Women In The Shadow. Ann Bannon
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“You need a real man,” Laura said softly. “Not a bunch of daydreams at the office. That’s enough to drive anybody nuts. You worry me, Jack.”
“Good.” He smiled and squeezed her arm. “Now I’ll tell you what I really need.” He looked at her through his sharp eyes set in that plain face Laura had come to love and find attractive. “I don’t need a man, Laura,” he said. “I’m too damn old to run after pretty boys anymore. I look like a middle-aged fool, which is exactly what I am. When Terry left me, I was through.”
“Do you still love him? Even after what he did?”
“I won’t talk about him,” he said simply. “I can’t. But he was the last one. The end. I want a woman now. I want you, Laura.” He turned away abruptly, embarrassed, but his hand remained on her arm.
Laura was touched. “Jack,” she said very gently. “I’m a Lesbian. Even if you renounce men, I can’t renounce women. I won’t even try.”
“There was a time when you were willing to try.”
“That was a million years ago. I wasn’t the same Laura I am now. I said that before I even met Beebo—when another girl was giving me hell, and I was new to the game and to New York and so afraid of everything.”
“So now you know the ropes and you’re absolutely sure you’d rather give your life away to the goddamn tourists and a woman you don’t love than come and live with a man you do love.”
“Jack, darling, I love you, but I don’t love you with my body. I love you with my heart and soul but I could never let you make love to me.”
“I could never do it, either,” he said quietly. “You’re no gayer than I am, Laura. If we married it would never be a physical union, you know that.” Somewhere far back in his mind the sweet shadow of that little dream child hovered, but he suppressed it, lighting a cigarette quickly. His fingers shook.
“If it wasn’t a physical union, what would it be?” Laura asked. “Just small talk and community property and family-plan fares?”
He smiled. “Sounds a little empty, doesn’t it?”
“Jack,” Laura said, speaking with care so as not to hurt him, “you’re forty-five and life looks a little different to you now. I’m only twenty-three and I can’t give up my body so casually. I could never make you promises I couldn’t keep.”
“I wouldn’t ask that promise of you, Laura,” he said.
“You mean I could bring girls home? To our home, yours and mine? Any girls, any time? And it would be all right?”
“Let’s put it this way,” he said. “If you fell in love with somebody, I’d be understanding. I’d welcome her to the house, and I’d get the hell out when you wanted a little privacy. I’d keep strict hands off and just one shoulder for you to cry on. As long as you really loved her and it wasn’t cheap or loud or dirty, I’d respect it.”
He knocked the ashes off the tip of his cigarette thoughtfully. “… Only,” he said, “you’d be my wife. And you’d come home at night and tuck me in and you’d be there in the morning to see me off.” He sounded so peculiarly gentle and yearning that she was convinced that he meant it. But she was not ready to give in.
Laura smiled at him. “What would there be in all this for you, Jack?” she said. “Just getting tucked in at night? Is that enough compensation?”
“Nobody ever tucked me in before.” He said it with a grin but she sensed that it was true.
“And breakfast in the morning?”
“Wonderful! You don’t know what a difference it would make.”
“That’s nothing, Jack, compared to what you’d be giving me.”
“You’d be my wife, Laura, my honest-to-God lawful legal wife. You’d give me a home. You don’t know what that would mean to me. I’ve been living in rented rooms since I was out of diapers. You’d give me a place to rest in and be proud of, and a purpose in life. What the hell good am I to myself? What use is an aging fag with a letch for hopelessly bored, hopelessly handsome boys? Christ, I give myself the creeps. I give the boys the creeps. And you know something? They’re beginning to give me the creeps. I’m so low I can’t go any place but up. If you’ll say yes.”
“What if I did? What about Beebo?” Laura said softly, as if the name might suddenly conjure up her lover, jealous and vengeful.
“It would solve everything,” he said positively. “She could still see you, but you wouldn’t be her property anymore. It’s bad for her to have the idea she owns you, but that’s the way she treats you. If you were my wife she’d have to respect the situation. It would be a kind way to break with her,” he added slyly. He was feeling too selfish to waste sympathy on Beebo now.
Laura thought it over. There was no one she respected more than Jack, and her love for him, born of gratitude and affection, was real. But it was not the love of a normal woman for a normal man she felt for him, and the idea of marrying him frightened her.
“Do you think, if we married, we could keep our love for each other intact, Jack?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Even if I were having an affair?” She was thinking at that moment of Tris Robischon, the lovely, lithe Indian girl.
“Yes. I told you ‘yes.’”
Laura finished her beer in silence, gazing into the mirror over the bar and pondering. She knew she would say no. But she didn’t quite know how. “I can’t, Jack,” she said at last, in a small voice.
“Not now, maybe?” He wouldn’t give up.
“Never.”
“Never say never, Mother. Say ‘not now’ or something.”
She did, obediently. But she added, “We’d quarrel and we’d end up destroying our love for each other.”
“We’d quarrel, hell yes. I wouldn’t feel properly married if we didn’t.”
“And there’s always the chance that you’d fall in love. And regret that you married me.”
He turned to her with a little smile and shook his head. “Never,” he said. “And this once it’s the right word.” He took her hands. “Say yes.”
“No.”
“Say maybe.”
“No.”
“Say you’ll think about it, Laura. Say it, honey.”
And out of love and reluctance to hurt him, she whispered, “I’ll think about it.”
Laura was walking up Greenwich Avenue, searching for number 251. She had a small white card in her hand to which she referred occasionally, although she had memorized the address. It was a hot day, late in the afternoon, and she had just come from work, wilted and worn and bored. The idea of going home right away depressed her and she had decided to walk a little.
She hadn’t gone two blocks before she was daydreaming of Tris Robischon and suddenly shivering with the thought of seeing her again.
Beebo wouldn’t be home until nine o’clock that evening, and Tris’s studio address was only a short distance from the shop where Laura worked. All at once she was walking fast.
She found the address with no trouble at all. In fact it was almost too easy, and before she knew it she was standing in the first floor hallway of the modest building reading the names on the mailboxes. TRIS ROBISCHON. There it was. Third floor, Apartment C. Laura climbed the stairs.
What will I say to her! she asked herself. How in God’s name will I explain this visit? Ask her for a dance lesson? Me? She had to smile