The Revelation of Beatrice Darby

by Jean Copeland

  “Well, here you go.” Miss Gill seemed disheartened as she wheeled the book-return cart around for her. “When you’re done, meet me in the reference room.”

  As Beatrice replaced each title to its rightful position within Mr. Dewey’s decimal system, she cringed, thinking about disappointing her paramour. Would doing something rebellious impress her? Beatrice had always done what was expected of her in school and at home, especially when her father’s death seven years earlier had fractured the family. Beatrice had so wanted to make him proud, and the best way to do that was to continue being his “good girl.”

  Later in the reference room, she shifted the heavy stack of encyclopedias in her arms and slouched in defeat. Despite her best effort, she couldn’t suppress the urge to peek as Miss Gill stretched to reach the highest shelf, her breasts bulging against a peach sweater. As Miss Gill bit at her bottom lip while pushing two volumes into position, Beatrice practically salivated.

  “You must be thrilled about leaving for college in a few weeks,” Miss Gill said as she tugged at the bottom of her sweater.

  “Yes, I suppose.”

  “What do you mean suppose?” Miss Gill glared down at her from her perch. “You were so excited in the spring when you learned you got a full scholarship. When we celebrated at DeLuca’s you seemed out of your head with excitement, remember?”

  How could Beatrice forget? They’d sat together at the drugstore counter sipping cream-soda floats while Miss Gill regaled her with such thrilling tales of sorority life. Beatrice’s most cherished memory of the afternoon was when Miss Gill giggled so hard recalling a prank she and her sisters had pulled that she’d accidentally tumbled against Beatrice’s arm in dramatic fashion.

  “It’s just that, well…” She fumbled for words. “Well, I’ll miss working here and helping you.”

  “Aw.” Miss Gill placed her hand on Beatrice’s shoulder as she descended the stepladder. “I’ll miss having your help,” she added with a smile brighter than Marilyn Monroe’s in the Lustre-Crème Shampoo ads.

  “Will you?” Beatrice asked, surprised.

  “Why sure,” she replied with a gentle stroke across Beatrice’s shoulder. “You’ve been great fun, especially this summer when libraries can be ghost towns.”

  Beatrice curled her lips to prevent her smile from leaping off her face.

  “Are you blushing, Bea?” Miss Gill grinned.

  Her cheeks flamed. “No,” she whispered, looking down at her shoes.

  “I think you are.” Miss Gill then sang, “Beatrice is blushing, Beatrice is blushing.”

  “No, I’m not.” She faked a scowl to hide the excitement charging through her.

  Miss Gill chuckled. “Aw, don’t be mad. You’re adorable when you blush.” She gently pinched Beatrice’s belly.

  Beatrice touched the part of her shirt where Miss Gill pinched her.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

  She watched Miss Gill’s mouth form the words and then shook her head.

  Their eyes locked for an awkward moment, Miss Gill’s with an intensity Beatrice had never noticed before. God, what was she thinking? What would it really be like to kiss her?

  “What do you say, kid? Time to blow this clambake,” Miss Gill said.

  Beatrice wrenched her lips into a smile and followed her to the break room. Punching out each day was like flipping to the next page of a riveting novel and realizing it was the last.

  *

  The next morning, Beatrice surveyed her reflection in horror. Her eyes were puffy, the side of her face marred by sheet wrinkles from a fitful sleep. It was well after three by the time she’d fallen asleep, thanks to visions of Miss Gill and her in various scenarios of intimacy. Why couldn’t she stop these thoughts?

  She closed her eyes as she brushed her teeth and tried to imagine kissing her best friend, Robert Carlin. She wrinkled her forehead and scrunched her eyes tight as she forced the image in her mind’s eye. Nothing remotely close to kissing Miss Gill—in fact, she accidentally poked her tonsil with her toothbrush and gagged into the sink.

  As she walked to the library, she passed Robert on the street washing his father’s ’56 Ford Fairlane. She’d known Robert since he moved to the neighborhood in the fifth grade, earning his loyalty by tutoring him through eighth-grade Algebra, saving him his spot on the junior-varsity basketball team. Robert was a nice boy, cute and sort of shy around girls—that is until they got to know him. Beatrice didn’t have many friends in high school, but she certainly counted Robert as her closest.

  Toward the end of his graduation party in June, he’d tried to ask her out on a real date, but when she picked up on what he was spluttering about, she managed to change the subject before he could spit it out. And before she knew it, Maria Perillo came along, and Robert was happy just being friends again.

  “Hiya, Bea,” Robert said, shaking the soapsuds from his hands. “Off to work on this beautiful day? Sorry about that.”

  She nodded. “Gee, you sure wash your dad’s car a lot.”

  “Say, what do you mean?” Robert said with a scowl. “This is my car. My dad gave it to me.”

  He was lying. “Well, it’s a really keen car. I’m sure Maria enjoys tooling around in it.”

  “Sure she does. Maybe I can take you for a spin sometime,” he said with a blushing smile.

  She considered the offer. According to most of the stories from girls she knew who dated boys, accepting a ride in a boy’s car meant you could expect to wind up at the top of East Rock steaming up the windows. She looked at Robert’s expectant smile, the fine brown hair on his top lip gleaming with sweat. He was cute. Very cute. So why didn’t she think about him the way she thought of Miss Gill? She closed her eyes and tried again to picture him kissing her, pantomiming as she forced the image.

  “What’s the matter, Bea? You got something from breakfast stuck in your teeth?”

  She opened her eyes and smiled awkwardly. Nothing. No tingles, no butterflies, zilch.

  “So how about that ride?”

  “I’d like to, Robert, but my mother won’t allow me in cars with boys until I’m eighteen.”

  “That’s in October, isn’t it?”

  She nodded confidently, knowing she’d be safely nestled away on Salve Regina’s Rhode Island campus by the time that day arrived.

  “Okay, I’ll see you then for that ride,” he said with a grin.

  She grinned back. “Not if I see you first.”

  He flung soapsuds at her as she trundled off down the street.

  “That’s okay,” he called out after her. “Maria would probably get sore if you came with me anyway.”

  “You certainly wouldn’t want that,” Beatrice said over her shoulder with a satisfied grin.

  *

  At lunchtime in the break room, Beatrice peeled her tuna sandwich from its waxed-paper wrapping and poked it. Her suspicions were correct—mushy bread from a runny tomato slice. She sighed and sank it like a basketball into the garbage can. She wasn’t hungry anyway. Waiting for Miss Gill to come in had her stomach in knots. She absently picked at something crusty on the table’s surface, making another attempt to rationalize her exuberance as admiration. After all, Miss Gill was thirty-one, never married, and a self-assured career girl, the kind of woman Beatrice had long aspired to be, not the apron-wearing, slotted-spoon-wielding homemaker all the girls in school seemed bent on becoming.

  Finally, Miss Gill arrived in a huff. “Damn it. Now I barely have enough time to eat. I swear that Draper does this to me on purpose. ‘And another thing, Miss Gill…’” After she mocked her, she looked directly at Beatrice. “What the hell is wrong with an Emily Dickinson display anyway?”

  “Nothing,” Beatrice replied timidly. She loved it when Miss Gill had her eyeglasses pushed up into her hair, little black strands poking out this way and that.

  “Here,” Miss Gill said, sending her Scooter Pie skittering across the table. “I won’t have time to eat this.”r />
  Beatrice offered an innocent smile. “Want me to help fix the display after?”

  “You’re such a sweet kid,” Miss Gill said with a wink.

  Beatrice adored any kind of personal acknowledgement from Miss Gill except when she referred to her as a kid. She absolutely was not a kid. She was a young woman, almost eighteen, and practically a college girl.

  Later, as Beatrice stood holding Nathaniel Hawthorne novels and story collections, Miss Gill repositioned the hardcovers around the small square table with each one she added. She stepped back and eyed the display. She then scooped up the books and shoved them at Beatrice.

  “Draper may not want a Nineteenth-Century Great American Poets display, but she’s getting a Great American Something display.”

  Beatrice smiled at her defiance.

  “What are you grinning at, you little monkey?” Miss Gill said.

  For some reason, Beatrice suddenly felt emboldened. “I’m wondering how long you’re going to make me hold these books. Hawthorne’s been dead a long time. He doesn’t care how they’re positioned.”

  “Well, aren’t you fresh?” Miss Gill eyed her flirtatiously. “Good. I’m starting to rub off on you.”

  Beatrice grinned and launched The House of Seven Gables at her. “Here you go.”

  “I asked you to hold it,” Miss Gill replied, launching it back.

  They began to struggle playfully with the book, shoving it at each other, forcing the other one to hold on to it. During one of the frenzied exchanges, Beatrice’s hand grazed the side of Miss Gill’s breast, stirring an arousal in her much like what she’d been experiencing since reading Odd Girl Out, swapping images of Miss Gill and herself in the steamy scenes. Before Beatrice could process her feelings, Miss Gill one-upped her by tickling her in the stomach and on her sides. The pages of the novel flapped liked wings as it fell to the floor, and Beatrice backed away as the sensation surging through her grew more intense.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Bea,” Miss Gill said as she bent to pick it up. “Did I pinch you or something?”

  “Uh, no, no,” Beatrice stammered. “Your uh, your hands are cold.”

  Miss Gill chuckled. “My hands aren’t cold. In fact, they’re too damn warm—feel.” She pressed both palms against Beatrice’s cheeks.

  Beatrice’s heart fluttered wildly as the ecstasy of the moment gave way to an awkward self-awareness.

  “Miss Gill,” Mrs. Draper barked from the end of the stacks, scaring her hands off Beatrice’s face. “If you can spare Beatrice for a moment, her mother would like a word with her on the telephone.”

  “Of course, Mrs. Draper,” Miss Gill said with an obedient smile. “You take all the time you need, Bea.”

  Beatrice shuffled to the phone at the front desk, trying to make sense of what had just happened, to rationalize why her body was now responding in such a shameful way whenever she was close to Miss Gill. They were friends, yet Beatrice was having more and more difficulty controlling her thoughts. How would Miss Gill feel if she ever knew? Repulsed? Definitely repulsed. She shuddered as she picked up the telephone receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Bea, darling, I’m out of my pills. Would you stop by DeLuca’s on your way home and pick up my new prescription?”

  “I don’t have any money on me, Mother.”

  “Have him put it on my account.”

  Beatrice huffed. She resented being her mother’s pharmaceutical mule, especially when Mr. DeLuca gave her the hairy eyeball over their past-due account. “Can’t Quentin stop and get them on his way home?”

  “It’s right on your way home, dear. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t turn into Sarah Bernhardt over every little thing I ask you to do.”

  “All right, Mother. Good-bye.” She replaced the receiver and was startled by Mrs. Draper, lingering behind the desk with a glare that could have surely penetrated Beatrice’s skull and into her private thoughts. Beatrice offered her a solemn nod and decided to make herself scarce for the rest of the day, if only to allow her feet to return to earth.

  Chapter Two

  After work, Beatrice enjoyed a leisurely walk to DeLuca’s drugstore before heading home. An early evening breeze had kicked up along Chapel Street, and the coolness of the wind against her damp face and throat refreshed her. As she passed an elm tree, she plucked a lush leaf from a low branch and began tearing it into slices at the veins. Her mind wandered to the library and Miss Gill. She glanced down at her knuckles and ran her fingers over them as though she might be able to feel Miss Gill’s breast again.

  She entered the drugstore, and as she was approaching the counter, inspiration struck. She took a detour to the back of the store and the display of romance novels, eager to see what else she’d discover in the mix, fully prepared for the moral consequence of another pilfering job. She slowed when she noticed Mr. DeLuca waving his hand around in the florid face of the suit-and-tied pulp-fiction vendor. She moved closer to them and pretended to compare different brands of bubble bath.

  “I don’t care what your excuse is,” Mr. DeLuca said. “You better check what you’re stuffing my display racks with, or I’m gonna offer my business elsewhere.”

  “Jeez, I’m awful sorry, Mr. DeLuca,” the young man said, scratching his buzzed hair. “I just figured they was all them romance novels, you know, the kind like all the housewives read?”

  “Well, this isn’t romance, Mr. Wentworth,” Mr. DeLuca said, raising a book to the young man’s nose. “This is filth, deviant filth, and I will not have it in my store. Women Without Men.” He scoffed. “Families and kids and little old ladies shop here, for Pete’s sake.”

  “I understand, sir, and I can assure you it will never happen again.”

  Beatrice exhaled as she tossed a package of bath soap between her hands. Deviant. The word hung in the air like a pungent odor as she absorbed its full meaning. She recalled hearing it used before and not in a very pleasant context. It was probably best she didn’t grab another book anyway. What if this time she’d been caught stealing? What if she’d been discovered with it at home?

  While Mr. DeLuca was still berating the book vendor, Beatrice hurried over to Sally at the cash register about her mother’s Valium prescription. Sally, with her soft, wrinkly face that smelled of dusting powder, was too nice to care if her mother’s account was past due.

  *

  Beatrice’s pace walking home was slower than her stroll to the drugstore from work. For some reason, she didn’t want to go home yet. Mr. DeLuca’s disgust over the type of literature she found intriguing stuck in her throat. The feeling suddenly reminded her of the jeering faces of the girls from her senior-year gym class. She swallowed a lump as she recalled the incident in the girls’ locker room in April that capped off an anxious year of whispers and innuendo.

  Shelly Pinkerton sauntered over to the corner where Beatrice was tying her red PF-Flyers and planted her hip into the locker.

  “Say, Bea, none of us gals can figure out why you won’t go to the senior dance with Frank DeFelice when he’s so dreamy.”

  Beatrice had been preparing for the ambush since she’d observed Shelly and Margaret Lowell hovering by the showers as she dressed.

  “He’s a nice fellow, just not my type,” she replied coolly.

  “Then who are you going with?” Shelly asked.

  Beatrice shrugged.

  “Didn’t you say the same thing about Charlie Cole and Tom Gaffney?” A small flock of girls gathered as Margaret questioned her.

  “What’s the matter, Bea? Are you too good for the fellas at Cross?” Shelly’s question was more of a statement.

  Beatrice kept her head low, taking extra time to double knot her laces. She recalled the one family trip they’d taken years earlier to Ocean Beach in New London. As they swam in the open waters of the Atlantic, she’d asked her father about sharks.

  “Don’t worry about them, Bea,” he’d said. “As long as they don’t smell blood, they’ll leave you alone.
”

  But at that moment, the sharks were drawn to the aroma of something.

  “Maybe she’s a cold fish,” Margaret said, and the collective laughter was piercing in the acoustics of locker-room tile and steel.

  “Are you a cold fish?” Jackie Milner asked, emerging from the mob to poke Beatrice in the arm. “Yep, cold and fishy.” She screeched with laughter.

  Several other girls joined in the poking. Beatrice stood up, but as hard as she tried, she couldn’t keep her boiling blood from spreading into rosy blotches across her face and neck.

  “Leave me alone,” she shouted, but no one was listening.

  Margaret taunted her. “Maybe our boys here aren’t classy enough for a snob like Beatrice.”

  “No, they’re not tall enough. A giraffe like Bea probably gets a crick in her neck looking down all the time,” Shelly said, and the pack roared with laughter.

  An anonymous voice assailed her from the crowd. “Maybe she doesn’t like boys.”

  Beatrice’s heart pounded even harder. “Of course I do.”

  “Maybe she’s afraid because she’s never been kissed,” Shelly added.

  Laughter erupted again, and then came the familiar chorus of chants.

  “Beatrice, Beatrice, the only girl at Cross who’s never been kissed.”

  On and on went the song with the exuberance of a spiritual at a revival meeting.

  “Shut up,” Beatrice yelled. “Just shut up, all of you.” She shoved past them and ran out into the hall, resolved not to give them the satisfaction of tears.

  The mob continued shouting their mantra until she could detect only a faint rumble of laughter still emanating from the locker room.

  She shook the horrid image from her mind as she climbed the four flights of stairs to her family’s apartment.