by Ann Bannon
"I guess it is,” he said. “I heard the tapes,” he added diffidently. “She sounded pretty desperate."
Another pause. Beth finished her drink and Charlie ordered two more.
"How can you take those children back to Pasadena to live?” she asked.
"It doesn't need to be Pasadena,” he said. “California's a big state."
"But the business is in Pasadena. It's all established. You can't just pick up and move out."
"For something like this I could. And I would.” He gazed directly at her as he said it, wanting her to see all the hurt and determination and love in his face.
"But, Charlie,” she protested, feeling caught and flustered, “it would mean dragging everybody with you, all the office staff, the craftsmen, the machinists. Cleve and Jean—"
"Cleve and Jean don't need to worry about it any longer,” he said, and he was gazing down at his drink now, lines of concern on his forehead.
"Why not? What does that mean?"
"Cleve isn't with the company now. It's just—Ayers Toys?"
Beth's mouth dropped open a little. “What happened?” she breathed at last.
"He climbed into that damn bottle and stayed,” Charlie said. “He was coming to work drunk all the time. It was getting bad when you left, Beth; you must have heard me mention it a couple of times.... Well, it just got worse. It got intolerable, to tell the truth. He wasn't doing anything, he wasn't contributing anything. He just sat in his office and tipped the bottle. I did all the work. And goddamn it, I didn't feel like sharing the credit and the money with a souse who didn't raise a finger for either one."
"Oh, but Charlie,” she said, and there were tears in her voice, “it was his business, his idea. You were the newcomer not so long ago. You were the one he took in, and taught the ropes, and made an equal partner.” She was hurt for a moment, as Cleve must have been hurt when it happened.
"Well, damn it!” he cried defensively. “It didn't have to happen ‘that way, Beth. I begged him to quit drinking. I dragged him around to a couple of specialists. I got Jean to help me, and Mrs. Purvis. And Cleve tried. When it got too bad, he felt the same way I did.
’”Honey, you don't think I went in there and fired the guy, do you?” he said, flinging out his hands in a plea for sympathy. “No! Hell, no. Cleve brought it up himself. I couldn't do a thing like that. He just came in one morning about a month ago and told me he thought it would be better for the business and for himself if he quit."
"Who's going to hire him now if he's been drinking?"
"Beth, it's rough, I know. It's a rough life, nobody needs to tell me that."
"Maybe Jean will get a job and support them for a while,” she said.
"He's leaving her!"
"What?” It was impossible. “They were always so happy!” she exclaimed. They had seemed so stable as a partnership.
"It's a trial separation,” Charlie said. “I think they love each other, all right, but they just can't stand each other, if you know what I mean."
"I always thought Jean took everything in her stride. I thought there was nothing that girl couldn't face with a smile. I even used to resent that smile of hers, because I thought it meant inner peace. I thought she had learned to cope with life, and because I was jealous I used to tell myself it was only because she was so stupid. I thought anybody as smart as me could never be happy. Only the nice, jolly, stupid people like Jean."
"She isn't stupid, honey,” Charlie said, sitting down on the bed beside her. “Her only answer to her problems was to smile. She and Cleve have been just—roommates for years. Not husband and wife. I think that's why he drinks. It had something to do with Vega, too. He never did explain it all to me. Just little hints and remarks when he was tight. I guess he and Vega were too close or something. When they were younger, I mean. He even made me think, one time, that it went as far as—” He stopped.
"As far as what?” she prompted with unhappy curiosity.
"Well, as a sort of affair,” he said, obviously embarrassed to talk about it. “Anyway, they were abnormally close. For a long time. And suddenly there was an awful fight. I guess they both got scared and ashamed when they got a little older and realized it wasn't very healthy for a brother and sister, and all that. And they both turned on each other. Vega blamed Cleve because he was a man and men are always responsible for these things. And Cleve blamed Vega because she was the oldest and she showed him the way and encouraged it. And all of a sudden, where there had been so much love, there was hate. They hated each other with real dedication. I guess to hide the fact that they would always love each other anyway, no matter how they tried not to.
"Well, it was too much for both of them. Vega turned to women for relief and affection. And Cleve tried to find a substitute in Jean for Vega. But Jean was the wrong girl entirely. They were different as night and day—the two women. I guess that's why Cleve chose her. He didn't want to be eternally reminded of his sister. But it didn't work, for either of them."
After a pause Beth said softly, “Explains a lot of things, doesn't it? God, it makes you wonder, though. It just makes you wonder if Cleve and Vega wouldn't both have been better off to stay with each other and let the world go to hell."
"You know it wouldn't,” he said, and though his voice was even she could feel the sudden rise in his emotional temperature.
"At least Vega wouldn't have ended up horribly dead on the floor of a hotel room."
"I wouldn't count on it. It's never better to prolong a sick relationship. She might have ended up dead even sooner."
"If prolonging a sick relationship will keep you alive, it's worth it."
"Things would have been much worse for them if they lived together,” he said positively. Anything abnormal he automatically loathed, without understanding it, without questioning himself.
And rather than fight him in an area where his will and his emotions could not be moved, she simply said, “He always managed to write and tell me how you and the kids were. No matter how drunk he was. And sometimes those letters looked like he had palsy when he wrote them. But I was so grateful for them.
"He was writing to you?” Charlie said, turning where he sat to look at her, surprised.
She nodded, her eyes on the floor. “I asked him to, she said “I knew you wouldn't write, and I had to know how you were."
He seemed touched. After a moment he reached for her hand and she let him have it, dreading to argue with him.
"Beth,” he said quietly. “Have you had enough now? Enough of this running around and trying to ‘find yourself,’ or whatever it is you think you're doing?"
He meant to be kind but he sounded condescending, and it wounded her. “You mustn't laugh at me, Charlie,” she said.
"No, darling, I'm not laughing. I know it's serious. God knows I have nothing to laugh about,” he said quickly.
Beth made herself look at him and for a brief moment she saw him the way he had been nine years ago in college when she had loved him so romantically. Or thought she had. The tenderness was reflected on her face and he brightened a little to see it. “Charlie, darling, I'm so grateful to you for so much,” she said. “I owe you a lot and I wish there were some way to repay it."
"There is. Come home with me."
She almost bit her lip. She hadn't meant to give him an opening like that. She wanted to steer him out of the idea without inflicting pain on him. He had come a long way and put up with a lot.
"I—I wish to God I could,” she said.
"You can. Oh, Beth, I've been so damned miserably lonesome—"
"I know, so have I,” she broke in swiftly, afraid to let him start telling her what he had been through. It would be very bad, it would hurt them both, and it would make her feel more obligated than ever to him.
She stood up, walking away from him a few steps, as if that would help her to think clearly. “I'll never be proud of what I've done to you, Charlie,” she said. “I've failed as a wife to you and as a
mother to my children. For a woman that's the ultimate disgrace. I suppose it sounds pretty hollow to say that I couldn't help it. But I was as much a failure to myself as a human being as I was to you. When you fail yourself how can you be any good to anyone else?"
She turned a supplicating face to him.
"I don't understand it,” he said. “You were all I ever wanted. The only thing wrong with my life now is that you're not in it."
"The only thing wrong with your life when I am in it is me. I had to leave,” she said, feeling that old needling desperation that plagued her when she tried to explain her private self to Charlie. He felt it too, as he tried to grasp it all, and came away with a head full of her words and no meanings to hang them on.
"I thought when I found Laura it would all come clear, all be explained to me,” she said, speaking as though explaining it to a child. “But when I found her, it was more like the beginning of the search than the end of it. I guess I'll never know the answer to who I am. Or why. I guess the answer is that there is no answer.” She gave a shy hopeless little laugh. “Does that make things any clearer?"
"No,” he said and shook his head, an earnest sweat of concentration on his face. “I hope you aren't telling me you won't come back with me. That's the only thing that matters."
"But Charlie, darling, we're right back where we started. That isn't enough. Not for me. If we could only be friends and—"
"Friends I” he flared, and she knew she was in for it now. “How can a husband and wife be just friends? Do you want to live like Cleve and Jean lived all these years? A pitiful farce of a marriage? It may fool their friends but it doesn't fool them."
"Charlie, let's face it, ours wasn't much better."
"It was till you got a bunch of goddamn half-baked ideas in your head!"
"I don't think I could go back to you now, even loving you,” she said.
"You mean you don't love me enough? Beth, Beth, I've always known that. In a marriage, one always loves more than the other. I'm willing to be that one.” He had risen and come toward her and now he stood behind her with his big warm hands on her shoulders, feeling her sobs and aching to stop them with kisses.
’”Oh, don't!” she cried, shaking him away from her. “Don't talk that way. You'll break my heart."
"'Come home with me then."
"I can't!” she cried, moving still further away from him.
"I need you."
"I can't, Charlie."
"The children need you. Think of them if you can't think of me, for God's sake."
"I have, I have, I've almost lost my mind over them. I wish somebody had cared that much about me when I was a child! I can't go home!"
’”You can, goddamn you! You will!” he exclaimed.
She whirled and faced him and shrieked with desperate determination, “No!"
There was a trembling silence for several moments while they stared at each other, both shaking with the intensity of their love, their hate, their helplessness.
"Beth, not once since I found you and got you out of that jail and brought you here have I said anything about what you've done to me. I was hoping I wouldn't have to. I haven't told you about the nights I've spent alone and the restaurant dinners I've eaten and the stories I've had to make up for the kids about you and the things I've had to tell the neighbors. I haven't told you—"
"Don't!” she cried in anguish. “Don't tell me unless you want to kill me."
"I want you to know what I've been through!” he said fiercely.
"Charlie, I'm telling you now and forever, once and for all, I can't come home with you. I can't go back to you. I—” “You said you loved me.” He had turned quite pale and was staring at her.
"I want a divorce,” she said, and crumbled into a chair at the foot of the bed.
They sat in utter silence then for ten minutes, neither of them moving, neither speaking. At last he said, “I could have killed you when you left. I felt that way for a long time. But when I heard about Vega, all the mess in the papers, everything changed. I was so worried about you. I knew you couldn't have done it and I wanted to forgive you. I don't know why, I guess I'm just a glutton for punishment. I just wanted you back, no questions asked."
"You didn't need to ask. Mr. Heinrich had all the answers,” she said sharply.
"I came here to forgive you, to rescue you and start over."
"I can't be rescued,” she said firmly.
"You're not worth it,” he said grimly. “I didn't know that till now. Or rather, I couldn't face it. I guess because I loved you so much."
She covered her face with her hands, refusing to look at him or answer. At last he rose.
"I'll take another room,” he said. “I'll be leaving tomorrow, I guess. There isn't much point in staying on."
She listened to him moving about the room, taking his things from the drawers where he had put them the night before, and her heart contracted. But still she didn't move, didn't try to stop him. It was better that he go off mad. It would give him strength and reassure him in the future that he had done the right thing. It would help him give her up. He stopped at the door and she looked up then, aware that he was leaving. His chin was set and his eyes were hard. He was very handsome and straight.
"Charlie, I wish—with all my heart, I wish—"
"I know. So do I,” he said.
"I'll never know, all the rest of my life, if what I'm doing is a brave thing or a cowardly thing, Charlie. A right thing or a wrong one. I only know I have to do it."
He listened, quiet and Uncomprehending, and then he said, almost gently, “Goodbye, Beth."
"Goodbye,” she whispered. He shut the door softly after him.
Chapter Twenty-two
THERE WAS ONLY ONE THING left that she knew she had to do, and that was see Laura and tell her the truths she had withheld before. She wrote to her aunt and uncle first and explained why she could not, and never would, come home, and thanked them for the hospitality. She was honest, although she was brief.
If she had to start a new life, and there was no question any more about that, she was going to start it without the lies and self-deceptions that had marred the other. She was going to pare away the fibs and selfish miseries, as many of them as she could, even if it meant hurting herself, hurting others. It would be a clean, honest pain and it would heal. She hadn't the guts to face Laura that day; to face anyone, for that matter. She waited until the next morning and then slipped out early, afraid of running into Charlie in the hotel lobby. But she was spared that.
She took a cab over to Laura's apartment. It was only eight-thirty. It seemed like an odd hour for confession and atonement, an odd time of day to be making your apologies and refashioning your life. But we don't pick our own times for these things; they happen when they are ready. The tangled strands of Beth's life were smoothing out a little. This was the last task. Until it was done she was not free. The rest would have to wait. When Laura herself knew the whole truth, Beth would be liberated at last from her self-contempt, from her obsessive need for Laura.
She rang the elevator buzzer after the clerk had phoned the Manns and told her she could see them. She rode up with her spine tingling and all the delicate nerves of her face taut. It wouldn't be so, bad; it couldn't be worse than what she had been through with Charlie or with Vega, she told herself. It had to be done. And still she trembled.
She tried to think of herself riding back down in that same elevator in half an hour with her lies behind her, her selfishness exposed and, in part, atoned for, and her heart lighter. Even if Laura was angry and disillusioned with her, even if her idealization of Beth was rudely shattered, even if there was no friendship left to salvage. It was Laura, she had come to find and Laura was her last bridge to cross before she could begin her life over again somewhere and try to do better with it this time.
She knocked quickly on Laura's front door, as if by hesitating she would squander her courage. Jack opened it for her. She stared
at him.
"Good morning,” he said. “It's all right, I live here,” he added, seeing the look of faint dismay on her face.
"I thought you'd be at work,” she said clumsily.
"I'm on my way, sweetheart,” he said, smiling. “She's all yours.” He thumbed over his shoulder and Beth saw Laura behind him in the living room, tying Betsy's hair ribbons. “Come on in,” he said and Beth walked in behind him. “We're relieved to see you,” he told her seriously.
Laura stood up, her face a picture of pale consternation. “Beth,” she said. The name was almost a question. “Are you all right?"
"Yes,” Beth said, and the relief Laura showed touched her.
"We saw in the papers that it was all over. They released you and everything."
Beth sat down in a chair and Laura busied herself with goodbyes until Jack and Betsy had gone out. She understood intuitively that Beth had to talk to her, only her, to set things right with herself.
When they were alone she came and sat on a hassock beside Beth's chair—the leather chair that Jack liked so well.
"I came to tell you the truth about a few things, Laura,” Beth said softly. “I won't take much time."
"Have some breakfast with me,” Laura said, but Beth shook her head. “Some coffee then?” and without waiting for an answer Laura sprang up and went into the kitchen. Beth didn't want her hospitality. She didn't want to watch Laura's warm concern turn slowly to disdain when she found out that Beth had deserted two children and her husband. The children, mercifully, had been kept out of the papers. It was up to Beth to confess their existence to Laura.
Beth came over to the stove where Laura was arranging two cups and saucers.
"Laura, please,” she said, touching her hand gently. “Don't do this. You may not want to look at me after I tell you—tell you—"
"You don't have to tell me anything, Beth. I trust you,” Laura said. “I love you. Friends don't need to apologize to each other."
"Yes, they do. Sometimes it's the only way."
"We've said too much to each other already. The less we say to each other, the happier we are together.” And she smiled intimately.