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Laura felt a crazy wish to turn and run, but she held her ground, unable to answer.
Beth put her hands gently on Laura’s shoulders. “Are you afraid of me, Laur?” she said. There was a long, terribly bright and searching silence.
“I wondered what the door in back was to,” Laura faltered. Her sentence seemed to hang suspended, without a period.
Beth let her hands drop. “That’s the chapter room,” she said. “Verboten. Until you’re initiated, of course.”
“Oh,” said Laura, and she walked out of the luggage room with Beth’s strange smile wreaking havoc in the pit of her stomach.
On the way upstairs they met Mary Lou Baker, the president of Alpha Beta. She came down the stairs toward them, towing a bulging bundle of laundry which bumped dutifully down the stairs behind her. She smiled at them and said, “Hi there. How’s the unpacking coming, Laura?”
“Fine, thank you.” Laura watched Mary Lou retreat into the basement, impressed with her importance.
“She likes you,” said Beth as they headed back up to their room.
“She does?” Laura smiled, pleasantly surprised.
“Um-hm,” Beth answered. “Usually she has nothing to say to newcomers for a few weeks. If she notices you right away it’s a good sign. At least it is if you’re interested in her approval.” She said this rather disparagingly.
Walking down the hall behind her, Laura smiled.
And now here they were in the calm of a Sunday night, alone in their room, curious and shy at the same time. Beth finished her Coke and set the bottle down on a glass-topped coffee table in front of the studio couch. The clack of glass on glass startled Laura and the pledge manual slipped from her hands to the floor.
“Want to go make your bed up now?” Beth said. Her voice was soft, as if she were rather tired.
“Oh, yes. I guess I’d better.”
“I’ll help you.” Beth sat up, swinging her long legs to the floor. She sat still for a minute as if getting her bearings, looking at her feet. Then she lit a cigarette. “Come on, let’s go do it,” she said finally with a sudden brightness.
“I’ll do it, Beth,” said Laura firmly. “You’ve done so much for me today, I just hate to have you do any more.”
Beth blew smoke over the table top. “Laura, if you don’t stop thanking me for everything you’re going to wear me out,” she said. “Or turn my head.” She said this good-naturedly, to tease more than to scold. But then she saw that she had hurt Laura and she wanted instantly to reach out with comfort and reassurance. She was not impatient with Laura’s hypersensitivity, only unused to it. She never knew when she might scrape against it and cause pain.
Laura’s mouth tightened and she gripped the cover of her pledge manual in an effort to calm herself.
“Laura,” Beth said in a gentle voice, and she got up and went over to her. Laura drew back in surprise as Beth dropped to her knees in front of the chair, putting a hand on Laura’s knees and smiling up at her. Laura was too startled to pretend composure.
“Laur, have I hurt your feelings, honey? I have, haven’t I? Answer me.”
Laura said helplessly, “No, Beth, really—”
“I know I have,” Beth interrupted her. “I’m sorry, Laur. You mustn’t take me so seriously. I’m only teasing. I like to tease, but I don’t like to hurt people. You just have to get used to me, that’s all. Take me with a grain of salt.” She looked earnestly at her with the shade of a smile on her lips and she thought how good it would be to skid her hands hard up Laura’s thighs and…. So she kept talking. It was better to ignore the peculiar feelings Laura awoke in her; she covered her confusion with words.
“Because I want us to be good friends,” she went on. “And I’ll try not to—to shock you any more. I guess I’m a little crazy—the result of a misspent youth, of course.” And she grinned. “But I’m not dangerous, honest to God. Now—” she smacked Laura’s knees amiably—“we’re over the first crisis. Are we going to be friends, Laur?”
Laura wanted desperately to pull her knees together. “Yes,” she said to Beth. “I hope so.”
“Good!” said Beth and she bounced to her feet. “Come along then. Let’s make your bed.”
It hadn’t taken long to make up the austere box bed and Laura found herself back in the room and faced with the humiliating problem of undressing in front of somebody else. Her shyness settled in her cheeks and neck like a heat rash. As soon as she felt the burn, it spread to her shoulders and bosom. She blushed very easily and she despised herself for it. She wanted to scratch at her arms again, but because Beth would notice it she had to content herself with biting the tender flesh of her underlip until she was afraid it would bleed and cause her more grief.
She turned as far from Beth as she could and unbuttoned her blouse, somehow feeling that Beth’s bright eyes were doting on every button. But Beth was subtle; she was humming a tune and busy with her pajamas. She saw Laura without seeming to and Laura began to envy her pleasant abandon. After a moment she said, “Laur, do you have a sweatshirt?”
“Yes.” Laura eyed her quizzically.
“Better put it on. The dorm is a damn deep freeze.”
Laura found the sweatshirt and pulled it over her head, and Beth led her up to the dorm. On the door was posted a wake-up chart with a pencil on a string hanging beside it. Beth signed Laura’s named under “6:45.”
“Think you can find your bed?” she asked.
“There it is,” said Laura, pointing.
“Okay, in you go,” said Beth.
Laura studied the upper bunk, which looked unattainable. “How?” she faltered.
Beth laughed quietly. “Well, look,” she said. “Put your foot on the rung of the lower bunk—no, no wait!—that’s right,” she said, guiding her. “Now, get your knee on the rung of the bed next door. Now, just roll in. Whoops!” she said, catching Laura as she nearly lost her balance. She gave her a push in the right direction. Laura rolled awkwardly onto her bunk, laughing with Beth.
Beth climbed up where she could see her and said, “You’ll catch on, Laur. Doesn’t take long.” She helped Laura under the covers and tucked her in, and it was so lovely to let herself be cared for that Laura lay still, enjoying it like a child. When Beth was about to leave her, Laura reached for her naturally, like a little girl expecting a good-night kiss. Beth bent over her and said, “What is it, honey?”
With a hard shock of realization, Laura stopped herself. She pulled her hands away from Beth and clutched the covers with them.
“Nothing.” It was a small voice.
Beth pushed Laura’s hair back and gazed at her and for a heart-stopping moment Laura thought she would lean down and kiss her forehead. But she only said, “Okay. Sleep tight, honey.” And climbed down.
Laura raised herself cautiously on one elbow so she could watch her leave the dorm. Beth went out and shut the door and Laura was left to her strange cold bed in the great dark dormitory. She felt cut loose from reality.
It took her a long while to get to sleep. Her nerves were brittle as ice and they all seemed to be snapping from the day’s pressure. She lay motionless on her back and studied the luminous checkers on the ceiling, laid there through the window by the light of the fire escape. She though of Beth: Beth beside her watching her, whispering to her, reaching out to touch her.
The stillness grew and lengthened and Laura lay in it alone with her thoughts. Far away on the campus the clock on the Student Union steeple pulsed twelve times through the waiting night. Laura pulled her covers tight under her chin and tried to sleep. She was just drifting off when she heard someone stop by her bed and she opened her heavy eyes and saw Beth outlined by the night light.
“Still awake?” she whispered.
“I’m sorry. I’m dropping off now.” Laura felt guilty; caught with her eyes open when they should have been shut; caught peeking at nothing; caught thinking of Beth.
“Just wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“Oh, yes, thank you.”
“Shhh!” hissed someone from a neighboring bed.
“Sorry!” Beth hissed back, and then turned to Laura again.
“Okay, go to sleep now,” she said, and she gave Laura’s arm a pat.
“I will,” Laura whispered.
Two
At six forty-five, Laura heard a soft voice whispering, “Time to get up, Laura.” She sat up immediately in her bed as if pulled by a wire, and looked over to see an unusually pretty face staring up at her.
“Thank you,” she said.
The face smiled and whispered, “Wow, are you easy to wake up!” and moved away.
Laura had a good morning. She spent a lot of it wondering about her strange desire for a good-night kiss from Beth, and hoping Beth hadn’t understood her sudden aborted gesture. At lunchtime she sat with everybody in the big sunny dining room, talking while she ate. She glanced over at Beth, who sat two tables away from her, and found Beth returning the look. Laura answered her smile and turned, in confusion, to prospecting for nuggets of hamburger in her chili.
After lunch they studied together for a while. Laura sat down with her book in a large green butterfly chair in the corner and struggled to get comfortable. She was still trying to conform to the incomprehensible chair when Emily ran in from the washroom, grabbed her coat and a notebook, and ran out again. Seconds later she was back.
“Hey Beth, if Bud calls tell him I’ll see him at Maxie’s at four.”
Beth pulled her reading glasses down to the end of her nose and looked over them. “Right,” she said.
“Thanks.” And Emily was gone.
Beth stared after her, shaking her head and smiling a little.
“What?” said Laura.
“I just don’t get it. Or rather, I get it but I don’t like it. He’s too crazy for her. Emmy needs a steadying influence.” She winked at Laura and turned back to her book.
Laura began to glance furtively at her, half expecting her to be looking back, and she was rather disappointed when Beth kept her nose in the book. After a while Laura gazed openly at her, resentful of the book that claimed all Beth’s attention. And then she forgot the book and thought only of Beth….
The two girls walked to their afternoon class together. It was a brisk day, snappy and sunny and invigorating. Beth walked with long, smooth strides. She liked to walk and she walked well, as if she were really enjoying her legs; enjoying the rhythmic cooperation between legs and lungs, crisp weather, space and speed. She had a lusty health that almost intimidated Laura, who was breathless with trying to keep up. And breathless, too, with pleasure at walking beside Beth.
They arrived in class five minutes late, and the instructor had already started his lecture. He interrupted himself to note, while gazing out the window with a wry smile, “Glad you could make it, Miss Cullison.”
Beth, slipping out of her coat, looked up at him with a grin. They were friendly enemies, she and the teacher; they liked to catch each other slipping up somewhere.
“I see,” he added, “you’re leading the innocent astray.”
Laura blushed in confusion. It scared her to see someone flirt with authority as Beth did: she expected to see the hallowed rules and traditions crash down on Beth and crush her, and when they didn’t she was as surprised as she was relieved. To Laura, the things Beth said and did were daring in the extreme. To Beth, who knew herself and people better, it was just a half-hearted revolt; a small-scale protest that was more in fun than in earnest. She didn’t want to be an out-and-out character any more than she wanted to be one of the herd, so Beth beat herself a path between the two. Laura was happy, when she saw the letter was from her father, that Beth and Emily weren’t in the room. Her divorced parents were a faraway sorrow she tried to pretend out of existence. She opened the letter slowly.
“Glad to hear you like your new home,” she read. “I understand Alpha Beta is a pretty good sorority.”
Yes, father. Pretty good. If you say so. She hated the way her father phrased things.
“Anyway,” the letter went on, “they had a good house when I was in school. Your roommates sound like nice girls, especially the Cullison girl. That’s the kind of friendship you should cultivate, Laura, with people who can really do you some good. This girl sounds like a real go-getter—president of the Student Union and etc. That’s quite an honor for a girl, isn’t it? She can probably do a lot for you—get you into the right activities and so forth. I’d treat her well, if I were you.”
Laura sighed with exasperation over her father’s ideas of friendship; if it weren’t useful somehow it just wasn’t friendship, only a waste of time.
“By the way,” he continued, “Cliff Ayers’s son Charlie is in school down there. I’d like you to give him a call—he’d like to hear from you, I’m sure.”
Sure, thought Laura with resentment. He’d like to hear from Marilyn Monroe. But who’s Laura Landon? He won’t even remember the name.
“Cliff says Charlie looks just like him, which means there’s probably a line of girls ahead of you.”
Is that supposed to encourage me? Laura wondered bitterly. If Charlie Ayers wants to hear from me, which I doubt, he can call me himself.
“I understand that your mother has found herself a nice apartment. You will spend half the holidays with her and half with me, of course. I must say, Laura, you took the divorce pretty well, though of course I expected you to.”
Laura crushed the letter with angry hands and threw it into the wastebasket by the desk. Then she put her head down and wept, until she heard Beth and Emily coming down the hall. They found her dusting the already spotless coffee table and smiling at the job.
Beth looked at her oddly for a moment and then picked up a manila envelope and hurried out of the room. She would be at a committee meeting all evening long and left Laura and Emily to study in an embarrassed silence. Both of them wished rather uncomfortably that Beth would come back and mediate for them. After a while the dearth of words between them began to pall and they were both suddenly conscious that they would be roommates together for the rest of the year. It seemed an interminable length of time.
Emily could usually chatter easily with people. She was natural with them and they responded naturally to her. But every word and gesture of Laura’s seemed to her to be rehearsed, calculated to please, and it threw Emmy completely. She got the feeling that she could smash a bottle over Laura’s head and Laura would say, very calmly, “Thank you.”
There was plenty of room for Laura on the couch beside Emily, but she wouldn’t sit there, simply because Emily got there first. She sat down in the butterfly chair with a sigh. It defied her, as usual, and her narrow skirt made the problem worse. She shifted unhappily and Emily, trying to be helpful, suggested, “Why don’t you put your p.j.’s on, Laura? Much more comfortable. Besides, nobody studies in their clothes.”
Laura couldn’t think of an excuse to keep her clothes on and she got up to change, wondering if Emily just wanted to watch her undress. She performed the operation with determined casualness. Her set teeth wouldn’t show, but her manner would. Emily watched her on the sly, wondering why Laura was so embarrassed and self-conscious about herself.
“Hey, Laur, what a pretty bra!” she exclaimed spontaneously as Laura pulled it out from under her pajama shirt. “Let’s see it,” said Emily, reaching out a hand.
Laura gave it a jerky toss.
“Gee, nylon,” said Emmy. “They make ’em up just like this only padded, you know,” she added. “They’re terrific. Ever try ’em?”
“Falsies, you mean?” said Laura. The word struck her as mildly obscene.
“Yeah.”
“No, I never did.”
“You should,” said Emmy realistically. “They’re terrific, really. Nobody knows the difference. Unless you’re dancing awful close,” she amended.
“I guess my busts are kind of small,” said Laura.
Emily smiled at her, wondering at the pathetic modesty that made it impossible for Laura to call the parts of her body by their right names.
Laura’s small breasts bothered her. She would fold her arms over them as much to conceal their presence as to conceal their size. She wished that they were more glamorous, more obviously there. In their present shape they seemed only an afterthought.
She sat down with her book again when she was safely into her pajamas and Emily sat and toyed with things to say; she had made a start and she wanted to keep the communication line open. At nine o’clock she snapped her book shut and said, “How ‘bout some coffee, Laur?”
“No thanks,” said Laura, looking up from her book.
“Oh, come on. It won’t keep you awake. We’ve got a big jar of Sanka.” She pulled open Beth’s bottom dresser drawer and took out the jar, and Laura noted with displeasure her familiarity with Beth’s things. “Come on,” she said again. “I hate to go down alone.”
Laura gave in. She followed Emily down the back stairs to the kitchen.
“We have a coffee break almost every night,” said Emily tentatively. She lighted a cigarette and cast about for something new to say. Her perplexity made her pretty face quite appealing.
“Say, Laur,” she said cheerfully, “have you got a date this Saturday?” Emily was ready to be friends with Laura; she was willing to be friends with almost anybody. The best turn she could do Laura, as she saw it, was to fix her up with an acceptable male. Emmy knew dozens of them.
“No,” said Laura doubtfully. “But in pledge meeting they said something about getting me a date.” She thought with fleeting guiltiness of Charlie Ayers, and knew she would never call him; she hadn’t the guts and she hadn’t the desire.
“Oh. Well, they haven’t done it yet, have they?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Listen, Laura, there’s a terrific guy I’m thinking of—a fraternity brother of Bud’s. I could fix you up with him. Jim’s a junior, real tall.” And she went on to describe an irresistible young man. They are always irresistible until you’re face to face with them. Laura let Emmy talk her into it. She didn’t know any men and it seemed a good idea to let Emmy take care of the problem.
“Bud and I will be along the first time out,” said Emily, making plans. “It’s much easier to have somebody else along for moral support.” She laughed and Laura smiled with her. What she said was true enough. It might not be so bad.
“That sounds terrific,” she said, borrowing Emmy’s favorite adjective to amplify her gratitude. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you.”
“Oh, Lord, no,” said Emily. She set one cup into another thoughtfully and went on, “Gee, I wish I could talk Beth into going out.”
Laura was suddenly alert. She turned and looked at Emily. “Doesn’t she go out?”
“Nope. Crazy girl.”
“Not at all?” Laura thought it was a requisite for sorority girls.
“No.” Emily stared quizzically at her sudden show of interest.
“I just thought—” Laura looked away in confusion. “I mean, she’s so popular and everything. I just naturally thought—well—” If a girl didn’t date was there anything wrong with her?
“Oh, she used to,” said Emmy, taking the steaming water from the burner and pouring it over the little mountains of dry coffee in the cups she had set out. “She used to go out a lot the first couple of years she was down here. But nothing ever happened, you know? Every time she got interested—sugar?”
Laura was so absorbed that it took her a minute to collect her wits and answer, “Yes, please.”
Emmy dropped it in and handed Laura her cup. “There’s no cream. There’s Pream, though. Want some?”
Laura wanted to shake Beth’s story out of her. “No, thanks,” she said briefly. “This is fine.” She was hungry for any crumb of information about Beth without stopping to wonder where her appetite came from. She was concerned only with satisfying it at this point.
Emily dipped into the Pream can with a spoon and sprinkled the white powder into her coffee. “You get used to it,” she said. “I didn’t used to like it, either.”
“Well, what happened?” said Laura in a voice that was urgent yet soft, as if the volume might excuse the words. She didn’t want to look interested.
“Oh … well,” Emmy stirred her concoction. “Nothing happened, really. In fact, that was the whole trouble. Nothing did happen.” She looked cautiously at Laura, as if trying to determine just how much she could be confided in. Laura’s face was a picture of sympathetic concern. “She’d find somebody she liked,” Emmy went on, “and they’d go together for a couple of months, and just when it seemed as if everything was going to be terrific, it was all over. I mean, Beth just called it off. She always did that,” she said musingly, “just when we all thought she was really falling in love. All of a sudden she’d call it quits.”
“Why?” said Laura.
Emily shrugged. “If you ask me, I think she just got scared. I think she’s afraid to fall in love, or something. It’s the only thing I can think of. Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense.”
“Were they nice boys?” Laura asked.
“Terrific boys! Some of them, anyway.”
“Well, didn’t she tell them why she dropped them? I mean, she must have told them something.” Laura was groping for the key to Beth’s character, for something to explain her with.
“Nope,” said Emily. “Just told ’em goodbye and that was it. Believe me, I know. I’ve had ’em call me by the dozens to cry on my shoulder. But she wouldn’t say much to me, either. She just said she got tired of them or it wouldn’t have worked out and it was best to end it now than later, or something.”
“And now she doesn’t go out any more?”
“Isn’t that something?” Emily clucked in disapproval. “You’d think she was disillusioned at the tender age of twenty-one. She puts on like she doesn’t care, but I know she does. But still, she did it to herself. After a while when the boys called up for dates she just turned ’em down automatically. As if she knew she wasn’t going to have any fun, no matter who she went with. As if it just wasn’t worth the trouble.”
Emily had lost Laura’s attention, but she didn’t know it. Laura was thinking to herself, She’s got a right not to care. Why should she care about boys? She doesn’t have to. Emmy doesn’t know everything.
“Of course,” Emmy went on, “she’s told me a thousand times she doesn’t want any man who’s afraid of her, and if they’re all afraid of her, to hell with them. I’m quoting,” she added, smiling. “She likes to swear.”
“I noticed,” said Laura a trifle primly.
“I don’t know where she got that idea,” Emmy said. “She says she won’t play little games with them just for the sake of a few dates. Well, you know men. What’s a romance without little games? I mean, let’s face it, there isn’t a man living who doesn’t want to play games.” She eyed Laura over her coffee cup and made her feel illogically guilty.
“Maybe she’s afraid of men,” said Laura. The words popped from her startled mouth like corks from a bottle. For a sickening minute she thought Emily was going to ask her questions or stare at her curiously, but Emily only laughed.
“Lord, she’s not afraid of anything,” she said. “It’s more the other way around. They’re afraid of her. She just needs a good man who doesn’t scare easy to get her back on the right track. Maybe we can find somebody for her,” and she smiled pleasantly at Laura.
Upstairs again, Laura settled into her malevolent butterfly chair and wondered why Emmy was so short-sighted. It struck her as rather fine and noble that Beth didn’t go out with men. It never occurred to her that Beth really might like men; without knowing why, without even thinking very seriously about it, she knew she didn’t want her to like them.
Laura was a naive girl, but not a stupid one. She was fuzzily aware of certain extraordinary emotions that were generally frowned upon and so she frowned upon them too, with no very good notion of what they were or how they happened, and not the remotest thought that they could happen to her. She knew that there were some men who loved men and some women who loved women, and she thought it was a shame that they couldn’t be like other people. She thought she would simply feel sorry for them and avoid them. That would be easy, for the men were great sissies and the women wore pants. Her own high school crushes had been on girls, but they were all short and uncertain and secret feelings and she would have been profoundly shocked to hear them called homosexual.