by Ann Bannon
Laura had grown up there, too. And suddenly Beth knew that she had to get to Chicago. She would go if it meant a divorce; even if it meant giving up her children. No sacrifice seemed out of line to her. Uncle John would take her in. She could always feed him stories and hide the truth from him. The idea of actually seeing Laura again awakened a trembling hope in her that came very near, at her best moments, to being happiness.
She spent three days trying to figure out a good way to broach the subject. Nothing had changed between herself and Charlie. He spoke to her when necessary and he spent the nights on his side of the bed, never touching her except by accident. His silent suffering both touched and exasperated her, like Vega's. Mostly it made her mad.
There was a secret woman in Beth, a woman capable of a wonderful and curious love for other women, and she wanted to dominate Beth. But, tragically for Charlie and her family, this tormented woman could not feel more for a man than a sort of friendly respect. If that was spurned she had nothing else to offer. And Charlie wanted passionate love and devotion, not a buddy who was more woman-oriented than he was.
It all came out in a single bright and anguished explosion. Beth had cast about for a way to explain herself to him; a hopeless job before it was begun, for she could not begin to understand herself. And when she saw the futility of it, she gave up and recklessly threw the whole range of her misery before him, like a picture on a screen.
She waited until the children were in bed and Charlie was watching the TV in the living room. She came in and sat down in a chair facing him. He was stretched out on the couch with his head on a hill of pillows, looking intently at the glowing screen in hopes of forgetting his problems for a little while.
"Charlie?” she said, and because she had not approached him for any reason for several weeks he turned his head and looked at her with surprise.
"What?” he said.
Beth swallowed once, to be sure her voice would come out clear and determined. “I'm going to go home. To Chicago."
He stared at her briefly and then turned unseeing eyes back to the set. “I doubt it,” he said. “You wouldn't want to leave Vega that long."
"Vega can go to hell. She's driving me crazy,” Beth confessed. He already believed the truth, although he had no proof of it. So why in God's name am I pretending? she thought defiantly. Suddenly it seemed easier and even cleaner to be frank.
"Don't tell me the great romance is fading?” he said, still not looking at her.
She gazed at his face she had once so loved and she wished, for the sake of that decaying love, that he would be kind, that he would say things that would not make her hate him.
"The great romance never existed,” she said.
"If you're trying to tell me it was all platonic, don't bother,” he said.
"I'm trying to tell you I'm not in love with Vega Purvis,” she blurted. “I never was."
"That's funny!” said Charlie. “I got the other impression."
"Well, I thought I was in love with her,” she said awkwardly, thinking, hoping the confession would unburden her at the same time that it destroyed Vega's worst weapon against her. But suddenly the words were ugly and hard to shape and she wished she had simply told him she was going away and left it at that.
"I—I thought I loved her the night I took her the whiskey, at the Knickerbocker. And I discovered that I didn't. That's all."
"After a little mutual exploration?” His voice was sarcastic. “Shall I send you a gold plaque in honor of your extra-marital affairs?"
She stood up and stamped her foot and started to speak, but he added quickly, “And don't talk to me the way you talk to your children. I'll take you up and beat the hell out of you, I ‘swear I will. For their sakes."
"Charlie, I'm going to Chicago!” she said flatly, finally. “You're not going to run out on this, Beth. You have a responsibility to me and the kids. Nobody held a gun to your head when we, got married. Why, you weren't even pregnant. You married me because you wanted to marry me, and by God, you're still married to me. And you're going to stay married to me until you grow up and learn to face your responsibilities."
"Charlie,” she said, suddenly earnest and almost scared, “I can't stand this any more."
"Can't stand what? No lovers? None of your lady friends suits you?"
For a second she thought she would explode with grief and fury, but she clamped her eyes shut and controlled herself. “I can't stand living with a man,” she said, and suddenly the tears began to flow. She went on speaking, ignoring them. “It's not your fault you're a man—” “Thanks,” he snarled.
"And it's not my fault I need a woman. You have to understand that, Charlie. I'm not doing this because I want to hurt you. I'm not gay because I enjoy it. I don't even know if I'm gay at all. I wish to God, I wish with all my heart, that I could make a life with you and the children. I wish all I needed to be happy was what other woman need—a home and a man and children. I thought I was like other women when we got married, or I never would have committed myself to a lifetime with you. I thought it was what I needed and wanted, or believe me I would have spared us both. I would have climbed aboard that train with Laura nine years ago. But I thought she was different and I was normal. And I was in love with you."
He sighed deeply, covering his face for a moment with his hands.
"I remember Laura,” he said then, gazing into space. “I remember her so well, with that pale face, rather thin, and those big blue eyes. I remember how she adored you and how pathetic I thought she was. I remember how shocked I was when I found out that you had encouraged her. But I was always so sure, in spite of everything, that you were basically normal and that being married and having a couple of kids would straighten you out so easily. I was so sure of myself,” and she saw his self-doubt and confusion now and it touched her. “I thought because I was a man and because I loved you so terribly that we'd be able to work out anything together. I thought that living with me would give you a lifelong preference for my love. Real love, a man's love. The kind of love that only a man can give a woman."
"That's not the only real love, Charlie,” she said, sinking to the chair again, and leaning toward him, tense with the need to make him understand a little, now, at long last. “I thought I'd get over it too when Laura went away, and I thought I had. It was years after we were married that I began to feel like this, and at first I didn't even know what it was. It wasn't till Vega that I even realized what was wrong with me. Charlie, maybe if I could just have a sort of vacation from you."
"Vacation? How can you take a vacation from a marriage? It's a permanent condition,” he said, and she could tell from his voice that it didn't make the first glimmer of sense to him.
"I know it isn't sensible, and I've tried to fight it, but it overwhelms me,” she said. “I wonder, ‘What in hell am I married for anyway? My kids are miserable, I'm miserable, Charlie's miserable.’ If I were doing any good with all this suffering it might be worth while. If it made Skipper and Polly happy, if it made you happy, maybe it would be worth it all. But it doesn't. We're all unhappy. Charlie ... please understand."
"You can help yourself, Beth,” he said coldly.
"No, I can't,” she said. “That's the awful part of it. That's what scares me so. I feel my irritation turning into hatred, almost. I want to get away so badly that I don't think I can stand it sometimes."
"Get away from what? Yourself? You have to take yourself with you wherever you go, you know."
"No, I want to get closer to myself, I want to know myself, Charlie. I don't even know who I am. Or what I am."
"You're my wife!” he said sharply, as if that were the argument to end them all, to end all of her doubts with one stroke.
"I'm myself!” she cried, rising to her feet again, her fists knotted at her sides. “And all I'm doing by staying here is creating agony for the four of us."
"The five of us. You forget Vega. Apparently she's not too happy with things, if you w
ish she were in hell."
"Oh, Charlie, spare me! God!” she shouted. Her voice sounded nearly hysterical.
"Keep it down,” he said. “If you don't wake the kids up you'll scare the neighbors to death."
For a long trembling moment she stood there, unable to speak through her sobs and unable to look at his tired and disappointed face. Finally she said, whispering, “I don't know who I am, Charlie. Just saying I'm your wife doesn't tell me any more than I've known for years, and that isn't enough."
"You're either straight or you're gay, Beth. Take your pick.” He couldn't yield to her, he couldn't be generous. He had been through too much and his restraint ran too high. He stood to lose a wife he loved, through that wife's lack of self-understanding. He might see her transformed into a type of woman he neither understood nor liked, before his very eyes.
"It's not that easy,” she said, appalled at his attitude. “You aren't either black or white, you're all shades of gray in between. It might be the kind of thing I could get over and learn to live with, and it might be the kind of thing that will change my whole life irrevocably."
"What if you find out you're nothing but a goddamn Lesbian?” he said in that rough voice that carried his grief so clearly, and he wounded her heart forever with his words.
Her patience snapped like a stick bent too far. Without a word—words had never seemed so inadequate, so meaningless, so useless between two people born to the same native tongue—she turned and went into the bedroom and emptied all of her dresser drawers on the bed. Charlie watched her while she marched in white-faced fury into the basement and hauled two big bags up the stairs.
She dragged them through the living room and he leaned forward to say softly, “You fool, Beth. You fool!"
But she couldn't look at him. She thought she would either faint with her hatred or somehow kill him with the frenzy of it.
In the bedroom she stuffed things into the bags helter skelter. What didn't fit didn't go. The rest was left behind in a tangle.
Halfway through this frenetic task she went to the phone and called the Los Angeles International Airport. Charlie watched her, still on the couch, immobilized with disbelief. She made a reservation for that very morning at three o'clock.
And then she called her Uncle John and told him to pick her up at Chicago's Midway Airport the next day. Her reservation on the plane was for one person only.
"Just you?” Charlie said softly, staring at her. “You mean you'd really leave me here with the kids? You mean you really don't give a goddamn about your own children?"
"You said I couldn't take them with me!” she cried. “I'd take them if you'd let me."
"Never,” he said. “But I thought—God, Beth, I thought you'd try a little harder to get them than this. You've given up without a struggle.” He was truly shocked; it blasted all his favorite concepts of motherhood to see her behave this way.
"I've struggled with you until I haven't any strength left,” she said hoarsely.
"You never loved them,” he said, hushed with shock and revelation. “You never loved them at all."
"I haven't a strong enough stomach to get down on my knees and beg for them,” she cried. “I've begged you long enough and hard enough for other things."
"But they were things. These are kids. Your own kids!"
"I want them,” she cried, “but I want my freedom more. I only make them unhappy, I'm not a good mother."
"Well, what sort of a mother do you think I'll make?” he shouted, and now it was Charlie whose voice was loud enough to wake the children.
She left him abruptly and finished her packing. In the children's room she could heard stirrings and she prayed with the tears still soaking her cheeks that neither of them would wake up and break her heart or change her mind. She forced her suitcases shut with the strength of haste and fear, and half shoved, half carried them out to the car.
Charlie stood in the center of the living room and watched her with his mouth open. When she passed him he said, “Beth, this isn't happening. It can't be. I couldn't have been that bad. I couldn't have been. Beth, please. Explain to me, tell me. I don't understand."
But she gave him a look of hopelessness, and once she snapped, “Is that all you can say? After nine years of marriage?"
Is he just going to stand there and let me go? she wondered. A sort of panic rose in her at the thought that he might suddenly regain his senses and force her to stop. But he let her get as far as packing both bags into the back of the car and actually starting the motor before he yanked the door open and shoved her over so that he could sit in the driver's seat.
"Beth,” he said, and his eyes were still big with the awful-ness of what she was doing to him and their children. “You aren't going anywhere."
Suddenly he kissed her urgently, holding her arms with hands so strong and fierce that they bruised her flesh. She felt his teeth pressed into her tender mouth and something in the despair of it, the near-terror she sensed in him at the thought of losing her, brought an uprush of unwanted tenderness in her heart.
He tried to kiss her again, but Beth struggled wildly, trying to hurt him. And all the while he was wooing her with violence, almost the way he had when they first met, as if he knew now too that words were long since worthless between them.
At last Beth grasped one of her own shoes and pulled it off. Desperately she struck him with all her strength on the side of the head. The sharp heel cut his scalp and he gave a soft little cry of astonishment. He pulled away from her at last and they stared at each other, both of them shocked at themselves, at each other, at what was happening, both of them crying.
Finally, without a word, he got out of the car and slammed the door.
Beth dragged herself over to the driver's seat and rolled down the window. “I'll write,” she said, but their two white faces, still so near one another physically, were already separated by more than the miles Beth would fly across that night. He flinched at her promise, as if he knew that an envelope full of words would do no. more good than those they had flung at each other in a huge effort to create understanding.
"Take good care of the kids,” she said and immediately she began to back out because she could hear one of them starting to cry.
He walked along beside the car, one hand on the window sill, as if that might keep her there longer. “What shall I tell them this time when they wake up and find you gone?” he asked.
"Tell them I've gone to hell,” she wept. “Tell them I'm a no-good and the only thing they can hope for is that life will be happier without me than with me. It will, too.'*
She began to press the accelerator, gathering speed until he had to let go or run to keep up. He let go.
In the street she straightened the car around and gave one last trembling look to her house, her yard and garden, the lighted windows of the living room where the TV set played on to an audience of furniture. Skipper's little voice wailed through the night for a glass of water and Charlie stood at the end of the drive, a silhouette with silver trim, watching her.
Beth drove away. God, let me never feel sorrow like this again, she prayed. Let this be my punishment for what I'm doing. I can't bear any more.
Chapter Nine
IN PASADENA SHE stopped and called Cleve. It was past eleven o'clock and she hesitated, but she had to talk to somebody about Vega and had to make some arrangements about Charlie, and there plainly wasn't anybody she could turn to but Cleve.
"I'm in a little all-night joint on Fair Oaks, at Colorado,” she said.
"God, Beth, you're on skid row!"
"Sh! Don't wake Jean up! Can you come down?"
"Sure, but you'd better find a cop to protect you till I get there."
"It's not a bar, it's a coffee place,” she said. “Hurry, Cleve.” And the catch in her throat warned him to heed her words.
He got there in less than fifteen minutes. She was waiting out in front and when he arrived they went in and took a booth and had a cu
p of coffee in the dirty brilliance of the fluorescent light.
"Cleve, it's not fair of me to dump my troubles in your lap,” she said, “but you've got to help me. You're the only one who can."
He was alarmed by the look of her. Her eyes were heavy and scared, red with weeping, and her hair hung about her pretty face in neglected confusion. She breathed fast, as though she had been running, and she stammered—something Beth, with all her poise, had never done.
"If you're in trouble—"
"It's private trouble, Cleve. I'm leaving Charlie."
His jaw went slack and he stared at her amazed while the waitress placed the coffee in front of them. After a moment he lighted them each a cigarette, passing hers to her, and then he said to the coffee cup, “I'm really sorry. God! I thought you two were sublimely happy."
"Not everybody's as happy as you and Jean!” Beth said, and there was more wistfulness than envy in her voice.
"Thank God for that,” he said wryly, but she was too wrapped up in her pain and perplexity to notice it ‘Tell me about it?” he said.
"No,” she said, shaking her head and making a tremendous effort to control herself. “You wouldn't understand any better than he did."
"What about the kids?” His voice was cautious. He had been handling Vega's flare-ups so long that frantic women were not new to him. He had some idea what to do.
"I—I left them. I'm no proper mother, Cleve. It was cowardly but I swear I think they'll be happier."
Like Charlie before him, Cleve was shocked. “But what in hell will Charlie do with them?"
"I don't know. I came to talk to you about Vega,” she said quickly. If he persisted in that obvious shock she would go to pieces. His sister's name silenced him, threw him off the track.
"I went ahead and saw her, Cleve. I've been seeing quite a lot of her lately.” She didn't know how to proceed. She couldn't blurt out the truth to him, and yet she had to say something. In her frayed emotional state Vega was likely to do anything, even scream the facts to strangers, unless she could be reassured that Beth at least thought of her before she left.