“I’d be a rotten doctor, Jack. I’d be scared. I’d be running and hiding every day of my life.”
“Hell, plenty of doctors are gay. They manage.” He was surprised at the importance it was assuming in his own mind. He really cared about it. It depressed him to think of what she might be and what she was in a fair way now of becoming. “You’re thinking that if people are going to reject you, by God you’re going to reject them first. If they make it hard for you to be a doctor, you’ll make damn sure they never get that doctor. You’ve been keeping score and now you’re avenging yourself on the world because most of the people in it are straight. You keep it up and you’ll turn into a joyless old dyke without a shred of love in her heart for anyone.”
Beebo sat up and frowned at him, surprised but not riled. “Are you telling me to go to hell because I—I think I’m gay?” she asked.
“I’m telling you to go to college,” he said seriously.
“Jack, you goofed your chance for an M.D. for reasons a lot flimsier than mine. What are you trying to do? Push me into school so you can make peace with your conscience? You’re the one who wants to give that good doctor to humanity. If it can’t be yourself, better it should be Beebo than nobody. And Jack Mann will have made a gift to his fellow men. Jack, the Great Humanitarian. And you won’t even have to crack a book.” She spoke wryly, but without rancor.
Jack was stunned into silence by her flash of insight.
“I hit it, didn’t I?” she said. “Jack, you don’t know what you’re asking me to do: wear a skirt for the rest of my life. Forget about love till my heart dries up. Go back and face the father I destroyed and the brother who hates me…well, I can’t. I’m no martyr. I’m not brave enough to try to be a doctor now, just because you tried and failed. And feel bad about it.”
He took her hands and rubbed them. “You hit it dead on, little pal, but only part of it,” he said. “Sure, I’d like to see you with a medical degree and know I’d had something to do with it. But forget me. Be selfish about it. A degree would protect you, not expose you to more trouble. Knowledge, success, the respect of other doctors—that would be your defense against the world.”
“There’s no protection against myself. My feelings. I didn’t tell you about the girls back home, Jack, walking down country lanes after school with their arms around the boys, kissing and laughing. The girls I couldn’t touch or talk to or even smile at. The girls I’d grown up with, suddenly filling out their sweaters and their nylons, smooth and sweet with scented hair and pink mouths. I didn’t tell you how I ached for them.”
He got up and crossed the room, looking out his front windows. “I don’t want you to end up an old bull dyke in faded denims, letting some blowsy little fem take care of you,” he said acidly. “You’re not a bum.”
“I don’t want that, either. But Jack, I can’t spend the rest of my life wondering!” She went to his side, speaking urgently, wanting him to root for her, not against her. “They call this life gay,” she said softly, following his gaze out the windows. “I need a little gaiety.”
“They call it gay out of a perverted sense of humor,” he said.
Across the street two young women were walking slowly in the mild evening air, arms around each other’s waists. “There,” Beebo said, nodding at them. “That’s what I want. I’ve wanted it ever since I knew girls did such things.”
“You mean Mona?” he said.
Beebo shoved her hands into her pockets, self-conscious as always when that name came up. “You have to start somewhere,” she said.
“You have quite a thing about her, don’t you?” he said.
Beebo’s cheeks flushed and she looked at the floor. “I never dared to admit that I wanted a girl before, Jack. Maybe I picked the wrong time. Or the wrong audience.”
“Pal, you just picked the wrong girl.”
“I don’t want you to pity me. That’s why I held out so long. I need you, Jack. You’re the first friend—the first brother—I ever had.”
Jack was touched and embarrassed. “I feel no pity for you, Beebo,” he said. “You don’t need pity. I feel friendship and…anxiety. If you’ve made up your mind to stay here, I’ll do anything to help you, teach you, take you around. But, honey—not Mona. She doesn’t believe in anything but kicks. She’ll charm the pants off you and then leave you standing naked in front of your enemies.”
“Are you trying to say you disapprove of Mona, but not of the fact that I’m—I must be—gay?” she said.
“Why would I disapprove of that?” he said and then he laughed. “I swear to God, Beebo, you can be thicker than bean soup. I’ve done everything but sing it for you in C sharp.”
“I know you’ve tried to be tolerant and all, introducing me to your friends. I thought it was because you suspected about me and you wanted to be a good sport.”
“I’m trying to explain about me, not you,” he said, throwing out his hands and still chuckling.
Beebo smiled back, mystified. “Let me in on the joke, will you?”
“The joke’s on me this time,” he said.
She studied him a moment, her smile yielding to perplexity. And then she said, “Oh!” suddenly and lifted a hand to her face. She went back to the sofa and sat down with her head in her hands.
“Well, you don’t need to feel badly about
