I am a woman
Terry eyed him like a suspicious five-year-old. “I don’t know. You’re so
bitchy tonight.” He sighed. “All right, all right. What do I have to
do?”
“Stay here. And if she shows up, hang on to her. I’ll be back at—” He
looked at his watch. “—at ten. No later.”
Terry threw himself in an armchair with a huge sigh of disgust. “Oh,
this Laura!” he groaned. “She must be the most fabulous female in the
whole goddam world.”
“She is,” Beebo said briefly. She dinched her cigarette and walked out
ahead of Jack. “I’ll be at home, Terry,” she called back. “If she shows
up.”
“Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll hogtie her and call all the newspapers. I’ll
notify the President. Christ!”
Jack and Beebo went down the stairs together and out into the lowering
night. The first drops were coming down. “What’d you give him, Jackson?”
Beebo smiled. “He’s learning how to mind. He doesn’t like it very much,
but he’s learning.”
Jack shrugged. “He does like it, doll. That’s the secret. He likes to be
shoved around a little. I wish to hell I’d known before I bought all
those stinking oysters.”
Chapter Sixteen
It was five past ten and the rain was fairly heavy outside. Terry was
curled up in the armchair watching television, eating peanuts and
drinking a beer. He was irritated with Jack for being late. He tried to
get interested in the film and sat for a quarter of an hour with his
eyes on the set, wiggling restlessly, like a child in need of a comfort
station. He jumped when a knock on the door disturbed him.
“Come in, you know it’s not locked,” he said without looking up. “Where
the hell were you? At least I tell you where I’m going. Well talk, damn
it.” And he turned around to see a tall slim girl standing five feet
from him, her long hair streaming wet and her clothes clinging to her
body. He was conscious of nothing in her face but her eyes; huge, blue
and heavy, dominating, agonized.
Terry stood up suddenly, stammering a little. “You must be Laura,” he
said finally. “I was beginning to think you weren’t real.” He took
another look at her, pale as a wraith, her eyes the only warmth in the
cold oval of her face. “Are you?” he asked. And then smiled a little
sheepishly. “Well, don’t just stand there. Come in and sit down.”
She moved as if she were dreaming, one hand to her forehead, and he
guided her to the sofa where she half sat and half collapsed, letting
her head fall back against the cushions. She looked utterly exhausted.
Terry stood hovering uncertainly over her, staring at her. At last he
said, “Jack says I’ve got to keep you here.” She shut her eyes. “He’s
supposed to be home at ten. He should be right along. I’m Terry. Terry
Fleming. Jack says he told you about me. He certainly talks a lot about
you. He thinks the world of you.” She gave no sign that she had heard or
cared to hear.
At last in some consternation he said, “Would you like something to eat,
Laura? You look like you could do with something.” No answer. He went
out to the kitchen and opened a can of soup. He fixed up the plate with
crackers and cheese and, as a second thought, smoked oysters, and poured
a glass of milk. Every two or three minutes he interrupted his task to
go to the doorway and check on her. He thought she might vanish, like a
ghost. But she didn’t move. She looked dead. She scared him.
He put the food on a tray and brought it into the living room and sat
down on the sofa next to her. He put the soup and milk on the coffee
table in front of her and then he said, “Wake up. Wake up, Laura.” She
didn’t stir. Terry put an oyster on a cracker. “Here,” he said, shaking
her a little. “Here, for God’s sake, eat it. It’s your oyster.”
Laura stirred and opened her eyes, took one look at the smoked oyster,
and turned away with a grimace. Terry was offended. “So what’s wrong
with smoked oysters?” he said. “Here. It’s yours.”
She looked at him then. Really saw him. And then sat up a little,
rubbing her eyes. “Mine?” she repeated dimly.
“Jack says you bought ’em.” Terry looked at her with bright eyes,
curious now. “You might as well enjoy them.”
Laura sighed and then saw the soup. Terry handed her a spoon and she ate
it all without a pause or a word. It seemed to give her strength, to
bring her back to life. “I haven’t eaten.” she apologized. “I can’t
remember ...”
“Want some more?” he asked quickly.
“No. No thanks. Maybe later.” She looked around the apartment,
recognition and sense coming back to her face. “Where’s Jack?” she said,
and suddenly clutched Terry’s sleeve. “Where’s Jack?” She sounded
frightened.
“He’ll be back any minute,” Terry said.
Laura stared at him then. “Oh, you’re Terry,” she said.
“You’re Laura.” He grinned. “I saw you first.”
She blinked at him, unable to joke with him. Dead serious, she asked,
“Did the oysters help?”
“Help?” he said. “Oh. You mean Jack and me.”
“He says you love them.”
Terry studied her, frowning over his smile, and then looked away in
embarrassment. “Not the oysters so much,” he said. “But _you_ helped, in
a roundabout way. By getting lost.”
“I’m glad,” she said, confused. “He loves you terribly.” She seemed to
have no sense that this might startle him or be the wrong thing to say.
She hadn’t the physical strength to censor herself. She spoke the
necessary truths and no more. But Terry was strongly affected. He walked
to the other side of the room and refused to look at her for a while,
letting his feelings whirl around inside him. When he did look back, she
was stretched out on the sofa, sleeping the sleep of complete
exhaustion.
* * * * *
Laura woke up to find Jack sitting in the armchair sipping gingerly at a
steaming cup of coffee. His eyes showed over the rim of the cup, heavy,
anxious, and old. He lowered the cup when she wakened, putting it on the
coffee table by the sofa and lighting a cigarette.
“It’s a nice day,” he said cautiously.
She sat up halfway. “What time is it?”
“Seven-thirty.”
Laura dropped back and shut her eyes. She found a blanket over herself
and her shoes were on the floor beside the sofa.
“Well,” said Jack, “are you going to tell me where the hell you’ve been?
Or am I going to ask?”
Laura turned her face suddenly to the back of the sofa and wept. “Oh,
Jack,” she moaned. “I killed him. I killed him. Oh, God help me.” And
she began to sob.
“Killed who?”
“My father.”
“Your father,” he said with friendly sharpness in his voice, “has a
prize concussion. But he’s very much alive.”
She turned her head slowly to look at him, her eyes enormous and her
heart stopped in her chest. “Alive?” Her voice was a startled whisper.
She sat up suddenly and said it out loud. “Alive?” She grabbed Jack’s
arms with the strength of shock. “How do you know? How do you know? Tell
me quickly.”
“I will, give me half a chance.” He pushed her back down and told her of
his trip to the McAlton. “I just went up to the fourteenth floor,” he
said. “It was easy. There were a lot of people standing around outside
his room and the elevator boy told me about it. Incidentally, you made a
real friend. He thinks you’re the original Goof Nut.”
“But my father, Jack, my father?”
“There was a doctor with him. He’s okay, Mother.”
Laura half fainted and it was some minutes before Jack could bring her
around. Terry sat on the floor by the sofa, watching her with interest
while Jack propped her feet up on pillows. “That better?” he said.
“I hit him so hard,” she murmured the moment she was able to talk. “I
was sure I killed him. Maybe he died of the concussion.” Her eyes went
wide again with fear and she looked at Jack, but he shook his head with
a little smile.
“No such luck,” he said. “I talked to him last night.”
She gasped. “What did you say? Is he all right? Did you tell him who you
were?” The fears tumbled out of her.
“I called him on the house phone. Relax, Laura, you’re among friends. I
asked him if he knew where you were. He said no.”
“What else?” Laura had clutched his arms with trembling hands.
“He was pretty curious about _me_, naturally. But I didn’t give him my
name and phone number. Now calm down, will you? You’re giving me the
screaming mimis.”
“What did he say?” She was crying again. “What? Tell me!”
“He tried to get me to talk but I didn’t tell him anything, except that
I was your best friend. Finally he said he was afraid he had hurt you.”
Laura shut her eyes and covered her face with a groan. “He wanted a
chance to explain. He said if I found you to tell him right away. He has
an agency trying to track you down. He said to tell you he’s sorry.”
Jack looked curiously at her.
“He’s sorry,” she repeated, staring. “He’s sorry!”
“Did he hurt you, honey?” Jack said gently.
It was too enormous to describe, too torturous to explain; her own
private agony. Not even Jack could share it with her. “Yes,” she
whispered. “He hurt me.” She looked at Jack and he could see in her face
how much more there was to it than the simple words told him.
Jack crushed out his cigarette angrily. “I wish I could break his head
for him,” he said.
“No, no,” Laura said. “I thought I had killed him. I never meant to. I
was sick. I’ve been so sick, Jack, you wouldn’t believe—Oh, thank God
he’s alive. Thank God. I wanted to hurt him and I did. I never wanted
anything more. Just a chance to get even with him.”
“What the hell happened between you two?”
“I can’t talk about it.”
“You can to me.”
“No. I can’t. Not to anybody.”
“Did he beat you?”
She shook her head. “Don’t ask me, Jack,” she said. “It’s my own
personal sickness. And his. It’s between us, and nobody else.”
Jack lighted a cigarette, watching her closely through the blue smoke.
“Why did you go to him in the first place? Didn’t you know it would be
bad?”
“I had to,” she said, her face drawn and intense. “I’ve been running
away from him all my life. I had to quit running and save myself. I had
to tell him face to face what I am.”
Jack’s brows drew together heavily. “You told him you were gay?” he
asked.
“Yes. I told him.”
“What did he do?”
She turned her deep eyes, accentuated by the thinness of her face, to
Jack. “He hurt me, Jack. And I hurt him. But it’s all over. Oh, my God,
I’m so grateful I didn’t kill him. Have you ever thought you killed
somebody, and tried to go on living with it? It eats you up, it corrodes
your brain and your body, it makes you sick, oh, so horribly sick. Oh,
Jack....” And he put his arms around her while she wept and Terry
watched them in silence.
“That bastard,” Jack murmured, comforting her. “That damn bastard. I
think I hate him as much as you do, honey.”
“No, no, I don’t hate him,” she whispered. “I can’t any more. I never
will again. I understand now, so much. Nothing ever made sense before,
but now I understand. He was weaker than I was, Jack.” She spoke with
wonderment. “He was more afraid of me than I was of him.” It was a
strange new feeling this knowledge gave her. “I don’t know quite how I
feel about him now. I won’t know for a long time, I guess. But I still
love him. I always loved him, even when I hated him the most. I only
hope we never meet again. I can stand it if I never have to see him
again.”
* * * * *
Terry fixed her a breakfast, and she ate ravenously. She discovered they
had stripped her wet clothes off and put a robe on her the night before
while she slept. She pulled the robe close around her while Jack tried
to make her tell him where she had been, but he got little satisfaction.
“I don’t know,” was all she would say, and when he protested,
skeptically, she turned to him, her face earnest, and said, “I don’t
know.”
“Ahhh, don’t tell _me_,” he said.