Читать книгу Journey To A Woman - Ann Bannon - Страница 8

SHE LAY IN THE DARK AND CRIED. SHE LAY CLOSE AND WARM IN her husband’s arms while their breath slowed to normal and their hearts quieted together and she wept silently at his sigh of relief. She had learned to cry without making a sound. It had taken a while but she had had plenty of opportunities to learn. If he caught her crying there was always a terrible scene. He started out by questioning her love and ended by questioning his own manhood.

“Goddamn it, Beth!” he had cried to her once, when they had been married only two months, “If I’m doing it wrong, tell me! How do I know what you want me to do if you don’t tell me? A woman isn’t like a man. I can’t tell if it’s any good for you or not.”

He was blaming her for his own faults of love she thought, and, stung, she snapped back, “What am I supposed to do, give you a play-by-play analysis? Can’t you figure it out for yourself, Charlie? You did well enough before we were married.”

“So did you, before we were married,” he flung at her. He got out of bed, lighted a cigarette in the dark, and sat down on the floor. They could not afford chairs yet, and he didn’t want to share the bed with her for a few minutes. Not until the anger wore off.

“Beth, you’ve got it just backwards,” he said. “Most girls can’t enjoy it until they’re married. Their consciences hurt, or something. They’re afraid they’ll get pregnant. But not you. Not Backwards Beth. The minute we get married it’s no fun anymore. Does love have to be immoral or illegal before you can enjoy it, honey?”

Insulted, she turned her back to him and pulled the covers over her disappointed body. She was afraid to think of what he had just said. It had too much the shape of truth and she had had to work very hard to forget it completely. Charlie finished his cigarette and climbed gingerly back into his place in bed, more chilled by his wife’s behavior than the night vapors.

It had been nine years since the first such quarrel. There had been others, but Beth had learned fast to hide the tears of frustration. True to her contrary nature, there were times when she loved Charlie—if love can be an on-again, off-again affair. And sometimes, when she didn’t expect it, desire sneaked up on her and made the moments in his arms unbearably lovely, the way they had been in college. But that was only sometimes, and sometimes was not enough.

On this night, like so many others, she got up after he had fallen back to sleep and went into the bathroom and washed herself. It comforted her obscurely to tidy herself up this way. And when she went back to bed, she dreamed. Beth dreamed often and vividly.

But tonight it wasn’t a dream like any other. She dreamed of Laura. Just Laura, sitting on the studio couch of the room they had shared in college, looking at Beth and smiling. Laura with her long light hair and periwinkle eyes. Laura, who didn’t know herself until Beth discovered her. Laura, who loved her and who had disappeared from her life like frost from a spring lawn, and who never came back.

That was all. Beth spoke her name, trying to make her answer and explain herself, but Laura only sat and smiled. Beth repeated the name until suddenly she wakened and pressed a hand over her mouth. Had she spoken aloud? But Charlie slumbered undisturbed and she relaxed again, leaning back on her pillow and staring at the dark ceiling.

I haven’t even thought of her for months, she pondered. How strange. It’s been years since I dreamed of her. I’d half forgotten. I wonder how she is … where she is. In Chicago with her father, I suppose. He always ruled her life like a tyrant. She wouldn’t have married, of course.

In the morning she told Charlie, “I dreamed of Laura last night.”

“Oh?” He looked up from the financial page of the paper. He spoke casually enough, although he stiffened inwardly. Charlie remembered Laura, too. A man does not easily forget a rival and for a few months, many years ago, when they were all in college, that was what Laura had been. A strange cool girl she was, with a capacity for violent love that Beth had almost accidentally roused. It had only lasted a short while—the space of a semester—and for Beth it had not seemed serious, for she was falling in love with Charlie at the time, and Charlie won her handily. That was when Laura had disappeared.

Beth and Charlie had talked it over, had even tried to help Laura. There was little about the curious affair that Charlie didn’t know; little that he couldn’t forgive. And, it should be added, little about it that he understood.

When he and Beth married he was confident that she would forget it, and to a large extent she had. At first, anyway. She liked men, she was married to one. She had children now and a stable home. Most important in Charlie’s eyes, she had him. And besides, she was a sensible girl. When Laura dropped out of Beth’s life physically, Charlie had faith that she would drop out emotionally as well.

Beth had rarely mentioned Laura over the years, and now, when she spoke of her dream at the breakfast table, it was the first time Charlie had even thought of Laura in over two years. So he was startled, but he didn’t want it to show.

“What was the dream?” he asked.

“Not much. Just Laura, sitting there.”

“Where?”

“That room we had on the third floor at the Alpha Beta house.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all. Polly, damn it, don’t wipe your fingers on your dress!” Her four-year-old daughter grabbed a paper napkin guiltily.

“Don’t swear at the kids, honey,” Charlie said mildly.

“Don’t scold me in front of them,” she said.

He sighed, feeling a quick hot frustration, a sensation that was much too common for comfort these days, and picked up the paper again. “What else about Laura?” he said.

“Nothing else. Silly dream.”

But it haunted her. And Charlie had a feeling there was more to it than she told him. He kept his eyes on the paper another five minutes and then rose from the table. “Got to get going,” he said. He kissed his two children goodbye and then came around the table behind Beth.

“ ’Bye, honey,” he said into her ear, and blew into it gently.

“Have a good day,” she said absently.

He wished gloomily that she would see him to the door.

“Daddy, when you get home will you make me a kite?” Skipper said suddenly. He was five, just a year older than his sister, and he looked very much like Beth.

“Sure,” Charlie said, still looking at the short dark curls on the back of his wife’s head. He stroked her neck with his finger.

“Yay!” Skipper cried.

Beth squirmed slightly, irritated by Charlie’s wordless loneliness and a little ashamed of herself. Charlie left her finally and went toward the front door, slipping into his suit coat as he went. Beth felt his gaze on her and glanced up suddenly with a little line of annoyance between her eyes.

“Something wrong?” she said.

“No. What are you doing today?”

“I’m flying to Paris,” she said sarcastically. “What else? Want to come?”

“Sure.” He grinned and she softened a little. He was handsome, in a lopsided way, with his big grin and his fine eyes. The kids set up a clamor. “Can I come too? Can I come too, Mommy?”

And when Charlie went out the door he heard her shout at them in that voice that scared him, that voice with the edge of hysteria in it, “Oh, for God’s sake! Oh, shut up! Honest to God, you kids are driving me insane!”

And he knew she would slam something down on the table to underline her words—a jam jar or a piece of tableware, anything handy.

He drove off to work with a worried face.