by Ann Bannon
Beth finished her drink. “Do you suppose I’ll ruin it all by seeing her again?”
“You could. Depends on why you want to see her,” he said, urging a confession from her with his voice, his attitude, everything but his words.
She looked at him out of tormented eyes. “I wonder if I could explain it, even to you,” she murmured.
“Try,” he said.
“Jack,” she said helplessly, “there’s no way. I don’t know myself. I won’t know why I’m here until I see her face before me. Until I touch her and hear her voice. Maybe I’ll know then, if I’m lucky.” She felt herself getting shaky and she stopped talking. He took her glass again and refilled it.
“She’ll be along,” he said. “These things are never very late.”
But it did get late. Later and later until it was after midnight and she could no longer bear to sit there and face him and keep her dreadful secrets from coming up in her throat and gagging her. She got up at last and thanked him and told him, “I can’t wait any longer. I’ll come by tomorrow. Please don’t tell her I was here. I have to surprise her. Don’t ask me why, I can’t explain.”
“There’s a lot you can’t explain,” he said mildly. “Why don’t you spend the night?” he went on. “We have plenty of room.”
Her heart jumped at the chance.
“Get up, you’re on the sofa-bed,” he told her. “Won’t take a minute to make it up.”
When he brought her one of Laura’s nightgowns to wear she took it with a sudden gesture and look of pleasure she made no attempt to hide. He smiled at her.
“Still want to keep it a secret?” he said. “From Laura, I mean.”
“Won’t she see me when she comes in?” Beth said. “Right here in the living room?”
“She won’t know who it is in the dark.”
“Don’t tell her, then.”
“It’ll probably knock her for a loop in the morning,” he said. “But if you want it that way.”
“I do. Thanks, Jack.”
“Sure.” He smiled at her, showed her where the bathroom was, and left her to herself.
She lay down after a while, turning out the light and lying in the dark. She didn’t expect to sleep with her mind whirling and full of Laura, but she did. Very suddenly she dropped off as if a switch had been flipped inside her and stifled her thoughts.
Chapter Seventeen
IT WAS ALMOST DAWN WHEN SHE HEARD THE FRONT DOOR opened carefully, and shut with a small click. She was lying on her stomach with her face obscured by crumpled bedclothes and the pillow. She heard Laura come in, heard her pause as she caught sight of the sofa-bed open and occupied, heard her rustle softly across the room and felt her presence, her scent, only scant inches from her. The room was full of a deep gray light and Beth was sure it wasn’t enough for Laura to distinguish her face by. She lay almost breathless on the bed until Laura turned and moved quietly away, going into her own bedroom.
Beth rolled over and gazed at the faintly visible ceiling with a tremendous happiness inside her that called for singing, shouting from the rooftops, hilarity. It made her smile at the ceiling and hug herself, and after a while it got her out of bed and sent her to the door of the bedroom where Jack and Laura were sleeping. She just stood there, one hand pressed against the door and a smile on her face, for half an hour. There was too much excitement and anticipation in her for the unhappy parts of her life to bother her. She never once thought of Charlie or of Vega.
She got up and dressed. There was no point in trying to sleep any more; she was too keyed up. She put her clothes on and washed her face and then she made up the sofa-bed, folding the sheets and blanket carefully and stacking them in a chair while she closed the hinged mattress and put the cushions back in place. All slowly…all quietly.
She picked up a magazine and looked at the pictures. And finally, after what seemed like an eternity, she heard stirrings in Jack and Laura’s room. She heard a sleepy male voice speaking softly and then someone answering him, and her whole soul thrilled to that light feminine voice. It had been so long, so abysmally long and lonesome a time since she had last heard it. She even wondered, half laughing at herself, if she would have recognized it as Laura’s voice without the sure knowledge that it was actually Laura who spoke. She heard her so indistinctly; the words were unintelligible, just a faint murmur of sound.
Fifteen minutes went by, during which Beth could hear sounds of running water in the bathroom, small sounds of drawers opening and shoes dropping and things being moved and things being gotten into. Suddenly the bedroom door opened and she looked up—almost leaped up—only to see Jack emerge.
Jack gave her a pleasant grin. “She’s still sleeping,” he said. He gave three sharp raps on Betsy’s door and said, “Get up, honey.” And then, turning to Beth, he said, “Come on, I’ll fix you some breakfast.”
She got up and followed him into the kitchen and helped him make scrambled eggs and bacon and coffee and orange juice and muffins.
“I believe in big breakfasts,” he told her.
“You’re some cook,” she said. “You really know your way around the kitchen. I’m a flop in that department.”
He smiled, unabashed. “Worked out very well,” he said. “Laura’s not a great cook, and she doesn’t like it much. I do most of it.”
“Under protest?”
“Hell, no. I enjoy it. I wouldn’t do it otherwise.”
Betsy came in as Beth was pouring the orange juice and she exclaimed brightly, “Hi, Mrs. Ayers! Did you stay all night?”
“Sh!” her father told her. “Come here and let me button you. Mrs. Ayers is going to surprise Mommy. We don’t want her to know she’s here.”
“Oh,” she said, turning big eyes, made bigger still by the lenses in front of them, on Beth, while Jack did up a row of pearl buttons on the back of her dress.
“There,” he said. “Eat.”
Beth had the uncanny feeling that everything she saw and heard, every bit of this little morning ritual she was sharing with them, would tie Laura closer to her and help her understand herself. Nothing was unimportant. She remembered it all.
“When does Laura get up?” she asked while they ate.
“Not till ten or so. It depends,” he said.
“She isn’t working, then?”
“No.” It was emphatic. She sensed that he didn’t want his wife to work.
“Who did you tell her I was?”
“She asked me this morning,” he said, grinning. “I told her you were my mother. Stood her on her ear.”
“Did it? Is your mother dead or something?”
He laughed. “No. Laura’s never laid eyes on my mother, and neither have I for thirty years. But I call Laura ‘Mother.’ It started out as a joke and ended up a family institution. I was calling her Mother long before I had any notion of marrying her. A Freudian slip, I suppose.”
Betsy giggled, more at the tone of his voice than at his words, for they didn’t make much sense to her.
“I’ll be home after five,” he told Beth when he finished. “We’ll go out for dinner or something.” He got up and Betsy followed him. At the kitchen door he turned to add, “Say, tell Laura to call George McCracken and cancel that order, will you? I’ve changed my mind. And tell her to mail a check to Dr. Byrd. It’ll save me writing it down.”
“Sure,” Beth said.
When they had gone she felt suddenly scared, suddenly on her own without anyone to help her through it, and she almost wished that Laura knew she was there. It was going to be such a hard shock for her. Or was it? Would she take it in stride the way she seemed to have taken the rest of her life?
Beth cleaned up the breakfast dishes, leaving the coffee and wrapping the muffins in waxed paper for Laura. She smoked incessantly out of sheer nervousness and she began to wonder if it would ever be ten o’clock.
But Laura was quicker than that. It was only a little past nine when Beth heard her getting up, heard the familia
r morning sounds that Jack had been making an hour ago. And all at once Beth was overwhelmed with the significance of it. It seemed as if all she had suffered and begun to learn so painfully and searched for so clumsily was about to be revealed to her, as if her very soul would come walking out of that bedroom with Laura and show itself to her for the first time and answer all her questions.
She was almost more afraid of seeing her true self than of seeing Laura now and she sat on the edge of the chair with her whole spine shivering and her hands hot and sweaty.
The bedroom door opened and from her seat Beth heard Laura cross the living room, the dining area. For a shattering second she felt the gray faintness that possessed her in tense emotional storms and she clamped her eyes shut. But the feeling passed and she opened them again. They opened on Laura.
She was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, and at the moment Beth saw her she was still too stunned to speak. There was not even a trace of amazement yet on her face, just morning sleepiness and the heart-piercing beauty that Beth had loved so passionately long ago.
For some moments they simply stared at each other, both too full of feeling to speak or move. And then Laura raised trembling hands to her face and Beth heard her voice, clear and familiar now, break as she spoke her name. It took her another second to realize that Laura was crying.
Beth sprang to her feet and went to her, only to find herself helplessly shy and unable to touch her. Until Laura lowered her hands and turned diamond-bright eyes up to her and reached for her.
They kissed each other with such tenderness, such perfect accord, such lovely waiting warmth, that Beth felt dizzy with it. Laura simply moved into her arms, giving herself to her with that whole-souled generosity that thrilled Beth almost to tears. They clung to each other, and still there were no words between them, there seemed to be nothing to say. Beth held her tight, feeling a flood of strength and sureness come into her arms, as she put her head down against Laura’s and kissed her throat, her ears, the delicate expanse of shoulder that her negligee revealed. She could feel Laura trembling and it delighted her inexpressibly, this overpowering response they could feel for each other. It was as if Laura had known all along and was welcoming her home.
“I thought you might have changed,” Beth whispered finally. “I thought you might never have forgiven me. Oh, Laura, Laura, oh my darling Laura.”
But Laura, sensing better than Beth the futility of words at such a moment, pulled away, seeming to glide out of Beth’s arms. Her eyes, her whole face glowed with a beguiling reticence that Beth remembered with a wrench of the heart, and she followed as Laura moved away from her, across the kitchen to a window.
“Laura, say something,” Beth pleaded. “Say it’s all right that I’m here. Say you’re glad to see me.”
Without looking at her Laura repeated softly, “It’s all right, Beth. I’m glad to see you. Very glad,” and her voice vibrated with amazed desire. When she felt Beth’s kisses on the back of her neck she put her head back and let it rest against Beth’s shoulder.
For Beth it was almost too much. There was so much to say, so much to excuse, and yet all she wanted was to touch Laura, to make love.
“I’m afraid to stop touching you!” Beth said. “I’m afraid you’ll vanish, I’m afraid I’m dreaming. Oh, Laura, Laura…Just saying your name to you now, knowing you hear me…I can’t bear it.” She felt her own tears well up and she let them come. “I’ve said it so many times to myself, to the bare walls, to nobody and anybody. I feel as if I’ve spent my whole life trying to find you again, as if everything in my life that I’ve done without you doesn’t count. Nothing matters but you. Laura, I was so afraid I wouldn’t find you. I’ve tried so hard, I’ve been so damn scared that you wouldn’t want to see me, that you’d be different.”
Laura turned around and put a finger on Beth’s lips. “Don’t talk,” she said. “It’s so hard to talk. You’ll spoil everything.” She took Beth’s hand and led her into the bedroom. The scent of her pervaded the whole room and struck a whirling exhilaration into Beth. The beds were rumpled and welcoming and the clothes Laura must have worn the night before hung over a chair in the corner.
Laura pulled Beth down on the bed with tender graceful arms, slipping under her as she did so and letting her negligee fall away. For every feverish word Beth uttered Laura gave her a kiss until she had Beth helpless with desire, until all the words were stilled. Beth had not even the time to marvel at it, to be grateful; all that she saved for afterwards, succumbing to the sensual beauty of it now, while it was happening.
She had the feeling, whenever Laura touched her or moved with her, that no one, no living human being, had ever understood her so beautifully, so instinctively, and she felt too that Laura could not have been this way with anybody else. All Laura had to do was speak, and Beth would understand all. Their love was sacred to them. It made her feel that Laura had just been waiting for her all these years. Nothing of significance had happened to either of them since they parted. All their lives, all their actions, all their thoughts without each other lost meaning. It was as if nothing existed but the two of them, and they were more important than the rest of the world put together.
They lay in each other’s arms throughout the rest of the morning, hardly speaking at first, just reaffirming a powerful attraction that had lain dormant for too long, thrilled to feel the remembered sweet response.
“It makes me think of the campus,” Laura murmured. “Do you remember how it was in the spring? How it felt to walk under the huge old elms on the broadwalk and talk about classes and whisper about love? It’s almost like being there, having you so close. I never thought I’d feel it again.”
“Laura,” Beth said, her hands full of Laura’s hair. “I’ve been half dead all these years. I’ve needed you so terribly.” There was a little pause. Laura looked away and Beth knew what she was thinking. “I—I know I could have had you in the beginning,” she went on, hesitant but unable to stem the flood of feeling. “I know I should never have given you up. But you see, I didn’t understand it then.”
She paused, searching Laura’s face for a light of sympathy, but Laura listened to her with her face averted. It made Beth feel, more than words could have, how profoundly she had hurt this exquisite girl. “I thought I had to have a man, then,” she tried to explain. “But Laura, I was wrong. I’ve had to live with one and, believe me, I know. I’ve been sick—just sick with it.”
“You’d have been sick with me too, Beth,” Laura said with a wise smile, unexpectedly. “No matter which one of us you chose, it would have been the wrong choice. You would have spent the rest of your life wondering if you hadn’t done wrong. It wouldn’t have been so much different with me than with Charlie.”
Beth sat up in bed, grasping Laura’s face in her hands, her eyes hurt and shocked. “Laura, you’re the only one who ever understood me, who ever cared so beautifully and completely for me. No man—certainly not Charlie—could ever measure up to you. No man can understand me when I can’t understand myself. That’s why I needed you so desperately.”
“To be understood?” Laura interrupted. She smiled with a sad mouth. In the aftermath of shock and passion, her head was clearing.
“Not just that,” Beth said, feeling somehow as if the ground were slipping out from under her, yet not knowing why. “I love you, Laura. I’ve loved you since we parted.”
“When did you make that discovery?” Laura said. “On your wedding day?” And her smile was sharp now.
“Oh God, Laura, I don’t know when I first realized it—what a mistake the marriage was.”
“Probably the day you had your first quarrel,” Laura said, and her expression hinted that she would have liked to have seen it. She looked suddenly like a minx—sly and taunting. Beth could tell just from her face, her smile, how much she had learned, how much she had changed. She would not be easy and yielding for long.
“Laura, don’t laugh at me,” Beth pleaded. “Yo
u don’t know what I’ve been through, what I’ve given up, to find you.”
“What, Beth? Tell me. Your reputation? Your fortune? Your rose-covered bungalow? Or just a little peace of mind?” She got up from the bed while she spoke and began to dress. The action was almost insolent, a soundless slap in the face that reverberated across nine years. Beth saw in her mind with stinging clarity the scene at the train, when she had sent Laura away. It had never seemed cruel to her until now because she had fooled herself into thinking she had done it for Laura’s own good. But looking into Laura’s haunting face she saw very clearly that it had been cruel after all. Laura remembered every word and gesture of it. She was remembering it at that moment while she looked at Beth with a smiling mouth.
“Laura, I’m speaking to you from my heart,” Beth said, her voice straining. “I’m telling you the absolute truth the very best I can. Don’t turn your back to me.”
But Laura had kept her resentment in check too many years not to give herself the luxury of loosing it now. Just once. Just to let Beth know how it had been. That was all she wanted. “You turned your back on me often enough,” she said, facing away from the bed and looking through her dresser drawers.
Beth looked down at her bare thighs in confusion and covered them with part of the sheet. “Never on purpose,” she protested.
Laura laughed. She knew better. “Only for Charlie’s sake,” she said. “That it? He forced you. You never would have turned me out on your own. Where is Charlie now?” She pulled a gauzy slip from one of the drawers, and still her back was turned and her eyes ignored her lover.
And Beth knew from the toss of Laura’s head, from the sweep of her smooth arm, that Laura meant to punish her.
“He’s in California,” Beth said darkly.