Chapter II: Part 2

He leaned toward her, hating to hurt her. “Beth, I’d do anything for you,” he said earnestly. “I’d let you go model in Timbuktu if that would make you happy. But it won’t. All these things you think you want so badly—did you ever stop to examine them? What are they? So many escapes. You’re running away. The one thing you can’t stand, you can’t bear to face or live with or understand, is your relationship with me. Your home. Your kids. But mostly me. Are you sorry we got married, Beth? Tell the truth.”

There was a terrible, painful pause. It took all of her courage to admit, “I don’t know. That’s the truth. I don’t know.”

He shut his eyes for a moment, as if to recover a little.

“Do you love me, then?”

She swallowed. “Yes,” she said. Her courage would not stretch so far as to let her hedge on that one.

“Do you love the kids?”

She caught her breath and bit her lip. _I will be truthful, I’ll be as truthful as I can_, she told herself sharply.

“Do you love the kids, honey?” he prompted her.

“When they’re not around,” she blurted, and gave an awful sob, covering her wicked mouth with one hand. When she could talk a little she said, “I love them, I love them terribly, but I just can’t _stand_ them. Does that make any sense?”

He lay back on the bed and gazed at the ceiling. The sight of Beth tore his heart. “Not to me, it doesn’t,” he said. And seeing her despair, he added, “But at least it’s the truth, Beth. Thank you for that much, anyway.” There was no sarcasm in his voice now.

Beth got up and walked back and forth at the foot of the bed. “I know I’m not the world’s greatest mother, Charlie. Far from it.” She wiped her eyes impatiently. “Or the best wife. I guess I hound you all the time because I’m ashamed of my own behavior. At least that’s part of it. You’re no dreamboat yourself sometimes.” She turned to look at him and he nodded without answering.

“The trouble is, I just don’t know what I _would_ be good at,” she said helplessly. “I don’t know what I want to do. I wish I could want something, good and hard, and it would be the right thing. Sometimes I wish somebody would _tell_ me what I want. Maybe my ideas about traveling and the rest of it are just daydreams. Escape, or whatever you said. But Charlie, that’s not criminal. I _need_ an escape. I really do.” She felt a note of semi-hysteria pulling her voice higher and higher and she stopped talking for a minute to catch her breath.

“I wanted to go to Mexico last year. You said no. I wanted to get that MG we saw in Monrovia. You said no. I have a couple of cocktails by myself in the afternoon and you blow your top. You think I’m headed for Skid Row. I ask to go home and visit Uncle John. No again.”

“The last time you visited Uncle John,” Charlie pointed out with heat, “I didn’t see you for four whole months.”

“And those four months saved my sanity!” she cried, thrusting her angry chin toward him.

He lighted another cigarette in offended silence.

After a moment she resumed, trying to keep her voice level, “Now I want to model a couple of days a week. Is that so very awful? Am I really a case for the bughouse because I want to _escape_ once in a while?” She tried, with her voice, to make it seem ridiculous.

“If it were only once in a while,” he said sadly. They were silent again. Beth had stopped her pacing and he looked at her lovely figure, shadowy beneath the nylon film of nightie. He wanted her so much ... so much. At last he said, quietly, “Well, I guess it’s better than losing you to Uncle John for half a year.”

She turned around slowly and her face was grateful. “Thanks, Charlie,” she said. “I would have done it anyway, but—” She was sorry she had said it. He looked so despondent, utterly stripped of his husbandly influence, almost a stranger to her. “But I wanted you to approve,” she went on hastily. “I wanted to be able to tell you about it and everything.” He refused to look at her. “She—she’s doing it for nothing,” Beth added, hoping to make it more acceptable to him.

He laughed unpleasantly. “She’s doing it for _something_, Beth. Not money, maybe, but _something_. Vega’s not the kind of girl who does things for nothing.”

She went around the bed and sat down beside him. “Look at me, honey,” she said. “I want to thank you.”

“I know,” he answered, but the thought of her kiss suddenly made him weak and a little sick. He sat up, turning to give her his back and was suddenly mortified to feel her lips on it in a brief shy salute. He froze.

“Beth,” he said sternly. “Vega is a strange girl. You should know....”

“Know what?” she said eagerly.

“Cleve has told me,” he said reluctantly. “She’s been married a couple of times.”

“To whom?” Beth interrupted, astonished. Vega? _Married?_

“Well, I didn’t know them. The first marriage was ideal, by your lights: she lived in Chicago and he lived in Boston. For eight years. Cleve said she never let him in her bed. His name was Ray something. She calls him ex-Ray.”

Beth had to grin at his back. It began to sound more like the elegant enigma she knew. “Who was the other one?” she asked.

“Some good-timer, backslapping sort of guy. A roommate of Cleve’s once, before I knew him. Younger than Vega. It’s only been two years since she divorced that one. I guess he didn’t get past the bedroom door either, but he did get into her bank account. Spent all her money and then disappeared. Nobody knows where he is. She never talks about him.”

“Well,” Beth said cautiously, “that’s not so strange. I mean, she obviously wasn’t a good marriage risk, but lots of women have behaved that way. Maybe the men she picked weren’t such prizes either.”

He shrugged. “Maybe.” He turned to look at her. “She lives alone with her mother and her grandfather. Cleve says they’re a trio of cuckoo birds. You can’t get him over there. Except Christmas and birthdays, and he only goes because he feels he has to.”

“Do they really hate each other—Cleve and Vega?” Beth asked.

“Only on the bad days,” he said. “Now and then they quit speaking to each other. But then their mother breaks a leg or Gramp poisons the stew and they get back together. Takes a family calamity, though. Right now they’re as friendly as they ever are, according to Cleve. I don’t know why it should be that way. Doesn’t seem natural.”

“They’re both such nice people. It’s a shame,” she said.

Charlie couldn’t stand to look at her any longer and not touch her. He put his arms around her and felt her nestle against him with a shattering relief. After a few minutes he heaved himself over her to turn out the dresser lamp, returning fearfully to her arms, only to find them open.

“Is this my thanks for giving in?” he said. It was flat and ironical. He couldn’t help the dig. But she took it in stride by simply refusing to answer him. He made up for several weeks of involuntary virtue that night.

Before they slept, Charlie had to say one last thing. He saved it until he knew they were both too tired to stay awake and argue. He didn’t want to ruin things. She lay very close to him, in his arms, too worn out for her usual tears of frustration, and he whispered to her, “Beth?”

“Hm?”

“Darling, I have to know this. Don’t be angry with me, just tell the truth like you did earlier. Beth, I—” It was so hard to say, so awkward. He was afraid of humiliating her, rousing her temper again. “I keep thinking of Laura,” he said at last.

“Laura?” Beth woke up a little, opening her eyes.

“Yes. I mean, I can’t help but wonder if you—you know how you felt about her—if it’s the modeling that interests you or if it’s—Vega.”

In the blank dark he couldn’t see her face and he waited, fearful, for her answer. _God, don’t let her explode_, he prayed.

Beth turned away from him, her face dissolved in tears. “It’s the modeling!” she said in a fierce whisper. And they said no more to each other that night.

Chapter Five

Vega’s studio was located on the second floor of a building that housed an exclusive dress shop and a luggage and notions shop. It was an expensive place to rent and Beth was rather surprised to see how bare it was. There was a small reception room which was tastefully decorated, though there was space for more chairs in it. There was a door marked “office,” which was closed, and there was a large, nearly empty studio room with eight or ten folding chairs, the kind you sit on at PTA meetings.

Beth peered into the studio hesitantly, and instantly Vega materialized from a small group of high school girls who had surrounded her while she spoke to them. There was silence while she walked, regally lovely in flowing velvet, both hands extended to Beth. The teens examined the newcomer with adolescent acuteness, and Beth took their silent appraisal uneasily.

Vega reached her. “Darling, how are you,” she said in her smooth controlled voice, and kissed Beth on the mouth. Beth was shocked speechless. She stared at Vega with big startled eyes.

“Oh, don’t worry,” Vega laughed, seeing her expression. “The doctor says I’m socially acceptable. The TB has been inactive for almost two years—really a record.”

But it wasn’t the infected lung, the possibility of catching TB, that upset Beth. That, in fact, never occurred to her. It was the sudden electric meeting of mouths, the impudence of it, the feel of it, the teen-aged audience taking it all in. Beth was piqued. Vega had no business treating her so familiarly. Still, it was impossible to make a fuss over it, as though she were guilty of some indecent complicity with Vega.

“How are you?” she said uncertainly.

The knot of girls began to talk and giggle again, and Vega turned to them. “Okay, darlings, you can go now,” she said. “That’s all for this afternoon.”

She took Beth’s arm and led her into the studio while the girls filed past them and out, still staring. Beth began to be seriously disturbed. Vega behaved as if they were sisters, at the very least, and at the worst.... Beth turned to her abruptly.

“Vega, I hate to say anything, but really, I—I—” She paused, embarrassed. Vega would surely take it the wrong way. Who but a girl with a problem would take the kiss, the familiarity, so hard? What, after all, was so dreadful about a kiss between two women? Even if it was so unexpected, even if it was so direct that a trace of moisture from Vega’s lips remained on Beth’s own.

_I’d only look like a fool to complain_, Beth thought. _She’d think I was—queer—or something._ How she hated that word!

“Something wrong?” Vega said helpfully.

“I—well, I’m just not so sure I should do this, that’s all,” she said lamely. “Charlie said—”

“Charlie be damned. Charlie’s as stuffy as Cleve. They make a beautiful couple,” she shot at Beth, who was startled by the sharp emphasis. “However....” Vega turned away, walking to one of the folding chairs to pick up her purse and fish out a cigarette. “Maybe he’s right. Maybe you shouldn’t try to do this.”

“_What?_” Beth exclaimed. “After all you said—”

“Oh, just for today, I mean,” Vega laughed. “I don’t feel much like giving another lesson. I get so sick of this damn place,” she added plaintively, and her change of expression impressed Beth. Vega looked tired for a moment, and perhaps not as young as usual. But her face smoothed out quickly. “You don’t really mind, do you?” she said.

“Well, I—I do a little,” Beth admitted. After what she had gone through to get Charlie’s approval she minded a lot. But Vega intimidated her somehow, and she hadn’t the nerve to show her irritation. “But if you’re tired....” She paused.

“I am,” Vega said. “But I have no intention of abandoning you, my little housewife.” She swung a plush coat over her shoulders. “I’m tired and fed up and sick to death—not really,” she added with a brilliant smile that did not reassure Beth at all. The edge in Vega’s usually soft and low voice made her words sound literally true. _Tired, fed up, sick._ And those eyes, so deep and dark and full, had turned lusterless again, as if Vega were defying her to look into them and see her secrets.

“Let’s go slumming,” she said, and the way she said it, the quick return of life to her face, the odd excitement so tightly controlled, was infectious.

“Where?” Beth said, intrigued.

“Well, you look so nifty we can’t go too far astray,” Vega said, looking at her professionally. And yet not quite professionally enough. “Do you have your car?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll show you where my girls hang out. My teen-agers.” She spoke of them with visible affection. “It’s a caffè espresso place—The Griffin. It’s not far. Have you been there?”

“I’ve heard of it but I never thought I’d see it. It’s the last place in Pasadena that would interest my adventurous husband.”

“Let’s go!” Vega spoke gaily and caught Beth’s arm. They left the studio together, walking down the narrow flight of stairs to the street, and Beth thought, _My God, I never even got my coat off_.

“I like your studio, Vega,” she said, because the silence between them was becoming too full.

“Do you?” It was almost a listless response. “I’m going to redecorate it. That’s why it looks so bare.”

Beth tried to look at Vega’s face but they had reached the foot of the stairs and she had to pull the door open for her instead. Vega would not release her arm, even through the clumsy maneuver of getting out the door, and Beth was peeved to find her clinging to her still as they walked down the street toward the car. She was grateful when they reached it for the semi-privacy it afforded.

“Where to?” she said, starting the motor.

* * * * *

The Griffin was dark and dank, jammed with very young, very convivial people very sure of themselves. In a corner an incredibly dirty minstrel twanged on a cracked guitar and sang what passed for old-English ballads. There were beards aplenty on the males and pants aplenty on the girls. Only a few females, Vega and Beth among them, wore skirts. And there was coffee of all kinds but no liquor. Not even beer.

“Coffee—that’s all you can get in here,” Vega said. So they ordered Turkish coffee and drank it while Vega told her about the place. “It’s just an old private house,” she said. “The kids have redone it all themselves.”

“They did a godawful job,” Beth commented and immediately sensed, without being told, that she had injured Vega, who seemed actually rather proud of the place.

“Yes, I guess they did,” she admitted. Vega looked around, her eyes bright and probing, wafting smiles at the familiar faces and studying the strange ones. Beth saw her nervous pleasure, her fascination, quite plainly in her face. So it startled her to see that same lovely face cloud over abruptly, with angry wrinkles spoiling the purity of her brow. Vega glanced at Beth and realized her emotions were showing. Rather diffidently she nodded at a tableful of girls about ten feet from them.

“See those girls?” she said. There were five of them, all in tight pants, all rather dramatically made up, with the exception of one who wore no makeup at all. Her hair was trimmed very short and she had a cigarette tilting from the corner of her mouth. Beth’s gaze rested on her with interest. She looked tough, a little disillusioned. Her blonde hair was unkempt but her eyes were piercing and restless and her face made you look twice. It wasn’t ugly, just different. Quite boyish.

“They’re disgusting,” Vega said. “I can’t bear to look at them.”

Beth saw her hand trembling and she looked at her in astonishment. “For God’s sake, why?” she said. “They’re just kids. They look pretty much like the others in here. What’s so awful about them?”

“That one with the cigarette—she ought to be in jail,” Vega said vehemently.

“Do you know her?” Beth said, glancing back at the tough arresting face. Vega’s heat amused and scared her a little. Vega was so frail. How mad could you get before you hurt yourself, with only one lung, a fraction of a stomach, and a bodyful of other infirmities?

“I don’t know her personally,” Vega said, stabbing out her cigarette, “but I know enough about her to put her in jail ten times over.”

“Why don’t you, then?” Beth asked.

Vega looked away, confused. Finally she turned back to Beth and pulled her close so she could whisper. “That lousy bitch is gay. I mean, a Lesbian. She hurt one of my girls. Really, I could kill her.”

“Hurt one of your girls?” Beth could only gape at her. What did she mean? She sounded tense, a little frantic.

“One of my students. She made a pass at her,” Vega fumed.

“Well, that couldn’t have hurt very much,” Beth said and smiled. “That’s not so bad, is it?” She looked curiously at the girl.

But Vega was displeased. “I don’t imagine you approve of that sort of thing?” she said primly, and Beth, once again, was lost, surprised at the changes in her.

“I wouldn’t send her to jail for it,” Beth said.

Vega stared at her for a minute and then she stood up. “Let’s go,” she said. “If I’d known she was in here I wouldn’t have come.” She was so upset, so obviously nervous, that Beth followed her out without a protest. They walked to the car, neither one speaking.

“Take me home, will you, Beth?” Vega said when they got in, and lapsed into gloomy silence. Beth began to see what Charlie meant by strange. Moody and restless. In fact, Vega’s mood had changed so radically that the bones seemed to have shifted under her skin. Her face looked taut and tired and much older now. She slumped as if weakened by her angry outburst.

At last Beth asked softly, “Why do you go in there, Vega, if it bothers you so?”

“I didn’t expect _her_.”

“What did you expect?”

“My girls, of course. They’re in there all the time.”

And Beth could hear, in the way Vega said “_my_ girls,” how much her students meant to her, how much she needed their youth around her, their pretty faces, their respect. “I like to let them see me in there once in a while,” she added, trying for a casual sound in her voice. “Gives them the idea that I’m not a square. You understand. You see—I mean, well, they mean a lot to me,” she went on, and there was a thread of tense emotion in her voice now. “Everything, really. They’re all I have, really, I—” And unexpectedly she began to cry. Beth was both concerned and dismayed. She reached a hesitant hand toward Vega to comfort her, controlling the car with the other.

“It’s all right, Vega, don’t cry,” she said. “Do I turn here?”

Vega looked up and nodded.

They turned down the new street and Beth ventured softly, “You have your mother and grandfather, Vega. And Cleve. Your family. You aren’t alone. And you have friends.”

“My family is worthless! Worse than worthless. They hang like stones around my neck,” Vega said and the bitterness helped her overcome her tears.

“I’m sorry. I should keep my mouth shut,” Beth said.

“And I haven’t any friends,” Vega cried angrily. “Just my girls. They’re sweet to me, you know, they bring me things—” and abruptly, as if ashamed, she broke off. “I’d like you for a friend, Beth,” she said. “I really would. I liked you right away. I’ve never been much good at making friends with women, and for some reason I get the feeling that you’re the same way. It makes me feel closer to you. Am I right?” She paused, waiting for an answer.

Beth was alarmed by her behavior, afraid to aggravate her, and yet she felt it served her as warning not to get too close to Vega. The older woman was lovely, quick and charming. But Charlie was right—she was strange. Beth had a premonition of that wild fury with the world that displayed itself against the Lesbian and against Vega’s family turning on herself someday. But she couldn’t delay answering. You offer your friendship gladly, without deliberation, or you don’t offer it at all.

“I’d like to be friends with you, Vega,” she said, but it sounded hollow to her.

To Vega it sounded beautiful. “I’m glad,” she said, and Beth felt that the mood had passed. Vega put a hand on her arm and left it there until they reached her house.

“Come in for a cocktail,” she said. She was telling Beth, not asking her, and Beth was unable to refuse. “There’s just one thing,” Vega cautioned as they walked up the driveway to the small bungalow. “Mother can’t drink anything. But _anything_. Really. It would kill her. She’s an absolute wreck. You’ll love her, of course, but she _is_ a mess. I sometimes think she just keeps on living to remind me of the powers of alcohol.”

Beth blanched slightly at this, but Vega laughed at her own remarks. “Anyway, Mother drank like a fish for twenty-three years and suddenly she went all to hell inside. Liver, bladder, God knows what-all. The doctor tried to explain it to me, but all I know is she aches all over and she has to make forty trips to the bathroom every day.”

The little crudity brought Beth up short. It was so homely, so out of place on Vega’s patrician lips. But Vega was full of contradictions; they were, perhaps, her only consistency.

As they paused, they were approached abruptly by a slight shadow of a man in worn corduroys and a jaunty deer-hunting cap. His arms were full of cats and his eyes full of mischief. What cats couldn’t find room in his arms sat on his shoulders.

“Gramp!” Vega exclaimed. “You scared me to death.” She relieved him of two cats, the ones that were having the most trouble hanging on. “This is Beth Ayers,” she told him. “Beth—my grandfather.”

“How do you do, Mr. —?” Beth began clumsily, holding out a hand to him.

“Gramp. Just call me Gramp.” He ignored her hand. Even with two of the cats transferred to Vega’s arms he was still too loaded to let go and pursue the normal courtesies. “My best friends,” he grinned, nodding at the soft animals.

“Your _only_ friends,” Vega amended. “The only ones he trusts, anyway,” she told Beth. “We were just going in for a cocktail, Gramp. I was telling Beth about Mother.”

“_What_ about her?” His eyes snapped with good humored suspicion.

“Just what a mess she is.”

“Well, forewarned is forearmed,” he said to Beth. “She’s really quite harmless.”

“Except for her tongue,” Vega said softly.

The three of them headed for the front door again. “Fortunately she’s much nicer than she looks,” Gramp explained. “She likes to laze around in nothing but an old beat-up bathrobe. Saves pulling down her pants all the time. You see, she has to take a—”

“I know, I know, Vega told me,” Beth said quickly. Why did they take such a delight in exposing all the ugly comical little family weaknesses to her? Did it make them easier to bear? Or were they punishing themselves for something? Beth stopped where she was.

“What’s the matter?” Vega and Gramp asked with one voice, pausing and looking back at her.

“Vega, your mother doesn’t want any visitors,” Beth said. “She’s _sick_.”

“Sure she’s sick. We’re all sick. It’s part of the family charm,” Gramp said. “Come on in and join the fun.”

“You’ll see what I’m going to look like in another ten or twelve years, according to Mother,” Vega said.

“The last thing she’d want is visitors,” Beth tried once more, but Vega shushed her with a laugh.

“Bull,” Gramp commented. “Hester’s sick and proud of it. She likes to show it off. She gave up appearances years ago. Actually takes pride in being a wreck. She’s delightful. You’ll love her. Even the cats enjoy her company.”

And Beth, reluctant, bashful, but overwhelmed with curiosity to see what Vega would “look like in ten years,” followed them in.

“Don’t mention liquor,” Vega hissed just before she pushed the front door open. “_Remember._”

Beth’s first impression was that the house was stiflingly hot; and the second, jampacked with rickety furniture. Vega flitted around the room lighting lamps and dissipating the gloom, and Beth suddenly became aware of an old woman sitting in a corner who appeared to be broken into several pieces. She wore a gray, once-pink dressing gown; she had been listening to a speaking record until she heard Vega and Beth enter. Vega kissed her head briefly in salutation.

“Mother, this is Beth Ayers,” Vega said. “I told you about her. Mother’s blind as a bat,” she said cheerfully to Beth, who advanced to take the old lady’s outstretched hand. “I forgot to tell you that.”

“But not much else, hey?” her mother said, holding out a hand. “How do you do, my dear?”

Beth murmured something to her, grasping her hot hand gingerly. And then Vega said, with a wink at Beth, “Let’s all have a Coke. Mother, you game?”

“Are you kidding?” Mrs. Purvis said. “It’ll have to be Seven-Up, though. Gramp busted the plumber one with the last Coke. There’s still fizz all over the john.” And she cackled with pleasure. Gramp, unperturbed, was arranging himself in a harem of cats on the couch. Beth stared at Mrs. Purvis, repelled and fascinated and amused.

_Vega in ten years?_ Utterly incredible! Never.

“What the hell did you do that for, Gramp?” Vega called from the kitchen. “The plumber hurt one of the cats?”

“No, they disagreed about the plunger,” her mother answered, cutting Gramp off. “Gramp said the head was German rubber and the plumber said they don’t make rubber in Germany. So Gramp pickled him in fizz.”

“He deserved it. He was wrong,” Gramp said mildly.

Beth smiled uneasily at them all, slipping out of her coat and feeling the sweat already trickling down her front. _God, it must be a hundred degrees in here_, she thought. _How does Vega stand it?_

Vega came out of the kitchen, apparently standing it very well, with some glasses on a tray and a bottle of Seven-Up. She poured it for her mother and handed Beth a glass with two inches of whiskey and an ice cube in the bottom. Gramp got the same and settled back into the cats with a conspiratorial sigh.

“Tell us what you did today, Mother,” Vega said, while Beth made signs to her that she wanted some water in her drink. Vega took the glass back to the kitchen while Mrs. Purvis answered.

“Listened to a book,” she said.

“A good one?”

“Good book, but a lousy reader. They cut out all the good stuff anyway. I guess they figure we poor blind bastards will die of frustration if we hear the good parts.” She chuckled. “With me it’s all a matter of nostalgia, anyway,” she added. “How old are you, Beth, my dear?”

“Thirty,” Beth said, taking her glass again from Vega.

“On the nose? Any kids?”

“Two,” Beth said. “Boy and girl.”

“Ideal,” said Mrs. Purvis. “Just like the Purvis clan. You know,” she said, leaning toward Beth, “what a harmonious family we are.” There was a mischievous leer in her smile.

“I’m sure you are,” Beth said politely.

Mrs. Purvis roared amiably. “Everything we ever did was immoral, illegal, and habit forming,” she said. “Until Cleve turned straight and earned an honest living,” she added darkly.

“God, Mother, you make us sound like a pack of criminals,” Vega protested.

“We’re all characters. But not a queer one in the bunch.” Mrs. Purvis took a three ounce swallow of Seven-Up. “Too bad you never knew my husband,” she said to Beth. “A charmer.”

“Daddy was a doctor,” Vega said, and Beth noticed, uncomfortably, that she was working on a second drink of straight whiskey.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Purvis energetically. “Specialized in tonsils. Once a week he went down to his office—Monday mornings, usually—and sliced out eighteen or twenty pairs. That was all. Never did another thing and never lost a patient. Made a pile too, all on tonsils. Kept us quite comfortably for years. It’s a shame he wasn’t around to carve Vega up when the time came.”

“My tonsils are the _only_ things they didn’t cut out, Mother,” Vega reminded her.

“Well, it was a good life,” Mrs. Purvis said. “Lots of leisure time, lots of money for booze and the rest of life’s necessities. Of course, I drink tamer stuff these days. How’s your Seven-Up, girls?”

“Oh, it’s delicious,” Beth said quickly, but something in the old lady’s face told her that Vega’s silent boozing didn’t escape her mother. Whiskey didn’t _sound_ any different from Seven-Up, but it _smelled_ different.

“I hope you split them up fairly, Vega,” Mrs. Purvis said. “There were only two.” She smiled inwardly at herself, slyly.

“There were three, Mother. One in the back of the shelf. You missed it,” Vega lied promptly, with perfect ease.

“Oh.” Her disappointment seemed to remind Mrs. Purvis that it was time for another of her incessant trips to the bathroom, and she heaved unsteadily to her feet.

“Can I help you?” Beth exclaimed, half rising, but Mrs. Purvis waved her down.

“Hell no, dear,” she said. “This is one thing I can still do by myself, thank God. When I can’t make it to the john any more I’m going to lie down with the damn cats in the back yard and die.”

“If they’ll have you,” Gramp murmured.

“Besides, she needs the exercise,” Vega said. “It’s the only walking she does, really.”

“I get more exercise than you, my dear daughter,” said her mother from the door. “You just sit around on your can all day and tell other people how to walk. You should try it some time. Every twenty minutes. Never gives the circulation time to get sluggish. There are many advantages to being old and diseased, as you will soon discover,” she said, chortling with expectation at Vega. “Not the least of them are virtue and exercise.”

“All right, Hester, get the hell in the bathroom before you lose it,” Gramp snapped impatiently, and Beth saw Vega’s temper rising too. Beth didn’t know whether she was amused or repelled by the whole scene: the ugly crumbling old woman, the way Vega lived, the wise-cracking with the hint of violence under the humor. She didn’t understand why she said yes when Vega fixed her another drink, then another. And Vega drank two for her every one.

Beth began to forget, or rather to get accustomed to, the hothouse atmosphere. She unbuttoned her blouse at the top and pushed the dark hair off her perspiring forehead, and talked and laughed with Vega and Mrs. Purvis. They were both a little daffy, she decided, but in a macabre sort of way they were fun. And Vega was so beautiful ... so beautiful. Beth saw her now with slightly fuzzy outlines. Vega became animated in a careful sort of way, even laughing aloud, which was an effort for her. Every little while she would disappear with their empty glasses and come back with a couple of inches of liquor in them. Mrs. Purvis had long since finished her Seven-Up.

“No, thanks,” Beth said finally, laughing in spite of herself when Vega offered her another. “I can’t, really, I’m driving.”

Vega raised an alarmed finger to her lips, and Mrs. Purvis said, “That crap will kill you, dear. It’s the bubbles—they’re poison, I swear. Whiskey is much better for you, believe me.” And Beth thought her sagging old face looked crafty and pleased with itself—or was it just the effort of trying to figure the two young women out?

Beth rose to go, throwing her coat over her shoulders.

“Oh, wait!” Vega pleaded. “Wait a little while. I’ll make some dinner for us.” She put a hand on Beth’s arm and this time it didn’t bother Beth at all. Or rather, the bothersome sensation was welcome; it was all pleasure. They smiled at each other and Beth felt herself on the verge of giving in. She felt at the same time a warmth in Vega that she hadn’t suspected.

“Stay and have some dinner with us, Beth,” Mrs. Purvis said genially. “Vega’s a lousy cook unless she has company to fix for. The damn pussies eat better than we do.”

“They’re healthier, too,” Gramp interposed.

Beth looked at her watch. It was past six o’clock, which struck her funny. “I can’t, thanks,” she said. “My kids, my husband—”

“Can’t he cook?” exclaimed Mrs. Purvis. “Hell, I used to make the doctor sling his own hash three or four times a week. And we were sublimely happy.”

_But what happened?_ Beth wondered. _Your family split up and went all to hell. Everyone but Cleve, and even Cleve drinks too much. Charlie gripes about it._

“Charlie can boil water,” she said, “but that’s all. It’s past dinnertime now.” She adjusted her coat and headed for the door.

Vega scooped up a couple of mewing cats from the couch and followed her, balancing her drink precariously at the same time.

“Tell her to stay for dinner, Gramp,” Mrs. Purvis said.

“Canned cat food. The finest,” he offered with a grin.

But Beth suddenly felt the need to escape, and Vega, seeing it, took her hand and led her outdoors. “That’s enough, you two,” she called back to her family. “Don’t scare her off!”

Beth turned and looked at Vega one last time before she left. She felt giddy and silly and she was aware that there was a smile on her face, a smile that wouldn’t go away. “Thanks, Vega,” she said.

“You know, you don’t need modeling lessons, Beth,” Vega said slowly, as if it were something they had a tacit understanding about. “I like the way you walk. It’s not quite right for modeling—too free swinging—but I wouldn’t change it for anything, even if I could. It would ruin you—the lovely effect you make.”

Beth stammered at her, unable to answer coherently, only aware that she was deeply flattered.

“Tell Charlie you had a first-rate lesson,” Vega went on. “Tell him you walked three miles back and forth in a straight line and you learned how to treat your hair with olive oil. Tell him anything, only come back on Friday.”

Beth, smiling and mystified and pleased, said softly, “I will.”

Chapter Six

She drove home like a punch-drunk novice, laughing at the panic she caused and feeling light, giddy, peculiarly happy in a way that almost seemed familiar. She was unable even to feel guilty when she got home and found that Charlie had had to feed the kids and was waiting with stubborn hungry impatience for her to feed him.

She did her chores with a smile. Everything seemed easy. Even the children. The bedtime routine charmed her, the way it would have if she had to go through it only once or twice a year. She put her arms around her children and cuddled them, to their surprise. And Charlie, who was ready to bite her head off when she came in, traded his wrath for astonished love two hours later.

It did something to Beth to be in the company of a desirable woman, a woman whose interest was obviously reciprocal, and the first thing it did was make her happy. Her kids reflected the lighter mood gratefully and innocently, but Charlie ... Charlie wondered where it came from and, knowing his wife, he worried.

Beth was surprised two days later when Cleve Purvis called her. She had been in a state of wonderful tickling anticipation all day, picking out a dress, pondering what to say when she got to the studio. And now, at two o’clock in the afternoon, Cleve called.

“I know this is goofy,” he admitted, “but could I talk to you?”

“Sure,” she said. “Go ahead.”

“Not on the phone.”

“Why not?” she said, surprised.

“Don’t ask me, I feel like enough of an ass already. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.”

“But Cleve—”

“Thanks,” he said and hung up. So she got her clothes on and decided that whatever it was she’d make him drop her off at Vega’s afterward.

Cleve took her to a small key club bar and sat her down at a table in the rear. They faced each other over the table. Strangers? Friends? Acquaintances? What were they exactly to each other? Cleve had left college before Beth met Charlie and they had only known each other fairly well since she had come to California. They had seen each other often, they had exchanged a few jokes, and now and then when Cleve was tight they danced together. But never alone. Never had they had a private talk. Charlie or Jean or the kids or somebody was always with them.

It made Beth feel odd, unsure, to be with him now in a private bar. Nobody knew about the meeting, apparently, and no one was there to see them but a few late lunchers and early imbibers. It gave the meeting something of the character of a secret tryst.

Cleve ordered a couple of Martinis. “I know this must seem funny to you,” he said, and covered his awkwardness with a gulp of gin.

“Does Charlie know you asked me here?” she said.

“Not unless you told him.”

“No,” she said, and somehow the fact that both of them _could_ have told him and neither of them had made her feel part of an illegal conspiracy.

“Well, don’t, Beth,” he said. “Just keep it to yourself. I may not have any right to stick my nose in your affairs, but when your affairs get scrambled up with Vega’s, somebody’s got to tell you a few things.”

Beth felt the hair on her scalp begin to tingle. “What things?” she said. Cleve finished his drink and ordered another. He drank like Vega—briskly and for a purpose. Beth looked hard at him, studying the face she thought she knew so well. It seemed different now, pensive under the thick dark blond hair. His mustache drooped and the deep cleft in his chin gave a droll twist to his frown. Cleve was not a handsome man, although Vega was a beautiful woman and they looked a good deal alike. It happens that way sometimes in a family. Two of the kids will resemble each other, yet the features that go so harmoniously in one face are awkward and out of proportion in the other. And still, Cleve’s face was pleasant enough—not out-and-out ugly. Beth liked it. She liked the tired green eyes and the small wry grin he usually wore, and now and then, when she thought about it, she wondered why in hell such a man would marry a giggling good-natured idiot like Jean. Maybe her endless smile comforted him. Maybe it bucked him up through the dismal periods Charlie said he had, when he was more interested in booze than selling plastic toys.

Up until the present it had not interfered with his business. Charlie was willing to let him drink what he wanted, as long as he could do his job. So far, it appeared, he could. Beth, looking at him, wondered what strange, strong hold liquor held over the Purvises. Vega and Cleve both worshipped the stuff, and Mrs. Purvis was blind and crippled and leaking because of it.

Cleve had trouble telling Beth why he had brought her there this afternoon. It was easier after a couple of drinks, and by that time they were both looking at each other through new eyes.

“By God,” Cleve mused. “I never realized you had violet eyes before. I always thought they were plain blue.”

“Is that why you dragged me down here? To tell me that?” she asked.

He grinned sheepishly. “That’s probably as good a reason as any. Better than the real one.”

“You were going to tell me something about your wicked sister,” Beth said. “And you better had before I get drunk. I have a date with her this afternoon at four.”

“A date?” The phrase seemed to rock him a little. “Well, what the hell, drink all you want, you won’t be any up on her. She’s never sober.”

“She’s never drunk, either,” Beth said.

“Yeah, how about that? I wish I were that kind of a drinker,” he said enviously. “Never sober but never drunk.”

“It doesn’t seem to make _her_ very happy,” Beth observed. “Maybe it would be better not to be a drinker at all.”

“No doubt about it,” Cleve said, grinning, and ordered another.

“Cleve, I can’t sit around all day,” she said, giving him a smile. “Tell me about Vega, or I’ll leave you here with only the booze for company.”

“Okay, okay,” he said. “Beth, I—I—Vega’s queer.” He threw it at her, curt and clumsy, as if it were hot and burned his mouth.

Beth stared at him, her face frozen with surprise, with a sudden fear and wariness. “That’s a lousy word, Cleve. _Queer._”

“It’s a lousy condition. I only tell you because she won’t.”

“Well, give her the credit of a little kindness, anyway,” Beth snapped. “She’s your sister.”

“Nobody needs to remind me,” he said. “Beth, this isn’t a nice way to put it and I wish to hell I could laugh it off or forget it or put it some genteel way. But when Charlie told me she asked you to come in and model I thought somebody had better let you know.”

“And that somebody was you? Is this what you tell all her girls? Must be great for business.” She put all her scorn into it.

“No.”

“Well, then why tell me? Why not let me find out for myself? If the other girls can be trusted with her, why can’t I?” Her temper ignited quickly.

“You’re special,” he said. “You’re different from the other girls—_better_, I mean. And she likes you more. That’s obvious.”

“Well, if Vega’s so damn dangerous she probably would have made it clear to me herself.” She was angry; her innocent idyll with Vega was jeopardized by his harsh words. How could she fool around now, just play a little, if Vega’s own brother watched every move with morbid suspicion?

“That’s the hell of it, Beth,” he said, leaning toward her over the table. “Vega doesn’t realize it. She doesn’t know she’s gay.”

Beth’s mouth dropped open slightly. “Good God, how can you be gay and not know it?” she exclaimed.

And it was Cleve’s turn to stare. “I wouldn’t know,” he said finally, slowly, still staring. “I don’t know anything about it, frankly. I’ve never felt that way.”

Beth felt her whole neck flush and her cheeks turn scarlet. She was suddenly embarrassed and irritated. “Is that all you came here to tell me, Cleve? Vega’s gay? Nobody in the whole world has figured this mystery out but you, of course, and you ‘don’t know anything about it.’ Not even _Vega_ knows about it. Just you. Not your mother, not Gramp, not the people who live with her, not the models who study with her. Just good old Doctor Cleve, expert analyst. He doesn’t know anything about the subject, by his own admission, but he’s willing to damn his sister and smear her reputation on the strength of his own intuition. Oh, Cleve, come off it,” she said, disgusted and disappointed.

He wouldn’t argue with her. “I know she’s gay,” he said simply. “Shouting at me won’t change that.”

“Nuts!” said Beth—but she believed him. “Can you prove it?”

He smiled, a melancholy smile. “I’m glad you’re defending her,” he said. “I’m glad you’re mad about it. I wouldn’t have liked to see you take it for granted.... No, I can’t prove it. I can only tell you things.... I say this, not because your eyes are violet, not because you have such a lovely mouth, not even because we’re both a little high. I say it in honor of your innocence. I say it to spare you shock. I say it because I hope you and Vega can be friends, and nothing more. She needs a friend. She really does. All she has is Mother, and Mother has run her life since it began. Vega adores her as much as she hates her, and that’s a lot. She can’t get away from her, even though she wants to. In her heart, in her secret thoughts—I don’t know—maybe she has some idea she’s gay. But Mother hates the queers, she’s always poured contempt on them. How can Vega admit, even to herself, that she’s the kind of creature Mother despises?”

“Your mother doesn’t despise alcoholics, or quacks, or physical wrecks.”

“Yes, but you see, none of those are _queer_,” he said earnestly.

“Oh, Cleve, that word! That ugly, mean, pitiless word!”

“I’m sorry,” he said, studying her.

Beth finished her drink with a quiver of excitement and desire and disgust—all the feelings that Vega roused in her.

“Vega’s going broke,” Cleve said. “That’s why the studio’s so bare. Looks like a barn. She’s had to hock a lot of stuff and return a lot. She used to support Mother and she told me they didn’t want my goddamn charity. Now they’re getting it—they can’t live without it—but they let me know every time I hand them a check that they run right in and wash their hands as soon as it’s deposited at the bank.”

“Why?” Beth said, shocked.

“Mother thinks I’m a bastard because I didn’t study medicine like my father. Gramp thinks whatever Mother thinks. And so does Vega.”

Beth began to see what a tyrannical hold Mrs. Purvis, in spite of her debilities, had on her children.

“Vega and I understand each other,” Cleve said. “We’re both contemptible.”

For a moment it seemed like he was begging for sympathy and Beth said, rather sharply, “Oh, you’re not so bad. When you’re tight.”

Cleve gave a dispirited little laugh. “We know each other better than we know ourselves,” he said. “Someday you’ll understand us, too,” he said, looking into his glass. “If you keep on running around with Vega.” He sounded almost jealous. He sounded almost like a man warning another man away from his wife, not a friend warning another friend of his sister’s emotional quirks.

Beth cautiously steered him back to finances. “Why is she going broke?” she asked. “She has a nice studio, lots of students.”

“Not so many, not any more. Their mothers are worried about them. There was a scandal a couple of years ago.”

“I never heard about it,” Beth declared, as if that proved it a deliberate fib.

“You don’t hear about everything in the Purvis family,” he retorted, and silenced her. “One of the girls had an affair with one of the others. Vega knew about it and she didn’t exactly discourage it. And then some of the others found out and told their parents. Vega should have quit then and there and tried somewhere else, but she hates that kid who started it all and she wants to stay here and make a go of it in spite of what happened. Show everybody. Show the girl herself most of all. Damn!” he said, and finished another drink.

Beth thought suddenly of the strange tough little blonde with no makeup and a cigarette drooping from her mouth in the caffè espresso place. “Who was the girl?” she asked.

“P.K. Schaefer is her name. Vega hates everybody but she hates P.K. worse than poison.”

“Is she sort of a beatnik type? I mean, does she hang out in the coffee houses, does she dress like—”

“Like a goddamn boy,” he finished for her, with the sound of his mother’s disapproval plain in his voice. “Always has a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth, as if that would make a male of her. As if that would take the place of—oh, hell.” He ordered another drink, staring moodily at the floor.

And Beth knew it was P.K. she had seen. Did Vega love her or hate her? Or, as with the other important people in her life, did she feel both emotions for her? Beth felt a spark of jealousy.

“Vega doesn’t hate everybody, Cleve,” she said. “Maybe you two have had some bad arguments, maybe life with her wasn’t all sugar candy when you were growing up, but, my God, she’s a nice girl. She’s fun, she’s a lovely person. If you think you’re going to make me drop her just by throwing a few old scandals and half-baked suspicions in my face, you’re wrong. We get along fine and I enjoy her. After all, it wasn’t Vega who had the affair, it was her students. She’s not making any passes at me. And from what she’s said about Lesbians I think she’d put the whole damn clan in jail if she had her way.”

“Ah, she’s had you over to The Griffin to see P.K.,” he said, shocking her. “Exhibit A. She works fast, I have to say that for her.”

“How did you know that?” She was mad again.

“She’s given you her famous lecture on the beastly Lesbians.”

Beth blushed. “Thanks for the drinks, Cleve,” she said sharply, starting to rise, but he caught her wrist and pulled her down again. “Why do you think she talks about them if she doesn’t have it on her mind all the time?” he said fiercely, his face close to hers. There was a high pink of excitement in his cheeks, as if he really, secretly, hated these women who were rivals for his sister’s affection; as if he were admonishing Beth, for his own selfish reasons, not to become one of them.

“You said she didn’t even know she was—_gay_, herself,” Beth protested.

“Right,” he said. “She’d quit spouting all that crap about putting them in jail if it meant she’d be going along with them.” He sighed and gazed intently at her, and she smelled the whiskey on his breath. “Beth, you’re a damn nice girl,” he pleaded. “You’re a lovely girl. You’re bored as all hell with your life, it sticks out all over you. You stumble across my sister and she’s charming, she’s different, she shocks you a little and interests you a lot. You’re looking for kicks; you’re sick of that little house and that great big husband and those noisy kids, and Vega looks like heaven. She’s got all the sophistication, all the glamor anybody could want. Hell, yes, I can understand it.”

And Beth, thunderstruck, only gazed at him in silence, too surprised even to wonder when he had been observing her, when it began to matter to him what she did. _Not until Vega began to matter to me_, she thought, full of wonderment.

“Beth, she’s nuts. Please believe me. She’s goofy and she’s pure trouble. I know; nobody knows like I know. I nurse her through her emotional storms; I have all our lives. She gets these desperate crushes she won’t admit, or can’t admit, or doesn’t understand, and I go through hell with her. I don’t want it to happen with you. Life has been too pleasant these past few months. No complications. Vega’s been getting along so well.”

“Why do you fight with her so much?” Beth said softly. “If all you’re trying to do is help her. That _is_ what you’re trying to do, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” he said, and looked away. “God knows I love her. I just fight with her when I find out what she’s done.”

“Like what?” She felt as if he was almost on the verge of a confession of some kind to her.

“Like socking Mother right out of her chair. It’s the only way she has of getting back at Mother for dominating her life. Or like getting stewed at seven in the morning when she’s supposed to be at a Chamber of Commerce meeting that’ll mean jobs for her girls. Like bugging me all the time about the money situation. And that goddamn blind spot of hers a mile square! If she’d only admit what she is and arrange her life accordingly. At least maybe she could live like other human beings then.”

“How? What do you mean?”