Beth and Charlie both jumped when the phone rang at one-thirty in the
morning. Charlie grumbled, “I’ll get it,” but Beth had a sudden
premonition and said, “Oh, never mind. I’ll go.”
Willingly he turned over, muttering, “Probably a wrong number. Some
drunk, or something.”
It was Vega and she sounded hysterical. “Beth! Oh, darling, thank God
you’re there.”
“Where else would I be at this hour of the morning?” she said, keeping
her voice low so Charlie wouldn’t hear the conversation. She was both
thrilled and alarmed to hear that cautious smooth voice, charged now
with desperation.
“Beth, you’ve got to help me. I’m in a ghastly predicament. I’m just
frantic.”
“Where are you?” Beth asked.
“At the Knickerbocker.”
“The hotel?” Beth was relieved; the trouble couldn’t be too serious.
“Yes. It got so late. Some of the girls wanted to stay, so I said it was
okay. Oh, I called their mothers and everything. You have to be so damn
careful with them, with all these repulsive conventioneers around. It’s
like trying to smuggle a hoard of diamonds through a convention of
international jewel thieves. And if anything happens to any one of my
angels—holy God, it’d ruin me! I’d be run out of town on a rail.” She
stopped talking suddenly, as if to catch her breath, as if the tension
in her had drained her resources.
“Vega, tell me what happened!” Beth demanded, worried.
“Well, I—we—” For a moment Beth feared Vega would burst into tears. Her
honeyed voice broke and Beth grasped the phone in sweating hands,
imagining the worst.
“Vega, did some bastard try to—” she began but Vega interrupted.
“No, nothing like that, I just—Beth, darling, would you mind driving
over here?”
In the astonished silence Charlie called out, “Beth, for the love of
God. Who is it?”
“It’s Vega. And shut up, you’ll wake up the kids,” she hissed at him.
“Vega!” he spluttered. “What does _she_ want?”
“I don’t know. Please shut up.”
“Well, tell her to go cram it, and come to bed.”
“Beth, I need you. Will you come down?” Vega asked, her voice rough and
soft and tantalizingly near to Beth. Beth stood in the dark, feeling her
heart skip and a queer concentrated pleasure flash through her body.
_Beg me, Vega, beg me_, she thought. _Work for me. I want you so._
“It’ll take an hour,” she hedged.
“Not at this time of night. Oh, darling, I’m so miserable. Please come
to me. I haven’t got a single cigarette and those s.o.b.s at the desk
won’t send any up. I haven’t even got enough whiskey for a lousy
nightcap. You _will_ come, won’t you? And bring me some groceries?”
And Beth understood then why she was calling. Cleve had already warned
her: Vega couldn’t sleep without a bottle by the bed. There was a moment
of acute disappointment when she wanted to throw the phone down and
smash it. And then it came to her suddenly that Vega could have called
somebody else, even Cleve. But she chose her instead.
“I’ll come,” Beth said weakly. “I’ll come, Vega.”
“Bless you, Beth, you’re wonderful. I swear, nobody else is crazy like I
am but you. I _knew_ you’d do it. Darling, you make me feel so much less
lonesome.”
“I’ll be there as fast as I can,” Beth said, and hung up.
* * * * *
Beth tried to find her clothes in the dark without waking Charlie. But
he was listening for her. Suddenly he switched on the reading light over
the bed. For a second or two they were both blinded: Beth on one foot in
the closet, pulling on a stocking, and Charlie leaning on his elbow
against the pillow. When he opened his eyes and saw her he got out of
bed and went to her without a word. Beth felt him come toward her and
she was afraid of him; really afraid. He was a big man with a hard body
and a strong streak of jealousy in him. His love for her was still alive
but it was uncomfortable and a little the worse for wear and
disappointments over the years. He was in no mood to deal gently with
her.
She felt his angry hands close on her arms and jerk her forward so that
her face snapped up to his. “Now what’s all this about?” he said.
“I’m going downtown,” she said.
“To Vega’s?”
Beth looked away. “Let go of me, Charlie.”
“_Answer_ me, Beth!” He had no intention of letting go until she
confessed what she was up to. And maybe not then.
“Vega’s downtown, at the Knickerbocker. She wants some cigarettes and
things, and I told her—”
“Cigarettes!” he flared. “And _things_! What things?” When she refused,
panting with indignation, to tell him, he said disgustedly, “And booze I
suppose. And you’re going all the way into Hollywood in the middle of
the night to take them to her. Good God, Beth, I didn’t know it had gone
_this_ far.”
“What’s _that_ supposed to mean!” she cried. “I haven’t done anything
wrong! You have no right to hint that I have.” She was furious with the
strength of her fear; the fear that always rose in her like a red wall
at the suggestion of abnormality and shut off her judgment and good
sense. Her voice stirred the children, asleep in the next room.
“You haven’t done anything wrong _yet_,” he amended. “But you go down
there tonight and you will.” He was so cold, so bitter, so chagrined
that she quailed at the sight of him. The moment his hands dropped from
her arms, as if she were too wretched for him even to touch, she turned
and fled from him, snatching up a coat from the hall closet. The liquor
and cigarettes were ready in a paper bag on the hall table and she
grabbed them on the way out.
In the bedroom Polly woke up and began to cry. Beth heard her when she
started the car, and she wondered at every panicky second why Charlie
didn’t stop her, why he didn’t run after her and shake her till her
bones came loose, or strangle her. She could feel his fury like a
tangible thing wafting to her through the mild night air. Backing out
the driveway with dangerous haste she felt that if she had not been
fighting mad herself, desperate and determined, his anger would have
swallowed her up and subdued her.
She drove down the Pasadena freeway and into Hollywood, her mind
stewing. _If Charlie hadn’t made such a fuss there wouldn’t be any
trouble. I’ll be home in the morning, the kids don’t ever need to know
the difference. And if he could only realize—oh, God, make him
realize—how happy I can be if I just have somebody to love. To have fun
with. Somebody like Vega. Why doesn’t he understand how good I can be to
him? How patient with the kids? If he could only share me, just a little
bit, just once in a while, with ... with a woman._
She was amazed to find herself reasoning like this: Beth, who hadn’t
given a conscious thought to other women for nine years; Beth, who
thought she was solidly normal for so long, who even married a man on
that conviction; Beth, who had turned Laura Landon out of her life one
day many years ago with such reassuring feelings of superiority and
normalcy. That Beth, that very same girl, was tearing through the night
on a fool’s errand at the whim of a beautiful spoiled woman who probably
didn’t give a damn what her personal feelings were.
Vega: Beth saw her in her mind suddenly, whole and clear, every detail
of her, as she had seen Laura in her dream some weeks before. Strangely,
life was worth living for a woman like that. Problems could be solved,
boredom could be faced, chores could be accomplished, if Vega could only
love her. With love, with passion, with romance in her life again,
Beth’s children would be more bearable. She could love them again
because love was being reawakened in her and there would be plenty to go
around. Why couldn’t Charlie see it that way, see what joy and peace his
family would know if Beth were only satisfied?
She felt a flare-up of stinging resentment at his apparent selfishness.
He’d understand one of these days; he’d _have_ to. Beth was so eager for
Vega’s company, so full of pleasure and trembling anticipation, that
nothing could have stopped her then, not even the thought of Charlie’s
wrath.
She pulled off the freeway and into the stop-and-go traffic on Hollywood
Boulevard. The great avenue was a strip of brilliants pasted on the
black night. It might have been past two in the morning but it was
Friday night, too, and the big brassy street was humming. Lights
twinkled and flashed, announcing a hundred shows, a thousand succulent
and sinful beauties, a million laughs. Posh shops displayed their slick
wares in a weird radiance unknown to the daytime hours.
And the people swarmed down the walks and across the street looking
urgently for fun, dressed in their courting clothes or their tourist
sport shirts. They smiled at every light, every open door, every burst
of commercial good humor. Beth watched them when she had to stop for
lights, and they did not strike her as pathetic or lost or bored. They
were having fun, they were all dressed up, and they were doing Hollywood
right. She even found herself envying them.
* * * * *
The night clerk buzzed Vega’s room for her, giving Beth a narrow-eyed
examination all the while. “She says come up,” he said, leaning toward
her on the counter.
“Thanks.” Beth turned away, but he called her back.
“Miss,” he said and smiled at her sparkling eyes. “She’s been giving us
a rough time tonight. We’re not supposed to take stuff up after
midnight. And those girls with her are pretty noisy. I wonder if you’d
tell her to tone it down a little. Would you mind?” He glanced at the
paper bag full of whiskey under her arm.
“She’ll tone it down,” Beth said. “You won’t hear a damn thing, I
guarantee.”
“Thanks,” he said, and watched her fanny as she walked away toward the
elevator.
She was full of a reckless elation, a taut and wonderful excitement that
she didn’t dare to analyze. She rode up in the elevator and all she
thought about was Vega: the sight of her, the scent of her, the smile.
Not what she would do once they were alone in that room together; not
what she would say. Just a mental vision of that fine-featured face,
that elegant body, too thin, almost too well kept, too pale. _But oh,
deliver me! So beautiful!_ Beth thought.
She knocked lightly on Vega’s door. The hall was rather noisy, with
half-suppressed laughter and an occasional squeal floating from the
adjacent rooms. Beth had just time to hope that none of the girls was
sharing Vega’s room when the door opened and Vega herself nearly fell
into Beth’s arms.
“Oh, you’re here!” she cried. “Thank God! Did you bring it?” Beth could
feel the tremor running through Vega and watched her with fascination as
she seized the package of whiskey.
Beth stood just inside the door, her coat and gloves still on, content
to be in Vega’s presence, content to smell her perfume and feel the air
she stirred when she moved. Vega was swathed in a full peignoir of
several varicolored layers that floated and swirled around her. It gave
the illusion that she was rounder and softer than she was.
Vega busied herself with the bottle, opening it with a finger nail file
and pouring herself a drink in the bathroom glass. Beth realized slowly
that they were completely alone. The girls had banded together in the
other rooms, and the fact that she and Vega were there by themselves,
locked in a hotel room at nearly three in the morning, exulted her. She
felt wonderfully strong and strange, gazing at Vega, who had softened
and relaxed with the warmth of the whiskey and was settling herself on
the bed.
Vega smiled up at Beth and said, “Come and sit with me and tell me how
evil I am.” Her smile was both sad and inviting, and suddenly the
curious strength Beth had felt washed out of her and her knees began to
tremble. She was afraid to move, afraid any move she made would be the
wrong one.
Vega frowned slightly at her, perplexed. “Beth, darling, you can’t just
stand there in your coat for the rest of the night. Take it off and come
here.”
It was such a frank proposition that Beth wondered suddenly how Vega
could be gay, as Cleve said, and not know it. It just couldn’t be. She
wanted to rush to her, grasp her hands and sink to her knees and say,
“Vega, Cleve has been lying to me. He says you don’t know yourself, he
says—”
“What do you mean?” said Vega, and Beth realized, with a little gasp of
horror and surprise, that the words had virtually spoken themselves, so
intensely was she involved in her thoughts. Her face went a hot deep
pink and she moved at last, slipping out of her coat, wordlessly
embarrassed.
“What did Cleve say to you, Beth?” Vega was strung up tight again,
leaning forward to catch each word.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Beth murmured. “I—I just had a drink
with him this afternoon. He told me a lot of guff. I think he was just
tight.” She went anxiously toward the bed and suddenly Vega burst into a
beautiful smile and laughed in her cautious, lovely way.
“He told you how charming you are and how wicked and depraved I am, no
doubt. He thinks it’s his mission in life to warn decent people away
from his nefarious sister.” Her laughter brought a breath of relief to
Beth, who smiled gratefully at her. It gave her the courage to come and
sit beside her, and when Vega offered her the glass and poured her a
drink, she took it as a sign that there were no hard feelings. She
didn’t want the liquor, just Vega’s esteem, Vega’s warmth and favor. But
liquor was one way Vega had of showing her approval and it had to be
accepted.
“He’s been telling people for years how rare I am,” Vega went on. “How
immoral. How faithless and frigid. I ... was married, you know,” she
added abruptly, her eyes bright on Beth.
“I know.”
“Oh, so he told you that too.” And she laughed again, putting her head
back a little. Her hair was loose, not wound into the graceful roll she
usually wore, and it fell, two feet of it, in silky luxury down her
back. Beth had an almost uncontrollable urge to touch it, and she was
relieved when Vega straightened up and resumed her story. “I was married
twice, Beth. They were nice enough guys. That wasn’t the trouble.”
“What _was_ the trouble?” Beth said and felt her throat constrict with
excitement. It was such a perfect opening for a confession.
Vega turned her bottomless brown eyes on Beth and touched her knee
gently, letting her hand rest there. “You blurted out a minute ago—to
your own embarrassment, obviously—that Cleve thinks I don’t know
myself.”
“Vega, I’m so sorry, it was thoughtless, I just—”
“No darling, I don’t want you to explain.” Her hand tightened on Beth’s
warm knee. “I just want you to tell me what Cleve thinks it is I don’t
know about myself. Tell me, Beth.”
Beth opened her mouth to speak and found no voice. How could she
possibly say such a thing? _He thinks you’re a Lesbian, and you don’t
know it._ It could be torment for a sensitive person to have something
that shocking, that personal, thrown at her from the blue.
“I can’t say it, Vega,” she admitted, and Vega read her pale face
accurately.
“Well, then, I know what it is,” she said. “And he’s telling you what he
honestly believes.” Her face became pensive suddenly and she gazed
downward at the whiskey in the glass tumbler. “I have never let him
understand me very well. I have good reasons for it. He _thinks_ he
does, of course. It’s rather painful sometimes, he thinks I’m so dense.”
Beth felt herself in a state of tremulous anticipation. She didn’t want
to talk, only to touch, only to feel. And yet talking like this might
bring her closer to Vega, help her understand her.
“If I tell you, Beth,” Vega said slowly, “that I have never been
attracted to men ... I hope it won’t give you wrong ideas.” She glanced
up to see how her remark was taken, but Beth said only, “Wrong ideas?”
She sat holding her hands together tightly to keep from reaching out for
Vega.
Vega smiled at her suddenly and said, “Relax.” The squeeze she gave
Beth’s knee tickled her and they both laughed. “You didn’t come here to
get a lecture on me, anyway,” Vega added. “You deserve some reward for
your effort. Here, have another.” She offered Beth the glass and Beth
tried to turn it down. But she saw a quick shy retreat in Vega’s eyes,
as if Vega feared Beth were disapproving, and she took the glass anyway
and drank.
“Was Charlie mad at you for coming?” Vega asked.
“Yes,” Beth said simply. Her head was getting light.
“I’m sorry,” Vega said. Her voice was tender and grateful.
“You know, I had an odd thought on the way over here tonight,” Beth
said, to change the subject.
“Tell me.” Vega leaned back into the pillows and gazed up at her, the
whiskey glass resting on her stomach. She held it lightly, almost
casually, as if she could easily give it up, as if she could go to bed
without a drink, without a bottle on the table beside her.
“I’d like to get lost with you in Hollywood. I mean—” Beth laughed,
flustered. “See the sights, like the tourists.”
“You don’t go wandering in Hollywood at night without a man unless you
want to get picked up, darling. Is that what you mean?”
“No, I just want to share it with you. You’re fun to be with. I guess—to
be frank—that’s why I came tonight.” She took the proffered glass again,
avoiding Vega’s penetrating smile bashfully, and when she returned it
she felt quite dizzy. She leaned toward Vega slightly, steadying herself
with both hands pressed into the bed in front of her. She found herself
tilted close to Vega.
“Feel okay?” Vega asked. “You look way out. No need to keep up with me,
you know. I’m more or less immune to the stuff. Ask Cleve.”
“I feel fine. Wonderful,” Beth said, raising her eyes to Vega’s. She
felt reckless, even. Their closeness was like a challenge, a dare that
brought her pulse up high and visible in her throat and made her work
for her breath. “Vega, you—you are the loveliest woman,” she whispered.
Slowly Vega placed her glass on the floor and then her hands went up to
Beth’s shoulders, more to subdue her than encourage her.
“Beth?” she said, and the name itself was a question. “I never thought
_you_ of all people....”
In one quick painful second, Beth saw that she was caught; her
fascination, her desire were clear and hot in her eyes and mouth. Vega
could see them. There was nothing for it but to declare herself or
retreat and run, spouting half-baked excuses that would fool neither of
them. Back to Charlie she would go, back to the kids, back to Sierra
Bella, humiliated and disappointed beyond her capacity to bear it. She
could not give up so easily; she had come too far, risked too much.
“Vega, let me, you must let me,” she said, trying to lean closer to her,
but Vega’s thin arms restrained her. Beth was afraid of hurting her and
she paused.
“You know how I feel about this,” Vega said, and there was something
sharp, almost fearful, in her voice. Her eyes were quite wide. Beth felt
her own strength and Vega’s weakness and she forced Vega’s arms down
suddenly.
“You ... of all people, you,” Vega moaned. “No, Beth. _Please!_”
“Vega, forgive me,” Beth said wildly. “I love you, I can’t help it!” And
she bent her head in one swift hungry movement and kissed Vega’s
exquisite mouth.
For the space of a heart beat there was no response, only a chill, a
palpable terror. And then suddenly Vega returned her kiss, and Beth,
murmuring insanities, kissed her face and her mouth all over, holding
her tightly and panting with the sheer forgotten glory of it: the
marvelous sweetness and suppleness of a woman’s body, the instinctive
understanding that surpasses words, the indescribable tenderness two
women in love with each other can create.
She became aware only slowly that Vega was desperate for breath. The
weight of Beth’s body was too much for her, and Beth rolled off
suddenly, exclaiming, “Vega, darling, did I hurt you? Are you all
right?”
Vega swept to her feet and nearly fell back again. Beth leaped up after
her and caught her from behind, putting her arms around Vega and rocking
her gently, her lips against Vega’s throat.
“Come sit down,” she said, and when she had Vega safely into a chair,
she knelt and put her head down in Vega’s lap, her arms around that tiny
waist and her lips moving still against Vega’s warm body, exploring,
caressing, reverencing.
Until Vega pushed her head back and said, as if her breath had only then
come back to her, “Stop it! Will you _stop_ it?” with such anguish that
Beth pulled away in alarm.
“Oh, I hurt you,” she said, dismayed.
Vega got to her feet. “No, don’t help me,” she ordered. “Don’t touch
me.”
“But Vega—”
“Shut up!” Vega turned a tormented face to her. She walked to a window
and pulled it up, gasping up the air. “I told you not to get any wrong
ideas,” she said finally, when some measure of calm had returned to her.
She gazed stonily at the street eight stories below, her face almost a
mask now.
“I didn’t know that was so awfully _wrong_,” Beth said, rising and
coming toward her.
Vega looked up at her and her expression changed again, the fear showing
quite plainly in the quiver of her muscles. “Beth, stop, hear me,” she
said. “It’s not that I don’t _know_ what I am. It’s just that I can’t
stand _being_ what I am. If you do this, if you insist, you’ll destroy
me.”
“All I want to do is love you, Vega,” Beth said, and felt tears of
frustration and passion struggling for supremacy in her. “Can love
destroy a person?”
“The wrong kind can!” Vega said.
“But this _isn’t_ wrong.”
“You only say that because you want it, because you’re too weak to deny
yourself,” Vega cried.
“I’ve done without it for more than nine years.”
“I’ve done without it for more than _twenty_ years!” Vega said. But
something in the parting of her lips, in the warmth of the kiss she had
returned, gave Beth courage. Perhaps Vega feared her mother, perhaps she
couldn’t help knuckling under to her mother’s ideas. But her body, her
secret heart, seemed to beg for that proscribed love.
“I don’t believe you,” Beth said. “Your own beauty would trap you in a
score of affairs.”
“I’m not that beautiful,” Vega said candidly. “I might have been once
but I’m not any more.”
“I never saw anyone lovelier,” Beth said. “I never saw anyone I wanted
so much.” The thought of Laura flashed before her eyes and reminded her
that she was lying. But that had been so long ago, this was so here and
now. “Vega,” she said in a voice husky with pleading, with need. “Please
come to me. Please, don’t let me stand here alone in this strange room
speaking love to a stranger. Let me know you, darling. Let me be close
to you. Don’t shut me out. Vega, do you know how long I’ve waited,
turned this out of my mind and lived like a robot? No, _worse_—a robot
can’t suffer. I did it because there was no one I could love.”
“You did it because Lesbian love is wrong and you knew that,” Vega said,
and Beth could hear the echo of her mother’s voice speaking, the way she
had heard it in Cleve’s speech. “And it’s still wrong, Beth. More for
you than for me. _You_ have a husband. And children.”
“That’s why I need it so!” Beth cried in a storm of misery. She was
ready to explode with the feeling inside her, a whirlwind of
contradictions and desires.
“Yes. You need _it_, not me,” Vega said bitterly.
Beth couldn’t stand it any longer. She rushed toward Vega, but Vega very
swiftly and unexpectedly opened her diaphanous dressing gown, holding it
wide away from herself so that Beth should see every detail of her white
body.
Beth stopped abruptly, within a foot of her goal, and stared. She made a
small inarticulate sound, and Vega searched her face with horrible
anxiety. “If you can make love to that,” she whispered, “then I’ll
believe you love me. I’ll accept it.”
She was a complex of scars that twisted every which way over her chest,
like yards of pink ribbon in snarls. She had no breasts, and the
operation to remove her lung had left a bad welt that Beth returned to
once or twice with a prickle of revulsion. Even Vega’s dainty little
abdomen had its share. And the bones, the poor sharp bones without the
ordinary smooth envelope of tender flesh that most girls take for
granted and even rail against when there’s too much. Vega’s bones were
all pitifully plain and frankly outlined.
Beth put her trembling hands over her mouth, to stifle her horror, and
let the tears flood from her eyes. She shut them tight for a moment, but
when she opened them Vega was halfway out of the open window.
With a little scream Beth lunged at her and caught her, pulling her to
safety over the most violent protests of which Vega was capable. Beth
held her, struggling and swearing hysterically, in her arms for some
time, thinking all the while of Cleve and his unhappy eyes and his talk
of Vega and their mother. She stroked Vega’s hair and let her own
unhappy tears fall.
After a while sheer exhaustion forced Vega into silence. Beth felt her
drooping and she bent down and put an arm under Vega’s legs and another
around her shoulders and lifted her up. She was surprised at how slight
the burden was. Beth was a big girl and she was strong, and she had
always been proud of these unfeminine qualities in herself.
There was plenty of whiskey left, and Beth, after laying Vega down
tenderly on the bed, poured her a drink. Neither of them had spoken a
word.
Vega gulped the drink and then handed it back; she turned her face away
and put one hand over it. Beth let her weep undisturbed for a while. At
length Vega murmured in a broken voice, “You don’t need to tell me how
you feel now. I saw it in your face.”
“Vega, you damn fool,” Beth said gently. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why
did you spring it on me that way? I could have taken it, if you’d only
let me know. If you’d only prepared me a little for it.”
“No,” Vega said, reaching for a tissue from her pocket and wiping her
eyes. “No, what you mean is, you could have controlled the look on your
face. You could have made up a kind little speech and said it right
away, before your silence spoke for you.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Beth protested.
“Don’t you see, Beth,” she said, turning to look at her and forcing
herself to face those eyes that had seen her saddest and ugliest secret,
“if I had told you beforehand you would never have confessed your love
to me at all. You would never have tried to know me or touch me. That
counts for something, believe me. That’s one thing to be grateful for,
even if it can’t last. But aside from that it wouldn’t have made much
difference. You might have hidden your disgust a little better, that’s
all. No matter which way I did it, the ending would have been the same.”
Beth lighted a cigarette. “This has happened before, hasn’t it?” she
said quietly.
“Yes,” Vega sighed. “Now you know why I’ve been waiting twenty years. It
wasn’t pure virtue.” She gave an acrid little laugh. “You thought my
mother was ugly, didn’t you?” she said. “I’ll bet you didn’t know how
ugly a woman could be until now.”
“Vega, please,” Beth said, exasperated with her and with herself. She
was in a state of tremulous nervousness, keyed up to a fever one moment
with aching desire, and almost nauseated with shock the next. Somehow,
in the space of a few short weeks, this lovely woman she had known well
enough for a period of years had appeared to her as a lover. Suddenly
Vega, who had been only Cleve Purvis’s sister since Beth came to
California, was all the promise of love, of womanhood to her. Vega
became Beth’s own passion resurrected in the flesh.
And now, with brutal suddenness, she had seen her mutilated body,
repellent and pitiable, and she could not find her desire any more. It
had dissipated.
_But surely I loved her_, Beth told herself miserably. _When you love,
you love more than a body. You love a mind and heart, too, or your
emotion is a cheap fake._ She knew this was true. She knew that if her
“love” had been real it would somehow have survived, even in platonic
form. But all she wanted now was to get out, to leave, to breathe the
open air, to be free of her cruelly misshapen dream.
The very sight of Vega, the small sounds she made, drove Beth’s
disappointment through her like a knife. She was ashamed of her
selfishness but quite impotent with it. She had wanted a whole woman,
warm and yielding. She had dreamed that her hands would touch the smooth
perfumed flesh of a body that knew how to love. It had been a vital part
of her desire and now she had little more than a face to hang her dreams
on. Vega’s face, covered with tears.
“You’d better go,” Vega told her suddenly, and Beth wanted nothing more
than to obey. But shame and pity held her to the spot beside Vega on the
bed.
After a moment Vega turned and gazed at her. “Surely you can’t stay,
after what you’ve seen?” she said in a leaden voice.
“Vega,” Beth said painfully. “I said—I said I loved you. I’ve grown very
fond of you over the last few weeks. I don’t know how or why it
happened. I only know that I can hardly bear to hurt you, to see you
lying there in despair.” It was meant as solace, to ease Beth’s parting.
Nothing more. But Vega in her desperation took it for more. She turned
to gaze at Beth and there was a new look on her face. The eyes were less
empty, the mouth less tragic.
“You mean you’ll stay?” she whispered almost inaudibly.
Once said, the words trapped Beth. For a moment she couldn’t answer and
her mind flew frantically from lie to lie, but there were no excuses,
none that wouldn’t hurt Vega mortally. She had seen Vega’s ugliness and
she had been sickened. Her passion had flickered and gone out, and now
she was tired and ashamed and she wanted to be gone.
“Of course I’ll stay,” she said softly, hopelessly, to Vega. It was her
conscience, her compassion, that spoke for her. If the incredulous
pleasure, the stammering gratitude she produced in Vega could have
reawakened the needs of Beth’s body, Beth would have fallen on her with
delight. Instead she lay wordlessly beside her, taking Vega into her
arms and murmuring kindnesses to her.
“I knew you were better than the rest,” Vega said, and her voice broke
with emotion. “Beth, darling Beth, I knew it somehow. I had a feeling
about you. Maybe because I wanted you so much. I did, you know. I do.
Oh, Beth.”
And Beth, as she kissed her, wondered with sad irony why Vega couldn’t
have said that to her before when she wanted so much to hear it, why she
couldn’t have played the game gently and broken the secret mercifully.
Perhaps she hoped she could catch someone like Beth someday who had too
much pride and pity to treat her like an outcast. Perhaps she hoped her
pathetic condition would finally snare somebody the way it had Beth. She
had waited a long lonely time for this, and she clung to Beth as if to
let go for even an instant was to lose her forever.
Beth made love to her. It was restrained, partly because she saw with
awful clarity in her mind’s eye every part of Vega that her hands
touched, and partly because Vega herself had not the breath or strength
to throw herself into her feelings. Beth clung tight to her composure,
swallowing her tears of frustration and giving Vega all she could muster
of tenderness and patience. Vega could not be satisfied unless Beth
appeared to be so, for otherwise it would be too clear that Beth was
doing this for her out of charity. So there was the fatiguing necessity
of pretending to enjoy it, pretending to feel the thrill that was
nothing but a gruesome parody of the happiness she had anticipated.
Vega lay in her arms throughout the rest of the night and she slept like
a guiltless child. Beth, beside her in the dark and afraid to move and
disturb her, did not sleep at all. She stared into the night and cursed
the unkind fate that had promised so much and delivered so little. All
the dormant fires of her younger days had sprung to life and they burned
in her still, tempting her, torturing her, until she knew she would have
to find release somewhere or die of it. She even went so far as to
imagine the young girls in the next few rooms and to wonder if it were
possible to see them, to make friends.
_At five-thirty in the morning?_ she said it to herself, and smiled
wryly at the dawn.
* * * * *
Beth drove home in the morning, dropping Vega off first and seeing her
go with a sigh of relief. She was ashamed of her feeling of resentment
and to cover it up in her conscience she berated Vega. _Jesus, I wanted
to make love to a woman, not a carved-up scarecrow!_ she cried to
herself, and her own hard words dismayed her. Her attitude toward Vega
was fast becoming one of bitter disappointment. She had been betrayed
and she was near to loathing the object of her betrayal, so great had
been her hopes and her needs.
At home in her empty house she put her head down and cried. They were
tears of fury, tears of frustration, but not tears of despair. Not now.
Her temper was too high and the blaze in her too hot.
For an hour or more she stamped around the house, picking up objects
aimlessly and smacking them down again, kicking chairs and doors, and
thinking. She walked out into the yard and pulled up a few flowers just
because it felt good to ruin something. And then she went back into the
house and threw herself down on her bed and slept.
She dreamed of Laura.
Just Laura, sitting on the studio couch in the sorority room they had
shared, gazing at her. But though she didn’t move, though she didn’t
speak, she was vibrantly alive this time. Beth could smell the
remembered heady scent of her hair, and when she approached her and held
out her hand she could feel Laura’s breath upon it. She spoke to her,
just her name. And Laura smiled, ever so faintly, over the gulf of years
and the famous “well of loneliness.”