Strange Women, The

by Miriam Gardner

"No. It's not what you'd think." She looked down into the street, where the small drops were still splattering into the puddles. "It's—I know why Jill won't marry Mack, Kit."

  "Some other man?"

  "No man, Kit. It's—" Nora bent her head. This was it, and she simply didn't know how to say it. "It's—my fault. It's because of me."

  "Yours? How? You're too sensitive, Nora. You're not responsible for the whim of Jill's, certainly—" Kit stopped abruptly and Nora winced before the sudden comprehension in his face. Then, slowly, he nodded.

  "So that was it, all along. Yes, that was it."

  "Kit—"

  "Darling, come here!" Kit gathered his wife in his arms. "You can't imagine how relieved—you don't know what I went through this winter, thinking it was a man—I'm not worried about Jill. Not as a rival."

  She should have expected his refusal to take it seriously. She might have done it herself, a year ago. "Kit, do you even know what I'm trying to tell you?"

  "Sure. You're saying Jill's queer."

  She flinched. "If she is, it's my fault, Kit."

  "I doubt that like hell. And as far as you and I are concerned, it couldn't matter less, could it? How do you feel about Jill now?"

  "Perfectly miserable," she said, and choked.

  "I don't mean that." Kit's eyes were blue and bleak as the bottom of the sky. "Well?"

  "I—" Nora tried to force herself to go on, but words came. "I—I can't."

  "Okay, forget it. I'm not curious." She saw the shadow of pain, like the darkness flying in the wake of a cloud, move across his face. "I'm not trying to force you—I said you didn't have to tell me anything. I—I think I could go for some of that Scotch myself, about now."

  She fixed him a drink and he sipped, his hands not at ease on the glass.

  "Reason I asked—there are pretty rough penalties for that stuff in the service. It still flares up, now and then. Usually just a—well, a flare-up." He frowned, searching for words, turning the glass round and round in his hands. "I mean, things happen. Like, some kid comes to pass the time of night and after you've batted the breeze a while you run out of things to say. And you find yourself thinking you'd like to put your arms around him—I'm not saying this very well—and you end up giving him a slap on the back and telling him to get the hell out, you've got work to do. Or you and some guy get stuck in the northeast corner of nowhere, nothing to do but get on each other's nerves and wait for all hell to break loose outside. Only two ways to get rid of all you've got stored up inside, and usually you wind up slugging him instead. But you can't help wondering if the other guy is thinking the same way." Kit stared into space, not even in the same room with Nora any more. "And sometimes he is."

  He went on turning the glass round and round in his fingers. When he looked up again, his face was haggard, as if he had been on a very long journey.

  "The thing is, Nora—well, I've been there. When things get rough, you—grab on to whoever's handiest. My grandfather—ran a line of fishing boats up in Maine—had a saying. I used to think about it—went like this. Every boat's best off in its own drydock. But if the weather gets rough enough, any boat will put into a stranger's harbor." He managed to grin.

  "When are you leaving for Mayfield?"

  "I can't go, Kit. I've got to see this through with Jill—Kit, what's the matter?"

  "Nothing. But that isn't the way." He spoke slowly, hunting for words. "I'm not asking you not to see Jill again. Do what you have to. But I want you to go to Mayfield, just as you planned, tonight."

  "I suppose," she flared, "that unless I do, you'll beat me!" She did not know why anger had come back to replace her gratitude for his understanding.

  "No. It's too important for that, Leonora. Let's just say—I want you to do it because you're my wife, and I asked you to, and because your marriage is more important to you than—well, than Jill."

  Nora had not faced this decision before. Now it lay before her, clearcut and inevitable. It was not so simple as a choice between Kit and Jill, either. It was a choice as to whether or not she could give up her cherished independence.

  She sat staring at Kit. She knew she loved him, but in a curious way hated him too. Oh, no, there was no peaceful, conventional happy ending before them. It would be more like a battle to the death, if she chose Kit.

  She had spent twenty years learning to dominate her surroundings. Everyone who would not allow himself to be swept into her ruthless track had been quickly swept aside. Pammy. Les Rannock. Vic and Ramona when they had outlived their usefulness to her. Jill; cruelly, without compunction, she had tried to cut Jill away. Was Kit to be the latest victim?

  At least I'm not pregnant. Like I told Mack; now she doesn't have to marry him. I'm free too...

  Kit's voice was gentle. "You think I'm inconsistent. I told Mack he should let Jill make up her own mind. I'm telling you that you've got to let me make yours up. But I'm not telling you what to do, Nora. I'm asking if you'll let me tell you. You've got to surrender Nora. If you can't—you don't need me. And if you don't need me, sooner or later you won't love me."

  Nora got up without answering and went for her raincoat. She took her medical bag and opened it, slipping into her pocket the bankbook Mack had given her, months ago. She had never spoken of it. In response to a point-blank question, Jill had told her that she had money enough to see her through her confinement. But the bankbook had begun this, and now it must end it.

  Kit started up, as she turned to the door; but Nora, at the last breath of her endurance, said, "No, Kit. Don't ask me. I'll call—or I'll come back—or I'll call you from Mayfield. But if you ask now, there's only one answer. If there's any pity in you, give me time."

  He whispered, "All the time you want, Leonora. Like I said to Mack; I'd rather lose you, than get you on the wrong terms. But whatever you decide, it's for keeps, because we'll never go through this again."

  He turned and walked into the bedroom, and Nora knew he had fallen there and was lying, as he lay so often, face down, his arms hiding his face, shutting out all but his pain and his pride and his manhood. And she had no right to follow. Numbly, she went out into the rain.

  CHAPTER 18

  The hotel desk clerk told her that Mr. MacLellan had checked out, and Nora went up the stairs with her heart pounding, not yet knowing why she had come—excerpt, perhaps, to fling Mack's trust in his face. Why he thrown Jill at her?

  She rapped at the door; he opened it, and looked at her, startled. "Nora? Come in." He drew her inside.

  "Why, your hair's all wet—what are you doing out in rain? Kid, is something wrong?" His face creased with sunburn, leaned over her with anxious gentleness; solid, comforting, letting her be herself. She buried her in the front of his shirt, forgetting anger, forgetting everything. The delayed misery of her new knowledge, the tension of choice, were tearing at her.

  She had failed as a woman. She had failed everywhere and everyone. She had destroyed Jill. She had hurt Kit. She had betrayed her trust to Mack—"

  "That chair's hard. Here, sit on the bed," he said, don't talk if you don't want to. You look like you could a drink." He turned away, giving her time to collect herself, and poured it into a thick-rimmed hotel glass. But as she put it to her lips he said anxiously, "Is it all right to drink now? You're a doctor, you ought to know, but—"

  "I ought to know a lot of things," she said bitterly, put the glass to her lips and drained it. Mack had poured at least a double shot; she felt it burn in her stomach and hit her quickly; but she no longer cared. She held out the glass and reluctantly he poured her another.

  "I guess you know when to stop."

  Suddenly it poured out of her. "For God's sake don't treat me like a fragile little expectant mother," she exploded, and drank again, shaking. "I'm not pregnant—I couldn't even have that! I just found out—Kit doesn't know—I don't know how I'm going to face telling him," she said, strangled with pain. Mack dropped the glass and sprang toward her. He caught her close a
nd held her; he almost rocked her.

  "Nora, Nora. You poor baby, poor kid! You love him so much—that makes all the difference?"

  She had lost all caution between misery and the drinks. "I don't know if I love him or hate him! He wants—I don't know if I can stand it to be just the part of me that Kit wants, just his wife, not a person—I'm not making sense—"

  "Oh, yes you are," he soothed. "I know, I know. Neither of us have much luck, Nor. First you get that goddamn conceited Rannock kid who wanted to tie you up with a houseful of brats right away, and I get that Rhoda girl who wanted a gray flannel suit walking like a man. And then when we do want to be tied down, I get a girl who won't marry me, and you—" he spread his hands helplessly. "We're a pair of suckers, Nora. We yell for independence, and when the time comes when we want a family, we can't even manage that—"

  He leaned down and kissed her. Gently, his hands cradling her cheeks, he kissed her again; this time not a brother's kiss of comfort, but a man's kiss; hard, virile, demanding. His arms went roughly around her.

  In disbelieving shock, Nora felt the old love surge up, the never-forgotten passionate hunger. She knew she was drunk, but it didn't matter.

  This was what she had wanted. Mack, the beloved, the one she loved best, had pushed her away, rejected her; all these years she had fenced herself from a similar rejection by being, like Mack, strong; masculine; self-sufficient. Mack rejected her; and she had never again been sure of herself as a woman. Now, wide-eyed and shaken as the child she had been them, she lay looking up into his eyes, fear swept away by alcohol and her own inner conflicts.

  He muttered, "I don't give a damn what—" and again the heat and hunger in his mouth silenced them both. His big hands moved on her.

  "Why didn't I know? All these years, Nor, I've been looking for you. Someone who wouldn't crowd me—I was afraid to treat you like a woman, so I tried to make you over—"

  She was passive in his arms; he pushed her back on the bed, murmuring, "I haven't touched a woman since I left Jill in Mayfield..."

  She had known it would be like that for him; he was not a man for casual affairs, and they went deep when they happened. She could feel the long hunger and frustration in him, making his hands tremble. "Nor," he said, "Nor, do you—want it like this?"

  Swiftly, he began to unfasten her dress. The rain beat hard on the windows, and his face, pale and tense, bent above her. Suddenly, a spasm of shock and disgust swept through her, a wave of revulsion. The pendulum, pulled too far, sprang to the other extreme.

  "No," she said hoarsely, "No—I'm drunk, but—no, Mack!" She felt stripped to the humiliated roots of her being. Desire had died in her, leaving only shame.

  So Mack was just like them all. All they wanted was to get you on your back beneath them, solve all your problems with sex... prove themselves on you—

  She forgot that she, herself, had begun this. With that vivid imagery she saw Jill's face, raised in love and surrender. To Mack, to Kit, she might be simply a woman to be conquered and calmed with sex. To Jill—to Pammy—she was the strong commanding force in herself. Buttoning her dress with scornful swift fingers, she shook off Mack's worried hand, only half aware of his dismay.

  "Nor— Nor, I'm sorry I lost my head—don't look like that—" but she hardly heard. So he, so imperious when she lay beneath him like a yielding woman, was now worried and whimpering? She pushed by him, disregarding his frantic "Nora, for God's sake, you're sick—" and walked out, down the hall, into the cold rain again.

  * * *

  She never knew where she walked in the next hour. After a long time, cold and wet, soaked through, she found herself standing outside a neon door and the spilling noise of a jukebox; Flora's. As if waking from a somnambulist's nightmare, Nora pushed the swinging doors and went in.

  The smell of stale beer and whisky greeted her. The women crowded at the bar and the tables might almost have been the same woman. She gave her order. The brainstorm which had sent her out into the rain was quieting; she was capable now of surprise at her own behavior, and of dismay and distress. How had she come to Mack's arms? The surge of revulsion was still with her; the distaste at showing herself a woman, pliant, vulnerable.

  As a woman I'm not so much. I can't even have a baby.

  She watched a tall woman in slacks dancing with a pretty little fair-haired girl of twenty or so. She knew a curious fellow-feeling.

  I wasn't woman enough to compete with Pammy as a girl. In seducing her I proved myself as much a man as Mack...

  Homosexual. She tried the word over, softly, to herself. Was that what she really wanted, then? She had not wanted Mack. Even Mack, whom she had loved so long. She picked up her drink. The comfortable blur of emotion was wearing off, growing sharp-edged; she wanted to blur it again.

  Flora Danbury, her raddled cheeks pale under the rouge stopped by her table. "Why, Doctor Caine, nice to see you. You're getting to be one of our regulars," she said familiarly.

  Nora set down her drink untasted. She managed a nod, murmured something about a hurry, and went out. The chilly rain in the streets cleared her thoughts again.

  No. Even if she were irretrievably homosexual, she wouldn't find the answer in Flora's, surrounded by desperate women trying to find, in the phony warmth of a drink, the answer to problems they couldn't solve outside, in the cold rain. The courage she might find there was a false courage that would evaporate with the hangover.

  Whatever her choice, her life must be lived outside the small enclosed world in which confessed lesbians found self-centered happiness.

  Flora, calling her doctor, had recalled her to herself. She was always, primarily, first and forever, a doctor. She could never go there as one of them. Only as a tourist; an outsider. She might be a misfit among wives; but she was a worse misfit in the closed circle of those who made a career of being lesbians.

  If she had destroyed normal life, normal love for Jill, then she had some responsibility and she would accept it; but if that was her choice, she and Jill would have to make a world outside the easy one of lesbian bars and bright talk about unconventionality.

  She found herself standing at the top of the stairway in the Lenox apartments. Under oath she could not have told how she had come there. Margaret came out into the hall, and Nora blinked as if surfacing after a very long dive. "Marg, is it you?"

  "Of course it's me. I do live here, you know." Margaret looked at her sharply. "Nora, what's the matter? You're soaked through. Come inside—I was just going out, but I'll stay if you like. Or—was it Jill you came to see?"

  Nora drew a careful breath. She said, "Thanks, Marg. I—I think I do have to see Jill alone. If you don't mind. But don't let us drive you out of your own home, we'll go out somewhere—"

  But where? Flora's? Is that the only place left?

  "No, Nora. Whatever this is, you don't have to take it out on the streets. That's the worst thing, having no place—don't you think I remember when neither my family or Ramona's would have the other one under their roof?" She laid her hand lightly on Nora's arm. "I'll be out till midnight. You can count on that."

  Before Nora could speak, she had gone on down the stairs, closing the street door behind her. Nora tasted something curiously salt and sour in her mouth. The feel of being on a swaying pendulum had quieted, now, to a great ticking, as if her steps were vibrating inside a clock. Arrhythmic tachycardia, usually neurotic in origin. Tension symptoms, connected with emotional shock, usually subside spontaneously without medication. She walked through the door Margaret had left open.

  "Jill, are you there?"

  Jill came out of her bedroom. She stared at Nora in amazement, and, as Margaret had done, said, "You're soaked through!" She came and took the raincoat from Nora. "Let me hang that up for you."

  Nora surrendered it, and Jill fussed with spreading it out on a chair to dry. "I guess you know Mack's in town again?"

  "I suppose he came straight to you—Nora, I'm not fit to marry him. He would
n't want me if he knew."

  "Jill, listen to me," Nora said, "Do you want to marry Mack? Or not? What do you really want?"

  Jill twisted her fingers. "I don't know," she said at last, and Nora was startled—yes, and disappointed.

  What did I expect? Did I expect Jill to throw herself into my arms again and say she only wanted me? Yes, yes, I'm a fine one to be asking Jill what she wants, when I don't know what I want myself!

  Jill said suddenly, "But I'm a fine hostess, I must say! I lived in your house for months, and when you come to mine, I don't even offer you a cup of tea! Or would you rather have a coke? There are some in the icebox."

  "Nothing, thanks." Nora realized with relief that she was at last completely sober again. She was surprised at Jill. She had never associated these domestic details with the girl. It occurred to her that there were large sections of Jill's personality wholly unknown to her; she had never seen Jill in a normal state, only driven by strange storms. From the day she had walked into Nora's office—pregnant, afraid, driven by the memory of betrayals—Jill had been haunted. What was the real Jill like? She felt a seething ache to know what Jill might be, free of these storms. The pendulum weighted; dipped.

  Kit, Mack—they see only a woman to build her life around them. Kit loves me, he wants me to do the work I was trained for—provided I don't neglect him. It will never occur to him—that the part of me he owns, isn't all there is to know about me!