Passage 8

It was Christmas Eve. They had a fine big tree, freshly green in a sea of lights and tinsel. No honeymoon, as they had hoped; the office couldn’t spare Jack. So they had a party instead.

“I hate those damn pink trees,” Jack had said when they picked theirs out. “Or gold, or white, or whatever-the-hell color they’re making them this year. Give me a nice healthy green.”

They celebrated at the party and Jack drank eggnog without whiskey and Laura was very pleased with him. There was a lovely girl there—unmarried and probably gay. Laura flirted with her in spite of herself.

Jack teased her about it when they met briefly in the kitchen—he to make drinks and she to get more hors d’oeuvres from the refrigerator. “Looks like you got a live one,” he said.

Laura blushed. “Was I too obvious?” she asked, scared.

“No,” he said. “I just have X-ray eyes, remember?”

“I shouldn’t—”

“Oh, hell,” he said with a good-natured wave of his hand. “Flirt, it’s good for you. Just don’t elope with her.” He gave her a grin and went out, holding five highballs precariously. She felt a flush of love for him, watching him.

It was three a.m. Christmas day before they got rid of everybody. Laura threw herself in their expensive new sofa and surveyed the wreckage with a sigh.

“I’m not even going to pick it up,” she said. “I’m not going to touch a thing till morning.”

“That’s the spirit,” Jack said. He fixed them both a cup of coffee, settled down beside her in the rainbow glow of the Christmas tree and took her hand with a sigh of satisfaction.

“That’s the first goddam Christmas tree I ever had,” he said. And when she laughed he protested solemnly, “Honest. And this is the first Christmas that ever meant anything to me.” He turned his head, resting against the back of the sofa, and smiled at her....

“You shouldn’t swear at Christmas,” Laura told him.

He gazed at her for a while and then asked, “Are you in love with Kristi? Wasn’t that her name?”

“Yes, it was her name. No, I’m not in love. With anybody.”

“Me?”

“Oh, you. That’s different.”

She smiled a little and sipped her coffee, and then she leaned back on the sofa beside him, absorbed in the soft sparkle of the tree.

Jack was still watching her. “Laura?” he said in an exploratory voice.

“Hm?”

“What would you think of adopting a child?”

She stared at a golden pine cone, her face suddenly a cautious blank. “I don’t know,” she said.

“Have you ever thought about it?”

“A little.”

“What did you think?”

“I told you. Kids scare me.”

He bit his underlip, frowning. “I want one,” he said at last. “Would you be willing to—have one?”

“You mean—” She swallowed. “—get pregnant?”

“Yes,” he said, smiling at her outraged face. “Oh, don’t worry, Mother. We’d do it the easy way.”

“There is no easy way!” she fired at him. “What way?”

He took a long drag on his cigarette and answered, “Artificial insemination.” She gasped, but he went on quickly, “Now before you get your dander up let me explain. I’ve thought it all out. Either we could adopt one, or—and this would be much better—we could have one. Our own. We can tell the Doc we’ve had trouble and let him try the insemination. There’s nothing to it, it doesn’t take five minutes. It doesn’t hurt. And if it worked ... God! Our own kid. You wouldn’t be afraid of your own, honey.”

There was a long pause while Laura sweated in silent alarm. Why did he bring it up tonight? Why? When they were so contented and pleased with each other, and the world was such a place of glittering enchantment.

“Couldn’t we wait and talk about it later?” she asked.

“Why not now?”

“Couldn’t I have time to think about it?”

“Sure. Think,” he said and she knew he meant, I’ll give you five minutes to make up your mind.

“Jack, why do we have to do it right now? Why can’t we wait? We’ve only been married five months.”

“I can’t wait very long, Mother,” he said. “I’m forty-five. I don’t want to be an old man on crutches when my kid is growing up.”

“Maybe in the spring,” she said. The idea of becoming a mother terrified her. She had visions of herself hurting the baby, doing everything wrong; visions of her old passion coming on her and shaming them all; selfish thoughts of her beautiful, new, leisurely laziness being ruined.

“What would I ever tell any child of mine if it caught me—with a woman?” she said awkwardly.

“Tell it for Chrissake to knock before entering a room,” he said, and something in his voice and manner told her that he had set his heart on this long ago.

“Would you insist on having a baby, Jack?” she asked him defiantly.

He was looking at the ceiling and he expelled a cloud of blue smoke at it and answered softly, “I want you to be happy, Laura. This marriage is for both of us.”

There was a long silence. “I think I would hate myself if I ever got pregnant,” she said, ashamed of her vanity but clinging to it stubbornly. “God, how awful. All those aches and pains and months of looking like hell, and for what? What if the baby weren’t normal? What if I couldn’t be a good mother to it?”

He shrugged and then he said, “All right. We’ll adopt one. That way at least we can be sure of getting a girl.”

Laura wrung her hands together in a nervous frenzy. The last thing she wanted to do was hurt Jack. And yet she could feel the dogged one-mindedness in him, feel his enormous desire.

“A man needs a child,” he said softly. “So does a woman. That’s the whole reason for life. There is no other.” And he glanced up at her and all the Christmas lights reflected on the lenses of his glasses. “We can’t live our lives just for ourselves,” he said. “Or we live them for nothing. We die, monuments to selfishness.... I want a child, Laura.”

“Is that why you married me?” she asked with sudden sharpness, feeling as if he had cornered her.

“I married you because I love you,” he said.

“Then why do you keep badgering me about a child?” she demanded.

“This is the first time I’ve mentioned it since we got married,” he reminded her gently.

“You act as if just because you want one it’s all settled,” she said, and surprised herself by bursting into tears. He took her in his arms, abandoning his cigarette, and said, “No, honey, nothing’s settled. But think about it, Laura. Think hard.”

They sat that way, hugging each other and watching the Christmas tree, letting the cigarette slowly burn itself out, and they didn’t mention it again. But from that moment on it was very big between them, unspoken but felt.

* * *

Jack did not mention a child to her again for a while. But as the weeks slipped by Laura began to feel a growing dissatisfaction. She didn’t know where it came from or what it meant. At home, in the apartment, it was shapeless. Outside it took the shape of girls. When she went out for groceries or to shop or to have dinner with Jack, she found herself looking around hopefully, gazing a little too boldly, desiring. Jack saw it too before long, but he said nothing.

Laura felt selfish, and she didn’t like the feeling. She blamed it on Jack. It made her want to get away from him for a bit. And soon the wish crystallized in her mind to a desire for the Village, and began to haunt her.

She knew she ought to tell Jack she wanted to go. He would never stand in her way, as long as she was there at night to cook his meals and be a fond companion to him. As long as she let him in on it and kept it clean.

But she was embarrassed. She didn’t want to tell him and see his disappointment and know she was so much weaker than he. So she kept it secret and let it fester inside her until it had grown, by March, to a great, irritating problem.

Then, one fine, sunny morning in the first week of spring, the phone rang.

It’ll be Ginny Winston, she thought. One of their neighbors. She’ll want to go shopping again. I guess we might as well, it’ll keep me out of trouble. Ginny was thirty-five, a widow, a nice girl but hopelessly man-happy.

Laura grabbed the receiver after the fourth ring. “Hello?” she said.

“Laura? How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. Who’s this?”

“Terry.”

“Terry who?” She gasped suddenly. “Terry! Terry Fleming?”

“Yes.” He chuckled. “Guess how I found you?”

She hung up. She just slammed the phone down in place and stood there shaking. Then she sat down and cried, waiting for the thing to start ringing again. She had no doubt it would.

It did. She picked it up again, and before he could say anything she told him, “I don’t care how you found us. I don’t want you around here. Don’t you come near this place Terry, or I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do. You can’t, you mustn’t. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” he said, astonished. “What’s the matter?”

“Didn’t you get my letter?” she asked him.

“Sure. You’re married. Congratulations, I always thought it’d happen. You got a great guy there, Laur. I wish I had him.” And he laughed pleasantly.

“Terry, you’re incredible,” she said. “I don’t want you to come near Jack. That’s final.”

“Go on,” he laughed. “I thought I’d come over this afternoon.”

“You can’t!” She felt as she did in nightmares when she tried to talk and no one could hear her. She felt as if all her words fell on deaf ears.

“Sure I can. I thought we’d—”

“Look, Terry, I’m not going to tell him you’re in town,” she said, fighting a nerve-rasping frustration with him. “I’m just going to let it go, and I’m telling you right now that if you show up over here it’ll hurt him more than he can stand. You broke his heart and that should be enough for you. You won’t get any more of him!” She felt fiercely protective and loving, now that their life together seemed threatened. She would fight Terry every way she knew. And yet she had to admit to herself that Terry had more to fight with than she if it ever came to a showdown. That was why it was so important to keep him away.

Jack was a very sensual man and he had been deeply in love with Terry. He still was, in spite of everything. His love for Laura was different; strong, she was sure, but could it stand up to a sudden white-hot blast of passion?

“You sound real bitter, Laura,” Terry said reproachfully. “I thought you were sort of kidding in your letter.”

“I’ve never been more serious, Terry. Stay away from us!” She hung up again. When she took her hand away there was a ring of wet on the black handle. She cried all day, feeling angry and helpless.

Jack got home at five, but she told him nothing. She was gentle and solicitous with him in a way he had missed for a couple of months. She read to him and she chatted with him, and underneath it all was a tremulous fear of disaster that made her feel a great tenderness for him. He seemed vulnerable to her. If she betrayed him she would embitter him more than she was able to imagine. The thought was terrifying.

“Mother, you need a change,” he said when they had finished dinner.

“I do?”

“Leave the dishes and scram.”

She felt a little spark of fear. “Are you kicking me out?” she asked.

“I sure as hell am, you doll,” he said. “Get thee hence.”

“Where?” His laughter relieved her.

“The Village. Where else?” And when she stared at him, wordless, he added, “You need it, honey. You’re nervous as a cat. Go on, have a ball.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I’ll give you three minutes to get out of here,” he said with a glance at his watch.

Laura hesitated for a few seconds until he looked at her over the top of the paper again and then she ran, heels ringing staccato on the polished wood floor of the hall, and got her coat and purse. On the way out she stooped to kiss his cheek.

“Jack, I adore you,” she whispered, to which he only smiled. At the door she turned and said, “I’ll be home early.”

“No curfew,” he said solemnly.

Laura went first to the Cellar, a favorite hangout in Greenwich Village. The tourists had begun to stop there by this time, but the gay crowd outnumbered them still and it wasn’t primarily a trap. The prices were reasonable and the decor smoky.

Laura settled at the bar with a sigh of sheer pleasure. All she wanted to do was sit there quietly and look at them ... those lovely girls, dozens of them, with ripe lips and rounded hips in tight pants or smooth skirts. And the big ones, the butches, who acted like men and expected to be treated as such. They were the ones who excited Laura the most, when it came right down to it. Women, women ... she loved them all, especially the big girls with the firm strides and the cigarettes in their mouths.... She realized with chagrin that she was thinking of Beebo.

God, what if she’s here? she thought with a wonderful scare running up her spine. She looked around, but Beebo was nowhere in sight.

I wonder if she has a job, poor darling. I wonder if Lili’s still supporting her. I wonder if she’s still drinking so much ... if she thinks of me at all.... Oh, what’s the matter with me? What do I care? She nearly drove me crazy!

She thought of Tris suddenly, of that marvelous fragrant tan skin. In fact she indulged in an orgy of suggestive thoughts that would have driven her crazy cooped up at home. But here, surrounded with people who felt and thought much as she did, it was all right. It was safe somehow. She could even spend the evening flirting with somebody, if anybody caught her eye, and it would come to no harm. Just a night’s outing. Nothing more.

Tris ... Tris ... she would never show up in a place like this. She’d shun it like the plague. All the same it would be nice. So nice.

But the harder Laura concentrated on Tris the more insistently Beebo obsessed her. Laura shrugged her off and ordered another drink. She laughed a little to herself and said, But I don’t love her at all any more. And she turned to talk to the girl beside her.

The girl was very charming: small and curly-headed and pretty, and she laughed a lot. And soon Laura was laughing with her and learned that Inga was her name. But that face, that damned face of Beebo’s, strong and handsome and hard with too much living, kept looking at her through the haze of Inga’s cigarette.

“Did you ever have somebody plague your thoughts, Inga?” she asked her abruptly. “Somebody you’d nearly forgotten and weren’t in love with any more, and never really were in love with?”

“What’s her name?” Inga asked sympathetically.

“Oh, nobody you’d know.” She was fairly sure Inga would know, if she frequented the Cellar. If she’d hung around the Village long enough she’d know most of the characters by sight, if not personally. Beebo was one of the characters. And she had been around here for fourteen years. “How long have you lived down here?” Laura asked the girl.

“Two years next month.”

Long enough, Laura thought.

“I’ll bet I know her. She ever come in here? Come on, tell me,” Inga said.

“I can’t.”

“You’re silly, then. I’ll clue you in on something, Laura. If you can’t get her off your mind it’s because you can’t get her out of your heart. That sounds corny but it’s true. I found out the hard way. Believe me.”

Laura shook her head. “I never loved her,” she said positively.

“You’re fooling yourself, sweetie.”

Laura looked at her, bemused. “I’m in love with somebody else,” she said, thinking of Tris.

“Me?” Inga grinned.

“No. No, an Indian girl.”

“Indian? What’s her name?”

“Tris.”

“Tris! Gee, I do know her. She comes in here a lot.”

Laura stared at her, too shocked to answer for a minute. Finally she said hoarsely, “Tris would never come in here. She hates gay bars. I know that for a fact.”

“Well....” Inga looked as if she knew she had put her foot in her mouth and regretted it. “Maybe it’s a different Tris.”

“What’s her last name?”

“Robischon, or something. Something Frenchy. I think she made it up myself. But she’s a gorgeous girl. I was really smitten when I saw her.”

Laura blanched a little and ordered another drink and drank it down fast, and Inga laid a hand on her arm. “Gee, I’m sorry, Laura,” she said. “Me and my big mouth. I should learn to shut up. But I’m in here all the time. I come in after work and I see just about everybody—”

“I know, I know. It’s okay, Inga.” She ordered another drink. “I’d rather know than not,” she said. “Besides, I haven’t seen the girl for eight months. It’d be pretty strange if nobody found out about her in eight months. She’s beautiful.”

“That she is. Somebody’s found out, all right. A lot of people, I hear.”

“Does she come in here alone?” The whole thing seemed incredible to Laura. Tris! So aloof, so chilly, so much better than the rest of the gay crowd. Tris, who wouldn’t go near Fire Island for a summer vacation because it was “crawling with queers.” It just couldn’t be. But Inga certainly wasn’t describing anybody else.

“She comes with somebody else,” Inga said reluctantly. “Look, sweetie, why don’t you come over to my place and have a nightcap. We can’t talk in here.”

“I’d like to know, Inga. Tell me. Who does she come in with?” Laura turned and looked at her, swiveling slowly on her stool, a little tipsy and feeling suddenly as if the situation were something of a joke.

“Oh ... a big gal. Been around the Village for years. You might know her. Beebo Brinker’s her name.”

Laura sat there frozen for nearly a minute. It was a joke—colossal, cruel, hilarious. She laughed uncertainly and ordered another drink.

“I knew you were going to say that,” she told Inga. “Isn’t that the damnedest thing? Isn’t that the goddamnedest thing?” And she began to laugh again, repeating, when she could get her breath, “I knew you were going to say that.” Inga had to slap her face to stop the shrieking, irrepressible giggles that were strangling her. Then Laura’s laughter changed, in the space of a breath, to tears.

Inga talked to her quietly with that odd intimacy that springs up between homosexuals in trouble, and it helped. After five or six minutes Laura wiped her eyes and drank her drink and let Inga help her out of the Cellar. A few curious eyes followed them and Laura prayed again that nobody she knew had seen her.

The cold air braced her a little, and she stood on the corner weaving slightly and trying to get her bearings.

“Come on,” Inga said. “Let’s get some hot coffee into you. I live just a couple of blocks from here. Come on.”

Laura let herself be led by the diminutive curly-head, but when she saw they were headed for Cordelia Street she began to get scared. “Beebo lives near here,” she said, hanging back. “I mean—she used to.”

“She still does,” Inga said. “I see her now and then. I live right over there.” She pointed.

Laura brushed the girl’s hand from her sleeve and turned to her. “Thanks, Inga,” she said. “Thanks anyway, but I think I’ll....” And her eyes wandered back into Cordelia Street.

Inga followed her gaze, catching the idea. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” she said. “You’ll be real sorry the minute you get there.” When Laura didn’t answer she asked, “Tell me, which one of them is it?”

“Which one?”

“That you just can’t get off your mind?”

Laura looked back up the street where she used to live and said softly, “Beebo. It’s crazy, isn’t it? Beebo. And it’s Tris I’m in love with.”

“Yeah,” said Inga with kindly skepticism. “Sure.... Have some coffee with me?”

Laura leaned over on a whim and kissed her cheek. “That’s for being a woman,” she said. “You don’t know what a help it’s been.”

Inga stood on the corner and watched Laura walk away from her. “Any time you want that coffee, Laura,” she called. “I’m in the phone book.”

* * *

Laura stood in front of the door into her old apartment building for a long while on trembling legs before she turned the knob and walked in.

What if they’re together? she wondered. They’ll just grab me and wring my neck. God, all those questions Tris used to ask me about Beebo. And it never entered my love-sick head!

She crossed the little inner court to the second door, opened it, and went to the row of mailboxes to press the buzzer. She found Beebo’s name, with her own crossed out beneath it but no other added. And a weird, wonderful panic grabbed her throat at the thought of Beebo.

She left the buzzer without pressing it and walked up the flight of stairs to stand in front of the door that had once been her own, with Beebo still swimming before her eyes.

She could picture her more and more clearly: wearing pants and going barefoot, tired at the end of the day and maybe a little high; a cigarette in her mouth and a towel tied around her middle while she did dishes or cleaned up the apartment; the smooth skin on her face and the handsome features that used to fire Laura’s imagination and make her tingle; the tired eyes, blue and brilliant and somehow a little sick of it all ... except when they focused on Laura.

Laura remembered how it had been and a sudden flash of physical longing caught her heart and squeezed until she felt her breath come short. She stared at the door, afraid to knock and still hypnotized with curiosity. Her hand was raised, quivering, only inches from the green painted wood.

Tris will open it, she thought, and together they’ll strangle me. Oddly, she didn’t care. She was too tight to care. She had a vision of herself falling into their arms and succumbing without a struggle. Just letting them have her life, her mixed-up, aimless, leftover life.

She knocked—a quick scared rap, sharp and clear. And then stood there on one foot and the other, half panicky like a grade-schooler nearly ready to wet her pants and flee.

Footsteps. High heels. From the kitchen, Beebo’s voice. “Who the hell could that be? After ten, isn’t it?” Oh, that voice! That husky voice that used to whisper such things to me that I can never forget.

The door swung open all at once, ushering a flood of light into the hall. Laura looked up slowly ... at Lili! The two of them stared at each other in mutual amazement for a moment. And while they stared, mute, Beebo called again, “Who is it, Lili?”

Lili, her candy-box pretty face overlaid with too much makeup, as usual, broke into a big smile. “It’s Laura!” she exclaimed. “I’ll be goddamned. Laura!”

For a tense moment Laura could feel Beebo’s shock across the rooms and through the walls like a physical touch. Then her courage melted—fizzled into nothing like water on a hot skillet, and she turned and ran.

She heard Beebo at the door, before she got out into the court, saying, “Let her go, Lili. If she thinks I’m going to chase her twice—” And that was all Laura got of it. It shot through her heart like a bullet.

Laura reached the door to the street, tore it open, and rushed out. But once there, with the door shut behind her and no sound of pursuing footsteps, she collapsed against the wall and wept. Between sobs, when she could get her breath, she listened ... listened ... for the running feet that would mean Beebo had changed her mind. Laura had to believe, at least for a minute, that Beebo would come after her. Because it was all tied up in her mind with Beebo loving her. If Beebo loved her she’d chase her. It was that simple. And it didn’t matter a damn what Laura might have done to Beebo in the past, or how she might have hurt her.

Tris! she thought. I’ve got to see her! She said this to herself very urgently, but curiously, at the same time, she felt no desire to go and find the lovely tormented dancer. She told herself it would be all fight and misery. But in her heart of hearts she knew that real love would brave that misery now, being so close and so starved for passion.

She stood there for fully fifteen minutes before she was able to pull herself together and walk to Seventh Avenue. She went straight home in a cab.

Laura walked slowly up the stairs to her apartment. It was after eleven now, and Jack would be in bed. She had had too much to drink, but she was sober, a tired, bewildered sort of sobriety that made her want to lie down and weep and rest.

In the morning she would tell it all to Jack. Wonderful Jack. He would coax her back to living, coax her with his wit and his compassion and his incredible patience with her. And she would lie in a welter of dejection and let him work on her until she felt like lifting her head from the pillow and raising the shade from the window and going on with life. It was one of the things she loved him for and needed him for the most—this ability to revive her when she was so low that only death was lower.

Tonight was perhaps not quite that bad. But it was bad enough to have exhausted her. And Tris and Beebo! That had been the cruelest blow; the one she should have foreseen clear as a beacon in a black sea. She shoved a trembling key into the lock and walked into the apartment.

It was warm and well-lighted. It was pretty and it was comfortable. It was home. And Laura felt a sort of gratitude to Jack that needed words. She went to find him. But he wasn’t in the living room, nor in the bedroom.

She stood on the threshold of the bedroom and said, “Jack? Hey, Jack! Where are you?”

“Here,” he said from the kitchen.

“Oh. It’s me. I thought you’d be in bed.” She slipped her coat off while she walked through the living room to find him. “Hi,” she said. He was sitting on a kitchen chair and he answered, “Hi.”

Laura stood in the doorway and looked at him. And he stared back at her, and she knew something was wrong but she didn’t know what. Her long fine hair had come loose when she ran from Beebo and she reached up and pulled it down in a shimmering cascade, watching Jack all the while through narrowed eyes.

“Have fun?” he asked.

“Beebo and Tris ... are ... shacking up.” She threw it at him point-blank. She wanted his sympathy.

Jack put his head back and laughed, that awful bitter laugh she hadn’t heard for months, and she knew with a sudden start of fear and pity that he was drunk. “That makes everything perfect,” he said, still laughing, his eyes wicked and sharp behind the horn rims.

“Jack ...,” she said shakily, coming in to sit beside him and seeing now the whiskey bottle on the table in front of him, two-thirds empty. “Jack, darling.” She took his hands and her eyes were big with alarm.

Jack took his hands back. Not roughly, but as if he simply didn’t want to be touched. Not by Laura, anyway.

“Mother, you are a living doll. If I had known you could keep secrets so well I’d have told you a few,” he said. He spoke, as always when he was drunk, with a slow precision, as if each word were a stepping stone.

“Secrets?” Laura said.

“You are the living picture of guilt, my dear,” he said. “It is written all over your beautiful face.”

Laura put her hands over that face suddenly with a gasp. “Terry!” she sobbed through clenched teeth. “Terry! If I hadn’t gone out he wouldn’t have come.”

“He comes when the mood hits him,” Jack said. “Which is most of the time, most anywhere. It had nothing to do with you going out, my little wifey.”

Laura looked up, her delicate face mottled pink and white and wet from the eyes down. “He wrote—”

“Indeed he did. He told me the whole romantic story.”

“Jack, darling, I only kept it secret because I was afraid you’d—you’d start drinking, or something—I—”

“You hit the nail on the head. I’m indebted to you. Your solicitude is exemplary.” He waved the fast-emptying bottle at her.

“Oh, shut up! Shut up! I love you. I did it because I love you.”

“You opened my mail because you love me?” He continued to drink while he talked ... slowly, but steadily.

“I knew it was from him, Jack. I just had a feeling. The handwriting and everything.”

He laughed ruefully. “Just think what you’ve spared me!” he said. “I can drink in peace now. My wife loves me. Thanks, wife.” He saluted her.

Laura slid off her chair to her knees and put her arms around him, still crying. “Jack, Jack, please forgive me. I’ll do anything, I couldn’t bear to hurt you, I’d die first. Oh, please—”

“You’re forgiven,” he interrupted her. “Why not?” And he kept on laughing. But his pardon was so light, so biting, that she cringed from it. She lifted her face to him, streaming with tears, and he said, smiling at her, “You make a lovely picture, Mother. Sort of Madonna-like. If I could paint you, I’d paint you. Black, I think. From head to toe.”

She put her head down on his knees and said softly, “You’ll never forgive me, will you?”

“I already have.”

“Never,” she whispered, stricken.

“Oh, let’s not get maudlin,” he said. “I admit I would have been grateful for a little forewarning. But after all, it’s a simple question of sex. Maybe I should get rid of mine. That would solve everything.” And his soft, insane chuckling underlined everything he said.

Laura felt terror then. It rose and fell inside her like nausea. Whenever she looked at Jack it surged in her throat. It wasn’t the sweet guilty thrill of coming near Beebo that had cost her such sensual pain earlier in the evening.

“Jack, darling,” she said.

“Yes, Laura darling.” And the sarcasm burned her. But she went on, determined, raising herself back into her chair again with effort.

“Tell me what happened. Tell me everything.”

“Oh, it was dandy,” he said. “You should have been here. Incidentally, he asked about your health.” Laura couldn’t watch him while he talked. She looked at her hands. And all the while he told her about it she kept thinking, If only I hadn’t gone out tonight. Every time I do something completely selfish I suffer for it. And so does he. Damn Terry! Damn him to hell! He won’t ruin Jack, I won’t let him. This is once he won’t have his way.

* * *

It had been so completely unexpected, so startling, that Jack would never forget it or recover from it. Terry was as far removed from his life as if he were dead. And his life, Jack felt, had become a good thing at last. He had Laura to live for, not a wild, irresistible, good-for-nothing boy who wore him out and broke his heart and his bankroll. He had a new stature in the world as a married man, a new security. And the sweet hope of a child someday....

When he heard the bell ring, almost an hour after Laura had gone out, he took it for a neighbor and stood with the front door open while the elevator ascended. But when Terry stepped out, Jack was speechless. He couldn’t believe it, and he would have slammed the door and passed it off as a nightmare if he could have moved a little faster.

But Terry caught him and from then on it was as degrading and overwhelming as it had ever been. Jack put up the best fight he could, but it was little more than a gesture of protest. He was helplessly angry, helplessly infatuated. And all the while Terry prated to him of San Francisco and the Beats and the fog and the styles in clothes and the styles in love-making, Jack kept wondering, How did he find me? And the answer was, had to be, Laura. Laura had failed him. Betrayed him. It almost tore him apart.

Terry didn’t leave until nearly eleven, and Jack saw him out, still with the feeling that it hadn’t happened, that it was all an incredible dream. It wasn’t until he got the bottle and began to drink that he believed in it at all. By the time Laura got home he wished the whole damned world to hell, with himself first in line.

* * *

“And that’s all,” Jack said. “Naturally, the only thing to do after he left was get drunk.” He had nearly finished the bottle and it was all he could do to get the words out. They left his mouth slowly, discreetly, each one a pearl of over-articulation.

Laura took away what was left—a shot or two at the most—and he didn’t even try to protest. She helped him up and half dragged, half carried him to the bedroom, where she dumped him on his bed. He was unconscious the minute she pushed his head down on the pillow. Laura undressed him, tears running down her face.

“Sleep,” she said. “Sleep and forget it for a while. I’ll make it up to you, darling. All I wanted tonight was to cry on your shoulder. And you can’t even hold yourself up.”

She dragged and shoved and pulled until she got him under the covers. “He won’t get you, Jack,” she whispered. “You’d fight for me if I were in trouble. And I’ll fight for you.”

* * *

In the morning, Laura got up, moving softly as a bird on the sand, and left him to himself in the bedroom, still noisily and miserably asleep with a full-blown, brutal hangover brewing under his closed eyes.

She had to make it up to him, redeem herself. And she could only think of one thing. So before noon she called Terry and asked him to dinner.

“Sounds great,” he said in innocent surprise and pleasure. “I was counting on mooching from you,” he admitted, laughing.

When Jack woke up she told him what she had done. She waited until he had had four cups of coffee and eight aspirins and some forced warm milk and raw egg. He said nothing but “No. No! No!” to whatever she was trying to get into him. He sat in the kitchen with his head in his hands, and Laura began to fear he was still a little drunk. She had thrown out the rest of the whiskey.

“Where’s the bottle?” he asked her finally, around the middle of the afternoon.

“Gone. I tossed it.”

He nodded painfully, resigned.

“Jack,” she said softly. “Terry’s coming to dinner.”

He lifted his throbbing head to gape at her. “Are you trying to kill me, Mother? Or just drive me nuts?” he said.

“I’m going to save you. Save us,” she said passionately. “We’re at the crossroads, Jack. This is the first real crisis we’ve had. We can’t just fall apart. We have too much to save, too much worth saving. We have love, too, and I’m not going to let him hurt you any more.” Somehow in the strength she found to fight Jack’s battle was the strength to fight her own. The downright shock and humiliation of finding that her two ex-lovers were romancing might have thrown her into a full-blown depression. But now she hadn’t time. It was Jack’s turn. She loved him, she was absolutely sure of that. She was not absolutely sure she loved Tris any more. Nor was she sure now that she didn’t love Beebo. Jack was her security, her chosen life; he deserved her loyalty.

But to her chagrin, her noble speech had very little effect on him. He got out of his chair with much agonized effort, making a face, and headed for the coat closet.

“Where are you going?” she asked anxiously, running after him.

“For a bottle.”

“Oh, Jack, no!”

He turned to face her, sliding awkwardly into his coat sleeves. “Do you want me to go through this sober?”

“Darling, you don’t even have to look at him! You can lock yourself in the john and sing hymns if you want to. I just want to talk to him.”

“About the weather?”

“I’ll get him out of here, I swear I will!”

“How? With a can opener? TNT?” He was moving toward the door as he spoke with Laura clinging to his arm and trying to hold him back.

“Darling, trust me!” she begged. She was not at all sure that she could get Terry out again, once he got in, but she had to make Jack calm down. She was frantic to stop him.

“Trust you?” He turned and looked at her uncertainly, his hand on the front door knob, and gave a little snort. “That doesn’t work. I tried it.”

“Oh, you damn, fatuous idiot!” she cried in exasperation, dropping his arm to stamp to the middle of the room and face him from there as if from a podium. “I open one goddam letter—out of love and anxiety—to spare you pain. And the thing backfires. Do you have to crucify yourself? I said I was sorry and I am. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” she yelled.

“Were you born that way?” he snapped.

“Shut up and listen!” she cried. “Jack, let me make it up to you, let me try. You have no right to call yourself my husband if you won’t give me a chance, and I’m telling you right now, Jack Mann, if you won’t I’ll walk out of this house and your life forever.” She paused, flushed and trembling, for breath, while Jack stared at her, surprised, half-convinced, and himself trembling slightly from the hangover.

Finally he went to the arm of the nearest chair and sat down and said, “All right, Wife. Read him the riot act while I sing hymns in the bathroom, if you think it’ll do any good.”

“Oh, Jack.” She ran to him, all pity and tenderness, and kissed his frowning face. He put his head back and ignored her.

Terry arrived at seven, half an hour late, with a huge bouquet of roses for Laura. “For Mrs. Mann,” he said, bowing, and then gave her a quick embrace. “You look great, honey.”

“Thanks,” she said with reserve. “I’ll put them in water.”

“Where’s Jack? Oh, there you are.” Terry made a running jump to the couch where Jack was lying in state, wearing his hangover like a royal robe.

Jack let out all his breath in a wail of anguish when Terry hit him.

“Where did you get the flowers?” Laura asked, coming back in with them arranged in a tall vase.

“Nick’s. On the corner. I had to charge ’em to you, Laur. I hope you don’t mind.” He smiled charmingly. “Your credit’s much better than mine around here.”

Jack laughed softly. “You haven’t changed a bit, have you?” he said to Terry.

Laura sat down and looked at Terry’s bright young face, smiling happily around a mouthful of salted pecans, and wondered if her little trick would work. It had to. But it might not. She felt a little sick, seeing Jack so miserable.

“No drinks?” Terry said, suddenly conscious of the lack of alcohol.

“Milk,” Laura offered.

“Milk punch?” he asked.

“Just bare milk,” Jack drawled.

“What’s the matter with you?” Terry said and laughed at him. “Have a nut.” And he popped one in Jack’s half open mouth. “You aren’t on the wagon, are you?”

“I was,” Jack said. “Till last night.”

“No kidding. God. Amazing. Since when?”

“Since we got married last August. A little before.”

“Laura, how’d you do it?” He grinned at her.

“I didn’t have to,” she said. “The day you walked out of his life all the good things walked in.”

“Including you?” Terry asked.

“Including me,” she shot back.

“Oh.” He smiled ruefully. “I wasn’t that bad, was I?” he asked Jack. He seemed to think it was comfortably funny, like everything else connected with Jack. “Did I drive you to drink, honey?” he said.

“Only on the bad days,” Jack said. “Unfortunately, there weren’t any good days.”

Terry laughed and stuck another nut in Jack’s mouth.

“That’s all,” Jack told him, wincing. “The damn pecans sound like depth charges when I chew.” He stroked his head carefully.

There was a silence while Terry ate, Laura stared at him nervously, and Jack concentrated on his pains. Laura wanted to make Terry uncomfortable, self-conscious. But it was nearly a lost cause.

“What’s for dinner?” he asked suddenly, unaware that he was supposed to notice the silence.

She told him.

“Great,” he said. More silence. Laura was determined to embarrass him, and Jack was too ill to care about conversation. Slowly, Terry began to realize something was amiss. Rather than take the hint he tried to lighten the atmosphere with chatter.

“How do you like the married life, old man?” he asked.

“He liked it fine the day before yesterday,” Laura said crisply. Jack groaned. Terry understood.

He sat up and leaned toward his hostess. “Laura, honey, I don’t want to mess things up for you,” he said. “I just love Jack, too, that’s all. You know that. You always knew it, even before you got married.”

“I know you nearly killed him,” she said quietly.

“No fair exaggerating.”

“No fair, hell. It’s true!” she exclaimed.

“It’s not either!” he said with good-humored indignation, as if they were playing parlor games. “Is it, Jack?”

But Jack, his eyes on Laura now, kept silent.

“Well,” Terry admitted, “I was pretty bitchy sometimes. But so was he. And no matter what, we loved each other. Even at the end, when he kicked me out.”

“If he hadn’t kicked you out that night he might have killed himself with liquor.”

“I don’t believe it.”

Laura threw her hands up, exasperated. “What more do you want from Jack, Terry?” she said. “What do you want from me?”

Terry grinned. “Equal time,” he said, nodding at the bedroom.

Jack laughed weakly and Laura got up and stamped her foot. “Terry, Jack loves you. I know that and I’ll have to live with it. But that love is destructive, and I’m asking you now to get out of our lives forever and never come back to hurt us again.” She said it with quiet intensity.

“Before dinner?” he asked.

“Oh, God!” Laura spluttered at the ceiling.

Terry lighted a cigarette for Jack, who had fumbled one from the box on the cocktail table, and told Laura, “I can’t go away forever. Any more than you could desert Beebo forever. I love him. I’m stuck with him.”

“I’ve left Beebo,” she said.

“You’ll go back,” he told her serenely. “It was that kind of affair.”

Laura held on to her self control as her last and dearest possession. She didn’t dare to lose it. “Take me seriously, Terry,” she begged, almost in a whisper. “Please let us live together in peace.”

Terry shrugged. He didn’t like to get serious. “What are you going to do the rest of your lives?” he asked them. “Live like a couple of old maids in your fancy little apartment? Pretend you’re both straight? What a kick!” He said it sarcastically but without malice. “A kick like that won’t last long, you know.”

“It’s not a kick. It’s something we both need and want,” Laura said earnestly.

“Nuts,” Terry said amiably. “What you both need and want is a few parties. Get out and camp. Do you good.”

“Sure,” Laura said sharply. “So you make love to Jack and he goes out and drinks a fifth of whiskey, after eight months on the wagon. Was that what you had in mind?”

Terry made a little grimace of perplexity. “That was pretty silly,” he told Jack. “Now she won’t let me see you at all.”

“He needs me more than he needs you, Terry,” Laura said.

“Yeah? But he wants me more.” He grinned at her. “You’ve got to admit that counts for something,” he told her. “I can give him something you can’t give him.” He looked so smug, so sure of himself, that Laura, with her heart in her throat, decided to pull her rabbit out of the hat. If it didn’t work, she would have to give up.

“And I can give him something you can’t give him,” she said, her voice low and tense. “A child.”

There was a long stunned silence. Jack and Terry both stared at her—Jack with a slight smile of amazement and Terry with open-mouthed dismay.

“A child!” Terry blurted finally. “Don’t tell me! I wasn’t born yesterday.”

“It’s true,” Laura spat at him. “And I’m not going to have any empty-headed, pretty-faced queers hanging around my baby! Not even you, Terry Fleming.”

Terry turned to gape at Jack, his mouth still ajar. “She’s kidding!” he exclaimed. “Isn’t she?”

Jack paused slightly and then shook his head, and the strange little smile on his face widened. It was brilliant, he thought. Cruel, to himself even more than to Terry, because it wasn’t true. But clever.

Terry stood up, bewildered, and walked around the living room. Laura watched him, her face flushed, sweating with expectation. Finally Terry turned to look at them. Jack, raising himself on one elbow, watched him.

“Do you still want me to have dinner with you?” he asked wryly, and Laura saw hesitation in his look and felt a first small hope.

She didn’t know what to say. But she was thinking, I’ve made Jack a man in his eyes now. He’s thinking, Jack can do what he could never do himself. He’s thinking, at least if I was wrong about him ruining Jack’s life, I’m right about ruining a baby’s. He knows damn well he could do that. Or does he?

But at least he was thinking. His lovely young face was screwed up with the effort.

Suddenly he said to Laura, as if expecting to trip her up, “When’s it due? The kid?”

“November,” she said. She had anticipated him.

“Well!” His face brightened. “If it isn’t due till November, we’ve got a long time to play around.” And it was Jack he looked at now.

But Laura jumped at him, bristling. “I don’t want an alcoholic for a husband!” she said. “I don’t want my baby to have an alcoholic for a father. A drunken, miserable, tormented man who doesn’t know which sex he is, who has to chase around after a thoughtless character like you all night. I don’t want to lose my husband, Terry. Not to you or any other gay boy in the world. You’d ruin his health and make him wild inside of a month.”

She was crying, though she didn’t realize it, and her cheeks were flaming. Terry stared at her for some moments in surprised silence. And then he looked at Jack, who was still propped on one arm, taking it all in with an inscrutable smile.

“Well ...,” Terry said again, almost diffidently. Apparently he believed they were having a child. He looked to Jack for moral support. “Is that the way you feel too, honey?” he asked.

“Why certainly,” Jack said cheerfully, incongruously. “Can’t you tell? Whatever she says, goes.” A soft note of hysteria sounded in his voice.

“I guess you don’t want me to stay for dinner now,” Terry said, glancing at Laura. For answer she only turned away and began to cry. Terry walked over to Jack and knelt before him on the floor, putting his hands on Jack’s shoulders. “I do love you, Jack. I never lied about that. I didn’t know it was so bad. For you, I mean. I still don’t see how it could have been. But I don’t want to mess things up for the kid. Shall I go? You tell me.” He waited, watching Jack’s face.

“I told you to leave me once, Terry. I haven’t the strength to say it again. It’s up to you.”

Terry leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. “If you haven’t the strength to say it, I haven’t the strength to do it. No matter what she says,” he said.

Laura came at him suddenly from across the room. “Go!” she flashed. “Go, damn you, and never come back!”

Terry looked uncertainly from Laura to Jack, and Jack covered his face abruptly with a noise rather like a sob.

Terry stood up. “All right,” he said in a husky voice. “I’ll go. I’ll go for the baby’s sake. But not forever, Laura. Not forever.”

At the front door he turned to her. “You say you love him,” he said. “Then you must understand why I can’t leave him forever. I love him too.” He said it sadly but matter-of-factly. And Laura, staring at him through tear-blurred eyes, realized that he never would understand what he had done to Jack or how. He thought it was a simple matter of giving a kid a break. And because he loved Jack enough he was able to do it.

“Enjoy your flowers,” he said with a rueful grin, and then Terry went out the front door and shut it carefully behind him. Neither Jack nor Laura stirred nor made a sound until they heard the elevator arrive, the doors open, shut again, and the elevator leave.

“He’s gone,” she whispered. “Dear God, don’t let him ever come back.”

Jack rolled over, his back to her, and wept briefly and painfully with desperate longing. There was a moment of silence while she watched him fearfully. And then he stood up and headed for the door. Laura threw herself against it.

“No! Don’t follow him, Jack!” she implored, her voice rising.

“I won’t,” he said, trying to reach past her to open the door, but she threw her arms around him and begged him to stay with her.

“I got him to leave, Jack. He won’t dare come back for a long time. Maybe he’ll find somebody new. Maybe we’ll be lucky and he’ll never come back.”

“I should be so lucky,” he said acidly.

She looked at him, dismayed. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” she asked.

He stopped trying to grab the doorknob for a minute to look at her. “Yes,” he said, with effort. And after a pause, “You were masterful, Mother. You really played your scene.”

She looked at the floor confusedly, hearing all the sarcasm and the hurt and the grudging admiration in his voice. “Do you hate me for it?” she asked.

“No. I’m grateful.”

“Do you still love me?” she whispered.

“Yes. But don’t ask me to prove it now.” He got the door open in a sudden deft gesture, but Laura was still clutching him.

“Where are you going?” she asked fearfully.

“For a bottle.”

“Oh, God!” she gasped. “Then it’s all been for nothing,” she said despairingly.

“No,” he said. “I’m not drinking this for Terry. I’m drinking it for the baby.”

“The baby?” she said tremulously.

“The little kid who wasn’t there.”

He turned to go and she followed him into the hall.

“But Jack—” she protested as he rang for the elevator. “Jack, I—I—” She looked up and saw the long bronze needle moving swiftly toward “three” as the elevator ascended, having barely emptied Terry into the first floor. It seemed to be measuring off the last seconds of their marriage. She had to do something. Trembling and scared, she caught his lapels and said, with great difficulty, “I meant it, Jack.”

“Meant what?”

“About the baby.”

He stared at her, one hand holding back the door of the just-arrived elevator.

“I’ll have a baby,” she said. “If you still want one.”

For a while they stood in the dim little hall and gazed at each other. And then Jack let his hand slip from the elevator door and, circling her waist with his arm, led her back into the apartment.

“He’ll be back, you know,” he said, stopping to look at her.

“I know. But by that time he’ll know we aren’t kidding,” she said, looking dubiously at her tight, flat stomach. “By that time you’ll be strong again. And ready for him. You’ll know he’s coming and you’ll be able to take it. It won’t be like now.”

He kissed her. “Goddam it,” he whispered, grateful and amazed. “I do love you.”