Uncle John, genial and bustling and worried, picked her up in Chicago.
He had to be content with the briefest and barest explanation from her.
She was utterly exhausted and all she wanted was to collapse and sleep.
She even took sleeping pills when it developed that her bitter
self-recriminations would give her no rest. And for two whole days she
refused to leave her room.
“I’ll just say this,” she told Uncle John when he pressed her. “I’ve
left Charlie. He has the children; they’re all fine. Everything is my
fault. It would kill me to have to talk about it now. I’ll try to
explain it later. I’m so tired and miserable I just want to be alone.”
So they gave her their hospitality and let her have her way. Uncle John
was anxious and he even thought of calling Charlie and demanding the
facts. But his wife restrained him. “Let’s at least hear her side of it
first,” she said. “She _did_ say it was her fault, after all.”
Beth had no intention of explaining to them what couldn’t be explained.
She wrote to Charlie, just a note. She said she would be with Uncle John
for a while and she’d let him know any new plans. Cleve wrote to her
within a couple of days to say the kids were well but missed her badly,
and Charlie had become very taciturn at the office. He had found a woman
to care for the children during the day. Beth wondered impatiently what
sort of woman she was—whether she was kindly and whether she liked
children and whether she fixed them their favorite breakfasts, and what
she looked like. There was no mention of Vega in Cleve’s letter.
As soon as she had a little strength, a little sense, she determined to
find Laura. The place to start was with Laura’s father. Beth didn’t
suppose that Laura was still living with him; they had never gotten
along, and Laura, when she left Beth nine years ago, had been an
entirely different girl from the one her father thought he had raised.
She had found herself and had begun to live for the first time, and Beth
guessed that her first move had been to leave her father.
But Beth had to start somewhere, and so, when she had been in Chicago
two days, she called Merrill Landon. It was mid-afternoon; it had taken
her till then to get up her courage. She wasn’t sure whether she was
more afraid of finding Laura or of not finding her. What would Laura
think of Beth, now that her former lover was no longer a radiant college
girl? Of course Laura would be older too, but she was still four years
younger than Beth, and Beth had lived with a mountain of dissatisfaction
and discontent that had left its mark on her pretty face.
Merrill Landon was not in. Beth had to call again at seven. She
approached the phone in a nervous sweat, afraid that her voice would
break or her throat go dry and betray her nerves to him. She had to be
very casual.
This time she got him from his dinner.
_Damn!_ she thought while the servant summoned him. _He probably hates
to be interrupted._
“Hello?” he said, and his voice was deep and rough. He spoke in the same
tone he would have used to bark an order to a subordinate at the
newspaper where he worked. Beth gasped a little before she could say,
“Mr. Landon? My name is Beth Cullison. I—I mean Beth _Ayers_.” Her
maiden name! _God_, she thought in dismay. But there was no time to
scold herself.
“Well, which is it?” he boomed.
“Ayers. Mrs. Ayers,” she answered, trying to sound calm. She raced on,
hoping to smooth over his first impression, “I’m an old college friend
of Laura’s. I’m visiting in Chicago and I thought it would be nice if we
could get together.”
Her voice went dry and she had to stop. There was an awkward pause. “A
college friend?” he said, as if there were no such things.
“You _are_ Laura’s father, aren’t you?” she asked timidly.
“Yes.” He waited so long to answer that it made her wonder. “What do you
want with Laura, Mrs. Ayers?”
“I just wanted to talk to her. If she’s there.”
“I haven’t seen Laura for the last eight years,” he said, and Beth’s
heart went cold. He added thoughtfully, “You said your name was
Cullison. Were you one of Laura’s roommates at the university?”
For some reason she was afraid to answer yes. Could it possibly be that
Laura might have told him about the curious love that had sprung up
between them? It was unlikely that he would remember her name unless it
had special significance for him. What if he had forced the truth out of
his daughter?
“Well?” he said, surprise and impatience in his voice at her delay.
“Maybe you can’t remember that far back.”
“Yes. Yes, I was her roommate. Excuse me, I—where is Laura now?”
“Mrs. Ayers, why don’t you come over here tonight? I’d like to talk to
you.” And when she hesitated again in a welter of uncertainty he said,
“Are you far from here?”
“I have a car,” she said. “I’ll come.”
* * * * *
She took Aunt Elsa’s Buick and drove out to the Landon house. It wasn’t
far; it was on one of the pretty shaded streets of Evanston. Merrill
Landon lived there alone with his two servants. He had been there since
he and Laura’s mother first married and nothing could tempt him away.
There was nothing left of Laura’s mother now but memories. But they
bound Landon to her and kept him in the home she had furnished, where he
could still see traces of her taste, her touch. No other woman had ever
replaced her for him. Except, in a strange and uncomprehended way,
Laura. And because she couldn’t _be_ her mother, because she was only a
sweet shadow, a photo transparency, he blamed her and was very hard with
her.
When Laura had at last understood where she had unwittingly failed him,
she left him. She was his daughter, not his wife; that was her crime.
And because he couldn’t have her he couldn’t forgive her for living. She
was a constant threat to his virtue, a painful reminder of his dead
wife. The knowledge of his tormented desire gave her the courage to turn
her back on him and run.
He had found her once, after that, almost by accident, and they had it
out in words, the awful incredible words that had never been spoken
between them before. The rupture had been complete after that. He
admitted that he wanted her. He took her in his bearish arms and kissed
her mouth brutally. And Laura, in her shock, told him what she was, a
Lesbian. And who had done it to her; her own father. So they knew the
very worst of each other, had known now for years, and had lost each
other. But the knowledge, though it hurt, had washed away the
bitterness.
Over the chasm of years and miles, Merrill Landon had come to love his
daughter in a new way. He had never tried to pursue her, after that one
shattering night in a New York hotel room when they had revealed
themselves to each other, but he had spent the long years since then
wondering about her, imagining how she might be living and with whom.
His thoughts were mostly tender, sometimes resentful, always lonely. But
he was proud and a little afraid of himself with her, and he would not
seek her out again.
Beth rang his bell, ignorant of all that had passed between him and
Laura in the years that preceded her visit. No servant opened to her, as
she had expected, but Merrill Landon himself, as though he, too, was
anxious for the meeting. She had never seen him before in her life but
she knew him instantly. His flesh was Laura’s and her whole body was
suddenly covered with shiverings.
He was a huge man; not big like Charlie, not tall and long-muscled, but
just big. Square-chested, slope-shouldered, powerfully built, with his
dark hair and heavy beard. He stood high from the ground but you didn’t
realize it until you came close to him; the chunkiness of his
construction gave him the look of a shorter man. In his heavy features
she saw very little of Laura, who resembled most her mother. And yet
there was something there, faint but visible, that kept the shivers
coming in Beth.
He sized her up like a seasoned journalist. “Come in, Mrs. Ayers,” he
said, and showed her into a comfortable den stacked high with books and
papers. It was apparently his study, the work room where he wrote his
daily editorials, read his books, did his dreaming, perhaps. Beth sat in
a large ox-blood leather chair. She was afraid to lean back in it for
fear of getting lost, of making herself look small and shy to this man
she wanted so much to impress with her social ease. It would have helped
immeasurably if she could have guessed by looking at him how much he
knew of her love for Laura.
Landon mixed her a drink. “What are you doing in Chicago, Beth?” he
asked with his back to her, and the sound of her proper name startled
her.
_Now he thinks he’s got me_, she thought. _I’m here in his house and he
thinks he’s going to find out about Laura and me once and for all. I’m
not even Mrs. Ayers any more, I’m just Beth. Just a school girl._
She told him she was visiting her uncle, she was living in California,
she had two children. That was all. His questions were brief, as though
she were a socialite he had to interview for the next day’s paper, and
she tailored her answers the same way. But Beth wanted to ask her own
questions. She was the one who urgently needed to know, who had left her
home and kids and husband and come all this way to find this man’s
daughter—and perhaps, at the same time, herself. She gazed around the
room, taking in the working disorder, the handsome, slightly worn
furniture. Laura knew all this, Beth thought; it was as familiar to her
as her own room, and the thought made Beth ache for her.
She interrupted Landon to ask him, “Where is she, Mr. Landon? Maybe
there’s still time for me to see her tonight.” He smiled at her
over-bright eyes and somehow she expected his answer.
“I doubt it. She’s not living in Chicago any more.”
_Of course not. Goddamn! That would have been too easy. I should have
known._ “Where is she?” she demanded, and again he smiled at the pink
flush in her cheeks, the line between her eyes.
“I’d like to know myself,” he said. He was almost teasing her.
“You must have some idea,” she cried, desperately afraid that Laura
would slip out of her fingers before she ever touched her again. If she
had been more observant she would have seen the understanding that began
to show in his smile. He was needling her for a purpose.
“I do have some idea,” he said calmly, sitting down behind his desk.
“I’ll gladly share it with you. If you’ll do something for me, Beth.”
“If I can.”
“You can.” She watched him while he listened to his memories. He could
hear Laura’s voice in his inner ear crying, “And that’s not all!
Remember Beth Cullison? Remember my roommate at school? Her too, Father!
She was the first! I loved her! Do you understand what I’m telling you?”
That voice, sharp with the saved-up sorrows and frustrations of a young
lifetime, crying at him through tears and fury of what she had become,
what her true nature was! And he had understood her, at last. His
perverted love for her had twisted her whole personality. He had
controlled his terrible desire for years, but it had cost Laura a normal
childhood.
“When you find Laura,” he said, “I want you to tell me where she is.
That’s all. Will you do that?”
Beth stared at him. “When I find her?” she said. “Where do I have to
go?”
“Tell me her address, that’s all,” he bargained.
And she knew then that he could see plainly how badly she wanted Laura.
She struggled to keep her face smooth, her passion under wraps. “Yes,”
she said. It was a whole confession of love, that word. It said, _Yes,
I’ll find her, I’ll go to the ends of the earth, I’ll do any favor for
you if you’ll tell me where to start, where to look._
He smiled. He had her. “She’s in New York,” he said.
Beth’s mouth fell open. “New _York_!” She was dismayed. She had only
been there once, when she was a little girl of ten. She didn’t know the
city at all. And the size of it! “But, good God, Mr. Landon, there are
millions of people in New York!” she exclaimed.
“There’s only one Laura. She’s been there a while, she knows people.”
“What people?” Her discouragement showed now, too. She couldn’t have
hidden it from her extraordinary host.
“If I were you I’d start in the Village,” he said. “She lived down there
a while.”
“I don’t know the Village,” she protested. “I don’t know New York at
all. I can’t fly to New York just to scare up an old roommate of mine.”
It was supposed to throw him off the track, demonstrate her normalcy.
But Merrill Landon was too far ahead of her. He knew too much that she
didn’t know. He saw the strength and determination in her chin, the
trembling of her sensual mouth, and he smiled once again.
“You can’t, but you will,” he said. “Isn’t that why you’re here?” There
was an embarrassed silence. She didn’t know how to answer without
exposing herself to him. “Beth,” he said, and the gruff voice softened
slightly, “I know you were in love with my daughter.”
She gasped, and as he went on she gulped the rest of her drink.
“She told me so. You have a right to know that I know. She—well, she had
to tell me; she didn’t do it to hurt you. I’ve kept it to myself. I knew
you from the pictures she used to have of you.” She began to cry, and
into the sniffly silence he added, “I love her too. Only I can’t go find
her now. Someone else will have to do that for me.”
When they were able to look at each other again he said, “Did you come
all the way from California to find her?”
She was undone. She had no secrets. He was too much for her, with his
bright eyes that penetrated hers and saw so much and suspected so much
more. “Yes,” she confessed. “I had to get away from my husband. I was
nearly cracking up. I just wanted to see Laura again. Everything was so
wonderful then, so awful now. I thought it might help. I thought maybe
that was what was wrong with me.”
He lighted a cigarette for her and one for himself. “Laura doesn’t want
to see me again,” he said. “With you it may be different. If you follow
her to New York, Beth, you’ll find her, somehow. I want you to tell me
about her and where she’s living. I won’t give you cause to regret it.
I’ve messed up her life enough as it is. Just tell me when you find
her.”
“All right.” She seemed to have no will now. Only a need for Laura, a
need for her love so great that it would propel her onward until she
found her. “Mr. Landon,” she said, looking at him with all her
subterfuges stripped from her. “Why are you kind to me? Why don’t you
despise me for what I did to your daughter?”
“For what _you_ did to her?” He gave a scornful little laugh that turned
against himself. “If I were guiltless myself I could despise anyone I
pleased. I could blame anyone I pleased. But I’m not guiltless.” His
words made her feel braver. “If it hadn’t been you it would have been
somebody else, Beth. You know that, of course. Laura is a Lesbian.
Sooner or later she would have understood that, whether with your help
or without it.”
It was logical, it was sensible. But it had never struck Beth quite that
way and it hurt. She stood up with a little gasp and walked away from
him. “No,” she blurted. “It was special, it was—almost sacred.”
“To you perhaps.”
“To both of us. She couldn’t have done it with anyone else.” She spoke
positively because she was suddenly so unsure.
“I didn’t mean to shock you,” he said. “I thought you would have
realized long ago that somebody had to be first with her and it just
happened to be you. It was no divine choice, just blind accident.”
Beth lighted a cigarette with trembling hands. “I guess it’s because
I’ve never known any other woman the way I knew Laura,” she said,
talking fast to keep the tears back. “I guess it’s because there never
was anybody else I wanted like that.”
“And you just took it for granted that Laura never wanted anybody else,
either? You’re fooling yourself, my dear. That’s her nature. That’s her
life. For you, with a husband and a family, life has been very
different. Now, when you want her again, you’re resentful to find that
Laura’s life has gone on without you. That she’s found other women, a
whole new mode of living, other interests that you don’t share.”
It knocked her ego into a corner. “Oh, you spiteful bastard!” she cried
in pure self-defense. And then clapped her hands over her mouth, sinking
to a small straight-backed chair and weeping angry startled tears that
nevertheless broke the tension and relieved her.
Merrill Landon laughed softly and she was unnerved to hear Laura’s
inflection in the sound. “You have a little spirit, after all,” he said.
“Good. You’re mad because I’m right. Isn’t that so? Of course.”
And of course he was right, to her chagrin.
“I didn’t even think about her after I’d been married,” Beth said
brokenly. It was the first time in all these weary months of wondering
and experimenting with the wrong person, of deceiving Charlie and
perhaps her own self, that she let go and spoke of it. And it felt good.
Landon understood her language. That alone made it possible to speak.
“I was dissatisfied,” she explained to him. “Oh, hell, I was just plain
sick to death of the whole mess. The little things with a husband
aggravated me even more than the big things. And the kids nearly did me
in. When it got so I couldn’t stand to have Charlie touch me, I knew
we’d had it. _He_ didn’t, though. He still thinks I’m going through a
phase.
“I guess when _I_ changed so much it seemed to me Charlie should change,
too. But that was unreasonable of me. Here I am, a completely different
Beth, and he’s just the same old Charlie.”
“You fell in love with him that way,” Landon reminded her.
“In love and out,” she said.
“When did it occur to you that Laura might cure your ills?” He handed
her a fresh drink and she took a swallow before she answered him.
“I began to dream about her,” she said. “Just a little at first, but
then all the time. I met another woman and I tried to find with her what
I had known once with Laura, but it didn’t work. Made me think that no
other woman would be right for me.” She glanced at him shyly, suddenly
recalling that he ought to be shocked and disapproving, wondering where
she found the guts to confess as she did. The whiskey? The house,
Laura’s house? The man, Laura’s father? She saw no shock in his face,
only interest and a certain remote sympathy, and it gave her a new
respect for him.
“The other woman didn’t love you?” he asked.
“Yes, she did,” Beth said. He saw her chin quiver and knew she was
understating things for him.
“When you find Laura, do you think she’ll be just the way she was when
you knew her in college?” he asked.
“No. That’d be pretty naïve of me,” Beth said.
“And yet that’s what you’re looking for in her. You don’t know her the
way she is now. You’re setting out to find your old college roommate.
Laura may disappoint you like this other woman did. Just by being
different from your memories of her. Then where will you turn, Beth?”
It was a dismal thing to face. She had resolutely ignored the
possibility until now.
“You’d better make plans,” Landon continued. “A thing like that could
crack you up if you’re not prepared for it. It’s been a while, Beth,
quite a while. Nine years?”
She nodded. “She hasn’t forgotten me, has she? Could that be?”
“She hadn’t when I saw her. She remembers a college girl with no real
experience of life, the way you do. She remembers an ingenuous romance.
She remembers that you jilted her for a boy you knew, and probably
married the boy. End of story. You’ll have to take it from there
yourself when you find her.”
“_If_ I find her,” she said and emptied her glass again.
“You will, if you still want to as much as you did when you came in here
tonight.”
She put the glass down. “I do,” she whispered.
He smiled. “You may get to New York and find her right there in the
phone book. Who knows?”
Beth gave a wry little laugh. “Sure,” she said. “I was thinking, on the
plane, ‘What if I get to Chicago and there she is, at home with her
father.’ It would have been too easy, though. But I _did_ think she’d be
living in the city, at least. Now ... New York. God. When I get to New
York they’ll tell me she’s living in Paris. And if I ever make it to
Paris, damned if she isn’t already on her way to Hong Kong.”
“She’s not much of a vagabond,” Landon reassured her. “She’d have stayed
here in Chicago if I’d made it tolerable for her. This was her home. She
liked it here.... Have you any money?” he asked abruptly, looking
directly at her.
“A little,” she said with some pride.
“A little doesn’t last long in New York.”
“I have about three thousand in my bank account.”
“Well, depending on how you live and whether you work or not, that might
see you through a half year.”
“I don’t gamble,” she snapped. “I don’t eat at the Stork Club. And I
don’t throw the stuff away.”
He laughed. “Okay, my dear. Go to New York with your three thousand
dollars and live on it for the rest of your life if you can. I wish you
only luck—the best kind. I was just thinking, if you should need a
loan....” And seeing her face storm up he added, “I’m not laughing at
you, Beth. I think you’re a better girl—a braver girl—than I did at
first. Maybe I hoped you’d be a disappointment. You see, I haven’t liked
you very well, over the years, since Laura told me she loved you. Simple
jealousy. I haven’t liked any of the others she told me about either.
But I suppose it’s only fair. I had her all to myself for eighteen years
and only made her miserable.” He turned away as he spoke. “When at last
I had to share her, it was with her own sex. I was shocked when she told
me, but after a while I found I preferred it to sharing her with men.”
There was an awkward silence. Beth stared in surprise at his broad back
in its brown tweed lounging jacket, feeling that his admission bound her
to him, as hers bound him to her. They had a little something on each
other now. They owed each other some small allegiance.
“I’ll send you her address, if I find her,” Beth said.
“Thank you. And your own. I don’t think I’d better write Laura. I’ll
have to depend on you for news. Do you mind?”
Beth began to laugh and made him turn around to stare in his turn. “Is
that funny?” he asked.
Beth shook her head and when she found her voice she said, “No, life is
funny. I can’t write to Charlie either. There’s a friend in Pasadena
who’s doing for me what I’m doing for you. Writing to tell me all the
news.” They gazed at each other a little guiltily and still with
amusement. “Are we a pair of cowards, Mr. Landon?” she said. “Or are we
braver than everybody else?”
“Cowards, of course,” he said. “We aren’t really brave at all. But we do
have a certain strength. You set out to find yourself, and that takes
strength. I found myself long ago and had the strength to live with what
I found—not a pleasant task.” He grinned at her and suddenly she liked
him. She liked him very much and in that instant she saw Laura in his
face, his smile, again.
They were a pair of conspirators. If Beth found Laura and won her love
again, she would be an ally for Merrill Landon. Through Beth he might
come close once again to the daughter he adored; once again before time
caught up with him and closed his life. For he was in his late fifties
now and he had lived too hard. He was tired. He wanted a few years with
her, and the idea had struck him when he interviewed Beth that this
might be a last way to achieve the goal. He couldn’t approach Laura
himself. She would turn and run before he could speak, and she had a
right to. But Beth might speak for him. She liked him. He could see it
in her face.
They parted with an understanding—friends.