I am a woman
was so hurt I didn’t know what to do or say. I thought of a million
crazy explanations. The only one that seemed to make sense was that you
felt the way I do.” She looked hard at Marcie. Their faces were very
close together, and Laura was holding her tightly, her arms locked
around Marcie’s small waist. “Do you, Marcie?” Laura whispered. “Do
you?”
They stayed that way for awhile, not moving, looking at each other.
Laura felt her breath speed up and she felt a powerful longing to kiss
Marcie. It grew stronger by the second. She began to press Marcie
against her rhythmically and suddenly all the months of repression
exploded inside her and came out kisses on her lips. She began to kiss
Marcie intensely—her face, her neck and arms, her ears, her throat.
“Marcie,” she said hoarsely, suddenly holding her tight with the
strength of desire. “I’ve wanted you for so long. I thought I’d die of
it. Living with you, so close to you, seeing you all the time ...
undressing, bathing ... It drove me crazy. Marcie, you’re so beautiful,
so sweet. Oh, God, it feels so good to say it. You’re impossible. I want
you so terribly, so terribly. You want me too, don’t you? I know it, I
always knew it. Oh, Marcie, let me, let me. Don’t stop me! Please!” A
note of anguish crept into her voice when Marcie began to resist her.
“Please, Marcie!” she implored her.
But Marcie put her arms up and pushed hard against Laura. “Let me go!”
she said. “Let me go!” And she began to cry. Laura, shocked, released
her so suddenly that Marcie staggered backwards a little. She gave a
cry, recovered her balance, and stared at Laura with her eyes wide for a
moment. Then she turned and ran inside.
Laura stood where she was for a long time, afraid to think or feel. She
had no idea how much time had passed before she dared to go inside. Had
she frightened Marcie? Revolted her? Would Marcie greet her with love or
hatred? As a witch or a lover? She was in a state of nervous agony when
she finally gathered the strength to walk around to the penthouse door.
She opened it and walked slowly through the living room and kitchen. She
pushed the bedroom door open slowly. Marcie was sitting on her bed, her
back toward Laura. She had apparently sat like that without moving for
some time. She turned very slowly when she heard Laura come in, and
looked up at her. Laura felt her heart turn over. Marcie was so lovely,
so miserable. It showed plainly in her face. Laura went to her and
dropped to her knees in front of her and put her head in Marcie’s lap.
And when she felt Marcie’s hand stroking her head, she wept.
“Forgive me,” she begged. “It’s your turn now, Marcie. I frightened you.
I didn’t mean to, I didn’t!” And she caught Marcie’s hand and kissed it.
“Laura,” Marcie said quietly. “I’ve been trying to talk to you for weeks
and you wouldn’t let me. Now it’s eating me up. I’m going to tell you
something. And you’re going to listen.” Her voice trembled so that Laura
looked up at her.
“Laura, I’m so ashamed, so ashamed.”
“Tell me, Marcie. Tell me. I’m listening now.” She searched her face
anxiously.
Marcie swallowed her tears and with a tremendous effort, said, “I did an
awful thing, Laur. I’ve known for a while about you.” She looked away,
struggling with herself; her shame, her pity, her shaking voice.
“You—you knew?” Laura whispered, going white.
“Yes. I couldn’t help knowing. You couldn’t hide it, Laura. You couldn’t
come near me without it showing—in your eyes, your face. The way you
touched me, the things you said, all the crazy moods you had. You seemed
afraid of me. You let things slip. You even kissed me once. I’ve been
around enough to know. I knew about you.” She wiped the tears from her
cheeks embarrassedly and went on, unable to look at Laura, “I should
have told you. Or else I should have let it drop. But I guess it
interested me. It seemed like a game. I got sort of intrigued, you might
say. I even told Burr what I suspected ... months ago ...” She stifled a
sob.
Laura’s face was colorless, tortured. Her hands were over her mouth.
“It kills me to say these things,” Marcie whispered. “But I did
everything to earn your contempt. I can’t lie to you any more, Laura. I
even _bet_ Burr I could make you make a pass at me.”
“No,” Laura gasped. “Oh, no—”
“He thought it was all a joke. He wouldn’t even listen to me. Until I
got fed up with him and started hanging around here so much. Then he got
it into his head that we were having a hot and heavy affair. I couldn’t
talk him out of it. I’d gone too far for that.”
Laura turned away from her and rested her head against her own bed, too
stunned, too wounded, to answer or understand half of it.
“Laura.” Marcie bent toward her. “I don’t know what crazy imp gets hold
of me sometimes. I swear I don’t. I never even wondered what I’d do if
it ever came to this, if you ever tried to make love to me. I guess I
thought it would be a game, like everything else. I guess I thought it
would be a lot of kicks. Or just a stupid silly thing that wouldn’t
really matter. To either of us. I guess I didn’t think at all.
“And just now—on the roof—when you told me how you felt, and how you
wanted me—Laura, I had no idea you could love like that. I didn’t know
it could be beautiful, or touching, or tragic. I thought it was mostly
play-acting. I thought the only real love was between men and women. But
you made it beautiful, Laura. I don’t know what else to call it. I’m
ashamed. Clear through my soul. I played you for a fool, and all the
while you were an angel.”
Laura began to sob.
“I’d do anything for you, Laur,” Marcie whispered. “Anything to make it
up. If I could love you the way you want me to, I’d do that. I’ll even
try, if you want it.”
Laura slumped to the floor, her arms over her head, and sobbed
helplessly.
Marcie knelt beside her, profoundly afraid and ashamed. “Laura,” she
said, “Do whatever you want with me. I’ve hurt you so terribly. Hurt me
back if it’ll help. Do something. Do anything. I can’t stand to see you
like this. Oh, Laura, Laura. Please don’t cry like that. Please.”
Chapter Fourteen
In the morning—the bleak morning that came in spite of everything and
had to be faced—she could hardly look at Marcie. And Marcie, brimming
with shame and pity, avoided her, breaking softly into tears from time
to time.
At breakfast Marcie said, “Laur, if you think you can bear to live with
me I don’t want you to move out. Nothing was your fault, nothing.”
“I couldn’t stand it, Marcie,” Laura said hoarsely without looking at
her. “Neither could you.” She got up abruptly and left the table without
having eaten a thing.
Marcie got up and followed her. “I wish we could still be friends,
Laur.”
“We never were.”
“Oh, but we were. I like you so much, Laura.”
“Marcie, this is unbearable. Don’t talk to me. Please don’t.”
“But I can’t just leave things like this, it’s too awful.”
“I can’t help it.”
“Laura, I’ll never get over this. I’ll never forgive myself. I hurt you
so.”
“Marcie, stop it!” She almost screamed at her. “I was a fool, a blind
fool. I wouldn’t listen.” She was thinking of all the warnings from Jack
and Beebo that she willfully ignored. But she caught herself and spared
Jack another betrayal. That, at least, was something Marcie didn’t know
and never would. “Never mind,” she finished. “Just drop it.” She turned
away and busied herself, but Marcie wouldn’t let her go.
“You will come back tonight, won’t you, Laura? You’ll stay here until
you find another place? I’ll be sick if you don’t. This is your
apartment as much as it is mine. I’ll move out if you’d rather. You know
that, don’t you, Laur?” She was so anxious, so eager for conciliation,
so disgusted with what she had done, that Laura felt a momentary
relenting and looked shyly at her. “Please come back tonight,” Marcie
whispered. “I’ll worry myself sick if you don’t. Please. Promise?”
Laura shut her eyes for a moment and tried to control her voice. She
hadn’t the courage to argue. She just said, “Yes,” and grabbed her purse
and rushed out.
* * * * *
Laura knew, even before she reached the subway, that she wasn’t going to
work that day. She knew it would be impossible for her to read, to type,
to look up words, to answer the doctors, to joke with Sarah. It would be
a nightmare of hypocrisy, utterly beyond her strength.
She felt shattered, ready to scream if anyone touched her, like someone
with an open wound. But she held herself tightly in check. She rode
aimlessly on the subway for an hour or two. She stood in bookshops with
a volume in her hands and stared at the pages until the clerks, in turn,
stared at her. She sat on benches in Central Park. She stopped now and
then to get a cup of coffee, and late in the day, a sandwich. It enabled
her to keep walking. She walked, looking at nothing but the pavement
ahead of her, for a couple of hours. She paid no attention to where she
was going or why. She walked to exhaust herself, to reach that country
of fatigue where even the mind cannot operate and the emotions are dead.
Abruptly she found herself standing outside the McAlton in the last hour
of daylight. She was not strong enough to feel surprise. On the
contrary, it was as if she had been working toward it, all through that
empty endless day, knowing she would end up here. And knowing, she had
not needed to think of it, to make a decision. It was unavoidable.
She stood outside the main door to the lobby, looking at the people
hurrying past and hoping somebody would come up to her, talk to her,
even make advances to her. Anything to postpone what she knew was
coming. She looked at the door and away again, and then back to it, as
if it were a great sinister magnet. Sooner or later she knew she would
walk through it.
She stood leaning against the gray stone of the McAlton, her fine face
pale and vacant, her body apparently relaxed. She looked like a tired
young career girl, waiting at the appointed place for a date. She knew
it and took advantage of it. The hotel doorman strolled over to her and
said, “Lovely evening, isn’t it?” And later, “Looks like he’s a bit
late, Miss.” With a little smile.
Laura returned the smile faintly. She tried to engage him in
conversation, but he was called away frequently, and finally, with the
evening crowd converging on him, got too busy to talk to her at all. The
night was violet now, turning fast to black. It was eight o’clock.
Laura turned to the door and walked through it almost automatically.
Once inside she was suddenly profoundly afraid. Flashes of fear went
through her; long sweeps of tremors and gooseflesh. She didn’t bother
with the desk this time. She knew what floor he was on. She got the
elevator and said, “Fourteenth floor, please.” She wondered if her voice
sounded as shaky as it felt in her throat. She thought of simply getting
off the elevator on the fourteenth floor and taking another elevator
right back down. And when she was let off, she stood there in the deep
carpeted hall with her heart crying “No-no, no-no, no-no,” at every
beat.
“He’s my father,” she told herself. “He won’t kill me, after all. He
might beat me, but he’s done that before and I’ve lived through it. I’ll
be twenty-one in three weeks, so he can’t say I’m a minor. All he can do
is make a speech about my ungratefulness. He’s a human being, not the
devil.” She said the last aloud, in a whisper, and her own voice
startled her.
Cautiously, Laura investigated room numbers, half expecting him to burst
from his room and discover her unprepared. After a few false starts she
found 1402 and standing there, looking at that door, she felt an