“Emmy,” he said, “I love you. If only there were something I could do.”
“There is,” she said, nervously determined. “Don’t you remember?”
He looked at her in puzzlement.
“Marry me, Bud,” she said.
He dropped his glance and stared at the table for a minute and then he took her hands and nearly crushed them in his. “I will, Em,” he said. “If that’s what you want, I will.” He looked up at her.
“Oh, Bud,” she said, and began to smile a real smile for the first time since their disaster. “If I could know that—if I could look forward to that—”
He kissed her hands.
“When?” she urged him.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.” And seeing her face cloud over again he added, “June, maybe. Or Easter. I don’t know.”
“Oh, Bud, darling,” she whispered, and the world steadied a little.
Eighteen
Beth brooded for days. She didn’t want to see Charlie, she didn’t want to go out, she didn’t want to do anything. Her every bitter thought had a wicked stinger in it: she and Charlie had done the same as Emily and Bud, and got away with it.
Beth felt a wave of irresistible disgust with herself, her little duplicities, her evasions. In a restless temper she got up and paced the room fretfully. Laura watched her anxiously, wanting to talk to her, to help, but afraid to. Beth pulled the window open and stood in the wash of early April air, chill and dark and soft, and thought of the sorrows that a man can heap on a woman. She thought of Charlie’s complicity, she thought of Bud’s worthless charm and useless contrition, and she hated them briefly, with violent energy.
The phone on the desk rang. Laura picked it up, watching Beth all the while.
“Hello?” she said, and she frowned. Beth shook her head without a word, and then shut her eyes tight as if that might eliminate the sound of Laura’s voice.
“No, Charlie, she’s not here. I’m sorry—please, Charlie—I don’t know, but—” And she listened a moment longer and hung up. She looked at Beth apologetically. “I hung up on him,” she said. “I didn’t know what else to do. He sounded sort of—frantic. I didn’t know what else to do.” She watched Beth hopefully, tenderly, afraid to go near her. Beth leaned against her dresser and stared out the window again, silent.
“Beth?” Laura said softly. Beth turned toward her suddenly and pulled her hard and close against her and put her head down against Laura’s. Her hot hands probed and pushed back and forth across Laura’s shoulders, the small of her back, her hips, catching in her clothes, rumpling them, and finally her arms tightened around the younger girl and she whispered, “Laura. Look at me.”
Laura looked up and Beth kissed her full on the lips, a yearning kiss, warm and deep and slow. She didn’t stop for a long while, not until Laura was shivering wildly in her embrace, answering Beth’s passion with her own.
“Oh, Laur,” Beth said into Laura’s ear, “what a fool I am. What a simpleton.”
“Beth, I love you,” said Laura, clinging to her and letting the delicious tremors shake her body, wondering where this revival of desire came from, but not caring. It had happened; Beth wanted her again the way she had in the beginning.
“Laura,” Beth said. “Oh, I hate them! God damn them all, I hate them!” Laura didn’t have to be told that “they” were men; she knew it and her heart expanded joyously and floated in her chest.
“You can’t trust them,” Beth muttered. “You can’t trust them. God, I don’t know why I ever bothered with them. All they know how to do is hurt. They all want the same damn thing.” She hugged Laura tighter and Laura’s hope bloomed again like a forced flower. “I’m sick and tired of it,” Beth went on. “I’m sick and tired of the whole damn thing. If you get caught they treat you like a slut, they kick you out. If you don’t get caught your conscience gives you hell. I’ve had enough, Laura. It makes me sick, the whole damn business—authority—stupid, stuffy, blind authority—men, deans, school, everything. I want to get out of here.” They whipped Emmy in public, she thought; I’ll whip myself in private. Exile myself. It was the only way to square with her conscience.
“What about Charlie?” Laura’s voice was faint and frightened.
“Charlie can go to hell. Charlie’s as guilty as Bud. You don’t know how guilty Charlie is. You don’t know.” She put her head down again.
“Beth, would you really leave school?”
“Yes. Yes, I would, damn it. I would!”
“Will you let me come with you?”
Beth pulled away from her a little and started to shake her head.
“Beth!” Laura cried, “I want to go wherever you go. You said we weren’t any better than Bud and Emily; you said we were doing the same thing. Well, we haven’t any more right to stay here than she does, then.”
“Your family?” Beth said.
“Oh, my family…” Laura said, making the word curdle with her contempt. “My family doesn’t care what happens to me, just so they have something to tell their friends.”
“They won’t like it, Laur.”
“I won’t ask them to like it. There’s nothing they can do about it, Beth. I’m of age, in this state anyway. Oh, Beth, you can’t ask me to stay here without you—you can’t!” She clung tightly to her. Laura was aware that Beth couldn’t resist her at that moment, and she made the most of it.
Furious with men and intensely sympathetic for a girl, angry with herself, yet in need of reassurance, Beth turned to Laura again with all the unreasoning joy of their early romance. She said weakly, “I don’t know….”
Laura said quickly, “Beth, darling, I wouldn’t be afraid of anything as long as you were with me.”
Beth laughed gently at her, flattered, seeing the exaggeration and yet enjoying it too much to deny it. “I can’t do everything,” she whispered.
“Yes
