It was the last time they were together before Christmas; the last time for several weeks.
Christmas. Laura went home to Lake Forest, Charlie went home to New York, and Beth went off to Florida to be with her Aunt Elsa and Uncle John.
There was little for Laura to do but visit one parent and then the other, and do school assignments. The holidays were a dreary parenthesis in her romance. She wanted to write to Beth every day but Beth forbade it.
“It would look too obvious,” she said. “Just send a couple of notes, honey.”
Her notes were rather more like chapters from a book, but at least there were only three of them. Beth’s answers were short but affectionate in a noncommittal sort of way; Laura knew them by heart.
She spoke to her parents so many times of Beth that her mother exclaimed, “Aren’t you lucky to have such a nice girl for a roommate!” And she was thankful that her daughter was under the guidance of someone so “sensible” about boys. Laura had told her that Beth spent most of her energies on study and the Student Union.
Mr. Landon muttered, “She sounds like a damn puritan. A girl like that ends up an old maid nine times out of ten. I wouldn’t take everything she says as the Gospel, Laura.”
And Laura laughed to herself to think that her lovely, warm, passionate Beth could be so easily camouflaged without benefit of a single fib.
Beth, on the beach, sunned herself and studied and thought of Laura. She thought of other things, in her solitude, and all the other things, strangely enough, were Charlie. Her mind was vague, her thoughts indefinite; there was just a cloudy image of Charlie in her head. It could be dissipated like a cloud, but like a cloud it always re-formed and hung about to threaten a storm.
It came to her at odd moments, bothersome and wonderful and completely exasperating. Once, in a restaurant booth, Uncle John leaned past her to reach for the salt shaker, putting his hand on her knee as he did so. It couldn’t have been a more innocuous gesture on his part and he was somewhat startled to hear his niece gasp audibly at his touch. The warmth and pressure of his hand in just that spot on her leg brought Charlie back to her with a shock; Charlie in the smoky booth in Maxie’s basement, pressing against her, laughing, telling her nonsense, and feeling her leg with an experienced hand. She felt a sudden irritation at the thought of him, as she had so many times before; and as usual, she didn’t quite understand it. Before the first week of vacation was up she was impatient to get back to school again.
Charlie, in New York, occupied himself with parties and people, but his head was full of Beth. In the past, whenever he found himself thinking too much about one particular girl, he’d deliberately ignore her and take out dozens of others, another one each night, and soon enough he’d be free of his infatuation. So it was with understandable confusion that he discovered that Beth could not be driven from his thoughts in this fashion. It annoyed him, but after four or five days he accepted the situation and quite simply gave up and thought only of Beth.
He knew her special kind of beauty appealed strongly to him, and she pleased him with her teasing, her talk, even her tantalizing independence. But he had found these qualities in other girls and never been so hopelessly fascinated with them. No, there was a unique delight in being with Beth, a curious essence in her that he couldn’t put his finger on, couldn’t explain. It was as if she were holding something of herself back, as if there were some secret unsounded depth in her that no one had ever touched. Charlie made up his mind then and there to touch her; to reach for her and find her as she really was, and hold and keep her.
The days dragged for all three of them. Laura crossed them off on a little pocket calendar she carried in her wallet on the other side of a picture of Beth. The picture was a reproduction of her yearbook portrait and although Laura knew every plane and shadow of it, she took it out frequently to study it.
Ten
Laura came back to school in a sweat of excitement. But when she burst into the room the one who turned to greet her was Emily.
“Where’s Beth?” Laura demanded. She forgot to say hello to Emmy.
“Hi, Laur. Nice vacation?”
“Oh—yes, thanks. Where’s Beth?”
“We just got a wire from her. She’s not coming in till tomorrow. Bad flying weather, or something.”
“Oh.” It was a shocking disappointment.
Emily stared at her curiously. “She’ll be back tomorrow, Laur,” she said in a comforting voice that Laura was alarmed to have inspired.
“Oh. Oh, I know.” Laura laughed nervously to cover her chagrin. “I—I just had something to tell her.” She tried to make it sound casual. She had to have something innocent to be disappointed about.
“Oh, what!” said Emily, who loved secrets.
“Oh, nothing,” said Laura. She turned away in confusion, suddenly afraid.
“Is it a secret?” said Emily. She was kneeling on the couch and smiling at Laura like a little girl with three guesses to spend. There was nothing malicious in her curiosity.
“Well, I—I don’t know.” Laura felt rather desperate.
“Can I guess?”
“Oh, Emmy!” she said in a sharp, angry voice. She stopped and caught her breath, and then turned to see how much
