” he said, accepting it. “Yes, she still does. Shall I keep it
till she gets home? She ought to be the one to open it.”

“Isn’t she here?” Beth stared at him, still half out of her seat.

“If you froze that way,” he said with a grin, “you’d be a pretty unhappy
girl.”

And she sat down suddenly, embarrassed.

“Yes, she’s out,” he went on. “I mean, no, she’s not at home.” He put
the gift on the table in front of him and sat down opposite her in a
leather chair, asking if she’d like a drink, how long she would be in
New York, a dozen urbane civilities that they batted back and forth with
a show of casualness. And all the while they studied each other
surreptitiously, Jack with the bemused air of a man trying to place a
face, and Beth with the intense interest of a rival.

“So you and Laura went to school together,” he said.

“Yes. Just for a year.” She thought she liked him, which was something
she hadn’t planned on. He was ugly, in the nice sort of way that women
like. There was a friendly intelligence in his face. And he was short.
Beth guessed that he and Laura might be near the same height. Beth was
taller than he, quite a bit taller in her high-heeled shoes. But he was
quick and graceful and very much at ease, and it made her easier within
herself, for which she was grateful. He went to a small built-in bar in
a corner of the living room and fixed her a drink. It gave Beth a chance
to look around. It was a spacious room, an unusually roomy apartment for
midtown Manhattan.

_He must be doing well to keep Laura like this_, she thought.

“When do you think she’ll be in?” she asked in a voice loaded with
careful disinterest.

“I don’t know. She’s out with a friend. They were going to a concert, so
it could be rather late. If you’d told us you were coming....” He smiled
and shrugged, handing her the Scotch and water.

“Thanks. I guess it was silly not to. I wanted to surprise her.”

“Well, it sure as hell will surprise her if she hasn’t seen you in nine
years. If you’d gotten here ten minutes earlier you would have caught
her.”

“Probably just as well I didn’t. I might have ruined her evening.” She
was thinking of the “friend” Laura went to the concert with, and Jack,
though his eyes opened wider at this, pretended not to have heard.

“Where’s your daughter?” Beth asked suddenly. “I thought you had a
daughter.”

“Really? What gave you that idea?” he asked with a little frown of
curiosity visible between his eyes.

Beth cursed her own clumsiness silently. “I should have told you right
away,” she stumbled. “I ran into a friend of Laura’s—oh, just by
accident—or I never would have found you. She told me about—Betsy.”

“Oh. That explains it. I was about to ask how you found us.” He said it
slowly and she knew he was amused but somehow she didn’t mind. She had
the feeling he was being amiable because he liked her, not because it
was his obligation to a guest. “Who was the friend?” he asked.

She didn’t want to throw it at him, as if she had been down in the
Village sleuthing and run into Beebo as a likely well of information—as
if she and Beebo were in cahoots. But his smile broadened at her delay
and she finally said, with a little sigh that meant she was surrendering
all her subterfuges, “Beebo. Beebo Brinker. You know her pretty well, I
guess.”

“Pretty well,” he said with the emphasis of understatement, and laughed
outright. “Good old Beebo. How the hell did you find _her_? Well, I
guess it’s not so hard at that,” he answered himself. “Anywhere south of
Fourteenth Street you can’t miss her. Was she wearing her boots?”

“Her boots?”

“Yes. She wears them when she’s mad at the world. Makes her feel manly.”
He said it without ill-will but full of old familiar affection.

“No boots,” Beth smiled. “But lots of advice. Lots of stories.”

“She must have been bowled over when she found out you knew Laura,” Jack
said. “She’s still in love with her.”

A queer little flash of disappointment, almost alarm, went through Beth.
“She recognized me,” she said. “I guess Laura told her quite a bit about
me. Showed her some old snapshots, or something.”

“Then you must be Beth,” he said. “I thought so but I didn’t want to
embarrass you.... Beth the Incorruptible.”

“What?” she exclaimed.

“That’s what I used to call you,” he said. “In the days when I couldn’t
stand you. Purely sarcastic, you can be sure. But that was before I met
you. Laura used to make you seem that way when she talked about you.”

Beth began to grin. Suddenly, strangely, she felt at ease. “You know,
it’s the damnedest thing,” she told him. “I met her father in Chicago a
couple of weeks ago, and he knew me right away. I met Beebo in a bar
last night and she said, ‘My God, you’re Beth!’ And now you’ve got it
figured out too. I feel like a celebrity.”

“Around here you were a celebrity, for quite a while,” he said. “We all
had to learn to live with you—all of us who lived with Laura. Papa
Landon got you thrown in his face one night at the McAlton Hotel—all
about that year you and Laura roomed together. After Laura told him she
cracked him over the head with a glass ashtray and beat it. Gave him a
concussion, but he recovered. They’ve never seen each other since.”

“My God!” Beth breathed softly. “He spoke of her so lovingly. As if it
had all been forgiven, if not forgotten.”

“I suppose it has,” Jack said. “I suppose he’d like to find her again
and patch things up.” His eyes were bright on her. “But it wouldn’t be a
very good idea.”

“No? Why not?” Her mind flashed to the note she had mailed that very
afternoon with Laura’s address and married name in it.

Jack shrugged. “Well, Laura’s happy now. We’re happy, I should say. And
Landon never did anything but upset her. At least when they were
together.”

“It’s been a long time. Maybe he deserves another chance,” Beth
suggested.

“I think that’s up to Laura, don’t you?”

“Why not to him?”

“He wasn’t the aggrieved party,” Jack said. “Whatever was unhappy
between them was his doing. It’s up to Laura to forgive, not Landon.”

“Oh.” She lowered her head, a small alarm inside herself. But Merrill
Landon had given Beth his promise not to visit Laura, not to interfere
with her life. He said it was because he had no right to bother her. All
he wanted was a link, an address, a reassurance. And remembering him
with confidence, even a sort of affection, her trust returned and she
calmed herself.

Before she could ask Jack more a little girl about six years old burst
out of a door behind him and said, “Daddy, will you fix the TV? The
picture’s all crooked.”

“Sure. Come here, honey, we have company,” he said. “This is Mrs.
Ayers.”

“Hello, Mrs. Ayers,” she murmured and came forward shyly, her hair long
and blonde and floating like Laura’s, her features dainty and her face
fair, though she wore glasses like her father. She was shy and
unspeakably sweet and small, and Beth thought of Polly, her Polly ...
and of Laura and all Laura’s reflected beauty and reticence. And she
held out her arms to Betsy with a full heart and full eyes and clasped
the astonished child to her.

“Oh, you’re lovely!” she exclaimed. “You look just like your mommy.”

The little girl backed away, frightened at her strange behavior, but
Beth caught her hands and said, “Don’t be afraid. You know, I have a
little girl—” She stopped, suddenly wary. She meant to keep that part of
her life separate and apart from this. “I was a good friend of your
mommy’s years ago,” she said, brushing impatiently at a tear. “We went
to school together. And I’m so happy to see she has a beautiful little
daughter that looks so much like her.”

Betsy smiled. “You’re beautiful, too.”

Beth had to resist the impulse to hug her and probably scare her again.
Jack had adjusted the television for Betsy in the meantime and he came
to take her by the hand. “You go in and watch,” he said. “You can have
another half hour,” he told her. “Then bedtime. School tomorrow.”

Beth watched her retreat across the living room and turn in her bedroom
door to say again, with the same little dip of her head that Laura gave
before people she didn’t know and was a bit shy with, “Good night, Mrs.
Ayers.”

“Good night, Betsy,” Beth said solemnly.

Jack gave her a kiss and closed the door behind her. He looked up to see
the tears in Beth’s eyes and, surprised, he said, “She’s just a kid like
any other. Except to Laura and me. We’ve got her pegged for President of
the United States, naturally.”

“I didn’t mean to be silly about it,” Beth said. “She—looks so much like
Laura.”

“That’s nothing to cry about,” he smiled. “That’s something to be
grateful for. Before she was born I had nightmares that she’d look just
like me.”

“It wouldn’t have been _that_ bad,” she said, forced to return his
smile.

“Not for a boy, maybe,” he said. “A man can be ugly and nobody cares.
But a woman can’t. Her whole life is twisted up if she is.”

Beth gazed at him with a new respect. His words recalled Vega’s shocking
hidden ugliness to her and for a minute she was nearly overcome with the
thought of her former lover. She concentrated on Jack for the sake of
composure. He was a father, he had proved himself a man. He had a lovely
child and a lovely home. He had Laura.

All Beth’s stereotyped ideas about homosexual men were getting a bad
jumbling. He seemed as normal, as comfortable to be with as any man she
knew. Only, he wasn’t normal, and it gave her an odd feeling inside. She
asked herself how much he knew of her, and what he supposed she was
doing there, trailing Laura after all these years.

They talked and the time passed quickly. He told her how he and Laura
had met and how their love had grown and Beth thought, watching him,
that Laura must love him very much to have let him marry her, to have
taken his name and shared his home and borne his child. It amazed Beth
that Laura could have done that, gone that far. Laura was not a selfish
girl. She wouldn’t have objected to children on that ground. It was the
mechanics of it, the necessary intimacy between a man and a woman that
preceded children that Beth could hardly picture Laura accepting. But
she had and with _this_ man, Jack, who faced Beth now over a friendly
nightcap and described his life with Laura.

“The one thing I never thought she could do,” she confessed to him, “was
marry anybody.”

“I didn’t think she could, either,” he said. “Gave me some bad nights
till she said yes.”

“I remember when we were in college together, how she used to talk
about—about men.”

“She didn’t think much of us as a group,” he said and his eyes twinkled.
“Chalk that up to Papa Landon. He set a sterling example as a slob. I
had quite a prejudice to overcome before I could talk her into tying the
knot.”

“You don’t mean you had to talk her out of women?” Beth exclaimed.

“Hell, no,” he said and laughed. Now that it was out in the open they
both felt better. “Nobody could do that. I’d have been nuts to try. She
can’t be talked out of women and I can’t be talked out of
men—emotionally, that is. It would take more words than there are. But
that doesn’t matter to our marriage. Nothing goes on in this house that
might hurt our life together. We keep the other stuff apart; it always
comes second.”

“Does Betsy know?”

“No,” he said simply. “It’s not that we hide things, it’s just that
she’s too young to understand, even if we made a point of it to her. She
knows we have our own friends, she knows we go out occasionally. Like
Laura tonight. Now and then she meets some of our friends. That’s all.
She’s a happy kid, thank God. And we’re happy.”

“I’m glad,” Beth said, and she truly was. “I’ve been expecting to hate
you ever since I knew you existed. But I don’t. I don’t even want to any
more. I’m glad things have worked out for you. Only....”

“Only, you’d like to see Laura again. See if she’s changed and all
that?”

“Something like that.” She looked away from him timidly.

“Why did you come to New York, Beth?” he said quietly. “It wasn’t just
to find Laura, was it?”

“Oh, it was a lot of things,” she said.

“Laura said you were married. Or nearly married when she last saw you.
You said your name was Mrs. Ayers. Is Mr. Ayers here with you?”

“No, he’s in California,” she said. “As a matter of fact, we’re
divorced. I haven’t seen him for quite some time.”

“Too bad,” he said, but he said it too quickly, too lightly, without
comment, and she sensed his doubt, sensed that he only accepted her
statement to put her at ease, not because he believed it. She had no
idea why she felt compelled to lie about her marriage. Maybe because she
thought Jack would not let her get close to Laura if he knew. Maybe
because she was at heart so desperately ashamed of the mess she had left
in California. At any rate the lie was spoken and she had to stick by it
now.

“Any kids?” he said and she shook her head, unable to speak the
monstrous fib aloud. How could Laura take her back, how could she learn
to love Beth again, hold her and come close to her, if she knew what
Beth had done to her own children? She must never know and Beth realized
suddenly that she had to keep the whole past in the shadows, to pretend
it was no more real than she said it was. Or it would poison the
happiness she felt so near.

“You must be a little older than Laura,” she said brightly to Jack,
switching the subject abruptly and making him blink at her.

“A little,” he conceded. “Twenty-two years.”

“My God!” she cried. “That much? I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged and smiled. “You don’t have to,” he said.

“But that makes you damn near fifty years old,” she said, incredulous.

“Damn near. Forty-seven.”

“But you look as if you were in your thirties.”

“Thanks,” he said with a grin. “You make me feel extremely generous.
Have another drink.”

She handed him her glass. “You look so—Joe College,” she said and he
gave a laugh that was more of a snort of self-mockery and said, “That’s
going too far.” But he did look remarkably young and moved his spare
body with a suppleness that belied his age.

She took her glass back filled and looked at it intently, as though in
search of poise. “Is—is Laura in love with anybody, Jack?” she asked.

“Not seriously,” he said, studying her, wondering just how much she
wanted from his wife.

“Either she is or she isn’t,” she said.

“Well, on that basis,” he said, “I’d have to say she is. But remember
you forced me into it.”

“Then it is serious.” Her face was very pale and her eyes were on him
now.

“Hell, she’s not going to marry the girl.”

“Has she known her a long time? Does she dream about her all the time?”
The questions tumbled out of Beth and she was suddenly humiliated by her
eagerness, her concern, and her gaze dropped from his again.

“She’s known her for a while now,” he said. “I think it’s beginning to
fade. But they still see each other just about every day. They’re pretty
compatible.”

“Who is the girl?”

He chuckled a little. “Betsy’s piano teacher,” he said. “Betsy’s getting
free lessons all over the place. Very economical.”

After a long pause Beth said, “Are you in love with anybody?”

“You have designs on me, too?” he grinned and she blushed a quick red.
“I’m always in love with somebody. How about you?”

She had left herself wide open for that and she knew he wanted to know
why she was there and what she was seeking from Laura.

“I’m never in love with the right person,” she said softly.

“I’ll bet,” he said, but though he teased her it was not malicious. “You
must have been once,” and when she glanced up at him, he added, “to hear
Laura tell it.”

“You mean—my husband?” she faltered.

“I mean Laura,” he said bluntly. “She was terribly in love with you, for
a very long time, Beth. Long after she left you.”

“Is she still?” she asked. She had to say it; her heart and tongue would
not be still even though the asking of it shamed her.

He looked at her a moment and then he shook his head. “Her life has
changed,” he explained. “There are other things, now. I don’t know
exactly how she feels about you any more, Beth. I can only say she’s
safely out of love with you and has been for a long time. We don’t talk
about it much. On the other hand, I think she’ll always feel a special
tenderness for you. It’s just that you don’t seem very real to her any
more. You’re more like a beautiful dream that’s over and done with.
Something to remember with gratitude and affection, but something more
like a mirage than a fact.”

Beth finished her drink. “Do you suppose I’ll ruin it all by seeing her
again?”

“You could. Depends on why you want to see her,” he said, urging a
confession from her with his voice, his attitude, everything but his
words.

She looked at him out of tormented eyes. “I wonder if I could explain
it, even to you,” she murmured.

“Try,” he said.

“Jack,” she said helplessly, “there’s no way. I don’t know myself. I
won’t know why I’m here until I see her face before me. Until I touch
her and hear her voice. Maybe I’ll know then, if I’m lucky.” She felt
herself getting shaky and she stopped talking. He took her glass again
and refilled it.

“She’ll be along,” he said. “These things are never very late.”

But it did get late. Later and later until it was after midnight and she
could no longer bear to sit there and face him and keep her dreadful
secrets from coming up in her throat and gagging her. She got up at last
and thanked him and told him, “I can’t wait any longer. I’ll come by
tomorrow. Please don’t tell her I was here. I have to surprise her.
Don’t ask me why, I can’t explain.”

“There’s a lot you can’t explain,” he said mildly. “Why don’t you spend
the night?” he went on. “We have plenty of room.”

Her heart jumped at the chance.

“Get up, you’re on the sofa-bed,” he told her. “Won’t take a minute to
make it up.”

When he brought her one of Laura’s nightgowns to wear she took it with a
sudden gesture and look of pleasure that she made no attempt to hide. He
smiled at her.

“Still want to keep it a secret?” he said. “From Laura, I mean.”

“Won’t she see me when she comes in?” Beth said. “Right here in the
living room?”

“She won’t know who it is in the dark.”

“Don’t tell her, then.”

“It’ll probably knock her for a loop in the morning,” he said. “But if
you want it that way.”

“I do. Thanks, Jack.”

“Sure.” He smiled at her, showed her where the bathroom was, and left
her to herself.

She lay down after a while, turning out the light and lying in the dark.
She didn’t expect to sleep with her mind whirling and full of Laura, but
she did. Very suddenly she dropped off as if a switch had been flipped
inside her and stilled her thoughts.




                           Chapter Seventeen


It was almost dawn when she heard the front door opened carefully, and
shut with a small click. She was lying on her stomach with her face
obscured by crumpled bedclothes and the pillow. She heard Laura come in,
heard her pause as she caught sight of the sofa-bed open and occupied,
heard her rustle softly across the room and felt her presence, her
scent, only scant inches from her. The room was full of a deep gray
light and Beth was sure it wasn’t enough for Laura to distinguish her
face by. She lay almost breathless on the bed until Laura turned and
moved quietly away, going into her own bedroom.

Beth rolled over and gazed at the faintly visible ceiling with a
tremendous happiness inside her that called for singing, shouting from
the rooftops, hilarity. It made her smile at the ceiling and hug
herself, and after a while it got her out of bed and sent her to the
door of the bedroom where Jack and Laura were sleeping. She just stood
there, one hand pressed against the door and a smile on her face, for
half an hour. There was too much excitement and anticipation in her for
the unhappy parts of her life to bother her. She never once thought of
Charlie or of Vega.

She got up and dressed. There was no point in trying to sleep any more;
she was too keyed up. She put her clothes on and washed her face and
then she made up the sofa-bed, folding the sheets and blanket carefully
and stacking them in a chair while she closed the hinged mattress and
put the cushions back in place. All slowly ... all quietly.

She picked up a magazine and looked at the pictures. And finally, after
what seemed like an eternity, she heard stirrings in Jack and Laura’s
room. She heard a sleepy male voice speaking softly and then someone
answering him, and her whole soul thrilled to that light feminine voice.
It had been so long, so abysmally long and lonesome a time since she had
last heard it. She even wondered, half laughing at herself, if she would
have recognized it as Laura’s voice without the sure knowledge that it
was actually Laura who spoke. She heard her so indistinctly; the words
were unintelligible, just a faint murmur of sound.

Fifteen minutes went by, during which Beth could hear sounds of running
water in the bathroom, small sounds of drawers opening and shoes
dropping and things being moved and things being gotten into. Suddenly
the bedroom door opened and she looked up—almost leaped up—only to see
Jack emerge.

Jack gave her a pleasant grin. “She’s still sleeping,” he said. He gave
three sharp raps on Betsy’s door and said, “Get up, honey.” And then,
turning to Beth, he said, “Come on, I’ll fix you some breakfast.”

She got up and followed him into the kitchen and helped him make
scrambled eggs and bacon and coffee and orange juice and muffins.

“I believe in big breakfasts,” he told her.

“You’re some cook,” she said. “You really know your way around the
kitchen. I’m a flop in that department.”

He smiled, unabashed. “Worked out very well,” he said. “Laura’s not a
great cook, and she doesn’t like it much. I do most of it.”

“Under protest?”

“Hell, no. I enjoy it. I wouldn’t do it otherwise.”

Betsy came in as Beth was pouring the orange juice and she exclaimed
brightly, “Hi, Mrs. Ayers! Did you stay all night?”

“Sh!” her father told her. “Come here and let me button you. Mrs. Ayers
is going to surprise Mommy. We don’t want her to know she’s here.”

“Oh,” she said, turning big eyes, made bigger still by the lenses in
front of them, on Beth, while Jack did up a row of pearl buttons on the
back of her dress.

“There,” he said. “Eat.”

Beth had the uncanny feeling that everything she saw and heard, every
bit of this little morning ritual she was sharing with them, would tie
Laura closer to her and help her understand herself. Nothing was
unimportant. She remembered it all.

“When does Laura get up?” she asked while they ate.

“Not till ten or so. It depends,” he said.

“She isn’t working, then?”

“No.” It was emphatic. She sensed that he didn’t want his wife to work.

“Who did you tell her I was?”

“She asked me this morning,” he said, grinning. “I told her you were my
mother. Stood her on her ear.”

“Did it? Is your mother dead or something?”

He laughed. “No. Laura’s never laid eyes on my mother, and neither have
I for thirty years. But I call Laura ‘Mother.’ It started out as a joke
and ended up a family institution. I was calling her Mother long before
I had any notion of marrying her. A Freudian slip, I suppose.”

Betsy giggled, more at the tone of his voice than at his words, for they
didn’t make much sense to her.

“I’ll be home after five,” he told Beth when he finished. “We’ll go out
for dinner or something.” He got up and Betsy followed him. At the
kitchen door he turned to add, “Say, tell Laura to call George McCracken
and cancel that order, will you? I’ve changed my mind. And tell her to
mail a check to Dr. Byrd. It’ll save me writing it down.”

“Sure,” Beth said.

When they had gone she felt suddenly scared, suddenly on her own without
anyone to help her through it, and she almost wished that Laura knew she
was there. It was going to be such a hard shock for her. Or was it?
Would she take it in stride the way she seemed to have taken the rest of
her life?

Beth cleaned up the breakfast dishes, leaving the coffee and wrapping
the muffins in waxed paper for Laura. She smoked incessantly out of
sheer nervousness and she began to wonder if it would ever be ten
o’clock.

But Laura was quicker than that. It was only a little past nine when
Beth heard her getting up, heard the familiar morning sounds that Jack
had been making an hour ago. And all at once Beth was overwhelmed with
the significance of it. It seemed as if all she had suffered and begun
to learn so painfully and searched for so clumsily was about to be
revealed to her, as if her very soul would come walking out of that
bedroom with Laura and show itself to her for the first time and answer
all her questions.

She was almost more afraid of seeing her true self than of seeing Laura
now and she sat on the edge of the chair with her whole spine shivering
and her hands hot and sweaty.

The bedroom door opened and from her seat Beth heard Laura cross the
living room, the dining area. For a shattering second she felt the gray
faintness that possessed her in tense emotional storms and she clamped
her eyes shut. But the feeling passed and she opened them again. They
opened on Laura.

She was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, and at the moment Beth
saw her she was still too stunned to speak. There was not even a trace
of amazement yet on her face, just morning sleepiness and the
heart-piercing beauty that Beth had loved so passionately long ago.

For some moments they simply stared at each other, both too full of
feeling to speak or move. And then Laura raised trembling hands to her
face and Beth heard her voice, clear and familiar now, break as she
spoke her name. It took her another second to realize that Laura was
crying.

Beth sprang to her feet and went to her, only to find herself helplessly
shy and unable to touch her. Until Laura lowered her hands and turned
diamond-bright eyes up to her and reached for her.

They kissed each other with such tenderness, such perfect accord, such
lovely waiting warmth, that Beth felt dizzy with it. Laura simply moved
into her arms, giving herself to her with that whole-souled generosity
that thrilled Beth almost to tears. They clung to each other, and still
there were no words between them, there seemed to be nothing to say.
Beth held her tight, feeling a flood of strength and sureness come into
her arms, as she put her head down against Laura’s and kissed her
throat, her ears, the delicate expanse of shoulder that her negligee
revealed. She could feel Laura trembling and it delighted her
inexpressibly, this overpowering response they could feel for each
other. It was as if Laura had known all along and was welcoming her
home.

“I thought you might have changed,” Beth whispered finally. “I thought
you might never have forgiven me. Oh, Laura, Laura, oh my darling
Laura.”

But Laura, sensing better than Beth the futility of words at such a
moment, pulled away, seeming to glide out of Beth’s arms. Her eyes, her
whole face glowed with a beguiling reticence that Beth remembered with a
wrench of the heart, and she followed as Laura moved away from her,
across the kitchen to a window.

“Laura, say something,” Beth pleaded. “Say it’s all right that I’m here.
Say you’re glad to see me.”

Without looking at her Laura repeated softly, “It’s all right, Beth. I’m
glad to see you. Very glad,” and her voice vibrated with amazed desire.
When she felt Beth’s kisses on the back of her neck she put her head
back and let it rest against Beth’s shoulder.

For Beth it was almost too much. There was so much to say, so much to
excuse, and yet all she wanted was to touch Laura, to make love.

“I’m afraid to stop touching you!” Beth said. “I’m afraid you’ll vanish,
I’m afraid I’m dreaming. Oh, Laura, Laura.... Just saying your name to
you now, knowing you hear me ... I can’t bear it.” She felt her own
tears well up and she let them come. “I’ve said it so many times to
myself, to the bare walls, to nobody and anybody. I feel as if I’ve
spent my whole life trying to find you again, as if everything in my
life that I’ve done without you doesn’t count. Nothing matters but you.
Laura, I was so afraid I wouldn’t find you. I’ve tried so hard, I’ve
been so damn scared that you wouldn’t want to see me, that you’d be
different.”

Laura turned around and put a finger on Beth’s lips. “Don’t talk,” she
said. “It’s so hard to talk. You’ll spoil everything.” She took Beth’s
hand and led her into the bedroom. The scent of her pervaded the whole
room and struck a whirling exhilaration into Beth. The beds were rumpled
and welcoming and the clothes Laura must have worn the night before hung
over a chair in the corner.

Laura pulled Beth down on the bed with tender graceful arms, slipping
under her as she did so and letting her negligee fall away. For every
feverish word Beth uttered Laura gave her a kiss until she had Beth
helpless with desire, until all the words were stilled. Beth had not
even the time to marvel at it, to be grateful; all that she saved for
afterwards, succumbing to the sensual beauty of it now, while it was
happening.

She had the feeling, whenever Laura touched her or moved with her, that
no one, no living human being, had ever understood her so beautifully,
so instinctively, and she felt too that Laura could not have been this
way with anybody else. All Laura had to do was speak, and Beth would
understand all. Their love was sacred to them. It made her feel that
Laura had just been waiting for her all these years. Nothing of
significance had happened to either of them since they parted. All their
lives, all their actions, all their thoughts without each other lost
meaning. It was as if nothing existed but the two of them, and they were
more important than the rest of the world put together.

They lay in each other’s arms throughout the rest of the morning, hardly
speaking at first, just reaffirming a powerful attraction that had lain
dormant for too long, thrilled to feel the remembered sweet response.

“It makes me think of the campus,” Laura murmured. “Do you remember how
it was in the spring? How it felt to walk under the huge old elms on the
boardwalk and talk about classes and whisper about love? It’s almost
like being there, having you so close. I never thought I’d feel it
again.”

“Laura,” Beth said, her hands full of Laura’s hair. “I’ve been half dead
all these years. I’ve needed you so terribly.” There was a little pause.
Laura looked away and Beth knew what she was thinking. “I—I know I could
have had you in the beginning,” she went on, hesitant but unable to stem
the flood of feeling. “I know I should never have given you up. But you
see, I didn’t understand it then.”

She paused, searching Laura’s face for a light of sympathy, but Laura
listened to her with her face averted. It made Beth feel, more than
words could have, how profoundly she had hurt this exquisite girl. “I
thought I had to have a man, then,” she tried to explain. “But Laura, I
was wrong. I’ve had to live with one and, believe me, I know. I’ve been
sick—just sick with it.”

“You’d have been sick with me too, Beth,” Laura said with a wise smile,
unexpectedly. “No matter which one of us you chose, it would have been
the wrong choice. You would have spent the rest of your life wondering
if you hadn’t done wrong. It wouldn’t have been so much different with
me than with Charlie.”

Beth sat up in bed, grasping Laura’s face in her hands, her eyes hurt
and shocked. “Laura, you’re the only one who ever understood me, who
ever cared so beautifully and completely for me. No man—certainly not
Charlie—could ever measure up to you. No man can understand me when I
can’t understand myself. That’s why I needed you so desperately.”

“To be understood?” Laura interrupted. She smiled with a sad mouth. In
the aftermath of shock and passion, her head was clearing.

“Not just that,” Beth said, feeling somehow as if the ground were
slipping out from under her, yet not knowing why. “I love you, Laura.
I’ve loved you since we parted.”

“When did you make that discovery?” Laura said. “On your wedding day?”
And her smile was sharp now.

“Oh God, Laura, I don’t know when I first realized it—what a mistake the
marriage was.”

“Probably the day you had your first quarrel,” Laura said, and her
expression hinted that she would have liked to have seen it. She looked
suddenly like a minx—sly and taunting. Beth could tell just from her
face, her smile, how much she had learned, how much she had changed. She
would not be easy and yielding for long.

“Laura, don’t laugh at me,” Beth pleaded. “You don’t know what I’ve been
through, what I’ve given up, to find you.”

“What, Beth? Tell me. Your reputation? Your fortune? Your rose-covered
bungalow? Or just a little peace of mind?” She got up from the bed while
she spoke and began to dress. The action was almost insolent, a
soundless slap in the face that reverberated across nine years. Beth saw
in her mind with stinging clarity the scene at the train, when she had
sent Laura away. It had never seemed cruel to her until now because she
had fooled herself into thinking she had done it for Laura’s own good.
But looking into Laura’s haunting face she saw very clearly that it had
been cruel after all. Laura remembered every word and gesture of it. She
was remembering it at that moment while she looked at Beth with a
smiling mouth.

“Laura, I’m speaking to you from my heart,” Beth said, her voice
straining. “I’m telling you the absolute truth the very best I can.
Don’t turn your back to me.”

But Laura had kept her resentment in check too many years not to give
herself the luxury of loosing it now. Just once. Just to let Beth know
how it had been. That was all she wanted. “You turned your back on me
often enough,” she said, facing away from the bed and looking through
her dresser drawers.

Beth looked down at her bare thighs in confusion and covered them with
part of the sheet. “Never on purpose,” she protested.

Laura laughed. She knew better. “Only for Charlie’s sake,” she said.
“That it? He forced you. You never would have turned me out on your own.
Where is Charlie now?” She pulled a gauzy slip from one of the drawers,
and still her back was turned and her eyes ignored her lover.

And Beth knew from the toss of Laura’s head, from the sweep of her
smooth arm, that Laura meant to punish her.

“He’s in California,” Beth said darkly.

“How long has he been out there?”

“A long time. Years.”

“Were you there with him?”

“No.”

“He must be worried sick about you. Or does he know where you are?” And
now, as from a great height, Laura’s cornflower eyes swept over her
curiously. Those eyes had lost their innocence through the years, but
Beth loved them still.

“No, he doesn’t know. I doubt if he’s in any mood to give a damn,
either. He thinks I’m in Chicago.”

“Are you still married?” Laura said.

“No. Divorced. Oh, it was a long time ago, Laura. Don’t ask me about
it.” She sped through the lie as if afraid of stumbling over it. But
Laura’s eyes, grown knowing and sharp, saw the shadow of uncertainty on
Beth’s face.

“Have you been looking for me all this time?” Laura said, and suddenly
she was coy, teasing, needling Beth. “Was I so hard to find?”

“Not after I got to New York. I met Beebo Brinker in the Village. Beebo
told me where you were.”

“Oh.” Laura pulled the slip over her head and her act of dressing defied
Beth. Laura was so breathtaking without her clothes. The fact that she
was covering herself up was almost depressing, as if she were putting an
end to the tenderness, the caresses of a little while ago. She was
telling Beth, subtly and wittily, to go to hell, and Beth was stung.
Laura’s whole graceful body told her impudently, _You took advantage of
my surprise, my helpless love. Well, I’m not helpless any longer._

“Did you have any children, Beth?” Laura asked. Her questions were slow,
bold, rather hopeful of offending. And yet there was still restraint in
her. She had once loved Beth utterly, and her first reaction to Beth’s
presence had been a quick unreasoning surrender. Desire had made her
weak. But desire was satisfied now; it remained to satisfy her wounded
soul.

“No,” Beth snapped. “No children.” She was appalled at herself and at
the same time angrily determined to deny that part of her life.

Laura gazed at her, aware from the tone and temper in Beth that she had
touched an emotional sore. But then perhaps it was just Beth’s
disappointment in seeing Laura get dressed.

Beth, suddenly surly, got up and began to put her own clothes on. She
stepped into her panties self-consciously and then, to her own surprise,
broke down and began to cry. The chill between them was too much for
her. She went to Laura humbly and embraced her.

“Laura, I want you,” she whispered. “I love you. Nothing else matters.
The rest of my life doesn’t matter, it didn’t even happen, if you’ll
just take me back. Be good to me. Help me, please, help me.”

But Laura couldn’t be had that easily. “Help you what?” she said. “You
mean, help you now the way you helped me nine years ago? Put you on a
train and send you to hell? One-way trip?”

“Please—dear God—don’t be sarcastic!” Beth implored her.

“It’s a very educational trip, Beth,” Laura said softly.

For a moment it struck Beth as Nina’s barbs had struck her. But she
needed Laura’s aid too much to risk antagonizing her. “I’m dead
serious,” she said through her tears. “Help me find myself. Help me know
myself,” she insisted, shaking Laura forcibly. “No one can help me but
you.”

And Laura, caught in Beth’s strong urgent arms, began to understand,
began to see through the clouds of passion and desperation that hung
about Beth. She knew what Beth was there for. Not for love, not for
Laura, not for nostalgia or passion or anything tender. She had come to
find herself and was fanatically sure Laura could help. Laura was her
tool, and, realizing it now, Laura smiled at her with pity.

“You’re so lucky,” Beth said. “So damn lucky!” And she couldn’t keep the
little green flash of envy from showing. “You’ve got it both ways. A
husband and a child and a home. And at the same time, women. You worked
your life out right, Laura darling. I made a complete mess of mine. God,
isn’t it ironical? When I said goodbye to you and watched you climb on
that train and go out of my life, I felt sorry for you. I pitied you
because I thought you were already starting out on the wrong foot. I
thought nothing could set you right. You’d just bungle along and botch
the whole thing. I thought you’d be hurt.” She clung to Laura as she
spoke, unconsciously rocking her as if the movement were a comfort.

“I thought you’d get lost, I thought you’d get taken, I thought the big
city would devour you,” Beth cried, almost wishing, out of spite, that
it had. “I thought living like an outcast, a Lesbian, would destroy you.
All this time I’ve worried and wondered about you. And now at last I
find you and—and—” she began to laugh a little hysterically—“and you’re
happy as a clam. You’ve got the world on a string. You’re the one who
did it right, who found the secret. Laura, let me in on it. I’m so
damned miserable sometimes I feel like death. Like death.” And she shook
Laura with the angry demand for sympathy.

It was not a generous speech. It was not the declaration of love reborn
or of gratitude that she had meant to make. It was an accusation. It
said, “You have no right to be happier than I!” Laura had it all, Beth
had nothing, and Beth showed her grudge in a sudden uncontrollable
outpouring of envy and unhappiness. It was not what she had come all
this way to discover and it was too much to bear.

Laura understood this while Beth did not. Beth thought she was speaking
of love, and she was chagrined when Laura moved out of her arms with a
laugh.

Laura walked across the room in her slip, one nylon stocking on, one in
her hand, and her laugh burned Beth like salt in a cut. Laura turned and
looked at her then, still smiling.

“Beth,” she said, lingering over the name. “I still love you, Beth. God
knows why. But now, for the first time in all these years, I can pity
you too. It’s a strange feeling. A little like being set free.”

“No, Laura—”

“Don’t talk. Listen! You need a little pity. You need a lot. You’ve
spent so damn many years pitying me, Beth, don’t begrudge me the same
pleasure. It’s my turn now.”

Beth went over to the bed and collapsed on it. “How did you do it?” she
begged. “Where did I go wrong? I never should have let you leave me.”

“No? What would we have done together, you and I? Settled down in a
vine-covered walk-up in the Village? Adopted a couple of kids?”

“I don’t want kids, I never did!”

“You said you didn’t have any.”

“I don’t!” Beth shrieked.

“Then don’t get excited,” Laura said curiously. “You could have lived
with me once, Beth. Don’t forget that.”

“Anything would have been better than Charlie!”

“Even me?” Laura couldn’t help laughing again.

“No! No! Good God, Laura, Laura, please don’t laugh like that. Don’t
laugh at me!” She sounded quite frantic and Laura took pity on her. She
was not malicious, only human, and she needed to hurt Beth a little. It
was healthy for her. It would clear away the murky, pent-up bitterness
and misunderstanding.

“If you don’t want me to laugh at you, don’t be such a fool,” she said.

“Charlie was insufferable,” Beth gasped, clutching at her self-control.

“Charlie loved you, Beth,” Laura retorted. “I don’t know what the
situation is now, but you dismissed his love much too lightly a few
minutes ago. It was a wonderful love, very deep and strong. If there
were blind spots in it, they weren’t weaknesses. He had enough love to
smooth them over. I hated him but I respected him always. I knew how
much he loved you.”

“Are you saying that whatever happened between us must have been my
fault? That I didn’t love him enough?” Beth cried. And the frustrations
of the last months colored her voice.

“No. I’m saying you couldn’t have made a better choice than Charlie, if
you wanted to get married. And Beth, you did want to. You were cocksure
of yourself.”

“Then why didn’t it work? Why wasn’t I happy?” Beth had lost control,
even the desire for control. She wept noisy furious sobs like a child,
her hands covering her face.

Laura watched her from across the room for a moment and then she went
into the bathroom. She came back in a moment with a glass of cold water,
walked up to Beth, and threw it in her face. She accomplished this
quietly, experimentally, but with a certain satisfaction. She had never
thought, in all her daydreams of Beth, that she would have the courage
to treat her like another mere human being.

“I don’t know why it didn’t work, Beth,” she said. “Maybe you’ll be
happy now. I hope so.”

With an outraged splutter, Beth stopped crying. There was a moment of
palpable tension between them. The water clung to Beth’s hair and
dripped from her face and for a moment she thought she would explode
with rage. But it came to her slowly that she could not get any angrier
than she had just been. She hadn’t the strength and there was no way to
express it without behaving like a madwoman. She was not that kind.

Beth turned her wet, violet eyes and open mouth up to Laura, struggling
to find words, composure. But Laura, still smiling, spared her the
necessity.

“Maybe the one thing you learned from living with a man is that you
can’t live with a man,” she told her. “It’s a sad, common little lesson.
But sometimes those are the hardest to learn.”

After a full minute of wet humiliation Beth brought herself to say,
“What if it had been somebody different?” Her voice was unsure of
itself, rough. “What if it had been somebody like Jack, maybe, who
understood?”

“You said you didn’t understand yourself,” Laura reminded her, putting
the empty glass down casually on the bed table. “Do you want to marry a
psychiatrist who’ll spend all his time explaining you to yourself?”

“No.” Laura’s words made Beth vaguely aware of her own unreasonable
thinking. “No, I wanted that from you. You grasp things others miss. I
wanted you to tell me.” And she wanted Laura to apologize for that glass
of water; it was obvious in every inflection of her voice. _Redeem
yourself; say you’re sorry. Damn you!_

But Laura was on top of the situation now. She could play it her way.

“Tell you what, Beth?” Laura said suggestively, and brushed cold water
from Beth’s breasts. Beth shied away from her and stood up.

“Tell me what to do,” she said through clenched teeth. “Who I _am_.” She
gave a tortured little laugh through her sobs and said, “God it’s funny.
It’s so funny. I thought I’d know just by looking at you. I thought all
you’d have to do was walk through that door and I’d suddenly understand
everything. Just the sight of you would make it all clear.”

“You were always a great one for oversimplifying things,” Laura said.
“I’m not the fortune teller who can read your palm. I’m not so easy to
hurt any more either, or so easy to teach. I’ve learned to protect
myself. You gave me my first lessons years ago. Tell me something, Beth.
Why did you think you had to find me to find yourself?”

“I don’t know,” Beth said and shook her head. Laura handed her some face
tissue to wipe the last of the water off with and Beth snatched it from
her haughtily. She blew her nose. “It sounds—crazy, now. Irrational,
even. But a few hours ago it seemed like the most natural thing in the
world.”

“And now I’ve disappointed you, haven’t I?” Laura said. She seemed
privately pleased at the idea; it might show Beth the folly of
oversimplifying things, of hurting other people to spare herself. “Poor
Beth. Poor silly Beth. It was all going to be so easy, wasn’t it?” she
said sympathetically.

Beth was without dignity, without resources. She could only mumble, “I
guess I expected too much.”

“You expected the impossible,” Laura chided her. “And I thought at first
you really wanted me. Really desired me again.”

“I—I did.”

“No, it was something completely different. Oh, not that you minded that
part in bed a little while ago. But that was supposed to be the frosting
on the cake. You could have done without that if you’d had to.”

“Laura, don’t persecute me,” she whimpered, sitting down in a stuffed
chair by the window. “If I had only found a guy like Jack!” she said,
pounding her legs harshly with her fists. “If _only_—”

“You aren’t going to make things better by copying my life,” Laura said.
“Even if you could, that’s no answer.”

“It was the answer for you,” Beth snapped.

“But you’re not me,” Laura said. “Come on, Beth, you know that much.”

“We’re a lot alike,” Beth persisted.

“We’re entirely different. We always were.”

Beth stood up again, turning her back to Laura. She stood tall and
angry, hurt and bewildered, but recovering her pride. “Are you telling
me you won’t help me?” she demanded. “You refuse? I’m not worth the
trouble? Or am I just a hopeless case?”

“Not yet, but you’re trying awfully damned hard to make yourself
hopeless,” Laura exclaimed. “What right have you to get on your high
horse with me? When you need help, Beth, you ask for it. You don’t order
it, like a meal. At least not from the people who don’t owe you
anything.” There was another blazing silence. The air between them
seemed very heavy.

“Is there anything I can do?” Laura said finally, placatingly. “I doubt
it. But if there is, tell me.”

“I want you to tell me!” Beth cried, turning on her in near despair.
“Why do you think I’m here? Why do you think I’ve given up everything
just to find you? What do you think I’ve been saying to you all
morning?” And to emphasize her anger, to avenge herself for that
shameful glass of water, she picked up Laura’s bed pillow and swung it
hard against the table. It broke. Together, silent, they watched the
feathers snow down. Beth was too mad to feel sorry. She was entitled to
ruin something, after all Laura had put her through.

Laura nodded distantly at the mess. “That’s right, Beth,” she said, and
her composure infuriated Beth the more. “When things go wrong, throw a
tantrum. When they aren’t right, break them. You’ve always thought that
way, haven’t you? You’re still a child. I guess that’s the real cause of
all your troubles.”

“I’m a woman!” Beth cried. “A grown woman!”

“A grown woman would know herself, control herself. She’d know breaking
a pillow wouldn’t solve her problems. She’d know I couldn’t change her
whole life.”

“You did once.”

“I hardly touched it.” Laura bent over and picked up a goose feather,
and Beth watched her, fascinated and angry. “I passed through your life,
I loved you. And it didn’t work out because you didn’t love me. We
parted, as we should have, and it was over. I yearned for you for a long
time. And what did you do? Got married to a handsome, intelligent,
affectionate s.o.b. you were in love with. Was it so godawful, Beth? Was
it really as bad as all that? Or did you just begin to be bored with
housewifery? Did you just want to play around again, the way you played
around with me?”

“I loved you, Laura,” Beth said helplessly and suddenly went to her
knees among the feathers. “I loved you, how can you think anything
else?”

Abruptly, Laura’s understanding, that wonderful understanding that Beth
had needed and demanded and had traveled out of her life and over a
continent to find, was unwelcome. It was painful and embarrassing,
because it exposed the truth. Beth, on her knees, recoiled from it at
the same time that she pleaded for it. It was a question which was
worse: the endless wondering about herself, about her true sexuality, or
knowing the truth and having the truth be ugly and selfish and pitiful.

“You loved what you couldn’t have, Beth,” Laura said. “You still do.”

“But I could have had you! I know that, we both know that!” Beth shouted
passionately.

“The minute you found out you could have me, you didn’t want me any
more,” Laura said. She turned her back on Beth, who was still kneeling,
and began to comb her marvelous hair. “I wonder if that isn’t what
happened between you and Charlie. Once he married you he was hooked. He
was yours. It was all sewed up, legitimate and approved of, and maybe
that’s why it bored you.”

Beth felt a terrible rage rising in her. She wanted to scream, “Look at
me!” Instead she said in a shaking voice, “I’m on my knees to you,
begging for help, Laura. Give it to me. I’m not a dog.”

“Then get off the floor,” Laura said without turning around.

“You stand there and comb your goddamn hair!” Beth shouted.

“My hair needs combing.”

Beth wondered if she could stand it or if her brains would boil in her
head. Laura controlled the situation by controlling herself. Every
shriek that escaped Beth made her own position weaker and sillier. With
a supreme effort she held herself in check. “Charlie said once that I
could only love when love was forbidden,” she said. The admission gave
her a little dignity; it was very adult.

“Then he sees what I see,” Laura said.

“But you’re wrong,” Beth whispered. “You’re both wrong. I can love
without that. It doesn’t have to be wrong to be desirable. That’s so—so
childish.”

“Yes, it is. But that isn’t what you came all this way to tell me,”
Laura said. “You didn’t really come to see me at all. I think you’re
running away.”

“No, I’m not. I’m facing things, Laura! For the first time I’m facing
the things I should have faced years ago, but didn’t have the guts to. I
love women. I love you. And if you think it was the easy thing for me to
run away and leave my—” She broke off, afraid to mention her children
now that she had denied their existence. “It took all my courage,
everything I had,” she said, and her voice twisted with the enormity of
it, the remembered pain.

“Beth, how long have you been divorced?” Laura stopped combing long
enough to look at her.

“That’s none of your business!” Beth shot back.

“You’re making it my business. You’re throwing your whole messed-up
unhappy life in my lap. Listen, Beth,” she continued kindly, “no matter
how fast you run you can’t catch up with the past. You’ve found me, all
right, but you haven’t found our college days. You haven’t found a dead
romance and brought it back to life. We’re two different people now; we
can’t capture the past and live in it as if it were the present. I tried
to run away, too. For years. Believe me, it’s the one sure way to get
trouble to follow you.” Her voice was gentle; she meant what she said.
Maybe it would help. She could see Beth had been pushed pretty far. But
to Beth it was like being a naughty child again and getting lectured for
misbehaving. She listened in pale anger.

“You’re in love with all the things you can’t have, Beth, with all the
things you’ve never seen and never tasted. Once you do see them they
lose their fascination for you. If you _had_ to live with a woman, don’t
you think pretty soon you’d be hollering for a man?”

“You mean—” Beth gaped at her. “You mean it has nothing to do with
sexuality? It has nothing to do with love and desire? It’s just a
compulsion for something new? Oh, no, Laura. Now you’re the one who’s
oversimplifying.”

“It has a lot to do with love and desire, but that’s only part of it.
You were never cut out to settle down and put out roots anywhere.”

“Laura, for God’s sake, are you telling me no matter what I do or where
I turn I’ll never be happy? I’ll always make myself unhappy?” It was a
cry of desolation and protest.

“I’m telling you what you’re like now,” Laura said. “I’m not saying you
can’t change. Nobody has a right to say that to you but yourself.”

“How do you know you’re right about me? What makes you so sure?” Beth
said brokenly.

“I don’t know for sure. You brought me your troubles and said, ‘Here,
help me. Straighten me out.’ Well, I’m trying.” There was impatience in
her voice, but also sincerity.

“Laura, darling Laura, don’t you love me any more? Did you ever really
love me?”

“You know better than to ask. All the years that you and Charlie were
getting along and still happy, I was dreaming of you. It’s just that—”
She glanced down at the tortoise shell comb in her hand.

“Just that what?” Beth demanded.

“Just that my love for you is different now.”

Beth stood up, anger and triumph all over her face. “Then why did you
make love to me the way you did? An hour ago we were making love, Laura!
Or have you forgotten? Why?”

Laura gazed at her again, matching her own composure against Beth’s hot,
breathless emotion.

“I had no warning—” she began.

“Exactly! So you reacted naturally!” Beth exclaimed, her face flushed
and excited. “That’s what I wanted, that’s exactly what I wanted!” She
walked toward Laura, talking and gesticulating. “If you had known I was
there you would have put me off, you would have behaved like a friend,
nothing more. But you didn’t know. It all took you by surprise and you
gave yourself to me without a fight, without resisting me at all. The
most natural thing in the world.”

Laura looked into her feverish face, standing her ground royally as Beth
approached. “Beth, if you’re going to think of it that way, I can’t do a
damn thing to help you. You love your own delusions too much.”

“Well, how in hell am I supposed to think of it?” Beth flashed. And in a
sudden hopeless surrender to her misery, in the need to be right with
Laura just _once_, Beth threw herself on Laura like a cat gone mad. She
snapped the straps of Laura’s slip with one hard desperate pull and
caught the tender breasts beneath with angry rough hands. With a small
startled scream, Laura lost her self-control. She struggled wildly
against Beth but Beth had worked up a reserve of hysterical strength and
tore the slip from her.

“Let me look at you!” Beth cried, throwing Laura to the floor and
falling on her. Laura tried to scream again but Beth kissed her savagely
and bit her neck and shook her shoulders till her head hit the floor
painfully.

“Stop! God!” Laura moaned. “Beth, stop!”

“An hour ago you weren’t too good for me,” Beth sobbed. “Now all of a
sudden you don’t want to be touched.”

“I don’t want to be hurt. I can’t stand to be hurt,” Laura said, tears
on her face.

“I’m not welcome, I’m not loved, I’m not understood,” Beth went on in a
strangling voice. “And you—you don’t give a damn, do you? You stand
there and comb your hair and turn your back on me and throw cold water
in my face and tell me to go to hell—” Her face was scarlet and Laura,
terrified, threw her hands up to protect herself.

But Beth didn’t know how to hurt her. She was lost. All she had was her
thoughtless fury, her shapeless unhappiness. It all came together inside
her and exploded in bitter kisses, sharp bites, and sudden agonized
passion. She vented it all on Laura and it gave her only a sour sort of
satisfaction to know that Laura couldn’t resist it, that Laura had
succumbed to the animal fury of it and let herself go.

Beth lay beside her on the scratchy wool rug and sobbed when it was
over. And then, slowly, she was overcome with a deep lassitude, a
suspension of mind and emotions that would finally let her come back to
normal.

Laura sat up beside her and stroked her back and after a while she said
in a low voice, a voice that let Beth know she was forgiven, “Have you
any idea what a shock it was? Do you suppose I didn’t dream of making
love to you every day and every night for over a year after I left you?
Do you think I hadn’t imagined every detail of it? I’d have given my
soul for that experience once. Only, Beth, it came too late. It was
beautiful, it was so beautiful this morning. I can’t pretend I’m sorry,
I can’t pretend I would have done it a different way. But that’s just
it, you see. It’s as if my reaction were planned years ago. As if the
whole thing went according to plan in spite of me. I saw you, suddenly,
with no warning, the way I always dreamed I’d see you. And we were
alone, the way I always dreamed we’d be. And we made love.”

Beth rolled over to look at her; at her lovely body with the fresh marks
of teeth and nails in vulnerable spots. Beth touched the bruises and
wept. “I’m sorry. I had to—”

“I know, I know. Just like I had to be nasty. It’s over now. We can be
friends now. Can you understand that, Beth?”

Beth heard, clear and genuine, the pity in her voice and she said, “I
understand that you made love to me, that you wanted me, that it wasn’t
any different than it ever was, this morning.” Then she paused, hovering
between defiance and adoration. “That’s all I understand.”

“That’s not enough,” Laura said gently. “Grow up, Beth. Your problems
aren’t hopeless, you can solve them. You don’t need me, you need
yourself.”

“If I hadn’t started talking, if I’d just kept my damned mouth shut and
stayed in bed with you, it would have been all right.”

“Do you know how many times you’ve said ‘if’ this morning?” Laura said.
“If only this, if only that—everything would have been all right. That’s
a child talking.”

They remained a moment in silence and then, as if with one accord, got
painfully to their feet. Beth couldn’t look Laura in the face.

“I hope I didn’t hurt you!” she said. “I’d rather die than hurt you.”

“No. I’m all right.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“No, of course not,” Laura said. Beth’s eyes climbed only as high as
Laura’s breasts, faltered, and fell again.

“Are you in love with that girl? Betsy’s piano teacher?” she said.

“I was.”

“No more?”

“Not so much. But I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her.”

“Not till Betsy can play the ‘Minute Waltz,’ at least.”

“You didn’t hurt me till you learned how to play at love from me,” Laura
reminded her. “You were no fool. You didn’t get rid of me till you were
sure you didn’t need me any more.”

Beth deserved the dig. She finished dressing silently, with ferocious
concentration, still ashamed of the hungry love and revenge she’d forced
on Laura.

Laura slipped a negligee over her torn slip and watched Beth without
speaking.

“Stay and have lunch with me,” she said when Beth had finished, but Beth
wanted to get away from her.

“I thought once I’d found you I’d hang on for dear life,” Beth said.
“But I’m so full of feeling, so damned mixed up, I don’t think I could
bear to sit here and let you watch me puzzle it out. I just want to be
alone.”

“Whatever you say,” Laura said. “How about dinner?”

“I don’t know.” Beth looked at her and the corners of her mouth
trembled. “You never find what you set out looking for, do you?” she
whispered. “Damn. It’s queer. Life is so queer.”

Laura could see the bitter disappointment on her face and she put her
hands tentatively on Beth’s waist.

“I want you to come back, Beth,” she said softly. “I’ve been hard on
you, but I had a right to be. You got even. So we’re square.”

Beth still couldn’t face her. “Do you love me still?” she asked again.

“I’ve already said it.”

“Say it just once more. I’ll think of it before I think of the other
things. The things that hurt.”

“I love you,” Laura told her simply.

And Beth turned around and walked out of her bedroom and across the
living room. She stopped a moment, remembering Jack’s messages. “Call
McCracken and cancel the order,” she called back to Laura in an unsteady
voice. “And send a check to Dr. Byrd.” Then she went out the front door.




                            Chapter Eighteen


She walked. She spent most of the day walking, and when she got tired
she went to the library and sat at a table in a corner of the Social
Sciences room and stared ahead of her. She didn’t consciously try to
understand everything. She just let her mind wander from one peak of
recollection to another, too worn out to steer her thoughts or make
sense of them.

When it began to darken outside she got up and left, stopping by the
post office on her way back to the Beaton Hotel. There was nothing for
her, nor did anything come for the next several days. She didn’t know
what to do with herself. She felt desperately scared most of the time,
lost between those two worlds, one renounced, the other closed to her.
One was normal, ordinary, reassuring, with a home and a husband and
children. And it had failed her. The other was gay and strange, exotic
and dangerous, painful and, possibly, wonderful. But it was still
untried, inaccessible somehow. And Beth, caught dead center between the
two, was afraid she had lost both forever and would wander in limbo the
rest of her life.

She couldn’t go back to Charlie, even if he would have her. Her pride,
her shame, her very nature, forbade that. And, having taken Laura’s
words as a rebuff, she felt almost as unwelcome in the gay world as the
straight.

So she spent nearly a week in a fog of confusion and fear. She refused
to take any phone calls, though there were several. _All from Laura_,
she thought, and it gave her a bitter satisfaction not to answer, to
keep Laura worrying and anxious.

Whenever she thought of her children her heart contracted. Something in
her character prevented her from loving them openly, easily, naturally,
like other women. Did a woman like her have a right to any children? She
could hardly bear to think of it. At the worst moments she tried instead
to think of what it would be like living with a desirable woman, with
someone affectionate and understanding, someone who was all she had
hoped to rediscover in Laura. Then it seemed like the only life for her.
She was sure she wanted it, whatever it cost in pain and regret.

She remained shut up in a cocoon of private suffering and wondering for
nearly seven days, meandering around New York in the afternoons and
lying on her bed at night, sleepless. She drank quite a bit of whiskey.
It seemed to ease her.

Every day she stopped at the post office, until at last there was a
letter waiting. It was from Cleve, but she hadn’t the heart or the
interest to open it right away. She was curiously without feeling, as if
she had lost her capacity to care.

Her feet were stiff and aching in their heeled shoes when she finally
reached the hotel. She started to walk past the desk but the clerk
called to her and held up a letter to catch her eye. For some reason it
alarmed her and brought her back to life. A letter from Cleve was all
right, but not two.

It was from Merrill Landon, of course. He had her hotel address; there
had seemed no reason to hide it from him. The odd feeling of foreboding,
of distress at the sight of the letters, stayed with her and settled in
her stomach. She threw them on the dresser in her small stuffy room,
placed a newly purchased bottle of whiskey beside them, threw off her
clothes and showered, before she tried to read.

She opened the letter from Landon first. He was a reserved man, a
cautious man, and he expressed himself carefully, but his pleasure was
evident even in the controlled phrases that thanked her for having found
his daughter.

“I owe you any joy there may be left in my life,” he said, and the
admission touched her. His note was brief. But at the end he added a
shocker, in his terse sensible prose. “By the way, your husband is in
Chicago. I found out through my ‘spies’ on the paper. Sorry I can’t tell
you more.”

Beth sat on the bed with a stiff drink in one hand and the note in the
other. Charlie in Chicago! Why? What in God’s name for? He knew then,
from her aunt and uncle, that she had run away. What else did he know?

She jumped up and grabbed Cleve’s letter with quivering hands. Maybe it
would explain, maybe it was a letter of warning about Charlie.

It was.

“Dear Beth,” he wrote. “I just found out about this—hope it’s not too
late to tell you. There’s been a detective following you ever since you
left Chicago. Your uncle John and Charlie have gotten together. John
told Charlie everything he got from the detective so all our little
precautions have been for nothing. Charlie has known all along where you
are and what you are doing—more than I know by a long shot. He left
yesterday for Chicago. I don’t know what will happen now. He has the
kids with him—they’re both fine.”

The little domestic interjection almost threw her for some reason she
couldn’t fathom and she had to stop reading to clear her mind of guilty
thoughts of her children.

“One last thing,” Cleve wrote. “Just to make everything perfect. Vega
has disappeared. She had been spending the weekends with us and seemed
so much better. Sunday night I was going to drive her back to the
hospital, but Mother called in a panic and said she was gone. Went out
in back to help Gramp feed the cats and when his back was turned she got
out somehow. Strangely enough, P.K.—that lessie Vega was always
hollering about—has disappeared too. Romance? God, I hope not. Anyway,
don’t worry. I’m sure we’ll find her. Will keep you posted. Cleve.”

But he had only told her to make her worry, she knew that. She knew it
was the one small revenge he had for the sick sister Beth had foisted on
him, and she didn’t blame him. She looked at the letter, with the
written lines uneven and shaky, and she wondered if he had written it
with a glass of booze in one hand, which was just the way she had read
it.

_God, we’re all so weak_, she thought dismally. _I’m no better than the
Purvises. We can’t even face the crises in our lives without this._ She
made a face at the drink, and then she shut her eyes and finished it.

And suddenly she remembered something, hazily at first. Just a figure,
small and dumpy, male and tired-looking. Then a face, round, heavy-eyed,
high-crowned and balding. A short, heavy man. Who was he? She had seen
him around the Village. She had seen him going far uptown on a bus, the
same bus she was on.

“He was no damn ‘John,’” she said aloud. “He was the detective. He’s
been following me all this time.” For a moment she swayed a little and
her stomach turned. And then she straightened up and stared at her empty
glass. The bitterness she expected to feel, the resentment, the injury,
were dissipated.

Everything seemed suddenly ridiculous. Love was senseless, life was
hopeless. She didn’t know what she was doing there in that stuffy room
in a hotel in a city that was foreign to her. She didn’t know what she
had come to find or whether she had found it. Nothing was simple,
nothing was clear, and she felt dangerously as if she didn’t give a
damn.

She had another drink. And another. And then she put her clothes back on
and went out.

“You had another call, Mrs. Ayers,” the hotel clerk told her, but she
didn’t even look at him and when she was out of earshot he told the
elevator boy, “Snippy bitch.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

She went to the Village. She went to all the bars she could remember
having been in and drank in all of them. She went to some she had never
seen before with girls she didn’t know, and by early morning it seemed
as if she knew all of them, as if they had all grown up together.

In the afternoon (who knew what afternoon?—the clock merely said
two-thirty and the sun shone) she woke up in an apartment that stank of
cats and orange juice. The girl in the bed beside her was still
sleeping, her back to Beth. She was naked. Beth knew with a shudder, as
she saw her, that they had made love. But she couldn’t remember her
name. She couldn’t remember her face. She didn’t know where they had met
or what they saw in each other.

At first her physical pains were sharp enough to engross her mind, and
she didn’t worry about the girl. She got out of bed, holding her head,
found the bathroom and tried to wash and dress herself. In the mirror
her face looked tired and she felt a little dizzy. When she leaned over
to brush her teeth a wave of nausea clutched her and she threw up
precipitately into the washbasin. When she straightened up she
discovered a number of curious bruises scattered over her limbs and
body, as if she had fallen down. But she had no recollection of falling.

She opened the bathroom door to find the girl she slept with standing
there, evidently waiting for her. She seemed fairly cheerful and she
tweaked one of Beth’s breasts familiarly, as though she had the right.

“Hung over?” she said, and went past her into the bathroom.

Beth had raised a quick angry hand to stop the tweaking but it was too
late. The girl laughed at her and said, “Bad-tempered Beth,” in a
singsong voice.

And suddenly Beth was frightened. What in hell was her name? Why had she
picked _this_ girl? She found her purse and opened it, almost surprised
to find her money still there. She ran a comb through her tangled hair
and then she bolted for the front door like a prisoner on the run,
buttoning her dress as she went.

“What’s the matter, honey? Don’t you want breakfast?”

Beth looked up to find her leaning in the open bathroom door, smiling
suggestively. She was still undressed and laughing at Beth’s confusion.

Beth gave her one last look, wild and accusing, and then went out.

“Come and see me again sometime,” the girl called after her and her
voice rang down the narrow hall. “When you can stay a little while.”

Beth found her way out of the labyrinthine apartment house and down a
couple of very crooked streets full of homogeneous brown houses. She
burst upon Seventh Avenue abruptly, without recognizing it, and found a
restaurant.

It was small and not overly clean, in keeping with the nightmare
atmosphere she was in, but it had food for sale, cooked. She ordered
breakfast, but after letting her enumerate the items and tell him how
she wanted her eggs, the waiter said, “What’s the matter, sister, can’t
you tell time? It’s three in the afternoon. We got no eggs after ten, in
the morning.”

She gave him a baleful look and settled for pastrami on rye. As an
afterthought she ordered a beer. Unexpectedly it went down well and she
ordered another.

When she left there seemed to be nothing to do but wander again, lost
and looking, through the Village streets. The hotel depressed her
unutterably; she couldn’t go to Laura, she wouldn’t go to Nina. And
somehow, without exactly understanding where it started or how, she
wound up in a bar again, drinking too much, talking too much, forgetting
names and faces.

Late in the evening she found Franny’s telephone number in her
pocket—Franny, the girl Nina had in bed with her one morning, and who
had been taken with Beth. On an impulse Beth called her.

                   *       *       *       *       *

It was almost worse to wake up in bed the next day and know who she was
sleeping with than it had been to wake up with a stranger. At least that
other way it had been impersonal. But now, feeling sick and full of hate
for herself, she had to get up and talk to Franny, apologize, make an
effort to explain. It only alarmed her when Franny responded with all
the exaggerated understanding and sympathy of a crush aborning. Beth
wanted to grab her hands and say, “No, don’t fall for me, Franny, don’t
even like me. I’ll hurt you. I hurt anybody, everybody, who gets in my
way, anybody who tries to stop me from going—” From going where? She
didn’t know.

She spent a couple of days with Franny and she kept on drinking and
crying and trying to explain all the things she couldn’t understand
about herself. And Franny, a good-natured girl with a shock of innocent
blonde hair and a smile reminiscent of Jean Purvis’s, listened in
passionate silence, her eyes riveted on Beth. Her heroine worship upset
Beth, who didn’t want it and couldn’t return it and so responded to it
with a twinge of guilt. She asked Franny about Nina but Franny only
shrugged and stuck her tongue out, giving Beth to understand that that
affair was dead.

Beth finally escaped, leaving during the day when Franny was at work.
She couldn’t face her hotel room. Her clothes were getting raggedy and
quite plainly dirty, and still she couldn’t return. Not yet. Tomorrow,
maybe. Tomorrow she would go back, set her affairs in order, clean
herself up, contact her family and confess what they already knew in a
pitiful effort to salvage her self-respect. She would collect her small
courage and get it over with.

Tomorrow, that is. Not today.

She went drinking again. Somewhere along the way she saw Nina. They were
both quite drunk at the time and it was a curiously friendly meeting,
though brief. Nina sat down, putting an arm around Beth’s waist, and
said, “Guess who’s gay?” And she began to call out names like a drill
sergeant, names of movie stars, names of Broadway luminaries, names of
writers, names of generals, names of celebrated female social workers
and adventurers and courtesans.

“All gay,” she said, pausing for breath, while Beth listened in a sort
of mesmerized silence, wondering what possessed Nina to rattle these
names off in her face, both interested and ashamed of her interest.

“If they’re all gay, what’re you worried about?” Nina said. Beth said
nothing and Nina went on, “Did I ever tell you you listen beautifully?
You make a beautiful listener, Beth. That’s what you ought to do. Just
go out and listen. To hell with sex. Forget about it. Just sit around
and listen, honey, you do it so well. It’s a shame you’re such an
independent bitch.” She kissed her, lightly and briefly, and Beth
remembered with a drunken ache why she had been so fascinated with the
girl in the first place.

It was the only encounter she recalled over a period of several days.
The next time she woke up she was sick. Really rotten from top to bottom
and too trembly to make it out of bed. She didn’t know where she was and
she didn’t care. There was a period, after her first wakening, of four
or five hours when she slept again, fitfully and in spite of rhythmic
pains in her head.

At the second wakening she got her bearings. She was in a small, gently
worn but comfortable bedroom on a familiar bed. Lifting her unwieldy
head cautiously, she looked around. And then she sat up and surprise
eased her throbbing pain for a moment. She was in Beebo’s apartment.

Very slowly, gingerly, she lifted the covers and got up, stumbled into
the bathroom which opened directly off the bedroom, and took a shower.
She stood in it for fifteen minutes, just letting the water rain on her,
warm and soothing. At first she thought she would never feel clean
again. At least not inside. But the shower relaxed her, cleared her head
a little.

She was startled to hear the bathroom door open and see Beebo step in.
Beth looked at her from around the shower curtain, inexplicably
frightened of her. Just a little, but still frightened.

“You aren’t drowning are you?” Beebo said with a smile. “You’ve been in
there a while.”

“No.” Beth turned the water off and then stood uncertainly behind the
frail shelter of the curtain while Beebo faced her, arms folded over her
chest, smiling.

“Towel?” she said at last, handing one over leisurely.

“Thanks.” Beth grabbed it and dried herself behind the curtain. “Where
did you—find me?” she asked diffidently.

“I doubt if you’ve ever heard of the place,” Beebo said. “And you
probably wouldn’t recognize it again if they threw it at you.”

“Just the same, I’d like to know,” she said.

“It’s called The Gorgon’s Head,” Beebo said.

“God.” Beth made a face, stepping carefully out of the tub. One foot
slid a little and Beebo caught her, steadying her, and helped her out
the rest of the way. The towel had come loose and Beebo handed it back
to her before Beth even realized that a long sweet curve of flesh was
open to view. She snatched the towel gratefully from Beebo with a sudden
shyness, and irritation and pleasure were scrambled up inside her,
momentarily aggravating her headache.

“Here,” Beebo said, opening the medicine chest over the washbowl. She
took a couple of pills resembling aspirin from an unmarked plastic
drugstore container and handed them to Beth, along with a glass of
water.

“What are they?” Beth said, looking at them as if they were capsules of
arsenic.

“What the hell do you care? You couldn’t feel any worse, could you?”
Beebo grinned.

Beth took them, and Beebo said when she saw them disappear, “They’re
hangover pills. Aspirin, codeine, caffeine, and God knows what else.
Should bring you back to life.” She stepped out of the way when Beth
moved toward the bathroom door, letting her find the way back into the
bedroom.

“Beebo, I—would you mind telling me where my clothes are?” Beth
faltered.

“I was just ironing them. Everything but the undies, and they don’t
show,” Beebo said. She pulled Beth’s things from a drawer in her
dresser. “Never iron what doesn’t show,” she said, holding them out.
“Life’s too damn short.”

Beth took them, gazing at her. “You mean you cleaned them up? You washed
them all out? All my clothes?”

“Didn’t take much figuring to see they were dirty,” Beebo said. “How
long do you ordinarily wear a thing before you wash it?” She was
smiling, a warm, even and compelling smile of amusement that both
pleased and disconcerted Beth.

“I—I haven’t been back to my room for a few days,” Beth admitted,
ashamed and exasperated to feel her face color.

“I would have guessed as much,” Beebo said, sitting down on her bed and
crossing her long legs at the ankles. “Only, I didn’t have to guess. You
told me.”

“I told you? When? Last night when I was drunk?”

“Last night and the night before that. I didn’t realize how far gone you
were, baby, or I’d have rescued you sooner. My friendly enemy, Nina
Spicer, called me finally. Said she’d have taken you home with her but
she already had company, and she thought somebody’d better get you out
of sight before the cops got interested.”

Beth, struggling to get into her brassiere without exposing any of
herself to those sharp and interested eyes of Beebo’s, said mournfully,
“The cops already know.”

“Know what?” Beebo exclaimed, suddenly concerned. “The bastards,” she
added under her breath.

“There’s been one following me for days. Weeks, I mean. God, months, for
all I know.” She lost her towel suddenly and pulled the panties up the
rest of the way with a jerky movement that betrayed her
self-consciousness.

“Do you mean a cop or a lousy detective?” Beebo said. “There’s a
difference.”

“Is there? Which is best? Or worst?” Beth said, standing on the towel
and wiggling into her brassiere.

Beebo watched her, but not critically, not suggestively. “Depends,” she
said laconically. “Have you done anything wicked lately?”

Beth pulled her slip over her head before answering, as if the extra
covering might increase her dignity a little. Then she sat down at the
foot of the bed, turned half away from Beebo, wondering what to tell
her, whether to tell her anything. It would feel so good, it would help
so much, the way it had helped to spill some of it to Nina before. But
how far, how much, could she trust this strange, mannish woman who had
taken her in and out of harm’s way?

“Afraid to tell me?” Beebo said. “You don’t have to. But if it’s bad,
maybe I can help. I’ve been in every conceivable scrape in my time,
baby. I know the ropes.”

Beth lowered her head. “I—I ran away,” she said, her voice only slightly
above a whisper.

“That’s nothing new.”

“From my husband. I’m not divorced, Beebo. I just ducked out.”

“Well, I never had a husband, thank God, but I’ve done some running
away.”

Beth turned her face to Beebo’s and searched her for hidden laughter,
for the sort of veiled scorn Nina showed her, for the hint of future
betrayal. But Beebo’s face was frank and open and Beth found, being so
near her again, so close to that face, that she liked it inordinately.
There was wisdom in it and the trace of pain lived through and learned
from, and a very special personal beauty that almost no one else would
have called by that gentle name.

“I ran away and left Charlie. And my children,” she said. “I have two, a
boy and a girl. I abandoned them, Beebo. There was no excuse for it, no
warning, no preparation for the kids. They just woke up the next morning
and I was gone. I had no right to do it. I had no right to have
children. Oh, God....” She stopped a minute to steady her voice. “If I’d
only known years ago, if I’d only realized....”

They simply gazed at each other for a moment and then, as naturally as a
mother and child coming together, they embraced. Beebo took Beth in her
arms and comforted her and let her cry. She never asked her if she loved
her children. She knew.

“I failed them,” Beth sobbed. “They were so young, just five and six,
and they needed me so. But I was beastly to them; I hurt them. It was
worse being there with them—worse for them, I mean.”

“Worse for you too, baby,” Beebo told her gently. “Don’t lie to
yourself.”

“And now Charlie, or Uncle John, or _somebody_, has a goddamn detective
following me around New York. He must know everything, he must have seen
everything.”

“Well, he can’t see this,” Beebo reassured her, and Beth felt Beebo’s
lips against her forehead. It sent a curious thrill through her that
pierced even her melancholy and made her cling the tighter. “How do you
know he’s found you yet?” Beebo said.

“Because I know who he is. I didn’t realize it; I just thought he was
somebody from the Village at first, but I’ve seen him uptown too and I
swear it’s the same guy. A dumpy little guy with bags under his eyes and
a wrinkled suit. He looks tired all the time. And he’s bald. I’m sure
he’s the one. Anyway, it doesn’t matter; he’s all over the damn place,
everywhere I go. He’s probably downstairs right now, picking his nails
and waiting for me to leave.”

“I’ll break his head,” Beebo murmured.

“And now Charlie’s in Chicago and he’ll probably come to New York and
give me hell. And my family will disown me. Charlie at least had some
idea of why I left him. He knew about Laura. We were all in school
together nine years ago. I was in love with both of them at the same
time. But Uncle John! And Aunt Elsa! They’ll never speak to me again.”
Her voice cracked under the load of emotion it carried.

“And the kids?”

“Oh, the kids,” she wept. “They’d be better off if they’d never been
born. I guess Charlie will keep it from them, if it only doesn’t get out
back there and ruin their lives.”

Beebo held her and comforted her for a long time, her arms warm and
strong and profoundly welcome to Beth. She didn’t laugh like Nina, she
didn’t shriek hysterically like Vega, she didn’t analyze, with
devastating truth and painful love, like Laura. She said nothing, she
judged nothing. But, oh, how good she felt, how sure and how reassuring.

“Beebo,” Beth whispered after a while, the urge for catharsis still in
her. “Did you ever fall for a woman, a very lovely desirable woman, and
then discover that she wasn’t at all what she’d made you think she was?
Maybe she was sick, or deformed, or something. Something awful that
shocked you badly and sort of—knocked the passion out of you. And you
tried to go on like before until the whole thing made you sick and she
got desperately jealous and finally you just ran away, without even
saying goodbye, just to get rid of her?”

“Sounds like the story of my life,” Beebo said.

“Really?” Beth twisted in her arms, half sitting up to look at her.
“Just like that?”

“Not _just_ like that. But I’ve done some rotten things, baby. I’ve
treated some girls like dirt. I could have been great friends with them,
but I couldn’t be a lover. You can choose your friends but not your
lovers. They just happen to you.”

“Did Laura just happen to you?” Beth asked.

Beebo smiled privately at the past. She released Beth and got up to
light a cigarette, offering one to Beth from the pack. Beth took it. “I
guess she did,” Beebo said, lighting them both. “She was so different
from the others—to me, at least—that it’s hard to think of it happening
the way any other affair happens. But I guess it did.”

“Beebo, do you think Laura was right about me?” Beth asked anxiously.
“Do you think I’m just running away, looking for romance and all that?”

“I don’t know, baby. I don’t know you that well.”

“Laura says I only want what I can’t have. Once I’ve got it I don’t want
it. And Charlie thinks so, too.”

Beebo grinned and scratched an ear. “They should get a license and set
up practice,” she said. “Laura always did like to figure people out. Not
maliciously, though, not for fun, like Nina. Just interested in people.”

“Is she right? Am I just chasing rainbows because they can’t be had?”

“I don’t know, Beth. I’d guess you just want to belong somewhere. Most
of us do. When you find out where you belong the pieces seem to fall
into place by themselves. The puzzle works itself out.”

There was silence for a few minutes while they smoked and thought and
Beth felt a sort of calm, a near peace, that came close to being what
she had sought so long and unsuccessfully. She didn’t want to move, to
change things or spoil the mood.

But Beebo said, “You’d better get back. I called the hotel, they were on
the verge of closing you out. You’ve been gone six days.”

“Six days!” Beth whispered, appalled. “_Six?_”

“That’s what they told me,” Beebo said. “Have you ever done that
before?”

Beth shook her head. She dressed, putting on her freshly ironed clothes
and eating some breakfast with Beebo. “What’ll I do if that miserable
detective is out there?” she said when she was ready to leave.

“What can you do?” Beebo said. “It’s too late now. Just get a cab and go
back to the hotel. And don’t flirt with any women.”

Beth gave her a hesitant smile. “Okay,” she said. And still she stood in
the door as though reluctant to leave, even a little bit scared.

“What’s the matter?” Beebo said, running a finger softly over Beth’s
cheek. “Got you down, sweetheart?”

“I don’t know,” Beth said.

“There isn’t anybody waiting for you, is there? I mean, besides the
detective?”

“No. Unless—unless Charlie has gotten here already. Or my uncle.”

“Do you want me to go back with you?” Beebo asked.

Beth considered. What would it be like to walk into her room with Beebo
and find Charlie there? He would decide at once that this was her new
lover, that Beebo was what she had traveled across the continent to
find, and no amount of talking would argue him out of it. But did it
matter any more? For she felt sure now that no matter what he said to
her she couldn’t go back to him. She had burned that bridge behind her.
Even if he wanted her she had gone too far. She had deserted her
children, and when a woman has done that there is no atoning, no going
back, no starting over. It’s final.

“Would you, Beebo? You don’t need to stay, just drive over with me. I’d
feel better.”

“What if he’s there?” Beebo said.

“I’ve made my choice,” Beth said.

“Okay, baby.” Beebo picked up another pack of cigarettes from a table by
her sofa and followed Beth out the door, pulling it to and locking it
behind her.




                            Chapter Nineteen


Outside it was muggy and hot, with an overcast sky. “Rain,” Beebo said.
“In an hour. It can’t miss.”

They walked over to Sixth Avenue and hailed a taxi, and all the while
Beth was looking around her, behind and on all sides for the little man
she was so sure was the detective. Now, when she was aware of him, when
she knew who he was and what he was up to, she couldn’t find him
anywhere. And yet she was convinced that his eyes were on her, peering
around some shadowy corner.

“Do you see him?” said Beebo, noticing her nervousness.

“No. I’ll tell you if I do.”

At the Beaton she checked at the desk for a note from Merrill Landon. Or
her family, she thought suddenly, with rancor. There was no reason why
they couldn’t write to her now if they wanted to. They certainly knew
where she was.

But there was nothing, nothing but the curious stares of the clerk and
the elevator boy. Beth didn’t know if they were for her or Beebo, or
both. For Beebo cut rather a startling figure, even in her own milieu in
the Village. Uptown, where everybody looked or tried to look perfectly
conventional and ordinary, she was painfully obvious. Beth guessed that
she didn’t often come uptown, if only to spare herself embarrassment.
There wasn’t much Beebo could do about her looks, and rather than hide
them she had finally surrendered to nature and even exaggerated them. It
was a question which would have made her stand out the more—trying to
hide her looks or playing them up. At least playing them up didn’t
expose her to the condescending pity that hiding them would have.

Beebo went with Beth up to her room. “It’s a miracle I still have the
key,” Beth said, opening her purse. “And a little money. I thought
people were supposed to rob you in the big city.”

“They are,” Beebo said as Beth pushed the door open. “Keep trying, they
will.”

Beth hesitated a moment before going in, feeling her heart give a tight
squeeze and half expecting Charlie’s handsome disillusioned face to rise
up from the chair or the bed and stare at the two women with a look of
evil suspicions confirmed. But the room was empty.

“Will you come in?” Beth asked, turning to Beebo, but Beebo shook her
head.

“You rest, baby,” she said. “You don’t need me. You’re beat. It shows
all over you. I’ll call you later, maybe tonight.”

“Thanks,” Beth said, “for coming home with me. I was so afraid he’d be
here.”

“I don’t know what I could have done if he was,” Beebo grinned. “Except
get the hell out and let the sparks fly. He probably will show up, by
the way, if your detective is worth his pay.”

“I know. But I’m glad it’s not now,” Beth said. “I couldn’t face
anything just now.”

“Okay, baby, get some sleep,” Beebo said and turned to go.

“You will call, won’t you?” Beth called after her, and immediately
wished she had kept her mouth shut. It made her sound so eager.

“Yes, I’ll call.” Beebo smiled, and then Beth shut the door after her,
leaning on it until she heard the elevator stop, open, and start up
again, carrying Beebo down with it.

For the first time since she had met Beebo, it caused her real pain to
leave her. Beebo seemed like a protection to her, a gentle strength and
a certainty to lean on. Was it only because Beebo was good to her?
Patient with her? Was it because she knew so much about the strange and
special world of Lesbianism and was willing to share her knowledge
without making it painful for Beth? Or was it something compelling,
something ineffably attractive in Beebo herself?

_I’m just grateful to her, that’s all_, Beth tried to tell herself. _She
saved me from a lot of extra suffering. She’s been good and generous.
But then, why is it—why—?_ Why did she tremble when Beebo touched her?
It was not the quake of fear but rather the lovely shivering of
pleasure. Beebo stirred her physically.

At first Beebo had appealed to Beth’s mind, her need for help and
understanding. And then, subtly and softly, like an enveloping cloud,
the appeal had broadened and deepened, assumed an erotic glow.

Now, at last, thinking of her and afraid to think of her, wanting her
and afraid to want her, Beth found herself absorbed in this unique,
rather frightening, rather wonderful human being.

Coming back to reality, Beth turned and pulled down the bed, taking off
her shoes and dress and tossing them carelessly into the chair beside
the bed. Then she opened both windows part way, letting in a breeze and
a few drops of rain. She lay down, half falling because it felt so good
to let go, and she lay with her eyes open for a little while, fixed on
the ceiling but seeing Beebo. She did not try to puzzle out the glow she
felt. Instead she simply relaxed and let herself be drawn to this odd
human being who was like no one else she had ever seen or known.

Her limbs began to feel warm and soft, and gradually, in spite of
herself, her eyes closed. They fluttered open once or twice but shut
again almost immediately. Her thoughts reached that state of confusion
and haphazardness that resembles dreams, and she was very near to sleep
when the door opened.

Which door? Beth never afterward was sure. The closet door and the door
to the hall were the only two in the room, and she could not recall
whether she had locked the hall door after Beebo or not.

It seemed to her, later, when she tried to reconstruct it all in her
mind, that it must have been the closet door, that Beth and Beebo had
surprised Vega when they first entered the room and she had taken refuge
in the closet, like a spy in a bad thriller, and waited until everything
was quiet again.

Beth opened her eyes at the small sound of the door squeaking and looked
about a little, unalarmed. There was still a breeze in the room from the
two half-open windows. It could have moved the door. But it hadn’t. She
realized, with a sudden horrified shudder of fear, that she was not
alone. And when she raised herself up partway on the bed she saw Vega
standing at the foot of it.

“Just stay there, don’t get up,” Vega said, and her words, the look of
her, her tragic eyes, terrified Beth. “Who was that other one? The one
that was just here with you?” Vega said.

“Beebo?” Beth said. “Do you know her?” she added inanely, her fear
distorting her sense.

“No.” Vega smiled sadly.

“Vega, what are you doing here? How did you find me?” Beth stammered.
“How long have you been here?”

“Since yesterday. The whole family knows where you are now, Beth. I only
wish I’d known sooner.” There was a flat controlled quality about her,
as if she was hanging on tightly to herself, her feelings, that was new
and ominous in Vega.

Beth made a move to get up, but Vega motioned her back on the bed with a
swift movement of her hand, and Beth saw then for the first time that
she held a gun. It was small and black, shiny and almost dainty for the
deadly thing it was. It gleamed softly with reflected light in Vega’s
hand and for a long time Beth stared at it incredulously. The knowledge
that she was in mortal danger gave her a grip on herself, a sort of
eerie calm that floated on top of her panic.

“Vega, you aren’t going to use that thing,” she said, her voice low and
coaxing. “Whatever I did to you, it wasn’t that bad. I don’t deserve
it.”

“It didn’t seem that bad to you because you weren’t the one who was
hurt,” Vega said.

“It was a lot of things that hurt you, not just me,” Beth urged.

“You were all that mattered.”

She was so beautiful, so pale, so alarmingly thin, thinner even than
Beth had remembered her. Beth felt a start of compassion for her, but
the weapon in Vega’s hand restrained her.

“Vega, can’t we talk?” she pleaded. “Can’t we talk about it? Don’t do
something you’ll regret for the rest of your life.”

“I wish somebody had been there to tell you the same thing before you
left me,” she said.

“I—I’m desperately sorry, Vega,” Beth murmured. “I was a coward. I’m
ashamed of it. God knows I’ve suffered too. I’ve thought of you so
often, I—”

“I know, I saw your letter to Cleve. You must have asked about me at
least once.”

“I was afraid it would upset him to ask more.”

“You just didn’t care.”

“I cared, Vega,” she said urgently. “I loved you once.”

“Is that what you call it?” Vega said and her eyes widened and her hand
began to tremble. “Is that what you call the hell you put me through,
never knowing if I’d see you or hear from you from one day to the next?
Dying of love for you and need of you, and having to beg to see you? You
loathed me, Beth, you were just looking for a way to get rid of me.” Her
voice rose steadily through her words, though she tried to stop it.

“No, Vega. That’s not why I ran away. That had nothing to do with it.”

“Don’t lie to me, Beth!” Vega cried, and Beth could almost feel, like a
tightening wire, her nerves stretching and the electric feeling of
hysteria in the air. She mustn’t let Vega get hysterical.

“Vega, whatever happened, it was all a mistake. It was all my fault,
too, I should never have done the things I did, but I did them anyway. I
did what I felt compelled to do. I wasn’t happy hurting you. I never
wanted to see you suffer.”

“You left in time to miss most of it,” Vega told her acidly. “Maybe you
know about that part. I was in Camarillo for a while. Did Cleve tell
you?”

“Yes, he told me,” Beth said, humble before this catalog of torments.

“Did he also tell you that he knows everything about us?”

“No!” Beth cried, chagrin plain in her open mouth and startled eyes.

“I told him,” Vega said with quiet desperation. “I was out of my mind. I
couldn’t help it, but I think I would have anyway. It couldn’t hurt me
any more and I had to hurt you somehow. It festered in me like a cancer,
Beth. It’s been eating me alive all this time.” The feverish flush in
her thin cheeks bore out her words.

Beth tried to sit up again but Vega threatened her with a swift movement
of the gun and Beth stayed where she was, propped on one elbow. “Vega,”
she pleaded, beginning to lose faith in her powers of persuasion. “I
know it’s been bad, I know it’s been terrible for you. Do you think
that’s the only reason I ran away? Didn’t Cleve tell you anything? I
told him to explain about Charlie, and the rest of it. Do you think it
was easy for me to leave my children?”

“I don’t know. I only know I’m the one who suffered most from your
going. Aside from that I don’t think anything any more. And I know just
one other thing, Beth, I want to see you suffer. I want to see you
scared and shaking and miserable the way I’ve been ever since you left.”

She sat down in a chair facing the bed, as though she meant to stay a
while.

“Will you—have a drink?” Beth asked. _God, if I could just get her
drunk!_ she thought.

“Cleve’s been doing all the family drinking lately,” Vega said. “I dried
out in the hospital.” Her voice was so cold, her attitude so rare and
strange in one given to hysterics, that Beth shivered involuntarily.

“Cigarette?” Beth said. If only she could get things on a talking basis,
instead of this sharp bitter exchange that cut and frightened her; if
only Vega would break down and cry and wail and let herself be
comforted.

“I don’t feel like it,” Vega said, waving the pack away. Her voice, her
eyes, left no doubt that she spoke the truth.

They stayed like that for a little while, neither one speaking or
moving. Beth found Vega’s desperate eyes, the only part of her that
seemed alive, more than she could bear, and she looked away.

“How long are you going to stay there like that?” she said at last.

“As long as I need to,” Vega said cryptically.

“Vega, I know what I did was crazy. I know you’ve been miserable.”

“My life was wrecked, Beth.”

“I—I know—”

“You have no idea.”

“I only meant—”

“Nothing you can say means anything.”

And Beth, for the first time, thought that her life might end that very
day in the face of that very gun, sitting idle and quiet in the hands of
a madwoman. For it was clear that Vega blamed her whole life on Beth.
All the sorrows and errors and accidents somehow had been Beth’s fault
and Vega, feeling as she did, could kill her with a clear conscience. It
made Beth’s flesh creep.

Death. She had never thought about it much before, except to wonder how
it felt, _if_ it felt, and to think it could never happen to her. It was
as unreal as old age, as a hydrogen war, as blindness, as any tragedy
that had never happened to her. How could you face death when you knew
nothing about it? How could you die all unprepared like this, terrified
and ugly and foolish in your underwear? Didn’t she have a right to
dignity, a right to respect and to a decent end with some warning?
Didn’t she have a right to a long life before that happened, a life that
would end slowly and gradually and gracefully—not in one sickening crack
of doom?

When would Vega pull the trigger? Beth began to watch the gun as if it
were an animal with a life of its own, a third presence in the room. She
couldn’t drag her eyes from it. She looked at the sleek short barrel and
the small black hole at the end, wondering when it would erupt in
flashing death.

_Maybe the bullet will miss me_, she thought, feeling the pounding of
her constricted heart. _Maybe she’ll just wound me. And I’ll leap at her
and grab the thing before she realizes what’s happened. No, maybe it
would be better to pretend I’m dead, just fall back and lie on the bed
as if I’m stone dead. But what if she comes over and looks at me and
sees it’s just a flesh wound? Or what if she empties the damned gun into
me?_ She almost whimpered aloud with terror. Her fear was a thing alive,
a separate living creature in that haunted room, and Vega could feel it.
But her face was stony and dreadful.

Beth lay back on the bed at last. _If she wants to shoot me dead she’ll
have to stand up to do it now_, she thought. _At least that’ll give me
some warning._ And almost in the next instant she wondered if she wanted
any warning. If it had to be, wouldn’t it be better to die abruptly and
without the agony of seeing it come and being helpless to stop it?

The day ended little by little to the tune of rain and wind and the room
grew dark. Small drops pattered in at the windows. Beth reached over
with utmost caution and turned the light on beside the bed, and
immediately cursed herself for it. It only made her a better target. But
Vega would have done it herself anyway, sooner or later, and maybe the
mere fact of having to move would have stirred her to fire.

Beth watched her, her mad, despairing eyes, and the horror of it was
almost unbearable. “Vega, do something,” she cried, and her own voice
shocked her into stillness again. “It couldn’t have been that bad,” she
cried again, later, supplicating, unwittingly using the same words to
Vega that Charlie had used to her.

“If you scream I’ll do it now,” Vega said, and with a sick gasp Beth
clamped her mouth shut.

They sat in tortured silence for a while longer. Beth looked at her
watch. It was past ten. Her stomach stirred and she knew it was empty,
but there was no desire for food in her. She thought with urgent envy of
the careless, casual people below her in the streets, eating in the
bright, cheerful restaurants, seeing the movies and shows, crossing the
streets and chatting with each other. And life, so mundane and full of
anxieties, seemed achingly beautiful to her. It didn’t matter who she
was, it didn’t matter where she belonged. It only mattered to keep on
living, to keep life strong and safe and have a second chance at it.

“Vega,” she tried again in a raspy voice at close to midnight, “you’ll
never get away with it. You know that, don’t you?”

“What makes you think I care?” Vega said. “Do you think I could possibly
give a damn any more what happens to me?”

“But your mother. And Gramp. And Cleve and Jean!” Beth said, hoping with
the force of panic to hit a sensitive chord.

“I spit on them all,” Vega said. “Do you wonder why I’m not screaming,
Beth?” she added in her voice that was calm with the serenity of
madness. “I’ve done all my screaming, that’s why. I did it all at Cleve
and Mother. And the doctors, the first few weeks I was in the hospital.
There isn’t any left in me. Gramp is dead, Beth. And Mother is dying,
just like all those neglected cats. Cleve doesn’t count, he never
amounted to anything. I have only you now. I have your whole future in
my hand, here. And it’s going to pay for my whole past.” She shook the
gun back and forth. “I have your life and your death, I have infinite
power over you, and nothing, not tears or begging or hypocritical love
or fancy excuses, is going to save you. Nothing.”

“Then do it now!” Beth cried in a cracking voice. “Do it now!” But every
inch of her was tense with prayers for mercy.

“When I’m ready,” Vega said. “When I’m good and ready.”

And so they sat on in the small pool of light in the little hotel room
with the instrument of death a wall between them and an everlasting tie.
Beth thought of Gramp, Vega’s grandfather, small and dry, coming into
the overheated house with his arms full of cats. He was only a vague
image in her mind, yet she mourned him with a sort of stricken sympathy.

She wondered if Vega was trying to drive her mad, too, and she felt so
near to abandoned shrieking, so near to violent shudders and agonized
pleas for help, that she thought her heart and bones would crack from
the pressure. If that was what Vega was after, it wouldn’t be long
before she had it.

And still they sat on and on and on. And Beth thought of her children.
Perhaps now, at long last, they’d be happy. She couldn’t shame them any
more. No rotten little detective was going to follow her around New York
or any other town, taking notes on the girls she met and the food she
ate and the money she spent, and then sell his pitiful information to
her rich uncle.

And Charlie. Would he care? How would it strike him? Would he mourn her?
In her deepest heart she knew he would, and that made her more
frightened, more miserable.

The phone rang with a shattering clamor that drew a small scream of
suppressed hysteria from Beth. She looked at Vega with wide eyes, and
Vega said, “Answer it.”

It was Beebo. “I meant to call earlier,” she said. “I know it’s late.”
Beth looked at her watch. It was past two. “I got stuck at a party,
baby, you know how it is. Am I forgiven?”

“Of course,” Beth said. _God, what can I say, how can I warn her?_ She
looked slyly at Vega, but the look on Vega’s face told her the gun would
speak instantly if Beth spoke too much.

“Well, that was easy,” Beebo laughed. How warm her voice was! Close and
relaxed. Beth yearned for her. “I expected to get a lecture. Or hurt
feelings at the very least. How about coming down for dinner tomorrow?
We could take in a movie or something.”

“Tomorrow? I don’t think I’ll be able to,” Beth said, putting all her
hope into the _double entendre_, but if it was innocent enough to get
past Vega it was obviously too vague to alarm Beebo.

“Okay, the day after,” Beebo said, unperturbed.

“I don’t think I’m going to be around,” Beth said and Vega sat up in her
seat and aimed the gun at her and Beth nearly fainted with fear. She
would have laughed at their histrionics if she had seen them in a movie,
but this was actually happening and just the terror of it nearly
squeezed the life out of her.

“You’re not going out of town, are you?” Beebo said.

“No.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

“You are mad at me,” Beebo said.

“No! No, I swear!” Beth protested with such vehemence that Vega motioned
her to hang up and she did, abruptly, without so much as a goodbye. She
hoped her strangeness on the phone, if nothing else, would alert Beebo
somehow. If only Beebo didn’t suppose she’d been drinking and was acting
silly. And she experienced a flash of truly passionate yearning for
Beebo, her physical presence, the strength and safety of her arms.

The hours went past with ponderous slowness and Beth tried to value
them, to treasure each moment that she was still alive. And yet each
moment struck such fear into her that she found herself crawling with
it.

Every ten or fifteen minutes she would say Vega’s name, or ask her to
leave, or offer her a cigarette. It didn’t matter that her words were
useless. It mattered that she was still able to speak and understand
herself. Every leaden moment made life dearer to her. Her thoughts
skipped sporadically from Laura to Nina to Beebo, to the others she had
met in the swift passage through the enormous city. They ranged over her
college days, over the exotic greenery of California and the face
Charlie showed her when she left him, standing alone at the end of the
drive. And the Scootch, and Skipper with a skinned knee. And her aunt
and uncle. And Vega, Vega herself, chic and smooth and so desirable when
Beth first knew her. And in between the fragmented pictures of her past,
the people she knew, came moments when her heart froze and her mouth
went desert dry.

She was still lying on the bed in a bath of sweat and anguish when she
heard Vega rise at last. The first tired light of dawn was showing in
the windows. The rain had stopped. Beth noted this with surprise, for
she had not heard it steal off. She stiffened all over, seeing Vega
approach her.

Vega turned off the bedside lamp that had shown them to each other
throughout the dark hours and they appeared to each other then as
silvery shadows.

“No, Vega, no, Vega, no-no-no-no-no,” Beth said in a sort of singsong,
nearly hypnotized with fear.

“I want to know how you’ll take it.”

“You’ll wake everyone up. They’ll catch you.”

“I want it that way.”

They gazed at each other. Communication was no longer possible between
them and Beth finally shut her eyes, unable to look at the gun any
longer. She wept, “I want to live. That’s all I want in the world. Just
give me that and I can work out the rest.”

“I wonder,” Vega said. “I’d like to see you try.”

After what seemed an age to her warped sense of time, Beth reopened her
eyes. Vega stood stock still where she was, at the side of the bed. The
light from the windows was brightening around her.

“Have you suffered tonight, Beth?” she asked.

“Horribly.” Beth choked a little trying to answer.

“Will you ever regret what you did?”

“I do, I _have_, since the day it was done.”

“Did you ever love me, I wonder?” But she held up her hand to Beth and
said, “Don’t answer, I don’t want any more lies from you.”

There was another dreadful silence and now the minutes were flying, the
sun was coming up with awful haste, and Beth’s heart was in her throat.

Vega lifted the gun, and the power of speech failed Beth. Nothing was
real but the thunder of her pulse in her ears and the stout hard barrel
two feet from her.

Vega lifted the gun higher. “I do this for you, Beth,” she said. “All
for you.”

Then she shot herself, very suddenly and awkwardly, in the right temple,
grimacing like a child expecting a tanning. Her features collapsed and
her body relaxed onto the floor before Beth’s eyes.




                             Chapter Twenty


In the silence that followed Beth lay where she was, nailed to the bed.
She had neither the courage nor the physical strength nor the desire to
sit up and look at Vega. What happened afterward remained forever in her
memory as a weird and warped nightmare.

Moments later an elevator boy and two maids rushed into the room, with a
couple of guests following them, and found the two women—one dead, the
other in a state of near-shock. At first glimpse they took Beth for dead
too, and one of the maids gave a little scream when she stirred.

“This one’s alive!” she cried.

They helped her to sit up and besieged her with questions, and though
she heard them and understood them she was unable to answer coherently.
She began to giggle morbidly when one of the guests referred to Vega as
“the poor stiff” and her awful uncontrollable choking laughter struck
them all aghast. It changed, as suddenly as it had started, into sobs.
Someone forced her back down on the bed and put a cold cloth on her head
and she heard a coarse hearty female voice somewhere in the room remark,
“Don’t know why we’re taking such fine care of her. She probably did
it!”

Very shortly the room was crowded and everyone in the crowd was firing
questions at Beth, who had not even the small comfort of her clothes in
which to face them. No one touched the body. It was grotesquely dead.

There was much murmurous comment about the arrival of the police,
mingled with pleas from hotel officials for clearing the room. Beth
struggled to her feet, climbing off the bed on the side opposite that
where Vega lay. She collected her clothes from the chair where she had
thrown them the night before and went into the bathroom. They made way
for her as if none of them wanted to touch her, though they continued to
ask her, “Why’d you do it, sister?” “Hey, you did it, didn’t you?” “Look
at her face. You can tell she did it.”

In the bathroom she was momentarily alone, and desperately sick for the
first few minutes. She wept sobs that were torn from the depths of her.
She mourned Vega. Vega had anticipated her curses, her fury, her
despair, everything but her pity. And yet pity was all Beth had to give,
all she could feel.

When she emerged, washed and dressed, the police were there.
Methodically and quickly they emptied the room. Notes were made on the
disposition of the body and it was photographed from several sides. The
gun had been tenderly separated from Vega’s index finger which had
curled around the trigger guard, and rested in a handkerchief on the bed
table.

Beth looked high and haughty into the face of the Law. She was not able
to look down at the floor. They led her to a chair—the one where Vega
had sat all night—and asked her what happened. She was quaking with
exhaustion but not with fear. It seemed she had felt all the fear she
would ever feel for the rest of her life in the night just past. She
answered them with the confidence of truth. She only hesitated once, and
that was when a Lieutenant Scopa, who was doing most of the questioning,
asked her why Vega would want to kill her.

“Well—she—she was a mental patient. She had gotten it into her head that
I hurt her, that I hated her. She thought I was responsible for all her
troubles, and she wanted revenge. That’s all I can tell you.”

                   *       *       *       *       *

They held her for two days and she sat in a bare orderly cell with
another, fortunately taciturn, woman, and cried most of the time, except
when they were interrogating her. Then she made it a point of pride to
maintain her composure. She was prepared to have them disbelieve her,
finally. At first she thought they would let her go at once, just
because she was truthful as far as she went with her story. When they
continued to hold her she began to realize that they doubted her. They
didn’t understand, they wouldn’t accept her words. The thing looked odd
to them. She expected to be told outright that she shot Vega in the head
and then wiped the gun clean and put it in the hand of the corpse. They
had even intimated this.

“We know she was a mental patient,” Lieutenant Scopa told her. “We’ve
checked up on her. Now if you want to plead self-defense and tell us
what really happened it’ll go easier on you, Mrs. Ayers. Nobody’ll blame
you for saving your own life. Vega had threatened other people with the
same gun.”

“What?” Beth cried, startled.

“A couple of people,” he said briefly. “We know it was her gun. It’s
registered in her name in South Pasadena. Of course, she didn’t shoot
the other people. But she might have scared you into thinking she
_would_ shoot you. If I had been you and I had a chance to grab that
thing, I would have done it myself.”

“If I’d had a chance to grab it, Lieutenant, don’t you think I would
have done something with it, too? I could have scared her at least. But
I couldn’t have killed her. It’s true, she did threaten my life, and I
had to wait there all night thinking she was going to kill me—”

“Without doing anything about it?”

“Doing _what_?” Beth said. “Every time I moved she aimed that damned gun
at me and told me to stay still.”

“Okay, okay,” he said.

“And finally, at dawn, she got up and came to the bed and told me what
she did she was doing ‘all for me.’ And I waited to die. But she shot
herself instead.” She could never talk about it without breaking up at
that point and they had to hold off the questions for a while to let her
recover herself.

They allowed her one phone call when they took her in and she made it to
Beebo. She didn’t think about this or weigh the sense of it. She simply
called. Beebo would understand and she’d do the right things. Beth
didn’t feel that way about anybody else.

“You’ve been in every scrape there is,” she said brokenly into the
receiver. “Help me out of this, Beebo.”

“God, Beth. I—I couldn’t believe it when I read—” Beebo began, but Beth
interrupted her.

“Call my uncle in Chicago,” she said and gave her the number. “He’ll get
me a lawyer. And, Beebo, I didn’t do it.”

“I know, baby, I believe you. Who was she?”

“She was the one I ran off and left.”

“Jesus,” Beebo breathed. “She took it pretty hard, didn’t she?”

“Will you help me?” Beth said.

“I’ll do anything, everything I can,” Beebo said. “Don’t worry,
sweetheart, if you’re innocent you’ll get off.”

“I’m not so sure. Nobody saw it. I can’t prove a damn thing.”

“Worrying won’t change things, Beth,” Beebo said, and Beth hung up
somewhat reassured.

But after two nights in a jail cell she was almost unstrung with
anxiety, nerves, even the fear she thought had been exhausted in her.
The truth, unsubstantiated, simply wasn’t enough. They were going to
hold her. They thought she did it, and it was her word against the word
of a dead woman. She wondered miserably what Cleve and Mrs. Purvis
thought of her now, who had liked her so well in the past. Cleve was
probably dead drunk and cursing the both of them, and Mrs. Purvis,
majestic in her infirmities, was probably dying quietly of the knowledge
that her daughter was a Lesbian.

Abruptly, the morning after the second night in jail, they released her.
A matron came and opened her door and said, “You’re free, Mrs. Ayers.”

Beth sat up on her cot, struck dumb for a moment with surprise. Her cell
mate grunted at her, gave her one envious glance, and went back to
sleep.

“On bail?” Beth asked at last through a dry throat, staring
incredulously at the woman. “Do I have a lawyer? My uncle—”

“No bail. You’re free. No strings attached. Except we’d like you to stay
in town until the last details of the case are straightened out.”

“How did it happen? Why?” she cried, collecting her things with hasty
hands, almost afraid to believe in her luck.

“They’ll explain it to you up front,” the woman told her and Beth
followed her down the clanging corridor and out the barred doors to the
elevator. The matron took her to an office on the first floor and
returned her coat and purse. They made her sign some release papers and
then they led her into a waiting room.

Charlie stood up to greet her.

Beth stopped in her tracks, speechless at the sight of him. His presence
struck her in the heart like a physical blow.

“Hello, Beth,” he said softly, his face heavy and serious.

“Charlie,” she whispered. And then she went to him and put her arms
around him and cried. “I never thought I’d see you again,” she said.
“Least of all here.”

“I wouldn’t desert you, Beth,” he said, holding her. “You’re still my
wife. I love you.” It was awkward but determined, stubborn and proud and
hopeless.

“Oh, no, please don’t say it,” she pleaded. “Please. I can’t take it.”
After all she had been through to escape him she was wary even of the
words that might entangle her again. She was glad, grateful, infinitely
relieved to see him there. But she was not in love with him and her
gratitude did not extend to a reconciliation.

“The children?” she asked before he let her go, and he nodded.

“Fine. Both fine. But they miss you.” She started to ask him more but he
interrupted, “I’ve got a room at the Blackwell. Let’s get out of here,
we can’t talk here.”

Beth clutched his sleeve. “Am I free?” she begged. “Am I really free?
Did she tell me the truth?”

“Yes,” he said.

“But how—”

“Come on, I’ll explain.”

He hailed a cab outside and as soon as they were in it Beth asked, “Are
Uncle John and Aunt Elsa here?”

“No,” he said. “They were going to come but I talked them out of it.
There wasn’t any need, and it would only have been painful.”

“It must have been a terrible shock for them.”

“Yes. It was pretty rough.”

They sat side by side, Charlie in his lightweight blue summer suit,
solemn and handsome and preoccupied, Beth in her rumpled clothes, the
same she had worn on her Village spree. They seemed by now to be the
only clothes she had ever worn. She sensed that he wanted to take her
hand, even to kiss her, but also that he had a stern lecture saved up, a
couple of months worth of grievances and loneliness and resentment to
get off his chest. But still, he was not harsh with her or
short-tempered, and she knew without his having to say it that he wanted
her back. That he could, after what had just happened, warmed her heart
and touched her, even though she understood that he was using her
troubles to suit his own ends. He was taking advantage of her fear and
confusion, using them as a lever to prod her out of New York. But she
could not go back and start over with him, however she might have
botched her efforts to find a new life here. She dreaded hurting him
with her decision.

“My things,” she said. “They’re all at the Beaton.”

“They were. I picked them up,” he said.

“There wasn’t much.”

“No.”

Between their short exchanges hung a thousand things unsaid, a thousand
things not for the ears of cabbies, things better left unsaid even to
each other. But they would say them anyway, Beth thought with a shudder.




                           Chapter Twenty-one


He closed the door of the room he had taken in the Blackwell and turned
to face her. Beth couldn’t look at him. She sat down on the bed—a
spacious double bed that unnerved her slightly—and kicked off her shoes.
Slowly she glanced up at him.

“I’ll order us a drink if you like,” he said.

“I’d love one,” she said thankfully, and he called room service and
ordered two vodka collinses. Beth was burning to know by what miracle
she had been released, but she didn’t want to drag it out of him. Let
him tell her in his own good time. He understood how anxious she was.
She supposed he was waiting for the drinks to come and lighten the
atmosphere a little.

“I’m going to take a bath and change my clothes,” she said.

“Good idea.” He showed her where he had put her things and she took a
change of underwear and a dressing gown into the bathroom with her and
bathed herself, weeping softly with relief in her first privacy in
forty-eight hours. Warm water, a leisurely bath, a refreshing drink on
the way—all the foolish little symbols of a serious and necessary
condition to her life: Freedom.

Only Charlie disturbed her. She had been so glad to see him that she had
run to his arms and wept. And now she sat in her tub suddenly full of
misgivings about him again. She knew enough now to know she loved him,
in a way. Only it was the wrong way; it was not sufficient for him or
for a marriage. It was enough to make her want him forever as a friend,
too little to make her want him back as a lover. If only he could
understand that. If only he could accept it. She tried, while she
bathed, to clear her mind and think of a way to tell him her feelings
which would not offend him.

When she came out, clean and fresh and powdered, the drinks had arrived.
He lighted a cigarette for her and handed her a glass.

“How did it happen?” she said, sitting down again on the bed. She
couldn’t hold it back any longer. She wondered why he was so reluctant
to get started with it. The whole thing seemed slightly fantastic. A
little less than an hour ago she had been a prisoner in jail, a murder
suspect; now she was free.

“Well....” He turned his back to her and gazed out the window. “Heinrich
saved you—” he began.

“Heinrich?” She broke in. “Who’s he?”

“He’s a—well, a sort of detective we hired—”

“Who hired?” she demanded.

“Your uncle John and I. Are you going to let me tell you this, Beth, or
are you going to keep interrupting me?”

“I’m sorry,” she said, but she felt the flush of indignation on her
cheek.

“Beth, we hired him because we were so damned scared,” Charlie said
suddenly, turning to face her. His voice, his gestures, pleaded for her
understanding. “He was supposed to be the best and we wanted only the
best. He did a couple of jobs for Uncle John once, long ago. John trusts
the guy and I went along. I was out of my mind worried about you the
first couple of weeks. When John phoned to say you’d run away from him,
too, I told him to go ahead and hire Heinrich.”

“I see.” She looked down into her glass, humiliated.

“We never meant to—to spy on you, darling,” Charlie said. “But when he
found you, in New York, we were—well, anything but reassured by what he
told us. We told him to stay with it, and he took a room next to yours
at the Beaton.”

“He what?” she cried. “Oh, Charlie, that was going too far.” _My God, we
even shared the same bathroom!_ she thought.

“It was going pretty far, maybe, but he was doing his job, Beth.”

“Well, I guess there’s nothing I can tell you about my stay in New York
that he hasn’t already told you!” she exclaimed.

“Not much,” Charlie said quietly, as if embarrassed.

“I suppose he was peeking through the keyhole when Vega showed up,” Beth
said, near to tears with indignation. The fact that it might have saved
her life was lost momentarily in the shame of the situation.

“Not exactly. He had the room wired,” Charlie said. “He recorded
everything. He just gave the tapes to the police and explained to them
that Vega was in love with you. The whole thing became clear as a bell.
She damn near killed a kid in Pasadena named P.K. Schaefer. With that
same gun. P.K. took a chance and ran for it. Vega fired and missed her.”
He shrugged. “Well, Heinrich’s testimony and P.K.’s and the doctor’s
Vega was seeing—they were too much for the police. It was plain that she
was unhinged. And that you didn’t do it.”

There was a silence then while they were both absorbed in their
thoughts.

“My children,” Beth said. “My poor kids.”

“They don’t know anything about it,” Charlie said quickly. “They’ve been
in Chicago all this time. I’m going to keep them there till it blows
over. You’ve been exonerated, Beth.”

“But Vega was a Lesbian. That part of it you can never wipe out. That
part will haunt me. I guess that’s what she meant by killing herself to
make me suffer.”

“I guess it is,” he said. “I heard the tapes,” he added diffidently.
“She sounded pretty desperate.”

Another pause. Beth finished her drink and Charlie ordered two more.

“How can you take those children back to Pasadena to live?” she asked.

“It doesn’t need to be Pasadena,” he said. “California’s a big state.”

“But the business is in Pasadena. It’s all established. You can’t just
pick up and move out.”

“For something like this I could. And I would.” He gazed directly at her
as he said it, wanting her to see all the hurt and determination and
love in his face.

“But, Charlie,” she protested, feeling caught and flustered, “it would
mean dragging everybody with you, all the office staff, the craftsmen,
the machinists. Cleve and Jean—”

“Cleve and Jean don’t need to worry about it any longer,” he said, and
he was gazing down at his drink now, lines of concern on his forehead.

“Why not? What does that mean?”

“Cleve isn’t with the company now. It’s just—Ayers Toys.”

Beth’s mouth dropped open a little. “What happened?” she breathed at
last.

“He climbed into that damn bottle and stayed,” Charlie said. “He was
coming to work drunk all the time. It was getting bad when you left,
Beth; you must have heard me mention it a couple of times.... Well, it
just got worse. It got intolerable, to tell the truth. He wasn’t doing
anything, he wasn’t contributing anything. He just sat in his office and
tipped the bottle. I did all the work. And goddamn it, I didn’t feel
like sharing the credit and the money with a souse who didn’t raise a
finger for either one.”

“Oh, but Charlie,” she said, and there were tears in her voice, “it was
his business, his idea. You were the newcomer not so long ago. You were
the one he took in, and taught the ropes, and made an equal partner.”
She was hurt for a moment, as Cleve must have been hurt when it
happened.

“Well, damn it!” he cried defensively. “It didn’t have to happen that
way, Beth. I begged him to quit drinking. I dragged him around to a
couple of specialists. I got Jean to help me, and Mrs. Purvis. And Cleve
tried. When it got too bad, he felt the same way I did.

“Honey, you don’t think I went in there and fired the guy, do you?” he
said, flinging out his hands in a plea for sympathy. “No! Hell, no.
Cleve brought it up himself. I couldn’t do a thing like that. He just
came in one morning about a month ago and told me he thought it would be
better for the business and for himself if he quit.”

“Who’s going to hire him now if he’s been drinking?”

“Beth, it’s rough, I know. It’s a rough life, nobody needs to tell me
that.”

“Maybe Jean will get a job and support them for a while,” she said.

“He’s leaving her!”

“What?” It was impossible. “They were always so happy!” she exclaimed.
They had seemed so stable as a partnership.

“It’s a trial separation,” Charlie said. “I think they love each other,
all right, but they just can’t stand each other, if you know what I
mean.”

“I always thought Jean took everything in her stride. I thought there
was nothing that girl couldn’t face with a smile. I even used to resent
that smile of hers, because I thought it meant inner peace. I thought
she had learned to cope with life, and because I was jealous I used to
tell myself it was only because she was so stupid. I thought anybody as
smart as me could never be happy. Only the nice, jolly, stupid people
like Jean.”

“She isn’t stupid, honey,” Charlie said, sitting down on the bed beside
her. “Her only answer to her problems was to smile. She and Cleve have
been just—roommates for years. Not husband and wife. I think that’s why
he drinks. It had something to do with Vega, too. He never did explain
it all to me. Just little hints and remarks when he was tight. I guess
he and Vega were too close or something. When they were younger, I mean.
He even made me think, one time, that it went as far as—” He stopped.

“As far as what?” she prompted with unhappy curiosity.

“Well, as a sort of affair,” he said, obviously embarrassed to talk
about it. “Anyway, they were abnormally close. For a long time. And
suddenly there was an awful fight. I guess they both got scared and
ashamed when they got a little older and realized it wasn’t very healthy
for a brother and sister, and all that. And they both turned on each
other. Vega blamed Cleve because he was a man and men are always
responsible for these things. And Cleve blamed Vega because she was the
oldest and she showed him the way and encouraged it. And all of a
sudden, where there had been so much love, there was hate. They hated
each other with real dedication. I guess to hide the fact that they
would always love each other anyway, no matter how they tried not to.

“Well, it was too much for both of them. Vega turned to women for relief
and affection. And Cleve tried to find a substitute in Jean for Vega.
But Jean was the wrong girl entirely. They were different as night and
day—the two women. I guess that’s why Cleve chose her. He didn’t want to
be eternally reminded of his sister. But it didn’t work, for either of
them.”

After a pause Beth said softly, “Explains a lot of things, doesn’t it?
God, it makes you wonder, though. It just makes you wonder if Cleve and
Vega wouldn’t both have been better off to stay with each other and let
the world go to hell.”

“You know it wouldn’t,” he said, and though his voice was even she could
feel the sudden rise in his emotional temperature.

“At least Vega wouldn’t have ended up horribly dead on the floor of a
hotel room.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. It’s never better to prolong a sick
relationship. She might have ended up dead even sooner.”

“If prolonging a sick relationship will keep you alive, it’s worth it.”

“Things would have been much worse for them if they lived together,” he
said positively. Anything abnormal he automatically loathed, without
understanding it, without questioning himself.

And rather than fight him in an area where his will and his emotions
could not be moved, she simply said, “He always managed to write and
tell me how you and the kids were. No matter how drunk he was. And
sometimes those letters looked like he had palsy when he wrote them. But
I was so grateful for them.”

“He was writing to you?” Charlie said, turning where he sat to look at
her, surprised.

She nodded, her eyes on the floor. “I asked him to,” she said. “I knew
you wouldn’t write, and I had to know how you were.”

He seemed touched. After a moment he reached for her hand and she let
him have it, dreading to argue with him.

“Beth,” he said quietly. “Have you had enough now? Enough of this
running around and trying to ‘find yourself,’ or whatever it is you
think you’re doing?”

He meant to be kind but he sounded condescending, and it wounded her.
“You mustn’t laugh at me, Charlie,” she said.

“No, darling, I’m not laughing. I know it’s serious. God knows I have
nothing to laugh about,” he said quickly.

Beth made herself look at him and for a brief moment she saw him the way
he had been nine years ago in college when she had loved him so
romantically. Or thought she had. The tenderness was reflected on her
face and he brightened a little to see it. “Charlie, darling, I’m so
grateful to you for so much,” she said. “I owe you a lot and I wish
there were some way to repay it.”

“There is. Come home with me.”

She almost bit her lip. She hadn’t meant to give him an opening like
that. She wanted to steer him out of the idea without inflicting pain on
him. He had come a long way and put up with a lot.

“I—I wish to God I could,” she said.

“You can. Oh, Beth, I’ve been so damned miserably lonesome—”

“I know, so have I,” she broke in swiftly, afraid to let him start
telling her what he had been through. It would be very bad, it would
hurt them both, and it would make her feel more obligated than ever to
him.

She stood up, walking away from him a few steps, as if that would help
her to think clearly. “I’ll never be proud of what I’ve done to you,
Charlie,” she said. “I’ve failed as a wife to you and as a mother to my
children. For a woman that’s the ultimate disgrace. I suppose it sounds
pretty hollow to say that I couldn’t help it. But I was as much a
failure to myself as a human being as I was to you. When you fail
yourself how can you be any good to anyone else?”

She turned a supplicating face to him.

“I don’t understand it,” he said. “You were all I ever wanted. The only
thing wrong with my life now is that you’re not in it.”

“The only thing wrong with your life when I _am_ in it is me. I had to
leave,” she said, feeling that old needling desperation that plagued her
when she tried to explain her private self to Charlie. He felt it too,
as he tried to grasp it all, and came away with a head full of her words
and no meanings to hang them on.

“I thought when I found Laura it would all come clear, all be explained
to me,” she said, speaking as though explaining it to a child. “But when
I found her, it was more like the beginning of the search than the end
of it. I guess I’ll never know the answer to who I am. Or why. I guess
the answer is that there is no answer.” She gave a shy hopeless little
laugh. “Does that make things any clearer?”

“No,” he said and shook his head, an earnest sweat of concentration on
his face. “I hope you aren’t telling me you won’t come back with me.
That’s the only thing that matters.”

“But Charlie, darling, we’re right back where we started. That isn’t
enough. Not for me. If we could only be friends and—”

“Friends!” he flared, and she knew she was in for it now. “How can a
husband and wife be just friends? Do you want to live like Cleve and
Jean lived all these years? A pitiful farce of a marriage? It may fool
their friends but it doesn’t fool them.”

“Charlie, let’s face it, ours wasn’t much better.”

“It was till you got a bunch of goddamn half-baked ideas in your head!”

“I don’t think I could go back to you now, even loving you,” she said.

“You mean you don’t love me enough? Beth, Beth, I’ve always known that.
In a marriage, one always loves more than the other. I’m willing to be
that one.” He had risen and come toward her and now he stood behind her
with his big warm hands on her shoulders, feeling her sobs and aching to
stop them with kisses.

“Oh, don’t!” she cried, shaking him away from her. “Don’t talk that way.
You’ll break my heart.”

“Come home with me then.”

“I can’t!” she cried, moving still further away from him.

“I need you.”

“I can’t, Charlie.”

“The children need you. Think of them if you can’t think of me, for
God’s sake.”

“I have, I have, I’ve almost lost my mind over them. I wish somebody had
cared that much about me when I was a child! I can’t go home!”

“You can, goddamn you! You will!” he exclaimed.

She whirled and faced him and shrieked with desperate determination,
“No!”

There was a trembling silence for several moments while they stared at
each other, both shaking with the intensity of their love, their hate,
their helplessness.

“Beth, not once since I found you and got you out of that jail and
brought you here have I said anything about what you’ve done to me. I
was hoping I wouldn’t have to. I haven’t told you about the nights I’ve
spent alone and the restaurant dinners I’ve eaten and the stories I’ve
had to make up for the kids about you and the things I’ve had to tell
the neighbors. I haven’t told you—”

“Don’t!” she cried in anguish. “Don’t tell me unless you want to kill
me.”

“I want you to know what I’ve been through!” he said fiercely.

“Charlie, I’m telling you now and forever, once and for all, I can’t
come home with you. I can’t go back to you. I—”

“You said you loved me.” He had turned quite pale and was staring at
her.

“I want a divorce,” she said, and crumbled into a chair at the foot of
the bed.

They sat in utter silence then for ten minutes, neither of them moving,
neither speaking. At last he said, “I could have killed you when you
left. I felt that way for a long time. But when I heard about Vega, all
the mess in the papers, everything changed. I was so worried about you.
I knew you couldn’t have done it and I wanted to forgive you. I don’t
know why, I guess I’m just a glutton for punishment. I just wanted you
back, no questions asked.”

“You didn’t need to ask. Mr. Heinrich had all the answers,” she said
sharply.

“I came here to forgive you, to rescue you and start over.”

“I can’t be rescued,” she said firmly.

“You’re not worth it,” he said grimly. “I didn’t know that till now. Or
rather, I couldn’t face it. I guess because I loved you so much.”

She covered her face with her hands, refusing to look at him or answer.
At last he rose.

“I’ll take another room,” he said. “I’ll be leaving tomorrow, I guess.
There isn’t much point in staying on.”

She listened to him moving about the room, taking his things from the
drawers where he had put them the night before, and her heart
contracted. But still she didn’t move, didn’t try to stop him. It was
better that he go off mad. It would give him strength and reassure him
in the future that he had done the right thing. It would help him give
her up.

He stopped at the door and she looked up then, aware that he was
leaving. His chin was set and his eyes were hard. He was very handsome
and straight.

“Charlie, I wish—with all my heart, I wish—”

“I know. So do I,” he said.

“I’ll never know, all the rest of my life, if what I’m doing is a brave
thing or a cowardly thing, Charlie. A right thing or a wrong one. I only
know I have to do it.”

He listened, quiet and uncomprehending, and then he said, almost gently,
“Goodbye, Beth.”

“Goodbye,” she whispered.

He shut the door softly after him.




                           Chapter Twenty-two


There was only one thing left that she knew she had to do, and that was
see Laura and tell her the truths she had withheld before. She wrote to
her aunt and uncle first and explained why she could not, and never
would, come home, and thanked them for the hospitality. She was honest,
although she was brief.

If she had to start a new life, and there was no question any more about
that, she was going to start it without the lies and self-deceptions
that had marred the other. She was going to pare away the fibs and
selfish miseries, as many of them as she could, even if it meant hurting
herself, hurting others. It would be a clean, honest pain and it would
heal.

She hadn’t the guts to face Laura that day; to face anyone, for that
matter. She waited until the next morning and then slipped out early,
afraid of running into Charlie in the hotel lobby. But she was spared
that.

She took a cab over to Laura’s apartment. It was only eight-thirty. It
seemed like an odd hour for confession and atonement, an odd time of day
to be making your apologies and refashioning your life. But we don’t
pick our own times for these things; they happen when they are ready.
The tangled strands of Beth’s life were smoothing out a little. This was
the last task. Until it was done she was not free. The rest would have
to wait. When Laura herself knew the whole truth, Beth would be
liberated at last from her self-contempt, from her obsessive need for
Laura.

She rang the elevator buzzer after the clerk had phoned the Manns and
told her she could see them. She rode up with her spine tingling and all
the delicate nerves of her face taut. It wouldn’t be so bad; it couldn’t
be worse than what she had been through with Charlie or with Vega, she
told herself. It had to be done. And still she trembled.

She tried to think of herself riding back down in that same elevator in
half an hour with her lies behind her, her selfishness exposed and, in
part, atoned for, and her heart lighter. Even if Laura was angry and
disillusioned with her, even if her idealization of Beth was rudely
shattered, even if there was no friendship left to salvage. It was Laura
she had come to find and Laura was her last bridge to cross before she
could begin her life over again somewhere and try to do better with it
this time.

She knocked quickly on Laura’s front door, as if by hesitating she would
squander her courage. Jack opened it for her. She stared at him.

“Good morning,” he said. “It’s all right, I live here,” he added, seeing
the look of faint dismay on her face.

“I thought you’d be at work,” she said clumsily.

“I’m on my way, sweetheart,” he said, smiling. “She’s all yours.” He
thumbed over his shoulder and Beth saw Laura behind him in the living
room, tying Betsy’s hair ribbons. “Come on in,” he said and Beth walked
in behind him. “We’re relieved to see you,” he told her seriously.

Laura stood up, her face a picture of pale consternation. “Beth,” she
said. The name was almost a question. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Beth said, and the relief Laura showed touched her.

“We saw in the papers that it was all over. They released you and
everything.”

Beth sat down in a chair and Laura busied herself with goodbyes until
Jack and Betsy had gone out. She understood intuitively that Beth had to
talk to her, only her, to set things right with herself.

When they were alone she came and sat on a hassock beside Beth’s
chair—the leather chair that Jack liked so well.

“I came to tell you the truth about a few things, Laura,” Beth said
softly. “I won’t take much time.”

“Have some breakfast with me,” Laura said, but Beth shook her head.
“Some coffee then?” and without waiting for an answer Laura sprang up
and went into the kitchen. Beth didn’t want her hospitality. She didn’t
want to watch Laura’s warm concern turn slowly to disdain when she found
out that Beth had deserted two children and her husband. The children,
mercifully, had been kept out of the papers. It was up to Beth to
confess their existence to Laura.

Beth came over to the stove where Laura was arranging two cups and
saucers.

“Laura, please,” she said, touching her hand gently. “Don’t do this. You
may not want to look at me after I tell you—tell you—”

“You don’t have to tell me anything, Beth. I trust you,” Laura said. “I
love you. Friends don’t need to apologize to each other.”

“Yes, they do. Sometimes it’s the only way.”

“We’ve said too much to each other already. The less we say to each
other, the happier we are together.” And she smiled intimately.

“I can’t help it,” Beth said miserably. “There’s one thing more.”

“Have your coffee first, then,” Laura said with a sigh, pouring it and
carrying the cups to the sunny breakfast table. She sat down and looked
up at Beth expectantly.

“I’m still married,” Beth blurted fearfully after a tight little pause.
She stood rigidly by the stove, forcing out the words with an effort of
will. “I have—I have two children.” She stopped to steady her breath, to
quell the shakes, shutting her eyes for a second. “I lied to you. I had
made love to other women when I saw you before. Not just you.
Vega—Vega—” She broke down and had to turn away.

“I know,” Laura said softly. “I know it all. You don’t need to tell me,
Beth. Come sit down.”

After a stunned pause, a hiatus of disbelief and relief both, Beth
cried, “You know! You know—all that—about the kids, about—”

“Yes. All of it.” Laura held out her hands and Beth came toward her,
trembling, and suddenly sank to her knees and put her head in Laura’s
lap and wept. “How?” she said. “How did you know?” She looked up with a
quick premonition. “Charlie didn’t try to see you, did he?”

Laura shook her head. “My father,” she said, stroking Beth’s hair. “My
bastard of a father, who still loves me in spite of everything. I wonder
why I still love him?” She looked away, perplexed.

“Your father?” Beth felt a stab of regret go through her. She should
never have trusted him.

“He wrote to me,” Laura said. “He told me about you. Just a couple of
days ago, after all that stuff in the papers. He said he wouldn’t have
written even then, but you were in such desperate trouble and he thought
I ought to know. And you know something? I’m glad he did.” She was
really surprised at herself. “I never thought I could care about him
again, when we quarreled years ago. Not after what he tried to do to me.
I would never have broken down and written him myself. But I worried
about him. I’ve thought a lot about him these past years, now that my
life is so much happier. So in a way it was a load off my mind to hear
from him.”

“He promised me he wouldn’t write,” Beth whispered. “He promised me he
wouldn’t interfere with your life again. I should never have told him
about you behind your back.”

“Maybe not, but it all turned out all right,” Laura said. “Now I’m glad.
No, really, honey. If you had asked me first I would have said no. So
maybe it’s for the best, because I would have been a stubborn fool if
I’d refused. He was so curious about Betsy. I guess the idea of being a
grandfather really tickles him. He didn’t know he was until you wrote
him about it.”

“And all these days you’ve known about me,” Beth said, raising her head
a little to look up at Laura. “You knew what I was, what I’d done, and
you didn’t despise me for it.”

“Oh, but I did. At first,” Laura admitted. “I was good and mad at first.
But I think I’ve gotten over it. What good is it to stay mad? It doesn’t
help things at all. Besides, everything you’ve done these past few weeks
you’ve done in a fog. I know that.”

“I did some terrible things to you, Laura,” Beth said. “I’ve lied to you
and betrayed you to your father and accused you of bad faith and—”

But Laura put a restraining finger on her mouth, and then, to Beth’s
surprise, she kissed her. It was a pardon for all the sorrows, big and
little, Beth had caused her. It was an end to pity and a start to love
without illusions, the tender love of friends.

“Please,” Laura said. “It’s over now. You told me everything. I wouldn’t
have asked that of you. I gave you a chance to get out of it, and you
had the guts to go ahead and tell me on your own. That’s enough for
anybody, Beth.”

And Beth understood, looking at her, that she really meant it. She was
not angry or hurt. She had had her moments of temper when she heard from
her father, but they were past and Beth had missed them. And Beth knew,
too, that if Laura still loved her the way she had loved her once, long
ago, she would be furious now with jealousy and disappointment. There
could be no more eloquent testimony to the change in Laura’s feelings
than the gentleness and affection Laura showed her now.

“I came so far to find you, Laura,” Beth murmured. “I thought it was
terribly important to revive your love for me; I thought that that by
itself could save me. I wanted you to think of me the way you did when
we were roommates in school.” She gave a small self-deprecating laugh.
“You know, I wonder if it isn’t true after all.”

“If what isn’t true?”

Beth walked slowly to the breakfast table and sat down opposite Laura,
fingering her coffee cup cautiously. “I wonder if I didn’t need to find
you in order to define myself. It’s wiped away a lot of my delusions
about myself—just knowing what your delusions about me used to be. It’s
taught me a lot, too. More what I am not, and can’t be, than what I am.
But even so, that helps.”

“You’ve been through a lot of hell to find what you were looking for,
Beth,” Laura said. “If I helped in any way, I’m glad.”

“So am I.” Beth smiled at her warmly and finally took a sip of fragrant
coffee. She felt much better, though she couldn’t have said why. She
should have been thoroughly ashamed of her deceptions. But she felt more
hopeful than shamed, closer to happiness than despair.

“I want to thank you for the crystal candlesticks,” Laura told her. “I
keep forgetting. They’re lovely.”

“I got them the same day I saw Charlie’s Scootch in the toy window.
Lord, I was so afraid to come and see you. So excited. It seems like a
million years ago already, and it’s been only a week or two.”

Laura studied her over the rim of her cup. Her eyes were smiling. “Do
you still think you’re in love with me, Beth?” she asked.

Beth shook her head, feeling a little sheepish. “I’ve been in love with
my daydreams. My past. My hopes. Everything but reality. I never knew
you, Laura, until now. I guess I never was in love with you—the real
you. I was in love with what I thought you were.”

“With what you thought I could do for you,” Laura grinned. “And I tried
so hard to live up to it, years ago. I tried so hard to be what you
thought I was, for fear of losing you. God, I loved you, Beth.”

They gazed at each other quietly for a moment.

“Loved? Past tense? It’s all over, then?” Beth said, almost wistfully.
_You aren’t loved like that very often in one lifetime_, she thought. It
was a wrench, even now, to see it end.

“All over but the good part,” Laura said. “The part about being friends.
Only the pain and the romance are missing, and we’ve both had too much
of them. Feels good, doesn’t it? To have somebody who knows everything
about you, and still be able to love them. To get rid of the damned
misunderstandings.”

“Yes,” Beth murmured. “It feels good.” Impulsively she reached across
the table and grasped Laura’s hands. “I don’t need you now, Laura. I’m
not desperate any more. I can make it on my own. And I have you to thank
for opening my eyes.”

“I wasn’t very nice about it,” Laura said.

“You couldn’t afford to be. I wouldn’t have seen the truth if you’d been
nice about it. You did it right.” And in a spasm of gratitude she pulled
Laura’s hands up to her lips and covered them with kisses. “Thanks,” she
whispered. “Thanks, Laura darling.”

The phone rang and startled them both into a laughing fit. Laura got up
and answered it from a small table around the corner in the dining room.
“Yes,” she said. “Hi. No, she’s here. That’s what I said.” And she swung
around to smile at Beth who returned the look, mystified. “Do you want
to talk?” She held the phone out, chuckling.

Beth was seized with alarm. She half-rose from her chair. “It’s not
Charlie, is it? Does he know where you are?”

Laura shook her head. “It’s Beebo.”

Surprised and pleased, Beth took the receiver from Laura and answered. A
sudden fluttery feeling grabbed at her stomach and she felt curiously
like a teen-ager talking to her prom date.

“How are you,” Beebo said. “It’s all over, I see by the papers. I would
have called you or come down to see you, but I was afraid there was
already too much going on. They would have done a double-take if I’d
showed up. Might have kept you over a day just to explain me.”

Beth laughed with her. “Thanks, Beebo,” she said. “I don’t know why I
called you from jail. I just thought you’d understand.” She knew very
well why she’d called Beebo, and she was trying too hard to keep their
talk casual, the way she had when she’d fallen in love once or twice
before in her life. She recognized the symptom with a shock.

“I’m flattered,” Beebo said and she wasn’t kidding. “Well, what’s next?
Where do you go from here? Back to Charlie?”

“No. We talked it all out when he came to get me. I’m going to stay in
New York a while, I guess. Maybe I can find a job.”

Laura took the phone back and asked Beebo over. Beth felt a sweet shiver
of anticipation at the idea of seeing her once more. All at once it was
important that her hair be combed right, her lipstick smooth.




                          Chapter Twenty-three


When she came she had coffee with them—they were on their third cups—and
she listened quietly while Beth explained what she had been through with
Vega—and what Vega had been through with her, for she didn’t spare
herself or her faults.

She felt a slow, lovely enchantment going through her at the sight of
Beebo; just the sight of her tired, handsome face pleased her oddly in a
new and special way. She could not even fib to herself that it was
simple gratitude any more. It was too strong for that.

When Beebo asked her later if she could take her home Beth agreed
without thinking. But suddenly she had to admit, “I don’t really know
where I’m going. I don’t have a home.”

“Back to the hotel?” Beebo said.

“I guess so.”

“That’s no place for you at a time like this,” Beebo told her. “Come
home with me. It’s not luxurious but it’s a hell of a lot friendlier.”

“Thank you,” Beth said quietly, without even arguing. “I’d like to.”

They said goodbye to Laura with promises to call her soon and went down
together in the elevator. “It’s funny,” Beth said. “I was coming up in
this same elevator a couple of hours ago and wondering how I’d feel when
I went down again. Scared and ashamed, or just glad it was all over.”

“Which is it?” Beebo said, leaning against the wall of the elevator and
looking down at her.

“Neither,” Beth admitted, smiling.

“What, then?”

“I guess it’s closest to ... a sort of happiness,” she confessed shyly.
“Or hopefulness, maybe.”

Beebo touched her face gently with her hand, a gesture she had used once
before and that delighted Beth. “You’ve been through enough to whip
anybody,” Beebo said. “I don’t know if it’ll help to think of this, but
you know, a lot of strange things have been done in the name of love. In
the search for love. And for the love of women. Crazy, silly,
unreasonable things, some of them. You’ve just made a journey across the
continent to find yourself. But the real journey was into your own
heart. Isn’t that so?”

Beth nodded as the sliding doors opened, and they walked into the lobby.
Beebo pulled her aside and talked to her. “Let me finish,” she said. “I
want you to understand this. For the love of women I’ve made a fool of
myself, just like most of the men I know. And a lot of the girls. I’ve
suffered like an idiot. At least what you suffered had purpose and
reason to it. You’ve learned from it. I’ll tell you one thing,” she
added with twinkling eyes, “the silliest goddamn thing I ever did was
fall for a girl I hated for years.”

“Who was that?” Beth said.

“You.”

Beth dropped her gaze and a warm thrill suffused her. She could feel her
face turning pink and she didn’t mind at all. Perhaps it was real or
perhaps it was all a dream. She didn’t know or care. All she knew was
that Beebo was offering her a chance at happiness and she asked only
that chance. It might work out, it might not. But she had life and youth
and even courage now, and looking into Beebo’s fine, worn face she felt
a solid reassurance. Beebo’s eyes promised shelter, they promised love,
they promised that glorious undeserved chance at contentment that Beth
had no right to expect from fate. But there it was.

Beebo’s strong hands held her shoulders. “I understand, baby,” she said
softly. “I understand. If that makes any difference to you.”

“It does. All the difference in the world.”

They walked out of the lobby together, hand in hand.




                          Transcriber’s Notes


This text was transcribed from the unchanged reprint edition in the
collection _HOMOSEXUALITY. Lesbians and Gay Men in Society, History and
Literature_, Arno Press: New York, 1975. Materials from a later date
than the original publication year 1960, such as series title, editorial
information, or publisher advertisements, have been omitted.

The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical
and punctuation errors as well as variations in hyphenation were
silently amended. All other changes are shown here (before/after):

   [p. 28]:
   ... “It didn’t used to be,” he said, his voice as soft as
       hers ...
   ... “It didn’t use to be,” he said, his voice as soft as
       hers ...

   [p. 41]:
   ... “Two,” Vega said. “Boy and girl.” ...
   ... “Two,” Beth said. “Boy and girl.” ...

   [p. 68]:
   ... wanted now was to get out, to leave, to breath the open air, ...
   ... wanted now was to get out, to leave, to breathe the open air, ...

   [p. 80]:
   ... children’s room she could heard stirrings and she prayed
       with ...
   ... children’s room she could hear stirrings and she prayed
       with ...

   [p. 110]:
   ... overfed animal, with bed, a desk, and three typewriters, to ...
   ... overfed animal, with a bed, a desk, and three typewriters, to ...

   [p. 134]:
   ... We do. I didn’t used to think so from the pictures she had ...
   ... We do. I didn’t use to think so from the pictures she had ...

   [p. 162]:
   ... under the huge old elms on the broadwalk and talk about ...
   ... under the huge old elms on the boardwalk and talk about ...




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