Lili stopped talking, and Laura realized dimly that there had been no cutting edge in her voice for the past few minutes.
After a little while of silence Laura got up dizzily from the floor and dried her eyes. Her face had gone very white and she sat down for a minute in a chair.
“Did you ever love her?” Lili asked. “Really?”
Laura turned to look at her, and her eyes seemed remarkably deep and different, as if she had seen something for the first time. She didn’t seem to have heard Lili.
“Did you ever love her, Laura?” Lili asked again.
“Not until now,” Laura said, and Lili stared at her.
When Laura got home, all she wanted was to go in the bedroom, turn out all the lights, and crawl half dressed into her bed. And try to make sense of her awful knowledge, try to live with it. She couldn’t think of Beebo without pain.
Jack followed her into the bedroom where she sprawled on the bed sobbing. He went to her and said worriedly, “Jesus, honey. Tell me about it.” He sat down beside her, his hands on her shoulders trying to ease her. “Did the stock market crash?”
She wept on as If he weren’t there.
“You got a bad pickle in your hamburger?”
No response.
“Your girdle split?”
She rolled over and looked at him with mournful eyes. “Jack, this is no time to be stupid.”
“I can’t say anything very bright till you tell me what’s the matter,” he said.
Laura blew her nose hard. He made her feel ludicrous and she resented it “Beebo,” she said finally. “Beebo. Oh, Jack.” She looked at him with red eyes. “She must have killed your little dog. The one you gave her after Nix died.”
“Must have?”
“She killed Nix. Nobody beat her up. She did it to herself.”
They stared at each other, Jack beginning to share her feelings.
He heaped his scorn on Beebo. “Damn!” he said. “Damn silly hysterical female. I thought Beebo had more sense than most women.”
“Just because she’s not like most women?” Laura cried. “Jack, you make me furious! The more mannish a woman is, the more sense you think she’s got! God! Beebo’s sick! She’s sick or she wouldn’t have done it When I think what she must have gone through, I—oh…” And she wept again, silently and hard. “She’s no damn silly female. You damn silly man!”
“What is she, then?” he asked, smiling a little.
Laura turned back to the bed and muttered, “I don’t know. She’s mixed up and unhappy and maybe she’s still in love with me. She’s miserable because she’s still in love with me, anyway. I know that much.”
“Isn’t that touching,” Jack commented acidly. “You have a desirable woman walloping herself and bisecting dachshunds out of love for you. It must do wonders for your ego.”
Laura didn’t even answer. She just flew at him, nails first, and took a wild swipe at his face. She missed; Jack was fast, and prepared. But she struggled desperately with him with her knees, her elbows, teeth and nails, until she was exhausted. She didn’t last long. Lili had taken the fight out of her.
He laid her back down on the bed when she was gulping for air and went to get her some coffee.
“Now, tell me where you learned about Beebo,” he said when he returned.
After a long, reluctant pause she answered him. Her basic trust in him persuaded her, but she promised herself that if he got sarcastic again she would stop speaking to him. Permanently.
“I saw Lili this afternoon,” she whispered.
He gave a snort. “For old times’ sake?” he asked.
“To ask about Beebo,” she said haughtily.
“And she told you that romantic little tale? About carving up Nix?”
“Yes.”
“And you believed her?”
“Yes. She wasn’t kidding.”
“Oh, she never does,” he said with false agreement.
Laura flipped over to face him, her face red, but he interrupted her before she could get a word out. “Okay, she told the truth, we’ll say.” He moved her coffee gently toward her as he spoke. “And if she did it’s pretty awful and it’s pretty sad. And I wish like hell that it hadn’t happened to Beebo, because she’s a damn nice kid and I always liked her. I’m sorry about it, Laura—”
“Sorry!” she exploded. “What a stinking little word that is for what she must have gone through!”
“What’s in a word, honey?” Jack shrugged, frowning. “You want a eulogy? I’m sorry, if Beebo really did it. That’s not fancy but it’s true. I can’t put Nix back together. I can’t order you to love Beebo the way she loves you.”
There was a long silence then while Laura considered what he said. Her feelings for Beebo seemed to have undergone a transformation that afternoon. It was as if she saw clearly, and for the first time, into Beebo’s secret heart, into her pain and frustration and passion. And Laura’s own heart melted, touched, awed, a little exalted even to think that she could have inspired such a wonderful, terrible, mad, single-minded love in anybody. All of a sudden it seemed very valuable to her. She wanted it back, just the way it had been. She would know how to respect it now.
She lay there looking at Jack and felt a small fear licking at her heart like a flame. What if her love for Beebo became more precious to her than her love for Jack?
She said pensively, “I felt so bad about everything. I’ve been so selfish.”
“Not with me, honey.”
There was a long pause. At
