He shook his head without even glancing at it.
“Are you too proper? Too moral? Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly developed a conscience! After all these years,” she said.
He shrugged. “Why read it? You’ve told me what’s in it.”
“Maybe you’d like to know what she says about me.” He saw her face color up again and a shivering clearly visible in her hands and he said, “No.” But Beebo opened the diary, leafing through it for the worst slander she could find.
Jack took the book from her hands so suddenly that she let it slip before she knew what he was up to, and then he socked her when she reached for it, catching her on the chin. She reeled backwards and sank to the floor. Jack leaned down and picked her up, hoisting her over his shoulder. He carried her that way, head dangling in back and feet in front, down the hall and out the door to the apartment building.
There he set her dizzily on her feet. She hardly knew where she was and let him hold her up. He found a taxi for her on the corner of Fourth and Seventh Avenue and told the driver, “She’s drunk. It’s only a couple of blocks, but I can’t take her home,” and handed him five dollars. “Take her upstairs,” he said, giving him the address. “Apartment 2B.”
He was headed up the steps to his apartment again when he heard Laura’s voice calling him, and he turned around to see her running up the sidewalk, hair awry and face like chalk.
“Laura!” he exclaimed and caught her. She began to sob the moment she felt his arms around her, as if she had only been waiting to feel him for the tears to start.
“Is she here?” she asked, and he could feel her quivering. “She left,” he said. “I just put her in a cab. Your timing is faultless, Mother.”
Laura looked at him out of big amazed eyes. “She’s gone? How did you do it?” she asked. “What happened?”
“Come on inside,” he said. He led her down the hall and in his kitchen at last, with the front door locked and no Beebo anywhere around and a comforting drink to brace her, she heaved a long sigh of relief.
“Now,” said Jack, making himself some coffee. “Who is Tris?”
Laura clasped her glass in both hands and looked into the whiskey for an answer. “She’s a dancer—”
“I know that part. I mean, are you sleeping with her?”
“No!” Laura flashed.
“Do you want to?”
And after a pause she whispered honestly, “Yes.”
“So Beebo’s not imagining things.”
“She doesn’t have to,” Laura cried bitterly. “She’s got my diary.”
“I saw it.”
“Did you read it?”
“No, but Beebo did.”
“What did she say?” Laura’s throat had gone dry all of a sudden at the idea of Beebo perusing those private pages, and she took a sip of her whiskey.
“She wants to solve the whole thing by murdering you.”
“I think she would, too,” Laura said, unsurprised. “Oh, Jack, help me. I’m scared to death.”
“All right.” He came over, pulling his chair, and sat down beside her. “Marry me.”
Laura covered her face with her hands and gave a little moan. “Is that all you can think of? Is that all you can say?” she said, and she sounded a little desperate. “I’m in love with Tris, and Beebo wants to murder me and you want to marry me. What good will that do? I might as well be dead as married!” And she said it so emphatically that Jack was stung.
But he never let personal hurts show.
“Mother, you’re in a mess,” he said. “Nobody has a perfect solution for you. And you have none at all for yourself. So listen to one from an old friend who loves you and don’t stomp on it out of sheer spite.”
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, sipping the drink again. She let the tears flow unchecked, without really crying. Her face was motionless, but still the tears rolled down her cheeks, as if they had business of their own unrelated to her emotion.
“Tell me something,” Jack said gently, putting an arm over the back of her chair and leaning close to her. And as always with him, she didn’t mind. She liked his nearness and the fact that he was male and strong and full off affection for her.
Perhaps it was because she knew he would never demand of her what a normal man would; because she felt so safe with him and so able to trust him. “Tell me why you went to live with Beebo two years ago,” he said.
“I thought I loved her.”
“Why did you think you loved her?” he asked.
“Because she—well, she was so—I don’t know, Jack. She excited me.”
He lighted a cigarette with a sigh. “And that’s love,” he said. “Excitement. As long as you’re excited you’re in love. When it turns flat you’re not in love. Lord, what a way to live.”
Laura was taken aback by the selfishness she betrayed. “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. It had never seemed so cheap to her before.
“Are you in love with Tris?” he asked.
“I—I—” She was afraid to answer now.
“Sure you are,” he said. “Just like Beebo. Fascinating girl. More excitement. Beebo’s worn out now, let’s try Tris. And when we wear Tris out, let’s find another—”
“Stop it!” Laura begged.
“Where’s your life going, Laura?” he asked her. “What have you done with it so far? Does it matter a damn, really? To anybody but you…and me?”
“And Beebo.”
“Beebo’s more worried about where her next drink is coming from than she is about you.” He knew it wasn’t true. He knew if it ever came to a choice, Beebo loved Laura desperately enough to give up drinking. But Jack was fighting for Laura now.
Laura began to cry now, her face concealed behind her hands. “Please, Jack,” she whispered, but he knew what he was doing. He had to make her see it his way so clearly, feel the hurt so hard, that she
