Chapter III: Part 3

“You’re sweet,” he said, his hand working the buttons on her blouse, pulling it gently from her shoulders, kissing her. “You’re sweet, Susan.”

Very softly, almost too softly for her to hear her own words, she said, “No,” but her eyes saw the circles and there was a new feeling in her body when he touched her and she could feel her clothes being pulled.

“No,” she said. “No, please, no!”

Then swiftly, suddenly, and with terrific pain, she felt pressure and her eyes opened wide and she would have screamed but his hand covered her mouth and he struck her hard.

“Shut up,” he said. “You wanted to know. You wanted this, Miss Virgin.”

For a long time she was down in the mire of pitch black and the quicksand sucking her in and her whole head dizzy and the pain. Then it was over and she could feel him kneeling beside her, his head on her breasts, his breath coming hard. When she stood up, she hung onto the table and her head throbbed and spun. He got up too and turned the light switch on and she saw him looking at her.

“Better get your clothes on,” he said, “and get upstairs with me.”

Her voice was not her own. “You go to hell,” she said. “You go to hell.”

“Come on,” he said. “Get your clothes on.”

She did not cry. She reached for her things, scattered there on the floor, the brown orchid squashed beside the couch, everything strewn. He turned his back and ran his fingers through his hair, and then he turned around and she was dressed, walking toward him with dead eyes, swerving slightly from side to side.

“Listen,” he said. “That’s ‘Good Night, Ladies.’ It’s the last dance.”

She moved past him toward the cellar steps. He caught her arm and she stopped and did not look at him.

“I’ll go out the side door,” he said. “Look, take a hot bath. You’re not hurt. Go up and take a hot bath and keep your mouth shut. Look, you’re all right. Don’t act this way.”

When he let her go, she walked up the cellar steps and up the back steps to the second floor and her room. There was no one up there. They were all finishing the last dance. She lay on the bed, her eyes shut, and the circles came back, but they were black now and she was very cold.

Leda found her like that when she came in the room, threw her coat on the chair, and let her arms reach out in a wide yawn.

“What’s the trouble?” she said.

Mitch did not move. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling, her lips parted, a gray-white color to her face, and she did not answer.

“You sick?”

She put her hand on Mitch’s forehead. “Roberts,” she said. “What did Roberts do to you? Did you fight? Talk to me, kid. Please tell me.”

Mitch started. Her feet touched the floor and moved toward the door. She shut it hard and turned toward Leda.

“He did it to me,” she said slowly. “He did it to me in the basement. I feel—horrible.”

Outside there was singing, men’s voices coming clearly, singing, “Dream girl, dream girl, you are a frat man’s dream girl,” in rich, deep tones. Mitch held her head and sat next to Leda.

“That goddamn bastard,” Leda said. “That no-good damn bastard!”

Mitch said, “When he came over tonight, I thought—he was sorry and he liked me and—” She could not finish, or cry or scream as she wanted to, and Leda’s cursing jarred her and teased her.

“Kid, listen. Can you hear me? Don’t say anything about this. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t tell anyone what happened in the cellar. The basement was off limits, and you’ve been drinking. God, it isn’t your fault! God knows that. But honey—no one cares when a rule is broken. They don’t care. Can you straighten out? Do you want me to get a wet rag for your head?”

“He said to take a hot bath. He said—”

“He would! A hell of a lot a man knows. Take a hot bath!”

“Leda, what’s wrong with me? How did—”

Leda said, “Don’t try to talk, kid,” and she helped the girl take her clothes off. She said, “It’s all right now. You’re O.K. now. You’ll feel better after you sleep.”

The voices outside were singing in a lively chorus, singing fast and clear:

“We are the great big, wow! Hairy-chested men, wow!
Hairy-chested me! Wow! Hairy-chested men!
We are the great big, wow! Hairy-chested men!
We can do an-nee-thing! Wow!”

Leda helped Mitch into her bed, and stripping, slipping into white silk pajamas, Leda crawled in beside her after flicking the light off. She put her arms around Mitch.

“It’s a lousy break, kid. It shouldn’t have happened to you. Marsha should have known better.”

“I’m afraid, Leda. Will I have a—what if I’m pregnant? I can’t even think. I wish I wasn’t here or alive or anything.”

“Everything will be O.K., Mitch honey. Let me stroke your back gently. I know how men are, Mitch. I know how rough they are. Mitch, does my hand feel good?”

“Yes.”

“Jake is rough too. You get sick of it. You get sick of them pawing you around as if you were an animal. Men don’t understand. They’re tough and they don’t care what they do to you. I know, honey. I’ve been through it and I don’t know why I go back, except that it just—You have to. Jan always thinks if you don’t have a man hanging around that you’re abnormal or something. Mitch, you don’t know what I’m talking about, I know. I talk like an idiot, Mitch. But I like to touch you. I die when I think of that Roberts bastard laying a hand on you. Listen, kid, I never felt about a person the way I feel about you. You’re different. I want to keep the damn world away from you, so it won’t kick you in the teeth the way it has me. You’re special, Mitch, and as long as I’m alive, you’re going to be O.K. I mean it.”

Long after Mitch was asleep, Leda’s hands stroked her arms, and Leda lay there, hoping the evening would stay and never let morning come, for now there was a restless peace in her, akin to finding something that was lost, and yet something that had never been hers before.

* * * * *

Up on the hill overlooking the towers and the town, there in an alcove, the Sigma Delta house was bright with lights and young men laughing. In the living room downstairs, faces were awake with lively talk and collars were open at the neck, with the ties hanging freely and the coats unbuttoned. A few of the boys kicked off their shoes and leaned back luxuriously in the deep chairs and couches. Others were coming through the front door in groups of twos and threes, and in the corner a radio played a late disc-jockey show from Louisville. At the card table, four fellows began a poker game, and one stood near them, holding a glass, discussing the evening, telling about the bad roads near Cranston Creek and the way “Gloria’s no fool, you know. She takes _real_ precautions. That’s what I mean about her acting older than the rest of these coeds.”

On the third floor, in the room with the banners and the signs and the skeleton hanging from the hatrack, Bud Roberts sat with a bottle and his roommate, Clive McKenzie, and Jake was there too. Bud was talking about it. About the way the girl had looked afterward, and how he felt, and their faces were serious and interested.

He said, “It was the first time I ever got such a creepy feeling. Now, I’ve fooled around a lot. Plenty. But I never got such a creepy feeling.”

Clive McKenzie crushed his cigarette on the floor. “Yeah, I know what you mean. One time I had a virgin and after she—”

“Listen,” Roberts yelled. “Listen, I’m telling you it wasn’t like that! You don’t know what the hell I’m telling you. I’m so goddamn drunk I don’t know what I’m telling you either. But this girl—she was like my dog at home after I kick her when I don’t mean to but I lose my temper. Ever kick your dog and see his eyes? She was like that. I never—”

“What the hell, Roberts. You asked for it. You said you were going to make her. I don’t know why you wanted to bother with the girl anyway. She’s built like a barn. You knew it. Jesus, what the hell! You want us to cry in our beer over your mess? God, what an act!”

Jake took a swig from the bottle and coughed. “Do I yell around here over troubles I got? And troubles I have got. You make me sick sometimes.”

“All right, shut up! Shut up!” Roberts yelled, standing up quickly. “We got a pledge in this room. Shut up, Jake, you damn fool!”

“You brought it up. You brought the thing up, for God’s sake. What do you want?”

“I want you to shut up about it now,” Roberts answered, lurching toward Jake and grabbing his shirt. He raised his arm to swing it out at Jake and Jake caught it, twisting it back until Roberts was on his knees.

“Break it up, fellows,” Clive ventured in a scared tone, stopping short when Jake let Bud free. Jake looked at Bud kneeling there and his anger softened. He said, “G’night, Clive, Bud. I’m going to bed. Get some sleep, men!”

When he said “men,” Clive knew that it was all right then. He watched Jake go and he turned his back on Roberts. He took his toothpaste and his brush and he swung a towel over his shoulder. Whistling weakly, he left the room and walked down the hall in the direction of the bathroom.

After the door shut, Bud dragged himself up on the bed. He sat there, pulling his ear and looking hard at the floor. With his fist, he hit his head hard. Then he stood up.

“Hey, you party-poopers,” he called out hoarsely, “where the hell did you go? It’s only one-thirty, for God’s sake! Hey, you four-legged bastards, come back and finish the bottle!”

* * * * *

The light sound woke Leda. Beside her, Mitch tossed restlessly, a pulsating whimpering rising inside her.

“Mitch, are you all right?”

She opened her eyes and looked at Leda. The room was not dark, early lights of dawn casting a rusty hue over everything, and the wind from the open window was mild and steady.

“I was dreaming. What time is it?”

“About five.”

“I was having an awful dream. Bud Roberts and—”

“Don’t,” Leda said, her arm catching the girl’s waist. Mitch turned on her side, facing Leda, feeling the hand rub her back. It was quiet and warm. Leda moved her hand forward and ran her fingers lightly over the buttons on Mitch’s pajama top. Then, gently, she slipped the round, plastic buttons from their loops, leaving the coat open. Almost as if Mitch knew what would follow, she held the top of the sheet back while Leda moved down and lightly kissed Mitch’s breasts. A soft sigh broke free from Mitch’s throat and evolved into a plaintive cry. Leda pulled herself up and her lips found Mitch’s and crushed them, burning and moist.

“Mitch,” Leda whispered, and they held each other fast and hard. “Mitch.”

Chapter Five

Mitch settled back in her seat that Monday morning and watched the thin, bespectacled man on the rostrum in the front of the room. Around her, students sat with open notebooks, waiting for the lecture to begin, doodling in circles and squares on the lined paper, talking busily, watching the slight rain on the windows, and stacking the books on the floor beneath their chairs. There was a sharp rap, a final rearranging of position on the part of the boys and girls, and Professor Aimes’ voice broke through the stir to say, “Shelley’s dates were 1792 through 1822. He attended Oxford as a boy, and while there he—”

He was like her father, this professor. Mitch noticed the resemblance in the way he stood, legs spread, hands stabbing his pockets, rocking back and forth as he talked. And in his build, in the gangling structure of his body, the way his arms hung loose in defiance of all tailoring, wrists jumping out of his sleeves. Even his voice was similar—high and full and self-assured. Her father was not an intelligent man. Mitch realized that much about him. He had been a very lucky man, and a very skillful businessman, and a man who was strange to other men and to most women and to Mitch. She could imagine that she and her father had never known each other, and yet they had spent many long hours together when she was on vacation from school, in the summer, and when he visited her on his rare trips that brought him to her vicinity.

Her mother was the stranger—the name, and the small gold-framed picture on the bureau, and the tiny flashes of information that her father had relayed. Death was a word like mother and the two stood for something that was there but unknown to feeling. Vaguely Mitch wondered what it would have been like if they had been real to her, this dead mother and the father who was alive and whom she wrote to and returned to in between school and growing.

“Do you know what happened to me Saturday night, Father?”

“No, black-eyed Susan. What?”

“I had sexual intercourse. In the cellar.”

Even after she had thought of such a scene and played with it in her mind and rejected it as impossible, she felt the danger of the thought. She felt that now she was grown, as her father had always said she would be and as she had thought she would never grow. She was grown and there was no more time to say, “When I grow up,” and now she could not say, “When I grew up” and tell what it was like, because it was over. It was over and when it is over you do not talk. You do not say what it was like. Not when it’s like this.

The Professor’s voice began the poem and she listened attentively.

“I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright....”

Leda was not a man, and yet, when she had awakened her, Mitch turned to her and they were not friends then, but lovers. Mitch became separate as a person at last. She was not separate from Leda, but individual and one. She was wanted and she wanted, and it was not a want striped with fear and hurt. It was a fragile want to be nurtured and cared for, as Leda had then in bed.

“I never kissed a girl,” Leda had said afterward. “I’m sorry I did it to you, kid.”

There was something wrong and ill in the two of them then like that, Mitch knew, but what? When she was a child, near the dam where she had gone with her father, on the worn lead pipe there were words written and she had said, “What do they mean?” They were bad words, he explained, and there was that about his explanation that made _her_ feel guilty, as though she had taken the white chalk and put the words there. Leda was sorry, so _she_ knew what was wrong.

“Oh, lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.”

The voice droned on and on and Mitch traced the holes in the paper with her pencil and thought more of Leda and still not enough. She thought of the talk at the dinner table in the house on Sunday, the way Leda had reached under the tablecloth and gripped Mitch’s hand, as if to give her strength to answer Marsha’s “You see, Mitch, it wasn’t so bad after all. I guess Bud can be a gentleman when he wants to.” And Sunday evening, before Leda ran downstairs to greet Jake and go off with him, she had kissed Mitch’s lips and looked at her and told her it would not be the same with Jake.

“I have to go,” she said, “but it won’t be the same. Not like us, kid. No.”

“My heart beats loud and fast.
Oh! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.”

Professor Aimes stopped, leaned forward, resting his elbow on the rostrum, his glasses in his hand. “That,” he said dramatically, “is what I mean about Shelley.”

* * * * *

When Mitch entered zoology lab after English class, Robin Maurer was waiting inside the door. She pulled Mitch over to the corner and began talking to her in a plaintive, earnest tone.

Robin had met Tom Edwards in her French class, a separate section from the one Mitch attended. He played the tenor sax and he was an independent and Robin had liked him immediately, the way Mitch had liked Charlie. He was one of the members of the combo that entertained at the housewarming on Saturday. As Marsha had requested, Robin asked a Sig Delt to the dance, an old flame of Kitten Clark’s. When Kitten got pinned, Robin’s date proceeded to get highly inebriated out on the back steps. During one of the half-dozen intermissions, Robin and Tom went for a ride. There was a flat tire with no spare tire in the back, and they had been stranded until one o’clock in the morning.

“It was innocent, really, Mitch. Tom didn’t even put his arm around me. But I got in after hours, and it’s the talk of the dance. Did Leda tell you anything about it?”

“No, I don’t think she heard that it happened.”

“Everyone heard! He didn’t get back for the dance—to play, I mean—and I was missing. Everybody heard about it, and they were whispering all through the house yesterday. Mitch, there’s a chapter meeting tonight and I’m going to get it. Bet you anything, Mitch. Bet you I get it.”

For a bare, awkward minute, Mitch thought of telling Robin about it. She thought of saying, “Look, you don’t know what happened to me,” but she remembered Leda’s words: “Don’t trust anyone. Don’t tell anyone what happened in the cellar.” She let Robin talk, and she listened until the class was called to order and the lab instructor passed the tiny slabs around to the members of the class. Moving along to the third row where her microscope was, Mitch slipped the slide under and peered down at the wiggling amoeba. Then the slide went black.

“You are now looking at the finger of Lucifer. Much more interesting than an amoeba.”

“Hello,” she said, raising her head and grinning at him. “I was just getting it focused.”

“My finger?”

“No. I was getting the amoeba focused.”

“Ah,” Lucifer said. “So you’re not interested in my finger.”

Any time but now, Mitch thought. Any day but today I could talk to him and laugh at him because I like him. But not today. She looked down into the microscope again, and Lucifer bent his head and moved it close to hers. “Let me see too,” he said. “Don’t be so stingy with your amoebas.”

She pulled the slide out and began to write in her lab book.

“Have a rip-roaring time with old Step-and-Fetch-It Saturday?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Tell me,” he leaned on the lab bench, “is it true that tall men are aggressive?”

Mitch didn’t answer. She tried to think so that she could write in her book, but he kept chatting away.

“Are they the best lovers?” he said. “Are they the world’s very best lovers?”

“I have to get this, Lucifer. Please—”

“If I were only tall,” he said. “If I were only tall and could make you forget amoebas.”

The lab instructor shot her a piercing glance.

“Please go, Lucifer.”

“You wouldn’t say that to an amoeba!” he said.

“He’s watching us,” she told Lucifer, pointing over toward the instructor, but Lucifer ignored the warning.

A piece of paper landed at Mitch’s feet and she reached to get the note that Robin had rolled to her. Lucifer caught it instead and held it up high and said, “Ah, a note! A secret message.”

He did not see the angry expression on the lab instructor’s face as he came toward them. Lucifer blew at the folded paper the note was written on, and he laughed. “Ha!” he said. “Communists infiltrating into our school system. Cranston Communists delivering their nasty notes of plenty!”

“Give that to me!” the instructor snapped. “Does this look like a high-school room to you?”

Lucifer jumped back and his face flushed. The instructor pointed to the note and tapped on the bench. “Who wrote this?” he said loudly.

In a strained voice, Robin Maurer answered.

“All right, you two, outside. One week’s suspension from the course! When you get back in, we’ll see if you’ve grown up any. Bad enough you act like freshmen, without acting like jackasses!”

He gave Lucifer a tap on the arm and pointed toward the door. Robin followed him, her head bent, her ears scarlet. Suspensions were reported to sorority houses. It was a means of checking on the pledges, and freshman instructors had been advised of this ruling by Panhellenic. Suddenly Mitch hated the clownish idiot who had caused Robin’s expulsion. She hated him along with all of them. _Men don’t care what they do._ Leda was right. A gnawing loneliness seeped into Mitch’s veins and she thought of Leda and how Leda touched her. The instructor pushed the amoeba slide in front of her and said, “You’ll be next if you don’t get busy, Miss Mitchell.”

* * * * *

Charlie was waiting for Mitch at the parking lot that afternoon. She had purposely avoided him when French class was over and the students shuffled out of the room. He stood next to her car and watched her coming.

“I missed you. You didn’t wait.”

“I’m in a hurry, Charlie. I don’t feel good.”

“Gee, I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. Can I do anything?”

“No, I’d better hurry to the house.”

He opened the door for her, his brow wrinkled with concern, his hand helping her.

“Maybe I can ask you this quick,” he said. “Go to a show with me Saturday?”

Mitch started the motor and looked back to see how much room there was to spare between her car and the one behind her. He was hanging on the door of the car, looking at her with a sweet but servile expression. She felt sorry for him but she did not want to go out with him.

“Yes,” she said for no reason that she could think of, “I’ll go with you. Saturday.”

When she drove off the dust kicked up in a cloud in the back and he stood in it. “Hope you feel better,” he called after her, pushing the thin specks of dirt away from his face.

From the street, along College Avenue, another voice called. Mitch brought the car to an abrupt halt, wheels squeaking and tires scraping against the curb when she pulled in.

“Hello, kid,” Leda said, tossing her books on the seat. “I thought you wouldn’t hear me. Hello,” she said again, smiling at Mitch and touching Mitch’s skirt with her hand. “I missed you today,” she said, and the car started fast on the black pavement.

Leda watched the girl as she drove. She had a mad, fleeting impulse to reach over and push the wheel so that there would be no more. The day had been an agony of guilt and regret, but her need for Mitch was no less strong. Jan’s face had come to her like a ghost, tormenting her with shame, symbolizing the impossibility of Mitch and Leda and a love that was wrong. It was not even love. It could very possibly not even be love. But where Jake was plastic, Mitch—this feeling for Mitch was wood. It was wood and it could do everything wood should do—splinter, crack, and burn. Now it burned, deep near her stomach, and there was never that with Jake. There was a compulsion with Jake, a compulsion to be taken and used and discarded. And with Mitch it was not like that. With Mitch it was clean. It was impossibly clean.

“Let’s drive out to the farm road, Mitch.”

“O.K.”

“Drive fast, Mitch. Let’s go fast.”

For that time before they reached the dirt road and swung off to the side near the pasture where there was space to park, Leda let her hair blow out in the wind and felt the crisp autumn air on her cheeks. Then, sitting there in the car with Mitch, she said, “I think this is peace, Mitch. I think this is what I always wanted.”

Leda always talked like that, dramatically, as if each word swelled with significance and was true. Mitch saw her beside her and saw her head resting on the leather seat, sitting loose and relaxed, staring up at the sky and the way it looked after the sudden and short showers that came and went like that in the Midwest.

She said, “Leda, did you hear anything about Robin?”

“Something, yes. Something about staying out late and going off from the dance with one of the musicians. She’s in for it.”

“It’s not her fault,” Mitch began, but Leda reached for her hand and said, “Don’t! Let’s not talk about the sorority and school and all that. Mitch, how do you feel about me?”

Mitch stammered, “I—I told you. I think that I—love you....”

“My God, think of the way people would talk if they knew! Leda, the fraternity man’s little damn darling, and here she sits wishing all to hell she could reach over and kiss you. But she can’t because it’s not right. Not here in broad daylight. Not in the open. It’s right in the night. Then it’s right. Huh, Mitch?”

“Don’t get mad, Leda.”

“I’m not mad, Mitch, honey, I’m not. I just wonder why I don’t lose my goddamn mind. I just wonder what I’m all about and how come you came along and gave me a clue. That’s all. And I wonder about Jake and oh, God!”

“Leda, in class today, I thought about Bud Roberts and I thought that if it hadn’t been for you—if you hadn’t cared—I guess I would have killed myself almost.”

Leda started to lean toward the girl, but drew back when she heard the voices. Through the woods a boy with a lettered sweater came, holding hands with a girl who was looking up at him, and they were smiling and pressing close to one another as they walked down the path and sat on the rock, back there where the road turned. From where they sat, they could see Mitch’s car, and Leda felt a swing of shame and guilt ride through her. She snapped the radio on.

“God,” she said, “it really is muggy! Out here in the damn country, it really is muggy.”

“I thought,” Mitch said, “that it was sort of like fate, what happened Sunday morning. I needed someone.”

Mitch’s confessions seemed ludicrous and unholy to Leda, there with the boy and girl behind them. She wished she would stop. The presence of the couple that had come through the woods inhibited her and made her nervous. She began to hum slowly to the music on the radio.

“Do you feel that way, Leda?”

Mitch leaned close to Leda and Leda pulled back and sat near the door. “Let’s drive back to the house,” she said. “I’ve got a pack of mail waiting for me.”

“Do you want to go, Leda?”

“Why not?” She could see them through the rear mirror. “Can’t stay here all day.”

“I thought you liked it out here.”

“Well, I want to go. Can’t stay in one place all your life, kid.”

Mitch said, “O.K.,” and she turned the switch on. The rest of the way back to the house, they did not talk. When they drove in, Leda jumped out and ran in and Mitch followed. Together they found their mail, a letter for Leda from Jan’s beau, and for Mitch, a letter from her father. When they were on the way to their room, Marsha called to Leda. “Chapter meeting,” she said, “at seven tonight, Leda. It’s important, so be there.”

“Hey,” Leda called back, “I want to talk to you about an exchange dinner. The Sig Delts are hot to have an exchange next week. We could set ourselves up good with that kind of deal, and maybe the silverware will be here by then. It should have been here long ago and I think—”

Mitch left them talking there in the hall, and as she turned the doorknob to her room, Robin appeared. Her eyes were swollen with crying and she told Mitch that she had reported the suspension herself. “They might as well know,” she said. “My goose is cooked anyway.”

“It’s my fault,” Mitch said. “That Lucifer is a—”

“He’s wonderful, Mitch. He’s the first all-around guy I’ve met besides Tom. No, it’s my fault—and I don’t care. If I get kicked out, my folks will be wild. You don’t know my folks, Mitch. Prestige and social climbing means everything. It’ll kill them.”

“You don’t think they’d kick you out.”

“I think they will. Sure, I try to tell myself they won’t, but I asked for it. I really did, and then Saturday night finished everything. I wish Marsha weren’t president. She’s the only decent one.”

“Leda’s wonderful too.” Mitch smiled. “She’s been really wonderful and—”

“I trust her like I trust a snake,” Robin snarled. “Don’t let her fool you, Mitch. Around here she may be a big cheese, but I’ve heard enough to convince me she’d make Amber look like a New England schoolteacher. You never can trust that kind of girl.”

Opening the door to the room, Mitch said, “We better not talk in the hall.”

Robin looked around her and shook her head and said it didn’t really matter where _she_ talked. She said she had to go back to her room and get her homework done because at least that much wasn’t messed up, and there was that much.

* * * * *

After dinner that evening, the Tri Eps filed into the small room off the living room. This was the Chapter Room, where the active members of Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon held their meetings. The pledges were instructed to stay upstairs in their rooms when such meetings occurred, and Mitch was propped up on her bed, staring unseeingly at her French assignment.

It had been impossible to concentrate these first few weeks of school. There was always a debris of thoughts to clear up in her mind, and when one mass was swept away, the windfall hit again and each new amount seemed staggering. Determined, Mitch began reading the lesson aloud, trying to impress the catchy rules of pronunciation on her brain, but she could not. Her thoughts returned invariably to the afternoon and the way Leda had been and the change that was always instant and arresting within Leda. Mitch got to her feet and drifted to the window, and sat in the chair looking out into the street. Monday night was chapter-meeting night in Greek Town, and there was a reverent hush in the neighborhood. Decisions and rules and amendments to rules were being developed throughout the area, and it was like a grand corporation manufacturing a variety of brands, all tested, all ready to compete with one another. As she saw the darkness with the spots of light in it and the stillness, Mitch wondered what it was like to be an independent. She wondered if Charlie were working in the drugstore, and if Lucifer were clowning in the chapter meeting across the street, and then she wondered achingly what Bud Roberts was thinking and if he had told his “brothers” and if he laughed and told them and if they laughed too. She picked up a copy of the school magazine and turned the pages, reading the jokes without smiling and looking at the pictures of the students there. The breeze coming in on her was cool, but there was a tiredness in her like that of a series of humid days that were close and without air....

“Is _that_ the way you study?” Leda said, nudging Mitch. She was smiling and her hand on Mitch’s shoulder was the same hand that had been there on Sunday and not cold or frigid now.

“I fell asleep.”

“I guess you did! Well, that damn meeting is over for another week. Robin’s case has been referred to Grand Council. They’re meeting in Marsha’s room now.”

Mitch sat forward. “You think it’ll be O.K.?”

“I don’t know, honey. It’s hard to tell. I just don’t know.”

Leda rolled her hair in tight ringlets and fished her soap from her glass. “Let’s go to bed right away,” she said. “I’m going to wash up and then let’s go to bed.”

“What about the Grand Council?”

“Don’t wait for them to decide anything. It may take all night. Get your bath, and we’ll turn in. O.K.?”

The bath water was too hot, but after the sting it felt good on Mitch’s leg. In the other tub, Marybell Van Casey was singing “On, Wisconsin” and splashing the water vigorously. Mitch eased herself down to a sitting position, listened to the other girls in the room, washing out their socks, brushing their teeth, and talking about Robin. She recognized Kitten’s voice, and the voices of several of the pledges, but there was no way of learning more about the incidents that occurred during the meeting. The feelings were mixed, and influenced by what each girl thought she should feel. The pledges thought that they should side with those who recommended stern reprimand, and only a few dared to express sympathy. None rebelled against the occurrence. No one defied those who accused Robin. Only Mitch, inside, and she did not speak out. She pushed the soapy cloth back and forth on her arms and legs and neck and remained silent. There was enough to be wary of, and there were no answers to her own questions.

Later, Leda turned the lights out and for a moment there was no sound in the room, but an air of expectancy, a period of waiting for one to speak. Then, in a rush of covers, springing over to Mitch’s bed, Leda clung to the girl. She said, “Mitch, Mitch, oh, God!” Passionately she nipped the girl’s neck and shoulder with her teeth, and pulled the pajamas from her large body. Mitch helped her, and waited while Leda took her own off, and then they came together, moving rhythmically against one another.

When they talked, later, Mitch asked her about the afternoon and Leda cried, saying her words between half sobs welling from the slim body that was pressed tight against Mitch’s.

“I don’t know what came over me,” she said. “That couple came along and I don’t know what happened to me. I felt as though—Mitch, don’t ask me.”

“How did you feel?”

“I felt—guilty.”

Mitch said, “Oh.”

“Do you, Mitch? About us?”

“No ... not yet. I felt—I know how _you_ feel because I think I felt that way after Bud Roberts and—”

“No!” Leda said sharply. “Not that way! Not that kind of guilt! God, no!”

Leda wanted to laugh and scream and be hysterical until her whole body was spent and she could fall exhausted down into a bed of grass and let the wet blades cool her. How was it possible to make a child understand what an adult could not comprehend either? It was better that she did not realize, that the kinks and bumps and twists that resolved themselves into the overt actions were shielded and hidden from Mitch. _One_ could bear guilt. For both, one could carry it and it would be better.

“Go to sleep, darling,” Leda said. “I love you, Mitch. This is between us. It’s ours, Mitch. Keep it ours and never tell it.”

Mitch said, “I will. I don’t talk about things. I mean, I think I know what you mean.”

They could hear the chattering just when sleep was coming, and the rush of the feet in the hall. Leda sat up straight and said, “What in hell is going on?”

She poked the light button and unlocked the door. “Hey,” she yelled, “what the hell is the rumpus? Did the Russians attack?”

One of the girls stopped long enough to say that Robin Maurer was depledged. That tomorrow she would have to move out of the house.

Chapter Six

The Tri Epsilon porch was crowded when Mitch and Charlie came up the walk and stood against the columns. In the swings and chairs there were half a dozen couples locked in embraces at various angles, and many others clung to their dates standing. It was Saturday evening, five minutes shy of closing hour, and the scene was usual.

“I had a good time with you tonight,” Charlie said, and in that setting his voice sounded loud and intrusive. Mitch glanced at the minute hand flying slowly in circles under the glass in her wrist watch. They had been to a late movie and for sodas in the Cortille after. Soon she would be with Leda. Three minutes.

The porch light flickered on and off to give the signal, and a voice called out, “Twelve-thirty.” Charlie shuffled his feet uneasily. “Well,” he said, coughing, lingering, “this is it, I guess.... May I kiss you good night?”

Mitch was uncomfortable when he leaned forward and let his lips touch hers lightly. Then he backed away, waving faintly, a curved grin on his round young face, until he collided with a couple behind him saying good night at the edge of the steps. Mitch turned, and once inside the screen door, ran up the stairs to see if Leda was there. The room was dark, and when Mitch pushed the light button, there was only the disarray of clothing on the bed, the shoes kicked about on the floor, and the papers scattered on the desk, reminding her that her economics assignment was barely begun. She pulled the blinds and slipped out of her clothes, into her terry-cloth robe and the worn slippers. The bathroom was crowded with Tri Epsilons, and as she ran her bath water and waited, she saw them pass in the halls, tired and bedraggled from their evening, many of them rushing to the windows to wave to their dates as they left. Leda was not among them, and as Mitch eased herself into the hot water, she prayed that Leda was only late, and not in trouble somewhere with Jake.

Jane Bell called her a few minutes after she was in the bathtub.

“Phone,” she said. “Some guy.”

Dripping and curious, Mitch hovered in a wide towel as she took the call in the booth outside the bathroom.

“I said, this is Jake. You know.”

“Yes, but—Has something—”

“Listen,” he yelled out at her, “don’t blurt anything out where the whole bunch can hear. Leda’s O.K. We’re just a little tied up and she’ll be late. Now listen, can you hear me?”

Mitch’s knees grew unexplainably weak. “Yes,” she said.

“In one hour exactly—that’s at one-forty-five—I’ll let Leda off at the side entrance. She’ll come in through the cellar door. Got that? You get down there and unlock the door for her. Now, have you got it?”

“I guess so, but—”

“Don’t get panicky. It happens all the time. Look, just be a sweet kid and get that door unlocked for her. Don’t unlock it ahead of time, though, because someone might get wise. They’ll be in bed by the time we get in. And something else—you there?”

“Yes.”

“Leda says not to tell anyone she’s still out. If anyone comes looking for her, lock the door and say she’s sick, or pretend you’re asleep, or something like that. O.K.? And when you meet her at the cellar door, bring her robe and slippers.”

“Is it all right? I mean—”

“Look, kid, Leda wouldn’t ask you to do it if it wasn’t. Now be a sweetheart. Promise?”

“I promise,” Mitch said, and the click came in her ear after Jake said, “Fine, baby, don’t forget. One-forty-five.”

She did not bother to finish her bath. Pulling the plug, she gathered her things together and came face to face with Kitten as she was about to leave. “Hey,” Kitten said, “how are you? Why don’t you come down for hot cocoa in the kitchen?”

“O.K.,” Mitch said. “As soon as I get into my pajamas.”

After Mitch was dressed, she wrapped Leda’s thin robe about her slippers and tied them in a ball. On the shelf near the stairway to the cellar, she hid them behind the large can of turpentine.

When she reached the kitchen, there was a huge pot of steaming cocoa on the stove. Marsha was stirring it, the sleeves of her green wool robe pushed up to her elbows, her hair rolled up on red and white rag curlers. At the table, Kitten and Casey and Bebe Duncan talked busily about their evening.

“Hi,” Kitten said. “I suppose you couldn’t drag Leda down.”

Mitch laughed and shook her head. She sat on the high wooden stool and looked at her watch. It was ten minutes after one. Marsha poured the cocoa into the cups and pulled a chair over near the table. They kept on talking. Casey asked Mitch to try out for the swimming team next week, and the chatter about sports grew and lasted. One-twenty.

“Who was your date tonight?” Kitten asked suddenly, turning toward Mitch.

“Oh, Charlie. He’s in some of my classes.”

“Independent?”

The cocoa was cold and flat. “Yes. I—It was my first date with him. He’s been very nice to me.”

“I didn’t mean anything,” Kitten said. “It’s O.K. to date them once in a while. You know, just so it’s not a habit.”

Mitch swallowed. She had expected more trouble from Kitten, but the subject changed again and Charlie was virtually forgotten by everyone. The minute hand seemed to whirl. There was no way to go down the cellar steps without being seen, and the talk was endless. When Marsha moved toward the stove to reheat the remaining cocoa, Mitch felt a warm rising in her chest and her hopes of getting Leda in safely caved in.

“I’m not the least bit sleepy,” she heard Bebe say, “not the least bit.”

* * * * *

Jake came back from the phone booth with a smile. He signaled to Leda to finish her beer. “Now, that’s the kind of roommate to have,” he said. “Lets you take her car and opens the door for you when you come home. I gotta train mine better.”

He paid the check and took her arm. She stumbled on the cobblestone walk that led away from the Fat Lady, a café just on the outskirts of Cranston. It was a popular place for late dates because few of the regular college crowd went there. Those who did were usually there for the same reason—to avoid being seen and to make a few phone calls before starting off someplace else.

The air was brisk, and the ground was still soft from the rain that had fallen earlier in the day. Dizzily, Leda thought of Mitch, and burned to have her and be with her, but in the pocket of her coat her fingers touched the letter. Jan was coming in five days. She laid her head back on the seat in Mitch’s car, and when the motor started and the tires skidded loose, she recalled last night’s dream.

She had been asleep somewhere in a rambling bed with Mitch beside her. They were naked, and covering them there was a brilliant red comforter, and snow was falling around them. Sleepily, and with that surging ache inside of her, she had turned to Mitch’s back and cupped her hands around on Mitch’s breasts and kissed the smooth white skin of her shoulders, and Mitch had turned instantly. She had said, “Leda!” in that startled, shocked voice, and the features of her face fell away and became Jan’s features. And again, “Leda, what on earth are you doing?” The dream had ended there.

“Hell!” Leda swore, and Jake grinned, his eyes on the road. “You got yourself a little load on, miss. Too bad, too—could have been a good night for it.”

“Every night’s a good night for it where you’re concerned.”

“That’s why you love me,” Jake laughed, “my insatiable queen!”

“What time is it?” Leda said.

He turned the corner sharply and she fell over against him.

“We’re on time,” he said. “It’s only one-twenty now. We’ll make it right on the dot.”

* * * * *

The kitchen lights were bright at a quarter to two, and inside, Mitch sat on the stool, her eyes moving from the empty cocoa cup to the cellar stairs just outside the kitchen door on the left. Marsha was rattling on about clothes and only Kitten had left the gathering to go up to bed. Leda was waiting, but there was no way to reach her. Because of Jake. When she thought of him, Mitch glowered at the floor, imagining in a fleeting series of mental pictures what they had done that evening, Jake and Leda. The pictures were sordid and painful, and almost compulsively Mitch forced them to come, and each one was worse. Leda did not love him, and yet she persisted in being with him, always, as if he were a medicine or a drug. He drove Mitch’s car, and called up and asked Mitch to let Leda in, and the whole affair was tiresome and nerve-racking. Mitch vowed she would tell Leda not to see Jake any more. When she got in, and _if_ she got in, Mitch would tell her that she didn’t like it. She loved Leda and Leda loved her. There was no need for this fear and worry and frustration. Suddenly, Mitch realized that Marsha was standing there, speaking to her.

“I said, are you coming to bed? It’s two o’clock.”

Mitch jumped to her feet and hurried to rinse her cup and saucer at the sink. Then, after the light was switched off in the kitchen, she followed Bebe and Marsha up the stairs to the second floor. She would have to wait to run back and open the door for Leda. If she was still there! If everything would only work out! Marsha waved good night, and Bebe wandered off down the hall, humming “St. Louis Blues” aimlessly.

The house was strangely quiet and still. Mitch waited ten minutes in the doorway of the bathroom, and then, softly, the tips of her slippers barely touching the stairs as she moved, she found her way to the cellar stairway, and reaching up behind the large square tin can, she found the rolled ball of clothing that she had left there. Her other hand grabbed the long silver flashlight, and she flinched at the strong creaking of the stairs as she made her way down and ran toward the door in the back room of the cellar. She unbolted it, and Leda, leaning up against it on the outside, nearly fell in. Jake was behind her. She held the door open an inch and whispered something to him before she closed it. Then she turned toward Mitch, and reaching for her waist, she came into her arms, and her kiss smelled heavily of stale liquor and tobacco.

“Get into your robe,” Mitch said. “I’m petrified. You don’t know how my stomach felt when it was time and everyone was still in the kitchen.”

“I could see them,” Leda said, “but I knew you’d come, honey. When you could.”

She began to pull her sweater over her head and unhook her skirt. “I’ll have to undress here and leave my clothes under the pillows until tomorrow. Then if anyone sees us going back upstairs, we can say we came down for Cokes. Couldn’t sleep. I even have two nickels. Look, you go get two Cokes out of the machine. God, my clothes are stuck to me!”

Mitch walked across the room and slid the nickels into the slot. “If I’d thought of the machine, I could have got here on time. I never thought of it.”

She felt the cold ice feeling of the bottles as they hit the small case at the bottom of the machine. “Shall I open them?”

Leda said, “Yes,” and then, “Look, Mitch.”

Mitch turned the flashlight to look at her, and she saw her standing there, bare except for the spike-heeled shoes on her feet. “What are you going to do about it?” Leda laughed. “You aren’t going to just stand there?”

Slowly, Mitch came toward her and set the Cokes on the table. She put out the flashlight, and her hands found Leda’s body. Then for the first time, she was the aggressor. The strength that was sleeping in her awakened. A powerful compulsion welled up inside of Mitch as she felt the pliant curves of Leda’s body. Then they lay together, breathless and filled with a new peace. When she spoke at last, Leda said, “Mitch? Mitch! Oh, God, I love you.”

A feeling of power, and the knowledge of Leda’s quivering submission, filled Mitch as she let her eyes stare up at the blackness in the cellar. When she had gone to Leda, she had not known what she would do, and it happened without thought or care for what followed, but it was easy and natural. She was the conqueror, and it was a sensation abundant in glory and desire.

“Want to stay here for a while?” Leda asked. “It’s too late now for anyone to care whether we’re in our rooms or not. I like it here.... Did you have a good time?”

Mitch said, “Pretty good. We went to a movie. Nothing special.” She rubbed Leda’s back and patted her hair. “How about you?” she said. “How come you were late?”

“Oh, Jake was in one of his usual carnal moods but I was too high and we argued.”

“Then why do you do it, Leda? With Jake, I mean.”

“What?”

“Why do you do it with Jake?”

“Who knows?” Leda said, stretching magnificently, pulling her robe around her. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m trying to prove something.”

“I don’t like it, Leda.”

“_You_ don’t like it! What in hell does that mean?”

“It means,” Mitch said, “that I don’t like you sleeping with a guy when you’re in love with me.” Even to Mitch the words sounded unreal, as if she were playing a game or reading someone else’s lines or living a foolish semi-conscious daydream. Yet that was what she had wanted to say. Leda sat up and moved from Mitch. “Listen,” she said. “Don’t get me wrong. I may be a little uncertain about it, but men come first with me. What do you think we are—engaged to be married? Are you going to propose now, and then settle down with me in a little goddamn vine-covered cottage and raise kids? Sometimes you’re God-awful thick in the head, Mitch.”

“But you said you didn’t even _like_ Jake! Maybe I am thick in the head.”

“Maybe you are! Who said anything about Jake? I said _men_ come first. Men, as distinguished from women! Sure, I’ve got bisexual tendencies, but by God, I’m no damn Lesbian.”

“You said you loved me. Maybe I don’t understand—”

Leda got up from the couch and picked the Coke bottle up. She took the flash in her hand, and then, turning around to face Mitch sitting there, she said, “You don’t understand much at all. But get this! Jan is coming Wednesday. Lay off the love business while she’s around. I’m afraid she doesn’t understand much either, and she sure as hell wouldn’t understand this. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”

“Wait a minute,” Mitch said, catching the girl’s wrist. “Wait a minute, Leda. I love you. Don’t leave it like this. All I know is that I love you.”

“You better get to know men too, kid. I mean that. There are a lot of people who love both and no one gives a damn, and they just say you’re oversexed and they don’t care. But they start getting interested when you stick to one sex. Like you’ve been doing, Mitch. I couldn’t love you if you were a Lesbian.”

“I’m not,” Mitch said, wondering what the word meant. “I’m not. I—I just haven’t met a man yet who makes me feel the way you do.”

“Maybe you don’t give them a chance,” Leda answered. “Come on now. Let’s go to bed. God, it’s three-thirty.”