When Beth left Nina’s apartment two days later, she found a letter
waiting for her in the post office box she had rented. She half expected
Nina to ask her to move in before she left. But it would have
inconvenienced Nina too much, with the lack of space and the long hours
she had to spend at her typewriter. She didn’t want to be bothered and
Beth understood, even though she was sorry not to have been asked. Nina
should have known Beth would refuse, out of consideration for her. But
Beth never got the chance.
The letter was from Cleve, and Beth tore it open in the elevator on the
way up to her room at the Beaton. She got as far as, “Dear Beth, How do
you like New York? Charlie and the kids are as ever. Not very happy but
getting along. The kids like Mrs. Donahue pretty well now that they’re
used to her. Charlie works like a dog—too damn hard if you ask me. Puts
all of us to shame and gives me a guilt complex.”
Beth asked herself if he might not be drinking still more and neglecting
his job down at the office. Of course, he was still half boss; Charlie
was the other half. But she knew Charlie would be hard on him if the
alcohol became more important than Ayers-Purvis Toys.
She stepped out of the elevator and went to her room, fumbling with the
key in her purse and pushing the door open with her shoulder. The
morning sun was coming in her windows and she sat down on the bed to
finish reading the letter.
“Charlie has some big idea for a new toy,” Cleve went on. “He wants to
call it ‘The Scootch.’ It’s a sort of spring, a great big thing you can
crawl inside or sit on top of and bounce. It travels when you bounce on
it, or you can roll down hills in it. Sounds kind of goofy probably, but
the neighborhood kids go for it in a big way. So do your kids. Skipper
says it’s better than a kite any day. Charlie is hoping it’ll take up
where the Hula Hoop left off. If it does we’d make a fortune. He’s been
working on it night and day, trying to get the right materials and
colors, and working up a marketing scheme for it. I haven’t seen all the
plans yet. Jean and I have been away on a vacation, and I haven’t been
feeling so red hot lately. But don’t worry about me. You have enough on
your mind.”
It was kind and restrained, with hardly a trace of reproach. Beth
lowered the letter to her lap for a minute, not quite finished with it,
and stared out the window at the shaded side of the building across the
street. “Not feeling so red hot.” _Drunk, maybe?_ She hoped not. She
liked Cleve too well, she owed him too much, to wish him any ill. But
the thought of his mother, ravaged by liquor, and his sister, who
devoted her life to it, frightened her.
“You ask about my family,” he went on in reference to one of her notes.
“Mother is about as ever. Gramp still feeds his cats and vents his
temper on the delivery boys or the plumber or whoever gets in the way.
Vega is at Camarillo. We all thought it would be for the best—”
Camarillo! _Camarillo!_ All the sense was suddenly shocked out of Beth.
Camarillo—the state mental institution. “Oh, God!” she cried aloud, too
stunned to read any further for a minute, unaware that she spoke aloud.
“Oh, good God! _Vega!_”
“We all thought it would be for the best since the studio folded two
weeks after you left. Do you remember P.K.? The girl she said she hated
so much? Well, P.K. managed to spread some pretty ugly rumors about her,
and that, on top of the shaky state of her finances, did the trick. The
students she had left, and there was really a surprising number—they all
liked her a lot—had to leave. Their parents heard about it and
disapproved, and that was it.
“The doctors say she has an excellent mind and she is very reasonable
most of the time, and they hope she can come home in another few months.
The oddest part of it is, she copies Mother all the time. I mean, all
Mother’s sicknesses. She acts as if she’s crippled, has to run to the
bathroom every five minutes, even says she’s blind and can’t see a
thing. The doctor says it’s almost as if she wanted old age to catch up
with her and incapacitate her to punish herself for her feelings. Or
maybe to stop her from _having_ any feelings. Another angle occurred to
me. If she is Mother, how can she be anything Mother _disapproves_ of?
Like gay? I don’t know—make any sense?
“Don’t worry too much about this, Beth. It’s been in the wind for many
years now. I’m surprised myself it didn’t come sooner. She’ll be okay.
The important thing for you is to get yourself straightened out and come
home. Charlie needs you. He used to be a nice guy but now there’s no
living with him.
“Best to you, Cleve.”
_Vega at Camarillo!_ Of all the things in the letter none affected her
any more than that. Vega had had to bear the loss of her lover and the
loss of the girls she adored and her business, her only means of
support, within two weeks of each other. Beth bowed her head and cried,
without bothering to cover her face or wipe away the tears. Vega had had
to face the scorn of a teen-age torturer in the person of P.K. all
alone. It must have been godawful, terrible even for Cleve, who had to
hear it all from her hysterical lips, who had to try to comfort her and
care for her.