"I suppose you think I'm a case of retarded development."
He raised one eyebrow. It gave him a look of insatiable curiosity. "I'm not your parish priest," he said, "but if you care to tell me what's eating you it might be good practice. I intend to spend the rest of my life with you that way: you tell me your troubles, I tell you my troubles."
"Oh, you have troubles too? Just like ordinary people?"
"Well, I wasn't as polite to Uncle Doc as I might have been," he said. He fell into step with her, the two of them walking in an easy rhythm. "I've been going around here feeling as moral as hell because I told the old boy off. It was horsey of me. Some day I'm going back and tell him so."
"You moved out?"
"Sure. When I go on a bust I go full length, as the fellow told the photographer. Going back to school in January anyhow; I just dropped out for a semester because I was short of money." He shook his head. "I'm in a real nice rooming house, hot and cold running cockroaches."
"Now I know you're crazy."
"Don't change the subject," he said. "Give. What's the worm in your apple?"
"Nothing."
"You'll feel better after you tell." They were back among the little houses now. The volume of kids' shouting had diminished; upstairs windows blossomed with light. Bedtime. "Look, do you have to be in any special time?"
"No, I forgot to sign out."
"I bet. I'll buy you some coffee."
She made up her mind suddenly. Nothing else to do but study, and she was in no mood for that. "All right."
The place he took her to was one of those boxcars made over into a hamburger joint. Not much of a place for a first date; maybe he was really broke or maybe he didn't think she was worth impressing. She didn't want to be impressed by him, of course, but still—Curiosity got the best of her resentment. She'd passed a lot of places like this but it was the first time she had been inside one. This one looked clean, though the air was smoky from the grill. The menu was written on a blackboard against the back wall. The man behind the counter, fat and mustached, said, "Hi, John."
"Hi. Two coffees.”
"John what?"
"Jones. I know you don't believe it, but it's true. My middle name's Carstairs. That's what I'll call myself when I hire my second office nurse, J. Carstairs Jones."
"You don't look like a Carstairs."
"Thanks."
The coffee was hot, clear and strong. John took a deep swig. "This the first affair you've had?" he asked.
"I don't know why you think such a thing. You've got a dirty mind."
"Uh-uh, there you go. Sex is dirty. Look, there's not much love in the world, let's not get snooty about it. Anything that has even a little tenderness and understanding in it—if you've got that you've got something, haven't you?"
"I don't know," Joyce said. She wondered how they had got to this point. "I don't know one single thing," she said.
"I should have said, is this the first affair you've had with a woman?" He set down his cup and grabbed her by the shoulder as she got up from her stool. "Don't blow your top, you're only mad because I'm right."
"How did you know?"
"Oh, honey," John Jones said tenderly, "you've got a face that wouldn't fool a week-old baby. If it really looked at you," he added quickly. Most people don't." This was. so in line with her own recent observations that she couldn't deny it.
"You can't run away," he said.
"I'm not running away."
"Okay. Let's change the subject. How's your friend getting along, the one that had the operation?"
"Fine. We just had a big fight," Joyce said, noticing that her hand shook when she tried to stir her coffee. "That's why I came with you, I mean, that's why I don't much want to go back.”
"Regular roommate fight, or is she the one? No, that's not so likely. Considering." She could see his mind working back to their first meeting. "It's reasonable she should pick a fight, you know too much about her. If she can work up a good peeve she won't have to feel so guilty. It figures. What did you do, get a run in her good stockings?"
"You think you're smart."
"Not so very," John Carstairs Jones said sadly. He shoved his cup across the counter and the fat waiter, who seemed to be cook and cashier too, filled it. "He's deaf," John said following her eyes. "Reads lips, though. Want another?"
"What time is it?"
"Twenty to twelve."
"Oh, good Lord." Edith, she thought. Edith would have come and gone, nobody in the room, no notation in the going-out book, no excuse for this kind of thing. She wouldn't bring it up before the House Council—how could she?—but she would certainly have plenty to say in private. "I've got to get back," she said frantically, buttoning up her jacket.
They didn't talk on the walk back, but he held her arm and it felt good, sort of cozy. Didn't make sense, considering how insulting and snoopy the boy was.
He stood with her outside the door of the dorm, just off the sidewalk where the light over the door casing was softened. "Thanks for walking with me," he said. "It's been on my mind ever since that day—I'm honestly sorry I popped off at you like that. Sorry if I made you mad out there tonight, too."
"It's all right. I wasn't very nice to you, either."
"That's okay."
"Well—" Now she was here, she was reluctant to go in. There didn't seem to be much of anything to hope for, inside. "I'll call up first, the next time."
He planned a next time, then. She ought to get that straightened out right now. Tell him she didn't want to see him again. She licked her lips nervously. "All right."
She stood with a hand on the doorknob, watching him walk away. Maybe somebody would look out of the window and see her coming in at this hour. So what? She felt too lost and miserable to care. It would be my luck if the door was locked. But it wasn't, the knob turned smoothly under her hand and she was in, taking advantage of a precaution meant for someone else.
There was no line of light under Edith's door. She was asleep, or out. Or maybe upstairs, waiting. Anxious. Or angry. There was still that possibility to face, but Joyce felt too tired to care much. She walked up slowly, noticing in an abstracted way that her leg muscles were cramped and sore from so much walking. Sounds of slamming and clattering came from behind Bitsy's closed door. Joyce laughed. Bitsy studied by schedule and liked to be in bed by eleven. A fussbudget, a regular old maid about neatness and order. Living with Mary Jean was likely to be an eye-opener. She'd bet Mary Jean would learn to pick up after herself, or wish she had. Serve 'em both right.
There was no one in her room. Edith had given up, then, and gone to bed. She pushed the thought of tomorrow out of her mind. The room looked sort of nice; nice and bare. She tiptoed around picking up Mary Jean's leavings, used and wadded tissues, bobby pins, an old sock, a pried-off stamp, a dirty comb. She cleaned out the dresser drawers, then removed them one by one and shook them over the wastebasket to get the powder and dust out of the cracks. She made her own bed up with fresh sheets and stood back looking at the effect.
She wanted to go to bed and sleep for hours and hours, alone. In fact, the way she felt, she didn't ever want anyone to. touch her again. I wish people would leave me alone, she thought fretfully. She felt the clean pillowcase cool against her cheek, and there was comfort in it.
I thought I loved her, she thought. I do love her. Or is it only because I needed to love somebody and she made the first move? That was an unhappy thought and she turned over, hoping that the position would make her sleepy.
Some time in the night she woke, thinking about John Carstairs Jones, and was unable to get back to sleep. He's unhappy, she thought. She hadn't noticed it while they were together, but his face was clear in her mind now and it was young, thin and strained. It must have been terrible for him to fight with his uncle, she thought, when he's always thought so much of him. She recalled the pride in the older man's voice, the one time she'd seen them together. It made her feel guilty. She tried to imagine
how she'd feel if Aunt Gen turned out to be a—well, she didn't know, you couldn't imagine Aunt Gen doing anything that wasn't perfectly honest. Suddenly she saw Aunt Gen, too, standing beside the kitchen table in one of her big coverall aprons, her hair braided smoothly above her serious, suntanned face. Even through polished bifocals her eyes made you wish you didn't have anything on your conscience.
John Jones had the same trick of looking straight through you. I don't like him, she thought; he thinks he knows everything.
It took her quite a while to get back to sleep. Nothing was wrong, nothing at all. It must have been all that coffee so late at night.
Chapter 16
“Really civilized people," Edith Bannister said. She leaned forward a little over the steering wheel. There was color in her smooth cheeks, and her voice was pitched higher than Joyce had ever heard it before. She's excited about this, Joyce thought. Excited about getting out for an evening, like some farm woman who's been kept cooped up among the pigs and chickens since Lord knows when and is offered a trip to town. Can she be that bored with school?
Joyce wasn't bored with school. Since the three days away with Mary Jean, when she had been almost sure they would be found out and expelled, she was both happy and unhappy about college, but certainly not bored. I'd like to start over, she thought wistfully. Or maybe come back next year and get on the Student Council and take something besides snap courses. If I could start without Edith. Maybe she'll get a job somewhere else, she thought, but recognized it as wishful thinking.
She'd have liked to forget all that had happened in these three months and concentrate on just living for a while. She folded her hands on her lap and forced her attention back to what Edith was saying.
"She does everything. Ceramics, weaving, the modern dance. Not only talented but versatile. It's one of the few sensible marriages I've ever known," Edith said eagerly. "Both of them free to go their own way without any grudges or petty jealousies. Fritzi often has some man friend staying with him for a few weeks! He knows they're welcome.
"They've even talked about having a child, to make the picture complete" Still, they have perfect freedom now. And companionship. You can have a very fine companionship with a man as long as he doesn't get any silly ideas. You'll discover that for yourself when you have a chance to get acquainted with a more mature type of man." The traffic light flashed amber. She stopped the car with a lurch. "It's an ideal arrangement for both of them."
"I can see that."
"Are you tired, darling? You sound tired."
"I'm fine."
"Not shocked, are you?" The upward tilt of her mouth implied that the idea was pretty funny. After all we've done, after all we've had together. Stuffy conventional people might be bothered by these things, but we know. Joyce didn't admit that she was shocked, a little; she had supposed marriage was for the normally-sexed and that those outside the regular social-moral framework stayed single.
The light turned green. The line of city-bound cars moved slowly forward, many-colored and swimming nose to tail through the thickening dark. "I'm taking a chance introducing you to these people," Edith said. Her voice was edged with cold steel. "You could make a lot of trouble for me if you wanted to."
"You don't have to worry."
"You know everyone's against us. People hate us because we're free of their petty restrictions, because we dare to love honestly, without a lot of little social conventions to back us up. They discriminate against us socially, they deny us the right to earn a living, their damn preachers and social-reformers would like to throw us all in jail. The only way you can survive is to have two lives, one for the stuffy narrow-minded people to know about and one with your own kind in the cracks and crevices of your days."
This was old stuff. She'd heard it a hundred times before, and the first few renditions had made quite an impression on her. Nobody loves us, everybody hates us. The only thing that could get Edith worked up, besides making love, was the idea that everybody had it in for sex deviates, including God. Joyce was beginning to wonder if people were that much interested.
What she did find fascinating just now was the idea that two of them so assorted as to sex would be married. Like this Fritzi and Anitra Schultz they were going to see, who were Edith's friends and had such a gosh-awful wonderful life together. She could see how Edith, fastidious, lonesome and not interested in men, might end up as a Lesbian. Or someone like me, she thought wryly; that's had the pants scared off her. But for a man who was interested only in other men, and a woman attracted to other women—now there was something she wouldn't have thought possible. "I don't see what they get out of it," she said.
"Don't be dense," Edith said coldly. "Nobody questions them, don't you see? They're part of the conventional design, the pattern society wants to mold everybody into."
Yes, but then where's the wonderful honesty? She didn't ask it. The one thing she was sure of right now was that she'd better not ask any more questions. "Is this dress all right, or should I have worn something fancier?"
"You look very nice." The blue wool was a schoolgirl dress with a round white collar and little glittery buttons down the front. Mimi's feather haircut had grown out long enough to take a pincurl permanent. Edith approved of that, too. She supposed that was camouflage, too, looking feminine and being part of the social pattern. Keep people from finding out I'm not normal. It wasn't a happy thought.
Anitra Schultz was a painter, primarily, Edith explained. She worked in oil, water color and gouache. "She's had several one-man shows," Edith said proudly.
The Schultzes lived in one of those self-consciously informal suburban houses built by people living a little beyond their means. The lawn was manicured. An old-fashioned hitching-post painted shocking pink held a curly black iron sign, "The Bluff." Since the place was flat, she guessed it was meant to be cute. The drive was jammed with ordinary cars, convertibles and those little English models that look as if you could tuck them under your arm while you went shopping. Edith parked in the street and Joyce got out of the car, smoothing her skirt, and looked around. The house door stood open and light streamed out. She felt like a child going to a birthday party. Edith took her hand as they went up the arty flagstone walk, and she was grateful for so much warmth.
Anitra Schultz looked like her house, sleek and expensive, but not quite real. She was tall and slender, with lacquered black hair drawn back in a bun on her neck and green eyes underlined with emerald mascara, fuchsia lips sharply painted on. Only her skin spoiled the picture; it was olive but rather oily and rough. She wore narrow velvet trousers and her feet were bare in flat black velvet slippers embroidered with gold thread and fake pearls. She laid her cheek close to Edith's and they saluted the air in a way that couldn't spoil make-up. "Darling, I'm so glad you could come. Is this your little girl you told us about? Charming. Fritzi darling, bring these nice people something to drink."
Fritzi looked rather like Mary Jean's Bill, stocky and fair, with a crewcut. Masculine type—nobody could call him sissy. He was carrying a tray of drinks, like a butler in the movies, and he gave Joyce a pleasant impersonal smile and Edith a curt nod. "Here, take what you like best. That's rum. That's Scotch and that's gin, with the peel in it." Joyce decided that she rather liked him, but didn't like his wife.
The drink she took felt nice and cold in her hand, smelled good, tasted bitter but slid down easily. It exploded in her stomach; she felt she must be breathing out smoke and flame. There didn't seem to be any place to set down the empty glass; she looked at Edith for a cue, but Edith was still talking to Anitra and she gave Joyce an absent-minded nod indicating: go on, don't be formal, have a good time and circulate. So she walked around, glass in hand, looking at the rooms which opened into one another and then, with rather less curiosity, at the people.
She guessed this was modern decor, or maybe moderne. She wasn't sure how to pronounce decor, but she was always running into it in magazines that told you how to paint your old walnu
t furniture bright green and make chic curtains out of turkish towels. There were a lot of small tables covered with books and arty arrangements of flowers, weeds, leaves and such things as gilded snap clothespins and little ceramic caterpillars. The davenport curved, but unevenly, and the coffee table was free-form. Some of the chairs were made of rawhide laced crisscross, like the paper-strip mats kids make in kindergarten, and some were wrought-iron with grape leaves and curlicues all over them. There was a grand piano which seemed to be the regular shape; but it was painted a deep pink. Someone had already set a drink on top of it and the glass had tipped over; a clear-liquid was dribbling down onto the keys and splashing on the olive-green rug.
There were twenty or thirty people scattered around. It was hard to reach a closer estimate because the rooms were in series, with partial walls but no doors. A small, frilly, blonde girl sat on a cushion on the floor beside the piano, her knees drawn up in front of her so that the tops of her stockings showed and a stretch of bare leg. An older woman with gray hair and a gray suit buttoned primly around a matronly figure squatted beside her, talking. The girl looked sulky and bored. Some of the women wore full peasant skirts over crinolines, and jangling handmade jewelry. Some were in evening dresses cut right down to the nipples. Most of the men were less formal, they ran to tweed jackets and loud slacks, and there was one husky type who looked like Tarzan with a beard. She bet he hadn't ever wrestled with an ape. He wore Bermuda shorts and no shirt at all, just a fine mat of black hair on his chest that mingled with the fringes of his beard. But he looked different from these other characters, more like a real person.
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