voices. Through the woods a boy with a lettered sweater came, holding
hands with a girl who was looking up at him, and they were smiling and
pressing close to one another as they walked down the path and sat on
the rock, back there where the road turned. From where they sat, they
could see Mitch’s car, and Leda felt a swing of shame and guilt ride
through her. She snapped the radio on.
“God,” she said, “it really is muggy! Out here in the damn country, it
really is muggy.”
“I thought,” Mitch said, “that it was sort of like fate, what happened
Sunday morning. I needed someone.”
Mitch’s confessions seemed ludicrous and unholy to Leda, there with the
boy and girl behind them. She wished she would stop. The presence of the
couple that had come through the woods inhibited her and made her
nervous. She began to hum slowly to the music on the radio.
“Do you feel that way, Leda?”
Mitch leaned close to Leda and Leda pulled back and sat near the door.
“Let’s drive back to the house,” she said. “I’ve got a pack of mail
waiting for me.”
“Do you want to go, Leda?”
“Why not?” She could see them through the rear mirror. “Can’t stay here
all day.”
“I thought you liked it out here.”
“Well, I want to go. Can’t stay in one place all your life, kid.”
Mitch said, “O.K.,” and she turned the switch on. The rest of the way
back to the house, they did not talk. When they drove in, Leda jumped
out and ran in and Mitch followed. Together they found their mail, a
letter for Leda from Jan’s beau, and for Mitch, a letter from her
father. When they were on the way to their room, Marsha called to Leda.
“Chapter meeting,” she said, “at seven tonight, Leda. It’s important, so
be there.”
“Hey,” Leda called back, “I want to talk to you about an exchange
dinner. The Sig Delts are hot to have an exchange next week. We could
set ourselves up good with that kind of deal, and maybe the silverware
will be here by then. It should have been here long ago and I think—”
Mitch left them talking there in the hall, and as she turned the
doorknob to her room, Robin appeared. Her eyes were swollen with crying
and she told Mitch that she had reported the suspension herself. “They
might as well know,” she said. “My goose is cooked anyway.”
“It’s my fault,” Mitch said. “That Lucifer is a—”
“He’s wonderful, Mitch. He’s the first all-around guy I’ve met besides
Tom. No, it’s my fault—and I don’t care. If I get kicked out, my folks
will be wild. You don’t know my folks, Mitch. Prestige and social
climbing means everything. It’ll kill them.”
“You don’t think they’d kick you out.”
“I think they will. Sure, I try to tell myself they won’t, but I asked
for it. I really did, and then Saturday night finished everything. I
wish Marsha weren’t president. She’s the only decent one.”
“Leda’s wonderful too.” Mitch smiled. “She’s been really wonderful and—”
“I trust her like I trust a snake,” Robin snarled. “Don’t let her fool
you, Mitch. Around here she may be a big cheese, but I’ve heard enough
to convince me she’d make Amber look like a New England schoolteacher.
You never can trust that kind of girl.”
Opening the door to the room, Mitch said, “We better not talk in the
hall.”
Robin looked around her and shook her head and said it didn’t really
matter where _she_ talked. She said she had to go back to her room and
get her homework done because at least that much wasn’t messed up, and
there was that much.
* * * * *
After dinner that evening, the Tri Eps filed into the small room off the
living room. This was the Chapter Room, where the active members of
Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon held their meetings. The pledges were instructed
to stay upstairs in their rooms when such meetings occurred, and Mitch
was propped up on her bed, staring unseeingly at her French assignment.
It had been impossible to concentrate these first few weeks of school.
There was always a debris of thoughts to clear up in her mind, and when
one mass was swept away, the windfall hit again and each new amount
seemed staggering. Determined, Mitch began reading the lesson aloud,
trying to impress the catchy rules of pronunciation on her brain, but
she could not. Her thoughts returned invariably to the afternoon and the
way Leda had been and the change that was always instant and arresting
within Leda. Mitch got to her feet and drifted to the window, and sat in
the chair looking out into the street. Monday night was chapter-meeting
night in Greek Town, and there was a reverent hush in the neighborhood.
Decisions and rules and amendments to rules were being developed
throughout the area, and it was like a grand corporation manufacturing a
variety of brands, all tested, all ready to compete with one another. As
she saw the darkness with the spots of light in it and the stillness,
Mitch wondered what it was like to be an independent. She wondered if
Charlie were working in the drugstore, and if Lucifer were clowning in
the chapter meeting across the street, and then she wondered achingly
what Bud Roberts was thinking and if he had told his “brothers” and if
he laughed and told them and if they laughed too. She picked up a copy
of the school magazine and turned the pages, reading the jokes without
smiling and looking at the pictures of the students there. The breeze
coming in on her was cool, but there was a tiredness in her like that of
a series of humid days that were close and without air....
“Is _that_ the way you study?” Leda said, nudging Mitch. She was smiling
and her hand on Mitch’s shoulder was the same hand that had been there
on Sunday and not cold or frigid now.
“I fell asleep.”
“I guess you did! Well, that damn meeting is over for another week.
Robin’s case has been referred to Grand Council. They’re meeting in
Marsha’s room now.”
Mitch sat forward. “You think it’ll be O.K.?”
“I don’t know, honey. It’s hard to tell. I just don’t know.”
Leda rolled her hair in tight ringlets and fished her soap from her
glass. “Let’s go to bed right away,” she said. “I’m going to wash up and
then let’s go to bed.”
“What about the Grand Council?”
“Don’t wait for them to decide anything. It may take all night. Get your
bath, and we’ll turn in. O.K.?”
The bath water was too hot, but after the sting it felt good on Mitch’s
leg. In the other tub, Marybell Van Casey was singing “On, Wisconsin”
and splashing the water vigorously. Mitch eased herself down to a
sitting position, listened to the other girls in the room, washing out
their socks, brushing their teeth, and talking about Robin. She
recognized Kitten’s voice, and the voices of several of the pledges, but
there was no way of learning more about the incidents that occurred
during the meeting. The feelings were mixed, and influenced by what each
girl thought she should feel. The pledges thought that they should side
with those who recommended stern reprimand, and only a few dared to
express sympathy. None rebelled against the occurrence. No one defied
those who accused Robin. Only Mitch, inside, and she did not speak out.
She pushed the soapy cloth back and forth on her arms and legs and neck
and remained silent. There was enough to be wary of, and there were no
answers to her own questions.
Later, Leda turned the lights out and for a moment there was no sound in
the room, but an air of expectancy, a period of waiting for one to
speak. Then, in a rush of covers, springing over to Mitch’s bed, Leda
clung to the girl. She said, “Mitch, Mitch, oh, God!” Passionately she
nipped the girl’s neck and shoulder with her teeth, and pulled the
pajamas from her large body. Mitch helped her, and waited while Leda
took her own off, and then they came together, moving rhythmically
against one another.
When they talked, later, Mitch asked her about the afternoon and Leda
cried, saying her words between half sobs welling from the slim body
that was pressed tight against Mitch’s.
“I don’t know what came over me,” she said. “That couple came along and
I don’t know what happened to me. I felt as though—Mitch, don’t ask me.”
“How did you feel?”
“I felt—guilty.”
Mitch said, “Oh.”
“Do you, Mitch? About us?”
“No ... not yet. I felt—I know how _you_ feel because I think I felt
that way after Bud Roberts and—”
“No!” Leda said sharply. “Not that way! Not that kind of guilt! God,
no!”
Leda wanted to laugh and scream and be hysterical until her whole body
was spent and she could fall exhausted down into a bed of grass and let
the wet blades cool her. How was it possible to make a child understand
what an adult could not comprehend either? It was better that she did
not realize, that the kinks and bumps and twists that resolved
themselves into the overt actions were shielded and hidden from Mitch.
_One_ could bear guilt. For both, one could carry it and it would be
better.
“Go to sleep, darling,” Leda said. “I love you, Mitch. This is between
us. It’s ours, Mitch. Keep it ours and never tell it.”
Mitch said, “I will. I don’t talk about things. I mean, I think I know
what you mean.”
They could hear the chattering just when sleep was coming, and the rush
of the feet in the hall. Leda sat up straight and said, “What in hell is
going on?”
She poked the light button and unlocked the door. “Hey,” she yelled,
“what the hell is the rumpus? Did the Russians attack?”
One of the girls stopped long enough to say that Robin Maurer was
depledged. That tomorrow she would have to move out of the house.
Chapter Six
The Tri Epsilon porch was crowded when Mitch and Charlie came up the
walk and stood against the columns. In the swings and chairs there were
half a dozen couples locked in embraces at various angles, and many
others clung to their dates standing. It was Saturday evening, five
minutes shy of closing hour, and the scene was usual.
“I had a good time with you tonight,” Charlie said, and in that setting
his voice sounded loud and intrusive. Mitch glanced at the minute hand
flying slowly in circles under the glass in her wrist watch. They had
been to a late movie and for sodas in the Cortille after. Soon she would
be with Leda. Three minutes.
The porch light flickered on and off to give the signal, and a voice
called out, “Twelve-thirty.” Charlie shuffled his feet uneasily. “Well,”
he said, coughing, lingering, “this is it, I guess.... May I kiss you
good night?”
Mitch was uncomfortable when he leaned forward and let his lips touch
hers lightly. Then he backed away, waving faintly, a curved grin on his
round young face, until he collided with a couple behind him saying good
night at the edge of the steps. Mitch turned, and once inside the screen
door, ran up the stairs to see if Leda was there. The room was dark, and
when Mitch pushed the light button, there was only the disarray of
clothing on the bed, the shoes kicked about on the floor, and the papers
scattered on the desk, reminding her that her economics assignment was
barely begun. She pulled the blinds and slipped out of her clothes, into
her terry-cloth robe and the worn slippers. The bathroom was crowded
with Tri Epsilons, and as she ran her bath water and waited, she saw
them pass in the halls, tired and bedraggled from their evening, many of
them rushing to the windows to wave to their dates as they left. Leda
was not among them, and as Mitch eased herself into the hot water, she
prayed that Leda was only late, and not in trouble somewhere with Jake.
Jane Bell called her a few minutes after she was in the bathtub.
“Phone,” she said. “Some guy.”
Dripping and curious, Mitch hovered in a wide towel as she took the call
in the booth outside the bathroom.
“I said, this is Jake. You know.”
“Yes, but—Has something—”
“Listen,” he yelled out at her, “don’t blurt anything out where the
whole bunch can hear. Leda’s O.K. We’re just a little tied up and she’ll
be late. Now listen, can you hear me?”
Mitch’s knees grew unexplainably weak. “Yes,” she said.
“In one hour exactly—that’s at one-forty-five—I’ll let Leda off at the
side entrance. She’ll come in through the cellar door. Got that? You get
down there and unlock the door for her. Now, have you got it?”
“I guess so, but—”
“Don’t get panicky. It happens all the time. Look, just be a sweet kid
and get that door unlocked for her. Don’t unlock it ahead of time,
though, because someone might get wise. They’ll be in bed by the time we
get in. And something else—you there?”
“Yes.”
“Leda says not to tell anyone she’s still out. If anyone comes looking
for her, lock the door and say she’s sick, or pretend you’re asleep, or
something like that. O.K.? And when you meet her at the cellar door,
bring her robe and slippers.”
“Is it all right? I mean—”
“Look, kid, Leda wouldn’t ask you to do it if it wasn’t. Now be a
sweetheart. Promise?”
“I promise,” Mitch said, and the click came in her ear after Jake said,
“Fine, baby, don’t forget. One-forty-five.”
She did not bother to finish her bath. Pulling the plug, she gathered
her things together and came face to face with Kitten as she was about
to leave. “Hey,” Kitten said, “how are you? Why don’t you come down for
hot cocoa in the kitchen?”
“O.K.,” Mitch said. “As soon as I get into my pajamas.”
After Mitch was dressed, she wrapped Leda’s thin robe about her slippers
and tied them in a ball. On the shelf near the stairway to the cellar,
she hid them behind the large can of turpentine.
When she reached the kitchen, there was a huge pot of steaming cocoa on
the stove. Marsha was stirring it, the sleeves of her green wool robe
pushed up to her elbows, her hair rolled up on red and white rag
curlers. At the table, Kitten and Casey and Bebe Duncan talked busily
about their evening.
“Hi,” Kitten said. “I suppose you couldn’t drag Leda down.”
Mitch laughed and shook her head. She sat on the high wooden stool and
looked at her watch. It was ten minutes after one. Marsha poured the
cocoa into the cups and pulled a chair over near the table. They kept on
talking. Casey asked Mitch to try out for the swimming team next week,
and the chatter about sports grew and lasted. One-twenty.
“Who was your date tonight?” Kitten asked suddenly, turning toward
Mitch.
“Oh, Charlie. He’s in some of my classes.”
“Independent?”
The cocoa was cold and flat. “Yes. I—It was my first date with him. He’s
been very nice to me.”
“I didn’t mean anything,” Kitten said. “It’s O.K. to date them once in a
while. You know, just so it’s not a habit.”
Mitch swallowed. She had expected more trouble from Kitten, but the
subject changed again and Charlie was virtually forgotten by everyone.
The minute hand seemed to whirl. There was no way to go down the cellar
steps without being seen, and the talk was endless. When Marsha moved
toward the stove to reheat the remaining cocoa, Mitch felt a warm rising
in her chest and her hopes of getting Leda in safely caved in.
“I’m not the least bit sleepy,” she heard Bebe say, “not the least bit.”
* * * * *
Jake came back from the phone booth with a smile. He signaled to Leda to
finish her beer. “Now, that’s the kind of roommate to have,” he said.
“Lets you take her car and opens the door for you when you come home. I
gotta train mine better.”
He paid the check and took her arm. She stumbled on the cobblestone walk
that led away from the Fat Lady, a café just on the outskirts of
Cranston. It was a popular place for late dates because few of the
regular college crowd went there. Those who did were usually there for
the same reason—to avoid being seen and to make a few phone calls before
starting off someplace else.
The air was brisk, and the ground was still soft from the rain that had
fallen earlier in the day. Dizzily, Leda thought of Mitch, and burned to
have her and be with her, but in the pocket of her coat her fingers
touched the letter. Jan was coming in five days. She laid her head back
on the seat in Mitch’s car, and when the motor started and the tires
skidded loose, she recalled last night’s dream.
She had been asleep somewhere in a rambling bed with Mitch beside her.
They were naked, and covering them there was a brilliant red comforter,
and snow was falling around them. Sleepily, and with that surging ache
inside of her, she had turned to Mitch’s back and cupped her hands
around on Mitch’s breasts and kissed the smooth white skin of her
shoulders, and Mitch had turned instantly. She had said, “Leda!” in that
startled, shocked voice, and the features of her face fell away and
became Jan’s features. And again, “Leda, what on earth are you doing?”
The dream had ended there.
“Hell!” Leda swore, and Jake grinned, his eyes on the road. “You got
yourself a little load on, miss. Too bad, too—could have been a good
night for it.”
“Every night’s a good night for it where you’re concerned.”
“That’s why you love me,” Jake laughed, “my insatiable queen!”
“What time is it?” Leda said.
He turned the corner sharply and she fell over against him.
“We’re on time,” he said. “It’s only one-twenty now. We’ll make it right
on the dot.”
* * * * *
The kitchen lights were bright at a quarter to two, and inside, Mitch
sat on the stool, her eyes moving from the empty cocoa cup to the cellar
stairs just outside the kitchen door on the left. Marsha was rattling on
about clothes and only Kitten had left the gathering to go up to bed.
Leda was waiting, but there was no way to reach her. Because of Jake.
When she thought of him, Mitch glowered at the floor, imagining in a
fleeting series of mental pictures what they had done that evening, Jake
and Leda. The pictures were sordid and painful, and almost compulsively
Mitch forced them to come, and each one was worse. Leda did not love
him, and yet she persisted in being with him, always, as if he were a
medicine or a drug. He drove Mitch’s car, and called up and asked Mitch
to let Leda in, and the whole affair was tiresome and nerve-racking.
Mitch vowed she would tell Leda not to see Jake any more. When she got
in, and _if_ she got in, Mitch would tell her that she didn’t like it.
She loved Leda and Leda loved her. There was no need for this fear and
worry and frustration. Suddenly, Mitch realized that Marsha was standing
there, speaking to her.
“I said, are you coming to bed? It’s two o’clock.”
Mitch jumped to her feet and hurried to rinse her cup and saucer at the
sink. Then, after the light was switched off in the kitchen, she
followed Bebe and Marsha up the stairs to the second floor. She would
have to wait to run back and open the door for Leda. If she was still
there! If everything would only work out! Marsha waved good night, and
Bebe wandered off down the hall, humming “St. Louis Blues” aimlessly.
The house was strangely quiet and still. Mitch waited ten minutes in the
doorway of the bathroom, and then, softly, the tips of her slippers
barely touching the stairs as she moved, she found her way to the cellar
stairway, and reaching up behind the large square tin can, she found the
rolled ball of clothing that she had left there. Her other hand grabbed
the long silver flashlight, and she flinched at the strong creaking of
the stairs as she made her way down and ran toward the door in the back
room of the cellar. She unbolted it, and Leda, leaning up against it on
the outside, nearly fell in. Jake was behind her. She held the door open
an inch and whispered something to him before she closed it. Then she
turned toward Mitch, and reaching for her waist, she came into her arms,
and her kiss smelled heavily of stale liquor and tobacco.
“Get into your robe,” Mitch said. “I’m petrified. You don’t know how my
stomach felt when it was time and everyone was still in the kitchen.”
“I could see them,” Leda said, “but I knew you’d come, honey. When you
could.”
She began to pull her sweater over her head and unhook her skirt. “I’ll
have to undress here and leave my clothes under the pillows until
tomorrow. Then if anyone sees us going back upstairs, we can say we came
down for Cokes. Couldn’t sleep. I even have two nickels. Look, you go
get two Cokes out of the machine. God, my clothes are stuck to me!”
Mitch walked across the room and slid the nickels into the slot. “If I’d
thought of the machine, I could have got here on time. I never thought
of it.”
She felt the cold ice feeling of the bottles as they hit the small case
at the bottom of the machine. “Shall I open them?”
Leda said, “Yes,” and then, “Look, Mitch.”
Mitch turned the flashlight to look at her, and she saw her standing
there, bare except for the spike-heeled shoes on her feet. “What are you
going to do about it?” Leda laughed. “You aren’t going to just stand
there?”
Slowly, Mitch came toward her and set the Cokes on the table. She put
out the flashlight, and her hands found Leda’s body. Then for the first
time, she was the aggressor. The strength that was sleeping in her
awakened. A powerful compulsion welled up inside of Mitch as she felt
the pliant curves of Leda’s body. Then they lay together, breathless and
filled with a new peace. When she spoke at last, Leda said, “Mitch?
Mitch! Oh, God, I love you.”
A feeling of power, and the knowledge of Leda’s quivering submission,
filled Mitch as she let her eyes stare up at the blackness in the
cellar. When she had gone to Leda, she had not known what she would do,
and it happened without thought or care for what followed, but it was
easy and natural. She was the conqueror, and it was a sensation abundant
in glory and desire.
“Want to stay here for a while?” Leda asked. “It’s too late now for
anyone to care whether we’re in our rooms or not. I like it here.... Did
you have a good time?”
Mitch said, “Pretty good. We went to a movie. Nothing special.” She
rubbed Leda’s back and patted her hair. “How about you?” she said. “How
come you were late?”
“Oh, Jake was in one of his usual carnal moods but I was too high and we
argued.”
“Then why do you do it, Leda? With Jake, I mean.”
“What?”
“Why do you do it with Jake?”
“Who knows?” Leda said, stretching magnificently, pulling her robe
around her. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m trying to prove something.”
“I don’t like it, Leda.”
“_You_ don’t like it! What in hell does that mean?”
“It means,” Mitch said, “that I don’t like you sleeping with a guy when
you’re in love with me.” Even to Mitch the words sounded unreal, as if
she were playing a game or reading someone else’s lines or living a
foolish semi-conscious daydream. Yet that was what she had wanted to
say. Leda sat up and moved from Mitch. “Listen,” she said. “Don’t get me
wrong. I may be a little uncertain about it, but men come first with me.
What do you think we are—engaged to be married? Are you going to propose
now, and then settle down with me in a little goddamn vine-covered
cottage and raise kids? Sometimes you’re God-awful thick in the head,
Mitch.”
“But you said you didn’t even _like_ Jake! Maybe I am thick in the
head.”
“Maybe you are! Who said anything about Jake? I said _men_ come first.
Men, as distinguished from women! Sure, I’ve got bisexual tendencies,
but by God, I’m no damn Lesbian.”
“You said you loved me. Maybe I don’t understand—”
Leda got up from the couch and picked the Coke bottle up. She took the
flash in her hand, and then, turning around to face Mitch sitting there,
she said, “You don’t understand much at all. But get this! Jan is coming
Wednesday. Lay off the love business while she’s around. I’m afraid she
doesn’t understand much either, and she sure as hell wouldn’t understand
this. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”
“Wait a minute,” Mitch said, catching the girl’s wrist. “Wait a minute,
Leda. I love you. Don’t leave it like this. All I know is that I love
you.”
“You better get to know men too, kid. I mean that. There are a lot of
people who love both and no one gives a damn, and they just say you’re
oversexed and they don’t care. But they start getting interested when
you stick to one sex. Like you’ve been doing, Mitch. I couldn’t love you
if you were a Lesbian.”
“I’m not,” Mitch said, wondering what the word meant. “I’m not. I—I just
haven’t met a man yet who makes me feel the way you do.”
“Maybe you don’t give them a chance,” Leda answered. “Come on now. Let’s
go to bed. God, it’s three-thirty.”
They tiptoed up the back steps and down the quiet, dimly lighted hall to
their room. Leda pulled the covers back and fell into her bed. She
murmured a tired good night, and her eyes closed and her breathing came
heavily. Mitch did not sleep. She lay tossing about on her bed across
from Leda, her mind running through the incidents of the evening to
review them and examine them. There was only a fragmentary edge left to
the sensuous memory of her loving Leda, and looming now in a sick
foreground there was this word.
Slowly Mitch got up and went to the bookshelf, taking from it the blue
book, and leafing through it, holding it near the flash that Leda had
left on the desk.