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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79013 ***
+
+
+                             Sorority House
+
+   From far off Susan Mitchell could hear the sweet voices of a
+   fraternity serenading another sorority house down the street.
+
+   Mitch turned the light on and looked at the face of the clock. It
+   was eleven-thirty. She saw Leda’s half-full package of cigarettes
+   on the desk, and she took one from the pack and lit it.
+
+   It was taking Leda a long time. Mitch was numb with torment, and
+   the sheets on her bed were wrinkled and halfway off the mattress
+   from her perpetual turning and moving as she waited. The ticking
+   of the tin clock on the dresser sounded frantic and Mitch made
+   the ticks come in three beats in her mind—_Les-bi-an_,
+   _Les-bi-an_, _tick-tick-tick_. The thought foamed in Mitch’s
+   brain and hurt her. She did not know why she felt dirty when Leda
+   told her that she was a Lesbian. She thought she should have felt
+   happy and glad that they were two. But she did not want to be
+   one.
+
+   Tomorrow, she decided, she would move out of Tri Epsilon and into
+   the dorm with Robin. If she and Leda weren’t put out of the
+   sorority, she would leave anyway. But she knew she could not
+   leave Leda. “I love Leda,” she said softly to the darkness, “even
+   though we’re both that way. I wish she wasn’t that way.”
+
+
+                         A GOLD MEDAL ORIGINAL
+
+
+
+
+                              SPRING FIRE
+
+
+                               Vin Packer
+
+
+                                New York
+                            Gold Medal Books
+                       Fawcett Publications, Inc.
+
+
+Copyright 1952 by Fawcett Publications, Inc.
+
+   First Printing, February 1952
+   Second Printing, August 1952
+   Third Printing, May 1954
+   Fourth Printing, March 1956
+   Fifth Printing, July 1958
+
+All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or
+portions thereof.
+
+All characters in this book are fictional and any resemblance to persons
+living or dead is purely coincidental.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter One
+
+
+It was two-thirty in the afternoon, late September, with the sun beating
+down the way it does then in the Midwest, and the dust in the streets.
+The girl, Susan Mitchell, was wearing a green linen suit that clung on
+her large body heavily, a round white straw hat from which short pieces
+of blonde hair hung limply, and brown and white shoes with low heels
+that made her long feet look longer. She was not pretty. She was not
+lovely and dainty and pretty, but there was a comeliness about her that
+suggested some inbred strength and grace. It was in her face. It was in
+the color of her eyes—deep blue like the ocean ’way out there, but quiet
+and still. It was in the structure of her cheekbones, high and firm
+coming down to pull her chin up. She walked that way, too. She walked
+easy and sure. She was following College Avenue down to where the main
+gate was, and the road that led through the gate to the campus of
+Cranston University. All around her there were signs in the windows of
+bookstores and drugstores and dress shops and bars and the signs said:
+“WELCOME BACK C. U.”
+
+The gate was open and the wide slate walks surrounding the immense green
+lawn were dotted with boys and girls, walking together in groups,
+sitting alone on benches, standing thoughtfully in doorways, and waiting
+wearily in long registration lines. Susan Mitchell had registered two
+weeks ago.
+
+“You’ll have enough to think about during rush week,” her father had
+promised, “without worrying about getting yourself enrolled. We’ll do it
+early. Then you can concentrate on impressing those sorority gals. Don’t
+be nervous, either. Remember, your father still loves you, no matter
+what.”
+
+And so it was there again—his fear for her. His fear that she was not
+good enough. Because he had not been. He had worked hard, and not gone
+to college, and not had luxuries, and not learned not to say “ain’t,”
+and not anything. Until the war and the men came that day and looked at
+the factory and talked with him and signed papers and he was rich then.
+And then he was afraid.
+
+He had driven her from Kansas City to register, and when she had
+finished, he had asked someone how to get to “Greek Town,” and with him
+she had first seen it.
+
+“Greek Town” was the home of the sororities and fraternities and it was
+magic over there, close to the stadium, within walking distance of the
+campus, but not huddled up in narrow streets the way the dorms and
+boardinghouses were. It was magic, with street after street of grand
+houses—brick, stucco, stone, and fresh white wooden houses. Each one had
+a gold plaque with shining Greek letters, and nearly all of them had
+spacious yards, winding driveways, and huge white columns that stood
+impressively, symbols of magnificence. Then she too had felt a thin
+shiver of fear.
+
+Tomorrow she would go to the sorority houses to be judged; but now as
+she walked on the campus she forgot about that momentarily, and smelled
+the grass that had been cut and watered, and it was good. The ivy,
+crawling up along the walls of the building, was massive and cooling,
+and the big trees made shade along the path. She sat for a while on the
+rock bench there where the breeze came along, and it was peaceful.
+
+A group of laughing girls passed, arms entwined, faces glowing with
+excitement.
+
+“... anyway,” one of them was saying, “it turned out he was from St.
+Louis—Webster, in fact—and he knew loads of kids I knew.”
+
+“My God!” another shrieked. “Didn’t you tell him _I_ was from Webster?”
+
+Later Susan Mitchell walked back toward the gate and the street leading
+to the hotel where she was staying. A convertible whizzed by and kicked
+up clouds of the dust that settled near the curb, and at the corner when
+it turned, the tires squealed nervously. In the doorway of a restaurant,
+a tall boy stood holding hands with a small, brown-eyed girl whose hair
+was flaxen. “God,” he said, “all summer I had you on my mind, Annie. No
+bull, I thought about you all summer.”
+
+When Susan Mitchell reached the lobby of the hotel, the low leather
+couches and chairs were filled with girls, and several rows of luggage
+were lined up near the desk. She asked for her key, wary of the
+arrogant, crooked-nosed clerk who always yelled, as he did now. “Speak
+up, girlie,” he said. “I ain’t deaf and I can’t read lips.”
+
+“Susan Mitchell,” the girl said louder. “Four-o-one.”
+
+He handed her the metal key with the wooden tab attached and she hurried
+off to the waiting elevator.
+
+“Good God,” the uniformed pimple-faced boy said when she stepped into
+the small box. “You girls! Up and down all the damn day long! I never
+seen the likes of this bunch. The sororities are welcome to you!”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“The next name, girls,” Mother Nesselbush said, “is Susan Mitchell.”
+
+At her feet, sitting on the wide tan rug, the members of Tri Epsilon
+polished their nails, knitted, rubbed cold cream into their skin, and
+rolled their hair up on rags and iron curlers and bobby pins. Mother
+Nesselbush thumbed through the papers on the card table in front of her.
+She was a fat woman with a nervous twitch in her jowls and short, squat
+legs. Twenty years ago she had been a slim coed with long golden hair, a
+gay young face, and a heart-shaped Tri Epsilon pin attached to her
+budding bosom. Five years ago, when J. Edman Nesselbush fell dead, she
+returned to the Cranston campus and took over the duties of the
+housemother at Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon. Now she was a wide dowager with
+wiry gray hair and a worn, wrinkled face. In place of the pin now, there
+was a gravy stain from the noon meal slopped onto her broad,
+lace-covered chest.
+
+“Now,” Mother Nessy began, “a little about this girl.”
+
+The information on Susan Mitchell had been obtained by Edith Wellard
+Boynton, ’22. Mrs. Boynton relished the task. She was a superior sleuth,
+and she would often come from an assignment with copious notes on such
+intimate details as the estimated income of the candidate’s father; the
+color of the guest towels in the candidate’s bathroom and the condition
+of said bathroom; the morals of the candidate, the candidate’s mother,
+father, brother, and sister; and ever important, the social prestige of
+the candidate’s family in the community. Then she would type up her
+notes and send them special delivery.
+
+Susan Mitchell’s report read:
+
+   An absolute _must_ for Tri Epsilon. The Mitchell girl is 17. Her
+   father is a widower and a millionaire. There are no other
+   children. The Mitchell girl owns a brilliant red convertible,
+   Buick, latest model. Edward Mitchell belongs to Rotary, Seedmore
+   Country Club, Seedmore Business Club, and Seedmore P.T.A. Susan
+   has been educated in the best private schools. She is not
+   beautiful, but she is wholesome and a fine athlete. Every room in
+   the Mitchell home has wall-to-wall carpeting. There are four
+   bathrooms. No mortgages. Edward Mitchell’s reputation is above
+   reproach. They are definitely nouveaux riches, but their social
+   prestige in Seedmore is tiptop. Susan has a fabulous wardrobe.
+   Kansas City Alum Association puts a stamp of approval on this
+   girl, and a definite “Yes! Yes! Yes!”
+
+When Mother Nesselbush finished reading what Mrs. Boynton had written,
+there was a sudden minute of silence. Then Leda Taylor spoke up.
+
+“What if she’s a muscle-bound amazon? Do we have to pledge the girl just
+because her father is worth a mint?”
+
+Leda Taylor did not have a father. Not a father she knew. Jan, her
+mother, had raised Leda singlehanded, with the help of her job as a
+dress designer and a good stiff Martini. It had not been easy for Jan.
+As Leda grew older, Jan’s age became more obvious to men and she always
+had to say, “I had my baby when _I_ was a baby, really—I was just a baby
+when little Leda was born.” Little Leda grew fast and fully and richly.
+She had long black hair that shone like new coal, round green eyes, a
+stubborn tilt to her chin, proud pear-shaped breasts that pointed
+through her size 36 sweater, and long, graceful legs. Jan had taught her
+never to say “Mother.” Leda said “Jan.” She said, “Oh, God, Jan is
+getting higher than a kite!” when they were all out on parties like
+that—Leda and the men who clambered after Jan and Jan with her glass
+raised and her voice growing shrill. Leda said, “Jan, for the love of
+God, let me pick my own men. I don’t want your castoffs,” when she was
+home in the summer and Jan was always entertaining. Then in the fall,
+Leda said, “Take it easy, Jan. Stay sober,” and the train moved away,
+toward Cranston and college and the house.
+
+Mother Nesselbush sighed and answered Leda. “This is a pretty strong
+note, dear. You know our alums never make their requests quite so
+adamant.”
+
+Kitten Clark tapped her nails angrily on the top of the glass coffee
+table. She was the official social chairman for the sorority, the girl
+who was responsible for seeing that Tri Eps dated fraternity men. Her
+motto was pasted up over the mirror in the soft jade-green room where
+she and Marybell Van Casey lived: “If he’s got a pin—he’s in!”
+
+Underneath these words, a penciled addition to the rule read blithely:
+“Like Flynn!”
+
+“Nessy,” Kitten said, “so far on our list we have four goon girls.
+Legacies. We _have_ to take legacies, but we don’t have to take Susan
+Mitchell! What did the K.C. alums ever do for us?”
+
+Viola Nesselbush straightened herself, tugged harshly at her corset, and
+leaned forward intimately. She whispered in a rasping tone, one finger
+held forward significantly. “Now listen, girls. Remember that new set of
+silverware you all want for the house? The one with the Tri Epsilon
+crest on it? Well, girls, if we pledge this little girl, I think the
+K.C. alums will see to it that you get that silverware. In fact, girls,”
+she added coyly, “I’ll personally guarantee it.”
+
+A spontaneous round of applause rose from the gathering, and the faces
+of the Tri Eps grinned approval.
+
+“She may be halfway attractive,” Marybell Van Casey offered. “After all,
+just because she’s a sweat-socks is no sign she’s utterly repulsive.”
+
+Casey’s voice was tinged with defiance. She was a major in physical
+education, and all of her classes, with the exception of English and
+vertebrate zo, took place in the arid surroundings of the gymnasium. Her
+build was heavy and muscular, but her face was pleasant and attractive
+and she was pinned to a Delta Pi who played baseball.
+
+The president of Tri Epsilon sorority rose gracefully and stood beside
+the piano facing the group. She wore a crisp pair of white shorts, a
+black halter, and a black velvet ribbon in her hair. Her name was Marsha
+Holmes, and there was a mild, poised quality about her that commanded
+respect and admiration from her sorority sisters. Whenever Marsha spoke,
+her gray eyes watched the individual faces of her audience carefully,
+and her low husky voice made her words sound wistful and honest. Marsha
+had learned much about people from her father, the Reverend Thomas
+Holmes, and the serenity she wore so easily had been practiced long
+years at church functions.
+
+“I think everyone agrees,” she said calmly, “that Susan Mitchell is
+excellent Tri Epsilon material. The purpose of a sorority is to help a
+girl grow, and if Susan needs our help, it will be our privilege to give
+it to her. Let’s all make a special effort to show Susan that Tri
+Epsilon is a friendly house—the kind of house that she would be proud to
+live in.”
+
+For a moment there was a holy stillness. Leda blew a cloud of smoke up
+into the air in tiny rings. She said, “Amen!” She said, “Amen and hail
+the new Christ child!”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The following morning, a few minutes before the taxis arrived with the
+rushees, Mother Nesselbush gave the final instructions.
+
+“Remember, girls, the phonograph is your signal to dance with one of the
+rushees. Don’t, for heaven’s sake, girls, don’t leave a girl without a
+partner. You’ll be able to tell a whole lot about a rushee by dancing
+with her. Notice how she dances, and in speaking to her, try your best
+to determine whether she would make a satisfactory Tri Ep. We know most
+of the facts on these girls, but it’s up to you to verify them. And one
+more thing. In regard to the Mitchell girl—be patient. She may not look
+like a Tri Ep, but girls, I’m to the point where I’ll insist that she be
+one. Now—go to it, and good luck!”
+
+Susan Mitchell arrived in the first taxi along with four other rushees.
+Beside them she looked like a great hound dog that had been forced to
+romp with a select group of dachshunds, Pekinese, and toy poodles. Her
+manner was sprightly and buoyant, and she lacked the poised reserve of
+the others who walked with her up the long path to the marble steps,
+where Kitten Clark waited to greet them. She was smiling when her hand
+caught Kitten’s, and her voice was too impetuous and ingenuous. “Hi,”
+she said. “Hot, isn’t it?”
+
+Kitten glanced hastily at the name tag. She should have known. The
+dimples came in her cheeks, and her hand guided Susan lovingly toward
+Mother Nesselbush. “This is Susan Mitchell,” Kitten said. “Mother Nessy
+will introduce you to the girls.”
+
+Mother Nesselbush’s fat fingers reached for Susan’s arm, and as she led
+her through the porch door to the living room she exclaimed, “What a
+lovely name! Susan! Or Sue? Which one do you like best?”
+
+“Most folks call me Mitch,” the girl answered, and Mother Nessy said,
+“That’s a dar-ling name! Mitch!”
+
+Marsha Holmes interpreted Nessy’s wink correctly. She rushed forward
+immediately and checked the name tag. Then she sat beside Susan Mitchell
+on the divan and she talked in that mellow, soft voice. She brought the
+girl cool mint punch and round jelly cookies, and she punctuated every
+sentence with “Mitch.” Through the house she guided the girl, showing
+her the neat, pastel-colored rooms, the grand tile bathroom with the
+glass shower and tub stalls, the spotless white kitchen, the cellar with
+the washing machines and dryers and irons, and the closed-off section
+known as The Den, where Tri Eps brought their dates for ping-pong and
+Cokes. Soon Kitten Clark finished greeting the rushees and joined the
+entourage, and Marybell Van Casey followed along, and Jane Bell, the
+pert, efficient rush chairman, and they were all smiling and saying, “Do
+you like it, Mitch?”, “Wait till you see this, Mitch,” and “You are
+going to come back, Mitch?”
+
+Mitch felt confident and proud. She sat at the bridge table with the Tri
+Eps flocking to her, and her eyes saw the wretched lanky girl in the
+corner near the window, alone, fumbling frantically with her purse,
+feigning an interest in its contents, ignored by the smooth busy figures
+in white. Another girl in a creamy yellow suit enjoyed the same
+attention Mitch received, the white formals reaching to light her
+cigarettes, bending to smile benignly, kneeling adoringly at her feet as
+she sat there in the stuffed chair and let the cool breeze from the
+porch ruffle her hair lightly. There was a fat girl in a red suit
+standing awkwardly with Mother Nesselbush in the doorway of the room,
+not speaking, looking fearfully at the assembly. A small, pug-nosed
+rushee with a flip feathered hat whispered fervently to two Tri Eps.
+Mitch saw them all, hearing the voices talking to her on all sides,
+answering and listening and watching until her eye rested on a girl
+standing near the piano. The girl was beautiful. Her white gown began
+just above her breasts and came in tight at her waist and full down to
+her ankles, where it ended and allowed spike-heeled silver shoes to
+glisten clean and clear. She was picking up records from a stack there
+on the top of the piano, reading the labels, and dividing them into two
+piles. When she felt Mitch’s fixed look, she answered it and Mitch
+grinned, looking back quickly at Kitten, who was explaining how the Tri
+Epsilon house had been redecorated over the summer. For several minutes
+Mitch knew that the girl was staring at her now, and a warm flush rose
+to her face. There was something about the girl. She had never seen her
+before, but there was something familiar in that fast second when they
+had looked at one another.
+
+In a moment the phonograph was turned on, and throughout the room girls
+paired off and moved to the center of the floor. Kitten grabbed Mitch’s
+hand. “Do you like to dance?” she asked, pulling her forward. Mitch
+nodded, and as they danced, Kitten held her off so that she could talk
+and watch Mitch’s face.
+
+“How do you like Tri Epsilon?” she asked.
+
+“Fine,” Mitch told her, and naïvely, “but of course, I haven’t been to
+the other houses yet.”
+
+Kitten said, “You will come back, won’t you, Mitch? We all hope you’ll
+save your most important dates for us. Try to save two and eight.”
+
+“I didn’t know there was a difference.”
+
+“Yes.” Kitten smiled and pressed Mitch’s hand. “There certainly is. Will
+you try?”
+
+Mitch said she would. At the hotel she had heard the rushees talk
+ecstatically about the Tri Eps. They were rated tops nationally, and the
+Cranston chapter was the leading sorority on the college campus. A hot
+stir of pleasure enveloped Mitch. She had not known the fear her father
+had known for her when she had thought of rush week, but there was
+always the subconscious worry that she might be too uncut and plain for
+sorority sophisticates. During the summer the college catalogues and
+booklets had come through the mail, and she had flicked through the
+pages, seeing the pictures of debonair, glamorous young people her own
+age. But not like her. Mitch knew that then—and again when Kitten talked
+to her and Marsha walked with her, and Marybell Van Casey sat beside her
+and smoked long cigarettes and talked about tennis and swimming and
+things Mitch understood. Still different, all of them. Mitch was aware
+of that fact, but she no longer pondered the differences. They liked her
+anyway. They wanted her to join Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon.
+
+Jane Bell danced with Mitch. Casey. Kitten again. Marsha. The lilting
+lyrics of “Temptation” filled the room. Suddenly Mitch felt a wave of
+uncanny turbulence, relieved then when she turned and saw the girl
+standing next to her. The beautiful girl who had stood at the piano.
+Marsha laughed and said, “Mitch, I don’t think you’ve met Leda Taylor.”
+
+Susan Mitchell was taller than Leda Taylor. Leda held her and led her
+along the waxed floor. Mitch was conscious of her own breathing, coming
+in gasps and causing her chest to heave uncomfortably against Leda’s.
+She smelled the faint pungent perfume that Leda wore, and her hand on
+Leda’s bare shoulder was hot and rough. The words to the song sounded
+loud in her ears, and they embarrassed her, dancing to them close to
+this girl.
+
+“So you’re Susan Mitchell,” the girl said, and Mitch could not hear her
+own answer. She did not talk for those minutes when they were together
+before the music ended, and Leda Taylor did not talk again. When it was
+over, a note sounded on the piano, and Marsha Holmes hummed the note.
+
+“Form the loving circle,” Marsha said. “Join hands.”
+
+Leda grasped Mitch’s hand tightly. As the Tri Eps hummed the melody,
+there was a slow swaying motion in the circle of girls, and when the
+words came, Mitch could feel Leda’s eyes on her.
+
+   “Love you, I love you,
+   Come be a Tri Ep girl.
+   Love you, I love you,
+   Come be an Ep-si-lon pearl.”
+
+Mitch looked down at Leda and then away toward the French doors and the
+drapes and the sun outside.
+
+   “Take my hand and hold it, dear,
+   Let me make my message clear.
+   Love you, I love you,
+   Come be a Tri Ep girl.”
+
+“I suppose,” Leda said when the song was finished, “that you’ll come
+back.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I’ll see you then,” Leda said. She said, “I’ll see you then,” and
+glided away while Mother Nessy ran forward to hug Mitch. “The taxis are
+waiting, dear,” she told Mitch, “and we have to hurry you all away.
+Remember, Susan, Tri Epsilon is counting on you. We hope you’re counting
+on Tri Epsilon.”
+
+Past Kitten Clark and Marsha, Marybell and Jane, their “Come backs”
+echoing in her ears, Mitch felt the sun on her arms, heard the nervous
+honking of the cabs’ horns, and remembered only the green color of
+Leda’s eyes, and the four words, “I’ll see you then.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+That evening Marsha looked up from the stuffed peppers and the tossed
+salad in front of her. “I noticed you were Susan Mitchell’s partner in
+the loving circle this morning,” she said to Leda.
+
+“Wasn’t my fault. I danced with her and it happened to be the last
+dance.”
+
+“Well, what did you think of her?”
+
+Leda toyed with her crust of bread, spreading the butter thickly around
+the edges and on the sides. “We need the silverware,” she answered.
+
+“But the girl has possibilities, too. I mean, she certainly isn’t
+backward or shy.”
+
+“I don’t know anything about the girl. I had one dance with her.”
+
+Kitten Clark sat opposite Marsha. She clinked her fork on her plate and
+said, “Well, believe me, if she were anyone but Edward Mitchell’s
+daughter, she’d get a nice, fat, round blackball from yours truly. She’s
+hickey! I mean, absolutely hickey!”
+
+“But she is Edward Mitchell’s daughter,” Marsha broke in, “and let’s all
+of us remember that. The girl hasn’t pledged yet, you know. Other houses
+will be after her too.”
+
+Casey said, “She says she swims. We could use her on the intramural
+swimming team.”
+
+“You’ll find a way to _use_ her,” Leda said. “I’m not worried about
+that.”
+
+After she said it, she bit hard into the bread and the layers of butter.
+Casey’s eyes flashed and she spurted out angry words. “What are you
+talking about?” she demanded. “Since when have you cared a damn whether
+a girl got an even break in this sorority? You throw a blackball around
+at the drop of a hat, and all of a sudden you’re so damned
+self-righteous. This is a new twist.”
+
+Leda knew it. She pushed her plate away and stood up. “Must be the
+heat,” she said. “I don’t care a hoot about Mitchell. She can go back to
+Seedmore for all I care. Right now, lover boy is waiting.”
+
+She ran to the side door, to the tall brown-haired boy with the pipe
+jutting from his jaw, and the sweater that said Sigma Delta, and she
+murmured, “Jakie,” and moved close to him.
+
+“You finished fast,” he said. “Wanna walk?”
+
+“Yes, Jake-O.”
+
+“We can pick up some beer in Campus Town. Then wanna walk back out—to
+the stadium?”
+
+“You know I do.”
+
+“You always do. That’s why you’re my baby. Because you always do.”
+
+“Let’s hurry, Jake.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The long red car waited at the corner for the light to be green, and
+Mitch sat behind the wheel with Fredna Loughead in the front seat beside
+her. She had met Fredna at the hotel. Fredna was trying to convince her
+that Delta Rho was a better house than Tri Ep.
+
+“They liked you too, Mitch,” she said, “and I know they’ll ask me. Why
+don’t you join with me?”
+
+“I don’t know. I can’t make up my mind. All of them were so wonderful to
+me.”
+
+“The Delta Rhos aren’t snobs, either.”
+
+The light went green and Mitch saw them. They were standing at the curb
+waiting. Leda Taylor looked up. There was a brief flicker of
+recognition, a half-smile. Mitch grinned broadly this time and waved,
+but Leda took the boy’s arm and turned to talk with him. The car moved
+away and Mitch watched them as long as she could through her mirror.
+
+“Some buggy,” Jake said. “Rushee?”
+
+“A potential Tri Ep. Father’s a millionaire.”
+
+“She gonna be your roommate?”
+
+“_My_ roommate?”
+
+“Well, you gals have to room with a pledge. I just thought you might
+pick a pledge with a nice red convertible.”
+
+Leda laughed. She said, “Maybe that’s an idea.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Back in the hotel room, Mitch finished unpacking some of her clothes.
+She hung them up and brushed them off, and when she was through, she
+slipped into her blue-striped pajamas and sat on the bed hugging her
+knees. She said, “Tri Epsilon,” aloud, and then, “Delta Rho.” She
+reached over to the night table, where the leather-bound books rested.
+On the cover of one, there was a picture of the huge house with the six
+white columns and the marble steps leading up to the door. The words
+underneath read simply: “Tri Epsilon is a friendly house.”
+
+For a moment she stared at it dreamily, and then, turning the page, she
+saw the clear full-length picture of Leda Taylor in the black dress
+wearing the crested crown, smiling. Mitch’s fingers moved delicately
+down the picture as though she were touching a live object, and they
+stopped there at the words printed in bold blue letters. They said:
+“Where every girl’s a queen.”
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter Two
+
+
+“Put your stuff in the top drawers,” Leda told Mitch. “I don’t mind
+bending down to get mine.”
+
+Mitch was used to new roommates and new surroundings and the strange
+formalities attached to this form of orientation. For six years she had
+attended boarding schools, and each year it was smoother and less
+uncomfortable. The first year she had hovered behind a closet door, too
+shy to undress in front of the girl with whom she shared the room. She
+had bolted the bathroom doors, and picked odd hours to do her grooming.
+Even her underclothes had been a source of embarrassment, and she had
+brought them to her room wet from their washing in the dorm sink, and
+hung them surreptitiously along the radiator near her bed. In time she
+had developed an unabashed nonchalance toward these matters and they no
+longer concerned her. But now, in Leda’s presence, the casualness fell
+away, and Mitch found the old inhibitions again. She found that it was
+hard to talk to Leda, too, because she wanted to so badly. She wanted to
+remember the glib, natural responses that came so readily with others,
+but she could not.
+
+“Tonight the pledges are supposed to go on blind dates,” Leda said. “You
+know that?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Want to get out of it?”
+
+“How?”
+
+“By going out with a friend of Jake’s. He’s a fraternity brother. We’d
+double-date. It’s O.K. with Kitten so long as you’re with a fraternity
+man.”
+
+Mitch said, “I’d like that, I guess.”
+
+She knew what it would be like if Leda were along. She knew that she
+would forget how to act and what to say and that she would laugh too
+loud and too often. But she did not want to go on a date alone with a
+stranger, either.
+
+“Like men, Mitch?”
+
+“Sure, they’re all right.”
+
+“I mean, really like them?”
+
+Mitch’s lips were tired from the painful grins she had been stretching
+them into all day. Leda laughed. “Never mind,” she said. “You’ll learn.
+I used to think you just had to lie there and that was it. Then I
+learned better.”
+
+Mitch pulled nervously at the string of pearls around her neck. Her face
+flushed scarlet. Leda noticed. “You’ll have to get used to me, Mitch. I
+believe in being frank.”
+
+“I don’t mind,” Mitch answered. “I guess I’m kind of dumb.”
+
+“We’re all dumb at first. But don’t get fooled by some of them that play
+dumb. My God, to listen to this bunch, you’d think they were all
+virgins. But take it from me, most of them have had it. You ever fool
+around?”
+
+“I—I don’t know too many fellows.”
+
+“Ever been kissed—hard?”
+
+“A few times, I guess.” The pearls snapped then and rolled onto the
+floor. Mitch jumped down to chase them and Leda stopped one with her
+foot. “Couple of them under the desk,” she said. “God! Never been kissed
+more than a few times. I started when I was six. Then I used to play
+doctor out in back of my house. God!”
+
+Mitch did not answer. Her hands felt huge as she groped for the tiny,
+round pearls, and bending down there before Leda, she felt like an
+immense malformed giant. She was remembering how many other times she
+had heard references to sex, behind locked bedroom doors in boarding
+school, interspersed with thick laughter and raised eyebrows, and hands
+held at the mouth in gestures of awe and excitement. But now....
+
+“You’ll grow up in college,” her father had said. “You’ll be a real lady
+when you come home.” She wondered vaguely what her mother had been like,
+and if she were a real lady, and how she would have told her about men
+and women and the things they did together. She thought of Billy
+Erickson—the day in the bushes when he had showed it to her. The snake,
+she had called it to herself. The snake that men have.
+
+“You’ll have fun tonight,” Leda said. “You’ll like Bud Roberts. That’s
+Jake’s friend.”
+
+Mitch put the pearls in a box and sat awkwardly on the bed beside Leda.
+“I hope he likes me. You see, I’m not too used to men. In the other
+schools, I didn’t see many. You know—rules and all.”
+
+“Forget it! Look, we’re going to buy some beer and get out on the Creek
+Road and just take life easy. You’ll like Bud. He’s no movie star, but
+he gets around plenty. He’s Sig Delt president. Say, what about your
+car? We _could_ walk, but—”
+
+“Sure,” Mitch said. “Might as well take it. Only I don’t like to drive
+at night very well. Not in a strange city.”
+
+“Can Jake drive? He’s a peach on the roads. Careful as anything.”
+
+Mitch hesitated. Then she agreed.
+
+Leda pulled her sweater up over her head and loosened her bra. “Scratch
+my back, will you, kid?” she said. “God, I’m tired.” She flopped on the
+bed, face down.
+
+Timidly Mitch’s hands reached over and rubbed her shoulders, and with
+her eyes fixed half shyly on Leda’s body, she recalled doing this
+before—a hundred times—but never so fearfully as now with Leda.
+
+“Ummm. That’s nice. Your hands are wonderful.”
+
+For long minutes Leda let them run up and down her back. Susan Mitchell
+was an enigma. There was strength and force and power in her, queerly
+harnessed and checked, Leda thought. If it should be released, she would
+be stronger. Masterful. There had been a hint of this in her look that
+first day. It was the kind of look that an old acquaintance gives
+another, in a crowd where no one is aware that the two have known each
+other a long time. Leda balked at her own thoughts. This tall child was
+naïve and uncomplicated, she scoffed inwardly, and there was no reason
+to be wary. Suddenly, on an impulse, Leda rolled over and lay with her
+breasts pushed up toward Mitch’s hands. The girl jerked her hands away
+quickly and stood up.
+
+“F-f-feel better?” She forced the words out.
+
+Leda stretched luxuriously. “Mitch, honey,” she said, “look in the left
+closet and see if my yellow blouse is there. The one with the buttons
+down the back.”
+
+Mitch turned toward the door to the closet and opened it, grateful for
+this sanctum. She stood there moving the hangers down the rack. _I used
+to think you just had to lie there and that was it._
+
+“See it, honey?”
+
+“No,” Mitch answered, not looking at the color of the clothes. “I don’t
+see anything at all.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bud Roberts was a straight, narrow boy with a long nose and a square
+jaw. A cigarette hung loosely from his mouth, and as they rode along in
+the back of Mitch’s car, he held his hands firmly, cracking his knuckles
+in regular, even movements. Mitch sat beside him, smoothing her skirt
+and glancing up at him now and then, searching frantically for something
+to say. The radio blared forth from the front seat, where Leda leaned
+blissfully on Jake’s shoulder.
+
+“I love to ride along like this,” Mitch managed to say. “It’s so cool
+and everything,” she added.
+
+They turned down a dirt road and drove fast around the sharp corners and
+Mitch fell against Bud Roberts. “I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away.
+
+He had not said anything beyond “Hi” since they started on their
+evening. He had simply said, “Hi,” and then they had climbed into the
+car and he had not said another word. Mitch tried to pretend that the
+silence was natural and she hummed a bit from one of the songs the Tri
+Eps had sung at dinner. The radio was noisy and she could not hear her
+own humming, but it made her feel better. She thought of Leda and how
+beautiful she was, and she felt a warm glow in her stomach when she
+remembered the way Leda had turned on her back that afternoon, and how
+lovely she had been. At her feet, in the car, the beer bottles rattled
+and she remembered how she hated the taste of beer. A slow panic mounted
+inside her as she imagined the hours ahead with the beer and the boy who
+did not talk. The panic was edged with anger and resentment.
+
+When the car stopped and Jake called, “All out!” she was sick inside
+where a drummer beat fast against her breast, and dull loneliness gnawed
+there.
+
+Bud Roberts caught the blanket that Jake tossed at him.
+
+“We’re going on up ahead,” he said, and Leda called out, “See you later,
+Mitch.”
+
+Mitch stood there while Bud spread the blanket a few feet from the car.
+He was whistling now, but there was no tune—just whistling with no order
+to the notes. Walking back to the car, he picked up the sack from the
+back seat and set it down by the blanket. Then he took a bottle opener
+from his shirt pocket and sat down.
+
+“Like beer?” he said.
+
+“Not too well. I’m not used to it.”
+
+With a flip of his wrist, he sprung the cap and the white foam bubbled
+out toward the top of the bottle. He held it up to Mitch and said,
+“Here.” He opened another for himself and took a long swig.
+
+Mitch sat down beside him and tasted the cold beer mincingly. It tasted
+bitter and sour. She coughed and said, “I haven’t had any in a long
+time.” Bud grunted and drank some more. He finished and reached for
+another bottle. “Through?” he asked, and Mitch shook her head. She sat
+quietly, wishing that Leda had not gone off with Jake, indignant that
+they had left her alone with Bud.
+
+The silence was nervous and anticipating. After a while he reached over
+and pulled her down beside him there on the blanket. His mouth came on
+hers and she could feel the roughness of his beard. At first she tried
+to push him back and she struggled desperately. Then she let him kiss
+her. _Ever been kissed—hard?_
+
+“You’re a cold baby,” Bud Roberts muttered in her ear. “That’s all
+right. I like them cold.”
+
+“Leave me alone,” Mitch said. “Will you leave me alone?”
+
+He sat up and reached for the full bottle of beer that was Mitch’s. He
+handed it to her and watched her swallow. In the darkness he could not
+see the tears that stung her eyes from the harsh taste of the beer. He
+waited and she took another swallow. She did not want to kiss him.
+
+“Cigarette?” he said, passing her the pack.
+
+She took one from him and let him light it. It would pass time. The
+smoke tickled her nose and she began to sneeze. Bud drank more beer and
+whistled nonchalantly, watching her as he handed her another bottle. The
+taste was like water now.
+
+“Think you’re going to like smoking?” Bud said, grinning at her.
+
+The end of her cigarette was wet and soggy and she stubbed it out on the
+ground. She said, “I’ve smoked before.”
+
+He laughed and pulled her down again, and for another long minute she
+lay there impassively while his mouth pressed against hers, wet and
+hard.
+
+“Take your coat off,” he said.
+
+“I will not!”
+
+“Get it off. What’s the matter? Rule against taking your coat off? I’m
+not going to undress you.”
+
+His hands worked on the buttons, and in a moment he was helping her out
+of it. The beer made her head swim and she did not care. He put her coat
+beside his own, and then he opened more beer, passing her another. It
+was smooth going down and she was grateful that he had not pushed her
+back again.
+
+“How old are you?” he said.
+
+“Seventeen.”
+
+“Jail bait, huh?” He laughed and reached over to touch her arm.
+
+“What does that mean?”
+
+“Means I’m not supposed to do this,” he said, his hand patting her below
+the stomach.
+
+She moved away. “Stop it, will you? Please!”
+
+“That’s just what I was explaining.” He laughed again. “That I’d have to
+stop. Don’t be so jumpy. You’re doing a regular dance over there. I’m
+not going to hurt you.”
+
+“Don’t touch me, then,” she told him.
+
+“Don’t worry so much, baby.... Tell me, how do you like rooming with
+Leda?”
+
+She was glad that he was going to talk. She felt better and less
+restless as he lay back, his arms behind his head, his legs crossed
+lazily.
+
+“I like her,” she said. “She’s been wonderful to me.”
+
+“She tell you much about Jake and her?”
+
+“What would she tell me? Just that she likes him.”
+
+“Likes!” He hooted and then he said, “Yeah—yeah,” slow, and then, “Yeah,
+maybe she does only like him. Funny girl. She always has eyes.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“She’s always looking around. You know.”
+
+“Yes,” Mitch said, not knowing at all.
+
+“Drink some more of that beer,” he said. “We’re wasting good iced beer.”
+
+“You know, I like beer O.K. now,” Mitch said with a frail semblance of
+excitement. “It’s not bad at all.”
+
+“Good. Here—rest your head.”
+
+He raised himself to a sitting position and spread his legs apart. He
+patted his chest lightly and said, “Here, baby—rest your head here.
+We’ll talk.”
+
+Mitch moved over and put her head on his chest, a hand resting on either
+knee.
+
+“I’m glad you’re so tall,” she confided. “I’m so tall myself.”
+
+“Yeah,” he said. “You’re a long-legged gal, all right.”
+
+“Why didn’t you talk coming up in the car? I was afraid you’d lost your
+tongue.”
+
+“I didn’t,” he said. “I just wanted to think.”
+
+“About what?” Mitch began to feel comfortable and easy with him. “What
+did you think about?”
+
+His hands reached up and cupped her breasts quickly, and his knees held
+her in. “About this,” he said, reaching one hand up to the blouse and
+down to her slip and inside touching her flesh. He began to rub her
+breasts as she wiggled to be free.
+
+Mitch whimpered slowly and softly and she could feel him moving around
+and forcing her back on the blanket and the tears came fast then. She
+was dizzy and exhausted and she could not pull herself up. Fighting
+desperately with him, she could not stop his hands from pulling her
+skirt up. A thin wail escaped from her mouth and she began to heighten
+it to a loud moaning sound.
+
+“Shut up,” he snapped. “Shut up!”
+
+Her moaning increased and some of the lost strength returned so that she
+kicked him and sent him back away from her. He stood up and glared down.
+“Mamma tell you not to?” he said angrily. “Mamma tell you sex is dirty?”
+
+She began to cry hard, and sitting there sobbing, she did not listen to
+his words. For a long time she stayed like that, listening to him take
+the caps off the bottles, light cigarettes, and mumble dull words to
+her. She could hear him say that he was sorry and she had better not cry
+because Jake and Leda would be back, and then she could hear him curse
+and swallow the beer and whistle the way he whistled.
+
+There were voices in the distance, ringing laughter, and the sound of
+them coming. She put her coat on and got up while Bud began folding the
+blanket.
+
+Leda came down the fields ahead of Jake, running happily while he
+followed. “Mitch and Bud,” she shouted, “how goes the mad twosome?”
+
+Mitch said, “Hi, Leda.”
+
+Bud reverted to his old mood of sullen silence as he loaded the blankets
+in the car and gathered the empty bottles together. Jake helped him and
+Leda jumped in the front seat, yawning and saying sleepily, “Better
+hurry. We’ll be out after hours.”
+
+On the way home, after they had come off the dirt road and gone onto the
+highway, Jake stopped the car. Leda stood beside Mitch while she
+vomited.
+
+“You’ll be O.K.,” she promised. “I used to get sick on beer myself.
+You’ll get used to it, honey.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning, after breakfast, Mitch waited for Marsha Holmes, as
+she had been told to do. The president’s suite consisted of three rooms.
+There was the bedroom, the study room, and the meeting room, all of them
+attractively furnished with low couches and triangular lamps and small
+square tables. Mitch sat in the meeting room, thumbing through the
+magazines on the table in front of her. She stopped at one titled “The
+Epsilon.” Inside, the columns were devoted to news from chapters of Tri
+Epsilon throughout the country. Mitch’s eye caught the printing, “Gamma
+Pi Chapter, Cranston University.”
+
+   Gamma Pi Tri Eps are looking forward to a year bustling with
+   excitement. Last year, you remember, they received many honors.
+   For the second year in a row, glamorous Leda Taylor, a Tri
+   Epsilon junior, was voted campus queen. Good luck this year,
+   Leda, and may you cap all awards again for the name of Epsilon
+   Epsilon Epsilon.
+
+“No one can deny it,” a voice said behind Mitch, “Leda is a beautiful
+girl.”
+
+Mitch turned and faced Marsha. “A very beautiful girl,” Marsha
+continued. “Do you like rooming with her, Mitch?”
+
+“Yes, I do. She’s been swell to me.”
+
+“Did you have a good time last night? You went out with Bud Roberts,
+didn’t you? And Leda and Jake?”
+
+“Yes, I did. I’m sorry we were late. It was my fault.”
+
+“Your fault, Mitch?”
+
+“Yes, I got sick coming back. We had to stop.”
+
+“I see.” Marsha thought for a moment, her hands folded demurely, and
+then she sat down beside Mitch. “Look, Susan, I hate to be the bossy
+president that starts right in advising pledges, but remember something
+for me, will you?”
+
+“Certainly, Marsha.”
+
+“Leda has many ideas that some of us—that _I_ don’t agree with. If there
+are any that you don’t agree with, will you come and talk to _me_ about
+them?”
+
+“Yes, I will. I didn’t like my date too well, but I shouldn’t have had
+all that beer. I guess I’m old enough to take care of myself.”
+
+“I won’t say any more, Mitch. I just want you to know that I’m here to
+help the pledges. I don’t think Leda was wise to have you date Bud
+Roberts during blind-date week. You see, Kitten, our social chairman,
+tries very hard to arrange a suitable date for each pledge. Someone your
+own age—usually a fraternity pledge who is as new to college as you
+are.”
+
+“Oh,” Mitch said. “I didn’t understand. Leda said it would be all right
+so long as Bud was a fraternity man.”
+
+“You will go along on a blind date tonight, won’t you, Mitch? One of
+Kitten’s. All the other pledges are enjoying it tremendously.”
+
+“Yes,” Mitch answered, “I will. I’m sorry about last night.”
+
+Mitch wandered out of the suite down the stairs to the porch, where some
+of the girls were playing bridge. She recognized a few of them as
+pledges, because they wore the pink and blue ribbons too, but she did
+not know them.
+
+“... and so I told him,” a short girl with jewel-studded rims on her
+large-framed glasses was saying, “that as far as I was concerned, he was
+the blindest date I’d ever had.”
+
+“Robin!” Marybell Van Casey looked horrified. “He was an Omega Phi.
+They’re a big fraternity, sweetie, and Tri Ep can’t afford to run around
+insulting their pledges. You be careful.”
+
+“Well, I don’t care. I hate those big oafs that maul you around as
+though you were a punching bag. I just won’t take it.”
+
+There was a tense silence. Marybell looked across the table
+significantly at Kitten Clark. Robin was due for a conference with the
+social chairman.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mitch sat next to Robin Maurer at the pledge meeting that afternoon.
+Jane Bell was the pledge director. She had an extensive background in
+directing and leading and counseling. In grammar school she had been the
+monitor in the cloakroom, and later, a junior counselor at a summer camp
+for girls. She was a Texan and an Army brat, and her speech was peppered
+with such phrases as “team spirit,” “pulling together,” “giving it all
+we’ve got,” and “sticking in there.” Whenever a date gave Jane trouble
+toward the end of an evening, Jane always looked him squarely in the eye
+and said, “Now, look—don’t get out of line, son!”
+
+“I guess that’s all. How about you girls? Any questions?”
+
+A girl in a plaid dress raised her hand. “Is it true,” she asked, “that
+we can only date fraternity men?”
+
+Jane cleared her throat and looked treacherously serious. “That question
+always comes up among new pledges. Well, girls, all I can say is that
+you have joined a sorority because you have found that you’re in with a
+gang you can be mighty proud of. Most men join fraternities for the same
+reason. They want to pick a bunch that they know have high standards and
+high ideals. Now, to my way of thinking, it’s only logical to want to
+date that kind of guy.”
+
+“But,” the girl persisted, “may we date an independent if we find that
+his standards are high and—” She stopped and wrung her hands and blurted
+out finally, “My boy friend is an independent. He can’t af-afford a
+fraternity.”
+
+Jane said, “I’ll talk to you after the meeting. We’ll have a chat about
+it, O.K.?”
+
+“Wait a minute,” Robin said, getting up and resting her hand on the
+large oak table before her. “I think this is pretty silly. You mean to
+tell me we have to ask _you_ before we can date an independent?”
+
+There was a stir among the gathering and Jane Bell rapped for order.
+“You can go out with independents if you want—on weekdays. Week ends,
+we’d prefer you to be with fraternity men.”
+
+“What a laugh!” Robin exclaimed. “You’re serious!”
+
+Anger swept through the Texan’s whole body and settled in her eyes,
+black as night. “That’s a demerit for you, Robin Maurer,” she thundered,
+“and it’ll be wise for you to learn how to talk to an active member of
+Tri Epsilon.”
+
+Robin turned and walked from the room after she said, “Hooray for the
+team spirit we’ve all got! Three big cheers for our team spirit!”
+
+It was difficult for Jane to continue. She uttered a few remarks about
+hours on week ends, and special permission for out-of-town week ends.
+Then she assigned the pledge lesson (learn the first three songs in the
+songbook, and the names of the official alumnae officers) and dismissed
+the group. She bounded off in the direction of the president’s suite.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Here you are,” Leda said, pulling Mitch aside as she came from the
+Pledge Room. “I’ve been looking for you. How about my fixing you up
+tonight with a date? Not Bud Roberts, spare your soul, but someone
+else.”
+
+They walked toward the stairs while Mitch explained that Marsha had
+advised her to take a blind date.
+
+“Marsha!” Leda cried. “She’s from hunger, honey. No kidding. You can do
+what you want as long as he’s a fraternity boy. Never mind Kitten’s
+blind dates. Look, I’m sorry Roberts was such a mess. I never should
+have left you, kid. Tonight it’ll be different.”
+
+“I think I’d better do what Marsha asked. All the other pledges are. You
+know—I don’t want to be an exception.”
+
+Leda put her arm around Mitch. “I understand, honey,” she said. “I
+shouldn’t have suggested it. Let’s go upstairs and catch thirty winks
+before dinner.”
+
+Robin Maurer was waiting outside Marsha’s door on the second floor when
+Mitch and Leda passed by.
+
+“I’m going in for my fifty lashes,” she said to Mitch. “Care to join
+me?”
+
+Mitch grinned. She liked Robin. She admired the way Robin spoke up and
+said what she thought. What Mitch thought, too.
+
+“That kid’s a little too cocky,” Leda commented. “She’d better tone down
+if she wants to keep those ribbons.”
+
+“What happens when you get a demerit?”
+
+“Oh, you get some horrible duty like taking Nessy to a movie on a Sunday
+afternoon. Sometimes to church too.” Leda sighed. “Nessy is a peach,
+really, but who wants to cart her around?”
+
+When they reached the room, Leda flopped down and kicked off her
+loafers. “Say, honey,” she said, “is everything going O.K. with you? I
+mean, I don’t want you to be a stranger around here too much longer.”
+
+“I don’t feel like one,” Mitch said. “Sometimes I just don’t catch on
+right away.”
+
+“You don’t say much, that’s why I wondered. When you want to unload,
+just open up, Mitch. That’s what I’m here for.”
+
+Mitch kicked her shoes off and stretched out on the bed. “I used to talk
+a lot in boarding school. College is different. The girls are more grown
+up, and I’m not used to talking about dates and boys and stuff.”
+
+“You’ll get used to it.... Your mother is dead, isn’t she, Mitch?”
+
+“Yes. When I was real young.”
+
+Watching the girl lie there, Leda had an odd feeling, like that of a
+protector who must guard an object carefully, less to keep it from harm
+than to keep it as a possession. The word “mother” floated around there
+somewhere and Leda could not catch it and stop it like that, so it
+rested with her momentarily. In that moment her breasts felt hard and
+bothersome. Mother, she thought, and seeing Jan off there again, she
+felt the sharp edge of hatred gnawing into her boredom, inside where she
+was thinking now for that very slow minute.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Downstairs in the president’s suite, Marsha talked to Robin.
+
+“... because if everyone had her own way, Robin, we wouldn’t be a
+unified group. There have to be rules.”
+
+“But rules like that are crazy. I never heard of dating only boys who
+belong to fraternities. Gee, next week when classes start, I’ll meet a
+lot of independents. It’s worse than racial prejudice.”
+
+“Robin, tell me something. Why do you want to join a sorority?”
+
+“My mother wants me to. She never had the money when she was in college.
+I guess she always wanted to make up for it by having me belong.”
+
+Marsha walked toward the window and watched the trees in the yard near
+the side of the house. “If you don’t believe in all that a sorority
+does,” she said, “one way to fight is to fight from the inside—where the
+rules and regulations are being made. Sometimes it takes a while. But
+there are good things about living here like this, and you can’t fight
+effectively if you don’t keep those good points in mind.”
+
+Robin looked up at her and smiled. “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “I’m
+a pretty clumsy rebel.”
+
+As she left the suite and passed the phone in the hall, it rang shrilly
+and she lifted the arm from the cradle. It was for Kitten Clark, and
+reaching up for the buzzer on the left of the booth, she found the name
+and pushed the tiny button. A voice called down, “Got it on three. Hang
+up on two, please.” Robin walked past a room where some pledges were
+gathered, learning the words to the Tri Ep song. “Tri Epsilon is a
+friendly house where every girl’s a queen,” they sang in close, harmonic
+tones, raising their voices slightly for the next line: “And all the
+frat men love her.”
+
+
+
+
+                             Chapter Three
+
+
+“... and this,” Kitten Clark said, “is Susan Mitchell.”
+
+Mitch stepped forward there in the front hall of the Tri Ep house and
+shook hands with Dirk Henry. He was a plump, short person, and walking
+along beside him, Mitch felt like a large wire-drawn giraffe. When they
+reached the front steps, he said, “Clive’s car is down the street. We’re
+going to the house.”
+
+“What fraternity are you in?” Mitch asked. “Kitten never even told me
+what house you were from.”
+
+He opened the jacket to his coat and displayed a plain oval-shaped
+silver pin, fixed to the pocket of his shirt. “Recognize it?”
+
+Mitch stammered. “I’m afraid I’m not too good at spotting them yet.”
+
+“Sigma Delta,” he said proudly. “It’s just the pledge pin. That’s why
+you didn’t recognize it. Here’s the car.”
+
+Bud Roberts was president of Sig Delt. Would he be at the party? The
+thought lost its force when Dirk opened the door, and Mitch saw Robin
+Maurer seated in front with Clive.
+
+“Hi, Mitch,” she cried. “Want you to meet Clive McKenzie, my unlucky
+blind date for the evening.”
+
+They drove for a few blocks until they reached a palatial two-story
+brick house. Oak trees towered self-consciously over the entrance and
+cast shadows on the Greek letters ΣΔ, outlined in sparkling white
+lights.
+
+As they piled out of the car and went up the walk, there was a sweet
+aroma of roses and honeysuckle.
+
+“Smells marvelous,” Mitch said.
+
+“It’s Henry, our houseboy. He has a passion for flowers. Keeps the yard
+in damn fine shape, Henry does.” Dirk’s tone sounded forced and
+pontifical, and Mitch glanced sideways at him to see if there were any
+trace of a smile, but he was dead serious.
+
+At the doorway, a small old woman waited to greet them. In the harsh
+light of the chandelier inside the entrance, her white face looked
+heavily powdered like the top of a sponge cake, and her silver-colored
+hair had a strong purple tint.
+
+“This is Mother Carter,” Dirk said. “How’s the party going, Mom?”
+
+Mitch and Robin shook her hand and passed on with the boys through
+spacious rooms with parquet floors to a winding stairway that led
+downward.
+
+“You’ll like the Tack Room,” Clive assured them. “Cost Sig Delt three
+thousand.”
+
+Robin groaned significantly, and it was hard to tell whether she was
+expressing awe or disgust.
+
+The Tack Room was lined on either side with large red leather booths,
+and around the walls on oak shelves there were pictures and trophies
+that were difficult to distinguish in the dim lighting. At the head of
+the room there was a large circular bar. Behind this a pledge worked,
+opening bottles of Coke and soda. Liquor was forbidden at fraternity
+parties, and so the flasks were hidden at the tables where a score of
+couples huddled together. Everyone was singing when Mitch and Robin
+entered with their dates.
+
+   “Roll me over, Yankee soldier.
+   Roll me over, lay me down, and do it again.
+
+   “This is number three and my hand is on her knee,
+   Roll me over, lay me down and do it again.
+   Roll me o-ver in the clo-ver,
+   Roll me over, lay me down, and do it again.”
+
+“I’ll get the setups,” Clive yelled back at them as they settled in a
+corner, and he pushed his way through the crowd. Robin sighed and said,
+“Last night I drank chug-a-lug. Not tonight!”
+
+Dirk joined the singing enthusiastically, and Mitch stared around the
+room, wondering if Leda and Jake were there. And Bud Roberts. Across
+from her, a girl with long raven hair pulled away from the lean boy who
+was whispering in her ear. “Kee-ryst!” she exclaimed, and the rest of
+her words were gobbled and gone amid the singing and the pounding clink
+of bottles and feet tapping time with the music.
+
+An hour dragged, monotonous and unrelieved, with the same songs and the
+sour taste of the whisky that Mitch barely touched. Clive and Dirk sang
+every song, stopping only to swig their drinks and refill them, and
+point out the various “brothers” who were big shots—football players,
+and the editor of the campus humor magazine, and a graduate student who
+was a Phi Beta Kappa, and, inevitably, Bud Roberts. Clive pointed at
+him, and Mitch looked and saw him, leaning against the wall, grinning
+crookedly. He began to weave his way toward them, slowly, at an amble,
+his hands stuffed into his baggy pants pockets, his green checkered
+sports shirt open at the neck.
+
+Mitch said, “I think I’ll go to the powder room.” She had noticed the
+red arrow and the dark letters on the wall announcing, “Women go this
+way!” Dirk nodded as she rose to leave, and Robin said, “Wait a second,
+friend, I’ll string along.”
+
+“One at a time,” Bud Roberts said, standing squarely in front of the two
+girls. “It’s a house rule. One at a time.” And then, “How are you
+tonight, Miss Mitchell?”
+
+“Fine.”
+
+“Good! Now, if you’ll allow me, I’ll lead you to our ladies’ room.” He
+grinned at Robin. “You’ll have to wait.”
+
+Mitch’s cheeks grew hot as his hand held her elbow and pushed her along.
+The singing was loud and painful in her ears.
+
+“How do you feel tonight?” he said. “Feel better?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“You know, you’re sort of a challenge to me.”
+
+“Why don’t you forget it?” Mitch said. “Why don’t you just be a
+gentleman?”
+
+“Spoken by a true lady, at the door of the ladies’ room.”
+
+Mitch pulled the door open and slammed it shut, thankful to be rid of
+him, to have the touch of his hand off her arm. Inside, the room was
+feminine and attractive, with small dressing tables, flowered couches
+and chairs, and a downy blue rag rug with green trim. Her examination of
+the handsome room was arrested suddenly as she stood before the mirror
+and reached for her comb. There, to the left of her, a huge cardboard
+figure dangled brazenly. It was that of a man, naked except for a
+flapping fig leaf across which was written, “Lift and look.”
+
+Automatically, her hand reached for the fig leaf, and drew back. Her
+curiosity was mixed with shame and guilt. She ignored it and began
+combing her hair, fixing her lipstick, and powdering her nose. It
+remained to obsess her in a peculiar way. Again she glanced at it, and
+then, remembering that Bud had said, “One at a time,” she realized that
+no one would see her examine the figure, and once more her hand touched
+the loose leaf. Slowly and fearfully she raised it. Suddenly and swiftly
+a fierce bell deafened her ears, ringing out a vibrant wail throughout
+the Sigma Delta fraternity house. Gales of laughter and shouts started
+in the room outside, and Mitch drew back and stood shocked, her hands
+shaking with scalding embarrassment.
+
+The voices and calls persisted and Mitch sat down for long, frenzied
+minutes. She could hear them coming closer until they stood at the door,
+singing.
+
+   “Never lift a fig leaf, lady, let the poor guy be!
+   That is,
+   That is,
+   If it’s idle cu-ri-os-i-ty!
+
+   “Never lift a fig leaf, lady, just to steal a glance,
+   Unless,
+   Unless
+   You fol-low with ro-mance!
+
+   “Now! Ain’t you coming out?
+   Ain’t you coming out?
+   Ain’t you ev-er, ev-er comin’ out?”
+
+She knew that she could not. They were waiting for her and she could not
+get up and walk to the door and pass them. Not now. It was a joke, she
+realized that, but it was _his_ joke. And everyone would be shaking with
+laughter, knowing what she had done. Anger mounted in her, and her hands
+wrung with a seething anxiety. Over and over they sang the song and
+shouted and she sat there. Very gradually the voices died away and then
+it was finished and they had left the door. Short, round tears loitered
+in the corners of her eyes and escaped down her face as she blotted them
+with her handkerchief and straightened herself. She listened at the
+door, and the noise was not there, but back at the booths where they all
+were. Opening it a few inches, she saw that Bud had waited. There was a
+look of smug defiance on his face.
+
+“C’mon,” he said. “No one will bother you now.”
+
+She slammed the door shut harshly and held onto it from the inside. He
+was the last one she could look at—his face leering that way, the slimy,
+suggestive tone, and the hand that reached for her.
+
+“By God, you’ll come out! You’ll come out!” he shouted, and heaving
+himself at the door before she could twist the lock and secure it, he
+held her arms back and kicked the door shut behind him.
+
+“Damn you,” he said, the sick, sweet odor of liquor flowing from his
+mouth. “Damn you and your damn innocence! You wanted to look, didn’t
+you? By God, look, then!”
+
+Mitch wrested herself free, and grabbing the china vase on the table,
+she brought it down on his head, and left him staggering back against
+the wall. Then, running, she tripped up the stairs, past the ghostlike
+face of Mother Carter, through the door, and beyond the gangling oak
+trees. She ran down the street in the tar-black night.
+
+When she stopped running, a block away, the near lights of the stadium
+told her she was streets away from the Tri Epsilon house. Gasping for
+breath, her body perspiring feverishly, she stumbled along until she saw
+the white house on the corner. As she approached it, she noticed the
+sign ΔΡ, and she remembered Fredna, the girl she had met at the hotel
+during rush week. Instantly, she quickened her pace and climbed the rows
+of brick steps. A couple sat on the porch, and the girl looked up at
+Mitch as she passed the swing where they were.
+
+“May I help you?” she said, standing, coming toward Mitch so that she
+could view her in the light of the porch.
+
+“Fredna Loughead. I was—looking for her.”
+
+The girl said, “Fredna’s on a blind date tonight. She won’t be home
+until closing hour. Can I take a message?” She had a quizzical
+expression in her alert eyes.
+
+“Well, I—I guess I’m lost.” Mitch stuttered nervously. “I’m a Tri
+Epsilon pledge. I can’t find the house.”
+
+“Really?” the girl said, her tone gaining interest, her lips parting in
+a ready smile. “Well now, how did that happen? You’re a pledge, you
+say?”
+
+“Yes, I am. I—I had a fight and—well, I just got lost.”
+
+“A fight? That’s terrible. Why, that’s awful. Look, I’ll tell you what
+we’ll do. Biff and I will walk you home. It’s just a few blocks, and we
+were going to take a walk anyway, weren’t we, Biff?”
+
+The boy got up from the swing and studied Mitch. “Yes,” he said. “We’d
+be glad to walk you home.” There was a bright jeweled pin on his
+sweater. “I live right across the street from you. Delta Pi. We’re
+neighbors.”
+
+“And,” the girl said in sirupy tones, “you can tell us all about this
+fight of yours while we walk along.”
+
+“There isn’t much to tell,” Mitch said as they started down across the
+damp grass. “I guess I just lost my temper.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Bud Roberts reeled back against the pale blue wall, and felt the warm
+trickle of blood on his forehead. He touched it with his finger and
+stared at its vivid color and stood there, slumped unevenly, resting.
+The door was partially open and the sound of many feet came rushing to
+him, and he straightened himself and walked into their midst, not
+stopping the blood as it ran. A girl shrieked out at the sight of him,
+and two young men rushed to aid him as he walked up to them all.
+
+“You O.K. fellow?”
+
+“Yeah,” Bud drawled, “I’m O.K.”
+
+“Man, she really bruised you.”
+
+They stood about him gaping up at his wound. Bud said, “Where’d she go?”
+
+“She took off,” Dirk answered. “She took off like a bat out of hell, up
+the stairs and out. Robin here tried to call to her.”
+
+“Are you a Tri Ep?” Bud asked Robin. “Are you one of that bunch?”
+
+“Yes.” Robin was uneasy. The crowd thickened. She wondered where Mitch
+had gone. “Why did she hit you?” Robin said incredulously. “I didn’t
+even know she knew you.”
+
+“Because she’s a poor damn sport, that’s why. Every night I plug old
+cardboard Adam up for one girl to bite on it, and she was the wrong
+girl. Then when I made the men stop singing, and quieted them down so
+she wouldn’t feel bad about coming out, she slugged me. Well, by God,
+she’s the last Tri Ep to come to this house.”
+
+He took out his handkerchief and held it to the blood. Mother Carter had
+come downstairs and squeezed through the crowd and seen him. She caught
+her breath in a quick hissing sound and ran to take his arm. With
+exaggerated caution she led him from the room, saying she hoped it was
+not a concussion, saying the young lady should be reported. “And she
+scooted right past me, too,” she said, “and the devil was in her eyes.”
+
+Clive McKenzie turned to Robin. “Under the circumstances,” he said, “I
+think I’d better drive _you_ back to the Tri Epsilon house.”
+
+His voice was stiff and brusk, and members of other sororities stood
+beside their dates watching as Robin picked up her coat and Mitch’s coat
+and walked toward the stairway with Clive.
+
+“I guess you realize,” Clive said as he opened the car door, “that this
+means trouble for your house. Probably a black-listing.”
+
+Robin said, “I wonder where she went. It’s so dark and everything.”
+
+“Hits a guy with a flowerpot! God!” Clive cursed. “Goddamn!”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The meeting lasted until two o’clock that morning. When Leda came
+upstairs, Mitch was sitting cross-legged on the bed, her hands clenched
+and shaking. Leda said nothing. She put her shoes in the flowered shoe
+bag behind the closet door and wiggled out of her skirt. Mitch watched
+her and felt strange, as though she were in a play on a stage and the
+people in the audience were waiting and watching and she did not know
+her lines. “I’m sorry, Leda,” she said finally. “I’m awfully sorry I got
+everyone in a jam.”
+
+Leda took out her brush and the bobby pins from the small yellow box on
+the top of the bureau. “I guess I just don’t belong,” Mitch continued.
+“I guess I just don’t know how to act right. I don’t know much about
+jokes like that, and Bud Roberts and the way he acted after. Look, Leda,
+I am sorry.”
+
+“I’m afraid,” Leda said into the mirror, “that it doesn’t help anything
+being sorry. You really made a mess of it. You know, the Delta Rhos
+_aren’t_ our best friends. You would pick that house to run to.”
+
+“I didn’t tell them anything. Just that I had a fight. Honest.”
+
+“And Biff Collins. He _would_ be in on it. You couldn’t have picked two
+worse people to help you find your way back home. You didn’t have to
+tell them anything. They’ll have their own stories circulating before
+morning. God!”
+
+“Is there anything I can do?” Mitch looked at the beautiful girl and her
+eyes ached where there should have been tears.
+
+“Yes,” Leda answered coolly. “There is. You can grow up! You can forget
+yourself and come out of your lousy damn shell and grow up! Don’t you
+think I know how you felt? Don’t you think I know what Roberts is like
+and how you felt? Do I look dumb and stupid, Mitch? Mitch, look at me!
+Do I look dumb and stupid?”
+
+Mitch stared. The tears had welled up and were held fast and there was a
+heaviness about her lids and the drummer was back inside her, beating
+away fast. Leda stood before her in her sheer white pajamas with her
+face red from excitement and her voice harsh and sharp.
+
+“No,” Mitch answered her. “I’m the one that’s dumb and stupid, I
+suppose. But I can’t help it. Everything’s so dirty and nasty. I can’t
+understand—”
+
+Leda cut in and held Mitch’s shoulders. “You make me sick, Mitch! You
+make me retch! I bet you still think babies grow under cabbage leaves.
+Well, they don’t. I’ve got news, Mitch, they don’t grow under any
+goddamn cabbage leaves. I had to learn it! I had to learn it the hard
+way. Goddamn you, anyway!”
+
+The tears broke then and came to Mitch’s eyes in a great rush and down
+her cheeks onto her slip and she said Leda’s name over and over. Leda
+sat beside her and began to talk as though she were not talking to the
+girl, but to the wall and the curtains and the Venetian blinds.
+
+“When I was ten—_ten_—I was out in the back yard and Jan was sitting
+there with Dave, the man she was sleeping with then, and he came over to
+me and felt me. He said, ‘Boy, she’s a nice one!’ and Jan laughed. Jan
+said, ‘You won’t even stop at kids, you bastard,’ and then they both
+laughed. You know what I did, Mitch? I laughed too. I’ve been laughing
+ever since. You should know what I laughed at. You should know some of
+the goddamn funny jokes I laughed at!”
+
+“Leda, please stop. I started all this. Please stop.”
+
+“Why? Because you don’t want to hear the story of my life? Is it raising
+the hair on your head, Mitch? You want to know something else? I used to
+lie in bed and listen at night. We had a bungalow out in L.A. when Jan
+and I lived there, and Jan’s room was right next to mine. I used to hear
+them. I used to hear them plain as everything—the springs creaking and
+the breathing. I used to go crazy listening.”
+
+There was an eeriness about the room and the way Leda looked straight
+ahead with her eyes fixed and unmoving. Mitch squirmed uncomfortably,
+not wanting to hear any more, but Leda kept on.
+
+“And Jake! Want to know what Jake did tonight? After Bud announced that
+the Tri Eps were black-listed, Jake and I got to the house and heard the
+news. Jake took me back to the car. And after, Mitch, after it was over,
+Jake said, ‘We’ll find some way to have this, even if I can’t take Tri
+Eps out. They won’t stop this, baby.’ He didn’t say, ‘The hell with the
+whole goddamn bunch of them. They can’t keep us apart.’ He said, ‘We’ll
+find some way to have this.’ But what’s funnier, Mitch—what’s even
+funnier—was that I felt that way too. I didn’t say it, but I felt it.
+That’s all I want from him. I hate his guts and it’s all I want from
+him. Sometimes I don’t even want that and then there’s nothing. I don’t
+know what I want, Mitch. I’m afraid of what I want.”
+
+She looked at Mitch and she said, “Mitch, that was why I was mad when I
+first came in the room. Because you brought it out in the open. Because
+you made the whole thing as goddamn plain as the nose on my face. You
+caused the trouble—you and that bastard Roberts. Because now the whole
+damn sorority is black-listed and I’ve got to act as if I care and as if
+Jake cares and oh, my God, it’s hell. We don’t care. What a laugh!”
+
+Mitch saw Leda’s face, and it was strange and unfamiliar. The features
+fell apart and they would not unite again. There was the wide, sensuous
+mouth and the nose and the eyes and the chin and they were like pieces
+of the puzzle that was Leda’s face that had not been put together. Mitch
+felt cold and hard, as though this room and this house and this whole
+new life were a dream and tomorrow she would wake up and her father
+would say, “What a sleepy-head you are, black-eyed Susan!”
+
+The room was still except for a slight knocking sound that the blinds
+made in the wind. Leda stood up.
+
+“Sometimes I drink too much,” she said now because it was over, “and I
+talk like a fool late at night. I’m sorry, Mitch. Forget it, kid, will
+you?”
+
+Mitch said yes but she knew no. She knew no she would never forget it,
+not the loneliness that gnawed away at Leda and the way she had said it.
+
+“Tomorrow you go over for your course cards,” Leda said. “Better get
+some sleep.”
+
+“What do you think they’ll do about what happened?”
+
+“I don’t know, kid. They’ll think of something. Don’t worry about it.”
+
+Mitch pulled her slip over her head and jerked off her brassiere. She
+stepped into the pants of her pajamas and buttoned the coat.
+
+“I’ll get the light, Leda,” she said, but Leda only looked at her and
+did not answer. When the room was dark, Leda said, “Mitch, come over and
+rub my back, will you?”
+
+She sighed then when the large hands came on her body and gently ran
+over her back. “Mitch,” she said, “I like you. From the first day. You
+knew that.... Do you hear me, Mitch?”
+
+The room was black and the wind blew and drops of rain fell on the roof
+and it was tin.
+
+“I hear you, Leda.”
+
+“You looked at me when I was standing by the piano. I’ll never forget
+that look.”
+
+“I thought you were—beautiful.”
+
+“Now what do you think of me, Mitch? Honestly.”
+
+“I’ve never known anyone like you. I’ve had friends before, you know,
+school friends. You’re different, though.”
+
+“Do you like to touch me?”
+
+“Yes. I—used to be timid about touching people. I don’t know. When the
+kids asked me to scratch their backs, I used to dislike it. Now—I like
+it. With you.”
+
+“The rain sounds good, doesn’t it?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Want to crawl in with me?”
+
+Mitch didn’t answer. She pulled the covers back and lay beside Leda,
+taking her hand from her back and turning over to face the other way.
+When Leda’s arms came around her to hold her, she felt a warm aching
+that eased into peace and she slept until the rain stopped and the sun
+came through the blinds in the morning.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Marsha said, “So you see, Mitch, it’s up to you. I know it’s a
+ridiculous request, but we’ve got to save the reputation of Tri Ep.”
+
+Mitch backed the car into a space in front of the library. Outside it
+was hot, and even now in the early morning, near ten, the people passing
+in the streets had a tired, damp look about them. A bespectacled young
+man dropped his books and stooped to gather them.
+
+“But why?” Mitch turned to Marsha. “Why would Bud Roberts want me to ask
+him to our housewarming? It doesn’t make sense.”
+
+“All I know is what he told me on the phone. He said, ‘If Susan Mitchell
+asks me to your housewarming, I’ll forget it.’ That’s what he said.”
+
+“I don’t trust him.”
+
+“Listen, Mitch, it’s three weeks away and you won’t have to be alone
+with him. It’s right at the house, and we’ll all be around. Try to
+believe me, I know how you feel. I’d never ask you to do it except that
+we can’t afford an enemy like Sig Delt. If they black-list us, the other
+fraternities will be too proud to date us too. And after all, Mitch, you
+did make it pretty messy when you ran to another sorority for help.”
+
+The car was hot and Mitch opened the door. She said, “O.K., I’ll ask
+him. I better get my course cards. The line’s getting longer by the
+minute.”
+
+“Thanks, Mitch.” Marsha smiled and touched her hand. “Thank you very
+much.”
+
+Marsha waited to cross the street while Mitch joined the line, standing
+behind a tall, angular blond boy. A warm buzz began in Mitch’s stomach
+when she thought of Leda. She traced an L in the dirt with her foot, and
+shielded her eyes from the sun with her arm.
+
+The blond boy said, “Hot!”
+
+Mitch nodded. The line inched forward while he talked to her. “Then
+we’re in three courses together,” he said. “Swell!”
+
+Afterward, as they sipped Cokes slowly in Mac’s, he told her that his
+name was Charlie Edmonson.
+
+The rain started heavily on the roof of Mac’s and splashed down at the
+windows. “My car!” Mitch exclaimed. “The windows are down!”
+
+They ran to the door and stood under the awning, watching the rain teem
+down. “Can’t get to it in this,” he said. “It’ll be a quick one,
+anyway.”
+
+People in the streets dodged for shelter, and one boy rolled his pants
+up to his knees and tore off with a newspaper over his head.
+
+“When it lets up,” Mitch said, “maybe I can drop you off. What
+fraternity are you in?”
+
+“Me?” Charlie pointed to himself, laughing. “I’m not a fraternity boy.
+Too fancy for an old Kansas farmer.”
+
+“Then you’re an independent,” Mitch said blankly, moving back from the
+awning where the leak was and the rain came through. She thought of the
+song they had sung at the Sig Delt house last night, the refrain humming
+distantly in her ears.
+
+   “He’s a goddamn independent,
+   He’s a G.D.I.
+   Ignore! Ignore! Ignore the bas-tard!
+   Ditch the guy,
+   The G.D.I.”
+
+“I think it’s letting up,” he said. “Want to run for it?”
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter Four
+
+
+It was Thursday, the week of the Tri Epsilon housewarming party, and the
+leaves on the trees along the streets of Cranston were the way they are
+in October. Mitch stood in the entrance to Jacob Hall, glancing
+nervously at her watch, moving up and down from the top step to the
+second step.
+
+“Sorry, Sue,” Charlie said when he arrived. “Professor Rudolph got
+talking after class and I couldn’t get away from him.”
+
+“We haven’t got time for a Coke. I have to get back to the house this
+afternoon.”
+
+They walked along the path to the street while Mitch explained that all
+pledges had to assist in decorating the house for the party on Saturday.
+As soon as she had said it, she felt a sudden surge of embarrassment
+sweep through her. It had been three weeks now that she had been going
+for Cokes after class with Charlie. He had asked her to go to a movie
+one Tuesday evening, but the Tri Epsilon pledge study-hall system had
+started, and pledges could not date on week nights.
+
+“It’s just sort of a housewarming,” she said, hoping it sounded
+unimportant and dull. Charlie scuffed his feet near the end of the
+sidewalk where there was a space between the ground and the asphalt.
+“Could I walk you on home?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+Kitten Clark passed them as they turned and she said hello to Mitch and
+looked at Charlie with a flat expression in her eyes. She had seen Mitch
+with him before, and she knew that he was an independent. His
+awkwardness, the plain, loose-fitting clothes, and the conspicuous
+absence of a fraternity pin pointed out the fact. As yet it was not a
+matter of concern to Tri Epsilon, because Mitch had not had a week-end
+date with him, or with anyone else since the trouble with Roberts. On
+Saturday she would emerge from the cocoon for the housewarming and the
+date with Bud. It was a complete enigma to Kitten why Roberts even
+bothered. Perhaps to save face, and more to prove that no girl could hit
+and run. Not him. She thought of the silverware that Mother Nessy had
+promised Tri Epsilon if they pledged Susan, and hoped they would have it
+in time for the buffet dinner on Saturday.
+
+“How come you aren’t driving?”
+
+Mitch hardly heard his question after they had passed Kitten. She was
+thinking that Kitten would want to know who the boy was and what house
+he belonged to. She wondered vaguely what Jane Bell would say; if she
+would say that it was just as easy to have a Coke and walk home with a
+fraternity man after class, and that it was preferable.
+
+“Independents aren’t lepers,” she had told the pledge class at their
+last meeting, “but fraternity men are preferable.”
+
+There were fraternity men in all of Mitch’s classes—suave, confident
+young men whose loafered feet stretched out in the aisles, and whose
+bold guffaws echoed after the profs’ jokes. They had names like Grey
+Gregg and Big Tom D. and Rabbit Man and they sat in clumps together.
+There was something different about them, Mitch thought, something that
+was not neutral but cold and hot as they willed in their way with
+others.
+
+“I said, how come you don’t have your car in the lot today?”
+
+“Leda borrowed it. She had to pick up some equipment downtown.”
+
+“Your roommate?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“If I had a car, I guess I’d be afraid to let people borrow it. Maybe
+not. Hard to tell when you’re as far from having a car as I am.”
+
+“Leda’s careful.”
+
+“Must be going to be a big old party at your house Saturday.”
+
+“Pretty big.”
+
+“Just girls?”
+
+“No,” Mitch said. “Boys and girls.”
+
+“I was going to—I have this job downtown at Messer’s Drugstore. Usually
+work week ends. That’s why I haven’t been able to ask you out. I was
+going to ask you out Saturday, but—”
+
+They cut across Swampcot Street and waited for the light to change.
+“Will you ask me some other week end?” Mitch said as they walked on.
+
+“Sure.”
+
+“Because I have a date Saturday.”
+
+When they reached the circular walk to the Tri Epsilon house, Charlie
+said good-by and handed Mitch the French book he was carrying for her,
+and he said after he said good-by, “Be good, Sue.”
+
+The Tri Eps were busy trimming the entrance to the dining room in pink
+and blue streamers and Robin Maurer was polishing the mirror in the
+hall. She paused when Mitch entered the hall.
+
+“Get lost,” she advised. “They got work around here that would scare an
+elephant.”
+
+“Looks good. Who’s your date, Robin?”
+
+“Some blockhead. I’ve seen him once. Looks like those prehistoric men in
+our Soc books.”
+
+“You know who mine is.”
+
+“Yes,” Robin said, wringing out the cloth, “I know. Marsha gave me a
+little lecture too, all about bowing and scraping to Sig Delt. I don’t
+know, though. She’s the only one in this bunch I trust.”
+
+“Hey,” Jane Bell called to Mitch. “Change your clothes and pitch in
+here. We need some work done in the basement if Mother Nessy lets us use
+it Saturday.”
+
+At a previous Tri Epsilon party, a fraternity man had spent his entire
+evening and half of the following day on the moth-eaten divan behind the
+ping-pong table in the Tri Ep cellar. He was very drunk and it had
+happened last year and Mother Nesselbush had been called on by the Dean
+of Women to explain the incident. Since then, the basement was termed
+“off limits” for house parties. This year there was a skinny hope that
+it would not be a restricted area.
+
+The hope died shortly after Mitch changed into a pair of jeans and
+headed off in the direction of the back steps. There, congregated in a
+small mass, Tri Eps faced Mother Nessy. Her answer was a very adamant
+no, supplemented with the viewpoint that basements encouraged
+extravagant necking, liquor drinking, which was forbidden, and other
+“things.”
+
+Leda heard them arguing back there when she drove Mitch’s car in the
+drive and pulled the packages out. She set them down in the living room
+and went upstairs. As she took her worn green suede coat off and tossed
+the matching beret to the top of the closet, she noticed the yellow
+paper on Mitch’s desk. It was Marsha’s paper. Marsha had reams of this
+paper, pale lemon-colored onionskin with a small silver initial at the
+top. The third time this week, Leda realized. Whenever Mitch could not
+be found, she was down in the suite helping Marsha, or in the evening
+after closing hours, making cinnamon toast in the kitchen with Marsha,
+or listening to records with Marsha in the living room. Irritated, Leda
+glanced at the scrawled words on the yellow paper:
+
+“Want to help me trim the side hall for the party? I’ll meet you there
+when you’re changed. Love, Marsh.”
+
+“Good God!” Leda said aloud. “Trimming the side hall with _Marsh_. What
+a great big fat kick that is!”
+
+She stretched out on the bed and shut her eyes. In a persistent,
+conscious dream, Jake was beside her, his hands on her, her ears filled
+with the harsh profane words he used. Then, in that crazy state of half
+awareness, she projected herself into Jake’s ways and saw Mitch, large
+and muscular, but less strong than Leda, who held onto her. Suddenly she
+heard the footsteps in the hall and Mitch appeared, shaking the dream,
+chattering noisily about the decorations, how Marsha had helped her with
+her French assignment, and what Mother Nessy had said about the
+basement.
+
+“Mitch,” Leda said, breaking in, “who’s the guy?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“They say you’re hanging around with some guy after classes.”
+
+“Oh, Charlie. He’s in a couple of my classes.”
+
+“Like him?”
+
+“Sure.”
+
+Leda blew the smoke from her cigarette toward the ceiling. Mitch thought
+it was time now for the harangue on independents if Leda knew, and if
+not, it would be time after she asked and knew then.
+
+“Why don’t you ask him to come Saturday? Tell Roberts to go jump and ask
+him.”
+
+“I can’t. Marsha asked me to do this. Leda, you know why I had to ask
+Roberts.”
+
+“That’s Marsha’s idea. Listen, kid, don’t be pushed around. Marsha could
+have settled it some other way.”
+
+“But I thought,” Mitch said, confused, “I thought it was the only choice
+I had. I don’t understand you now, Leda.”
+
+“You understand Marsha, apparently.”
+
+Mitch sat down on the bed and tried to reason why Leda was afraid again,
+almost as she had been that night. Weeks had passed and Leda had seemed
+aloof and busy, with Jake all the time, and tired in the evening. Now
+this, and Leda was angry.
+
+“Charlie is an independent,” Mitch said, “so he wouldn’t be a good date
+to bring anyway.”
+
+“Charlie?”
+
+“The boy you said I should ask instead of Roberts.”
+
+Leda searched in the bookcase for her Spanish text, and finding it, she
+grabbed her coat. “I’ve got work to do,” she said. “I can’t think about
+it all the time. Do you hear me, Mitch? I can’t think about it all the
+time!”
+
+Mitch didn’t say anything.
+
+“Marsha! I’m so sick of hearing that girl’s name. You think she’s God,
+don’t you? You think that girl is God?”
+
+Mitch reached in the drawer beside her bed and found the nail polish.
+She was wearing it regularly now, bright red, and her nails were growing
+long and tapered.
+
+Leda stood before her waiting for an answer but it did not come. She
+said, “I thought you were my friend. I thought you cared about me
+because no one else had ever given a damn. No friend. Jake cares for his
+own damn reasons and Jan doesn’t care. The two J’s in my life. J for
+junk. But I thought you gave a damn and I ran around pouring my heart
+out telling you things. Then you run to Marsha when you have a problem
+and you do what Marsha says.”
+
+“I haven’t.” Mitch’s voice cracked. “I talk to her because she’s
+president.”
+
+“President! President of what? Of the world? Of the United States of
+America? I laugh my fool head off at her being president.”
+
+“I don’t know what to say, Leda. I don’t know why you’re mad all of a
+sudden.”
+
+Leda shook her head and walked out of the room, slamming the door. She
+walked down the hall and the steps and out the door to the street, and
+she knew why it was this way. She knew. Before she had thought she knew,
+and she had erased it like a pencil mark on a sheet of new paper. It
+came back. And Susan Mitchell, of all those it might have been, and the
+way she was, like a baby.
+
+Mitch watched her from the window until she was out of sight. Across the
+street the Delta Pi’s were staging a song practice on their side lawn.
+In even rows of more than a dozen, they faced their white-flanneled
+leader and sang out in fine, gruff voices. They were singing the
+Cranston football team’s “Fight Song,” and listening to them, Mitch
+thought that this was the way she had pictured college. This singing,
+and the fall leaves outside, and the hazy questions in her mind about
+the French translation and the English composition, and no Leda or Bud
+Roberts—nothing like that. Still, there were Leda’s eyes, and the deep
+blue tinge of hurt that had shown when she left like that.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The housewarming was to begin immediately after the football game, and
+that Saturday afternoon the Tri Eps had gone in a body to the stadium.
+It was the first home game of the year, and tradition brought together
+the fervid assemblage of fraternity brothers and sorority sisters in
+solid blocks throughout the grandstands. To Mitch, it was a bewitching
+spectacle, with the lively mass of people and the beat of the drums in
+the uniformed band parading down the field. Robin Maurer sat beside her.
+Of all the pledges, Robin was the one whom Mitch knew and liked best.
+The others seemed to be absorbed into the whole, with no particular
+individual traits of their own. Sissy Callahan and Bebe Duncan and Jett
+Duquette and Travis King, all somehow alike, with the same neutrality
+toward you as the fraternity men’s. Most of them wore their hair long,
+curled loosely, their faces tinted with the popular liquid powder base
+they all used. Their arms were caparisoned with silver bracelets, and
+their shoes varied only from loafers to saddle shoes and saddle shoes to
+loafers and they called everyone darling. That was together. Alone,
+there was Sissy’s brother who flew transatlantic flights and had been
+married four times. Bebe Duncan’s father was an author and his books
+were dedicated always “To B. and Bebe,” because her mother’s name was
+Beatrice. Jett Duquette was named after the race horse her uncle made
+his first million on. And Travis King had false teeth, which only made
+her more beautiful and which she talked about, often, in mixed company.
+
+They sat there, too, with Robin and Mitch. But Robin was the one that
+counted. When the whistle blew and the football sailed off in the air,
+Mitch leaned forward and drank in the movements on the field below. The
+cheering and the songs and the tense moments near the goal line caught
+her up and carried her with them. Once Leda turned around from the row
+down in front of her and winked at Mitch. She saw the excitement on
+Mitch’s face, the red, ruddy look to her cheeks, and the eyes shining as
+though she had fever. Mitch was happy then. It was their first exchange
+after yesterday’s quarrel. There was something in the look that meant,
+“All right, it’s all right,” and Leda was beautiful, looking up like
+that and laughing.
+
+During the half Marsha called down to Mitch and Robin to come up and sit
+with her. She was munching a hot dog, and some of the boys from Delta Pi
+had crawled under the ropes and were standing there chatting with her.
+Mitch and Robin scrambled up and joined them, and they met Ted and
+Lucifer, the two Delta Pis. When the band struck up the “Fight Song,”
+the five of them roared out the words, and Mitch laughed at the way
+Lucifer sang, deep and loud like a bass drum.
+
+“Hey,” he said. “You’re laughing at me.”
+
+The whistle blew and she sat down beside him for the next quarter. “I’ve
+seen you somewhere before,” he said, “somewhere that smells vaguely of
+formaldehyde.”
+
+“Gosh,” Mitch exclaimed, “that’s right! Lab! You’re in my zoology lab.”
+
+“No, no!” He smiled, tipping his black and gold fraternity cap. “You’re
+in _my_ zoology lab. Remember, I am Lucifer.”
+
+Mitch saw Leda looking back, searching for her, craning her neck and
+peering over the heads of the others to the seats Robin and Mitch had
+deserted. Mitch did not know why she leaned down and pretended to tie
+her shoe, so that Leda wouldn’t see her. She did not know why, but she
+knew that it was better. Better not to have her see.
+
+“Walk you home,” Lucifer said, after the game was won and elated
+students jumped about in the bleachers, hugging one another and singing
+out in husky choruses. “You’re a neighbor, that’s why. I only walk
+neighbors home. Hate foreigners from other streets.”
+
+Lucifer jabbered on about nothing and Mitch liked him. He was a short
+boy with huge thick glasses and an unbelievably short haircut. Mitch was
+taller than he was and he would not let her forget it, but the way he
+joked and the way he talked charmed Mitch.
+
+“You’re taller,” he said, “and so you undoubtedly consider your length a
+blight on your whole day. Because why? Because Lucifer said he would
+walk you home. Because Lucifer is very tiny and prefers that his women
+be very tiny. And furthermore because you have a feeling you are going
+to fall madly in love with Lucifer. But never mind. Lucifer has a soul.
+It is very possible that he will make a little room in his life for you
+from time to time.”
+
+Mitch laughed. “Thanks,” she said. “Any time you want me to reach up and
+hammer a nail in that’s over your head....”
+
+“My dear girl,” Lucifer said, “a much funnier way of saying the same
+thing would have been to say, ‘Call me when you can’t reach the
+hatrack.’ You see? Something simpler than what you said, though much the
+same essence.”
+
+Outside the Tri Epsilon house, cars were lined up and horns were
+blowing. The chairs on the lawn were filling up with young men, and Tri
+Eps were hurrying up the walk to join them.
+
+“I understand you’re warming your house tonight,” Lucifer said. “Some of
+our boys were invited.”
+
+“Yes. I’m sorry you won’t be here.”
+
+“Then ask me.”
+
+Mitch laughed. “I have a date, Lucifer.”
+
+“Where?”
+
+“I don’t see him now,” Mitch said, looking the crowd over, “but he’ll be
+here.”
+
+“Well, I tell you what. I’ll wait with you until he comes. It’ll be O.K.
+Tell him I’m your brother. Tell him I’m a gnome. He won’t care. And when
+he comes, poof! Disappearing act.”
+
+She hesitated, but realized it was no use. Lucifer was determined.
+Together they made their way up to the porch, and Mitch went in to get
+him a glass of punch. On her way to the kitchen she met Marsha, and she
+explained that Lucifer had insisted on staying until Bud came. Marsha
+smiled and answered that she couldn’t see how it would hurt anything.
+Then Mitch rejoined Lucifer and waited for Bud to come.
+
+At seven o’clock Lucifer said, “It was a very delicious buffet, my
+little gazelle. Ah, your date—he’s coming tonight?”
+
+“I don’t know,” Mitch said, thinking of the humiliation of being stood
+up, of having Lucifer here to witness it, and Tri Eps passing with their
+dates, looking to see if Mitch and Bud were getting along well, and Bud
+not there at all.
+
+“You don’t seem distressed.”
+
+“I’m not, really. I don’t like it, of course. But I don’t care for him
+either.”
+
+Lucifer said, “But he’s tall. I suppose he’s very, very tall.”
+
+“Quite tall, yes. Taller than I am.”
+
+“Ah, me,” Lucifer sighed. “Vanity. Vanity, vanity.”
+
+Inside the group was singing “My Gal Sal.” Mitch shivered, and thought
+about forgetting the housewarming and going up to bed, or taking Lucifer
+inside and forgetting Bud. Then, to punctuate her thoughts, there was a
+sharp voice: “Hey, Susan Mitchell!”
+
+Bud Roberts was coming up the walk, carrying a box under his arm,
+smiling and talking in a loud voice. “Hi there. I know I’m late.”
+
+“Bright boy,” Lucifer said, rising, bowing, and moving away. “A
+commanding personality, that boy!” he said as he walked toward the
+sidewalk.
+
+“Who’s that?”
+
+“Lucifer. I don’t know his last name.” Mitch didn’t stand up or look up
+at him. Inside she was seething with anger.
+
+“Look, let me explain it. I was late for a good reason.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“I wanted to get you just the right kind of flower,” he said, tearing
+the ribbon off the box and presenting her with an orchid. A brown
+orchid. Mitch stared. She stood up and stepped back from the flower, as
+though it would shatter if she were to go near it. It was beautiful.
+
+“Forgive me?” he asked.
+
+Mitch nodded.
+
+“For everything, I mean, for everything! Let’s make this a peace
+offering.”
+
+She took his arm after he pinned the orchid on, and they went into the
+house, where couples were dancing on the dining-room floor, which had
+been cleared of the tables.
+
+“Got any punch?” Bud asked, and she led him back to the kitchen. He
+pulled a leather flask from his back pocket. “I want a shot in mine,” he
+said. “How about you?”
+
+“Put it away, Bud! It’s not allowed.”
+
+Bud Roberts threw his head back and laughed. He reached for Mitch’s
+hands and he said, “You know what? You’re the first really innocent girl
+I’ve ever met. You’re really innocent, aren’t you?”
+
+“I don’t know,” she said, “but I know liquor isn’t allowed.”
+
+Kitten Clark and her date rushed into the kitchen. They were howling
+over something and Kitten grabbed his head and bit his ear. “Take that,”
+she said, “and let it be a lesson.” Bud offered them a drink, and Mitch
+felt the blood rise in her head when she saw Kitten pour a large shot
+into her punch glass. Kitten sensed Mitch’s shock, and she said, “Look,
+it’s O.K. as long as Nessy doesn’t get wise. So take it easy.” Her date
+took a straight swig from the bottle, and laughing again, they left the
+kitchen door swinging back and forth behind them.
+
+“Here,” Bud said. “I’ll give you a light shot. This doesn’t taste bad,
+like beer. You won’t get sick.”
+
+Tired of being wrong all the time, Mitch let him “fix” her punch, and
+they joined the others. Marsha beamed at Bud and came rushing over to
+him, holding his hand for minutes after she shook it, smiling and saying
+nice things. Then others came—Jane Bell and Skip and Mother Nessy and,
+at last, Leda.
+
+“Hi,” she said to Roberts, Jake standing beside her, a sly, lopsided
+grin on his face. Roberts shook their hands and when he held Leda’s he
+did something to make Leda pull her hand away, and wipe it on her skirt
+and sneer at him half-smiling. “You never forget.”
+
+“Like an elephant,” he said, “just like an elephant.”
+
+“Someday you’re going to forget and you won’t have any personality.
+You’ll be a dope without your dirty jokes and your coy gestures.”
+
+Mitch shuddered to think what would follow, but Bud Roberts only stuck
+his hands in his pockets and looked admiringly at Leda. “You’re the only
+girl who can deliver an insult,” he said, “and still be a duchess. A
+mean duchess, though.”
+
+Jake took Leda’s arm. “Cool off, Roberts,” he said. “Cut your line, or
+pull your bait in.”
+
+Bud and Mitch danced and she found him easy to talk to and friendly. He
+kept getting her more punch, and each time putting a little more whisky
+in the glass, and telling her it was all right and that she wouldn’t
+feel it. But she did. She felt light and happy and once or twice she
+touched his arm and said something complimentary to him. She said,
+“You’re nice, Bud,” and “You know, you look very nice tonight, Bud.” He
+squeezed her close when they were dancing and she could feel his warm
+breath near her ears. She thought that their misunderstanding was a
+foolish, silly thing and that they had never understood one another
+until now. Now she was the lady her father wanted her to be and this was
+the ball and Bud Roberts was a gentleman.
+
+The orchestra that Tri Epsilon had hired was a small combo that played
+half an hour out of every hour. Then they staged a gala intermission,
+during which the orchestra members raced to the kitchen to refuel
+themselves with many bottles of assorted liquors. Mother Nessy permitted
+the musicians to have “alcoholic refreshments,” so there could be no
+suspicion on her part if she were to enter the kitchen and see a young
+man pouring a drink. He was merely “servicing” the hired musicians.
+During intermission there were scores of young men occupied this way.
+
+“That kitchen’s a mess,” Roberts said, “and the porch is jammed. How
+about sitting in your car?”
+
+Mitch felt lively and excited and she said, “Yes, that’d be fun.”
+
+When he kissed her she did not mind the kiss. She snuggled up close to
+him and laughed at nothing.
+
+“You feel good, don’t you?” he said.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+He kissed her again, and this time her mouth was forced open and she was
+hurt from his teeth and she drew back.
+
+“Listen,” he said, “you’ve never been kissed much that way, have you?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Let me show you something,” he said. “Let me show you how nice it can
+be.”
+
+The back door of the car opened and Marsha stood there with her date, a
+large, happy-looking boy. “Can we sit this out with you?” she said.
+“Every place is filled.”
+
+Marsha’s date was Ken, and he impersonated professors and they laughed
+for a while, but Bud did not laugh enthusiastically. Ken heard the music
+when it started, later, after they had talked together, and Marsha said,
+“Well, let’s all go back. There’s going to be a pinning. Jim Keeler is
+going to pin Kitten tonight.”
+
+A huge circle formed in the dining room and Jim Keeler stood in the
+center, his arm around Kitten’s waist. From the side lines, Mother Nessy
+beamed as the girls sang the “Sweetheart Song.” When it was finished,
+the orchestra played “I Love You Truly,” and Jim pinned his large
+fraternity pin on Kitten’s bosom. Then they danced and the others joined
+in.
+
+“C’mon,” Bud said to Mitch, “let’s get some punch in the kitchen.”
+
+The kitchen was empty and Bud poured a large shot of whisky into Mitch’s
+drink. “Susan Mitchell,” he said, holding his glass high, “the picture
+of innocence.”
+
+The taste was gone and Mitch drank easily. Bud came to her and kissed
+her and his hand went down to her skirt. “No,” he said when she started
+to squirm away, “just wait a minute. Wait a minute now, Susan Mitchell,
+just let me alone for a minute. Feels good, doesn’t it?” he said, and
+Susan Mitchell shut her eyes and the room was going around in grand
+yellow and red circles. He helped her down the steps and it was still
+and musty, but he talked all the way. When he found the light switch, he
+turned it on once and then off again quickly. He led her over to the
+couch near the ping-pong table.
+
+“You’re sweet,” he said, his hand working the buttons on her blouse,
+pulling it gently from her shoulders, kissing her. “You’re sweet,
+Susan.”
+
+Very softly, almost too softly for her to hear her own words, she said,
+“No,” but her eyes saw the circles and there was a new feeling in her
+body when he touched her and she could feel her clothes being pulled.
+
+“No,” she said. “No, please, no!”
+
+Then swiftly, suddenly, and with terrific pain, she felt pressure and
+her eyes opened wide and she would have screamed but his hand covered
+her mouth and he struck her hard.
+
+“Shut up,” he said. “You wanted to know. You wanted this, Miss Virgin.”
+
+For a long time she was down in the mire of pitch black and the
+quicksand sucking her in and her whole head dizzy and the pain. Then it
+was over and she could feel him kneeling beside her, his head on her
+breasts, his breath coming hard. When she stood up, she hung onto the
+table and her head throbbed and spun. He got up too and turned the light
+switch on and she saw him looking at her.
+
+“Better get your clothes on,” he said, “and get upstairs with me.”
+
+Her voice was not her own. “You go to hell,” she said. “You go to hell.”
+
+“Come on,” he said. “Get your clothes on.”
+
+She did not cry. She reached for her things, scattered there on the
+floor, the brown orchid squashed beside the couch, everything strewn. He
+turned his back and ran his fingers through his hair, and then he turned
+around and she was dressed, walking toward him with dead eyes, swerving
+slightly from side to side.
+
+“Listen,” he said. “That’s ‘Good Night, Ladies.’ It’s the last dance.”
+
+She moved past him toward the cellar steps. He caught her arm and she
+stopped and did not look at him.
+
+“I’ll go out the side door,” he said. “Look, take a hot bath. You’re not
+hurt. Go up and take a hot bath and keep your mouth shut. Look, you’re
+all right. Don’t act this way.”
+
+When he let her go, she walked up the cellar steps and up the back steps
+to the second floor and her room. There was no one up there. They were
+all finishing the last dance. She lay on the bed, her eyes shut, and the
+circles came back, but they were black now and she was very cold.
+
+Leda found her like that when she came in the room, threw her coat on
+the chair, and let her arms reach out in a wide yawn.
+
+“What’s the trouble?” she said.
+
+Mitch did not move. Her eyes were fixed on the ceiling, her lips parted,
+a gray-white color to her face, and she did not answer.
+
+“You sick?”
+
+She put her hand on Mitch’s forehead. “Roberts,” she said. “What did
+Roberts do to you? Did you fight? Talk to me, kid. Please tell me.”
+
+Mitch started. Her feet touched the floor and moved toward the door. She
+shut it hard and turned toward Leda.
+
+“He did it to me,” she said slowly. “He did it to me in the basement. I
+feel—horrible.”
+
+Outside there was singing, men’s voices coming clearly, singing, “Dream
+girl, dream girl, you are a frat man’s dream girl,” in rich, deep tones.
+Mitch held her head and sat next to Leda.
+
+“That goddamn bastard,” Leda said. “That no-good damn bastard!”
+
+Mitch said, “When he came over tonight, I thought—he was sorry and he
+liked me and—” She could not finish, or cry or scream as she wanted to,
+and Leda’s cursing jarred her and teased her.
+
+“Kid, listen. Can you hear me? Don’t say anything about this. Don’t
+trust anyone. Don’t tell anyone what happened in the cellar. The
+basement was off limits, and you’ve been drinking. God, it isn’t your
+fault! God knows that. But honey—no one cares when a rule is broken.
+They don’t care. Can you straighten out? Do you want me to get a wet rag
+for your head?”
+
+“He said to take a hot bath. He said—”
+
+“He would! A hell of a lot a man knows. Take a hot bath!”
+
+“Leda, what’s wrong with me? How did—”
+
+Leda said, “Don’t try to talk, kid,” and she helped the girl take her
+clothes off. She said, “It’s all right now. You’re O.K. now. You’ll feel
+better after you sleep.”
+
+The voices outside were singing in a lively chorus, singing fast and
+clear:
+
+   “We are the great big, wow! Hairy-chested men, wow!
+   Hairy-chested me! Wow! Hairy-chested men!
+   We are the great big, wow! Hairy-chested men!
+   We can do an-nee-thing! Wow!”
+
+Leda helped Mitch into her bed, and stripping, slipping into white silk
+pajamas, Leda crawled in beside her after flicking the light off. She
+put her arms around Mitch.
+
+“It’s a lousy break, kid. It shouldn’t have happened to you. Marsha
+should have known better.”
+
+“I’m afraid, Leda. Will I have a—what if I’m pregnant? I can’t even
+think. I wish I wasn’t here or alive or anything.”
+
+“Everything will be O.K., Mitch honey. Let me stroke your back gently. I
+know how men are, Mitch. I know how rough they are. Mitch, does my hand
+feel good?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Jake is rough too. You get sick of it. You get sick of them pawing you
+around as if you were an animal. Men don’t understand. They’re tough and
+they don’t care what they do to you. I know, honey. I’ve been through it
+and I don’t know why I go back, except that it just—You have to. Jan
+always thinks if you don’t have a man hanging around that you’re
+abnormal or something. Mitch, you don’t know what I’m talking about, I
+know. I talk like an idiot, Mitch. But I like to touch you. I die when I
+think of that Roberts bastard laying a hand on you. Listen, kid, I never
+felt about a person the way I feel about you. You’re different. I want
+to keep the damn world away from you, so it won’t kick you in the teeth
+the way it has me. You’re special, Mitch, and as long as I’m alive,
+you’re going to be O.K. I mean it.”
+
+Long after Mitch was asleep, Leda’s hands stroked her arms, and Leda lay
+there, hoping the evening would stay and never let morning come, for now
+there was a restless peace in her, akin to finding something that was
+lost, and yet something that had never been hers before.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Up on the hill overlooking the towers and the town, there in an alcove,
+the Sigma Delta house was bright with lights and young men laughing. In
+the living room downstairs, faces were awake with lively talk and
+collars were open at the neck, with the ties hanging freely and the
+coats unbuttoned. A few of the boys kicked off their shoes and leaned
+back luxuriously in the deep chairs and couches. Others were coming
+through the front door in groups of twos and threes, and in the corner a
+radio played a late disc-jockey show from Louisville. At the card table,
+four fellows began a poker game, and one stood near them, holding a
+glass, discussing the evening, telling about the bad roads near Cranston
+Creek and the way “Gloria’s no fool, you know. She takes _real_
+precautions. That’s what I mean about her acting older than the rest of
+these coeds.”
+
+On the third floor, in the room with the banners and the signs and the
+skeleton hanging from the hatrack, Bud Roberts sat with a bottle and his
+roommate, Clive McKenzie, and Jake was there too. Bud was talking about
+it. About the way the girl had looked afterward, and how he felt, and
+their faces were serious and interested.
+
+He said, “It was the first time I ever got such a creepy feeling. Now,
+I’ve fooled around a lot. Plenty. But I never got such a creepy
+feeling.”
+
+Clive McKenzie crushed his cigarette on the floor. “Yeah, I know what
+you mean. One time I had a virgin and after she—”
+
+“Listen,” Roberts yelled. “Listen, I’m telling you it wasn’t like that!
+You don’t know what the hell I’m telling you. I’m so goddamn drunk I
+don’t know what I’m telling you either. But this girl—she was like my
+dog at home after I kick her when I don’t mean to but I lose my temper.
+Ever kick your dog and see his eyes? She was like that. I never—”
+
+“What the hell, Roberts. You asked for it. You said you were going to
+make her. I don’t know why you wanted to bother with the girl anyway.
+She’s built like a barn. You knew it. Jesus, what the hell! You want us
+to cry in our beer over your mess? God, what an act!”
+
+Jake took a swig from the bottle and coughed. “Do I yell around here
+over troubles I got? And troubles I have got. You make me sick
+sometimes.”
+
+“All right, shut up! Shut up!” Roberts yelled, standing up quickly. “We
+got a pledge in this room. Shut up, Jake, you damn fool!”
+
+“You brought it up. You brought the thing up, for God’s sake. What do
+you want?”
+
+“I want you to shut up about it now,” Roberts answered, lurching toward
+Jake and grabbing his shirt. He raised his arm to swing it out at Jake
+and Jake caught it, twisting it back until Roberts was on his knees.
+
+“Break it up, fellows,” Clive ventured in a scared tone, stopping short
+when Jake let Bud free. Jake looked at Bud kneeling there and his anger
+softened. He said, “G’night, Clive, Bud. I’m going to bed. Get some
+sleep, men!”
+
+When he said “men,” Clive knew that it was all right then. He watched
+Jake go and he turned his back on Roberts. He took his toothpaste and
+his brush and he swung a towel over his shoulder. Whistling weakly, he
+left the room and walked down the hall in the direction of the bathroom.
+
+After the door shut, Bud dragged himself up on the bed. He sat there,
+pulling his ear and looking hard at the floor. With his fist, he hit his
+head hard. Then he stood up.
+
+“Hey, you party-poopers,” he called out hoarsely, “where the hell did
+you go? It’s only one-thirty, for God’s sake! Hey, you four-legged
+bastards, come back and finish the bottle!”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The light sound woke Leda. Beside her, Mitch tossed restlessly, a
+pulsating whimpering rising inside her.
+
+“Mitch, are you all right?”
+
+She opened her eyes and looked at Leda. The room was not dark, early
+lights of dawn casting a rusty hue over everything, and the wind from
+the open window was mild and steady.
+
+“I was dreaming. What time is it?”
+
+“About five.”
+
+“I was having an awful dream. Bud Roberts and—”
+
+“Don’t,” Leda said, her arm catching the girl’s waist. Mitch turned on
+her side, facing Leda, feeling the hand rub her back. It was quiet and
+warm. Leda moved her hand forward and ran her fingers lightly over the
+buttons on Mitch’s pajama top. Then, gently, she slipped the round,
+plastic buttons from their loops, leaving the coat open. Almost as if
+Mitch knew what would follow, she held the top of the sheet back while
+Leda moved down and lightly kissed Mitch’s breasts. A soft sigh broke
+free from Mitch’s throat and evolved into a plaintive cry. Leda pulled
+herself up and her lips found Mitch’s and crushed them, burning and
+moist.
+
+“Mitch,” Leda whispered, and they held each other fast and hard.
+“Mitch.”
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter Five
+
+
+Mitch settled back in her seat that Monday morning and watched the thin,
+bespectacled man on the rostrum in the front of the room. Around her,
+students sat with open notebooks, waiting for the lecture to begin,
+doodling in circles and squares on the lined paper, talking busily,
+watching the slight rain on the windows, and stacking the books on the
+floor beneath their chairs. There was a sharp rap, a final rearranging
+of position on the part of the boys and girls, and Professor Aimes’
+voice broke through the stir to say, “Shelley’s dates were 1792 through
+1822. He attended Oxford as a boy, and while there he—”
+
+He was like her father, this professor. Mitch noticed the resemblance in
+the way he stood, legs spread, hands stabbing his pockets, rocking back
+and forth as he talked. And in his build, in the gangling structure of
+his body, the way his arms hung loose in defiance of all tailoring,
+wrists jumping out of his sleeves. Even his voice was similar—high and
+full and self-assured. Her father was not an intelligent man. Mitch
+realized that much about him. He had been a very lucky man, and a very
+skillful businessman, and a man who was strange to other men and to most
+women and to Mitch. She could imagine that she and her father had never
+known each other, and yet they had spent many long hours together when
+she was on vacation from school, in the summer, and when he visited her
+on his rare trips that brought him to her vicinity.
+
+Her mother was the stranger—the name, and the small gold-framed picture
+on the bureau, and the tiny flashes of information that her father had
+relayed. Death was a word like mother and the two stood for something
+that was there but unknown to feeling. Vaguely Mitch wondered what it
+would have been like if they had been real to her, this dead mother and
+the father who was alive and whom she wrote to and returned to in
+between school and growing.
+
+“Do you know what happened to me Saturday night, Father?”
+
+“No, black-eyed Susan. What?”
+
+“I had sexual intercourse. In the cellar.”
+
+Even after she had thought of such a scene and played with it in her
+mind and rejected it as impossible, she felt the danger of the thought.
+She felt that now she was grown, as her father had always said she would
+be and as she had thought she would never grow. She was grown and there
+was no more time to say, “When I grow up,” and now she could not say,
+“When I grew up” and tell what it was like, because it was over. It was
+over and when it is over you do not talk. You do not say what it was
+like. Not when it’s like this.
+
+The Professor’s voice began the poem and she listened attentively.
+
+   “I arise from dreams of thee
+   In the first sweet sleep of night,
+   When the winds are breathing low,
+   And the stars are shining bright....”
+
+Leda was not a man, and yet, when she had awakened her, Mitch turned to
+her and they were not friends then, but lovers. Mitch became separate as
+a person at last. She was not separate from Leda, but individual and
+one. She was wanted and she wanted, and it was not a want striped with
+fear and hurt. It was a fragile want to be nurtured and cared for, as
+Leda had then in bed.
+
+“I never kissed a girl,” Leda had said afterward. “I’m sorry I did it to
+you, kid.”
+
+There was something wrong and ill in the two of them then like that,
+Mitch knew, but what? When she was a child, near the dam where she had
+gone with her father, on the worn lead pipe there were words written and
+she had said, “What do they mean?” They were bad words, he explained,
+and there was that about his explanation that made _her_ feel guilty, as
+though she had taken the white chalk and put the words there. Leda was
+sorry, so _she_ knew what was wrong.
+
+   “Oh, lift me from the grass!
+   I die! I faint! I fail!
+   Let thy love in kisses rain
+   On my lips and eyelids pale.”
+
+The voice droned on and on and Mitch traced the holes in the paper with
+her pencil and thought more of Leda and still not enough. She thought of
+the talk at the dinner table in the house on Sunday, the way Leda had
+reached under the tablecloth and gripped Mitch’s hand, as if to give her
+strength to answer Marsha’s “You see, Mitch, it wasn’t so bad after all.
+I guess Bud can be a gentleman when he wants to.” And Sunday evening,
+before Leda ran downstairs to greet Jake and go off with him, she had
+kissed Mitch’s lips and looked at her and told her it would not be the
+same with Jake.
+
+“I have to go,” she said, “but it won’t be the same. Not like us, kid.
+No.”
+
+   “My heart beats loud and fast.
+   Oh! press it to thine own again,
+   Where it will break at last.”
+
+Professor Aimes stopped, leaned forward, resting his elbow on the
+rostrum, his glasses in his hand. “That,” he said dramatically, “is what
+I mean about Shelley.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+When Mitch entered zoology lab after English class, Robin Maurer was
+waiting inside the door. She pulled Mitch over to the corner and began
+talking to her in a plaintive, earnest tone.
+
+Robin had met Tom Edwards in her French class, a separate section from
+the one Mitch attended. He played the tenor sax and he was an
+independent and Robin had liked him immediately, the way Mitch had liked
+Charlie. He was one of the members of the combo that entertained at the
+housewarming on Saturday. As Marsha had requested, Robin asked a Sig
+Delt to the dance, an old flame of Kitten Clark’s. When Kitten got
+pinned, Robin’s date proceeded to get highly inebriated out on the back
+steps. During one of the half-dozen intermissions, Robin and Tom went
+for a ride. There was a flat tire with no spare tire in the back, and
+they had been stranded until one o’clock in the morning.
+
+“It was innocent, really, Mitch. Tom didn’t even put his arm around me.
+But I got in after hours, and it’s the talk of the dance. Did Leda tell
+you anything about it?”
+
+“No, I don’t think she heard that it happened.”
+
+“Everyone heard! He didn’t get back for the dance—to play, I mean—and I
+was missing. Everybody heard about it, and they were whispering all
+through the house yesterday. Mitch, there’s a chapter meeting tonight
+and I’m going to get it. Bet you anything, Mitch. Bet you I get it.”
+
+For a bare, awkward minute, Mitch thought of telling Robin about it. She
+thought of saying, “Look, you don’t know what happened to me,” but she
+remembered Leda’s words: “Don’t trust anyone. Don’t tell anyone what
+happened in the cellar.” She let Robin talk, and she listened until the
+class was called to order and the lab instructor passed the tiny slabs
+around to the members of the class. Moving along to the third row where
+her microscope was, Mitch slipped the slide under and peered down at the
+wiggling amoeba. Then the slide went black.
+
+“You are now looking at the finger of Lucifer. Much more interesting
+than an amoeba.”
+
+“Hello,” she said, raising her head and grinning at him. “I was just
+getting it focused.”
+
+“My finger?”
+
+“No. I was getting the amoeba focused.”
+
+“Ah,” Lucifer said. “So you’re not interested in my finger.”
+
+Any time but now, Mitch thought. Any day but today I could talk to him
+and laugh at him because I like him. But not today. She looked down into
+the microscope again, and Lucifer bent his head and moved it close to
+hers. “Let me see too,” he said. “Don’t be so stingy with your amoebas.”
+
+She pulled the slide out and began to write in her lab book.
+
+“Have a rip-roaring time with old Step-and-Fetch-It Saturday?”
+
+“Yes,” she said.
+
+“Tell me,” he leaned on the lab bench, “is it true that tall men are
+aggressive?”
+
+Mitch didn’t answer. She tried to think so that she could write in her
+book, but he kept chatting away.
+
+“Are they the best lovers?” he said. “Are they the world’s very best
+lovers?”
+
+“I have to get this, Lucifer. Please—”
+
+“If I were only tall,” he said. “If I were only tall and could make you
+forget amoebas.”
+
+The lab instructor shot her a piercing glance.
+
+“Please go, Lucifer.”
+
+“You wouldn’t say that to an amoeba!” he said.
+
+“He’s watching us,” she told Lucifer, pointing over toward the
+instructor, but Lucifer ignored the warning.
+
+A piece of paper landed at Mitch’s feet and she reached to get the note
+that Robin had rolled to her. Lucifer caught it instead and held it up
+high and said, “Ah, a note! A secret message.”
+
+He did not see the angry expression on the lab instructor’s face as he
+came toward them. Lucifer blew at the folded paper the note was written
+on, and he laughed. “Ha!” he said. “Communists infiltrating into our
+school system. Cranston Communists delivering their nasty notes of
+plenty!”
+
+“Give that to me!” the instructor snapped. “Does this look like a
+high-school room to you?”
+
+Lucifer jumped back and his face flushed. The instructor pointed to the
+note and tapped on the bench. “Who wrote this?” he said loudly.
+
+In a strained voice, Robin Maurer answered.
+
+“All right, you two, outside. One week’s suspension from the course!
+When you get back in, we’ll see if you’ve grown up any. Bad enough you
+act like freshmen, without acting like jackasses!”
+
+He gave Lucifer a tap on the arm and pointed toward the door. Robin
+followed him, her head bent, her ears scarlet. Suspensions were reported
+to sorority houses. It was a means of checking on the pledges, and
+freshman instructors had been advised of this ruling by Panhellenic.
+Suddenly Mitch hated the clownish idiot who had caused Robin’s
+expulsion. She hated him along with all of them. _Men don’t care what
+they do._ Leda was right. A gnawing loneliness seeped into Mitch’s veins
+and she thought of Leda and how Leda touched her. The instructor pushed
+the amoeba slide in front of her and said, “You’ll be next if you don’t
+get busy, Miss Mitchell.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Charlie was waiting for Mitch at the parking lot that afternoon. She had
+purposely avoided him when French class was over and the students
+shuffled out of the room. He stood next to her car and watched her
+coming.
+
+“I missed you. You didn’t wait.”
+
+“I’m in a hurry, Charlie. I don’t feel good.”
+
+“Gee, I’m sorry. I’m very sorry. Can I do anything?”
+
+“No, I’d better hurry to the house.”
+
+He opened the door for her, his brow wrinkled with concern, his hand
+helping her.
+
+“Maybe I can ask you this quick,” he said. “Go to a show with me
+Saturday?”
+
+Mitch started the motor and looked back to see how much room there was
+to spare between her car and the one behind her. He was hanging on the
+door of the car, looking at her with a sweet but servile expression. She
+felt sorry for him but she did not want to go out with him.
+
+“Yes,” she said for no reason that she could think of, “I’ll go with
+you. Saturday.”
+
+When she drove off the dust kicked up in a cloud in the back and he
+stood in it. “Hope you feel better,” he called after her, pushing the
+thin specks of dirt away from his face.
+
+From the street, along College Avenue, another voice called. Mitch
+brought the car to an abrupt halt, wheels squeaking and tires scraping
+against the curb when she pulled in.
+
+“Hello, kid,” Leda said, tossing her books on the seat. “I thought you
+wouldn’t hear me. Hello,” she said again, smiling at Mitch and touching
+Mitch’s skirt with her hand. “I missed you today,” she said, and the car
+started fast on the black pavement.
+
+Leda watched the girl as she drove. She had a mad, fleeting impulse to
+reach over and push the wheel so that there would be no more. The day
+had been an agony of guilt and regret, but her need for Mitch was no
+less strong. Jan’s face had come to her like a ghost, tormenting her
+with shame, symbolizing the impossibility of Mitch and Leda and a love
+that was wrong. It was not even love. It could very possibly not even be
+love. But where Jake was plastic, Mitch—this feeling for Mitch was wood.
+It was wood and it could do everything wood should do—splinter, crack,
+and burn. Now it burned, deep near her stomach, and there was never that
+with Jake. There was a compulsion with Jake, a compulsion to be taken
+and used and discarded. And with Mitch it was not like that. With Mitch
+it was clean. It was impossibly clean.
+
+“Let’s drive out to the farm road, Mitch.”
+
+“O.K.”
+
+“Drive fast, Mitch. Let’s go fast.”
+
+For that time before they reached the dirt road and swung off to the
+side near the pasture where there was space to park, Leda let her hair
+blow out in the wind and felt the crisp autumn air on her cheeks. Then,
+sitting there in the car with Mitch, she said, “I think this is peace,
+Mitch. I think this is what I always wanted.”
+
+Leda always talked like that, dramatically, as if each word swelled with
+significance and was true. Mitch saw her beside her and saw her head
+resting on the leather seat, sitting loose and relaxed, staring up at
+the sky and the way it looked after the sudden and short showers that
+came and went like that in the Midwest.
+
+She said, “Leda, did you hear anything about Robin?”
+
+“Something, yes. Something about staying out late and going off from the
+dance with one of the musicians. She’s in for it.”
+
+“It’s not her fault,” Mitch began, but Leda reached for her hand and
+said, “Don’t! Let’s not talk about the sorority and school and all that.
+Mitch, how do you feel about me?”
+
+Mitch stammered, “I—I told you. I think that I—love you....”
+
+“My God, think of the way people would talk if they knew! Leda, the
+fraternity man’s little damn darling, and here she sits wishing all to
+hell she could reach over and kiss you. But she can’t because it’s not
+right. Not here in broad daylight. Not in the open. It’s right in the
+night. Then it’s right. Huh, Mitch?”
+
+“Don’t get mad, Leda.”
+
+“I’m not mad, Mitch, honey, I’m not. I just wonder why I don’t lose my
+goddamn mind. I just wonder what I’m all about and how come you came
+along and gave me a clue. That’s all. And I wonder about Jake and oh,
+God!”
+
+“Leda, in class today, I thought about Bud Roberts and I thought that if
+it hadn’t been for you—if you hadn’t cared—I guess I would have killed
+myself almost.”
+
+Leda started to lean toward the girl, but drew back when she heard the
+voices. Through the woods a boy with a lettered sweater came, holding
+hands with a girl who was looking up at him, and they were smiling and
+pressing close to one another as they walked down the path and sat on
+the rock, back there where the road turned. From where they sat, they
+could see Mitch’s car, and Leda felt a swing of shame and guilt ride
+through her. She snapped the radio on.
+
+“God,” she said, “it really is muggy! Out here in the damn country, it
+really is muggy.”
+
+“I thought,” Mitch said, “that it was sort of like fate, what happened
+Sunday morning. I needed someone.”
+
+Mitch’s confessions seemed ludicrous and unholy to Leda, there with the
+boy and girl behind them. She wished she would stop. The presence of the
+couple that had come through the woods inhibited her and made her
+nervous. She began to hum slowly to the music on the radio.
+
+“Do you feel that way, Leda?”
+
+Mitch leaned close to Leda and Leda pulled back and sat near the door.
+“Let’s drive back to the house,” she said. “I’ve got a pack of mail
+waiting for me.”
+
+“Do you want to go, Leda?”
+
+“Why not?” She could see them through the rear mirror. “Can’t stay here
+all day.”
+
+“I thought you liked it out here.”
+
+“Well, I want to go. Can’t stay in one place all your life, kid.”
+
+Mitch said, “O.K.,” and she turned the switch on. The rest of the way
+back to the house, they did not talk. When they drove in, Leda jumped
+out and ran in and Mitch followed. Together they found their mail, a
+letter for Leda from Jan’s beau, and for Mitch, a letter from her
+father. When they were on the way to their room, Marsha called to Leda.
+“Chapter meeting,” she said, “at seven tonight, Leda. It’s important, so
+be there.”
+
+“Hey,” Leda called back, “I want to talk to you about an exchange
+dinner. The Sig Delts are hot to have an exchange next week. We could
+set ourselves up good with that kind of deal, and maybe the silverware
+will be here by then. It should have been here long ago and I think—”
+
+Mitch left them talking there in the hall, and as she turned the
+doorknob to her room, Robin appeared. Her eyes were swollen with crying
+and she told Mitch that she had reported the suspension herself. “They
+might as well know,” she said. “My goose is cooked anyway.”
+
+“It’s my fault,” Mitch said. “That Lucifer is a—”
+
+“He’s wonderful, Mitch. He’s the first all-around guy I’ve met besides
+Tom. No, it’s my fault—and I don’t care. If I get kicked out, my folks
+will be wild. You don’t know my folks, Mitch. Prestige and social
+climbing means everything. It’ll kill them.”
+
+“You don’t think they’d kick you out.”
+
+“I think they will. Sure, I try to tell myself they won’t, but I asked
+for it. I really did, and then Saturday night finished everything. I
+wish Marsha weren’t president. She’s the only decent one.”
+
+“Leda’s wonderful too.” Mitch smiled. “She’s been really wonderful and—”
+
+“I trust her like I trust a snake,” Robin snarled. “Don’t let her fool
+you, Mitch. Around here she may be a big cheese, but I’ve heard enough
+to convince me she’d make Amber look like a New England schoolteacher.
+You never can trust that kind of girl.”
+
+Opening the door to the room, Mitch said, “We better not talk in the
+hall.”
+
+Robin looked around her and shook her head and said it didn’t really
+matter where _she_ talked. She said she had to go back to her room and
+get her homework done because at least that much wasn’t messed up, and
+there was that much.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+After dinner that evening, the Tri Eps filed into the small room off the
+living room. This was the Chapter Room, where the active members of
+Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon held their meetings. The pledges were instructed
+to stay upstairs in their rooms when such meetings occurred, and Mitch
+was propped up on her bed, staring unseeingly at her French assignment.
+
+It had been impossible to concentrate these first few weeks of school.
+There was always a debris of thoughts to clear up in her mind, and when
+one mass was swept away, the windfall hit again and each new amount
+seemed staggering. Determined, Mitch began reading the lesson aloud,
+trying to impress the catchy rules of pronunciation on her brain, but
+she could not. Her thoughts returned invariably to the afternoon and the
+way Leda had been and the change that was always instant and arresting
+within Leda. Mitch got to her feet and drifted to the window, and sat in
+the chair looking out into the street. Monday night was chapter-meeting
+night in Greek Town, and there was a reverent hush in the neighborhood.
+Decisions and rules and amendments to rules were being developed
+throughout the area, and it was like a grand corporation manufacturing a
+variety of brands, all tested, all ready to compete with one another. As
+she saw the darkness with the spots of light in it and the stillness,
+Mitch wondered what it was like to be an independent. She wondered if
+Charlie were working in the drugstore, and if Lucifer were clowning in
+the chapter meeting across the street, and then she wondered achingly
+what Bud Roberts was thinking and if he had told his “brothers” and if
+he laughed and told them and if they laughed too. She picked up a copy
+of the school magazine and turned the pages, reading the jokes without
+smiling and looking at the pictures of the students there. The breeze
+coming in on her was cool, but there was a tiredness in her like that of
+a series of humid days that were close and without air....
+
+“Is _that_ the way you study?” Leda said, nudging Mitch. She was smiling
+and her hand on Mitch’s shoulder was the same hand that had been there
+on Sunday and not cold or frigid now.
+
+“I fell asleep.”
+
+“I guess you did! Well, that damn meeting is over for another week.
+Robin’s case has been referred to Grand Council. They’re meeting in
+Marsha’s room now.”
+
+Mitch sat forward. “You think it’ll be O.K.?”
+
+“I don’t know, honey. It’s hard to tell. I just don’t know.”
+
+Leda rolled her hair in tight ringlets and fished her soap from her
+glass. “Let’s go to bed right away,” she said. “I’m going to wash up and
+then let’s go to bed.”
+
+“What about the Grand Council?”
+
+“Don’t wait for them to decide anything. It may take all night. Get your
+bath, and we’ll turn in. O.K.?”
+
+The bath water was too hot, but after the sting it felt good on Mitch’s
+leg. In the other tub, Marybell Van Casey was singing “On, Wisconsin”
+and splashing the water vigorously. Mitch eased herself down to a
+sitting position, listened to the other girls in the room, washing out
+their socks, brushing their teeth, and talking about Robin. She
+recognized Kitten’s voice, and the voices of several of the pledges, but
+there was no way of learning more about the incidents that occurred
+during the meeting. The feelings were mixed, and influenced by what each
+girl thought she should feel. The pledges thought that they should side
+with those who recommended stern reprimand, and only a few dared to
+express sympathy. None rebelled against the occurrence. No one defied
+those who accused Robin. Only Mitch, inside, and she did not speak out.
+She pushed the soapy cloth back and forth on her arms and legs and neck
+and remained silent. There was enough to be wary of, and there were no
+answers to her own questions.
+
+Later, Leda turned the lights out and for a moment there was no sound in
+the room, but an air of expectancy, a period of waiting for one to
+speak. Then, in a rush of covers, springing over to Mitch’s bed, Leda
+clung to the girl. She said, “Mitch, Mitch, oh, God!” Passionately she
+nipped the girl’s neck and shoulder with her teeth, and pulled the
+pajamas from her large body. Mitch helped her, and waited while Leda
+took her own off, and then they came together, moving rhythmically
+against one another.
+
+When they talked, later, Mitch asked her about the afternoon and Leda
+cried, saying her words between half sobs welling from the slim body
+that was pressed tight against Mitch’s.
+
+“I don’t know what came over me,” she said. “That couple came along and
+I don’t know what happened to me. I felt as though—Mitch, don’t ask me.”
+
+“How did you feel?”
+
+“I felt—guilty.”
+
+Mitch said, “Oh.”
+
+“Do you, Mitch? About us?”
+
+“No ... not yet. I felt—I know how _you_ feel because I think I felt
+that way after Bud Roberts and—”
+
+“No!” Leda said sharply. “Not that way! Not that kind of guilt! God,
+no!”
+
+Leda wanted to laugh and scream and be hysterical until her whole body
+was spent and she could fall exhausted down into a bed of grass and let
+the wet blades cool her. How was it possible to make a child understand
+what an adult could not comprehend either? It was better that she did
+not realize, that the kinks and bumps and twists that resolved
+themselves into the overt actions were shielded and hidden from Mitch.
+_One_ could bear guilt. For both, one could carry it and it would be
+better.
+
+“Go to sleep, darling,” Leda said. “I love you, Mitch. This is between
+us. It’s ours, Mitch. Keep it ours and never tell it.”
+
+Mitch said, “I will. I don’t talk about things. I mean, I think I know
+what you mean.”
+
+They could hear the chattering just when sleep was coming, and the rush
+of the feet in the hall. Leda sat up straight and said, “What in hell is
+going on?”
+
+She poked the light button and unlocked the door. “Hey,” she yelled,
+“what the hell is the rumpus? Did the Russians attack?”
+
+One of the girls stopped long enough to say that Robin Maurer was
+depledged. That tomorrow she would have to move out of the house.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter Six
+
+
+The Tri Epsilon porch was crowded when Mitch and Charlie came up the
+walk and stood against the columns. In the swings and chairs there were
+half a dozen couples locked in embraces at various angles, and many
+others clung to their dates standing. It was Saturday evening, five
+minutes shy of closing hour, and the scene was usual.
+
+“I had a good time with you tonight,” Charlie said, and in that setting
+his voice sounded loud and intrusive. Mitch glanced at the minute hand
+flying slowly in circles under the glass in her wrist watch. They had
+been to a late movie and for sodas in the Cortille after. Soon she would
+be with Leda. Three minutes.
+
+The porch light flickered on and off to give the signal, and a voice
+called out, “Twelve-thirty.” Charlie shuffled his feet uneasily. “Well,”
+he said, coughing, lingering, “this is it, I guess.... May I kiss you
+good night?”
+
+Mitch was uncomfortable when he leaned forward and let his lips touch
+hers lightly. Then he backed away, waving faintly, a curved grin on his
+round young face, until he collided with a couple behind him saying good
+night at the edge of the steps. Mitch turned, and once inside the screen
+door, ran up the stairs to see if Leda was there. The room was dark, and
+when Mitch pushed the light button, there was only the disarray of
+clothing on the bed, the shoes kicked about on the floor, and the papers
+scattered on the desk, reminding her that her economics assignment was
+barely begun. She pulled the blinds and slipped out of her clothes, into
+her terry-cloth robe and the worn slippers. The bathroom was crowded
+with Tri Epsilons, and as she ran her bath water and waited, she saw
+them pass in the halls, tired and bedraggled from their evening, many of
+them rushing to the windows to wave to their dates as they left. Leda
+was not among them, and as Mitch eased herself into the hot water, she
+prayed that Leda was only late, and not in trouble somewhere with Jake.
+
+Jane Bell called her a few minutes after she was in the bathtub.
+
+“Phone,” she said. “Some guy.”
+
+Dripping and curious, Mitch hovered in a wide towel as she took the call
+in the booth outside the bathroom.
+
+“I said, this is Jake. You know.”
+
+“Yes, but—Has something—”
+
+“Listen,” he yelled out at her, “don’t blurt anything out where the
+whole bunch can hear. Leda’s O.K. We’re just a little tied up and she’ll
+be late. Now listen, can you hear me?”
+
+Mitch’s knees grew unexplainably weak. “Yes,” she said.
+
+“In one hour exactly—that’s at one-forty-five—I’ll let Leda off at the
+side entrance. She’ll come in through the cellar door. Got that? You get
+down there and unlock the door for her. Now, have you got it?”
+
+“I guess so, but—”
+
+“Don’t get panicky. It happens all the time. Look, just be a sweet kid
+and get that door unlocked for her. Don’t unlock it ahead of time,
+though, because someone might get wise. They’ll be in bed by the time we
+get in. And something else—you there?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Leda says not to tell anyone she’s still out. If anyone comes looking
+for her, lock the door and say she’s sick, or pretend you’re asleep, or
+something like that. O.K.? And when you meet her at the cellar door,
+bring her robe and slippers.”
+
+“Is it all right? I mean—”
+
+“Look, kid, Leda wouldn’t ask you to do it if it wasn’t. Now be a
+sweetheart. Promise?”
+
+“I promise,” Mitch said, and the click came in her ear after Jake said,
+“Fine, baby, don’t forget. One-forty-five.”
+
+She did not bother to finish her bath. Pulling the plug, she gathered
+her things together and came face to face with Kitten as she was about
+to leave. “Hey,” Kitten said, “how are you? Why don’t you come down for
+hot cocoa in the kitchen?”
+
+“O.K.,” Mitch said. “As soon as I get into my pajamas.”
+
+After Mitch was dressed, she wrapped Leda’s thin robe about her slippers
+and tied them in a ball. On the shelf near the stairway to the cellar,
+she hid them behind the large can of turpentine.
+
+When she reached the kitchen, there was a huge pot of steaming cocoa on
+the stove. Marsha was stirring it, the sleeves of her green wool robe
+pushed up to her elbows, her hair rolled up on red and white rag
+curlers. At the table, Kitten and Casey and Bebe Duncan talked busily
+about their evening.
+
+“Hi,” Kitten said. “I suppose you couldn’t drag Leda down.”
+
+Mitch laughed and shook her head. She sat on the high wooden stool and
+looked at her watch. It was ten minutes after one. Marsha poured the
+cocoa into the cups and pulled a chair over near the table. They kept on
+talking. Casey asked Mitch to try out for the swimming team next week,
+and the chatter about sports grew and lasted. One-twenty.
+
+“Who was your date tonight?” Kitten asked suddenly, turning toward
+Mitch.
+
+“Oh, Charlie. He’s in some of my classes.”
+
+“Independent?”
+
+The cocoa was cold and flat. “Yes. I—It was my first date with him. He’s
+been very nice to me.”
+
+“I didn’t mean anything,” Kitten said. “It’s O.K. to date them once in a
+while. You know, just so it’s not a habit.”
+
+Mitch swallowed. She had expected more trouble from Kitten, but the
+subject changed again and Charlie was virtually forgotten by everyone.
+The minute hand seemed to whirl. There was no way to go down the cellar
+steps without being seen, and the talk was endless. When Marsha moved
+toward the stove to reheat the remaining cocoa, Mitch felt a warm rising
+in her chest and her hopes of getting Leda in safely caved in.
+
+“I’m not the least bit sleepy,” she heard Bebe say, “not the least bit.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Jake came back from the phone booth with a smile. He signaled to Leda to
+finish her beer. “Now, that’s the kind of roommate to have,” he said.
+“Lets you take her car and opens the door for you when you come home. I
+gotta train mine better.”
+
+He paid the check and took her arm. She stumbled on the cobblestone walk
+that led away from the Fat Lady, a café just on the outskirts of
+Cranston. It was a popular place for late dates because few of the
+regular college crowd went there. Those who did were usually there for
+the same reason—to avoid being seen and to make a few phone calls before
+starting off someplace else.
+
+The air was brisk, and the ground was still soft from the rain that had
+fallen earlier in the day. Dizzily, Leda thought of Mitch, and burned to
+have her and be with her, but in the pocket of her coat her fingers
+touched the letter. Jan was coming in five days. She laid her head back
+on the seat in Mitch’s car, and when the motor started and the tires
+skidded loose, she recalled last night’s dream.
+
+She had been asleep somewhere in a rambling bed with Mitch beside her.
+They were naked, and covering them there was a brilliant red comforter,
+and snow was falling around them. Sleepily, and with that surging ache
+inside of her, she had turned to Mitch’s back and cupped her hands
+around on Mitch’s breasts and kissed the smooth white skin of her
+shoulders, and Mitch had turned instantly. She had said, “Leda!” in that
+startled, shocked voice, and the features of her face fell away and
+became Jan’s features. And again, “Leda, what on earth are you doing?”
+The dream had ended there.
+
+“Hell!” Leda swore, and Jake grinned, his eyes on the road. “You got
+yourself a little load on, miss. Too bad, too—could have been a good
+night for it.”
+
+“Every night’s a good night for it where you’re concerned.”
+
+“That’s why you love me,” Jake laughed, “my insatiable queen!”
+
+“What time is it?” Leda said.
+
+He turned the corner sharply and she fell over against him.
+
+“We’re on time,” he said. “It’s only one-twenty now. We’ll make it right
+on the dot.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The kitchen lights were bright at a quarter to two, and inside, Mitch
+sat on the stool, her eyes moving from the empty cocoa cup to the cellar
+stairs just outside the kitchen door on the left. Marsha was rattling on
+about clothes and only Kitten had left the gathering to go up to bed.
+Leda was waiting, but there was no way to reach her. Because of Jake.
+When she thought of him, Mitch glowered at the floor, imagining in a
+fleeting series of mental pictures what they had done that evening, Jake
+and Leda. The pictures were sordid and painful, and almost compulsively
+Mitch forced them to come, and each one was worse. Leda did not love
+him, and yet she persisted in being with him, always, as if he were a
+medicine or a drug. He drove Mitch’s car, and called up and asked Mitch
+to let Leda in, and the whole affair was tiresome and nerve-racking.
+Mitch vowed she would tell Leda not to see Jake any more. When she got
+in, and _if_ she got in, Mitch would tell her that she didn’t like it.
+She loved Leda and Leda loved her. There was no need for this fear and
+worry and frustration. Suddenly, Mitch realized that Marsha was standing
+there, speaking to her.
+
+“I said, are you coming to bed? It’s two o’clock.”
+
+Mitch jumped to her feet and hurried to rinse her cup and saucer at the
+sink. Then, after the light was switched off in the kitchen, she
+followed Bebe and Marsha up the stairs to the second floor. She would
+have to wait to run back and open the door for Leda. If she was still
+there! If everything would only work out! Marsha waved good night, and
+Bebe wandered off down the hall, humming “St. Louis Blues” aimlessly.
+
+The house was strangely quiet and still. Mitch waited ten minutes in the
+doorway of the bathroom, and then, softly, the tips of her slippers
+barely touching the stairs as she moved, she found her way to the cellar
+stairway, and reaching up behind the large square tin can, she found the
+rolled ball of clothing that she had left there. Her other hand grabbed
+the long silver flashlight, and she flinched at the strong creaking of
+the stairs as she made her way down and ran toward the door in the back
+room of the cellar. She unbolted it, and Leda, leaning up against it on
+the outside, nearly fell in. Jake was behind her. She held the door open
+an inch and whispered something to him before she closed it. Then she
+turned toward Mitch, and reaching for her waist, she came into her arms,
+and her kiss smelled heavily of stale liquor and tobacco.
+
+“Get into your robe,” Mitch said. “I’m petrified. You don’t know how my
+stomach felt when it was time and everyone was still in the kitchen.”
+
+“I could see them,” Leda said, “but I knew you’d come, honey. When you
+could.”
+
+She began to pull her sweater over her head and unhook her skirt. “I’ll
+have to undress here and leave my clothes under the pillows until
+tomorrow. Then if anyone sees us going back upstairs, we can say we came
+down for Cokes. Couldn’t sleep. I even have two nickels. Look, you go
+get two Cokes out of the machine. God, my clothes are stuck to me!”
+
+Mitch walked across the room and slid the nickels into the slot. “If I’d
+thought of the machine, I could have got here on time. I never thought
+of it.”
+
+She felt the cold ice feeling of the bottles as they hit the small case
+at the bottom of the machine. “Shall I open them?”
+
+Leda said, “Yes,” and then, “Look, Mitch.”
+
+Mitch turned the flashlight to look at her, and she saw her standing
+there, bare except for the spike-heeled shoes on her feet. “What are you
+going to do about it?” Leda laughed. “You aren’t going to just stand
+there?”
+
+Slowly, Mitch came toward her and set the Cokes on the table. She put
+out the flashlight, and her hands found Leda’s body. Then for the first
+time, she was the aggressor. The strength that was sleeping in her
+awakened. A powerful compulsion welled up inside of Mitch as she felt
+the pliant curves of Leda’s body. Then they lay together, breathless and
+filled with a new peace. When she spoke at last, Leda said, “Mitch?
+Mitch! Oh, God, I love you.”
+
+A feeling of power, and the knowledge of Leda’s quivering submission,
+filled Mitch as she let her eyes stare up at the blackness in the
+cellar. When she had gone to Leda, she had not known what she would do,
+and it happened without thought or care for what followed, but it was
+easy and natural. She was the conqueror, and it was a sensation abundant
+in glory and desire.
+
+“Want to stay here for a while?” Leda asked. “It’s too late now for
+anyone to care whether we’re in our rooms or not. I like it here.... Did
+you have a good time?”
+
+Mitch said, “Pretty good. We went to a movie. Nothing special.” She
+rubbed Leda’s back and patted her hair. “How about you?” she said. “How
+come you were late?”
+
+“Oh, Jake was in one of his usual carnal moods but I was too high and we
+argued.”
+
+“Then why do you do it, Leda? With Jake, I mean.”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Why do you do it with Jake?”
+
+“Who knows?” Leda said, stretching magnificently, pulling her robe
+around her. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m trying to prove something.”
+
+“I don’t like it, Leda.”
+
+“_You_ don’t like it! What in hell does that mean?”
+
+“It means,” Mitch said, “that I don’t like you sleeping with a guy when
+you’re in love with me.” Even to Mitch the words sounded unreal, as if
+she were playing a game or reading someone else’s lines or living a
+foolish semi-conscious daydream. Yet that was what she had wanted to
+say. Leda sat up and moved from Mitch. “Listen,” she said. “Don’t get me
+wrong. I may be a little uncertain about it, but men come first with me.
+What do you think we are—engaged to be married? Are you going to propose
+now, and then settle down with me in a little goddamn vine-covered
+cottage and raise kids? Sometimes you’re God-awful thick in the head,
+Mitch.”
+
+“But you said you didn’t even _like_ Jake! Maybe I am thick in the
+head.”
+
+“Maybe you are! Who said anything about Jake? I said _men_ come first.
+Men, as distinguished from women! Sure, I’ve got bisexual tendencies,
+but by God, I’m no damn Lesbian.”
+
+“You said you loved me. Maybe I don’t understand—”
+
+Leda got up from the couch and picked the Coke bottle up. She took the
+flash in her hand, and then, turning around to face Mitch sitting there,
+she said, “You don’t understand much at all. But get this! Jan is coming
+Wednesday. Lay off the love business while she’s around. I’m afraid she
+doesn’t understand much either, and she sure as hell wouldn’t understand
+this. I’m tired. I’m going to bed.”
+
+“Wait a minute,” Mitch said, catching the girl’s wrist. “Wait a minute,
+Leda. I love you. Don’t leave it like this. All I know is that I love
+you.”
+
+“You better get to know men too, kid. I mean that. There are a lot of
+people who love both and no one gives a damn, and they just say you’re
+oversexed and they don’t care. But they start getting interested when
+you stick to one sex. Like you’ve been doing, Mitch. I couldn’t love you
+if you were a Lesbian.”
+
+“I’m not,” Mitch said, wondering what the word meant. “I’m not. I—I just
+haven’t met a man yet who makes me feel the way you do.”
+
+“Maybe you don’t give them a chance,” Leda answered. “Come on now. Let’s
+go to bed. God, it’s three-thirty.”
+
+They tiptoed up the back steps and down the quiet, dimly lighted hall to
+their room. Leda pulled the covers back and fell into her bed. She
+murmured a tired good night, and her eyes closed and her breathing came
+heavily. Mitch did not sleep. She lay tossing about on her bed across
+from Leda, her mind running through the incidents of the evening to
+review them and examine them. There was only a fragmentary edge left to
+the sensuous memory of her loving Leda, and looming now in a sick
+foreground there was this word.
+
+Slowly Mitch got up and went to the bookshelf, taking from it the blue
+book, and leafing through it, holding it near the flash that Leda had
+left on the desk.
+
+   Les´bi·an (lĕz´bĭ·ăn) _adj._ 1. Of or pertaining to Lesbos (now
+   Mytilene), one of the Aegean Islands. 2. Erotic;—in allusion to
+   the reputed sensuality of the people of Lesbos.
+
+Mitch closed the book and stood staring at the bare light of the street
+lamp in front of Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon. She could hear Leda’s breath
+coming slower now and more evenly, in deep sleep, and the dictionary had
+told her nothing.
+
+
+
+
+                             Chapter Seven
+
+
+Mitch sat in the stuffed chair near the window sewing up the burst seam
+in her coat.
+
+“Well, darling, I wish you could _see_ what Dwight has done with the
+studio. Of course, it’s the only place in the whole goddamn office
+building where a body can get a good stiff drink during the day and
+Dwight says—”
+
+The words went on endlessly, like a radio playing in a room when you do
+not listen constantly, but now and then, catching illusive scraps of the
+whole meaning, the crumbs of an endless dialogue. Jan had been there for
+three days. They were funny days. Leda fastened herself to Jan, hanging
+on the words and laughing before the pause, compulsively, almost as
+though she were afraid Jan would not say something hilarious each time
+she spoke. Jan was beautiful, too, older, with faint lines in her face
+that became real under the harsh electric ceiling light in Mitch’s and
+Leda’s room, but still very fine and hardly there at all. Leda sat on
+the bed next to Jan that afternoon.
+
+“I don’t know if I’ll marry him or not,” she heard Leda say. “Do you
+like him, Jan?”
+
+“He’s a doll, darling. You know who he reminds me of? Frank Pierce.
+Member him? Des Moines. Member?”
+
+“Oh, God,” Leda shrieked, laughing. “Him! One perfect rose! Sure, I
+remember Frank Pierce.”
+
+Jan wore a tight print dress, high black alligator shoes that were
+strapped around her slender ankles, and her fingers flashed and sparkled
+with rings and glitter. Mother Nessy had said, “Your jewelry is
+_ex_-qui-site, Mrs. Taylor. Why, it’s _fab_ulous!” when she met Jan on
+Wednesday and Jan had dinner in the dining room with the Tri Eps. Mitch
+sat at another table. From where she sat she could see Leda’s face, her
+eyes avoiding Mitch and fixed on Jan’s red lips and the whiteness of her
+teeth. When Jan left the house to return to the hotel for the evening,
+everyone had flocked to Leda’s room to say how they liked her mother and
+what fun it must be to have such a young mother. Then when they were
+gone and it was late, Leda did not talk to Mitch or come to her there in
+the night. And Mitch worried.
+
+She had found the explanation for the word in a thick volume on the
+psychology shelf in the library. A Lesbian was abnormal, a female who
+could not have satisfactory relations with a male, but only with another
+female, and Mitch knew it had been that way. A bisexual could love both
+sexes, and Leda loved Mitch, and she was with Jake like that too. Mitch
+thought back to the crushes she had had in boarding school, awful
+emotional orgies in which she had idolized certain teachers, and Miss
+English, the dietician, and there had never been any boys. Until Leda,
+there had been no one who had set her whole body pulsing with the sweet
+pain and the glory in the end. That was abnormal.
+
+Jan was looking at Mitch, waiting for an answer to the question Mitch
+did not hear.
+
+“I’m sorry. I didn’t hear you.”
+
+Leda smiled. “Jan said, ‘Who’s your man of the hour?’ It’s Charlie,
+isn’t it, Mitch? Isn’t he the one?”
+
+The needle came through the wool in the skirt and pricked Mitch’s
+finger. She tried to force a smile, but her lips felt dry and stiff. She
+knew that Leda was baiting her, trying to indicate the proper answer to
+Mitch. “I guess so,” Mitch said. “I guess he’s the one.”
+
+There was a mixed look of repulsion and pity on Jan’s face when she
+regarded Mitch. Mitch could feel it, like the heat of a warm sun,
+uncomfortable and sickly. She wished that they would go someplace and
+not stay here in the room and she felt that Jan knew she was abnormal.
+
+“Well, what’s he like?” Jan continued. “I bet he’s a big wheel on campus
+and you’ll be wearing his pin before long.”
+
+Leda jumped up to change the subject and grabbed a yellow envelope from
+the desk. “I forgot to show you the pictures,” she said. “I forgot to
+show you the pictures Jake and I took on our last picnic.” She fumbled
+with the seal on the envelope until the pictures fell out on the bed and
+Jan picked them up and riffled through them, laughing and screaming out
+her words the way she did. Mitch was grateful when Casey poked her head
+in the door and said, “Phone for you, Mitch. Want to take it in the
+hall?”
+
+“Don’t let us disturb you, honey,” Jan sang out, but Mitch had already
+moved for the door and followed the blue hall rug down to the booth near
+the bathroom.
+
+“Peculiar girl,” Jan said. “Certainly is awkward.”
+
+Leda passed another snapshot to Jan. It would be over tomorrow. Jan
+would leave and it would be over, Leda thought, and then she could make
+it up to Mitch. It had been horrible, the last few days, treating Mitch
+as though she were a piece of furniture, Jan’s presence heightening the
+guilt that Leda nurtured.
+
+“Is she popular?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know, Jan,” Leda answered. “She goes out a lot. Really, she
+can be sweet.”
+
+“Well, _I_ haven’t even seen her smile. Not once. Her lips just stretch,
+but she doesn’t smile. You don’t even seem like friends.”
+
+Leda said, “We get along all right.”
+
+Jan lit a cigarette and stuck the end into a long ivory holder. “I do
+like the other girls,” she said. “I thought you’d probably get yourself
+all graduated before I could get down here and see your sorority house
+and meet everyone. Dwight is hell about traveling. I told you I went to
+Louisville by myself for the fabric show, and he just stayed behind. He
+_hates_ to travel.”
+
+Leda had met Dwight during the summer. He was a fat, greasy man with a
+stubby cigar, wet on the end, hanging there from his mouth, and his head
+thinly covered with single strands of black hair that began inches back
+from his high forehead. On his little finger he wore a huge diamond
+ring, and there was a sweet, sickly smell of cologne and tobacco about
+him. Dwight was a big man in fabrics and Jan worked with him. She would
+come home and open the door and Leda would hear his voice behind Jan’s,
+and then the shaking of the cocktail mixer and the ice cubes, the low
+music on the phonograph and Jan’s laughter ringing through the rooms. He
+had looked at Leda and shown his brown teeth and he’d said, “Well, now,
+by God. An apple never falls far from the tree!”
+
+“You going to marry Dwight?” Leda asked.
+
+Jan inhaled and let the smoke come out in tiny round clouds. “I don’t
+know. I’d never have to worry where my next thousand is coming from. He
+hasn’t asked me yet, you know.”
+
+Glancing at her watch, Leda said, “Maybe we better go downstairs. It’s
+almost time for dinner. Fish tonight.”
+
+“Hell!” Jan swore. “I abhor fish! Member Ted Thorpton? Member the way he
+used to drag me around to those damn fish houses for lobster Newburgh? I
+think you came along a couple of times too, honey. You member?
+Washington? Member that place we went down a gangplank to get to and
+there was sawdust on the floor and that ungodly fishy odor?”
+
+Leda nodded. She remembered.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Robin Maurer put the arm back in its cradle and left the phone booth.
+Lucifer was leaning against the brick wall of the dorm reading the
+newspaper.
+
+“Any luck?” he said.
+
+“No, it’s too late for tonight. She says she’s got some kind of a
+special date with a guy named Charlie. No telling what that sorority has
+thought up. She’s probably going off to smoke opium someplace.”
+
+“Why didn’t you ask her to join us? Her and that Charlie horse?”
+
+“I did. She said she couldn’t. She said it was a special night. Who
+knows?”
+
+“Did you tell her the party was right across the street at Delta Phi?
+Maybe she’s lazy. Maybe she thought it was someplace she’d have to hike
+to.”
+
+“No,” Robin said, pulling a leaf off the tree as they passed down the
+walk from Main Dorm. “I think she might have a good date or something
+and wants to be alone with him. Then too, maybe the Tri Eps forbade her
+to be seen with an old reprobate like me.” They turned the corner and
+kicked the leaves while they walked. “Tell me something, Luke,” she
+said, “honestly.”
+
+“Sure.”
+
+“How about your fraternity brothers? Don’t they give you a bad time
+because you date me? I know how independents go over in Greek Town.”
+
+Lucifer reached over for her hand and swung it back and forth while they
+walked along. “Naw,” he said, “not at our house. We ain’t rich and we
+don’t know anyone who is. We ditched the rule book a long time ago.
+That’s how come I got in. You know, I’m pure Indian, with a little
+Russian on my mother’s side, and a little Chinese on my father’s.
+Seriously, Robbie, it ain’t that way at the house. Sure, we got eager
+beavers with all kinds of fool notions, but none of them go into effect.
+I couldn’t stomach it.”
+
+“I wish Mitch would get out of Tri Ep. I have a feeling she’s not going
+to stomach it either. The whole crowd’s too fast.”
+
+“How about that Leda?” Lucifer whistled. “Woooooowwww!”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The candles were lighted on the tables in the Tri Ep dining room. At the
+head table, Leda and Jan sat opposite Mother Nessy, and Marsha sat
+beside her. Above the other voices singing out, Mitch could hear Kitten
+Clark’s lively soprano. Nessy tapped on her glass, giving the signal to
+eat. Mitch sat at a side table in the back of the room. Her fork stabbed
+at the thin pieces of white fish, and pushed them in the mashed potatoes
+before she raised the fork to her mouth and swallowed the tasteless
+concoction. She thought of calling Robin back and telling her that
+Charlie and she would meet them after all, but then she could not. It
+was all planned. She would pick him up in the car at eight-thirty. They
+would have to be alone, Mitch knew, or it would never work. The food
+felt heavy in her stomach, and she took each bite with a long sip of
+water. Casey sat across from her, still talking about the swimming team,
+encouraging Mitch to join it.
+
+“You were terrific the other day,” she said. “With enough practice you
+could develop fast.”
+
+“I’ll come over again on Monday,” Mitch told her. Through the maze of
+faces, Mitch saw Leda look at her and then away. She heard Jan’s voice,
+louder than any other, and the inevitable laughter following what she
+said. Mitch wondered if she ever said anything you were not supposed to
+laugh at.
+
+“How’s your backstroke? That’s what we need. Someone with a neat
+backstroke.”
+
+“I’ll have to get more time in. It used to be my best stroke.”
+
+“Say, wasn’t that Robin Maurer on the phone?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+The others at the table looked up, interested. “I thought I recognized
+her voice,” Casey said. “How is she?”
+
+“Pretty good. She’s living at the dorm.”
+
+“Too bad about Robin,” Casey sighed. “She just wasn’t sorority
+material.”
+
+It was during dessert, when they sang the “Sweetheart Song,” that Mitch
+could feel Leda’s eyes watching her. Heat poured through Mitch, and
+there was a light yearning in her breasts that seeped through the rest
+of her body and warmed her.
+
+   “Tri Epsilon is a sisterhood
+   Of love that lasts forever,
+   Where memories are golden ones
+   That are forgotten never!
+
+   “Tri Epsilon, Tri Epsilon,
+   For her name we will strive
+   So long as we are sisters,
+   So long as we’re alive.”
+
+Marsha led the applause, and then, rising and standing at her place at
+the head table, she waited for the room to quiet down. “Remember,” she
+said, “closing hours are at one tonight because of the game tomorrow.
+That’s an extra half hour, so don’t anyone be late. And now I think we
+all ought to say good-by to Mrs. Taylor. She’s leaving us tomorrow, and
+I know we’ve all enjoyed her visit.” Marsha hummed the note. The words
+sounded sad and heartfelt.
+
+   “Won’t you come back? We’ll miss you.
+   Will you remember our love?
+   Good-by, good luck, we’ll miss you,
+   We send our prayer for you above.
+   Will you remember our love?”
+
+Jane Bell jumped up and started a round of “For She’s a Jolly Good
+Fellow.” The smile was glued on Jan’s face, and Mitch could hear her
+saying, “Lovely, simply lovely,” all the while. Mitch wondered if her
+mother would have said that, and if they would have sung to her. And
+what her mother would have thought if she were alive and knew what Mitch
+was planning. She pushed her chair back with the others while Mother
+Nessy rose regally and took Marsha’s arm, to be led from the dining
+room.
+
+“Why don’t you stay for more coffee?” Casey said to Mitch.
+
+Mitch explained that she had an early date. She swallowed what was there
+in her cup, and hurried upstairs to dress before Leda and Jan returned
+to the room. They were going out with Jake for the evening. Jan thought
+it would be “a perfect riot.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The car kicked up the gravel when it left the drive and spun around the
+corner. Mitch was not used to driving at night, but she knew the town
+well now. She turned on the radio and a lusty torch song sang out at
+her. The streets were not very crowded, and passing through Greek Town,
+Mitch saw the lights in other houses, shining and showing the figures of
+boys and girls moving in the large rooms. As she came near the campus,
+she admired the long walks, well lighted, and the great oak trees
+bordering the walks, and a few solitary figures strolling along them.
+The traffic increased as she approached the main street, and went fast
+down to the light. After she left it, she stopped again a few blocks
+down in front of the drugstore. Charlie was waiting there. He had a neat
+black-and-gray checked sports coat and gray pants, and under his arm a
+paper bag. When he saw her pull up, he grinned and hurried toward the
+car.
+
+“Hi,” he called. “Right on time.”
+
+He opened the door and moved in next to her. As they drove out toward
+the Creek Road, he said, “I got the bottle. You know, it’ll be fun.
+We’ve got a real moon, too. Did you remember the blankets?”
+
+Mitch nodded and motioned toward the back seat, where the brown blankets
+were folded beside the bottles of ginger ale and the opener.
+
+“I brought sandwiches too,” Charlie said. “Had Doc make some up for me.
+Say, this was a swell idea. How’d you ever think of it?”
+
+The husky crooner sang out on the radio and a tenor saxophone chimed in
+and gave the music a soothing, smoothing air. Mitch put her foot down
+harder on the gas pedal.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was one of those clear, brisk November nights and the ground was hard
+and cold when they sat down.
+
+“I got rye,” Charlie said. “Supposed to be easier on you. I’m not much
+of a drinker, myself.”
+
+Mitch spread one blanket on the ground while Charlie dragged the other
+over and the bottles of ginger ale. He took paper cups from the bag with
+the liquor bottle inside, and pried the tops off the bottles. Pouring
+two drinks, he set them on the ground beside Mitch.
+
+“My first time out here,” he said after he sipped his drink. “You ever
+been out here before?”
+
+“No,” Mitch said, remembering the last time. “No.”
+
+The air felt good on her face, and from the car a few feet away Mitch
+could hear the lush tones of a low piano. Above them hung a round moon
+the way it looks in November. She thought of Leda, and leaning back
+until her head touched the blanket, she closed her eyes and pictured it
+again. _You aren’t going to just stand there? I couldn’t love you if you
+were a Lesbian._
+
+With her hand supporting her head like that, she could hear the steady
+tick-tick of her wrist watch. He was beside her, talking and filling the
+paper cups with fresh drinks, then reaching for her hand. She turned
+toward him, and they kissed. She could hear him sigh, “Susan,” in the
+breaking away, holding her. His heart was beating very fast. They kissed
+again, and this time Mitch tried to imagine Leda and for a moment she
+could feel her lips until the roughness of his cheeks brushed against
+hers. She drank her third drink straight down.
+
+“Do you want to know something?” he said. His voice sounded strange and
+falsely hallowed. Mitch felt an impulse to smile. She knew what he would
+say. “I love you, Susan. I do, no kidding.”
+
+In the near distance Mitch could hear the announcer: “United States
+Weather Bureau forecast for Cranston and vicinity: Ten P.M. temperature,
+forty-five degrees; humidity, fifty per cent. Barometer, two nine point
+nine nine, rising. Tonight, clear, becoming cloudy toward morning....”
+
+Charlie’s hand climbed from her waist until it touched her breast and
+then drew back sharply. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, Susan.”
+
+“Don’t be,” Mitch said, and then, “I love you too—Charlie.”
+
+He was gentle and kind. There was a slow awkwardness to his kisses, and
+his hands came on her almost apologetically, fumbling, his voice
+mumbling, “Susan,” over and over, and the stiffness to his body. When he
+found her, she said, “Charlie, let’s move to the car.”
+
+They left the blanket and the bottles, and as he pushed the seat back
+for her, he pressed the tab of the radio off. Sitting on the leather
+seat, he put his arm around her and held her there, his lips touching
+her neck, wet and hot on her skin. “Gee,” he kept saying. “Oh, gee,
+Susan. Is it all right? Should we—”
+
+Mitch was afraid because it still was not the way it was with Leda. It
+was empty and aimless. He was sweet and shy and he loved her. If it was
+not now, then when? When ever? She reached out and touched his hair, a
+cheated feeling inside of her when her hand touched his ears and his
+neck and there was no hair there. “Do _you_ want to?” she said. “Do you
+really want to?”
+
+He could barely talk. His voice was a thick whisper. “Gosh,” he said.
+“Oh, yes. I do. Listen, Susan, I’ve never touched a girl. Honestly,
+never once in my life. I—I have something in my wallet. Look, I know
+what you must think because I have it with me, but I swear—I swear that
+I just always carry it and I never thought—”
+
+Mitch said, “I know. It’s all right.”
+
+She lay down on the leather seat, cramped, so that her feet came off the
+end. Charlie was kneeling on the floor of the car, and, kneeling like
+that, he began to kiss her again, and pull at her sweater, until he had
+it open and the hooks undone.
+
+For a long time he kissed her, and the open windows let the breeze in.
+
+“Susan,” he kept muttering, “Susan, I really love you. I really love
+you, Susan.”
+
+“I know,” she said. “I know you do.”
+
+“You’re cold,” he said. “I can feel you’re cold when I touch you.”
+
+Mitch felt the chill through her whole body. “Hurry,” she said. “Please
+hurry.”
+
+His hands clutched her desperately, and he began to whine in a strange
+way. After a moment he sat back on the floor.
+
+“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t.”
+
+“It’s all right, Charlie. I told you it was all right. I’ll put my
+sweater on. Then I won’t be cold and you won’t have to hurry and—”
+
+“No,” he whispered. “No. I just—can’t.”
+
+His shoulders shook violently as he began to cry.
+
+Mitch dressed while he sat there. She got out of the car and went over
+to the ground where the blankets were. When she came back with them, he
+was sitting up on the seat in the back, staring down at the floor.
+
+“Charlie—” Mitch began.
+
+He shook his head and did not look at her. “I want to go home,” he said.
+“Just drop me off when we get back in town.”
+
+“I’m sorry. I—Was it me?”
+
+“I don’t want to talk about it! I don’t want to ever talk about it!”
+
+She put the blankets down beside him and got into the front seat. When
+they were off the dirt road and on the highway, she snapped the radio on
+again. Through the mirror, she could see his figure slumped over, his
+hands holding his chin, his eyes fixed on the side window. When they
+reached town, he got out of the car and did not look back.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+They sat on Mother Nesselbush’s purple love seat, in the small
+beige-walled anteroom of her suite on the first floor of the Tri Epsilon
+house. There were Mother Rasmussen, Mother Muriel, and Mother Carter,
+seated across from Nessy, whose large hips hugged the lime-colored
+cushions of the chair facing them.
+
+“I thought she was very strange,” Mother Carter said, balancing the
+plate on her lap. There was a huge mound of whipped cream piled high
+above the fresh red fruit and the yellow cake. “I mean, hitting a boy
+with a vase.”
+
+“A what!” Mother Muriel gasped and licked the spoon from her own
+shortcake. “You mean she did that?”
+
+“Now, now,” Mother Nessy said, “let sleeping dogs die.” She tittered.
+“After all, the whole thing was forgotten. He did attend our
+housewarming with Susan, so you can see it was forgotten.”
+
+There was an elaborate silence, except for the clink of the spoons on
+the plates. Mother Muriel had a knowing smile at the edge of her lips.
+She was perfectly aware that Mother Nesselbush was trying to quell the
+story. Every Saturday night they met in one or the other’s small suite,
+exchanging gossip, and relating the exciting little incidents attached
+to the duties of housemother. Mother Muriel and Mother Carter agreed
+that it was not quite fair to include Nessy in their parties, because
+Nessy was a Tri Ep alumna. She could hardly be expected to give a fair
+or accurate appraisal of the situation in her house. It was so obvious
+that she was biased. Mother Rasmussen, on the other hand, was a thorough
+dunderhead. She rarely had anything to say. Each week she attended the
+get-together, ate heartily, and seemed to listen to the talk somewhat
+vaguely, with an aimless smile on her face, perpetually scratching the
+exzema on her hands.
+
+“At any rate,” Mother Nessy moved to conclude the conversation about
+Susan Mitchell, “the alums are so pleased that we took this girl,
+they’re sending us a splendid set of sterling. It should arrive any day
+now.”
+
+The front door slammed vigorously. Mother Nesselbush moved to the
+curtains of her French doors and stared into the hall. “Speak of the
+devil,” she said, “and the devil appears.” She looked at her watch, and
+noted that it was just eleven-forty-five. “Early, too,” she added, “for
+a one-o’clock night.”
+
+She pulled the French doors open and called after Mitch. “Susan, dear,
+are you all right?”
+
+“Fine, thanks.” Mitch started up the steps but stopped halfway.
+
+“Come down here,” Mother Nesselbush said, “and meet my guests.”
+
+“I can’t, Nessy. I look just terrible.”
+
+“I’d appreciate it, Susan. They’ll understand. Now, come on.”
+
+Mitch turned and walked back down. Mother Nessy took her arm and led her
+into the room. Instantly Mitch recognized the white, pasty face of
+Mother Carter. She smiled grimly at her, and she said, “Hello, Mother
+Carter.”
+
+She said hello to the others, passing by them, shaking their wrinkled,
+bony hands, being careful not to upset their plates.
+
+Her heart was pounding faster as she stood there and made polite
+conversation. They all seemed to be observing her as though she were a
+freak of some sort. Then Mother Nessy said, “Your father called tonight,
+dear. He was very anxious because you haven’t written in weeks.”
+
+Mitch passed her hand through her hair uncomfortably. “Gee,” she said,
+“I guess I just forgot.”
+
+“It’s easy to forget when you’re young.” Mother Muriel sighed.
+
+Mitch stood there, uncertain how she could leave them. She said, “Well,
+thanks, Mother Nessy. I’m so messy, I think I’ll take a good hot bath.
+And I’ll drop him a line tonight.”
+
+“Do that,” Mother Nessy said, her hand around Mitch’s waist, “because
+you know how parents worry, dear. I know when my son doesn’t write, I
+just get wild that something’s happened to him.”
+
+A faint smile flickered across Mitch’s face as she turned at the French
+doors and looked back at the women there. When the doors were shut, she
+went toward the kitchen, swung through the door, and turned the light
+on. She poured a tall glass of milk and spread butter on a piece of
+bread from the square red tin. Sitting on the stool, she felt a knot,
+burning and twisting, inside her, and her eyes felt tired and irritated.
+The news of her father’s call was the final thrust, the inevitable irony
+of the evening. She ached to call him back and tell him that she wanted
+to come home, but she knew what he would say. He would say, “Now, pretty
+black-eyed Susan, a big girl like you isn’t homesick.” Or he would have
+one of his standard sentences for her, like the signs that hung around
+the walls of his office: “A quitter never wins and a winner never
+quits.” “Keep on keeping on.” “If someone hands you a lemon, squeeze it
+and start a lemonade stand.”
+
+There was a free feeling in Mitch about Leda. At that moment she could
+not have cared less about Leda, she told herself; she simply could not
+care less. Charlie was a name. There was no Charlie and no Creek Road
+and nothing that had happened had happened. She sipped her milk slowly.
+She thought back on the day she had won the swimming championship for
+Gross Hall. How everyone had cheered and yelled her name. Four years
+ago, when she was in her first year at Gross.
+
+The house was quiet. Mitch finished her milk and walked up the back
+stairs. There were a few lights on in the rooms she passed. One girl’s
+head was bent over a book as she sat at her desk. Mitch went on until
+she reached her room. After she undressed, she lay on the bed with the
+lights off and the covers kicked back. She unbuttoned the top of her
+pajamas and drew a deep breath, but it was unsatisfying and stuffy.
+Mental pieces of the cracked picture of Charlie and her seemed to hang
+around in her thoughts and she could see some of them, but she did not
+think about them. She thought of sleeping and she slept.
+
+They were pointing at her and laughing. She was running down the street
+naked and her body was changing. At a corner she stopped to catch her
+breath and lean on the fat green storage box. She called out to them to
+stop laughing at her and her voice was deep and low like a man’s. Leda
+tried to get out of the storage box, but she held the door tight because
+Leda was naked too, and if she got out they would know. She saw her
+father coming down the street, calling her name, softly, calling her
+name, and she felt his hands on her shoulders.
+
+“It’s going to be all right.”
+
+“Leave me alone, Dad.”
+
+“No, Mitch, wake up, honey. It’s me. It’s going to be different now.”
+
+“No. No, go on.”
+
+“Mitch, Jan’s gone back. She gets me excited, sometimes I lose my head
+when Jan’s around. She makes me nervous. Don’t send me away now, Mitch.
+Now that it’s over. I’m back here, Mitch.”
+
+Her eyes opened and it was dark. Leda’s arm was holding her as she lay
+in bed beside Mitch. She was talking, and as she talked, Mitch could
+smell the odor of beer on her breath. Her own mouth tasted foul from the
+rye. She had not had enough to be drunk from it, but the taste was still
+there. Was Charlie drunk? He couldn’t do it to her. There was something
+wrong with her because he didn’t want to talk about it and he didn’t
+look back at her. Leda clung to her.
+
+“Mitch, please talk to me.”
+
+“I don’t have anything to say.”
+
+“Don’t you love me? Don’t you even want to touch me?”
+
+The words brought the stir back inside Mitch and she felt a warm spring
+of desire, but it was physical and opposite from the way she knew she
+was then. “You said—you said you couldn’t love a—Lesbian.”
+
+“Oh, God, kid, listen—I talk crazy. I’m crazy the way I talk. You’re no
+more that than I am. Hell, you know that. Look, Mitch, it was because
+Jan was here. I said so many damn things. Jan causes that. I know the
+way I treated you. I’m sorry. God, I am!”
+
+Mitch didn’t want to, but she lay there and felt it happening. She
+squeezed her eyes shut and lay there.
+
+“I can’t do what you can do,” Leda said huskily. “I’m not like you, but
+I love you.”
+
+“Why am I different?” Mitch wanted to know why. She wanted to stop
+Leda’s hands and find out why.
+
+“You’re really stronger than I am. You really are. When you had me the
+other night, I knew it. It was—wonderful.”
+
+“It was different because I—”
+
+“Yes,” Leda said, “because you’re strong. But you’ll see. I’ll learn to
+do it like that too, because I love you.”
+
+“I didn’t learn,” Mitch said. “I didn’t learn.”
+
+Leda kissed her. “Maybe it was natural.” She kissed her again and her
+hand stayed there, hurting Mitch now.
+
+Mitch sat up in bed. “It wasn’t,” she said. “It was not! Leave me alone.
+You can’t love me. Leave me alone, and—ohhh!” The sobbing was too loud.
+Leda hurried out of the bed and into her pajamas. She turned her covers
+down, and when she tried to make Mitch stop crying, Mitch wailed louder.
+“Someone will hear you,” Leda said, “and they’ll come,” but the sounds
+stopped in minutes, and no one came.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a single light above the bureau in the small room. The heat of
+the light bulb had burned a brown imprint in the dull green lampshade.
+Around the room on the walls there was a worn pattern of hounds, and men
+dressed in red coats, which were once brilliant red, but now dirty and
+faded. On the floor there was a skimpy rag scatter rug, and there was a
+single closet to the left of the door. Near the one window that looked
+out on the Cranston reservoir and water tower, there was a small cot
+covered sparsely with a brown Army blanket. He sat on the cot, an open
+Bible in his lap, his face covered with his hands. Next to the bureau
+there was a sink, and he got up and went to the sink and took the soap
+and ran the water. He washed his hands and dried them on the shabby
+white towel, returning to stand near the cot and stare out the window.
+Then he picked the Bible up again, and read aloud softly.
+
+“Against thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight; that
+thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou
+judgest. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity....”
+
+He could not finish. He threw the Bible on the cot. The gold letters
+spelling out “Charles Edmonson” seemed brighter in the dull lighting of
+the room. Remembering Susan Mitchell, he blamed her. He could hear the
+laughter of other boys coming up the stairs, and the heavy treading of
+their feet on the warped wooden floors in the hall. Doors slammed and
+again there was a stillness except for the very distant murmuring of
+voices through the thin walls. His mother’s picture was set up on the
+bureau and he looked at it for a long time. Beside the picture there was
+a hard-covered notebook with the words “Record Book” in white on the
+black cover. He opened it and turned the pages. Unscrewing the pen on
+the top of the bureau, he took the pen and the notebook and went back to
+the cot. Before he wrote, he thought a minute.
+
+                                                       November 5th
+
+   I was wrong about Susan. I admit that it was my fault too, but it
+   was her idea to get the liquor and go out there with the
+   blankets. She did not try to stop me. I had too much to drink and
+   I never acted that way before. I thank God in heaven that I was
+   stopped—that God knew best for me, and that He gave me my
+   warning. I shall never lose his faith in me again....
+
+He looked back at what he wrote. He scratched out the small letter “h”
+on the “his” and capitalized it. Then he put the record book back on the
+bureau, stared again at the picture of his mother, and moved to the
+sink, turning the tap water on gently, and reaching for the soap with
+his hands.
+
+
+
+
+                             Chapter Eight
+
+
+The green line at the bottom of the swimming pool grew fat and then thin
+with the even ripples of the blue water. The room, long and wide, was
+lined to the ceiling with tile, and the voices of the girls assembled
+there rang as though they were all shouting at one another from across
+the water and from the balcony stairs. Mitch stood with the others along
+the edge of the pool, the pungent smell of chlorine in her nostrils, a
+washed-out gray tank suit clinging to her body, freshly wet from the
+sprinkler through which she had passed at the entrance to the locker
+room.
+
+Miss Jennings, the instructor, separated from the rest by the fact that
+she alone wore a gay plaid swimming suit and carried a whistle on a
+string around her neck and wore no cap, called the role.
+
+“Abbott,” she began, “Barry, Craig, Caroway, Feitzer, Jamison, Lathrop,
+Maurer, Mitchell....”
+
+Mitch turned sharply. Robin was here, then. She scanned the faces of
+those around her, strangely alike with the white caps pulled down to
+their ears and across their foreheads, leaving no clues as to the color
+of their hair. Robin was standing at the head of the pool near the
+diving board. She waved and smiled, but it was against the rules to move
+about when roll was being taken.
+
+Standing beside Mitch, Marybell Van Casey said, “I didn’t know Robin
+Maurer could swim.”
+
+“All in, now!”
+
+The water was too warm and it tasted bad. Mitch dove down to the wobbly
+green line and brought up the round black rubber puck as she came to the
+top, letting it sink again as she caught her breath and trod water while
+she listened to the instructions for the relay with the Australian
+crawl. Then the backstroke, the flutter kick, the side stroke, and the
+whistle.
+
+“All out!”
+
+They all stood dripping at the sides, pulling their caps up from their
+ears so they could hear better, punching the sides of their heads to let
+the water out.
+
+“As it stands, the following stay: Caroway, Lathrop, Maurer, Mitchell,
+Marin, Orhoski, Rogers, Van Casey, and Walker. Next week, we’ll narrow
+down to six, with the others doubling. Play period for those who want to
+stay.” She blew a shrill period with her whistle, and climbed up on the
+white ladder chair.
+
+“Wonderful,” Casey said, slipping as she reached Mitch. “Two Tri Eps
+made it. Best ever. We’ll be there next week, too.”
+
+It had been easy. Mitch smiled back at Casey. Over her shoulder she saw
+Robin leaving, going toward the lockers. “I’m not going to stay,” Mitch
+said. “I’m pooped. See you at the house.”
+
+She caught up with Robin at the showers.
+
+“Well, stranger!” Robin said. “Say, you’re good. I saw that crawl.”
+
+“Robin, I’m sorry I couldn’t make it Saturday. Thanks again for asking.”
+
+“Forget it,” Robin said, pulling her suit off and working the knobs of
+the shower. “I know what you have to go through over in Greek Town.
+Social calendar like the Astors.”
+
+Mitch said, “No, I went out alone. With an independent.” She wished that
+Robin would put a towel around her. It was hard to talk with her and
+keep looking above her head or directly at her eyes or across the room.
+Not down at her naked body.
+
+“Gee, honey. You’re brave.” She tested the running water. “Just right,”
+she said. “Wait after you get dressed. We’ll catch a Coke.”
+
+The bathing suit fell to the floor in a tightly curled knot, and the
+towel felt good. There was a slight feeling of elation over Miss
+Jennings’ announcement that she was not eliminated yet. It would be easy
+to make the team, Mitch thought, and that would help at the house. She
+would know some of the others better, like Casey and Marsha and Jane
+Bell. The thought made her feel clean, not like the thought of Leda and
+those things. But where was Leda? She had spent yesterday with Jake,
+from early morning to closing hours, and Jan was gone. It was because of
+the way she had cried Saturday, and Leda was proud. Mitch knew that Leda
+had done it purposely, to hurt her.
+
+“I’m going with Jake for the day,” she had said Sunday morning, early,
+after breakfast and the phone call she had made. “See you around.”
+
+“Hey, Mitch, you dressed?”
+
+“In a minute.”
+
+“I’ll be drying my hair.”
+
+Mitch zipped the side of her skirt and pulled the sweater over her damp
+head. With the towel around her shoulders, she combed and parted her
+hair and took the lipstick to the mirror. I love Leda, she thought. I
+love Leda. I hurt her. I’ll always hurt her because I am that way. I’m
+what she said I was. Leda loves both but I love one. In the mirror, the
+wetness of her hair gave it a bobbed look, and the reflection was like
+that of a young boy. Mitch moved her hands up and pushed her hair back
+from her ears and studied the effect. Her face looked fresh from the
+swim, her eyes bright, the straight hair darker, and slicked back
+mannishly.
+
+“Hey,” Casey said, standing behind her in her swim suit, “you look like
+Sonny Tufts with lipstick.”
+
+Mitch jumped and stepped away from the mirror. She stuttered and felt
+heat rise to her head. “I w-was w-w-orrying ab-bout what to d-do with my
+hair.”
+
+“Well, don’t get so upset. Why don’t you dry it first?”
+
+“Y-yes,” Mitch said, hurrying away toward the dryers.
+
+Casey flung the towel over her shoulder and moved down past the white
+curtains to an empty booth. She thought, She’s an odd one.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Robin twisted the straw in her Coke glass. “I suppose you’re trying to
+make the better of the bitter,” she said, “but you don’t sound very
+happy.”
+
+“Most of it’s my own fault,” Mitch answered. “It’s because of the way I
+am.”
+
+“Look, Mitch! You’re a healthy, normal American girl, by Jupiter, and
+that bunch is from hunger. You don’t know. Over at the dorm,
+everything’s easy, the way it should be. Some people fit like gloves
+into that sorority routine, and others—well, they’re better off
+elsewhere. Take a tip from me, sweetie, come on over to the dorm. We
+have lots of extra beds.”
+
+The minute hand on the wall clock moved forward with a perceptible jerk.
+“French class,” Mitch said, fumbling in her coat for a dime to lay on
+the table. “I’ll have to run. I don’t know, Robin. Maybe I just won’t
+fit in anyplace. You don’t know me.”
+
+Robin gathered her books up and pushed two nickels across the table. “I
+know _you_. There’s nothing wrong with you that a good taste of
+independent life won’t cure. See you next week—and think it over. Gad, I
+sound like a recruiting station.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Even if Charlie hadn’t acted that way in French class, Mitch would have
+gone there anyway, eventually. He merely added to the reasons. It was
+happening all the time, everyplace. In the gym earlier, the way she had
+felt when Robin was naked, and in front of the mirror with her hair like
+that. Ever since she had heard the word. It was like picking up a book
+and reading the things the main character did and said and his
+description and thinking vaguely, at first, Why, I’m that way a little.
+Then more, until the realization comes like a giant boulder down the
+hill and crashes into you, pulverizing you with the knowledge that this
+_is_ you, this character. “Any similarity to persons living or dead is
+purely coincidental.” It says here.
+
+Charlie sat in the back by the window. She could feel his eyes. The
+short walk between the gym and Jacob Hall had taken the curl from her
+hair and left it the way it was before she had rolled it on pins and sat
+with the hot air blowing it dry under the big machine. It was straight.
+_Why_ couldn’t he do it? What was it she had read? Exactly? “A strong
+congenital trend ... risk to associate with a girl who has these
+traits....” What? Did he know about her? He had brought that thing in
+his wallet and he had wanted to. Was there something on her body that
+showed it? She squirmed uncomfortably in her seat, and listened to the
+slow, calculated conjugation of the verb _avoir_.
+
+Her name was called. “_Levez-vous! Allez au tableau noir et conjugez le
+verbe être._”
+
+The chalk dropped from her hand in the middle. She turned to pick it up
+and saw him look away from her and out the window. He knew.
+
+At the end, he didn’t wait. Mitch walked toward the library alone. There
+was a huge arch above the door, and inside the halls were quiet except
+for the slight tap of the shoes on the marble floors as the boy behind
+her walked down toward the Science Reading Room. At the head of the
+stairs, Mitch turned right and walked to the silent room where the
+tables were in rows, and the people at the tables sat hushed before
+their work. She picked the volume out easily from the shelf and chose a
+chair at a back table where no one sat.
+
+“The female homosexual, the Lesbian, often preys on girls who are not
+true homosexuals. Such girls may enjoy men, and be capable of normal
+heterosexual life if they do not become involved with a genuine Lesbian
+type, whose technique is often more skillful than that of many of her
+young men suitors.”
+
+_Men come first with me._
+
+_Maybe it was natural._
+
+“A normal man finds sex with this type of woman extremely difficult, if
+not impossible.”
+
+_I can’t._
+
+_No, I just can’t!_
+
+“Many times, under the proper circumstances, a female homosexual may
+learn to control, if not eliminate, her active homosexual tendencies
+once she is removed from an environment where the temptation is great.
+In the case of....”
+
+_Take a tip from me, sweetie, come on over to the dorm._
+
+“But, on the other hand, a change in environment may only lead to new
+conquests, a fresh hunting ground.”
+
+Mitch closed the book and put it back on the shelf. A dog wandered
+listlessly into the large room. He barked, wagging his shabby white
+tail, looking around at everyone. Laughter rocked the silence, and the
+dog increased his barking, running excitedly from table to table. The
+librarian in the room, a thin woman with pursed lips, hurried feverishly
+toward the fleeing animal.
+
+“Here,” she whispered ridiculously. “Here, here.”
+
+Mitch sat down again at the back table. She watched the woman take the
+dog by the collar and lead him with his back feet skidding across the
+floors and out the door. Again the hush fell back save for a few
+lingering giggles. Mitch tore a large sheet of paper from her notebook
+and wrote, stopping now and then to stare gloomily at the books that
+circled the wall. From a good distance down the hall, she could hear the
+dog barking in another room.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was a gray afternoon, and the sun was hidden behind a sheet of dull
+sky, with the wind kicking the leaves along the curb in front of the Tri
+Epsilon house, where they stood talking.
+
+“I’ll pick you up after the meeting,” he said. “We could squeeze in a
+few beers at Rick’s.”
+
+“Not tonight, Jake-O. I’m tired. Think I’ll catch up on sleep. Those
+Monday-night chapter orgies wear me down.”
+
+She was thinking that Mitch would be waiting in the room. Before dinner
+she would tell Mitch that she was going out with Jake when the chapter
+meeting let out, and then she would surprise her. She’d say, “Do you
+think I could go out with him when I knew you were up here? I can’t kid
+myself any longer, Mitch.” Maybe that would erase the nervous
+undercurrent of tension between them since Jan had gone. It would be
+more dramatic that way, surprising her like that.
+
+“O.K., I’ll give you a ring.” He took the pipe out of his mouth and
+leaned over to kiss her quickly. Jake was funny the way he sang aloud in
+the streets. He walked away singing, “Oh, here by the fire we defy the
+frost and storm,” and Leda heard him as she walked up the steps and came
+into the front room of the house. The thought came that if Jake were
+gone forever, it would be strange, but if the choice were to be made, it
+would be Jake who would go. Not Mitch. Was she upstairs? She teased her
+own curiosity, prolonging it, sweetening it by tarrying in the hall
+downstairs.
+
+To the left of the dining room there was a small alcove, with square
+boxes and names printed evenly above each one. In her box there was an
+envelope with her name scrawled on the outside, and no postage or
+address. Girls were coming down the stairs, milling around in the halls,
+waiting for the dinner gong. They were reading the papers, playing
+cards, singing at the piano, and talking together in close, separate
+groups. Leda took the envelope to the scarlet chair in the corner near
+the entrance to Mother Nessy’s suite. She ripped the seal open and held
+the thin notebook paper in her hand.
+
+   Dear Leda,
+
+   This letter is for you alone. Please tear it up when you are
+   through.
+
+   More than anything else I want you to understand what I’m going
+   to say here, and why I’m saying it. I want to leave the sorority
+   and become an independent. Maybe it’ll be the best thing for me,
+   and maybe it’ll be just another defeat, but I have to do it.
+   Leda, darling, you know that I love you. You know it, even though
+   I haven’t shown it the past few days. I’ve been worried and
+   afraid, and now I know for sure what’s wrong with me. I suppose I
+   should go to a doctor, but I don’t have the nerve, and I’m going
+   to try to help myself as best I can.
+
+   Lesbian is an ugly word and I hate it. But that’s what I am,
+   Leda, and my feelings toward you are homosexual. I had no
+   business to ask you to stop seeing Jake, to try to turn you into
+   what I am, but please believe me, I didn’t know myself what I was
+   doing. I guess I’m young and stupid and naïve about life, and I
+   know that you warned me about the direction my life was taking
+   when you told me to get to know men. I tried, Leda. But it was
+   awful. Even Charlie knows what I am now. I think that if I go to
+   an independent house, away from you, the only person I love, I’ll
+   be able to forget some of the temptation. If I stay in the
+   sorority, I’ll only make you unhappy and hurt you. I love you too
+   much to do that.
+
+   Please announce that I am leaving during the chapter meeting
+   tonight. Don’t tell them why, please, because I want to
+   straighten myself out and I don’t want people to know. Tell them
+   that I thank them for all they’ve done, but that I’d rather live
+   somewhere else because I don’t fit in here.
+
+   I know how you’ll feel about me after reading this. I’ll try to
+   stay out of your way. Tonight I am going to eat dinner downtown,
+   and then during chapter meeting I’ll pack most of my things and
+   move to the hotel until I get a room at the dorm. Robin Maurer is
+   going to help me.
+
+   There’s nothing else to say but good-by, I’m sorry, and I do love
+   you, Leda.
+
+                                                              MITCH
+
+The dinner gong sounded out the first seven notes of “Yankee Doodle.”
+Mother Nesselbush stood in the doorway of her suite. She looked down at
+Leda, who was sitting there holding the paper the note was written on,
+not moving. It was customary for one of the girls to lead her in to
+dinner. Marsha usually handled the task because she was president, but
+Marsha was hurrying to finish the last-minute preparations in the
+Chapter Room for the meeting. Mother Nesselbush cleared her throat, but
+to no avail. Leda sat still and pale and Nessy bent down.
+
+“Are you all right, dear?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“That was the dinner bell, you know.”
+
+Leda said, “Yes.”
+
+“Would you like to escort me to my table?”
+
+Leda looked up at her, a thin veil of tears in her eyes, so thin that
+Mother Nessy did not notice. She could sense the waiting around her, the
+girls waiting to go into the dining room, Nessy waiting, the houseboys
+who served the food waiting for her. Standing slowly, she crooked her
+arm and felt Nessy’s hand close on it as they moved across the floor
+into the brightly lighted hall, past the six oak tables to the long
+front table and the center seats.
+
+A plate of buns went from hand to hand, each girl taking one and passing
+the plate mechanically, reaching for it with the left, offering it with
+the right, as they had been taught when they were pledges. The bowl of
+thick, dried mashed potatoes came next, and the long dish of wizened
+pork chops, the bowl of dull green canned peas, and the individual
+dishes of cole slaw. When Leda tasted the food, she felt an emetic
+surging throughout her body and she laid her fork down. Around her there
+was a churning gobble of voices that seemed to slice through her brain
+like a meat cleaver. Mother Nessy stared after her when she went from
+the room.
+
+“She said she was sick,” she told Kitten, “and I knew it when I saw her
+before dinner. Poor thing. There’s a flu epidemic going around, and I’m
+willing to bet my life she’s got the flu.”
+
+The car was gone from the driveway. Leda put on the sweater she was
+carrying and ran down the graveled drive. In her hand she clutched her
+felt purse, and at the corner she caught a taxi.
+
+At the Blue Ribbon there was a crowd of students waiting at the rail
+with trays, sitting in the booths with books piled high beside their
+plates, pushing and standing near the juke box with nickels and dimes,
+the pin-ball machines ringing up scores in her ears as she looked for
+Mitch.
+
+The Den was quieter, and the waitresses were lingering lazily around the
+front of the room near the bar, where a few boys munched liverwurst
+sandwiches and drank draught beer. The bartender dropped a glass and
+cursed enthusiastically. Leda pushed the revolving door and felt the
+cold autumn wind.
+
+Mac’s, Donaldson’s, the Alley, French’s, Miss Swanson’s, all of them
+alive with hungry students swarming in and out, the smell of hamburger
+predominant in each café, the sizzling crack of French fries cooking in
+grease on hot open grills.
+
+“Ham on rye.”
+
+“One over easy.”
+
+“Hey, Mary, catch the dog.”
+
+“Well, hell, you’re almost an hour late!”
+
+Leda stood finally on the curb in front of Miss Swanson’s. She fumbled
+in her pocket for a nickel and ran into the drugstore on the corner. She
+made a mistake dialing the number, and she held the hook down until the
+nickel came back and then tried again. When the voice answered, there
+was a long wait, the far-off sound of voices shouting down the halls,
+and then the answer, quick and flip. “Robin’s out to dinner. Call back
+later.”
+
+Her heart was pounding, and she could feel the perspiration soaking her
+body. If Mitch was eating with Robin, she might have it arranged
+already. Where was she eating? With the car, she could be anywhere, but
+it was unlike her to drive far at night. The clock read seven-thirty. In
+half an hour the chapter would meet and Mitch would go back to the house
+for her bags. Leda shivered in the night air and wished she had found
+Mitch before she had a chance to see Robin and carry her plan through.
+Now Leda would have to tell Marsha she was sick, that she had gone for
+medicine because she was sick and she could not attend the meeting. She
+would be in the room waiting for Mitch when she came.
+
+A car swerved away from her as she stepped off the sidewalk into the
+street. The cab driver grunted, and skirted the curb narrowly as he
+drove fast.
+
+“Hurry!” he said. “You girls always gotta be someplace fast. That’s all
+I hear is ‘Hurry, driver!’ Hurry, hurry, hurry.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“Marsha’s in the Chapter Room,” Kitten said. “Thought you were sick.”
+
+Leda said, “I am.” She found the door to the room locked, and she
+knocked three times fast and once slow.
+
+“Who goes?” she recognized Jane Bell’s voice.
+
+“Pledged in blood,” Leda said. “Promised in the heart.”
+
+“Enter.”
+
+The bolt was slipped off and Jane Bell stepped back. She was wearing a
+silky white gown with a deep red scarf on her hair, drawing her hair
+back behind her ears. There was a sharp odor of burning incense in the
+dark room, lighted only by five single candles on a small table covered
+with the same silky white material. Marsha knelt at the table, arranging
+a red velvet-covered book with a black marker on the open page. When
+Leda walked in the room, panting, her face damp and hot, Jane stared at
+her.
+
+“My gosh,” she said, “you look feverish.”
+
+“That’s what I came about. I can’t attend the meeting tonight. I feel
+lousy.”
+
+Marsha looked up from the book at Leda. There was an angelic look to her
+face by candlelight, a look that she was fully aware of, cultivated and
+practiced. When she conducted the weekly chapter meetings, this look
+lent an air of piety to the conduct of the service. With the members of
+the chapter standing in a solemn semi-circle before her, she felt that
+there was something spiritual about her leadership, celestial and
+sacrosanct.
+
+“We’re having a formal meeting tonight,” she told Leda, as if to
+persuade her sickness to end.
+
+“I see you are. I’m sorry. I just feel lousy.”
+
+“You look feverish,” Jane Bell remarked again.
+
+“I hope you feel better.” Marsha smiled. “Did you know that Mrs. Gates,
+our Kansas City vice-counsel, gave us three new robes? Jane has one on.”
+
+Jane twirled and the robe floated on her gracefully. Inwardly Leda
+thought, Jesus! Oh, silly Jesus! but she pacified them by touching the
+material and exclaiming, then apologizing again. She backed out of the
+room just as the electric buzzer gave the signal for the members to line
+up in the hall and prepare to enter in single file.
+
+The halls were still, the pledges confined to their rooms for study
+hour. Leda found the room dark. Mitch had not come yet. She struck a
+match and lit a cigarette, and in the blackness she went to the window
+and watched the street. Ten dragging minutes later the convertible
+pulled up in front of the house, and Mitch slammed the front door and
+hurried up the walk. Leda lay down on the bed, watching the cigarette
+smoke curl to the ceiling, and waited.
+
+After the light went on in the room, Mitch felt a flood of surprise in
+her stomach as she saw Leda. She shut the door and set Robin’s large
+empty suitcase on the floor. Leda sat up and looked at her.
+
+“You’re going to pack now?” she said.
+
+“Yes. I thought you’d be in chapter meeting.” She tried not to look at
+Leda, but she could feel the girl’s eyes piercing her, stopping her
+attempts to avoid those eyes, and she went to the bureau and began
+removing socks and handkerchiefs and scarves.
+
+Leda let her click the suitcase open, and watched her while she placed
+the things inside it. She could feel the sharp edges of the letter
+against her chest there near her bra where she had put it before dinner.
+With her left hand she reached down and fished the letter out and stuck
+it under her pillow.
+
+“I decided,” Leda said finally, “that the least I could do was to say
+good-by to you.”
+
+Mitch felt choked up and agonized with desire. She scooped out an armful
+of slips and panties and pajamas, and thrust them in there with the
+other clothes. Her lips formed the word “Thanks,” and she meant to say
+it, but there was no sound. On the floor of the closet there were fluffy
+swirls of dust near her tennis shoes, and she brushed them away with her
+hand. She tossed the shoes onto the bed, and took the chair from the
+desk over to the closet to reach the boxes at the top.
+
+Leda said, “Want any help?”
+
+“No. Thanks, though. I can do it myself.”
+
+“You’ve got an idea,” Leda said, “that you can do everything yourself. I
+don’t know where you got that idea.”
+
+“Sometimes it’s up to yourself,” Mitch said.
+
+“You’ve got a lot of ideas, I bet. I bet you’ve got thousands of good
+ideas.”
+
+The box slipped from Mitch’s hand and fell to the floor, spilling out
+two round hats, one black, one brown, both alike—round and plain.
+
+“Someday you’ll find out that most of the ideas don’t work. None of them
+work.”
+
+Mitch stopped tying the strings on the top of the box and looked up at
+Leda. “What are you trying to say?” she asked. “What are you trying to
+tell me? You never say anything right out. You always talk around and
+make it hard.”
+
+“I’m trying to say, don’t go. Going isn’t the answer.”
+
+The tears came in her eyes, and Mitch looked away at the shoe bag on the
+closet floor. She thought of Robin, her friend, of the swimming team, of
+other years and anything to keep them from being the same, but this made
+it worse and the sob started low in her throat. Then Leda bent and
+caught her shoulder and held her, kneeling on the rug, listening to the
+stifled crying.
+
+“Mitch,” she said, “don’t go. Don’t leave me, please.”
+
+“But you know what I am. I told you what I am in the letter.”
+
+“I don’t care. Mitch, I don’t care.”
+
+“I can’t stay with you. I won’t feel right, I—”
+
+Leda put her hand on the girl’s face and felt the tears. She turned her
+face and put her lips on the salty moistness. “Come on over to the bed,”
+she said. “Get up, Mitch, and come on over to the bed.”
+
+Mitch lay down with her face buried in the pillow, and Leda sat on the
+edge, her hands stroking Mitch’s hair.
+
+“Can you hear me, Mitch? Listen, it doesn’t help to run away. You don’t
+think it helps, do you? It doesn’t help.”
+
+“No,” Mitch sobbed. “I can’t stay here. I can’t bear to see you every
+day and know what I’m doing to you.”
+
+“What are you doing to me? What in hell are _you_ doing to _me_?”
+
+“I’m a Lesbian,” Mitch answered. “That’s how I feel about you, too. I’m
+not like you—with Jake and everything.”
+
+“Oh, God, Mitch! All right, listen. I love you, you crazy kid. I don’t
+have to label my love, do I? Do I have to say that it’s Lesbian love?
+O.K., then that’s what it is. It’s Lesbian love, pure and simple. Ye
+gods, I’ve known about myself for years. I didn’t run away. I didn’t
+walk out and run away. You gave me plenty of reason to. You were the
+first one to come along and blow up my little plan for hiding the way I
+am. You think _you’re_ doing something to me! Oh, Mitch! If anyone’s
+doing it, I’m doing it. I’m doing it because I love you.”
+
+Mitch brought her head up from the pillow and turned over on her side.
+“But you said it,” she said. “You said you couldn’t love a Lesbian. You
+said—”
+
+“I said so damn much, didn’t I? You’ve got to understand, Mitch. I don’t
+like what I am. If Jan ever knew, I’d take a razor and slash my wrists.
+I couldn’t live with people knowing, and pointing and saying, ‘Queer’ at
+me. No one knows but you, and I guess I never would have told you if you
+hadn’t started to leave. Do you think it’s easy to admit it? It was
+different when I could say it wasn’t this way, that I was bisexual and
+all that rot. Bisexual—that’s sort of like succotash, isn’t it? Only
+this succotash hasn’t got any corn in it. It’s straight beans!”
+
+“What about Jake?” Mitch blew her nose and sat up. “What about all the
+time you spend with Jake?”
+
+“Maybe I’m trying to prove something to myself. Part of me is trying to
+say that I’m not what I am. That’s the part of me that everyone
+knows—the alluring Leda, the queen, Jan’s daughter, an apple never falls
+far from the tree. Out with Jake every damn day to keep myself away from
+what I really am. Want to know what sex with him is like? It’s like dry
+bread, that’s what it’s like. Like dry bread!”
+
+Leda got up from the bed and reached for her cigarettes on the desk. She
+felt relieved, cleansed, as though her mind had been emptied and she was
+free. She walked over to the suitcase on Mitch’s bed and picked up the
+clothing, taking it in her arms to the drawer. “You want this all put
+back, don’t you?” she said to Mitch. “You won’t leave me?”
+
+“No,” Mitch said. “I’m going. Robin arranged everything, and—oh, Leda!”
+They stood in the center of the room holding one another, their lips
+fastened hard, their arms strong around each other. Leda’s hand reached
+for the buttons on Mitch’s blouse.
+
+“Just stand still,” she said. “Just let me take everything off and look
+at you. I want to look at you.”
+
+The skirt fell to the floor, and the blouse. Mitch stepped out of her
+shoes and stood before Leda.
+
+“I want to love you,” Leda said.
+
+Her hands stroked Mitch’s body gently. She leaned over to kiss her lips
+and her forehead and the closed eyelids. She said her name and held her,
+feeling the fast beat in her pulse and knowing that she had almost lost
+her.
+
+The blood beat furiously in Mitch’s throat and she could feel a mounting
+strength in her legs and arms. With the arrogance of a master, Mitch’s
+nails dug into Leda’s flesh as she began to pull the sweater and the
+thin blouse from her shoulders. She let her teeth sink into Leda’s neck.
+
+“No, faster!” Leda cried. “Faster, Mitch!”
+
+Leda’s gasp was one of pleasure and desire and it moved Mitch to more
+violence, pinning Leda’s wrists behind her back and jerking at her
+skirt.
+
+Neither of them heard the door open.
+
+They turned in time to see Kitten and Casey framed in the doorway, eyes
+big, mouths dropped, and they fell apart from one another when the door
+was slammed, and the sound of feet running down the hall was as loud and
+fast as the beating of their hearts in that room.
+
+It was a long time before they talked. Mitch lay dumb with horror, never
+forgetting the look on their faces as they had found her that way with
+Leda, unclothed and wild like a fierce animal. Sitting with her head
+hung, her hands pressing at her eyes, Leda was the first one to speak
+after the minutes passed as they would in a slow nightmare when nothing
+is real.
+
+She stood up and picked the blouse off the floor. “Look,” she said.
+“I’ll go and talk to Marsha. That’s where they ran to. I’ll go and
+straighten it out.”
+
+“How?”
+
+Leda reached in the closet for a fresh blouse, and straightened her
+skirt so that the zipper was pulled and on the side. She ran a comb
+through her long hair, and her hands were trembling.
+
+“I’ll explain it somehow. Marsha’s gullible, and I’ll explain it. I have
+to go now, or they’ll have a chance to talk and spread the story.”
+
+Mitch said, “I’ll go too, Leda, I’ll go too. What’ll we say?”
+
+“No!” Leda put her hands over her face and shook her head. “I’m sorry I
+yelled. We’ve got to handle this just right. You stay here. It’s better
+for me to go alone.”
+
+“Are you sure?”
+
+“Yes. Look, get into bed. I’ll turn the light out and you stay here. If
+anyone else comes by, pretend you’re asleep.”
+
+She waited while Mitch pulled her pajamas from the suitcase on her bed
+and threw the suitcase down on the floor, before she stepped into the
+pants and the coat. After she got in bed, Leda snapped the light out and
+went back by her own bed before she opened the door to go.
+
+“Don’t worry,” she said. “Don’t worry at all. And stay here!”
+
+In her hand, as she walked toward Marsha’s suite, Leda clutched Mitch’s
+letter, wrinkled and folded on the long sheet of notebook paper. Her
+eyes were set and determined, and there was a tight line about her lips.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter Nine
+
+
+Under the heavy violet and black quilted robe, Mother Nesselbush wore a
+voluminous peach-colored flannel nightgown. Her hair was rolled on large
+black pins so that it pulled at her scalp and gave her round face a
+bizarre expression like that of a mild Jersey cow. Her skin shone with
+“night cream,” and until everything began, it was with conscious effort
+that she stifled the great yawns that exposed her pressing lethargy, as
+well as her gold-studded molars.
+
+Everything began when Marsha shut the door to Nessy’s suite and pressed
+the lock down to secure it. Beside those two, Casey, Kitten Clark, Jane
+Bell, and Leda shared the secrecy of the meeting that was about to
+commence. Marsha stood while the others sat in various positions around
+the small anteroom.
+
+“I don’t need to tell you that this gathering is an extreme emergency.
+We must all pledge never to reveal what we hear. Our whole reputation as
+a national sorority is at stake, to say nothing of the reputation of Tri
+Epsilon on the Cranston campus. I’ve asked Jane to come because she’s a
+member of the Grand Council. Fortunately, our other two members were on
+the scene when this thing happened. And Leda will explain her part in
+it. Nessy, we’ve inconvenienced you tremendously, but this is too
+terribly serious.”
+
+Mother Nesselbush protested that she was not disturbed, and that she was
+only too thankful that she was called on. She straightened her drooping
+shoulders and sat forward intently.
+
+“Maybe you better tell how it started, Casey,” Marsha said, leaning
+against the small mahogany table with the vase of daisies set on it.
+
+Casey was excited. Her face was animated and colored with the heat of
+her adventure. She uncrossed her legs and leaned forward from the couch.
+
+“It was right after chapter meeting. Kitten and I were going up to talk
+with Leda about her being nominated for Christmas Queen, and about the
+campaign we were going to plan. Well, we were kind of pleased and
+everything and I guess we just never thought of knocking, and when we
+got in there—well, this is kind of hard to say—we found Mitch naked and
+she was attacking Leda. I mean, she was kissing her and pulling at her
+clothes.”
+
+“What!” Mother Nesselbush paled and caught her jowls with her pudgy
+hands. “Oh, no!”
+
+Leda’s knees felt watery and loose, and her knuckles were white in a
+tight fist.
+
+“Well,” Casey went on, “Kitten and I ran like the devil—”
+
+“I’ll say we did,” Kitten broke in. “I was never so scared in my life.
+If you could have seen it! I didn’t know what to think. I didn’t even
+think when I was running.”
+
+“What did she do when you opened the door? Gosh, Leda, you must have
+been crazy with fear.” Jane Bell looked over at Leda after she said it,
+and shook her head and wrinkled her forehead in disbelief. “Absolutely
+_crazy_ with fear!” she repeated.
+
+“You poor, poor darling,” Nessy said. “To think of it!”
+
+Marsha moved forward and held her hand up for silence. “After that,” she
+said when everyone settled down, “Leda came to me in the suite. Luckily,
+Kitten and Casey had come right there, so the story hasn’t spread.”
+
+“What about Susan Mitchell?” Mother Nesselbush snapped. “Where is she
+now?”
+
+“You better carry on from here, Leda.” Marsha sat down on the floor,
+close to Nessy’s chair, and waited while Leda found words. Of course,
+they believed the story. It had been easy to tell it, Leda thought; not
+easy, but the only way. It had been the only way to tell it. Strange how
+she had thought that she would do it just this way if they were found,
+in that quick flash of intuition a second before they were found. She
+remembered another day when she was a child alone in her room, and in
+the midst of it she had heard Jan’s footsteps down the hall. If they
+stopped, if Jan came in the room, then she would say that she had
+shooting pains from cramps, and that she had been tossing on the bed and
+was hot and out of breath, and she would even cry to show that the pains
+were bad ones. But she would not spoil that moment there with herself
+for anything. All of the thoughts came quickly to Leda, solved in
+seconds, so that there was never any defeat. Now again she was not
+defeated, because they believed her. There was Mitch upstairs, waiting,
+trusting, but the time was now, downstairs, and Leda began slowly, her
+words careful and well remembered.
+
+“Mitch is upstairs in bed. She’ll stay there, and she won’t talk to
+anyone. I told her that I would explain it, and I’m going to try to. I
+can’t explain it so that everything is over and forgotten as I know she
+hopes I will do, but I am going to try to be fair to her.
+
+“First of all, with everyone’s permission, I’d like to read a letter.”
+
+When she finished the letter, Mother Nesselbush rolled her eyes in utter
+horror. “I declare,” she said. “I do declare!”
+
+“You see,” Leda said, “I suspected that Mitch had a crush on me. She was
+jealous of Jake and of the time I spent with him. I knew that, but I
+never dreamed the kid was in love with me like this. You know how I am.
+I call everyone honey and darling, and I guess the kid took me to heart.
+Then, after I told her to get some boy friends, she got mad and tried to
+ignore me. I didn’t pay any attention until I found this note in my
+mailbox before dinner tonight. Well, you know how I acted at dinner.”
+
+“And I thought it was just the flu,” Nessy said. “Land!”
+
+“So I decided that the only thing I could do was to try to help the kid.
+At least persuade her to wait until morning. I didn’t know what kind of
+condition she was in. She might do something dumb like confiding in that
+Robin Maurer. Then the whole campus would know. I didn’t know what to
+do. I couldn’t wait till chapter meeting and talk it over with you kids,
+because she’d be gone by then. I tried to handle it myself.”
+
+“Who’s Charlie?” Kitten said. “Is he that independent? What does she
+mean, _he_ knows?”
+
+“She imagined that, I’m sure,” Leda answered. “I guess they had a fight
+or something and she thought he knew. The kid is really naïve.”
+
+“She didn’t look naïve when Casey and I saw her.”
+
+“Let me finish, Kitten.”
+
+“Well, Lord, we don’t want it all over campus that one of the Tri Ep
+pledges is queer. That’s all the independents need.”
+
+“I tell you, he doesn’t know. No one does!”
+
+“Let Leda finish,” Marsha said.
+
+“She brought a suitcase with her and was ready to go. I persuaded her to
+wait until morning. I thought that by that time I’d be able to do
+something—talk to Nessy or Marsha or someone. She got undressed to go to
+bed, and—then she—attacked me. Thank God you kids came along at the
+right time.”
+
+“What did she do after they left the room?” Jane Bell asked. “I can’t
+even imagine this!”
+
+“That brought her to. You see, she really went out of her mind for a
+minute. After the door slammed, she came to and became herself. I
+quieted her as best I could, and told her it would all be O.K. She was
+scared to death, poor kid.”
+
+“Yeah, poor kid!” Casey sneered. “She belongs in a cage!”
+
+“I don’t know,” Leda said. “I can’t help feeling sorry for her.”
+
+Nessy said, “You showed great presence of mind, Leda. Why, if it had
+been me, I would have just shrieked my lungs out!”
+
+“You weren’t even yelling,” Casey said.
+
+“And it’s a good thing she didn’t. If it ever got around the house—Lord,
+I hate to think.” Kitten reached for a cigarette and snapped the flame
+on her lighter. “That’s one thing we’ve got to be damn careful about.
+We’ve got to keep it between us. We’ll have to think of some other
+reason for getting rid of her.”
+
+“Maybe I can do it,” Leda said. “Look, maybe I can convince her that the
+best thing for her to do is to go to the Psych Department. I’ll tell her
+I think she was right to want to move to the dorm, and then we’ll be rid
+of her and she’ll never know the difference. We can keep it all
+hush-hush.”
+
+Jane Bell groaned and scratched her head. “No, that’s no answer. She’d
+blab it to one of the doctors and then it’d get back to Panhellenic.
+Besides, no telling what she might do at the dorm.”
+
+Inwardly Leda shook at the danger of her own suggestion. But no matter
+where Mitch went, there was the danger of her telling her side of the
+story. Of someone believing it. Who’d believe it? The letter was written
+perfectly, leaving Leda free of any implication, and there was no other
+proof. Nothing. She felt stronger then, fear lending new armor.
+
+“You know,” she said, “the kid will probably try to blame me. She’ll
+probably say I had something to do with it. You know how people get when
+they’re up against a wall.”
+
+Mother Nesselbush giggled. “Leda, our queen,” she said. “Now really, do
+you think anyone would believe the child? She’s obviously demented!” Her
+face changed and became grave. “Girls, I don’t think the decision is
+ours to make. We must think of the reputation of the house. Tri Epsilon
+stands for honesty and loyalty, to ourselves and to the school too. This
+is a matter for the dean’s office, girls, and I assure you, Dean
+Paterson is a _very_ discreet person. She’ll handle this with utmost
+concern for our welfare.”
+
+“I agree with Nessy,” Marsha said. “It isn’t anything we can decide. We
+can only pledge ourselves to secrecy. No other member of the sorority is
+to know about this. Now, let’s promise it.”
+
+“Promised!” Kitten said. “That’s for sure.”
+
+“I’d be embarrassed to tell anyone else,” Casey commented. “Even now it
+embarrasses me.”
+
+Jane Bell stubbed her cigarette out in the ash tray. “I don’t have to
+remind anyone,” she said, “that if the pledges ever learn about this,
+we’ll be in danger of losing the entire pledge class.”
+
+Marsha stepped forward to the middle of the room. “We all know the
+consequences. It could be anything else but this. Homosexuality just
+leaves a horrid taste. We’d all have to pay, even though we had nothing
+to do with it, just because it happened under our roof. We’d be the
+brunt of thousands of miserable jokes. You all remember the year the
+Sigma Delts had those two terribly effeminate boys in their pledge
+class? Remember what happened the day they woke up and found the signs
+all over their front yard? That’s just half of what we’d get.”
+
+Leda remembered the signs. They were large cardboard ones with bright
+red paint. They said, “Fairy Landing,” and “Sig Delt Airport—Fly with
+our boys!” For weeks, the jokes out at the Fat Lady and down at the Den
+and the Blue Ribbon centered around the Sig Delt house. No one ever knew
+how it all started, or whether there was any basis to it all, but
+everywhere you went you heard the sly remarks, and saw the wry grins
+that attended the cracks about “those fairy nice Sigma Delts.” She had
+been a freshman then, but after two and a half years it was all very
+fresh in her memory. Everyone remembered, long after the boys left
+campus.
+
+“I’ll call the Dean,” Mother Nessy said, “the first thing in the
+morning. The only thing we can do tonight is go to bed and try to sleep.
+Leda, you’d better make up the couch in here.”
+
+“I’m afraid Mitch will be suspicious. I mean, I told her I’d explain
+everything. She’ll probably wait for me to get back.”
+
+“Oh, joyous reunion,” Casey said. “Holy God!”
+
+“You mean you’re going back to that girl, Leda? Why, I won’t _hear_ of
+it!”
+
+“Look,” Marsha said calmly, “maybe it’s the only way. We can’t have her
+getting out in the halls and trying to find Leda. I mean, she won’t be
+violent like that again, will she, Leda?”
+
+“No, I know she won’t. You don’t understand. The kid is scared out of
+her wits now. She wouldn’t lift a finger.” Leda felt queasy, listening
+to them picture Mitch as a wild beast roaming the halls for prey. She
+would have to make them believe that she was wise to go back up there to
+Mitch. But not too anxious. “Of course, I confess it isn’t going to help
+me sleep any to know she’s in the room, but—”
+
+“No!” Nessy said. “I simply can’t have it. I’m responsible.”
+
+Mitch would be waiting. Leda would have to go back, or Mitch might run
+to Marsha and confuse the story, ruin it—even if they didn’t believe
+her.
+
+“I know,” Marsha said. “Kitten and Casey and I will wait in the
+bathroom. Leda, you go in and see if it looks O.K. to stay there. If it
+does, you can tell us by coming down to the john. If it’s not O.K., then
+you can tell us and we’ll think of something else. I mean, if you think
+Mitch is going to act up.”
+
+“That’s fine,” Leda said, “and I think it’ll be O.K. You don’t know this
+kid like I do.”
+
+Kitten grinned. “Obviously,” she said. “Who’d want to?”
+
+“All right,” Nessy consented reluctantly, “but I won’t sleep a wink. Not
+a wink!”
+
+Marsha moved the tab back on the door and opened it. “Now, for heaven’s
+sake,” she whispered, “look nonchalant. Pretend we were all in talking
+to Nessy, and that’s all. Some of the kids might still be up. And Leda,
+when you come down to the john, make it subtle if anyone’s there. Then
+we can go to the suite and talk.”
+
+Mother Nessy took Leda’s arm before she left the room. “You promise me,”
+she said, “you promise me that if that girl gives _any_ indication of
+acting up again, you’ll just jump right out of that room and come down
+to me. I don’t care _what_ the hour is.”
+
+Leda said, “Don’t worry, Nessy, and I promise.”
+
+The five girls climbed the main stairs slowly, Marsha attempting vaguely
+to whistle a bit from “On, Wisconsin.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was taking Leda a long time. What could she say to them? Mitch was
+numb with torment, and the sheets on her bed were wrinkled and halfway
+off the mattress from her perpetual turning and moving as she waited.
+The ticking of the tin clock on the dresser sounded frantic and Mitch
+made the ticks come in three beats in her mind—_Les-bi-an, Les-bi-an,
+tick-tick-tick_. Leda was one too. The thought foamed in Mitch’s brain
+and hurt her. She did not know why she felt dirty when Leda told her
+that she was a Lesbian. She thought she should have felt happy and glad
+that they were two. But she did not want to be one. Abnormal.
+
+From far off she could hear the sweet voices of a fraternity serenading
+a sorority house down the street.
+
+She turned the light on and looked at the face of the clock. It was
+eleven-thirty. Leda had been gone too long. She saw Leda’s half-full
+package of cigarettes on the desk, and she took one from the pack and
+lit it. It tasted strong and sour and she squashed it in the ash tray
+and turned the light off again.
+
+Tomorrow, she decided, she would move out of Tri Epsilon and into the
+dorm with Robin. If she and Leda weren’t put out of the sorority, she
+would leave anyway. But she could not leave Leda. “I love Leda,” she
+said softly to the darkness, “even though we’re both that way. I wish
+she wasn’t that way.”
+
+The dream came in a half fit of consciousness. Her mother was very
+beautiful, with black hair that came to her shoulders, and clear green
+eyes. Mitch loved her. She wore pants and shirts and combed her hair
+back, wet from her swim, and went to her mother with jewels and furs
+that she had stolen for her to have. Her mother smiled and accepted
+them. Mitch heard her say, “You’d better not steal all the time. I
+couldn’t love a thief.” She ran down a long alley to escape the police
+who were looking for her. It was late when she got back to the Tri
+Epsilon house and her mother was there with the police holding her arm.
+Her mother was laughing. She said, “You didn’t know I was a thief too,”
+and the policemen led her away. Diamonds were spilling out of her
+mother’s pocket as she went down the steps with them.
+
+She thought she had been asleep for hours, but it was only twenty
+minutes to twelve. Leda must be in trouble. The dream put a ragged edge
+on her anxiety. The bed was a sight, rumpled and torn apart as though it
+had been ravaged. Mitch straightened the sheets and fluffed the pillow.
+In the corner of the room by the bureau her clothes lay where Leda had
+taken them off, kicked to the side. Mitch picked them up and brushed
+them off.
+
+_Les-bi-an, Les-bi-an, tick-bi-an...._
+
+Mitch thought, I can get a job. Leda and I can run away and I can work
+someplace. If they put us out of the sorority I won’t go home. Leda
+won’t either, because of Jan. Colorado is nice, or California. She had a
+vivid picture of the open convertible speeding through purple and rust
+landscapes and along white desert with the cactus along the roadside.
+She added glorious black nights and ten thousand brilliant stars, and a
+warm wind whipping at their faces. It was no good. She hated the
+picture. Why? A slow self-disgust chewed at her and called her coward,
+but she was still afraid. She promised herself to be strong when Leda
+came back, no matter. Whatever Leda said, Mitch would not reveal her
+fear. Leda loved her and this was the price. Be strong for two. The
+words on the storybook she’d had as a child came dancing on the screen
+of her mind: “Now We Are Two.”
+
+Part of it was the way Leda acted when she had said, “No, faster!
+Faster, Mitch!” It seemed far away and morbid, as though there was an
+insane spark to their love that made them fierce and careless. Sitting
+on the side of her bed, under the harsh light of the electric bulb
+overhead, Mitch could not know herself in that scene. She reasoned that
+she was not violent. Never violent. Yet there was still the faint taste
+of blood on her tongue, and the way she knew she had been strong there
+with Leda.
+
+Don’t blame Leda. You’re trying to blame Leda.
+
+There was a sound of steps in the hall. Mitch caught her breath when
+they came to the door. It was Leda returning.
+
+“What are you doing with the light on?”
+
+“I had to find out the time.”
+
+“I told you not to leave it on. I told you to go to bed.”
+
+“I just turned it on. I was afraid.”
+
+“Well, it’s over, so go to bed.”
+
+“Over?”
+
+“Yes. It’s all right.”
+
+“Wh-what did you say? How did you explain it?”
+
+Leda’s face was composed and placid. She took her soap from the tray on
+the rack behind the door. Her washcloth hung over the bar above the shoe
+bag and she put that with the soap. “I’m going to wash my face. I’ll
+tell you when I get back. Look, it’s over. There’s nothing to worry
+about.”
+
+Mitch just sat there staring.
+
+“Get in bed. I’ll be back.”
+
+“I’ll come too,” Mitch said. “I didn’t wash yet. Wait for me and I’ll
+come too.” She started toward the bureau.
+
+“No!” Leda’s tone came out sharper than she had meant it. She could not
+look at Mitch’s face, which was alive with a new hope. Her words went to
+the rug. “No, it’s better if you stay in bed. I told them you didn’t
+feel well. You see, that’s how I explained it. I said you were sick.”
+
+“Oh,” Mitch said. “I—” She sat back on the bed and rubbed her forehead.
+
+Leda walked toward the door. “Look, just get in bed. I’ll be back in a
+minute. I’ll tell you then.”
+
+“O.K., Leda.”
+
+Before Leda turned the doorknob, Mitch’s eyes met hers.
+
+“Leda?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Thanks.”
+
+When she was gone, Mitch felt sick and dull all over. She was ashamed of
+the way she had thought about Leda. The thoughts seemed to tease her
+still, pricking her knowledge that Leda had made everything all right,
+that now there would be no reason to run and hide. Steadily she rebuilt
+the structure of their love, amplifying it with Leda’s courage and with
+her own indebtedness to Leda. She could feel the physical ache for her
+down to the tips of her fingers, replacing the enfeebled numbness,
+charging it with renewed vigor. Healing time had conquered the doubt and
+fear, and her servility was sworn in that moment. Mitch felt humble and
+brave in the darkness of the room.
+
+A tongue of light cut through the black as Leda opened the door and
+slipped back in. Mitch could hear her putting things away and getting
+out of her clothes. The thud of her shoes on the floor sounded unusually
+heavy in the silence. Mitch threw the sheets and blankets back and went
+over to her.
+
+“For God’s sake, no! We just got out of one mess.”
+
+“I’m sorry, Leda. I just feel so—”
+
+“Get back in bed. My God!”
+
+The covers felt itchy on her chin and she pulled the sheet up higher.
+She could hear Leda getting in bed.
+
+“I know you’re upset,” she said. “I should have known better than to
+come over to you, Leda. I’m sorry.”
+
+“Forget it.”
+
+Mitch waited. Leda would tell her now—everything that had happened. The
+minutes crept and the clock began the game, ticking out the word.
+
+“Leda?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“You said you’d tell me.” Mitch’s voice was thin and meek. She didn’t
+mean to keep at Leda like that, but she had to know.
+
+“O.K. I said you were sick. I said you went to bed sick and you were
+feverish when you came after me.”
+
+“D-did you say that I came after _you_?”
+
+“Well, hell, I had to say something! When they came in the door, that’s
+what they saw.”
+
+“Oh.”
+
+The wind blew papers off the desk and they ruffled along the floor, the
+noise quick and airy.
+
+“Leave them,” Leda said. She settled back and the noise stopped.
+
+“Well, did they believe you? What about—My God, I was naked!”
+
+“You were sick! I told them you were sick, Mitch!”
+
+Mitch wanted to stop the angry tone. She lay quiet and another paper
+chased across the room and landed on top of her on the bed.
+
+“Mitch, I’m sorry I’m so snappish. I just feel like hell. It wasn’t
+easy.”
+
+“I know what it must have been like, Leda.”
+
+“It was hell.”
+
+“Does—does anyone know? Anyone else, I mean?”
+
+“Just Marsha and those two.”
+
+“It’ll be hard tomorrow. What’ll I tell them when they ask what was
+wrong?”
+
+Leda turned her pillow over on the side. Then she got up and put a
+bottle of ink on top of the papers so they wouldn’t blow any more. “It
+won’t be hard,” she said. “They won’t even talk about it. Just go along
+as though nothing happened.”
+
+“Leda, I don’t know how to thank you.”
+
+“Quit saying that! What in the name of God do you think I am, your holy
+savior?”
+
+The night air was crisp and Mitch snuggled down in the covers. She
+closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but she kept listening for Leda to
+say more. When she didn’t, Mitch said, “I just want to say one more
+thing, Leda. I’ll always stick by you—always. You mean more to me than
+anyone I know.”
+
+Leda didn’t answer.
+
+
+
+
+                              Chapter Ten
+
+
+Ruth Paterson was a stocky, middle-aged woman with brownish-red hair,
+which she wore in a short, smoothly waved coiffure. Her thin lips were
+faintly tinted with a medium rose shade, and her long full face had a
+healthy pink color that set off the deep brown eyes. Between the book
+ends on her smooth red-leather-topped desk there was a dictionary, a
+worn copy of “Wine from These Grapes,” “The Collected Poems of Robert
+Frost,” “Roget’s Thesaurus,” two volumes on methods for counseling
+teen-age girls, a Bible, and a frayed copy of Proust.
+
+Her office was a small white room furnished with comfortable red
+furniture and red-framed prints of Daumier. On a wobbly end table at the
+side of a long couch in front of her desk there were a miniature wooden
+pagoda and a vase with a single red rose pointing toward the white
+ceiling. On the lower rung of the table there were three copies of
+current magazine issues, and one copy of the Cranston University humor
+magazine.
+
+Dean Paterson took a great deal of pride in her office. She had done
+most of it herself, lacking encouragement from the university officials,
+who saw little valid reason for decorating the room so that it bore
+small resemblance to a typical office of the Dean of Women. The
+wall-to-wall black rug she had purchased herself at a private auction of
+one of the distinguished townspeople’s household effects. It was
+impractical, inevitably catching lint and dust from the heels of the
+steady infiltration of students, file clerks, secretaries, and
+university officials. She liked the rug anyway.
+
+It was just before eleven in the morning, a beautiful morning with a
+quick snap in the air, and a clear fall sky. At eleven-fifteen, Susan
+Mitchell would arrive for her appointment. Dean Paterson held the three
+square yellow cards in her hand, thumbing through them, the bland
+printed information registering slowly in her mind. There was scant
+knowledge of the girl on the office records.
+
+Mrs. Nesselbush had called her “a savage.”
+
+The case was not unique. In her twenty-three years of counseling girls,
+Dean Paterson had become fairly well acquainted with the problem of
+homosexuality, suspected or overt. She had dealt with it before.
+
+She laid the first set of yellow cards down and picked up the second
+set, removing the paper clip. Leda Taylor’s name was familiar. There
+were several rows of reported late minutes. The explanations appeared in
+the spaces after the account of the offense.
+
+       24  March—30 minutes late—Flat tire                       
+       12  April—2 hours late—Delayed because of storm           
+       19  April—Absent all night—Forgot to sign out for week end
+        2  May—15 minutes late—Watch stopped
+
+Her scholastic report was not always good. There were alarming high and
+low points, and a strange proclivity toward extremes. A’s and D’s. B’s
+and E’s. Psychology was a good subject. English was second, with science
+and math at a nadir. Dean Paterson remembered her as a very attractive
+girl, with a slight rough edge to her nature and a suggestion of
+specious warmth.
+
+Mrs. Nesselbush had explained that she was a darling.
+
+The buzzer burred out in the stillness. Susan Mitchell.
+
+Dean Paterson stood up and watched the door until the girl came in. She
+had not expected her to look like that at all. She said, “Won’t you sit
+down, Susan?”
+
+From the top of her desk drawer, near the newly sharpened pencils and
+the memo pads, the Dean removed the envelope that Mrs. Nesselbush had
+sent her. Inside was the letter.
+
+“You don’t know why you’re here, do you, Susan?”
+
+The girl smiled. “No, ma’am,” she answered. “Mother Nessy said something
+about your wanting to talk about my subjects.”
+
+It was irritating. There was no need to lie to the girl. There was no
+necessity to explain falsely why the appointment was made. The Dean
+shook her head and picked up her yellow pencil. She made dots on the
+back of the white envelope.
+
+“No,” she said. “It’s not about your subjects. It’s about something you
+may be able to tell me more about than I know.”
+
+“Yes?”
+
+“How close have you been to Leda Taylor?”
+
+Mitch felt a shrinking inside of her. “I—I room with her,” she said.
+“We’re good friends.”
+
+“Is that all?”
+
+So they hadn’t believed Leda after all. Mitch looked at the Dean’s face,
+and then down at her hands and the pencil. She could not say anything.
+
+“You see,” Dean Paterson said, “it’s been left up to me. I guess you had
+no indication that anything was wrong at the Tri Epsilon house today.”
+
+“No.” Mitch’s voice was barely audible. She looked at her hands. If only
+Leda had been summoned at the same time, Mitch thought, she could do the
+talking. Mitch wondered then if Leda had already been to see the Dean,
+earlier in the morning. She had not seen her since breakfast, and they
+had not sat at the same table. Leda thought it would be too obvious if
+they sat together after last night.
+
+“You see, Susan, that kind of thing can’t be tolerated. In the long run,
+if it was tolerated, you’d be hurt terribly. There would be cruel jokes,
+and an even crueler alienation from the other girls. Do you want to talk
+about it? I have only Mrs. Nesselbush’s report.”
+
+“I—I don’t know how to talk about it.”
+
+Dean Paterson went over to the couch where Mitch was sitting. She sat
+beside her. “Start with Leda,” she said. “Try to tell me about Leda.”
+
+Mitch spoke suddenly. “It’s not her fault,” she said. “It’s really not
+her fault at all.”
+
+Tears clouded Mitch’s eyes and she tried to prevent them from rushing
+forward. Dean Paterson put her arm around the girl’s shoulder. “Susan,”
+she said, “listen to me. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t
+want to. It’s going to make my job a little harder, though. You see,
+I’ll have to submit a report on this, and I don’t have very much to go
+on. Just the letter and what I’ve heard.”
+
+Mitch looked at her. “What letter?”
+
+“The one you wrote Leda. I’m sorry, dear. You can have it back. I don’t
+think it’s very nice to read other people’s mail either, but there are
+so many things the Dean of Women has to do that aren’t very nice.”
+
+Mitch said, “Then Mother Nessy stole the letter. She must have. Leda
+forgot to tear it up and—”
+
+Dean Paterson told Mitch then that Leda had given the letter to Nessy.
+Mitch pulled away and jumped up. “That’s not true,” she said. “That’s
+not true!” The tears streamed down her cheeks, and she sank back on the
+couch. “You don’t know Leda. She wouldn’t do that. She’s tried to
+protect me all the way—even lied for me last night to Marsha. She told
+Marsha I was sick and—”
+
+The shrill ring of the phone cut into Mitch’s words. While Dean Paterson
+crossed the room and stood talking, Mitch cried violently, stopping the
+sound with her handkerchief, pushing the sobs back in her throat. Again
+she thought of running away, with Leda, somewhere—anywhere. They would
+be expelled and there was no other thing to do but run. And run. She
+wished that the Dean would just tell her that she would have to leave
+Cranston, instead of asking questions and trying to find out more
+information. Then Mitch could hurry and get to Leda first, before the
+Dean did. It would be awful for Leda. She was so sure last night.
+
+“I’m sorry for the interruption,” Dean Paterson said, walking back
+toward Mitch. “I have an idea, if you’d like. It’s almost lunchtime. I
+usually make a sandwich at my apartment, a few blocks from here. Would
+you like to go there with me now?”
+
+Mitch shook her head. “I have to see Leda,” she said. “I have to talk to
+her. Please—she won’t be able to stand this. If we’re expelled—”
+
+The Dean took Mitch’s arm. “Susan, _Leda_ is not going to be expelled. I
+think we’d better talk about it at lunch, dear. All right?”
+
+As if in a trance, unable to comprehend any meaning, Mitch waited while
+Dean Paterson straightened some papers on the desk, removed her purse
+from the lower drawer, and pressed the light button off. Together they
+walked through the reception room, out into the cold marble corridor of
+Kenyon Hall.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+After Dean Paterson canceled her afternoon appointments, she sat down in
+the small, green-walled front room of her apartment. Susan Mitchell was
+in the bedroom asleep. The story seemed unbelievable.
+
+But not impossible.
+
+Ruth Paterson picked up the small white china poodle from the round
+glass-top coffee table. She passed her thumb along the ridges and up to
+the object’s black eyes, and she thought about Susan Mitchell. Certainly
+not a savage.
+
+It was a strange story, the story of Susan and Leda, but she had learned
+long ago not to be surprised at anything. She checked back her own
+willingness to believe what Susan Mitchell had told her. The child was
+afraid and lost, and sympathy came easily. This girl invited it and
+coaxed it, with her lonesome eyes and her ingenuous statements. Ruth
+Paterson had an impulse to go into the bedroom and wake the girl up and
+tell her that she could not stay. Even though she had asked her to stay.
+She was afraid of the girl in many ways, afraid that the fumbling
+immaturity of Susan Mitchell had made her go soft and irrational. There
+had been other occasions when she had weakened like this and regretted
+it later. The Dobbs girl, for instance. Petite, blue-eyed Faith Dobbs, a
+freshman years ago. She had been accused of stealing in the dorm, and
+something about her made the Dean believe that she was innocent when she
+sat before her and told her story. The hours and days of counsel, the
+defense she had made of the girl before the Board of Trustees, and the
+angry speech she had delivered to the girls who lived in Faith’s
+dorm—all objects of ridicule when Faith Dobbs pilfered the Dean’s watch
+and petty-cash box from her office weeks later. No, she was by no means
+infallible. And now there was another child who wanted to be trusted,
+was already trusted by the mere fact that she was asleep now in Dean
+Paterson’s apartment.
+
+She got up and placed the china poodle back on the glass top. The phone
+was in the corner, just above the window seat. For a moment she sat
+looking out into the street. A boy and girl passed, he carrying her
+books, she laughing up at him, reaching with her hand to brush back the
+blond curl that fell on his forehead. They kicked the leaves along the
+sidewalk as they walked down the block. Ruth Paterson said aloud, “If
+everything could be as simple as that,” and laughed when she thought of
+the obvious fact that even _that_ was not simple. There’s no simplicity
+left in modern living, she decided. Everyone is on the spit at one time
+or another. Thumbing through the phone book, she found the number and
+dialed it.
+
+“Marsha Holmes, please,” she said, and while she waited, she twisted the
+rubber cord attached to the telephone.
+
+“Hello, Marsha? This is Dean Paterson.... Fine, thank you. Marsha, is
+Leda Taylor in the house?... I see. I wonder,” Dean Paterson said, “if
+you could find her for me. If she’s in class, wait until it’s over and
+ask her to come and see me. At the apartment. I’ll be here all of this
+afternoon.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Den was not crowded at two-thirty that afternoon. It was a popular
+hour for classes at C.U., and only a few students lined the bar, their
+books strewn about on the pine top, their beers before them. The juke
+box blared out a frantic trumpet, and from a corner near the door the
+ringing of the pin-ball machines could be heard.
+
+Leda and Jake were the only ones occupying any of the knotty-pine
+booths. They sat in the last one, side by side, a pitcher of beer before
+them. Jake had a flask in the pocket of his coat, and they were drinking
+“boiler-makers,” half whisky, half beer. They had been there since
+eleven-thirty, and their only food had been a hardboiled egg apiece and
+a bowl of pretzels. Jake’s head was hanging to one side languorously. He
+was only half listening to Leda, who had been talking for three hours.
+
+“You can jus’ imagine,” she said, “if anyone can jus’ imagine.”
+
+Jake reached out for the pitcher of beer. He poured half of it on the
+table. The rest went in the glass and he fumbled in his pocket for the
+flask. He sang loudly, “Oh, a girl without a woman is like a—”
+
+A few boys at the bar looked back and laughed. Others kept on talking.
+The bartender shook his head. “Flunked an exam, probably,” he said.
+
+“Man,” the short thin boy exclaimed, “he’s carrying a big load!”
+
+The fellow next to him swallowed his beer. “She’s helping him with that
+load.”
+
+Leda tried to pour beer into her glass but she couldn’t grasp the
+handle. She nudged Jake and pointed to it. He poured more on the table,
+leaving a few inches in the bottom of her glass. His hand shook when he
+added the whisky, and some of the yellow-brown liquid fell on Leda’s
+coat. She brushed it away and giggled. Then her face became serious and
+she tasted the beer, which did not taste at all.
+
+She said, “Here’s to Mitchell, Mitchell.”
+
+Jake reached for his glass. “To Mitchell Mitchell,” he said. “Long may
+she wave!”
+
+The bartender leaned over to a solitary waiter standing near the end of
+the bar. He pointed at Leda and Jake, and the waiter came across the
+room to them. “All right, kids,” he said. “Don’t you think you’ve had
+enough?”
+
+Jake said, “Who asked you?”
+
+“C’mon, quiet down, kids. This is your last drink.”
+
+“Tell him,” Leda said, her words slurring and halting. “Tell him wha’
+hoppen.”
+
+“Naw, he don’t know from nothing.”
+
+“Look,” the waiter said, “take it easy. I’m warning you kids for the
+last time.”
+
+“For the last time,” Leda repeated, smiling, her head dropping to Jake’s
+shoulder.
+
+A confused thought came to her mind as she leaned against Jake. She
+wanted to cry. She really wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. She wanted to
+cry for what she had done to Mitch, but when she realized she had done
+it to herself too, she couldn’t get a tear to come. She could feel tears
+in her throat. She said aloud, “What good are they in my throat?”
+
+Jake said, “I don’t know.”
+
+She wondered where Mitch was and what she was thinking. She decided that
+Mitch was crying. Maybe she was packing. Maybe she was in the room at
+the Tri Epsilon house packing. She shut her eyes and there were bright
+colored circles and her head spun. She said, “Once yer on a roller
+coaster yew can’t git off.”
+
+Jake got up quickly. “Hurry,” he yelled at her. “Can you make it?”
+
+She only had a little way to go. The door pushed open readily, and she
+held onto the white sink. The tears came to her eyes automatically, and
+her whole body shook in jerks and seemed to roll. When it was over she
+got up from her knees and stared into the mirror. Her eyes focused at
+last, and when she saw her face, she could not believe it. She looked
+white and her hair hung like a witch’s. She took a lipstick from her
+coat pocket and rubbed the old stain off with a piece of rough toilet
+paper. When she applied the red color, it still looked sickly and
+smeared. The powder only made her face look whiter. She pinched her
+cheeks for color. The comb caught in the knots of her hair, and she
+swore. Finally she gave up. She turned to go back, but she could not.
+Again she fell to her knees. Over and over she cried, “Mitch,” and she
+got sicker and sicker. The tears rolled off her nose, and she could
+taste an evil-smelling taste in her mouth. She stood up after a while
+and held onto the wall. Everything was clearer. She felt better.
+Gradually the wall stopped moving and she could see things standing
+still again. She pushed the door open and walked regally down to the
+booth where Jake was waiting.
+
+Marsha sat across from him, and beside Marsha, was Kitten Clark.
+
+“Where have _you_ been?” They sounded too loud. “We’ve been looking high
+and low.”
+
+“Right here,” Jake said.
+
+Leda could feel things coming back. She could control herself. “I’ve
+been here for hours,” she said. “What do you want with me?”
+
+“We don’t want you. Dean Paterson wants you. She called up the house.”
+
+“Oh, God!”
+
+Kitten Clark got up from the booth. “C’mon, Leda,” she said. “We’ve got
+to get you sobered up. We’ll take you back to the house and put you
+under the shower. You’re in no condition.”
+
+“Yeah,” Leda answered, “I’m not. Jake borrowed Clive’s car. It’s out
+front. We gotta get it back to Sig Delt.”
+
+Marsha said, “I’ll drive.”
+
+Jake stood up then too. “The hell,” he said. “The hell you’ll drive.
+I’ll drive. I’m no one’s goddamn kindergarten kid. I’ll drive.”
+
+“No, Jake.” Leda held onto him and said, “No, don’t.”
+
+“Then _you_ drive, goddamn it. I don’t want these jackasses in my car
+that I personally borrowed.”
+
+Leda turned to them. Her head was clearing. She could still taste the
+taste and feel the strangeness in her knees, but she was all right. She
+had to be all right. Dean Paterson wanted to see her. Leda said, “Look,
+I better drive the car. We’ll drop him off. It’ll help me sober up,
+anyway.”
+
+“You’re not sober enough now to drive,” Marsha said.
+
+“I tell you I am! Don’t argue, now. I’ve got to step on it.”
+
+“She’s O.K.,” Kitten said. “She could sail a schooner with a few drinks
+in her. I know her.”
+
+They filed out of the Den and walked up the street toward Clive’s car.
+Jake was singing and stumbling as he walked along, and the fresh air
+made Leda feel sleepy. She blinked her eyes and made herself keep on
+going.
+
+The car was parked at the end of the street. Jake crawled in the back
+and stretched out on the seat, while Leda and Marsha and Kitten crowded
+in the front. When the motor started, Jake yelled out, “Home, James!
+Home!”
+
+The Dean would want Leda to tell her all about Mitch. She had talked to
+Mitch, and Mitch had no doubt told her everything. But the Dean wouldn’t
+believe it. Even the late minutes on her record alone would keep the
+Dean from believing. She was always out with boys—late. Last year she
+had been a queen.
+
+The Dean would make her go all through it again. Could she remember
+everything she had said exactly?
+
+“Here,” Kitten said, “chew on these mints. They’ll clear your breath.
+I’m not sure you’ll have time for a shower. It’s quarter after three.”
+
+Leda reached over for the mint. Her eyelids felt heavy and drooping.
+
+“She’s got to have a shower,” Marsha said. “Even her clothes smell of
+it.”
+
+“She can change those.”
+
+“No,” Marsha said, “a shower’s best. After all, the house has got a bad
+enough name in the Dean’s office now. She’ll think we’re completely
+irresponsible.”
+
+“Irrrrrr-reeeee-spon-sib-bull!” Jake yelled out from the back seat.
+
+“Where’d you tell her I was?” Leda said.
+
+“In class. We said we thought you had a class.”
+
+“I don’t. She can go to her files and find that out.”
+
+Marsha said, “She’s at her apartment.”
+
+“God! I’ve never been there.”
+
+She put her foot down harder on the gas. She would have to hurry and get
+it over with. What did Mitch say when she found out? What did she think?
+Mitch’s face seemed to come on the window and she couldn’t see the road.
+She was looking at Mitch’s face and the trusting eyes. Remembering the
+words. “I’ll always stick by you—always. You mean more to me than anyone
+I know.”
+
+“Hey,” Marsha said. “Slow down.”
+
+“Slow down, baby, don’t you blowwww yer top-p,” Jake sang out.
+
+She didn’t feel as though she were driving the car. She felt as though
+she were sitting back and someone else was driving. Looking down at her
+foot, she saw that it was on the pedal, but she could not feel her own
+strength pushing it.
+
+“Leda!” Kitten screamed. “Take it easy! Leda!”
+
+The car crashed in a thundering noise. Jake was thrown to the floor and
+Marsha and Kitten could feel their heads jerk forward and thump on the
+pane. When they straightened up, they lay back with their heads leaning
+against the leather seats. Jake moaned out from the back, and then he
+scrambled up and held his head too and shook it. Then they all saw Leda.
+The glass in the pane where her head had struck was splintered, and down
+the side of her face there was the scarlet color of blood.
+
+Outside of the car, there was another car smashed and still where it had
+been parked. Jake got out first. He pushed the seat back and stood in
+the road while the people on the street hurried toward them. Kitten and
+Marsha held Leda and tried to move her back. They were able to pull her
+head from the windshield and ease her back in a sitting position against
+the seat.
+
+“God!” Kitten said. “She’s bleeding like mad.”
+
+“I better call an ambulance.” Marsha got out of the car.
+
+A gray-haired man ran up to her. “Anything I can do, lady?”
+
+Marsha said, “Please—call an ambulance.”
+
+She went around to the other side and talked through the window to
+Kitten.
+
+“Is she coming to?”
+
+“Not yet. I’m trying to wipe the blood away. Ask Jake if he’s got a
+handkerchief.”
+
+Jake was holding onto the car, his head down, his arms wobbly. He handed
+Marsha the handkerchief without speaking. People crowded toward them and
+a policeman hurried up from the corner.
+
+“Hey!” Kitten yelled. “She’s coming to. She’s talking.”
+
+“What’s she saying? Is she hurt?”
+
+“Listen,” Kitten said. “Marsha, listen!”
+
+Marsha leaned in the window. Leda’s lips were parted, and the blood had
+run down by her nose. Her eyes were closed. She kept mumbling. They were
+able to make the mumbling out gradually as it became clearer. “Mitch,”
+she was saying. “Mitch, honey. Oh, God, Mitch, honey, what did I do to
+you?”
+
+“She feels bad about Susan Mitchell,” Kitten said. They listened to Leda
+as she said more. “I want you, Mitch. Kiss me! It’s going to be all
+right again. God, Mitch, love me.”
+
+Marsha and Kitten looked at each other with horror-stricken faces.
+
+Kitten said, “Did you hear what I heard?” and the mumbling kept on.
+
+
+
+
+                             Chapter Eleven
+
+
+The strong hospital smell made Marsha cough and cross the waiting room
+on the second floor of the large building to open the window and breathe
+the fresh air.
+
+“Hey,” Kitten said, “it’s cold. I’d rather have the smell.” She said it
+more for something to say than as an actual expression of her feelings
+that morning. On other Friday mornings at half past ten, she would be
+sitting in world-lit class, in the second row of the auditorium, vaguely
+hearing Professor Weber’s sonorous words blare out on the loudspeaker
+while she made flimsy notes and stared at the boy’s head in front of
+her.
+
+Leda had been in the University Hospital for three days. During that
+time, Dr. Ted Peters was her only visitor. Now Kitten and Marsha were
+waiting for him before they went in to see Leda.
+
+“I wish he’d come,” Marsha said. “If I miss my eleven-thirty, I’ll have
+to take a separate econ quiz.” She sat down in the black leather rocker
+and picked through the pages of “Look.” It was an old issue, and she had
+read it thoroughly weeks ago. Kitten took her compact from her purse and
+looked at her lipstick. She powdered her nose and stuck the compact
+back, clamping the purse shut. A nurse in a crisp white uniform padded
+by on her rubber-heeled shoes.
+
+“It didn’t take Mitch long to move,” Kitten said.
+
+Marsha sighed. “She had the car.”
+
+Dr. Peters shut the door to the waiting room after he came in. He was a
+tall, thin man with a boyish face and kindly gray eyes behind the black,
+heavy-rimmed glasses that matched the color of his thick hair. He had on
+a white coat above the dark blue pants, and in his hand he held a tan
+bone pipe.
+
+“Which is which?” he said, sitting down on the leather couch beside
+Kitten. After Marsha made the introductions, he put a match to the
+tobacco in his pipe and leaned back comfortably. His face was drawn with
+a serious, wary expression.
+
+“Dean Paterson tells me you two are the only Tri Eps who know the whole
+story on this.”
+
+“That’s right,” Marsha said, putting the copy of “Look” back on the
+table and folding her hands on her lap. “We’d like to keep it that way,
+if it’s possible. I guess you understand how girls can talk, and—”
+
+“I understand. About the Mitchell girl.... Does the house know why she
+was asked to leave?”
+
+Marsha said, “No. We said she was incompatible. That’s all. Jane Bell
+and Casey and Mother Nessy know. They know about Leda too now, but it’s
+terribly embarrassing. Leda was our queen. If it ever got out, we’d be
+ruined. I don’t think Mitch will tell. It’d ruin us.”
+
+Dr. Parker blew a puff of smoke up into the air. He took his glasses off
+and held them loosely in his hand. “And this—Jake? How does he fit into
+all of this?”
+
+“Him!” Kitten said. “We don’t have to worry about him. He was so blotto
+he doesn’t even remember being at the Den, much less anything else. I
+don’t know whether Leda told him or not, but he sure doesn’t remember
+anything. I had a class with him yesterday. All he’s worried about is
+paying for the car that got wrecked. And Leda too, he _says_, but if you
+ask me—”
+
+“Which no one did,” Marsha broke in, putting a period to Kitten’s
+opinion.
+
+Ted Peters watched the girls as they talked. He wondered if his
+generation had been that way, or if it was true that the younger
+generation had changed, evolved into a careless breed of people who
+lacked even a remote basis for understanding. He shut his eyes and
+shuddered inwardly. “Right now,” he said, “we’ve got to worry about Leda
+Taylor. She’s very ill—in her mind as well as in her body.”
+
+“Lord!” Kitten exclaimed. “You’d never think she was one. All those
+dates and everything.”
+
+“Look, girls,” Dr. Peters said, “right now I want you to turn into
+actresses. The best actresses you can be. Leda is conscious now. For the
+past few days she’s been semi-conscious and she’s got a lot off her
+mind, talking and crying, saying things she’s probably had pent up in
+her since she was knee-high. But now, as you go in that room, let her be
+the old Leda Taylor—act as if she’s the Leda you knew before the
+accident and your talk with Dean Paterson. When you go in see her,
+forget all of these recent developments, and talk to her as you would if
+this had never happened. She has no way of remembering what she said at
+the wreck, and no way of knowing what’s happened since then. She’ll be
+attempting to live the lie, and you’ve got to help her live it. Some of
+her talk may be incoherent. Pass over it. Don’t indicate in any way that
+there’s anything different about her. And most important—prepare
+yourself for a difference.”
+
+“We shouldn’t mention Susan Mitchell, of course?”
+
+“Not unless she mentions her. She may ask you if Susan was sent home, or
+what became of her. In that case, you say that she hasn’t been sent home
+_yet_. Say you don’t know any more about it—that Dean Paterson is
+handling it. You see, the best thing that could happen to Leda would be
+for her to see Susan. She feels guilty, and she still has emotional ties
+that are stronger than we can imagine, but she’ll have to ask to see the
+girl herself. Otherwise it won’t be effective.”
+
+“What about Jake?” Kitten said. “Should we mention him?”
+
+“Certainly! Act the way you would act if you didn’t know anything about
+all of this. Tell her everyone is asking for her at the house. Try to
+give her some will to get better.”
+
+Marsha stood up and came over to Dr. Peters. “We’ll do the best we can,”
+she said.
+
+The three of them left the small reception room and walked down the dark
+corridor where the smells of ether and medicine and disinfectant were
+more pronounced. There was a screen in the entrance to Room 209, and
+Kitten and Marsha stopped there and shook hands with Dr. Peters. He
+smiled briefly and whispered, “Don’t forget.”
+
+Inside the room the shades were drawn and there was a small light over
+the bed. The fat, neat-looking nurse left them alone with Leda, who lay
+still, her head swathed in white gauze bandages. Marsha went ahead of
+Kitten to the edge of the bed and peered down at Leda.
+
+“Hi,” she whispered. “How do you feel?”
+
+Leda’s face had a yellow cast to it and her lips barely broke in an
+uneven, crooked grin. “How do I look?” she answered.
+
+Kitten moved up alongside Marsha. She said, “I bet that’s the first
+cotton crown you ever wore.”
+
+“Why don’t you tell me how I look?” Leda said.
+
+Kitten sat down on the straight-back chair near the bed table. “You had
+a rough time of it,” she said. “I think you look darn well,
+considering.”
+
+Marsha tried to smile enthusiastically. “Everybody’s been asking about
+you at the house,” she said.
+
+“So everybody’s been asking.” Leda half laughed. “Well!”
+
+“Jake’s asked, too,” Kitten said. “You know, we have math together.”
+
+“Car wrecked?”
+
+Kitten stammered, unsure of what to say. Marsha said, “It _is_ in bad
+shape.”
+
+“Anyone called Jan?”
+
+“I don’t know,” Kitten answered. “I don’t think anyone at the house
+did.”
+
+“Good. It’d ruin her trip. She’s going to L.A., you know? Did you know
+Jan was going to L.A.? Yeah, she likes it out there. She’s a big hit in
+L.A.”
+
+There was a short pause. Kitten fumbled with her purse and found the
+handkerchief. She touched it to her nose, a gesture to take time and
+allow her to think of something to say. Marsha leaned on the bed and
+smoothed her skirt.
+
+“What about Mitch?” Leda said suddenly. “She go home?”
+
+“Not yet,” Marsha said. “I guess not yet.”
+
+Kitten remembered to add, “The Dean’s handling it.”
+
+“The Dean! What’d she want with _me_, anyway? I don’t care, either.”
+
+Marsha pretended to scratch her arm up under the sleeve of her sweater.
+“We’ll have to talk about your nomination for Christmas Queen when you
+get better, Leda.”
+
+“And what’s the Dean want with Mitch? Poor dumb kid.”
+
+There was another short silence.
+
+Leda said, “I’d like to see her. Surprise you? I’d like to see Mitch.”
+
+“Maybe you can,” Marsha said.
+
+“Surprises you that I’d like to see her, doesn’t it?”
+
+Kitten said, “No. I can see why.”
+
+“Why?” Leda said.
+
+Kitten’s face became tense. “Well, you—roomed together and—”
+
+Leda laughed very hard. Then she was serious again, her green eyes
+strangely alert. She brought her hand up and touched her fingers to her
+mouth, and even in the light and with the gauze and the weakness of her
+body, she was beautiful. It was in the supple line of her lips, and the
+way her glance seemed plaintive and lost.
+
+“Yes,” she said. “Yes, we roomed together. Roommates! Too bad. If she
+was still around I thought I could talk to her. Tell her it was too
+bad.”
+
+Kitten tried to blow her nose as though it needed it. “I’ve got a damn
+cold,” she said, “or my sinus or something.”
+
+“Do you know where Mitch is?” Leda asked.
+
+“No,” Marsha said. “Maybe the doctor would know.”
+
+“God!” Leda turned over on her side. “He doesn’t know her from a hole in
+the wall. Why talk about such dreary subjects, anyway? Might as well
+forget about it. What’s going on at the house this week end?”
+
+Kitten started elaborating on who had a date with whom, and what
+fraternities were giving parties. “You know,” she said, “we’ve got to
+get together on plans for the Christmas Queen campaign.” After she said
+it, she wondered whom they would elect to take Leda’s place. Secretly,
+she had thought of herself as a logical candidate.
+
+The fat woman in white returned and signaled to them. “Time’s up,” she
+said. “You can come again tomorrow.”
+
+Marsha and Kitten felt mutual relief as they stood up and bade Leda
+good-by. “Come back,” Leda said. “Come back and see me again. God, I go
+crazy in this bed!”
+
+“We’ll be back,” Marsha promised.
+
+Dr. Peters was waiting outside the screen for them. He led them down the
+hall and listened with interest as they announced that Leda had asked
+for Susan Mitchell.
+
+“She was funny, though,” Kitten said. “Not funny, but strange.”
+
+“Almost like she wasn’t all there at times,” Marsha sighed, “the way she
+looked away from me when she talked, and how she rambled.”
+
+He watched them after they left from the front door and hurried down the
+walk, talking together excitedly.
+
+It was late that afternoon when he parked his worn Chevrolet coupé in
+front of Dean Paterson’s apartment. She met him at the door and led him
+into the living room.
+
+“You look tired, Ted,” she said as he sat down and stretched his long
+feet before him. “It’s pretty depressing, isn’t it?”
+
+He knocked the bone pipe on the ash tray and took the small tan pouch
+from his coat pocket. “Did you talk to the girls? They were over this
+morning to see Leda, you know.”
+
+Ruth Paterson sat on the hassock beside the couch. “Yes, they stayed in
+my office for several hours. I wanted to be sure that they understood
+the situation thoroughly—that Susan Mitchell would be a perfectly normal
+girl if it hadn’t been for Leda, and that now, with understanding and
+help from you, she will be normal again.”
+
+“And how did they react to her staying in school?”
+
+“It’s curious, Ted. You see, their main worry is that Susan will tell
+the story to someone, thereby ruining the Tri Ep reputation. Susan’s
+welfare seems a smaller concern. Oh, of course, they said they wanted to
+see her get a decent break, and that they were upset about the whole
+affair—but primarily, they worry about how this would affect their
+sorority.”
+
+Dr. Peters put a match to the tobacco in the pipe and sucked on the stem
+thoughtfully. He shook his head. “You’re sort of sticking your neck out,
+Ruth. I can’t tell you how genuinely proud I am of you. It’s been my
+feeling all along that there’s no question about the Mitchell girl’s
+normality—that it could have happened to almost any lonely, helpless,
+and naïve child. But you shouldered the responsibility when you decided
+to let her stay in school. That takes courage, Ruth—real courage.”
+
+Dean Paterson wondered if it did, or if it were more of an act of
+responsibility than an act of courage. There was no doubt in her mind
+that the Mitchell girl would be normal again. Doubts like that were too
+costly for a dean of women. But to defend your own beliefs in the face
+of other people’s doubts did take courage. She was thankful for the kind
+of man Ted Peters was.
+
+“You know, Ted,” she began, “I’ve always thought my position was more
+than that of a counselor to girls en masse. I’ve wanted it to mean more
+than that—to mean each girl individually, not only in her academic work
+and in her extracurricular activities, but in the girl’s life as long as
+we’re associated with one another. I think that’s part of a college’s
+duty. Otherwise, it seems like an assembly line that turns out a female
+B.A. degree in four years.”
+
+“You’re right,” Dr. Peters agreed. “It’s a big job, too. I don’t know,
+Ruth. Today I wondered if all our youth hadn’t suddenly turned shallow
+and callous—after the girls left the hospital and I watched them walk
+away laughing and chatting like magpies. I wondered where the dignity of
+youth was nowadays. Well, at any rate, it looks like Susan will have a
+chance. Leda is another matter. She wants to see Susan—and that’s what I
+came over about. I’d like to arrange a meeting between the two of them
+tonight.”
+
+“Is that wise, Ted?”
+
+“I’ve talked to Susan, and I think I know her well enough now to be sure
+that it’ll be very wise in her case. It’s cruel to ask her to witness
+the fallen Leda, and yet, perhaps it’s the only way to prove to her once
+and for all how very sick Leda is and was. The mental sickness is
+becoming more pronounced than the physical. That wreck didn’t really
+injure Leda. It awoke her. The neuroses that was growing in her
+subconscious mind suddenly came to grips with the conscious mind at the
+time of the wreck. The impact of that meeting is what she can’t bridge.
+She knows her two selves now, and she can’t assimilate them. It’s very
+serious, Ruth, and I’m counting on her seeing Susan to help.”
+
+The phone was on the desk, and Dean Paterson reached for it, hesitating
+a moment before she remembered the number of the dorm where Susan
+Mitchell was living.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mitch finished hanging up the last dress and turned to look at the room
+in Main Dorm where she had moved. The boxes were empty, and the suitcase
+had been shoved under the bed by the wall. Robin sat limp in the chair
+near the desk, her short legs relaxed in front of her, her arms hanging
+down at the side. “Finally!” she sighed. “I thought we’d never finish.”
+
+“You were wonderful to help, Robin.”
+
+“I’d help anyone out of that kind of hell. You should have done it
+months ago.”
+
+“I guess so,” Mitch agreed. She sat on the bed and flicked the radio on,
+waiting for it to warm up.
+
+“You know,” Robin said, “Monday night after you didn’t show up here, I
+thought you’d weakened and changed your mind.”
+
+Mitch got a station that was playing waltz music. She fixed the tone so
+it was not too loud, and didn’t answer Robin. The Dean had warned her
+that it would be hard. People would want to know why she had moved out
+of the sorority.
+
+“Anything new on Leda?”
+
+The question jarred Mitch. She had heard from Dr. Peters that Leda had
+called for her at the wreck, that she had said all those things about
+her, crying out her love before she came to in the hospital. Half of
+Mitch remembered Leda with the raven-colored hair and the keen, delicate
+hands, the jade eyes and the soft words, but even in that half there was
+a tinge of bitter irony in Mitch’s memory, flowing into the other half
+of the remembered Leda. The half that had betrayed her.
+
+“I know you must be worried,” Robin continued. “I never trusted her,
+myself. There was something about her. But I know you like her.”
+
+“You have to know her,” Mitch said, hoping the dull edge on her words
+was not obvious to Robin.
+
+Robin yawned and stretched. “Yeah,” she said. “You can never tell. I’m
+going to run along. Got a mad date with Tom Edwards.”
+
+After she left, Mitch sat in the chair, hearing the music and thinking
+of Leda lying in the hospital, sick and alone. She did not want to hate
+Leda for all that she had done. Dr. Peters had helped her to understand
+Leda, but there was still the pain left from the way it had all blown up
+and left her burned. And Leda had struck the match to the situation.
+
+“She was sick when she loved you,” Dr. Peters had said, “and you caught
+some of that sickness. You’re going to be all right. Leda may never be
+all right again.”
+
+Mitch thought of it again—what would have happened if everything had
+gone the way Leda had planned it. She tried to picture her father’s
+face, contorted with anger and resentment and disgust, the way it would
+have been if she had been sent home from Cranston.
+
+But Leda was sick.
+
+Mitch turned the radio off and yelled, “O.K.” into the buzzer on her
+wall. She wondered who would be buzzing her number. Robin was gone with
+Tom Edwards, and she didn’t know anyone else yet.
+
+She picked up the comb again and fixed her hair before the mirror. It
+was getting longer, and she thought of having a permanent so the curl
+would stay in and not come down after swimming class. She turned the
+light off and shut the door. A girl passed her in the hall on her way to
+the steps, and Mitch returned her smile. The dorm was friendlier, she
+decided, and the smile made her feel better as she went down the stairs
+into the lobby to answer the buzzer.
+
+“Well!” Lucifer grinned. “You took your sweet time getting down here.”
+
+He was wearing a pair of old olive-green pants and a spotted brown
+sweater. There was a cap on his head, with faded Greek letters.
+
+“Pardon my attire,” he said. “I just finished scrimmage. Want to have a
+Coke with a famous Cranston peasant?”
+
+Mitch laughed and ran back up the stairs to get her coat. Lucifer was
+fun.
+
+They sat together in a small booth at the Student Union. Lucifer handed
+her a nickel. “Go ahead,” he said, “play anything you like. I’m
+extravagant, I know. But go ahead.”
+
+She read the list of selections on the machine at the side of the booth
+and pushed the button for number nine after she slid the nickel in the
+slot. Bing Crosby’s voice floated out over the room. “Little early for
+White Christmas,” Lucifer said. “Or is it?”
+
+“Six weeks early,” Mitch said. “I love Christmas, though.”
+
+“You’ll have a miserable Christmas.” Lucifer frowned. “You’ll miss me
+till you’re almost crazy.”
+
+The afternoon went easily. Mitch forgot a lot with Lucifer chatting away
+in her ear, running back and forth with Cokes, making her laugh with his
+idiotic talk. It wasn’t until they were leaving that she saw Marybell
+Van Casey sitting in the opposite booth. A flash of heat shot through
+Mitch when their eyes met, and she stood in the aisle beside Lucifer,
+uncertain whether to speak or move on. Casey smiled and her face broke
+in sudden friendliness. “Hi,” she said. “How are you, Mitch?”
+
+There were others at the table, but Mitch felt relieved when she saw
+that they were not Tri Eps. She said, “I’m fine.”
+
+“We can’t talk,” Lucifer broke in. “We have to catch a train. We’re
+eloping.”
+
+Casey laughed, and Mitch could feel the tension leave when Casey called
+out, “Get back in time for swim meet Monday. I think you’ll make the
+team, Mitch. No kidding.”
+
+“Teams!” Lucifer said as he took her arm and led her out of the room.
+“Teams at a time like this!”
+
+When he left her at the entrance to Main Dorm, he asked her to go out
+with him on Saturday. “We’ll go to a movie,” he said. “After all, it’s
+our honeymoon. We might as well splurge.”
+
+Mitch agreed. She pushed the door open and walked through the lobby of
+the dorm toward the stairs. The small girl at the reception desk called
+out her name. Mitch stopped and turned around. “Dean Paterson said to
+call her at the office,” the girl told her. “You can use the phone on
+this floor if you want. To your left.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+“I’ll drive you over after dinner,” Dean Paterson told Mitch over the
+phone. “Now, keep your chin up and don’t worry about it. I’ll pick you
+up at seven.”
+
+Mitch hung up. She stayed there in the booth and looked dumbly at the
+four walls, marked with penciled phone numbers, red lipstick prints
+where someone had kissed one of the walls, pictures of rabbits and
+girls’ heads, the sign that said, “Others are waiting,” and the one that
+said, “Well! Don’t take all day!” She pulled the door back and walked
+slowly toward the stairs. A girl ran out of her room and brushed up
+against Mitch, saying, “I’m sorry,” and hurrying on, with her coat
+flying in the wind she made as she ran.
+
+What kind of reunion would it be there in the hospital, Mitch wondered?
+What would they say to each other?
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The headlights blinded Mitch as she walked toward the car. Dr. Peters
+got out and let her move in so that she was sitting between them.
+
+“It won’t take long,” Dean Paterson said, “but it’s very important.”
+
+“How—is Leda?” Even the name was hard to say. Again a favorite slogan of
+her father’s ran through her mind: “Every good pencil has an eraser.”
+She wanted desperately to erase Leda from her mind.
+
+“She’s still in serious condition,” Dr. Peters answered, “but we’re
+hopeful. She asked to see you. Two of her sorority sisters were over
+this morning. I asked them to do something for me and they did it very
+well. Now I’m going to ask you, Susan.”
+
+“What?”
+
+Dr. Peters explained that Leda still thought Mitch was going to be
+expelled.
+
+“She feels guilty,” he said, “and it’s preventing her from wanting to
+get better. And yet we can’t let her know that you’re not being
+expelled, because then she’d realize that we know all about her, and she
+couldn’t take that. You’ve got to try to make her feel as though
+everything’s all right. Make her think you’re happy and that you’ve
+forgiven her. You’ll be alone with her, Susan, but we’ll be close by. If
+she gets emotional, try to be calm yourself. Say things that will ease
+her mind about you. All right?”
+
+Dean Paterson stopped for the light and reached over to touch Mitch’s
+hand. “It won’t be easy for you, Susan,” she said, “but try very hard,
+dear. Don’t tell her you’re at the dorm. Tell her you’re staying with me
+until you go home.”
+
+Tell her, don’t tell her, say, don’t say, all jumbled up and crazy in
+her mind. Mitch watched the lights from other cars and tried to remember
+what Leda’s face was like. She couldn’t remember. And her voice. She
+couldn’t recall what Leda’s voice was like. High or low? Dr. Peters and
+Dean Paterson kept talking, and Mitch could only think that she did not
+even know Leda, or them, or why she was there. The car swung into the
+spacious parking lot behind the hospital, and the night air felt cold on
+Mitch’s face as she stepped out of the car and followed them into the
+building.
+
+Some students sat in the chairs at the right of the entrance, and a
+telephone operator pulled out colored cords from her board and kept
+repeating, “University Hospital, one mo-ment” in a singsong tone. There
+was a strange silence in the halls as they walked, and the elevator
+seemed crowded, though there were just the three of them, and Dr. Peters
+pushed the buttons himself.
+
+The door moved back automatically, and they walked along until they came
+to the door with the screen in front of it. Mitch went in and they
+waited outside. Dr. Peters pushed the screen back when the nurse came
+out, and Mitch could hear the door close behind her. Slowly she walked
+toward the bed. When she saw Leda’s face in the dim light, she knew why
+she was there.
+
+She said, “Leda?”
+
+Leda opened her eyes. She looked at Mitch without smiling. She didn’t
+say anything, and Mitch moved closer.
+
+“Hello, Leda,” Mitch said.
+
+Almost instantly Leda seemed to regain her energy. She smiled and tried
+to move up farther on the big pillow behind her head. “Hi, kid,” she
+said.
+
+“How do you feel?”
+
+“God, I feel lousy.”
+
+“I’m sorry, Leda. Terribly sorry.”
+
+She was sorry, too. She knew it when she said it and looked at the girl.
+She was plain sorry.
+
+“You shouldn’t be sorry for me. I guess I ought to be sorry myself,
+Mitch.”
+
+“No,” Mitch said. “Everything turned out O.K. for me. You did best,
+Leda.”
+
+“You think so? You really believe that?”
+
+“Well, all I know is, I think it’s best the way you did it.”
+
+“_You_ would,” Leda laughed. “You _would_, Mitch. You know something?”
+
+“What, Leda?” Mitch had never seen a face like that. It looked old and
+lined with fear and worry. But it was Leda’s face, Mitch realized, and
+there was something there in the look that was not too strange.
+Familiar.
+
+“If I ever do anything good, I don’t know when I’m doing it. You know
+what I mean? I just do it, and then sometimes it turns out good. Do you
+know?”
+
+“Yes, I know, Leda.”
+
+“If it turned out good for you, kid, I’m glad.”
+
+“It did, Leda. It turned out good.”
+
+“I was worried,” Leda said, reaching over for her cigarettes. “Hand me
+one, will you, kid? Dr. Peters said I could smoke if I wanted today, but
+I didn’t feel like it till now.”
+
+Mitch gave her the cigarette and lit it for her with the small,
+blue-covered matchbox that said, “Clean-Rite Cleaners” on the top, and
+“You get it dirty—we’ll get it clean.”
+
+“I was worried,” Leda continued. “I thought you’d be sore at me. I
+wouldn’t have blamed you, either. I’m sorry about the letter. Nessy
+found it, you know. There wasn’t much I could do.”
+
+“I know,” Mitch said. “Let’s not talk about it, Leda. I’m glad you
+feel—”
+
+“Wait a minute. Why _not_ talk about it? Why not? You don’t believe that
+Nessy found that letter, do you, Mitch? Come on, Mitch. Even _you_ don’t
+believe that!”
+
+“Leda, please. Let’s forget it.”
+
+“Forget it! My God, forget it! You know what it’s like to lie here in
+this goddamn bed and think about everything? Some circus, this is! Some
+big circus!”
+
+She laughed and she stopped laughing abruptly. For a moment the look of
+peace and ease came back to her face and she smiled. “I do feel better,”
+she said. “Marsha and Kitten were here this morning. I haven’t seen Jake
+yet.”
+
+“Maybe you’ll see him tomorrow,” Mitch said.
+
+“Hell, who am I kidding? I’m not kidding you, am I, Mitch? I don’t care
+if I ever see him again.” Leda blew the smoke out and tried to sit up
+farther. Mitch moved over to help her with the pillow. Leda’s eyes met
+Mitch’s then under the light. They seemed to lose some of their green
+color, and there were lines around the sockets under them.
+
+“I’m not kidding you, am I, Mitch?”
+
+Leda caught Mitch’s hand when she brought it back from the pillow. “You
+know I don’t give a damn about Jake, don’t you?”
+
+Mitch felt the coldness of Leda’s skin. The same skin that used to feel
+warm and send chills through her and excite her. A momentary physical
+memory came back, but the warmth was fleeting and then dead when she
+looked back at Leda’s face. She tried to pull her hand away but Leda
+held it tightly.
+
+“I told you the other night. I told you right that night, Mitch.
+Remember that. No matter what happens after I get out of here, don’t
+forget I told you right. I probably won’t see you again, anyway.” Her
+voice seemed to break on the last sentence. She said, “Going home,
+Mitch? Back to Seedmore or Sneedmore or wherever it is?”
+
+“I suppose,” Mitch said. She saw the tears in the corners of Leda’s
+eyes.
+
+“You know I don’t want to be without you, don’t you?” Her fingers
+fastened more strongly on Mitch’s and Mitch could feel her crushing
+them. She could feel her own eyes fill. It wasn’t because of Leda. It
+was _for_ Leda that she wanted to cry. She wanted to cry a long time for
+Leda.
+
+She said, “Yes, I know that, Leda. Don’t think about it.”
+
+“It’s hard not to think about it. God! God! God!” Leda let Mitch’s hand
+go and moved her head back and forth on the pillow, clasping her own
+hands together and saying, “God, oh, God!” Then she did not move, but
+stared straight ahead and talked slowly. “You know something, Mitch?
+It’s going to be all right. I’ve just got a feeling that it’s going to
+be all right. I mean, maybe I didn’t do too bad by you. Hell, there are
+plenty of colleges and sororities. You wouldn’t have to go far away. I
+could still see you.”
+
+A tear came down Mitch’s cheek. God help her, she thought. Oh, God help
+Leda. She needs help now.
+
+Leda saw the tear. She smiled, and her voice rose. “You crazy kid!
+You’re crying! You’re crying!” Her own tears came forward. “You got me
+crying too,” she said. “You crazy kid!”
+
+Leda reached for the ash tray and put the cigarette in it. The smoke
+spiraled up. Her face was wet, and she began to talk faster with the
+tears coming too. “Maybe you can see me again before you go. When are
+you going, Mitch?”
+
+“I don’t know,” Mitch said. “I’m not sure. It’s up to the Dean.”
+
+“You—you didn’t tell her about me? I wouldn’t blame you if you did. I
+want to know, though. Did you, Mitch?” The edge of her white cloth
+hospital gown was wet and the tears did not stop.
+
+“No,” Mitch said, “I didn’t tell her.” Please, God, she thought, forgive
+me for lying to her. There are enough lies.
+
+“I wouldn’t blame you, Mitch. I wouldn’t blame you if you hated my guts.
+You do, don’t you?”
+
+She began to laugh then, and to cry and sob, her shoulders shaking and
+her hands covering the wild expression of hysteria. Mitch kept saying,
+“I don’t hate you, Leda. No, I don’t hate you at all.”
+
+The thick sound from Leda cut into Mitch’s words and rang through the
+room, persistent and hammering. Mitch backed away, her heart throbbing,
+afraid to go near Leda while it kept up and Leda writhed in the sheets.
+Momentarily Leda’s hand left her face and she stared ahead, quietly,
+unmoving, but this lasted only a quick second and she lapsed back again,
+laughing and weeping, her whole body convulsed.
+
+Fear ran through Mitch, and when the nurse opened the door and took the
+needle over to Leda, Mitch looked back once more, and left the room
+remembering Leda like that.
+
+Dean Paterson was waiting outside, and her arm went around Mitch’s waist
+as they walked along the hall. Mitch could see the thin figure of Dr.
+Peters waiting at the end of the corridor, and she could smell the tangy
+odor of his tobacco.
+
+
+
+
+                             Chapter Twelve
+
+
+There was a warm sun that morning, and the air was so cold that the
+messenger boy could see his breath as he walked up the steps. He pushed
+the button and shuffled his feet and clapped his hands together after he
+laid the package beside him on the porch and waited for someone to
+answer the door.
+
+He could hear an alarm go off somewhere in the house. It was early in
+Greek Town, eight o’clock, and across the street at the Delta Pi house,
+the windows on the second and third floors were half open and the shades
+were down.
+
+A girl in a blue wool robe answered the door and signed for the package.
+The boy could see other girls through the door, filing lazily into a
+large dining room, wearing robes like the one this girl had on. He could
+smell bacon and eggs and hot coffee while he stood there waiting for her
+to put her signature on his pad. She handed it back to him, and he
+picked up the package and gave it to her. Then he hurried down the steps
+to his bicycle, and took off at a good speed.
+
+Bebe Duncan rapped on the door to Nessy’s suite.
+
+“It’s a package,” she said, “from Kansas City.”
+
+Inside, Nessy put the final touch to her dress, the small square-shaped
+pearl brooch. She was proud of the fact that she _never_ ate breakfast
+in a robe, that she was always dressed for the day by eight o’clock in
+the morning at the latest. She fluffed her hair and gave one last jab to
+her nose with the powder puff.
+
+“Coming,” she said, sliding the lock back and emerging from the room,
+her lilac perfume filling the hall where Bebe stood with the package.
+“We’ll bring it into the breakfast room.” She smiled, walking stanchly
+ahead and leaving Bebe to follow with it.
+
+There was a noisy scraping of chairs as the Tri Eps stood up when Mother
+Nesselbush entered beaming and walked regally to the head table, where
+she pushed her fat hips into the chair. They all sat down again, and
+watched Bebe bring the package and Nessy take a knife to the string.
+
+“I think,” she said, “that I know what this is.” She looked very secret,
+with her lips puckered in a cryptic expression of pleasure.
+
+The brown paper fell from the box and Nessy reached into it and pulled
+out rumpled sheets of white tissue and another box, a red one. She set
+it on the table and lifted the cover. The Tri Eps gasped and sighed. The
+silverware looked beautiful and brilliant against the red velvet
+background.
+
+“Gee,” Bebe Duncan said. “With Mitch gone, they might take it back now.”
+
+“No,” Nessy said, her eyes dazzled with the silver pieces, her mind
+filled with vivid pictures of intimate gatherings in her suite with the
+other housemothers, and the way they too would gasp and sigh when they
+saw it. “After all, we did what was asked. We pledged the girl and gave
+her a chance.”
+
+One by one the Tri Eps came by the table to touch the silver and run
+their fingers along the magnificent crest. They left their breakfast and
+hung around the table where the box lay.
+
+“We’ll use it for the exchange with Delta Pi next week,” Jane Bell said,
+holding a fork so that it caught the light and gleamed.
+
+“Lord, let’s not wait till then. How about Sunday dinner, tomorrow?”
+
+“It isn’t even out of the box yet.”
+
+“Look at the demitasse spoons!”
+
+“Now all we need is cups.”
+
+It was not long after she had opened the box that Mother Nesselbush was
+called to the phone. She left the girls in the dining room, exclaiming,
+fondling each piece, planning for its use, Marsha by that time advising
+all of them that they had better vote on whether to save it for special
+occasions or to use it every day. When Nessy entered the small phone
+booth outside the dining room, Marsha was asking for a show of hands.
+
+Mother Nesselbush’s face was strangely animated when she reappeared and
+stood in the entrance. There was a look of grimness, oddly striped with
+fascination and a secret pleasure at the thought of the shock she was
+about to introduce to Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon.
+
+“Girls,” she said. “Please—everybody.”
+
+They turned and faced her and she waited. She looked down at the
+tablecloth and the rows of dishes filled with cold eggs and curled
+pieces of bacon. It was very quiet. She said, “Dr. Peters just called
+from the University Hospital. Leda Taylor has had a complete nervous
+breakdown. Her mother arrived late last night, and Leda is completely
+out of control. Absolutely broken!”
+
+There was silence, and then the noise of the sudden rush of voices, and
+the fork that fell from Marsha’s hand and clattered to the floor. Mother
+Nesselbush held her hand up for silence. “We are to pack her things. I
+suggest that Marsha and Kitten come into my apartment immediately to
+make plans for this.”
+
+The three of them left the dining room, and left behind them the gabble
+of high voices and the low buzz of awed exclamations and the repetition
+of her name, “Leda!”
+
+Nessy shut the doors to her apartment and leaned forward, whispering as
+though her words could be heard through the walls. “I saw it coming,”
+she said. “When I talked to Dean Paterson yesterday I could feel it
+coming. She’ll have to go to an institution.”
+
+“Gee,” Kitten said. “Leda!”
+
+“I could just read into everything the doctor said when he called. I
+just know she’s a wild woman over there in that hospital. A wild woman!”
+
+“I wonder where she’ll be sent?” Marsha said.
+
+Nessy’s face was bubbling, and her eyes were shining as though she had
+fever. “She won’t have a thing to do with her mother. There’s only one
+place she could go. An _asylum_.” She said the word “asylum” with a
+heavy tone of dread, and a note of finality for Leda, almost as though
+she had said “the grave.”
+
+“Lord,” Kitten said. “Leda in a nut house. Lord!”
+
+Marsha looked away from them and toward the window and the leaves
+running along the front of the house. She said, “As Tri Epsilons we must
+do everything we can for her. I wonder,” she said dramatically, pausing,
+her brow wrinkled, “I wonder if—if insane people can read mail.”
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dr. Peters lingered in the hall near the door as Susan Mitchell buttoned
+her coat and put her scarf around her head. “Then I’ll see you on
+Tuesday,” he said, taking her hand in a friendly good-by, “and have a
+nice week end, Susan. Any big plans?”
+
+“I’m going on a hay ride tonight. Robin and Tom and Lucifer and me.
+That’s about all I’ve planned.”
+
+He let her hand go and smiled as he held the door open. “Sounds like
+fun,” he answered. “By, Susan.”
+
+It was cold and there was a warning of snow in the fresh sweep of the
+breeze as Mitch walked along the path from the hospital. She had a clean
+feeling that was there whenever she finished talking with Dr. Peters,
+and she knew she was whole now. The tower bell struck five times, and
+distant figures of students carrying books hurried along the far walks,
+their breaths frosting faintly in the cold air. When she went by the
+auditorium, she could hear the university choir rehearsing for the
+Christmas pageant, and the nostalgic strains drifted out to her. Dusk
+was dressing the campus, and as Mitch walked with the music in her
+heart, she thought of Leda—hazily, as though she were someone she had
+known a long, long time ago.
+
+She knew that if it had been any other way—if Leda Taylor could have
+been helped, and could have at that moment walked there too and known
+the peace in the twilight and the first hints of frost on the grass and
+bushes surrounding Cranston—Mitch would have wanted that. Because it was
+true what she had told Leda yesterday. She didn’t hate her. She didn’t
+hate her at all, and she knew then that she had never really loved her.
+
+
+                                The End
+
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+                       _Don’t miss these big new_
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+   RIVER GIRL by Charles Williams
+
+   The story of a man and a woman who met and knew instantly that
+   they were meant for each other. Caught in the torment of desire,
+   they made each second count in a love that had no tomorrow. A
+   masterful novel of stark passions in the back country of the
+   South, by the author of HILL GIRL and BIG CITY GIRL.
+
+
+   THUNDERCLAP by Jack Sheridan
+
+   “Thunderclap is a powerful story with plenty of naturalistic talk
+   on the rawest physical level, but kept authentic, moving, and
+   revealing. It is a love story, in fact two love stories, for the
+   unorthodox love of Rigger and Ruby is as deep as the quiet love
+   of Britt and Marcy.”
+
+                     —Burton Rascoe, Distinguished American Critic.
+
+
+   DEEP IS THE PIT by H. Vernor Dixon
+
+   The beautiful, aristocratic Karen Stannard had married Marty Lee.
+   Too late, she found, under his polished manner and his easy
+   smile, a cold-blooded assassin. A man hunted by the women he had
+   ruined and by the police he had defied. By the author of the
+   best-selling Gold Medal Giant TO HELL TOGETHER.
+
+
+   THE DEVIL’S MISTRESS by Kenneth Thomas
+
+   Even in her tortured childhood, Rose Laning was marked for a life
+   of soaring passion and sinking despair. Where she gave pleasure,
+   she brought disgrace, until at last she stood before a jury. The
+   charge was murder.
+
+
+   HANDSOME by Theodore Pratt
+
+   “Recently, Theodore Pratt explored the phenomenon of nymphomania
+   in his novel THE TORMENTED. Now, in HANDSOME, he reveals the
+   motivation, the psychology, and the conduct of the insatiate
+   male. Again the author has produced a book which enlightens as it
+   intrigues.”
+
+                                          —Dr. Richard H. Hoffmann,
+                                Internationally Famed Psychiatrist.
+
+     In case your dealer cannot supply you, send 35c for each copy
+         desired, plus 5c per book for handling and mailing to
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+                            GOLD MEDAL BOOKS
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+
+
+                        FAMOUS GOLD MEDAL NOVELS
+
+        If you have missed any of these memorable books we’ll be
+                 glad to send any of them to you direct
+
+         Simply follow the directions at the end of this list.
+
+
+   109. AWAKENING OF JENNY Lillian Colter
+
+   Jenny had never found satisfaction in love. This story of her
+   search might be any woman’s secret.
+
+
+   119. THE TORMENTED Theodore Pratt
+
+   Zona was a nymphomaniac. She wanted to be a good wife, but she
+   couldn’t. A delicate subject, masterfully told.
+
+
+   132. WOMEN’S BARRACKS Tereska Torres
+
+   Intimate personal revelations of a member of the Free French
+   women’s army. A factual account of women in war.
+
+
+   141. HILL GIRL Charles Williams
+
+   Angelina was born to trouble—and most of it was men. A novel of
+   primitive passions by a brilliant new writer.
+
+
+   142. JEWEL OF THE JAVA SEA Dan Cushman
+
+   The exotic adventures of a lusty soldier of fortune in the lotus
+   land of the tropical South Pacific.
+
+
+   157. WESTPORT LANDING Homer Hatten
+
+   The lusty, brawling days of the Santa Fe Trail. With the most
+   memorable characters since Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara.
+
+
+   163. BIG CITY GIRL Charles Williams
+
+   Joy didn’t belong in the back country. She was too bold and too
+   brassy. Besides her husband was in jail and she was manhungry.
+
+
+   167. THE JUDAS HOUR Howard Hunt
+
+   She saved him from degradation. But she was evil beyond belief
+   and she would betray him as quickly. By the author of The Violent
+   Ones.
+
+
+   171. I, MOBSTER Anonymous
+
+   From the gutter of Rivington Street to the luxury of Park Avenue,
+   this personal account of the rise of a crime czar begins where
+   the Kefauver Committee left off.
+
+
+   176. CROCKETT’S WOMAN Eric Hatch
+
+   He was from the wrong side of the tracks. She was the idle rich.
+   Their love was torture and ecstasy. By the author of My Man
+   Godfrey.
+
+
+   178. CABIN ROAD John Faulkner
+
+   A slice of the lusty passionate back country life that made
+   Tobacco Road a classic. John Faulkner’s best book.
+
+
+   183. ... AND BE MY LOVE Ledru Baker, Jr.
+
+   They tried all pleasures and they knew all pain. Here is one of
+   the most frankly told love stories to appear on our list.
+
+
+   189. CASSIDY’S GIRL David Goodis
+
+   Mildred Cassidy was a lusty woman who knew what she wanted—and
+   how she wanted it. A salty, elemental novel of the waterfront.
+
+
+   190. FIRES THAT DESTROY Harry Whittington
+
+   She brought death to one man that she might live with another. A
+   relentless search into the soul of a sinful woman.
+
+
+   197. THE LADY AND THE CHEETAH John Flagg
+
+   When the most beautiful woman in Europe offered Rafferty a job,
+   he figured he was in luck. He was in luck, but none of it was
+   good.
+
+
+   200. WEEP FOR ME John D. MacDonald
+
+   Emily loved money as other women love men. To satisfy her
+   craving, she seduced Cameron, drained from him his manhood, his
+   morals, and his soul.
+
+
+   202. THE UNPOSSESSED William H. Fielding
+
+   Her every word, her every gesture promised delight. Yet she
+   fought like a hellcat any man who touched her.
+
+
+   204. DEATH FOR MR. BIG John Gonzales
+
+   On her wedding night they took her husband from her bed and shot
+   him. But she had weapons of revenge. A beautiful face. A lovely
+   body.
+
+
+   209. FOOLS WALK IN Bruno Fischer
+
+   She was running for her life when Knight picked her up on the
+   highway and gave her a lift. He didn’t know what she was then ...
+   and later he didn’t care.
+
+
+   211. 13 FRENCH STREET Gil Brewer
+
+   Alex came to visit his friend, who was mysteriously ill. He could
+   not know that the sickness was in the soul of a woman—his
+   friend’s wife.
+
+
+   213. THE GOLDEN WOMAN Eric Hatch
+
+   In proud, exotic Haiti, Walter Moore fell in love with a woman
+   who was a part of the land’s passionate nature, whose body awoke
+   to the beat of the voodoo drums. By the author of Crockett’s
+   Woman.
+
+
+   215. CONQUEST Homer Hatten
+
+   Clay Farrar came out of Missouri seeking a peace he was not to
+   find. Hard men with guns changed his plans. And beautiful Toni
+   O’Neill. The story of the man who tamed Texas, by the author of
+   Westport Landing.
+
+
+   218. HERE IS MY BODY Booth Mooney
+
+   Renie helped her man climb to success. The rungs of the ladder
+   she used were made of the bodies of her lovers—men who thought
+   they had conquered her.
+
+
+   219. THE SHELTERING NIGHT Steve Fisher
+
+   Ronnie was a saint by day, a sinner by night. A perpetual
+   temptation to every man, a soul-searing torment to herself. By
+   the author of Destination Tokyo.
+
+
+   221. THE FORBIDDEN ROOM Jaclen Steele
+
+   All her life, she had lived in fear and fascination of the room.
+   At last she was to learn its depraved secrets. A novel of
+   haunting terror.
+
+
+   222. SPRING FIRE Vin Packer
+
+   A novel of love between two beautiful women. Honest, provocative,
+   it deals with a theme too important to keep from the light.
+
+
+   224. TEARS ARE FOR ANGELS Paul Connolly
+
+   What happens when a man finds his wife in another’s arms in his
+   own bedroom? Harry London knew, and this is his story. By the
+   author of Get Out of Town.
+
+     In case your local dealer cannot supply you, send 25 cents for
+       each copy desired, plus 5 cents per book for handling and
+                              mailing, to
+
+                            GOLD MEDAL BOOKS
+                    Fawcett Place, Greenwich, Conn.
+
+
+
+
+                          Transcriber’s Notes
+
+
+The original spelling was mostly preserved. A few obvious typographical
+and punctuation errors as well as variations in hyphenation were
+silently amended. All other changes are shown here (before/after):
+
+   [p. 42]:
+   ... “I’m sorry, Leda,” she said finally. “I’m awful
+       sorry I ...
+   ... “I’m sorry, Leda,” she said finally. “I’m awfully
+       sorry I ...
+
+   [p. 54]:
+   ... of sight. Across the streets the Delta Pi’s were staging a ...
+   ... of sight. Across the street the Delta Pi’s were staging a ...
+
+   [p. 61]:
+   ... large fraternity pin on Kitten’s bosom. They they danced ...
+   ... large fraternity pin on Kitten’s bosom. Then they danced ...
+
+   [p. 104]:
+   ... the spoons on the plate. Mother Muriel had a knowing ...
+   ... the spoons on the plates. Mother Muriel had a knowing ...
+
+   [p. 153]:
+   ... and shook it. They they all saw Leda. The glass in the ...
+   ... and shook it. Then they all saw Leda. The glass in the ...
+
+   [p. 157]:
+   ... Susan was sent home, or what become of her. In that case, ...
+   ... Susan was sent home, or what became of her. In that case, ...
+
+   [p. 164]:
+   ... edge on her words were not obvious to Robin. ...
+   ... edge on her words was not obvious to Robin. ...
+
+   [p. 165]:
+   ... The afternoon went easy. Mitch forgot a lot with ...
+   ... The afternoon went easily. Mitch forgot a lot with ...
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 79013 ***