Journey To A Woman. Ann Bannon
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up good manners, and she was automatically friendly.
For four months Beth slept and ate and lazed around the house. It was delicious to be waited on, to have civilized cocktails in the afternoon, to let somebody else pick Polly up when the colic got her. To go out for whole evenings of food and glittering entertainment and know there were a dozen capable baby-sitters at home. Beth refused to join her husband in California until she threw him into a rage.
She realized with something like a shock that she didn’t miss Charlie’s love-making at all. She missed Charlie, in a sort of pleasant blurry way, and she loved to talk about him over a cold whiskey and water, laughing gently at the faults that drove her frantic when they were together. But when she heard his anger and hurt on the telephone it came to her as a surprise, as if she would never learn it once and for all, that a man’s feelings are urgent, even painful. She remembered feeling it like that once, long ago, in college. Was it Charlie, was it really Charlie that did it to her? Or was it somebody else, somebody tall and slight and blonde with soft blue eyes, who used to sit on the studio couch in their room at the sorority house and gaze at her?
Charlie was in a sweat of bad-tempered impatience when she finally, reluctantly, agreed to come out and resume their marriage.
Marriages would all be perfect if the husband and wife could live two thousand miles apart, she thought. For the wife, anyway.
And Charlie missed the kids. “He misses them!” she cried aloud, sardonically. But she knew if they were far away she would miss them too. She would love them at her leisure. They would begin to seem beautiful and perfect and she would forgive them their dirty diapers and midnight squalling sessions.
It scared her sometimes to think of this streak in herself; this quirk that made her want to love at a distance. The only person she had ever loved up close, with an abandoned delight in the contact, was … Laura. Laura Landon. A girl.
Charlie drove her home from the International Airport in Los Angeles. He was bursting with excitement, with things to say, with kisses and relief and swallowed resentments.
“How’s business?” she asked him when they were all safely in the car.
“Honey, it’s great. It’s everything I told you on the phone, only better. We did the right thing. You’ll love California. And I have a great idea, it’ll sell in the millions, it’s—oh, Beth, Jesus, you’re so beautiful I can’t stand it.” And he pulled over to the side of the road, to the noisy alarm of the car behind him, and kissed her while Skipper punched him in the stomach. He laughed and kept on kissing her and they were both suddenly filled with a hot need for each other that left them breathless. Beth felt a whole year’s worth of little defeats and frustrations fade and she wished powerfully that the children would both fall providentially asleep for five minutes. She was amazed at herself.
They got home after an hour’s driving on and off the freeways. It was a small town just east of Pasadena: Sierra Bella. It was cozy and old and very pretty, skidding down from the mountains, with props and stilts under the oldest houses.
It was quite dark when they drove into their own garage and Beth couldn’t see the house very well. But the great purple presence behind them was a mountain and it awed and pleased her. She was used to the flat plains and cornfields of the Midwest. Below them were visible the lights of the San Gabriel Valley: a whole carpet of sparklers winking through the night from San Bernardino to the shores of the Pacific.
“Like it?” Charlie said, putting an arm around her.
“It’s gorgeous. Is it this pretty in the daytime?”
“Depends on the smog.” He grinned.
Inside the house she was less impressed. It was clean. But so small, so cramped! He sensed her feelings.
“Well, it’s not like Lake Shore Drive. Uncle John could have done better, no doubt,” he said.
“It’s—lovely,” she managed, with a smile.
“It’s just till we get a little ahead, honey,” he said quickly.
Beth fed the children and put them to bed with Charlie’s help. And then he pulled her down on their own bed, without even giving her time to take her clothes off. For fifteen minutes, in their quiet room, they talked intimately and Charlie stroked her and began to kiss her, sighing with relief and pleasure.
Suddenly Skipper yelled. Bellyache. Too much excitement on the plane. Beth jumped up in a spitting anger and Charlie had to calm the little boy as best he could.
Beth was surprised at herself. She was tired and she had had an overdose of children that day. And still she responded to Charlie with a sort of wondering happiness. She didn’t want anything to intrude on it or spoil it. Maybe this was the beginning of a new understanding between them, a better life, even a really happy one.
A half hour later Skipper woke again. Scared. New room, new bed, new house. And when Beth, nervous and impatient, finally got him down again, Polly woke up.
Beth’s temper broke, hard. “Damn them!” she cried. “Oh, damn them! They’ve practically ruined my life. They’re driving me nuts, Charlie, they’ll end up killing me. The one night we get back together after all these months—” she began to cry, choking on her self-pity and outrage—“those miserable kids have to spoil it.”
“Beth,” Charlie said, grasping her shoulders. His voice was stern and calm. “Nothing can spoil it, darling. Get a grip on yourself.”
Polly’s angry little voice rose over Charlie’s and Beth screamed, “One of these days I’ll croak her! I will! I will!”
And suddenly Charlie, who adored his children, got mad himself. “Beth, can’t you go for a whole hour without losing your temper at those kids!” he demanded. “What do you expect of them? Skipper isn’t even two years old. Polly’s a babe in arms. Good God, how do you want them to act? Like a pair of old ladies? Would that make you happy?”
“Now you’re angry!” she screamed.
He clasped his arms against his sides in an expression of exasperation. “You were in love with me five minutes ago,” he said.
Beth didn’t know quite what had gotten into her. She was tired, worn out from the trip and the emotions, fed up with the kids. She had wanted him, coming home in the car. Now all she wanted was a hot bath and sleep.
She walked out of the bedroom and slammed the door behind her. But Charlie swung it open at once and followed her, turning her roughly around at the door to the bathroom.
“What’s that little act supposed to mean?” he said.
She stared at him and the kids continued to chorus their sorrows in screechy little voices. Charlie’s big hands hurt her tender arms and his eyes and voice had gone flat.
“I won’t argue,” she said, her voice high and shaky. “I won’t argue with you. You don’t understand anything about me. You never have understood me!”
He looked into her flushed face and answered coolly, “You never have understood yourself, Beth. If you knew who you really were it wouldn’t be so hard for me to know you. Or anybody else.”
That infuriated her. She hated to be told that she didn’t know herself and it was one of the things Charlie always told her when he was mad at her. She hated it the worse because it was true.
“You lie!” she cried. “You bastard!”
Charlie pushed her back against the wall, so hard that her head snapped and hit the plaster with a stuffy thump. He kissed her. He was not very nice about it.
“If you think you’re going to make love to me, tonight, after the way you’ve just been acting—” she panted furiously at him, struggling to free herself— “if you think I’ve come two thousand miles just to let you rape me—”
“You shut up,” he said harshly, and kissed her again. He nearly crushed