I Am A Woman

Burr smiled and shook his head. But he liked him; they got along. Jack went out with Burr and Marcie before and after they got married. And after they got divorced. He was the troubleshooter until he got too drunk, which was often.

When he arrived with Burr on Friday night Laura was irked to find that she was taller than he was. She had made up her mind that she wasn’t going to enjoy the evening—just live through it. She’d have to spend the time mediating for Marcie and Burr and trying to entertain a man she didn’t know or care about. So she was put out to discover that she did like Jack, after all. It ruined her fine gloomy mood.

Marcie introduced them and Jack looked up at her quizzically. “What’s the matter, Landon?” he said. “You standing in a hole?”

Laura laughed and took her shoes off. It brought her down an inch. “Better?” she said.

“Better for me. Very bad for your stockings.” He grinned. “Have you read Freud?”

“No.”

“Well, thank God. I won’t have to talk about my nightmares.”

“Do you have nightmares?”

“You have read Freud!”

“No, I swear. You said—”

“Okay, I confess. I have nightmares. And you remind me of my mother.”

“Do you have a mother?” said Burr. “Didn’t you just happen?”

“That’s what I keep asking my analyst. Do I have to have a mother?”

“Jack, are you seeing an analyst?” Marcie was fascinated with the idea. “Imagine being able to tell somebody everything. Like a sacred duty. Burr, don’t you think I should be analyzed?”

“What will you use for a neurosis?” Jack asked.

“Do I need one?”

“How about Burr?”

“I’m taken,” Burr said. “Besides, you talk like a nitwit, honey. You don’t go to an analyst like you go to the hairdresser.”

Marcie’s eyes flashed. “Thanks for the compliment,” she said. “I’m not as dumb as I look.”

“Come on, Mother.” Jack took Laura’s arm and steered her out the door. “I see a storm coming up.”

But it was dissipated when Marcie grabbed her coat and hurried after them.

After the play they walked down Fourth Street in the Village, meandering rather aimlessly, looking into shop windows. Laura was lost. She had never been in the Village before. She had been afraid to come down here; afraid she would see someone, and do something, and suddenly find herself caught in the strange world she had renounced. It seemed so safe, so remote from temptation to choose an uptown apartment. And yet here she was with her nerves in knots, her emotions tangled around a roommate again.

Laura pondered these things, walking slowly beside Jack in the light from the shop windows. She was unaware of where she walked or who passed by. It startled her when Jack said, “What are you thinking about, Mother?”

“Nothing.” A shade of irritation crossed her face.

“Ah,” he said. “I interrupted something.”

“No.” She turned to look at him, uncomfortable. He made her feel as if he was reading her thoughts.

“Don’t lie to me. You’re daydreaming.”

“I am not! I’m just thinking.”

He shrugged. “Same thing.”

She found him very irritating then. “You don’t say,” she said, and looked away from him.

“You hate me,” he said with a little smile.

“Now and then.”

“I messed up your daydream,” he said. “I’m rarely this offensive. Only when I’m sober. The rest of the time, I’m charming. Someday I suppose you’ll daydream about me.”

Laura stared at him and he laughed.

“At least, you’ll tell me about your daydreams.”

“Never.”

“People do. I have a nice face. Ugly, but nice. People think, ‘Jesus, that guy has a nice face. I ought to tell him my daydreams.’ They do, too.” He smiled. “What’s the matter, Mother, you look skeptical.”

“What makes you think you have a nice face?”

“Don’t I?” He looked genuinely alarmed.

“It wouldn’t appeal to just anyone.”

“Ah, smart girl. You’re right, as usual. A boy’s best friend is his mother. Only the discriminating ones, my girl, think it’s a nice face. Only the sensitive, the talented, the intelligent. Now tell me—isn’t it a nice face?”

“It’s a face,” said Laura. “Everybody has one.”

He laughed. “You’re goofy,” he said. “You need help. My analyst is very reasonable. He’ll stick you for all you’ve got, but he’s very reasonable.”

Burr, who was walking ahead of them with Marcie, turned around to demand, “Somebody tell me where I’m going.”

“Turn right at the next corner,” said Jack. “You’re doing fine, boy. Don’t lose your nerve.”

“I just want to know where the hell I’m going.”

“That’s a bad sign. Very bad.”

“Cut it out, Jack,” said Marcie. “Where are we going?”

“A little bar I know. Very gay. I go there alone when I want to be depressed.”

It sounded sinister, not gay, to Laura. “What’s it called?” she said.

“The Cellar. Don’t worry, it’s a legitimate joint.” He laughed at her long face.

Marcie laughed too, and Laura’s heart jumped at the sweetness of the sound. It made her hate the back of Burr, moving with big masculine easiness ahead of her in a tweed topcoat, his bristling crew cut shining.

A few minutes later Jack led them down a few steps to a pair of doors which he pushed in, letting Laura and Marcie pass.

Laura heard Burr say, behind her, in an undertone, “It is gay,” and he laughed. “You bastard.” She was mystified. It looked pretty average and ordinary. They headed for a table with four chairs, one of the few available, and Laura looked around.

The Cellar was quite dark, with the only lights placed over the bar and glowing a faint pinky orange. There were candles on the tables, and people crowded together from one end of the room to the other. Everybody seemed reasonably cheerful, but it didn’t look any gayer than any other bar she had been in. She looked curiously at Burr, but he was helping Marcie out of her coat.

“No table service,” Jack said. “What does everybody want?”

They gave him their orders and Laura tried to catch his eye, hoping for more information about the place. She was curious now. There were checkered tablecloths, fish nets on the wall, a lot of people—all rather young—at the tables and bar. The jukebox was going and somebody was trying to pick up a few bucks doing pencil portraits, but no one seemed very interested. The customers looked like students. There were girls in cotton pants, young men in sweaters and open-collared shirts.

“They all look like students,” she said to Burr.

He grinned. “I never thought of it that way,” he said. “I guess they do, all right.”

She stared at him. And then she looked around the room again, and suddenly she saw a girl with her arm around another girl at a table not far away. Her heart jumped. A pair of boys at the bar were whispering urgently to each other.

Gay, Laura thought to herself. Is that what they call it? Gay? She was acutely uncomfortable now. It was as if she were a child of civilization, reared among the savages, who suddenly found herself among the civilized. She recognized them as her own. And yet she had adopted the habits of another race and she was embarrassed and lost with her own kind.

They looked at her—her own kind—from the bar and from the tables, and didn’t recognize her. And Laura looked around at them and thought, I’m one of you. Help me. But if anyone had approached her she would have turned away.

Jack came back with the drinks and sat down, passing them around. He drank a shot of whisky and said to Laura, “Well? How do you like tonight’s collection?”

“Tonight’s collection of what?” Laura said.

“Of nuts.” He looked around The Cellar. “Doesn’t anyone tell you anything, Mother? Burr, what’s the matter with you? She’s a tourist. Make with the old travelogue, boy.”

Burr laughed. “I thought you didn’t get it, Laura.” He smiled. “They’re all queer.”

Laura’s face went scarlet, but the candlelight hid it. She felt an awful tide of anger and fear come up in her at that word. She felt trapped, almost frantic, and she vented it on Jack. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she said. Her voice trembled with indignation.

“Take it easy, Mother,” he said.

“Tonight’s collection!” she mimicked bitterly. “You talk about them as if they were a bunch of animals.”

“They are,” he said quietly. “So are we.”

“We’re human beings,” she said. “We have no right to sit here and laugh at them for something they can’t help.”

“Can’t help, hell,” Burr said, leaning over the table toward her. “All those gals need is a real man. That’d put them on the right track in a hurry.”

Laura could have belted him. She wanted to shout, “How do you know, you big ape?” But she said instead, “You’re not irresistible, Burr.”

“I don’t mean that!” he said, frowning at her. “Christ! I only mean a man who knows the first thing about women could lay any one of these dames—even a butch—and make her like it.”

“What’s the first thing about women?” Jack asked, smiling, but they ignored him.

“If men revolt her and somebody tried to—to lay her—he’d only make her sick. No matter how much he knew about women,” Laura said sharply.

“Any girl who doesn’t like men is either a virgin or else some bastard scared the hell out of her. She needs gentling.”

“You talk about us as if we were horses!” Laura flared.

“Us?” Burr stared at her.

“Us—us women.” Laura’s face was burning.

Burr watched her as he talked. “Some girls get a bastard the first time,” he said. “It’s too bad. They end up in joints like this swapping horror stories with the other ones.”

Laura hated the way he talked. She couldn’t take it. “What if the bastard is her father?” she said. “And he scares the hell out of her when she’s five years old? And twenty years later some ass who thinks he’s a great lover comes along and throws her down and humiliates and horrifies her?”

Jack remarked, with amusement, and probably more enlightenment than the others, “Jesus, we have a moralist in our midst.” He looked at her as if she were a new species of fish.

“Damn it, Laura, that’s the point,” Burr said. “He wouldn’t humiliate her. I don’t mean some God-damn truck driver with nothing but a quick lay on his mind. I mean a considerate decent sort of guy—a sort of Good Samaritan—” He grinned and Marcie said, “God!” and rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

“—who really wants to help the girl,” Burr finished.

“Why don’t you try it?” Jack said.

Marcie’s face darkened. “Yes, darling, why don’t you prove your little theory? I’m sure we’d all be fascinated.”

“Now damn it, don’t you go yammering at me. I’m talking to Laura.”

“Excuse me!” Marcie said.

Laura leaned toward her. “I didn’t mean to start anything,” she said.

“Nobody ever does,” Jack remarked to himself.

“He said he could lay any girl and make her like it,” Marcie said.

“I said,” Burr said, turning to her and intoning sarcastically, “That any guy with any—”

“We know what you said, boy,” Jack interrupted. “Let’s keep it purely theoretical. Nobody has to prove anything. Burr loves Marcie and Marcie loves Burr. Jack loves whisky and whisky hates Jack. Laura loves animals. Everybody happy?”

Thinking over what she had said while Jack talked, Laura began to feel sick. She wished she had been perceptive enough to see where she was when they first came into The Cellar. But she took things at face value. They had entered a little bar and they were going to have a nightcap. Okay. What was so sinister about that? Why did it have to turn out to be a damn gay bar? And why did she have to react like an angry virgin when she found out?

They stayed long enough to get pretty high. They were stared at by the regular customers, but Laura was afraid to stare back.

When she did, once or twice, she couldn’t catch anyone’s eye. She was ashamed of herself for trying to, but she couldn’t help it.

There was a girl at the bar, standing at one end, in black pants and a white shirt open at the collar. Her hair was short and dark, and there once again was that troubling resemblance to Beth. There were some other people with her and they were all talking, but the short-haired girl seemed somehow apart from them. Now and then she would turn and smile at one of them and say a word or two. Then she turned her gaze back to the bar or into her drink, or just stared into the mirror behind the bar without seeing anything.

Laura glanced at her now and then. She had an interesting face. It made Laura want to talk to her. It must be the drinks, she thought, and refused another.

“I see by the look in your eye,” Jack said, “that you’ve had enough of this place. It’s nearly midnight. Are you going to turn into a pumpkin?”

“God, I hope not,” said Laura.

“It’s after midnight,” said Marcie. “Let’s go. After all, poor Burr had to get up at six this morning to get to work. He’s probably exhausted. Maybe we should leave him here and let him organize a night school for the ladies.”

“Wouldn’t be any takers in here,” Jack observed, looking around. “They aren’t ladies, they’re lessies.”

“Do you have to talk about them as if they were exhibits in a zoo?” Laura exclaimed.

“God, now we’re quarreling” said Jack, laughing. But they weren’t really, for it takes two to make a quarrel and he was feeling powerfully good-natured with all that booze in him. “Leave us not forget our dignity,” he told Laura. He enunciated with meticulous care, not to let the liquor trip his tongue.

Marcie laughed at him, and pulled Laura aside as they got up. “Let’s go,” she said, and Laura walked with her to the ladies’ room. It was a glaring change from the softly lighted Cellar. They were nearly blinded with a big bare bulb which hung by a frayed wire far down into the room and watched all the proceedings with an unblinking eye.

“You go first,” Laura said to Marcie. There were few things less appealing to her than a public rest room—especially a one-horse job like this with its staring light, cracked mirror, and mounds of used paper towels on the cement floor. She wet her comb slightly in the tap and ran it through her hair. The door opened and the girl with the short dark hair and black pants came in. She lounged indolently against the wall, studying Laura. Laura recognized her from the bar, but ignored her royally. Marcie was talking to her through the john door.

“How do you like Jack?” she said.

“A lot,” Laura said, for the benefit of the girl in the black pants. Her voice was warm enough to surprise Marcie.

“I’m glad,” she said. “I thought once or twice you were mad at him.”

Laura’s cheeks went red again. God, how she hated that! And there was nothing she could do about it. She pulled the comb hard through her hair, afraid to look into the mirror. She knew she would meet the eyes of the girl in the black pants. “He’s very intelligent,” she said to Marcie.

“He’s funny,” Marcie said, coming out of the john. She nearly walked into the strange girl and said, “Oh! Excuse me.”

“My pleasure,” the girl murmured with a grin.

Laura felt suddenly jealous. It was maddening. She didn’t know who she was jealous of. She wanted the other girl to notice her, not Marcie. And she wanted Marcie to notice her, too. She stood a moment in confusion and then she said to the girl in the black pants, “Go ahead.” And nodded at the john. She said it to make her look up, which she did, slowly, and smiled. She looked shockingly boyish. Laura stared slightly.

“Thanks,” said the girl.

She shut the door behind her and Marcie laughed silently, covering her mouth with her hand. But Laura turned away, excitement tight in her throat. “Let’s go,” she said impatiently, dragging Marcie away from the mirror. She was afraid the strange girl would come out and talk to them. She was anxious to get out of The Cellar, out of the Village. She felt a pressing sense of danger.

Marcie turned to her as they went back to the table, and said, “I’ll bet Burr couldn’t have gotten anywhere with that one!” And she laughed. “She’d throw a hammer lock on him and tell him to pick on somebody his own size.”

Laura smiled faintly at her.

“Did you see how she stared at you?” Marcie said.

“Did she stare at me?”

“Yes, but she stared at me too. That’s the awful thing about Lesbians, they have no discrimination.”

Laura suddenly wanted to scream at her. It was so wrong, so false; so agonizing to have your lips sealed when you wanted to shout the truth.

They left the smoky Cellar and walked a few blocks, talking. Jack took a weaving course, and Laura had to steer him with one arm.

“Let’s take a taxi,” Marcie said.

“It’s only two blocks to the subway,” Burr reminded her.

“Can’t you ever spend a little extra on me?” she exclaimed. “Don’t you think I’m good enough to ride in a taxi? Don’t you think I’m worth another buck once in a while? You did when we got married.”

“Yeah, and I went broke. Subway’s cheap.”

“Well, I’m not!”

“Here, here,” said Jack. He took a quarter from his pocket and held it up to Marcie’s face.

“Heads,” she said.

He flipped while Laura thought to herself what child’s play it all was. Jack seemed unsophisticated now and Marcie and Burr had lost the beauty and excitement they seemed to generate together, even in the midst of their quarrels, perhaps because of them. We all look tired and silly, Laura thought, and I wish we were anywhere but the middle of Greenwich Village flipping over a taxi ride.

“Heads!” said Marcie. She poked Burr in the stomach.

“No show next week,” he said.

“You don’t think I care, do you?”

“Never mind, children, this is my treat,” said Jack. He smiled foxily. “I’m no fool with money,” he said. “I grow it in my window box. I give it all to Mother, here, and she invests it for me. Don’t you, Mother?”

“Don’t be an ass,” said Laura, but she laughed at him. “She loves me,” Jack explained to Burr and Marcie. Suddenly he left them all to dash into the middle of the street, waving his arms wildly at a pair of headlights that were bearing down on him. They screeched to a halt with an irate taxi driver behind them. Marcie gave a little scream and the driver leaned out and said, “You damn fool!”

“You’d better get that punk home and give him some black coffee, lady,” he told Laura as they started uptown. “If you don’t mind a little advice.”

“He’s going to hate himself tomorrow,” Marcie said.

“He’s damn lucky he’s gonna be around tomorrow,” said the cabbie. They all talked about him as if he were deaf.

And in fact, he was, for he had fallen asleep almost as soon as he got into the cab.

“Does he do this all the time?” Laura asked Burr.

“He’s a great guy, Laura,” Burr said, as if trying to bolster Jack in Laura’s eyes. “He just flies off the handle now and then. I guess he’s got problems.”

At the apartment Laura got out first. Burr said, “I’ll wake him up, Laura,” but she protested. “Just let him sleep,” she said. “I’d hate to interrupt his dreams.”

“I heard that,” said a ragged voice from the shadow inside the car. “You’re a doll, Mother. Sleep well.”

“Good night,” Laura said, smiling.

Chapter Five

She was under the covers and almost asleep when Marcie tiptoed in after bidding Burr goodnight. She moved around the room for a few minutes, getting ready for bed. Laura was just barely aware of her. After a little while she heard her turn the light off and cuddle the covers around herself. The silence, up above the city late at night, was deep, lulling, almost country-like. Only an occasional stray horn filtered up to their level. It sounded like a far-off echo. “Laura? Are you asleep?” Marcie whispered.

“Yes.”

“Oh.” She was quiet for a minute. Then she whispered, “I have to ask you something.”

“Don’t marry him. It’ll never work.”

“No, I don’t mean that. I mean—does it make you feel funny to see those people?”

“What people?”

“Queers?”

“They aren’t queer, Marcie. That’s a cruel word.” Her eyes were wide open now in the dark.

“What are they, then?”

“Homosexuals.” She said it shyly.

“That’s too long. Well, does it make you feel funny?”

“I don’t know what you mean, Marcie.”

“Well, I mean like the butch in the ladies’ room. Didn’t she make you feel queer—I mean funny—” She laughed. “—looking at us like she was a man, or something?”

“I guess so.”

“She was looking at us when she was at the bar, too.”

“She was?” Laura was amazed that Marcie would notice such a thing. “How do you know?”

Marcie laughed again. “I was looking at her,” she said.

“You what?”

“Oh, not the way you think. I was just sort of looking around and she was looking at our table. I think she wanted to come up and talk to us but she didn’t dare with the boys there. She knew we weren’t gay.”

“Is that what they call it—gay?”

“Yes. You know, it gave me the funniest feeling, her staring at us like that.”

Laura turned over in her bed, very wide awake. She said to herself, I won’t ask her about it, but she couldn’t help asking. “What sort of feeling?” she whispered.

“Well, it was like … if I tell you you won’t think I’m like them, will you?”

“Oh, no! Of course not.” Laura felt the blood beating in her throat.

“It was like I wanted to know what she’d do to me. If we were alone, I mean. I was sort of curious. I wondered what it would feel like. Not that I’d ever let a girl—I mean—Laura, did you ever kiss a girl?”

“No,” Laura said. In the dark she could lie pretty well. Her blushing cheeks didn’t show.

“I did, once.”

Laura put her hands to her throat and tried to still her breathing. “Did you like it?” she whispered.

“Not much. But I didn’t dislike it. I was at that age. She was a friend of mine in Junior High. Maybe she turned out queer. I mean homosexual. She probably thinks I turned out queer,” and she laughed. “She was always wanting to touch tongues.”

Laura shivered. “Did you?”

“A couple of times. It gave me the creeps. With a man it’s so lovely.” Laura heard her turn in her bed to face her. “Didn’t you ever do that when you were little? We used to do it a lot, just because it felt so awful. But Lenore was always wanting to do it with me when we got older. We were sort of best friends for a while.”

Laura was sitting up, shivering, on the edge of her bed. She thought, Dear God, if there is a God, help me now. Don’t let me touch her. Please don’t let me.

Suddenly Marcie got up and crossed the small aisle between the beds. She felt Laura and sat beside her. “Stick out your tongue,” she commanded, giggling.

“No!”

“Come on. I want to feel twelve years old again. I feel silly. Stick your tongue out.” She was teasing and Laura could see the flash of gold hair in the moonlight that struck them from the window by the bed.

“Marcie, don’t do this! Don’t! You’re playing with fire. Please, this is crazy.” But her voice dwindled to a whisper as Marcie took her face in her hands, and she was powerless to resist. She let herself be pulled toward Marcie, felt Marcie’s soft wet tongue searching for her own. Laura opened her mouth with a slight gasp. Her arms went out to grasp Marcie’s slender body as a groan escaped her.

Suddenly the phone rang. Laura gave a little scream of shock. They were both utterly silent and motionless until it rang again. Then Marcie began to laugh. “Oh, wouldn’t you know!” she said. “Saved by the bell. Saved from a life of sin.” The phone rang again. “I’ll get it,” Marcie said. She sprang up from the bed. Laura sat frozen where she was, hugging herself, trembling and miserable. “It’s probably Burr wanting to apologize for being such a skunk,” Marcie said. She threw herself across her bed and lifted the receiver. “Hello? … Laura, it’s for you.” She put her hand over the mouthpiece and said, “It’s Jack.”