Marcie tried to be understanding with Laura when they were alone later. She said, “Jack told me all about it, Laura. I understand.”
What did he tell you? What do you understand? Why didn’t he tell me? She didn’t know how to act with Marcie. Her discomfort made her awkward and for the first time she found herself wishing to be without her for a little while. She didn’t want Marcie to try to comfort her. She just wanted to let it blow over.
But Marcie was a warm-natured girl, and she was curious. She wanted to sit on Laura’s bed and talk about it. She kept saying, “Tell me about it, Laur. Tell me what happened. Don’t you know I wouldn’t be shocked?”
At this point Laura revolted. “No, I don’t know!” she said, and was immediately sorry. She raised her hand to her mouth. “Marcie, please. Please drop it.”
“I’m sorry, Laur. I can’t do anything right tonight.” She looked so disheartened that Laura had to smile at her a little.
“You do everything right, Marcie,” she said soothingly. “I’m the one who’s wrong. No, it’s true. I’m not like you. I can’t confess to people.”
“You tell Jack things.”
Laura was suddenly alert, alarmed. “How do you know?” she demanded. “What things?”
“Oh, you’re always going off and talking. Like this morning. Why don’t you have long talks with me?”
Laura sighed, relieved. “I don’t know. Jack is so easy to talk to, Marcie.”
“Does that mean I’m not? I try to be.” She smiled invitingly.
Laura, who had been lying on her bed, raised herself up on her elbows. “I never say these things like I mean them,” she apologized. “I only mean, I—” I can’t talk to you because I’m in love with you, that’s what I mean. But that’s not what I can say.
She rolled over on her stomach and buried her face in the pillow. Marcie sat motionless for a minute, afraid to say anything and start her off again. Then she leaned over her and touched her shoulders. “You don’t have to tell me, Laura, honey,” she said. “I guess I shouldn’t pester you. Jack says you’ve been through a lot and that’s why you’re nervous. I don’t want to make you unhappy, Laura. I’m afraid I do sometimes. I don’t know why, I just get the feeling now and then, when you look at me, that I make you sad. Do I?”
Laura’s nails cut into her smooth white forehead. “Marcie, don’t torture me,” she said. Her voice was low and strained. It was such an odd thing to say that Marcie withdrew, and climbed into her own bed.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, pulling the covers up and turning out the light. Then she put her hands over her face suddenly and sobbed.
“Oh, Marcie!” Laura was out of bed before she had time to think, sitting next to Marcie and holding her. “Don’t cry, Marcie. Oh God, why can’t I ever say anything right?” She implored the ceiling for an answer. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Marcie slowed down and stopped almost as suddenly as she began. “I know,” she said. “I know what it is. I used to drive Burr nuts this way, asking questions and talking and talking. And when he wouldn’t answer, I just kept asking more and more till I drove him crazy. I don’t know why. I guess I wanted to drive him crazy. But I don’t know why I do it to you.” She looked away, embarrassed. Laura’s arms tightened involuntarily around her. She had no idea how to answer this unexpected outburst. She was afraid to try to comfort Marcie, for the very act of soothing her brought Laura’s own emotions to a boil. The safest course was to get back in bed at once and forget it. Or at least, stop talking. But Marcie was clinging to her and she couldn’t roughly shake her off.
“I’ve learned a lot from living with you, Laur,” Marcie said quietly. Laura listened, her nostrils full of the scent of flowers. “This may sound silly to you but—don’t take this wrong, Laura—but I admire you, I really do. You have a quality of self control that I could never learn. You keep your thoughts to yourself. If you don’t have anything to say, you don’t say anything. If you don’t want to talk, you don’t.”
She looked up and laughed a little ruefully. “I talk all the time, as if I had to. Just living with you, I’m beginning to see it. I talk all the time and say nothing. You almost never talk, but when you do it’s worth listening to.”
Laura began to squirm uncomfortably, but Marcie grasped her sleeves and continued. “You know something, Laur? I think I just drove Burr crazy. I talked him to death.”
“He still loves you, Marcie.” Laura found her hand on Marcie’s hair, without quite knowing how she had let it happen. “He wants you back.”
“I know. We’ve hardly quarreled at all this week, Laur. You haven’t been around much, you haven’t seen us. But we’ve been getting along unusually well. But the screwy part is, it’s not like I thought it would be.”
“You mean, you miss the quarrels?”
“I mean I just wish he wouldn’t come around so much any more. I want time to change. To think.”
“Think about what?”
“About me. No, about anything but me. That’s all I ever thought about before. You think about other things. You know what’s going on. You come home at night and you read all these books that are sitting around. You can’t even talk to me about them, because you know how stupid I am.”
Laura was astonished. All these critical thoughts had gone through Marcie’s head, and Laura hadn’t been aware of it. Marcie had been watching her, admiring her, and she hadn’t known that either. I’m plumb blind, she thought. And I thought I couldn’t know Marcie any better. Because I love her. And she talks like this to me. God!
“Marcie, you don’t need to read books. It’s just a bad habit for introverts.” Marcie shook her head silently while Laura went on. “Beautiful girls like you don’t need to read,” she said.
“That’s just it,” Marcie said. “I’m not going to be just another pretty idiot. I want to know something. I’m sick of knowing absolutely nothing. I want to be different. I want you to help me.”
She wants me, Laura thought happily. She wants me. It was all she heard.
“When you were gone all night with Jack—” She paused and looked away. “—I started to think. I couldn’t sleep, I don’t know why. I was thinking about you, Laur. I was wondering why you never talk to me, why we have so little to say to each other. We sit at the breakfast table and read the paper and go off without anything more than ‘good morning’. At night we go to bed and sometimes I talk, but it’s not a conversation. You listen, I guess you listen.”
“I do!”
“And I say the wrong things. And you go to pieces, like Friday night.”
“No.”
“Or else you run away. You go sleep with Jack.”
“Marcie!”
“I know you were with Jack again last night. He didn’t have to lie to me about it.”
“But he didn’t. I wasn’t!”
“Now don’t you lie to me!”
Laura stared at her, unable to speak.
“Help me, Laura,” Marcie said, leaning toward her. “I want to change. I’m sick of myself. I’m sick of Burr.”
The strangest craziest feeling started up in Laura; just an echo, faraway in herself. She wants me to help her, to be with her. She admires me. Dear God, I’m afraid to wonder how much. A very small smile curved the corners of her mouth.
“I have to start somewhere,” Marcie said. “I want to talk to you like an intelligent human being, not an ignoramus.”
Laura smiled at her. Almost without her realizing it, her hand had stolen back to Marcie’s yellow hair. “Do you, Marcie?” she said. It was a simple question, but it asked a thousand others.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I’m fed up with myself. I never realized, till I lived day-in-day-out with you, how much I’d been missing. Give me a book to read, Laur.”
“In the morning.” Laura smiled at her and got up, edging away from her bed.
“It’s too late, Marcie. You won’t read anything now.”
“I want to tell Burr I read a book.”
“I’ll give you something later,” Laura said. It sounded strangely insinuating, the way she said it. She scared herself. She ducked into her bed as into a safe harbor, and hid her body under the blankets.
With a sigh Marcie turned the light out. After a moment’s silence she whispered, “Laur? Will you talk to me after this? Really talk to me? Tell me things?”
“I’ll try,” Laura murmured, frowning in the dark. She lay in bed daydreaming for hours, seeing the first signs in Marcie of an influence she had been unaware of. Where would it lead? What doors would it open? Would it lead them both to bitterness? Or mutual ecstasy?
* * *
In the morning Laura was very matter-of-fact. She almost ignored Marcie. She made her work for her attention and it delighted her that Marcie was willing to work for it. Instinctively Laura knew she had to play hard to get, and she liked to play that way for once.
At breakfast, after a few false starts, Marcie blurted, “I’ll be late tonight.” She put her paper down and faced Laura.
Laura looked up slowly. “Date with Burr?” she said.
“No. Mr. Marquardt is having some out-of-town guests for dinner downtown. He asked some of us to go. I told him I would.”
“Have fun,” Laura said, and looked back at the front page.
“Ha! Some drunken idiot of a reporter’ll probably pester me to death.”
“A reporter?” Laura looked up again suddenly.
“Oh, I don’t know.” Marcie saw Laura’s interest and it sparked her own. “A journalist, or something. It’s a convention—professional fraternity, I guess.”
“What fraternity? What’s it called?”
“Ummm.” Marcie bit her lip and concentrated. “It’s Greek. Let’s see. Something the matter?”
“No. Is it Chi Delta—”
“—Sigma. That’s it, I remember. How did you know? Now something is the matter, Laura!”
Laura had gone very pale. She swallowed convulsively. “I just remembered, I was supposed to run an errand for Dr. Hollingsworth. I’d better get going.” She got up suddenly and went into the bedroom for her jacket.
Marcie stood up and followed her. “You didn’t finish your breakfast, Laur,” she said, concerned, a line of worry in her forehead.
“I’m not hungry. I’ll see you tonight,” she said, and turned quickly to almost run out.
Marcie came after her, bewildered. “Laura, you don’t make sense,” she said. “What’s the matter with you?”
But Laura was running down the stairs to the elevator. Marcie turned and went back into the kitchen and drank her coffee standing, gazing perplexed at Laura’s plate.