I am a woman
“I hate to pull a philosophical on you, but gee, Laura, we’re dealing
with sick people. Sometimes these X-ray reports spell life and death for
somebody. We can’t dawdle over them. Doctors are waiting all over the
city for these things. Dr. Hollingsworth is swamped. We can’t let him
down.”
“I know.” Laura felt the way she had in third grade when she feigned
sick to get out of playing a role in the annual spring pageant. The
teacher had talked to her in much the same tone of voice, and used much
the same arguments. “Everybody’s pulling for you, we all like you, don’t
let us down, Laura, don’t let us down.” But the thought of going out on
that stage had appalled her. The whole audience melted down to one
man—Merrill Landon. She had done it, finally, to prove she could. But
his amused criticisms afterward had nearly killed her.
“I haven’t been feeling well,” she murmured to Sarah.
“Well, you’d better start feeling better, honey. Because Dr.
Hollingsworth and I had a little talk today. He asked me what was wrong
with you. He thought maybe if you and I talked it over you might tell me
what was the matter.” She spoke carefully, in a discreet voice.
But Laura stood up, offended and frightened. “Nothing’s the matter,” she
snapped. “If he doesn’t like my work let him come to me and tell me
about it himself.”
Sarah stood up, herself slightly offended at this display of
ingratitude. “He came to me because he wanted to spare you any
embarrassment, Laura. I should think that would be obvious.”
Laura relented a little. “I’m sorry, Sarah. I can’t explain it. I just
can’t, it’s impossible. If he wants to let me go, I have no choice. I’ll
leave.” But she was not as resigned to it, as stoical, as she sounded.
“Can’t you _try_ to do a little better, Laura?” Sarah said kindly. “If I
could tell him we had a little talk and you promised to try to do
better. Or you’d been sick, or had a problem at home, or something.
_Anything._”
Laura gave an unpleasant little laugh. Then her face dropped and she
said, “I have no excuses, Sarah. I’m not a good enough liar to cook one
up. I just—” And here she burst unexpectedly into tears and Sarah had to
try to comfort her.
“Look, honey,” she said, after Laura had recovered a little. “Do you
want the job? Do you?”
“Yes,” Laura said. “I want it.”
“Will you try to be more consistent, then? And I’ll tell Dr.
Hollingsworth you’ve been having trouble at home you don’t want to talk
about.”
“That’s such an obvious fib, Sarah.”
“No, it’s no fib. I heard you talk to Jack on the phone last week,”
Sarah said. “I know there’s something going on.”
Laura went shaky and pale, and the blue shadows that had been growing in
the past weeks under her eyes deepened. “What do you know?” she
demanded.
Sarah became alarmed at her appearance. “Well, nothing really, only you
sounded so upset, I thought maybe—”
“What did I say?”
“Oh, I don’t remember.” She tried to push it off casually, but she had
thoroughly scared Laura, who recalled with biting clarity now Jack’s
voice saying, _For God’s sake, Mother, keep your voice down_. “What did
I say, Sarah?”
“Nothing so very bad, Laura.” Sarah stared at her. “I just got the
impression you had a quarrel.”
“You had no right to listen!” Laura exclaimed harshly.
“You had no right to make personal calls during working hours, for that
matter,” Sarah said defensively.
Laura picked up her purse and ran out of the office without another
word. She went into a phone booth and called Jack. “Can I come over?”
she said.
“No. I’m in a mess.”
“Please, Jack.”
“Mother, for Christ’s sake! Be empathic for once, will you?”
“All right, I’ll call Beebo.”
“No don’t. She’s p.o.’d at you. She may never speak to you again after
what you said to her.”
Laura felt frantic. “Well, what am I supposed to do?” she said, half
crying into the receiver. “I’ve practically lost my job.”
“Go home to Marcie, Mother. Do _something_. I can’t help you out
tonight. I’m sorry, honey.” And he was.
“Oh, Jack, say something to me. Say something kind. Anything.”
After a pause he said, “I love you, Mother. Only I’m not _in_ love with
you. I wish to hell I was, it couldn’t be worse than Terry. Now be a
doll and let me go. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
She felt the urgency to get away in his voice and let him go. For a
moment she sat in the booth and dried her tears. She felt sick about
Beebo but she was afraid to call her.
* * * * *
It was another torturous weekend for Marcie, who was beginning to feel
as if she had ruined Laura’s life. It was Sunday night before they
actually made any sort of communication with each other.
Burr had been calling Marcie every night, trying to talk her into
leaving the apartment. Their talks were short but the animosity had
faded from them. Laura listened to them listlessly; she could not avoid
hearing them in the small apartment. Marcie said things like, “Yes,
she’s here.” “No, you _know_ I don’t want to see you.” “No, we aren’t,
and don’t bring that up again.” “I know I did. I know what I did, Burr,
don’t throw it in my face.” She refused to see him.
Laura winced at all this, and finally she took to going out on the roof
when he called. The windows were wide open, the weather being soft and
pleasant now, and Marcie’s voice carried even out there. But it wasn’t
so pervading, so persistent. On Sunday night, Laura went out and looked
at the city while Marcie talked. The time passed almost without Laura’s
being aware of it. She gazed across New York in the direction of the
McAlton, wondering if her father was sitting in his room waiting for
her. And then she looked down toward the Village and her heart gave a
sick squeeze at the thought of Beebo. Beebo, who told her how terribly a
love affair could hurt. Beebo, who told her to beware and then got
caught in her own trap. Laura wondered if Beebo really loved her. If she
could ever forgive her. Laura had attacked the very basis of her being:
her body, her pride, her deepest needs. In that one quick wicked speech,
Laura had ridiculed her. She felt the tears come. And she could hear
Jack saying, “If Terry said that to me, I’d strangle him.” It was
shameful.
She grew very depressed, thinking of the necessity of going back to work
in the office the next morning, with Sarah trying to put on cheerfulness
and Dr. Hollingsworth—so kindly, so tolerant—watching for signs of
steadiness and application in her. And herself, so heavily aware of
their good will toward her, their frustration, and her own overwhelming
complexities that sapped her strength and effort.
She was startled when Marcie said at her elbow, “Burr wants to see me.”
When Laura didn’t answer, Marcie said, “He feels God-awful about the
whole thing. He wants to apologize to me.” Another silence. “I want to
apologize to _you_, Laura. But you won’t let me.”
Laura shut her eyes in pain for a moment, as if to avoid the sight of
Marcie’s face. And then she opened them and without looking at her,
said, “We’ve been all through this before, Marcie. I don’t want your
apologies. You have nothing to apologize for.”
“I do.”
“You don’t!”
Marcie gave a long sigh of exasperation. “All right, then why won’t you
speak to me?”
“I _will_, Marcie. When I can.”
“When will that be?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why not now?”
“I guess I’m sick. Maybe Jack was right, I need to see his analyst.” She
tried to smile a little.
“Because of your father? What he did to you?”
Laura looked down at her arms, folded on the cement railing. “I guess
so,” she almost whispered.
“Laura, say something to me. This is unbearable.” Marcie was pleading
with her, as Laura had pleaded herself with Jack on the phone. She
turned and looked at Marcie, standing close beside her, two delicate
lines between her eyes betraying the tension inside her. For a moment
Laura just looked at her. It had been over a week since she looked at
Marcie that way. In the soft spring night, in the golden light fading up
from the streets below, with the myriad muffled noises that are the
music of a great city around them, they gazed at each other. And Marcie
was very beautiful with her hair lifted gently in the breeze and her
eyes big with anxiety. She was wrapped in a blue silk negligee and the
lines of her slim young body showed through it.
Finally, prompted by the necessity to speak, Laura said, “It’s so hard
to talk, Marcie. Words are so inadequate sometimes.”
“Any words will do, Laura. Except ‘Excuse me.’ That’s all you’ve said to
me for days on end.”
They smiled a little at each other, and Laura took her hands. She pulled
just a little on them, and Marcie responded softly, coming toward her.
“Laura, tell me I’m forgiven. Don’t say there’s nothing to forgive me
for. I just want to hear you say it.”
“No.”
“Please.” Her voice broke.
“No, no, no,” Laura said, gazing curiously at Marcie. Did she really
feel so guilty? She hadn’t done anything that bad. Laura had a strange
feeling of finality, of the end of things, of everything ending at once
so that nothing really mattered any more. As if Marcie would turn and
walk out of her life, and her job would end, and Beebo would never see
her, and Jack and Terry would break up. It made her pensive and sad. She
wondered at all the new feelings in her: the inability to care about her
job, her meanness with Beebo, her unreasoning fear of Merrill Landon in
the hotel lobby. Nothing seemed very real, up there on the roof. It
didn’t seem to make much difference what she did. She gave another
little pull and Marcie came still closer, touching her up and down the
length of her body.
Laura touched her hair. “You look so much like a friend of mine,” she
said. Marcie reminded her of Beth again at this moment; the Beth she had
lost so long ago, a million years ago, it seemed.
“I do? You never told me that.”
“I forgot.”
“What’s she like?”
“Oh, she was tall, short dark hair, purple eyes. Rather boyish.”
“You talk about her as if she were dead.”
“She is. As far as I’m concerned.”
Marcie frowned at her. “She doesn’t sound at all like me.”
“No, I guess she doesn’t,” Laura said. “There’s something about your
face; I don’t know how to define it. I thought I saw a resemblance.” She
had seen it in Beebo, too. And even in the curly-headed little blonde
who had approached her in The Cellar the night she was looking for
Beebo. They couldn’t all look like Beth. It was very strange.
“Were you good friends?” Marcie asked.
Laura smiled a little and put her arms around Marcie. In the still night
she answered simply, “We were lovers.” It was very quiet, dreamlike, as
if she spoke in a trance.
Marcie stared at her, motionless, as if to determine whether she were
joking. She stood in Laura’s arms, unable to move one way or the other;
uncertain and a little scared.
Laura saw her consternation, but it didn’t worry her. She spoke again,
still feeling as if it weren’t real, any more than the glittering city
below was real, or her father’s wrath, or Jack, or Beebo, or the doctors
and Sarah ... “That was the ‘great love’ I told you about, in college,”
she said. “It was Beth.”
After a long pause, Marcie said in a whisper, “What happened?”
“She got married,” Laura said.
Marcie was dumbfounded. “I’m sorry,” she said awkwardly and then
retreated into herself, embarrassed. She had no idea what to say, what
to do.
Laura could see that, but at first she didn’t try to interpret it. It
didn’t frighten her yet. “That’s why I was so shocked when Burr said you
told him we were lovers,” Laura said. “I wish we were, Marcie. But I
never touched you.” Marcie was studying her now, her eyes brimming.
“When he accused me of it and believed it and said you told him so, I