"You think you know so much." Joyce stood up. "I've got to get home; it's getting late—"
"No, wait." He turned around and flipped the hamburger over. John wasn't a man to get rattled or lose his head; she guessed he would make a good doctor. He came back and laid a hand on her arm. "Don't go yet. We don't have any business getting mad at each other, we're too close."
"That's what I keep trying and trying to tell you. I don't want to be close to anybody."
"I'd as soon put it off a couple years myself," John admitted. "But it's already happened; we can't change that." He switched off the grill. The wires glowed and darkened. "You know," he said casually, "maybe a sample of the real thing would help straighten you out. You want another hamburger?"
"No… What are you talking about?"
"I was thinking," John said. He looked embarrassed; you couldn't imagine him being embarrassed, but he was. She liked it in him. "You could go to bed with me if it would help any. This isn't just a new kind of a proposition. You've got to start some time, you know, making a woman out of yourself. I figure on our getting married some day anyhow. So it might as well be me you learn on.”
Joyce stared at him.
"Shut your mouth before a fly walks in." He bit thickly into his sandwich. "Want to try?”
"You're crazy."
"Not at all. I've laid a girl or two in my time. Those diagrams in the medical books help, too."
"Oh, be serious." There were tears in her eyes; she blinked them back. "I tell you all my troubles, and all you do is make corny jokes."
"Never more serious in my life." He came around the counter and sat down beside her, still eating. "Analyze it. You're not happy in the half-sexed deal you've got, are you?"
"Oh God," Joyce said, "why do you think I told you all that stuff? Sometimes I think I'm going crazy.”
"Same time, you've got this silly idea there's something the matter with you—"
"I know there is."
"You know why women are frigid? They don't love their husbands, or their mothers scared them when they were kids, or they're afraid of getting pregnant or something." He patted her knee. "It doesn't come built in. Okay, go to bed with me tonight and we'll see. You don't have to be afraid; I'll take care of you."
He meant it. Realization filtered in slowly? Why not? she thought. It might be the thing she was hoping for, a definite step. It might somehow break the web of confusion that held her in its sticky meshes. Even if it weren't an answer it might be a clue. Maybe, she thought, if she tried love with a man and it didn't repel her—she didn't expect to enjoy it, of course—it might prove something. She wasn't sure. "I don't see what good it would do," she objected.
"Prove you're a normal female capable of normal feelings," John said. "Not tied down to something you've already outgrown. Sure, I'd like it for my own benefit. If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't be any good to you. But that's not it, this isn't a scheme to get you in bed. I'm not that clumsy with women. I can get a girl the usual way."
Joyce looked at him. He looked so everyday and ordinary she couldn't imagine being afraid of him. "All right, I'll do it."
He waved at her plate. "Eat your sandwich first. Making love's hungry work."
"Later. I'll eat something later. If we're going to do it I want to do it right now, before I lose my nerve."
"Okay. Soon as the boss-man gets back."
She stood out on the sidewalk, coat collar turned up and her hands in the deep pockets. Mimi had sent her this coat, a soft fleece in pale yellow, and she hadn't written yet to thank her. Never mind. Through the glass of the diner she saw John and the boss arguing—apparently John wanted to pay for all the food he had eaten and Bruno was saying with hands and shoulders and eyebrows, no, it's on the house. John swung the door open and was beside her. "A motel's the best. Cheap, and nobody asks questions. Do you want to take a cab or should I borrow a car?"
The thought of Scotty raised the fine little hairs at the back of her neck. There was no reason why a taxi would be driven by Scotty, but she felt, unreasonably, that it would be. "Please, let's get the car."
There seemed to be a lot of waiting involved in this: outside the drugstore, while John went in—she saw him standing at the counter", thin and redheaded and serious, and marveled again at how matter-of-fact some people were about things she had always considered shameful; under a tree at the corner near his friend's house, a square yellow layer on a square brown layer, like a cake. It looked so respectable and middle-class she was afraid he might change his mind and not come out again. She walked around a little, with short nervous steps. Now that her mind was made up, she wanted to get it over with. The memory of Edith's hands woke in her muscles, and another memory, brutal and terrifying. I won't think about that, she promised herself. This is different. He's doing it to help me; an act of kindness, not love.
All the way out to the edge-of-town motel they were quiet, John drove fast, but well. His profile looked stern. She was a little afraid of him. When he parked he didn't speak to her, but came around silently and held her door open.
A neon sign said VA ANCY; one bulb was burnt out. She saw a curving row of neat little white-painted houses on a gravel drive, like doll houses with colored shutters. She stood outside the office with her bare left hand shoved down in her pocket, another interval of waiting, while John signed the register. When he came out he was smiling. "That's one good thing about being a Smith or a Jones. It saves you trouble making one up."
"Have you done this a lot?"
"Every night since I was thirteen," John said, "and twice on Sunday."
"In other words, mind my own business."
He took her fingers in his. His hand was cold. He's scared too, she thought, and then dismissed the idea because he couldn't possibly be scared. Somebody had to be calm and grown-up about this. She wrapped her fingers around his thumb. "Come on. Let's go in."
Chapter 21
The cabin was bright and light, decorated with western decals on every possible surface. Cowboys and Indians, bucking broncos, Davy Crocketts with terrific coonskin caps. She had pictured a tacky place like Stella's cabin, but this was modern and streamlined.
"Can we turn the light off?"
"If you want. It's better with it on, though."
“Any way you say."
“That's my girl."
They undressed quickly. She was glad she looked all right with her clothes off. She fought back a silly impulse to put her hands in front of her. John said, "Scared?" and she said, "No."
"You lie in your teeth."
"All right, I'm scared."
He was no boy now, but a man. He moved against her, and his arms were tight and strong around her. She felt the hard solidity of his muscular body. No boy. He said softly, "Come to bed, honey."
The sheets were smooth and cold. When she felt his body stretched out beside hers she began to tremble. It was silly, she hadn't expected it, but she couldn't help it. "I won't hurt you," he promised.
She thought: he expects me to be a virgin, he doesn't know about—Her teeth chattered. He stroked her arms and shoulders gently, leaning over her, propped on one elbow. She relaxed a little. But then his hand moved down and stopped. She started to shake again. "I can't. Oh, don't make me."
"You'll feel better after. I was scared the first time, too."
"What was your first girl like?"
He considered, wrinkling his forehead. "Oh, just a girl. You know how a boy is at sixteen or seventeen, with hot pants. Doesn't mean anything after it's over."
Her heart was banging. She could see it thump under her smooth skin. The pulse in her throat pounded violently. She shut her eyes. "Okay. Go ahead."
"Not till you're ready. It's no good for you this way."
She lay stiff and still while he caressed her. The warmth didn't go deeper than her skin. "Please, let's not."
"You know, you're holding out on me." She could feel him looking at her, though her eyes were shut. "All that stu
ff you told me—that's not the whole story, is it? There's something you're keeping back."
"No. Not anything that matters." He rolled over and lay on his back, arms under his head. She turned away from him, face to the wall. "Please."
"Why not?"
She didn't know. Want was growing in her, not only for the relief of having at last done something definite but in some deeper way that was rooted in her own body. Yet she couldn't go ahead with it, could not let him enter her. She pressed her legs together, trembling so that the bed shook.
"Okay. We won't do it." John sat up on the edge of the bed, smiling a little. He looked self-conscious, and it occurred to her that she had hurt his feelings.
She said timidly, "I'm sorry.''
He got up without answering and went into the little bathroom. She heard water running and the gargling noise of the toilet being flushed. She raised her arm; the flesh was dotted with goose pimples. She pulled the blanket up to her chin.
"Everything okay."
"John, are you mad at me?"
"No. Look, why don't you take a little nap? I'll lie right here and keep you warm. Put your head on my shoulder. I won't make any passes or anything."
His skin was warm and smooth. He smelled a little of sweat and some odor that was vaguely male, not unpleasant. Her head fitted right into the hollow of his shoulder. Timidly, she moved against him. He put an arm around her. Her tense muscles began to thaw out. Being married must be like this, she thought; after the sex part's over you'd feel real close and cozy together, never lonesome or scared any more.
When his watch showed him that it was after midnight, he had to shake her to get her awake. She rolled over, sighing. For a moment she couldn't remember where she was or why she was lying here naked with a man's body pressed against hers. Her neck was stiff. She pulled away from him and sat up, beginning to be scared again.
"Some honeymoon," John said. He sat on the edge of the bed, pulling on his shorts. "You got a good nap, anyway."
"I wasn't asleep.”
"Then why were you snoring?"
"Oh."
"I felt you relax," John said. "It was nice."
Her lips shook. "I'm so sorry. About everything."
"It's okay." He bent over to pick a sock off the floor. All she could see was his back, the muscles stretched. "Maybe it's better to wait till we're married. You were brought up old-fashioned."
"I don't want to get married," Joyce said. It was hard to sound prim and hook her bra at the same time. She felt the circumstances weren't exactly suited to arguing. "You will. It'll take time, that's all." She gave up. You couldn't tell him anything. He was the one who tidied the room, putting everything back in place, turning down the sheets so they could be changed for the next couple. He raised the window shades to halfway and set the straight chair against the wall. She stood looking around the neat little room. Silly as it was, she hated to leave it. Tenderness had been here, and a feeling of security. She leaned against John, trying to hide her sudden tears in the front of his shirt. He kissed the top of her head. "It's all right, kid. We've got plenty of time. C'mon, time to go."
A car was pulling out as he turned the key in the lock. The headlights swept across the drive, the front of the cabin, the bent back of the young man trying the doorknob and Joyce's erect figure as she waited for him. She blinked in the sudden glare. Then the car backed out of the parking space, turned, and rushed down the highway toward town. The sky was dark and the air quiet except for traffic and someone's faraway radio.
They walked across the grass to where the borrowed car stood parked. Their shadows went ahead of them, immensely and far apart, an empty space between them.
Chapter 22
Mary Jean stopped her in the hall after breakfast. "I have to see you," she said. She laid her books on the newel post at the top of the stairs and leaned back against the wall, gripping the knob of the post with a white-knuckled hand. Her eyes, deeply shadowed, were fixed on Joyce's face.
She knows, Joyce thought. "I'm busy." It was partly the quick defense of one caught unprepared, partly the mean pleasure of getting even. I really am busy, she thought. Practice at ten, last one before dress rehearsal, and an Art exam after that. She smiled thinly, feeling the muscles of her face stretch. "Whatever it is, it'll have to wait."
Mary Jean's face was like that of a slapped child. It had been white; now the white turned a sick gray. "It's all right," she said in a low voice. She hesitated a moment, then picked up her books and walked away, her soft moccasins making a dragging sound on the hall rug. Joyce stood looking after her. She wanted to run after her and call: come back, I'll listen, you can tell me. But she stood there with a set face, and then a group of girls came out of the bathroom and shut Mary Jean out of her sight.
She went down, feeling guilty and ashamed for no reason. Probably wasn't anything, she comforted herself. Probably wanted to borrow a dollar or a pair of shoes. But the feeling didn't go away, or the conviction that Mary Jean knew about the motel.
She might have been there herself. I wouldn't put it past her.
The auditorium was a scramble of girls in jeans and dirty shirts, milling around, moving extension cords that writhed across the floor like rubber snakes, scraping chairs. The floor in front of the stage was littered with lipstick-smeared cigarette butts, although it was against the rule to smoke anywhere in the building. Molly Andrews was down on her knees painting flats, with gilt in her hair and a cerise smear across the seat of her pants. Ellin, as the blasé English divorcee, sat hunched over in a folding chair gabbling lines she should have known two weeks before. Joyce felt it was an almost professional mess, with all of the racket meaning something. She fished the prop list out of her skirt pocket and went backstage, more to be a part of the clatter back there than because there was any more doubt about where things belonged.
She was tired. In eighteen years she couldn't remember ever having been this tired before. There was the time the girl from Derwent High socked her during the second quarter of a basketball game, and she finished the game and then went to the nurse and had two cracked ribs taped up. There was the summer she worked detasseling hybrid corn; the second morning she'd been so stiff she couldn't walk, had crawled to the bathroom and soaked in a tub of hot water till her locked muscles loosened. But those where physical things. This was an all-over fatigue that left her feeling heavy, dead and blank. "I feel blah," she thought. She must have said it out loud because Linda Garrick slapped her on the back and said, "It's the cheap liquor that does it"
Either all of her props were where they belonged, or she was too gone to know the difference. She went down again and sat on the edge of a folding chair, right in front of the stage. There were regular theater-type chairs with arms between, used for compulsory chapel and whatever outside entertainment the college could book, but it was supposed to be more knowing to sit well forward and criticize the performance, or pull a funeral-parlor chair to the back of the auditorium and test the acoustics. Today she kept losing the thread, although she'd sat in on so many practices that she knew most of the parts. She got up and walked out in the middle of the love scene, restless in spite of her fatigue.
Something was wrong. You don't ask help from someone you've quarreled with, not if you can help it. She looked sick, too. I'll find her the first thing after Art, Joyce decided, and see what's the matter. The decision made her feel better; it answered some demand in her. She headed for the semi-basement, full of good nature. I won't hold anything against her; I’ll do what I can to help her.
Perhaps it was the virtuous feeling that made the test so easy in spite of her fatigue. Her headache was going away, too. The pen scurried over the pages of the Blue Book, her mind picked the right answers out of the air. Manet, Monet, Seurat, Renoir, picking answers for mix-match.
She finished the second book and sat looking out the window, waiting for someone who didn't mind being an eager beaver to turn in her test first.
The hall tele
phone rang. Miss Wilkes got up quietly and went to answer it, leaving the door open so she could at least hear what was going on. Our girls are refined and well-bred, Miss Wilkes reminded herself with grim pleasure, our girls do not cheat in examinations. Not unless they sit more than one row from the front and the teacher's near-sighted.
Molly Andrews stopped chewing her pencil and copied briskly from her neighbor's book, word for word and X for X. There was paint across her knuckles.
Miss Wilkes came back on rubber soles. She looked sharply over all the meek, bent heads—light, dark, red, with little chiffon bows tied into the ponytails or jewelled pins set among the curls, this season's fad. The innocent little darlings, she thought grimly. She walked flatfooted to Joyce's chair. "Will you report to the dean at once? You can finish your test later."
"Oh—I'm done." Joyce handed in her book and left. There was a little buzz. Eyebrows were raised and smiles spread over faces,
"Quiet, please," Miss Wilkes said. She had been young once herself. She was only forty-two now, she sometimes reminded her reflection in the bathroom mirror, and forty-two isn't dead by a long shot. There was a man back home, department manager in a store, she was keeping in reserve. "Anyone I see talking will fail this test," Miss Wilkes said, rapping her desk with a pencil.
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