The Beebo Brinker Omnibus

by Ann Bannon

  “Emily!” A poison-tipped voice split them asunder; a girl’s voice, high and hard with indignation.

  “Oh, my God!” cried a boy at almost the same time. “Oh, my God!” he said again, helplessly.

  Bud and Emmy sat up suddenly in a fit of alarm, gazing at the silhouettes, straining against the head-on sun streaming at them from the window to see their faces.

  “I’m terribly sorry,” said the boy. “I didn’t know. I mean—God. We’d better go, Mary Lou.”

  “We’d better go, Emily,” said Mary Lou. “You and I.”

  Bud looked at his watch. “But it’s only four-thirty,” he said.

  Beth found Emmy just before dinner, face down on the couch and sobbing. The shades were all pulled down and the room was dark and sad and overheated. Laura followed Beth into the room and stood soundless and motionless while Beth dropped her books and shut the door.

  “Emmy!” Beth said. “What’s the matter?” She threw her coat off and sank to the floor on her knees by Emily’s head. Emily turned away. “Emmy, honey,” she said, and stroked her hair. Laura watched her without expression. “Tell me what’s the matter.”

  Emily tried to repress her tears. She turned to Beth and whispered sporadically, “They found us. Mary Lou and Mitch. We couldn’t stand it any longer. We had to see each other. They found us.”

  Beth was astounded. “You saw Bud?” she said, squinting incredulously.

  “Yes,” said Emmy in a tiny voice.

  “Emmy! Where? How?” Beth felt the impending catastrophe.

  “The apartment. I didn’t know. Charlie picked me up. I never thought we’d get caught.”

  “Charlie? Charlie’s apartment?”

  “Yes. He told Bud he could use it. Nobody was going to be there. It was just a mistake—”

  “You met Bud in Charlie’s apartment?”

  “Yes.” Her voice tricked and trapped and deserted her; her breath came hard and then not at all.

  “Oh, Em….” Beth put her arms around her and comforted her. Laura watched them, cold and remote as a winter sky, silent as the snow. “Tell me about it.”

  Emmy pulled herself up and sat gazing at the dead face of the window shade behind the desk. “Mitch wasn’t supposed to get in till five-thirty. He cut class. He had coffee with Mary Lou. They came back to the apartment to get some books. We would have left in another fifteen minutes. But they caught us. I’ll be blackballed, Beth.” She looked desperately at her.

  The dinner chime sounded and Beth remembered Laura. “Run along and eat, honey,” she said.

  Laura stood stolidly in place. There were times when she actively resented the childish role Beth forced on her.

  “Go on,” Beth said. “I’ll be along in a minute.”

  Laura stayed where she was and Beth turned to Emily again. “Can I bring you a tray, Em?”

  Emmy shook her head. “I can’t eat,” she said, leaning limply on Beth’s shoulder. “They’re going to kick me out, Beth.”

  “How bad—I mean—what were you doing when they came in?”

  “We were in bed. We were in Charlie’s bed.”

  Laura shuddered with a sharp involuntary disgust.

  “We were making love. Oh, Beth!” Emmy wept. “I love him so much. Is it such a terrible crime to love somebody?”

  “No,” said Beth with a sting in her voice, “but it’s a terrible thing to get caught. It’s good to love, Emmy, but it’s hell to get caught. I’d just love to know,” she went on with her voice getting surer and harder, “just what the hell Mary Lou and Mitch were doing going to the apartment this afternoon? Going to do a little intimate homework, maybe? A little research…anatomical variety? We’ll never know.” She rocked Emily in her arms and Laura, seeing their bodies move together, could feel nothing but spite for Emily….

  Laura held her tongue until late that night, after Emmy had gone to bed. “What will they do to her?” she asked.

  “Kick her out. Jerk her pin. Disgrace her.” She spat the words out.

  “Well….” Laura studied her nails. “I guess she disgraced them.”

  Beth looked at her narrowly. “She fell in love, Laura. Is that so disgraceful to you?”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Beth,” Laura said softly. “I only meant she didn’t have to be so obvious about it. Everybody knew—”

  “Yeah, everybody knew she loved him. That’s good enough reason to expel her, isn’t it?”

  Laura sighed ill-naturedly. “She got what she deserved,” she said. “She broke every rule. She defied authority.”

  “Laura,” said Beth with pointed irritation, “what do you think would happen to you if everybody knew you were in love with me? You’d get the same treatment, honey, and don’t forget it. You’d get worse.”

  Laura stared at her, startled and scared.

  “What’s so wonderful about rules?” Beth snapped. “Is it obeying the rules for two girls to make love to each other? Don’t you think we’re defying authority ourselves?”

  “I—never thought of it that way,” Laura faltered.

  “No, of course not. Maybe you never thought of it at all.”

  “Beth, for heaven’s sake! Emily was caught in bed with a man with no clothes on when she wasn’t supposed to see him at all. She was—she was—making love to him—”

  Beth came over to the couch and sat down beside Laura, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, a cigarette in one hand. She pulled on her cigarette and brought two jets of smoke through her nose. “We’ve made love, Laura.”

  “But that’s different, Beth. That’s clean. It’s beautiful.” She grasped Beth’s arm and leaned anxiously toward her. Beth studied the tip of her cigarette.

  “A man and a woman are beautiful, too. And we’ve been caught making love, Laura…you and I. Just like Bud and Emmy.”

  Laura snatched her hand away as if from a flame and sat for a wounded moment, terrified. “Beth, what do you mean?” she said in a strained whisper.

  Beth flicked her ashes thoughtlessly toward a tray. “Just that. We aren’t any cleaner or any more beautiful than Emily and Bud, just because we’re both women. And we were caught, too.”

  “Beth!” Laura stared at her with horrified eyes. “We were never caught.”

  “Yes we were, Laur. We were seen in here one night—right here in this room—kissing each other and talking about it.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t they ever say anything?”

  “They’ don’t know. We had the good luck to get caught by Emmy.”

  “Emmy?”

  “Yes. Emmy. Emmy found us in here one night just before semester vacation. She heard enough to guess the story. She never told a soul except me. She never will.” Beth’s quiet, angry voice contrasted vividly with Laura’s high anxiety.

  To Laura, her love had seemed as secret as it was sacred. That someone else should know; that someone else had known for months; that the someone else was Emily, and Emily would never tell, would spare them what had been inflicted on her—all these thoughts struck Laura at once and she felt a sudden twist of guilt in her heart.

  “Oh, Beth…if I’d only known,” she said, and her voice broke.

  “Oh, it would only have worried you, Laur. I hoped you could see some good in Emmy. I hoped you’d learn to like her.” She looked up at Laura’s face. “I guess you were jealous of her.”

  “Beth….” Laura rested her forehead against Beth’s shoulder. “Beth, I’m so sorry. I thought she was—oh, I don’t know why she didn’t just tell them about me. I was so nasty to her. I couldn’t have blamed her if she did.”

  “She’s not that way, Laur. Besides, if she told them about you she’d’ve had to tell them about me.” She fingered her cigarette, musing. “But she wouldn’t have said anything anyway. She likes you, Laur…or at least, she wants to. I don’t know why.”

  “Oh, Beth, I’m so sorry—”

  “Don’t tell me, Laur, tell Emmy.” Beth wasn’t cr
oss with her any more. She was too worried about Emily to think about other feelings.

  “Don’t cry, Laur.” She turned and held her then and chided her gently. “I’ve had all I can stand of crying today.”

  Laura stopped slowly, in jerks. “Will they really blackball her, Beth?” she whispered.

  “They have to. You can break the rules, but you can’t get caught.”

  “Isn’t there anything we can do?”

  “All we can do is remind them of what they’re going to do to Emmy: her family, her education, her friends…all the heartbreak, and things never patch up to be quite the same as they were before.”

  “Never?”

  “Oh, those things get all over your home town. There’s always somebody around to let them out. And once it’s out they never let you forget it.”

  “Will they kick her out of school, too?”

  “They’ll probably just put her on social probation. But she won’t want to stay in school. My God, when the whole damn campus knows what happened?”

  Beth knew what she was talking about. In no time at all there was the secret chapter meeting of the sorority, with one of the national officers in attendance. Representatives of the alumnae were there, too.

  Mary Lou was pale and distressed and she let the alumnae carry the burden of the meeting. They were impressive women, businesslike and efficient, real club women. They enjoyed tackling problems; Emmy’s was one of the juiciest in years. They spent a good bit of time congratulating the girls present on their presumed virginity and their unblemished reputations; and a good bit demolishing what was left of Emmy’s. They did it with masterful tact.

  “Emmy is a good girl at heart, but….”

  “Of course, you all feel terrible about this. I know she had many friends in the house….”

  But an hour and a half later, Emily was an ex-Alpha Beta. Her career at the university was ruined.

  Emmy was spared the meeting. She sat alone in her room while it was going on with a number of open suitcases around her and tried to find the courage to start packing.

  Beth had stood up at the meeting and made an eloquent plea for her. And when that failed she got sharp and sarcastic, and still it didn’t change the vote. The sisters were sympathetic but restrained from mercy by the stifling good sense of their elders.

  Laura sat in wretched silence, helpless. She couldn’t speak as well as Beth, she hadn’t nearly the influence, and yet she wanted to stand up and say something, but after Beth sat down there was nothing more to be said.

  Beth and Laura went up to the room together. Emmy had one bag packed when they came in. She sat on the floor staring listlessly at her belongings, and she looked up at them when they came in. Their faces were painful to see.

  “I know,” she said. Tve called home. Dad’s going to pick me up tomorrow.”

  Beth went to her and said, “We did everything we could, Em.”

  “I know. I knew it would happen. It had to happen, that’s all. It couldn’t be any other way. I was a fool.”

  “Did you talk to Bud? They said you could call him.”

  Emmy gave a bitter little smile. “Now that the damage is done, I can call him. If they’d let me talk to him before, maybe it wouldn’t have happened.”

  “Did you talk to him?”

  “Yes. I called while you were all downstairs.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “Oh, you know Bud. He feels terrible. He was furious. But he doesn’t know what to do; he never could handle a problem.” Her smile became reluctantly tender. “He just rants and raves and says he’ll quit school too, as if that would do any good, and they can’t do this to me, and…. Oh, I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Emmy,” Beth said gently. “I’ll help you get your things together. You don’t have to go right away. You can take a few days to pack and—” She stopped.

  “I want to get out of here as fast as I can,” Emmy said harshly. “Oh, Beth, he—he cried!” she said with a sudden hard sob. “My dad cried!” And the stress of that sorrow nearly tore her apart.

  Beth got Emily packed by three in the morning. Laura had tried to help but soon realized that she was neither needed nor wanted and left for the dormitory. Emily was afraid to face anybody and Beth sat up with her all night and helped her get ready to meet Bud for breakfast so they could say good-by. He promised to go to see her every weekend, he swore he loved her, he denounced the university, the sorority, the world for his mistake.

  He said, “Emmy, darling, I did this to you and I’ll make it up to you somehow, by God, I will. I don’t know how, but—there must be a way. Oh, honey, I hate to see you so unhappy. And I did it, I did it.” He was so miserable that Emily had to comfort him, and it seemed to give her strength. She listened to him, knowing that he sincerely meant what he said when he said it, wondering how long it would affect him so.

  “Emmy,” he said, “I love you. If only there were something I could do.”

  “There is,” she said, nervously determined. “Don’t you remember?”

  He looked at her in puzzlement.

  “Marry me, Bud,” she said.

  He dropped his glance and stared at the table for a minute and then he took her hands and nearly crushed them in his. “I will, Em,” he said. “If that’s what you want, I will.” He looked up at her.

  “Oh, Bud,” she said, and began to smile a real smile for the first time since their disaster. “If I could know that—if I could look forward to that—”

  He kissed her hands.

  “When?” she urged him.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.” And seeing her face cloud over again he added, “June, maybe. Or Easter. I don’t know.”

  “Oh, Bud, darling,” she whispered, and the world steadied a little.

  Eighteen

  Beth brooded for days. She didn’t want to see Charlie, she didn’t want to go out, she didn’t want to do anything. Her every bitter thought had a wicked stinger in it: she and Charlie had done the same as Emily and Bud, and got away with it.

  Beth felt a wave of irresistible disgust with herself, her little duplicities, her evasions. In a restless temper she got up and paced the room fretfully. Laura watched her anxiously, wanting to talk to her, to help, but afraid to. Beth pulled the window open and stood in the wash of early April air, chill and dark and soft, and thought of the sorrows that a man can heap on a woman. She thought of Charlie’s complicity, she thought of Bud’s worthless charm and useless contrition, and she hated them briefly, with violent energy.

  The phone on the desk rang. Laura picked it up, watching Beth all the while.

  “Hello?” she said, and she frowned. Beth shook her head without a word, and then shut her eyes tight as if that might eliminate the sound of Laura’s voice.

  “No, Charlie, she’s not here. I’m sorry—please, Charlie—I don’t know, but—” And she listened a moment longer and hung up. She looked at Beth apologetically. “I hung up on him,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do. He sounded sort of—frantic. I didn’t know what else to do.” She watched Beth hopefully, tenderly, afraid to go near her. Beth leaned against her dresser and stared out the window again, silent.

  “Beth?” Laura said softly. Beth turned toward her suddenly and pulled her hard and close against her and put her head down against Laura’s. Her hot hands probed and pushed back and forth across Laura’s shoulders, the small of her back, her hips, catching in her clothes, rumpling them, and finally her arms tightened around the younger girl and she whispered, “Laura. Look at me.”

  Laura looked up and Beth kissed her full on the lips, a yearning kiss, warm and deep and slow. She didn’t stop for a long while, not until Laura was shivering wildly in her embrace, answering Beth’s passion with her own.

  “Oh, Laur,” Beth said into Laura’s ear, “what a fool I am. What a simpleton.”

  “Beth, I love you,” said Laura, clinging to her and letting the delicious tremors shake her body, wondering
where this revival of desire came from, but not caring. It had happened; Beth wanted her again the way she had in the beginning.

  “Laura,” Beth said. “Oh, I hate them! God damn them all, I hate them!” Laura didn’t have to be told that “they” were men; she knew it and her heart expanded joyously and floated in her chest.

  “You can’t trust them,” Beth muttered. “You can’t trust them. God, I don’t know why I ever bothered with them. All they know how to do is hurt. They all want the same damn thing.” She hugged Laura tighter and Laura’s hope bloomed again like a forced flower. “I’m sick and tired of it,” Beth went on. “I’m sick and tired of the whole damn thing. If you get caught they treat you like a slut, they kick you out. If you don’t get caught your conscience gives you hell. I’ve had enough, Laura. It makes me sick, the whole damn business—authority—stupid, stuffy, blind authority—men, deans, school, everything. I want to get out of here.” They whipped Emmy in public, she thought; I’ll whip myself in private. Exile myself. It was the only way to square with her conscience.

  “What about Charlie?” Laura’s voice was faint and frightened.

  “Charlie can go to hell. Charlie’s as guilty as Bud. You don’t know how guilty Charlie is. You don’t know.” She put her head down again.

  “Beth, would you really leave school?”

  “Yes. Yes, I would, damn it. I would!”

  “Will you let me come with you?”

  Beth pulled away from her a little and started to shake her head.

  “Beth!” Laura cried, “I want to go wherever you go. You said we weren’t any better than Bud and Emily; you said we were doing the same thing. Well, we haven’t any more right to stay here than she does, then.”

  “Your family?” Beth said.

  “Oh, my family…” Laura said, making the word curdle with her contempt. “My family doesn’t care what happens to me, just so they have something to tell their friends.”