Mytilene), one of the Aegean Islands. 2. Erotic;—in allusion to
the reputed sensuality of the people of Lesbos.
Mitch closed the book and stood staring at the bare light of the street
lamp in front of Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon. She could hear Leda’s breath
coming slower now and more evenly, in deep sleep, and the dictionary had
told her nothing.
Chapter Seven
Mitch sat in the stuffed chair near the window sewing up the burst seam
in her coat.
“Well, darling, I wish you could _see_ what Dwight has done with the
studio. Of course, it’s the only place in the whole goddamn office
building where a body can get a good stiff drink during the day and
Dwight says—”
The words went on endlessly, like a radio playing in a room when you do
not listen constantly, but now and then, catching illusive scraps of the
whole meaning, the crumbs of an endless dialogue. Jan had been there for
three days. They were funny days. Leda fastened herself to Jan, hanging
on the words and laughing before the pause, compulsively, almost as
though she were afraid Jan would not say something hilarious each time
she spoke. Jan was beautiful, too, older, with faint lines in her face
that became real under the harsh electric ceiling light in Mitch’s and
Leda’s room, but still very fine and hardly there at all. Leda sat on
the bed next to Jan that afternoon.
“I don’t know if I’ll marry him or not,” she heard Leda say. “Do you
like him, Jan?”
“He’s a doll, darling. You know who he reminds me of? Frank Pierce.
Member him? Des Moines. Member?”
“Oh, God,” Leda shrieked, laughing. “Him! One perfect rose! Sure, I
remember Frank Pierce.”
Jan wore a tight print dress, high black alligator shoes that were
strapped around her slender ankles, and her fingers flashed and sparkled
with rings and glitter. Mother Nessy had said, “Your jewelry is
_ex_-qui-site, Mrs. Taylor. Why, it’s _fab_ulous!” when she met Jan on
Wednesday and Jan had dinner in the dining room with the Tri Eps. Mitch
sat at another table. From where she sat she could see Leda’s face, her
eyes avoiding Mitch and fixed on Jan’s red lips and the whiteness of her
teeth. When Jan left the house to return to the hotel for the evening,
everyone had flocked to Leda’s room to say how they liked her mother and
what fun it must be to have such a young mother. Then when they were
gone and it was late, Leda did not talk to Mitch or come to her there in
the night. And Mitch worried.
She had found the explanation for the word in a thick volume on the
psychology shelf in the library. A Lesbian was abnormal, a female who
could not have satisfactory relations with a male, but only with another
female, and Mitch knew it had been that way. A bisexual could love both
sexes, and Leda loved Mitch, and she was with Jake like that too. Mitch
thought back to the crushes she had had in boarding school, awful
emotional orgies in which she had idolized certain teachers, and Miss
English, the dietician, and there had never been any boys. Until Leda,
there had been no one who had set her whole body pulsing with the sweet
pain and the glory in the end. That was abnormal.
Jan was looking at Mitch, waiting for an answer to the question Mitch
did not hear.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”
Leda smiled. “Jan said, ‘Who’s your man of the hour?’ It’s Charlie,
isn’t it, Mitch? Isn’t he the one?”
The needle came through the wool in the skirt and pricked Mitch’s
finger. She tried to force a smile, but her lips felt dry and stiff. She
knew that Leda was baiting her, trying to indicate the proper answer to
Mitch. “I guess so,” Mitch said. “I guess he’s the one.”
There was a mixed look of repulsion and pity on Jan’s face when she
regarded Mitch. Mitch could feel it, like the heat of a warm sun,
uncomfortable and sickly. She wished that they would go someplace and
not stay here in the room and she felt that Jan knew she was abnormal.
“Well, what’s he like?” Jan continued. “I bet he’s a big wheel on campus
and you’ll be wearing his pin before long.”
Leda jumped up to change the subject and grabbed a yellow envelope from
the desk. “I forgot to show you the pictures,” she said. “I forgot to
show you the pictures Jake and I took on our last picnic.” She fumbled
with the seal on the envelope until the pictures fell out on the bed and
Jan picked them up and riffled through them, laughing and screaming out
her words the way she did. Mitch was grateful when Casey poked her head
in the door and said, “Phone for you, Mitch. Want to take it in the
hall?”
“Don’t let us disturb you, honey,” Jan sang out, but Mitch had already
moved for the door and followed the blue hall rug down to the booth near
the bathroom.
“Peculiar girl,” Jan said. “Certainly is awkward.”
Leda passed another snapshot to Jan. It would be over tomorrow. Jan
would leave and it would be over, Leda thought, and then she could make
it up to Mitch. It had been horrible, the last few days, treating Mitch
as though she were a piece of furniture, Jan’s presence heightening the
guilt that Leda nurtured.
“Is she popular?”
“Oh, I don’t know, Jan,” Leda answered. “She goes out a lot. Really, she
can be sweet.”
“Well, _I_ haven’t even seen her smile. Not once. Her lips just stretch,
but she doesn’t smile. You don’t even seem like friends.”
Leda said, “We get along all right.”
Jan lit a cigarette and stuck the end into a long ivory holder. “I do
like the other girls,” she said. “I thought you’d probably get yourself
all graduated before I could get down here and see your sorority house
and meet everyone. Dwight is hell about traveling. I told you I went to
Louisville by myself for the fabric show, and he just stayed behind. He
_hates_ to travel.”
Leda had met Dwight during the summer. He was a fat, greasy man with a
stubby cigar, wet on the end, hanging there from his mouth, and his head
thinly covered with single strands of black hair that began inches back
from his high forehead. On his little finger he wore a huge diamond
ring, and there was a sweet, sickly smell of cologne and tobacco about
him. Dwight was a big man in fabrics and Jan worked with him. She would
come home and open the door and Leda would hear his voice behind Jan’s,
and then the shaking of the cocktail mixer and the ice cubes, the low
music on the phonograph and Jan’s laughter ringing through the rooms. He
had looked at Leda and shown his brown teeth and he’d said, “Well, now,
by God. An apple never falls far from the tree!”
“You going to marry Dwight?” Leda asked.
Jan inhaled and let the smoke come out in tiny round clouds. “I don’t
know. I’d never have to worry where my next thousand is coming from. He
hasn’t asked me yet, you know.”
Glancing at her watch, Leda said, “Maybe we better go downstairs. It’s
almost time for dinner. Fish tonight.”
“Hell!” Jan swore. “I abhor fish! Member Ted Thorpton? Member the way he
used to drag me around to those damn fish houses for lobster Newburgh? I
think you came along a couple of times too, honey. You member?
Washington? Member that place we went down a gangplank to get to and
there was sawdust on the floor and that ungodly fishy odor?”
Leda nodded. She remembered.
* * * * *
Robin Maurer put the arm back in its cradle and left the phone booth.
Lucifer was leaning against the brick wall of the dorm reading the
newspaper.
“Any luck?” he said.
“No, it’s too late for tonight. She says she’s got some kind of a
special date with a guy named Charlie. No telling what that sorority has
thought up. She’s probably going off to smoke opium someplace.”
“Why didn’t you ask her to join us? Her and that Charlie horse?”
“I did. She said she couldn’t. She said it was a special night. Who
knows?”
“Did you tell her the party was right across the street at Delta Phi?
Maybe she’s lazy. Maybe she thought it was someplace she’d have to hike
to.”
“No,” Robin said, pulling a leaf off the tree as they passed down the
walk from Main Dorm. “I think she might have a good date or something
and wants to be alone with him. Then too, maybe the Tri Eps forbade her
to be seen with an old reprobate like me.” They turned the corner and
kicked the leaves while they walked. “Tell me something, Luke,” she
said, “honestly.”
“Sure.”
“How about your fraternity brothers? Don’t they give you a bad time
because you date me? I know how independents go over in Greek Town.”
Lucifer reached over for her hand and swung it back and forth while they
walked along. “Naw,” he said, “not at our house. We ain’t rich and we
don’t know anyone who is. We ditched the rule book a long time ago.
That’s how come I got in. You know, I’m pure Indian, with a little
Russian on my mother’s side, and a little Chinese on my father’s.
Seriously, Robbie, it ain’t that way at the house. Sure, we got eager
beavers with all kinds of fool notions, but none of them go into effect.
I couldn’t stomach it.”
“I wish Mitch would get out of Tri Ep. I have a feeling she’s not going
to stomach it either. The whole crowd’s too fast.”
“How about that Leda?” Lucifer whistled. “Woooooowwww!”
* * * * *
The candles were lighted on the tables in the Tri Ep dining room. At the
head table, Leda and Jan sat opposite Mother Nessy, and Marsha sat
beside her. Above the other voices singing out, Mitch could hear Kitten
Clark’s lively soprano. Nessy tapped on her glass, giving the signal to
eat. Mitch sat at a side table in the back of the room. Her fork stabbed
at the thin pieces of white fish, and pushed them in the mashed potatoes
before she raised the fork to her mouth and swallowed the tasteless
concoction. She thought of calling Robin back and telling her that
Charlie and she would meet them after all, but then she could not. It
was all planned. She would pick him up in the car at eight-thirty. They
would have to be alone, Mitch knew, or it would never work. The food
felt heavy in her stomach, and she took each bite with a long sip of
water. Casey sat across from her, still talking about the swimming team,
encouraging Mitch to join it.
“You were terrific the other day,” she said. “With enough practice you
could develop fast.”
“I’ll come over again on Monday,” Mitch told her. Through the maze of
faces, Mitch saw Leda look at her and then away. She heard Jan’s voice,
louder than any other, and the inevitable laughter following what she
said. Mitch wondered if she ever said anything you were not supposed to
laugh at.
“How’s your backstroke? That’s what we need. Someone with a neat
backstroke.”
“I’ll have to get more time in. It used to be my best stroke.”
“Say, wasn’t that Robin Maurer on the phone?”
“Yes.”
The others at the table looked up, interested. “I thought I recognized
her voice,” Casey said. “How is she?”
“Pretty good. She’s living at the dorm.”
“Too bad about Robin,” Casey sighed. “She just wasn’t sorority
material.”
It was during dessert, when they sang the “Sweetheart Song,” that Mitch
could feel Leda’s eyes watching her. Heat poured through Mitch, and
there was a light yearning in her breasts that seeped through the rest
of her body and warmed her.
“Tri Epsilon is a sisterhood
Of love that lasts forever,
Where memories are golden ones
That are forgotten never!
“Tri Epsilon, Tri Epsilon,
For her name we will strive
So long as we are sisters,
So long as we’re alive.”
Marsha led the applause, and then, rising and standing at her place at
the head table, she waited for the room to quiet down. “Remember,” she
said, “closing hours are at one tonight because of the game tomorrow.
That’s an extra half hour, so don’t anyone be late. And now I think we
all ought to say good-by to Mrs. Taylor. She’s leaving us tomorrow, and
I know we’ve all enjoyed her visit.” Marsha hummed the note. The words
sounded sad and heartfelt.
“Won’t you come back? We’ll miss you.
Will you remember our love?
Good-by, good luck, we’ll miss you,
We send our prayer for you above.
Will you remember our love?”
Jane Bell jumped up and started a round of “For She’s a Jolly Good
Fellow.” The smile was glued on Jan’s face, and Mitch could hear her
saying, “Lovely, simply lovely,” all the while. Mitch wondered if her
mother would have said that, and if they would have sung to her. And
what her mother would have thought if she were alive and knew what Mitch
was planning. She pushed her chair back with the others while Mother
Nessy rose regally and took Marsha’s arm, to be led from the dining
room.
“Why don’t you stay for more coffee?” Casey said to Mitch.
Mitch explained that she had an early date. She swallowed what was there
in her cup, and hurried upstairs to dress before Leda and Jan returned
to the room. They were going out with Jake for the evening. Jan thought
it would be “a perfect riot.”
* * * * *
The car kicked up the gravel when it left the drive and spun around the
corner. Mitch was not used to driving at night, but she knew the town
well now. She turned on the radio and a lusty torch song sang out at
her. The streets were not very crowded, and passing through Greek Town,
Mitch saw the lights in other houses, shining and showing the figures of
boys and girls moving in the large rooms. As she came near the campus,
she admired the long walks, well lighted, and the great oak trees
bordering the walks, and a few solitary figures strolling along them.
The traffic increased as she approached the main street, and went fast
down to the light. After she left it, she stopped again a few blocks
down in front of the drugstore. Charlie was waiting there. He had a neat
black-and-gray checked sports coat and gray pants, and under his arm a
paper bag. When he saw her pull up, he grinned and hurried toward the
car.
“Hi,” he called. “Right on time.”
He opened the door and moved in next to her. As they drove out toward
the Creek Road, he said, “I got the bottle. You know, it’ll be fun.
We’ve got a real moon, too. Did you remember the blankets?”
Mitch nodded and motioned toward the back seat, where the brown blankets
were folded beside the bottles of ginger ale and the opener.
“I brought sandwiches too,” Charlie said. “Had Doc make some up for me.
Say, this was a swell idea. How’d you ever think of it?”
The husky crooner sang out on the radio and a tenor saxophone chimed in
and gave the music a soothing, smoothing air. Mitch put her foot down
harder on the gas pedal.
* * * * *
It was one of those clear, brisk November nights and the ground was hard
and cold when they sat down.
“I got rye,” Charlie said. “Supposed to be easier on you. I’m not much
of a drinker, myself.”
Mitch spread one blanket on the ground while Charlie dragged the other
over and the bottles of ginger ale. He took paper cups from the bag with
the liquor bottle inside, and pried the tops off the bottles. Pouring
two drinks, he set them on the ground beside Mitch.
“My first time out here,” he said after he sipped his drink. “You ever
been out here before?”
“No,” Mitch said, remembering the last time. “No.”
The air felt good on her face, and from the car a few feet away Mitch
could hear the lush tones of a low piano. Above them hung a round moon
the way it looks in November. She thought of Leda, and leaning back
until her head touched the blanket, she closed her eyes and pictured it
again. _You aren’t going to just stand there? I couldn’t love you if you
were a Lesbian._
With her hand supporting her head like that, she could hear the steady
tick-tick of her wrist watch. He was beside her, talking and filling the
paper cups with fresh drinks, then reaching for her hand. She turned
toward him, and they kissed. She could hear him sigh, “Susan,” in the
breaking away, holding her. His heart was beating very fast. They kissed
again, and this time Mitch tried to imagine Leda and for a moment she
could feel her lips until the roughness of his cheeks brushed against
hers. She drank her third drink straight down.
“Do you want to know something?” he said. His voice sounded strange and
falsely hallowed. Mitch felt an impulse to smile. She knew what he would
say. “I love you, Susan. I do, no kidding.”
In the near distance Mitch could hear the announcer: “United States
Weather Bureau forecast for Cranston and vicinity: Ten P.M. temperature,
forty-five degrees; humidity, fifty per cent. Barometer, two nine point
nine nine, rising. Tonight, clear, becoming cloudy toward morning....”
Charlie’s hand climbed from her waist until it touched her breast and
then drew back sharply. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Susan.”
“Don’t be,” Mitch said, and then, “I love you too—Charlie.”
He was gentle and kind. There was a slow awkwardness to his kisses, and
his hands came on her almost apologetically, fumbling, his voice
mumbling, “Susan,” over and over, and the stiffness to his body. When he
found her, she said, “Charlie, let’s move to the car.”
They left the blanket and the bottles, and as he pushed the seat back
for her, he pressed the tab of the radio off. Sitting on the leather
seat, he put his arm around her and held her there, his lips touching
her neck, wet and hot on her skin. “Gee,” he kept saying. “Oh, gee,
Susan. Is it all right? Should we—”
Mitch was afraid because it still was not the way it was with Leda. It
was empty and aimless. He was sweet and shy and he loved her. If it was
not now, then when? When ever? She reached out and touched his hair, a
cheated feeling inside of her when her hand touched his ears and his
neck and there was no hair there. “Do _you_ want to?” she said. “Do you
really want to?”
He could barely talk. His voice was a thick whisper. “Gosh,” he said.
“Oh, yes. I do. Listen, Susan, I’ve never touched a girl. Honestly,
never once in my life. I—I have something in my wallet. Look, I know
what you must think because I have it with me, but I swear—I swear that
I just always carry it and I never thought—”
Mitch said, “I know. It’s all right.”
She lay down on the leather seat, cramped, so that her feet came off the
end. Charlie was kneeling on the floor of the car, and, kneeling like
that, he began to kiss her again, and pull at her sweater, until he had
it open and the hooks undone.
For a long time he kissed her, and the open windows let the breeze in.
“Susan,” he kept muttering, “Susan, I really love you. I really love
you, Susan.”
“I know,” she said. “I know you do.”
“You’re cold,” he said. “I can feel you’re cold when I touch you.”
Mitch felt the chill through her whole body. “Hurry,” she said. “Please
hurry.”
His hands clutched her desperately, and he began to whine in a strange
way. After a moment he sat back on the floor.
“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t.”
“It’s all right, Charlie. I told you it was all right. I’ll put my
sweater on. Then I won’t be cold and you won’t have to hurry and—”
“No,” he whispered. “No. I just—can’t.”
His shoulders shook violently as he began to cry.
Mitch dressed while he sat there. She got out of the car and went over
to the ground where the blankets were. When she came back with them, he
was sitting up on the seat in the back, staring down at the floor.
“Charlie—” Mitch began.
He shook his head and did not look at her. “I want to go home,” he said.
“Just drop me off when we get back in town.”
“I’m sorry. I—Was it me?”
“I don’t want to talk about it! I don’t want to ever talk about it!”
She put the blankets down beside him and got into the front seat. When
they were off the dirt road and on the highway, she snapped the radio on
again. Through the mirror, she could see his figure slumped over, his
hands holding his chin, his eyes fixed on the side window. When they
reached town, he got out of the car and did not look back.
* * * * *
They sat on Mother Nesselbush’s purple love seat, in the small
beige-walled anteroom of her suite on the first floor of the Tri Epsilon
house. There were Mother Rasmussen, Mother Muriel, and Mother Carter,
seated across from Nessy, whose large hips hugged the lime-colored
cushions of the chair facing them.
“I thought she was very strange,” Mother Carter said, balancing the
plate on her lap. There was a huge mound of whipped cream piled high
above the fresh red fruit and the yellow cake. “I mean, hitting a boy
with a vase.”
“A what!” Mother Muriel gasped and licked the spoon from her own
shortcake. “You mean she did that?”
“Now, now,” Mother Nessy said, “let sleeping dogs die.” She tittered.
“After all, the whole thing was forgotten. He did attend our
housewarming with Susan, so you can see it was forgotten.”
There was an elaborate silence, except for the clink of the spoons on
the plates. Mother Muriel had a knowing smile at the edge of her lips.
She was perfectly aware that Mother Nesselbush was trying to quell the
story. Every Saturday night they met in one or the other’s small suite,
exchanging gossip, and relating the exciting little incidents attached
to the duties of housemother. Mother Muriel and Mother Carter agreed
that it was not quite fair to include Nessy in their parties, because
Nessy was a Tri Ep alumna. She could hardly be expected to give a fair
or accurate appraisal of the situation in her house. It was so obvious
that she was biased. Mother Rasmussen, on the other hand, was a thorough
dunderhead. She rarely had anything to say. Each week she attended the
get-together, ate heartily, and seemed to listen to the talk somewhat
vaguely, with an aimless smile on her face, perpetually scratching the
exzema on her hands.
“At any rate,” Mother Nessy moved to conclude the conversation about
Susan Mitchell, “the alums are so pleased that we took this girl,
they’re sending us a splendid set of sterling. It should arrive any day
now.”
The front door slammed vigorously. Mother Nesselbush moved to the
curtains of her French doors and stared into the hall. “Speak of the
devil,” she said, “and the devil appears.” She looked at her watch, and
noted that it was just eleven-forty-five. “Early, too,” she added, “for
a one-o’clock night.”
She pulled the French doors open and called after Mitch. “Susan, dear,
are you all right?”
“Fine, thanks.” Mitch started up the steps but stopped halfway.
“Come down here,” Mother Nesselbush said, “and meet my guests.”
“I can’t, Nessy. I look just terrible.”
“I’d appreciate it, Susan. They’ll understand. Now, come on.”
Mitch turned and walked back down. Mother Nessy took her arm and led her
into the room. Instantly Mitch recognized the white, pasty face of
Mother Carter. She smiled grimly at her, and she said, “Hello, Mother
Carter.”
She said hello to the others, passing by them, shaking their wrinkled,
bony hands, being careful not to upset their plates.
Her heart was pounding faster as she stood there and made polite
conversation. They all seemed to be observing her as though she were a
freak of some sort. Then Mother Nessy said, “Your father called tonight,
dear. He was very anxious because you haven’t written in weeks.”
Mitch passed her hand through her hair uncomfortably. “Gee,” she said,
“I guess I just forgot.”
“It’s easy to forget when you’re young.” Mother Muriel sighed.
Mitch stood there, uncertain how she could leave them. She said, “Well,
thanks, Mother Nessy. I’m so messy, I think I’ll take a good hot bath.
And I’ll drop him a line tonight.”
“Do that,” Mother Nessy said, her hand around Mitch’s waist, “because
you know how parents worry, dear. I know when my son doesn’t write, I
just get wild that something’s happened to him.”
A faint smile flickered across Mitch’s face as she turned at the French
doors and looked back at the women there. When the doors were shut, she
went toward the kitchen, swung through the door, and turned the light
on. She poured a tall glass of milk and spread butter on a piece of
bread from the square red tin. Sitting on the stool, she felt a knot,
burning and twisting, inside her, and her eyes felt tired and irritated.
The news of her father’s call was the final thrust, the inevitable irony
of the evening. She ached to call him back and tell him that she wanted
to come home, but she knew what he would say. He would say, “Now, pretty
black-eyed Susan, a big girl like you isn’t homesick.” Or he would have
one of his standard sentences for her, like the signs that hung around
the walls of his office: “A quitter never wins and a winner never
quits.” “Keep on keeping on.” “If someone hands you a lemon, squeeze it
and start a lemonade stand.”