There was only one thing left that she knew she had to do, and that was see Laura and tell her the truths she had withheld before. She wrote to her aunt and uncle first and explained why she could not, and never would, come home, and thanked them for the hospitality. She was honest, although she was brief.
If she had to start a new life, and there was no question any more about that, she was going to start it without the lies and self-deceptions that had marred the other. She was going to pare away the fibs and selfish miseries, as many of them as she could, even if it meant hurting herself, hurting others. It would be a clean, honest pain and it would heal.
She hadn’t the guts to face Laura that day; to face anyone, for that matter. She waited until the next morning and then slipped out early, afraid of running into Charlie in the hotel lobby. But she was spared that.
She took a cab over to Laura’s apartment. It was only eight-thirty. It seemed like an odd hour for confession and atonement, an odd time of day to be making your apologies and refashioning your life. But we don’t pick our own times for these things; they happen when they are ready. The tangled strands of Beth’s life were smoothing out a little. This was the last task. Until it was done she was not free. The rest would have to wait. When Laura herself knew the whole truth, Beth would be liberated at last from her self-contempt, from her obsessive need for Laura.
She rang the elevator buzzer after the clerk had phoned the Manns and told her she could see them. She rode up with her spine tingling and all the delicate nerves of her face taut. It wouldn’t be so bad; it couldn’t be worse than what she had been through with Charlie or with Vega, she told herself. It had to be done. And still she trembled.
She tried to think of herself riding back down in that same elevator in half an hour with her lies behind her, her selfishness exposed and, in part, atoned for, and her heart lighter. Even if Laura was angry and disillusioned with her, even if her idealization of Beth was rudely shattered, even if there was no friendship left to salvage. It was Laura she had come to find and Laura was her last bridge to cross before she could begin her life over again somewhere and try to do better with it this time.
She knocked quickly on Laura’s front door, as if by hesitating she would squander her courage. Jack opened it for her. She stared at him.
“Good morning,” he said. “It’s all right, I live here,” he added, seeing the look of faint dismay on her face.
“I thought you’d be at work,” she said clumsily.
“I’m on my way, sweetheart,” he said, smiling. “She’s all yours.” He thumbed over his shoulder and Beth saw Laura behind him in the living room, tying Betsy’s hair ribbons. “Come on in,” he said and Beth walked in behind him. “We’re relieved to see you,” he told her seriously.
Laura stood up, her face a picture of pale consternation. “Beth,” she said. The name was almost a question. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” Beth said, and the relief Laura showed touched her.
“We saw in the papers that it was all over. They released you and everything.”
Beth sat down in a chair and Laura busied herself with goodbyes until Jack and Betsy had gone out. She understood intuitively that Beth had to talk to her, only her, to set things right with herself.
When they were alone she came and sat on a hassock beside Beth’s chair—the leather chair that Jack liked so well.
“I came to tell you the truth about a few things, Laura,” Beth said softly. “I won’t take much time.”
“Have some breakfast with me,” Laura said, but Beth shook her head. “Some coffee then?” and without waiting for an answer Laura sprang up and went into the kitchen. Beth didn’t want her hospitality. She didn’t want to watch Laura’s warm concern turn slowly to disdain when she found out that Beth had deserted two children and her husband. The children, mercifully, had been kept out of the papers. It was up to Beth to confess their existence to Laura.
Beth came over to the stove where Laura was arranging two cups and saucers.
“Laura, please,” she said, touching her hand gently. “Don’t do this. You may not want to look at me after I tell you—tell you—”
“You don’t have to tell me anything, Beth. I trust you,” Laura said. “I love you. Friends don’t need to apologize to each other.”
“Yes, they do. Sometimes it’s the only way.”
“We’ve said too much to each other already. The less we say to each other, the happier we are together.” And she smiled intimately.
“I can’t help it,” Beth said miserably. “There’s one thing more.”
“Have your coffee first, then,” Laura said with a sigh, pouring it and carrying the cups to the sunny breakfast table. She sat down and looked up at Beth expectantly.
“I’m still married,” Beth blurted fearfully after a tight little pause. She stood rigidly by the stove, forcing out the words with an effort of will. “I have—I have two children.” She stopped to steady her breath, to quell the shakes, shutting her eyes for a second. “I lied to you. I had made love to other women when I saw you before. Not just you. Vega—Vega—” She broke down and had to turn away.
“I know,” Laura said softly. “I know it all. You don’t need to tell me, Beth. Come sit down.”
After a stunned pause, a hiatus of disbelief and relief both, Beth cried, “You know! You know—all that—about the kids, about—”
“Yes. All of it.” Laura held out her hands and Beth came toward her, trembling, and suddenly sank to her knees and put her head in Laura’s lap and wept. “How?” she said. “How did you know?” She looked up with a quick premonition. “Charlie didn’t try to see you, did he?”
Laura shook her head. “My father,” she said, stroking Beth’s hair. “My bastard of a father, who still loves me in spite of everything. I wonder why I still love him?” She looked away, perplexed.
“Your father?” Beth felt a stab of regret go through her. She should never have trusted him.
“He wrote to me,” Laura said. “He told me about you. Just a couple of days ago, after all that stuff in the papers. He said he wouldn’t have written even then, but you were in such desperate trouble and he thought I ought to know. And you know something? I’m glad he did.” She was really surprised at herself. “I never thought I could care about him again, when we quarreled years ago. Not after what he tried to do to me. I would never have broken down and written him myself. But I worried about him. I’ve thought a lot about him these past years, now that my life is so much happier. So in a way it was a load off my mind to hear from him.”
“He promised me he wouldn’t write,” Beth whispered. “He promised me he wouldn’t interfere with your life again. I should never have told him about you behind your back.”
“Maybe not, but it all turned out all right,” Laura said. “Now I’m glad. No, really, honey. If you had asked me first I would have said no. So maybe it’s for the best, because I would have been a stubborn fool if I’d refused. He was so curious about Betsy. I guess the idea of being a grandfather really tickles him. He didn’t know he was until you wrote him about it.”
“And all these days you’ve known about me,” Beth said, raising her head a little to look up at Laura. “You knew what I was, what I’d done, and you didn’t despise me for it.”
“Oh, but I did. At first,” Laura admitted. “I was good and mad at first. But I think I’ve gotten over it. What good is it to stay mad? It doesn’t help things at all. Besides, everything you’ve done these past few weeks you’ve done in a fog. I know that.”
“I did some terrible things to you, Laura,” Beth said. “I’ve lied to you and betrayed you to your father and accused you of bad faith and—”
But Laura put a restraining finger on her mouth, and then, to Beth’s surprise, she kissed her. It was a pardon for all the sorrows, big and little, Beth had caused her. It was an end to pity and a start to love without illusions, the tender love of friends.
“Please,” Laura said. “It’s over now. You told me everything. I wouldn’t have asked that of you. I gave you a chance to get out of it, and you had the guts to go ahead and tell me on your own. That’s enough for anybody, Beth.”
And Beth understood, looking at her, that she really meant it. She was not angry or hurt. She had had her moments of temper when she heard from her father, but they were past and Beth had missed them. And Beth knew, too, that if Laura still loved her the way she had loved her once, long ago, she would be furious now with jealousy and disappointment. There could be no more eloquent testimony to the change in Laura’s feelings than the gentleness and affection Laura showed her now.
“I came so far to find you, Laura,” Beth murmured. “I thought it was terribly important to revive your love for me; I thought that that by itself could save me. I wanted you to think of me the way you did when we were roommates in school.” She gave a small self-deprecating laugh. “You know, I wonder if it isn’t true after all.”
“If what isn’t true?”
Beth walked slowly to the breakfast table and sat down opposite Laura, fingering her coffee cup cautiously. “I wonder if I didn’t need to find you in order to define myself. It’s wiped away a lot of my delusions about myself—just knowing what your delusions about me used to be. It’s taught me a lot, too. More what I am not, and can’t be, than what I am. But even so, that helps.”
“You’ve been through a lot of hell to find what you were looking for, Beth,” Laura said. “If I helped in any way, I’m glad.”
“So am I.” Beth smiled at her warmly and finally took a sip of fragrant coffee. She felt much better, though she couldn’t have said why. She should have been thoroughly ashamed of her deceptions. But she felt more hopeful than shamed, closer to happiness than despair.
“I want to thank you for the crystal candlesticks,” Laura told her. “I keep forgetting. They’re lovely.”
“I got them the same day I saw Charlie’s Scootch in the toy window. Lord, I was so afraid to come and see you. So excited. It seems like a million years ago already, and it’s been only a week or two.”
Laura studied her over the rim of her cup. Her eyes were smiling. “Do you still think you’re in love with me, Beth?” she asked.
Beth shook her head, feeling a little sheepish. “I’ve been in love with my daydreams. My past. My hopes. Everything but reality. I never knew you, Laura, until now. I guess I never was in love with you—the real you. I was in love with what I thought you were.”
“With what you thought I could do for you,” Laura grinned. “And I tried so hard to live up to it, years ago. I tried so hard to be what you thought I was, for fear of losing you. God, I loved you, Beth.”
They gazed at each other quietly for a moment.
“Loved? Past tense? It’s all over, then?” Beth said, almost wistfully. You aren’t loved like that very often in one lifetime, she thought. It was a wrench, even now, to see it end.
“All over but the good part,” Laura said. “The part about being friends. Only the pain and the romance are missing, and we’ve both had too much of them. Feels good, doesn’t it? To have somebody who knows everything about you, and still be able to love them. To get rid of the damned misunderstandings.”
“Yes,” Beth murmured. “It feels good.” Impulsively she reached across the table and grasped Laura’s hands. “I don’t need you now, Laura. I’m not desperate any more. I can make it on my own. And I have you to thank for opening my eyes.”
“I wasn’t very nice about it,” Laura said.
“You couldn’t afford to be. I wouldn’t have seen the truth if you’d been nice about it. You did it right.” And in a spasm of gratitude she pulled Laura’s hands up to her lips and covered them with kisses. “Thanks,” she whispered. “Thanks, Laura darling.”
The phone rang and startled them both into a laughing fit. Laura got up and answered it from a small table around the corner in the dining room. “Yes,” she said. “Hi. No, she’s here. That’s what I said.” And she swung around to smile at Beth who returned the look, mystified. “Do you want to talk?” She held the phone out, chuckling.
Beth was seized with alarm. She half-rose from her chair. “It’s not Charlie, is it? Does he know where you are?”
Laura shook her head. “It’s Beebo.”
Surprised and pleased, Beth took the receiver from Laura and answered. A sudden fluttery feeling grabbed at her stomach and she felt curiously like a teen-ager talking to her prom date.
“How are you,” Beebo said. “It’s all over, I see by the papers. I would have called you or come down to see you, but I was afraid there was already too much going on. They would have done a double-take if I’d showed up. Might have kept you over a day just to explain me.”
Beth laughed with her. “Thanks, Beebo,” she said. “I don’t know why I called you from jail. I just thought you’d understand.” She knew very well why she’d called Beebo, and she was trying too hard to keep their talk casual, the way she had when she’d fallen in love once or twice before in her life. She recognized the symptom with a shock.
“I’m flattered,” Beebo said and she wasn’t kidding. “Well, what’s next? Where do you go from here? Back to Charlie?”
“No. We talked it all out when he came to get me. I’m going to stay in New York a while, I guess. Maybe I can find a job.”
Laura took the phone back and asked Beebo over. Beth felt a sweet shiver of anticipation at the idea of seeing her once more. All at once it was important that her hair be combed right, her lipstick smooth.