by Ann Bannon
“But my parents would never let me leave school. My father has his heart set on my getting my degree.” And Bud might not marry me. Brought face to face with the problem, she admitted it to herself for the first time.
“Then I think you ought not to see Bud for a while.”
Emmy was thunderstruck, trapped. “For a while?” she murmured in a hardly audible voice.
Bobbie put an arm around her and said, “Don’t cry.”
“For a while,” Mary Lou repeated. “It’s the only way, Emmy. I think you’re headed straight for real trouble, otherwise. And you’re pulling all of us after you. Don’t you see, Emmy? It’s for everybody’s good, really. It won’t be forever.”
Emmy saw; she saw very clearly now. She tried to steady her breath. “What if I do see him?” She couldn’t help asking; it was a last feeble gesture of independence. “What if I keep on seeing him?”
“It’s your duty not to, Em.”
“But what would happen if I did?” It had the fascination of calamity for her.
“Well—” Mary Lou looked down at her lap and found it hard to talk, hard to do what she cherished as her duty, to hit just the right tone—firm but compassionate. “Then I think—I think you would be happier outside the sorority.”
It took Emmy’s breath away from her for a minute. “You mean you’d jerk my pin?” It was preposterous. “You’d blackball me?”
“Oh, Emmy,” said Mary Lou, and she patted her arm sympathetically. It was hard to do the right thing, but this was indubitably the right thing. “Emmy, don’t say it that way. We wouldn’t blackball you. I think we should just have a sort of agreement. If everything works out, you’ll see Bud again. It just means time to think it over, time to get to know yourself.”
“But you don’t know Bud.” Emmy put her head down in her hands. It might be love, all right, but with Bud she had to keep feeding the flame. She had to be with him every day, reminding him how pretty, how bright and sweet she was, or he would find someone else. It was that simple. That was logic.
She looked up. The three girls were watching her, a jury of friendly executioners, waiting for her answer. She knew they were all of the same mind—Mary Lou’s mind. Even Bobbie, who gave her a squeeze and said, “Emmy, I think it might be a good idea.”
Emily leaned against her and wept for a few minutes. The sorority had her in a corner; there was no help for her. At last she whispered, “All right,” and got up and hurried from the room.
Seventeen
Beth was warmly sympathetic in spite of her misgivings about Bud; she was needled by a sense of guilt and the thought of her own adventures with Charlie. She said over and over, “Emmy, I should have warned you, I should have seen it coming. It’s my fault, Em.”
But Emmy wouldn’t have it that way.
“They’re such damn hypocrites,” Beth fumed. “They know you aren’t the only one who’s made a few concessions. My God, they do it themselves, a lot of them. It’s just that the one who gets caught gets punished. You were just too much in love to be very cautious, I guess. I guess you really are in love, Emmy, aren’t you?”
Emmy’s tears answered her.
“Damn,” Beth muttered. “They really cash in on that prestige of theirs, don’t they? They know there’s no disgrace quite so humiliating as getting blackballed out of the sorority. The whole campus talks about you for months. Suddenly you haven’t any friends. Why? Because you left them all back in the sorority. And you’ve left the sorority for good. And then what happens? You can’t stand it after a while. You’re an outcast, a failure. You’re nowhere socially. You’re ashamed and lonesome. And pretty soon you call it quits and leave school. Maybe you go somewhere else, maybe you don’t. But all over the country, on any campus, that sorority blackball will haunt you every time you try to join a club. They’ll find out about it, and there you’ll be, right back where you started. God, it makes me sick.”
Bud exploded when he found out what had happened. He was furious, frustrated, bitter against the powers that be in universities and sororities. He cut his classes for a week and spent all his time, filled to his ears with beer, in Maxie’s basement. He played till his lip gave out and he complained to anyone who would listen to him. It was his way of handling a problem. Bud could make sweet music and sweet girls; he could be supremely pleasant with anybody, anywhere; but he couldn’t make or follow a plan, and order and progress were hostile to his happiness.
He was artist enough to admire ideals, but he never pursued them. However, they took Emily away from him at just the time when he had decided that she was one of his ideals, and the sudden loss made her more desirable—not less, as Emily had feared.
“I love that girl,” he muttered moodily. “The only girl I ever loved. And what do they do? They take her away from me.”
Charlie swatted him on the back. “Cheer up, boy,” he said. “This won’t last forever. You’ll be seeing her. Beth says they’ll parole her for good behavior.” Charlie had heard the story a dozen times.
“Yeah, sure. When? What the hell am I supposed to do in the meantime? I tell ya, Ayers, I’m going nuts. I can’t stand it. Who the hell do they think they are? Who the hell—”
“Okay, boy, take it easy.”
“Yeah, take it easy. You gotta help me out. What am I gonna do? Help me out, boy.”
Charlie gave him a lot of free advice….
Beth complained to Charlie, too. “It’s a damn dirty trick,” she said. “God, it makes me mad! There’s only one aspect of the whole thing that might do any good, and that’s that Bud was never meant for Emmy—or any girl, for that matter. He couldn’t support a wife or kids. My God, can you imagine Bud Nielsen with kids on his hands? He’d give ’em all slide whistles before they could walk and send ’em out to make their own living.”
Charlie laughed at her.
“No one’s fonder of Emmy than I am,” she added, “but she’ll do anything for a man she thinks she’s in love with. She hasn’t the sense she was born with. She’d never get caught if she’d use her head, but she wants to please Bud. Will she say no to Bud? No, she will not. And do they catch her in bed with him? No, they do not. That’s too easy. Her damn silly costume breaks and all of a sudden she’s a scarlet woman. An accident. God, it’s ironic, isn’t it?”
Charlie nodded.
“Well, maybe she’ll cool off, now. See Bud for what he is.”
“What is he, honey? You’re pretty damn hard on him.”
“Oh, Bud Nielsen is a bum. A born bum. Let’s face it.”
“A bum? I don’t know, Beth. He’s a nice guy.”
“Sure, he’s a nice guy. He’s a great guy. Everybody likes him. And he’ll never amount to a row of beans.”
“Well, I don’t know.” Bud was a good friend of Charlie’s.
“Oh, Charlie, he’s been an undergraduate for six years. The guy hasn’t even enough ambition to leave school, for God’s sake. Emmy’s as much in love with that trombone as she is with Bud. He’s a big wheel on campus—talented, everybody knows him. I’d never tell her, but I’m kind of glad they’ll be separated for a while. I think they’ll both come to their senses. I hope they will.”
Charlie disagreed. “Hell, if they took you away from me for a while would you come to your senses? Would I?”
“No, but—we’re in love.”
“Well, so are they.”
“They just think they are.”
“You just can’t resist analyzing everybody you know, can you? No matter how little you really know about them. You figure them all out and slap a label on them and that’s the end of them as far as you’re concerned. You never consider that you might be wrong, or they might be different. Try analyzing yourself some time. It’s no cinch.”
Beth was temporarily confused. “Well—I know Emmy pretty well,” she said.
“Yeah. And I know Bud. He may be a worthless character, but tearing him away from Emmy isn’t going to cool either of them off. That’s
the best way I can think of to get them both hot. Right now Bud’s in love with Emmy and he’s damned unhappy. I feel sorry for the guy.”
“Oh, so do I. It’s not that I don’t, it’s just that all men are such—most men are such—oh, never mind.”
He grinned at her. “What are most women?”
“You’d never understand.”
“What’s Beth Cullison?” His eyes were curiously bright and narrow and Beth felt suddenly uncomfortable.
“You tell me,” she challenged him.
“I can’t,” he said. “I don’t know. I thought you did.”
She couldn’t look at his eyes and she despised her sudden shyness.
“Maybe we’ll find out together,” he said with a light smile….
And so the days went slowly by, with everybody bringing news to Emmy about Bud, with everybody discussing the situation over and over again.
Emily chafed and wept and wondered and beseeched her friends for more news. Bud griped and argued with anyone who would listen, and consoled himself with beer and music.
It got pretty bad. He liked to talk to Charlie because Charlie was a fraternity brother and Charlie saw Beth, Emmy’s roommate. Charlie was a friend; he listened.
“I tell ya, dad, it’s intolerable,” Bud protested. “If I could just see her. Just once. The thing is, nobody’d have to know. If I could just talk to her, work it out somehow.”
“They won’t let you talk to her.”
“If I could meet her someplace….”
“Hang on, boy. That’s not going to kill you. They’ll relent one of these days.”
“Yeah, sure, I can hang on. But what I mean is, why hang on if you don’t have to? Hell, this is a big campus. Nineteen thousand students. Who’s going to check on each one? If I saw her some afternoon where nobody’d suspect anything….”
“Yeah, but you have to worry about where. Why don’t you just forget it and let the thing ride for a few weeks? They’ll give in. Emmy’s acting like a damn puritan. They’ll have to let her out.”
Bud was quiet for a minute, and then he looked at Charlie with an intently confidential frown. “Charlie,” he said, “listen. Is there any time during the day when your apartment is empty?”
“No,” said Charlie firmly.
“Listen, boy—”
“No! It’s never empty. We have a resident truant officer.”
“Charlie, listen, it’d be so easy. Nobody’d ever know, believe me.”
“No.”
“Now listen to me, will ya, God damn it? Now listen. Look, Emmy has a two o’clock Tuesdays and Thursdays. She’s out at three, walks south on Wright Street—”
“Listen, Bud—”
“Charlie, you’ve even got a car. My God, this is perfect. You could pick her up, tell her about it in the car on the way over.”
“Way over where?”
“To the apartment, boy.” Bud flung his hands out earnestly. “Use your head. Jesus. Now listen, when’s your roommate in class? What’s-his-name?”
“Mitch.”
“Mitch. He there on Thursday afternoon?”
“Look, Bud, that’s beside the—”
“That’s great. That makes it just about perfect. He wouldn’t have to know a thing. Nobody’d know but you and me and Emmy. The fewer the better. Charlie my boy, listen to me—we’d be there only a couple of hours.” He watched Charlie’s face anxiously. “All right, an hour.” Charlie was silent, sympathetic but dubious. “Charlie, you hear me?”
“Yeah…I don’t know, Bud.”
“Man, what’s the matter with you? You so pure you never had a girl in your apartment?”
“No, but I was never under orders not to have her, boy. I was never shadowed by the university. If you get caught, we all get canned. The university doesn’t sponsor extracurricular love-making, in case you didn’t know.”
“Look, Charlie, if we get caught, which we won’t, nobody gets canned but us. Emmy and me.”
“Are you ready to do that to Emmy?”
“It won’t happen. Believe me. Besides, if it did we’d go on pro, we wouldn’t be expelled.”
“Who wants to be on probation?”
“Charlie, we’re just wasting time talking about it. It won’t happen, man.”
“It’s my apartment, my car—my bed, for God’s sake.”
“Okay. And I’m your friend. A brother. I could’ve asked to use the apartment without telling you why. You can make like you’re shocked as all hell if we get caught. Oh, hell, this is a lot of crap—we’re not going to get caught. Who’s gonna catch us? When does Mitch get in?”
“Oh—about five-thirty.”
“Any sooner? Ever get in sooner?”
“No.” Charlie shook his head.
“Okay, we’re out at five. Emmy walks one block to the bus, I go the other way, toward campus.”
Charlie shook his head doubtfully. “Bud, I hate to risk it, boy. Not because I’m afraid for my own sake, but—God, it would be the end for Emmy if she got caught.”
“Charlie,” said Bud, as if he were talking to an uncooperative first-grader, “we won’t get caught. Who the hell’s gonna catch us? As long as I don’t have to call her, as long as you pick her up and everything, what’s to go wrong? Oh, Charlie, be a friend. I need help, believe me. How would you like it if they cut you off for months? And don’t tell me there’s other girls. I know that, I know. I want Emmy. Like you want Beth, I want Emmy… Charlie, I’d do it for you. I swear I would, boy.”
Charlie drained his beer and stabbed his cigarette into an ashtray. “You really want to see her that bad?” he said.
Bud looked up at the ceiling as if searching it for his self-control. “Yeah. I want to,” he said. “That bad.”
“Okay. I’ll pick her up. Thursday at three.”
“Charlie—” Bud grinned at him and gripped his hand.
“Be at the apartment. And by God, be out at five.”
“I will. Jesus, Charlie, I can’t tell you—”
“Never mind, boy. Save it. Just keep it quiet.”
“My God, you’re telling me!”
At three o’clock on Thursday afternoon Emily stood on the steps of Bevier Hall on Wright Street, chattering with some classmates. Charlie didn’t see her until she came down the walk with a friend, and then he pulled the car toward her and called to her.
“Emmy!” he said. “Hey, Em! How about a ride?”
She looked up, surprised, and broke into a sudden smile.
“Thanks!” she exclaimed, running over. “Can you take Jane too?”
Charlie was alarmed. “Where’s she going?”
“Gamma Delt house.” The girl thrust a pleasant young face over Emmy’s shoulder.
“Okay, hop in,” said Charlie.
“It’s right on the way. I hope you don’t mind,” Emmy said, sensing his reserve.
“Not at all.” He had little to say until Jane was delivered and they were a mile off course from the apartment. He turned the car around while Emily watched him with big questioning eyes.
“Where’re we going?” she asked.
“We’re going to my apartment, Emily,” he said.
“Your apartment?”
“Yeah.” He looked at her and said with a smile, “Bud’s there.” Emily gasped. And then she cried.
“Emily!” he said. “My God, don’t tell me you don’t want to go!”
“Yes, I do,” she said. “I do. You scared me, Charlie. Oh, is he really there?” She put a hand on his arm.
“Yeah, he’s there all right.”
“Charlie—it’s safe, isn’t it? I mean, we won’t get caught?”
“No, Em, don’t worry. Mitch is out for the afternoon. I won’t be there. You’ll have till five o’clock.”
“Ohhh,” said Emily with an uncertain smile. “Charlie, thanks.”
“Don’t thank me, honey. I wasn’t very nice about it. I don’t want you to get into trouble. But I guess there’s not much
chance of that. But Emmy—”
“Yes?” Her heart gave a thump.
“Don’t tell anyone about it. Not anyone. Not even Beth. Understand?”
“Yes. Not even Beth?”
“Not even Beth. Promise?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Charlie dropped her off. She walked up to the door with her knees shaking a little, opened it, and went in. For a moment her sun-dazzled eyes saw nothing and then she heard Bud jump to his feet. “Emmy!” he said. He pushed the door shut behind her, and held her against it, leaning on her and kissing her almost savagely.
He pulled her against him and said, “Oh, Emmy. Oh, God, God, God, Emmy! Darling….” He could not have said more or said it better. He looked at her as if she were all miraculously new to him. He pulled her down and took her like a man who had never had a woman before and thought never to have another. He took her over and over and over and yet again in a fight with time that raised his passion to a frenetic pitch and made a wild, tireless thing of Emily. And then they lay beside each other, whispered to each other of love and loneliness and relentless longing. Bud wrapped her in his arms, still lightheaded with emotion, and said, “Emmy, darling, I love you.”
“Oh, Bud,” she half sobbed. “They’ll never do this to us again.”
“Never,” he echoed. “Oh, Em—I’d do anything for you. I love you, chicken.”
She clung to him hopefully. “Anything, Bud?”
“Anything,” he murmured, kissing her. “They’ll never take you away from me again.”
“Bud—” Her voice was light and supplicating. “Marry me?”
“What?” He stopped kissing her just long enough to raise himself on one elbow and gaze at her. “Marry you?”
She held her breath, not daring to answer nor yet to keep still, and her perishable perfection ensnared him, enflamed him, wrenched his heart like a lovely tune.
“Yes, Em. I guess I would. I never thought of it, but I guess I would. I will if you want it, Emmy. I’d be one hell of a lousy husband, but I love you. Maybe that’ll make up for it.”
“Oh, Bud,” she cried softly. They leaned toward each other until their lips were together again, and far away, as in the gentlest of reveries, the latch clicked and the door opened. They lay, quiet and complete, whole and serene in each other’s need, fulfilled and reassured, lovely and beautifully human.