Chapter V: Part 5

At the Blue Ribbon there was a crowd of students waiting at the rail with trays, sitting in the booths with books piled high beside their plates, pushing and standing near the juke box with nickels and dimes, the pin-ball machines ringing up scores in her ears as she looked for Mitch.

The Den was quieter, and the waitresses were lingering lazily around the front of the room near the bar, where a few boys munched liverwurst sandwiches and drank draught beer. The bartender dropped a glass and cursed enthusiastically. Leda pushed the revolving door and felt the cold autumn wind.

Mac’s, Donaldson’s, the Alley, French’s, Miss Swanson’s, all of them alive with hungry students swarming in and out, the smell of hamburger predominant in each café, the sizzling crack of French fries cooking in grease on hot open grills.

“Ham on rye.”

“One over easy.”

“Hey, Mary, catch the dog.”

“Well, hell, you’re almost an hour late!”

Leda stood finally on the curb in front of Miss Swanson’s. She fumbled in her pocket for a nickel and ran into the drugstore on the corner. She made a mistake dialing the number, and she held the hook down until the nickel came back and then tried again. When the voice answered, there was a long wait, the far-off sound of voices shouting down the halls, and then the answer, quick and flip. “Robin’s out to dinner. Call back later.”

Her heart was pounding, and she could feel the perspiration soaking her body. If Mitch was eating with Robin, she might have it arranged already. Where was she eating? With the car, she could be anywhere, but it was unlike her to drive far at night. The clock read seven-thirty. In half an hour the chapter would meet and Mitch would go back to the house for her bags. Leda shivered in the night air and wished she had found Mitch before she had a chance to see Robin and carry her plan through. Now Leda would have to tell Marsha she was sick, that she had gone for medicine because she was sick and she could not attend the meeting. She would be in the room waiting for Mitch when she came.

A car swerved away from her as she stepped off the sidewalk into the street. The cab driver grunted, and skirted the curb narrowly as he drove fast.

“Hurry!” he said. “You girls always gotta be someplace fast. That’s all I hear is ‘Hurry, driver!’ Hurry, hurry, hurry.”

* * * * *

“Marsha’s in the Chapter Room,” Kitten said. “Thought you were sick.”

Leda said, “I am.” She found the door to the room locked, and she knocked three times fast and once slow.

“Who goes?” she recognized Jane Bell’s voice.

“Pledged in blood,” Leda said. “Promised in the heart.”

“Enter.”

The bolt was slipped off and Jane Bell stepped back. She was wearing a silky white gown with a deep red scarf on her hair, drawing her hair back behind her ears. There was a sharp odor of burning incense in the dark room, lighted only by five single candles on a small table covered with the same silky white material. Marsha knelt at the table, arranging a red velvet-covered book with a black marker on the open page. When Leda walked in the room, panting, her face damp and hot, Jane stared at her.

“My gosh,” she said, “you look feverish.”

“That’s what I came about. I can’t attend the meeting tonight. I feel lousy.”

Marsha looked up from the book at Leda. There was an angelic look to her face by candlelight, a look that she was fully aware of, cultivated and practiced. When she conducted the weekly chapter meetings, this look lent an air of piety to the conduct of the service. With the members of the chapter standing in a solemn semi-circle before her, she felt that there was something spiritual about her leadership, celestial and sacrosanct.

“We’re having a formal meeting tonight,” she told Leda, as if to persuade her sickness to end.

“I see you are. I’m sorry. I just feel lousy.”

“You look feverish,” Jane Bell remarked again.

“I hope you feel better.” Marsha smiled. “Did you know that Mrs. Gates, our Kansas City vice-counsel, gave us three new robes? Jane has one on.”

Jane twirled and the robe floated on her gracefully. Inwardly Leda thought, Jesus! Oh, silly Jesus! but she pacified them by touching the material and exclaiming, then apologizing again. She backed out of the room just as the electric buzzer gave the signal for the members to line up in the hall and prepare to enter in single file.

The halls were still, the pledges confined to their rooms for study hour. Leda found the room dark. Mitch had not come yet. She struck a match and lit a cigarette, and in the blackness she went to the window and watched the street. Ten dragging minutes later the convertible pulled up in front of the house, and Mitch slammed the front door and hurried up the walk. Leda lay down on the bed, watching the cigarette smoke curl to the ceiling, and waited.

After the light went on in the room, Mitch felt a flood of surprise in her stomach as she saw Leda. She shut the door and set Robin’s large empty suitcase on the floor. Leda sat up and looked at her.

“You’re going to pack now?” she said.

“Yes. I thought you’d be in chapter meeting.” She tried not to look at Leda, but she could feel the girl’s eyes piercing her, stopping her attempts to avoid those eyes, and she went to the bureau and began removing socks and handkerchiefs and scarves.

Leda let her click the suitcase open, and watched her while she placed the things inside it. She could feel the sharp edges of the letter against her chest there near her bra where she had put it before dinner. With her left hand she reached down and fished the letter out and stuck it under her pillow.

“I decided,” Leda said finally, “that the least I could do was to say good-by to you.”

Mitch felt choked up and agonized with desire. She scooped out an armful of slips and panties and pajamas, and thrust them in there with the other clothes. Her lips formed the word “Thanks,” and she meant to say it, but there was no sound. On the floor of the closet there were fluffy swirls of dust near her tennis shoes, and she brushed them away with her hand. She tossed the shoes onto the bed, and took the chair from the desk over to the closet to reach the boxes at the top.

Leda said, “Want any help?”

“No. Thanks, though. I can do it myself.”

“You’ve got an idea,” Leda said, “that you can do everything yourself. I don’t know where you got that idea.”

“Sometimes it’s up to yourself,” Mitch said.

“You’ve got a lot of ideas, I bet. I bet you’ve got thousands of good ideas.”

The box slipped from Mitch’s hand and fell to the floor, spilling out two round hats, one black, one brown, both alike—round and plain.

“Someday you’ll find out that most of the ideas don’t work. None of them work.”

Mitch stopped tying the strings on the top of the box and looked up at Leda. “What are you trying to say?” she asked. “What are you trying to tell me? You never say anything right out. You always talk around and make it hard.”

“I’m trying to say, don’t go. Going isn’t the answer.”

The tears came in her eyes, and Mitch looked away at the shoe bag on the closet floor. She thought of Robin, her friend, of the swimming team, of other years and anything to keep them from being the same, but this made it worse and the sob started low in her throat. Then Leda bent and caught her shoulder and held her, kneeling on the rug, listening to the stifled crying.

“Mitch,” she said, “don’t go. Don’t leave me, please.”

“But you know what I am. I told you what I am in the letter.”

“I don’t care. Mitch, I don’t care.”

“I can’t stay with you. I won’t feel right, I—”

Leda put her hand on the girl’s face and felt the tears. She turned her face and put her lips on the salty moistness. “Come on over to the bed,” she said. “Get up, Mitch, and come on over to the bed.”

Mitch lay down with her face buried in the pillow, and Leda sat on the edge, her hands stroking Mitch’s hair.

“Can you hear me, Mitch? Listen, it doesn’t help to run away. You don’t think it helps, do you? It doesn’t help.”

“No,” Mitch sobbed. “I can’t stay here. I can’t bear to see you every day and know what I’m doing to you.”

“What are you doing to me? What in hell are _you_ doing to _me_?”

“I’m a Lesbian,” Mitch answered. “That’s how I feel about you, too. I’m not like you—with Jake and everything.”

“Oh, God, Mitch! All right, listen. I love you, you crazy kid. I don’t have to label my love, do I? Do I have to say that it’s Lesbian love? O.K., then that’s what it is. It’s Lesbian love, pure and simple. Ye gods, I’ve known about myself for years. I didn’t run away. I didn’t walk out and run away. You gave me plenty of reason to. You were the first one to come along and blow up my little plan for hiding the way I am. You think _you’re_ doing something to me! Oh, Mitch! If anyone’s doing it, I’m doing it. I’m doing it because I love you.”

Mitch brought her head up from the pillow and turned over on her side. “But you said it,” she said. “You said you couldn’t love a Lesbian. You said—”

“I said so damn much, didn’t I? You’ve got to understand, Mitch. I don’t like what I am. If Jan ever knew, I’d take a razor and slash my wrists. I couldn’t live with people knowing, and pointing and saying, ‘Queer’ at me. No one knows but you, and I guess I never would have told you if you hadn’t started to leave. Do you think it’s easy to admit it? It was different when I could say it wasn’t this way, that I was bisexual and all that rot. Bisexual—that’s sort of like succotash, isn’t it? Only this succotash hasn’t got any corn in it. It’s straight beans!”

“What about Jake?” Mitch blew her nose and sat up. “What about all the time you spend with Jake?”

“Maybe I’m trying to prove something to myself. Part of me is trying to say that I’m not what I am. That’s the part of me that everyone knows—the alluring Leda, the queen, Jan’s daughter, an apple never falls far from the tree. Out with Jake every damn day to keep myself away from what I really am. Want to know what sex with him is like? It’s like dry bread, that’s what it’s like. Like dry bread!”

Leda got up from the bed and reached for her cigarettes on the desk. She felt relieved, cleansed, as though her mind had been emptied and she was free. She walked over to the suitcase on Mitch’s bed and picked up the clothing, taking it in her arms to the drawer. “You want this all put back, don’t you?” she said to Mitch. “You won’t leave me?”

“No,” Mitch said. “I’m going. Robin arranged everything, and—oh, Leda!” They stood in the center of the room holding one another, their lips fastened hard, their arms strong around each other. Leda’s hand reached for the buttons on Mitch’s blouse.

“Just stand still,” she said. “Just let me take everything off and look at you. I want to look at you.”

The skirt fell to the floor, and the blouse. Mitch stepped out of her shoes and stood before Leda.

“I want to love you,” Leda said.

Her hands stroked Mitch’s body gently. She leaned over to kiss her lips and her forehead and the closed eyelids. She said her name and held her, feeling the fast beat in her pulse and knowing that she had almost lost her.

The blood beat furiously in Mitch’s throat and she could feel a mounting strength in her legs and arms. With the arrogance of a master, Mitch’s nails dug into Leda’s flesh as she began to pull the sweater and the thin blouse from her shoulders. She let her teeth sink into Leda’s neck.

“No, faster!” Leda cried. “Faster, Mitch!”

Leda’s gasp was one of pleasure and desire and it moved Mitch to more violence, pinning Leda’s wrists behind her back and jerking at her skirt.

Neither of them heard the door open.

They turned in time to see Kitten and Casey framed in the doorway, eyes big, mouths dropped, and they fell apart from one another when the door was slammed, and the sound of feet running down the hall was as loud and fast as the beating of their hearts in that room.

It was a long time before they talked. Mitch lay dumb with horror, never forgetting the look on their faces as they had found her that way with Leda, unclothed and wild like a fierce animal. Sitting with her head hung, her hands pressing at her eyes, Leda was the first one to speak after the minutes passed as they would in a slow nightmare when nothing is real.

She stood up and picked the blouse off the floor. “Look,” she said. “I’ll go and talk to Marsha. That’s where they ran to. I’ll go and straighten it out.”

“How?”

Leda reached in the closet for a fresh blouse, and straightened her skirt so that the zipper was pulled and on the side. She ran a comb through her long hair, and her hands were trembling.

“I’ll explain it somehow. Marsha’s gullible, and I’ll explain it. I have to go now, or they’ll have a chance to talk and spread the story.”

Mitch said, “I’ll go too, Leda, I’ll go too. What’ll we say?”

“No!” Leda put her hands over her face and shook her head. “I’m sorry I yelled. We’ve got to handle this just right. You stay here. It’s better for me to go alone.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Look, get into bed. I’ll turn the light out and you stay here. If anyone else comes by, pretend you’re asleep.”

She waited while Mitch pulled her pajamas from the suitcase on her bed and threw the suitcase down on the floor, before she stepped into the pants and the coat. After she got in bed, Leda snapped the light out and went back by her own bed before she opened the door to go.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Don’t worry at all. And stay here!”

In her hand, as she walked toward Marsha’s suite, Leda clutched Mitch’s letter, wrinkled and folded on the long sheet of notebook paper. Her eyes were set and determined, and there was a tight line about her lips.

Chapter Nine

Under the heavy violet and black quilted robe, Mother Nesselbush wore a voluminous peach-colored flannel nightgown. Her hair was rolled on large black pins so that it pulled at her scalp and gave her round face a bizarre expression like that of a mild Jersey cow. Her skin shone with “night cream,” and until everything began, it was with conscious effort that she stifled the great yawns that exposed her pressing lethargy, as well as her gold-studded molars.

Everything began when Marsha shut the door to Nessy’s suite and pressed the lock down to secure it. Beside those two, Casey, Kitten Clark, Jane Bell, and Leda shared the secrecy of the meeting that was about to commence. Marsha stood while the others sat in various positions around the small anteroom.

“I don’t need to tell you that this gathering is an extreme emergency. We must all pledge never to reveal what we hear. Our whole reputation as a national sorority is at stake, to say nothing of the reputation of Tri Epsilon on the Cranston campus. I’ve asked Jane to come because she’s a member of the Grand Council. Fortunately, our other two members were on the scene when this thing happened. And Leda will explain her part in it. Nessy, we’ve inconvenienced you tremendously, but this is too terribly serious.”

Mother Nesselbush protested that she was not disturbed, and that she was only too thankful that she was called on. She straightened her drooping shoulders and sat forward intently.

“Maybe you better tell how it started, Casey,” Marsha said, leaning against the small mahogany table with the vase of daisies set on it.

Casey was excited. Her face was animated and colored with the heat of her adventure. She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward from the couch.

“It was right after chapter meeting. Kitten and I were going up to talk with Leda about her being nominated for Christmas Queen, and about the campaign we were going to plan. Well, we were kind of pleased and everything and I guess we just never thought of knocking, and when we got in there—well, this is kind of hard to say—we found Mitch naked and she was attacking Leda. I mean, she was kissing her and pulling at her clothes.”

“What!” Mother Nesselbush paled and caught her jowls with her pudgy hands. “Oh, no!”

Leda’s knees felt watery and loose, and her knuckles were white in a tight fist.

“Well,” Casey went on, “Kitten and I ran like the devil—”

“I’ll say we did,” Kitten broke in. “I was never so scared in my life. If you could have seen it! I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t even think when I was running.”

“What did she do when you opened the door? Gosh, Leda, you must have been crazy with fear.” Jane Bell looked over at Leda after she said it, and shook her head and wrinkled her forehead in disbelief. “Absolutely _crazy_ with fear!” she repeated.

“You poor, poor darling,” Nessy said. “To think of it!”

Marsha moved forward and held her hand up for silence. “After that,” she said when everyone settled down, “Leda came to me in the suite. Luckily, Kitten and Casey had come right there, so the story hasn’t spread.”

“What about Susan Mitchell?” Mother Nesselbush snapped. “Where is she now?”

“You better carry on from here, Leda.” Marsha sat down on the floor, close to Nessy’s chair, and waited while Leda found words. Of course, they believed the story. It had been easy to tell it, Leda thought; not easy, but the only way. It had been the only way to tell it. Strange how she had thought that she would do it just this way if they were found, in that quick flash of intuition a second before they were found. She remembered another day when she was a child alone in her room, and in the midst of it she had heard Jan’s footsteps down the hall. If they stopped, if Jan came in the room, then she would say that she had shooting pains from cramps, and that she had been tossing on the bed and was hot and out of breath, and she would even cry to show that the pains were bad ones. But she would not spoil that moment there with herself for anything. All of the thoughts came quickly to Leda, solved in seconds, so that there was never any defeat. Now again she was not defeated, because they believed her. There was Mitch upstairs, waiting, trusting, but the time was now, downstairs, and Leda began slowly, her words careful and well remembered.

“Mitch is upstairs in bed. She’ll stay there, and she won’t talk to anyone. I told her that I would explain it, and I’m going to try to. I can’t explain it so that everything is over and forgotten as I know she hopes I will do, but I am going to try to be fair to her.

“First of all, with everyone’s permission, I’d like to read a letter.”

When she finished the letter, Mother Nesselbush rolled her eyes in utter horror. “I declare,” she said. “I do declare!”

“You see,” Leda said, “I suspected that Mitch had a crush on me. She was jealous of Jake and of the time I spent with him. I knew that, but I never dreamed the kid was in love with me like this. You know how I am. I call everyone honey and darling, and I guess the kid took me to heart. Then, after I told her to get some boy friends, she got mad and tried to ignore me. I didn’t pay any attention until I found this note in my mailbox before dinner tonight. Well, you know how I acted at dinner.”

“And I thought it was just the flu,” Nessy said. “Land!”

“So I decided that the only thing I could do was to try to help the kid. At least persuade her to wait until morning. I didn’t know what kind of condition she was in. She might do something dumb like confiding in that Robin Maurer. Then the whole campus would know. I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t wait till chapter meeting and talk it over with you kids, because she’d be gone by then. I tried to handle it myself.”

“Who’s Charlie?” Kitten said. “Is he that independent? What does she mean, _he_ knows?”

“She imagined that, I’m sure,” Leda answered. “I guess they had a fight or something and she thought he knew. The kid is really naïve.”

“She didn’t look naïve when Casey and I saw her.”

“Let me finish, Kitten.”

“Well, Lord, we don’t want it all over campus that one of the Tri Ep pledges is queer. That’s all the independents need.”

“I tell you, he doesn’t know. No one does!”

“Let Leda finish,” Marsha said.

“She brought a suitcase with her and was ready to go. I persuaded her to wait until morning. I thought that by that time I’d be able to do something—talk to Nessy or Marsha or someone. She got undressed to go to bed, and—then she—attacked me. Thank God you kids came along at the right time.”

“What did she do after they left the room?” Jane Bell asked. “I can’t even imagine this!”

“That brought her to. You see, she really went out of her mind for a minute. After the door slammed, she came to and became herself. I quieted her as best I could, and told her it would all be O.K. She was scared to death, poor kid.”

“Yeah, poor kid!” Casey sneered. “She belongs in a cage!”

“I don’t know,” Leda said. “I can’t help feeling sorry for her.”

Nessy said, “You showed great presence of mind, Leda. Why, if it had been me, I would have just shrieked my lungs out!”

“You weren’t even yelling,” Casey said.

“And it’s a good thing she didn’t. If it ever got around the house—Lord, I hate to think.” Kitten reached for a cigarette and snapped the flame on her lighter. “That’s one thing we’ve got to be damn careful about. We’ve got to keep it between us. We’ll have to think of some other reason for getting rid of her.”

“Maybe I can do it,” Leda said. “Look, maybe I can convince her that the best thing for her to do is to go to the Psych Department. I’ll tell her I think she was right to want to move to the dorm, and then we’ll be rid of her and she’ll never know the difference. We can keep it all hush-hush.”

Jane Bell groaned and scratched her head. “No, that’s no answer. She’d blab it to one of the doctors and then it’d get back to Panhellenic. Besides, no telling what she might do at the dorm.”

Inwardly Leda shook at the danger of her own suggestion. But no matter where Mitch went, there was the danger of her telling her side of the story. Of someone believing it. Who’d believe it? The letter was written perfectly, leaving Leda free of any implication, and there was no other proof. Nothing. She felt stronger then, fear lending new armor.

“You know,” she said, “the kid will probably try to blame me. She’ll probably say I had something to do with it. You know how people get when they’re up against a wall.”

Mother Nesselbush giggled. “Leda, our queen,” she said. “Now really, do you think anyone would believe the child? She’s obviously demented!” Her face changed and became grave. “Girls, I don’t think the decision is ours to make. We must think of the reputation of the house. Tri Epsilon stands for honesty and loyalty, to ourselves and to the school too. This is a matter for the dean’s office, girls, and I assure you, Dean Paterson is a _very_ discreet person. She’ll handle this with utmost concern for our welfare.”

“I agree with Nessy,” Marsha said. “It isn’t anything we can decide. We can only pledge ourselves to secrecy. No other member of the sorority is to know about this. Now, let’s promise it.”

“Promised!” Kitten said. “That’s for sure.”

“I’d be embarrassed to tell anyone else,” Casey commented. “Even now it embarrasses me.”

Jane Bell stubbed her cigarette out in the ash tray. “I don’t have to remind anyone,” she said, “that if the pledges ever learn about this, we’ll be in danger of losing the entire pledge class.”

Marsha stepped forward to the middle of the room. “We all know the consequences. It could be anything else but this. Homosexuality just leaves a horrid taste. We’d all have to pay, even though we had nothing to do with it, just because it happened under our roof. We’d be the brunt of thousands of miserable jokes. You all remember the year the Sigma Delts had those two terribly effeminate boys in their pledge class? Remember what happened the day they woke up and found the signs all over their front yard? That’s just half of what we’d get.”

Leda remembered the signs. They were large cardboard ones with bright red paint. They said, “Fairy Landing,” and “Sig Delt Airport—Fly with our boys!” For weeks, the jokes out at the Fat Lady and down at the Den and the Blue Ribbon centered around the Sig Delt house. No one ever knew how it all started, or whether there was any basis to it all, but everywhere you went you heard the sly remarks, and saw the wry grins that attended the cracks about “those fairy nice Sigma Delts.” She had been a freshman then, but after two and a half years it was all very fresh in her memory. Everyone remembered, long after the boys left campus.

“I’ll call the Dean,” Mother Nessy said, “the first thing in the morning. The only thing we can do tonight is go to bed and try to sleep. Leda, you’d better make up the couch in here.”

“I’m afraid Mitch will be suspicious. I mean, I told her I’d explain everything. She’ll probably wait for me to get back.”

“Oh, joyous reunion,” Casey said. “Holy God!”

“You mean you’re going back to that girl, Leda? Why, I won’t _hear_ of it!”

“Look,” Marsha said calmly, “maybe it’s the only way. We can’t have her getting out in the halls and trying to find Leda. I mean, she won’t be violent like that again, will she, Leda?”

“No, I know she won’t. You don’t understand. The kid is scared out of her wits now. She wouldn’t lift a finger.” Leda felt queasy, listening to them picture Mitch as a wild beast roaming the halls for prey. She would have to make them believe that she was wise to go back up there to Mitch. But not too anxious. “Of course, I confess it isn’t going to help me sleep any to know she’s in the room, but—”

“No!” Nessy said. “I simply can’t have it. I’m responsible.”

Mitch would be waiting. Leda would have to go back, or Mitch might run to Marsha and confuse the story, ruin it—even if they didn’t believe her.

“I know,” Marsha said. “Kitten and Casey and I will wait in the bathroom. Leda, you go in and see if it looks O.K. to stay there. If it does, you can tell us by coming down to the john. If it’s not O.K., then you can tell us and we’ll think of something else. I mean, if you think Mitch is going to act up.”

“That’s fine,” Leda said, “and I think it’ll be O.K. You don’t know this kid like I do.”

Kitten grinned. “Obviously,” she said. “Who’d want to?”

“All right,” Nessy consented reluctantly, “but I won’t sleep a wink. Not a wink!”

Marsha moved the tab back on the door and opened it. “Now, for heaven’s sake,” she whispered, “look nonchalant. Pretend we were all in talking to Nessy, and that’s all. Some of the kids might still be up. And Leda, when you come down to the john, make it subtle if anyone’s there. Then we can go to the suite and talk.”

Mother Nessy took Leda’s arm before she left the room. “You promise me,” she said, “you promise me that if that girl gives _any_ indication of acting up again, you’ll just jump right out of that room and come down to me. I don’t care _what_ the hour is.”

Leda said, “Don’t worry, Nessy, and I promise.”

The five girls climbed the main stairs slowly, Marsha attempting vaguely to whistle a bit from “On, Wisconsin.”

* * * * *

It was taking Leda a long time. What could she say to them? Mitch was numb with torment, and the sheets on her bed were wrinkled and halfway off the mattress from her perpetual turning and moving as she waited. The ticking of the tin clock on the dresser sounded frantic and Mitch made the ticks come in three beats in her mind—_Les-bi-an, Les-bi-an, tick-tick-tick_. Leda was one too. The thought foamed in Mitch’s brain and hurt her. She did not know why she felt dirty when Leda told her that she was a Lesbian. She thought she should have felt happy and glad that they were two. But she did not want to be one. Abnormal.

From far off she could hear the sweet voices of a fraternity serenading a sorority house down the street.

She turned the light on and looked at the face of the clock. It was eleven-thirty. Leda had been gone too long. She saw Leda’s half-full package of cigarettes on the desk, and she took one from the pack and lit it. It tasted strong and sour and she squashed it in the ash tray and turned the light off again.

Tomorrow, she decided, she would move out of Tri Epsilon and into the dorm with Robin. If she and Leda weren’t put out of the sorority, she would leave anyway. But she could not leave Leda. “I love Leda,” she said softly to the darkness, “even though we’re both that way. I wish she wasn’t that way.”

The dream came in a half fit of consciousness. Her mother was very beautiful, with black hair that came to her shoulders, and clear green eyes. Mitch loved her. She wore pants and shirts and combed her hair back, wet from her swim, and went to her mother with jewels and furs that she had stolen for her to have. Her mother smiled and accepted them. Mitch heard her say, “You’d better not steal all the time. I couldn’t love a thief.” She ran down a long alley to escape the police who were looking for her. It was late when she got back to the Tri Epsilon house and her mother was there with the police holding her arm. Her mother was laughing. She said, “You didn’t know I was a thief too,” and the policemen led her away. Diamonds were spilling out of her mother’s pocket as she went down the steps with them.

She thought she had been asleep for hours, but it was only twenty minutes to twelve. Leda must be in trouble. The dream put a ragged edge on her anxiety. The bed was a sight, rumpled and torn apart as though it had been ravaged. Mitch straightened the sheets and fluffed the pillow. In the corner of the room by the bureau her clothes lay where Leda had taken them off, kicked to the side. Mitch picked them up and brushed them off.

_Les-bi-an, Les-bi-an, tick-bi-an...._

Mitch thought, I can get a job. Leda and I can run away and I can work someplace. If they put us out of the sorority I won’t go home. Leda won’t either, because of Jan. Colorado is nice, or California. She had a vivid picture of the open convertible speeding through purple and rust landscapes and along white desert with the cactus along the roadside. She added glorious black nights and ten thousand brilliant stars, and a warm wind whipping at their faces. It was no good. She hated the picture. Why? A slow self-disgust chewed at her and called her coward, but she was still afraid. She promised herself to be strong when Leda came back, no matter. Whatever Leda said, Mitch would not reveal her fear. Leda loved her and this was the price. Be strong for two. The words on the storybook she’d had as a child came dancing on the screen of her mind: “Now We Are Two.”

Part of it was the way Leda acted when she had said, “No, faster! Faster, Mitch!” It seemed far away and morbid, as though there was an insane spark to their love that made them fierce and careless. Sitting on the side of her bed, under the harsh light of the electric bulb overhead, Mitch could not know herself in that scene. She reasoned that she was not violent. Never violent. Yet there was still the faint taste of blood on her tongue, and the way she knew she had been strong there with Leda.

Don’t blame Leda. You’re trying to blame Leda.

There was a sound of steps in the hall. Mitch caught her breath when they came to the door. It was Leda returning.

“What are you doing with the light on?”

“I had to find out the time.”

“I told you not to leave it on. I told you to go to bed.”

“I just turned it on. I was afraid.”

“Well, it’s over, so go to bed.”

“Over?”

“Yes. It’s all right.”

“Wh-what did you say? How did you explain it?”

Leda’s face was composed and placid. She took her soap from the tray on the rack behind the door. Her washcloth hung over the bar above the shoe bag and she put that with the soap. “I’m going to wash my face. I’ll tell you when I get back. Look, it’s over. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Mitch just sat there staring.

“Get in bed. I’ll be back.”

“I’ll come too,” Mitch said. “I didn’t wash yet. Wait for me and I’ll come too.” She started toward the bureau.

“No!” Leda’s tone came out sharper than she had meant it. She could not look at Mitch’s face, which was alive with a new hope. Her words went to the rug. “No, it’s better if you stay in bed. I told them you didn’t feel well. You see, that’s how I explained it. I said you were sick.”

“Oh,” Mitch said. “I—” She sat back on the bed and rubbed her forehead.

Leda walked toward the door. “Look, just get in bed. I’ll be back in a minute. I’ll tell you then.”

“O.K., Leda.”

Before Leda turned the doorknob, Mitch’s eyes met hers.

“Leda?”

“What?”

“Thanks.”

When she was gone, Mitch felt sick and dull all over. She was ashamed of the way she had thought about Leda. The thoughts seemed to tease her still, pricking her knowledge that Leda had made everything all right, that now there would be no reason to run and hide. Steadily she rebuilt the structure of their love, amplifying it with Leda’s courage and with her own indebtedness to Leda. She could feel the physical ache for her down to the tips of her fingers, replacing the enfeebled numbness, charging it with renewed vigor. Healing time had conquered the doubt and fear, and her servility was sworn in that moment. Mitch felt humble and brave in the darkness of the room.

A tongue of light cut through the black as Leda opened the door and slipped back in. Mitch could hear her putting things away and getting out of her clothes. The thud of her shoes on the floor sounded unusually heavy in the silence. Mitch threw the sheets and blankets back and went over to her.

“For God’s sake, no! We just got out of one mess.”

“I’m sorry, Leda. I just feel so—”

“Get back in bed. My God!”

The covers felt itchy on her chin and she pulled the sheet up higher. She could hear Leda getting in bed.

“I know you’re upset,” she said. “I should have known better than to come over to you, Leda. I’m sorry.”

“Forget it.”

Mitch waited. Leda would tell her now—everything that had happened. The minutes crept and the clock began the game, ticking out the word.

“Leda?”

“What?”

“You said you’d tell me.” Mitch’s voice was thin and meek. She didn’t mean to keep at Leda like that, but she had to know.

“O.K. I said you were sick. I said you went to bed sick and you were feverish when you came after me.”

“D-did you say that I came after _you_?”

“Well, hell, I had to say something! When they came in the door, that’s what they saw.”

“Oh.”

The wind blew papers off the desk and they ruffled along the floor, the noise quick and airy.

“Leave them,” Leda said. She settled back and the noise stopped.

“Well, did they believe you? What about—My God, I was naked!”

“You were sick! I told them you were sick, Mitch!”

Mitch wanted to stop the angry tone. She lay quiet and another paper chased across the room and landed on top of her on the bed.

“Mitch, I’m sorry I’m so snappish. I just feel like hell. It wasn’t easy.”

“I know what it must have been like, Leda.”

“It was hell.”

“Does—does anyone know? Anyone else, I mean?”

“Just Marsha and those two.”

“It’ll be hard tomorrow. What’ll I tell them when they ask what was wrong?”

Leda turned her pillow over on the side. Then she got up and put a bottle of ink on top of the papers so they wouldn’t blow any more. “It won’t be hard,” she said. “They won’t even talk about it. Just go along as though nothing happened.”

“Leda, I don’t know how to thank you.”

“Quit saying that! What in the name of God do you think I am, your holy savior?”

The night air was crisp and Mitch snuggled down in the covers. She closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but she kept listening for Leda to say more. When she didn’t, Mitch said, “I just want to say one more thing, Leda. I’ll always stick by you—always. You mean more to me than anyone I know.”

Leda didn’t answer.

Chapter Ten

Ruth Paterson was a stocky, middle-aged woman with brownish-red hair, which she wore in a short, smoothly waved coiffure. Her thin lips were faintly tinted with a medium rose shade, and her long full face had a healthy pink color that set off the deep brown eyes. Between the book ends on her smooth red-leather-topped desk there was a dictionary, a worn copy of “Wine from These Grapes,” “The Collected Poems of Robert Frost,” “Roget’s Thesaurus,” two volumes on methods for counseling teen-age girls, a Bible, and a frayed copy of Proust.

Her office was a small white room furnished with comfortable red furniture and red-framed prints of Daumier. On a wobbly end table at the side of a long couch in front of her desk there were a miniature wooden pagoda and a vase with a single red rose pointing toward the white ceiling. On the lower rung of the table there were three copies of current magazine issues, and one copy of the Cranston University humor magazine.

Dean Paterson took a great deal of pride in her office. She had done most of it herself, lacking encouragement from the university officials, who saw little valid reason for decorating the room so that it bore small resemblance to a typical office of the Dean of Women. The wall-to-wall black rug she had purchased herself at a private auction of one of the distinguished townspeople’s household effects. It was impractical, inevitably catching lint and dust from the heels of the steady infiltration of students, file clerks, secretaries, and university officials. She liked the rug anyway.

It was just before eleven in the morning, a beautiful morning with a quick snap in the air, and a clear fall sky. At eleven-fifteen, Susan Mitchell would arrive for her appointment. Dean Paterson held the three square yellow cards in her hand, thumbing through them, the bland printed information registering slowly in her mind. There was scant knowledge of the girl on the office records.

Mrs. Nesselbush had called her “a savage.”

The case was not unique. In her twenty-three years of counseling girls, Dean Paterson had become fairly well acquainted with the problem of homosexuality, suspected or overt. She had dealt with it before.

She laid the first set of yellow cards down and picked up the second set, removing the paper clip. Leda Taylor’s name was familiar. There were several rows of reported late minutes. The explanations appeared in the spaces after the account of the offense.

24 March—30 minutes late—Flat tire
12 April—2 hours late—Delayed because of storm
19 April—Absent all night—Forgot to sign out for week end
2 May—15 minutes late—Watch stopped

Her scholastic report was not always good. There were alarming high and low points, and a strange proclivity toward extremes. A’s and D’s. B’s and E’s. Psychology was a good subject. English was second, with science and math at a nadir. Dean Paterson remembered her as a very attractive girl, with a slight rough edge to her nature and a suggestion of specious warmth.

Mrs. Nesselbush had explained that she was a darling.

The buzzer burred out in the stillness. Susan Mitchell.

Dean Paterson stood up and watched the door until the girl came in. She had not expected her to look like that at all. She said, “Won’t you sit down, Susan?”

From the top of her desk drawer, near the newly sharpened pencils and the memo pads, the Dean removed the envelope that Mrs. Nesselbush had sent her. Inside was the letter.

“You don’t know why you’re here, do you, Susan?”

The girl smiled. “No, ma’am,” she answered. “Mother Nessy said something about your wanting to talk about my subjects.”

It was irritating. There was no need to lie to the girl. There was no necessity to explain falsely why the appointment was made. The Dean shook her head and picked up her yellow pencil. She made dots on the back of the white envelope.

“No,” she said. “It’s not about your subjects. It’s about something you may be able to tell me more about than I know.”

“Yes?”

“How close have you been to Leda Taylor?”

Mitch felt a shrinking inside of her. “I—I room with her,” she said. “We’re good friends.”

“Is that all?”

So they hadn’t believed Leda after all. Mitch looked at the Dean’s face, and then down at her hands and the pencil. She could not say anything.

“You see,” Dean Paterson said, “it’s been left up to me. I guess you had no indication that anything was wrong at the Tri Epsilon house today.”

“No.” Mitch’s voice was barely audible. She looked at her hands. If only Leda had been summoned at the same time, Mitch thought, she could do the talking. Mitch wondered then if Leda had already been to see the Dean, earlier in the morning. She had not seen her since breakfast, and they had not sat at the same table. Leda thought it would be too obvious if they sat together after last night.

“You see, Susan, that kind of thing can’t be tolerated. In the long run, if it was tolerated, you’d be hurt terribly. There would be cruel jokes, and an even crueler alienation from the other girls. Do you want to talk about it? I have only Mrs. Nesselbush’s report.”

“I—I don’t know how to talk about it.”

Dean Paterson went over to the couch where Mitch was sitting. She sat beside her. “Start with Leda,” she said. “Try to tell me about Leda.”

Mitch spoke suddenly. “It’s not her fault,” she said. “It’s really not her fault at all.”

Tears clouded Mitch’s eyes and she tried to prevent them from rushing forward. Dean Paterson put her arm around the girl’s shoulder. “Susan,” she said, “listen to me. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. It’s going to make my job a little harder, though. You see, I’ll have to submit a report on this, and I don’t have very much to go on. Just the letter and what I’ve heard.”

Mitch looked at her. “What letter?”

“The one you wrote Leda. I’m sorry, dear. You can have it back. I don’t think it’s very nice to read other people’s mail either, but there are so many things the Dean of Women has to do that aren’t very nice.”

Mitch said, “Then Mother Nessy stole the letter. She must have. Leda forgot to tear it up and—”

Dean Paterson told Mitch then that Leda had given the letter to Nessy. Mitch pulled away and jumped up. “That’s not true,” she said. “That’s not true!” The tears streamed down her cheeks, and she sank back on the couch. “You don’t know Leda. She wouldn’t do that. She’s tried to protect me all the way—even lied for me last night to Marsha. She told Marsha I was sick and—”

The shrill ring of the phone cut into Mitch’s words. While Dean Paterson crossed the room and stood talking, Mitch cried violently, stopping the sound with her handkerchief, pushing the sobs back in her throat. Again she thought of running away, with Leda, somewhere—anywhere. They would be expelled and there was no other thing to do but run. And run. She wished that the Dean would just tell her that she would have to leave Cranston, instead of asking questions and trying to find out more information. Then Mitch could hurry and get to Leda first, before the Dean did. It would be awful for Leda. She was so sure last night.

“I’m sorry for the interruption,” Dean Paterson said, walking back toward Mitch. “I have an idea, if you’d like. It’s almost lunchtime. I usually make a sandwich at my apartment, a few blocks from here. Would you like to go there with me now?”

Mitch shook her head. “I have to see Leda,” she said. “I have to talk to her. Please—she won’t be able to stand this. If we’re expelled—”

The Dean took Mitch’s arm. “Susan, _Leda_ is not going to be expelled. I think we’d better talk about it at lunch, dear. All right?”

As if in a trance, unable to comprehend any meaning, Mitch waited while Dean Paterson straightened some papers on the desk, removed her purse from the lower drawer, and pressed the light button off. Together they walked through the reception room, out into the cold marble corridor of Kenyon Hall.

* * * * *

After Dean Paterson canceled her afternoon appointments, she sat down in the small, green-walled front room of her apartment. Susan Mitchell was in the bedroom asleep. The story seemed unbelievable.

But not impossible.

Ruth Paterson picked up the small white china poodle from the round glass-top coffee table. She passed her thumb along the ridges and up to the object’s black eyes, and she thought about Susan Mitchell. Certainly not a savage.

It was a strange story, the story of Susan and Leda, but she had learned long ago not to be surprised at anything. She checked back her own willingness to believe what Susan Mitchell had told her. The child was afraid and lost, and sympathy came easily. This girl invited it and coaxed it, with her lonesome eyes and her ingenuous statements. Ruth Paterson had an impulse to go into the bedroom and wake the girl up and tell her that she could not stay. Even though she had asked her to stay. She was afraid of the girl in many ways, afraid that the fumbling immaturity of Susan Mitchell had made her go soft and irrational. There had been other occasions when she had weakened like this and regretted it later. The Dobbs girl, for instance. Petite, blue-eyed Faith Dobbs, a freshman years ago. She had been accused of stealing in the dorm, and something about her made the Dean believe that she was innocent when she sat before her and told her story. The hours and days of counsel, the defense she had made of the girl before the Board of Trustees, and the angry speech she had delivered to the girls who lived in Faith’s dorm—all objects of ridicule when Faith Dobbs pilfered the Dean’s watch and petty-cash box from her office weeks later. No, she was by no means infallible. And now there was another child who wanted to be trusted, was already trusted by the mere fact that she was asleep now in Dean Paterson’s apartment.

She got up and placed the china poodle back on the glass top. The phone was in the corner, just above the window seat. For a moment she sat looking out into the street. A boy and girl passed, he carrying her books, she laughing up at him, reaching with her hand to brush back the blond curl that fell on his forehead. They kicked the leaves along the sidewalk as they walked down the block. Ruth Paterson said aloud, “If everything could be as simple as that,” and laughed when she thought of the obvious fact that even _that_ was not simple. There’s no simplicity left in modern living, she decided. Everyone is on the spit at one time or another. Thumbing through the phone book, she found the number and dialed it.

“Marsha Holmes, please,” she said, and while she waited, she twisted the rubber cord attached to the telephone.

“Hello, Marsha? This is Dean Paterson.... Fine, thank you. Marsha, is Leda Taylor in the house?... I see. I wonder,” Dean Paterson said, “if you could find her for me. If she’s in class, wait until it’s over and ask her to come and see me. At the apartment. I’ll be here all of this afternoon.”

* * * * *

The Den was not crowded at two-thirty that afternoon. It was a popular hour for classes at C.U., and only a few students lined the bar, their books strewn about on the pine top, their beers before them. The juke box blared out a frantic trumpet, and from a corner near the door the ringing of the pin-ball machines could be heard.

Leda and Jake were the only ones occupying any of the knotty-pine booths. They sat in the last one, side by side, a pitcher of beer before them. Jake had a flask in the pocket of his coat, and they were drinking “boiler-makers,” half whisky, half beer. They had been there since eleven-thirty, and their only food had been a hardboiled egg apiece and a bowl of pretzels. Jake’s head was hanging to one side languorously. He was only half listening to Leda, who had been talking for three hours.

“You can jus’ imagine,” she said, “if anyone can jus’ imagine.”

Jake reached out for the pitcher of beer. He poured half of it on the table. The rest went in the glass and he fumbled in his pocket for the flask. He sang loudly, “Oh, a girl without a woman is like a—”

A few boys at the bar looked back and laughed. Others kept on talking. The bartender shook his head. “Flunked an exam, probably,” he said.

“Man,” the short thin boy exclaimed, “he’s carrying a big load!”

The fellow next to him swallowed his beer. “She’s helping him with that load.”

Leda tried to pour beer into her glass but she couldn’t grasp the handle. She nudged Jake and pointed to it. He poured more on the table, leaving a few inches in the bottom of her glass. His hand shook when he added the whisky, and some of the yellow-brown liquid fell on Leda’s coat. She brushed it away and giggled. Then her face became serious and she tasted the beer, which did not taste at all.

She said, “Here’s to Mitchell, Mitchell.”

Jake reached for his glass. “To Mitchell Mitchell,” he said. “Long may she wave!”