Laura surprised Tris by dropping into a chair and sobbing.
Tris sat down opposite her and waited in silence till she caught her breath, expecting an explanation. But Laura only dried her eyes and asked for some coffee.
Jack wasn’t home when she went to pick up her clothes. She had known he wouldn’t be there, and still it made her want to weep. She was in a blue mood, and even the sight of Tris, waiting for her outside at the wheel of a rented convertible, didn’t cheer her up. She made several trips with the clothes, leaving most of her other possessions behind, and on the last trip she wrote him a note. It said, in part:
You’re the only man I would ever marry, Jack. Maybe it will still work out. Tris wants me to spend two weeks with her on Long Island. I’ll call you the minute I get back. I’m crazy about her, but she’s a sick girl and I’ve had enough of wild scenes with sick lovers. I don’t know what to expect so am leaving most of my things here. Hope they won’t be too much in the way. I quit my job, by the way. Will find something else when I get back. Thank you so much for everything, Jack darling. Hope Beebo didn’t give you any trouble. Don’t start drinking, I’m not worth it. I love you. Laura.
The cabin had two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room, and a bathroom. It was furnished à la 1935, full of sand and ants, but comfortable. The walk to the beach was short and just enough to get you pleasantly warm before you soaked in the salt water.
There were a lot of other vacationers living all around them—young couples with dozens of hollering kids, mostly. Laura watched them romping on the sand, the little ones screaming and giggling and pouring water on each other. She wondered if she could ever want a child.
She lay on the beach with Tris, the day after they arrived, and luxuriated in the sun. Tris had lathered herself lovingly with rich sun cream and was sitting under a huge beach umbrella that she had erected with the help of a young man they discovered while they looked for a place to lie down. He was not very subtle about his admiration, which he confined to Tris. And Laura was not very pleased to see her prance for him. But she said nothing.
“You’ll burn to a crisp, Laura,” Tris warned her.
“I put some stuff on,” Laura said lazily, wiggling a little and feeling the hot rays toast the backs of her legs.
“Not enough for one so fair,” Tris maintained. “Such fair skin you have.” And Laura heard the yearning in her voice. “If mine were that light I would never expose it like you do. I’d do everything to keep it as light as I could. Even bleach it. They say buttermilk works wonders.”
Laura looked up at her through eyes squinted against the sun. “Your skin is beautiful, Tris.”
“Oh, not like yours,” Tris said, embarrassed.
“How can you say that? You’re the prettiest color I ever saw.”
“And you’re a dirty hypocrite!” Tris snapped.
Laura stared at her, dumbfounded, for some seconds, before she answered softly, “No, I mean it.” She was afraid to say more. “You think I only say it to flatter you, don’t you?” she asked finally. “I won’t say it, then. I’d rather you turned your temper on yourself than on me.”
After an elaborately casual pause, full of much smoothing lotion and gazing around, Tris said, “Do you really like my color?” The little-girl pleading in her voice touched Laura.
“If I say yes, you call me a liar. If I say no you call me a bigot.”
“Say yes.”
“Yes.” And Laura smiled at her and Tris smiled back and gave Laura the feeling of false but sweet security.
Tris said, “Did you ever notice, when we lie on the bed together, how we look?”
Laura finished, “Yes, I noticed.” She looked at Tris in surprise. It wasn’t like her to mention such things. “Me so white and you so brown. It looks like poetry, Tris. Like music, if you could see music. Your body looks so warm and mine looks so cool. And inside, we’re just the other way around. Isn’t it funny? I’m the one who’s always on fire. And you’re the iceberg.” She laughed a little. “Maybe I can melt you,” she said.
“Better not. The brown comes off,” Tris said cynically, but her strange thought excited Laura.
“God, what a queer idea!” Laura said. “You’d have to touch me everywhere then, every corner of me, till we were both the same color. Then you’d be almost white and I’d be almost tan—and yet we’d be the same.” She looked at Tris with her squinty eyes that sparkled in the glancing sun. And Tris, struck herself by the strangeness of it, murmured, “I never thought of it that way.”
Laura hoped Tris would look at it that way for the rest of the vacation.
Chapter Seven
JACK WALKED into his apartment at five-thirty in the afternoon, tired and thirsty but dolefully sober. He was a stubborn man and he had dedicated all his resistance to fighting liquor. He meant to head for the kitchen and consume a pint of cider and fix himself some dinner. Since Laura had left five days ago he had not had much appetite. He did not admit that she would ever come back or that he had lost a battle. It was only a temporary setback. But it rocked him a little and it hurt him a lot.
He came wearily down the hall, stuck his key belligerently into the lock and kicked his front door open. He dumped a paper bag full of light bulbs, cigarettes, and Scotch tape on a chair, switched on a light and started toward his kitchen. It came as a distinct shock to find Laura sitting on his sofa.
He stared at her.
