“Oh, God!”
Kitten Clark got up from the booth. “C’mon, Leda,” she said. “We’ve got
to get you sobered up. We’ll take you back to the house and put you
under the shower. You’re in no condition.”
“Yeah,” Leda answered, “I’m not. Jake borrowed Clive’s car. It’s out
front. We gotta get it back to Sig Delt.”
Marsha said, “I’ll drive.”
Jake stood up then too. “The hell,” he said. “The hell you’ll drive.
I’ll drive. I’m no one’s goddamn kindergarten kid. I’ll drive.”
“No, Jake.” Leda held onto him and said, “No, don’t.”
“Then _you_ drive, goddamn it. I don’t want these jackasses in my car
that I personally borrowed.”
Leda turned to them. Her head was clearing. She could still taste the
taste and feel the strangeness in her knees, but she was all right. She
had to be all right. Dean Paterson wanted to see her. Leda said, “Look,
I better drive the car. We’ll drop him off. It’ll help me sober up,
anyway.”
“You’re not sober enough now to drive,” Marsha said.
“I tell you I am! Don’t argue, now. I’ve got to step on it.”
“She’s O.K.,” Kitten said. “She could sail a schooner with a few drinks
in her. I know her.”
They filed out of the Den and walked up the street toward Clive’s car.
Jake was singing and stumbling as he walked along, and the fresh air
made Leda feel sleepy. She blinked her eyes and made herself keep on
going.
The car was parked at the end of the street. Jake crawled in the back
and stretched out on the seat, while Leda and Marsha and Kitten crowded
in the front. When the motor started, Jake yelled out, “Home, James!
Home!”
The Dean would want Leda to tell her all about Mitch. She had talked to
Mitch, and Mitch had no doubt told her everything. But the Dean wouldn’t
believe it. Even the late minutes on her record alone would keep the
Dean from believing. She was always out with boys—late. Last year she
had been a queen.
The Dean would make her go all through it again. Could she remember
everything she had said exactly?
“Here,” Kitten said, “chew on these mints. They’ll clear your breath.
I’m not sure you’ll have time for a shower. It’s quarter after three.”
Leda reached over for the mint. Her eyelids felt heavy and drooping.
“She’s got to have a shower,” Marsha said. “Even her clothes smell of
it.”
“She can change those.”
“No,” Marsha said, “a shower’s best. After all, the house has got a bad
enough name in the Dean’s office now. She’ll think we’re completely
irresponsible.”
“Irrrrrr-reeeee-spon-sib-bull!” Jake yelled out from the back seat.
“Where’d you tell her I was?” Leda said.
“In class. We said we thought you had a class.”
“I don’t. She can go to her files and find that out.”
Marsha said, “She’s at her apartment.”
“God! I’ve never been there.”
She put her foot down harder on the gas. She would have to hurry and get
it over with. What did Mitch say when she found out? What did she think?
Mitch’s face seemed to come on the window and she couldn’t see the road.
She was looking at Mitch’s face and the trusting eyes. Remembering the
words. “I’ll always stick by you—always. You mean more to me than anyone
I know.”
“Hey,” Marsha said. “Slow down.”
“Slow down, baby, don’t you blowwww yer top-p,” Jake sang out.
She didn’t feel as though she were driving the car. She felt as though
she were sitting back and someone else was driving. Looking down at her
foot, she saw that it was on the pedal, but she could not feel her own
strength pushing it.
“Leda!” Kitten screamed. “Take it easy! Leda!”
The car crashed in a thundering noise. Jake was thrown to the floor and
Marsha and Kitten could feel their heads jerk forward and thump on the
pane. When they straightened up, they lay back with their heads leaning
against the leather seats. Jake moaned out from the back, and then he
scrambled up and held his head too and shook it. Then they all saw Leda.
The glass in the pane where her head had struck was splintered, and down
the side of her face there was the scarlet color of blood.
Outside of the car, there was another car smashed and still where it had
been parked. Jake got out first. He pushed the seat back and stood in
the road while the people on the street hurried toward them. Kitten and
Marsha held Leda and tried to move her back. They were able to pull her
head from the windshield and ease her back in a sitting position against
the seat.
“God!” Kitten said. “She’s bleeding like mad.”
“I better call an ambulance.” Marsha got out of the car.
A gray-haired man ran up to her. “Anything I can do, lady?”
Marsha said, “Please—call an ambulance.”
She went around to the other side and talked through the window to
Kitten.
“Is she coming to?”
“Not yet. I’m trying to wipe the blood away. Ask Jake if he’s got a
handkerchief.”
Jake was holding onto the car, his head down, his arms wobbly. He handed
Marsha the handkerchief without speaking. People crowded toward them and
a policeman hurried up from the corner.
“Hey!” Kitten yelled. “She’s coming to. She’s talking.”
“What’s she saying? Is she hurt?”
“Listen,” Kitten said. “Marsha, listen!”
Marsha leaned in the window. Leda’s lips were parted, and the blood had
run down by her nose. Her eyes were closed. She kept mumbling. They were
able to make the mumbling out gradually as it became clearer. “Mitch,”
she was saying. “Mitch, honey. Oh, God, Mitch, honey, what did I do to
you?”
“She feels bad about Susan Mitchell,” Kitten said. They listened to Leda
as she said more. “I want you, Mitch. Kiss me! It’s going to be all
right again. God, Mitch, love me.”
Marsha and Kitten looked at each other with horror-stricken faces.
Kitten said, “Did you hear what I heard?” and the mumbling kept on.
Chapter Eleven
The strong hospital smell made Marsha cough and cross the waiting room
on the second floor of the large building to open the window and breathe
the fresh air.
“Hey,” Kitten said, “it’s cold. I’d rather have the smell.” She said it
more for something to say than as an actual expression of her feelings
that morning. On other Friday mornings at half past ten, she would be
sitting in world-lit class, in the second row of the auditorium, vaguely
hearing Professor Weber’s sonorous words blare out on the loudspeaker
while she made flimsy notes and stared at the boy’s head in front of
her.
Leda had been in the University Hospital for three days. During that
time, Dr. Ted Peters was her only visitor. Now Kitten and Marsha were
waiting for him before they went in to see Leda.
“I wish he’d come,” Marsha said. “If I miss my eleven-thirty, I’ll have
to take a separate econ quiz.” She sat down in the black leather rocker
and picked through the pages of “Look.” It was an old issue, and she had
read it thoroughly weeks ago. Kitten took her compact from her purse and
looked at her lipstick. She powdered her nose and stuck the compact
back, clamping the purse shut. A nurse in a crisp white uniform padded
by on her rubber-heeled shoes.
“It didn’t take Mitch long to move,” Kitten said.
Marsha sighed. “She had the car.”
Dr. Peters shut the door to the waiting room after he came in. He was a
tall, thin man with a boyish face and kindly gray eyes behind the black,
heavy-rimmed glasses that matched the color of his thick hair. He had on
a white coat above the dark blue pants, and in his hand he held a tan
bone pipe.
“Which is which?” he said, sitting down on the leather couch beside
Kitten. After Marsha made the introductions, he put a match to the
tobacco in his pipe and leaned back comfortably. His face was drawn with
a serious, wary expression.
“Dean Paterson tells me you two are the only Tri Eps who know the whole
story on this.”
“That’s right,” Marsha said, putting the copy of “Look” back on the
table and folding her hands on her lap. “We’d like to keep it that way,
if it’s possible. I guess you understand how girls can talk, and—”
“I understand. About the Mitchell girl.... Does the house know why she
was asked to leave?”
Marsha said, “No. We said she was incompatible. That’s all. Jane Bell
and Casey and Mother Nessy know. They know about Leda too now, but it’s
terribly embarrassing. Leda was our queen. If it ever got out, we’d be
ruined. I don’t think Mitch will tell. It’d ruin us.”
Dr. Parker blew a puff of smoke up into the air. He took his glasses off
and held them loosely in his hand. “And this—Jake? How does he fit into
all of this?”
“Him!” Kitten said. “We don’t have to worry about him. He was so blotto
he doesn’t even remember being at the Den, much less anything else. I
don’t know whether Leda told him or not, but he sure doesn’t remember
anything. I had a class with him yesterday. All he’s worried about is
paying for the car that got wrecked. And Leda too, he _says_, but if you
ask me—”
“Which no one did,” Marsha broke in, putting a period to Kitten’s
opinion.
Ted Peters watched the girls as they talked. He wondered if his
generation had been that way, or if it was true that the younger
generation had changed, evolved into a careless breed of people who
lacked even a remote basis for understanding. He shut his eyes and
shuddered inwardly. “Right now,” he said, “we’ve got to worry about Leda
Taylor. She’s very ill—in her mind as well as in her body.”
“Lord!” Kitten exclaimed. “You’d never think she was one. All those
dates and everything.”
“Look, girls,” Dr. Peters said, “right now I want you to turn into
actresses. The best actresses you can be. Leda is conscious now. For the
past few days she’s been semi-conscious and she’s got a lot off her
mind, talking and crying, saying things she’s probably had pent up in
her since she was knee-high. But now, as you go in that room, let her be
the old Leda Taylor—act as if she’s the Leda you knew before the
accident and your talk with Dean Paterson. When you go in see her,
forget all of these recent developments, and talk to her as you would if
this had never happened. She has no way of remembering what she said at
the wreck, and no way of knowing what’s happened since then. She’ll be
attempting to live the lie, and you’ve got to help her live it. Some of
her talk may be incoherent. Pass over it. Don’t indicate in any way that
there’s anything different about her. And most important—prepare
yourself for a difference.”
“We shouldn’t mention Susan Mitchell, of course?”
“Not unless she mentions her. She may ask you if Susan was sent home, or
what became of her. In that case, you say that she hasn’t been sent home
_yet_. Say you don’t know any more about it—that Dean Paterson is
handling it. You see, the best thing that could happen to Leda would be
for her to see Susan. She feels guilty, and she still has emotional ties
that are stronger than we can imagine, but she’ll have to ask to see the
girl herself. Otherwise it won’t be effective.”
“What about Jake?” Kitten said. “Should we mention him?”
“Certainly! Act the way you would act if you didn’t know anything about
all of this. Tell her everyone is asking for her at the house. Try to
give her some will to get better.”
Marsha stood up and came over to Dr. Peters. “We’ll do the best we can,”
she said.
The three of them left the small reception room and walked down the dark
corridor where the smells of ether and medicine and disinfectant were
more pronounced. There was a screen in the entrance to Room 209, and
Kitten and Marsha stopped there and shook hands with Dr. Peters. He
smiled briefly and whispered, “Don’t forget.”
Inside the room the shades were drawn and there was a small light over
the bed. The fat, neat-looking nurse left them alone with Leda, who lay
still, her head swathed in white gauze bandages. Marsha went ahead of
Kitten to the edge of the bed and peered down at Leda.
“Hi,” she whispered. “How do you feel?”
Leda’s face had a yellow cast to it and her lips barely broke in an
uneven, crooked grin. “How do I look?” she answered.
Kitten moved up alongside Marsha. She said, “I bet that’s the first
cotton crown you ever wore.”
“Why don’t you tell me how I look?” Leda said.
Kitten sat down on the straight-back chair near the bed table. “You had
a rough time of it,” she said. “I think you look darn well,
considering.”
Marsha tried to smile enthusiastically. “Everybody’s been asking about
you at the house,” she said.
“So everybody’s been asking.” Leda half laughed. “Well!”
“Jake’s asked, too,” Kitten said. “You know, we have math together.”
“Car wrecked?”
Kitten stammered, unsure of what to say. Marsha said, “It _is_ in bad
shape.”
“Anyone called Jan?”
“I don’t know,” Kitten answered. “I don’t think anyone at the house
did.”
“Good. It’d ruin her trip. She’s going to L.A., you know? Did you know
Jan was going to L.A.? Yeah, she likes it out there. She’s a big hit in
L.A.”
There was a short pause. Kitten fumbled with her purse and found the
handkerchief. She touched it to her nose, a gesture to take time and
allow her to think of something to say. Marsha leaned on the bed and
smoothed her skirt.
“What about Mitch?” Leda said suddenly. “She go home?”
“Not yet,” Marsha said. “I guess not yet.”
Kitten remembered to add, “The Dean’s handling it.”
“The Dean! What’d she want with _me_, anyway? I don’t care, either.”
Marsha pretended to scratch her arm up under the sleeve of her sweater.
“We’ll have to talk about your nomination for Christmas Queen when you
get better, Leda.”
“And what’s the Dean want with Mitch? Poor dumb kid.”
There was another short silence.
Leda said, “I’d like to see her. Surprise you? I’d like to see Mitch.”
“Maybe you can,” Marsha said.
“Surprises you that I’d like to see her, doesn’t it?”
Kitten said, “No. I can see why.”
“Why?” Leda said.
Kitten’s face became tense. “Well, you—roomed together and—”
Leda laughed very hard. Then she was serious again, her green eyes
strangely alert. She brought her hand up and touched her fingers to her
mouth, and even in the light and with the gauze and the weakness of her
body, she was beautiful. It was in the supple line of her lips, and the
way her glance seemed plaintive and lost.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, we roomed together. Roommates! Too bad. If she
was still around I thought I could talk to her. Tell her it was too
bad.”
Kitten tried to blow her nose as though it needed it. “I’ve got a damn
cold,” she said, “or my sinus or something.”
“Do you know where Mitch is?” Leda asked.
“No,” Marsha said. “Maybe the doctor would know.”
“God!” Leda turned over on her side. “He doesn’t know her from a hole in
the wall. Why talk about such dreary subjects, anyway? Might as well
forget about it. What’s going on at the house this week end?”
Kitten started elaborating on who had a date with whom, and what
fraternities were giving parties. “You know,” she said, “we’ve got to
get together on plans for the Christmas Queen campaign.” After she said
it, she wondered whom they would elect to take Leda’s place. Secretly,
she had thought of herself as a logical candidate.
The fat woman in white returned and signaled to them. “Time’s up,” she
said. “You can come again tomorrow.”
Marsha and Kitten felt mutual relief as they stood up and bade Leda
good-by. “Come back,” Leda said. “Come back and see me again. God, I go
crazy in this bed!”
“We’ll be back,” Marsha promised.
Dr. Peters was waiting outside the screen for them. He led them down the
hall and listened with interest as they announced that Leda had asked
for Susan Mitchell.
“She was funny, though,” Kitten said. “Not funny, but strange.”
“Almost like she wasn’t all there at times,” Marsha sighed, “the way she
looked away from me when she talked, and how she rambled.”
He watched them after they left from the front door and hurried down the
walk, talking together excitedly.
It was late that afternoon when he parked his worn Chevrolet coupé in
front of Dean Paterson’s apartment. She met him at the door and led him
into the living room.
“You look tired, Ted,” she said as he sat down and stretched his long
feet before him. “It’s pretty depressing, isn’t it?”
He knocked the bone pipe on the ash tray and took the small tan pouch
from his coat pocket. “Did you talk to the girls? They were over this
morning to see Leda, you know.”
Ruth Paterson sat on the hassock beside the couch. “Yes, they stayed in
my office for several hours. I wanted to be sure that they understood
the situation thoroughly—that Susan Mitchell would be a perfectly normal
girl if it hadn’t been for Leda, and that now, with understanding and
help from you, she will be normal again.”
“And how did they react to her staying in school?”
“It’s curious, Ted. You see, their main worry is that Susan will tell
the story to someone, thereby ruining the Tri Ep reputation. Susan’s
welfare seems a smaller concern. Oh, of course, they said they wanted to
see her get a decent break, and that they were upset about the whole
affair—but primarily, they worry about how this would affect their
sorority.”
Dr. Peters put a match to the tobacco in the pipe and sucked on the stem
thoughtfully. He shook his head. “You’re sort of sticking your neck out,
Ruth. I can’t tell you how genuinely proud I am of you. It’s been my
feeling all along that there’s no question about the Mitchell girl’s
normality—that it could have happened to almost any lonely, helpless,
and naïve child. But you shouldered the responsibility when you decided
to let her stay in school. That takes courage, Ruth—real courage.”
Dean Paterson wondered if it did, or if it were more of an act of
responsibility than an act of courage. There was no doubt in her mind
that the Mitchell girl would be normal again. Doubts like that were too
costly for a dean of women. But to defend your own beliefs in the face
of other people’s doubts did take courage. She was thankful for the kind
of man Ted Peters was.
“You know, Ted,” she began, “I’ve always thought my position was more
than that of a counselor to girls en masse. I’ve wanted it to mean more
than that—to mean each girl individually, not only in her academic work
and in her extracurricular activities, but in the girl’s life as long as
we’re associated with one another. I think that’s part of a college’s
duty. Otherwise, it seems like an assembly line that turns out a female
B.A. degree in four years.”
“You’re right,” Dr. Peters agreed. “It’s a big job, too. I don’t know,
Ruth. Today I wondered if all our youth hadn’t suddenly turned shallow
and callous—after the girls left the hospital and I watched them walk
away laughing and chatting like magpies. I wondered where the dignity of
youth was nowadays. Well, at any rate, it looks like Susan will have a
chance. Leda is another matter. She wants to see Susan—and that’s what I
came over about. I’d like to arrange a meeting between the two of them
tonight.”
“Is that wise, Ted?”
“I’ve talked to Susan, and I think I know her well enough now to be sure
that it’ll be very wise in her case. It’s cruel to ask her to witness
the fallen Leda, and yet, perhaps it’s the only way to prove to her once
and for all how very sick Leda is and was. The mental sickness is
becoming more pronounced than the physical. That wreck didn’t really
injure Leda. It awoke her. The neuroses that was growing in her
subconscious mind suddenly came to grips with the conscious mind at the
time of the wreck. The impact of that meeting is what she can’t bridge.
She knows her two selves now, and she can’t assimilate them. It’s very
serious, Ruth, and I’m counting on her seeing Susan to help.”
The phone was on the desk, and Dean Paterson reached for it, hesitating
a moment before she remembered the number of the dorm where Susan
Mitchell was living.
* * * * *
Mitch finished hanging up the last dress and turned to look at the room
in Main Dorm where she had moved. The boxes were empty, and the suitcase
had been shoved under the bed by the wall. Robin sat limp in the chair
near the desk, her short legs relaxed in front of her, her arms hanging
down at the side. “Finally!” she sighed. “I thought we’d never finish.”
“You were wonderful to help, Robin.”
“I’d help anyone out of that kind of hell. You should have done it
months ago.”
“I guess so,” Mitch agreed. She sat on the bed and flicked the radio on,
waiting for it to warm up.
“You know,” Robin said, “Monday night after you didn’t show up here, I
thought you’d weakened and changed your mind.”
Mitch got a station that was playing waltz music. She fixed the tone so
it was not too loud, and didn’t answer Robin. The Dean had warned her
that it would be hard. People would want to know why she had moved out
of the sorority.
“Anything new on Leda?”
The question jarred Mitch. She had heard from Dr. Peters that Leda had
called for her at the wreck, that she had said all those things about
her, crying out her love before she came to in the hospital. Half of
Mitch remembered Leda with the raven-colored hair and the keen, delicate
hands, the jade eyes and the soft words, but even in that half there was
a tinge of bitter irony in Mitch’s memory, flowing into the other half
of the remembered Leda. The half that had betrayed her.
“I know you must be worried,” Robin continued. “I never trusted her,
myself. There was something about her. But I know you like her.”
“You have to know her,” Mitch said, hoping the dull edge on her words
was not obvious to Robin.
Robin yawned and stretched. “Yeah,” she said. “You can never tell. I’m
going to run along. Got a mad date with Tom Edwards.”
After she left, Mitch sat in the chair, hearing the music and thinking
of Leda lying in the hospital, sick and alone. She did not want to hate
Leda for all that she had done. Dr. Peters had helped her to understand
Leda, but there was still the pain left from the way it had all blown up
and left her burned. And Leda had struck the match to the situation.
“She was sick when she loved you,” Dr. Peters had said, “and you caught
some of that sickness. You’re going to be all right. Leda may never be
all right again.”
Mitch thought of it again—what would have happened if everything had
gone the way Leda had planned it. She tried to picture her father’s
face, contorted with anger and resentment and disgust, the way it would
have been if she had been sent home from Cranston.
But Leda was sick.
Mitch turned the radio off and yelled, “O.K.” into the buzzer on her
wall. She wondered who would be buzzing her number. Robin was gone with
Tom Edwards, and she didn’t know anyone else yet.
She picked up the comb again and fixed her hair before the mirror. It
was getting longer, and she thought of having a permanent so the curl
would stay in and not come down after swimming class. She turned the
light off and shut the door. A girl passed her in the hall on her way to
the steps, and Mitch returned her smile. The dorm was friendlier, she
decided, and the smile made her feel better as she went down the stairs
into the lobby to answer the buzzer.
“Well!” Lucifer grinned. “You took your sweet time getting down here.”
He was wearing a pair of old olive-green pants and a spotted brown
sweater. There was a cap on his head, with faded Greek letters.
“Pardon my attire,” he said. “I just finished scrimmage. Want to have a
Coke with a famous Cranston peasant?”
Mitch laughed and ran back up the stairs to get her coat. Lucifer was
fun.
They sat together in a small booth at the Student Union. Lucifer handed
her a nickel. “Go ahead,” he said, “play anything you like. I’m
extravagant, I know. But go ahead.”
She read the list of selections on the machine at the side of the booth
and pushed the button for number nine after she slid the nickel in the
slot. Bing Crosby’s voice floated out over the room. “Little early for
White Christmas,” Lucifer said. “Or is it?”
“Six weeks early,” Mitch said. “I love Christmas, though.”
“You’ll have a miserable Christmas.” Lucifer frowned. “You’ll miss me
till you’re almost crazy.”
The afternoon went easily. Mitch forgot a lot with Lucifer chatting away
in her ear, running back and forth with Cokes, making her laugh with his
idiotic talk. It wasn’t until they were leaving that she saw Marybell
Van Casey sitting in the opposite booth. A flash of heat shot through
Mitch when their eyes met, and she stood in the aisle beside Lucifer,
uncertain whether to speak or move on. Casey smiled and her face broke
in sudden friendliness. “Hi,” she said. “How are you, Mitch?”
There were others at the table, but Mitch felt relieved when she saw
that they were not Tri Eps. She said, “I’m fine.”
“We can’t talk,” Lucifer broke in. “We have to catch a train. We’re
eloping.”