“You do everything right, Marcie,” she said soothingly. “I’m the one who’s wrong. No, it’s true. I’m not like you. I can’t confess to people.”
“You tell Jack things.”
Laura was suddenly alert, alarmed. “How do you know?” she demanded. “What things?”
“Oh, you’re always going off and talking. Like this morning. Why don’t you have long talks with me?”
Laura sighed, relieved. “I don’t know. Jack is so easy to talk to, Marcie.”
“Does that mean I’m not? I try to be.” She smiled invitingly.
Laura, who had been lying on her bed, raised herself up on her elbows. “I never say these things like I mean them,” she apologized. “I only mean, I—” I can’t talk to you because I’m in love with you, that’s what I mean. But that’s not what I can say.
She rolled over on her stomach and buried her face in the pillow. Marcie sat motionless for a minute, afraid to say anything and start her off again. Then she leaned over her and touched her shoulders. “You don’t have to tell me, Laura, honey,” she said. “I guess I shouldn’t pester you. Jack says you’ve been through a lot and that’s why you’re nervous. I don’t want to make you unhappy, Laura. I’m afraid I do sometimes. I don’t know why, I just get the feeling now and then, when you look at me, that I make you sad. Do I?”
Laura’s nails cut into her smooth white forehead. “Marcie, don’t torture me,” she said. Her voice was low and strained. It was such an odd thing to say that Marcie withdrew, and climbed into her own bed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, pulling the covers up and turning out the light. Then she put her hands over face suddenly and sobbed.
“Oh, Marcie!” Laura was out of bed before she had time to think, sitting next to Marcie and holding her. “Don’t cry, Marcie. Oh God, why can’t I ever say anything right?” She implored the ceiling for an answer. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Marcie slowed down and stopped almost as suddenly as she began. “I know,” she said. “I know what it is. I used to drive Burr nuts this way, asking questions and talking and talking. And when he wouldn’t answer, I just kept asking more and more till I drove him crazy. I don’t know why. I guess I wanted to drive him crazy. But I don’t know why I do it to you.” She looked away, embarrassed. Laura’s arms tightened involuntarily around her. She had no idea how to answer this unexpected outburst. She was afraid to try to comfort Marcie, for the very act of soothing her brought Laura’s own emotions to a boil. The safest course was to get back in bed at once and forget it. Or at least, stop talking. But Marcie was clinging to her and she couldn’t roughly shake her off.
“I’ve learned a lot from living with you, Laur,” Marcie said quietly. Laura listened, her nostrils full of the scent of flowers. “This may sound silly to you but—don’t take this wrong, Laura—but I admire you, I really do. You have a quality of self-control that I could never learn. You keep your thoughts to yourself. If you don’t have anything to say, you don’t say anything. If you don’t want to talk, you don’t.”
She looked up and laughed a little ruefully. “I talk all the time, as if I had to. Just living with you, I’m beginning to see it. I talk all the time and say nothing. You almost never talk, but when you do it’s worth listening to.”
Laura began to squirm uncomfortably, but Marcie grasped her sleeves and continued. “You know something, Laur? I think I just drove Burr crazy. I talked him to death.”
“He still loves you, Marcie.” Laura found her hand on Marcie’s hair, without quite knowing how she had let it happen. “He wants you back.”
“I know. We’ve hardly quarreled at all this week, Laur. You haven’t been around much, you haven’t seen us. But we’ve been getting along unusually well. But the screwy part is, it’s not like I thought it would be.”
“You mean, you miss the quarrels?”
“I mean I just wish he wouldn’t come around so much any more. I want time to change. To think.”
“Think about what?”
“About me. No, about anything but me. That’s all I ever thought about before. You think about other things. You know what’s going on. You come home at night and you read all these books that are sitting around. You can’t even talk to me about them, because you know how stupid I am.”
Laura was astonished. All these critical thoughts had gone through Marcie’s head, and Laura hadn’t been aware of it. Marcie had been watching her, admiring her, and she hadn’t known that either. I’m plumb blind, she thought. And I thought I couldn’t know Marcie any better. Because I love her. And she talks like this to me. God!
“Marcie, you don’t need to read books. It’s just a bad habit for introverts.” Marcie shook her head silently while Laura went on. “Beautiful girls like you don’t need to read,” she said.
“That’s just it,” Marcie said. “I’m not going to be just another pretty idiot. I want to know something. I’m sick of knowing absolutely nothing. I want to be different. I want you to help me.”
She wants me, Laura thought happily. She wants me. It was all she heard.
“When you were gone all night with Jack—” She paused and looked away. “—I started to think. I couldn’t sleep, I don’t know why. I was thinking about you, Laur. I was wondering why you never talk to me, why we have so little to say to each other. We sit at the breakfast table and read the paper and go off without anything more than ‘good morning.’ At night we go to bed and sometimes I talk, but it’s not a conversation. You listen, I
