Beth went through a period of nearly two months, as spring edged into
summer, of emotional upheaval and torment that were all the harder to
bear for being secret. There was no one to talk to, no one to explain
to, no one to confide in. Charlie would never understand. His reaction
would surely be one of anger and contempt for her. Her exclusive
behavior, her moods, had already come close to damning her in his eyes.
And _Vega_.
_Oh, God!_ Beth thought with acute irritation. Vega was rapidly becoming
a stone around her neck. She pestered her on the phone two or three
times a day. She begged Beth to spend more time with her, and Beth, who
was speedily growing sick and sorry about the whole affair, tried every
machination to get out of it. But then came threats. Vega would sob over
the phone, and her lovely voice, tangled in the gasps for air that
plagued her when she was excited, would moan, “You love me. You _said_
so. If you love me come to me, Beth. My God, I’m out of my mind I want
you so much.”
And Beth found herself yearning for the days when she and Vega were
hardly more than acquaintances; even the days when she wanted Vega and
couldn’t have her were better than these when an unhappy and jealous
Vega tried to force herself on her.
“I have to take Skipper to a birthday party,” she would say. Or, “I
can’t, Vega, I’m bowling this morning.”
“Oh, hell!” Vega spat. “You gave that up weeks ago. Jean told me. She
said you just called up and quit and she thinks you don’t like her any
more. She called me to cry on my shoulder.” Her voice was hard with
jealous suspicions and Beth was obliged to concoct ridiculous fibs for
her. Anything to keep her at arms’ length.
But she couldn’t keep her there always. There were meetings, awful
exhausting affairs. Beth approached them with a dread that included an
element of physical revulsion she found it hard to hide. Vega, who was
sharp-eyed in spite of her infatuation, could see that Beth’s response
to her was only slight and that her thoughts were always with something
or someone else. But she had fallen for Beth and there was no backing
out. It was almost a fanatical attachment. Their relations became more
and more trying, more strained, with Vega weeping pathetic angry tears
and Beth snapping at her with wild impatience. They had really trapped
each other and there seemed to be no way out.
Vega’s most desperate fear was that one day Beth would simply refuse to
see her at all. “I’d _kill_ you if you did that to me,” she told Beth
once, thinking that by mentioning it before it had a chance to happen
she might miraculously stave it off.
But Beth offered her no consolation, not even an answer. She knew quite
well that soon it would come to a parting; that she had only delayed the
break out of shame, cowardice, and a desire to lessen the pain for Vega.
Vega would often call her when Charlie was at home and Beth would be
forced to talk quietly to her, to agree to her plans, just to avoid a
revealing argument in front of Charlie. Beth upbraided her royally for
it when they met.
“Good God, Vega, I can’t let Charlie know what’s going on,” Beth shouted
at her. “That is, if he doesn’t know already. Do you want me to stop
seeing you altogether? He’d insist, you know.”
“Beth, if you’d call me once in a while instead of forcing me to call
_you_. Just _once_ in a while. If you’d act like you cared—”
“Vega, don’t throw a lot of sentimental pap at me.”
“Is that what you call it?” Vega sprang to her feet, her face white. “Is
that what you call my love for you? This affair was all your idea, Beth,
in case you’ve forgotten. _You_ insisted. _I_ surrendered. And now
you’re obligated to me. I swear to God you are!” She would have gone on
but lack of breath stopped her and she paused, panting, a hand to her
throat.
“I’m not going to stand around and be hollered at,” Beth said, picking
up her coat with an angry sweep of her arm. “You’re turning into a
shrew, Vega.”
“Beth, don’t go! Please!” The last word was almost a sob and Beth didn’t
dare to turn around and see her face. She would have succumbed to her
own sympathy and weakness again and hated herself for it afterward.
“Beth, I’m warning you here and now, if you leave me I’ll tell Charlie
all about this. I’ll tell him everything.”
Beth paused, her back to Vega, and her heart skipped a beat. She kept
her voice under control when she answered. “He won’t believe you.”
“You know damn well he will. You said yourself he already suspects
monkey business. Well, it won’t take much to convince him.”
“Try it,” Beth said, still bluffing, still afraid to face her.
“You’re goddamn right I’ll try it,” Vega said, with all the meager force
she could muster.
Beth turned around slowly, reluctantly. “Vega,” she said. “You’re a
viper. I can’t think of anything else to call you. You’re nothing but a
lousy snake. You make me sorry I ever laid eyes on you.”
“You’ve laid more than eyes on me, Beth, and don’t forget it,” Vega
said, trembling with the fatigue of her feelings. “You owe me
something.”
“You owe _me_ something, too, Vega,” Beth said. Her voice was soft but
furious. “You waited twenty years for somebody, remember? For some poor
idiot like me to take pity on you—”
“Stop!” Vega cried, visibly hurt and beginning to reel slightly. Beth
was forced to care for her, to help her to a chair and bring her a shot
of whiskey. “Beth, don’t say it,” she begged. “Once those things are
said there’s no unsaying them. They hang there in the air and poison
things. They destroy even the little white lies you tell yourself when
things look blackest.”
And Beth was touched by her misery in spite of herself. “You mean,” she
said quietly, “they make you face the truth.”
“Hurt like that goes beyond the truth,” Vega said. “When you’re trying
to hurt somebody else you kill them with truth like that. I couldn’t
bear it if you left me, Beth. I can’t believe you will. I was so lonely
before. It’s not much better now, but it’s better. When you’re in a good
humor I almost faint with love for you. I want to lie in your arms and
die of joy. I wish we could live somewhere together, just the two of
us.”
And Beth, for whom the whole situation had taken such a sickening turn,
was caught between pity and disgust. “I—I don’t mean to leave you,
Vega,” she said at last, hoping that her phraseology would leave her an
out. “But don’t call Charlie. Things are bad enough as it is. Please,
leave him out of it.”
She hated to say it, for it gave Vega a powerful ace to play, but she
spoke the truth when she admitted that things were already bad enough at
home.
There had been a sort of armed truce declared between Charlie and
herself. They had very little to say to each other, but for the
children’s sake they put on a show of life-as-usual. Beth reached a
point where she hated to leave the house, as if her love affair—if the
word “love” belongs there—had changed her physically and might give her
away to her neighbors. She did the marketing and took the children out,
but that was all.
Housework seemed an interminable chore to her. She had never liked it,
any more than she liked cooking. But she had always done what was
necessary. Now even that oppressed her to such an extent that she would
often let things go until the last moment, sometimes failing to make up
the beds until just before Charlie got home, and letting days, weeks, go
by without dusting or vacuuming. The worse the house got the harder it
was for her to do anything about it. She wanted to shut her eyes and
forget it.
And all the time, every day, at every hour and in every imaginable
posture, she dreamed of Laura. She dreamed of the romance, unfettered
with family obligation or dishwashing, free of all the daily drudgery
she so despised, free of a husband who was jealous and narrow-minded,
free of children who were noisy and nerve-wracking.
Beth yearned for Laura. She was almost possessed with her. It was as if,
out of the blue, she had fallen in love with her all over again; and, in
a way, she had. She was in love with her own lost freedom, her own
smooth young face, her college sophistication, her exotic love for a
strange and fascinating girl. All the things that were once but were no
more, all the things Beth had been and was no longer. These she loved.
And Laura personified them.
To while away the hours, she read. On her shopping trips she picked up
books—every book she could find on the subject of homosexuality and
Lesbianism. She read them with passionate interest, and found a release
in them she had not expected. Most of them were novels with tragic
endings. Some were even dull, at least for those whose ruling interest
in life had nothing to do with their own sex. Some of them depressed
her, but all of them interested her and she gained a feeling of
companionship with some of the writers which alleviated her solitude a
little. She wrote letters to a few, the ones who impressed her most, who
seemed to understand best what it was like to be gay and to be alone and
starved for love; for less than love, even—for sympathetic
companionship.
A handful of them wrote back to her and she established a correspondence
with one or two that relieved her a little. She looked forward to their
letters eagerly and poured out her desperate lonesomeness and
bewilderment to them. After a few weeks they had all deserted her but
one, who seemed really interested in her, named Nina Spicer.
Nina’s letters came in oversized envelopes with the name of her
publisher in the corner, and Beth read each one avidly. She knew dimly
that although Nina Spicer was gay there was very little else they had in
common. That became clear from her letters. But Nina had become
intrigued with her and Beth was grateful for the interest. It was a
bridge into another world where she longed hopelessly to be, and it
comforted her.
The thought began to grow in Beth that the only way out of her
depression was to go back to Chicago and search for Laura. Charlie would
refuse, of course, and he’d fight it all the way, but she had to get
out, shed her present life, try to find herself in a new environment
with new people.
Chicago ... it sounded beautiful, romantic as a foreign port to her, for
the first time in her life. She had grown up there, she knew her way
around. But it had never appeared as anything but huge and dirty and
familiar, with sporadic excitements available.
Laura had grown up there, too. And suddenly Beth knew that she _had_ to
get to Chicago. She would go if it meant a divorce; even if it meant
giving up her children. No sacrifice seemed out of line to her. Uncle
John would take her in. She could always feed him stories and hide the
truth from him. The idea of actually seeing Laura again awakened a
trembling hope in her that came very near, at her best moments, to being
happiness.
She spent three days trying to figure out a good way to broach the
subject. Nothing had changed between herself and Charlie. He spoke to
her when necessary and he spent the nights on his side of the bed, never
touching her except by accident. His silent suffering both touched and
exasperated her, like Vega’s. Mostly it made her mad.
There was a secret woman in Beth, a woman capable of a wonderful and
curious love for other women, and she wanted to dominate Beth. But,
tragically for Charlie and her family, this tormented woman could not
feel more for a man than a sort of friendly respect. If that was spurned
she had nothing else to offer. And Charlie wanted passionate love and
devotion, not a buddy who was more woman-oriented than he was.
It all came out in a single bright and anguished explosion. Beth had
cast about for a way to explain herself to him; a hopeless job before it
was begun, for she could not begin to understand herself. And when she
saw the futility of it, she gave up and recklessly threw the whole range
of her misery before him, like a picture on a screen.
She waited until the children were in bed and Charlie was watching the
TV in the living room. She came in and sat down in a chair facing him.
He was stretched out on the couch with his head on a hill of pillows,
looking intently at the glowing screen in hopes of forgetting his
problems for a little while.
“Charlie?” she said, and because she had not approached him for any
reason for several weeks he turned his head and looked at her with
surprise.
“What?” he said.
Beth swallowed once, to be sure her voice would come out clear and
determined. “I’m going to go home. To Chicago.”
He stared at her briefly and then turned unseeing eyes back to the set.
“I doubt it,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to leave Vega that long.”
“Vega can go to hell. She’s driving me crazy,” Beth confessed. He
already believed the truth, although he had no proof of it. _So why in
God’s name am I pretending?_ she thought defiantly. Suddenly it seemed
easier and even cleaner to be frank.
“Don’t tell me the great romance is fading?” he said, still not looking
at her.
She gazed at his face she had once so loved and she wished, for the sake
of that decaying love, that he would be kind, that he would say things
that would not make her hate him.
“The great romance never existed,” she said.
“If you’re trying to tell me it was all platonic, don’t bother,” he
said.
“I’m trying to tell you I’m not in love with Vega Purvis,” she blurted.
“I never was.”
“That’s funny!” said Charlie. “I got the other impression.”
“Well, I thought I was in love with her,” she said awkwardly, thinking,
hoping the confession would unburden her at the same time that it
destroyed Vega’s worst weapon against her. But suddenly the words were
ugly and hard to shape and she wished she had simply told him she was
going away and left it at that.
“I—I thought I loved her the night I took her the whiskey, at the
Knickerbocker. And I discovered that I didn’t. That’s all.”
“After a little mutual exploration?” His voice was sarcastic. “Shall I
send you a gold plaque in honor of your extra-marital affairs?”
She stood up and stamped her foot and started to speak, but he added
quickly, “And don’t talk to me the way you talk to your children. I’ll
take you up and beat the hell out of you, I swear I will. For their
sakes.”
“Charlie, I’m going to Chicago!” she said flatly, finally.
“You’re not going to run out on this, Beth. You have a responsibility to
me and the kids. Nobody held a gun to your head when we got married.
Why, you weren’t even pregnant. You married me because you _wanted_ to
marry me, and by God, you’re _still_ married to me. And you’re going to
_stay_ married to me until you grow up and learn to face your
responsibilities.”
“Charlie,” she said, suddenly earnest and almost scared, “I can’t
_stand_ this any more.”
“Can’t stand what? No lovers? None of your lady friends suits you?”
For a second she thought she would explode with grief and fury, but she
clamped her eyes shut and controlled herself. “I can’t stand living with
a man,” she said, and suddenly the tears began to flow. She went on
speaking, ignoring them. “It’s not your fault you’re a man—”
“_Thanks_,” he snarled.
“And it’s not my fault I need a woman. You have to understand that,
Charlie. I’m not doing this because I want to hurt you. I’m not gay
because I enjoy it. I don’t even know if I’m gay at all. I wish to God,
I wish with all my heart, that I could make a life with you and the
children. I wish all I needed to be happy was what other woman need—a
home and a man and children. I thought I _was_ like other women when we
got married, or I never would have committed myself to a lifetime with
you. I thought it was what I needed and wanted, or believe me I would
have spared us both. I would have climbed aboard that train with Laura
nine years ago. But I thought _she_ was different and _I_ was normal.
And I was in love with you.”
He sighed deeply, covering his face for a moment with his hands.
“I remember Laura,” he said then, gazing into space. “I remember her so
well, with that pale face, rather thin, and those big blue eyes. I
remember how she adored you and how pathetic I thought she was. I
remember how shocked I was when I found out that you had encouraged her.
But I was always so sure, in spite of everything, that you were
basically normal and that being married and having a couple of kids
would straighten you out so easily. I was so sure of myself,” and she
saw his self-doubt and confusion now and it touched her. “I thought
because I was a man and because I loved you so terribly that we’d be
able to work out anything together. I thought that living with me would
give you a lifelong preference for my love. Real love, a man’s love. The
kind of love that only a man can give a woman.”
“That’s not the only real love, Charlie,” she said, sinking to the chair
again, and leaning toward him, tense with the need to make him
understand a little, now, at long last. “I thought I’d get over it too
when Laura went away, and I thought I had. It was years after we were
married that I began to feel like this, and at first I didn’t even know
what it was. It wasn’t till Vega that I even realized what was wrong
with me. Charlie, maybe if I could just have a sort of _vacation_ from
you.”
“Vacation? How can you take a vacation from a marriage? It’s a permanent
condition,” he said, and she could tell from his voice that it didn’t
make the first glimmer of sense to him.
“I know it isn’t sensible, and I’ve tried to fight it, but it overwhelms
me,” she said. “I wonder, ‘What in hell am I married for anyway? My kids
are miserable, I’m miserable, Charlie’s miserable.’ If I were doing any
good with all this suffering it might be worth while. If it made Skipper
and Polly happy, if it made _you_ happy, maybe it would be worth it all.
But it doesn’t. We’re _all_ unhappy. Charlie ... please understand.”
“You can help yourself, Beth,” he said coldly.
“No, I can’t,” she said. “That’s the awful part of it. That’s what
scares me so. I feel my irritation turning into hatred, almost. I want
to get away so badly that I don’t think I can stand it sometimes.”
“Get away from what? Yourself? You have to take yourself with you
wherever you go, you know.”
“No, I want to get closer to myself, I want to _know_ myself, Charlie. I
don’t even know who I am. Or _what_ I am.”
“You’re _my wife_!” he said sharply, as if that were the argument to end
them all, to end all of her doubts with one stroke.
“I’m myself!” she cried, rising to her feet again, her fists knotted at
her sides. “And all I’m doing by staying here is creating agony for the
four of us.”
“The five of us. You forget Vega. Apparently she’s not too happy with
things, if you wish she were in hell.”
“Oh, Charlie, spare me! God!” she shouted. Her voice sounded nearly
hysterical.
“Keep it down,” he said. “If you don’t wake the kids up you’ll scare the
neighbors to death.”
For a long trembling moment she stood there, unable to speak through her
sobs and unable to look at his tired and disappointed face. Finally she
said, whispering, “I don’t know who I am, Charlie. Just saying I’m your
wife doesn’t tell me any more than I’ve known for years, and that isn’t
enough.”
“You’re either straight or you’re gay, Beth. Take your pick.” He
couldn’t yield to her, he couldn’t be generous. He had been through too
much and his restraint ran too high. He stood to lose a wife he loved,
through that wife’s lack of self-understanding. He might see her
transformed into a type of woman he neither understood nor liked, before
his very eyes.
“It’s not that easy,” she said, appalled at his attitude. “You aren’t
either black or white, you’re all shades of gray in between. It might be
the kind of thing I could get over and learn to live with, and it might
be the kind of thing that will change my whole life irrevocably.”
“What if you find out you’re nothing but a goddamn Lesbian?” he said in
that rough voice that carried his grief so clearly, and he wounded her
heart forever with his words.
Her patience snapped like a stick bent too far. Without a word—words had
never seemed so inadequate, so meaningless, so useless between two
people born to the same native tongue—she turned and went into the
bedroom and emptied all of her dresser drawers on the bed. Charlie
watched her while she marched in white-faced fury into the basement and
hauled two big bags up the stairs.
She dragged them through the living room and he leaned forward to say
softly, “You fool, Beth. You fool!”
But she couldn’t look at him. She thought she would either faint with
her hatred or somehow kill him with the frenzy of it.
In the bedroom she stuffed things into the bags helter skelter. What
didn’t fit didn’t go. The rest was left behind in a tangle.
Halfway through this frenetic task she went to the phone and called the
Los Angeles International Airport. Charlie watched her, still on the
couch, immobilized with disbelief. She made a reservation for that very
morning at three o’clock.
And then she called her Uncle John and told him to pick her up at
Chicago’s Midway Airport the next day. Her reservation on the plane was
for one person only.
“Just you?” Charlie said softly, staring at her. “You mean you’d really
leave me here with the kids? You mean you really don’t give a goddamn
about your own children?”
“You said I couldn’t take them with me!” she cried. “I’d take them if
you’d let me.”
“Never,” he said. “But I thought—God, Beth, I thought you’d try a little
harder to get them than this. You’ve given up without a struggle.” He
was truly shocked; it blasted all his favorite concepts of motherhood to
see her behave this way.
“I’ve struggled with you until I haven’t any strength left,” she said
hoarsely.
“You never loved them,” he said, hushed with shock and revelation. “You
never loved them at all.”
“I haven’t a strong enough stomach to get down on my knees and beg for
them,” she cried. “I’ve begged you long enough and hard enough for other
things.”
“But they were _things_. These are _kids_. Your own kids!”
“I want them,” she cried, “but I want my freedom more. I only make them
unhappy, I’m not a good mother.”
“Well, what sort of a _mother_ do you think I’ll make?” he shouted, and
now it was Charlie whose voice was loud enough to wake the children.
She left him abruptly and finished her packing. In the children’s room
she could hear stirrings and she prayed with the tears still soaking her
cheeks that neither of them would wake up and break her heart or change
her mind. She forced her suitcases shut with the strength of haste and
fear, and half shoved, half carried them out to the car.
Charlie stood in the center of the living room and watched her with his
mouth open. When she passed him he said, “Beth, this isn’t happening. It
can’t be. I couldn’t have been that bad. I _couldn’t_ have been. Beth,
please. Explain to me, tell me. I don’t understand.”
But she gave him a look of hopelessness, and once she snapped, “Is that
all you can say? After nine years of marriage?”
_Is he just going to stand there and let me go?_ she wondered. A sort of
panic rose in her at the thought that he might suddenly regain his
senses and force her to stop. But he let her get as far as packing both
bags into the back of the car and actually starting the motor before he
yanked the door open and shoved her over so that he could sit in the
driver’s seat.
“Beth,” he said, and his eyes were still big with the awfulness of what
she was doing to him and their children. “You aren’t going anywhere.”
Suddenly he kissed her urgently, holding her arms with hands so strong
and fierce that they bruised her flesh. She felt his teeth pressed into
her tender mouth and something in the despair of it, the near-terror she
sensed in him at the thought of losing her, brought an uprush of
unwanted tenderness in her heart.
He tried to kiss her again, but Beth struggled wildly, trying to hurt
him. And all the while he was wooing her with violence, almost the way
he had when they first met, as if he knew now too that words were long
since worthless between them.
At last Beth grasped one of her own shoes and pulled it off. Desperately
she struck him with all her strength on the side of the head. The sharp
heel cut his scalp and he gave a soft little cry of astonishment. He
pulled away from her at last and they stared at each other, both of them
shocked at themselves, at each other, at what was happening, both of
them crying.
Finally, without a word, he got out of the car and slammed the door.
Beth dragged herself over to the driver’s seat and rolled down the
window. “I’ll write,” she said, but their two white faces, still so near
one another physically, were already separated by more than the miles
Beth would fly across that night. He flinched at her promise, as if he
knew that an envelope full of words would do no more good than those
they had flung at each other in a huge effort to create understanding.
“Take good care of the kids,” she said and immediately she began to back
out because she could hear one of them starting to cry.
He walked along beside the car, one hand on the window sill, as if that
might keep her there longer. “What shall I tell them this time when they
wake up and find you gone?” he asked.
“Tell them I’ve gone to hell,” she wept. “Tell them I’m a no-good and
the only thing they can hope for is that life will be happier without me
than with me. It will, too.”
She began to press the accelerator, gathering speed until he had to let
go or run to keep up. He let go.
In the street she straightened the car around and gave one last
trembling look to her house, her yard and garden, the lighted windows of
the living room where the TV set played on to an audience of furniture.
Skipper’s little voice wailed through the night for a glass of water and
Charlie stood at the end of the drive, a silhouette with silver trim,
watching her.
Beth drove away. _God, let me never feel sorrow like this again_, she
prayed. _Let this be my punishment for what I’m doing. I can’t bear any
more._