The Beebo Brinker Omnibus

by Ann Bannon

  Nina slipped away from her and brought in the rest of the plates, and they did the dishes together, speaking softly of small irrelevancies, enjoying each other’s physical presence.

  And still Beth hesitated, with that name on the tip of her tongue and some ineffable misgiving freezing it there.

  Nina showed her an album full of snapshots she had collected, and startled her by pointing to a nice-looking crew-cut boy and saying off-handedly, “That was my husband.”

  “Your husband? You never said you were married.”

  “I’m not. I was. Besides, why should I tell you?” And for an instant Beth felt the wall of sarcasm rising.

  “No reason,” she said. “What happened?”

  Nina shrugged. “What happened with you and Charlie? It didn’t work. We divorced years ago.”

  “Did you love him?”

  “Hell, no. He was just a nice kid. We had fun.”

  “And no children.”

  “And no children. You were a fool to have children, Beth. “I love them,” she said humbly.

  “Ha!” Nina cried. “Then what are you doing here? Why aren’t you with them?” After a suggestive pause she prompted, “Was the old long lost love that tempting?”

  In the midst of such sharp and painful needling Beth couldn’t speak Laura’s name. She couldn’t bear to have it laughed at and she clammed up for a while. When she could control her voice a little she tried to explain.

  “I left my kids because I treated them badly. I was unjust, I was unreasonable, I hurt them over and over. Even if there had never been any ‘long lost love,’ I think I would have left them. The more I hurt them the worse I hurt myself until I thought we would all go crazy.”

  Nina saw what a whirlpool of guilt and resentment she had stirred up, and, interested, she stirred it a little more. “So your solution was to dump the kids in the river and run to New York in search of a girl you haven’t seen in nine years? Not very sensible, was it?”

  “Not very!” Beth conceded. “Not much fun, either,” she added sharply.

  Nina dropped her smile at once. “I’m not laughing,” she said with a solemn face. But of course she was, inside, in the dark and silence of her private self. “My first husband and I had it worked out a little better than that, that’s all. You should have used your head.”

  “Your first husband?” Beth snapped. “Where in hell is your second?”

  “Oh I mean my ex-husband. My former husband,” Nina corrected herself.

  “Well, say so, then.” Beth had caught her lying. She had never married. It simply pleased her ego to say she had, to make Beth feel that no experience Beth had ever had was unique or different from any Nina had had. Nina had to be one up on you, or at least on a level with you, or she couldn’t enjoy herself. Ordinarily she lied to this end with great skill, gracefully and casually. It gave Beth her first peace of mind with Nina to catch her in a blatant fib, to see that startled look flicker over her face.

  Nina had the good sense to take it lightly. She passed over it, coming to the couch where Beth sat and settling beside her. She cocked one foot against the coffee table and said slowly, “Would you like to spend the night?” The conflict of desires on Beth’s face tickled her, restored her self-assurance.

  “I don’t think so,” Beth said.

  “Why not? Afraid of me?”

  “Not of you.” Damn her!She would make a test of it, a challenge, How can I turn her down now? But Beth wasn’t absolutely sure she wanted to turn her down.

  “Afraid of what, then?”

  “You don’t really want me to stay.”

  “Why do you think I asked you?” Nina had made her mind up. Beth was moody, she was pretty, she was new. Nina smiled at the swell of her breasts beneath the simple suit she wore and wondered how they looked undraped.

  “Stay,” she said. And when Beth didn’t answer she added, “I have a nightie you can borrow. Go take a shower and I’ll get you a towel. Go on!” She shooed her as she might have a wayward child or a chicken, and Beth got up and obeyed her. It exhausted her to try to make a decision. It was easier to let Nina make it for her.

  She showered and dried herself, gazing at herself critically in the mirror of the medicine chest, wondering just how big a fool she was to stay, to walk into whatever trap Nina might be laying for her. The small consolation was that you could only walk into Nina’s kind of trap once. Nina had a way of stripping your innocence off with both hands. It hurt, but Beth was learning. She sensed that the lessons Nina taught her would bolster her when she faced the gay world alone.

  “Finished?” Nina called outside the bathroom door. “Here’s some pajamas.”

  Beth opened the door a few inches and grabbed them and saw Nina grin at her modesty. She slipped the blue cotton pants on and found they were too short. The jacket was too tight through the bust and she laughed silently at the picture she made in the mirror.

  Nina was waiting for her, curled up on the foot end of the sofa-bed she had pulled out from the love seat in the living room.

  “You can sleep in here,” she said. “There’s plenty of room.” There was in fact room for two, but Nina had her own bed in the other room and Beth was relieved to know they would sleep apart.

  She sat down on a pillow as far from Nina as the length of the bed would permit, and Nina fixed them both a nightcap. They drank in silence for a moment, and then Beth spoke. Maybe it was the liquor that prompted her, or the informality of the pajamas that were too small and looked silly, or just the need to know. At any rate, she spoke of the things closest to her then.

  “How do you know if you’re gay, Nina?” she asked.

  “Simple. You go to a fortune teller,” Nina said.

  “Is that how you found out about yourself?”

  “No.” And Nina’s face became more serious. “No, I did it the hard way.”

  “What’s the hard way?”

  “I got hurt.”

  “Well, I’ve been hurt before,” Beth said. “A thousand times, a thousand different ways. It didn’t teach me a thing.”

  “You weren’t a good student, then.”

  “I don’t mean with women, Nina.”

  “I thought you were in New York trying to find some woman.”

  “I am. But she never hurt me. I hurt her, but she never did a thing to me.”

  “Well, there must have been others.”

  There had been Vega, of course. But Beth couldn’t talk about her, and there seemed no reason to confess that sordid little chapter to Nina, who would only have laughed at it anyway.

  “No,” Beth said. “No others.” She finished her drink quickly and Nina reached to refill it, but Beth held back.

  “You mean that once nine years ago you had a fling with some girl,” Nina said, letting her hand drop, “and now you wonder if you’re gay?” She spoke with exaggerated incredulity and the curl in her small mouth was not kind. But it was amused.

  “I loved her very much,” Beth said. “I just happened to meet my husband at the same time. I’ve been wondering all these years if I made the right choice. Lately, with things so bad at home, I thought seeing her again would help me make up my mind. Help me understand myself.”

  “What makes you think she’ll be so eager to see you? Or help you out? What makes you think she cares a damn about you after nine years? Especially if you hurt her the last time around?”

  “I have no idea how she’ll react,” Beth said. She resented the probing mockery Nina subjected her to, but if it was the price of knowledge she was ready to pay it. “I only know she was a very gentle, affectionate girl and when we parted there were no hard feelings.”

  “Oh, swell,” Nina said. “She’s had nine years to sit and stew over it, remember. She’s known other women by now, if she has any sense. She can evaluate what you did to her. She couldn’t before when it first happened. Or weren’t you her first?”

  “Yes. I was.” Beth glanced up at her. It was true. Laura had experien
ce to measure Beth with now, but Beth had nothing but memories with which to judge Laura. Memories and one abortive sad little romance with a sick woman that only made Laura look the lovelier in her imaginings.

  “She may look good to you,” Nina pointed out, “but you may look like hell to her. What if you barge in on a new romance? What if you finally find her and the poor girl is madly in love with somebody new? How glad do you think she’ll be to see you? You could louse up her whole life, throw a monkey wrench into her romance. What’s she supposed to do, laugh it off for old time’s sake? Welcome you with open arms and let the other girl go jump?”

  In a burst of irritation and arrogance Beth leaned across the bed, her hands planted deep in the mattress just inches from Nina and the rest of her weight on her knees. “You know something?” Beth said. “I don’t give a damn. I don’t care what I do to her life, as long as she lets me back in it. I want her so badly I can see her in every female I meet. I can smell her the way she used to be after her shower at night when she was covered with scented powder and her hair was still damp. God, God, I can even taste her!”

  And Nina twisted her mouth into a laugh. When Beth started to protest she put a hand up and exclaimed, “No, I believe you. You’re in love.”

  Beth came down to a more reasonable sitting position. “Does that make me gay?” she asked seriously.

  “For the time being.” Nina sized her up. “Why do you worry about it, Beth? Why are you so anxious for a label? What do you care what category you fall into? Just be yourself.”

  “I don’t know myself.”

  “Then just be however you feel like being and pretty soon the pattern will emerge.”

  “I’ve been doing that for thirty years,” Beth said. “There is no pattern, there’s only chaos.”

  “Well, maybe that comes from living with a man. Maybe you were never meant to settle down. I know some perfectly nice girls, all straight, who can’t live with men. They can’t live without them, either, of course. It’s a matter of balancing their lives between the men who are important to them, and the other things. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re gay. It doesn’t necessarily mean you should go live with a woman and make love to her, just because you’ve made a flop of your first marriage. So maybe you got the wrong guy. Try somebody else.”

  “It isn’t that easy. If you’d ever been married you’d know that.”

  “I have been married. I told you,” Nina said quickly

  And Beth, seeing that she meant to stick by her fib, said, “Oh, sorry. I forgot.” She hoped Nina liked the sarcasm in her voice. Nina was used enough to dishing it out. But Beth was glad for her words. They put a new light on things, made her see them from an angle that had been closed to her when there had been just her own ramblings in the dark to guide her.

  “If Charlie was a mistake, I’ll be paying for it all my life,” Beth said.

  “Don’t be silly. What did you pay him for this trip?”

  “A lot of misery, Nina. A lot of soul searching and misery.”

  “You’ll get that out of life anyway, Beth. You have no corner on misery. That’s everybody’s business. That’s the growing-up process, you might say.” It sounded familiar to Beth. She wondered if she might have read it somewhere in one of Nina’s books. “Your long lost love can probably teach you a few things about misery. Anybody who’s gay knows that subject backwards and forwards.”

  Beth reached over to a small end table to squash out her cigarette. When she sat up Nina unfastened the central, cornerstone, button on the tight pajama tops. It was accomplished with one quick movement that caught Beth off guard and the straining button yielded gratefully before she had time to catch Nina’s hand and stop her. At once, the whole thing came unbuttoned, the jacket top failing open over her bare chest.

  Rather than protest or lose her temper or button the thing up again, or even use the gesture as an excuse for making a pass, Beth just sat there as if nothing had happened. Her expression, her attitude, were a dare to Nina. She gazed into space, apparently preoccupied, and Nina, who was fishing for a hard reaction, was nonplussed. Beth could sense it without looking at her. She continued to sit, inwardly amused and relieved to see Nina’s consternation. Beth’s full high breasts were disturbingly visible and Nina could neither move away, nor mention them until Beth did something without making herself look idiotic. So Nina sat still beside Beth, both exasperated and interested. The gambit forced an unaccustomed respect for Beth on her. Perhaps Beth was something more than a passionate hayseed trying to scare up an old crush. Perhaps she was good for something besides laughs.

  At last Beth leaned back into the pillows, settling down with a sigh, her arms and legs flung out and the unbuttoned jacket flung carelessly out on either side of her. She shut her eyes and said, “Forgive me, Nina. I’m beat.”

  “Sure,” Nina said. Released by the words, she got up and took the glasses and full ashtrays into the kitchen. Beth listened to her moving about, smiling to herself. She felt better about Nina now, less at her mercy.

  “I’ll be in the next room,” Nina said. “If you have any bad dreams, that is.”

  “Thanks. I’ll remember,” Beth said. She heard Nina take a few steps and stop, and make a few odd noises with her tongue and then with an ashtray, as if to attract Beth’s attention, make her open her eyes. But Beth kept them shut, ignoring her. “Did you like the dinner?” Nina said.

  Beth had. She had said so several times. So it was plain that Nina was looking for an invitation, a more intimate talk, a caress, maybe even a night in bed with Beth. And Beth was both surprised and flattered. But she had no idea of yielding her small lead then. Let Nina squirm. It was her turn.

  “Yes, thanks,” she said noncommittally. “It was delicious.”

  And seeing that she would get no further without stating her intentions in plain English, Nina gave up with a smile, put out the last light, and climbed into her own bed.

  It was black early morning when Beth was slightly roused by a movement of the bedclothes. She continued to breathe slowly and softly as if she were still asleep, letting Nina slip under the blankets and lie beside her. Nina didn’t touch her and didn’t move for fully ten minutes, for fear of waking Beth.

  They played cat and mouse for a while. Beth was at first dismayed to feel Nina’s presence. Not so much because she didn’t desire her as because she didn’t want to desire her. She didn’t want to feel an attraction for this odd girl who was teaching her some valuable facts in such a humiliating manner. And yet she did. She couldn’t imagine living with Nina or sharing the things that mattered with her. But she could imagine, vividly, making love to her. She could see in her mind’s eye the well-shaped legs and trim torso, the long brown bob and green eyes, the small passionless mouth that nevertheless felt so strangely soft and sweet when they kissed over the steak plates.

  It was a lovely body that lay next to her, not like the poor tortured thing that was Vega, with her heart all twisted inside by the mutilations on the outside. After a while Beth knew she wanted to touch Nina; she knew she would have to pretty soon if Nina didn’t make the move first. She wanted extremely to control herself, to withstand the temptation, to prove the stronger, and this desire gave her a few moments more of resistance. She wondered if Nina meant to sleep beside her all night, without making a single gesture toward her. Maybe she wanted merely to wake up in the morning with Beth beside her and enjoy Beth’s surprise. She wondered if it was just another trap to make Beth look silly.

  Beth held her breath for a second and then her breathing came faster with the speed of excitement and even fear. Nina heard it, lying so near her in the bed, and she tensed, knowing there was nothing more she needed to do. But Beth startled her by reaching over her and snapping on the small pink lamp on the end table, flooding the room with a soft rosy radiance that made them both visible to each other. Beth couldn’t have explained the action; it seemed better somehow than simply grabbing Nina like an animal after bait.
Maybe it was just another effort to resist, to do anything but touch Nina.

  Nina rolled over on her back and stared at Beth, her eyes opening wider slowly as they became accustomed to the light. “What the hell did you do that for?” she asked. But she wasn’t angry.

  “What the hell are you doing in my bed?” Beth said.

  Nina smiled. “I had a bad dream,” she said. And Beth had to smile too. Nina looked boldly at her. “You’re still unbuttoned,” she said. In the sudden intimacy it was possible to speak of it.

  “I like it that way. Your pajamas are too small for me.”

  Nina reached up slowly and put her hands on Beth’s warm breasts. “You can never know for sure if you’re gay, Beth,” she said softly, “unless you can respond to more than one woman. You’ll never know if you save yourself all for the long lost love. How do you even know you’ll find her? Maybe she’s gone for good and you’ll go home to Charlie and never know what you left him to find out.”

  There was a pause. In a way it was true, and in another way it was a satin-covered, thorn-lined invitation to infidelity. Beth wondered if she would be unfaithful to Charlie by making love to a woman. It had never seemed so to her with Vega, probably because making love to Vega was a depressing chore. But Nina made her feel suddenly that she was a faithless woman. Nina made her feel that the things she was doing were both silly and wicked, and wonderful. At the same time, she made her believe they were natural and inevitable.

  Beth looked down at her, with her soft brown hair scattered on the pillow. Her eyes were very green in the rosy light and her skin was very fair. Beth caught her hands, pulling them gently away from her breasts and kissing the palms. And then Nina took them back to slip out of her own pajamas. Beth watched her in silence, letting things happen as if she had no will to stop them; she didn’t even try.

  Nina wriggled out of the bottoms and threw them on the floor, at the same time pushing the covers off her body with a couple of long quick thrusts of her legs. Suddenly, almost unexpectedly, for Beth was not well prepared for anything that happened that night, Nina was lying beautifully naked beneath her, her fine legs crossed at the ankles, her sharp restless eyes searching Beth’s.