Chapter IV: Part 4

They tiptoed up the back steps and down the quiet, dimly lighted hall to their room. Leda pulled the covers back and fell into her bed. She murmured a tired good night, and her eyes closed and her breathing came heavily. Mitch did not sleep. She lay tossing about on her bed across from Leda, her mind running through the incidents of the evening to review them and examine them. There was only a fragmentary edge left to the sensuous memory of her loving Leda, and looming now in a sick foreground there was this word.

Slowly Mitch got up and went to the bookshelf, taking from it the blue book, and leafing through it, holding it near the flash that Leda had left on the desk.

Les´bi·an (lĕz´bĭ·ăn) _adj._ 1. Of or pertaining to Lesbos (now
Mytilene), one of the Aegean Islands. 2. Erotic;—in allusion to
the reputed sensuality of the people of Lesbos.

Mitch closed the book and stood staring at the bare light of the street lamp in front of Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon. She could hear Leda’s breath coming slower now and more evenly, in deep sleep, and the dictionary had told her nothing.

Chapter Seven

Mitch sat in the stuffed chair near the window sewing up the burst seam in her coat.

“Well, darling, I wish you could _see_ what Dwight has done with the studio. Of course, it’s the only place in the whole goddamn office building where a body can get a good stiff drink during the day and Dwight says—”

The words went on endlessly, like a radio playing in a room when you do not listen constantly, but now and then, catching illusive scraps of the whole meaning, the crumbs of an endless dialogue. Jan had been there for three days. They were funny days. Leda fastened herself to Jan, hanging on the words and laughing before the pause, compulsively, almost as though she were afraid Jan would not say something hilarious each time she spoke. Jan was beautiful, too, older, with faint lines in her face that became real under the harsh electric ceiling light in Mitch’s and Leda’s room, but still very fine and hardly there at all. Leda sat on the bed next to Jan that afternoon.

“I don’t know if I’ll marry him or not,” she heard Leda say. “Do you like him, Jan?”

“He’s a doll, darling. You know who he reminds me of? Frank Pierce. Member him? Des Moines. Member?”

“Oh, God,” Leda shrieked, laughing. “Him! One perfect rose! Sure, I remember Frank Pierce.”

Jan wore a tight print dress, high black alligator shoes that were strapped around her slender ankles, and her fingers flashed and sparkled with rings and glitter. Mother Nessy had said, “Your jewelry is _ex_-qui-site, Mrs. Taylor. Why, it’s _fab_ulous!” when she met Jan on Wednesday and Jan had dinner in the dining room with the Tri Eps. Mitch sat at another table. From where she sat she could see Leda’s face, her eyes avoiding Mitch and fixed on Jan’s red lips and the whiteness of her teeth. When Jan left the house to return to the hotel for the evening, everyone had flocked to Leda’s room to say how they liked her mother and what fun it must be to have such a young mother. Then when they were gone and it was late, Leda did not talk to Mitch or come to her there in the night. And Mitch worried.

She had found the explanation for the word in a thick volume on the psychology shelf in the library. A Lesbian was abnormal, a female who could not have satisfactory relations with a male, but only with another female, and Mitch knew it had been that way. A bisexual could love both sexes, and Leda loved Mitch, and she was with Jake like that too. Mitch thought back to the crushes she had had in boarding school, awful emotional orgies in which she had idolized certain teachers, and Miss English, the dietician, and there had never been any boys. Until Leda, there had been no one who had set her whole body pulsing with the sweet pain and the glory in the end. That was abnormal.

Jan was looking at Mitch, waiting for an answer to the question Mitch did not hear.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”

Leda smiled. “Jan said, ‘Who’s your man of the hour?’ It’s Charlie, isn’t it, Mitch? Isn’t he the one?”

The needle came through the wool in the skirt and pricked Mitch’s finger. She tried to force a smile, but her lips felt dry and stiff. She knew that Leda was baiting her, trying to indicate the proper answer to Mitch. “I guess so,” Mitch said. “I guess he’s the one.”

There was a mixed look of repulsion and pity on Jan’s face when she regarded Mitch. Mitch could feel it, like the heat of a warm sun, uncomfortable and sickly. She wished that they would go someplace and not stay here in the room and she felt that Jan knew she was abnormal.

“Well, what’s he like?” Jan continued. “I bet he’s a big wheel on campus and you’ll be wearing his pin before long.”

Leda jumped up to change the subject and grabbed a yellow envelope from the desk. “I forgot to show you the pictures,” she said. “I forgot to show you the pictures Jake and I took on our last picnic.” She fumbled with the seal on the envelope until the pictures fell out on the bed and Jan picked them up and riffled through them, laughing and screaming out her words the way she did. Mitch was grateful when Casey poked her head in the door and said, “Phone for you, Mitch. Want to take it in the hall?”

“Don’t let us disturb you, honey,” Jan sang out, but Mitch had already moved for the door and followed the blue hall rug down to the booth near the bathroom.

“Peculiar girl,” Jan said. “Certainly is awkward.”

Leda passed another snapshot to Jan. It would be over tomorrow. Jan would leave and it would be over, Leda thought, and then she could make it up to Mitch. It had been horrible, the last few days, treating Mitch as though she were a piece of furniture, Jan’s presence heightening the guilt that Leda nurtured.

“Is she popular?”

“Oh, I don’t know, Jan,” Leda answered. “She goes out a lot. Really, she can be sweet.”

“Well, _I_ haven’t even seen her smile. Not once. Her lips just stretch, but she doesn’t smile. You don’t even seem like friends.”

Leda said, “We get along all right.”

Jan lit a cigarette and stuck the end into a long ivory holder. “I do like the other girls,” she said. “I thought you’d probably get yourself all graduated before I could get down here and see your sorority house and meet everyone. Dwight is hell about traveling. I told you I went to Louisville by myself for the fabric show, and he just stayed behind. He _hates_ to travel.”

Leda had met Dwight during the summer. He was a fat, greasy man with a stubby cigar, wet on the end, hanging there from his mouth, and his head thinly covered with single strands of black hair that began inches back from his high forehead. On his little finger he wore a huge diamond ring, and there was a sweet, sickly smell of cologne and tobacco about him. Dwight was a big man in fabrics and Jan worked with him. She would come home and open the door and Leda would hear his voice behind Jan’s, and then the shaking of the cocktail mixer and the ice cubes, the low music on the phonograph and Jan’s laughter ringing through the rooms. He had looked at Leda and shown his brown teeth and he’d said, “Well, now, by God. An apple never falls far from the tree!”

“You going to marry Dwight?” Leda asked.

Jan inhaled and let the smoke come out in tiny round clouds. “I don’t know. I’d never have to worry where my next thousand is coming from. He hasn’t asked me yet, you know.”

Glancing at her watch, Leda said, “Maybe we better go downstairs. It’s almost time for dinner. Fish tonight.”

“Hell!” Jan swore. “I abhor fish! Member Ted Thorpton? Member the way he used to drag me around to those damn fish houses for lobster Newburgh? I think you came along a couple of times too, honey. You member? Washington? Member that place we went down a gangplank to get to and there was sawdust on the floor and that ungodly fishy odor?”

Leda nodded. She remembered.

* * * * *

Robin Maurer put the arm back in its cradle and left the phone booth. Lucifer was leaning against the brick wall of the dorm reading the newspaper.

“Any luck?” he said.

“No, it’s too late for tonight. She says she’s got some kind of a special date with a guy named Charlie. No telling what that sorority has thought up. She’s probably going off to smoke opium someplace.”

“Why didn’t you ask her to join us? Her and that Charlie horse?”

“I did. She said she couldn’t. She said it was a special night. Who knows?”

“Did you tell her the party was right across the street at Delta Phi? Maybe she’s lazy. Maybe she thought it was someplace she’d have to hike to.”

“No,” Robin said, pulling a leaf off the tree as they passed down the walk from Main Dorm. “I think she might have a good date or something and wants to be alone with him. Then too, maybe the Tri Eps forbade her to be seen with an old reprobate like me.” They turned the corner and kicked the leaves while they walked. “Tell me something, Luke,” she said, “honestly.”

“Sure.”

“How about your fraternity brothers? Don’t they give you a bad time because you date me? I know how independents go over in Greek Town.”

Lucifer reached over for her hand and swung it back and forth while they walked along. “Naw,” he said, “not at our house. We ain’t rich and we don’t know anyone who is. We ditched the rule book a long time ago. That’s how come I got in. You know, I’m pure Indian, with a little Russian on my mother’s side, and a little Chinese on my father’s. Seriously, Robbie, it ain’t that way at the house. Sure, we got eager beavers with all kinds of fool notions, but none of them go into effect. I couldn’t stomach it.”

“I wish Mitch would get out of Tri Ep. I have a feeling she’s not going to stomach it either. The whole crowd’s too fast.”

“How about that Leda?” Lucifer whistled. “Woooooowwww!”

* * * * *

The candles were lighted on the tables in the Tri Ep dining room. At the head table, Leda and Jan sat opposite Mother Nessy, and Marsha sat beside her. Above the other voices singing out, Mitch could hear Kitten Clark’s lively soprano. Nessy tapped on her glass, giving the signal to eat. Mitch sat at a side table in the back of the room. Her fork stabbed at the thin pieces of white fish, and pushed them in the mashed potatoes before she raised the fork to her mouth and swallowed the tasteless concoction. She thought of calling Robin back and telling her that Charlie and she would meet them after all, but then she could not. It was all planned. She would pick him up in the car at eight-thirty. They would have to be alone, Mitch knew, or it would never work. The food felt heavy in her stomach, and she took each bite with a long sip of water. Casey sat across from her, still talking about the swimming team, encouraging Mitch to join it.

“You were terrific the other day,” she said. “With enough practice you could develop fast.”

“I’ll come over again on Monday,” Mitch told her. Through the maze of faces, Mitch saw Leda look at her and then away. She heard Jan’s voice, louder than any other, and the inevitable laughter following what she said. Mitch wondered if she ever said anything you were not supposed to laugh at.

“How’s your backstroke? That’s what we need. Someone with a neat backstroke.”

“I’ll have to get more time in. It used to be my best stroke.”

“Say, wasn’t that Robin Maurer on the phone?”

“Yes.”

The others at the table looked up, interested. “I thought I recognized her voice,” Casey said. “How is she?”

“Pretty good. She’s living at the dorm.”

“Too bad about Robin,” Casey sighed. “She just wasn’t sorority material.”

It was during dessert, when they sang the “Sweetheart Song,” that Mitch could feel Leda’s eyes watching her. Heat poured through Mitch, and there was a light yearning in her breasts that seeped through the rest of her body and warmed her.

“Tri Epsilon is a sisterhood
Of love that lasts forever,
Where memories are golden ones
That are forgotten never!

“Tri Epsilon, Tri Epsilon,
For her name we will strive
So long as we are sisters,
So long as we’re alive.”

Marsha led the applause, and then, rising and standing at her place at the head table, she waited for the room to quiet down. “Remember,” she said, “closing hours are at one tonight because of the game tomorrow. That’s an extra half hour, so don’t anyone be late. And now I think we all ought to say good-by to Mrs. Taylor. She’s leaving us tomorrow, and I know we’ve all enjoyed her visit.” Marsha hummed the note. The words sounded sad and heartfelt.

“Won’t you come back? We’ll miss you.
Will you remember our love?
Good-by, good luck, we’ll miss you,
We send our prayer for you above.
Will you remember our love?”

Jane Bell jumped up and started a round of “For She’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” The smile was glued on Jan’s face, and Mitch could hear her saying, “Lovely, simply lovely,” all the while. Mitch wondered if her mother would have said that, and if they would have sung to her. And what her mother would have thought if she were alive and knew what Mitch was planning. She pushed her chair back with the others while Mother Nessy rose regally and took Marsha’s arm, to be led from the dining room.

“Why don’t you stay for more coffee?” Casey said to Mitch.

Mitch explained that she had an early date. She swallowed what was there in her cup, and hurried upstairs to dress before Leda and Jan returned to the room. They were going out with Jake for the evening. Jan thought it would be “a perfect riot.”

* * * * *

The car kicked up the gravel when it left the drive and spun around the corner. Mitch was not used to driving at night, but she knew the town well now. She turned on the radio and a lusty torch song sang out at her. The streets were not very crowded, and passing through Greek Town, Mitch saw the lights in other houses, shining and showing the figures of boys and girls moving in the large rooms. As she came near the campus, she admired the long walks, well lighted, and the great oak trees bordering the walks, and a few solitary figures strolling along them. The traffic increased as she approached the main street, and went fast down to the light. After she left it, she stopped again a few blocks down in front of the drugstore. Charlie was waiting there. He had a neat black-and-gray checked sports coat and gray pants, and under his arm a paper bag. When he saw her pull up, he grinned and hurried toward the car.

“Hi,” he called. “Right on time.”

He opened the door and moved in next to her. As they drove out toward the Creek Road, he said, “I got the bottle. You know, it’ll be fun. We’ve got a real moon, too. Did you remember the blankets?”

Mitch nodded and motioned toward the back seat, where the brown blankets were folded beside the bottles of ginger ale and the opener.

“I brought sandwiches too,” Charlie said. “Had Doc make some up for me. Say, this was a swell idea. How’d you ever think of it?”

The husky crooner sang out on the radio and a tenor saxophone chimed in and gave the music a soothing, smoothing air. Mitch put her foot down harder on the gas pedal.

* * * * *

It was one of those clear, brisk November nights and the ground was hard and cold when they sat down.

“I got rye,” Charlie said. “Supposed to be easier on you. I’m not much of a drinker, myself.”

Mitch spread one blanket on the ground while Charlie dragged the other over and the bottles of ginger ale. He took paper cups from the bag with the liquor bottle inside, and pried the tops off the bottles. Pouring two drinks, he set them on the ground beside Mitch.

“My first time out here,” he said after he sipped his drink. “You ever been out here before?”

“No,” Mitch said, remembering the last time. “No.”

The air felt good on her face, and from the car a few feet away Mitch could hear the lush tones of a low piano. Above them hung a round moon the way it looks in November. She thought of Leda, and leaning back until her head touched the blanket, she closed her eyes and pictured it again. _You aren’t going to just stand there? I couldn’t love you if you were a Lesbian._

With her hand supporting her head like that, she could hear the steady tick-tick of her wrist watch. He was beside her, talking and filling the paper cups with fresh drinks, then reaching for her hand. She turned toward him, and they kissed. She could hear him sigh, “Susan,” in the breaking away, holding her. His heart was beating very fast. They kissed again, and this time Mitch tried to imagine Leda and for a moment she could feel her lips until the roughness of his cheeks brushed against hers. She drank her third drink straight down.

“Do you want to know something?” he said. His voice sounded strange and falsely hallowed. Mitch felt an impulse to smile. She knew what he would say. “I love you, Susan. I do, no kidding.”

In the near distance Mitch could hear the announcer: “United States Weather Bureau forecast for Cranston and vicinity: Ten P.M. temperature, forty-five degrees; humidity, fifty per cent. Barometer, two nine point nine nine, rising. Tonight, clear, becoming cloudy toward morning....”

Charlie’s hand climbed from her waist until it touched her breast and then drew back sharply. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Susan.”

“Don’t be,” Mitch said, and then, “I love you too—Charlie.”

He was gentle and kind. There was a slow awkwardness to his kisses, and his hands came on her almost apologetically, fumbling, his voice mumbling, “Susan,” over and over, and the stiffness to his body. When he found her, she said, “Charlie, let’s move to the car.”

They left the blanket and the bottles, and as he pushed the seat back for her, he pressed the tab of the radio off. Sitting on the leather seat, he put his arm around her and held her there, his lips touching her neck, wet and hot on her skin. “Gee,” he kept saying. “Oh, gee, Susan. Is it all right? Should we—”

Mitch was afraid because it still was not the way it was with Leda. It was empty and aimless. He was sweet and shy and he loved her. If it was not now, then when? When ever? She reached out and touched his hair, a cheated feeling inside of her when her hand touched his ears and his neck and there was no hair there. “Do _you_ want to?” she said. “Do you really want to?”

He could barely talk. His voice was a thick whisper. “Gosh,” he said. “Oh, yes. I do. Listen, Susan, I’ve never touched a girl. Honestly, never once in my life. I—I have something in my wallet. Look, I know what you must think because I have it with me, but I swear—I swear that I just always carry it and I never thought—”

Mitch said, “I know. It’s all right.”

She lay down on the leather seat, cramped, so that her feet came off the end. Charlie was kneeling on the floor of the car, and, kneeling like that, he began to kiss her again, and pull at her sweater, until he had it open and the hooks undone.

For a long time he kissed her, and the open windows let the breeze in.

“Susan,” he kept muttering, “Susan, I really love you. I really love you, Susan.”

“I know,” she said. “I know you do.”

“You’re cold,” he said. “I can feel you’re cold when I touch you.”

Mitch felt the chill through her whole body. “Hurry,” she said. “Please hurry.”

His hands clutched her desperately, and he began to whine in a strange way. After a moment he sat back on the floor.

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t.”

“It’s all right, Charlie. I told you it was all right. I’ll put my sweater on. Then I won’t be cold and you won’t have to hurry and—”

“No,” he whispered. “No. I just—can’t.”

His shoulders shook violently as he began to cry.

Mitch dressed while he sat there. She got out of the car and went over to the ground where the blankets were. When she came back with them, he was sitting up on the seat in the back, staring down at the floor.

“Charlie—” Mitch began.

He shook his head and did not look at her. “I want to go home,” he said. “Just drop me off when we get back in town.”

“I’m sorry. I—Was it me?”

“I don’t want to talk about it! I don’t want to ever talk about it!”

She put the blankets down beside him and got into the front seat. When they were off the dirt road and on the highway, she snapped the radio on again. Through the mirror, she could see his figure slumped over, his hands holding his chin, his eyes fixed on the side window. When they reached town, he got out of the car and did not look back.

* * * * *

They sat on Mother Nesselbush’s purple love seat, in the small beige-walled anteroom of her suite on the first floor of the Tri Epsilon house. There were Mother Rasmussen, Mother Muriel, and Mother Carter, seated across from Nessy, whose large hips hugged the lime-colored cushions of the chair facing them.

“I thought she was very strange,” Mother Carter said, balancing the plate on her lap. There was a huge mound of whipped cream piled high above the fresh red fruit and the yellow cake. “I mean, hitting a boy with a vase.”

“A what!” Mother Muriel gasped and licked the spoon from her own shortcake. “You mean she did that?”

“Now, now,” Mother Nessy said, “let sleeping dogs die.” She tittered. “After all, the whole thing was forgotten. He did attend our housewarming with Susan, so you can see it was forgotten.”

There was an elaborate silence, except for the clink of the spoons on the plates. Mother Muriel had a knowing smile at the edge of her lips. She was perfectly aware that Mother Nesselbush was trying to quell the story. Every Saturday night they met in one or the other’s small suite, exchanging gossip, and relating the exciting little incidents attached to the duties of housemother. Mother Muriel and Mother Carter agreed that it was not quite fair to include Nessy in their parties, because Nessy was a Tri Ep alumna. She could hardly be expected to give a fair or accurate appraisal of the situation in her house. It was so obvious that she was biased. Mother Rasmussen, on the other hand, was a thorough dunderhead. She rarely had anything to say. Each week she attended the get-together, ate heartily, and seemed to listen to the talk somewhat vaguely, with an aimless smile on her face, perpetually scratching the exzema on her hands.

“At any rate,” Mother Nessy moved to conclude the conversation about Susan Mitchell, “the alums are so pleased that we took this girl, they’re sending us a splendid set of sterling. It should arrive any day now.”

The front door slammed vigorously. Mother Nesselbush moved to the curtains of her French doors and stared into the hall. “Speak of the devil,” she said, “and the devil appears.” She looked at her watch, and noted that it was just eleven-forty-five. “Early, too,” she added, “for a one-o’clock night.”

She pulled the French doors open and called after Mitch. “Susan, dear, are you all right?”

“Fine, thanks.” Mitch started up the steps but stopped halfway.

“Come down here,” Mother Nesselbush said, “and meet my guests.”

“I can’t, Nessy. I look just terrible.”

“I’d appreciate it, Susan. They’ll understand. Now, come on.”

Mitch turned and walked back down. Mother Nessy took her arm and led her into the room. Instantly Mitch recognized the white, pasty face of Mother Carter. She smiled grimly at her, and she said, “Hello, Mother Carter.”

She said hello to the others, passing by them, shaking their wrinkled, bony hands, being careful not to upset their plates.

Her heart was pounding faster as she stood there and made polite conversation. They all seemed to be observing her as though she were a freak of some sort. Then Mother Nessy said, “Your father called tonight, dear. He was very anxious because you haven’t written in weeks.”

Mitch passed her hand through her hair uncomfortably. “Gee,” she said, “I guess I just forgot.”

“It’s easy to forget when you’re young.” Mother Muriel sighed.

Mitch stood there, uncertain how she could leave them. She said, “Well, thanks, Mother Nessy. I’m so messy, I think I’ll take a good hot bath. And I’ll drop him a line tonight.”

“Do that,” Mother Nessy said, her hand around Mitch’s waist, “because you know how parents worry, dear. I know when my son doesn’t write, I just get wild that something’s happened to him.”

A faint smile flickered across Mitch’s face as she turned at the French doors and looked back at the women there. When the doors were shut, she went toward the kitchen, swung through the door, and turned the light on. She poured a tall glass of milk and spread butter on a piece of bread from the square red tin. Sitting on the stool, she felt a knot, burning and twisting, inside her, and her eyes felt tired and irritated. The news of her father’s call was the final thrust, the inevitable irony of the evening. She ached to call him back and tell him that she wanted to come home, but she knew what he would say. He would say, “Now, pretty black-eyed Susan, a big girl like you isn’t homesick.” Or he would have one of his standard sentences for her, like the signs that hung around the walls of his office: “A quitter never wins and a winner never quits.” “Keep on keeping on.” “If someone hands you a lemon, squeeze it and start a lemonade stand.”

There was a free feeling in Mitch about Leda. At that moment she could not have cared less about Leda, she told herself; she simply could not care less. Charlie was a name. There was no Charlie and no Creek Road and nothing that had happened had happened. She sipped her milk slowly. She thought back on the day she had won the swimming championship for Gross Hall. How everyone had cheered and yelled her name. Four years ago, when she was in her first year at Gross.

The house was quiet. Mitch finished her milk and walked up the back stairs. There were a few lights on in the rooms she passed. One girl’s head was bent over a book as she sat at her desk. Mitch went on until she reached her room. After she undressed, she lay on the bed with the lights off and the covers kicked back. She unbuttoned the top of her pajamas and drew a deep breath, but it was unsatisfying and stuffy. Mental pieces of the cracked picture of Charlie and her seemed to hang around in her thoughts and she could see some of them, but she did not think about them. She thought of sleeping and she slept.

They were pointing at her and laughing. She was running down the street naked and her body was changing. At a corner she stopped to catch her breath and lean on the fat green storage box. She called out to them to stop laughing at her and her voice was deep and low like a man’s. Leda tried to get out of the storage box, but she held the door tight because Leda was naked too, and if she got out they would know. She saw her father coming down the street, calling her name, softly, calling her name, and she felt his hands on her shoulders.

“It’s going to be all right.”

“Leave me alone, Dad.”

“No, Mitch, wake up, honey. It’s me. It’s going to be different now.”

“No. No, go on.”

“Mitch, Jan’s gone back. She gets me excited, sometimes I lose my head when Jan’s around. She makes me nervous. Don’t send me away now, Mitch. Now that it’s over. I’m back here, Mitch.”

Her eyes opened and it was dark. Leda’s arm was holding her as she lay in bed beside Mitch. She was talking, and as she talked, Mitch could smell the odor of beer on her breath. Her own mouth tasted foul from the rye. She had not had enough to be drunk from it, but the taste was still there. Was Charlie drunk? He couldn’t do it to her. There was something wrong with her because he didn’t want to talk about it and he didn’t look back at her. Leda clung to her.

“Mitch, please talk to me.”

“I don’t have anything to say.”

“Don’t you love me? Don’t you even want to touch me?”

The words brought the stir back inside Mitch and she felt a warm spring of desire, but it was physical and opposite from the way she knew she was then. “You said—you said you couldn’t love a—Lesbian.”

“Oh, God, kid, listen—I talk crazy. I’m crazy the way I talk. You’re no more that than I am. Hell, you know that. Look, Mitch, it was because Jan was here. I said so many damn things. Jan causes that. I know the way I treated you. I’m sorry. God, I am!”

Mitch didn’t want to, but she lay there and felt it happening. She squeezed her eyes shut and lay there.

“I can’t do what you can do,” Leda said huskily. “I’m not like you, but I love you.”

“Why am I different?” Mitch wanted to know why. She wanted to stop Leda’s hands and find out why.

“You’re really stronger than I am. You really are. When you had me the other night, I knew it. It was—wonderful.”

“It was different because I—”

“Yes,” Leda said, “because you’re strong. But you’ll see. I’ll learn to do it like that too, because I love you.”

“I didn’t learn,” Mitch said. “I didn’t learn.”

Leda kissed her. “Maybe it was natural.” She kissed her again and her hand stayed there, hurting Mitch now.

Mitch sat up in bed. “It wasn’t,” she said. “It was not! Leave me alone. You can’t love me. Leave me alone, and—ohhh!” The sobbing was too loud. Leda hurried out of the bed and into her pajamas. She turned her covers down, and when she tried to make Mitch stop crying, Mitch wailed louder. “Someone will hear you,” Leda said, “and they’ll come,” but the sounds stopped in minutes, and no one came.

* * * * *

There was a single light above the bureau in the small room. The heat of the light bulb had burned a brown imprint in the dull green lampshade. Around the room on the walls there was a worn pattern of hounds, and men dressed in red coats, which were once brilliant red, but now dirty and faded. On the floor there was a skimpy rag scatter rug, and there was a single closet to the left of the door. Near the one window that looked out on the Cranston reservoir and water tower, there was a small cot covered sparsely with a brown Army blanket. He sat on the cot, an open Bible in his lap, his face covered with his hands. Next to the bureau there was a sink, and he got up and went to the sink and took the soap and ran the water. He washed his hands and dried them on the shabby white towel, returning to stand near the cot and stare out the window. Then he picked the Bible up again, and read aloud softly.

“Against thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight; that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity....”

He could not finish. He threw the Bible on the cot. The gold letters spelling out “Charles Edmonson” seemed brighter in the dull lighting of the room. Remembering Susan Mitchell, he blamed her. He could hear the laughter of other boys coming up the stairs, and the heavy treading of their feet on the warped wooden floors in the hall. Doors slammed and again there was a stillness except for the very distant murmuring of voices through the thin walls. His mother’s picture was set up on the bureau and he looked at it for a long time. Beside the picture there was a hard-covered notebook with the words “Record Book” in white on the black cover. He opened it and turned the pages. Unscrewing the pen on the top of the bureau, he took the pen and the notebook and went back to the cot. Before he wrote, he thought a minute.

November 5th

I was wrong about Susan. I admit that it was my fault too, but it
was her idea to get the liquor and go out there with the
blankets. She did not try to stop me. I had too much to drink and
I never acted that way before. I thank God in heaven that I was
stopped—that God knew best for me, and that He gave me my
warning. I shall never lose his faith in me again....

He looked back at what he wrote. He scratched out the small letter “h” on the “his” and capitalized it. Then he put the record book back on the bureau, stared again at the picture of his mother, and moved to the sink, turning the tap water on gently, and reaching for the soap with his hands.

Chapter Eight

The green line at the bottom of the swimming pool grew fat and then thin with the even ripples of the blue water. The room, long and wide, was lined to the ceiling with tile, and the voices of the girls assembled there rang as though they were all shouting at one another from across the water and from the balcony stairs. Mitch stood with the others along the edge of the pool, the pungent smell of chlorine in her nostrils, a washed-out gray tank suit clinging to her body, freshly wet from the sprinkler through which she had passed at the entrance to the locker room.

Miss Jennings, the instructor, separated from the rest by the fact that she alone wore a gay plaid swimming suit and carried a whistle on a string around her neck and wore no cap, called the role.

“Abbott,” she began, “Barry, Craig, Caroway, Feitzer, Jamison, Lathrop, Maurer, Mitchell....”

Mitch turned sharply. Robin was here, then. She scanned the faces of those around her, strangely alike with the white caps pulled down to their ears and across their foreheads, leaving no clues as to the color of their hair. Robin was standing at the head of the pool near the diving board. She waved and smiled, but it was against the rules to move about when roll was being taken.

Standing beside Mitch, Marybell Van Casey said, “I didn’t know Robin Maurer could swim.”

“All in, now!”

The water was too warm and it tasted bad. Mitch dove down to the wobbly green line and brought up the round black rubber puck as she came to the top, letting it sink again as she caught her breath and trod water while she listened to the instructions for the relay with the Australian crawl. Then the backstroke, the flutter kick, the side stroke, and the whistle.

“All out!”

They all stood dripping at the sides, pulling their caps up from their ears so they could hear better, punching the sides of their heads to let the water out.

“As it stands, the following stay: Caroway, Lathrop, Maurer, Mitchell, Marin, Orhoski, Rogers, Van Casey, and Walker. Next week, we’ll narrow down to six, with the others doubling. Play period for those who want to stay.” She blew a shrill period with her whistle, and climbed up on the white ladder chair.

“Wonderful,” Casey said, slipping as she reached Mitch. “Two Tri Eps made it. Best ever. We’ll be there next week, too.”

It had been easy. Mitch smiled back at Casey. Over her shoulder she saw Robin leaving, going toward the lockers. “I’m not going to stay,” Mitch said. “I’m pooped. See you at the house.”

She caught up with Robin at the showers.

“Well, stranger!” Robin said. “Say, you’re good. I saw that crawl.”

“Robin, I’m sorry I couldn’t make it Saturday. Thanks again for asking.”

“Forget it,” Robin said, pulling her suit off and working the knobs of the shower. “I know what you have to go through over in Greek Town. Social calendar like the Astors.”

Mitch said, “No, I went out alone. With an independent.” She wished that Robin would put a towel around her. It was hard to talk with her and keep looking above her head or directly at her eyes or across the room. Not down at her naked body.

“Gee, honey. You’re brave.” She tested the running water. “Just right,” she said. “Wait after you get dressed. We’ll catch a Coke.”

The bathing suit fell to the floor in a tightly curled knot, and the towel felt good. There was a slight feeling of elation over Miss Jennings’ announcement that she was not eliminated yet. It would be easy to make the team, Mitch thought, and that would help at the house. She would know some of the others better, like Casey and Marsha and Jane Bell. The thought made her feel clean, not like the thought of Leda and those things. But where was Leda? She had spent yesterday with Jake, from early morning to closing hours, and Jan was gone. It was because of the way she had cried Saturday, and Leda was proud. Mitch knew that Leda had done it purposely, to hurt her.

“I’m going with Jake for the day,” she had said Sunday morning, early, after breakfast and the phone call she had made. “See you around.”

“Hey, Mitch, you dressed?”

“In a minute.”

“I’ll be drying my hair.”

Mitch zipped the side of her skirt and pulled the sweater over her damp head. With the towel around her shoulders, she combed and parted her hair and took the lipstick to the mirror. I love Leda, she thought. I love Leda. I hurt her. I’ll always hurt her because I am that way. I’m what she said I was. Leda loves both but I love one. In the mirror, the wetness of her hair gave it a bobbed look, and the reflection was like that of a young boy. Mitch moved her hands up and pushed her hair back from her ears and studied the effect. Her face looked fresh from the swim, her eyes bright, the straight hair darker, and slicked back mannishly.

“Hey,” Casey said, standing behind her in her swim suit, “you look like Sonny Tufts with lipstick.”

Mitch jumped and stepped away from the mirror. She stuttered and felt heat rise to her head. “I w-was w-w-orrying ab-bout what to d-do with my hair.”

“Well, don’t get so upset. Why don’t you dry it first?”

“Y-yes,” Mitch said, hurrying away toward the dryers.

Casey flung the towel over her shoulder and moved down past the white curtains to an empty booth. She thought, She’s an odd one.

* * * * *

Robin twisted the straw in her Coke glass. “I suppose you’re trying to make the better of the bitter,” she said, “but you don’t sound very happy.”

“Most of it’s my own fault,” Mitch answered. “It’s because of the way I am.”

“Look, Mitch! You’re a healthy, normal American girl, by Jupiter, and that bunch is from hunger. You don’t know. Over at the dorm, everything’s easy, the way it should be. Some people fit like gloves into that sorority routine, and others—well, they’re better off elsewhere. Take a tip from me, sweetie, come on over to the dorm. We have lots of extra beds.”

The minute hand on the wall clock moved forward with a perceptible jerk. “French class,” Mitch said, fumbling in her coat for a dime to lay on the table. “I’ll have to run. I don’t know, Robin. Maybe I just won’t fit in anyplace. You don’t know me.”

Robin gathered her books up and pushed two nickels across the table. “I know _you_. There’s nothing wrong with you that a good taste of independent life won’t cure. See you next week—and think it over. Gad, I sound like a recruiting station.”

* * * * *

Even if Charlie hadn’t acted that way in French class, Mitch would have gone there anyway, eventually. He merely added to the reasons. It was happening all the time, everyplace. In the gym earlier, the way she had felt when Robin was naked, and in front of the mirror with her hair like that. Ever since she had heard the word. It was like picking up a book and reading the things the main character did and said and his description and thinking vaguely, at first, Why, I’m that way a little. Then more, until the realization comes like a giant boulder down the hill and crashes into you, pulverizing you with the knowledge that this _is_ you, this character. “Any similarity to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.” It says here.

Charlie sat in the back by the window. She could feel his eyes. The short walk between the gym and Jacob Hall had taken the curl from her hair and left it the way it was before she had rolled it on pins and sat with the hot air blowing it dry under the big machine. It was straight. _Why_ couldn’t he do it? What was it she had read? Exactly? “A strong congenital trend ... risk to associate with a girl who has these traits....” What? Did he know about her? He had brought that thing in his wallet and he had wanted to. Was there something on her body that showed it? She squirmed uncomfortably in her seat, and listened to the slow, calculated conjugation of the verb _avoir_.

Her name was called. “_Levez-vous! Allez au tableau noir et conjugez le verbe être._”

The chalk dropped from her hand in the middle. She turned to pick it up and saw him look away from her and out the window. He knew.

At the end, he didn’t wait. Mitch walked toward the library alone. There was a huge arch above the door, and inside the halls were quiet except for the slight tap of the shoes on the marble floors as the boy behind her walked down toward the Science Reading Room. At the head of the stairs, Mitch turned right and walked to the silent room where the tables were in rows, and the people at the tables sat hushed before their work. She picked the volume out easily from the shelf and chose a chair at a back table where no one sat.

“The female homosexual, the Lesbian, often preys on girls who are not true homosexuals. Such girls may enjoy men, and be capable of normal heterosexual life if they do not become involved with a genuine Lesbian type, whose technique is often more skillful than that of many of her young men suitors.”

_Men come first with me._

_Maybe it was natural._

“A normal man finds sex with this type of woman extremely difficult, if not impossible.”

_I can’t._

_No, I just can’t!_

“Many times, under the proper circumstances, a female homosexual may learn to control, if not eliminate, her active homosexual tendencies once she is removed from an environment where the temptation is great. In the case of....”

_Take a tip from me, sweetie, come on over to the dorm._

“But, on the other hand, a change in environment may only lead to new conquests, a fresh hunting ground.”

Mitch closed the book and put it back on the shelf. A dog wandered listlessly into the large room. He barked, wagging his shabby white tail, looking around at everyone. Laughter rocked the silence, and the dog increased his barking, running excitedly from table to table. The librarian in the room, a thin woman with pursed lips, hurried feverishly toward the fleeing animal.

“Here,” she whispered ridiculously. “Here, here.”

Mitch sat down again at the back table. She watched the woman take the dog by the collar and lead him with his back feet skidding across the floors and out the door. Again the hush fell back save for a few lingering giggles. Mitch tore a large sheet of paper from her notebook and wrote, stopping now and then to stare gloomily at the books that circled the wall. From a good distance down the hall, she could hear the dog barking in another room.

* * * * *

It was a gray afternoon, and the sun was hidden behind a sheet of dull sky, with the wind kicking the leaves along the curb in front of the Tri Epsilon house, where they stood talking.

“I’ll pick you up after the meeting,” he said. “We could squeeze in a few beers at Rick’s.”

“Not tonight, Jake-O. I’m tired. Think I’ll catch up on sleep. Those Monday-night chapter orgies wear me down.”

She was thinking that Mitch would be waiting in the room. Before dinner she would tell Mitch that she was going out with Jake when the chapter meeting let out, and then she would surprise her. She’d say, “Do you think I could go out with him when I knew you were up here? I can’t kid myself any longer, Mitch.” Maybe that would erase the nervous undercurrent of tension between them since Jan had gone. It would be more dramatic that way, surprising her like that.

“O.K., I’ll give you a ring.” He took the pipe out of his mouth and leaned over to kiss her quickly. Jake was funny the way he sang aloud in the streets. He walked away singing, “Oh, here by the fire we defy the frost and storm,” and Leda heard him as she walked up the steps and came into the front room of the house. The thought came that if Jake were gone forever, it would be strange, but if the choice were to be made, it would be Jake who would go. Not Mitch. Was she upstairs? She teased her own curiosity, prolonging it, sweetening it by tarrying in the hall downstairs.

To the left of the dining room there was a small alcove, with square boxes and names printed evenly above each one. In her box there was an envelope with her name scrawled on the outside, and no postage or address. Girls were coming down the stairs, milling around in the halls, waiting for the dinner gong. They were reading the papers, playing cards, singing at the piano, and talking together in close, separate groups. Leda took the envelope to the scarlet chair in the corner near the entrance to Mother Nessy’s suite. She ripped the seal open and held the thin notebook paper in her hand.

Dear Leda,

This letter is for you alone. Please tear it up when you are
through.

More than anything else I want you to understand what I’m going
to say here, and why I’m saying it. I want to leave the sorority
and become an independent. Maybe it’ll be the best thing for me,
and maybe it’ll be just another defeat, but I have to do it.
Leda, darling, you know that I love you. You know it, even though
I haven’t shown it the past few days. I’ve been worried and
afraid, and now I know for sure what’s wrong with me. I suppose I
should go to a doctor, but I don’t have the nerve, and I’m going
to try to help myself as best I can.

Lesbian is an ugly word and I hate it. But that’s what I am,
Leda, and my feelings toward you are homosexual. I had no
business to ask you to stop seeing Jake, to try to turn you into
what I am, but please believe me, I didn’t know myself what I was
doing. I guess I’m young and stupid and naïve about life, and I
know that you warned me about the direction my life was taking
when you told me to get to know men. I tried, Leda. But it was
awful. Even Charlie knows what I am now. I think that if I go to
an independent house, away from you, the only person I love, I’ll
be able to forget some of the temptation. If I stay in the
sorority, I’ll only make you unhappy and hurt you. I love you too
much to do that.

Please announce that I am leaving during the chapter meeting
tonight. Don’t tell them why, please, because I want to
straighten myself out and I don’t want people to know. Tell them
that I thank them for all they’ve done, but that I’d rather live
somewhere else because I don’t fit in here.

I know how you’ll feel about me after reading this. I’ll try to
stay out of your way. Tonight I am going to eat dinner downtown,
and then during chapter meeting I’ll pack most of my things and
move to the hotel until I get a room at the dorm. Robin Maurer is
going to help me.

There’s nothing else to say but good-by, I’m sorry, and I do love
you, Leda.

MITCH

The dinner gong sounded out the first seven notes of “Yankee Doodle.” Mother Nesselbush stood in the doorway of her suite. She looked down at Leda, who was sitting there holding the paper the note was written on, not moving. It was customary for one of the girls to lead her in to dinner. Marsha usually handled the task because she was president, but Marsha was hurrying to finish the last-minute preparations in the Chapter Room for the meeting. Mother Nesselbush cleared her throat, but to no avail. Leda sat still and pale and Nessy bent down.

“Are you all right, dear?”

“Yes.”

“That was the dinner bell, you know.”

Leda said, “Yes.”

“Would you like to escort me to my table?”

Leda looked up at her, a thin veil of tears in her eyes, so thin that Mother Nessy did not notice. She could sense the waiting around her, the girls waiting to go into the dining room, Nessy waiting, the houseboys who served the food waiting for her. Standing slowly, she crooked her arm and felt Nessy’s hand close on it as they moved across the floor into the brightly lighted hall, past the six oak tables to the long front table and the center seats.

A plate of buns went from hand to hand, each girl taking one and passing the plate mechanically, reaching for it with the left, offering it with the right, as they had been taught when they were pledges. The bowl of thick, dried mashed potatoes came next, and the long dish of wizened pork chops, the bowl of dull green canned peas, and the individual dishes of cole slaw. When Leda tasted the food, she felt an emetic surging throughout her body and she laid her fork down. Around her there was a churning gobble of voices that seemed to slice through her brain like a meat cleaver. Mother Nessy stared after her when she went from the room.

“She said she was sick,” she told Kitten, “and I knew it when I saw her before dinner. Poor thing. There’s a flu epidemic going around, and I’m willing to bet my life she’s got the flu.”

The car was gone from the driveway. Leda put on the sweater she was carrying and ran down the graveled drive. In her hand she clutched her felt purse, and at the corner she caught a taxi.