Spring Fire Page 12

  "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 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.

  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 the intruders' 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. I've got to stop them before they tell anybody else."

  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 in here, 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. Besides 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, 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 naive."

  "She didn't look naive 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."

  "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 pr
obably 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 Patterson 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.