The Beebo Brinker Omnibus

by Ann Bannon

Her fear grew suddenly quite strong and for a moment she wavered. Then she said softly, “If you’re going to beat me, Father, do it now and let’s get it over with.”

  He laughed; an awful laugh she remembered very well. It was usually the prelude to violence. “Well, isn’t that noble,” he said. “Why don’t you pull down your pants and bend over? Make it easy for me?”

  “You’ve beaten me all my life, whenever I displeased you. And I seem to displease you just by existing. I’ve never seen you beat anyone your own size, Father, but you’re awfully damn good at beating me.”

  “My, aren’t we grown up!” he said. “We not only talk back to our Father now, we swear at him. That’s real sophistication.”

  “You don’t know how much I hate you, Father! You can’t know! I’ve begun to think that’s what you want. You’ve worked hard enough all my life to make me hate you.”

  His face changed again, became grave and heavy. Her eyes watched him intently, like eyes that have witnessed floods scan the skies for sun. He turned away from her, dragging on his cigarette, knocking ashes into a heavy glass tray on the dresser. “Why do you hate me, Laura?” he asked dispassionately. “Because I discipline you now and then? Isn’t that a father’s prerogative?”

  “Not when it ruins his child’s life.”

  “Is your life ruined?” he said sharply. “You have a ‘wonderful’ job, ‘wonderful’ friends. Wonderful money in the bank, wonderful everything. Hell, I seem to have done you a favor.”

  “A favor! You call it a favor!” She stared at him, his hardness still astonishing her after all these years. And then she felt her resistance begin to wilt. Sooner or later all her arguments were doomed. She never won with him. The sheer physical fact of him, massive and dominant, exhausted her after a while. “I—I never wanted to hate you, Father. You were all I had. I wanted to love you. But you wouldn’t let me,” she almost whispered. I mustn’t go on like this. I’ll cry, she thought desperately. “I hate you because you hate me!” she flung at him.

  He looked at her for some time before he answered quietly, “What makes you think I hate you, Laura?”

  She was so taken aback by this that she could only stammer at him. “I don’t know, but you know you do.”

  “Oh, come now. I haven’t been that harsh with you.”

  It’s a trap! A trap! He wants to soften me up. He wants to see me whimpering. Oh, God, if only I could stop him, freeze him up, like other men. “You’ve been brutal,” she said harshly and the sobs were crowding close in her throat. “You’ve treated me like a slave. Worse! You’ve beaten me sometimes for nothing. Just for the exercise.”

  “I never once beat you without a reason,” he said.

  “You lie!” And her voice was a furious hiss.

  He glared at her. “I’m not in the habit of lying to you, Laura. Your life has been more than beatings. I sent you to the best schools. I let you go to the college of your choice. I let you join a sorority and paid all your bills. And when you came home and quit like a damn coward—without so much as an explanation, I didn’t force you to go back. I found you a good job with excellent training and a big future. I’ve given you a good comfortable home, a lot of clothes, travel.” His voice was low, controlled, but it was the calm before the storm and he was tense.

  “I would have traded them all for love.” Her voice broke and she turned suddenly away, afraid to shame herself with tears in front of him.

  “Let’s not get maudlin,” he said sardonically, and once again smothered the spark of tenderness that had waited so many years in Laura for expression.

  “All right,” she said sharply. “Let’s not be maudlin. I have a good job here and I’m not going to leave New York. That’s what I came to tell you. Now maybe I’d better go.” She turned and walked resolutely toward the door, but she should have known it wouldn’t be that easy. He merely placed himself between the door and Laura and she stopped, afraid to go near him. He smiled slightly at this evidence of his power over her.

  “Before you leave,” he said, “suppose you explain the filial affection that made you write me to go to hell, in your little billet-doux last week?”

  “Why did you say you had no daughter?” she flared.

  “To teach you a lesson.”

  “Are there any lessons left for you to teach me?” she said.

  “Quite a few, my dear. You don’t know it all yet, even if you are almost twenty-one.”

  “It almost killed me, Father,” she said, the anguish showing. “You don’t know how terribly I—” But she stopped herself, ashamed. He didn’t know, and she didn’t want him to know. She was the one who cared about their relationship, who wanted love and trust and gentleness between them. Not her father. He didn’t give a damn, as long as she minded him. “You said you had no daughter,” she repeated bitterly.

  “You wanted it that way, Laura.”

  She turned to stare at him, incredulous. “I?” She said. “I wanted it that way?”

  “You denied my existence before I ever denied yours,” he said. “You ran away from me.”

  “You forced me to.”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “You made life intolerable for me.”

  “I didn’t mean to.” It was an extraordinary admission, completely unexpected, and she looked at him speechless for a moment.

  “Then why didn’t you show me some kindness?” she said. “Just a very little would have gone a long way, Father.”

  He crushed out his cigarette in the heavy ashtray with an expression of contempt on his face. “You women are all alike, I swear to God,” he said. “Give you a little and you demand a lot.”

  “What’s wrong with a lot?” she said, trembling. “You’re my father.”

  “Yes, exactly!” he said, so roughly that she ducked. “I’m your father!”

  “Did you treat my mother this way?” she whispered. “Her life must have been hell.”

  He looked for a minute as if he would strangle her. She stood her ground, pale and frightened, until he relented suddenly and turned his profile to her, looking out the window. “Your mother,” he said painfully, “was my wife. I adored her.”

  Laura was absolutely unable to answer him. She sat down weakly in the stuffed chair by the dresser and put her face in her hands. Her father—her enormous gruff harsh father—had never spoken such a tender word in her presence in her life.

  “I could never marry again, when she died,” he said. Laura felt frightened as she always did when her mother’s death was mentioned. She expected him to turn on her unreasonably as he had so often before. “I never struck her.”

  “Then why me?” she implored out of a dry throat.

  He turned and looked at her, his mouth twisted a little, running a distraught hand through his hair. “You needed it,” was all he would say.

  “What for?”

  “You needed it, that’s what for!” And she was afraid to push him further. After some minutes he said, “Laura, you’re coming back to Chicago with me.”

  “No Father, I can’t. I won’t.”

  “That’s why I waited for you,” he went on, as if she had said nothing. “I won’t go to Chicago or anywhere else with you. I’m through with you.”

  “You could look for work with a radiologist, if you like it so well. I won’t insist on journalism. You have a flair for it, it’s a waste to leave the field, but I won’t insist. You see, Laura, I can be human enough.”

  She stared at him. She had never heard him talk like this. He glanced at her, annoyed by the look on her face. “I’ve made reservations,” he said, “for June first. That’s Saturday. I could probably get earlier ones.”

  “Father.” She stood up. “I can’t come with you.”

  “Don’t say that!” he commanded her, so sharply that she started.

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “You can, and you will. That’s all I want to hear on the subject.” As she started once again to protest he he
ld his hands up for silence. “No more discipline, Laura. I promise you that. I was a fool. You were too, but never mind that now. I was too hard on you, it’s true. I see that. Well, you’re more or less grown up by this time. I guess we can dispense with spanking.”

  “Spanking! It was more than that and you know it!”

  “Don’t argue with me, Laura.” He turned on her, his voice low and fierce. Then, making a visible effort to calm himself, he said, “Get your things together and I’ll see about the reservations.”

  “No.”

  “Don’t fight me, Laura.”

  “Father, there’s something you don’t know about me.” I have to tell him. I’ll never be free from him till I tell him. Till he knows what he’s made of his only child. “There’s something you don’t know about me,” she whispered.

  “I don’t doubt it. Now hurry up, we’ve wasted enough time.”

  “Father…listen to me.” It was almost too hard to say. Her legs were trembling and her heart was wild.

  “Well, out with it, for God’s sake! Jesus, Laura, you go through more agony…Well? What is it?” He frowned at her tense face.

  “I—I’m a—homosexual.”

  His mouth dropped open and his whole body went rigid. Laura shut her eyes and prayed. She held her lower lip in her teeth, ready for the blow, and felt the humiliating tears begin to squeeze through her shut lids. She moaned a little.

  He made up his mind fast and his voice cracked out like a lash. “Nonsense!” he snarled.

  “It’s true!” Her eyes flew open and she cried again, passionately, “It’s true!” It was her bid for freedom; she had to show this courage, this awful truth to him, or she would never walk away from him. She would spend all her life in a panic of fear lest he find her out. “I’m in love with my roommate. I’ve made love—”

  “All right, all right, all right!” he shouted. His voice was rough and his face contorted. He turned away from her and put his hands over his face. She watched him, every muscle tight and aching.

  At last he let his hands drop and said quietly, “Did I do that to you, Laura?”

  Without hesitating, without even certain knowledge, but only the huge need to hurt him, she said, “Yes.”

  He turned slowly around and faced her and she had never seen his face like that before. It was pained and full of gentleness. Perhaps it looked that way to her mother now and then. “I did that to you,” he said again, to himself. “Oh, Laura. Oh, Laura.” His heavy brow creased deeply over his eyes. He walked to her and put his hands on her shoulders and felt her jerk with fear. “Laura,” he said, “have you ever loved a man?”

  She shook her head, unable to speak.

  “Have you ever wanted a man?”

  Again she shook her head.

  “Do you know what it’s like to want a man?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Do you want to know?” His eyes were wide and intense, his grip on her shoulders was very hard.

  “I’m so afraid of them, Father. I don’t want to know.”

  He seemed to be in another world. Laura was utterly mystified by his strange behavior, blindly grateful for his sudden warmth, and she let herself weep softly.

  “Laura,” he said, as if he derived some private pleasure from saying her name over and over. “Your mother—you look so much like your mother. You never looked like me at all. Every time I look at you I see her face. Her fragile delicate face. Her eyes, her hair.” He put his arms around her. “Come back to Chicago with me,” he said gently. “You don’t have to love a man, Laura. I don’t want you to. I don’t want you to be like other girls, I don’t want you to go off with some young ass and give him your youth and your beauty. I don’t mind if you’re different from the rest. I can take that if you are able to.”

  Laura clung to him, astonished, fearful, grateful, anxious, a whirlwind of confused feelings churning inside her.

  “I want you to stay with me,” he said. “I always did. I won’t let you go.”

  “You made me go, Father. You punished me so.”

  “No, no Laura! Don’t you see, it was myself.” He was holding her so hard now, as if to make up for years of avoiding her, that she ached with it. She began to cry on his shoulder.

  “Oh, Father, Father,” she wept. “You never told me you wanted me to stay with you. You made me believe you hated me.”

  “No,” he said. “I never hated you.” He spoke in a rush, as if he couldn’t help himself, as if it were suddenly forcing its way out of him after years of suppression. “Never, Laura, it was just that I was so lonely, so terribly lonely; I wanted her so much and she was gone. And there was only you, and you tormented me.”

  “I?” She tried to see his face, but he held her too close.

  “You were so much like her, even when you were a child. Every time I looked at you, I—oh, Laura, it’s myself I should have punished all this time. I was punished. I’ve suffered. Believe me. Laura, please believe me.”

  Laura was suddenly shocked rigid to feel his lips on her neck. He put his hand in her hair and jerked her head back and kissed her full on the mouth with such agonized intensity that he electrified her. He released her just as suddenly and turned away with a kind of sob. “Ellie! Ellie!” he cried, his hands over his face.

  Laura was shaking almost convulsively. At the sound of her mother’s name she grabbed the thick and heavy glass ashtray from the dresser, picking it up with both hands. She rushed at him, unable to think or reason, and brought the ashtray down on the crown of his head with all the revolted force in her body. He slumped to the floor without a sound.

  Laura gaped at him for a sick second and then she turned and fled. She left the door wide open and ran in a terrible panic to the elevators. She sobbed frantically for a few moments, and then she pushed the down button. She jabbed it over and over again hysterically, unable to stop until an elevator arrived and the doors opened. She stumbled in and pressed into a back corner, helpless in the grip of the sickness in her. The operator and his two other passengers stared at her, but she paid them no heed, even when one asked if he could help her. At the ground floor the operator had to tell her, “Everybody out.”

  She turned a wild flushed face to him and he said, “Are you all right, Miss?” And she glared at him, violently offended by his manner, his uniform, his question.

  “Don’t you know those pants won’t make a man of you?” she exclaimed acidly. And rushed out, leaving him gaping open-mouthed after her.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Marcie called Jack late that night. “I haven’t heard from her. I wouldn’t bother you, but I don’t know where she is, and I’m worried,” she said. “Is she with you?”

  “No. What’s the matter, Marcie? It’s only ten-fifteen.”

  “She said she’d be home tonight. She promised.”

  “Did you call the office?”

  “Yes. She wasn’t there today.”

  “Was she sick?”

  “No.” Marcie was almost physically sick with shame and the fear that Laura would do herself violence. She knew well how passionately Laura could respond, how intensely she could feel. She had been truly alarmed when she called the office in the afternoon and Sarah told her they hadn’t seen Laura all day. And they’d damn well like to know where she was themselves.

  “She left the house this morning to catch the subway to work. She said she’d be back tonight, but she didn’t go to work. And she isn’t back,” Marcie told Jack.

  Jack’s first thought was Merrill Landon. “Out with it, Marcie. Tell Uncle Jack everything.”

  “Jack, I can’t—” Jack of all people! Jack, who had a crush on Laura. Marcie would have slit her throat before she would have betrayed Laura to him. She was in no madcap mood any longer. She had wounded Laura with a callousness that shocked even herself when she thought back on it. She had no yen to hurt anymore.

  “Come on, doll, we’ve known each other for years,” Jack said. “Spill the beans.
”

  “Jack, I won’t hurt her. Not even—”

  “Not even if she drops dead because you won’t tell me the truth.”

  “Oh! But she won’t!”

  “Oh, but she might! Now let’s have it.”

  “Jack, I don’t want you to think—”

  “I think all the time. It’s a congenital defect.”

  “Yes, but this—”

  “Oh, for Chrissake, Marcie. Say it. Did you quarrel?”

  “I—yes. We quarreled.”

  “What about?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Now you listen to me, God damn it, I’m getting worried.”

  “About love.” She whispered it.

  And Jack knew at once what was the matter. But why hadn’t Laura come to him? Why hadn’t she told him? She couldn’t be that ashamed. She knew he wouldn’t hurt her with the knowledge. He would be kind, with the kindness of deep sympathy. Something was wrong—more wrong than Marcie admitted, or more wrong than she knew. Or both.

  “I can’t explain, Jack,” Marcie moaned.

  “You don’t have to, Marcie. I get the message.”

  “Should I call the police?”

  “No,” he said quickly. Jack had an inborn aversion to cops. “I think I have an idea. I’ll call you back later. And call me the minute you hear anything.”

  “I will, I promise!”

  Jack called Beebo. “Marcie’s straight,” he said.

  “So what, Jackson?”

  “So Laura just found out—the hard way, apparently—and now she’s disappeared.”

  “I couldn’t care less.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “Look, Jack, I don’t even want to talk about the kid. I don’t want to hear her name mentioned. She can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.”

  “I’ve got to find her, Beebo, and you’ve got to help me.”

  “The hell I do.”

  “I want you to check the Lessie joints. They won’t let me in. I busted the mirror in The Colophon last month and they all hate me.”

  “That’s your problem.”

  “Beebo, for God’s sake. I know how bitchy she was. I’m not asking you to forget it. I’m asking you to help me find her. I think she went to see her father. From what she’s told me of him, she might be dead before we find her.”