The Beebo Brinker Omnibus

by Ann Bannon

  And Laura, helpless, went to her. Tris took her hands and led her, walking backwards herself, into the room and onto the low couch. She began to kiss her and Laura felt her fury rise and change into passion. Tris had never been so close to her, so tantalizing.

  Somehow her anger made her passion sharper and wilder. She wanted to hurt Tris with it. Beebo believed they had made love, did she? Well, Laura would give truth to her fantasies.

  Laura could feel Tris’s body begin to respond. A surging feeling of triumph flashed through her. She felt the familiar, wonderful insanity come over her and she relinquished herself wholly to feeling. It took her a few moments to understand that Tris was fighting her. And suddenly she came to herself with a shock and felt Tris slip away from her and saw her standing a few feet from the bed.

  Tris gave her a look—almost of pity—and then turned and raced from the room. By the time Laura reached the door, it was locked. At first she was stunned, motionless. And then she began to throw her weight against it “Tris! Tris, let me out!” she cried in a panic.

  “Stay where you are till you cool off,” Tris said. Her voice was very near, just on the other side of the door, and Laura was wild to join her.

  “Please, Tris!” she implored and her voice was low with coming tears. “Tris, don’t do this to me!” Her whole body ached and after a moment more of futile beating on the door she slumped to the floor, moaning.

  A long time later she dragged herself off the floor and back to the bed and lay there, sleepless, until early dawn. She was sick with the need to hurt and the need for love all scrambled inside her; she was imprisoned in her homosexuality and thinking…thinking hard of Jack.

  The first daylight was coming in the window when Laura heard the door open and saw Tris glide across the floor toward her. Laura smothered a first harsh impulse to jump at her. Tris came on tiptoe, thinking Laura would be asleep, and when she saw Laura’s blue eyes staring at her, she was startled.

  Then she came and sat in silence on the edge of the bed and looked at Laura for a while, until Laura, who was restraining herself tightly, saw that Tris was crying. And the crying became suddenly audible and made Tris cover her face with her hands. Laura lay beside her, refusing to touch her, feeling her spite and misery soften a little, feeling even a shade of pity. She wanted to beat the girl and at the same time stroke her shaking shoulders.

  Tris turned her back to Laura and finally spoke with considerable effort. “I’m going out on the Island tomorrow,” she said. “For two weeks, a vacation. Come with me.”

  Laura stared at her back, frowning in disbelief. “What?” she said.

  “I want you to come with me,” Tris whispered. Her voice sounded, as once before, quite American.

  “You must enjoy torturing me,” Laura said.

  There was a long pause while Tris snatched a piece of face tissue from a box by the bed and blew her nose. Finally she said, “It was torture for me, too. But still, it was inexcusable, what I did to you. I was a beast. I—I can’t talk about it,” and she gave a quick sob. “But I promise it will never happen again—if you promise never to mention it.. Promise?” And she turned and looked at Laura.

  “Why did you do it?” Laura asked.

  “I had to! I had to! I wanted to hurt you—last night—you made me feel—” and her speech was clipped again and careful—“you made me want you so much, Laura. And I hate it! I hate it!” She was almost shrieking.

  “Why?” Laura asked.

  “Because I’m not really a Lesbian. Not like you. It’s men I love, Laura. Really,” she added desperately.

  And Laura felt compassion for her. “You’re sick, Tris,” she said, but she said it kindly.

  “Sick?” And Tris went a strange ashy color that scared Laura. “How do you mean?”

  Laura realized then that she couldn’t destroy Tris’s illusion without destroying Tris. She raised herself to one elbow and brushed away the tears on Tris’s cheek. “Let’s put it this way,” she said. “If you feel like this about me, we shouldn’t be together anymore. In two weeks we’d drive each other wild. I know you feel terrible about last night, Tris, I can see it. I know I can’t forget you, or forgive what you did. If we were living together, I’d want you and you’d hate me for it. And pretty soon I’d hate you too, for denying me.”

  “I won’t deny you, Laura,” Tris whispered, without looking at her. “I promise you. If you’d just let me do it my way. Don’t let it be like last night. When I feel as if I’m losing control, it’s as if I were drowning, as if I were losing my sanity along with my will. It’s as if—if I let it happen—I—I’ll lose my mind.” She spoke so painfully, with such evident anxiety, that Laura was touched.

  “Poor Tris,” she murmured, and smoothed her hair. “I thought I’d be pulling your hair out this morning, not playing with it,” she said, running her long fingers over the sleek black braid.

  “Come with me,” Tris pleaded. “Let me make it up to you.”

  “Where are you going? Fire Island?”

  “God, no!” Tris flared. “That place! It’s crawling with queers. I wouldn’t go near it.”

  “Tris…,” Laura said, a little hesitantly. Her ear did not betray her. Tris’s accent fluctuated strangely and roused her curiosity. She asked cautiously, “What part of India do you come from?”

  “Why do you ask?” And Tris’s eyes narrowed.

  Laura lifted her shoulders casually. “You never told me.”

  “I said New Delhi.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Besides, it has nothing to do with the vacation. I’m going to a place on Long Island. Stone Harbor. It’s not far from Montauk, on the north side. I have a cottage there for two weeks. It’s very secluded. No one will bother us. I was there last year and it’s really lovely. You’d like it, Laura, I know you would. You can swim every day—we’re only two blocks from the beach and—”

  “Tris?” Laura stopped the almost compulsive flow of speech and startled the dancer.

  “Yes?”

  “Why won’t you tell me about India?”

  “You wouldn’t be interested.”

  “I’d be fascinated. Everything about you fascinates me. For instance, what are you doing in this country?”

  “Dancing.”

  “Where are your parents?”

  “Dead.”

  “How did you get here?”

  “Scholarship.”

  “Are you a citizen?”

  “Laura, stop it! Why do you ask me such things? What has this to do with our vacation? I refuse to be quizzed like a criminal. We’ll leave tomorrow at eight. Can you be packed by then? I’ve rented a car.”

  “I can’t even get into my own apartment,” Laura admitted. “You fixed me up just fine.”

  “Of course you can. Call the police.” Her odd green eyes flashed.

  “No. Maybe Jack could get my things. I’ll call him.”

  “Who’s Jack?”

  “Jack? He’s a—sort of—fiancé. A permanent fiancé.” She smiled slightly.

  Tris snorted. “Does he know you are gay?”

  “Of course.” She would tell her no more, If Tris were going to seal her private life behind a wall of secrets, Laura could play it that way, too. “Can I use your phone?” she asked.

  “Yes. In the kitchen.” Tris followed her across the empty studio into the sunny blue and yellow kitchen and while Laura was dialing she asked, “You will come, of course?”

  “I’ll tell you in a minute,” Laura said. “…Jack?”

  “Good morning, Mother.”

  “Jack, I wonder if you could—if you’d mind going over to the apartment and getting my clothes. Do you think you could? I hate to ask you, but I don’t dare go near her.”

  “Sure,” he said. “Did you pass your test?”

  “My test? Oh.” She glanced at Tris. “I—I flunked,” she said and felt a tidal wave of pity and shame all at once. “Jack—I’m sorry. Oh, I’m so sorry. Let me come
over—”

  “Come get your clothes at five,” he said. “I’ll leave the door open.” And he hung up.

  Laura surprised Tris by dropping into a chair and sobbing.

  Tris sat down opposite her and waited in silence till she caught her breath, expecting an explanation. But Laura only dried her eyes and asked for some coffee.

  Jack wasn’t home when she went to pick up her clothes. She had known he wouldn’t be there, and still it made her want to weep. She was in a blue mood, and even the sight of Tris, waiting for her outside at the wheel of a rented convertible, didn’t cheer her up. She made several trips with the clothes, leaving most of her other possessions behind, and on the last trip she wrote him a note. It said, in part:

  You’re the only man I would ever marry, Jack. Maybe it will still work out. Tris wants me to spend two weeks with her on Long Island. I’ll call you the minute I get back. I’m crazy about her, but she’s a sick girl and I’ve had enough of wild scenes with sick lovers. I don’t know what to expect so am leaving most of my things here. Hope they won’t be too much in the way. I quit my job, by the way. Will find something else when I get back. Thank you so much for everything, Jack darling. Hope Beebo didn’t give you any trouble. Don’t start drinking, I’m not worth it. I love you. Laura.

  The cabin had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room, and a bathroom. It was furnished à la 1935, full of sand and ants, but comfortable. The walk to the beach was short and just enough to get you pleasantly warm before you soaked in the salt water.

  There were a lot of other vacationers living all around them—young couples with dozens of hollering kids, mostly. Laura watched them romping on the sand, the little ones screaming and giggling and pouring water on each other. She wondered if she could ever want a child.

  She lay on the beach with Tris, the day after they arrived, and luxuriated in the sun. Tris had lathered herself lovingly with rich sun cream and was sitting under a huge beach umbrella that she had erected with the help of a young man they discovered while they looked for a place to lie down. He was not very subtle about his admiration, which he confined to Tris. And Laura was not very pleased to see her prance for him. But she said nothing.

  “You’ll burn to a crisp, Laura,” Tris warned her.

  “I put some stuff on,” Laura said lazily, wiggling a little and feeling the hot rays toast the backs of her legs.

  “Not enough for one so fair,” Tris maintained. “Such fair skin you have.” And Laura heard the yearning in her voice. “If mine were that light I would never expose it like you do. I’d do everything to keep it as light as I could. Even bleach it. They say buttermilk works wonders.”

  Laura looked up at her through eyes squinted against the sun. “Your skin is beautiful, Tris.”

  “Oh, not like yours,” Tris said, embarrassed.

  “How can you say that? You’re the prettiest color I ever saw.”

  “And you’re a dirty hypocrite!” Tris snapped.

  Laura stared at her, dumbfounded, for some seconds, before she answered softly, “No, I mean it.” She was afraid to say more. “You think I only say it to flatter you, don’t you?” she asked finally. “I won’t say it, then. I’d rather you turned your temper on yourself than on me.”

  After an elaborately casual pause, full of much smoothing lotion and gazing around, Tris said, “Do you really like my color?” The little-girl pleading in her voice touched Laura.

  “If I say yes, you call me a liar. If I say no you call me a bigot.”

  “Say yes.”

  “Yes.” And Laura smiled at her and Tris smiled back and gave Laura the feeling of false but sweet security.

  Tris said, “Did you ever notice, when we lie on the bed together, how we look?”

  Laura finished, “Yes, I noticed.” She looked at Tris in surprise. It wasn’t like her to mention such things. “Me so white and you so brown. It looks like poetry, Tris. Like music, if you could see music. Your body looks so warm and mine looks so cool. And inside, we’re just the other way around. Isn’t it funny? I’m the one who’s always on fire. And you’re the iceberg.” She laughed a little. “Maybe I can melt you,” she said.

  “Better not. The brown comes off,” Tris said cynically, but her strange thought excited Laura.

  “God, what a queer idea!” Laura said. “You’d have to touch me everywhere then, every corner of me, till we were both the same color. Then you’d be almost white and I’d be almost tan—and yet we’d be the same.” She looked at Tris with her squinty eyes that sparkled in the glancing sun. And Tris, struck herself by the strangeness of it, murmured, “I never thought of it that way.”

  Laura hoped Tris would look at it that way for the rest of the vacation.

  Chapter Seven

  JACK WALKED into his apartment at five-thirty in the afternoon, tired and thirsty but dolefully sober. He was a stubborn man and he had dedicated all his resistance to fighting liquor. He meant to head for the kitchen and consume a pint of cider and fix himself some dinner. Since Laura had left five days ago he had not had much appetite. He did not admit that she would ever come back or that he had lost a battle. It was only a temporary setback. But it rocked him a little and it hurt him a lot.

  He came wearily down the hall, stuck his key belligerently into the lock and kicked his front door open. He dumped a paper bag full of light bulbs, cigarettes, and Scotch tape on a chair, switched on a light and started toward his kitchen. It came as a distinct shock to find Laura sitting on his sofa.

  He stared at her. She had her legs up, crossed, on the cocktail table, and her head back, gazing at the ceiling. She knew he was there, of course; she heard him come in. She turned and looked at him finally, and something in her face dispelled his melancholy. He felt elated. But he checked it carefully. He slipped his coat off without a word, dropped it on the chair with his package, and walked over to her, standing in front of her with his hands in his pockets.

  “Run out of suntan lotion?” he said.

  “No. But you’re out of whiskey.”

  “I gave it to Beebo. Traded it for your clothes.”

  “Take the clothes back and get the whiskey.”

  “Later,” he said, and smiled. Then he added, “Was it bad?”

  “Very bad,” Laura said and for a moment they both feared she would start crying. But she didn’t.

  “Want to tell me?”

  “Jack,” she said with an ironic little smile. “You’ll have to write a book about me someday. I tell you everything.”

  He grinned. “I’ll leave that to somebody else. But I’m saving my notes, just in case.” He sat down beside her. “Well, it could only be one of three things, seeing that she’s gay,” he said. “She’s a whore.”

  “No.”

  “A junkie.”

  “No.”

  “—or she’s married.”

  “She’s married.”

  He lighted a cigarette with a long sigh, his eyes bright on her.

  “How did you know?” she asked.

  “I didn’t. But it had to be something that would shock you. And you seem pretty damn nervous about the idea of gay people being married.” He paused and she had to drop her glance. “Does she hate him?” he asked returning to Tris.

  “Most of the time. God, Jack, I need a drink.”

  “Steady, Mother. My neighbor always has a supply. I’ll fix you up.” He came back in less than three minutes with a bottle of sparkling burgundy.

  “Ugh!” Laura said. But she took it gratefully.

  “Now,” he said, settling down on the cocktail table with a cup of instant coffee, “begin at the beginning.”

  Laura rubbed her forehead and then sipped the prickly drink. “It started…beautifully,” she said. “Like a dream. It was all hot sand and cool water and kisses. We held hands in the movie, we sat up till all hours in front of the fireplace with a bottle of Riesling and sang, and danced. We traded secrets and we made plans. We made a boat trip to the point—”


  “Did you make love?”

  “You just can’t wait, can you?” she said, half teasing, half irritated.

  “My future may depend on it,” he said and shrugged.

  There was a long reflective pause and finally Laura said, sadly, “Yes. We made love. Only once.”

  “And that was the end?”

  “It wasn’t that simple. You see, she—well, she flirted. She flirted with men until I thought I couldn’t stand it. Till I wanted to flirt myself to get even, if only I weren’t so damn awkward with men. She’s not. She’s a genius with them. She didn’t give a damn if they were married or not. She had them all proposing to her.

  “After the first couple of days it got intolerable. She had been making me sleep on one bed and she took the other. And after she turned the lights out she made a rule—no bed hopping.”

  “And you obeyed her little rule?”

  “I had to, Jack,” she defended herself. “We had a sort of agreement before we left the Village…It was supposed to be up to her to choose the time and place.”

  “That’s the lousiest agreement you ever made, Mother,” he commented.

  “No. She’s sick, you see. Really. She thinks she’s straight. And if you hint she’s not, she gets terrified. Almost hysterical. She can’t accept it.”

  “Why do you always fall for these well adjusted ladies?” he asked.

  “Beth was well adjusted.”

  “Beth is dead. As far as you’re concerned.” Laura glared at him while he smiled slightly, lighting another cigarette from the one he was finishing. “So Tris is a queer queer,” he said. “And she flirts with the opposite sex. Very subversive. So what came next?”

  “Well, they followed us home—”

  “Who?”

  “Men!” she flashed peevishly. “They followed us at the beach, in the bars, in the stores. They followed Tris, I should say. I was cold as hell with them. I tried to keep quiet about it, but after three days of it I blew up. We had a miserable quarrel, and I was ready to pack up and leave right then. But she relented suddenly. I don’t know why. I think she really likes me, Jack. Anyway, she got drunk. Just enough so that she wouldn’t have to watch what I did to her…or hear what I said to her…or care too much…”