Unlike Others (3 page)

"I thought nothing was ever going to happen again?"

"Well, I don't know what it can be, but I'm willing to admit there might be something."

Richard looked uneasy. Jo said kindly, "We really ought to go pretty soon. Is Michael downtown already?"

"He's coming down a little early, but it doesn't make any difference. Let me get you something to eat."

Jo tipped her glass to get the last of her drink. "I ought to get home early myself. And Richard, thanks again."

"Think nothing of it. I'd do anything I could for you."

"Me too," Jo said. They got up and walked around a little cluster of people just coming in. "You're a good guy," she said gratefully.

"You're pretty okay yourself. I think everything's going to come out all right for you."

"Sure." She blinked at the late-afternoon daylight, just beginning to pale. "Only tell me one thing, will you?"

"What's that?"

"Considering everything," Jo said, "why in hell do they call us gay?"

CHAPTER 3

But what else could you call it? she wondered, getting out of her clothes slowly. The gin had cleared her mind but was making her fingers a little stiff and slow. All the words people use for us seem so—ishy, somehow. Dirty, like something out of a medical book, Greek and Latin names for diseases. Which is what Karen's doctor thinks it is, she admitted, placing her gray skirt on a hanger and then putting the hanger away carefully in the closet.

Homosexual. Like klepto or dipso. Don't call me a homosexual unless you want your face pushed in. Not that I mind being one. It's a long, long time since I was sixteen and that girl in my gym class asked me home to spend the night, and I found out there was something better than smooching with boys in parked cars. Allene, or Eileen or something like that.

I'm like anybody else, medium intelligent, a good editor, I like to cook, I look like a lot of other people—hell, I'm exactly like a thousand other girls, except I like making love to women instead of men. So what? It's my own private business.

She unbuttoned her blouse and tossed it into the hamper. I don't seduce teen-agers, she continued her mental inventory, I don't pick people up, I'm not promiscuous. I tell the truth and pay my bills promptly. I do an honest day's work in return for my pay. They ought to have a better name for people like me.

Nylons and panty girdle followed the blouse into the hamper. She stood in front of the long bathroom mirror, naked, and gave her reflection one of those searching inspections. It was a good enough body, slender and solid, slim of hip, with small but adequate breasts and a nice line from waist to knee. The body of an adolescent girl, at twenty-eight, yet soundly female.

The girl in the tan bermudas had been built like a boy, with wide shoulders and muscular legs. Not Jo. She and Karen, on one of their few evenings out, could have been meeting to nice young men for a double date.

She could see why the boys she knew, especially, had settled on "gay" as the least offensive word. It had a good go-to-hell sound. But there were all these times between lovers—they were about as un-gay as anything could possibly be. And even when you were most in love there was the knowledge that the rending lay ahead, hope as you might.

Monogamy? She knew one couple who had been together six years, stable hard-working girls with half a dozen interests in common. Dina and Olive were buying a house in the suburbs. They were the only ones.

Straight husbands and wives changed, grew apart, saw the dulling of the rainbow. But at least they started out with the intention of permanence.

It was too complicated. She gave up trying. Abruptly she was no longer interested in evaluating herself or in finding a word for her own dilemma. She was achingly tired. She switched off the bathroom light, picked her way across the bedroom like a sleep-walker wading in dreams, and fell into bed. In less than five minutes she was asleep. Thinking as she went under, darling Rich; and then, that wonderful gin.

She woke before full daylight, and lay comfortably with her hands under her head. It was as though, having pushed the affair into the past, she could see Karen in her true perspective. Or as though Karen had died and could be remembered without grief, with a gentle accept-ant sorrow.

She had met Karen in a bar. It seemed odd now, partly because neither of them was much of a drinker, partly because it was an ordinary downtown bar catering mostly to squares—the sort of place where a secretary might go hoping to meet a man, or simply for a half-hour's relaxation on the way home from work. No such place as Richard had taken her to last night, where you might hope to meet somebody. That she had been in this bar was strange enough; that Karen would perch on the stool next to hers and there dissolve into gentle weeping was even more to be wondered at.

What impulse had swerved her, Jo, aside from her bus trip homeward into this chrome and neon paradise for five-o'clock drinkers? She couldn't remember. Nor why she had taken a handful of crumpled tissues from her jacket pocket and offered them to the blonde girl who sat beside her, ignoring her drink and the tears that rained down her cheek. Jo's first year in the city had taught her to mind her own business. If someone dropped dead in the street, you called a cop. If a scream rang out in the middle of the night, you closed your window and went back to sleep. People in the city not only wanted but demanded anonymity—that was one reason she'd left Cottonwood Falls, the job in the drugstore and the Sunday dinners with the family. Whatever she was, she had to come to terms with herself; and that was a thing that could be done only among people who didn't care.

Not that I'm doing such a wonderful job, she reminded herself. I found out what I was, all right, but what good's it doing me?

She looked at the crying girl. A slender blonde about her own age, maybe a little younger. Little heart-shaped face all pink with whatever emotion was shaking her. Even if it was nothing but fatigue at the end of a wearing day, her sorrow gave her a vulnerable, childish look. She smoothed back the fight hair from her rounded forehead, a woman's gesture of distraction. Jo's hand reached into her pocket without any instructions from her and brought up the wad of Kleenex. With no intention of doing so, she shoved it into the girl's hand.

"Thanks."

"That's all right."

"I feel so stupid," Karen said, blowing her nose heartily. She blinked at Jo. Tears hung on her lashes. "I just had a fight with my analyst and I'm so tired, and everything's a mess."

Well, naturally. All these neurotics transferring the guilts and conflicts and their love, too, to some stranger who didn't really give a damn. Some guy who sat behind a desk and listened, for twenty bucks an hour. Trying to find in professional impersonality something of the deep and meaningful closeness people have lost in the modern world. If you have enough love, you don't need psychiatry. That was Rich's theory. Jo went along with it.

That was the place to end the whole thing, before it started. Just get up and walk out.

Back in Cottonwood Falls, baby-sitting for spending money, she had loved the sick children best of all. Tiny babies, too, because they were so helpless. Their bodies sagged against you, their heads wobbled, they were dependent. Later, working in the drugstore, she always made the best and biggest shakes for Jimmy Pearsall because he'd had polio and old Mr. Acosta because he was an alcoholic.

As long as she lived, she supposed, it would be easier to love people who were hurt or helpless. According to religion and her mother's moral axioms—the ones she talked about, not the ones she lived by—that was commendable. Actually she thought it was a stupid way to be, it created a lot of messy situations, but people are what they are. By the time you discover that your supposed virtues are really faults, it's too late.

So she followed the Kleenex with a question, and some time later Karen walked out of the bar beside her, still pale and shaky but without tears. Not knowing the score, of course—and Jo had no intention of starting anything.

The kid was too depressed to go back to her furnished room, so she could spend the night and Jo would curl up on the davenport. That was all.

I might have known how it would turn out, Jo thought, turning over and pulling up her knees. Karen never really said she was gay. She never told me till after that crazy mixed-up night that she'd been worrying about it since she was in high school. Or maybe I knew. Maybe there's a sixth sense that tells people. Otherwise how would Richard know about men who look just like any other men to me?

If she'd known, she might have let Karen alone. Might have sent her back to bed when she got up at three in the morning, crying again, and threw herself into Jo's comforting arms and refused to let go. She might not have made it, hungry for love as she was, but she'd have tried. The strong are supposed not to hurt the weak. The strong have an obligation to the weak.

At three in the morning, however, the obligation seemed to consist of taking the girl back to bed and comforting her. And one thing led to another.

The hell of it is, Jo mused, the weak always win. They have a terrible strength, weak people do, and they get the best of the deal every time. If I ever find another girl, a real girl I can love and not just somebody who wants to play around, it'll be one who can carry her share of the load. I'm tired.

How about this Considine kid? She does look like Karen, a little. Is that just an accident? I look like my sister, but we're totally different.

She's not gay. She probably doesn't know it, just divorced and all, but she’ll be looking around for another husband. They always do.

Here we are, right back where we started from. She reached out and throttled the alarm just in time to keep it from sounding off. That's a good start for the day, she told herself cheerfully, getting out of bed and standing tall and white on the chenille throw rug. At least I don't have to listen to that awful racket.

Today she would make her own coffee. She'd have a good breakfast before she started another day of earning a living, building up Stan's ego, and learning to live alone. Plus getting acquainted with Betsy Considine, that soft, faced blonde.

She made her way to the kitchen, still naked.

Betsy might very well be what Stan was looking for. When a man was that hungry, any decent-looking female had a chance. He could see her every day without trying to figure out a way to get free from his mother, that human octopus.

Somebody might as well be happy. There's so little happiness lying around, it's a shame to waste any.

She found a clean dish towel and wiped the dust from the percolator. The kitchen linoleum needed scrubbing; she should have spent the weekend cleaning instead of sitting around feeling sorry for herself. So Karen wasn't around to keep things in order. So all right, she'd have to get used to the idea.

Somebody had to look after poor old Stan, the nebbish. If this little blonde turned out to be what he was looking for, she'd try to be happy about it.

The old lady across the back court was looking out, peeking around the edges of her cafe curtains. Let her look, Jo thought with a grin. She pulled her own curtains shut to hide her nakedness, and whistled softly as she measured coffee into the percolator basket. She was young yet. Anything could happen.

CHAPTER 4

Stan was doing all right for himself. He had managed to get to the office before nine, for the first time in three years. When Jo walked in he was leaning over the new assistant's desk, showing her a copy of the magazine and looking down the front of her blouse. He straightened up, looking flustered, at the sound of Jo's heels in the hall. She said "Good morning," in a cooler voice than usual, and walked past to her own cubicle. It didn't seem so welcoming this morning.

She'd grown accustomed to a certain amount of faking where Stan was concerned. A smart woman working with a not-so-smart man always had to pretend. The authors of popular sociology books insisted that the United States was a matriarchy, with women holding eighty per cent of the buying power and making all of the domestic decisions. Maybe so. But in the business world, where protocol had been shaped about the time Bob Cratchit sat stoop-shouldered over his ledgers, the myth of male superiority still held.

She and Stan divided their duties about equally. Several times she'd caught him up on blunders that might have been disastrous. But he got seven thousand a year, while her salary was about four before deductions, and he was the boss. That was because he wore pants and she came to the office in a skirt.

The moms of America might regard their men as big lovable boys, but in the office world men got their own back, so far as money and prestige were concerned. The vice president of a bank might be a woman, but the president was always a man. Hospitals included women doctors on their rosters but didn't seem disposed to make them chiefs of staff. The pattern was set in high school, where the girls voted for some popular boy as class president and then allowed a girl to be elected secretary. By the time you got old enough to earn a living you were supposed to be adjusted to it.

Stan was better than some men she'd worked for. He was damn competent, and he recognized her ability—so long as she didn't insist on it. They worked well together. It was only that she got tired of building him up all the time.

She had to admit that the man had special problems. Who didn't? She'd never seen old Mrs. Haxton, but they'd talked on the telephone and for almost three years Stan had reported every one of his mother's tantrums to her. He called them heart attacks, but they were tantrums; no heart attack was ever that well timed, no old lady ever survived so many of them and recovered to eat a hearty breakfast the next morning. The old witch had him in a double scissors lock that would loosen only when she died; and then he'd feel guilty about being so relieved. They always were. It was a mess, but a common enough one. There were women like her back home, in Cottonwood Falls.

Stan was forty-one and hungry, scared to death of attractive females even while his mouth watered for them. God help the girl he gets, Jo thought devoutly. And God help him, whether he gets one or not. Only let him leave Betsy Considine alone.