by Ann Bannon
Twelve
Emmy could hardly wait to hear about Charlie. She had to run after Beth in a midmorning rush between classes and caught her speeding over the campus toward Lincoln Hall.
“Have coffee with me,” she begged.
Beth was afraid; she knew too well what to expect from Emmy. “I have a class, Em.”
“Well, cut it! Oh, come on.”
Beth slowed down. “Well—” she said. She had to face it sooner or later. Emily would be wondering why she didn’t see Charlie again. She’d have to make it sound plausible.
Beth let herself be led to the nearest coffee spot. Emmy could hardly wait to ask questions.
“How was it?” she said.
Beth stirred her coffee carefully, watching the brown and white unite in her cup and come tan. “He’s a very nice boy,” she said.
Emily waited. “Well, is that all?” she said finally.
“No.” She pulled the spoon out and looked at it. It was a tricky business trying to fool Emily. Emily knew her too well. “We had a very nice time.”
“What’s all this ‘nice’? That doesn’t mean anything.” She leaned back and folded her arms. “What happened, Beth?”
Beth wondered if she could possibly conceal it from her, and the weight of another lie pulled her spirits still lower. “He just doesn’t have it, that’s all. I know, I know, when you saw us at Maxie’s I looked all excited…and I guess I was. But it wore off. He’s—” She shrugged. “He’s just another guy, Emmy.”
“You’re disappointed, maybe, but not with Charlie. Gee, Beth, I know you better than that. You’re not in love with his face. At least that’s not all you’re in love with.”
“Who’s in love? With anything? Or anybody? I didn’t say I was in love.”
“You didn’t need to.”
“Oh, Emmy—” she exclaimed. My God, does it show? Emily took her confusion for confirmation.
“When are you going to see him again?”
Beth emptied the smoke from her lungs and said, “I don’t know.” If she had said “never” she would have provoked a storm from Emily.
“Is he going to call?” Emily felt her way carefully, surprised by Beth’s evasiveness.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“I don’t know, Emmy. Today, I guess.”
“You don’t know? Didn’t he say?”
“No.”
“He’s disappointed too, is that it?”
“I guess so. I don’t know.”
“If he’s disappointed, why is he going to call?”
“Emmy, I—” She had to protect Laura. She looked down again, defeated. “I don’t know.”
Emmy frowned, reaching for Beth’s confidence with her sympathy, her affection; wondering why Beth suddenly distrusted her. “What happened last night, Beth?” she said again. “Or don’t you know that either?”
Beth wanted to scream at her. She made one last try to evade her. In a short dry voice she said, “We had dinner, we danced, we talked. We made love, we came home.” She sighed, hurting because the relief of truth was denied her and because now it was Emily she had to lie to. But Laura must be spared; Laura, whose whole love she had taken for her sometime pleasure; Laura, whose trust she had wholly betrayed; Laura, to whom she owed the climax of love, and perhaps even her physical pleasure with Charlie.
“Beth,” said Emily gently. “Why won’t you talk to me? Is there something the matter?” Beth looked up at her slowly and Emmy took her hands and squeezed them. “Beth, you’re my best friend,” she said. “Don’t you think I want to help, if I can? Gee, Beth, I tell you everything. I haven’t a secret in the world from you. You know you can trust me.” Beth couldn’t answer. “Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head.
“Did he threaten you or—or was he disgusting, or—”
“No, no, Emmy. He—” She stopped, helpless. After a moment she said, “No, he was very nice. He didn’t do anything.”
Emily released her hands and sat studying her in silence. Beth sipped her coffee and smoked and sweated in quiet misery. Finally Emily said pointedly, “It’s Laura.”
Beth looked up at her with such a startled face that Emmy said, “I thought so. I should have suspected this all along.”
“Oh. Emmy—no!” said Beth. She was almost sick with apprehension.
“Don’t tell me, Beth. I’ve got eyes. You won’t go out with Charlie because of Laura.”
“Emmy, I swear to God, it’s not true, it’s not—”
“Don’t try to deny it, Beth. It’s the only possible answer. Nothing else makes sense.”
“Oh, Emmy, my God.” She put her head in her hands, shaken to the core. “How did you know? How did you ever—”
“Simple,” said Emmy. “You have the softest heart in the world. Too damn soft for your own good. You won’t go out with Charlie because Laura’s still got a crush on him.” She smiled triumphantly. “I knew it. I’m right, aren’t I?”
Beth couldn’t answer. She wanted to laugh hysterically with relief, she wanted to get up and run.
Emmy sighed and spun her cup slowly around by its handle. “I know because Laura felt so terrible last night before you got home. She even cried a little. And finally she just plain got mad at me. She said she just couldn’t explain it, but I knew it was you and Charlie.”
Beth wondered if Emmy would see the tremor in her hands. “I talked to her last night,” she said. “I think she’s all right now.”
“Now that you’ve told her you won’t go out with Charlie, you mean.”
“Oh, Emmy….”
“Beth, I know you wouldn’t lie to me. You’d tell me if this wasn’t true. Now listen to me. Laura’s a sweet girl and I know you’re fond of her, but this is ridiculous. You can’t sacrifice a terrific guy—maybe your whole future—to one girl. You’ll probably never see her again after next June. Beth, you’re crazy about Charlie. Admit it….” Beth put her head down on her arms and prayed for her sanity. “Beth, you’re hurting yourself forever, trying not to hurt Laura for a little while.” For the wrong reasons, Emmy hit the right truth, but Beth was blind with her own distress.
“Emmy, you’ve got it all backwards, you—” She broke off. “Let’s not talk about it. Let’s please not talk about it.”
“But I don’t understand.”
“Please, Emmy.” She restrained an impulse to grasp her shoulders and shake her into silence. She stood up abruptly, suddenly at the end of her endurance, and said, “I’m going up to the Union. I’ll see you later, Emmy.”
Emmy looked up, surprised and a little hurt. “I’ll come with you, Beth,” she offered.
“No, no. You—you stay here and finish your coffee.”
Emily watched Beth stumble out of the lounge and made up her mind that she would interfere. Laura’s crush would just have to give way to Beth’s love. There were no two ways about it.
Thirteen
Mitch was curious. He pestered Charlie for the facts, and Charlie’s evasions gave him the satisfaction of supposing the evening with Beth was a failure.
“How far did you get?” he asked.
Charlie sighed and looked up from his book. His temper was bad but he tried to hold it back. “I got nowhere, boy. 1 wasn’t trying to get anywhere.”
“Going to see her again?”
“Of course.”
“When?”
“I don’t know,” he said with martyred patience. And then to illustrate his irritation he added, “God damn it! Now will you shut up?”
Mitch complied, grinning comfortably. To see Charlie make a mistake with a woman was to see Romeo take a pratfall under the balcony.
“What are you grinning at?” said Charlie.
Mitch chuckled. “I didn’t know I was.”
“You were.”
“Oh, I’m just glad to know you’re fallible.”
Charlie plunged back into his book. He had been trying to reach Beth all day with no success
. She wasn’t at home or she couldn’t be disturbed. They couldn’t say where she was or when she’d be back. Sorry. Call again. And he did, again and again, with always the same results and the same obvious reason for them: she didn’t want to talk to him.
It was incomprehensible. For a long while he imagined that he had done something wrong. But the harder he pursued the idea the less substance it had and finally he gave it up. Something else was bothering her. Maybe they had gone too fast. Maybe they both had wanted too much too soon. He hadn’t pushed it, he hadn’t insisted on anything. She’d wanted it as much as he did; it had happened naturally. He couldn’t accuse himself of anything there. The whole evening had seemed so right, so fair and lovely, and he wanted her again so much that it was impossible for him to admit that she didn’t want him just as much. He didn’t think she was a girl with a conventional conscience, but he was willing to admit that he might have been wrong there; she had certainly suffered enough over her past transgressions. What else could it be? He didn’t think she was seeing anyone else; she came with him voluntarily and never made an objection to him. The more he thought of it the more puzzled he was.
Charlie didn’t know he had an ally. Emily kept her peace as long as she could, but by the middle of exam week she couldn’t hold out any longer. She knew Charlie had been trying to see Beth on campus, at the Union, everywhere; that he had been calling every day and getting nowhere; that he was upset and getting mad. She got half of this from Bud, who saw Charlie almost every day, and the rest from watching and listening to Beth, and pretty soon her Samaritan instincts got the better of her. She called Charlie. Mitch took a message for her.
When Charlie got home he found the note under the corner of the phone. “Call Emily at 7-4006. She says you’ll understand. What’s the mystery?”
Charlie chucked his books on the sofa and picked up the phone, pulling off his jacket while it rang.
“Good afternoon, Alpha Beta,” said a bright young voice.
“Hello, is Emily there?”
“Just a moment, please.”
Charlie lighted a cigarette and waited, fidgeting.
Minutes later, Emmy said, “Hello?”
“Emmy?” he said eagerly.
“Oh, Charlie! I’m so glad you called. Listen, I’m going to be perfectly frank with you. I know you’ve been trying to reach Beth.” She hesitated.
“Yeah?” he said, urging her with his voice.
“Well, she wants to see you, Charlie. I know it. She won’t talk to you on account of Laura.”
“Laura? What the hell does Laura have to do with it?”
“Beth’s got it into her head that Laura’s still got a crush on you.”
Charlie was floored. “Emmy—my God—she never did! Our fathers were old buddies in college. I never would have met the girl if it hadn’t been for that. She doesn’t have a crush on me. She never did. What the hell!”
Emily was suddenly concerned. The words she phrased in such good faith seemed always to change character the moment they left her mouth. Not until she heard herself speak them did she understand them as other people did. She paused, trying to grasp the implications of the conversation. “Well,” she said, uncertainly, “Beth doesn’t know that, apparently. Anyway, Charlie, that’s not the point. The point is she wants to see you. She’s told me so. She’s miserable, and if you could just talk to her—”
“How? My God, I’ve been trying—”
“I know, but she won’t talk to you if she knows it’s you. Call her on her private phone. We have one in the room. She doesn’t know you have the number, so she’ll answer it. Once she hears your voice, Charlie, it’ll make all the difference, I know it.”
“When can I call?”
“Call her tonight about seven. She’ll be alone in the room then. Laura’s got a final at Greg Hall and I’ll just fade away.”
“Emmy, you’re a good girl.”
“Oh, she’d do it for me. I just hate to see you two in a mess because of a silly misunderstanding. You just need a go-between.” She laughed.
“What’s her number?”
She told him.
“Thanks, Emmy,” he said. “I really appreciate this.”
They hung up, each wondering what sort of a game Laura was playing. Charlie figured it for some kind of petty jealousy, but Emily came closer. She began to review Laura’s behavior systematically: the way she followed and imitated Beth; her disappointment when Beth wasn’t at home; her temper when Beth wasn’t there to greet her after Christmas vacation; her anger when Beth and Charlie went out.
Emily admitted that it might be some sort of obsessive friendship, but even that idea made her uncomfortable. She was unwilling to accept it but unable to dismiss it. But she said nothing to either of her roommates.
At seven, as arranged, Charlie called Beth on her room phone. He listened nervously to the ring. It rang four times before Beth picked up the receiver.
“Hello?”
“Beth—darling, this is Charlie. Don’t hang up.”
“Charlie?” She began to tremble.
“Don’t ask me anything, Beth, just listen. I have to see you. Tonight. We have to talk. We owe each other that much. Can you be ready in fifteen minutes?” His voice was urgent and soft; it brought him too close to her.
“Charlie—” she whispered, sinking into the desk chair, and tears started down her cheeks.
“I’ll be by for you in fifteen minutes,” he said. “Beth?”
“Yes?”
“Fifteen minutes, darling.” He hung up before she could say anything.
Beth put her head in her hands and gave one short dreadful sob, and then she ran to wash her face and get dressed. She was ready when her buzz sounded a few minutes later and made her heart jump. She sped downstairs as if speed would obliterate her thoughts.
Charlie was waiting at the foot of the stairs. She stopped when she saw him and moved toward him slowly, stopping in front of him in the hall. She hadn’t even time to hate her weakness; she resolutely ignored the idea of Laura. She couldn’t help herself. They stared at each other for a minute and then he put his arm around her tight and led her outside without a word and down the walk to his car.
He started the motor, and she watched him with her heart pulsing wildly and her hot hands knotted together. After a moment he turned and regarded her and, still without a word, took her in his arms. With a gasp she reached for him and they kissed for a very long time. And then again. He turned the motor off, and for almost an hour they sat there with no words, only their lips and their trembling bodies to speak for them. Finally she put her head down on his shoulder and cried soundlessly. Only her involuntary tremors betrayed her. When she was calm again he said gently, “Want to talk to me, darling?”
She shook her head. He tilted her face up and brushed away the leftover tears and smiled at her. “All right,” he said. “I won’t torture you with questions. You’ll find a way to tell me. Only tell me this, honey. Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” She smiled faintly at him and looking at him wanted him again and lifted her lips to be kissed. He took them almost violently and then, holding her, he said, “Is there someone else?”
She couldn’t answer. She struggled with herself and couldn’t answer.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said. “I said no questions, didn’t I?” He released her, frowning and rubbing his brow. “Let’s get a beer.” He looked at her but she didn’t answer. “I can only take so much of this, Beth. Beer, honey?”
“Okay,” she said.
They went over to Pratts’ and talked very little because there was only one thing to talk about and it couldn’t be said. So they studied each other’s faces in the candlelight and locked their hands together and got a little drunk, more on each other than on the beer. And Beth fought off the haunting image of Laura’s face from time to time when it got too strong and began to accuse her.
Charlie had to say something finally. “Emmy called
me,” he said. “She gave me your number.”
“Oh.” She smiled at him.
“She said something that—made me think you might have a wrong impression, honey.”
“Of what?”
He knocked a column of ash from his cigarette and said musingly, “Twenty-eight years ago, my father went to school here with a guy named Merrill Landon. They’ve been friends ever since. When I found out Landon’s daughter was here in school last fall I called her up and we went out a couple of times.” He paused to study her. “Do you see what I’m getting at?”
There was a line of worry between Beth’s eyes. “What did Emmy tell you, Charlie?”
“She said she thought you wouldn’t see me because of Laura—because you thought Laura had a crush on me. Darling, Laura never did have a crush on me. We’re just friends. Or rather, the children of friends…. Was that the trouble?”
Beth stared helplessly at him, her fingers pressed against her cheeks. He watched her for a moment, feeling that he was losing her again. “Beth, you can’t let Laura come between us. She means nothing to me, except as a family friend. There’s no reason—”
“It’s not Laura’s fault. Don’t blame anything on Laura. She has nothing to do with it.”
Charlie wanted to squeeze the truth out of her, but her worried face warned him it wouldn’t work. She was as stubborn as Emmy had said she was. “All right, darling, I won’t push you any farther,” he said. “On one condition. On one condition, Beth. Look at me.” He pulled her toward him. “That you see me again.” Her eyes dropped. “Beth!” His voice ordered her attention.
“All right,” she whispered unhappily. She couldn’t resist him when she was with him, just as she couldn’t hurt Laura when they were together. “All right, Charlie.”
“Tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.”
“Look, Beth,” he said, suddenly getting disciplinary with her. “I know you’ve got trouble, honey, I know you’re up against something. I’m not trying to force you or push you around or frighten you. Maybe you’ve got obligations somewhere else, maybe you can’t help what you’re doing. Okay. But damn it, Beth, you’ve got obligations to me, too, whether you want ’em or not. You can’t play with people, honey. You can’t do—” He groped a little. “You can’t behave the way you did with me—say the things you did—and suddenly drop me like a hot potato. Nobody can take that, Beth. Not me, not anybody.”