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 anymore.
“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!
