it and answered softly, “I want you to be happy, Laura. This marriage is
for both of us.”
There was a long silence. “I think I would hate myself if I ever got
pregnant,” she said, ashamed of her vanity but clinging to it
stubbornly. “God, how awful. All those aches and pains and months of
looking like hell, and for what? What if the baby weren’t normal? What
if I couldn’t be a good mother to it?”
He shrugged and then he said, “All right. We’ll adopt one. That way at
least we can be sure of getting a girl.”
Laura wrung her hands together in a nervous frenzy. The last thing she
wanted to do was hurt Jack. And yet she could feel the dogged
one-mindedness in him, feel his enormous desire.
“A man needs a child,” he said softly. “So does a woman. That’s the
whole reason for life. There is no other.” And he glanced up at her and
all the Christmas lights reflected on the lenses of his glasses. “We
can’t live our lives just for ourselves,” he said. “Or we live them for
nothing. We die, monuments to selfishness.... I want a child, Laura.”
“Is that why you married me?” she asked with sudden sharpness, feeling
as if he had cornered her.
“I married you because I love you,” he said.
“Then why do you keep badgering me about a child?” she demanded.
“This is the first time I’ve mentioned it since we got married,” he
reminded her gently.
“You act as if just because _you_ want one it’s all settled,” she said,
and surprised herself by bursting into tears. He took her in his arms,
abandoning his cigarette, and said, “No, honey, nothing’s settled. But
think about it, Laura. Think hard.”
They sat that way, hugging each other and watching the Christmas tree,
letting the cigarette slowly burn itself out, and they didn’t mention it
again. But from that moment on it was very big between them, unspoken
but felt.
* * * * *
Jack did not mention a child to her again for a while. But as the weeks
slipped by Laura began to feel a growing dissatisfaction. She didn’t
know where it came from or what it meant. At home, in the apartment, it
was shapeless. Outside it took the shape of girls. When she went out for
groceries or to shop or to have dinner with Jack, she found herself
looking around hopefully, gazing a little too boldly, desiring. Jack saw
it too before long, but he said nothing.
Laura felt selfish, and she didn’t like the feeling. She blamed it on
Jack. It made her want to get away from him for a bit. And soon the wish
crystallized in her mind to a desire for the Village, and began to haunt
her.
She knew she ought to tell Jack she wanted to go. He would never stand
in her way, as long as she was there at night to cook his meals and be a
fond companion to him. As long as she let him in on it and kept it
clean.
But she was embarrassed. She didn’t want to tell him and see his
disappointment and know she was so much weaker than he. So she kept it
secret and let it fester inside her until it had grown, by March, to a
great, irritating problem.
Then, one fine, sunny morning in the first week of spring, the phone
rang.
_It’ll be Ginny Winston_, she thought. One of their neighbors. _She’ll
want to go shopping again. I guess we might as well, it’ll keep me out
of trouble._ Ginny was thirty-five, a widow, a nice girl but hopelessly
man-happy.
Laura grabbed the receiver after the fourth ring. “Hello?” she said.
“Laura? How are you?”
“Fine, thanks. Who’s this?”
“Terry.”
“Terry who?” She gasped suddenly. “Terry! Terry Fleming?”
“Yes.” He chuckled. “Guess how I found you?”
She hung up. She just slammed the phone down in place and stood there
shaking. Then she sat down and cried, waiting for the thing to start
ringing again. She had no doubt it would.
It did. She picked it up again, and before he could say anything she
told him, “I don’t care how you found us. I don’t want you around here.
Don’t you come near this place Terry, or I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do.
You can’t, you mustn’t. Do you hear me?”
“Yes,” he said, astonished. “What’s the matter?”
“Didn’t you get my letter?” she asked him.
“Sure. You’re married. Congratulations, I always thought it’d happen.
You got a great guy there, Laur. I wish I had him.” And he laughed
pleasantly.
“Terry, you’re incredible,” she said. “I don’t want you to come near
Jack. That’s final.”
“Go on,” he laughed. “I thought I’d come over this afternoon.”
“You can’t!” She felt as she did in nightmares when she tried to talk
and no one could hear her. She felt as if all her words fell on deaf
ears.
“Sure I can. I thought we’d—”
“Look, Terry, I’m not going to tell him you’re in town,” she said,
fighting a nerve-rasping frustration with him. “I’m just going to let it
go, and I’m telling you right now that if you show up over here it’ll
hurt him more than he can stand. You broke his heart and that should be
enough for you. You won’t get any more of him!” She felt fiercely
protective and loving, now that their life together seemed threatened.
She would fight Terry every way she knew. And yet she had to admit to
herself that Terry had more to fight with than she if it ever came to a
showdown. That was why it was so important to keep him away.
Jack was a very sensual man and he had been deeply in love with Terry.
He still was, in spite of everything. His love for Laura was different;
strong, she was sure, but could it stand up to a sudden white-hot blast
of passion?
“You sound real bitter, Laura,” Terry said reproachfully. “I thought you
were sort of kidding in your letter.”
“I’ve never been more serious, Terry. Stay away from us!” She hung up
again. When she took her hand away there was a ring of wet on the black
handle. She cried all day, feeling angry and helpless.
Jack got home at five, but she told him nothing. She was gentle and
solicitous with him in a way he had missed for a couple of months. She
read to him and she chatted with him, and underneath it all was a
tremulous fear of disaster that made her feel a great tenderness for
him. He seemed vulnerable to her. If she betrayed him she would embitter
him more than she was able to imagine. The thought was terrifying.
“Mother, you need a change,” he said when they had finished dinner.
“I do?”
“Leave the dishes and scram.”
She felt a little spark of fear. “Are you kicking me out?” she asked.
“I sure as hell am, you doll,” he said. “Get thee hence.”
“Where?” His laughter relieved her.
“The Village. Where else?” And when she stared at him, wordless, he
added, “You need it, honey. You’re nervous as a cat. Go on, have a
ball.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I’ll give you three minutes to get out of here,” he said with a glance
at his watch.
Laura hesitated for a few seconds until he looked at her over the top of
the paper again and then she ran, heels ringing staccato on the polished
wood floor of the hall, and got her coat and purse. On the way out she
stooped to kiss his cheek.
“Jack, I adore you,” she whispered, to which he only smiled. At the door
she turned and said, “I’ll be home early.”
“No curfew,” he said solemnly.
Laura went first to the Cellar, a favorite hangout in Greenwich Village.
The tourists had begun to stop there by this time, but the gay crowd
outnumbered them still and it wasn’t primarily a trap. The prices were
reasonable and the decor smoky.
Laura settled at the bar with a sigh of sheer pleasure. All she wanted
to do was sit there quietly and look at them ... those lovely girls,
dozens of them, with ripe lips and rounded hips in tight pants or smooth
skirts. And the big ones, the butches, who acted like men and expected
to be treated as such. They were the ones who excited Laura the most,
when it came right down to it. Women, women ... she loved them all,
especially the big girls with the firm strides and the cigarettes in
their mouths.... She realized with chagrin that she was thinking of
Beebo.
_God, what if she’s here?_ she thought with a wonderful scare running up
her spine. She looked around, but Beebo was nowhere in sight.
_I wonder if she has a job, poor darling. I wonder if Lili’s still
supporting her. I wonder if she’s still drinking so much ... if she
thinks of me at all.... Oh, what’s the matter with me? What do I care?
She nearly drove me crazy!_
She thought of Tris suddenly, of that marvelous fragrant tan skin. In
fact she indulged in an orgy of suggestive thoughts that would have
driven her crazy cooped up at home. But here, surrounded with people who
felt and thought much as she did, it was all right. It was safe somehow.
She could even spend the evening flirting with somebody, if anybody
caught her eye, and it would come to no harm. Just a night’s outing.
Nothing more.
_Tris ... Tris ... she would never show up in a place like this. She’d
shun it like the plague. All the same it would be nice. So nice._
But the harder Laura concentrated on Tris the more insistently Beebo
obsessed her. Laura shrugged her off and ordered another drink. She
laughed a little to herself and said, _But I don’t love her at all any
more._ And she turned to talk to the girl beside her.
The girl was very charming: small and curly-headed and pretty, and she
laughed a lot. And soon Laura was laughing with her and learned that
Inga was her name. But that face, that damned face of Beebo’s, strong
and handsome and hard with too much living, kept looking at her through
the haze of Inga’s cigarette.
“Did you ever have somebody plague your thoughts, Inga?” she asked her
abruptly. “Somebody you’d nearly forgotten and weren’t in love with any
more, and never really were in love with?”
“What’s her name?” Inga asked sympathetically.
“Oh, nobody you’d know.” She was fairly sure Inga _would_ know, if she
frequented the Cellar. If she’d hung around the Village long enough
she’d know most of the characters by sight, if not personally. Beebo was
one of the characters. And she had been around here for fourteen years.
“How long have you lived down here?” Laura asked the girl.
“Two years next month.”
_Long enough_, Laura thought.
“I’ll bet I know her. She ever come in here? Come on, tell me,” Inga
said.
“I can’t.”
“You’re silly, then. I’ll clue you in on something, Laura. If you can’t
get her off your mind it’s because you can’t get her out of your heart.
That sounds corny but it’s true. I found out the hard way. Believe me.”
Laura shook her head. “I never loved her,” she said positively.
“You’re fooling yourself, sweetie.”
Laura looked at her, bemused. “I’m in love with somebody else,” she
said, thinking of Tris.
“Me?” Inga grinned.
“No. No, an Indian girl.”
“Indian? What’s her name?”
“Tris.”
“Tris! Gee, I _do_ know her. She comes in here a lot.”
Laura stared at her, too shocked to answer for a minute. Finally she
said hoarsely, “Tris would never come in here. She hates gay bars. I
know that for a fact.”
“Well....” Inga looked as if she knew she had put her foot in her mouth
and regretted it. “Maybe it’s a different Tris.”
“What’s her last name?”
“Robischon, or something. Something Frenchy. I think she made it up
myself. But she’s a gorgeous girl. I was really smitten when I saw her.”
Laura blanched a little and ordered another drink and drank it down
fast, and Inga laid a hand on her arm. “Gee, I’m sorry, Laura,” she
said. “Me and my big mouth. I should learn to shut up. But I’m in here
all the time. I come in after work and I see just about everybody—”
“I know, I know. It’s okay, Inga.” She ordered another drink. “I’d
rather know than not,” she said. “Besides, I haven’t seen the girl for
eight months. It’d be pretty strange if nobody found out about her in
eight months. She’s beautiful.”
“That she is. Somebody’s found out, all right. A lot of people, I hear.”
“Does she come in here alone?” The whole thing seemed incredible to
Laura. Tris! So aloof, so chilly, so much better than the rest of the
gay crowd. Tris, who wouldn’t go near Fire Island for a summer vacation
because it was “crawling with queers.” It just couldn’t be. But Inga
certainly wasn’t describing anybody else.
“She comes with somebody else,” Inga said reluctantly. “Look, sweetie,
why don’t you come over to my place and have a nightcap. We can’t talk
in here.”
“I’d like to know, Inga. Tell me. Who does she come in with?” Laura
turned and looked at her, swiveling slowly on her stool, a little tipsy
and feeling suddenly as if the situation were something of a joke.
“Oh ... a big gal. Been around the Village for years. You might know
her. Beebo Brinker’s her name.”
Laura sat there frozen for nearly a minute. It _was_ a joke—colossal,
cruel, hilarious. She laughed uncertainly and ordered another drink.
“I knew you were going to say that,” she told Inga. “Isn’t that the
damnedest thing? Isn’t that the goddamnedest thing?” And she began to
laugh again, repeating, when she could get her breath, “I knew you were
going to say that.” Inga had to slap her face to stop the shrieking,
irrepressible giggles that were strangling her. Then Laura’s laughter
changed, in the space of a breath, to tears.
Inga talked to her quietly with that odd intimacy that springs up
between homosexuals in trouble, and it helped. After five or six minutes
Laura wiped her eyes and drank her drink and let Inga help her out of
the Cellar. A few curious eyes followed them and Laura prayed again that
nobody she knew had seen her.
The cold air braced her a little, and she stood on the corner weaving
slightly and trying to get her bearings.
“Come on,” Inga said. “Let’s get some hot coffee into you. I live just a
couple of blocks from here. Come on.”
Laura let herself be led by the diminutive curly-head, but when she saw
they were headed for Cordelia Street she began to get scared. “Beebo
lives near here,” she said, hanging back. “I mean—she used to.”
“She still does,” Inga said. “I see her now and then. I live right over
there.” She pointed.
Laura brushed the girl’s hand from her sleeve and turned to her.
“Thanks, Inga,” she said. “Thanks anyway, but I think I’ll....” And her
eyes wandered back into Cordelia Street.
Inga followed her gaze, catching the idea. “I wouldn’t if I were you,”
she said. “You’ll be real sorry the minute you get there.” When Laura
didn’t answer she asked, “Tell me, which one of them is it?”
“Which one?”
“That you just can’t get off your mind?”
Laura looked back up the street where she used to live and said softly,
“Beebo. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Beebo. And it’s Tris I’m in love with.”
“Yeah,” said Inga with kindly skepticism. “Sure.... Have some coffee
with me?”
Laura leaned over on a whim and kissed her cheek. “That’s for being a
woman,” she said. “You don’t know what a help it’s been.”
Inga stood on the corner and watched Laura walk away from her. “Any time
you want that coffee, Laura,” she called. “I’m in the phone book.”
* * * * *
Laura stood in front of the door into her old apartment building for a
long while on trembling legs before she turned the knob and walked in.
_What if they’re together?_ she wondered. _They’ll just grab me and
wring my neck. God, all those questions Tris used to ask me about Beebo.
And it never entered my love-sick head!_
She crossed the little inner court to the second door, opened it, and
went to the row of mailboxes to press the buzzer. She found Beebo’s
name, with her own crossed out beneath it but no other added. And a
weird, wonderful panic grabbed her throat at the thought of Beebo.
She left the buzzer without pressing it and walked up the flight of
stairs to stand in front of the door that had once been her own, with
Beebo still swimming before her eyes.
She could picture her more and more clearly: wearing pants and going
barefoot, tired at the end of the day and maybe a little high; a
cigarette in her mouth and a towel tied around her middle while she did
dishes or cleaned up the apartment; the smooth skin on her face and the
handsome features that used to fire Laura’s imagination and make her
tingle; the tired eyes, blue and brilliant and somehow a little sick of
it all ... except when they focused on Laura.
Laura remembered how it had been and a sudden flash of physical longing
caught her heart and squeezed until she felt her breath come short. She
stared at the door, afraid to knock and still hypnotized with curiosity.
Her hand was raised, quivering, only inches from the green painted wood.
_Tris will open it_, she thought, _and together they’ll strangle me_.
Oddly, she didn’t care. She was too tight to care. She had a vision of
herself falling into their arms and succumbing without a struggle. Just
letting them have her life, her mixed-up, aimless, leftover life.
She knocked—a quick scared rap, sharp and clear. And then stood there on
one foot and the other, half panicky like a grade-schooler nearly ready
to wet her pants and flee.
Footsteps. High heels. From the kitchen, Beebo’s voice. “Who the hell
could that be? After ten, isn’t it?” _Oh, that voice! That husky voice
that used to whisper such things to me that I can never forget._
The door swung open all at once, ushering a flood of light into the
hall. Laura looked up slowly ... at Lili! The two of them stared at each
other in mutual amazement for a moment. And while they stared, mute,
Beebo called again, “Who is it, Lili?”
Lili, her candy-box pretty face overlaid with too much makeup, as usual,
broke into a big smile. “It’s Laura!” she exclaimed. “I’ll be goddamned.
_Laura!_”
For a tense moment Laura could feel Beebo’s shock across the rooms and
through the walls like a physical touch. Then her courage melted—fizzled
into nothing like water on a hot skillet, and she turned and ran.
She heard Beebo at the door, before she got out into the court, saying,
“Let her go, Lili. If she thinks I’m going to chase her twice—” And that
was all Laura got of it. It shot through her heart like a bullet.
Laura reached the door to the street, tore it open, and rushed out. But
once there, with the door shut behind her and no sound of pursuing
footsteps, she collapsed against the wall and wept. Between sobs, when
she could get her breath, she listened ... listened ... for the running
feet that would mean Beebo had changed her mind. Laura had to believe,
at least for a minute, that Beebo would come after her. Because it was
all tied up in her mind with Beebo loving her. If Beebo loved her she’d
chase her. It was that simple. And it didn’t matter a damn what Laura
might have done to Beebo in the past, or how she might have hurt her.
_Tris!_ she thought. _I’ve got to see her!_ She said this to herself
very urgently, but curiously, at the same time, she felt no desire to go
and find the lovely tormented dancer. She told herself it would be all
fight and misery. But in her heart of hearts she knew that real love
would brave that misery now, being so close and so starved for passion.
She stood there for fully fifteen minutes before she was able to pull
herself together and walk to Seventh Avenue. She went straight home in a
cab.
Laura walked slowly up the stairs to her apartment. It was after eleven
now, and Jack would be in bed. She had had too much to drink, but she
was sober, a tired, bewildered sort of sobriety that made her want to
lie down and weep and rest.
In the morning she would tell it all to Jack. Wonderful Jack. He would
coax her back to living, coax her with his wit and his compassion and
his incredible patience with her. And she would lie in a welter of
dejection and let him work on her until she felt like lifting her head
from the pillow and raising the shade from the window and going on with
life. It was one of the things she loved him for and needed him for the
most—this ability to revive her when she was so low that only death was
lower.
Tonight was perhaps not quite that bad. But it was bad enough to have
exhausted her. And Tris and Beebo! That had been the cruelest blow; the
one she should have foreseen clear as a beacon in a black sea. She
shoved a trembling key into the lock and walked into the apartment.
It was warm and well-lighted. It was pretty and it was comfortable. It
was home. And Laura felt a sort of gratitude to Jack that needed words.
She went to find him. But he wasn’t in the living room, nor in the
bedroom.
She stood on the threshold of the bedroom and said, “Jack? Hey, Jack!
Where are you?”
“Here,” he said from the kitchen.
“Oh. It’s me. I thought you’d be in bed.” She slipped her coat off while
she walked through the living room to find him. “Hi,” she said. He was
sitting on a kitchen chair and he answered, “Hi.”
Laura stood in the doorway and looked at him. And he stared back at her,
and she knew something was wrong but she didn’t know what. Her long fine
hair had come loose when she ran from Beebo and she reached up and
pulled it down in a shimmering cascade, watching Jack all the while
through narrowed eyes.
“Have fun?” he asked.
“Beebo and Tris ... are ... shacking up.” She threw it at him
point-blank. She wanted his sympathy.
Jack put his head back and laughed, that awful bitter laugh she hadn’t
heard for months, and she knew with a sudden start of fear and pity that
he was drunk. “That makes everything perfect,” he said, still laughing,
his eyes wicked and sharp behind the horn rims.
“Jack ...,” she said shakily, coming in to sit beside him and seeing now
the whiskey bottle on the table in front of him, two-thirds empty.
“Jack, darling.” She took his hands and her eyes were big with alarm.
Jack took his hands back. Not roughly, but as if he simply didn’t want
to be touched. Not by Laura, anyway.
“Mother, you are a living doll. If I had known you could keep secrets so
well I’d have told you a few,” he said. He spoke, as always when he was
drunk, with a slow precision, as if each word were a stepping stone.
“Secrets?” Laura said.
“You are the living picture of guilt, my dear,” he said. “It is written
all over your beautiful face.”
Laura put her hands over that face suddenly with a gasp. “Terry!” she
sobbed through clenched teeth. “_Terry!_ If I hadn’t gone out he
wouldn’t have come.”
“He comes when the mood hits him,” Jack said. “Which is most of the
time, most anywhere. It had nothing to do with you going out, my little
wifey.”
Laura looked up, her delicate face mottled pink and white and wet from
the eyes down. “He wrote—”
“Indeed he did. He told me the whole romantic story.”
“Jack, darling, I only kept it secret because I was afraid you’d—you’d
start drinking, or something—I—”
“You hit the nail on the head. I’m indebted to you. Your solicitude is
exemplary.” He waved the fast-emptying bottle at her.
“Oh, shut up! Shut up! I _love_ you. I did it because I love you.”
“You opened my mail because you love me?” He continued to drink while he
talked ... slowly, but steadily.
“I knew it was from him, Jack. I just had a feeling. The handwriting and
everything.”
He laughed ruefully. “Just think what you’ve spared me!” he said. “I can
drink in peace now. My wife loves me. Thanks, wife.” He saluted her.
Laura slid off her chair to her knees and put her arms around him, still
crying. “Jack, Jack, please forgive me. I’ll do anything, I couldn’t
bear to hurt you, I’d die first. Oh, please—”
“You’re forgiven,” he interrupted her. “Why not?” And he kept on
laughing. But his pardon was so light, so biting, that she cringed from
it. She lifted her face to him, streaming with tears, and he said,
smiling at her, “You make a lovely picture, Mother. Sort of
Madonna-like. If I could paint you, I’d paint you. Black, I think. From
head to toe.”
She put her head down on his knees and said softly, “You’ll never
forgive me, will you?”
“I already have.”
“Never,” she whispered, stricken.
“Oh, let’s not get maudlin,” he said. “I admit I would have been
grateful for a little forewarning. But after all, it’s a simple question
of sex. Maybe I should get rid of mine. That would solve everything.”
And his soft, insane chuckling underlined everything he said.
Laura felt terror then. It rose and fell inside her like nausea.
Whenever she looked at Jack it surged in her throat. It wasn’t the sweet
guilty thrill of coming near Beebo that had cost her such sensual pain
earlier in the evening.
“Jack, darling,” she said.
“Yes, Laura darling.” And the sarcasm burned her. But she went on,
determined, raising herself back into her chair again with effort.
“Tell me what happened. Tell me everything.”