“Look at me, Laura,” he said and lifted her face. “We can’t think straight because we always think gay,” he said. “We don’t know anything about a love that lasts or a life that means something. We spend all our time on our knees singing hosannas to the queers. Trying to make ourselves look good. Trying to forget we aren’t wholesome and healthy like other people.”
“Some of the other people aren’t so damn wholesome either,” Laura said.
Jack put his arms around her suddenly and pulled her tight against him and said, “Let’s get out of it, Laura. Let’s run like hell while we have a chance. We could get away, just the two of us. But we can’t do it alone; we need each other. We could move uptown and get a nice apartment and you wouldn’t have to work. We could get married, honey.”
“But—”
“Please, Laura, please,” he begged her. “Maybe we could even…adopt a child. Would you like that? Would you?” He sounded a little breathless and he leaned back to see her face.
Laura was startled. “I don’t know anything about kids. They scare me to death.”
“You’d get over it in a hurry,” he said. “You’re female. You have instinct on your side.”
“Do you like kids?”
“I love them.”
“I don’t. You’re more female than I am,” she said.
He laughed. “Flattery will get you nowhere,” he said. “Seriously, Laura—would you like a child? A daughter?”
“Why not a son?” she asked him, sharp-eyed.
“Okay.” He shrugged warily. “A son.”
Laura slid back in her chair and looked at the ceiling. “I never even thought about it before,” she said. “I just never dreamed I’d ever have anything to do with a child of my own…with any child.”
“Do you want one?” He seemed so eager that she was reluctant to hurt him. But she couldn’t lie to him.
“No,” she said. And when his face hardened, she added, “Because I’d be a terrible mother, Jack. I’d be afraid of it. And jealous, I think. I’d be all thumbs. I’d stick it full of pins and never be sure if I did it on purpose or by mistake.”
“You won’t always feel that way,” he said, and she knew from the tone of his voice that there was no arguing with him.
“Maybe not,” she said. “But if I marry you, Jack—” And they were both startled to hear the words, as if neither had really expected Laura to consider it seriously. “If I marry you, I wouldn’t dare adopt a child for years. Not till I was sure we were safe together and the marriage would last.”
“It would. It will. Say yes.”
“I can’t,” she said and drove him to his feet in a fit of temper.
“Goddamn it, Laura, do you want to grow old here in the Village?” he said. “Have you seen the pitiful old women in their men’s oxfords and chopped-off hair, stumping around like lost souls, wandering from bar to bar and staring at the pretty kids and weeping because they can’t have them any more? Or living together, two of them, ugly and fat and wrinkled, with nothing to do and nothing to care about but the good old days that are no more? Is that what you want? Because if you stay here, that’s what you’ll get.
“Pretty soon you won’t know any other way of life. You won’t know how to live in the big world. You don’t care a goddamn about that world now when you’re young. So when you’re old you won’t know a goddamn about it. You’ll be afraid of it and of normal people and you’ll hide in a cheap walk-up with a dowdy old friend or a stinking cat and you’ll yammer about lost loves. Tempting, huh?” And he leaned on the kitchen table, his eyes so bright with urgency that she couldn’t look at them and only watched his mouth.
“Horrible,” she said.
He straightened up and shoved his hands in his pockets, and when he started to speak again he was gazing out the window. “I want to get so far away from here,” he said, “that—”
“That Terry will never find you again,” she guessed.
He dropped his head a little. “Yes,” he said. “That, too. Terry and Joe and Archie and John and God knows who. We’d go way uptown and leave no forwarding address…nothing. Just fade out of the Village forever. No Beebo, no Terry…”
“No Tris,” Laura whispered.
“I told you, Mother…I’m no bluebeard. If you want affairs, have them. You’re young, you need a few. Only keep them out of the Village and keep them very quiet.”
“Do you think Terry would really come looking for you again?” she asked. “After the way you threw him out?”
“There aren’t many men stupid enough to put up with his antics as I did,” he said. “I think he might try to put the touch on me between affairs.”
“Damn him!” Laura cried indignantly.
“Yes, he might try to find me. And Beebo would pace the city looking for you. But let them. We’d be through with them forever.”
And Laura felt a very queer unwelcome pang for Beebo, for all that wealth of misdirected love. Jack was standing behind her now, his hands on her shoulders. “Well?” he said quietly. “Will you marry me?”
“Could I—answer you in the morning?” she asked.
“What the hell will you do tonight?”
“See Tris.”
“Oh. And if she’s nice, it’s no to old Jack. If she’s bitchy, it’s yes. Right?” He said it lightly but she knew he was hurt.
“Not quite,” she said. “I want to test myself, I guess. Jack, for the first time I feel almost—almost like saying yes. But I want to see her first. Please let me.”
“You don’t need my permission, Mother.”
“Maybe Beebo’s found her already.”
“Beebo’s in bad shape. I lay odds she sleeps it off for a while. Even if she’s found Tris she won’t be in condition to do either of you much harm.
