he asked about your health.” Laura couldn’t watch him while he talked.
She looked at her hands. And all the while he told her about it she kept
thinking, _If only I hadn’t gone out tonight. Every time I do something
completely selfish I suffer for it. And so does he. Damn Terry! Damn him
to hell! He won’t ruin Jack, I won’t let him. This is once he won’t have
his way._
* * * * *
It had been so completely unexpected, so startling, that Jack would
never forget it or recover from it. Terry was as far removed from his
life as if he were dead. And his life, Jack felt, had become a good
thing at last. He had Laura to live for, not a wild, irresistible,
good-for-nothing boy who wore him out and broke his heart and his
bankroll. He had a new stature in the world as a married man, a new
security. And the sweet hope of a child someday....
When he heard the bell ring, almost an hour after Laura had gone out, he
took it for a neighbor and stood with the front door open while the
elevator ascended. But when Terry stepped out, Jack was speechless. He
couldn’t believe it, and he would have slammed the door and passed it
off as a nightmare if he could have moved a little faster.
But Terry caught him and from then on it was as degrading and
overwhelming as it had ever been. Jack put up the best fight he could,
but it was little more than a gesture of protest. He was helplessly
angry, helplessly infatuated. And all the while Terry prated to him of
San Francisco and the Beats and the fog and the styles in clothes and
the styles in love-making, Jack kept wondering, _How did he find me?_
And the answer was, had to be, _Laura_. Laura had failed him. Betrayed
him. It almost tore him apart.
Terry didn’t leave until nearly eleven, and Jack saw him out, still with
the feeling that it hadn’t happened, that it was all an incredible
dream. It wasn’t until he got the bottle and began to drink that he
believed in it at all. By the time Laura got home he wished the whole
damned world to hell, with himself first in line.
* * * * *
“And that’s all,” Jack said. “Naturally, the only thing to do after he
left was get drunk.” He had nearly finished the bottle and it was all he
could do to get the words out. They left his mouth slowly, discreetly,
each one a pearl of over-articulation.
Laura took away what was left—a shot or two at the most—and he didn’t
even try to protest. She helped him up and half dragged, half carried
him to the bedroom, where she dumped him on his bed. He was unconscious
the minute she pushed his head down on the pillow. Laura undressed him,
tears running down her face.
“Sleep,” she said. “Sleep and forget it for a while. I’ll make it up to
you, darling. All I wanted tonight was to cry on your shoulder. And you
can’t even hold yourself up.”
She dragged and shoved and pulled until she got him under the covers.
“He won’t get you, Jack,” she whispered. “You’d fight for me if I were
in trouble. And I’ll fight for you.”
* * * * *
In the morning, Laura got up, moving softly as a bird on the sand, and
left him to himself in the bedroom, still noisily and miserably asleep
with a full-blown, brutal hangover brewing under his closed eyes.
She had to make it up to him, redeem herself. And she could only think
of one thing. So before noon she called Terry and asked him to dinner.
“Sounds great,” he said in innocent surprise and pleasure. “I was
counting on mooching from you,” he admitted, laughing.
When Jack woke up she told him what she had done. She waited until he
had had four cups of coffee and eight aspirins and some forced warm milk
and raw egg. He said nothing but “No. No! _No!_” to whatever she was
trying to get into him. He sat in the kitchen with his head in his
hands, and Laura began to fear he was still a little drunk. She had
thrown out the rest of the whiskey.
“Where’s the bottle?” he asked her finally, around the middle of the
afternoon.
“Gone. I tossed it.”
He nodded painfully, resigned.
“Jack,” she said softly. “Terry’s coming to dinner.”
He lifted his throbbing head to gape at her. “Are you trying to kill me,
Mother? Or just drive me nuts?” he said.
“I’m going to save you. Save _us_,” she said passionately. “We’re at the
crossroads, Jack. This is the first real crisis we’ve had. We can’t just
fall apart. We have too much to save, too much worth saving. We have
love, too, and I’m not going to let him hurt you any more.” Somehow in
the strength she found to fight Jack’s battle was the strength to fight
her own. The downright shock and humiliation of finding that her two
ex-lovers were romancing might have thrown her into a full-blown
depression. But now she hadn’t time. It was Jack’s turn. She loved him,
she was absolutely sure of that. She was not absolutely sure she loved
Tris any more. Nor was she sure now that she _didn’t_ love Beebo. Jack
was her security, her chosen life; he deserved her loyalty.
But to her chagrin, her noble speech had very little effect on him. He
got out of his chair with much agonized effort, making a face, and
headed for the coat closet.
“Where are you going?” she asked anxiously, running after him.
“For a bottle.”
“Oh, Jack, no!”
He turned to face her, sliding awkwardly into his coat sleeves. “Do you
want me to go through this sober?”
“Darling, you don’t even have to _look_ at him! You can lock yourself in
the john and sing hymns if you want to. I just want to talk to him.”
“About the weather?”
“I’ll get him out of here, I swear I will!”
“How? With a can opener? TNT?” He was moving toward the door as he spoke
with Laura clinging to his arm and trying to hold him back.
“Darling, trust me!” she begged. She was not at all sure that she could
get Terry out again, once he got in, but she had to make Jack calm down.
She was frantic to stop him.
“Trust you?” He turned and looked at her uncertainly, his hand on the
front door knob, and gave a little snort. “That doesn’t work. I tried
it.”
“Oh, you damn, fatuous idiot!” she cried in exasperation, dropping his
arm to stamp to the middle of the room and face him from there as if
from a podium. “I open _one_ goddam letter—out of love and anxiety—to
spare you pain. And the thing backfires. Do you have to crucify
yourself? I said I was sorry and I am. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry,
I’m sorry!” she yelled.
“Were you born that way?” he snapped.
“Shut up and listen!” she cried. “Jack, let me make it up to you, let me
_try_. You have no right to call yourself my husband if you won’t give
me a chance, and I’m telling you right now, Jack Mann, if you won’t I’ll
walk out of this house and your life forever.” She paused, flushed and
trembling, for breath, while Jack stared at her, surprised,
half-convinced, and himself trembling slightly from the hangover.
Finally he went to the arm of the nearest chair and sat down and said,
“All right, Wife. Read him the riot act while I sing hymns in the
bathroom, if you think it’ll do any good.”
“Oh, Jack.” She ran to him, all pity and tenderness, and kissed his
frowning face. He put his head back and ignored her.
Terry arrived at seven, half an hour late, with a huge bouquet of roses
for Laura. “For Mrs. Mann,” he said, bowing, and then gave her a quick
embrace. “You look great, honey.”
“Thanks,” she said with reserve. “I’ll put them in water.”
“Where’s Jack? Oh, there you are.” Terry made a running jump to the
couch where Jack was lying in state, wearing his hangover like a royal
robe.
Jack let out all his breath in a wail of anguish when Terry hit him.
“Where did you get the flowers?” Laura asked, coming back in with them
arranged in a tall vase.
“Nick’s. On the corner. I had to charge ’em to you, Laur. I hope you
don’t mind.” He smiled charmingly. “Your credit’s much better than mine
around here.”
Jack laughed softly. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?” he said to
Terry.
Laura sat down and looked at Terry’s bright young face, smiling happily
around a mouthful of salted pecans, and wondered if her little trick
would work. It had to. But it might not. She felt a little sick, seeing
Jack so miserable.
“No drinks?” Terry said, suddenly conscious of the lack of alcohol.
“Milk,” Laura offered.
“Milk punch?” he asked.
“Just bare milk,” Jack drawled.
“What’s the matter with you?” Terry said and laughed at him. “Have a
nut.” And he popped one in Jack’s half open mouth. “You aren’t on the
wagon, are you?”
“I was,” Jack said. “Till last night.”
“No kidding. God. Amazing. Since when?”
“Since we got married last August. A little before.”
“Laura, how’d you do it?” He grinned at her.
“I didn’t have to,” she said. “The day you walked out of his life all
the good things walked in.”
“Including you?” Terry asked.
“Including me,” she shot back.
“Oh.” He smiled ruefully. “I wasn’t _that_ bad, was I?” he asked Jack.
He seemed to think it was comfortably funny, like everything else
connected with Jack. “Did I drive you to drink, honey?” he said.
“Only on the bad days,” Jack said. “Unfortunately, there weren’t any
good days.”
Terry laughed and stuck another nut in Jack’s mouth.
“That’s all,” Jack told him, wincing. “The damn pecans sound like depth
charges when I chew.” He stroked his head carefully.
There was a silence while Terry ate, Laura stared at him nervously, and
Jack concentrated on his pains. Laura wanted to make Terry
uncomfortable, self-conscious. But it was nearly a lost cause.
“What’s for dinner?” he asked suddenly, unaware that he was supposed to
notice the silence.
She told him.
“Great,” he said. More silence. Laura was determined to embarrass him,
and Jack was too ill to care about conversation. Slowly, Terry began to
realize something was amiss. Rather than take the hint he tried to
lighten the atmosphere with chatter.
“How do you like the married life, old man?” he asked.
“He liked it fine the day before yesterday,” Laura said crisply. Jack
groaned. Terry understood.
He sat up and leaned toward his hostess. “Laura, honey, I don’t want to
mess things up for you,” he said. “I just love Jack, too, that’s all.
You know that. You always knew it, even before you got married.”
“I know you nearly killed him,” she said quietly.
“No fair exaggerating.”
“No fair, hell. It’s true!” she exclaimed.
“It’s not either!” he said with good-humored indignation, as if they
were playing parlor games. “Is it, Jack?”
But Jack, his eyes on Laura now, kept silent.
“Well,” Terry admitted, “I was pretty bitchy sometimes. But so was he.
And no matter what, we loved each other. Even at the end, when he kicked
me out.”
“If he hadn’t kicked you out that night he might have killed himself
with liquor.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Laura threw her hands up, exasperated. “What more do you _want_ from
Jack, Terry?” she said. “What do you want from _me_?”
Terry grinned. “Equal time,” he said, nodding at the bedroom.
Jack laughed weakly and Laura got up and stamped her foot. “Terry, Jack
loves you. I know that and I’ll have to live with it. But that love is
destructive, and I’m asking you now to get out of our lives forever and
never come back to hurt us again.” She said it with quiet intensity.
“Before dinner?” he asked.
“Oh, God!” Laura spluttered at the ceiling.
Terry lighted a cigarette for Jack, who had fumbled one from the box on
the cocktail table, and told Laura, “I can’t go away forever. Any more
than you could desert Beebo forever. I love him. I’m stuck with him.”
“I’ve _left_ Beebo,” she said.
“You’ll go back,” he told her serenely. “It was that kind of affair.”
Laura held on to her self control as her last and dearest possession.
She didn’t dare to lose it. “Take me seriously, Terry,” she begged,
almost in a whisper. “Please let us live together in peace.”
Terry shrugged. He didn’t like to get serious. “What are you going to do
the rest of your lives?” he asked them. “Live like a couple of old maids
in your fancy little apartment? Pretend you’re both straight? What a
kick!” He said it sarcastically but without malice. “A kick like that
won’t last long, you know.”
“It’s not a kick. It’s something we both need and want,” Laura said
earnestly.
“Nuts,” Terry said amiably. “What you both need and want is a few
parties. Get out and camp. Do you good.”
“Sure,” Laura said sharply. “So you make love to Jack and he goes out
and drinks a fifth of whiskey, after _eight months_ on the wagon. Was
that what you had in mind?”
Terry made a little grimace of perplexity. “That was pretty silly,” he
told Jack. “Now she won’t let me see you at all.”
“He needs me more than he needs you, Terry,” Laura said.
“Yeah? But he _wants_ me more.” He grinned at her. “You’ve got to admit
that counts for something,” he told her. “I can give him something you
can’t give him.” He looked so smug, so sure of himself, that Laura, with
her heart in her throat, decided to pull her rabbit out of the hat. If
it didn’t work, she would have to give up.
“And I can give him something _you_ can’t give him,” she said, her voice
low and tense. “A child.”
There was a long stunned silence. Jack and Terry both stared at her—Jack
with a slight smile of amazement and Terry with open-mouthed dismay.
“A child!” Terry blurted finally. “Don’t tell _me_! I wasn’t born
yesterday.”
“It’s true,” Laura spat at him. “And I’m not going to have any
empty-headed, pretty-faced queers hanging around my baby! Not even
_you_, Terry Fleming.”
Terry turned to gape at Jack, his mouth still ajar. “She’s kidding!” he
exclaimed. “Isn’t she?”
Jack paused slightly and then shook his head, and the strange little
smile on his face widened. It was brilliant, he thought. Cruel, to
himself even more than to Terry, because it wasn’t true. But clever.
Terry stood up, bewildered, and walked around the living room. Laura
watched him, her face flushed, sweating with expectation. Finally Terry
turned to look at them. Jack, raising himself on one elbow, watched him.
“Do you still want me to have dinner with you?” he asked wryly, and
Laura saw hesitation in his look and felt a first small hope.
She didn’t know what to say. But she was thinking, _I’ve made Jack a man
in his eyes now. He’s thinking, Jack can do what he could never do
himself. He’s thinking, at least if I was wrong about him ruining Jack’s
life, I’m right about ruining a baby’s. He knows damn well he could do
that. Or does he?_
But at least he _was_ thinking. His lovely young face was screwed up
with the effort.
Suddenly he said to Laura, as if expecting to trip her up, “When’s it
due? The kid?”
“November,” she said. She had anticipated him.
“Well!” His face brightened. “If it isn’t due till November, we’ve got a
long time to play around.” And it was Jack he looked at now.
But Laura jumped at him, bristling. “I don’t want an alcoholic for a
husband!” she said. “I don’t want my baby to have an alcoholic for a
father. A drunken, miserable, tormented man who doesn’t know which sex
he is, who has to chase around after a thoughtless character like you
all night. I don’t want to lose my husband, Terry. Not to you or any
other gay boy in the world. You’d ruin his health and make him wild
inside of a month.”
She was crying, though she didn’t realize it, and her cheeks were
flaming. Terry stared at her for some moments in surprised silence. And
then he looked at Jack, who was still propped on one arm, taking it all
in with an inscrutable smile.
“Well ...,” Terry said again, almost diffidently. Apparently he believed
they were having a child. He looked to Jack for moral support. “Is that
the way you feel too, honey?” he asked.
“Why certainly,” Jack said cheerfully, incongruously. “Can’t you tell?
Whatever she says, goes.” A soft note of hysteria sounded in his voice.
“I guess you don’t want me to stay for dinner now,” Terry said, glancing
at Laura. For answer she only turned away and began to cry. Terry walked
over to Jack and knelt before him on the floor, putting his hands on
Jack’s shoulders. “I do love you, Jack. I never lied about that. I
didn’t know it was so bad. For you, I mean. I still don’t see how it
could have been. But I don’t want to mess things up for the kid. Shall I
go? _You_ tell me.” He waited, watching Jack’s face.
“I told you to leave me once, Terry. I haven’t the strength to say it
again. It’s up to you.”
Terry leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. “If you haven’t the
strength to say it, I haven’t the strength to do it. No matter what she
says,” he said.
Laura came at him suddenly from across the room. “Go!” she flashed. “Go,
damn you, and never come back!”
Terry looked uncertainly from Laura to Jack, and Jack covered his face
abruptly with a noise rather like a sob.
Terry stood up. “All right,” he said in a husky voice. “I’ll go. I’ll go
for the baby’s sake. But not forever, Laura. Not forever.”
At the front door he turned to her. “You say you love him,” he said.
“Then you must understand why I _can’t_ leave him forever. I love him
too.” He said it sadly but matter-of-factly. And Laura, staring at him
through tear-blurred eyes, realized that he never would understand what
he had done to Jack or how. He thought it was a simple matter of giving
a kid a break. And because he loved Jack enough he was able to do it.
“Enjoy your flowers,” he said with a rueful grin, and then Terry went
out the front door and shut it carefully behind him. Neither Jack nor
Laura stirred nor made a sound until they heard the elevator arrive, the
doors open, shut again, and the elevator leave.
“He’s gone,” she whispered. “Dear God, don’t let him ever come back.”
Jack rolled over, his back to her, and wept briefly and painfully with
desperate longing. There was a moment of silence while she watched him
fearfully. And then he stood up and headed for the door. Laura threw
herself against it.
“No! Don’t follow him, Jack!” she implored, her voice rising.
“I won’t,” he said, trying to reach past her to open the door, but she
threw her arms around him and begged him to stay with her.
“I got him to leave, Jack. He won’t dare come back for a long time.
Maybe he’ll find somebody new. Maybe we’ll be lucky and he’ll never come
back.”
“I should be so lucky,” he said acidly.
She looked at him, dismayed. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” she asked.
He stopped trying to grab the doorknob for a minute to look at her.
“Yes,” he said, with effort. And after a pause, “You were masterful,
Mother. You really played your scene.”
She looked at the floor confusedly, hearing all the sarcasm and the hurt
and the grudging admiration in his voice. “Do you hate me for it?” she
asked.
“No. I’m grateful.”
“Do you still love me?” she whispered.
“Yes. But don’t ask me to prove it now.” He got the door open in a
sudden deft gesture, but Laura was still clutching him.
“Where are you going?” she asked fearfully.
“For a bottle.”
“Oh, God!” she gasped. “Then it’s all been for nothing,” she said
despairingly.
“No,” he said. “I’m not drinking this for Terry. I’m drinking it for the
baby.”
“The baby?” she said tremulously.
“The little kid who wasn’t there.”
He turned to go and she followed him into the hall.
“But Jack—” she protested as he rang for the elevator. “Jack, I—I—” She
looked up and saw the long bronze needle moving swiftly toward “three”
as the elevator ascended, having barely emptied Terry into the first
floor. It seemed to be measuring off the last seconds of their marriage.
She had to do something. Trembling and scared, she caught his lapels and
said, with great difficulty, “I meant it, Jack.”
“Meant what?”
“About the baby.”
He stared at her, one hand holding back the door of the just-arrived
elevator.
“I’ll have a baby,” she said. “If you still want one.”
For a while they stood in the dim little hall and gazed at each other.
And then Jack let his hand slip from the elevator door and, circling her
waist with his arm, led her back into the apartment.
“He’ll be back, you know,” he said, stopping to look at her.
“I know. But by that time he’ll know we aren’t kidding,” she said,
looking dubiously at her tight, flat stomach. “By that time you’ll be
strong again. And ready for him. You’ll know he’s coming and you’ll be
able to take it. It won’t be like now.”
He kissed her. “Goddam it,” he whispered, grateful and amazed. “I _do_
love you.”
9
The doctor’s waiting room was crowded, heavy with the eager boredom of
people waiting to talk about themselves. It was the fourth doctor they
had been to see within a week. Jack, as Laura might have expected, was
in a hurry. But he had to find the right man, too—a man he genuinely
liked. Not just any bone-picker was going to perform the wizardry to
bring _his_ child into being.
Laura had simply sat in red-faced silence through Jack’s expositions of
their supposed marital troubles, both unwilling and unable to contribute
a word. And the whole thing had been lengthy and bewildering and not a
little tiring.
But when they finally got into Dr. Belden’s plush, paneled office, it
went well. And she knew, suddenly paying attention to the words of the
men, that it was going to be settled. And it was.
She answered the standard questions, her voice low with embarrassment.
They always bothered her excessively, like so many spiders crawling over
her tender shame. Other girls might not mind, or even liked to yammer to
doctors about their intimate selves, but not Laura.
Jack bolstered her up as they were leaving. “You were heroic, Mother,”
he assured her. “I know you hate it—yes you do, don’t lie,” he added
impatiently when she tried to protest. “It’s all right, honey, it’s all
in a good cause.”
“Don’t call me honey.”
“Why?”
“Terry calls everybody honey.” She was in a grumpy mood; he saw it and
let her be for a while. “When do I have to go back?” she asked as they
rode home in a taxi.
“A week from Thursday.” He looked at her somewhat anxiously as if
wishing that Thursday had already come. “You won’t change your mind, of
course,” he said to comfort himself. His voice was calm but his eyes
were worried.
“No,” she sighed. She looked at her gloved hands until his anxious gaze
moved her to give him one and make him smile.
He looked strangely different, almost young. Jack had the kind of a face
that must have made him look forty when he was twenty. In a sense it was
an ageless face because it had hardly changed at all. Laura supposed
that when he was sixty, he would still look forty. But for the few weeks
after Terry disappeared it looked young. And Laura thought with an ache
of how much of that was due to her. How much she had forced him to
depend on her. She was deeply committed now. There was no retreating.
* * * * *
Laura saw Doctor Belden three days in a row, and it was unspeakably
humiliating for her. But she endured it. By the time her appointment
came due, she was too afraid for Jack not to go. But she prayed when she
was alone, with big wild angry sobs, that the artificial insemination
wouldn’t work; that she was barren or Jack was sterile or the timing was
off; anything. And she felt a huge, breathtaking need for a woman that
absolutely tortured her at night.
After her first examination with Belden she went out of the office to
meet Jack and told him she was going to the Village.
“I don’t know why I need to. I just do,” she said.
“Sure, sweetheart,” he said at last, standing facing her on the pavement
outside the doctor’s office. “Go. Only, come back.”
“I will,” she said, near tears, and turned and almost ran from him. She
couldn’t bear to touch him, and it was painful even to look at him.
It was mid-day in the Village and mothers walked their babies in the
park. Laura hurried past them. Old ladies strolled about in the
unusually warm weather, dogs barked, and a few hardy would-be artists
had set up shop in the empty pool at the center of Washington Square. A
small crowd of students had gathered to offer encouragement and argue.
Laura walked quickly through the park to Fourth Street, and then she
turned and walked west, not sure why. On the other side of Sixth Avenue
she stopped and found a drugstore and went in for coffee.
_I can’t see Tris_, she told herself, playing nervously with her hands.
_I won’t see Beebo. Or rather, Beebo won’t see me. That’s for sure._ She
tried to think of anything but what she had just been through, but it
didn’t work. It never does.
_Just so it’s normal_, she thought angrily. _I won’t hate it but I
couldn’t stand an abnormal child. God, I’ve got to talk to somebody,
somebody who doesn’t know, who’ll put it out of my mind._ She thought of
Inga then, but she couldn’t remember her last name and she wasn’t too
sure where the girl lived. She had been too drunk that night.
And then, for no apparent reason, she thought of Lili. Beautiful, brazen
Lili. At least Lili would talk. Laura wouldn’t have to open her mouth.
Maybe it would be better that way. She wouldn’t betray any secrets to
Beebo’s old lover about her marriage. But Lili would be only too happy
to tell Laura what had gone on between Beebo and Tris if only to see her
squirm, and Laura was burning to know.