Chapter VI: Part 6

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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