Chapter VII: Part 7

“Who makes it?” she asked faintly.

“Who? Uh—let’s see.” He up-ended a carton behind the counter. “California firm,” he said. “Ayers-Purvis Toys.” He read the name slowly. “That must be a new one, I don’t recall it,” he said. “All the new ideas come from California,” he explained, smiling. “Don’t know why. They breed out there like cats.”

“Thank you,” she said, turning to leave.

He called after her, “Excuse me, wouldn’t you like to buy one? I mean—you’ll have to get one sooner or later for your own kids.”

“My own kids probably have twenty of them,” she said, and left, knowing he would go to the back of the store and tell the others about the wacky customer he had.

She felt a tormented tenderness for Charlie, standing there gazing at his supreme achievement in the window. It was so silly. It was so ingenious. It would make him and Cleve a fortune. She wished him well; she wished for the first time in a long time that she had been able to adapt to him better than she had. She wished fervently that they might have made each other happy, that the children could have brought a sense of fulfillment to her life. She wished that she had been there when he came home with his face lighted up and that happy, abstract look in his eyes to tell her about his wonderful new idea, wished she could have seen Polly and Skipper with their daddy’s great invention.

She leaned momentarily against the wall of the toy shop and a woman stopped to inquire if she needed help.

“No,” she said, and straightened up and walked into the crowd. She finally bought a pair of crystal candlestick holders at Black, Starr, and Gorham’s. While they were being gift-wrapped her spirits revived a little. She thought of Laura, thought of her very hard. Tried to picture the man she married. Was he good to her, was he rich, was he intelligent? He was gay—did that make him swishy, too? A nancy? Or could a man be gay and reasonably masculine at the same time? She burned to meet him. She was prepared to hate him.

At the hotel she collapsed on her bed and slept the rest of the day. When she awoke, late in the afternoon, she wrote Merrill Landon a note to say that Laura, his lost Laura, was found. She gave him Laura’s address and told him she was married. “And you have a granddaughter,” she added. “Betsy.” She asked him to forward a note she enclosed to Charlie, so it would have a Chicago postmark on it.

To Charlie she wrote: “I saw the Scootch in the shop windows today. For what it’s worth, I’m proud of you. I hope you make a million dollars. The kids must love it. I’m fine, don’t worry about me. I haven’t made my mind up yet on anything. Take care of yourself and give the children my fondest love. Beth.”

She cried while she wrote it, knowing she had no right to the tears. They were tears of self-pity more than anything else. She had given up a lot when she gave up her children, her home, her conjugal rights. She had given them up on a gamble, in the hope that she might someday find something else, something that would mean more to her. But she hadn’t found that something yet and it scared her to feel herself suspended between two worlds, belonging to neither. And she had done it all, deliberately, to herself.

* * * * *

Beth took a taxi to Laura’s apartment building. It was a short ride in the pleasant twilight, with the sun almost down and the air cooling.

She asked at the desk for Mr. and Mrs. Mann.

The clerk telephoned up and then asked Beth who was calling, one hand judiciously placed over the receiver.

“Mrs. Ayers,” Beth said doubtfully.

“Mrs. Ayers,” the clerk repeated, gazing down at the floor and speaking into the receiver. He glanced up again at Beth and then handed the phone to her.

“Hello?” she said, her heart pounding, rising in her throat, her ears geared for Laura’s light voice.

“Mrs. Ayers?” It was Jack. He sounded rather growly, but pleasant.

“Yes.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know you.”

“I—I’m an old school friend of Laura’s,” she said, wishing the trembling in her would go away just long enough for her to make a serene first impression on him.

“Oh,” he said. And then, with just a hint of enlightenment, “_Oh._ Well, then, won’t you come up?”

“Thanks, I’d love to.”

She got into the elevator, feeling the light nervous sweat break out all over her body, trying not to clutch her present too tightly in her clammy hands and ruin the wrappings. She watched the numbers of the floors flash above her until they got to four. It seemed an eternity.

She found the door promptly, but it was another matter to ring the bell. She felt suddenly faint and hated herself, trying to take up her courage and smooth her dress and compose her face with a multitude of ineffectual fluttering gestures. At last she stopped and stood rigidly still for as long as she could bear it, her eyes tight shut and the sweat loosed uncontrollably all over her. And then she reached for the bell.

Before she could push it the door opened and she gave a small but audible gasp. A short dark man, crew-cut and horn-rimmed, smiled at her.

“Took so long I thought you must have gotten lost,” he grinned. “Mrs. Ayers? Come on in. I’m Jack Mann.”

“Thanks,” she said from a husky throat, and followed him into the living room, grasping the box with the candlesticks in it so closely that the white tissue paper pulled apart under one of her thumbs. She looked about the room with quick scared eyes, her whole being prickling with the possibility of Laura’s presence.

“Sit down,” Jack said. He watched her with a mixture of amusement and curiosity that was friendly enough. Beth obeyed him, lowering herself halfway into her chair and suddenly remembering her gift.

“Oh, here,” she blurted, rising abruptly and thrusting it toward him. “I—I brought you a little something. I remember Laura used to like crystal and cut glass, things like that.”

“Thanks,” he said, accepting it. “Yes, she still does. Shall I keep it till she gets home? She ought to be the one to open it.”

“Isn’t she here?” Beth stared at him, still half out of her seat.

“If you froze that way,” he said with a grin, “you’d be a pretty unhappy girl.”

And she sat down suddenly, embarrassed.

“Yes, she’s out,” he went on. “I mean, no, she’s not at home.” He put the gift on the table in front of him and sat down opposite her in a leather chair, asking if she’d like a drink, how long she would be in New York, a dozen urbane civilities that they batted back and forth with a show of casualness. And all the while they studied each other surreptitiously, Jack with the bemused air of a man trying to place a face, and Beth with the intense interest of a rival.

“So you and Laura went to school together,” he said.

“Yes. Just for a year.” She thought she liked him, which was something she hadn’t planned on. He was ugly, in the nice sort of way that women like. There was a friendly intelligence in his face. And he was short. Beth guessed that he and Laura might be near the same height. Beth was taller than he, quite a bit taller in her high-heeled shoes. But he was quick and graceful and very much at ease, and it made her easier within herself, for which she was grateful. He went to a small built-in bar in a corner of the living room and fixed her a drink. It gave Beth a chance to look around. It was a spacious room, an unusually roomy apartment for midtown Manhattan.

_He must be doing well to keep Laura like this_, she thought.

“When do you think she’ll be in?” she asked in a voice loaded with careful disinterest.

“I don’t know. She’s out with a friend. They were going to a concert, so it could be rather late. If you’d told us you were coming....” He smiled and shrugged, handing her the Scotch and water.

“Thanks. I guess it was silly not to. I wanted to surprise her.”

“Well, it sure as hell will surprise her if she hasn’t seen you in nine years. If you’d gotten here ten minutes earlier you would have caught her.”

“Probably just as well I didn’t. I might have ruined her evening.” She was thinking of the “friend” Laura went to the concert with, and Jack, though his eyes opened wider at this, pretended not to have heard.

“Where’s your daughter?” Beth asked suddenly. “I thought you had a daughter.”

“Really? What gave you that idea?” he asked with a little frown of curiosity visible between his eyes.

Beth cursed her own clumsiness silently. “I should have told you right away,” she stumbled. “I ran into a friend of Laura’s—oh, just by accident—or I never would have found you. She told me about—Betsy.”

“Oh. That explains it. I was about to ask how you found us.” He said it slowly and she knew he was amused but somehow she didn’t mind. She had the feeling he was being amiable because he liked her, not because it was his obligation to a guest. “Who was the friend?” he asked.

She didn’t want to throw it at him, as if she had been down in the Village sleuthing and run into Beebo as a likely well of information—as if she and Beebo were in cahoots. But his smile broadened at her delay and she finally said, with a little sigh that meant she was surrendering all her subterfuges, “Beebo. Beebo Brinker. You know her pretty well, I guess.”

“Pretty well,” he said with the emphasis of understatement, and laughed outright. “Good old Beebo. How the hell did you find _her_? Well, I guess it’s not so hard at that,” he answered himself. “Anywhere south of Fourteenth Street you can’t miss her. Was she wearing her boots?”

“Her boots?”

“Yes. She wears them when she’s mad at the world. Makes her feel manly.” He said it without ill-will but full of old familiar affection.

“No boots,” Beth smiled. “But lots of advice. Lots of stories.”

“She must have been bowled over when she found out you knew Laura,” Jack said. “She’s still in love with her.”

A queer little flash of disappointment, almost alarm, went through Beth. “She recognized me,” she said. “I guess Laura told her quite a bit about me. Showed her some old snapshots, or something.”

“Then you must be Beth,” he said. “I thought so but I didn’t want to embarrass you.... Beth the Incorruptible.”

“What?” she exclaimed.

“That’s what I used to call you,” he said. “In the days when I couldn’t stand you. Purely sarcastic, you can be sure. But that was before I met you. Laura used to make you seem that way when she talked about you.”

Beth began to grin. Suddenly, strangely, she felt at ease. “You know, it’s the damnedest thing,” she told him. “I met her father in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, and he knew me right away. I met Beebo in a bar last night and she said, ‘My God, you’re Beth!’ And now you’ve got it figured out too. I feel like a celebrity.”

“Around here you were a celebrity, for quite a while,” he said. “We all had to learn to live with you—all of us who lived with Laura. Papa Landon got you thrown in his face one night at the McAlton Hotel—all about that year you and Laura roomed together. After Laura told him she cracked him over the head with a glass ashtray and beat it. Gave him a concussion, but he recovered. They’ve never seen each other since.”

“My God!” Beth breathed softly. “He spoke of her so lovingly. As if it had all been forgiven, if not forgotten.”

“I suppose it has,” Jack said. “I suppose he’d like to find her again and patch things up.” His eyes were bright on her. “But it wouldn’t be a very good idea.”

“No? Why not?” Her mind flashed to the note she had mailed that very afternoon with Laura’s address and married name in it.

Jack shrugged. “Well, Laura’s happy now. We’re happy, I should say. And Landon never did anything but upset her. At least when they were together.”

“It’s been a long time. Maybe he deserves another chance,” Beth suggested.

“I think that’s up to Laura, don’t you?”

“Why not to him?”

“He wasn’t the aggrieved party,” Jack said. “Whatever was unhappy between them was his doing. It’s up to Laura to forgive, not Landon.”

“Oh.” She lowered her head, a small alarm inside herself. But Merrill Landon had given Beth his promise not to visit Laura, not to interfere with her life. He said it was because he had no right to bother her. All he wanted was a link, an address, a reassurance. And remembering him with confidence, even a sort of affection, her trust returned and she calmed herself.

Before she could ask Jack more a little girl about six years old burst out of a door behind him and said, “Daddy, will you fix the TV? The picture’s all crooked.”

“Sure. Come here, honey, we have company,” he said. “This is Mrs. Ayers.”

“Hello, Mrs. Ayers,” she murmured and came forward shyly, her hair long and blonde and floating like Laura’s, her features dainty and her face fair, though she wore glasses like her father. She was shy and unspeakably sweet and small, and Beth thought of Polly, her Polly ... and of Laura and all Laura’s reflected beauty and reticence. And she held out her arms to Betsy with a full heart and full eyes and clasped the astonished child to her.

“Oh, you’re lovely!” she exclaimed. “You look just like your mommy.”

The little girl backed away, frightened at her strange behavior, but Beth caught her hands and said, “Don’t be afraid. You know, I have a little girl—” She stopped, suddenly wary. She meant to keep that part of her life separate and apart from this. “I was a good friend of your mommy’s years ago,” she said, brushing impatiently at a tear. “We went to school together. And I’m so happy to see she has a beautiful little daughter that looks so much like her.”

Betsy smiled. “You’re beautiful, too.”

Beth had to resist the impulse to hug her and probably scare her again. Jack had adjusted the television for Betsy in the meantime and he came to take her by the hand. “You go in and watch,” he said. “You can have another half hour,” he told her. “Then bedtime. School tomorrow.”

Beth watched her retreat across the living room and turn in her bedroom door to say again, with the same little dip of her head that Laura gave before people she didn’t know and was a bit shy with, “Good night, Mrs. Ayers.”

“Good night, Betsy,” Beth said solemnly.

Jack gave her a kiss and closed the door behind her. He looked up to see the tears in Beth’s eyes and, surprised, he said, “She’s just a kid like any other. Except to Laura and me. We’ve got her pegged for President of the United States, naturally.”

“I didn’t mean to be silly about it,” Beth said. “She—looks so much like Laura.”

“That’s nothing to cry about,” he smiled. “That’s something to be grateful for. Before she was born I had nightmares that she’d look just like me.”

“It wouldn’t have been _that_ bad,” she said, forced to return his smile.

“Not for a boy, maybe,” he said. “A man can be ugly and nobody cares. But a woman can’t. Her whole life is twisted up if she is.”

Beth gazed at him with a new respect. His words recalled Vega’s shocking hidden ugliness to her and for a minute she was nearly overcome with the thought of her former lover. She concentrated on Jack for the sake of composure. He was a father, he had proved himself a man. He had a lovely child and a lovely home. He had Laura.

All Beth’s stereotyped ideas about homosexual men were getting a bad jumbling. He seemed as normal, as comfortable to be with as any man she knew. Only, he wasn’t normal, and it gave her an odd feeling inside. She asked herself how much he knew of her, and what he supposed she was doing there, trailing Laura after all these years.

They talked and the time passed quickly. He told her how he and Laura had met and how their love had grown and Beth thought, watching him, that Laura must love him very much to have let him marry her, to have taken his name and shared his home and borne his child. It amazed Beth that Laura could have done that, gone that far. Laura was not a selfish girl. She wouldn’t have objected to children on that ground. It was the mechanics of it, the necessary intimacy between a man and a woman that preceded children that Beth could hardly picture Laura accepting. But she had and with _this_ man, Jack, who faced Beth now over a friendly nightcap and described his life with Laura.

“The one thing I never thought she could do,” she confessed to him, “was marry anybody.”

“I didn’t think she could, either,” he said. “Gave me some bad nights till she said yes.”

“I remember when we were in college together, how she used to talk about—about men.”

“She didn’t think much of us as a group,” he said and his eyes twinkled. “Chalk that up to Papa Landon. He set a sterling example as a slob. I had quite a prejudice to overcome before I could talk her into tying the knot.”

“You don’t mean you had to talk her out of women?” Beth exclaimed.

“Hell, no,” he said and laughed. Now that it was out in the open they both felt better. “Nobody could do that. I’d have been nuts to try. She can’t be talked out of women and I can’t be talked out of men—emotionally, that is. It would take more words than there are. But that doesn’t matter to our marriage. Nothing goes on in this house that might hurt our life together. We keep the other stuff apart; it always comes second.”

“Does Betsy know?”

“No,” he said simply. “It’s not that we hide things, it’s just that she’s too young to understand, even if we made a point of it to her. She knows we have our own friends, she knows we go out occasionally. Like Laura tonight. Now and then she meets some of our friends. That’s all. She’s a happy kid, thank God. And we’re happy.”

“I’m glad,” Beth said, and she truly was. “I’ve been expecting to hate you ever since I knew you existed. But I don’t. I don’t even want to any more. I’m glad things have worked out for you. Only....”

“Only, you’d like to see Laura again. See if she’s changed and all that?”

“Something like that.” She looked away from him timidly.

“Why did you come to New York, Beth?” he said quietly. “It wasn’t just to find Laura, was it?”

“Oh, it was a lot of things,” she said.

“Laura said you were married. Or nearly married when she last saw you. You said your name was Mrs. Ayers. Is Mr. Ayers here with you?”

“No, he’s in California,” she said. “As a matter of fact, we’re divorced. I haven’t seen him for quite some time.”

“Too bad,” he said, but he said it too quickly, too lightly, without comment, and she sensed his doubt, sensed that he only accepted her statement to put her at ease, not because he believed it. She had no idea why she felt compelled to lie about her marriage. Maybe because she thought Jack would not let her get close to Laura if he knew. Maybe because she was at heart so desperately ashamed of the mess she had left in California. At any rate the lie was spoken and she had to stick by it now.

“Any kids?” he said and she shook her head, unable to speak the monstrous fib aloud. How could Laura take her back, how could she learn to love Beth again, hold her and come close to her, if she knew what Beth had done to her own children? She must never know and Beth realized suddenly that she had to keep the whole past in the shadows, to pretend it was no more real than she said it was. Or it would poison the happiness she felt so near.

“You must be a little older than Laura,” she said brightly to Jack, switching the subject abruptly and making him blink at her.

“A little,” he conceded. “Twenty-two years.”

“My God!” she cried. “That much? I don’t believe you.”

He shrugged and smiled. “You don’t have to,” he said.

“But that makes you damn near fifty years old,” she said, incredulous.

“Damn near. Forty-seven.”

“But you look as if you were in your thirties.”

“Thanks,” he said with a grin. “You make me feel extremely generous. Have another drink.”

She handed him her glass. “You look so—Joe College,” she said and he gave a laugh that was more of a snort of self-mockery and said, “That’s going too far.” But he did look remarkably young and moved his spare body with a suppleness that belied his age.

She took her glass back filled and looked at it intently, as though in search of poise. “Is—is Laura in love with anybody, Jack?” she asked.

“Not seriously,” he said, studying her, wondering just how much she wanted from his wife.

“Either she is or she isn’t,” she said.

“Well, on that basis,” he said, “I’d have to say she is. But remember you forced me into it.”

“Then it is serious.” Her face was very pale and her eyes were on him now.

“Hell, she’s not going to marry the girl.”

“Has she known her a long time? Does she dream about her all the time?” The questions tumbled out of Beth and she was suddenly humiliated by her eagerness, her concern, and her gaze dropped from his again.

“She’s known her for a while now,” he said. “I think it’s beginning to fade. But they still see each other just about every day. They’re pretty compatible.”

“Who is the girl?”

He chuckled a little. “Betsy’s piano teacher,” he said. “Betsy’s getting free lessons all over the place. Very economical.”

After a long pause Beth said, “Are you in love with anybody?”

“You have designs on me, too?” he grinned and she blushed a quick red. “I’m always in love with somebody. How about you?”

She had left herself wide open for that and she knew he wanted to know why she was there and what she was seeking from Laura.

“I’m never in love with the right person,” she said softly.

“I’ll bet,” he said, but though he teased her it was not malicious. “You must have been once,” and when she glanced up at him, he added, “to hear Laura tell it.”

“You mean—my husband?” she faltered.

“I mean Laura,” he said bluntly. “She was terribly in love with you, for a very long time, Beth. Long after she left you.”

“Is she still?” she asked. She had to say it; her heart and tongue would not be still even though the asking of it shamed her.

He looked at her a moment and then he shook his head. “Her life has changed,” he explained. “There are other things, now. I don’t know exactly how she feels about you any more, Beth. I can only say she’s safely out of love with you and has been for a long time. We don’t talk about it much. On the other hand, I think she’ll always feel a special tenderness for you. It’s just that you don’t seem very real to her any more. You’re more like a beautiful dream that’s over and done with. Something to remember with gratitude and affection, but something more like a mirage than a fact.”

Beth finished her drink. “Do you suppose I’ll ruin it all by seeing her again?”

“You could. Depends on why you want to see her,” he said, urging a confession from her with his voice, his attitude, everything but his words.

She looked at him out of tormented eyes. “I wonder if I could explain it, even to you,” she murmured.

“Try,” he said.

“Jack,” she said helplessly, “there’s no way. I don’t know myself. I won’t know why I’m here until I see her face before me. Until I touch her and hear her voice. Maybe I’ll know then, if I’m lucky.” She felt herself getting shaky and she stopped talking. He took her glass again and refilled it.

“She’ll be along,” he said. “These things are never very late.”

But it did get late. Later and later until it was after midnight and she could no longer bear to sit there and face him and keep her dreadful secrets from coming up in her throat and gagging her. She got up at last and thanked him and told him, “I can’t wait any longer. I’ll come by tomorrow. Please don’t tell her I was here. I have to surprise her. Don’t ask me why, I can’t explain.”

“There’s a lot you can’t explain,” he said mildly. “Why don’t you spend the night?” he went on. “We have plenty of room.”

Her heart jumped at the chance.

“Get up, you’re on the sofa-bed,” he told her. “Won’t take a minute to make it up.”

When he brought her one of Laura’s nightgowns to wear she took it with a sudden gesture and look of pleasure that she made no attempt to hide. He smiled at her.

“Still want to keep it a secret?” he said. “From Laura, I mean.”

“Won’t she see me when she comes in?” Beth said. “Right here in the living room?”

“She won’t know who it is in the dark.”

“Don’t tell her, then.”

“It’ll probably knock her for a loop in the morning,” he said. “But if you want it that way.”

“I do. Thanks, Jack.”

“Sure.” He smiled at her, showed her where the bathroom was, and left her to herself.

She lay down after a while, turning out the light and lying in the dark. She didn’t expect to sleep with her mind whirling and full of Laura, but she did. Very suddenly she dropped off as if a switch had been flipped inside her and stilled her thoughts.

Chapter Seventeen

It was almost dawn when she heard the front door opened carefully, and shut with a small click. She was lying on her stomach with her face obscured by crumpled bedclothes and the pillow. She heard Laura come in, heard her pause as she caught sight of the sofa-bed open and occupied, heard her rustle softly across the room and felt her presence, her scent, only scant inches from her. The room was full of a deep gray light and Beth was sure it wasn’t enough for Laura to distinguish her face by. She lay almost breathless on the bed until Laura turned and moved quietly away, going into her own bedroom.

Beth rolled over and gazed at the faintly visible ceiling with a tremendous happiness inside her that called for singing, shouting from the rooftops, hilarity. It made her smile at the ceiling and hug herself, and after a while it got her out of bed and sent her to the door of the bedroom where Jack and Laura were sleeping. She just stood there, one hand pressed against the door and a smile on her face, for half an hour. There was too much excitement and anticipation in her for the unhappy parts of her life to bother her. She never once thought of Charlie or of Vega.

She got up and dressed. There was no point in trying to sleep any more; she was too keyed up. She put her clothes on and washed her face and then she made up the sofa-bed, folding the sheets and blanket carefully and stacking them in a chair while she closed the hinged mattress and put the cushions back in place. All slowly ... all quietly.

She picked up a magazine and looked at the pictures. And finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she heard stirrings in Jack and Laura’s room. She heard a sleepy male voice speaking softly and then someone answering him, and her whole soul thrilled to that light feminine voice. It had been so long, so abysmally long and lonesome a time since she had last heard it. She even wondered, half laughing at herself, if she would have recognized it as Laura’s voice without the sure knowledge that it was actually Laura who spoke. She heard her so indistinctly; the words were unintelligible, just a faint murmur of sound.

Fifteen minutes went by, during which Beth could hear sounds of running water in the bathroom, small sounds of drawers opening and shoes dropping and things being moved and things being gotten into. Suddenly the bedroom door opened and she looked up—almost leaped up—only to see Jack emerge.

Jack gave her a pleasant grin. “She’s still sleeping,” he said. He gave three sharp raps on Betsy’s door and said, “Get up, honey.” And then, turning to Beth, he said, “Come on, I’ll fix you some breakfast.”

She got up and followed him into the kitchen and helped him make scrambled eggs and bacon and coffee and orange juice and muffins.

“I believe in big breakfasts,” he told her.

“You’re some cook,” she said. “You really know your way around the kitchen. I’m a flop in that department.”

He smiled, unabashed. “Worked out very well,” he said. “Laura’s not a great cook, and she doesn’t like it much. I do most of it.”

“Under protest?”

“Hell, no. I enjoy it. I wouldn’t do it otherwise.”

Betsy came in as Beth was pouring the orange juice and she exclaimed brightly, “Hi, Mrs. Ayers! Did you stay all night?”

“Sh!” her father told her. “Come here and let me button you. Mrs. Ayers is going to surprise Mommy. We don’t want her to know she’s here.”

“Oh,” she said, turning big eyes, made bigger still by the lenses in front of them, on Beth, while Jack did up a row of pearl buttons on the back of her dress.

“There,” he said. “Eat.”

Beth had the uncanny feeling that everything she saw and heard, every bit of this little morning ritual she was sharing with them, would tie Laura closer to her and help her understand herself. Nothing was unimportant. She remembered it all.

“When does Laura get up?” she asked while they ate.

“Not till ten or so. It depends,” he said.

“She isn’t working, then?”

“No.” It was emphatic. She sensed that he didn’t want his wife to work.

“Who did you tell her I was?”

“She asked me this morning,” he said, grinning. “I told her you were my mother. Stood her on her ear.”

“Did it? Is your mother dead or something?”

He laughed. “No. Laura’s never laid eyes on my mother, and neither have I for thirty years. But I call Laura ‘Mother.’ It started out as a joke and ended up a family institution. I was calling her Mother long before I had any notion of marrying her. A Freudian slip, I suppose.”

Betsy giggled, more at the tone of his voice than at his words, for they didn’t make much sense to her.

“I’ll be home after five,” he told Beth when he finished. “We’ll go out for dinner or something.” He got up and Betsy followed him. At the kitchen door he turned to add, “Say, tell Laura to call George McCracken and cancel that order, will you? I’ve changed my mind. And tell her to mail a check to Dr. Byrd. It’ll save me writing it down.”

“Sure,” Beth said.

When they had gone she felt suddenly scared, suddenly on her own without anyone to help her through it, and she almost wished that Laura knew she was there. It was going to be such a hard shock for her. Or was it? Would she take it in stride the way she seemed to have taken the rest of her life?

Beth cleaned up the breakfast dishes, leaving the coffee and wrapping the muffins in waxed paper for Laura. She smoked incessantly out of sheer nervousness and she began to wonder if it would ever be ten o’clock.

But Laura was quicker than that. It was only a little past nine when Beth heard her getting up, heard the familiar morning sounds that Jack had been making an hour ago. And all at once Beth was overwhelmed with the significance of it. It seemed as if all she had suffered and begun to learn so painfully and searched for so clumsily was about to be revealed to her, as if her very soul would come walking out of that bedroom with Laura and show itself to her for the first time and answer all her questions.

She was almost more afraid of seeing her true self than of seeing Laura now and she sat on the edge of the chair with her whole spine shivering and her hands hot and sweaty.

The bedroom door opened and from her seat Beth heard Laura cross the living room, the dining area. For a shattering second she felt the gray faintness that possessed her in tense emotional storms and she clamped her eyes shut. But the feeling passed and she opened them again. They opened on Laura.

She was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, and at the moment Beth saw her she was still too stunned to speak. There was not even a trace of amazement yet on her face, just morning sleepiness and the heart-piercing beauty that Beth had loved so passionately long ago.

For some moments they simply stared at each other, both too full of feeling to speak or move. And then Laura raised trembling hands to her face and Beth heard her voice, clear and familiar now, break as she spoke her name. It took her another second to realize that Laura was crying.

Beth sprang to her feet and went to her, only to find herself helplessly shy and unable to touch her. Until Laura lowered her hands and turned diamond-bright eyes up to her and reached for her.

They kissed each other with such tenderness, such perfect accord, such lovely waiting warmth, that Beth felt dizzy with it. Laura simply moved into her arms, giving herself to her with that whole-souled generosity that thrilled Beth almost to tears. They clung to each other, and still there were no words between them, there seemed to be nothing to say. Beth held her tight, feeling a flood of strength and sureness come into her arms, as she put her head down against Laura’s and kissed her throat, her ears, the delicate expanse of shoulder that her negligee revealed. She could feel Laura trembling and it delighted her inexpressibly, this overpowering response they could feel for each other. It was as if Laura had known all along and was welcoming her home.

“I thought you might have changed,” Beth whispered finally. “I thought you might never have forgiven me. Oh, Laura, Laura, oh my darling Laura.”

But Laura, sensing better than Beth the futility of words at such a moment, pulled away, seeming to glide out of Beth’s arms. Her eyes, her whole face glowed with a beguiling reticence that Beth remembered with a wrench of the heart, and she followed as Laura moved away from her, across the kitchen to a window.

“Laura, say something,” Beth pleaded. “Say it’s all right that I’m here. Say you’re glad to see me.”

Without looking at her Laura repeated softly, “It’s all right, Beth. I’m glad to see you. Very glad,” and her voice vibrated with amazed desire. When she felt Beth’s kisses on the back of her neck she put her head back and let it rest against Beth’s shoulder.

For Beth it was almost too much. There was so much to say, so much to excuse, and yet all she wanted was to touch Laura, to make love.

“I’m afraid to stop touching you!” Beth said. “I’m afraid you’ll vanish, I’m afraid I’m dreaming. Oh, Laura, Laura.... Just saying your name to you now, knowing you hear me ... I can’t bear it.” She felt her own tears well up and she let them come. “I’ve said it so many times to myself, to the bare walls, to nobody and anybody. I feel as if I’ve spent my whole life trying to find you again, as if everything in my life that I’ve done without you doesn’t count. Nothing matters but you. Laura, I was so afraid I wouldn’t find you. I’ve tried so hard, I’ve been so damn scared that you wouldn’t want to see me, that you’d be different.”

Laura turned around and put a finger on Beth’s lips. “Don’t talk,” she said. “It’s so hard to talk. You’ll spoil everything.” She took Beth’s hand and led her into the bedroom. The scent of her pervaded the whole room and struck a whirling exhilaration into Beth. The beds were rumpled and welcoming and the clothes Laura must have worn the night before hung over a chair in the corner.

Laura pulled Beth down on the bed with tender graceful arms, slipping under her as she did so and letting her negligee fall away. For every feverish word Beth uttered Laura gave her a kiss until she had Beth helpless with desire, until all the words were stilled. Beth had not even the time to marvel at it, to be grateful; all that she saved for afterwards, succumbing to the sensual beauty of it now, while it was happening.

She had the feeling, whenever Laura touched her or moved with her, that no one, no living human being, had ever understood her so beautifully, so instinctively, and she felt too that Laura could not have been this way with anybody else. All Laura had to do was speak, and Beth would understand all. Their love was sacred to them. It made her feel that Laura had just been waiting for her all these years. Nothing of significance had happened to either of them since they parted. All their lives, all their actions, all their thoughts without each other lost meaning. It was as if nothing existed but the two of them, and they were more important than the rest of the world put together.

They lay in each other’s arms throughout the rest of the morning, hardly speaking at first, just reaffirming a powerful attraction that had lain dormant for too long, thrilled to feel the remembered sweet response.

“It makes me think of the campus,” Laura murmured. “Do you remember how it was in the spring? How it felt to walk under the huge old elms on the boardwalk and talk about classes and whisper about love? It’s almost like being there, having you so close. I never thought I’d feel it again.”

“Laura,” Beth said, her hands full of Laura’s hair. “I’ve been half dead all these years. I’ve needed you so terribly.” There was a little pause. Laura looked away and Beth knew what she was thinking. “I—I know I could have had you in the beginning,” she went on, hesitant but unable to stem the flood of feeling. “I know I should never have given you up. But you see, I didn’t understand it then.”

She paused, searching Laura’s face for a light of sympathy, but Laura listened to her with her face averted. It made Beth feel, more than words could have, how profoundly she had hurt this exquisite girl. “I thought I had to have a man, then,” she tried to explain. “But Laura, I was wrong. I’ve had to live with one and, believe me, I know. I’ve been sick—just sick with it.”

“You’d have been sick with me too, Beth,” Laura said with a wise smile, unexpectedly. “No matter which one of us you chose, it would have been the wrong choice. You would have spent the rest of your life wondering if you hadn’t done wrong. It wouldn’t have been so much different with me than with Charlie.”

Beth sat up in bed, grasping Laura’s face in her hands, her eyes hurt and shocked. “Laura, you’re the only one who ever understood me, who ever cared so beautifully and completely for me. No man—certainly not Charlie—could ever measure up to you. No man can understand me when I can’t understand myself. That’s why I needed you so desperately.”

“To be understood?” Laura interrupted. She smiled with a sad mouth. In the aftermath of shock and passion, her head was clearing.

“Not just that,” Beth said, feeling somehow as if the ground were slipping out from under her, yet not knowing why. “I love you, Laura. I’ve loved you since we parted.”

“When did you make that discovery?” Laura said. “On your wedding day?” And her smile was sharp now.

“Oh God, Laura, I don’t know when I first realized it—what a mistake the marriage was.”

“Probably the day you had your first quarrel,” Laura said, and her expression hinted that she would have liked to have seen it. She looked suddenly like a minx—sly and taunting. Beth could tell just from her face, her smile, how much she had learned, how much she had changed. She would not be easy and yielding for long.

“Laura, don’t laugh at me,” Beth pleaded. “You don’t know what I’ve been through, what I’ve given up, to find you.”

“What, Beth? Tell me. Your reputation? Your fortune? Your rose-covered bungalow? Or just a little peace of mind?” She got up from the bed while she spoke and began to dress. The action was almost insolent, a soundless slap in the face that reverberated across nine years. Beth saw in her mind with stinging clarity the scene at the train, when she had sent Laura away. It had never seemed cruel to her until now because she had fooled herself into thinking she had done it for Laura’s own good. But looking into Laura’s haunting face she saw very clearly that it had been cruel after all. Laura remembered every word and gesture of it. She was remembering it at that moment while she looked at Beth with a smiling mouth.

“Laura, I’m speaking to you from my heart,” Beth said, her voice straining. “I’m telling you the absolute truth the very best I can. Don’t turn your back to me.”

But Laura had kept her resentment in check too many years not to give herself the luxury of loosing it now. Just once. Just to let Beth know how it had been. That was all she wanted. “You turned your back on me often enough,” she said, facing away from the bed and looking through her dresser drawers.

Beth looked down at her bare thighs in confusion and covered them with part of the sheet. “Never on purpose,” she protested.

Laura laughed. She knew better. “Only for Charlie’s sake,” she said. “That it? He forced you. You never would have turned me out on your own. Where is Charlie now?” She pulled a gauzy slip from one of the drawers, and still her back was turned and her eyes ignored her lover.

And Beth knew from the toss of Laura’s head, from the sweep of her smooth arm, that Laura meant to punish her.

“He’s in California,” Beth said darkly.

“How long has he been out there?”

“A long time. Years.”

“Were you there with him?”

“No.”

“He must be worried sick about you. Or does he know where you are?” And now, as from a great height, Laura’s cornflower eyes swept over her curiously. Those eyes had lost their innocence through the years, but Beth loved them still.

“No, he doesn’t know. I doubt if he’s in any mood to give a damn, either. He thinks I’m in Chicago.”

“Are you still married?” Laura said.

“No. Divorced. Oh, it was a long time ago, Laura. Don’t ask me about it.” She sped through the lie as if afraid of stumbling over it. But Laura’s eyes, grown knowing and sharp, saw the shadow of uncertainty on Beth’s face.

“Have you been looking for me all this time?” Laura said, and suddenly she was coy, teasing, needling Beth. “Was I so hard to find?”

“Not after I got to New York. I met Beebo Brinker in the Village. Beebo told me where you were.”

“Oh.” Laura pulled the slip over her head and her act of dressing defied Beth. Laura was so breathtaking without her clothes. The fact that she was covering herself up was almost depressing, as if she were putting an end to the tenderness, the caresses of a little while ago. She was telling Beth, subtly and wittily, to go to hell, and Beth was stung. Laura’s whole graceful body told her impudently, _You took advantage of my surprise, my helpless love. Well, I’m not helpless any longer._

“Did you have any children, Beth?” Laura asked. Her questions were slow, bold, rather hopeful of offending. And yet there was still restraint in her. She had once loved Beth utterly, and her first reaction to Beth’s presence had been a quick unreasoning surrender. Desire had made her weak. But desire was satisfied now; it remained to satisfy her wounded soul.

“No,” Beth snapped. “No children.” She was appalled at herself and at the same time angrily determined to deny that part of her life.

Laura gazed at her, aware from the tone and temper in Beth that she had touched an emotional sore. But then perhaps it was just Beth’s disappointment in seeing Laura get dressed.

Beth, suddenly surly, got up and began to put her own clothes on. She stepped into her panties self-consciously and then, to her own surprise, broke down and began to cry. The chill between them was too much for her. She went to Laura humbly and embraced her.

“Laura, I want you,” she whispered. “I love you. Nothing else matters. The rest of my life doesn’t matter, it didn’t even happen, if you’ll just take me back. Be good to me. Help me, please, help me.”

But Laura couldn’t be had that easily. “Help you what?” she said. “You mean, help you now the way you helped me nine years ago? Put you on a train and send you to hell? One-way trip?”

“Please—dear God—don’t be sarcastic!” Beth implored her.

“It’s a very educational trip, Beth,” Laura said softly.

For a moment it struck Beth as Nina’s barbs had struck her. But she needed Laura’s aid too much to risk antagonizing her. “I’m dead serious,” she said through her tears. “Help me find myself. Help me know myself,” she insisted, shaking Laura forcibly. “No one can help me but you.”

And Laura, caught in Beth’s strong urgent arms, began to understand, began to see through the clouds of passion and desperation that hung about Beth. She knew what Beth was there for. Not for love, not for Laura, not for nostalgia or passion or anything tender. She had come to find herself and was fanatically sure Laura could help. Laura was her tool, and, realizing it now, Laura smiled at her with pity.

“You’re so lucky,” Beth said. “So damn lucky!” And she couldn’t keep the little green flash of envy from showing. “You’ve got it both ways. A husband and a child and a home. And at the same time, women. You worked your life out right, Laura darling. I made a complete mess of mine. God, isn’t it ironical? When I said goodbye to you and watched you climb on that train and go out of my life, I felt sorry for you. I pitied you because I thought you were already starting out on the wrong foot. I thought nothing could set you right. You’d just bungle along and botch the whole thing. I thought you’d be hurt.” She clung to Laura as she spoke, unconsciously rocking her as if the movement were a comfort.

“I thought you’d get lost, I thought you’d get taken, I thought the big city would devour you,” Beth cried, almost wishing, out of spite, that it had. “I thought living like an outcast, a Lesbian, would destroy you. All this time I’ve worried and wondered about you. And now at last I find you and—and—” she began to laugh a little hysterically—“and you’re happy as a clam. You’ve got the world on a string. You’re the one who did it right, who found the secret. Laura, let me in on it. I’m so damned miserable sometimes I feel like death. Like death.” And she shook Laura with the angry demand for sympathy.

It was not a generous speech. It was not the declaration of love reborn or of gratitude that she had meant to make. It was an accusation. It said, “You have no right to be happier than I!” Laura had it all, Beth had nothing, and Beth showed her grudge in a sudden uncontrollable outpouring of envy and unhappiness. It was not what she had come all this way to discover and it was too much to bear.

Laura understood this while Beth did not. Beth thought she was speaking of love, and she was chagrined when Laura moved out of her arms with a laugh.

Laura walked across the room in her slip, one nylon stocking on, one in her hand, and her laugh burned Beth like salt in a cut. Laura turned and looked at her then, still smiling.

“Beth,” she said, lingering over the name. “I still love you, Beth. God knows why. But now, for the first time in all these years, I can pity you too. It’s a strange feeling. A little like being set free.”

“No, Laura—”

“Don’t talk. Listen! You need a little pity. You need a lot. You’ve spent so damn many years pitying me, Beth, don’t begrudge me the same pleasure. It’s my turn now.”

Beth went over to the bed and collapsed on it. “How did you do it?” she begged. “Where did I go wrong? I never should have let you leave me.”

“No? What would we have done together, you and I? Settled down in a vine-covered walk-up in the Village? Adopted a couple of kids?”

“I don’t want kids, I never did!”

“You said you didn’t have any.”

“I don’t!” Beth shrieked.

“Then don’t get excited,” Laura said curiously. “You could have lived with me once, Beth. Don’t forget that.”

“Anything would have been better than Charlie!”

“Even me?” Laura couldn’t help laughing again.

“No! No! Good God, Laura, Laura, please don’t laugh like that. Don’t laugh at me!” She sounded quite frantic and Laura took pity on her. She was not malicious, only human, and she needed to hurt Beth a little. It was healthy for her. It would clear away the murky, pent-up bitterness and misunderstanding.

“If you don’t want me to laugh at you, don’t be such a fool,” she said.

“Charlie was insufferable,” Beth gasped, clutching at her self-control.

“Charlie loved you, Beth,” Laura retorted. “I don’t know what the situation is now, but you dismissed his love much too lightly a few minutes ago. It was a wonderful love, very deep and strong. If there were blind spots in it, they weren’t weaknesses. He had enough love to smooth them over. I hated him but I respected him always. I knew how much he loved you.”

“Are you saying that whatever happened between us must have been my fault? That I didn’t love him enough?” Beth cried. And the frustrations of the last months colored her voice.

“No. I’m saying you couldn’t have made a better choice than Charlie, if you wanted to get married. And Beth, you did want to. You were cocksure of yourself.”

“Then why didn’t it work? Why wasn’t I happy?” Beth had lost control, even the desire for control. She wept noisy furious sobs like a child, her hands covering her face.

Laura watched her from across the room for a moment and then she went into the bathroom. She came back in a moment with a glass of cold water, walked up to Beth, and threw it in her face. She accomplished this quietly, experimentally, but with a certain satisfaction. She had never thought, in all her daydreams of Beth, that she would have the courage to treat her like another mere human being.

“I don’t know why it didn’t work, Beth,” she said. “Maybe you’ll be happy now. I hope so.”