Girls' Dormitory (17 page)

"She was the purest woman I ever knew. And what did it get her? Young and dead, that's what." Otis Markey thumped on the table. "Hey, waiter! Buzz around here and sting us again."

When her father went to the men's room eventually Peggy took the opportunity to talk to Helen.

"Leave him alone," she said.

"What?"

"I said, leave him alone."

Helen had opened her compact and was fixing her lipstick.

"Who's bothering who?" she demanded, biting down on a tissue. "I didn't start anything."

"Maybe you didn't, but I told you what he's like. That was why I wanted you to come with us. I didn't expect this."

Helen shrugged.

"So what?"

"I don't like it, that's all."

"He's having fun."

"He's always having fun."

Helen inspected her lips again in the mirror.

"Besides," she said, "he's a nice guy. I don't think you appreciate him."

"But I do."

"You don't show it."

"Because I don't drink?"

"That and other things. You're old enough to know that a man has to horse around a little bit or he doesn't feel like a man."

"He's my father."

"Does that make him any different?"

"Well—"

"Look," Helen said, leaning across the table. "He likes me and I like him. You want us to hate each other?"

"No, but—"

"You stay out of it, then. Just leave us alone."

But Peggy was determined.

"You don't know my father," she said. "A smile and a few drinks means more to him than just that smile and a few drinks.

"It does to a lot of men."

Peggy was confused. "Don't you care?"

"Frankly, no."

"But—"

"But nothing. You keep out of this."

"I don't have to."

"Yes, you do."

"Why?"

Helen smiled and leaned forward slightly. "You were my lover," she said quietly. "Don't forget that. Your father wouldn't think you were so pure if he knew about the hours we spent making love."

Peggy could hardly speak.

"You wouldn't!" she gasped.

"Why wouldn't I? I have everything to gain and nothing to lose."

Caught, Peggy thought; caught in the web she had helped build. She felt angry and amazed, but completely helpless. She wondered, vaguely, if Helen was one of those bisexuals she had read about. She didn't know, and she didn't care. She just wished that she could take back and destroy that one part of her life she had so innocently given.

"I'll never forgive you," Peggy whispered viciously. "Never!"

Helen laughed.

When Otis Markey returned to the table he started telling jokes, and many of them were coarse and vulgar. Peggy didn't so much as smile, but Helen laughed at every one he told. She no longer cared about the ever-lowering front of her dress, and when she spilled some of her drink she let him wipe it away with the edge of a napkin.

"Let's go back to the college," Peggy said. "I'd like you to meet the dean."

"To hell with the dean," her father said and waved for another round of stingers. "A dean in a joint like that couldn't hold down a study hall in a regular college."

"You know it," Helen agreed.

"Well, you go there," Peggy reminded Helen.

"Not through choice."

Peggy had another ginger ale but she couldn't keep up with them. Her father's forehead glistened with perspiration, and Helen's eyes were very bright.

"Let's go somewhere interesting," Helen suggested.

Peggy's father was all for it.

"Where?"

"I don't know. Any place."

"Not out to the college?"

"No. That's for stiffs."

"You get my vote."

Peggy tried to convince them to go out to the school but her efforts met with no success.

"I'll send them a check," her father said. "I'll send them a big fat check and tell them I couldn't find the place, it was so small."

"Dad!"

Her father stood up. "You coming with us?"

"Maybe she doesn't want to," Helen said, getting to her feet. Her face was darkly flushed and she was slightly unsteady.

"It's up to you," Otis Markey said.

"You coming, Peggy?"

"No."

"How will you get back to the house?"

"Don't worry about me. I know where it is."

"You don't have to be nasty about it."

"I can't help that."

After they had gone Peggy remained sitting at the table for a long time. She felt like crying. The very thing for which she had left home had followed her. And what she had done with her own life made the entire situation worse. Did every girl go through the same growing up period? Did every girl experience a twilight love which, even with its share of ugliness, was tinged with a certain indescribable beauty? Some did, she guessed. Many of those were able enough to change in time and become a woman like every other, but others, she knew, remained loving their own sex for the rest of their lives. She was one of the lucky ones.

"Drink, Miss?"

"I don't know."

"You can't just sit here. The boss doesn't like it."

"What do you drink with brandy?"

"Soda, mostly."

"Then bring me a brandy and soda."

When the waiter brought the drink she offered to pay for it but he refused.

"The gentleman left an extra ten. He said to give you anything you wanted."

Money, she thought; money was one of the few things that meant very much to her father. Women and drink were the other things. And he had to have more than his share of all three. He had to have them in huge quantities, and have them constantly. He was like a vulture hunting a desert sky. Anything he saw he took. Anything.

Peggy was on her third drink when she decided to call Jerry. She had to have somebody to talk to, somebody to confide in.

"Hello. Reid's."

The voice belonged to Thelma Reid.

"Could I speak to Jerry?"

"Who is this?"

"Peggy. Peggy Markey."

There was a slight pause.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Jerry isn't here."

"Oh."

She hung up and returned to the table. That had been a foolish thing to do, a very foolish thing. Jerry didn't care about her any more. She had given herself to Jerry at the lake and as soon as that was done she had lost him, lost him forever. But she still did not regret their love-making.

She had found the woman in herself that day, and for this she was grateful. Someday she would find a man, a man like Jerry, and she would love him the way a woman was supposed to love a man. Oh, someday…

Peggy came back to Mrs. Reid's shortly after dark. The living room was empty, and when she walked through to the kitchen she found no one in there, either.

She opened the cellar door.

"Jerry!"

Silence greeted her. "Jerry!"

She heard somebody moving around down in the cellar.

"What?"

"Jerry, it's Peggy."

She thought she heard him swear but she couldn't be sure.

"What are you doing here?" he asked. "You're supposed to be at the college."

"My father wouldn't go."

Jerry flipped on a switch and light flooded the cellar. He was at the bottom of the stairs, looking up.

"You're crying," he said gently.

She nodded.

"Is it because of me?"

"Partly."

"Where is your father?"

"He's with Helen Lee."

"That's not so good."

"It was terrible."

He started up the stairs and stopped.

"You can come down," he said.

"What about Mrs. Reid?"

"She went to the college to tell them what a wonderful place she runs."

"Are you sure?"

"That's what she said."

She knew she shouldn't go down there, but she also knew something else. She desperately needed somebody close and understanding.

"All right," she said, going down the steps. "But you're going to hate me."

"I won't hate you," Jerry assured her. "I'll love you."

And he did, wonderfully and violently, there in that little room near the furnace.

"I'm jealous," she said later.

"Of whom?"

"The others."

"Don't be. It was never like this."

"Never?"

"Nor this."

Once more he loved her, completely, fully and magnificently.

Afterward, when she went up to the attic, she hardly noticed the two girls lying in. one bed, wrapped in each other's arms. She felt only something like pity for them. They didn't know what it was all about. They just didn't.

She smiled secretly.

But she did.

The cops were after him and Jerry knew it. He had taken a drink in Mrs. Lopez' apartment and his fingerprints had been found on the glass. The cops were running the owner of the fingerprints down; the paper said they were.

"I didn't know the man," Mrs. Lopez was quoted as saying. "He came to the house, first alone and then with the girl, but he didn't give his name. I don't think they were married and he gave the impression that he was just trying to help her. He gave me the money—three hundred dollars—and left. I didn't ever see him again after that.”

Mrs. Lopez had been caught. She had dropped her pocketbook near Evelyn's body and it had been traced.

"I didn't want to do it," Mrs. Lopez insisted. "It was a bad thing and I knew it was a bad thing. But she cried a lot and said I just had to help her. I tried. But I didn't know she was that far gone, or I never would have touched her, so help me. She started to bleed, and I couldn't stop it. And she died. She wasn't very strong. She was just a kid and I feel worse than anybody about what happened."

Of course, Mrs. Lopez was guilty and she would get a prison sentence; that was a foregone conclusion. The Grand Jury had been swift to indict her and now she was awaiting trial.

"We want the man," one of the police told the newspaper. "We want to talk to him because he might be able to tell us a lot that we don't know. And the man is as guilty as Mrs. Lopez. He took the girl to that apartment and she died."

Jerry couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, couldn't think. He didn't even want to drink. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw Evelyn as she had been that day, tiny and afraid, her eyes big and round, the hand on his arm shaking as they walked up the steps of the apartment house together.

"Jerry," she had suddenly said, "thank you for helping me and forgive me for forcing you. There wasn't any other way or I wouldn't have done it."

"It's okay, Evelyn. Okay."

"Pray for me, Jerry," she had said.

"I will."

He had gone into the apartment, paid the woman, had a drink and left. The next thing he knew about Evelyn was when he found out that her body had been found. Mrs. Lopez had been picked up almost immediately. She had remembered the unwashed glass and the fact that his fingerprints must still be on it.

"We'll catch him," the police promised.

And they would.

His fingerprints were on file with the army in Washington and it was only a matter of time before the authorities knew, before they came for him and took him away.

What would they do to him?

He didn't know. Few people, if any, would believe his almost incredible story about having been blackmailed into helping Evelyn. Now that he looked back on it, now that he thought of it, he hardly believed it himself. He had been a fool, an utter fool, and before very long he would have to pay for his stupidity.

"You do hardly anything any more," Mrs. Reid complained. "You don't even sweep out the cellar."

"I swept it out."

"When?"

"Three or four days ago."

"You're supposed to do it every day."

She was on his back all the time. There were a million and one things lined up for him to do, so many things that sometimes he felt like slapping her. And her drinking didn't help matters any. She wasn't so bad when she was sober but drunk she was almost impossible.

"You didn't make your bed."

"I didn't get a chance."

"What chance? Five minutes? Every bed in this house has to be made every morning. The girls make theirs and you have to make yours."

"Okay, okay."

"Well, see that you do from now on."

And the nights were worse than the days. Whenever he could borrow the Chrysler, he saw Peggy. They met downtown on one of the street corners, and they just rode around, talking. Sometimes they did more than just talk, but not often. He felt too guilty every time he touched her.

"You're lovely," he would say.

"And you're lovely, too."

"Am I?"

"Yes."

"You never used to think so."

"That was before all this. That was before I knew what love could be."

Peggy's father had stayed on in Youngsville and was seeing Helen almost every night. Peggy said little about it at first, except that she didn't approve. But on Wednesday night, riding along the river front with Jerry, she had much more to say about it.

"My father has flipped his lid," she said.

"How come?"

"He picked me up at the school and drove me down to his hotel. He practically told me that he was going to ask Helen to marry him."

Jerry nearly ran the car off the road.

"He must be nuts!"

"He is. She's nobody for him."

"Not at all."

"I know Helen. We used to talk to each other a lot. Her one ambition is to marry somebody with money and get all the things she wants."

"And your father's got money."

Peggy nodded. "He's very rich, Jerry."

"That lets me out."

Her glance was concerned. "Why?"

"With you. I couldn't buy dollar bills if they were selling for a nickel each."

She moved close to him.

"Don't let it worry you," she said. "It doesn't bother me at all."

"It does me."

"I don't know why. People often marry someone with more money than they have. It doesn't mean anything."

"I make forty a week." He laughed. "Plus room and board."

"But you don't always have to work for forty a week."

"No? What else could I do?"

"There are other things, lots of things. My father never got past high school and look what he's done for himself."