by Orrie Hitt
She had known that her father would ridicule the school. Everything had to be big with Otis Markey. Houses had to be big, cars had to be big, and money had to be big. Nothing small made any sense to him.
"Frank wanted to come," he said. "He came to the house four times and insisted on driving up with me, but I told him that I better not."
"I'm glad you didn't."
"I told him you were having your fling and that you'd get over it soon. He's waiting it out for you."
Frank, she decided, could keep right on waiting. She had found the man she had wanted. But she had lost him. What was the matter with her? What was wrong with Jerry? She was pretty, as pretty as any of the other girls, but now he wouldn't have anything to do with her. Maybe the old belief that said not to let a man have his way was right, after all. But she knew she would do the same thing again if she had the choice. That moment in the cabin had been one of beauty; it had awakened in her the woman that had been there sleeping all these years. She could look at Helen and not desire her. She could look at Helen and want her only as a friend. She felt sorry for her because she was that way, and felt sorry for herself because she had been a part of it.
"I asked you in my letter not to drive the Caddy," Peggy said. "But I should have known you would do it anyway."
"What's wrong with the Caddy?"
"You've seen the other people here. They don't have very much."
"You think I'm rubbing it in?"
"A little."
Otis Markey stared intently at a girl in a tight-fitting red dress.
"You have to get used to money," he said. "You have to realize that money is power and that people respect power." He looked around the room. "My God, isn't there a drink in the place?" he demanded.
"Not here."
He looked disgusted. "Let's get out of here and get some liquor," he said. "I'm as dry as dust after that trip."
"I see you're still drinking as much as ever."
"I drink because I can afford it. And also for the hell of it."
Peggy recalled the brandy at the cabin. She couldn't understand how anybody could drink and still think straight.
"There's a girl going with us," she said. "We have to wait for her."
"Oh?"
"Helen Lee. Her parents aren't here and I promised we'd take her along."
Other parents were now arriving and the living room began to fill with people. Thelma Reid introduced herself to everybody. She laughed a lot and kept shouting for Jerry to bring in more chairs from the dining room.
"Who's Jerry?" Otis Markey asked.
"He works here."
"Well, he keeps looking at you all the time."
"Does he?"
"Yes. And you keep looking at him. What goes on with you two?"
"Nothing."
"There better not be. Frank is a good boy."
Peggy felt suddenly angry.
"Don't I have a right to love anybody except Frank Taylor?"
"Of course, you have the right—if he's in our class."
"What class is that?"
"Money."
"You didn't always have money."
"But I do now. And that's what counts. When you're poor you marry poor, but when you're rich you have to marry rich."
"Nothing like being a snob."
"Or being practical."
Mrs. Reid came over to them and Peggy's father asked how his daughter was getting along. Mrs. Reid said she was doing fine, just fine. Peggy, feeling left out of things, watched Jerry bring in chairs from the dining room. He did look at her but he didn't smile. She wished that he would smile at her so that she would feel wanted again. Not the way he had wanted her out at the lake. Peggy ached to be wanted for herself alone.
Suddenly, almost every head turned. Helen was coming down the open stairs. She was wearing a tight blue dress cut very low in front, caught with a tiny bow between her two high breasts. Her movements were like those of a cat walking over hot coals. Somebody let their breath out in a rush. Peggy looked to see who it was. It was her father.
"Hi," Helen said to Peggy. "Your dad get here yet?"
"Yes."
She made the introductions but she wasn't quite sure of what she said. She hadn't wanted Helen to dress in so revealing and sexually attractive a way. A skirt and a blouse would have been better.
"Driest place this side of prohibition," her father was saying. "Would you care for a drink, Miss Lee?"
"Call me Helen."
"Well—Helen?"
"I wouldn't mind," Helen said. "But I forgot my coat I'll have to get it."
Helen made the same sort of exit from the room as her entrance. Her hips were trim and rounded, and her legs were long and straight.
"She's a looker," Otis Markey said.
"Dad!"
"Can I help it if she looks like that?"
"She's a nice girl."
"I didn't say she wasn't."
"Well, see that you don't act like you think she isn't."
They drove uptown to a bar on South Adams Street, an expensive place with deep-cushioned seats and enough waiters to man a fair-sized sea-going ship.
"You pay for the atmosphere," Otis Markey said. He grinned, and he wasn't looking at the tablecloth. "But when don't you pay for the atmosphere?"
"You don't pay for it at Cooper Community College," Helen said.
"That's because there isn't any."
She laughed. "You're right."
The waiter, who had been ignored, stood patiently by, waiting.
"It isn't so bad," Peggy said. "They teach you what you're supposed to know and that's what you're supposed to go to college to get.
"Hell," her father said. He glanced up at the waiter. "Who's first?" he asked.
"I'll take a stinger," Helen said.
Peggy's father nodded his approval.
"Sounds good to me. And you, Peggy?"
"Ginger ale."
"She doesn't drink," Otis Markey said. "Can you imagine me having a daughter who doesn't drink?"
"I know she doesn't drink," Helen said. "She never would."
"Silly. A few never hurt anybody."
"That's what I say."
Things got off to a bad start and they stayed that way. Helen and Peggy's father drank stingers, kept on saying that they ought to go out to the college if they were ever going to go, and Helen's dress continued to get lower and lower in front. She pulled the dress up a couple of times, but whenever she laughed it slid down again. She finally left it where it was. Peggy began to wish that her father had never come, and that she hadn't invited Helen to go with them.
"You and Peggy room together?" Otis Markey wanted to know.
"We used to, yes."
"I'll bet it was fun."
Helen's eyes and voice were filled with meaning when she replied, "It was fun."
"We should be getting out to the college."
"If you want to."
"I don't want to," Otis Markey said. "What do I care about going out to that stinking little college? It's you girls I'm thinking of. You're supposed to be there, aren't you?"
"There's no rule about it," Helen said.
The waiter hovered over the table and Peggy refused another ginger ale. How much could a person drink, anyway? She had ordered a glass for every round of stingers, and felt almost bloated. She wondered where her father and Helen could possibly put so much liquor.
"Let's go, Dad," Peggy said. She tried a laugh and the result was a little weak. "I want you to show up sober."
"I'm sober," her father said belligerently.
"Of course, you are."
"And so is Helen. She's plenty sober. This girl friend of yours can drink with the best. She still holds her own like a lady."
Helen smiled.
"Old sponge, they call me," she said.
"I'll bet."
"Old sponge with the hollow legs."
Otis Markey lifted the tablecloth and looked under the table.
"T
hey're the nicest hollow legs I ever saw," he said. "And believe me, I've seen a lot of hollow legs."
"A man like you wouldn't be likely to miss a woman's legs."
"Hardly."
"Or anything else."
"There are a couple of things I'm not missing, you can bet your bottom dollar on that." He grinned at her.
Helen laughed. "You're a card," she said. "A real card."
Peggy was disgusted with both of them. Her father was making all the familiar pitches, and Helen was catching every one.
"Another stinger?"
"Another stinger."
"You like to get stung?"
"I don't mind getting stung."
"By the right man, huh?"
"You read my mind, Mr. Markey."
"I thought you were going to call me Otis."
"Otis."
"I sting like a hornet, I do."
"Dad!" Peggy said.
He glanced at her and then away. "You're a puritan," he said. "You always were a puritan. You must have gotten it from your mother."
"I'm not sorry if I did."
"She was the purest woman I ever knew. And what did it get her? Young and dead, that's what." Otis Markey thumped on the table. "Hey, waiter! Buzz around here and sting us again."
When her father went to the men's room eventually Peggy took the opportunity to talk to Helen.
"Leave him alone," she said.
"What?"
"I said, leave him alone."
Helen had opened her compact and was fixing her lipstick.
"Who's bothering who?" she demanded, biting down on a tissue. "I didn't start anything."
"Maybe you didn't, but I told you what he's like. That was why I wanted you to come with us. I didn't expect this."
Helen shrugged.
"So what?"
"I don't like it, that's all."
"He's having fun."
"He's always having fun."
Helen inspected her lips again in the mirror.
"Besides," she said, "he's a nice guy. I don't think you appreciate him."
"But I do."
"You don't show it."
"Because I don't drink?"
"That and other things. You're old enough to know that a man has to horse around a little bit or he doesn't feel like a man."
"He's my father."
"Does that make him any different?"
"Well—"
"Look," Helen said, leaning across the table. "He likes me and I like him. You want us to hate each other?"
"No, but—"
"You stay out of it, then. Just leave us alone."
But Peggy was determined.
"You don't know my father," she said. "A smile and a few drinks means more to him than just that smile and a few drinks.
"It does to a lot of men."
Peggy was confused. "Don't you care?"
"Frankly, no."
"But—"
"But nothing. You keep out of this."
"I don't have to."
"Yes, you do."
"Why?"
Helen smiled and leaned forward slightly. "You were my lover," she said quietly. "Don't forget that. Your father wouldn't think you were so pure if he knew about the hours we spent making love."
Peggy could hardly speak.
"You wouldn't!" she gasped.
"Why wouldn't I? I have everything to gain and nothing to lose."
Caught, Peggy thought; caught in the web she had helped build. She felt angry and amazed, but completely helpless. She wondered, vaguely, if Helen was one of those bisexuals she had read about. She didn't know, and she didn't care. She just wished that she could take back and destroy that one part of her life she had so innocently given.
"I'll never forgive you," Peggy whispered viciously. "Never!"
Helen laughed.
When Otis Markey returned to the table he started telling jokes, and many of them were coarse and vulgar. Peggy didn't so much as smile, but Helen laughed at every one he told. She no longer cared about the ever-lowering front of her dress, and when she spilled some of her drink she let him wipe it away with the edge of a napkin.
"Let's go back to the college," Peggy said. "I'd like you to meet the dean."
"To hell with the dean," her father said and waved for another round of stingers. "A dean in a joint like that couldn't hold down a study hall in a regular college."
"You know it," Helen agreed.
"Well, you go there," Peggy reminded Helen.
"Not through choice."
Peggy had another ginger ale but she couldn't keep up with them. Her father's forehead glistened with perspiration, and Helen's eyes were very bright.
"Let's go somewhere interesting," Helen suggested.
Peggy's father was all for it.
"Where?"
"I don't know. Any place."
"Not out to the college?"
"No. That's for stiffs."
"You get my vote."
Peggy tried to convince them to go out to the school but her efforts met with no success.
"I'll send them a check," her father said. "I'll send them a big fat check and tell them I couldn't find the place, it was so small."
"Dad!"
Her father stood up. "You coming with us?"
"Maybe she doesn't want to," Helen said, getting to her feet. Her face was darkly flushed and she was slightly unsteady.
"It's up to you," Otis Markey said.
"You coming, Peggy?"
"No."
"How will you get back to the house?"
"Don't worry about me. I know where it is."
"You don't have to be nasty about it."
"I can't help that."
After they had gone Peggy remained sitting at the table for a long time. She felt like crying. The very thing for which she had left home had followed her. And what she had done with her own life made the entire situation worse. Did every girl go through the same growing up period? Did every girl experience a twilight love which, even with its share of ugliness, was tinged with a certain indescribable beauty? Some did, she guessed. Many of those were able enough to change in time and become a woman like every other, but others, she knew, remained loving their own sex for the rest of their lives. She was one of the lucky ones.
"Drink, Miss?"
"I don't know."
"You can't just sit here. The boss doesn't like it."
"What do you drink with brandy?"
"Soda, mostly."
"Then bring me a brandy and soda."
When the waiter brought the drink she offered to pay for it but he refused.
"The gentleman left an extra ten. He said to give you anything you wanted."
Money, she thought; money was one of the few things that meant very much to her father. Women and drink were the other things. And he had to have more than his share of all three. He had to have them in huge quantities, and have them constantly. He was like a vulture hunting a desert sky. Anything he saw he took. Anything.
Peggy was on her third drink when she decided to call Jerry. She had to have somebody to talk to, somebody to confide in.
"Hello. Reid's."
The voice belonged to Thelma Reid.
"Could I speak to Jerry?"
"Who is this?"
"Peggy. Peggy Markey."
There was a slight pause.
"I'm sorry," she said. "Jerry isn't here."
"Oh."
She hung up and returned to the table. That had been a foolish thing to do, a very foolish thing. Jerry didn't care about her any more. She had given herself to Jerry at the lake and as soon as that was done she had lost him, lost him forever. But she still did not regret their love-making.
She had found the woman in herself that day, and for this she was grateful. Someday she would find a man, a man like Jerry, and she would love him the way a woman was supposed to love a man. Oh, someday…
Peggy came back to Mrs. Reid's shortly after dark. The living room was em
pty, and when she walked through to the kitchen she found no one in there, either.
She opened the cellar door.
"Jerry!"
Silence greeted her. "Jerry!"
She heard somebody moving around down in the cellar.
"What?"
"Jerry, it's Peggy."
She thought she heard him swear but she couldn't be sure.
"What are you doing here?" he asked. "You're supposed to be at the college."
"My father wouldn't go."
Jerry flipped on a switch and light flooded the cellar. He was at the bottom of the stairs, looking up.
"You're crying," he said gently.
She nodded.
"Is it because of me?"
"Partly."
"Where is your father?"
"He's with Helen Lee."
"That's not so good."
"It was terrible."
He started up the stairs and stopped.
"You can come down," he said.
"What about Mrs. Reid?"
"She went to the college to tell them what a wonderful place she runs."
"Are you sure?"
"That's what she said."
She knew she shouldn't go down there, but she also knew something else. She desperately needed somebody close and understanding.
"All right," she said, going down the steps. "But you're going to hate me."
"I won't hate you," Jerry assured her. "I'll love you."
And he did, wonderfully and violently, there in that little room near the furnace.
"I'm jealous," she said later.
"Of whom?"
"The others."
"Don't be. It was never like this."
"Never?"
"Nor this."
Once more he loved her, completely, fully and magnificently.
Afterward, when she went up to the attic, she hardly noticed the two girls lying in. one bed, wrapped in each other's arms. She felt only something like pity for them. They didn't know what it was all about. They just didn't.
She smiled secretly.
But she did.
CHAPTER 14
The cops were after him and Jerry knew it. He had taken a drink in Mrs. Lopez' apartment and his fingerprints had been found on the glass. The cops were running the owner of the fingerprints down; the paper said they were.
"I didn't know the man," Mrs. Lopez was quoted as saying. "He came to the house, first alone and then with the girl, but he didn't give his name. I don't think they were married and he gave the impression that he was just trying to help her. He gave me the money—three hundred dollars—and left. I didn't ever see him again after that.”
