door open hard. It cracked like a shot against the wall and Laura opened
her eyes slowly. Her arms were crossed at the wrists and clamped tight
over her breasts, as if to ward off attack. She looked at Beebo and
Beebo looked at her without a word for several amazed minutes. Laura
felt such a flash of agonized desire for this big, handsome, passionate
girl who had been her lover that she was unable to speak.
Finally Beebo walked slowly into the room, her hands shoved into the
pockets of her pants, squinting through the smoke of the cigarette
between her lips. “I thought Lili was kidding,” she said softly. “Seeing
things.” And she gave a single short laugh. She walked to the bed and
dropped her coat. “Relax, Laura, I’m not going to rape you,” she said.
She turned, with her weight on one foot and the other on the bed rung,
and called to Milo, “You can go now, Sir Galahad.”
“It’s all right?” He came to the door and looked at Laura, who finally
found the strength to nod at him. “Okay,” he said. He looked her up and
down, surprised to find how desirable she looked with a clean skin and
no rags. “Lotsa luck, girls,” he said with his rueful defeated smile,
and he went out.
“Thank you, Milo,” Laura called after him, but her voice was so low and
husky with emotion that he did not hear her.
There followed a long strange silence while Beebo stared at her. Laura
kept her eyes on her toes, afraid to meet that penetrating gaze.
At last Beebo crushed her cigarette and lay down on the bed, crossing
her feet and stuffing her hands behind the pillow to raise her head.
“All right, Laura,” she said calmly. “You’re here. Tell me what you
want.”
Laura looked up then, slowly, still very afraid. She was prepared for
any violence, any brutality. It no longer mattered if Beebo hurt her or
not. She was ready to submit to anything if Beebo would only take her
back.
“What do you want?” Beebo said.
“To stay,” she whispered.
Beebo’s eyes widened with surprise. “To stay? With me?” She looked away
then at the wall. “You could have stayed last August.”
“Last August I was miserably unhappy because of you. I had to get away.
I found out I’m more unhappy without you than with you.”
Beebo laughed outright then. “Doesn’t give you much of a choice, does
it?” she said and her voice was not kind. Her laughter made Laura
realize that she was a little drunk. Laura walked over to the side of
the bed and knelt beside it, with her heart working as if it had taken
her up a stiff hill.
Beebo turned her head to watch her. “What’s that for?” she said,
catching a corner of her pajamas between thumb and forefinger. Her flesh
was only inches away from Laura’s for the first time in eight long
months and there was a sudden current of feeling between them that
leaped like a spark from Beebo’s hand to Laura’s breasts.
“I had to change. My clothes were filthy. I took a shower and borrowed
your pajamas.... I’ve been walking all night. All the way from midtown.”
“What the hell did you do that for? Don’t they still have taxis in this
town?” She was cold. Her hand dropped away from Laura.
“I didn’t have any money. And I had to see you.”
“Why?”
Laura put her head down on the bed on her clasped hands and began to
cry. “I love you,” she wept. And it was the first time since they had
met that Beebo had heard her say it that way.
She got up on one elbow and leaned toward Laura. Her face was impassive,
but shrewd. “Not Tris?” she said.
“Not Tris.”
“Anybody else?”
“Nobody else.” Laura lifted her tearful face. “Oh, Beebo, I’ve done you
so wrong, darling. I didn’t know how bad it was. Lili told me—”
“I know she did, the miserable bitch. God damn her soul. The only secret
she can keep is her age.”
“Beebo, I’ll do anything for you—anything—if you’ll have me back. Oh,
darling, it took me months to figure out what was wrong with me. I’ve
been so confused. And lately I’ve been thinking of you all the time. I
don’t think I ever stopped loving you, Beebo. I thought when you saw me
here you’d beat the hell out of me. If you want to ... do it ... if
it’ll help.” She looked at her out of large frightened eyes, half
expecting Beebo to jump her.
But Beebo sat up then, grasping her ankles with her hands. “No, Laura,
it’s too late for that. What good would that do?” She made a face,
frowning. “There was a time when I would have. If you had come back last
fall instead of now. I would have loved you enough then to hate you. But
I’ve changed, Laura.... It doesn’t seem to matter so much any more.”
There was a shocked silence from Laura. “You mean,” she ventured
finally, “you don’t love me any more? Oh, Beebo! Oh, Beebo! No!” She
covered her mouth with both hands, pressed so tight they turned white.
Beebo looked at her curiously. “I love you, Laura,” she said, but it was
impersonal, detached, as if it were just another fact in her life like
her job or her black hair. “I’ll always love you. But I’ll never love
you again the way I did before you ran out on me last summer. That was
too much. When it happened it was a question of either dying of it ...
or living with something else, changing myself. Becoming a different
person. That’s what happened.”
Laura, in her desperation, found the courage to touch Beebo then. She
reached out for her, and Beebo unexpectedly turned to help her. She
dragged Laura up on the bed with her two strong arms, and Laura gave a
long groan of need and fear and gratitude, all mixed up together. Beebo
held her in both arms, her back pressed against the wall, watching Laura
struggle to control her tears and trembling. She was kind, she was
patient. And it scared Laura, who suddenly discovered that she missed
the old stormy fury and passion. Beebo seemed odd to her, and it was
true that she had changed.
“Laura,” she said. “I’ve been doing some thinking. I want to tell you
something. Maybe you won’t want to come back to me so much any more.”
“Let me tell you something first,” Laura begged. “If I don’t tell you,
Beebo, I haven’t any right to touch you. I haven’t any right to be here.
Maybe I don’t anyway. Darling, I—I’m married.” Beebo gasped a little,
and Laura said quickly, “To Jack.”
Beebo simply gaped at her for a second and then she burst out laughing.
“Good God! _That’s_ what happened!” she exclaimed. “You and Jack. Oh,
God!”
“It wasn’t exactly—ridiculous,” Laura whispered, hurt. “We loved each
other.” But Beebo went on laughing.
“I’m sorry, baby, but it sounds so damn—goofy,” she said.
And when she called her baby, Laura felt a small glow of warmth and
hope. Maybe it wasn’t hopeless; maybe things could work out. She clung
to Beebo and found herself half laughing with her, and half weeping to
hear Jack’s name.
“Where is he now? Does he know you’re here?” Beebo asked her.
“He knows,” Laura said, for there could be no doubt that he did.
“Did he send you? Married life got him down?”
“No, I ran away. I—I hurt him. It meant so much to him to have a wife
and all....” She couldn’t say any more about it; it broke her up to
think of it.
Beebo sobered a little. “You have a talent for that, Laura—hurting
people. Sometimes I think that’s your only real ability.”
“I know,” Laura murmured, shame-faced. “And the trouble is, I never want
to. I never mean to. I’d give anything to undo it, once it’s done. But I
begin to feel like I’m smothering. Like I’d die of it if I can’t get
away.”
“Is that the way _I_ made you feel?” Beebo said.
Laura hung her head. “Yes,” she whispered. “I won’t lie about it.”
“You can’t very well. I read the damn diary—every word of it.”
Laura flushed at the thought of the thing. “Beebo, I—I didn’t understand
before how you felt. Or how I felt myself. But I know now I love you.”
She said it quivering with hope.
But Beebo only answered, “Do you, Laura? How do you know?” There was a
little smile on Beebo’s face. She asked the question gently as if she
were talking to a bewildered child, brushing Laura’s hair from her
forehead.
“Because I want so terribly to be with you,” Laura said, shaking her
head to emphasize her words. “I can’t bear it like this, being apart
from you.”
“I’ve changed so much,” Beebo said, wondering at it, “and you haven’t
changed at all. Have you? I think you’re just tired of being a wife,
honey.”
“No. I love Jack. But it’s different. I don’t _need_ him like I need
you.”
“How about Jack? Doesn’t he need you?”
Laura covered her face again with her hands to stifle the sudden sobs.
“A lot, I’m afraid. I’d be better off dead, Beebo, I swear I would. I’ve
caused so much heart ache. And most of all to myself. I’m no good to
anybody. I wish to God you’d get that big knife and do to me what you
did to Nix. I wish you’d beat me the way you beat yourself—”
“Laura! God, spare me!” And for a second the latent fire in her flared
and gave Laura a curious thrill.
“I thought you would,” Laura cried. “I was prepared for anything, even
that, when I came here. I still can’t believe you—I mean, you seem so
funny. I thought you’d hurt me, and you’re so calm, so quiet—”
Beebo shook her head, looking at Laura with her disillusioned eyes. “I
won’t hurt you, baby,” she said.
“You said once you’d kill me,” Laura said wildly, as if she were asking
for it, as if it would be proof of Beebo’s huge need for her.
“I know. I meant it then, too. I was nearly crazy. But things have
changed, Laura. I don’t throw my threats around so easily any more.
There was a time when I could have done it, but no more. No more. Stop
crying, baby. Stop, honey.” She began to stroke Laura’s long hair.
Laura looked up at her through pink eyes, her chest heaving in Beebo’s
warm embrace, and they gazed at each other for some time before Beebo
told her, kindly, trying to ease it for her, “I said I loved you, Laura.
But it’s not the same for me, now. I don’t love you the way I used to. I
couldn’t and go on living. You were my whole life for two years. I
thought I couldn’t exist without you. I thought it would be better to
kill you and die with you than go on without you. So what did I do?” She
smiled in contempt for herself. And pity. A bitter smile. “I chickened
out. I slaughtered a poor innocent pup instead. In the fury I should
have saved for you. And what did it prove? Nothing. How did it help? It
didn’t. It was a wasted gesture, Laura. A stupid, senseless thing.
“But you see, I was out of my mind in love with you at the time. Now all
the madness has gone out of me, Laura. There’s not much fire left.” And
she bent suddenly to touch Laura’s brow with her lips. Laura felt the
sweet touch flow through her to her toes and she nestled close against
Beebo, weeping at her words. “It’s not wild and wonderful and tormenting
any more.”
“How did it happen?” Laura begged her, cruelly disappointed. “Maybe
it’ll change.” She felt almost betrayed, as if she were in the arms of a
stranger.
“No. I wouldn’t want it to change, now. It happened because if it hadn’t
I would have died, Laura. I was so sick, so lost without you, that I
would have gone to pieces. I’d have used the damn cleaver on myself.”
“Oh!” Laura breathed, horrified.
“I changed to save my life ... and my sanity. It took all my strength,
but I did it. And strangely enough, it was a relief. I felt as if I’d
laid down a killing burden.” She looked down at Laura, pulling her so
tight that they could feel one another’s hearts beating, and Laura, her
eyes shut, was saying to herself, “No, no, no....”
“I love you still, baby,” Beebo told her. “I know I should be proud and
angry with you. I should kick you out or beat you up or both. But if I
did it wouldn’t mean anything. It would only hurt, like I hurt Nix, for
no purpose. I know Lili and the rest of them will bitch at me for taking
you back—”
“Oh, will you, Beebo? Darling, darling, will you?”
“If you want it that way....” She stopped, looking into Laura’s
tear-bright eyes.
“I want it that way,” Laura gasped.
But at the same time she had to realize that this was not her Beebo any
more; that things had changed irreparably and forever between them; that
the love they had left now was only good and tender, not the exalted,
shivering passions of the past. It had to be so, because Beebo could
never have forgiven her, let alone taken her back, otherwise. _And it’s
my fault—all my fault. It’s the price I have to pay to get her back_,
Laura told herself.
“If you had been like this last summer ... so calm, so casual,” she
whispered humbly, “I would have stayed.”
“And now that I’ve calmed down, you want me wild again, don’t you?”
Beebo laughed a little, a sad, wise laugh. “Crazy, isn’t it? Ironic and
crazy. And there’s not a goddamn thing we can do about it, Bo-peep.
Either of us ... baby....” She lifted Laura’s face and kissed it.
“I won’t tell you how I missed you. I won’t tell you what I went
through. I wouldn’t even know how. It took a lot out of me. Too much.
But you’re welcome to what’s left. If you want it.”
“I want it,” Laura said passionately. “I want _you_, Beebo.” She hung
her head. “Unless ... unless you still want Tris?”
“I never did. I never wanted anybody else. I’ve been trying to give Tris
back to Milo since she walked in on me the first time,” Beebo said.
“She’ll give up on me when she finds out you’re home. She won’t want to
make it a threesome.”
“Home,” Laura repeated. “Oh, Beebo....”
And suddenly her arms were locked around Beebo’s neck and they were lost
in kisses and thrilling, half-forgotten caresses and the warm satin
touch of each other’s bodies. The pajama top Laura had pulled on so
frantically slipped off with no trouble, and she stretched out on the
white spread beneath the girl she had loved so much, in spite of so
much, and surrendered with a groan of delight tempered with sorrow. And
perhaps the beginning of understanding at last.
* * * * *
It was only a matter of hours the next day before Laura knew that the
feeling of strangeness she felt would not wear off. It was another two
days before she could bring herself to give up hope that Beebo might
change, that being together again would reawaken their crazy, beautiful,
love affair.
But it was two whole weeks, two very long weeks full of wondering and
self-pity and struggle and doubt, before Laura could tell herself that
she had made a mistake.
Beebo was drained of feeling. She was tired, tired of love and even
tired of life. Perhaps time and innate toughness would revive her, but
she had nothing to give Laura now. Laura realized with chagrin how
little she had to give Beebo. She had never given much, always taking,
taking, taking, from the older girl, who seemed to have so much to
offer. It had been too easy to help herself to that wealth of love and
she understood now, painfully, that she had come back to Beebo to be
worshipped again.
She had turned tail and run at the moment when her problems with Jack
seemed too much for her, and she had run to the one person who had
adored her spectacularly in the past. She needed her ego bolstered, she
needed flattery and passion and reassurance from a woman. So it had come
to her as an eye-opening blow to find her tempestuous lover subdued,
transformed, almost a different person.
_It never was right_, Laura thought, watching Beebo over the dinner
table. _She had to give beyond her strength and I took it all with no
return. At least she was generous with herself. I was the selfish one. I
always have been the selfish one. I thought the world was giving me a
bum deal, but I was too selfish to see the good side. Even with Jack....
Oh my God, Jack. My poor darling. With him most of all._
“What are you thinking about?” Beebo asked her, seeing her absorption.
“I—I have to go back, Beebo,” Laura said and her own words startled her.
“I have to see Jack once more.” Once expressed, these feelings so long
in the making made her feel like crying. She looked apprehensively at
Beebo, expecting her sarcasm.
But Beebo only said, “I thought you would. Well, go on, baby. Go tell
him you’re sorry, it was all a nasty misunderstanding.” She spoke
mildly.
“Don’t make it sound cheap, Beebo,” Laura pleaded.
“It won’t be anything _but_ cheap unless you go back to stay,” Beebo
told her. “Otherwise there’s no point in going back at all.”
“But—but I’m going to live with you now,” Laura faltered. “I just have
to see him once more. Explain to him—”
“You’re his wife. Either go home to him and grow up or don’t go back.
What do you think you’d accomplish with a quickie visit, Bo-peep? Just
pep him up a little? Make it all bearable? You’d be lucky if he didn’t
run you out with a rifle. If you haven’t learned anything else in all
this time, you _must_ have learned that you can’t play around with love
as if it were a bargain basement special. Real love isn’t a production
line thing, it isn’t waiting for you in any old shop window. Haven’t you
learned that yet, baby?”
Laura nodded, putting her head back against the chair and letting the
soothing tears flow quietly. “I’ve learned it. But it’s so hard to live
by what you learn. I needed you so much when I came back two weeks ago.
But I needed you the way you used to be.” It was a difficult admission,
but Beebo understood it.
“Sure,” she said gently. “Now you’ve seen me. Now you know what I
couldn’t find the words to tell you. It’s over, Laura. I’ll always be
here, I guess we’ll always need each other a little. Maybe we’ll see
each other now and then. But there’s no point in our living together.”
Shame colored Laura’s cheeks pink and she said warmly, “I’m not a child,
Beebo, and I didn’t come back here just to run off and leave you again.
I gave up too much to come back.”
“Yes, baby, I think you did. You gave up too much. It wasn’t worth the
price, and you see that now. Admit it. Don’t be a stubborn idiot.”
Laura was appalled at the apathy in her voice. “What would you do if I
insisted on staying with you?” she asked.
Beebo shrugged. “I’d let you stay, of course. I haven’t the ambition to
kick you out. Besides, I love you still, in my way. I meant it when I
said it.”
Laura stood up, unable to look at her any more. “I’m going back to the
apartment, and I’m going to talk to Jack,” she said. “I’ll be back in a
couple of hours.”
“I doubt it.” Beebo did not even leave her chair. She lighted a
cigarette slowly, watching Laura’s back.
Finally Laura turned around and faced her. “Please, Beebo, don’t talk to
me as if nothing in the world mattered any more. I can’t stand it, I
can’t stand to think I did it to you.”
“Jack still matters, baby. Don’t do it to him, too.”
Laura went and got her coat and purse from the bedroom, and then she
looked into the kitchen. Beebo sat with her back to the door, still
smoking thoughtfully. “I’m leaving,” Laura told her. “I should be back
around nine.”
“Sure, sweetheart. Tell old Jack I said hello.”
“I will.” Laura looked at her dark curly head, not sure if the frosting
on her curls came from the kitchen light above or from the first gray
hairs. She walked over to Beebo and kissed her cheek, leaning over her
chair from behind. Beebo smiled though she did not turn her head.
And then Laura walked out, knowing somehow, deep within herself, that it
was for the last time.
11
Laura approached the apartment building with her legs trembling. It was
all she could do to keep from turning around and running. It was hard to
imagine what she might find. She left Jack a desperate man, and her
absence for two weeks would not have made things any easier for him.
She stopped at the front door to marshal her strength, and the chain
link fence at the end of the street caught her eye. She marvelled that
she had been able to climb it the night she ran away. It looked almost
insurmountable now with the long shadows creeping along the ground
beneath it. She touched one of the cuts on her arm, still healing, and
wondered where her shabby guide with his friendly dime was now. All
unaware, he had taught her a valuable lesson about herself and turned a
spotlight on the lies until even Laura had been forced to see them and
confess the truth. She loved Jack too much to hurt him, and she had come
back now to heal him if she could.
That thought gave her the most strength as she pushed open the
lacquer-red front door with its brass knocker. _If he didn’t need me so
desperately, I couldn’t do this_, she told herself. _And if I didn’t
love him so much, I couldn’t do it, either._ She pushed the button for
the elevator and felt a thrill of shame and fear that almost made her
sick. And then, out of habit, she glanced at her mailbox. It was so full
that it could not be locked and the door hung open. Laura went to it and
pulled the bundle of mail out with a sudden premonition.
The box had not been emptied for days, perhaps weeks; perhaps not since
the night she ran away.
_Is Jack—is he gone, then?_ she wondered. For a second her weakness and
humiliation overwhelmed her and she hoped he was. She hoped she would
never have to face him. For she dreaded what she had done to this man
who loved her, in his own odd way, more than he loved, or ever had
loved, anyone else on earth.
And then, suddenly, she whispered aloud, “No! Oh, no! He’s _got_ to be
here!”
She took the elevator to the third floor in a frenzy of impatience and
crossed the carpeted hall to her apartment door swiftly. Like the
mailbox, the door was unlocked, and that gave her hope. He wouldn’t go
out and leave it open for any stranger to wander into. It wasn’t like
him.
Silent and tremulous, Laura entered the living room. “Jack?” she said
softly, knowing already there would be no answer. “Jack? Be here.
Darling, please be here,” she murmured. Slowly and fearfully she entered
each room, saying his name as she did so, and silently, each room
revealed nothing but his absence. Never had a home seemed so empty.
Never had her own voice awed and saddened her so.
She had been through all the rooms a couple of times, halfheartedly
picking up a thing or two and looking with frightened eyes into the dark
corners, before she spotted the note. It was rolled into the top of a
whisky bottle, one of several sitting on the kitchen table. She picked
it up with trembling fingers and read:
“_Laura darling._ I’m with Terry. I guess you’ve gone back to Beebo.
Maybe that’s fate, but I still think we could have made a go of it.
You’re my wife, Laura—that’s the difference between life and death
to me, even now. If you ever read these words, remember, I love you,
Mrs. Mann. And remember it too if you ever want to come home. Jack.”
Laura wept silently, her throat and chest painfully tight with it,
crushing the letter against her neck.
She walked dazedly into the living room, still holding the letter, and
stared around through her tears. She thought of Beebo and the warm,
slightly worn rooms she lived in and the worn-out love she had left. And
she thought of Jack. There had been none of his usual piercing sarcasm
in the note. Nothing but gentleness, nothing but love.
After a long moment Laura pulled herself together. She sank down on the
sofa by the table and picked up the mail. She felt weak, and she
shuffled listlessly through the pile of bills and ads and notes and
papers. Near the end she almost passed up one with Dr. Belden’s name in
the return address spot. His name registered suddenly in her mind, and
she tore his letter open with hands newly sprung to life.
She read only the first half of the first sentence:
“Dear Mrs. Mann. I am delighted to inform you that next November, if
all goes well, you and Mr. Mann will be parents, and....”
She fainted.
* * * * *
When Laura awoke she was lying on the couch with her head back and her
mouth open and uncomfortably dry. Carefully she lifted her head on a
stiff neck, turning it gingerly, and sat up straight. On the floor at
her feet was the doctor’s letter. She picked it up and found her hands
shaking so that she had to grab at it three times before she caught it
between her fingers.
For some moments she sat there, her cornflower eyes enormous with shock.
Finally she whispered, “I’m going to have a child. _Me._” A first
hysterical thought of abortion flew through her mind, but she dismissed
it almost before it formed.
“I’m going to be a woman. I have eight months to get ready and I’ve got
to _be_ ready when it comes. I’ve got to love it and take care of it.”
Cautiously she stood up, and unsteadily walked toward the bedroom, one
hand warm across her stomach. “Now that I know, it’s not so bad,” she
said, speaking aloud as if to reassure herself. “I don’t resent it so
much any more. Strange ... I’m not afraid of it. I don’t know why,
exactly. Yes, I guess I do.... It’s Jack’s. It’s a part of him. It’s a
way to make it up to him for what I’ve done.”