she said, “you promise me that if that girl gives _any_ indication of
acting up again, you’ll just jump right out of that room and come down
to me. I don’t care _what_ the hour is.”
Leda said, “Don’t worry, Nessy, and I promise.”
The five girls climbed the main stairs slowly, Marsha attempting vaguely
to whistle a bit from “On, Wisconsin.”
* * * * *
It was taking Leda a long time. What could she say to them? Mitch was
numb with torment, and the sheets on her bed were wrinkled and halfway
off the mattress from her perpetual turning and moving as she waited.
The ticking of the tin clock on the dresser sounded frantic and Mitch
made the ticks come in three beats in her mind—_Les-bi-an, Les-bi-an,
tick-tick-tick_. Leda was one too. The thought foamed in Mitch’s brain
and hurt her. She did not know why she felt dirty when Leda told her
that she was a Lesbian. She thought she should have felt happy and glad
that they were two. But she did not want to be one. Abnormal.
From far off she could hear the sweet voices of a fraternity serenading
a sorority house down the street.
She turned the light on and looked at the face of the clock. It was
eleven-thirty. Leda had been gone too long. She saw Leda’s half-full
package of cigarettes on the desk, and she took one from the pack and
lit it. It tasted strong and sour and she squashed it in the ash tray
and turned the light off again.
Tomorrow, she decided, she would move out of Tri Epsilon and into the
dorm with Robin. If she and Leda weren’t put out of the sorority, she
would leave anyway. But she could not leave Leda. “I love Leda,” she
said softly to the darkness, “even though we’re both that way. I wish
she wasn’t that way.”
The dream came in a half fit of consciousness. Her mother was very
beautiful, with black hair that came to her shoulders, and clear green
eyes. Mitch loved her. She wore pants and shirts and combed her hair
back, wet from her swim, and went to her mother with jewels and furs
that she had stolen for her to have. Her mother smiled and accepted
them. Mitch heard her say, “You’d better not steal all the time. I
couldn’t love a thief.” She ran down a long alley to escape the police
who were looking for her. It was late when she got back to the Tri
Epsilon house and her mother was there with the police holding her arm.
Her mother was laughing. She said, “You didn’t know I was a thief too,”
and the policemen led her away. Diamonds were spilling out of her
mother’s pocket as she went down the steps with them.
She thought she had been asleep for hours, but it was only twenty
minutes to twelve. Leda must be in trouble. The dream put a ragged edge
on her anxiety. The bed was a sight, rumpled and torn apart as though it
had been ravaged. Mitch straightened the sheets and fluffed the pillow.
In the corner of the room by the bureau her clothes lay where Leda had
taken them off, kicked to the side. Mitch picked them up and brushed
them off.
_Les-bi-an, Les-bi-an, tick-bi-an...._
Mitch thought, I can get a job. Leda and I can run away and I can work
someplace. If they put us out of the sorority I won’t go home. Leda
won’t either, because of Jan. Colorado is nice, or California. She had a
vivid picture of the open convertible speeding through purple and rust
landscapes and along white desert with the cactus along the roadside.
She added glorious black nights and ten thousand brilliant stars, and a
warm wind whipping at their faces. It was no good. She hated the
picture. Why? A slow self-disgust chewed at her and called her coward,
but she was still afraid. She promised herself to be strong when Leda
came back, no matter. Whatever Leda said, Mitch would not reveal her
fear. Leda loved her and this was the price. Be strong for two. The
words on the storybook she’d had as a child came dancing on the screen
of her mind: “Now We Are Two.”
Part of it was the way Leda acted when she had said, “No, faster!
Faster, Mitch!” It seemed far away and morbid, as though there was an
insane spark to their love that made them fierce and careless. Sitting
on the side of her bed, under the harsh light of the electric bulb
overhead, Mitch could not know herself in that scene. She reasoned that
she was not violent. Never violent. Yet there was still the faint taste
of blood on her tongue, and the way she knew she had been strong there
with Leda.
Don’t blame Leda. You’re trying to blame Leda.
There was a sound of steps in the hall. Mitch caught her breath when
they came to the door. It was Leda returning.
“What are you doing with the light on?”
“I had to find out the time.”
“I told you not to leave it on. I told you to go to bed.”
“I just turned it on. I was afraid.”
“Well, it’s over, so go to bed.”
“Over?”
“Yes. It’s all right.”
“Wh-what did you say? How did you explain it?”
Leda’s face was composed and placid. She took her soap from the tray on
the rack behind the door. Her washcloth hung over the bar above the shoe
bag and she put that with the soap. “I’m going to wash my face. I’ll
tell you when I get back. Look, it’s over. There’s nothing to worry
about.”
Mitch just sat there staring.
“Get in bed. I’ll be back.”
“I’ll come too,” Mitch said. “I didn’t wash yet. Wait for me and I’ll
come too.” She started toward the bureau.
“No!” Leda’s tone came out sharper than she had meant it. She could not
look at Mitch’s face, which was alive with a new hope. Her words went to
the rug. “No, it’s better if you stay in bed. I told them you didn’t
feel well. You see, that’s how I explained it. I said you were sick.”
“Oh,” Mitch said. “I—” She sat back on the bed and rubbed her forehead.
Leda walked toward the door. “Look, just get in bed. I’ll be back in a
minute. I’ll tell you then.”
“O.K., Leda.”
Before Leda turned the doorknob, Mitch’s eyes met hers.
“Leda?”
“What?”
“Thanks.”
When she was gone, Mitch felt sick and dull all over. She was ashamed of
the way she had thought about Leda. The thoughts seemed to tease her
still, pricking her knowledge that Leda had made everything all right,
that now there would be no reason to run and hide. Steadily she rebuilt
the structure of their love, amplifying it with Leda’s courage and with
her own indebtedness to Leda. She could feel the physical ache for her
down to the tips of her fingers, replacing the enfeebled numbness,
charging it with renewed vigor. Healing time had conquered the doubt and
fear, and her servility was sworn in that moment. Mitch felt humble and
brave in the darkness of the room.
A tongue of light cut through the black as Leda opened the door and
slipped back in. Mitch could hear her putting things away and getting
out of her clothes. The thud of her shoes on the floor sounded unusually
heavy in the silence. Mitch threw the sheets and blankets back and went
over to her.
“For God’s sake, no! We just got out of one mess.”
“I’m sorry, Leda. I just feel so—”
“Get back in bed. My God!”
The covers felt itchy on her chin and she pulled the sheet up higher.
She could hear Leda getting in bed.
“I know you’re upset,” she said. “I should have known better than to
come over to you, Leda. I’m sorry.”
“Forget it.”
Mitch waited. Leda would tell her now—everything that had happened. The
minutes crept and the clock began the game, ticking out the word.
“Leda?”
“What?”
“You said you’d tell me.” Mitch’s voice was thin and meek. She didn’t
mean to keep at Leda like that, but she had to know.
“O.K. I said you were sick. I said you went to bed sick and you were
feverish when you came after me.”
“D-did you say that I came after _you_?”
“Well, hell, I had to say something! When they came in the door, that’s
what they saw.”
“Oh.”
The wind blew papers off the desk and they ruffled along the floor, the
noise quick and airy.
“Leave them,” Leda said. She settled back and the noise stopped.
“Well, did they believe you? What about—My God, I was naked!”
“You were sick! I told them you were sick, Mitch!”
Mitch wanted to stop the angry tone. She lay quiet and another paper
chased across the room and landed on top of her on the bed.
“Mitch, I’m sorry I’m so snappish. I just feel like hell. It wasn’t
easy.”
“I know what it must have been like, Leda.”
“It was hell.”
“Does—does anyone know? Anyone else, I mean?”
“Just Marsha and those two.”
“It’ll be hard tomorrow. What’ll I tell them when they ask what was
wrong?”
Leda turned her pillow over on the side. Then she got up and put a
bottle of ink on top of the papers so they wouldn’t blow any more. “It
won’t be hard,” she said. “They won’t even talk about it. Just go along
as though nothing happened.”
“Leda, I don’t know how to thank you.”
“Quit saying that! What in the name of God do you think I am, your holy
savior?”
The night air was crisp and Mitch snuggled down in the covers. She
closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but she kept listening for Leda to
say more. When she didn’t, Mitch said, “I just want to say one more
thing, Leda. I’ll always stick by you—always. You mean more to me than
anyone I know.”
Leda didn’t answer.
Chapter Ten
Ruth Paterson was a stocky, middle-aged woman with brownish-red hair,
which she wore in a short, smoothly waved coiffure. Her thin lips were
faintly tinted with a medium rose shade, and her long full face had a
healthy pink color that set off the deep brown eyes. Between the book
ends on her smooth red-leather-topped desk there was a dictionary, a
worn copy of “Wine from These Grapes,” “The Collected Poems of Robert
Frost,” “Roget’s Thesaurus,” two volumes on methods for counseling
teen-age girls, a Bible, and a frayed copy of Proust.
Her office was a small white room furnished with comfortable red
furniture and red-framed prints of Daumier. On a wobbly end table at the
side of a long couch in front of her desk there were a miniature wooden
pagoda and a vase with a single red rose pointing toward the white
ceiling. On the lower rung of the table there were three copies of
current magazine issues, and one copy of the Cranston University humor
magazine.
Dean Paterson took a great deal of pride in her office. She had done
most of it herself, lacking encouragement from the university officials,
who saw little valid reason for decorating the room so that it bore
small resemblance to a typical office of the Dean of Women. The
wall-to-wall black rug she had purchased herself at a private auction of
one of the distinguished townspeople’s household effects. It was
impractical, inevitably catching lint and dust from the heels of the
steady infiltration of students, file clerks, secretaries, and
university officials. She liked the rug anyway.
It was just before eleven in the morning, a beautiful morning with a
quick snap in the air, and a clear fall sky. At eleven-fifteen, Susan
Mitchell would arrive for her appointment. Dean Paterson held the three
square yellow cards in her hand, thumbing through them, the bland
printed information registering slowly in her mind. There was scant
knowledge of the girl on the office records.
Mrs. Nesselbush had called her “a savage.”
The case was not unique. In her twenty-three years of counseling girls,
Dean Paterson had become fairly well acquainted with the problem of
homosexuality, suspected or overt. She had dealt with it before.
She laid the first set of yellow cards down and picked up the second
set, removing the paper clip. Leda Taylor’s name was familiar. There
were several rows of reported late minutes. The explanations appeared in
the spaces after the account of the offense.
24 March—30 minutes late—Flat tire
12 April—2 hours late—Delayed because of storm
19 April—Absent all night—Forgot to sign out for week end
2 May—15 minutes late—Watch stopped
Her scholastic report was not always good. There were alarming high and
low points, and a strange proclivity toward extremes. A’s and D’s. B’s
and E’s. Psychology was a good subject. English was second, with science
and math at a nadir. Dean Paterson remembered her as a very attractive
girl, with a slight rough edge to her nature and a suggestion of
specious warmth.
Mrs. Nesselbush had explained that she was a darling.
The buzzer burred out in the stillness. Susan Mitchell.
Dean Paterson stood up and watched the door until the girl came in. She
had not expected her to look like that at all. She said, “Won’t you sit
down, Susan?”
From the top of her desk drawer, near the newly sharpened pencils and
the memo pads, the Dean removed the envelope that Mrs. Nesselbush had
sent her. Inside was the letter.
“You don’t know why you’re here, do you, Susan?”
The girl smiled. “No, ma’am,” she answered. “Mother Nessy said something
about your wanting to talk about my subjects.”
It was irritating. There was no need to lie to the girl. There was no
necessity to explain falsely why the appointment was made. The Dean
shook her head and picked up her yellow pencil. She made dots on the
back of the white envelope.
“No,” she said. “It’s not about your subjects. It’s about something you
may be able to tell me more about than I know.”
“Yes?”
“How close have you been to Leda Taylor?”
Mitch felt a shrinking inside of her. “I—I room with her,” she said.
“We’re good friends.”
“Is that all?”
So they hadn’t believed Leda after all. Mitch looked at the Dean’s face,
and then down at her hands and the pencil. She could not say anything.
“You see,” Dean Paterson said, “it’s been left up to me. I guess you had
no indication that anything was wrong at the Tri Epsilon house today.”
“No.” Mitch’s voice was barely audible. She looked at her hands. If only
Leda had been summoned at the same time, Mitch thought, she could do the
talking. Mitch wondered then if Leda had already been to see the Dean,
earlier in the morning. She had not seen her since breakfast, and they
had not sat at the same table. Leda thought it would be too obvious if
they sat together after last night.
“You see, Susan, that kind of thing can’t be tolerated. In the long run,
if it was tolerated, you’d be hurt terribly. There would be cruel jokes,
and an even crueler alienation from the other girls. Do you want to talk
about it? I have only Mrs. Nesselbush’s report.”
“I—I don’t know how to talk about it.”
Dean Paterson went over to the couch where Mitch was sitting. She sat
beside her. “Start with Leda,” she said. “Try to tell me about Leda.”
Mitch spoke suddenly. “It’s not her fault,” she said. “It’s really not
her fault at all.”
Tears clouded Mitch’s eyes and she tried to prevent them from rushing
forward. Dean Paterson put her arm around the girl’s shoulder. “Susan,”
she said, “listen to me. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t
want to. It’s going to make my job a little harder, though. You see,
I’ll have to submit a report on this, and I don’t have very much to go
on. Just the letter and what I’ve heard.”
Mitch looked at her. “What letter?”
“The one you wrote Leda. I’m sorry, dear. You can have it back. I don’t
think it’s very nice to read other people’s mail either, but there are
so many things the Dean of Women has to do that aren’t very nice.”
Mitch said, “Then Mother Nessy stole the letter. She must have. Leda
forgot to tear it up and—”
Dean Paterson told Mitch then that Leda had given the letter to Nessy.
Mitch pulled away and jumped up. “That’s not true,” she said. “That’s
not true!” The tears streamed down her cheeks, and she sank back on the
couch. “You don’t know Leda. She wouldn’t do that. She’s tried to
protect me all the way—even lied for me last night to Marsha. She told
Marsha I was sick and—”
The shrill ring of the phone cut into Mitch’s words. While Dean Paterson
crossed the room and stood talking, Mitch cried violently, stopping the
sound with her handkerchief, pushing the sobs back in her throat. Again
she thought of running away, with Leda, somewhere—anywhere. They would
be expelled and there was no other thing to do but run. And run. She
wished that the Dean would just tell her that she would have to leave
Cranston, instead of asking questions and trying to find out more
information. Then Mitch could hurry and get to Leda first, before the
Dean did. It would be awful for Leda. She was so sure last night.
“I’m sorry for the interruption,” Dean Paterson said, walking back
toward Mitch. “I have an idea, if you’d like. It’s almost lunchtime. I
usually make a sandwich at my apartment, a few blocks from here. Would
you like to go there with me now?”
Mitch shook her head. “I have to see Leda,” she said. “I have to talk to
her. Please—she won’t be able to stand this. If we’re expelled—”
The Dean took Mitch’s arm. “Susan, _Leda_ is not going to be expelled. I
think we’d better talk about it at lunch, dear. All right?”
As if in a trance, unable to comprehend any meaning, Mitch waited while
Dean Paterson straightened some papers on the desk, removed her purse
from the lower drawer, and pressed the light button off. Together they
walked through the reception room, out into the cold marble corridor of
Kenyon Hall.
* * * * *
After Dean Paterson canceled her afternoon appointments, she sat down in
the small, green-walled front room of her apartment. Susan Mitchell was
in the bedroom asleep. The story seemed unbelievable.
But not impossible.
Ruth Paterson picked up the small white china poodle from the round
glass-top coffee table. She passed her thumb along the ridges and up to
the object’s black eyes, and she thought about Susan Mitchell. Certainly
not a savage.
It was a strange story, the story of Susan and Leda, but she had learned
long ago not to be surprised at anything. She checked back her own
willingness to believe what Susan Mitchell had told her. The child was
afraid and lost, and sympathy came easily. This girl invited it and
coaxed it, with her lonesome eyes and her ingenuous statements. Ruth
Paterson had an impulse to go into the bedroom and wake the girl up and
tell her that she could not stay. Even though she had asked her to stay.
She was afraid of the girl in many ways, afraid that the fumbling
immaturity of Susan Mitchell had made her go soft and irrational. There
had been other occasions when she had weakened like this and regretted
it later. The Dobbs girl, for instance. Petite, blue-eyed Faith Dobbs, a
freshman years ago. She had been accused of stealing in the dorm, and
something about her made the Dean believe that she was innocent when she
sat before her and told her story. The hours and days of counsel, the
defense she had made of the girl before the Board of Trustees, and the
angry speech she had delivered to the girls who lived in Faith’s
dorm—all objects of ridicule when Faith Dobbs pilfered the Dean’s watch
and petty-cash box from her office weeks later. No, she was by no means
infallible. And now there was another child who wanted to be trusted,
was already trusted by the mere fact that she was asleep now in Dean
Paterson’s apartment.
She got up and placed the china poodle back on the glass top. The phone
was in the corner, just above the window seat. For a moment she sat
looking out into the street. A boy and girl passed, he carrying her
books, she laughing up at him, reaching with her hand to brush back the
blond curl that fell on his forehead. They kicked the leaves along the
sidewalk as they walked down the block. Ruth Paterson said aloud, “If
everything could be as simple as that,” and laughed when she thought of
the obvious fact that even _that_ was not simple. There’s no simplicity
left in modern living, she decided. Everyone is on the spit at one time
or another. Thumbing through the phone book, she found the number and
dialed it.
“Marsha Holmes, please,” she said, and while she waited, she twisted the
rubber cord attached to the telephone.
“Hello, Marsha? This is Dean Paterson.... Fine, thank you. Marsha, is
Leda Taylor in the house?... I see. I wonder,” Dean Paterson said, “if
you could find her for me. If she’s in class, wait until it’s over and
ask her to come and see me. At the apartment. I’ll be here all of this
afternoon.”
* * * * *
The Den was not crowded at two-thirty that afternoon. It was a popular
hour for classes at C.U., and only a few students lined the bar, their
books strewn about on the pine top, their beers before them. The juke
box blared out a frantic trumpet, and from a corner near the door the
ringing of the pin-ball machines could be heard.
Leda and Jake were the only ones occupying any of the knotty-pine
booths. They sat in the last one, side by side, a pitcher of beer before
them. Jake had a flask in the pocket of his coat, and they were drinking
“boiler-makers,” half whisky, half beer. They had been there since
eleven-thirty, and their only food had been a hardboiled egg apiece and
a bowl of pretzels. Jake’s head was hanging to one side languorously. He
was only half listening to Leda, who had been talking for three hours.
“You can jus’ imagine,” she said, “if anyone can jus’ imagine.”
Jake reached out for the pitcher of beer. He poured half of it on the
table. The rest went in the glass and he fumbled in his pocket for the
flask. He sang loudly, “Oh, a girl without a woman is like a—”
A few boys at the bar looked back and laughed. Others kept on talking.
The bartender shook his head. “Flunked an exam, probably,” he said.
“Man,” the short thin boy exclaimed, “he’s carrying a big load!”
The fellow next to him swallowed his beer. “She’s helping him with that
load.”
Leda tried to pour beer into her glass but she couldn’t grasp the
handle. She nudged Jake and pointed to it. He poured more on the table,
leaving a few inches in the bottom of her glass. His hand shook when he
added the whisky, and some of the yellow-brown liquid fell on Leda’s
coat. She brushed it away and giggled. Then her face became serious and
she tasted the beer, which did not taste at all.
She said, “Here’s to Mitchell, Mitchell.”
Jake reached for his glass. “To Mitchell Mitchell,” he said. “Long may
she wave!”
The bartender leaned over to a solitary waiter standing near the end of
the bar. He pointed at Leda and Jake, and the waiter came across the
room to them. “All right, kids,” he said. “Don’t you think you’ve had
enough?”
Jake said, “Who asked you?”
“C’mon, quiet down, kids. This is your last drink.”
“Tell him,” Leda said, her words slurring and halting. “Tell him wha’
hoppen.”
“Naw, he don’t know from nothing.”
“Look,” the waiter said, “take it easy. I’m warning you kids for the
last time.”
“For the last time,” Leda repeated, smiling, her head dropping to Jake’s
shoulder.
A confused thought came to her mind as she leaned against Jake. She
wanted to cry. She really wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. She wanted to
cry for what she had done to Mitch, but when she realized she had done
it to herself too, she couldn’t get a tear to come. She could feel tears
in her throat. She said aloud, “What good are they in my throat?”
Jake said, “I don’t know.”
She wondered where Mitch was and what she was thinking. She decided that
Mitch was crying. Maybe she was packing. Maybe she was in the room at
the Tri Epsilon house packing. She shut her eyes and there were bright
colored circles and her head spun. She said, “Once yer on a roller
coaster yew can’t git off.”
Jake got up quickly. “Hurry,” he yelled at her. “Can you make it?”
She only had a little way to go. The door pushed open readily, and she
held onto the white sink. The tears came to her eyes automatically, and
her whole body shook in jerks and seemed to roll. When it was over she
got up from her knees and stared into the mirror. Her eyes focused at
last, and when she saw her face, she could not believe it. She looked
white and her hair hung like a witch’s. She took a lipstick from her
coat pocket and rubbed the old stain off with a piece of rough toilet
paper. When she applied the red color, it still looked sickly and
smeared. The powder only made her face look whiter. She pinched her
cheeks for color. The comb caught in the knots of her hair, and she
swore. Finally she gave up. She turned to go back, but she could not.
Again she fell to her knees. Over and over she cried, “Mitch,” and she
got sicker and sicker. The tears rolled off her nose, and she could
taste an evil-smelling taste in her mouth. She stood up after a while
and held onto the wall. Everything was clearer. She felt better.
Gradually the wall stopped moving and she could see things standing
still again. She pushed the door open and walked regally down to the
booth where Jake was waiting.
Marsha sat across from him, and beside Marsha, was Kitten Clark.
“Where have _you_ been?” They sounded too loud. “We’ve been looking high
and low.”
“Right here,” Jake said.
Leda could feel things coming back. She could control herself. “I’ve
been here for hours,” she said. “What do you want with me?”