I am a woman
“Then why didn’t you show me some kindness?” she said. “Just a very
little would have gone a long way, Father.”
He crushed out his cigarette in the heavy ashtray with an expression of
contempt on his face, “You women are all alike, I swear to God.” he
said. “Give you a little and you demand a lot.”
“What’s wrong with a lot?” she said, trembling. “You’re my father.”
“Yes, exactly!” he said, so roughly that she ducked. “I’m your father!”
“Did you treat my mother this way?” she whispered. “Her life must have
been hell.”
He looked for a minute as if he would strangle her. She stood her
ground, pale and frightened, until he relented suddenly and turned his
profile to her, looking out the window. “Your mother,” he said
painfully, “was my wife. I adored her.”
Laura was absolutely unable to answer him. She sat down weakly in the
stuffed chair by the dresser and put her face in her hands. Her
father—her enormous gruff harsh father—had never spoken such a tender
word in her presence in all her life.
“I could never marry again, when she died,” he said. Laura felt
frightened as she always did when her mother’s death was mentioned. She
expected him to turn on her unreasonably as he had so often before. “I
never struck her.”
“Then why me?” she implored out of a dry throat.
He turned and looked at her, his mouth twisted a little, running a
distraught hand through his hair. “You needed it,” was all he would say.
“What for?”
“You _needed_ it, that’s what for!” And she was afraid to push him
further. After some minutes he said, “Laura, you’re coming back to
Chicago with me.”
“No Father, I can’t. I won’t.”
“That’s why I waited for you,” he went on, as if she had said nothing.
“I won’t go to Chicago or anywhere else with you. I’m through with you.”
“You could look for work with a radiologist, if you like it so well. I
won’t insist on journalism. You have a flair for it, it’s a waste to
leave the field, but I won’t insist. You see, Laura, I can be human
enough.”
She stared at him. She had never heard him talk like this. He glanced at
her, annoyed by the look on her face. “I’ve made reservations,” he said,
“for June first. That’s Saturday. I could probably get earlier ones.”
“Father.” She stood up. “I can’t come with you.”
“Don’t say that!” he commanded her, so sharply that she started.
“I can’t,” she whispered.
“You can, and you will. That’s all I want to hear on the subject.” As
she started once again to protest he held his hands up for silence. “No
more discipline Laura. I promise you that. I was a fool. You were too,
but never mind that now. I was too hard on you, it’s true. I see that.
Well, you’re more or less grown up by this time. I guess we can dispense
with spanking.”
“Spanking! It was more than that and you know it!”
“Don’t argue with me, Laura.” He turned on her, his voice low and
fierce. Then, making a visible effort to calm himself, he said, “Get
your things together and I’ll see about the reservations.”
“No.”
“Don’t fight me, Laura.”
“Father, there’s something you don’t know about me.” _I have to tell
him. I’ll never be free from him till I tell him. Till he knows what
he’s made of his only child._ “There’s something you don’t know about
me,” she whispered.
“I don’t doubt it. Now hurry up, we’ve wasted enough time.”
“Father ... listen to me.” It was almost too hard to say. Her legs were
trembling and her heart was wild.
“Well, out with it, for God’s sake! Jesus, Laura, you go through more
agony.... Well? What is it?” He frowned at her tense face.
“I—I’m a—homosexual.”
His mouth dropped open and his whole body went rigid. Laura shut her
eyes and prayed. She held her lower lip in her teeth, ready for the
blow, and felt the humiliating tears begin to squeeze through her shut
lids. She moaned a little.
He made up his mind fast and his voice cracked out like a lash.
“Nonsense!” he snarled.
“It’s true!” Her eyes flew open and she cried again, passionately, “It’s
true!” It was her bid for freedom; she had to show this courage, this
awful truth to him, or she would never walk away from him. She would
spend all her life in a panic of fear lest he find her out. “I’m in love
with my roommate. I’ve made love—”
“All right, all right, all right!” he shouted. His voice was rough and
his face contorted. He turned away from her and put his hands over his
face. She watched him, every muscle tight and aching.
At last he let his hands drop and said quietly, “Did I do that to you,
Laura?”
Without hesitating, without even certain knowledge, but only the huge
need to hurt him, she said, “Yes.”
He turned slowly around and faced her and she had never seen his face
like that before. It was pained and full of gentleness. Perhaps it
looked that way to her mother now and then. “I did that to you,” he said
again, to himself. “Oh, Laura. Oh, Laura.” His heavy brow creased deeply
over his eyes. He walked to her and put his hands on her shoulders and
felt her jerk with fear. “Laura,” he said, “have you ever loved a man?”
She shook her head, unable to speak.
“Have you ever wanted a man?”
Again she shook her head.
“Do you know what it’s like to want a man?”
“No,” she whispered.
“Do you want to know?” His eyes were wide and intense, his grip on her
shoulders was very hard.
“I’m so afraid of them, Father. I don’t want to know.”
He seemed to be in another world. Laura was utterly mystified by his
strange behavior, blindly grateful for his sudden warmth, and she let
herself weep softly.
“Laura,” he said, as if he derived some private pleasure from saying her
name over and over. “Your mother—you look so much like your mother. You
never looked like me at all. Every time I look at you I see her face.
Her fragile delicate face. Her eyes, her hair.” He put his arms around
her. “Come back to Chicago with me,” he said gently. “You don’t have to
love a man, Laura. I don’t want you to. I don’t want you to be like
other girls, I don’t want you to go off with some young ass and give him
your youth and your beauty. I don’t mind if you’re different from the
rest. I can take that if you are able to.”
Laura clung to him, astonished, fearful, grateful, anxious, a whirlwind
of confused feelings churning inside her.
“I want you to stay with me,” he said. “I always did. I won’t let you
go.”
“You made me go, Father. You punished me so.”
“No, no Laura! Don’t you see, it was myself.” He was holding her so hard
now, as if to make up for years of avoiding her, that she ached with it.
She began to cry on his shoulder.
“Oh, Father, Father,” she wept. “You never told me you wanted me to stay
with you. You made me believe you hated me.”
“No,” he said. “I never hated you.” He spoke in a rush, as if he
couldn’t help himself, as if it were suddenly forcing its way out of him
after years of suppression. “Never, Laura, it was just that I was so
lonely, so terribly lonely; I wanted her so much and she was gone. And
there was only you, and you tormented me.”
“I?” She tried to see his face, but he held her too close.
“You were so much like her, even when you were a child. Every time I
looked at you, I—oh, Laura, it’s myself I should have punished all this
time. I _was_ punished. I’ve suffered. Believe me. Laura, please believe
me.”
Laura was suddenly shocked rigid to feel his lips on her neck. He put
his hand in her hair and jerked her head back and kissed her full on the
mouth with such agonized intensity that he electrified her. He released
her just as suddenly and turned away with a kind of sob. “Ellie! Ellie!”
he cried, his hands over his face.
Laura was shaking almost convulsively. At the sound of her mother’s name
she grabbed the thick and heavy glass ashtray from the dresser, picking
it up with both hands. She rushed at him, unable to think or reason, and
brought the ashtray down on the crown of his head with all the revolted
force in her body. He slumped to the floor without a sound.
Laura gaped at him for a sick second and then she turned and fled. She
left the door wide open and ran in a terrible panic to the elevators.
She sobbed frantically for a few moments, and then she pushed the down
button. She jabbed it over and over again hysterically, unable to stop
until an elevator arrived and the doors opened. She stumbled in and
pressed into a back corner, helpless in the grip of the sickness in her.
The operator and his two other passengers stared at her, but she paid
them no heed, even when one asked if he could help her. At the ground
floor the operator had to tell her, “Everybody out.”
She turned a wild flushed face to him and he said, “Are you all right,
Miss?” And she glared at him, violently offended by his manner, his
uniform, his question.
“Don’t you know those pants won’t make a man of you?” she exclaimed
acidly. And rushed out, leaving him gaping open-mouthed after her.
Chapter Fifteen
Marcie called Jack late that night. “I haven’t heard from her. I
wouldn’t bother you, but I don’t know where she is, and I’m worried,”
she said. “Is she with you?”
“No. What’s the matter, Marcie? It’s only ten-fifteen.”
“She said she’d be home tonight. She promised.”
“Did you call the office?”
“Yes. She wasn’t there today.”
“Was she sick?”
“No.” Marcie was almost physically sick with shame and the fear that
Laura would do herself violence. She knew well how passionately Laura
could respond, how intensely she could feel. She had been truly alarmed
when she called the office in the afternoon and Sarah told her they
hadn’t seen Laura all day. And they’d damn well like to know where she
was themselves.
“She left the house this morning to catch the subway to work. She said
she’d be back tonight, but she didn’t go to work. And she isn’t back,”
Marcie told Jack.
Jack’s first thought was Merrill Landon. “Out with it, Marcie. Tell
Uncle Jack everything.”
“Jack, I can’t—” Jack of all people! Jack, who had a crush on Laura.
Marcie would have slit her throat before she would have betrayed Laura
to him. She was in no madcap mood any longer. She had wounded Laura with
a callousness that shocked even herself when she thought back on it. She
had no yen to hurt any more.
“Come on, doll, we’ve known each other for years,” Jack said. “Spill the
beans.”
“Jack, I won’t hurt her. Not even—”
“Not even if she drops dead because you won’t tell me the truth.”
“Oh! But she won’t!”
“Oh, but she might! Now let’s have it.”
“Jack, I don’t want you to think—”
“I think all the time. It’s a congenital defect.”
“Yes, but this—”
“Oh, for Chrissake, Marcie! _Say_ it. Did you quarrel?”
“I—yes. We quarreled.”
“What about?”
“I can’t say.”
“Now you listen to me, God damn it, I’m getting worried.”
“About love.” She whispered it.
And Jack knew at once what was the matter. But why hadn’t Laura come to
him? Why hadn’t she told him? She couldn’t be that ashamed. She knew he
wouldn’t hurt her with the knowledge. He would be kind, with the
kindness of deep sympathy. Something was wrong—more wrong than Marcie
admitted, or more wrong than she knew. Or both.
“I can’t explain, Jack,” Marcie moaned.
“You don’t have to, Marcie. I get the message.”
“Should I call the police?”
“No,” he said quickly. Jack had an inborn aversion to cops. “I think I
have an idea. I’ll call you back later. And call me the minute you hear
anything.”
“I will, I promise!”
Jack called Beebo. “Marcie’s straight,” he said.
“So what, Jackson?”
“So Laura just found out—the hard way, apparently—and now she’s
disappeared.”
“I couldn’t care less.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Look, Jack, I don’t even want to talk about the kid. I don’t want to
hear her name mentioned. She can go to hell as far as I’m concerned.”