by Joan Ellis
"Don't use that word!" Elaine lashed out sharply.
"Why not?" An odd defiance radiated from him.
"I hate it!" Then she reined herself in tightly. "You're talking about your father, Eric."
"So I'm a rotten son." Suddenly, Eric was determined to dismiss the whole discussion. "Let's forget about us and our psychotic grievances. Kathy, I'm starving—get that roast on the table or I'll fall flat on my face."
* * *
Elaine sat in the studio, starkly conscious of each passing minute, waiting to hear Kathy's light steps coming up the four flights to the studio. They'd made their secret little plan when Eric had insisted on going off to the kitchen to do the dishes himself. It'd been an act of apology for his outburst earlier in the evening, they'd both recognized. Yet even now Elaine couldn't toss out of her mind the deep suspicion that Eric was concerned about himself even as he intuitively guessed about her. If only somehow, she could make him understand that her own deviation from the normal had nothing to do with him! But she couldn't do that without admitting what she was—and somehow that seemed a loathsome, impossible step.
"Elaine?" Kathy's melodic voice called breathlessly.
"Right here." She swung about with a smile of welcome. "I was afraid you'd give up somewhere about the third flight."
"Takes more than stairs to defeat me," Kathy laughed.
"Like some coffee?" Elaine waved to the percolator off in a corner on the two-burner gas range.
"No thanks." Kathy's eyes glowed intensely. "Since we don't have too much time, I thought maybe you'd want to get right down to work."
"Are you going to be a slave driver?" Elaine teased, but the warm affection in her voice belied the words.
"I didn't know if I should bring something special to wear, or what." Plainly, to Kathy, this was a tremendous adventure.
"I'm not sure myself just what I want to do." Elaine faltered, because suddenly an image passed through her mind. She knew exactly how she wanted to paint Kathy.
"You caught hold of an idea then, didn't you?" Kathy guessed intuitively.
"Sort of," she hedged, her breath quickening, her body tense. How could she ask that of Kathy? She'd never agree. And if she did, how could Elaine bear seeing her like that, all of her screaming to hold that exquisite, elusive elf that was Kathy?
"Tell me," Kathy coaxed, avidly curious, yet with none of the cloying, sulky sweetness of Terry. Something so fine, so clean about this girl, Elaine thought painfully, wanting her, fighting the need to pull her close, fondle her, show her this other love.
"I'd like to paint you in the nude," she compelled herself to say calmly. "A wood nymph caught unawares."
"I couldn't." Kathy's eyes widened in shock.
"I wouldn't show it, Kathy," Elaine heard herself pleading. "It'd be something to get me started again! An incentive, because I know that would be good!"
"I'd feel—funny," Kathy faltered. "I mean—I hadn't thought you meant that sort of thing."
"I didn't at first," Elaine admitted, hearing herself talking with an odd harshness, a compulsive determination. "Kathy, we wouldn't even have to let Eric see it! I'll do another portrait, after that, for him."
Kathy's eyes searched Elaine's, as though seeking for an answer, but not really finding it. "If it's so terribly important to you, Elaine, yes."
Gratitude shinning forth from her, obliterating the need for words, Elaine swiftly pulled out a sketch pad, all the tools she'd need for the rough sketches her fingers ached to do now. Because sketching Kathy would be the closest thing to loving her. She kept herself busy, her eyes everywhere but on Kathy—except for thirsty involuntary glances.
Kathy's face wore a half-smile of eagerness, telegraphing her honest desire to help Elaine find herself again, yet the slightly frightened wistfulness of her eyes betrayed her uncertainty. With slow, methodical movements Kathy was removing her clothes, everything that separated her from Elaine—soberly folding each bit of apparel and laying it on the chair nearby. Until she stood there, wistfully appealing in her nudity—and Elaine bit her lip, fighting for control.
"You're lovely," Elaine whispered huskily. "More lovely than I even suspected."
"What do you want me to do?" Kathy faltered self-consciously. "Sit on the bench here—or what?" Her eyes fluttered in a downward glance that shot torrents of desire tearing through Elaine. But she had to remember this was Kathy, Elaine ordered herself in anguish. Her sister-in-law!
"Let's try something like this," Elaine said unsteadily, moving to Kathy and settling her into position on the bench, her hands ice-cold on Kathy's warmly fragrant shoulders. "All right?"
"Whatever you want, Elaine," Kathy smiled back, trying not to feel the oddness of this occasion.
Charming words!" A male voice cut with knife-sharpness into the quietness of the studio. Eric, at the door, his face white and set.
“Eric!" Kathy froze in astonishment.
"You're not fussy, are you?" he mocked. "Elaine or me—after all, it's still in the family."
"Eric, what filth is your mind cooking up?" Elaine demanded hoarsely, feeling herself entrapped in a net of unreality.
"All my life I've been trying to tell myself I was crazy—to think something like this about my own sister! A rotten Lesbian, who chases after my own wife!"
"Eric, shut up," Kathy's voice was a painful whisper.
"You were so sweet, so honest, so innocent," he mocked with terrible bitterness. "My Lily Maid of Astelot!"
"You don't know what you're talking about," Elaine started off, striving for one crumb of reality in this unreal nightmare.
"I'm not blind," he interrupted with brutal determination. "I can see! A minute later and you'd have been rolling on the floor together."
"Eric, shut up!" Kathy stood there, trembling, white, her eyes dark coals of anguish. "You don't know what you're saying."
"Go ahead, stay with your ardent Lesbian. Laugh together over the big joke you nearly pulled off! I have more respect for the tramps in the whorehouses than I have for my wife!"
And in horrible silence the two of them hovered there, listening to the disappearing footsteps down the long flights of stairs, until Elaine reached down to pick up the note Eric had dropped in the door-way:
If you want to know whom your wife really love go to this address.
CHAPTER 11
The note was printed with rough block letters to conceal the identity of the sender, but she might just as well have signed it, Elaine thought bitterly. Terry! She should have seen this coming from the very beginning.
"Kathy, I don't know what to say," Elaine finally broke the deadly quietness.
"He must be sick," Kathy whispered, ashamed for her husband. "To talk like that."
"Someone deliberately tried to make trouble," Elaine extended the note, wondering how much she must tell Kathy, how to tell her.
"What kind of a marriage do we have that he believes the first stranger that comes along? He bursts in here, and believes what he wants to believe!" Anger rose to challenge Kathy's grief. "What can Eric know of love?"
"Kathy—" Elaine searched desperately for words, finding none.
"It's been like this all along," Kathy forced herself to admit. "Eric's kept a wall between us from the very beginning. He'd never let me get really close to him."
"Because of me." Elaine walked across the room, unable to face her. "Because he suspected the truth, and was afraid. Not just for me but how this thing might be part of him, too. Eric's never been sure he was fully a man."
"But that's absurd," Kathy protested, and in the silence that followed Elaine felt her recognition of the truth about Eric. The wall that intruded in their marriage.
"There's nothing wrong with Eric—it's me!" Elaine flung out, hating herself. "Ever since I can remember, there was this thing. I remember the first time it came out into the open, the ugly truth, that I could only love women. There was a girl counsellor when I was away at camp—she was older than me, a
nd so wise! Everybody thought it was a teenage crush, but I knew even then. I went to college, and there was a girl there. But it wasn't real with her the way it is with me—she was able to break away. She got married right after graduation, has a family now. If we meet on the street, she walks by pretending she doesn't recognize me."
"Elaine, I didn't know," Kathy fought to keep the shock out of her voice.
"Does it make you sick?" Elaine demanded harshly. "Can you bear to look at me now?"
"No, I'm not sick," Kathy said steadily, "except about Eric."
"Kathy, let me make it up to you!" It was as though a complete stranger had taken control of her body, Elaine thought frantically, hearing herself yet unable to stop. "We'll go away together somewhere, and you'll forget all this nastiness. I'll show you soft, real love that makes life beautiful and worth living."
"Elaine, no!" Horror shone from Kathy.
With shattering suddenness Elaine realized what she was doing. "Kathy, I'm sorry," her voice was a whisper of shame.
"It's all right, Elaine—we've both had a horrible experience—you didn't think."
"I didn't want you to hate me."
"I don't," Kathy insisted, regaining her composure as she saw Elaine's eluding her. "I'm not condemning you, Elaine. I want to help. As Eric should! He's your brother."
"Nobody can help me," Elaine said heavily. "Except myself. I have to learn to live with myself, first of all."
"Then do that, fully," Kathy moved towards her earnestly. "You're an artist—this career of yours means nothing, does it? Be real, all the way. Live the way you have to live—and be true to your ability. You know you're an artist—that should make up for so many things."
"I haven't the honesty to live my way," Elaine said bitterly. "I have to run around corners and hide! I can't face the loathing I see in eyes around me."
"Not everybody feels that way."
"Most," Elaine closed her eyes for an instant. "To almost everyone in the so-called normal world those like me are sick, depraved animals to be shunned and laughed at!"
"No!" Kathy insisted, her face taut with sympathy
"The least I can do is straighten out this thing with Eric and you. We'll go back to your apartment I'll make him listen to me, understand. I won't lie any more about myself—maybe in that way I can set him free. The whole family isn't messed up, as he's so utterly afraid. It's only me!"
They went back to the apartment together, because Elaine would have it no other way. They sat in the desolate quietness, like two at a wake. Then Elaine began to talk, until it seemed she'd talked for years—because here was someone who'd listen without condemning, who might not understand because how could any human not cursed with this inward conflict ever completely know what it was like to follow these strange, shadowy paths? And still Eric didn't arrive.
"Maybe he isn't coming back at all," Kathy forced herself to give voice to the torrent of fear that kept soaring within her, higher and higher until she was ready to choke with it.
“He’ll be back," Elaine insisted because she didn't dare believe otherwise. Because if he didn't, she knew what she'd have to do. She'd kill Terry!
"And if he does come back, so what?" Kathy tossed off defiantly. "Why should I even want him?"
"Because you love him. Because he loves you. You can't give up something that's precious to both of you so easily."
"I'm not right for Eric. He needs somebody he can lean on—somebody to push him ahead the way he wants to go."
"You're exactly what Eric needs," Elaine said with conviction. "That's his trouble—always pushing, in the wrong directions." She didn't say—"exactly what I need"—but the thought tore at her. The nearest thing had been Alex in Paris—and she'd let her mother drag her away from that.
"I ought to get out of here. Pack up and just go." Panic seized Kathy with sudden urgency.
"You can't," Elaine ordered sharply.
"That's the right way, Elaine. Clean and finished. Eric won't want to see me when he walks in here!"
The two girls froze, hearing the key in the lock, and then Eric stood there, his face running through a frantic transition of emotions. Shock, anger, bitterness that Elaine guessed even before it showed itself.
"Well, what a welcome home I'm getting," he chuckled harshly, glancing from one to the other. "Home comes the hero, straight from the bars."
"Eric, I want to talk to you," Elaine said quietly, her eyes holding his. He'd been drinking heavily—but not so much that he was incoherent.
"Yes, that's a great idea," he agreed with a tortured mockery. "Let's talk!"
Then, with cold deliberation, he swung about and locked the living room door with his key. He caught the glance of consternation that shot from Kathy to Elaine, and this seemed to amuse him enormously.
"Now may we talk?" Elaine asked grimly.
"In a while." He sauntered across the room, his tongue between his lips, thinking out his course of action, plainly announcing he was master here. "We have plenty of time—a whole lifetime ahead of us."
"I’ll make some coffee," Kathy offered hopefully.
"I'm not that drunk!" It was a sharp reprimand.
"I didn't mean that—" Kathy flushed.
"First of all," a smile played about his mouth now, "I want to talk to my wife. Or should I say—'our wife'?"
"That's enough of that," Elaine said with a calmness she didn't feel. "We've got a lot of air to clear up, and let's start off by throwing out stupid suspicions."
"We'll talk to you later. Right now," he moved to Kathy, grasping her by the wrist, "I want to talk to Kathy."
"All right, Eric." Kathy's eyes were dark with uncertainty, yet the pain mirrored in his told her the depth of his hurt.
"Inside," he gestured elaborately to the bedroom, and she walked silently inside.
Elaine moved to the sofa, insecure, upset. What was Eric up to in this alarming mood of his? What did he expect Kathy to tell him?
“Baby, you're not afraid of me, are you?" Eric's voice came clearly from the bedroom, making no effort at concealment.
"No, Eric," Kathy spoke softly, yet again those blatantly thin walls, Elaine thought despairingly.
"Love me?"
"You know I do!" Honesty rang through her voice.
"Take off your clothes!" he ordered harshly.
"Eric—"
"What's the matter? You took them off for my sister," he reminded with a deadly quietness.
"Eric, you said we were going to talk," Kathy tried again, and Elaine's nails dug painfully into her palms, knowing there was no escape for her here. Eric, damn him, had locked that door!
"We are—my way! The trouble with me, I've always treated you as though you were a delicate bit of china. All right, now you'll see what it's like to be loved by a man. A whole man!"
"Eric, I love you…" It was hardly more than a whisper.
"You’ll do more than that before I finish. You'll want me! Not that hulk of degeneracy outside, but me!”
"Don't talk about Elaine that way," she pleaded.
"What else, when she made a play for my own wife." Elaine heard the tearing of material, and she shut her eyes to blot out the mental vision of Eric stripping Kathy the way he would some hot-blooded, wised-up slut.
"Eric, you're so wrong!"
"You've never felt my hands on you like this, have you?" he demanded. "It was always easy, careful Eric, trying not to frighten you."
"You never frightened me. For heaven sake, I'm your wife!"
"You were a wide-eyed school-girl, a married virgin! Did you call what we shared passion?"
"Eric, please, don't talk so loud," her voice was husky with shame.
"All right, we'll stop talking, baby!" His breath was labored now, and in the somber silence of the night Elaine could imagine what she couldn't hear. Eric's hands caressing that soft young body, and her faint cry of pain as his teeth sank into her breast. "Afraid now?" he taunted.
"No, Eric, no!"
"All right, tell me you love me now!" Eric demanded hoarsely. "Say it, Kathy! I dare you!"
"Darling, yes!”
"Say it," he ordered.
"Eric, I love you! Eric, I want you!" It was a tortured passionate admission, and the desire that welled in Kathy in the bedroom was a red-hot poker branding Elaine, alone on the sofa.
"Okay, Kathy, prove it! Prove it to me. Right now!"
The incoherent moans of towering passion, their triumphant half-sobs of satisfaction ripped into Elaine, punishing her as nothing else on earth could ever do.
With astonishing suddenness the door to the bedroom swung open, and Eric stood there, stripped to his shorts, his face contorted with mockery. Elaine saw Kathy, momentarily stunned, reaching now for a robe to conceal her nakedness.
"Yes, Eric?" She stood her ground, acknowledging nothing.
"I showed my wife what real love means. Think you can better that?"
"There was nothing like that between Kathy and me, ever." Her eyes held his, unflinching. She didn't deny what her heart and her body admitted—but what she spoke was absolute truth—she had to convey that to Eric.
"Then here's your chance." His eyes swung from one to the other, loaded with unspoken challenges. "Show her, Elaine! Show her which one of us is the best!"
"Eric, there's no need to talk like that," Kathy forced herself to speak, tying the robe tightly about her body, as though to take refuge there.
"Let's have a contest," Eric decided, his eyes flashing ominously. "Why so modest?"
"I won't listen to this!" Desperation shone from Kathy now, as she stood there, trembling, unable to meet Elaine's glance of apology.
"Why so squeamish? You weren't squeamish with me. Shall I tell Elaine about it?"
"Eric, you're insane!" Elaine lashed out. "We've had enough already. Are you out of your mind?"
"I'm being generous, sister dear. I say, let's share and share alike. Why don't the three of us have a ball? We have all the ingredients right here. Connubial passion, homosexuality, incest. Have you ever had a man, Elaine? Or has it always been women?"