This is the story of Willa who somehow lost her way. She had come to the Big, City, as countless thousands do, in eager pursuit of glamour or fame or excitement or love ... or even all of these put together, for the hearts of the young, beat fast with hope and everything, can yet be attained....
I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
La Belle Dame San Merci by John Keats
Archive Note: There were several missing section numbers in each chapter in the original pocketbook.
CHAPTER ONE
"It never ends; my interrogation never ends, Searching for a point where lovers meet, Like rivers in the sea."
... Clem Graham
1
Her name was Willa Keyes, and she was the little girl from the big city who, after a brief absence, was returning to her home in Brooklyn.
With almost an hour to kill before the New York bus would pull out of Baltimore, she stored her one small suitcase in a station locker and moved out of the terminal into the street for a breath of fresh air. But there was very little breeze stirring on that hot June afternoon, and her thoughts were just as sticky as the atmosphere.
Willa was leaving the Maryland metropolis the way she had come into it, with one important deviation: she was leaving alone.
Cliff shouldn't have treated me like dirt under his feet, she kept muttering to herself as she sauntered slowly down Baltimore Street.
When Willa left home with Cliff Lindsay three months earlier, she thought that she was quite sure of what she did not want. Included in her list of 'nots' were such matters as living with Cliff's family and working for a living. Her illicit relationship with Cliff would be too embarrassing for her with his kinfolk, and she figured that Cliff, being a trained airplane mechanic, was quite capable of earning a living for both of them.
When she had taken the big gamble and run off with Cliff, she had harbored no illusions about him. She was physically attracted to the tall blond youth, and his ardent lovemaking sent her into ecstasy. Willa was completely lacking in illusions. The decade in which she had grown up had dealt her more hard knocks than was the lot of most girls her age, even in those years when tragedies were commonplace.
Though not quite seventeen, Willa looked much older. She possessed more than an adequate share of ripe physical assets. She was tall and red-haired, with beguiling eyes and a lush figure. She usually managed to keep her arrestingly pale face innocent of all expression. She was full of emotions; none of them too deep. Yet, it was not her cupidity which had brought her to this situation in which she now found herself. For Cliff Lindsay, it seemed, surpassed even her in that failing.
It was hard for her to believe what had happened. It was as if all she had done in Baltimore was just a dream. And at first it felt good, and then it felt worse, because Cliff was only a dream like everybody else with whom she had ever lived.
Willa paused briefly in front of a music store and listened to a phonograph record that was being played inside. She could hear a song ending, beginning again, the same tune, a love song, the cadence of an impassioned voice in some lover's nook, the call of a lovesick heart, the deep secret longing of a voice that rose and another voice that blended in answer, soaring clearly, up and up, winged with passionate desire. The burden of mingled voices, a delicate melody, a soft artless litany that grew to an artless rhythm.
Oh, I love you, lovely thing. The song brought back memories to Willa. For she had been a lovely thing for Cliff Lindsay as he had been for her. It had been a dream madness, a river of shadows flowing past her on Joralemon Street in Brooklyn under the night sky, faraway voices, remoter yet than the immediate singing voices. The voices now grew ever fainter and the rhythm declined with it.
It was during a short visit to New York that Cliff had swept her off her feet. He was a good talker, very glib. He had a smooth line. Just give him half a chance to get started and he could talk the birds down right out of the trees.
It was sorcery, that's what it was, smacking of witchcraft. It had been all wrong from the very start. From the day Cliff had asked her to come with him to Baltimore, she had not been a free agent.
"Cliff, why don't you let me alone?" she had asked abruptly over a glass of beer in the Flying Irishman's bar and grill. "Why'd you ever make a play for me in the first place? Why can't I get loose from you, honey?"
Cliff had grinned. "I'll try to explain, Willa honey. I'm just about the stupidest ass on God's green earth for ever fallin' for you. But I can't help myself. You're under my skin", baby. I wanna make you happy."
And he had said it with such honest conviction that a wide smile of happiness had appeared on Willa's face, expressing the song in her heart. And so Cliff had talked Willa right out of Brooklyn onto a bus to Baltimore, where she had come to live with him without benefit of clergy.
He had promised her happiness, but he had brought her only sorrow and suffering. The wide smile had narrowed to a spectre of itself, and finally even the ghost of a smile had vanished entirely.
Last night the showdown had come. They had gone to one of their usual haunts, The Subway, a saloon at the corner of Eastern Avenue and Oldham Street. Cliff seemed to be relaxed at the table, but Willa sat inert, her face deathly white, her arms hanging limp at her sides. The staring eyes seemed to see nothing but the misery he had brought upon her.
Cliff drank. "Pretty good whiskey, Willa," he said, smacking his lips appreciatively.
Willa ignored his comment, sipping her whiskey thoughtfully. She decided to lay her cards on the table. She said, with a catch in her throat, "Cliff, you've been lettin' that Chats-worth dame steal you away from me."
Cliff pushed up his eyebrows innocently. "Have I?"
"Yes, you have. She's been playin' you for a sucker, the way you've been playin' me." Her voice rose to a screech. "I won't stand for it!"
Cliff, pushed back his chair and smiled, assuming a conciliatory attitude.
"Baby, you could be right," he said.
"I know I'm right!"
"Maybe I been a little unfair to you, Willa," he conceded. "But I can't help it, honey."
"Why can't you, Cliff?" Her voice was pleading now.
He grinned. "It's the playboy in me, I guess. No hard feelin's, I hope."
"Well, I don't know." Willa studied him uncertainly. "I just don't think it's fair, Cliff, treatin' me the way you do. You don't see me foolin' around with any other guy, do you?"
Cliff glared at her angrily. "Hey, what's this ... a lecture?" His eyes strayed to a blonde who had just strutted into the saloon.
Willa countered, "Yeah. And pay attention."
Cliff laughed. It was an abrupt, grating laugh. He cleared his throat and said harshly, "Listen, screwball, you been lucky so far. Stay lucky. Look for trouble, and I'll see you get it."
"But, Cliff...." Willa began.
Cliff snapped her off, "Baby, you're learnin' a lesson every dame has to learn sooner or later. I'm going to give you a little advice."
Willa smiled painfully. "You don't have to, Cliff. I know what it is even before you say it. Lay off the Chatsworth dame."
Cliff laughed good-naturedly. "Not exactly, baby. Far as I'm concerned, there ain't no Chatsworth dame."
"There ain't?" Her voice trembled with hope.
"No, there ain't. There's only you, Willa honey. You send me, baby."
"You send me, too, darling," Willa said, with a sweet smile.
"In bed you got Swiss movements. Just about the best. Can't be beat." Her face wreathed in delight at the flattery, but the pleased expression quickly vanished when he went on in a hardened tone, "Nope, my advice is something else again.
Just remember what you are and who you are. That's all you need to do. Try it and see how much better we get along."
Her eyes narrowed to slits. "And just who am I?"
He grinned unpleasantly. "Just a bush league hustler, baby," he said in response to her question.
She flinched uneasily under the cruel observation and made no denial, knowing that he was essentially right. She said grimly, "It's that Chatsworth dame. That bitch is a double-crosser de luxe, and I'm goin' to scratch her eyes out the first chance I get."
"The hell you are," he said dryly, staring at her with contempt.
Somebody put a nickel in the jukebox, and Willa sat silently, drinking and listening to the popular song. She was tense with feeling, but relaxed a little when she saw Pete Robustelli come in and approach their table. Pete was a stocky man with an olive complexion and a bulbous nose. He worked at Glen Martin's with Cliff. He was a lot of fun.
Willa could see that Pete was already a bit high when he sat down at the table without bothering to remove his hat.
"Hiyah, everybody," Pete said cheerfully.
Cliff eyed Pete's covered head with a studied frown. "Hi, Pete," he said in an uncordial tone.
Pete made an explosive noise with his lips, then started right in to kid Cliff. It was not exactly a smart thing to do.
"Hey, Cliff," Pete began, winking at Willa. "How's your sex standin' up nowadays?"
Cliff gave a little shrug. "It can still stand up. Want a reference, Pete? Ask Willa. She'll tell you."
Willa, more than a little embarrassed, made an effort to switch the conversation into safer channels. She looked down at her legs and frowned.
"Got a hole in my brand new hose, damn it!" she said in an irked tone.
Cliff quipped, "Got a hole somewhere else, too, huh, baby?"
The gibe seemed to moderate his grouchiness a little. He grunted several times with pleasure, and his shifty blue eyes seemed to smile in a hard enigmatic way, reflecting satisfaction with his cleverness at turning a phrase, crude though it might be.
Cliff looked at Pete and said jokingly, "Take off your hat, chum, and make yourself at home."
Pete smiled sheepishly as he took off his hat and put it on his lap. "Sorry, pal," he apologized. "I clean forgot."
Cliff stopped kidding, suddenly turning to righteous indignation. "You shouldn't oughta forget things like that when there's ladies around, Pete," he said gruffly. "Didn't your mother teach you no better?" He was back in his surly mood again.
Pete protested, "Hey, what gives? I said I was sorry, didn't I? You don't have to make a production out of it. What you drinkin', pal?"
"Champagne," Cliff said facetiously.
Willa scowled at him. "Don't act like a big shot, Cliff. You're just a two-bit mechanic at Martin's, so don't try to act like a thousand-dollar bill."
Cliff raised his hand threateningly. "Hey, lay off me, you cheap whore."
Willa opened her mouth to protest, but Pete saved her the trouble by intervening in her behalf. "Now, listen, Cliff," Pete said. "Watch your language. This girl's a nice kid, see? You oughtn't to talk to her that way."
"To hell with her." Cliff glowered at Willa. "I'll talk to her any goddamn way I want to. She's just a cheap pickup."
Taking umbrage, again Willa started to speak. And again Pete chopped her into silence. He turned to her, spread his hands in a "what's the use," gesture, and said, "That's the way things go, Willa. You can't argue with a knucklehead like Cliff."
Later, after many more drinks, they had gone home to their two-room apartment on Newark Street in Highlandtown. She made the mistake once again of raising the question of Cliff two-timing her.
He struck her hard across her cheek with his fist and told her to shut up. He called her a dirty name, but that was nothing new. She was used to it.
He sure had a prize bun on that night. He had never taken a punch at her before. She put up her hands to her face defensively and screamed at him, "Don't you dare hit me again!"
A wasted effort. He hit her three times in rapid succession. The third time she almost went down. To prevent herself from falling on her face, she sank into a low armchair. She sat there motionless, not breaking forth in well-deserved reproaches because her agony was too great, too real for words.
Cliff had rushed out of the house. After other spats with him she had been able to write off the whole thing as nothing more than a lovers' quarrel, assuring herself that by means of her passionate loving, Cliff would come to think differently. That he'd renew the old bond with her; her place in his life would be restored. But now that he had cussed her out and beaten her, and to top it off gone out to see that Chatsworth dame, she knew that it was all over and it was time for her to pull up stakes. She made up her mind to leave the next day.
At the breakfast table Cliff apologized for his behavior towards her the previous night. He said, "I give you my word, Willa honey, I'll be good to you from now on. I'll stop foolin' around."
Willa, by a slight movement of her hand, informed him that this concession was too late and meant nothing now. There was no way of breaching the break in their relationship any more. He was too unreliable. It was all over between them.
After Cliff went off to work, Willa packed her few personal belongings. Again she was faced with the unsavory problem: Where do I go from here?
She hated to go back to her mother's home in Brooklyn. It wouldn't be possible to explain her breakup with Cliff to her mother, who had frowned on the union in the first place. She was forever disgraced. She had the horrible sensation of being driven as a manacled captive towards some unknown dungeon. She seemed to be doing all that she wanted to avoid. It was the story of her life. In the end she knew that she would have to return to her mother. There was no other alternative.
Suddenly, with a start, she came back to the immediate present. She looked around her, aware that she had wandered a bit too far from the bus station. She would have to hurry if she didn't want to miss the bus. She started to walk faster. She sighed deeply and made one stubborn effort of will; she was not going to be sorry for herself. Other girls had to face life without love or money, and so could she.
She made it just in time as the bus was about to pull out of the station. Six hours later the bus was rolling over the New Jersey countryside, approaching the New York state line. The night was almost as hot as the afternoon had been, and as they neared the Holland Tunnel, the avenues and streets were like a curtain of lights and neon tubes, a crosspatch pattern that moved in on them, screaming with a promise of synthetic, drunken gaiety.
The air in the bus was hot and stale. Willa slid the window open a little. The fat lady behind her poked a chubby finger into her shoulder and said, "If you don't mind, girlie, I'd like that window shut." The way she said it, you'd think Willa was a damned snot-nosed kid and not a grown-up woman.
Willa said fretfully, "I'd like your big mouth shut, too."
The fat lady shut it. All afternoon it had been flapping about everything under the sun, from the way the driver handled the bus to the noises made by the infant up front. But this time it was shut so tight that even her lips did not show.
The fat lady somehow reminded Willa of her own mother. Mrs. Keyes was a funny old egg. Well, not so old, maybe, but she sure had allowed herself to spread all over the place. Her mother had grown more obese than the loud-mouth fat lady on the bus.
Oh, well, she couldn't be worried about her mother at this time. She had to look out for herself. Still, she didn't have any quarrel with her mother, not really. Sometimes she even felt sorry for poor old Mom.
Willa left the window open hoping the breeze would blow the wig off the fat lady's lousy head, and she did not close it until the bus braked to a halt in the 34th Street Station.
The driver killed the engine and half turned his head, barking out, "Thirty-fourth Street Station. Change here for railroad and bus connections and all points west. There'll be a thirty-minute layover for those goin' north."
For Willa it was the end of the linein more ways than one.
Carrying her suitcase in her left hand, she crossed over to Seventh Avenue and descended into the subterranean passage of the subway. The subway train for Brooklyn rumbled into the station. Willa moved in behind a number of other passengers, and the doors rattled shut behind them.
Sitting there on the subway train, Willa wondered how her mother would react to her homecoming. Would she welcome her with open arms? Probably not. More than likely she'd raise the roof with Willa for not writing to her and letting her know how she was getting along.
Oh, well, she shrugged casually, she could take whatever her mother dished out. In the language of the boxers, she would roll with the punch.
At the Borough Hall stop she alighted from the subway train, and after a long walk through underground conduits and up-and-down ramps and stairs she came out on Remson Street.
She put her suitcase down on the sidewalk and wiped her perspiring face with a kleenex. It was hotter in Brooklyn than it had been in Baltimore. The heat came in waves, big rollers of heat wallowing in from all parts of New York's largest borough and down from a sky of melted asphalt. Despite a sporadic breeze from the river, the heat flowed into Borough Hall and remained there.
Dean Street, where her mother lived, was only a few blocks away. It was still early, and she didn't feel like going straight home, even if she was loaded down with a suitcase. There were lots of neon lights and people moving in the streets, and she figured that maybe a chat with somebody might be in order.
She picked up her suitcase and started to walk slowly. She was crossing a street and turning a corner when a man bumped into her inadvertently. There was no street lamp in this particular area and Willa couldn't get a good look at the man. She made out a small figure with a mustache and neatly combed black hair. The man was hatless and coatless.
"Why don't you watch where you're goin'?" Willa asked crossly.
"Sorry," he said, and he stopped to light a cigarette. In the glow of the match Willa caught a fairly comprehensive glance at the face. But it lasted for only a minute. Anyhow, there was no special reason for studying his face.
"That's all right," Willa said, not so crossly.
"Hot night," the man said, puffing on his cigarette.
"Terrific."
"I saw some kids divin' off the dock," the man said. "They got the right idea."
Willa said, "If us grownups did a thing like that, people would call us nuts."
The man smiled. He had a good smile. "The trouble with people is that they don't understand people."
The man had a pleasant voice and a free-and-easy air about him. Willa told herself that he wouldn't be too hard to take. Maybe she could spend the evening with him and have a little fun. She could go home tomorrow. Her mother wouldn't know the difference, not even knowing that Willa was coming home.
The man moved back to the wall of a building and leaned against it. Willa followed him there.
"Care for a cigarette?" he asked, offering her his pack.
Willa said, "Thanks," and took one. He struck a match and lit her cigarette. The night was all around them and the street was a quiet one, the heat all-pervading.
"I wonder how they can stand it in the tropics," the man said.
"They're born to it," Willa said with an all-knowing smile.
"I don't think I could stand it," the man said.
She said, "You'd probably get used to it. People can get used to most anything, you know." Her smile broadened. It was her best come-on smile, perfected by practice. She was beginning her play for the man.
His eyes came to rest on her suitcase. "Been out of town?"
She nodded. "Been visitin' my folks in Baltimore," she lied.
He let his cigarette drop on the sidewalk, and stepped on it.
"Well," he said, "I think I'd better get goin'. My wife always waits up for me."
Willa's face fell with disappointment. "Been married long?" she asked.
"Eleven years exactly, the tenth of next month."
"I wish I was married," Willa said with a regretful sigh. He studied her. "You say that as though you mean it."
"I do. You bet I do."
The man shrugged. "Marriage has its good points, I guess. The first year's the hardest. Mamie and me were all set to split up that first year. Times I'd be eatin' breakfast, and there she'd be sittin' across the table from me, and I'd wonder how in the world I could get rid of her. Then I'd ask myself why, and I couldn't ever think of a good reason."
Willa suggested, "Maybe it's the old freedom angle."
He shook his head. "No, I don't think so. You're free."
She tossed her head. "It can get awfully monotonous," she said all-knowingly. "Everybody's got to have someone. You got to have something special, and it's got to be around all the time."
He looked at her with interest. "How do you know all that?" he asked. "You look so young."
A hurt look crossed her face. "I may look young," she retorted, "but I've been around."
A dreamy look came into the man's eyes. "I met my Mamie at a dance. I got to like her a lot, and it reached the point where I was buying her things and I got a big bang out of watching her face light up when she opened a package. We went around together for a little over a year and then I went out and bought a ring."
"How romantic!" Willa commented.
He studied her. "I don't know who you are and I'll probably never see you again, so it's okay to talk this way. I think it's a good idea to get things off your chest with strangers now and then, don't you?"
Willa nodded. "Somethin' to that," she said.
The man raised a wrist towards his eyes and peered at the dial of his watch. "Well, I got to be runnin' along," he said. "Be good."
"I will," Willa assured the man as he started away. "Good luck."
"Thanks," the man said over his shoulder, and he was crossing the street.
Willa shrugged, picked up her suitcase, and started for home. She moved slowly, her thoughts returning to the choice of a suitable lie to tell her mother.
I'll tell her anything but the truth, she mused. I have to tell so many lies, I get so I can pull lies out of the air. I know what I'll do. I'll tell Mom he's only half a man, and not at all what he seemed to be at first.
Heat came into the kitchen and settled itself over Hazel Keyes as she sat there alone at the table, drinking beer. It was one of those hot, sticky nights that made Brooklyn show its age. There was something dreary and stagnant in the way all the syrupy heat refused to budge. It was anything but a night for movement, and Hazel was determined not to move any more than she had to.
She lighted a cigarette. She told herself that it was time for another beer. She got up, telling herself to get away from the idea of beer. The heat was stronger than the beer.
Perspiring freely, Hazel moved with uncertain steps into the living room and walked over to the window. She stood there at the window of her fifth floor flat, looking out upon Dean Street and seeing the lights, hearing the street noises. She had a strong desire to be a part of that noise. She wanted to participate in the activity down there, whatever it might be. She just wanted to talk to somebody. If only Willa were here. Or even Cassie Thompson, her best friend. But Willa was in Baltimore and Cassie had volunteered to substitute for her on the cleaning job in the Flatbush Building when she had told Cassie that she was too sick to work tonight.
She wanted to go out, but she realized that she was too sick to go out. That realization brought on fright. She rubbed her hands into her eyes and wondered what it was that was making this night so difficult to endure. And suddenly she was telling herself that something was going to happen tonight.
Her eyes toured the room, and suddenly a feeling of repugnance swept over her, engulfing her. It was an ugly room, with all the furniture drab, hideous and badly in need of upholstering. The wallpaper was peeling. The linoleum was spotted and frayed. Dust was everywhere. She was irritated with everything, and found herself fostering her annoyance, nurturing it.
For a moment she had a decidedly queer feeling. As if I'd died and didn't know it, Hazel thought. And everyone looked right through me.
She moved into the bathroom. That room was even dustier than the others. She shrugged indifferently. The devil with it. Once she had spent considerable time in washing up and everything had remained irremediably dirty, or tidying up and everything was in eternal disorder. It was just impossible to keep anything clean in Brooklyn. It had worried her at one time but it did not any more, at least not since Willa had gone away and left her alone.
She saw herself in the mirror not approving of what she saw. She was not quite forty and already she looked like an old hag, an overstuffed sack with bulging flesh and flabby breasts. She was, by nature, an oversized woman with curly red hair with faint suggestions of premature silver here and there. The lines under her eyes and around her lips were not creases of advanced age, but lines of ordeal. And even her complexion emphasized this sordid picture of disintegration. It seemed that there was a shadow all over her, around her.
She turned away from the mirror in disgust. She had been lovely as a girl, she told herself. Even prettier than Willa, and the Lord knows that Willa was easy on the eyes. She had been gay and warm and outgoing; at ease, relaxed in any company. She had a voice that made every word she spoke seem like a jewel laid upon black velvet. And if the words, removed from the background and examined critically, proved to be of no great depth or sparkle, it had not mattered.
She had enchanted the boys with her loveliness. And her red hair, alone, had been something to fall in love with. And Hal Keyes had fallen in love with all of her.
Hal, who owned a grocery store, courted her as if he were running a race against time. He had rushed her into marriage. His interest in her, however, she discovered in bitter disillusionment, was hardly more than juvenile. His attention began to stray after Willa was born. The real surprise to her, after she became more familiar with the man that he was, was that his constancy had lasted for better than a year.
Yet even after she had caught him out, even through his most flagrant infidelities, she had allowed the marriage to stand. She could scarcely do otherwise. She had a daughter, and three years later a son was born to her. The birth of the boy had seemed to make a changed man out of Hal Keyes. From then on, he stayed closer to home. But Hazel's original feeling for her husband had long since died, and there was no such thing as resurrection in the lives of people.
She had loved Hal ardently. She had loved him only for a little while, though, before she discovered that Hal wasn't worth loving. For the sake of the two growing children she had tolerated him.
Then had come that horrible day seven years ago. He had been on a binge for three days. When he finally staggered home, she had told him in exasperation to get out of the house and not come back until he sobered up. He had tried to reason with her. He spent a lot of words that he spoke with a sluggish tongue, but they were wasted. He begged her to forgive him and she turned a deaf ear to his pleas. His words brought no admittance to her darkness of feeling.
Finally, in exhaustion, he had given up and gone out, promising to return but threatening to come back drunker than ever and beat her up.
Hal returned, all right, but not under his own power. He was killed in a drunken brawl.
Hazel winced at the memory and went back into the living room. She sat down in an overstuffed chair, still recalling things that she was so anxious to forget.
Hal's dead, she said to herself, so forget him. Hal, living, was a rotten bastard, not worth a damn either as husband or as father, worth a glance at most, a quickened heartbeat if it was a woman who glanced, but never a lingering thought, a sustained passion. Personable? Sure, he had been tall, dark and handsome. She had been fooled herself by his physical appearance.
She winced again. It was a reflex induced unfailingly by memory of her dead husband.
His untimely death had brought on new problems. Long before he had died he had lost the grocery store through bankruptcy. He had left no money and there had been no insurance, and with two young children to rear in a callous, every-man-for-himself world, Hazel found herself in desperate straits.
But Hazel was not one to buckle under difficulties. She felt an innate responsibility for her children, and was resolved that they would have every chance that life offered, even if she broke in the process.
Her own upbringing had been inadequate. In describing her growth from childhood to adolescence she was apt to say, "I'm up from the gutter. I never knew what a real bathtub was till I was sixteen." Stuff like that.
Still remembering, she remained a static hulk in her chair, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, an island in a sea of memory responding to nothing outward as she reviewed in her mind the past seven years. Her eyelids drooped, and she was confronted by a great blank waste.
It was after Hal had died that she had started those long arduous hours of working as a charwoman. She would go off at eight in the morning, trudge back to cook the children's dinner, and then set out again, often not returning until half-past ten at night It was little wonder that she had become thin and pale and that the struggle for her children's existences should make her possessive, jealous, even resentful at times, as they grew older and therefore less dependent on her love and care. She had given up everything in life worth having for their sake, and frequently she felt that they gave her so little in return, taking it all for granted.
And then, to make matters worse, little Danny was run over by a truck and killed. What a miserable mess her life had been. Her husband killed in a drunken brawl, her only son destroyed in an accident, and her daughter who liked the boys a little too much for her own good ... all were contributing factors to this misery.
Hazel had grieved for Danny a little while, and then the transformation in her appearance and personality began its noxious process. The result was not a pleasant one. She spent less time working and more time drinking beer. This habit of beer drinking developed to the point of insatiability. She became careless in her eating habits. Slowly but surely she started to put on weight. Her sylph-like figure became embedded in globs of fat. Suddenly she found herself grotesquely obese.
It seemed to her that the final blow had come three months earlier when Willa had married against her wishes. Willa was mulishly stubborn and simply would not listen to maternal advice. The girl insisted on going her own way. Hazel objected strenuously, but the bitter scene culminated in Willa going to Baltimore with young Cliff Lindsay.
The thought of Willa brought a premonition to Hazel. It was a process of going back, and with her eyes closed she could see a progression of scenes that made her shiver without moving and swallow hard without swallowing anything.
"I've slaved for her all these years," Hazel told herself aloud. "I've brought her up so she could marry well and have the chances I never had. And now it's all wasted, gone for nothing."
Hazel felt as though she had lost all faith and meaning in life. She had let herself go more and more, until now she sat there, a ponderous mass of excess flesh in a rapid state of deterioration.
About a month earlier she had taken on the formidable task of cleaning the Flatbush Building offices every weekday evening, and she scrubbed and scraped with amazing vigor for a woman her size. With a full moon of a face and a permanently gruff manner, Mrs. Keyes had the appearance of a genuine comic, but she could work. Scrubbing and cleaning as a job, a daily routine to her, the old individual pride in her work now being a thing of the past. She never noticed her employers and they never noticed her. She was only the scrubwoman.
In the new building, however, the people seemed different, somehow. On their way home, after the day's work was over, they stopped to say good evening and treated her as a person, not as a machine, and even asked if she had a family. Hazel could relax in this new atmosphere. She began to open up, to talk about her life and about Willa. One typist in particular, a girl who was scarcely more than a couple of years older than Willa, expressed her viewpoint about Hazel's difficulties with Willa, stating that the possessive mother makes the rebellious daughter. If Mrs. Keyes had sympathized with Willa instead of scolding her so much, if she had looked for the best in her daughter instead of the worst, she might have started her on the right road to happiness instead of making her suspicious and resentful.
Hazel had looked at her and marveled aloud, "You're so young! How do you know that?"
"I know," the typist had said shyly, "because I've been through the same thing myself."
That night Hazel had gone home from work, feeling strangely moved and humble. She felt that she wanted to start all over again and love Willa in a different way, help the girl.
But Willa was not there, and Hazel had personal problems. She was earning money but it just didn't seem to be enough. She was always broke. The cost of living was beyond her income, especially since she needed so much beer to keep her afloat. The high prices for food, clothing and rent left her strapped. It was needless to dwell on her anxiety when the rent was due. The other day, after counting every penny, she found herself two months in arrears. That was the last straw, and Hazel, who had met one disaster after another successfully, sank beneath it.
Her memories overwhelmed her. She wanted to push them away from her. Maybe if she went to sleep now....Sleep?
That was downright comical. As if sleep were something that came automatically. As if all she had to do was to put her head against the pillows and close her eyes and fall asleep. She laughed soundlessly at the picture of herself trying to sleep. Every night she had a debate with sleep and it was one rebuttal after another. It kept on like that until it knocked her out just when the sun got started. That was her sleep.
To hell with sleep. To hell with everything.
She fell asleep, anyhow. With her chair drawn close to the window and her chins pressed in her neck, she slept. After a while she opened her eyes, once as bright as her hair, but now like bits of scrap iron that had been allowed to rust and sink in the folds of her flesh. Her tongue was dry. She sent it questing for saliva. She swallowed painfully. She was thirsty, but she would have to get to her feet to get a drink.
It would be a mistake to get up. It meant that gruesome business of facing life again. Once a day was enough for that.
She heaved herself out of the chair. Her legs bore their heavy burden through the living room to the adjoining bath. She took great gulps of tap water, not swallowing, sluicing out the parched cavern of her mouth. Then she splashed her face and dried it, and began to comb her hair. Not once, during this sketchy toilet, did she look in the mirror. When it was over, she shivered, all heat being concentrated in her mouth and throat. She turned, and retraced her steps to the living room, wishing all the time that Cassie Thompson were there to share a beer with her. It seemed important to her not to pander to her thirst without the illusion of sociability, because long ago she had despised solitary drinkers.
About this time Willa reached the Dean Street address. It was an ancient six-story tenement house. She started into the building, and immediately the sickening smell hit her in the face. Her head flew back and she grimaced. She held her nose.
Quickly she climbed five flights of rickety stairs. The walls were scribbled in childish scrawls with such legends as Harry Loves Rosie and pornographic allusions to various people who had lived in the tenement through the years. In the dwelling was interwoven a crazy quilt of slapstick comedy and sordid tragedy, and it was difficult to determine where one ended and the other began.
On the fourth landing Willa paused. That smell again. Urine. Hall toilets. The walls. Evidently people could not bear to go to the messy toilets. Or else they could not wait. Too few bathrooms for so many tenants. Or perhaps old transients came in from the streets to discharge their natural functions. Anyway, her mother didn't have to contend with this unsavory problem. She had a private bathroom, even though it was small.
Willa braced herself and gripped the bannister with her free hand. The spoke loosened. She climbed to the fifth floor, moved down the corridor, and stopped in front of the wooden door marked 5C. It was her mother's home.
She fished in her purse for the key, which she had retained when she went away with Cliff, and opened the door. Willa inhaled with caution. The air in the room was very stale, and the shabby furniture was dulled everywhere by layers of Brooklyn dust. Some faint stirring of conscience impelled her to make futile stabs at creating order as she moved into the room. A sin and a shame, the way her mother had let things go to pot.
The room was illuminated only dimly by a floor lamp near the overstuffed chair. Willa switched on the overhead light.
Hazel was still sitting in the large chair near the window. The chair was so large and deep that she was concealed from Willa's view. In her half-wakefulness she had heard footsteps climbing the stairway, and presently the sound had died out. Her lids drooped again. When she raised them once more, light dazzled in the room. There was light and a human presence.
Hazel thought, I must be dreaming. It's not time for Cassie. She can't be finished so early at the Flatbush Building. Time doesn't pass so quickly as all that.
"Mom, are you here?" Willa called out.
No, time had not passed. It had gone backward. This was not the expected voice. This was a voice that she had not heard in months. Her daughter's voice. It seemed to come from somewhere behind the high back of her chair.
Willa moved around the chair. She faced her mother with a smile. "Hello, Mom," she said softly.
Hazel stared in disbelief, and then she muttered, "Well, I'll be damned! I'll be good and goddamned!" She leaned forward with her eyes wide, staring, like a frightened elephant ready to bolt. The overhead light behind Willa brought out the strong surge of youth in her body, the firm, sweeping contours of her breasts underlined by a stomach so flat that it appeared almost sucked in, held in with a play of muscles that danced as she moved.
Willa grinned. "Hello, Mom," she repeated. "You remember me, don't you?" She dropped her suitcase on the floor and rushed into her mother's arms, embracing her. Hazel thrust her away.
"Willa!" Hazel licked her lips and a frown worked its way into her eyes. "Oh, no ... not Willa! My God, not Willa! How'd you get here?"
Willa said, "Okay, Mom. Don't drop dead from fright over seein' me. I'm no ghost. I'm your daughter Willa, all right."
Hazel, still fascinated, could not take her eyes off the girl for a second. She stared until words came to her and squeezed out in another flurry of amazement.
"Willa! Well, I'll be damned!"
Willa smiled. "You already said that, Mom. Ain't you glad to see me?"
Hazel sighed. She spoke in that hoarse voice which so completely blended with her neglected person, saying, "You surprised me, Willa. I thought you was still in Baltimore."
"I left Baltimore this afternoon, Mom. I hopped a bus...."
"I wasn't expecting you. You shoulda written."
"I thought of it too late. I...." Willa could not talk for staring. Her mother tossed her one of those frowning smiles, and Willa watched the smile turn into a grimace, then to tears and sobbing as Hazel wrapped herself around her daughter in embrace. Over her head Willa saw the room with the white starched lace curtains and the ivory crocheted doilies that brought light to the drab chairs, and on the floor the linoleum was hard and glistening with dust.
Hazel moved her tongue over her dry lips. "What time is it?"
Willa said mechanically, "A little after ten-thirty, Mom." The words echoed in her ears, entirely irrelevant to the contents of her heart and mind. "We won't talk about the time or weather, Mom. You've got to explain ... all this...." She made a sweeping gesture that took in the entire room, waited for a response that did not come, then said doggedly, "Why in the world are you livin' like this?"
Her mother's lips went back and Willa saw the yellowed teeth again. Hazel's fingers were hanging on the edge of the chair, as if she were trying to tear off a chunk of it.
The words gushed out bitterly, "My daughter got married and left me...."
Willa's hand went out absently for a cigarette. She stuck it in her mouth, lit it, took a puff, then asked, "What's that supposed to mean?"
Hazel scowled. "Don't play dumb. You're the only one who knows the answer to that." Her eyes were pale, a watery blue, eyes hazy with a venom that remained deadly as she watched Willa.
"Well, strike me pink!" Willa said in amazement.
"What are you doin' here, child?" Hazel asked suddenly.
"Now, Mom, that ain't much of a welcome-home, is it?" Willa's voice sounded hurt. "You don't seem very glad to see me.
Hazel moved her tongue over her lips. It might have been annoyance that she tasted, but she downed it with no more comment than the lift of her shoulders. Willa was disappointed in her failure to arouse her. A weariness entered her eyes and voice. "So you're not glad to see me, are you?" she repeated.
Hazel shook her head uncertainly. "No, I guess not. I guess I couldn't be, after the way you treated me."
Willa had always tried hard to love her mother, yet she had to admit that the older woman was hard to take at times. She could make faces as well as her mother could.
She made a good one and said dryly, "Well, Mom, whether you like it or not, your daughter's come home to stay."
Hazel elevated her eyebrows wonderingly. "Come home to stay? What's the matter? Your husband throw you out?"
Willa shook her head. "No, Mom. It was the other way round. I ditched Cliff. He couldn't do me no good, the drip. He didn't have enough on the ball, so I packed up and left him." As an afterthought, she added to her supply of prevarications, "We had the marriage annulled."
Her mother laughed insolently, and the laugh cut Willa right in half. "So the guy did take you for a joy ride, didn't he?"
"Goddamn you, Mom!" Willa was getting sore. Her teeth came together as she made a strong effort to control herself. She hissed when she spoke. "Yeah, I went for the guy, all right. I went overboard for the drip. But it didn't last. Cliff ain't half a man. He could never satisfy me where it takes the most."
"Serves you right," her mother said grimly. "You're a bad girl, Willa."
"So I'm a bad girl," Willa's lips curled in a sneer. "It don't matter to me what you say, Mom. It never has mattered."
"I know it hasn't. That's why you're so bad."
"All right, so I'm a bad girl. What else?"
Hazel glared at her. "You don't really expect me to believe that stuff, do you?"
"Believe what stuff?" Willa asked innocently.
"What you said about the way you split up with Cliff Lindsay."
Willa shook her head. "Naw, I don't expect you to believe it. I don't expect you to believe anything. You never did."
Hazel looked at her uncertainly. "I've always had your welfare at heart, Willa. The straight of it is that...."
"You can save your breath, Mom," Willa broke in quickly. "I've heard that sob stuff a million times."
"All right, I'll shut up." Hazel drew her lips into a tight line.
Willa asked, somewhat timidly, "Is it okay for me to park my suitcase in my old room?"
"You know damn well I can't say no," her mother said gruffly. "After all, whatever you might have done, you're still my own flesh. But the next time you pull a stunt like that, and leave me without writin' even a line, I'll take you apart, piece by piece." Hazel half-stood up, sneering at her, and then she sank back into the chair, gasping and groaning.
Willa rushed to her side. "Mom, what's the matter?" she asked, in a small, alarmed voice. Her mother continued to gasp and groan. "You're sick, Mom. Should I call a doctor?"
Hazel started to laugh mirthlessly. "I don't need a doctor," she said, through her laughter.
Her shoulders heaved. The sound of her laughter was heartbreaking to Willa, a souvenir stumbled upon among castoffs once cherished and now grotesque because of time and change.
Willa sensed the grave danger, doubted the ability of the gasping flesh to stop now that it had started to writhe. She raised her voice brutally, "Then it's a brain doctor you need ... unless you're too far...."
The laughter ended. Hazel cowered as from a blow. Willa forced herself to go on, "I've been away only three months ... and look at you. Just look! I must say, you looked a lot better when I was here."
The girl took her shocked eyes away from her mother. It was the old story. It's awful to see Mom this way again, Willa was thinking. I thought she'd got over it. She'd been on the water wagon for months before I went away. It was Daddy's death that began it all. Never saw anybody so upset. You might have thought Daddy was the best guy in the world instead of a cheap drunk. A helluva time I had with Mom when Daddy got bumped off, the way she took to drink. And then it got worse when that horrible thing happened to little Danny. Seemed Mom couldn't get over Danny getting run over. Drank herself silly. She got over it, finally, and she was sober for a long time. But I was always afraid it might come over her again. My goin' away musta done it. She stinks like a brewery. Drank herself flat on her big ass. But I thought she'd gotten over it. It's a damned shame to see a woman like Mom get taken that way. It's changed her out of all knowin'. She's so ugly now. And to think Mom was such a pretty nice lookin' woman once, before she got that way. And she'll be ashamed when she snaps out of it, real ashamed.
Willa's voice was gentle and melancholic and respectful. "Mom, tell me what's the matter?"
Her mother did not hear her. She was weeping now, and it was as though the snows of a long winter suddenly had melted and joined in one relentless flood.
"Mom," Willa said for the third or fourth time, "you'll make yourself sick. Could I get you something, Mom?"
But her voice was no competition for that dreadful sobbing. Helplessly Willa retreated to the kitchen and smoked a cigarette to soothe her jangled nerves. This was a hell of a homecoming. People in their right sense didn't carry on like that, she thought fretfully. Mom drinks too much. I wonder, if I brought her a cup of black coffee, could I get her to take it?
At intervals Willa slipped into the hall to listen, and at last, to her relief, there was silence. She looked around, and her nose wrinkled in distaste. Well, she would straighten out this messy flat. She would dust the furniture, remove the grime and soot from the windowsills and woodwork, clean the draperies and curtains, the upholstery and linoleum, sweep the surfaces between. But that was for tomorrow. Tonight she would have to straighten out her mother.
She went back into the living room. The sunken eyes turned towards her. Tears had washed away their film. They seemed shamefully overexposed. Common sense had come to the rescue.
"I'm all right now, Willa," Hazel said. "Did you eat, honey? If you're hungry, I believe there's some cold lamb in the icebox."
"Thanks, Mom, but I don't think I will. Who in the world can eat in weather like this?"
"It is terribly hot, ain't it? I thought for sure we'd get a breeze tonight from the river."
"There's a little breeze, Mom, but it seems to make things just so much hotter."
Hazel looked at her sympathetically. "I'm sorry things didn't work out for you with Cliff, Willa."
"No, Mom, it didn't work out." Willa made a little movement with her left shoulder. "But it's just as well, I suppose. I'm home now."
"Yes, you're home now," Hazel sighed.
"I'll help you, Mom. Soon's I get settled, I'll go out and get me a job. Then maybe you can take it easy for a while. I guess I never should have left you alone."
Hazel said, "No, Willa honey, you shouldn't have."
Willa put her arms around her mother and squeezed. "I'm your baby."
Hazel's face took on a rapt, bemused expression. "Yes, you're my baby. You're all that I have left in the world." Again she sighed. "But we won't go into that now. You must be awfully tired, child, after that long trip. Maybe you ought to go to bed."
Willa shrugged resignedly. "Okay, Mom. Goodnight." Willa tweaked her hair in passing. Her mother slapped playfully at her hand, and Willa gave a realistic cry of pain.
After Willa left the room, Hazel got slowly to her feet. Willa had summoned her pride back to life. Her own dull misery could be endured by herself, but that its poison might infect her own daughter had not occurred to her.
3
In the morning, when she went into the kitchen to get her breakfast, Willa gasped as she looked at her mother standing at the sink. The change in Hazel's appearance overnight was remarkable, almost unbelievable. Despite her excessive fleshiness she was almost attractive again. Her hair was brushed and washed to a glisten. And she was wearing a clean blue cotton dress designed to flow loosely but bursting at the seams.
"Mornin', Mom."
"Mornin', Willa."
"How nice you look."
Hazel smiled with pleasure. It was the first compliment that she had been paid in months.
"Thank you, honey. I like things like this."
"Then you should wear them always."
"That's exactly what I intend to do, Willa."
On her lips, the way she said it then, the name Willa sounded like music. Willa recoiled inside, thinking of the blow her mother would have to take when the truth came out about her true relationship with Cliff Lindsay. But why should she ever tell her mother the truth? It was none of her business, really, and what she didn't know could never hurt her. She would just chalk it up as another bad deal. Any way it went, she had been born to a bad deal. Some women are slated in advance for sacrifice. All of her young life she had been bent to her mother's indifference. Saying Yes, Mom and No, Mom, and all the time playing second fiddle to a kid brother whose love had been a stranglehold. And right on top of everything else, to have fallen for a drip like Cliff Lindsay. What a rotten deal that had been!
Cliff, however, had been impossible to resist. It would have taken a woman of tough experience to have assessed him offhandedly at his real value. Willa was tough, all right, but not yet experienced enough.
Willa scrutinized her mother's face closely. "Mom, you still look kinda sick," she said anxiously. "If you feel sick, you oughta be in bed, not here."
"No, Willa, I'm not sick," Hazel said, and a harshness grated in her voice. "Nothin's the matter with me."
"But, Mom...."
Willa placed a sympathetic hand on her arm, and she jerked it away roughly. "I wish you wouldn't look at me like that," she said with a frown. "Just ... let me alone. There's nothin' much wrong with me. Better eat somethin', Willa."
With that Hazel walked out of the kitchen. There were tattered remnants of grace in the way she moved her ponderous body. Watching her, Willa felt her brittle young heart contract.
Willa drank a cup of instant coffee and ate toast and scrambled eggs. On the way to the sink with her dirty dishes she thought absently, I'll have to dig up a good excuse for Mom about why things didn't pan out so good with Cliff. She's sure to ask for more details than I gave her last night.
So, while she performed the remaining chores around the kitchen, she amused herself by inventing tall tales for her mother who, no doubt, still believed that she had been married to Cliff.
"Honest, Mom," she would tell her, "you could have knocked me over with a feather. The funny part of it all is that, though Cliff's so tall, strong and handsome, he ain't much of a man ... if you know what I mean. He dresses like a millionaire and he can be nice and sweet when he wants to be, but what good's'it all if he ain't half a man? Some romance, huh! So I'm sure you'll agree I did the right thing in havin' the marriage annulled. And I won't take any money from him, neither, even if we are hard up for cash."
Sure, stuff like that. Make a joke out of it and laugh it off. She wondered if her mother would ever tumble to the fact that she had never been married to Cliff. Mom would probably climb all over her if she ever latched on to the truth. But how could the old lady ever find out unless she herself told her? And that she would never do.
Willa joined her mother in the living room. Hazel started right in with her complaints. First she lashed at Willa for being so inconsiderate, then lapsed into a bitter tirade against Hal Keyes, splattering his memory with expletives as she blamed Willa's shortcomings on him.
Willa sat there silently, her face draining of all color and her lips tightening while she stared at her mother's profile. She kept her eyes steadily on Hazel's face. Hazel, obviously ashamed of her outburst, suddenly averted her face as she came to the conclusion of her remarks.
Repelled, Willa said, "You oughta be ashamed of yourself, Mom, talkin' that way about my father."
"Ashamed? Of what? To speak ill of the dead?
"Uh-huh. It ain't right to speak ill of the dead."
Her mother waved her arm in disgust. "Nuts! He can't hear, and anyway he knows I hated him ... as much as he hated me. I'm glad he's dead."
"Mother!"
"So is he. Or he oughta be. Everyone oughta be glad to be dead, everyone who's got any sense. At peace!" she shrugged. "Nuts! What of it?"
"Don't, Mom," Willa said tensely. "Please don't talk like that. I hate you when you talk like that."
"That pig of a husband...." Hazel was beside herself.
"You don't just know what you're talkin' about!" Willa said gruffly. "You...." She checked herself when she saw the pain on her mother's face. She rose from her chair and crossed in front of her, kneeling before her. "You really didn't mean that, did you, Mom?"
"I ... I...."
Suddenly Willa laughed. Her laugh was spontaneous because she saw the absurdity of herself kneeling in front of her mother, facing her as she sat patiently in the chair, her palms on her knees. Hazel laughed, too, the chuckle mirthful and pleasant.
"That's right, Willa. It does me good to hear a young girl laugh like that. That's what I've missed more'n anything else all these months you've been gone. Laughin's the best thing in the world, and it's a messy world when all's said and done."
Willa viewed her face searchingly. "I know you didn't mean what you said about Daddy, Mom," she said. "Why, I remember when...."
Hazel sighed profoundly. "No, Willa, I didn't really mean it. At least, not exactly in the way I said it. As I've told you so many times, your father had some nice things about him. He was a fine man til he took to drinkin' and runnin' around loose with the ladies. Why, there was a time when he had more guts 'n almost any other person I've ever known."
"Was that why you called out to him one night, Mom, some time after he was killed?"
"What night was that, child?"
"The night you came home, fired from that job you had in that office buildin' ... I forget which. Danny and me was hungry, and you came home late and brought us some food." Hazel wrinkled her nose, searching her memory. "Oh?" Willa went on, "And we ate and I went to sleep. I woke up, and you was kneelin' beside me, and the lamp shined on your face, and your eyes were sunk in and hot."
Remembrance gleamed in Hazel's eyes. She shook her head with memory and said, "Yeah, I remember now."
"I realize now you had yourself a temperature, but I was too small to know then."
"Of course you were, child." Hazel reached out for Willa's hand and took it in her own. "You were only ten."
"And I spoke to you, but you didn't answer. You just looked over my head and said out loud, 'Oh, Hal, Hal, I can't go on. Help me, help me.' I got so scared, I went out to call Mr. Slesky from next door."
"Oh, no, you didn't!"
"Uh-huh, I did, Mom. Mr. Slesky came and said there wasn't nothin' to be scared of, really, that you just hadn't eaten too long."
"Oh!" Hazel gasped as she remembered.
"And I didn't know then, or I'd have been scareder. Because I thought I'd been hungry when I'd just had a bellyache and felt queer inside, all over. I just didn't know."
Willa stopped, her eyes staring back strangely into the past, seeing the scene again. "And I asked Mr. Slesky why you'd called father like that when he wasn't there and he said it was because you loved him. That true, Mom?"
Hazel studied her daughter wonderingly. "How come you never asked me about that before, Willa? Why do you ask me now?"
"Because I gotta know. I just got to know."
"Mr. Slesky was right," her mother replied slowly. "Oh, how I loved your father, Willa honey." She thought it best not to go into the fact that Hal Keyes had killed that love long before he died.
Willa smiled, and it was a smile older than her years. "Oh, my lovin' mother, how you must have loved my father," she said. She looked into her mother's eyes. They were wet.
Hazel said, "That's one of the nicest things you've ever said to me, honey."
Later that morning Cassie Thompson dropped in. She greeted Hazel cheerfully, welcomed Willa somewhat less heartily, and sat down for a chat.
Willa listened silently while the two older women talked shop, with Cassie telling Hazel odd bits of gossip about how the job had gone the night before. Ten years earlier Cassie must have been ravishingly pretty. The prettiness was still apparent, but was beginning to go soft around the edges like an ice-cream shape left too long upon the plate. Willa thought Cassie looked wistful, as if she were anxious for people to like her without being very successful in satisfying her desires. This impression was confirmed when Cassie discussed the neighbors.
The widely proclaimed anonymity of the big city was definitely a fraud. Cassie, it seemed from her own admission, was unwelcome in other homes in the neighborhood, which was probably why she haunted the Keyes residence. The inhabitants of Dean Street hid behind curtains and refused to answer doorbells rather than subject themselves to Cassie's lengthy advice on how to run their households, shop, cook, and bring up their children, and all the while their furniture suffered the wear and tear of Cassie's insatiable curiosity. If she were treated as a minor menace, the treatment afforded nothing of malice. Her value in a conversation piece could send any social gathering off to a gay start.
The discussion between Hazel and Cassie finally got around to the latter's daughter Mitzi, who was about Willa's age.
Cassie said regretfully, "She's such a sweet child, Mitzi is, it seems a pity she's so much more outspoken than our generation, Hazel."
"Is she?"
"Indeed she is. The things she says! At dinner, for example.
All of her generation seems to think it's smart to say things like she did about marriage at the dinner table last night."
Willa put in curiously. "Is Mitzi gettin' married, Mrs. Thompson?"
"She is indeed, Willa. To Johnny Roberts."
"Oh!"
"Dear, dear. The things she said last night."
Cassie looked at Hazel for confirmation as to whether or not she wanted to know what Mitzi had said. Hazel obliged by asking, "What did she say, Cassie?"
"She said she's found out on what grounds she can get a divorce if it don't work out with Johnny." Cassie made a disapproving tsk-tsk, then went on, "She didn't really mean it, I'm sure. She couldn't. She just likes to scandalize me."
"Just how sure are you?" Willa asked.
Cassie looked startled, as if she had forgotten the subject they were discussing.
"Sure of what, Willa?"
"That she don't mean what she says," Willa replied. "Maybe it's your generation, Mrs. Thompson, who say what they don't mean."
Hazel said rebukingly, "Willa, you can't mean that!"
"Certainly I mean it!" Willa retorted.
Cassie said, "Mitzi just couldn't have meant what she said. Know what else she said?" She paused dramatically and then leaned forward, speaking in a confiding tone, "She said her Johnny was a pet and she was crazy about him, but people sometimes turn out quite differently when you're married to them."
Willa muttered, thinking of Cliff, "She's right, too."
Cassie was unmindful of the interruption. "So I says to her, 'I hope you won't change your mind before you marry Johnny.' And she says, winkin' at me, 'You never know, Mama. I just might see somebody I like better.'"
"She winked at you?" Hazel asked.
"That's right, Hazel. She did."
"Then maybe she was just pullin' your leg."
Cassie shook her head. "No, she meant it, every word of it. When she looked at me, her blue eyes held an invitation for me to argue that away."
Hazel laughed. "Cassie, maybe you should send out the weddin' invitations with a note," she suggested joshingly. " The name of the bridegroom is subject to change without notice.'"
Instead of taking that in the jocular vein it was intended, Cassie gave it some serious thought. At last she said, "It saves so much trouble to wait till one thinks one's sure."
"How can a girl be sure?" Willa demanded, somewhat irascibly. "Men change, and then a girl never knows who she'll meet the next day."
Hazel glowered at her, growling, "I seem to have raised a little savage. In my day...."
"In your day, Mom," Willa interrupted, "the whole business of marriage was much more serious. You got yourself a husband and you were stuck with him, even if you hated the sight of him. And I think that's a lot more savage."
"Our generation knew their own minds," Cassie retorted. "We didn't love one day and hate the next."
"That's because Mr. Thompson left you before you'd had time to change your mind," Willa said, and she laughed as though she thought that might be a rare witticism.
"Don't say that, Willa! Not even as a joke." The older woman ripped the words out. "My Tony was a saint."
"So you always say, Mrs. Thompson. I don't remember him that way."
Hazel reprimanded her. "Children should be seen and not heard, Willa. We were talkin' about Cassie's daughter, not her husband."
"So we were," Cassie said, with a shake of her head. "Dear, dear. I'm afraid I've given you the wrong impression of Mitzi, who's such a sweet child, I assure you." As an afterthought she added, "The way she tries to give me the wrong impression. And that's what's so sad. Mitzi's life hasn't been quite as easy as you might think, with her father being what he was ... and ... well, it hasn't been easy."
Hazel said solicitously, "No, I suppose not. Tony was not the best father a daughter could want."
Cassie said, "Tony had his good points."
"So did my Hal," Hazel said. "The whole trouble was, they weren't just quite good enough."
Cassie snapped her off, "Well, that's neither here nor there. We were talkin' about Mitzi. When she marries and settles down...."
"What's the feller like?" Willa asked.
"Who?" Cassie turned to her with questioning eyes.
"The one she's marryin'."
"Johnny? Oh, such a fine boy. When she's married to him, she'll settle down, all right." Cassie seemed to be repeating it in the hope that if she said it often enough she would be able to believe it, really.
An uncomfortable silence followed. Hazel tried to bridge it when she said, "Feel like a cold glass of beer, Cassie?"
"In this heat? I should say so!"
Hazel got to her feet. She said, "Back in two shakes," and lumbered out of the room. She was back more quickly than anyone had bargained for.
She tried to mask her disappointment when she said, "Sorry, Cassie. We're all out. I must have drunk the last bottle last night."
"That's okay, Hazel," Cassie said, with a sigh.
Hazel turned to Willa. "Be a good sport, honey, and go to the corner and buy us a couple of quarts of brew."
"All right, Mom." Willa got up and Hazel handed her some change.
After Willa was gone, Hazel sat down again in the chair she had vacated and turned to her friend. "I'm sorry you talked that way about marriage in front of Willa, Cassie," she said in a lecturing tone. "She just broke up with her husband and...."
"Oh," Cassie said, clucking her tongue sympathetically. "That's too bad." Hazel gestured helplessly. "Poor Willa, she's a rather helpless person. Afraid it's all my fault, too. I should have run her life more."
Cassie nodded in agreement. "You got to, Hazel. But you got to handle 'em slow and cautious nowadays. You just can't hurry them things. Now, take Mrs. Glasgow, she...."
Hazel showed mild interest. "Mrs. Glasgow? Oh, you mean the lady on the first floor, don't you?"
"Yeah, the mother of that naughty boy Frankie I was tellin' you about."
"Frankie?" Hazel furrowed her forehead, searching her memory.
"Yeah, the boy that only his uncle can manage."
Hazel sighed. "If only I could manage Willa first rate."
"You could learn to manage her first rate, Hazel."
Hazel shook her head uncertainly. "I don't know, Cassie. I just don't know. She ... well, the fact is, she started keepin' bad company when she was only twelve. The way I found out the awful life she was leadin'...." She swallowed hard, paused, trying to catch hold of the thread of thought she had lost momentarily. Then she continued, " ... the awful life she was leadin' was her comin' home late at night ... with that dissipated look...."
"Yeah, I remember. Poor Willa, she...." Cassie checked herself.
Hazel lit a cigarette and puffed out spirals of smoke. "She'd be out on the open lots, playin' with a gang of neglected little dagoes, playin' hookey from school. And her such a baby." She sobbed a little, then blew her nose into her handkerchief and wiped her eyes.
"Well, baby or no baby, Hazel, you reformed her all right."
Hazel moved her shoulders in a skeptical shrug. "I thought I had, Cassie, but now I ain't so sure. She told me about the boy she says she married, but she's such a liar."
Cassie volunteered, "Want me to have a talk with her, Hazel?"
Hazel shook her head. "No, Cassie. It wouldn't do no good. That girl would only tell you a pack of lies. She's such a bad girl, my Willa, I wouldn't believe her on a stack of Bibles."
At this point Willa came in, carrying a bundle. "She's such a bad girl," Hazel repeated. "A very, very bad girl."
"Who, Mom?" Willa deposited the bag full of bottles of beer on the table. Her eyes had been going from face to face, desperately trying to decipher what they had been saying. "Are you, by any chance, talkin' about me?"
Hazel tried to avoid a direct reply to her question. With a cloying smile she said, 'Thanks a lot for gettin' the beer, Willa honey. I sure can use a brew right now."
Cassie put in, "So can I, Hazel. It's so hot."
Hazel got up and went into the kitchen to get a bottle opener and two glasses. She then returned with them, opened a quart bottle, and poured beer into two glasses.
"I sure appreciate it, Willa, when you cooperate with me," she said. "Any little bit of help's a blessin'. Lord knows, I don't get much. I'm always the fall guy. I do the dirty work, and I'm rushed to death as it is."
An agonized silence followed. The older woman mercifully avoided looking at Willa, but from the corner of her eye Hazel saw her daughter's clasped hands tightening until the knuckles glistened. Willa caught her breath as if to say something, then decided to let the whole matter pass as of no consequence.
Hazel handed Cassie a glass of beer, then held up her own to her lips. "Here's mud in your eye," she said, and the two older women drank with satisfaction. Willa's mouth watered thirstily, and a hurt look appeared in her eyes because she was denied the pleasures of the beer.
4
For the next few days Willa was on her best behavior, and so was her mother. Which was pleasantly surprising, inasmuch as both were undisciplined of mind and their temperaments were apt to clash at the slightest irritation. So life in the Keyes' household proceeded serenely, barring one minor incident, when the lady from the floor below sent up her adult son to complain mildly about Willa's tap dancing.
The heat wave persisted, as did Cassie Thompson, who was an inveterate visitor.
One day the two older women were drinking beer and chatting idly while Willa was inspecting her face in a compact mirror and prettying herself up in preparation for going out.
Cassie glanced at Willa and commented, "You're very pretty, Willa."
Willa swung around and met her gaze strangely. "You really think I'm pretty, Mrs. Thompson?"
Cassie nodded vigorously. "A real looker, if I ever saw one. Dear, dear. As pretty as a sunset. Don't ever let anything ruin your good looks, girl."
Hazel glared at her friend. "Don't go givin' out with the compliments so free and easy, Cassie. You'll turn the girl's head."
"Don't you think I'm pretty, Mom?" Willa's face was pale and fixed in a wry grimace.
Hazel shrugged. "You'll get by, I guess ... in a crowd. But good looks don't buy no groceries, and...."
"You can save your breath, Mom," Willa broke in, flushing with annoyance. "I'll get a job."
"What with the cost of livin' so high, breath is just about all I can save," Hazel retorted. "It's so unfair, so damned unfair...."
Cassie said with a saccharine optimism, "Dear, dear. Hazel, I want to remind you...." She stopped, a blank look covering her face.
"Remind me of what, Cassie?" Hazel asked.
"Oh, just to remind you. Look here, we been friends a long time, ain't we?"
"Yes, a very long time, Cassie."
"So I want to remind you that if things line up one way, that's one kind of justice. Put them another way, and that's another kind of justice. But our blood burns with hope, and then everybody rejoices. What does it all mean?"
"Sure, what does it mean?" Willa asked sarcastically.
Cassie turned to her. "Why, child, it means that life may be hellish now, but it'll be splendid when things work themselves out. And I'm sure things'll work out okay. The good Lord sees to it that things work out okay. And do you mean to tell me a woman can't have faith?"
Cassie's philosophical utterance did not sit well with Hazel, who said dryly, "Drink your beer, Cassie, and shut up."
Cassie said vehemently, "I don't give a hoot in hell what you say, Hazel. You got to have faith."
Willa said derisively, "Go hire a church, Mrs. Thompson, if you want to preach a sermon."
Cassie jumped to her feet, resentful. She faced Hazel and said, "She's antisocial, your daughter is."
Hazel flashed her a stern look. "Don't torment the girl, Cassie," she scolded. "Willa's been through a lot lately."
Cassie repeated, in a chant, "Antisocial, antisocial, antisocial...."
Irked, Willa clapped her hands to her ears. "Stop it, stop it," she said wearily. "Sit down and shut up, Mrs. Thompson. Stop takin' me apart. Nobody's going to take me apart and get away with it."
Cassie started to say something, bit back the words before they came to her lips, smiled a loose nasty smile, and sat down. Her hands were not lingering on the table any more. They were in front of her, and everything in her eyes said that she was ready to take Willa apart, the next time she stepped out of line and insulted her.
Cassie did not linger long after that. When she had gone, Hazel sighed audibly as she gazed at her daughter.
"You oughta be more careful how you talk to Cassie, Willa."
"Why should I be?" Willa asked defiantly. "Why shouldn't you?"
The empty argument ended on that inconclusive note.
It was obvious that Willa would have to look for a job. Talking things over with her mother, Willa said, "What kind of job do you think I ought to look for, Mom?"
Hazel gave that a moment's consideration. "Well, you've knocked over most of the jobs. Guess there's not much left except sellin' things."
Willa smiled. "You know, Mom, I wouldn't mind sellin' things."
"Stop right there, Mom," Willa said. "I'm not too choosy. I can go back to workin' as a waitress. I kinda like dishin' out food."
On Thursday, the day when Willa went out looking for a job, there was a break in the overbearing heat wave. The rains came as a welcome interlude in a sequence of soaring temperatures, and the mercury in the thermometer dropped many degrees.
Hazel was in the kitchen when Willa came home, drenched to the skin. She was at the sink, drawing a cup of water to pour over the pudding she was preparing.
"I'm home, Mom," Willa said, taking off her raincoat and hat and hanging the dripping articles on the doorknob.
"Oh, hello, Willa," Hazel said, beating the eggs. "You're home early, ain't you?"
"Uh-huh."
"Rain lettin 'up any?"
"Uh-huh. It's beginning to clear up." Willa sat down in a chair near the window and started to take off her shoes.
Hazel went to a cupboard, opened a drawer, and took out a clean dishtowel. She looked over at the girl and saw her fooling around with her shoes. She crossed to her.
"If your feet are wet, Willa honey, you'd better take off your stockin's and dry 'em. I mean ... your feet."
Willa slipped off her hose, grabbed a towel and wiped off her wet feet, then slipped on a pair of mules.
Hazel watched her. "Now I come to think of it, where's that new pair of shoes I told you to buy? Seems to me I ain't seen them around anywhere."
"No, Mom, I...."
"Didn't you buy them shoes?"
Willa shook her head negatively.
Hazel chided her, "Well, why didn't you? I gave you the money, and there's nothin' left of these except the uppers. Why didn't you buy those shoes, honey?"
Willa flushed under the rebuke and said sheepishly, "I was goin' to, Mom, and then I ... I saw somethin' else I wanted a whole lot more. So I thought ... I...." She swallowed hard.
Hazel folded her arms across her breasts and flashed her a sternly reproving glance. "So you thought you'd use your shoe money on somethin' else? Well, girl, get that out of your head. You'll do no such thing. You'll buy them shoes."
Willa protested, "But, Mom...."
"There ain't no buts about it. There's no fun in catchin' your death of wet feet. You'll buy them shoes. Do you hear me?"
Willa was not so easily dissuaded. "But I saw a dress I...."
Hazel broke in, "A dress, is it?" She returned to the table, got a tablespoonful of sugar and sprinkled it over the pudding. "You'll get get a new dress when the time comes."
The girl bit her underlip. "Sure, I know. When I get a job. But I want that dress I saw in Abraham, Strauss ... and now. They won't keep it for me unless I pay somethin' down, and you don't have the money for both shoes and...."
"Money!" Hazel explained. "How do you know what money I've got? There ain't no tellin' how much your mother can put by, be this and be that, if she's careful and sparin' and...."
Willa looked at her in amazement. "Put by? If I really thought you'd put somethin' by, Mom, I'd be the happiest girl in the world."
Hazel smiled faintly. "Well, you can think it if it makes you happy. You notice I ain't been drinkin' so much beer lately, ain't you?"
"Yeah." Willa crossed to the table and started busying herself with the potatoes. She dumped them from a bag into a pan, grabbed a knife, and started to pare them.
Hazel turned and saw her. "Here, here! None of that dirty work for you. I'll peel the spuds. You go and set the table."
Willa obeyed. Hazel washed the cup that she used for the eggs as well as the other dishes, then dried them with a dish towel and put them away in the cupboard. That done, she started to peel the potatoes.
Willa said petulantly, "Mom, can't I have that new dress?"
"No!"
"It's really a peach of a dress, Mom. It wouldn't take you more'n a couple of minutes to step around to Abraham, Strauss with me and see it. It's only ten dollars, and fits without any alterations."
Hazel looked up from the potatoes with a studied frown. "Fits, that's what I'll give you in just about one minute, if you don't stop talkin' about that dress."
"You'll give me what?"
"Fits without alterations." Hazel finished peeling the potatoes, gathered the refuse from the table and threw it into a box at the upper corner of the stove.
"Ah, Mom, won't you?"
"Won't I what?"
"Go round to the store and see it. It looks spiffy on me."
Hazel wiped the table clean. "How do you know?"
"I looked in the mirror when I tried it on."
Hazel tossed the dish towel on a cupboard shelf. "Well, ... how do you like that?"
"Oh, Mom, you know I need some new clothes. I hate everything I've got."
"Be thankful they cover you up."
Willa grimaced wryly. "I don't want them to cover me up." She added, after a brief pause, "It ain't stylish to have your clothes cover you up. This one's a low-necked summer dress, and...."
"For the love of Pete! Fancy that!" Hazel's tone was scornful.
Willa moved her left shoulder a little in dismay. "Oh, Mom, Mrs. Thompson made her Mitzi a new dress, and she does her own work beautifully."
"That's okay, doin' your own work," Hazel snorted. "That's nothin', child. It's when you do your own work and other people's beside that you're apt to become some occupied."
Willa caught the implication, and winced. "Don't you worry none, Mom. I'll get a job soon."
Hazel crossed to her, patted her arm reassuringly, and smiled sweetly. "I know you will dear," she said. "But when?"
Willa flared up, "It was rainin' today but I went out to hunt for a job anyway, didn't I?"
"Sure you did, and I think it's very nice of you that you did. But it's no more'n right that you should. After all, I work my fingers to the bone for you till I just about see spots before my eyes...."
Willa stamped her foot in anger. "If that's the way you feel about it...."
Hazel silenced her with an upraised arm. "Hold onto your temper, Willa. Ain't no reason for you to be gettin' sore."
Willa subsided. "Oh, all right. Since you won't let me buy that dress, I wish you knew how to sew like Mrs. Thompson."
With her arms akimbo Hazel stood there and scowled at her daughter. "Listen to her," she snorted disdainfully. "My Willa don't like the style of mother her father picked for her." She returned to the table, picked up the pan of potatoes and put them on the fire.
Willa said surlily, "Mom, I wish you'd try to make me a new dress if you won't buy me one. You got time to do it. You sit down a lot and do nothin'."
"My, God forbid that I should sit down!" Hazel went to the sink and washed her hands, then dried them on the Turkish towel. "And I don't do nothin'?"
"I'm sorry," Willa conceded ruefully. "You mend stockin's, all right."
Hazel said with an unpleasant smile, "Oh, I thought I must have been doin' somethin'!"
Willa coughed, and her mother said, "Willa, I wish you'd do somethin' to get rid of that cough of yours. It ain't worth hangin' onto."
Again Willa coughed. She said casually, "Oh, it ain't nothin' to worry about. It's just a summer cold, Mom. Those summer colds seem to hang on for a long while." She crossed to a chair near the window, picked up a book from under the cushion, and hid it behind her back.
Out of a corner of her eye Hazel saw her act of concealment. She said, "Willa, do you know, I believe you'd feel a whole lot more like attendin' strictly to business if I relieved you of whatever you got behind your back."
Willa trembled with alarm. "What?"
"That's right. It wouldn't trouble me nary a bit, and it's just burdenin' you."
Willa said surlily, "Mom, I think you're real mean. I can't have a single thing without you always wantin' to see it."
"Of course you can't, Willa honey. I know you, child. You'd run around loose if I didn't keep a strict eye on you. Remember how you was hauled into Juvenile Court when you was only twelve because I let you run around loose?"
Willa said fretfully, "All right. So what? You don't have to bring that up, do you?"
"Yes, I do. I have to keep remindin' you of it so you won't do it again. You like the boys too much for your own good. You may not believe it, but a mother's got a real sort of friendly interest in her kids. A mother always wants to keep in touch with her kids' minds."
"So?"
"So your mind's behind your back now, Willa. Let me get right in touch with it."
"Oh, no!" Willa backed away. "I don't want you to."
Hazel held out her hand commandingly. "Now, come on, child. Right away, too, or I'll get in touch with it in another kind of way, a stingin' sort of way."
"Oh, all right." Willa angrily thrust the book at her mother. "Here, take it."
Hazel turned the book over and examined the title. "Well, what do you know? 'The Naked Woman.' "
Willa stuck her chin out. "What's wrong with that?"
"No wonder you're in no hurry to find a job."
"No?"
"You just want to read this sort of trash, so you can find out the kind of men the naked woman strips for."
Willa flushed guiltily but said nothing as her mother opened the book and skimmed through the pages. The girl listened when her mother paused at a passage and started to read it aloud: " 'Cora liked to lounge around the house naked. Inside the confines of her own home she never wore a stitch of clothing. The numerous men who came to see her and sleep with her enjoyed the spectacle of her warm white flesh, her voluptuous curves, her firm breasts, her alluring womb that curved into her thighs between her long slim legs like a sea shell.' "
Hazel threw the book down upon the floor in disgust, glowering at her daughter. "My God, what trash! No wonder you have no morals."
"I don't care," Willa said defiantly. "You can take my book away if you want, but there are some things I can do, and I'll do them, too. See if I don't"
"What, for instance?"
Willa's chin jutted out resolutely. "I'll get that dress I want so bad."
"What's goin' to come of you, Willa honey?" Hazel crossed to her, wringing her hands. "If you keep readin' trash like that, you're bound to wind up in the gutter."
"Oh, come off it, Mom," Willa said scornfully. "Don't be a drip. I'll be okay. You work yourself up into a stew over somethin' that'll never happen."
Hazel mumbled uncertainly, in a trembling voice. "I hope so."
Willa removed the lipstick from her handbag and drew it across her mouth, slowly. "Mom, look. Let's get one thing straight. I know how you feel, and all that, but I want to live."
The inference was not lost on her mother. She said, "You're trouble, Willa, bad trouble."
Willa slipped the lipstick back into its case and stared at it. Her head came up in a slow stare and she let her eyes roam over her mother's face.
"Sometimes...." she began, and checked herself.
"Yeah?"
"You know, Mom, maybe it woulda been better for you if I'd stayed away for good."
Hazel's eyebrows went up. "Better for who, child? Better that you should bum around and get yourself in a mess of trouble?"
Willa scowled. "You know I didn't mean that, Mom."
"No? What did you mean, then?"
"I ... I meant that I always cause you so much worry ... and...."
"Go on."
Willa shrugged. "That's all. I've said all I wanted to say." Maybe it was the light that made her mother's eyes look so misty. Willa was uncertain, so she stepped closer to her for a better view and she could see that it was not the light at all. Hazel's eyes were misty and getting wetter all the time until they swam in their own sadness.
Hazel brushed the wetness away from her eyes, smiled a little crookedly, and reached for Willa's hand.
"I'm your mother, Willa," she said in a choked up voice. "Never forget that."
Willa smiled back, swallowing a lump in her throat. "I'm a sad sack, ain't I, Mom? I got no shame ... and hardly any sense. Sorry I'm so silly, Mom."
"You ain't silly," Hazel said, then repeated, "You ain't silly." She sighed deeply, stretched her arms, and added, "All right, Willa. Let's go into the living room till the stuff cooks for dinner."
With a curiously adult resignation Willa yielded to her mother's wishes, allowing Hazel to precede her into the living room, and there was nothing in the girl's face and manner except courtesy.
That same night, right after dinner, Willa's mother went off to work in the Flatbush Building. Bemoaning her loneliness, Willa crossed to a window in the living room and looked down at the gloomy street which seemed deserted even though it was only a little after seven. It had stopped raining.
She turned from the window, said 'Hell,' and glanced guiltily towards the massive chair which still bore the impression of her mother's large frame. It was as though she almost expected it to play back her mother's views on the indiscriminate use of profanity by young girls. But the chair was empty, of course, so she said 'Hell' again and yet again.
She thought of her father, whom she had loved deeply even though she knew he was only a drunken bum. A jovial bear of a man, Hal Keyes had yearned for a son. Three years after Willa's birth a son had been born and her father had transferred his devotion from her to the baby boy. At first Willa had been puzzled and hurt, unable to understand why her father didn't love her. Envy had bitten profoundly into her, and she had expressed her jealousy of the intruder by pinching him slyly on the buttocks or face whenever she felt she could get away with it, undetected by her parents.
Inevitably she had been caught at it, and she had been punished for it by being locked in a closet. Frightened by the tight darkness, she had screamed until she was hoarse. After her release from the closet, her father had told her that he could never love a little girl who didn't love her baby brother.
The wish to recover her father's affection had caused her to change her tactics. Inwardly her attitude towards little Danny had not altered one iota, but because of what was at stake she was soon playing a role all over the place, displaying excessive affection for her tiny brother.
"I love Danny," she had assured her parents repeatedly, ad nauseam.
The two children had been inseparable, often sharing the same bed. Her first understanding of the difference between the two sexes had, in fact, resulted from sleeping with little Danny. Their mother would boast that Willa was happy only when Danny was. But despite all her efforts to wean her father away from the boy, Willa found herself still subordinated in her father's heart. When Hal Keyes came home at night from the grocery store, Willa would rush to greet him and he would hug her perfunctorily, then turn to the boy. Willa, with mounting resentment that she found harder and harder to conceal, would watch the two males play with toy trains and a new tricycle. Then to cover her hurt, she would seize Danny and overwhelm him with her caresses. Her father would roar with delight and toss them both in the air.
So Willa had courted her father by demonstrating constantly to him her love for her kid brother. It was the only sure way of winning her father's approval. Occasionally her mother would slap her half-heartedly because of this overexuberant demonstration and warn her to leave Danny alone. This interference, mild as it was, often precipitated family squabbles.
Willa was ten when her father was killed in a drunken brawl. It was about this time that Danny deserted her also, having reached the anti-girl stage of development.
Instinctively aware that her mother was happy only when both children were out of sight, Willa kept out of her way. When Danny was run over and killed, her loneliness drove her to mix more with the neighborhood children, a rowdy lot.
At twelve Willa was already taller than her mother. Her face was attractive, and even at that tender age her figure was richly curved. She took to sweaters like a Lana Turner; and aped the movie star in every possible detail, using lipstick and becoming popular with her schoolmates, especially the boys. She appeared to be just an average student, which she actually was not, a fact which was borne out when she was brought before the Children's Court on charges of promiscuity.
On being questioned by the judge she admitted that she had begun playing around with boys when she was only eleven, and frankly acknowledged intimacies with eight different boys between February and April of that year.
She explained to the judge, "I wanted them to like me." Significantly, she had bestowed gifts of food and money, in moderate amounts, to be sure, after having relations with them.
Willa was persuaded to testify against the boys, and so they were charged with statutory rape and committed to reform schools. She regretted the consequence of her snitching on the boys, particularly one of them by the name of Nick Lucas.
Placed on probation, Willa behaved so well that her case was dismissed. So the Big City forgot the Little Girl. Willa celebrated her freedom by renewing old acquaintances. Occasionally she remained away from home at night.
Willa left high school in her third year of attendance. With no trade or training worth anything, she went to work as a waitress. A neat dresser, she was given to plunging necklines that overexposed her voluptuousness. Her makeup was as thick as homemade icing. But she had a warm personality and easily made friends.
Then one day, early in the spring of this year, she had brought home a sulky young man from Baltimore and cheerfully informed her mother, "Mom, Cliff and me are married."
At first her mother refused to let her stay with Cliff, saying flatly that she did not believe that Willa was married and asked for proof. Willa, of course, was in no position to furnish this proof, not being married legally. A few days later, however, Hazel permitted Willa to go with her 'husband' to Baltimore.
Remembering all this, Willa chewed at her full lips and bit down hard on them as the doorbell rang. She glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It had dragged its hands to eight while she brooded there at the window. Her first thought was that her mother had come home from work, sick, but before she went to the hall door she dismissed this idea as farfetched because her mother had a key and wouldn't have to ring the doorbell to be let in.
Maybe it was Cassie Thompson. Willa did not feel in the mood for talking to that nosey dame. She was a drip. Undecided, Willa stood before the door. Again the bell rang, this time sounding even more insistent. Then she flung open the door.
The unshaded bulb in the outer corridor didn't improve the complexion of the mustard colored walls, but the boy who stood there would have been attractive in any light. He was just under six feet, slender and neat looking, with a well shaped head and wide shoulders. His thick dark hair was barbered in a crew cut. His large dark eyes were very expressive, going from gay to grave and back again in an instant. His smile was radiant and lighted up his face. His personality seemed both volatile and resolute. This was, of course, Willa's first impression.
But the expectancy quickly drained out of Willa's face as she recognized him. He was the boy from the floor below.
She asked frigidly, "Well, what do you want now?"
He said politely, "I guess that means you remember me ... Ned ... Ned Chandler."
She nodded. Last night Ned's mother had sent him up to complain about Willa making too much noise as she tried to teach herself to tap dance. The justice of the complaint had not made it any more palatable.
Ned was staring at her. There was nothing bold or wolfish about the stare. Not being without an education pertaining to wolves, Willa sensed this. His stare stated simply and honestly that he had found a girl he liked to look at.
Embarrassment made Willa gruff. "My mother's out," she said. "If there's anything you want to see her about...."
"I didn't come to see her." He was using the common coinage of polite speech towards a stranger. But there was something about her that interested him more than a little. He did not know why, but he hoped that the amenities of the situation would detain him.
"You didn't?" Willa pushed up her eyebrows wonderingly.
He made an effort to apologize. "I came to say I'm sorry about last night. My mother ... well, you know how ... older people get nervous and grouchy sometimes...."
"She was right," Willa admitted reluctantly. "I was makin' too much noise. You don't have to be sorry. If you'll excuse me...." She started to shut the door.
He put his foot in the doorway. "Well, I'm not here to apologize, exactly. When I saw you ... well ... we live in the same house and all that ... so I thought we should get acquainted."
"Oh?" Willa said, and she eyed him up and down contemplatively. Then she said, "Come on in."
In the living room she asked him to sit down and he lowered himself into her mother's big chair. In her present mood it was a relief to see him there instead of her mother. His crew haircut was traced by a wet comb. His white sports shirt, open at the neck, was clean. He was polite and treated her like a lady. She wouldn't mind getting better acquainted with him. No, she wouldn't mind at all.
At the beginning they made with the small talk.
"So your mother's out?" he said, without sorrow.
"Uh-huh." She took a piece of gum out of her pocket and stuck it in her mouth. "She works at night." She offered the boy a piece of gum, and he thanked her as he took it.
He chewed daintily on the gum and said, "Don't she mind leaving you home alone at night?"
"No, she don't mind. I'm old enough to take care of myself. I'll be nineteen on my next birthday," she lied, adding almost three years to her age, for she would not be seventeen for nearly six months.
"I'll be twenty-one," he said. She made no comment, and he tried to keep the talk alive. "We haven't lived here long."
Willa said, "We've lived here for years."
"Yeah?" Interest flickered in the boy's eyes. "Then how come I haven't seen you around before?"
"I've been away for the last couple of months." She decided not to elaborate on that.
Ned let the subject die. "Say ... I don't mean to be forward, but it don't seem natural to call you Miss Keyes. That's why I haven't been calling you anything. You see ... I get hunches about people, and I've got a hunch we're going to be friends. So I'd appreciate it if you'd tell me your first name."
"Willa," she told him in a tone that was encouraging.
"Willa." He made music out of it. "What a nice name. I like it. Where do you go, Willa?"
"Go?" She looked at him, puzzled.
"To school, I mean."
Willa smiled. "Oh, but I don't. Not now, anyway. I'm goin' to get me a job."
"That's funny. I'd have sworn you were a college girl."
She was flattered. "Probably because I wear these clothes." She took a brief survey of her low-heeled loafers, her cotton skirt, and wrinkled her nose distastefully.
Ned noted her frown, and he misinterpreted the cause of it He asked anxiously. "Did I say something to offend you?"
She shook her head. "No, Ned. Of course not."
He breathed out relief. "That's good. Offending you would be the last thing in the world I'd want to do. After all, college isn't everything ... and whatever you do, I guess you won't have to worry much about your future."
"What do you do, Ned?"
"I go to Brooklyn College. I'm going to be a music teacher."
"That's nice," she said absently.
He talked about music. He was taking her interest for granted, and so he elaborated upon his dedication to music, with no awareness of her inattention.
He's heaven-sent, she thought. He'll drive my blues away. I think I'll take a chance and go over to his chair, sit on the arm, and snuggle up to him. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. He might be a lot of fun.
She made the change of seats as unobtrusively as possible. But he became somewhat embarrassed.
He said, "I hope I haven't been talking your ear off, Willa."
"Oh, no." The smile she gave him was as old as the annals of women. "Ned, are you the one who plays the mouth-organ? I heard someone practicing the Bumblebee this afternoon."
"Not me," Ned said, sounding as if he might have been insulted by the question. "I play the piano. Must have been Bernie Sacks. He's the old bearcat on the harmonica."
"Not really? He's a real whiz if I ever heard one."
"He's good, all right," Ned said begrudgingly. He fidgeted on the edge of the chair and said shakily, "If you'd like to have a soda with me...." As though to match her smile, he became a blase man of the world. "Or you might prefer something stronger."
She hesitated. "Er, not tonight. I ... Oh, all right Let's go to the Flyin' Irishman's."
So the two young people went to the Flying Irishman's, a bar and grill on Remsen Street. They sat on stools at the bar.
"I like it here," Willa said, looking around.
The glass sat on the edge of her lip for a moment, then tipped sharply as she drained it. The bartender came over and made her another Daiquiri without asking. It was on the house. She knocked that drink off, too, with quick dispatch.
Her mouth was pulled down wryly. "Come on, Ned," she said. "Take me home."
When she got off the stool, she lost her balance and almost tipped over on her nose. Ned managed to get her outside. He whistled down a cab and shoved her inside. By the time they reached her home, she was all giggles and insisted on Ned seeing her to the door.
At the threshold she fell asleep in his arms. He fished out a key from the bottom of her handbag, opened the door. He found her bedroom, carried her into it, and gently deposited her upon the bed. He tossed the handbag upon the dresser.
Ned started to leave when she said plaintively, "You forgot to undress me, Ned."
He turned, and there she was, grinning at him, her eyes swimming through the blur of too many Daiquiris but still very much awake.
He sat down in a chair and looked at her in embarrassment "I ... I thought you were asleep."
Having accomplished the first phase of her objective, namely, to get him into her bedroom, she was less prone to relinquish her advantage. Immediately she entered into what appeared to Ned to be a very remarkable seduction.
She got up and crossed to his chair. She sat down upon his lap and started to butter up to him.
"Ned, you look so tired," she said, and her voice oozed with a syrupy oiliness. "I don't want to sound silly, but I feel like strokin' that pretty forehead of yours. I know good women don't dare do things like that. Other women think it cheap to do a thing like that. But you wouldn't think so, would you, Ned honey?"
Ned tugged defenselessly at his collar. "I ... er...."
She stroked his hair. "You don't mind me doin' this, do you, Ned darling? Let's get better acquainted. Mom won't be home for another hour or so, and ... What nice eyes you have. And I like your crew cut."
Again she combed her fingers through his hair, and she liked the feel of it, the shape of his head. He throbbed to the touch of her fingers. She leaned her lips down towards his and he raised his.
They kissed. It was a long passionate kiss.
She got up from his lap and stood facing him. "Undress me, Ned." She turned her back to him. "The zipper runs all the way down the back," she said.
"I know," he observed. "And there's only one hook in the gimmick."
Again she giggled, raising one leg slowly. Her dress fell back as far as it could ever get until she was all bare skin and sheer nylon. Shivers crawled up the back of Ned's neck.
"You're so right," she said. "Now . ... unzip me."
To her disappointment he got ready to leave. "Some other time," he said.
She knew how to pout. "You're mean," she said, letting her leg fall.
"Yeah, a real killer," he said, with a grin. "Don't you want me?" He swallowed hard. "I didn't say that."
"Then why don't you take me?"
"Your mother might pop in on us any minute, and I don't want to be caught with my pants down."
She laughed at the quip. "That all that's worryin' you?"
"Isn't that enough?" He stared at her hungrily.
Again she giggled. "Uh-uh. I told you she won't be home for another hour. We could have a lot of fun in an hour."
He shook his head. "Just the same, I don't want to take any chances."
"Aw, don't be a drip, Ned." Her tone was coaxing. "Good night." He turned and went out. She stared after him, infuriated.
6
It seemed strange to Willa that Ned Chandler had refused to accept her favors, offered so freely. It was something new in her experience, and she began to wonder a little if maybe she was losing her sex appeal.
But when Friday came with brilliant sunshine and a heartening air of normalcy, she was able to convince herself she might have been wrong after all. It could be that there was something wrong with the boy. Maybe he had been brought up too strictly for his own good, strapped up tight in a rigid moral code.
The day improved even more for Willa when she dropped in at McCoy's Restaurant and landed a job as a waitress. She was to start work on Monday.
Leaving the restaurant, she walked down the street, humming a cheerful tune. She stopped humming when she saw somebody heading in her direction, a somebody whom she knew and didn't particularly like.
The drip, she thought.
How odd it was that she always seemed to be bumping into Cassie Thompson. The old biddy kept turning up forever like a bad penny, either in person or conversation.
Willa really detested her. Yet the woman herself was so ordinary. True, she was bluff and hearty, with a manner which was well meant, no doubt. But she had the unpleasant habit of sticking her nose into everybody else's business, especially Willa's, and that didn't sit too well with her.
Willa said a casual hello to the older woman and started to pass. But Cassie had stopped for a chat and was not to be denied.
"Dear, dear! Willa! So you're still with us!"
"Brooklyn's my hometown, Mrs. Thompson," Willa reminded her coolly.
"Oh, sure," Cassie said vaguely.
What a stinking dame, Willa thought. Cassie was looking at her searchingly, and for a moment something stirred and uncoiled beneath the few idle sentences they had exchanged.
"So you got a job? Dear, dear. Now ain't that nice?" Cassie laughed. "I thought you might have run off with another boy."
Willa said harshly, "Save your wisecracks for your daughter Mitzi, Mrs. Thompson."
Cassie laughed again and started to stroll away. "Got a call to make," she said over her shoulder, almost as if that remark might be significant.
Willa watched her disappear around the corner, her eyes growing dark with perplexity. Her hands were balled into tight fists in her pockets, and her lower lip folded over the upper in that oddly youthful gesture which, with her, meant not temper but perturbation.
Damn her, anyway, Willa thought. I wonder if she saw Ned up at the flat with me? I don't like the way she snoops around. I don't like anything at all about the bitch.
To hell with her.
And with that she dismissed Cassie from her mind. In a lighter mood more appropriate to one who has realized her fondest wish, she headed for home to spring the good news on her mother.
It did her heart good to see her mother's face suffused with a glowing flush of happiness when she told her about the job. Hazel took her in her arms and held her tight in a bear hug.
As to be expected, her mother volunteered maternal words of warning about how to behave herself on the job. It would not have been natural if she had failed to do so.
Hazel said, "Willa dear, be sure not to flirt with any of the customers. Your boss might not like it."
Willa wrinkled her nose in annoyance. "Don't you worry none, Mom. I'm old enough to know better'n to start any smart-alec monkeyshines."
"Just the same, as your mother I figured it my business to warn you. This is a good opportunity for you, Willa dear, and...."
Willa flushed. "Don't be so fussy about it, Mom. What's so good about it? It's just another job."
Hazel shrugged. "Okay then. Go to it. You're not a sap. You ought to know how to behave."
So Willa settled down to the job. Nothing of consequence happened at McCoy's during the first few days. It might be mentioned, in passing, that Ned Chandler avoided her assiduously, as if she were untouchable, a leper. Every time he saw her around the house or on the street he ducked out of sight Willa shrugged him off. He was too young for her, anyhow, though he was older in years. She was ages his senior in experience.
One night after work, tired and thirsty and lonely, Willa dropped into a saloon just off Court Street. There was no reason for her to hurry home since her mother was on the job in the Flatbush building.
It was quiet in the saloon. Four men at the far end of the bar were having a muffled conversation about horses. A young man and a younger woman were taking their time over long, cool drinks and smiling at each other. A short, fat man was sullenly gazing at a flattening glass of beer. A tall young man was drinking a gin rickey.
Willa turned back to her glass of beer. A peculiar sense of aloneness came" upon her; she wanted to talk to someone about anything. She felt just a little sorry for herself. She ought to be like other girls, have a steady boyfriend, plan on getting married, really married, not like with Cliff Lindsay. A girl shouldn't be sitting alone in a place like this without meaning, without purpose. There ought to be some really good reason for waking up in the morning; some impetus, something to make life worth living.
Again one of those sighs of inadequacy got past her lips, and she recognized it for what it was and she did not like it. Nowadays she was sighing that way far too much. She finished her beer, swallowing the last few drops too fast to get any real taste out of it, then ordering another beer. While waiting for it she saw the short, stocky man looking at her in a hesitant sort of way. It was evident that Fatso ... she was already calling him that in her mind ... wanted to strike up a conversation. Obviously he was lonely, too.
Just then the beer arrived.
She offered the fat fellow a smile which was appreciated and returned. She kept on looking at him until he finally picked up his beer and walked towards her. He laid his glass down on her table, holding onto the smile.
He said, "Think you know me?"
"No," she replied.
"Then why are you lookin' at me that way?"
Willa shrugged indifferently. "This is a free country. I got a right to look."
"I guess you can look if you want to," he conceded. "I don't know what you expect to see, though."
She said in a barbed tone, "I'm not sure, either."
He said, looking at the beer, "Well, this is one way of beatin' the heat."
Willa nodded. "One thing I like about beer," she said, "it stays cold once it gets inside you. Whiskey don't work that way."
"I guess whiskey's a winter drink," the fat man said. He gave her a hesitant glance. "What brings you in here?"
"What brings anyone in here?" Fatso said, "We're speakin' about you. In particular."
"I was thirsty," Willa said evasively.
"Guess that's a good enough reason," the fat man said, and laughed. He leaned towards her and whispered circumspectly, "He's givin' you the eye."
Willa swallowed her beer, looking at the fat man as if he were crazy. She asked, "Who?"
"That tall young guy over by the bar." He nodded in the direction.
Willa studied the glass and its contents. She said nastily, "Young guys are always givin' me the eye."
"I just thought I'd mention it, you know."
"Thanks," Willa said dryly. "Thanks for mentionin' it."
The fat fellow gave a little shrug and drank some beer. He was quiet for a little while, then said, "Too bad you're not interested."
"Why?"
"He is."
"How nice." Willa quirked her eyebrow. "Good for the ego."
"He looks like a clean cut young fellow," the man said. She stared at him curiously. "You do this often?"
"Do what?"
"Play Cupid."
"Oh." He gave a nervous little laugh. "Funny damn thing. This is the first time. Usually I look out for myself. But that's a setup if I ever did see one."
"What's a setup?"
"You and that guy are a sure combination. Both good lookers, both lonely. I know it. And it makes me feel good."
"So it makes you feel good." she sneered. "Now, ain't that nice?"
He studied her for an instant. "I get a picture of you in satin. Gorgeous. There's no other word for it."
She was not pleased with the way he was undressing her in his eyes. She got up to leave. "I'm no cheap pickup," she said resentfully.
He put out a restraining hand. "Don't go," he begged. "I promise to keep my big mouth shut." He got to his feet. "You sit down. I'll go. I know I'm in the way."
She sat down again. "Not really," she said.
He stood there uncertainly, his carefully cultivated eyebrows raised a fraction of an inch. He flicked the ashes off his cigarette. He was a short, thick, heavy chested man with a big nose, a big jaw and face that seemed to be permanently flushed.
"I'll move on," he said at last. "I'm not your speed."
Willa began to feel sorry for him. The nastiness vanished from her tone and manner. She looked up at him sympathetically, "Now, why carry on like that? You're welcome to sit here with me."
"Oh, cut it out," he said morosely. "I'm just a fat slob, and I don't have brains enough to make girls overlook it." But he sat down again, anyhow.
Willa lighted a cigarette, took a few puffs as she stared at him, and asked, "Glands?"
He shook his head. "No, not glands. Appetite. I eat six meals a day."
Again she put him under a searching scrutiny. No wonder Fatso was so heavy. Six meals a day, and probably enough food to feed a family of four.
She smiled faintly. "Oh, I don't know. You're not so bad."
"Yeah, I know. But I'm not in your league." Her smile broadened into a grin. "Stick around and find out."
Fatso shook his head in disbelief. "Maybe you could see me on that, but the way you say it you don't really mean it."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry. I'm satisfied just so you talk to me. That's why I came in here."
"To see if you could pick up a girl?"
"No. To see if I could find someone interestin' enough to talk to."
"That's funny," she said.
"How come?"
"I had the same idea."
For a moment he appraised her silently with his shrewd hazel eyes. Finally he said, "You've been hurt, sister. You can't kid me. You've been hurt plenty."
Willa's hand tightened around her glass. She put it down. She tapped her fingers on the surface of the table and took a deep breath.
"All right," she said, gazing straight ahead. "So what?"
"So nothin'," he said. "Only ... I've been hurt, too, so I can tell."
"That's a shame," she sneered. "Should we start cryin' on each other's shoulders, or do you think maybe it's a good idea to skip the whole thing? Hey, how's about buyin' me a beer? My glass is empty."
Fatso looked towards the bar. "He sure is lookin' at you."
"All right, then," Willa said petulantly. "Don't buy me a beer. And do me a favor while you're at it."
He turned to her. "Why, what do you mean?"
"Speak for yourself. Don't give me a play-by-play of what's goin' on at the bar. I ain't interested."
Fatso got to his feet. "I'm goin' out for a bite to eat," he said. "Food settles all my problems, yet my biggest problem is food itself. That's the way it goes, girlie, and I tell you it's all a vicious circle."
Willa said uncertainly, "Maybe you got somethin' there, chum."
The fat man hesitated. "I'll buy you some grub if you don't mind eatin' with me."
Willa made a little movement with her left shoulder, then got up. "Okay, chum," she said. "I'm game."
He paid for the beers, and they walked out of the saloon. The heat seemed to be letting up a little, with the river lofting a slight breeze over Brooklyn.
Fatso looked at her. "Got any special place you like?"
She nodded. "There's a little place over on Washington Street. But I don't know if it's still open."
"Let's go there and see."
It was open. They ate hamburgers, and he treated himself to a hunk of cherry cream pie for dessert. Then came coffee and a cigarette.
Willa puffed spirals of smoke ceilingward. Suddenly she asked, "Won't you tell me about yourself? I don't even know your name."
"That makes us even. I don't know yours, either."
She smiled. "I'm Willa. Willa Keyes."
"Joe. Joe Snow. That's me."
"Hello, Joe."
"Hello, Willa. Have another hamburger."
They ate another hamburger. "You know, Joe," she said, "you interest me."
With a facetious smile he responded, "If you got a pencil and paper handy, I'll be glad to write a short life story of myself. I can put it in a capsule of six lines."
"Quit ribbin' me, Joe. You can at least tell me what you do."
"I sell insurance."
"What else?"
"Suppose we take one thing at a time. Let's talk about me after we get through with you. That okay?"
"If it ain't we'll do it anyway," she said with a smile. "I can see you've got your heart set on knowin' all about me. You get a lot of fun out of diggin' in to find out about people, don't you?"
"No, not exactly fun. But let's quit jockeyin' around. I mean ... let's put it all on the table. That saves a lot of time. Sometimes it saves a lot of grief, too, later on."
"What makes you think there'll be a later on?" she asked, gazing at him peculiarly.
He made a face. "I didn't say there would be. I'm just tryin' to catch up with you."
So Willa gave an expurgated account of her life, as usual lying about her age and about a lot of other things, too. To Joe Snow she was twenty-one. Naturally, she put her best foot forward. She said nothing about Cliff Lindsay, nor anything about her trouble with the Children's Court when she was twelve.
When she was finished, Joe looked at her with added interest and asked, "Want to join Shangri-Owl, Willa?"
"Shangri ... what?" Her eyebrows went up in a puzzled frown. "What in the world's that?"
"It's a new state," he explained. "A state of mind, where people who don't give a hoot are invited to settle down. We serve coffee and rose bushes in Shangri-Owl."
"You mean you just don't give a damn about anything?"
"That's about the size of it."
Willa laughed. "Sounds good. You can count me in if you'll throw in a keg of beer. I don't give a hoot about anything, really, and I like coffee and roses. It'd be a change, anyhow."
"Good!" he said with a laugh. "I'll sign you as a charter member." He paused, uncertain whether to go on. He decided to pursue his advantage. "The membership cards are in my home."
"Okay," she said lightly. "I'll go with you."
Joe could not mask his delight. He said, "I knew it! I was willin' to bet on it."
"As sure as that?" Willa looked at him quizzically.
"Just like that," Joe said, and snapped his fingers. "Just one of those things that have to happen."
She reached over and squeezed his hand. "You're smart, Joe. You got a good line."
"Have I?"
"You sure have. It's so different from anything I ever heard. Don't think you fooled me one bit. I knew you were propositionin' me when you were playin' Cupid. You got me interested in you. You sold me a bill of goods. Reminds me of the Courtship of Miles Standish."
"I read about it when I went to school."
"You're the John Alden type. I'm Priscilla." The allusion struck her as funny and she laughed.
Joe Snow lived in a two-room apartment on President Street. It was a walkup in a four-story redbrick building in the 900 block. By the time they reached the garret floor Willa felt all pooped out, for the stairway was steep. Joe was also puffing from the exhaustive climb.
The two rooms were small, and the roof slanted. When they moved around near the window, they had to stoop to escape hitting their heads against the ceiling.
For a while they sat down beside each other on an uncomfortable davenport and chatted idly over beer and pretzels. Presently Willa -edged closer to Joe. Suddenly she was in his arms and she stayed there in a long clinch.
Then Willa got up, stretching and yawning. "It's gettin' late, Joe. Let's go to bed and have some fun."
He smiled, pleased with the idea. "Suits me," he said.
In the bedroom, which was hardly more than a cubbyhole, her dress whispered over her head and her slip made static crackling noises when she took it off. She unhooked her bra, going through double-jointed contortions to accomplish this feat. She stretched her arms upward, reaching for the ceiling like a pagan moon worshipper. Her body made a nude shimmer in the dark, absorbing what little light seeped through the window from the street lamps. Her back bowed slowly, making every curve stand out in sharp relief. Then she relaxed into a sitting posture, ran her fingers through her hair and came over to the bed, where Joe was sitting and beaming on her.
"Beautiful," he said in admiration. "You're beautiful, Willa."
She sucked in her breath so hard that it caught in her throat and froze there. He reached up for the light over the bed, but before his fingers found the pull-chain her hand grabbed his wrist and forced it down. "No light, Joe," she said.
Her mouth came down slowly. Her lips were moist and parted. Warm. He could feel their warmth before they even touched his. He ran his hand up the small of her back and she shivered, again making animal sounds in her throat.
The outline of her face and body were tenuous objects in the darkness. Her mouth was a live, grasping thing squirming on top of his. And hot, fiery hot. The darkness closed in around them like a blanket until it exploded and left them there, tired and close, talking about tomorrow.
Her capacity for lovemaking seemed boundless. She exhausted Joe very quickly.
"Goodnight, honey," he said, turning over on his side. "I'm all burned out. I got no energy left."
He was so tired that he fell asleep almost instantly. Willa lay there beside him, still unsatisfied. She twitched around, squirming from side to side, but sleep would not come.
"Joe!" She reached over and shook him awake.
"Yeah?" he said sleepily.
"Joe, you awake?"
"Go back to sleep, Willa," he groaned. "I'm tired."
"Joe?" She kicked at him.
"Stop kickin'. Shut up and go to sleep."
"Joe...."
He twisted his head around to stare at her in the dark. "Willa, you sick?"
"Joe ... take me, take me...."
"Can't, Willa. I'm all played out."
"I'm so hot."
"Fever?"
"No. Just ... lovesick hot. Give me your hand, Joe."
"Willa, why are you squirmin' that way?"
"I need you, Joe. I need you bad."
He growled in disgust, "You're too hot for me, Willa. You take it out of a guy."
"But it feels so good, Joe. Didn't you have fun, honey?"
"Sure, Willa. But fun's fun. A guy's got to get some sleep. I'm a workin' man, you know."
"I'm a workin' girl. But I never get enough of that kind of fun."
"What's the matter with you? You a nympho?"
"What's that?"
"Skip it. Go to sleep."
"Not until you do it again."
He submitted grudgingly. "Whatever got into my head, takin' up with you?" he muttered.
CHAPTER TWO
"And I can see how truly great is our little love In intimate vows that are not to be denied, In tenderness of love and wonder of clasped hands Across the breakfast table, in the stirring kiss That warms the hungry heart."
... Clem Graham
1
When Willa arrived home early in the morning after leaving Joe Snow, she found her mother waiting up for her in the kitchen. Hazel was drinking a cup of coffee at the table. "Mornin', Mom."
Her mother said nothing, just scowled at her. Willa tried to act as though nothing had happened. She rummaged around in the icebox for eggs and bacon. As she prepared her breakfast, her mother stood up and watched her silently, arms akimbo and a stern, reproving look on her face.
It was not until Willa sat down at the table and started to eat that Hazel broke her silence. "Well, I'm waitin', Willa," she said.
"Waitin', Mom?" Willa held an innocent look. "Waitin' for what?"
"Waitin' for you to tell me where you were last night."
Chewing on a slice of burned toast, Willa grabbed at the first lie that came to her mind. "I ... I was at Mona's. We went to a late movie, and then we went to her house. We talked a while about school-days, and before we knew it it was too late for me to go home."
Willa was an inveterate liar, but she lacked the imagination to be a convincing one. She did not convince her mother. "I don't believe you," Hazel said. "It's the truth!" Willa said, offended. "That's what I want, Willa, the truth."
"I told you the truth."
Hazel expelled a breath of disgust. "Expect me to believe that un-likely story? I want the truth!"
"The truth?" Willa retorted, frowning in annoyance. "Would you recognize it?"
"Maybe not. But I can recognize a lie when I hear it. Your story's full of holes, and I don't like to step into holes."
Willa shrugged wearily. "Mom, let me alone, will you? I don't have time to get into an argument with you now. I got to go to work. Got to hustle if I don't want to be late."
She finished her breakfast, got up, and patted her mother's arm reassuringly. "Don't worry, Mom. I didn't do nothin' wrong. We'll talk about it when I get home tonight."
Hazel pushed her hand away. "We're goin' to talk about it now. You're my daughter, and I won't have you on my conscience. If you're doin' something you oughtn't to do, I want to know about it and stop it before it's too late."
Willa applied lipstick to her mouth. She faced her mother with a sneer and said, "That conscience of yours is on the job right along, ain't it, Mom? It even works overtime, don't it?"
"I just want to make sure yoa don't get in no trouble. I don't want you to do anything to make me ashamed of you. I want to be proud of you."
Willa scowled. "See here, Mom, so long as you're clearin' the decks for action, I might just as well take a hand in it myself. Speakin' of pride, you know us Keyes got very little reason to be proud."
"Oh, is that so?"
"That's so."
"I'll have you know you're lucky to have a mother like me."
"If you're a good mother," Willa said, "you'll stop pesterin' me and let me get ready to go to work. I said before we can have the talk tonight."
Hazel shook her head, her eyes clinging sternly to Willa's face. "I want to talk now, not tonight," she said. "I want to know if you're startin' those old shenanigans again."
Willa raised her shoulders with an assumption of cold dignity. She swallowed hard, her heartbeats nearly suffocating the words when she said, "Oh, Mom, leave me alone. I'm too tired to argue. And I just got to get to McCoy's on time if I don't want to lose my job."
"I asked you a question, Willa." There was an increasing hardness in Hazel's tone. "I want an answer."
Willa steadied herself against the edge of the table. "I don't know what you mean."
"Now, you be sensible and listen," Hazel said harshly. "You can't afford to act this standoffish with me. If you're up to your old tricks, and I'm afraid you are, I want to know so we can put a stop to it right here and now. I want to help you when you need help ... which means now."
Willa felt her anger rising to dissipate her feeling of guilt. "I don't know what you mean," she repeated insistently, "and I don't want to know."
"No," Hazel said with a somber nod. "You don't want to know. You want to go on livin' the life of a whore and shut your eyes to unpleasant facts and pretend they don't exist. Well, I can't let you."
"Oh, no?" Willa eyed her defiantly.
Hazel shifted her position forward a little, closer to Willa, so that her weight pressed against her daughter's feet. Willa drew them away hastily. Hazel chuckled at the movement, but she kept her eyes fixed steadily on Willa's face and there was much more than amusement in her gaze.
"Pay attention," Hazel began, "and I'll explain in plain words what I mean. Not that you need the explanation, really, because you understand all right what I'm drivin' at. But itll clear the air a little. Now, listen. I don't want to have to repeat myself, now or ever."
Willa compressed her lips.
Hazel went on, "You got a nice room here. This is your home, and I want you to sleep here every night. I don't want you ever to sleep out again without gettin' permission from me. I'm your mother, and I want to know what you're doin' till you come of age. I don't want you ever to sleep again with the man you slept with last night. Or any other man, either, till you get married again. Understand?"
The color left Willa's cheeks. Her large eyes seemed held by her mother's. This ultimatum was not to her liking. Nonetheless, she became submissive.
"I...." she began falteringly. "Uh-huh. I understand. But . .
"You're not to go out with the bum you slept with last night," Hazel repeated, with each word enunciated distinctly and with clarity. The words were spoken almost in a tone of savage derision, and the girl seemed to shrink as though under the lash.
Without another word Hazel turned and left the room, slamming the door shut behind her. For an instant Willa stood motionless, her eyes swimming with tears. Then she slowly gathered her composure, picked up her handbag, and started out of the house.
Her mother need not have worried about Willa seeing Joe Snow again, for he never invited her to his home again. Evidently she was too passionate for him. He was a drip, anyhow, the fat slob. Fatso just didn't have it in him to make love the way she liked to make love.
She didn't let it worry her. She settled down to her job as a waitress.
One day she came home and found Cassie Thompson drinking beer with her mother in the living room. "How you doin' on your new job, Willa?" Cassie asked.
Willa wrinkled her nose. "All right, I guess. There are a lot of angles to the restaurant business I don't like, though. Certain tables are choicy as far as tips are concerned, others ain't so good, and stuff like that."
"You mean it goes on the basis of seniority?" Cassie asked.
Willa snorted, "It goes on the basis of favoritism."
Cassie smiled indulgently. "No need to horse around, Willa. Just say straight out you don't like the job."
Willa glared at her. "I wasn't horsin' around."
Hazel put in, "I think you got Cassie all wrong, Willa. She only meant you should come right out and say what you think of the boss."
"I see," Willa said, smiling at her mother and batting her eyelashes. Then, swiftly turning to Cassie, she said, "Sony I blew my top at you, Mrs. Thompson. I been a little nervous and upset today, what with one thing and another. I can't seem to get a chance to get a breathin' spell on the job. I go on at eight and work right through till two without a letup."
"Tough job?" Cassie asked.
"Sometimes it's too tough."
"Tables fill up pretty well?"
"Well, it varies, of course. Some days we're packed and jammed, then others there ain't quite so much business. But every day during lunch hour everything's jammed. Then things taper off."
"Sure must be some job," Cassie said sympathetically, "being on your feet all the time like that."
"You don't know the half of it, Mrs. Thompson," Willa said. "In a joint like McCoy's the tips ain't too good, either." She shrugged. "Guess I've shot off my mouth, for all the good it does me."
That night, after her mother went off to work, Willa dropped into the Flying Irishman's for a beer. When her glass was shoved in front of her, she picked it up and sipped some beer while listening casually to two sailors standing nearby.
"You can't take it, Bob," the frog-voiced sailor said.
"Who can't take it?" his drunken pal asked defensively.
"You can't, Bob. Hell, this is my tenth bottle of beer an' I'm still goin' strong."
"Scuttlebutt, Jerry," sneered Bob. "Just plain scuttlebutt."
"Is it? Just look at you! Hell, you can't even toe a straight line. Where are your sea legs, Bob? You ain't drunk half as much as me an' you're burpin' an' belchin' all over the joint."
Bob made a drunken gesture and, hiccoughing loudly, he said, "Aw, go blow it outa your duffel bag, goon."
Willa, nursing her beer as if it were a precious offspring, let her eyes wander around the saloon. Suddenly a wave of excitement swept over her. There was a dark eyed boy sitting at the corner table. He had a grave face and an air of singleness of purpose.
She picked up her glass and carried it over to the young man's table. "Hi, there," she said. "You look kinda lonely."
"Maybe I am," the young man said. She smiled her best smile. "Mind if I sit down?" He shrugged indifferently. "Chair's empty, ain't it?"
"Uh-huh. That's right, the chair's empty, as if it was just waitin' for me. Ain't that so, big boy?"
"Sit down if you're goin' to," he said in a gruff voice. "Don't make a production out of it."
He bent forward as he spoke, and his face came into the light so that its angles stood out like a bold carving: eyes deep-set between bushy brows and high cheekbones, flat planes of cheeks, firm jaw. The face looked as if it would be hard to touch. During the past few minutes Willa had been watching him as he looked from one person to another in the saloon with such a total lack of expression. She thought then that he must be inwardly amused at what he saw. At that instant, when their eyes met briefly, she was certain of it.
"I knew this was my chair," she said, sliding into it, still smiling. She put her glass on the table. "So you say," he sneered.
"Sure, it's been waitin' for me all night. You know, big boy, you must be new around here. I ain't never seen you here before."
"That's right," he said, his lips curling. "We've never met."
"Of course I've been out of town for a couple of months...."
"So what?"
"So I'm back now. So I'm down at the Flyin' Irishman's real regular and I ain't never seen you before. How come?"
He moved his right shoulder a little in a shrug of indiffference. "I just blew into town a couple of days ago. Maybe that's why."
She looked at him with new interest. "No kiddin'?"
"No kiddin'."
"Where you from?"
"McKeesport, Pennsylvania."
"McKeesport?" She wrinkled her nose and shook her head. "Never heard of it."
He growled, "I never heard of you. So that makes us even." Willa shrugged that off. "How you like Brooklyn?"
He gestured casually. "It's a place."
She mulled that over. "Uh-huh, I see what you mean. Tell me, big boy, how come you're sittin' here all alone tonight?"
He frowned at her. "You're kind of nosey, ain't you?"
"Who me?" She assumed an air of injured dignity.
"Yeah, you. You've done nothin' but ask questions since you came over here. What's it to you if I'm alone?"
She made a gesture of helplessness with her hands. "Nothin', I guess."
"By the way, I thought the Flying Irishman didn't like dames sittin' around alone in his joint."
"I'm not alone," Willa lied. "My boyfriend just stepped out ... to make a phone call."
He gave her a small smile. "That's a whopper, girl. I been watchin' you for half an hour, at least. I saw you come in alone. You're all by yourself tonight, all by your lonesome."
A sudden thought popped uneasily into Willa's mind, and she shivered apprehensively. "Hey, mister, you a plainclothes cop?"
He laughed. "Jokes you make yet. Do I look like a cop?"
"I don't like cops," she said.
"You got company," he said. "I don't like them either." He repeated, "Do I look like a flatfoot?"
Her eyes studied him. "Yeah," she said finally. "You do."
"Jeez, you sure got a suspicious mind. Never saw a dame so suspicious-minded." As an afterthought he added, "And so nosey."
"You say you been watchin' me?" Willa remembered. "Why?"
"You kiddin'? I've been lookin' you over, that's all. You remind me of a blonde I used to know." He looked at her quickly. His eyes were a dark brown with grey flecks, like a hard slab of agate, and so deeply set under his brows that the upper lids were all but invisible. It gave them a curiously searching expression.
"Fancy that!" she said, running her fingers through her hair. "I ain't no blonde."
"No," he agreed, nodding slowly. "No, you're not. You're redheaded. But you remind me of that blonde, just the same." A troubled expression clouded his face as he dredged his memory out of the past. Then he shrugged it off quickly and said, "I been sittin' at this table and thinkin' what a cute redhead you are. I like redheaded chicks. Hey, your beer's flat. Let me buy you a fresh one. Or a real drink, maybe, instead of that beer."
He reached over and touched her arm with his hand. She pulled away resentfully. The man was an odd one. She didn't know just how to take him.
She said, "That don't mean you got a right to paw me, big boy."
He gave a short, nervous laugh. "Now, baby, don't get sore. Just tryin' to be friendly, that's all. Like I was sayin', let me buy you a drink."
"Big deal," she sneered.
He let that pass as he studied her admiringly. "You got a real pretty face, baby. And you're built. Yeah, you're stacked real good."
She was flattered by the compliment, but she didn't relax in her determination to act just as tough as he did. "Oh, all right, mister big shot," she said. "Cut out the yak-yak and buy me a drink, like you said. This beer's lousy, anyhow."
"What'll you have?"
"A Daiquiri."
The young fellow got up and strolled over to the bar. In a minute or two he came back with her Daiquiri and a double shot of bourbon for himself.
"Here's to a lousy life!" he toasted, and drained the shot in one swallow.
She sipped her Daiquiri, staring at him wonderingly. "Say, what kind of toast do you call that?" she asked. "You sour on life, or somethin'? A young and good-lookin' guy like you hadn't oughta be so sour."
"God!" he said, running a shaky finger through his thick brown hair. "Why the hell you think a guy would come to a pig sty like this if he wasn't sour on life? Hell, I try to fix my mind on bar room gossip, just to keep from thinkin'. To sit around in my room at the hotel St. George and think, just think ... it's drivin' me nuts!"
"Hey, what's your name, big boy?"
He hesitated for a second, then said, "Gene Kohler. What's yours?"
She told him, then asked, "Got a job, Gene?"
"A job?" Gene looked at her with bitterness. "What chance does a man have to get a decent job around here?"
"Plenty!" Willa said with spirit. "And what's wrong with around here?"
"Plenty!" he sneered. "And I thought you looked intelligent! The big town's nothin' but a hellhole, that's what's wrong." His tone took on a plaintive cadence which sounded as if he talked like that from habit, to himself if no one else would listen. "Talk, talk, talk, why don't you? Talk about the big city with all the opportunities for a young guy like me."
With rather startling effect his eyes ceased to focus on her. He seemed to vanish into another world, and that world was apparently not too pretty.
"If only I just knew what to do," he muttered, barely audibly, with his mouth trembling. "If only I could get away from it...."
The remainder of this sentence was lost in the cacophonic blast from the jukebox. The noise seemed to recall his thoughts, for he addressed Willa again. But most of his speech was drowned out, and she heard nothing except the last words.
"Lost generation," he said, touching his own chest tenderly.
Willa found it difficult to avoid grinning. "Tell me why you're so sour on life, Gene," she urged.
He laughed unpleasantly. "That's a laugh. I don't have any reason to be sour. Not me."
She sighed. "Guess I must be thick. I just don't get it."
"I know," he said. "It must sound all mixed up." He looked at her with understanding eyes. "You better look out, Willa."
"For what?"
He smiled cynically. "I might snap into a cryin' jag, and sob all over your beautiful breasts."
She began to feel sorry for him without knowing why. "You can sob on them all you like," she said gently.
"Don't encourage me," he said quickly. "You'd be awful sorry. Life can get mighty frantic and grim. A guy can get so lonely and discouraged, he feels kind of like endin' it all."
"You still haven't told me what's made you that way," she reminded him.
He appeared to fold up all at once, like an accordion. His face was as impassive as ever. Only the deep set eyes were alive, flicking around the saloon as if seeking an avenue of escape. Obviously he did not want to commit himself.
"That I can't tell you," he said at last. He stood up, erect against the table. She was rather astonished to see him measured against the table. Those lean, narrowly built men often looked taller than they actually were.
"Can't ... or won't?"
"Won't."
She asked, "Does it make you feel better, talkin' to me?"
He nodded. "A lot."
"Stay here, then, and talk to me."
"All right," he said after a brief deliberation, and lowered himself into the chair again.
"Tell me things, Gene," she encouraged. "Tell you what, Willa?"
"Anything." She leaned towards him. "Anything you want to tell me."
"Even if it's unimportant?"
"Even if it's silly," she said with a pleasant smile.
Gene was about to say something, then clamped his lips tight over the words and they died stillborn. "Now, I shouldn't mention it," he said vaguely. "It all depends on what mood you're in."
"I'm in any mood you're in, Gene," she said.
He scratched his head. "I don't know for sure what mood I'm in, Willa. I only know that blonde's a side issue right now. She was the lyingest pig I ever knew. Played a dirty trick on me, the bitch." His eyes narrowed and his lips tightened.
"Who? The blonde?"
"The blonde?" He started. "Who told you? Oh, that's right I did say ... Aw, hell, now I wish I hadn't said anything."
She laughed. 'Too late. You've already opened your big mouth."
"Maybe I'll tell you about her later."
"That a promise?"
"It's a promise. Oh hell, what's the difference?" His shoulders slumped as if it really made a big difference. "Comin' back from the coast after the war...." He paused to wet his lips. "It was so long ago. But it seems like tonight. It always seems like tonight. There's no present or future ... only the past happenin' over and over again ... now. You can't get away from it." He shoved his glass away from him. "Oh, nuts! To hell with that crap!"
But she was not to be denied in her probing into his personality. "You came back from the war, and...?" she prompted.
"Yeah," he said dully. "After they discharged me from the Navy."
She encouraged him to talk about his war experiences. He was sociable now, chatting about the dangers of sailing the seas when they were filled with lurking U-boats. He related at great length an experience that had impressed itself indelibly upon his mind.
He had been a wireless operator on the destroyer Altoona. They had been cruising the Atiantic when, suddenly out of the submarineinfested sea, a torpedo had found its mark in the Altoona, hitting it broadside. Gene grimaced wryly and sniffed as he spoke of the torpedoing. Blown up ships were only an ugly memory, a thing of his past, and he was thankful that he would not have to float around in icy seas amid ship wreckage, burning oil, and disembodied arms, legs, heads and torsos. He hoped to heaven he would never have to listen again to frantic sailors screaming and shouting while trying to swim vainly to safety away from the explosion. He never wanted to smell burning bodies again. Oh, God, brimstone could never have smelled so bad. For a long time afterwards he got into the habit of sniffing, and it was so annoying that it bordered on the psychotic. For many months after he was discharged from the Navy he had tried all kinds of perfume to get that terrible stench out of his nose. Before then he had always hated perfume. But he had seen so many torpedoings, seen so many mangled bodies in the blown up ships, that he not only couldn't get the sight of bodies, legs, arms, hands and heads floating around in the water out of his eyes, but he couldn't get the smell out of his nose, either.
"I'm over that now, thank God," he said, and added with a chuckle, "It was almost funny, Willa, the way I had to explain to people that was me they smelled and then tell them why I needed the perfume."
She furrowed her forehead in distaste. "How horrible! War turns your life upside down, don't it?"
He nodded gravely. "Sure, it's like you say, it turns your life upside down. Inside out, too, I might add. It's like walkin' around in a bad dream half the time." He added simply, "But, hell, the job was there to be done and it was up to anyone who could pitch in and do it."
He meant it, too, Willa believed with respect. One seldom ran across such candid and unashamed patriotism, even though it was tinged with bitterness.
She said, "Your nerves have been a bit out of whack ever since. That it?"
"That's it." He gave a short laugh. "I haven't felt right since then. Want to hear more?"
"Feed me first," she suggested. "I'm a better listener on a full stomach."
So they went out and found a restaurant. It was one of those places where people concentrated on food, and yet each booth was a little rendezvous in itself. There was an emphasis on privacy, yet it was a casual sort of privacy. While they waited for their order to be filled, their conversation was affected by the atmosphere of the place and it became pleasant, meaningless chatter, with a chuckle interjected here and there. When Gene let go of himself he had a fine sense of humor, deviating in a marvelous fashion between the dry and the robust. For those detached moments Willa enjoyed his company.
When the steaks arrived they stopped fooling around. It was good food and they gave it their undivided attention.
Later, while they sipped their cocktails, they looked at each other.
She said, "You promised you'd tell me about that blonde."
"Oh, yeah. I forgot about that."
"I didn't."
"You tryin' to find out what kind of dope I am, Willa?"
"I already know how smart you are," she said with a winning smile. "Now I want to find out what kind of lover you are."
"I could show you better what a lousy lover I am, Willa, than tell you about it."
He grinned at her. She did not return the grin. A strange quietness became a bubble growing ever larger in the center of the table, and she could see him through the bubble. She could see his face, and that was as far as she could see. It frightened her, and she did not know exactly why. There was no reason for fright. But she was very frightened, and gradually, as she sat there watching him, she realized that it was not Gene Kohler she feared. It was herself.
And then, all at once, there was a bursting in her brain, and this place, and Gene, and the table, the cocktail, everything, it all assumed the substance and dimensions of a horrible reality. Horrible only because it was real, so very real that it refused to be reined in. She was in love with him. Not like with the guys she slept with. That had been only for the physical fun she derived out of it. This was different. This was the McCoy.
It was not logical. It seemed impossible. Yet there it was. The attraction, the feeling, were beyond measurement, beyond the limits of self-analysis. The emotion itself was clear and definite, yet the reasons for it were vague and far away and she had no desire to itemize those reasons.
Willa had a sudden inspiration. She looked at her watch. Since her mother was not due home for quite a while yet, she suggested to Gene that he take her home and they would finish the evening more privately there.
Gene agreed to this, paid the bill and they went out into the starlit night.
2
On the way from the restaurant to the Keyes home, Gene spoke volubly and Willa listened, breaking her reticence only to make brief comments. His voice and manner exercised a soothing spell. She laughed comfortably at one of his deadpan absurdities, with only the slightest prick of uneasiness at realizing that he might learn, somehow, the kind of girl she had been. Had been was right. For she had made up her mind that, if given half a chance, she would be different from now on.
In the Keyes home they drew up chairs before the window in the living room and gazed at the summer moon, talking only sporadically. He made no advance to her and strangely enough, she felt happy about it. There seemed to be a tacit understanding between them that they were in love. The use of an occasional endearing term was the extent of their sign of affection.
Willa turned from her moon-gazing to look at him. "Know somethin', Gene?" she said quietly. "You're a very nice guy."
Gene shook his head. "I'm not nice at all. If you knew me well, you wouldn't say that. I'm a louse."
"I don't believe that," she said quickly.
He sighed. "If it wasn't such a long story, I'd tell it to you."
"Tell it to me anyhow," she suggested.
He stared at her. "You'll be sorry. But if you're such a glutton for punishment ... After all, I said I'd tell you later, didn't I?"
She nodded. "You ... you said you'd tell me about that blonde in McKeesport."
He scowled darkly. "She's a part of it. But I don't know whether or not to tell you. You won't believe it could have happened."
"Just try me, Gene darling. I'll understand."
He hesitated, then said dully, "No, Willa, I can't tell you. You'd hate my guts, and I wouldn't blame you."
"No! I'd love you, no matter what...."
He gave her a quizzical stare. "All right, then. Remember that's a promise." He started to speak, then stopped to swallow hard.
She saw that it was hard for him to tell it, so she said in a gentle tone, "Maybe you'd better not, Gene, if ... it'll make you suffer."
He laughed. "Suffer? Jeez, I ought to suffer for being such a dope."
She waited. He lighted a cigarette and took a puff or two on it before he began.
"It felt mighty good to be just plain Gene Kohler again, Willa," he said. "You don't know how happy it made me feel to be no longer Second Petty Officer Gene Kohler, United States Naval Reserve. I was still wearin' my uniform and that's all that counted. That was more'n enough to make me feel like a new man.
"It was altogether a glorious day. I sniffed. There was a strong smell of soap, and not the ozone of the seven seas over which I'd sailed for three hectic years. I was travelin', all right, but miles, and not knots, were being eaten up by the train from the West Coast. True, in a way the Super-Chief felt like a rollin' tub on the boundin' main, it was listin' that much. But it wasn't a ship, and I was on my way home from 'Frisco, where I'd been discharged, to my hometown of McKeesport, "The washroom where I was washing my face and hands was small, and I looked in the mirror over the washbowl and said to myself, 'On the whole, Gene Kohler, you don't look too bad after the hell you been through.' "
Willa waited silently while Gene paused to take a drag or two on his cigarette. Then he went on, "I wiped my face dry with a paper towel when the speedin' train hurtled around a corner, gave a lurch, and I reeled against the doorjamb. Ordinarily, a thing like that would have made me sore. But nothin' could make me sore then. You see, Willa, I was sittin' on top of the world, headin' for home to hitch up with my girl, Pamela Jones. I was safe there on the train, and I could play around with more pleasant thoughts than war. Pam, for instance. As I dried my hands, I kept wonderin' if she'd changed any since I left McKeesport. God, but she was beautiful." Again he paused to puff on his cigarette. "I'll bet she was," Willa said quietly.
A dreamy look entered his eyes as he remembered Pamela aloud. "Her blonde curly hair, her straight pert nose, her cream colored skin, her round throat, her slender figure ... well, she was just super-beautiful. Out of this world. And how sweet she smells, I kept thinkin' as I sniffed again. Like honeysuckle, like an orange blossom, like a rose in bloom. Nothin' like those burnin' bodies. I never remember those burnin' bodies without shudderin'."
This time, when he paused, he looked away from Willa. He resumed, "I knew there was another side to Pam, too, but I didn't want to remember her lack of consideration and her selfishness. I couldn't help rememberin', though. I found myself hopin' and prayin' she'd changed for the better ... in some respects, anyhow. I started to worry, hopin' for the best but fearin' the worst. I told myself to stop worryin', that my old job as a mechanic in the garage was waitin' for me, that I'd swing back in stride once I got home.
"After washin' myself I left the men's room and headed for my seat in the day coach. Even if I hadn't been wearin' my sailor uniform you could have told I was a sailor just by watchin' my legs rollin' down the aisle. Well, I got back to my seat, sittin' down alongside of an old joe who insisted on talkin' to me. The skinny old man had the brightest eyes and the widest grin I'd ever seen. The old man looked up, then leaned forward and tried to get me to open up about my experiences at sea. Don't talk about it, I said to myself. Don't let this old geezer remind you of those sights and sounds and smells. Think only of Pamela and your old job in the garage.
"Just then the old geezer sniffed. He asked me if I smelled a strong perfume. It really smelled strong, he said. I squirmed in my seat, smiled grimly, and told him it was me he smelled. I brushed him off with an explanation of why I used perfume, then settled back in my seat to think of the honeysuckle smell of Pamela."
Willa broke into his narrative. "She must have smelled nice, Gene."
Gene stared into space. "She sure did, Willa." Then he continued with his narrative. "It was after nightfall when the local train to which I'd changed in Pittsburgh reached the outskirts of McKeesport. I sure was glad. I'd had enough of that that dirty day coach filled with smells of stale cigarettes and sick bodies. The train topped the hill, and suddenly the town lay before me, a ragged smear of light along the valley below. The lights, except for those in the big steel mills, weren't bright like those in New York or Washington. Only a few little lights kept the night from being too big. But it was beautiful, anyhow.
"The trains are very slow around there. I became a little impatient with the way the train crawled along like a snail. But the slowness of the train didn't get under my skin too much then. I was too happy. I tried to wipe the frost from the window, so I could see the town better. But the frost was on the outside and I couldn't reach it. I blew my breath against the window, tryin' to drive away the white coat, but that was no go, either. Then I cussed a little." He paused, and it was obvious to Willa that he was getting to that part of the story which was hardest for him to tell.
She prompted him, "Go on, Gene. You tell a story very well."
Gene got up to rub out his cigarette butt in an ashtray, then returned to his chair close to Willa. "Won't Pam be surprised? I said to myself. Guess I should have notified her I was comin' home. But I wanted it like that. I wanted to surprise her. I could picture how big her eyes would be when I strutted in. Hell, she didn't even know I was back in the United States, much less that I was discharged from the Navy.
"My thoughts went back to that Sunday when I'd decided to join the Navy. I'd waited till after diner to spring it on her. I said, 'Pam you know how I feel about the Nazis. I know those Germans from personal contact. They're cold-blooded and murderous. They don't respect human life, and we'd better wipe them out before they wipe us out. I'd like a crack at them.'"
"'But it's not what a man wants to do,' she protested. 'It's what he should do.' "
"And I'd said, 'I'm puttin' it to you cold, honey. If you say I should stay put in the garage, I'll stay. Whatever you say, I'll do. But look at it this way, Pam honey. It'll only be a matter of time before they draft me. And since I want to go, it's better for me to volunteer. Right?"
"Pam jumped up from the table then and said, 'But what of our gettin' married, Gene darling? I don't want to marry you if you're goin' away."
"'We'll get married when I come back,' I told her."
"She started to object but stopped herself when she saw it wouldn't help; that I'd already made up my mind. 'Right, Gene,' she agreed. 'But I'm goin' to miss you somethin' awful.' "
Willa nodded understandingly. "Uh-huh. I can well imagine she did miss you somethin' awful. I know I would if I'd been in her shoes."
Gene shrugged cynically. "That's what you think. Please don't interrupt me. You'll find out just how much she really missed me."
He stared into space again as he picked up the thread of his story. "So the train moved into the lights, and I was back in a familiar world that wasn't so familiar any more. On the hill, to the left, stood the big steel mill. Just ahead, the Standard filling station. I was back home, a civilian again. I wanted the war out of my mind. I walked from the station to Bill Reid's drugstore just across the street. That was my first stop.
"Bill said, 'Hi, Gene,' but there was a troubled look in his eyes. He went back into a little room and started to mix pills and prescriptions. 'Hi, Gene.' That was all he had to say to me after me being away all those years. Seemed kind of funny to me, that sort of reception. I didn't get it. I didn't like it. He didn't ask me a single thing about how I was feelin', or about the war, and it was the first time I'd been home in three years. I had a Coke, just as I always did when I dropped in at Bill's, thinkin' about it. Only two other people were in the store then, a pimply faced boy and a girl. I didn't know either of them.
"Outside, I pulled my overcoat a little tighter around me and started up the street. Pamela filled my thoughts again. Fred Dalton stood in front of the garage. 'Hi, Gene,' he said. I grinned and said, "I'll be down in a day or two, Fred, to see about the job you promised me when I got back. I may be a little rusty, but there's damn little I don't know about an automobile.' Fred said okay in a disinterested sort of way and walked inside.
"I stood there, scratchin' my head. I was puzzled. 'Hi, Gene.' That's about all any of them said to me. The Presbyterian minister added, 'God bless you, my son.' That made me feel good, but why had he looked at me that way, like he were sorry for me? I couldn't look that bad. I felt fine. Just about perfect.
"I hurried along, anxious to be with Pamela. I remembered the first time I knew my days as a bachelor were doomed. I'd been walkin' past the alley just beyond Bill Reid's drugstore, and there was the house where Pamela lived. She'd come out of the house to meet me. We stood there for a long time while Pam chain-smoked cigarettes and flipped the butts on the grass. She'd looked at me over her shoulder, smiling and asking, 'Like my new hair-do?' "
"And I looked at her lovely blonde hair, put up in an upsweep. 'Oh, Pam honey, it looks swell,' I said. I watched her foolin' around in her white handbag, fingering through it for another cigarette. When she couldn't find one, she asked me for one. I held out my pack, and her fingers on my hand were light and cool.
"She'd drawn in the smoke and let it out, then she asked me if we were goin' to the dance that night. She looked at me when she spoke, and the touch of her eyes was like the touch of her fingers. I don't remember what I said. It may have been nothin'. From then on, I was a cooked goose. She existed in some world that didn't touch me, yet she was my world."
Willa interrupted, a puzzled frown on her face, "But that's beyond me, Gene. I don't get it."
He smiled bitterly. "You will, Willa. You'll get it when I tell you more about Pamela. She was heartless, a goodtime Jane, with everything for a laugh. That was Pamela. Once she killed a dog. It was an accident, of course, but she'd been so cold and heartless about it all. She said it was just a dog, and there wasn't a drop of pity or remorse in her voice."
"I'm sorry, Gene," Willa said in a quiet tone.
He sighed reminiscently and repeated, "Yeah, she existed in a world that didn't touch me, yet she was my world. I got to admit I was somethin' of a goodtime Charlie myself then. But that was worlds ago, centuries ago, odors ago. She was like honeysuckle, and yet ... If only she'd changed just a little to the good, I told myself. I was only three blocks away from her apartment.
"A cold wind blew, and traces of snow gave me a little trouble as I moved along. That snow sure held me up. It always snowed there at the wrong time, and some of it had to stick around till I got home. But I wasn't sore at the snow or the wind or anybody or anything in town, then. I just wanted to see Pam. I thought of Pam's blonde hair and red lips, and of the day she stood in the railroad station to wave goodbye to me as the train climbed the hill. Everything came back to me then as in a flood: the shabby linoleum in her livin' room, the too-short curtains in the bathroom window, and the kitchen table that my long legs could never fit under. And, of course, Pam herself. My body felt warm, and the war seemed far away.
"I didn't knock on the door. Instead, I gave it a wrench. I found it locked. That was funny. Pam never kept her door locked. Then I knocked. A woman I'd never seen before opened the door.
"I asked her if Pamela was home. 'You the sailor she used to go around with?' she asked. There was pity in her eyes. Then she answered all my questions before I asked them. 'She ain't here.' I knew then that Pamela was near but still worlds away."
"'Old Town,' she said tersely. That could mean only one thing. I thanked her and walked away. Why the hell hadn't somebody written to me? Guess they might have, sooner or later, only people don't write you things like that about the girl you were goin' to marry. They all knew, and they felt sorry for me. Damn them, I said to myself. They're sorry for me. That's why they looked at me that way. And I must have acted like a fool, bustin' out with pride over myself, and all the time they knew, and knowin' I didn't know, and knowin' I was a big dope for comin' back.
"I boarded the next train out of town. I didn't look back. There was somethin' cold in my heart, and I wanted it far away: the ragged smear along the valley, Pamela and Old Town, Bill Reid's drugstore, the service station, the garage, and the preacher who'd blessed me. All of it I wanted out of my mind and far away.
T headed for New York. I felt at home in the dimly lit coach, with the cigarette smoke, the scent of wool, the sleeping people. And the train's voice woundin' the night in a shrill whistle, the burnin' ships, and my bride-to-be that never-was ... all caught up together."
With his story finished, Gene's eyes swam with moisture. A sob punctuated his narrative. He held his hands over his eyes and wiped away the wetness. There was a long silence. Willa sat there quietly, respecting his remembered grief.
Regaining his composure, Gene took his hand away from his eyes and looked at her. "I loved Pamela, Willa," he said in a choked-up voice.
"I know you did, Gene," she said softly.
He gave a little shrug of resignation. "That explains everything," he said, then added strangely, "only sometimes it don't."
"No," Willa agreed. "Sometimes it don't."
She took his hand in hers. He stiffened, his face hardening.
"Well, I was right, wasn't I?" he said. "You hate me for being such a dope, don't you?"
"On the contrary...." she began. Unconsciously he tried to pull away his hand. She asked, in an annoyed tone, "Why are you pullin' your hand away?"
"Was I?" He stopped, made a feeble attempt at a smile. "I suppose it's because it seemed so crazy for you to hold my big ugly paw. But you're welcome to it, if you want it."
"I do want it," she said, clinging to it possessively. "It's strong and kind and warm ... like you." She leaned over and kissed it.
He blurted out tensely, "Oh, for the love of Mike!" He jerked his hand away, then relented hastily in a joking tone, "You must be moonstruck, wastin' kisses on my hand! Even the moon's laughin' at us. Just look at it!"
"Nuts to the moon!" she said.
He looked quietly into her eyes. "You know, Willa sweet, you got pretty eyes and hair ... and breasts."
She tried to be calculatingly enticing. "You can lay your head on my breast, Gene, if you want," she invited.
Instead of doing that he got up and pulled her up to him, embracing her. Their lips met in a long passionate kiss.
He signed, saying, "Who says lightnin' don't strike twice in the same spot?"
She drew his lips down to hers and kissed him again. "Oh, Gene, how I love you," she said.
"Thanks, Willa."
"Thanks ... for what?"
"For not believin' I'm a louse. Everybody else believes it ... including myself ... and for a damned good reason, too."
"You're not a louse," she chided mildly. "You're the nicest person I ever met"
Her mother shared Willa's opinion of Gene when she came in a few minutes later and got acquainted with him. Both Gene and Mrs. Keyes warmed up to each other as they chatted amiably over coffee and cakes.
After about an hour of that Hazel said good night to them. Shortly afterwards Gene kissed Willa good night. There was fervor in his kiss and she was somewhat astonished at his failure to make a pass at her. But she decided not to take a chance by making advances herself. At least, not at their first meeting.
She thought of him more than once before the next morning, usually with an involuntary smile. Obviously he was a man of many moods. From the sour to the sweet, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Those mild absurdities of his were really amusing, delivered in the casual voice that said in effect she didn't have to listen, with the expressionless face that assured her she didn't have to laugh. Yet, she couldn't quite make him out. The absurdities covered something much more serious than seemed apparent but she couldn't figure out what. Perhaps the loss of Pamela had affected him far more deeply than she could comprehend. Well, she would see to it that he'd forget Pamela Jones. If only she could keep him from finding out what kind of girl she had been herself.
Anyhow, I'm not a whore like Pamela, she said to herself consolingly.
She was in love. It was like a trip through outer space, and it left her in an exhilarated mood with only the vaguest sense of reality.
At the breakfast table her mother said, "I like your new boyfriend, Willa. He's very nice."
"Mom, does he really exist?" Willa beamed. "Or am I just dreaming him into my life?"
"Never mind that fancy stuff," growled Hazel. "He's a good Joe, all right. I can tell a real one from a phony at a glance. He's genuine fourteen-karat."
Willa reached across the table and squeezed her mother's hand. She said, "You're an angel, Mom."
Hazel said gruffly, "If I'm an angel, then at the risk of losin' my wings I want to warn you not to step out of line. If you watch your step, you can get him to marry you. Gene seems to be a nice catch, a boy in a million...."
"Don't I know it, Mom. I've really fallen for him like a ton of bricks."
Hazel now took on a practical tone. "What's he do for a livin', Willa?"
"He's lookin' for a job, Mom."
"Oh!" Hazel's face fell. "That's strictly from hunger."
Willa blanched. "Why, what do you mean, Mom? I thought you liked Gene."
"I do. He's awful nice. But you got to have money to live. These days they want too much for everything. The prices they ask ... they're out of their minds!"
"Oh, that's all that's worryin' you." Willa laughed in relief. "You don't have to worry about Gene. He's got a little money laid aside. And he can get a job either as a garage mechanic or a radio repairman."
Hazel beamed again. "That's fine, Willa. Just fine. Now, if you play your cards right, he'll ask you to marry him."
"I want to marry him." Willa paused. "As for money, Gene ain't no tightwad."
When Willa got up to go to work, Hazel gave her one last piece of advice. "Whatever you do, my child, for God's sake, don't let him tumble to what you did when you were just a kid."
Over her shoulder Willa assured her with a smile, "I won't, Mom. You can be sure of that. Think I'm a dope? If he knew all about me, he'd have a paralytic stroke!" As an afterthought she flung a warning at her mother, "Just make sure you don't let it slip out to him."
Hazel washed her hands in the air. "You know me, Willa. I can be a clam when I have half a mind to be. I won't tell him a thing."
Every night that week the two lovers saw each other. They went to the movies, to Prospect Park, to Coney Island, and made a round of the saloons. Willa found herself in a social whirl, and for the first time in her life she was really happy.
Gene looked for a job during the day, but without success. Because of his failure to land a job he would sink into occasional moods of surliness and self-criticism, calling himself terrible names. That made Willa sore.
One night at a corner table in the Flying Irishman's, they both got fairly high and were losing control of their tempers.
He said, in a growl, "Maybe we shouldn't see each other any more, Willa."
Her eyebrows elevated in amazement. "Why not?"
"I can't seem to get a job."
"Don't talk like that, Gene," she said reassuringly, "You'll get a job."
He said skeptically, "Maybe."
She moved her chair closer to his and snuggled up to him. "Did you have a girl in every port when you was in the Navy, Gene?" she asked, in an effort to change the subject.
He smiled. "Of course. Every sailor has a girl in every port. Navy regulations."
But she couldn't unburden his heavy mood. He sank into a brooding silence.
She reached out for his hand, held onto in. "Gene, don't leave me now for thoughts of Pamela or any of those girls in every port. I can do anything they can do. I...."
He shrugged. "Stop braggin'. Do you know what I'm thinkin?"
She studied him. "I can guess."
"Can you?" He gave a short laugh. "I was thinkm' that...."
"Don't tell me. Let me guess." Again he shrugged. "Guess, then."
"You were thinkin' I'm a brazen hussy for talkin' the way I did."
He shook his head. "Wrong. Guess again."
"Suppose it isn't a guess?" she asked, with a peculiar look. "I'm ready for anything," he said. "Make it good."
"If it's too good," she said with a shiver, "it won't be any good at all. It'll wreck everything." He smiled. "I'm willin' to gamble."
She shook her head. "Maybe that's because you don't have too much to lose. Mind if I back out?"
"Yeah," he said resolutely. "I do mind. I want you to make that guess."
She drew a quick breath. "It's not a guess any more. I'm sure I know. If I'm right, the whole thing blows up in my face." She reached out for his hand, took it in hers. "I don't want to lose you, Gene honey. Maybe you know that already."
He grinned. "I've been playin' with that idea."
"No matter what," she repeated grimly, "I don't want to lose you."
He stared at her. "You're halfway across the tightrope," he said. "You can't turn back now."
"You're really askin' for it, ain't you?"
"Put it a little stronger. Say I'm demandin' it."
A tinge of indignation came into her eyes. "You sound as if I'm obligated."
Gene took a cigarette from the pack on the table and lit it. Her eyes searched his face anxiously.
"We're both obligated," he said simply.
She swallowed hard, then said, "Okay, then. You're disgusted because you haven't been able to land a job. So you plan on takin' a train back to your dear old McKeesport tomorrow night, don't you?"
Still holding the burning match, Gene stared at her in amazement. "Back to McKeesport? How'd you figure that?"
She moved her left shoulder in a little shrug of dismay. "Let's just say a little birdie told me."
He blew out the match with a cloud of smoke. "Better give that bird the bird, honey," he said, leaning towards her, his eyes holding hers.
She touched uneasy fingertips to her chin. "Why are you lookin' at me like that, Gene?"
He puffed some smoke into the air. "I'm lookin' at the life ahead of me, honey. With you. I'm stayin' here in Brooklyn with you, Willa."
"Thank God," Willa breathed out in a low emotional tone.
"You make me feel alive again. Funny, you sayin' that about me goin' back to that dirty old burg. I never even dreamed of it. I never want to see it again."
"It is ... funny," she said slowly.
He got up to leave. "Let's get out of this crummy joint, honey."
On the way home they were lighthearted and happy. He left her at the door, with the echoes of his remote chuckle is her ears. She couldn't understand why she now felt downcast.
The following evening was Saturday, and they went to a dance. Having the next day off, Willa could afford to stay out late. It was way past two in the morning before they got back to Willa's house.
They stood close together in the doorway to the building entrance at the top of the stairway. Willa crossed her fingers. Her world had at last assumed a pleasant and durable pattern. She had won the love of a man worth loving. Equally important was her mother's well-being. Her mother had settled down, was drinking less and trying desperately to slim her figure down as much as possible. Everything had resolved happily for her mother, and everything was beginning for Willa.
Gene was tired and a little surly. Willa gave him a searching glance. "It was a nice dance, wasn't it, Gene darling?"
"I hated it," he said. "I hated everybody there except you."
Willa was both flattered and worried at the same time by his remark. She said, "Trouble with you, honey, you let everybody and everything worry you too much."
He shrugged, and gave a short laugh. "I'm not worried, Willa."
She shivered a little. "It's a little cool. What time is it? I left my watch home. I promised my mother I'd leave the dance before two, and she'll be waitin' up for me."
He laughed dispiritedly, took off his watch, and threw it down the stairway. It crashed at the foot of the bottom stair.
"It's no time, honey," he said, with a strange laugh.
She looked at him with fright in her eyes. "It scares me," she said, "when you act crazy like that."
"Sorry, honey," he said apologetically.
She had her hand on the doorknob. He put his hand on hers.
"Don't go in, Willa honey," he begged. "Let's always be like this, just you and me."
She looked up into his eyes. "But how would we live, Gene? You have no job."
Gene laughed peculiarly. "That's easy," he said. "We'd pick up raindrops for nickels and dimes, skin off greenbacks from the rollers out of the sea."
Willa shrugged, and opened the door. "Come on in, Gene, and have a nightcap with me."
He hesitated. "Maybe I'd better not. It's late."
"It's Sunday. You can sleep late."
"It's not that exactly."
"What is it, then?"
His eyes had a faraway look in them. "Look, Willa honey. You said it yourself. I don't have a job. Maybe we'd better not see each other until I land one."
Her eyes slid up disdainfully. "You're a proud bastard, ain't you?"
"Yeah, I am," he said, his lips curling. A smile played around the corners of her mouth. He turned to leave.
"Hold it," she said. "Where do you think you're goin'?"
"To my hotel," he told her, whirling around.
"Not yet, you won't, not even if I have to hold you here." She grabbed his arm and practically pulled him through the doorway.
She threw back her head and laughed, and then he laughed with her. They were silent after that brief flurry of laughter as they climbed the steep stairway to the fifth floor, careful not to disturb the sleeping tenants in the building.
4
In the living room she waved him to a chair. "Sit down there, Gene, and behave yourself." He lowered himself into the chair, and she patted his cheek, forcing a light air. "That's" a good boy. Now, don't go away. I know where a bottle of good Bourbon's hidden. I'll go get it."
In a little while she returned, carrying a tray loaded with a fifth of Bourbon, two tumblers, and a pitcher of water.
Gene sighed, and got to his feet. "Ah, the booze at last!" He relieved her of the tray and set it down on the table.
With a fixed smile, Willa said, "From the way you act, loverboy, you'd think I'd been gone for years."
"You have," he said with a smile.
"You don't need a drink that bad, do you?"
"It's you I need so bad, baby," he said in his usual kidding manner. "I been dyin' of loneliness."
"You'll die of lyin' some day," she said dryly. "But I'm glad you're alive again, anyhow. I thought you was really dyin' on me a while back."
"No such luck," he said dryly.
She poured the drinks and handed him a tumbler. They sat down beside each other on the sofa and drank in silence for a while.
"Good stuff," Gene said, breaking the silence.
She stared at him. "You sure got a capacity for booze," she said, half-admiringly.
He met her gaze. "Better watch your step, Willa honey. Unless you're careful, I might...." He let the sentence dangle meaningfully. "And then think of how disgusted you'd feel, with me lyin' beside you, probably snorin', as you watched the dawn come. You don't know...."
"Maybe I do," she said quickly.
As if he had not heard her, he went on bitterly, "But take it from me, I know. I've seen too many nightmares. This just has to be different. I want...." His voice trailed off into silence.
Willa tried to read his face, and failed. She said uneasily, "Hey, boyfriend, don't get lost in another fog."
"Oh?" He looked over at her, startled.
She nudged him playfully in the ribs, employing a lighter tone, "Don't be a drip, Gene. I don't think you know what you want. Except maybe another drink, and I want one, too."
"Fine!" he said, with a smile. "Good idea!" He reached out for the bottle, then poured a stiff drink into his tumbler. She held out her tumbler, but he ignored her.
She said indignantly, "You ain't very polite, honey, pourin' your own first."
He waved her away. "I said a drink was a good idea ... for me, not for you. You skip this one."
"You givin' the orders around here?" she asked resentfully. He swallowed some of his drink, then said, "Yeah, honey. You take a big drink of moonlight, instead."
"Pour me a drink!" she said angrily. He stared at her. "Okay," he said, shrugging his shoulder. "If you want it that way." He poured a drink into her tumbler.
She said stiffly, "Thanks," and then raised her glass mockingly, "here's to tonight."
A strange and bitter look came into his eyes. Suddenly he slapped at her hand, knocking the glass to the floor. It failed to break, but the liquid splashed all over the linoleum.
"I've slept with drunken tramps on too many nights!" he shouted, his voice hard with disgust.
She stared back at him, too startled and too bewildered to be angry. "Okay," she said finally, her voice trembling with a surprising meekness. "If you don't want me to drink, I...."
He was stirred deeply, in spite of himself. His voice quavered in apology, "Willa, don't...." He forced a tense laugh. "Sorry. Don't know what the devil the drink got into me." He picked up her glass. "Here, I'll pour you another."
"Don't bother," she said simply. "I'll skip this one." She put the glass on the table. "But you drink up."
"Thanks." He swallowed the remainder of his drink. Mechanically, he poured another. Suddenly he blurted out with loathing, "That fat pig ... I got her drunk! That's why I...." He checked himself guiltily.
"Who you talkin' about, Gene darling?"
"Never mind who. Maybe I'll...." He drank a little. "That ought to cure you ... for all time!" Suddenly he realized what he was saying. "Aw, nuts! Guess I'm more stewed than I thought I was."
"Don't talk like that, Gene honey. You need another drink." She held the bottle poised over his glass. "Say when."
He shook his head. "Hey, that drink's too big."
She gave a little shrug. "It's for me. I got a strong head. I can take it. So if you're worried I'll pass out on you and you'll have to put me to bed, forget it." She gave a bold laugh. "Hey, that's a good idea. I'll pretend I'm...."
Gene broke in irritably, "Cut out that raw talk, Willa. Remember, you said...."
"That I'd be different from the others?" There was an undertone of resentment in her voice. "That's right. I'm for-gettin' it's your pleasure to have me pretend I'm a virgin."
He said in a strange tone that was almost threatening. "If you don't look out, Willa, I'll call you on that bluff. Then you'll be sorry."
"Maybe I won't," she said in a low emotional tone.
He stared at her with a deliberate sensualist's regard that all but undressed her. "I'd like to. You know that, don't you?"
"Why don't you?" she asked boldly.
"Because...."
"You're the one who's bluffin'."
Nervously he pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He offered her one. She took it. He lit hers, then lit one for himself.
She puffed on the cigarette. "Thanks, darling." She watched him with eyes that were slitted now, and sleepy. He put his cigarette in a tray, then reached out and grabbed her, pulling her close to him with genuine passion.
"Willa!"
"Yes, Gene?"
He released her just as quickly. "Aah, forget it," he said in disgust. He turned away, picking up his cigarette and puffing on it.
She shrugged bitterly. "Okay," she said, in a trembling voice. "Suit yourself."
He drained his glass of whiskey, smacking his lips in satisfaction. He thrust his glass towards her and said, "How about pourin' me another, Willa? That's honest-to-goodness bonded Bourbon. Where'd your mother get hold of it?"
Willa winked. "She picked it up where she works."
He winked back knowingly. "I get it. Just picked it up, huh, when nobody was lookin'." He laughed.
Again she filled the glasses, then sat down on the sofa and pulled him down beside her. She raised her glass. "Here's to us, loverboy."
Gene abruptly pushed his glass away from him. "I know when I've had enough, Willa. They're comin' too fast." He gave her a curiously cynical, amused look. "Tryin' to get me soused, honey?"
"No, I'm not," she denied. "Just tryin' to get you feelin' happy, so you'll forget all your troubles."
He kidded, "I might forget all my honorable intentions, too, so look out."
"I'll look forward to it," she said dryly. "Well, if you think I'm tryin' to get you soused up ... here goes." She put her glass to her lips and drained what was left in it. "There, now. I must be schemin' to get myself soused, too."
"Maybe you are."
She said resentfully, "If I am, it's just to make you feel at home, you big dope. Didn't all the gals you had in every port get soused with you?"
He frowned in annoyance. "There you go again with that old line!"
Willa forced a laugh. "I'm eaten up with jealousy over them."
"You don't have to be. They don't belong in the same league with you."
She asked quizzically, "Not even Pamela?" He looked away. "Pamela, least of all."
"And I belong?"
His eyes returned to her. "Yeah, you do." She shook her head uncertainly. "I'll try to forget your old flames."
"I wish you would. They don't mean a thing to me now I know you. It's only you, honey. You're beautiful."
"Thanks!" she said humbly.
"To me, Willa honey, you're the most beautiful girl in the world."
She shrugged cynically, "Must be the Bourbon...."
"You're real and healthy and clean and good and strong and fine and warm and kind and...."
She broke in with a tinkling laugh, "I have a beautiful soul, you mean?"
"Well, I don't know much about girl's souls...." He took her hand in his. "But I do know you're beautiful." He released her hand and got to his feet. "Ah, hell, I'm talkin' like a moonstruck dope."
"Sit down, Gene." He complied. 'That's a good boy, darling. And we won't take any more whiskey. We've got a good jag on ... already. Everything seems so far away and don't matter ... except the moon and its dreams, and I'm part of the dreams ... and you are, too."
"Yeah," he sighed. "The moon and its dreams...."
She started to show him how to make love ... the Willa Keyes way. The kiss aroused his physical desire. He got into the spirit of it, pulled her head down and stared into her eyes.
"You got a beautiful body, Willa. Beautiful eyes and hair, a beautiful smile, beautiful warm breasts." He kissed her on the lips. For a second she pulled back, then returned the kiss.
Suddenly he broke away, and in a tone of guilty exasperation said, "This is crazy! Don't be a dope, Willa. Don't let me pull stuff like that."
"You meant it!" she breathed out shrilly. "I know you meant it! You want me, don't you Gene?"
For a moment he stared at her hungrily. Then he got up and moved over to the window. The August sky was still pinpointed with stars and a silver moon. A breeze blew in.
"That breeze feels good, Willa," he said, stretching and breathing in the air. "This summer's been too damned hot."
She crossed to his side, nestled close to him. "Darling, stop kickin' about the heat. I like everything hot." Her hand squeezed his arm.
He studied her, knowing he could take that remark in several ways, but choosing to take it in silence.
"Nice Gene," she crooned, and again squeezed his arm.
"Want a cigarette?" he asked, awkwardly fumbling in his pocket.
"No, darling," she breathed out. "I want you."
He wanted to answer her, but there wasn't any room for words. His mouth was a hot cushion against hers, her body a warm curve that melted and flowed into his, pressing so tightly that he could feel every tremor that ran in excited little ripples from her lips to her toes.
His fingers caught in her hair and pulled her head back. "You're a good kid, Willa honey," he said, grinning at her.
She didn't grin back. The corners of her eyes tilted with an obscure humor, but that was all.
"Good?" she echoed, and her drunkenness was making her honest. "I was good, and then I grew up. By the time I got smart it was too late. I was a tramp, and I'm not kiddin' myself about it. Take a long look, and you'll see it all, every bit of it. You'll see a gal who's been kicked around and done a lot of kickin' herself."
He dismissed her remarks with a wave of his hand. "Nuts! You're braggin' again. You're still a good kid, always have been."
She stared at him. For a long while he stared back. Her soul was in her face and it wiped out all the hard lines around her eyes.
Suddenly she closed in on him. Her warm breath bathed his face and then her hot, wet lips came searching, from eye to cheek to nose, and finally found the target. Gene was pressed backward against the window, and again backwards, until his head was against the sill. She released him abruptly, breathing hard, and drew herself erect. He was aware of her heavy breathing. Then one arm snaked around the back of his neck, and he was drawn close to her. He put his arms around her.
"Squeeze me tighter," she whispered hoarsely.
"I'm squeezin', I'm squeezin'."
"Kiss me...." she sighed huskily. "Oh, kiss me ... hard."
His cheek was against the swell of her breast. He managed to raise his head, and once more he found her lips searching.
"Love me, Gene," she whispered. "Oh, darling, make love to me ... please."
He got out of her embrace and drew away from her. "Know what you are, Willa? You're nothin' but a crazy, mixed-up kid. You...." An expression of stricken guilt and remorse clung to his face. "Oh, God!" With shaking hands he tried to light a cigarette. Finally, he managed. He inhaled deeply, and started pacing a few steps, back and forth, swearing defensively.
"Goddamn it, Gene!" she swore. She was on the verge of breaking down in sobs. But she fought it back. "What's wrong with two people in love lovin' each other up?"
"Nothin', I guess," he said. "Only I want things to be different between us, Willa honey. I...." He checked himself, yawning uncontrollably and stretching sleepily. "Let's table this until later, honey. I'm too tired. Guess I'll run along to my hotel, get some shut-eye, and stop messin' up what's left of your night. You look tired, too, honey. Your eyeballs are hangin' out. You need sleep."
She turned away from him annoyed. "I don't want sleep," she said. "I want to have some fun." She looked through the window at the stars. "Gene, look at the stars."
"I've had all the fun I want for the night," he said, grabbing his hat.
She was still looking intently at the sky. She pointed, "The stars, Gene, the stars."
"What stars?" He sighted along her pointing hand, squinting obliquely upward. "Hell, I'm in no condition for star-gazing."
She turned to face him and saw the hat in his hand. "So you really meant it. You are leavin'." She could not keep the disappointment out of her voice.
"Look, Willa," he gestured, "it's almost four. I can't keep my eyes open."
"Funny," she said stretching languidly. "I'm not the least bit sleepy."
"You city girls," he smiled.
"You country boys," she smiled back.
They laughed. Then they stopped laughing, and for a moment there was no sound in the room except the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. From an adjoining room they could hear the snores of Mrs. Keyes assaulting the atmosphere.
"Goodnight, Willa," Gene said tenderly.
"Goodnight, Gene," she said, equally tender.
He kissed her passionately on the lips, then started to leave. He turned suddenly at the door and asked, "Did you happen, by any chance, to say who you love?"
T love you, sweetheart," she said, blowing him a kiss.
"I thought so," he said with satisfaction. "Goodnight." And he was gone.
Willa did not go to bed immediately. She stood at the window, gazing at the stars. She was in the first heaven of hopeful bliss, where the beloved one walks in a halo of perfect light and there was no past, only a glorious now and an even more glorious tomorrow. A girl in love the way Willa was in love could not think at all without the future being in her thoughts.
5
A few nights later Willa was alone in the living room, waiting for Gene. She was curled up in a chair, smoking a cigarette and reading Forever Amber when the doorbell rang.
She put a marker in the page to keep her place, laid the book aside, and got up to answer the door. She opened the door and started to welcome Gene when she saw that the tall, lean young man in the doorway was not the man she was expecting.
He had a dark, thin face and coal-black hair that was thick and coarse. There was something familiar about him, but she couldn't place him.
He snickered, "What's nude, Willa?"
She couldn't let that go by without an answering quip. "Nothin'," she replied, "and that's the naked truth." She gave him a searching look. "I don't know you, do I?"
He smirked, "Why don't you invite me in and find out?"
She hesitated, then said, "All right. Come on in."
He followed her into the room. She crossed to the table and poured herself a drink, racking her brains as she sought to remember. She sat down, drew herself into a more upright position, and emptied the glass. Then she placed it on the end table. She lit a cigarette and dragged deeply on it as she studied her visitor.
Smoke eddied from her nostrils when she spoke. "Won't you sit down?" she smiled invitingly.
He ignored her invitation. He stood there, scowling darkly now.
"Remember me?" he asked, his lips curling contemptuously.
Again she sought recognition in his face. She moved her head uncertainly. The smile faded off her face.
"Nick Lucas," he said. He felt his heart beat more rapidly as he waited for the name to reach into Willa's clouded mind, and for the recognition when it finally reached her. He moved a little closer, keeping his weight forward.
"Nick. Nick Lucas." Willa repeated the name monotonously. "Nick Lucas." She closed her eyes, trying to shut out the memory.
Her heart chilled. She knew him, of course. She hadn't seen him since that day five years ago ... No, it couldn't be. But there he was, a little older and a good deal more bitter. He stood there, his body tensed, watching her face, waiting for what would follow.
She wanted to say something, and couldn't. Her head was shrieking with the pain of a long-forgotten memory and she felt her legs pulling up in a tight knot. She closed her eyes and waited until it passed. Then she forced her eyes open. Again she repeated the name, raising her face and looking somewhere far off, then slowly her face crumpled in front of him. She turned to face him and saw his shoulders hunching forward, his hands coming up slowly, fingers tightening. For an instant Willa thought he was about to spring at her throat. He took another step forward. Willa sat there motionless. Nick brought his clutching fingers together.
She found her voice. "When'd you get back, Nick?" she asked.
"Why do you want to know?"
"Because...."
"None of your goddamn business!"
Her eyes got brighter. "Don't act so damn tough, Nick. And you can save the dirty words. I don't like tough guys ... if you are a tough guy."
His lips curled scornfully. "I'm tough enough. You'll find that out soon enough, if you want to. I been through the wringer, Willa, thanks to you. I know what the score is."
She leaned back in her chair with something like a sigh. "No kiddin'?" she asked in a wondering voice.
Nick sneered. He must have been saving that particular sneer for a long time."
"I'm a graduate of the college at Warwick," he said bitterly. "You've heard of the place, haven't you, Willa?"
She nodded.
"Sure, you ought to know about it. You helped send me there. They call it a boys training school, but that's only a glorified name for hellhole."
"What did you learn there?" Willa asked casually.
"I learned how to pick a lock four ways," he replied promptly. "I wasn't such a bad kid before they sent me up. But they made a tough kid out of me, see? They cut you down to size there. I almost went crazy from the monotony. The food was garbage and it stank to high heaven. The work was monotonous. The recreation was monotonous. Everything ... everything was monotonous."
"Oh!"
"Willa, you couldn't possibly know what a hell that place was. They made us march together every place. To school, to work, to recreation, to cottage, to drill ground, to the crap-house." His face clouded over. "March, march, march. And never any privacy. They made us eat, sleep, learn, work, and play together like a herd of cattle."
He paused briefly to catch his breath, then went on even more acridly than before, "We were supposed to be juvenile delinquents, not prisoners. We had names, but they called us numbers. I was number 43214."
Her cigarette had gone out. It dangled loosely from a corner of her mouth. She discarded it in an ashtray on the end table. She clasped her hands together, and listened intently, fascinated in an uneasy sort of way by Nick's story.
Nick resumed, "They had all kinds of ways to muzzle us. Once they stuck me away in a meditation room for three weeks on bread and water because I sassed a cat." He paused again, grimacing at the recollection. 'That's how they muzzled me."
Willa stared at him curiously. "What's a cat, Nick?"
"A cat's a guard." Bitterness coated his words. "He put me in a meditation room after he used his 'tools of control' on .... me.
Willa scratched her head, puzzled. "I don't dig you, Nick. You got me floatin' around in a sea."
"Isolation cells are called meditation rooms in college." Nick explained with an impatient shrug. "Whips, paddles, blackjacks, and straps are 'tools of control.' "
"Oh!" Willa breathed out. "The damn pig!"
Nick shuddered. "That ain't the worst of it. The cats liked to play 'flyin' home,' too."
Willa was more bewildered than ever. "What's that?"
"The cat gives you a boot in the ass so quick and sharp that you just fly off the ground." Nick demonstrated with a gesture. "Like this. If he makes you fly high, that makes him laugh more."
Willa winced. "How horrible!"
"Horrible ain't the half of it," Nick snorted. "Talk about hell! You don't know from nothin' till you get the fire hose treatment. Want to hear what it's like, Willa?"
She wrinkled up her nose in anticipatory distaste. "Bet it ain't very funny," she said in a low voice.
"You bet it ain't," he said grimly. "Talk about hell! Let me give you a for instance. One day there was noise on the playground. The cat picked out four of us, backed us into the cellar, made us strip, then played the fire hose on us till we screamed holy murder."
"Oh!"
Nick made a face. "Goddamn right, Willa. The bastard didn't even ask us if we was the ones that made the noise. He just happened to pick us out."
"It ain't fair," Willa said.
"You bet it ain't!" Nick paused for a breath, and a painful expression crossed his face as he dredged up an agonizing memory. "I just couldn't take it no more, so I tried to escape. They caught me and put me to work on the Burma Road with other guys who tried to run away and never made it."
"The Burma Road?" Willa pushed up an inquiring eyebrow.
He nodded gravely. "Yeah. It's a mile stretch of bumpy road. They made us haul rocks and dirt in wheelbarrows from one end of the road to the other ... winter and summer ... under the goddamn hot sun or against a lousy cold wind. Guys who were caught trying to escape while workin' on the Burma Road were chained to their barrows. God!"
He sobbed out this monosyllabic entreaty as the memory of that unhappy experience overwhelmed him. Willa melted. She felt remorse for what she had done to him, and wanted to make amends in the only way she knew. But since she was really in love with Gene Kohler and could hardly comfort Nick in that way, she substituted words.
She got up, crossed to him, and laid a sympathetic hand on his arm. "I'm sorry, Nick," she said solicitously. "Honest I am. How can I make it up to you?"
"You can't!" he sneered, pushing her away from him roughly.
"Oh?" She flushed, her pride injured. "You can't give me back my five wasted years! You can't make me forget those rotten memories!" She sighed, "No, I guess not."
"I don't know what kind of angle you thought you was playin', Willa, snitchin' on me and the other guys for layin' you."
She swallowed hard. "They made me snitch on you. I didn't want to do it."
He spat out, "Statutory rape, my eye! It was the other way round, and you know it. You talked us into it."
She averted her eyes. "I know, I know."
"And we paid for it, sister, even though you gave it to us for free." His voice rose in mounting resentment. "It cost me five goddamn years of my life in the college. And I'm gonna pay you back double for every goddamn year I spent in that hellhole."
"Oh?"
"Get it now, you bitch, why I'm here?" Nick said roughly.
She backed away a little. Now she was beginning to understand a lot of things. She was expected to shake her head and quiver with fear. But she didn't scare so easy. Nick saw it in her face and he couldn't understand why.
She said in a quivering voice, "Ah, Nick, don't be like that. I was only a kid."
"So was I!"
"I didn't know no better. You can't blame me for what happened. I was fancy-free."
"Nice!" he said scornfully. "Quite a few people would like to be fancy-free. I'd have liked to be fancy-free from the college these past five years."
"We had fun then, Nick," she reminded him without batting an eye.
"Fun is where you find it," he parried, smiling unpleasantly. "It was fancy, all right, and free."
She smiled back. "Just so we understand each other," she said softly.
His face was as cold as ice, and so was his voice. "That's a crappy angle, Willa, real crappy. I'm gettin' a charge out of this. I love every bit of it. Don't mind my laugh."
He looked funny in his righteous indignation. Willa knew that she shouldn't have laughed, but she couldn't help it. The back of his hand smashed into her mouth, and before he could repeat the blow she slipped out of his reach.
She glared angrily at him, and said, "You put your hands on me again and I'll knock you flat on your goddamn ass."
Her words added fuel to his anger. He jumped towards her. His hands stopped halfway to her neck, and her eyes got wider and wider until there was no place else for the lids to go.
"I oughta kill you!" His whole body shook, his hands moving convulsively.
"You wouldn't dare!" Willa stood there defiantly.
"I trusted you, you rotten little bitch!" he sobbed out. "And what happened? You gave me the clap! That wasn't bad enough. On top of that, you got me sent up to the college for a five-year rap for rape. Rape, shit!"
"You must be nuts!" she said, the brutal edge of her voice coarsening with fear.
She felt her heart pounding, the blood rushing to her head. She was scared now. Nick said he ought to kill her, and he might try to do it. She couldn't scream for help; no one was home. For the moment her mind was paralyzed in a whirling daze of horror and a feeling of guilt. Her legs felt crumbly, and she shook horribly as she backed away from Nick, pushing a chair out of the way against the wall, her face gray and raddled, the vision in her eyes horrible to behold.
He glared at her. She had on a print silk jersey dress she had bought with her earnings from the hash house. She was a good-looking twist if you didn't get too close.
And then, as he watched her breasts shivering with fright, a sudden transformation took place in Nick Lucas. He laughed, and lowered his hands, his arms falling limply to his sides.
"You ain't worth killin'." He said it quietly. "I won't face a murder rap for you."
"Nick...."
He braced himself. "Nope, I won't kill you. I'll just kick the hell out of you. That might teach you not to...." The front doorbell rang, and he checked himself.
Willa looked at Nick, and he waved her to the door. She moved out into the hall, heading towards the front door and thanking God for whoever had come along to interrupt Nick.
But when she opened the door, she wasn't so sure she was happy about the intrusion. Gene stood there, smiling down at her. In her unexpected encounter with Nick she had forgotten all about their date.
She recoiled, as if from a blow, as he entered the hall.
"Hi, honey," he greeted her effusively.
She clapped her hand to her mouth. "Oh, God, now it'll all have to come out," she muttered, and her hand moved to her eyes as she burst into agonized tears.
Gene was solicitous. "Honey, don't cry like that," he said in a tender voice. "What'll have to come out?"
"You'll see," she said, in a low, choking voice. "You'll see," she repeated.
He scratched his head in bewilderment. "I don't follow what you're tryin' to tell me, Willa honey. And don't do that, please. Don't cringe as if I was going to hit you."
"You won't understand," she panted, lifting a tear-stained face. "I wasn't doin' no harm, but you won't believe me." She cleared her throat, then mustered words with a cracked voice, "I been seein' nobody but you, Gene ... absolutely nobody...."
He might not have heard. Without deliberation he took a step towards the living room. He was going to be difficult. She put out a restraining arm and grabbed him.
"Listen to me, Gene. Listen to me!" She swallowed hard, unable to go on.
He stared at her with puzzled eyes. "I'm listenin'," he said.
"Go away now, Gene. Please. Come back later. A half hour from now, let's say. Don't ask me any questions. Just go. Please!"
"Go?" His eyes swept the hall and returned to dwell with disbelief on her dejected figure, the soiled and wrinkled dress, the ashen face.
"Uh-huh. Please go."
He placed his hands upon her shoulders and looked into her eyes. "I won't go until I find out what this is all about. There's something very wrong...."
"There is something very wrong," she echoed tiredly. "Something you can't right. Nobody can. Please go and come back later."
He shook his head. "Not until you tell me what it's all about."
She shrugged helplessly. "All right, then," she said dully. "You might as well see for yourself."
Willa led him into the living room. When Gene saw Nick, he stopped in his tracks and put Nick under a searching scrutiny. Then he moved in front of Nick and asked, "Who're you?"
Nick said scornfully, "What's it to you?"
Gene stared at him, moved his gaze to Willa, then back to Nick, and said, "Nothin', I guess."
Nick grinned. "You guess right, fellow. You don't have to look like you're chewin' on nails just because a guy comes to see his old gal friend...."
Willa rushed over to him. "You tryin' to put me on the spot, Nick?" she asked angrily.
Nick put an endearing hand on her shoulder. "Don't act like that baby. Be sweet to me, like you used to be."
She swept his hand off her shoulder and whirled around to face Gene. "You believe that?" she asked.
Gene swore under his breath, turned around, and walked out of the room. Willa ran after him into the hall and put a restraining hand on his arm.
"Don't go, Gene honey!" she begged. "I can explain everything."
"Can you?" He stopped hesitantly, his hand clenched tight on the front doorknob. He snorted disdainfully, "I suppose you can explain that boy?"
"Yes, yes!" she shouted. "He's an old schoolmate of mine. He's been away for five years, and he stopped in to see me for old times' sake." She looked up at him with beseeching eyes.
"Did he, indeed?" he said, his eyes direct and intent upon her. "Want to tell me the whole story?"
She gave a well-censored version of her relationship with Nick Lucas. He listened with rigid attention.
"That's interestin'," he said, when she had finished. He released the doorknob and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Still, there was no reason for his acting so familiar...." he said, still uncertain.
"I love you, Gene," she mumbled. "Oh, how I love you!"
He laughed mirthlessly. "That's good, comin' from you. Every minute of the day I keep sayin' to myself that you love me. And now you say it, it rings as false as a lead nickel landin' on a wooden pavement."
"But it's true, Gene, it's true," she said in a desperate voice. "You gotta believe me!"
Gene viewed her suspiciously for a second, then started for the living room. "Okay," he said resolutely. "I'll soon find out."
"Wait, Gene! What are you goin' to do?"
"Talk to your boyfriend in there," he told her over his shoulder. "Find out if you're tellin' the truth."
Again she put a restraining hand on his arm. "No, Gene, don't do that," she pleaded. "You'll just start a fight, and I don't want you to do anything like that."
"I loved you, Willa," he said, with a studied frown. "I got to find out...."
She reached up to his lips and kissed him. "If you ever loved me, you'll leave now and come back later. Trust me, Gene. Please!"
He bent threateningly over her. "That won't do," he said harshly. "It's all scuttlebutt. You've trumped up a pretty thin story, but the whole thing's plain to me now. You're just a cheap floozie. I should have known it, but I got hornswoggled by your innocent looks."
He knew that he was hesitating between words, trying to choose the right one, but his speech always stumbled when he was overwrought, and she could take the meaning any way she wanted.
She chose to take it angrily. "You damn bastard!" she said. 'Take your ugly face out of here. You got a hell of a nerve to call me a cheap floozie ... and say it out loud!"
"Yeah, good and loud," he said bitterly. "I'm the biggest sucker alive. For the second time in my life I fall for a dame like a ton of bricks. And both times the damn bricks fell on top of me as the cheap floozies took me for a chase on the merry-go-round!"
She shouted, "Shut your big mouth!"
He laughed mirthlessly, and his tone assumed a hurt bitterness. "It's one hell of a joke on me," he said. "All the same, I'm good and sore. You sure pulled the blinders over my eyes, Willa. A cheap floozie, and I was all set to marry you!"
"Again you call me that!"
"I call you that because you are that. Deny it if you can." With a wrenching effort she controlled herself. "You'd better go, Gene."
He shook his head slowly three times in succession. "Oh, all right. I'll go." He stopped whirling his hat in his hands and stuck it on his head as he stalked towards the door.
She flung a sentence after him, "Thanks for nothin'!"
He looked over his shoulder, and the corner of his mouth twitched up. It said as plainly as words, I doubt if you were worth the trouble.
He walked out, slamming the door shut behind him. She stood there for a moment, looking absently at the door. Then she burst into tears.
Nick, hearing the front door close with a bang, came out into the hall. Willa directed the full blaze of her fury upon him.
"You're the cause of it all, Nick Lucas!" she shouted shrilly. "He would never have acted that way if you hadn't come here."
"He your boyfriend?"
"Uh-huh." She added bitterly, as an afterthought. "Was my boyfriend."
Nick shrugged. "What's all the hocus-pocus about? He jealous?"
"That's part of it." She burst into tears.
He softened a little towards her. "Sorry, kid. I didn't know. If I'd known, maybe I wouldn'ta come. But I was good and sore at you for what you'd done to me, and I been savin' it up all these years to give you a good beatin' all at once." Again he said, "Sorry, kid."
"A fine time to say you're sorry! He's gone away thinkin' ... I don't know what! Oh, what have I done?"
Nick stood looking at her without expression. After a moment she stopped crying and drew her palms vigorously across her face to dry it.
"I'm sorry, Nick," she said more quietly. "Sorry I blew my top at you. I got a bad temper. You had a right to be sore at me, after what I'd done to you. I had it comin' to me."
"I'll say you had!"
She moved closer to him, and looked up into his eyes co-quettishly. "Nick, I want to make up to you for what I've done."
He shook his head. "Nothin' you can do now to bring back those five lost years."
"You want me again, Nick?" she asked in a faint voice.
He shook her off roughly. "Get lost, punk! I don't want to be burned again." He snorted. "Goodbye," crossed to the door, opened it, and vanished.
Willa cried uncontrollably now. She had made a mess of everything. Between sobs she cursed bitterly. But her efforts to blame others for her problems didn't work this time.
It's no use, she thought miserably. I can't run away from the past. It's too fast for me. It's me. I'm rooted in it.
6
A dim light was burning in Willa's bedroom. She woke out of a fitful sleep and again looked at the clock on the table by her bed, watching it heavy-eyed to see if the hands were still moving in response to the muted ticktock she could hear so plainly in the dead silence of the room.
It was only one o'clock. She turned her head back and closed her eyes again. It was the longest night she had ever spent, and more than half of it was yet to come. From a quarter past ten she seemed to have lived a hundred leaden-weighted hours, interspersed with sleep that was worse than waking. It was a sleep filled with formless terrors that vanished just as she seemed about to identify them and give them a name, and she found herself awake, with cold sweat drenching the sheet that covered her.
Awake, she found herself face to face with the sickening mess she made of everything. She had been a fool from the very beginning, a fool ever to let every Tom, Dick and Harry love her up, a worse fool to have let Nick and the others take the rap for what she had done to them.
She squeezed her eyes shut, wishing the tears she felt would come out and let her rest instead of staying choked up in her throat. She moved her head back and forth on the pillow. She had been such a damn fool.
She stared miserably at the clock again. It had hardly moved. She sat up abruptly. She had been a fool, but she was being a bigger one now. It was because she was so tired that things looked worse than they really were. If she could only get some sleep and wake up without looking like a lost owl with deep circles under her eyes, she could drop in on Gene at his hotel and make up with him. She loved him and she knew that he loved her. Yes, she would do that very thing in the morning.
She reached for her mules on the floor beside the bed. The ache in her heart had translated itself into a dull, throbbing pain in her temples and in the muscles of her eyes. Maybe if she took a couple of aspirin tablets....
But she didn't get up, instead she sat on the edge of the bed, thinking ... and weeping.
At this point Hazel tiptoed to the door of her daughter's room and listened. An uneasy moan came from the bedroom, as if Willa were having a terrible nightmare.
Hazel set her jaw quickly and opened the door. She paused in the doorway. Willa had been weeping. She was on her knees upon the bed, in an attitude of bleak despair. A handkerchief to her eyes.
"Willa!"
"Huh?" Willa was startled. "Willa, what on earth...."
"Mom, I thought you'd gone to bed long ago." In the dim light her face was haggard.
"Naw, I sat up for a nightcap. But why ain't you asleep? You look all worn out."
"I am, Mom. I been wrestlin' with myself."
"What in the world you talkin' about, child?"
"My conscience. Go to bed, Mom."
"Your ... what?"
"Go to bed!"
"Rasslin' with your conscience?" Hazel had come into the room calmly, but suddenly she became excited. She ran over to Willa and held her hand, whispering sympathetically. "Oh, you poor dear."
"I'm tryin' to break through its defenses. It ain't easy to do. Ain't you goin' to bed?"
Hazel shook her head. "No, Willa, not until I find out what's the matter. Come into the parlor with me, honey, and we'll talk it out over a glass of Bourbon. I picked up a nice new bottle tonight."
Willa regarded her hesitantly, then said, "Oh, all right," and got up.
Her mother took her arm and ushered her tenderly into the living room. Willa shivered, though the night was hot and sticky. Hazel poured the drinks, and as they sat down with their glasses, Willa noticed that the bottle was already half-empty.
Willa sipped a little of her drink. Hazel drained hers while scrutinizing Willa's face closely. The beauty that it once had was faded, almost lost. Maybe not lost, Hazel thought, but paid at the price for the way she lives. And Willa's eyes held dark shadows ... lonely eyes that seemed to be looking at the world with fear.
Willa met her mother's gaze for an instant without saying anything. She still felt like crying, and the choked-up feeling inside her almost forced the tears to come to the surface. But she managed to hold them back and even tried to smile at her mother. "Oh, Mom."
Her mother asked, "Willa, has anything happened? Between you and Gene, I mean."
Willa didn't answer the question. She began to sob.
Hazel laid aside her glass, got up and crossed over to her. "Come on honey," she said in a kindly tone. "Tell your old mother."
Between sobs Willa said, "I can't take it no more, Mom. It's no use tryin'. I'm just clean beat out."
Hazel sat down near her. "Willa...." she began, and stopped abruptly.
Willa looked at her through her tears. "Yeah, Mom?"
Hazel pleaded, "Think out loud, please. Just this once, Willa, for God's sake, think out loud!"
"Oh, Mom!" Willa reached out and buried her head in her mother's bosom. Hazel patted her head tenderly, aware that Willa was struggling hard to dredge up some buried hurt.
"Willa honey, tell mother what's worryin' her little girl. Has anything happened between you and Gene?"
Again Willa burst into tears. "Mom, it's just too awful!"
"Relax now and tell me what the trouble is."
Willa swallowed hard, and said, "I've lost Gene."
Hazel shook her head in disbelief. "But that ain't so. I don't believe it. You've got the inside track with Gene."
"You're wrong, Mom. The last thing I have is an inside track."
"Go on," Hazel said incredulously. She got up and crossed to pour herself another drink. "He's in love with you."
Willa gave her a searching glance, looking at the bottle in her hand.
"No, I'm not tight, Willa." Hazel sloshed another generous portion of Bourbon into her glass. "Anybody can see how Gene feels about you. I was watchin' him the other night when you was talkin' to him. He's nuts about you, honey."
"Mom, you're all wet. He might have been, but he ain't nuts about me no more. He hates me, thinks the worst of me. And I don't know what to do. You got to help me, Mom."
Hazel swallowed some of her drink and made an impatient gesture. "How can I help you if you won't tell me what's wrong?"
Again Willa began to cry, her lips loose and quivering. But after a minute she rubbed away the tears with the sleeve of her robe.
"He's jealous, Mom, but there's no reason for him to be. What if I did run around with the boys once. I don't ... any more, and I won't."
Hazel moved back close to her. "Tell me what happened, child."
Willa told her. Towards the end of her story her voice rose shrilly, irritating her mother.
"Don't shout so loud," Hazel said. "You can say it quiet. I can hear you. I ain't deaf."
Willa was piqued by what she considered a rebuke, mild though it was. She said in an irked tone, "I suppose you want me to sit here and fold my arms and sing with joy because my boyfriend ditched me? "
"Oh, no, Willa!" her mother said quickly. "I didn't mean it that way."
"I can't help the way I feel, Mom. I got a heart. If I've lost Gene...." She broke off, sobbing again. Her sobs subsided and she continued, "Can't you see what I'm goin' to face? A long string of years ahead with no purpose, no fun. And for what? I'm on the edge of a hole, a hole full of darkness."
Her mother looked at her thoughtfully. "You're a strange girl, Willa."
Willa laughed bitterly. "Strange, you call me. You don't see a thing, do you?"
"Yes, I do," Hazel said, in a tone of disgust. "When you were born, the stork brought me a bungle from heaven."
Willa nodded glumly. "Guess you're right, Mom. I'm no good."
"Don't say that, Willa. You're swell."
A long silence followed, and they looked at each other questioningly. Willa sighed pensively and broke the silence saying, "I can't seem to hang onto a boyfriend, Mom." She wept softly.
Her mother said gently, "Don't cry, Willa. What's the good of it? Cryin' won't solve your problem. Cryin' never solves y problem. Take it from me. I know from experience. Please...."
Startled, Willa caught herself. "Cryin' again? But I got to stop cryin'. I promised myself I wouldn't cry no more. Some-thin's screamin' inside of me but I won't listen to it. Let it scream!"
Her mother leaned forward, extending her hand. She grasped one of Willa's and folded it into her own. "Pull yourself together, honey," she said, trying to console her. "You'll find everything's not half as dark as it seems."
Willa faced her mother more calmly now. Her natural color came back, and her eyes lost their frightened look.
"Oh, Mom, what should I do?" she sighed out.
"You could see Gene in the mornin', the way you thought of doin', and tell him he was all wrong about Nick Lucas." She threw a wet blanket over it by adding, "Though I'm not too sure how much it'll help."
"No, it won't!" Willa said, and there was a cold feeling at the pit of her stomach.
Her mother studied her briefly. "You look peaked, honey. You ought to get a little sleep first. Rest a few hours, and then we'll talk about it again in the mornin'. We'll figure out something, I'm sure."
Willa permitted herself to be led to her bedroom. While her mother chattered away, she climbed back into bed and tucked herself under the sheet.
"Darling, please try to get some sleep," her mother urged. "You don't want dark circles under your eyes, do you, dear?"
Willa kissed her mother, grateful for her babying care. Hazel put out the light and left the room. But sleep did not come to Willa. There were too many thoughts running a marathon through her mind to allow sleep to come to her. She knew her mother disapproved of the way she had muffed things with Gene, but it wasn't her fault, really. If only Nick hadn't come around....
7
Since it was Willa's day off at the restaurant and she had lost so much sleep during the night, she planned on sleeping late that morning. Even if it had been an off-day she wouldn't have gone to work.
It seemed that she had hardly dozed off, however, when the doorbell woke her up. When there was no answer to the ringing, there was a knocking on the door panel, knuckles rapping loudly and insistently.
In the moment between sleep and wakefulness Willa found herself burrowing under the covers, trying to throw off the panic which had plagued her all night. She didn't like the way she felt. She would never feel good again, not any more. She did not want to feel that way about any man. There was something about Gene that was different than any other man she had known ... something direct and honest, something that made a girl feel as if she had lost an arm when he was gone. Only, she reluctantly admitted to herself, in Gene's case she had lost her heart.
She shook the thought out of her mind and got up. The knocking and the bell ringing continued interchangeably. Frowning, she moved out to the front door, wearing a terry-cloth bathrobe which hugged the small curves of her breasts low enough to permit more than a suggestion of cleavage. Her slim legs were bare and she wore her mules.
Willa opened the door a crack and gasped in astonishment. It was Gene knocking. Trying the doorbell and getting no response, he assumed that it was out of order and knocked loudly, persistently, until he had aroused her. There was never any diffidence to his touch.
She peered cautiously through the crack in the door, and her heart added another beat to its natural rhythm. "So you came back," she said in a trembling voice. "Why?"
Now her head was cocked, and she was looking squarely into his face. Gene was speaking before she could make up her mind how to act towards him.
He cleared his throat, as though addressing an audience, then said, "I've come to apologize, Willa honey, for being such a dope."
"Ain't that nice?" she said mockingly. "I was sure you told me last night you wasn't comin' back."
Gene raised his eyes to heaven as if in supplication. He spoke with careful emphasis. "There's no such thing as a sure thing, honey. People's feelings change like the winds, you know. Last night I lost my temper. This mornin' I found it again."
"Is that so?"
He stared at her, trying to gauge the effect of his words. He faltered, "You were spillin' a little scuttlebutt yourself last night."
He was using the wrong approach. Obviously she didn't approve of what he was saying.
"All right, Gene," she said, with a frown. "You've given your lecture. Now you can take your argument with you."
Gene whistled softly. "So I have. You're sharp today."
She said bitterly, "I feel about as sharp as a wet dishrag, thanks to you." She gestured, "Now, leave me alone."
"But I don't want to leave you this way, Willa honey," he said.
"I'll be a lot better off that way!"
He was standing half turned away from her. He said something under his breath that sounded like Damn. Then he swung her around, took her in a hard embrace and kissed her soundly.
For a moment sheer surprise held her quietly in his arms. There was only time for her senses to register what once had been familiar and sweet: the warmth and the scent and the texture of male skin, and the sharp prickle of him. Nothing more.
Nothing more. She stared back, breathless and half laughing, and he let go of her at once.
"Well!" she said, letting her hand slide to his and patting it, briefly and gratefully. "Now, look what you've done. Thrown me all off. That's a new way to cure anger, but it worked. Did they teach you that in the Navy?"
The agate eyes looked at her from their deep caverns. "No," he said thoughtfully. "No, they didn't. I picked it up myself." He paused. "I hope you'll let me...." He looked longingly inside.
"Oh, sure, Gene. Come on in," she invited with a warm smile, no longer trying to act indifferent.
In the living room Gene sat down in her mother's favorite chair, looking at the floor and crushing his hat into a shapeless mass.
"I could kick myself for blowin' my top last night, Willa," he said awkwardly, and paused. "I ... I guess I showed you what I really am ... a jealous fool."
Willa said nothing. She stood there, gazing into space, her lower lip pushed in an attitude of deliberative uncertainty.
Gene got up and crossed to her. "Don't be an iceberg, Willa honey," he pleaded. "I'm sorry for the way I acted last night I told you that. What more can I say?"
Willa said, "Don't blame me for feelin' this way, Gene. You said some terrible things to me."
He moved away from her, stopping beside the window. "Let's see if I can do something with that," he said, without turning. "Wash out all those things that looked like dirt. I said I was sorry...."
"Do you really think I'm a cheap floozie, Gene? Do you, now?"
His back was still towards her. "No," he said.
"Do you like me less because I've known other boys?"
Gene turned around slowly. His hands were in his pockets and she could see his fists straining in outline against the cloth.
Once more he spoke. "If you have any doubts about my feelings," he said in a pleading tone, "please forget them. I ... I...." He was unable to go on. He averted his face from her in an effort to hide his feelings.
She could see how he felt, decided not to play out her good luck. She said cheerfully, "All right, Gene. All's forgiven. Let's forget it all. I...."
He turned once more. "Willa," he asked suddenly, "will you marry me?"
"Will I ... what?" She found herself sitting down on the sofa, without knowledge of how she had found the chair. Her face felt stiff with astonishment at this unexpected shock.
There was a brief silence, then he was crossing the room, bending towards her. His hand descended on her shoulder, in a gentle pat.
"You're a nice girl, Willa," he said in a voice choked with emotion. "You're the nicest girl I've ever known. Will you marry me?"
She opened her lips, and by sheer reflex she quavered, "But Gene, this is ... so sudden, after what happened last night. How can I...."
She would have laughed at her corny answer, but Gene's solemnity sobered her up.
"Don't you know why I was so nasty to you?" he said. "Good Lord, I talked to you like I never talked to any woman before. It was all because I ... I was ... so jealous." He wet his lips nervously. "I owe you a lot, Willa. You gave me back my self-respect. I can dream again. A man without dreams had might as well be dead."
Willa got up and leaned close to him. She put up her lips invitingly and murmured, "Kiss me, Gene."
He kissed her, long and passionately. He sighed.
"Willa, you're so wonderful. I knew you'd understand."
Her feelings were overwhelming her. She breathed hard.
"I want you now, Gene ... more than ever ... love you now more than ever ... after what's happened...." Suddenly she kissed him with fierce passion.
He shook his head. "Not now, Willa," he said understandingly, with caution. "Let's wait until after we're married."
She was determined not to be put off. "You must, Gene honey, you have to take me! I'll make you love me! To hell with your honorable scruples. What's the difference? We're going to get married, aren't we?"
"Yes, but...."
"I know you want me now, Gene darling! It's in your kissesl I can tell by the way you hugged and kissed me." Again she kissed him with passionate tenderness. She pulled at his arm and, with a little self-mocking laugh, she said, "I'll show you what love really is like, Gene dear."
He laughed good-naturedly. "Tonight, Willa. Okay?"
She moved her left shoulder in a disappointed shrug. "Okay by me."
"It's such a nice morning. Let's go out to Prospect Park...."
She shrugged casually. "All right, but you'll have to wait while I get dressed and eat breakfast."
In the kitchen Willa fried bacon and eggs. Gene sat down at the table, sniffing the coffee as it brewed. There were sweet rolls, jam, toast and butter. Gene drank two cups of coffee and ate four pieces of toast in an absent manner indicative of the fact he was not exactly aware of what he was doing.
In the meantime Hazel awakened, got up, put on a robe, washed her face and hands, ran a comb through her hair. She went into the kitchen with a shining eye and a scrubbed look. She concealed her delighted surprise very well when she found Gene seated at the table. She said good morning as though nothing had happened.
Willa returned her greeting in a welcoming but abstracted voice, "Mornin', Mom. Sit down, and I'll fix you some breakfast."
"You lamb," Hazel said gratefully. "But you look so tired, honey. Didn't you sleep any after I left you last night?"
Willa shook her head. "Didn't sleep a wink, Mom. Tossed around all night. I was just droppin' off when the front doorbell rang, and there was Gene."
"Hope I didn't disturb you, Mom," Gene said apologetically in a voice that was small, precise and very pleasant.
"Not at all. Didn't even hear it." Hazel looked at him wonderingly. "How come you're here so early, Gene?"
Gene gave an embarrassed cough. "Well, you see, it's like this. Willa and me had a little argument last night and I came here this morning to kiss and make up."
"Oh!" Hazel's eyes darted from her daughter to Gene and back again. She decided it would be better to pretend she knew nothing about the quarrel.
"Everything's fine now, Mom. Just fine." Willa sounded like a little girl in her first experience with the grown-up world.
There was a silence interrupted only by the sizzling of bacon.
At last Hazel said, "What was the argument about?"
Gene stared at her. He seemed angry, as if he felt it was none of her business. But then he shook his head.
"I'm a jackass, Mom," he said. "Smart in some ways, but a big fool in others. Man's a contrary animal. Tell him lies and he swallows them whole. Give him the truth and he gags on it. Maybe God gets tired of his thankless job every once in a while and cuts loose with a little joke." He said as if he were addressing not the two Keyes women, but himself. "I gagged on the truth when Willa told it to me. At first I thought she was lyin', until I cooled off and had time to think it over."
Willa, standing over the stove, asked, "Any special way you want your eggs, Mom?"
"Leave the eggs to me, Willa," her mother said firmly. "You look all fagged out. Go to your room and get some sleep."
Willa smothered a yawn. "But, Mom, Gene and I are goin' to Prospect Park."
Gene said, "Your mother's right, Willa. You need sleep. You can hardly keep your eyes open. Maybe we'll go to the park this afternoon."
Willa now yawned and stretched unashamedly. "Would you mind postponin' it till then, Gene darling?" She looked at him as if his decision were all that mattered.
"No, not at all," Gene said sweetly. "Grab yourself a couple hours of sleep, honey."
"I guess I'd better if I want to enjoy every minute of being with you, Gene," Willa said with a sigh. Again she yawned and stretched. "If I don't get some sleep, I'll be dead on my feet."
He gave her a friendly push. "Run along to bed, honey. I'll be back at two."
"I'm so tired I could lay down and die." She turned at the door. "See you later, darling." She gave him a slight wave of her hand, then was gone.
"Poor kid," Hazel said, breaking an egg viciously.
Gene was working on another cup of coffee. "She'll be okay, Mom. She's just tired."
Hazel peered at him knowingly. "She's a good girl, Gene."
He grinned. "That's what I told her, Mom. A wonderful girl."
"She's had it rough at times, poor girl."
"Sure, I know." He drained the last drop of coffee in his cup. "I love Willa, Mom. I asked her to marry me."
That same afternoon Willa and Gene walked through Prospect Park, feeding peanuts to the pigeons and squirrels. The sun felt good, the air was fresh, and now that she'd had a couple hours of sleep all the world seemed cheerful to Willa.
For some unaccountable reason, though, Gene seemed preoccupied. "Willa," he muttered, as he watched with absent intentness the antics of a flock of pigeons.
But Willa had lost interest in the pigeons and squirrels. She was anxious to learn what was on Gene's mind. "Let's sit down on the grass, Gene," she suggested.
"A good idea," he said, and plopped himself down on the grass underneath an elm tree.
She sat down beside him. She decided to nudge his mind a little.
"What're you thinkin' of, Gene?" she asked quietly.
He gave a little shrug. "Oh, I don't know. Thinkin' of what a big lie I've been livin' up till now. I was a ham-and-egger when I sailed on that nutcracker...." He pulled out a blade of grass and chewed on it reflectively. "Each of us is supposed to be civilized, but under the pleasant harmless surface there's another person not so pleasant and not so harmless. There's a lie somewhere in every person ... a big one, a little one, it don't matter much which. If you could see into other people's lives...."
"I don't want to," she said vigorously. "What a mind you have! Ain't there anyone who's truthful all the way through?"
He looked at her with an odd expression, quizzical and personal, challenging. "You and me, Willa ... now," he said. "And you're a little queer ... sometimes."
The gaze held for a moment longer. She wondered what he was trying to tell her.
Again Gene spoke. "Willa, I got good news. I've got a job lined up as a radio technician. Ninety-five bucks a week."
"Hey!" she whistled softly, in delight. "That's a lot of cabbage, Gene."
He smiled at her. "A pretty fair amount when you've got the corn beef to go with it," he said jokingly.
"When do you start?"
"Next Monday, honey. That ought to be enough to take care of both of us, Willa. We'll get spliced, and you'll quit your job at the hash joint and we'll set up housekeeping."
She shook her head uncertainly. "Maybe I ought to work a while longer, Gene."
"Why?" He stared at her with a studied frown.
"We could always use the extra money. The cost of livin' is so high nowadays."
He grimaced. "You goin' to marry me, ain't you?"
She nodded vigorously. "Uh-huh. But I want to keep my job for a while."
He looked hurt. "Okay, if you want it that way. Sorry I mentioned it."
She took his hand in hers. "Don't take it that way, Gene dear. It'll be only for a little while."
"I still think a woman's place is in the home. I think...." His voice trailed off and he shook his head dispiritedly.
The afternoon sun cast muted shadows across the intent eyes under the bushy brows, the firm mouth. Willa had a moment of complete incredulity. It hardly seemed possible that she was sitting here on the grass in Prospect Park, discussing love and marriage with this comparative stranger whom she had met only a short time ago.
When Willa came home, Hazel was just getting ready to go to work. She saw how happy Willa looked. "Feel better, Willa?" she asked.
Willa smiled broadly. "I ought to," she said, stretching languidly. "Somethin's happened, somethin' big. Gene's such a swell guy."
Hazel waited, looking at her expectantly, as if she were entitled to an explanation of what had taken place.
Willa proceeded to explain. She said excitedly, "Mom, Gene's mine! We're going to get married!"
8
For the next few days Willa floated on white fleecy clouds. And then, suddenly, she tumbled down from Cloud 88. For Gene's manner had assumed a form of estrangement for which she couldn't account sensibly.
It all started in the Flying Irishman's one night when a group of men cast furtive glances in the direction of the table at which Gene and she were sitting. The men spoke loud enough to be overheard.
Willa heard the end of a sentence, " ... ten dollars that even I could lay her any time I want to."
"Sure, you figure you can lay any dame in the world."
"Mostly it ain't tough. And with her it's a cinch."
Willa was aware of their curious glances. She sensed that they were talking about her. Gene sensed it also. He got up abruptly and said gruffly, "Let's get out of here, Willa."
She wondered if he had connected the obvious allusions to her. But after they left the saloon he gave no indication to that effect. She felt relieved.
Several nights later she discovered how mistaken she was. That night, when he came to see her at the house, Willa noticed how strange and aloof he acted. She met him at the door with a cheerful hello, stood on tiptoe and bit at the lobe of his ear, whispering, "Darling."
He wrenched away from her. He said with a scowl, "Cut the scuttlebutt!"
She felt hurt "Please don't act like that, honey."
He looked down at her, scarcely noticing the large blue eyes, the short pert nose, the wide tender mouth, all under the rich dark red of her hair. He paid no attention at all to the slender, shapely body because he was looking past all of it into the inner Willa, wondering if things had not happened as they had.
"What do you want me to act like?" he asked roughly.
She snapped resentfully, "My God, you're in an ugly mood tonight. Can't you even give me a hello kiss?"
He stepped farther into the hall, caught her roughly, thrust savage fingers into the back of her head and kissed her with a rude violence.
She recoiled. Queer, how little satisfaction there was in his kiss after waiting all these hours, she thought. She pinched the lobe of his ear and he shoved her away, turning his face aside and rubbing the back of his hairy hand across his mouth. A smear of lipstick came away on his knuckles.
"Ain't you nice?" she shrilled, regarding him with wondering eyes. "Go a little easier. You don't have to kiss me like you was goin' to eat me."
He reached for her wrist. She was sore now, and she slapped his hand aside. "Cut out the rough stuff, Gene. I won't take it!"
Gene seized her by the shoulders and pushed her against a wall. He held her pinned there, glaring into her angry face. "Let's quit playin' games, Willa," he said in a thick voice, "I've had enough of your lies!"
"Lies? But I don't understand, Gene."
He bumped her head against the wall, and through gritted teeth he said, "So you don't understand, you damn floozie? You understand all right...."
She gasped, "Don't choke me, Gene, for God's sake!"
He released her, and she clasped him in pleading arms, whining up into his face, "Aw, honey, why do we have to quarrel? I love you darling."
He averted his face, saying, "You caught me on the rebound. I was a ready-made sucker."
She moved around in front of him and searched his face. "What's the matter, honey?" she asked anxiously. "You look so pale. Like a dead man."
He faced her and said in a listless monotone, "You say I look dead, Willa. Well, I am dead ... practically."
"Shut up with such talk!" She hugged him protectively.
He stayed there limply. Sadness crept into his voice. "Ever since Pamela ran out on me...."
"Forget Pamela, honey. Just think of me."
His face hardened. "Let me finish, will you?" he said viciously. "I've forgotten what Pamela did to me. But I can't forget what you've done to me. I can't forget or forgive...."
She said, in a puzzled tone, "But I don't understand you, Gene."
He studied her with a frown. "Ever since I came in on you with your old boyfriend the other night, Willa, I've had my suspicions of you. Is there anybody else besides Nick Lucas you haven't told me about?"
Willa opened her mouth in amazement, and found that she wasn't quite ready for the inquisition. The sharp eyes were looking right through her again, and the rugged face was implacable.
She took a deep breath before saying, "On my word of honor, Gene, there ain't nobody but you."
"You're sure?" There was skepticism in the question.
"I'm sure."
"Somebody you might have forgotten?"
"Nobody I can remember now."
"You haven't forgotten Nick Lucas, have you?"
"Oh!" She was startled as he thrust the name in to the discussion again. "So you know?" He nodded grimly. "Yeah, I know."
"How'd you find out?"
He said with a sneer, "It was easy. After I heard those men talkin' about you the other day in the Flyin' Irishman's, I figured that maybe I'd had you doped all wrong, that you wasn't anything at all like that I cracked you up to be."
A tremor shook her from head to toe. "So what did you do?" She asked in a quivering tone.
He gave a little shrug. "I saw Nick around the neighborhood, so I checked around, poppin' questions everywhere."
"And what did you find out?"
"Plenty!" The word crackled like a gunshot through the air.
"It wasn't long before I had the whole story about what you did to Nick ... and the others. I found out what you really are ... a cheap floozie who lays for any Tom, Dick and Harry." He let it trail off ominously.
Her mouth twisted, though not in anger. Her head wagged slowly from side to side. She pursed her lips as if she were meditating. There was no escaping her past now, no way of pretending that she wasn't guilty of countless indiscretions. Gene had investigated her very carefully.
"Gene, I'm not a whore!"
He said scornfully, "Maybe you're not, but you're still a cheap floozie. You can't deny that. You...."
He stopped. Willa stood motionless, staring at him blankly. As the seconds grew to a minute and beyond, he began to think that he had stupefied her. So he gave her a verbal nudge.
"Have I made it plain enough?"
"Uh-huh," she mumbled, and swallowed hard. "You've made it plain enough."
Suddenly she leaned against a wall for support, a shudder running through her entire body. Her head drooped forward and her hands lifted to cover her face. She stopped shuddering. She held it so long that he decided another nudge was in order. But before he could crowd her she straightened up and demanded, "How do you know they're tellin' the truth? What proof have you got that I've done such things?"
"I know," he said, his chin jutting out. "I can't forget how you made me fall for you ... as if you were a virgin."
She glared at him. "That's not so. I never claimed I was a virgin. I dropped enough hints to show you I wasn't."
He acted as if he had not heard her. "And all the time I've been thinkin' you're as pure as the driven snow, here I find out you've slept with a thousand bozos, maybe ... even given some of them the clap!"
A lightning change came over her. "Okay," she said peevishly. "So you've got me over a barrel. You've got the goods on me. But you couldn't see that's all past, could you? No, I guess you couldn't. I can't do a thing about what's over and done with, but I can do somethin' now ... if you'll let me.
I'm a changed girl since I fell in love with you. No other man means a thing to me."
Her remarks infuriated him even more. "You goddamn floozie, I'll teach you to...." Again he checked himself. "Oh, hell, I guess it was my own fault, lettin' myself in for this. You and your lovers...."
"I love only you," she muttered.
"You're a dirty stinker of a liar!"
"For the love of God, Gene, don't ... don't!" She was in torment. "Can't you see I lied to you because I wanted you? I'm clean now, and I wanted to make a fresh start with you. Only...." She laughed bitterly. "Only there's no fresh start for a drip like me, I guess."
He felt a little sorry for her now. "You and I belong to the same club, Willa," he said. "We can kid the world sometimes, but we can't kid ourselves." He couldn't resist slurring her once more. "You're a tramp, and I...."
Her anger returned. "You think you're the high man on the totem pole, don't you?" she sneered.
He shook his head sadly. "No, Willa, I don't. I'm really the low man on the totem pole. I quit my job today. I couldn't see any sense to it. I'm a man without a dream...." He swallowed hard. He rolled his hat around in his hand nervously. "Guess I'd better go."
"Uh-huh," she said dully. "Go already. Goodnight"
"Not goodnight," he said. "Good-bye."
She raised her head forlornly. "Good-bye?"
"Yeah. I won't see you again before I leave New York. I was a damn fool for lettin' myself be talked into lovin' you. I hoped ... But you don't get it. How could you? So what's the good of...." He shrugged hopelessly and turned towards the door.
"But, Gene, can't you forgive and forget? I'm no whore!"
He turned back, with bitter accusation in his tone now. "Whore? Who said you were a whore? But why'd you have to act like one? I know from experience. You practically begged me to come to bed with you." He opened the door, and Willa could hear his disappearing footsteps down the stairway.
She began to laugh helplessly, hysterically. Handed right back to me, she thought bitterly. He was going to marry me. It was a nice dream, a wonderful dream. But it didn't make sense. Imagine me married. Marriage ain't for the likes of me. So the dream broke, turned into a nightmare.
She sobbed convulsively as she ran into her bedroom. She was a little girl in a big city, where pleasure was a packaged commodity and neon lights panicked the night and rocked people to sleep.
I'm so tired I could die, she was thinking. And I can't even throw myself across my bed 'cause I ... I have to wash my face and put up my hair in curlers.
She tried to think of other things, but the thing that she wanted to forget kept flooding back into her mind.
Oh, Gene, Gene....
9
Not satisfied to forget Gene and chalk him up to experience, Willa decided to take matters into her hands. She still had a burning desire for him. If he wouldn't marry her, that was all right with her. But she wanted him so badly she was willing to compromise, even if it meant only that she would be his mistress. What difference did it make, anyhow, whether or not they were tied together by legal bonds? Maybe she was kidding herself, but she felt that there was a good chance she could hang onto him if she could get him in bed, break down his reserve, appease his disillusionment with her.
So the following night, after knocking off from work, she went to the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn. It was raining, but she didn't mind that. In a way she rather welcomed it. It cooled the air a little.
She found the hotel lobby crowded. A convention of some kind was taking place. People burst from the hotel bar and flowed over into the lobby. New guests arrived and followed bell boys with their bags. All of the men and a smattering of the women were middle-aged. The men had reached that period in life when they sagged; the fat ones protruding in their bellies and under their chins; the skinny ones under their eyes and at the shoulders. And the women, for the most part, were no more streamlined than their men.
Everyone was shouting silly, senseless things at each other and laughing. They were obviously high. Willa thought suddenly how out of place all this frivolity was in a world where millions were hungry, bombed, being slain, and she was annoyed by the fact that these people should be chasing about this hotel lobby like carefree children, completely oblivious of the world about them. She was in that rare, thoughtful mood to wonder by what right they considered themselves so privileged.
The page boy's voice-an owl hoot in the crowded lobby-rose above the hubbub of the throng. The boy himself was some distance away, and if anyone in the lobby had understood the name he was calling, he paid no attention. The clatter rose up like a wave, was gathered into a crest of drunken laughter, and broke over Willa's head as she moved towards the elevator.
Knowing Gene's room number, Willa didn't stop at the desk to inquire whether he was in. She wasn't even sure if he had checked out already. She took the elevator to his floor, moved down the corridor to his room She knocked. There was no response. She repeated the knock several times, loudly and persistently. Still no response.
She went in search of a bell boy, and with a coquettish smile and a five-dollar bribe pleaded with him to let her into Gene's room with his pass-key. The bell boy couldn't resist the double allure of her money and her personal charm, and obliged. Inside she kept on smiling as she shrugged out of a light trench coat, and the motion shivered her breasts out for inspection. The bell boy lingered for a moment and then beat it, leaving Willa alone in the room. She started to undress and make herself at home.
Unknown to Willa, Gene Kohler was in the hotel bar. His elbows rested on the counter, and his expression was one of resignation; he was resigned because he realized that he had taken several bourbons too many, and that all desire to eat had left him.
He inspected himself in the mirror behind the bar and was relieved to see that he looked perfectly sober.
A small cold silence fled through the other drinkers around him, and was chased away by a burst of laughter and a buzz of polite chatter.
Gene closed his eyes. At once he was back on a fighting ship, bumping most uncomfortably over a grey choppy sea. It had been a bad war, and the peace was equally bad ... for him, at any rate. That he had been unable to readjust himself to civilian life doubtless had something to do with the mixture of bravado, moodiness, stubbornness and sentimentality which had gone to make up his character. How else could he account for falling so hard for Willa? He didn't kid himself about himself.
Everything was wrong. Everything had been wrong since he was discharged from the Navy. He had a jinx on him.
He got up to leave the bar. He didn't want to get drunk. In the morning he was leaving the hotel, leaving Brooklyn for good.
He went up to his room. He entered, reached over to the light switch and snapped it on. He opened his eyes wide and shut them quickly. A long blunt needle of pain threaded itself through his head. He groaned. The taste of bourbon was still in his mouth.
"Oh, no!"
"Hello, Gene."
He looked again, and he began tugging at the lobe of his left ear. He swallowed hard, and looked a third time. "Willa!" he said hoarsely. "What are you doin' here?"
She smiled her sweetest smile. "Don't look so tigerish, honey. Do you think I'm a ghost?" She was sitting up in the corner of the bed nearest the wall. She was completely nude.
His eyes flicked quickly over the naked girl on the bed.
He grinned. He observed, "If one believes the stories, ghosts are usually clothed."
"I had to see you, Gene. I just had to. So I came here. And since you wasn't here, I decided to make myself comfortable." She wriggled against the pillows like a satisfied kitten. The breeze felt good on her bare skin, cool and pleasant. Her voice was a gentle whisper, inviting him to come and get it.
"You look nice without anything on," he said.
She said, a little exasperated, "Well, just don't stand there like a drip...."
He walked deliberately to the armchair and sat down. "You seem to have taken over my bed."
"It's a big bed," she said coaxingly. "Room enough for two."
"How old are you, really?"
"Nineteen," she lied.
He clucked his tongue. "Who'd think it?"
"And what might that crack mean?" she asked, taking umbrage.
"You're old enough to know how dangerous it is to go around crawlin' into men's beds." She laughed. "I like danger."
He got up and shook his head disparagingly. "I don't know, Willa. Maybe you'll grow up one of these days. Now, are you goin' to get into your clothes and run along, or do I have to spank you first?"
"Would you?"
He nodded. "And it wouldn't be a playful spankin', either."
"Say, do you mean you'd...." She stared at him wonderingly.
Gene went over to the dresser and picked up a bottle of alka-seltzer. He disappeared into the bathroom and came back with a glass of water. Willa, still unclothed, was out of bed now.
"You been drinkin', Gene?" He nodded. "All right, then. Drink your alka-seltzer, then we'll talk. I can wait. I know how you must feel, but I just got to talk to you."
"What about?" he asked.
"About us," she said, and suddenly there was desperate anguish in her voice.
"Wait." He dissolved the alka-seltzer tablets in the warm water and quickly drank the solution while it fizzed. Then he said, "Well?"
But there was no answer. He turned, surprised, and found that she had a handkerchief pressed to her face. She was crying. He watched her now, carefully. The pain in his head had diminished. He was interested.
"Don't do that," he said.
She shook her head, the red hair swinging furiously. Then she blew her nose loudly. "I had to see you again, Gene darling," she said, still snuffling.
"Why?" Lack of food, the bourbons, and continued physical discomfort were scraping a raw edge to his temper.
"Because I ... I love you."
"Oh, you do, do you?" He gave a peculiar laugh.
She nodded. And suddenly she looked up, her blue eyes wildly intense with desire in her child-like face. She said in a low emotional tone, "I want you, Gene, and I couldn't let you get away, feelin' the way you did last night."
Gene stared at her unbelievingly. His brown pinstriped worsted suit made him look cool, but his eyes were as hard as two granite pebbles, washed in a thundering ocean of distrust.
Finally he said, "Seems to me I said good-bye to you last night."
"I didn't," she said coyly.
Oddly enough, that angered him. Suddenly acid, he snapped, "Damn! What a dope you must think I am! What do you think you'll gain by your strip-tease act?"
She said mildly, "Temper, temper! Your temper must get you in a lot of trouble, Gene honey."
"It does," he admitted.
Willa crossed to the window and looked out. It was still raining. "You can see the whole Manhattan skyline from this window," she said. "Come one over here and look, Gene. It's a wonderful sight. I like it."
He did not budge. "It's an ugly sight," he said. "I hate it. It's a cold, unfriendly city. The buildings are nice ... from the outside only. Inside they're as rotten as you are."
Willa glanced over her shoulder at him and met his gaze. His eyes did not waver, yet there had been in his framing of the phrase, 'as rotten as you are,' something biting ... a rising inflection, perhaps, which posed the merest breath of condemnation.
She looked pained. "I'm no whore, Gene."
"Can you shovel aside the dirt I dug up about you?" he asked bitterly, rhetorically.
She swallowed hard and slowly shook her head. "No, I can't. I wouldn't even try. I'm sorry I've fouled up your love for me with my past, Gene. I'm sorry I'm not the virgin you kidded yourself into believin' I was. I told you I wasn't, but you wouldn't believe me. I'm sorry you don't want me...."
"My bride, my bride!" He laughed long and contemptuously. "I was jealous over you ... once! Imagine that! What a sucker I was!"
The cruelest thing in the world can be laughter, especially in its derisive aspect. It bit into her, wounding her to the heart. She said irately, "Bet you laugh a hell of a lot."
He sneered, "Only at people."
"Especially people like me, huh?"
He averted his face, pain crossing it. "No, I can laugh at myself, too. Laughter can hurt, I know. Believe you me, I know from experience. Once I saw a great has-been jockey on a wooden horse of a merry-go-round. He was whippin' it, spurrin' it on like he once coaxed some great thoroughbred horses. And the carnival crow stood and laughed at him until suddenly he dropped dead from exhaustion."
Willa wrinkled her nose in a puzzled form. "Afraid I don't understand."
"It's not important that you should understand."
"Oh!"
He studied her, not knowing exactly what to do about her. She was hurt; that was clear in all she said and did. Well, he was hurt, too. But he wasn't going to let her bamboozle him into a resumption of their relationship. He wasn't going to take her back. It would never work out. He was certain of that. He would get over his hurt.
She made another feeble effort to win him over. She moved up close to him, and her hand reached out and touched him as she looked up enticingly into his eyes.
"I love you, Gene," she cooed.
He thrust her away from him. "It's a big lie! I won't buy it."
"Oh, no, Gene, You're wrong, all wrong."
"So this strip-tease act has been all for love?" he sneered.
"All for love," she said in a trembling voice.
"There's more to love than climbin' in bed with a man," he said bitingly.
She clapped her hands to her mouth and started to cry again. "Oh, I'm so ashamed...."
"You should be, suckerin' me into lovin' you."
"Don't you love me any more, Gene, not even a little?"
He picked up her assortment of clothing and tossed them to her. "Put your clothes on, Willa, and get out of here. Does that answer your question?"
She studied him silently. An unpleasant smile occupied his face.
"All right," she said finally. "I'll put them on. I only thought...." Her eyes were fierce now as she put on her clothes slowly, piece by piece. "I thought maybe you still loved me a little. I thought...."
He broke in with a grin, "I like my women to be mine only."
She adjusted her blouse. "I could kill you!" she blurted out.
He said bitterly, "You've already done enough to me, Willa."
After a short cold silence she said, "You're not very nice, Gene. Not a nice person at all."
"You'd better go, Willa," he said quietly. "We don't belong together. We'd fight like cats and dogs...."
The girl turned away and again looked out of the window.
She squared her shoulders ... a small movement of courage and defiance.
He said, "I told you ... you'd better go, Willa."
Irked by his cold indifference, she rushed at him and started to beat on his chest with her fists. T hate you, I hate you!" she shrilled.
Gene grabbed her hands and held her off. "Cut that out!"
"I feel like runnin' my fingernails over your face...." She began laughing hysterically. He slapped her face and she stopped laughing.
"Good-bye," he said, and opened the door for her. She didn't answer, but stomped out of the room, closing the door behind her with a bang.
CHAPTER THREE
"In the day when the keepers of the house shall tremble ... And those that look out of the window be darkened, And the doors shall be shut in the street...."
... Ecclesiastes, Chapter Twelve.
1
With her romance shattered, Willa Keyes brooded disconsolately for a week or two. Her mother tried to be understanding. In an effort to ease her sorrow, she urged the girl to go with her to a movie, forget Gene Kohler.
"Aw, come on, Willa honey," she said. "It's a musical tonight. Why don't you come? Why?" Her last words rang out in falsetto.
But Willa was not responsive. "Let me alone, Mom. Just let me alone. I was crazy in love with Gene...."
Not being very deep emotionally, Willa got over her grief and was soon in high spirits again.
But her spirits soared too high. The end of her romance with Gene Kohler proved to be the beginning of trouble for her. One day she struck up an acquaintance with a female customer in McCoy's. Patsy Dunn was a tall, lithe blonde with a toothsome smile that had man-trap written all over it. She was rather loose in her morals and had mothered two illegitimate children, both of whom were taken away from her by the Juvenile Court. She was ten years older than Willa.
It was Patsy who introduced Willa to the Navy. Together they hung around the local Navy Yard and haunted the hangouts where the sailors gravitated. From then on Willa reverted to type, passing out her love indiscriminately. More and more frequently she remained away from home at night, telling her mother that she was going to stay overnight with Patsy.
Naturally Hazel started to worry about Willa. She tried to talk with the girl, but her efforts proved futile. Willa was determined to go her own way.
Hazel was sitting in her massive chair in the living room, drinking beer and thinking about Willa. Her thoughts doubled back to the time when her daughter was 12 years old. Willa had been tall for her age then, and her figure bore the imprint of maturity. The world she lived in was circumscribed and small ... or rather one of them was, since she actually lived in two worlds at once. One of them was a small, drab, confined world: just four squalid rooms on the fifth floor of a six-story tenement house, stuffy in summer, freezing in winter. Just one grown-up in it then, her mother, and no other kids but herself.
The other world held no boundaries, no limits. She could do anything in it. She was beyond all accepted standards of conduct. She could go anywhere, do anything, in this world of imagination. All she had to do was just sit still and think hard, make it up as she went along. Willa had done a lot of that. She learned to keep it all to herself after Hazel told her that she was getting too big for that sort of stuff. Hazel remembered how she had swatted Willa and called it all lies. The last time Willa had tried telling her about it she had threatened to wallop her good if she ever made up any more fancy lies.
Hazel had thought then that it came from those Saturday afternoon movies which Willa had been seeing, so she had told the girl that she couldn't go to them any more. That had been a serious mistake. As a substitute for the movies Willa sought the company of boys. She had begun to glow, and the moths came. At first they were young moths, her own age. Then the older moths began to swarm around Willa's light. Hazel, seeing what was happening, disliked it to such an extent that she lectured Willa severely on the matter of proper behavior and threatened to report her to the Juvenile Court authorities if she didn't obey her. She never had, of course, and Willa had continued to defy her commands ... more stealthily, though. But then somebody else had reported Willa, and the girl had landed in Children's Court.
After that Willa became more discreet. Quitting high school, she had gone to work, flitting from one job to another. Mostly she worked as a waitress in hash joints, and once as a factory worker.
She was there for one month and two months and three months, counting up slowly to six and not stopping. "You know Willa Keyes, she got a good job already. Seventeen dollars a week in a paper box factory." That's what the neighbors buzzed about in a search for tidbits of gossip.
Up the steps, the wooden steps, bulb dimly lit, the sign on the door, the factory like a small black purse within a daily pocketbook, with people crowded like seventeen single dollar bills within, stuffed and snapped closed. It took two weeks to learn to make those paper boxes right; two weeks-new, exciting, different and passing fast; two weeks where the time for lunch and the time for quitting in the evening were sudden surprises wrapped up in a startle of bellringing; two weeks pulled to capacity like a rubber band and snapped broken and hanging flabbily to a Wednesday that limped into a month, and then another, and still another, and slow clocks with hour hands like stuck windows forced up to twelve and dragged down to six.
Hazel remembered how Willa had told her that after two weeks you learned that you were only working for money. But seventeen dollars wasn't much money. Willa dreamed of money, big money, broad and gay and million-neoned as Broadway; warm as a fur coat; money on wheels with a chauffeur; money in round sparkles around wrists and neck; money in sheer silk climbing and covering the ankles slowly to the knees up the thighs to the sniff of broad lace on pure silk panties; money in large rooms, and each room large enough to hold two four-room apartments such as she lived in, and each room for one person only. That was summer money of hot sleepless nights seen on the screen of street-lighted, plaster-chipped ceiling.
"It's time to get up, Willa." And Hazel saw to it that her young daughter was already up and washing at the sink. The soap suds in round sparkles were around the wrists and neck. She knew that tomorrow was today and yesterday in the sameness of it all.
"Let's play word games, Mom," she would say at the table. "How fast can you say breakfast, subway, work, lunch, work, subway, supper, sleep? Breakfast subway work lunch subway supper sleep. Say it faster, faster. Breakfast subway work lunch work subway supper sleep. Say it louder, Mom. I can't hear you above the street noises."
"Gee, Mom, I wish I was a kid again and back at school. Don't you, Mom?"
Schooldays, schooldays, a skip and a hop and test of schooldays. Schooldays, white middy and red tie of schooldays, reading and writing and arithmetic, all to the tune of when you got money you're rich.
Hazel drank some more beer as she recalled Willa starting in at high school. There she was older, yet still young enough to dislike school.
"Name two historical dates and the reasons for their importance."
1863. The Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves, and ... the first date with Nick Lucas. Nick took her to the movies, and he put his arm around her, his wrist warm on her side. The slow climb of fingers to the breast. Nick's legs unsteady on the floor, and her heart beating like bouncing ash cans. That's how Willa had described it to her mother. It was wrong, but it was dark and she was in the movies, she was in the movies. Tomorrow was the edge of the week, the cliff of Sunday, and the fall into Monday and school.
Then had come the job in the paper factory. It cramped her social style, so Willa finally quit it and went to work in the hashhouse. At least she wasn't too tired to go out with the boys after a day's work. She read the newspapers but only to learn about a playboy who got married for the fifth time, the girl who was raped, divorces, kidnappings, murders, wars, comics. Willa read dime love-story magazines. She went to the movies. None of that was any good. She had to have her own thrills, and the only thrill she had ever known was sex.
Willa had never been satisfied at home. It was still a small four-room flat, still the same mother, a confirmed drunkard. So Willa met Cliff Lindsay and went off with him to Baltimore. That didn't last long, only three months. The romance with Gene Kohler, so promising at the start, was of even shorter duration. A nice boy, too. But why couldn't Willa go steady with a boy from the neighborhood? That Jasper Carney, for instance. Hazel liked Jasper. He was nice looking and he had a good job.
Oh, dear. Willa, the girl-friend but never the bride. The many good times of movies , dances, Coney Island, and nights when Hazel was away at work. Those nights alone, nights soft as a velvet sofa, nights of love, body love without love. The fingers dancing on satin stillness and caressing the round, supple night; the flow of tumult silent in darkness, rising, mounting to flood, and gasping to swallow the peak-pointed stiffness. Willa couldn't keep her skirt on to save her life. She wasn't afraid of either pregnancy or disease. She'd had a taste of the latter, but that didn't faze her in the least. She was looking for something and looking everywhere, and she had one place where she purposely hadn't looked, and she did not look there because if it wasn't there ... there was no hope.
Oh, well, Hazel said to herself, sighing in resignation. It's no use. I can't do anything with her. She won't listen to me.
So Hazel settled down for a solo drunken carousal with her bottles of beer, the empties mounting in number atop the table as the day wore on.
2
One Sunday Willa went out for a drive in the country with Patsy Dunn and Patsy's girlfriend, a full-blown brunette with a stocky build. Her name was Peggy Johnson. It was Patsy's car, but Peggy was driving. On the way back to Patsy's apartment on Remsen Street, Peggy whipped the car around corners, swarmed in and out of traffic, making fast time, seldom slowing down, seldom pushing down hard on the throttle, managing despite heavy traffic to maintain a steady speed.
Willa, in the back seat, shook her head. Peggy was a speed demon in her book, and she didn't like the way Peggy was risking her neck.
Willa said, "Sometimes I think I'd rather you drove, Patsy."
"You kickin' again, Willa?" Peggy asked over her shoulder.
"Not kickin'," Willa said dryly. "Just passin' the time."
Patsy, sitting beside Peggy, grinned. "Don't mind Willa, Peggy. She just ain't accustomed to good drivin'. She even kicks when I drive."
"Can you imagine that?" Peggy exclaimed. "Kickin' about a safe driver like me."
Willa said, "You're hittin' fifty and not givin' a damn about anything, Peggy."
Peggy took offense. She said, "You got no kick comin'. I get you there in less time."
"What's your hurry?" Willa wanted to know. "The sailor-boys won't be around for hours."
The argument ended as they approached Remsen Street and Patsy said, "Here we are."
Peggy swung the car to the right, still going fast enough for the tires to scream as she skidded around the corner. Willa made an exaggerated gesture of putting her hands over her eyes in horrible expectancy.
Peggy slid the car up to the curb in front of a large building with a curving stairway. In its heyday it had been a mansion, housing the fashionable and the elite of a bygone era. But now it was rundown and decrepit, and it had been converted into an apartment building, with the former spacious rooms being chopped down and partitioned off into small cubicles.
Patsy's apartment was on the third floor. The three girls climbed the steep stairway, puffing with exertion as they reached their floor. Patsy inserted a key into the front door, and they went in.
It was a three-room apartment and was furnished in an over-exaggerated modernistic motif by the tasteless Patsy Dunn. The girls made themselves at home in the room that served as a combination living room, dinette and kitchenette. Willa and Peggy settled down in easy chairs, smoking cigarettes while Patsy got bottles of beer out of the icebox.
Willa leaned back in her chair and puffed lazily on her cigarette while she watched the tall, lanky, good-looking blonde pouring the beer. By nature Patsy was sentimental, a braggart who boasted of her male conquests, dishonest about most things except what she held to be fundamentally important: food, drink, sex, and the memory of her mother who had died in an accident when she was very young. Her attitude towards men, whom she fascinated, was completely amoral. Her opinion of men was very low; they were only good to have fun with. She had no feeling, one way or the other, for the two illegitimate children she had borne.
Patsy didn't work, and it was a mystery to Willa where she got her money. But she always seemed to have plenty of cash, and that was all Willa was interested in.
Patsy passed around the beer. Peggy drank some of hers and looked at Willa curiously. "You seen Pete Kane lately, Willa?" she asked casually.
"No!" A cold steely anger entered Willa's eyes at the mention of the name. "I hate the ground the bastard walks on."
"So I noticed," Patsy said, sitting down near Willa. "What gives with you and Pete?"
Willa replied quickly, "He's a nasty, cold-blooded son-of-a-bitch pimp. Nothin's too low for him to do." Peggy laughed. "That ain't a nice way to air his character." Willa grimaced. "I aired the stinker's character in a more public place than this, Peggy."
Patsy was curious. "What you tell him, Willa?"
"In a nice way I told him he's poison, smallpox, and he's got B.O. and bad breath. In short, he stinks."
"Then what?" Patsy wanted to know. Willa shrugged. "He scrammed. What else?" Peggy whistled. "You sure told him off, Willa. You're really somethin'."
"Pete ain't half as bad as you crack him up to be."
Willa threw back her head and laughed. "You're wrong, Patsy, so wrong. He's twice as bad. Pete ain't my idea of a man. I like 'em real manly."
"Wolf bait, that's you," Peggy, making her hands do motions that outlined a feminine figure.
Willa got to her feet. "Speakin' of wolf bait reminds me I got to see a man about a dog. That beer runs right through me.
After she had gone into the bathroom, Patsy leaned forward and whispered, "What do you think of her, Peggy? Think she might go over in the business?"
"Why, sure," Peggy said. "That gal's got what it takes to go places in our business. She's all sex."
"Like you, Peggy," Patsy winked slyly, and the nasty note was back in her voice.
"You don't live in no glass house, Patsy," Peggy countered in an equally nasty voice.
Patsy creased her forehead in a thoughtful line. "So you think Willa could go over in our business, do you?"
"Sure she could. She's stacked, that girl. Got what it takes."
Patsy said, "Maybe she don't want to go into the business."
"Sure she does. Maybe it has to be shown her, that's all. For the life of me, I can't see why she's so damn willin' to give it away and keep on workin' in that beanery when she can make money doin' it."
"I can't, either, Peggy."
"You could show her, Patsy. She likes you. That's what you been groomin' her for, anyhow, ain't it?"
They heard the toilet flushing in the bathroom. Patsy gave Peggy a warning glance and said in a low voice, "Shut up now. She's comin'."
Willa reappeared in the room with a swinging, confident stride. The others switched the conversation into safer channels as Willa crossed to the chair she had vacated. She settled herself, crossed her knees, smoothed her dress.
That same evening Patsy and Peggy went out joyriding with a couple of sailors whose ship was docked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Willa was left alone in Patsy's apartment with a new boyfriend, a 25-year-old sailor on shore leave.
Willa was attracted to him from the beginning. "Allow me to introduce myself," he had said, grinning broadly after he had gotten over the shock of seeing Willa in the nude, the manner in which she had received him. "Seaman First Class Kevin Connors, one of Uncle Sam's finest."
She had smiled back. "State your qualifications," she had retorted quickly. And he had stated them, oraggin rakishly of the girls he had in every port.
Now Kevin was sitting upright in an armchair, a tall glass of beer pressed against the tip of his nose, which was long, straight and pointed. Like the rest of him. He was long, straight and pointed all over. His eyes were black and very bright, his face, geometrically, was shaped in perpendicular lines. His forehead was lofty, and his heavy eyebrows gave him a devilish air.
He stared thoughtfully at her nude body. "You always go around like that?" he asked.
"Uh-huh. I like to be naked," she purred. "Don't anybody ever complain?"
She smiled at him as if he had made a joke, and finished the rest of her beer. She curled up in an easy chair, watching him over the rim of a fresh beer. He lit a cigarette and waited til she put down the glass. She had to uncurl to reach the coffee table and did it with a lazy sinuous motion. She leaned back in the chair and stretched, her breasts taut, then pulled in her stomach and relaxed.
"Come on over," she urged. "You're too far away, honey, for any fun."
He did not budge from his chair. "Maybe I get tired of the easy stuff," he said.
She did not take offense. "I'm oversexed," she admitted. She got up, crossed to him, and started pawing over him. "I'll take good care of you, honey." She pulled him up out of the chair.
"Come on, big boy, let's hit the hay." She pushed him towards the bedroom.
In the bedroom Kevin undressed. Willa was stretched out on the bed with a cigarette in each hand, daring him to come over and have a smoke. He took the dare. He reached for the cigarette, but he was not watching her closely enough. She twisted it and touched the hot tip to her hand, and laughed when his mouth went tight.
To her it was fun. She twisted on the bed, doing things that were supposed to make him forget everything in the world except her.
He also knew those kind of games. He flipped the lighted cigarette and it landed right on her belly button. Her eyes popped wide open and she doubled up with a curse.
He laughed. She didn't get sore, though. After the initial shock of pain, she was grinning, and her eyes were brighter than her red hair.
"I'm goin' to do some mean things to you for that," she promised.
He took a chance and climbed into bed beside tier. Her hand reached out and touched him, the tips of her fingers running over his body, and there was something animal-like in the way she moved.
Then she was all animal, and so was he. She was a warm, fragrant animal who made whimpering noises until he stopped her with his mouth and she clawed and clung in a mad frenzy of motion and her breath hung in her throat. Then it was over.
She was still asleep when he awoke in the morning, curled up on her side with her face buried against his shoulder. He rucked the cover under her chin, got up, dressed, and went out.
Kevin was gone when Willa woke up. There was the impression on the pillow that his head had left, the mark of his cheek on her arm. She could still smell the spicy maleness he had left behind.
There was a note on the dresser. It said that he would see her that evening, and was signed with love from Kevin.
Willa slept with him for three nights more before he shipped out.
3
One Tuesday afternoon Hazel and Cassie were sitting around the Keyes living room, as usual drinking and talking, when Cassie, looking over the rim of her glass, examined Hazel's hair critically.
"Hazel," she said, "seems to me you're gettin' a little gray."
"Oh, no!" Hazel said in alarm, her hand stealing involuntarily to her hair.
Cassie laughed. "Oh, well, none of us is gettin' any younger."
Hazel said harshly, "Don't get too smart, Cassie."
Aware that her hostess was getting angry, Cassie decided not to press the point. She switched the conversation into another subject that she regarded as safer.
"How's Willa? I ain't seen her for a coon's age."
"She's fine, Cassie. Just fine."
"She still workin' in that hash-house?"
"Uh-huh."
But Cassie perceptively noted a worry line furrowing Hazel's forehead. She said, "You're worried about her, ain't you, Hazel?"
"Of course I'm worried about her," Hazel said testily. "Willa's my daughter, and she's been actin' kinda funny lately. She was all right till she split up with her boyfriend, that Gene Kohler fellow. Since then she's been out of sorts and acting kinda cranky."
"Dear, dear. It ain't been much fun for you, has it?"
"No, it ain't."
"I don't suppose she tells you much about what she does with herself in her spare time, does she?"
Hazel swallowed some beer before replying. "No, she don't," she admitted reluctantly. "She's very independent, my Willa is. She claims her private life's her own business."
Cassie seemed to be weighing that judgment. "That's right. A girl nowadays don't tell all her business, not even to her mother. My own Mitzi's the same way. She never did marry that Johnny guy, you know."
"Yes, I know."
Cassie sighed, "It's a cryin' shame, the way our daughters behave to us."
"Willa's a good girl," Hazel said, more to convince herself than Cassie. "But she's light and fluffy and she likes her fun. But fun can get out of hand sometimes. She's too young to understand that. I keep on tryin' to find out what's been eatin' her lately and she flares up, and then we have some nasty rows around here."
Cassie shrugged, her face taking on a colder aspect. "Dear, dear. You know that Patsy Dunn, don't you, Hazel?"
Hazel nodded. "She's Willa's newest friend. I guess you'd say they were chums."
"They're chummy enough," Cassie said pointedly. Her eyes showed a calculating gleam as she looked shrewdly at Hazel. 'Too chummy for Willa's own good." She got up to go. "Guess I'll be trottin' along, Hazel."
"Wait, Cassie. Don't go yet." There was harsh command in Hazel's tone. "I didn't like the way you said that. In fact, I didn't like it at all."
Cassie stopped, and turned. "Said what?"
"About Willa being too chummy with Patsy for her own good."
Cassie sat down again, giving a distinct sniff, and crossing her ankles. Her forefinger tapped the threadbare arm of her chair.
"I know all about that Patsy dame," Cassie said, with a meaningful glance at Hazel.
Hazel met her gaze. "You said that like you don't think much of her."
Cassie gave a casual shrug. "I don't. She's a hard one, that Patsy. A regular tramp."
"Is she, now?" That made Hazel sit up straighter. Her eyebrows went up. "You mean ... she's a whore? Are you sure about that, Cassie?"
The smile that Cassie displayed was crafty. "Well, I don't know for sure if she's a whore, but I do know she hangs around the Navy Yard to pick up the sailorboys."
Hazel's eyes flashed annoyance. "And you're tryin' to tell me Willa goes out with the sailors along with Patsy?"
Cassie nodded, and her thin lips parted again. "That's exactly what I mean."
"A lie," Hazel said quickly, then raised her voice to repeat, "A dirty liel Willa ain't no whore!"
Again Cassie got to her feet, her thin lips tightening. "Don't call me a liar, Hazel Keyes! I never lie!"
Hazel got to her feet also. "You ever seen Willa out with a sailor, Cassie?"
That sniff came once more, and Cassie seemed actually pained. She said, "Yes, Hazel."
"When?"
"Just the other night I was walkin' up Remsen Street, and she was right there, as big as life, hangin' onto a sailor's arm, laughin' and talkin'."
"Oh!"
Cassie moved towards the door. "Well, I'll run along now. Dear, dear. I hope I didn't upset you too much, Hazel."
"Hm." Hazel frowned.
"Be seein' you," Cassie said over her shoulder, and then was gone.
Hazel was upset. She said nothing when Willa came home from work that evening. But at the dinner table she asked quite innocently, "Willa, what do you and Patsy Dunn do when you go out?"
Willa glared at her over her cup of coffee, as if she regarded the question an infringement upon her privacy. "Don't you ever get tired of askin' questions, Mom?"
Hazel sighed, "Sometimes," she said. "Especially when I don't get any answers."
Willa said, "You ask too many questions, Mom."
"But I'm your mother, Willa," Hazel protested. "It's part of my responsibility to ask questions. So please don't get sore."
"You make me sore," Willa growled, in disgust. "You ask more damn questions. Why the hell ain't you a Philadelphia lawyer?"
Hazel gave her a friendly smile. Then her face hardened and her voice took on a lecturing tone. "Stop cussin', Willa. Nice girls don't cuss."
Willa tossed her head indifferently. "Who wants to be nice?"
Hazel shook her head forlornly. "Not you, Willa. You're a bad girl." She sighed. "What a headache you've given me all your life."
"Uh-huh," Willa sneered. "Sure, I'm your big headache."
Hazel hesitated before saying, "Willa, you'll have to stop goin' around with Patsy Dunn."
"Why?" Willa lit a cigarette and puffed hard on it as she glared at her mother.
Hazel's chin jutted out. "Because I want you to."
Willa shook her head. "That ain't a good enough reason. I'm old enough to live my life the way I want to."
Hazel jumped to her feet. "You'll do as I tell you!"
Between puffs on her cigarette Willa said, "You still haven't told me why you want me to keep away from Patsy."
"Because she's bad for you."
"Is she?"
"You know she is. You're as bad as she is. You're bad, girl, very bad. You keep bad company."
Willa's anger mounted. She told her mother off in words crackled with electrifying fury. "I told you before, Mom, and I'm tellin' you again ... for keeps, this time ... lay off me!"
With an upraised hand Hazel said, "Now, hold on a second, Willa. If you'll let me get in a few words here, you might decide to be reasonable."
"What few words?" Willa barked out, still aiming her jaw belligerently in her mother's direction. Her hand shook, and the ashes from her cigarette scattered all over the floor.
"Any that you'll be polite enough to listen to!" Hazel yelled back.
Again Hazel sat down in her chair, and above the table top her eyes clashed with Willa's. Suddenly Willa nodded. She rubbed out her cigarette butt in an ashtray on the table and folded her arms challengingly across her breasts.
"Okay, Mom. Speak your piece." The tone was harsh.
"First of all," Hazel demanded, "what makes you blow your top the minute I mention Patsy? Is it because you feel guilty about the sailors?"
That almost set Willa off again. The arms quickly unfolded and her palms smacked on the table as she leaned forward. "You tryin 'to say I go around with sailors, Mom?"
Hazel back-tracked a little. "I didn't say that. I just mentioned them when I was talkin' about Patsy."
Willa said dryly, "You more'n mentioned Patsy and the sailors then. You practically included me in."
"All right, so I included you in. You go around with Patsy, don't you?"
"So?"
"So Patsy goes around with sailors."
Willa leaped to her feet, in a rage. "Damn you, Mom, keep your nose out of my business!"
"Now, Willa, that ain't the right attitude for you to take," her mother said, trying to reason with her. "I'm talkin' to you about this for your own good. Right away I'm your worst enemy. Don't you figure I might be of some help?"
"What sort of help? Why should I need help from you?"
Hazel tossed her head. "Look at it this way, Willa. Patsy's got a bad reputation, and sailors are known to go with a girl only for what they can get out of her."
"All right," Willa said petulantly. "So what? How much more do you think you know?"
"Frankly ... nothin'," Hazel admitted.
A grin split Willa's face. "At least you're honest about it For a minute there you had me boilin'."
"Sit down, Willa," Hazel coaxed, waving her back to her chair. "Maybe we can talk this out with some sense."
"There you go again," Willa said, with a slight scowl. "What's there to talk about?" But she sat down again, anyhow.
Hazel said slowly, "About you ... and the sailors."
"Me ... and the sailors?" Willa echoed slowly. She started to laugh, but there was no mirth in her laughter. "I don't have nothin' to do with no sailors."
Hazel's eyes narrowed. "You're lyin', Willa!"
Willa bit her underlip. "What do you mean ... I'm lyin'?"
"To put in on the nose, Willa, somebody saw you cuttin' up with a sailor on Remsen Street."
Willa stared at her. "I was just wonderin'...." She checked herself.
"Go ahead and say it," Hazel prompted. "Wonderin' what?"
"Wonderin' how you get that way!"
"I'm your mother, Willa. That's how come I get that way. I'm your old Mom. Don't that mean nothin' to you no more?"
Again Willa leaped to her feet angrily. "No goddamn old biddy's gonna nose around in my business!" she snapped. "I don't know nothin' about no sailors. If any nosybody told you they saw me with a sailor, they're lyin'. Patsy and me, we just have fun and don't ever get in no trouble."
"You're lyin', Willa," Hazel insisted.
"Damn you, Mom, you called me a liar again!" Infuriated, Willa jumped at her mother and slapped her sharply across a cheek.
Hazel recoiled from the blow. She lost her temper and hit Willa on her face with a fist. "You asked for it!" she shouted.
The two women grappled with each other. Willa was soon overpowered and Hazel, beyond all reason, continued to beat her daughter brutally. Willa gasped out hoarsely for her to stop, that she was killing her. She was bleeding profusely. A wave of nausea rose in Willa, and suddenly her legs gave way under the constant impact of her mother's fists. Finally, she keeled over, unconscious.
Hazel leaned over her, full of remorse. "I hated to do it, Willa," she muttered as she worked feverishly over her. "I hated to do it!" She sobbed, almost hysterical, overcome by the gravity of what she had done. "Come out of it, baby, come out of it!" she crooned.
At last Willa came to. She opened her eyes and asked in bewilderment, "What-t ... h-happened-d?"
Hazel sobbed out, "Oh, thank God, you're all right, baby!"
4
After that things got worse instead of better in the Keyes household, with Willa becoming more rebellious and defiant of her mother's wishes. The girl stayed away from home at night even more frequently than before.
So, on a September morning, Hazel Keyes, torn with indecision and worried beyond distraction by Willa's continued misbehavior, walked downtown through busy streets and came to a handsome marble building that housed the Juvenile Welfare Bureau. She hesitated only a moment before she went in. It had taken her the larger part of a restless night to make up her mind to this move, and even now she was uncertain about whether or not she was doing the right thing. But she was desperate and needed help, and this was the place for her to seek it.
She found out where the bureau offices were located. Down the hall to the right, and through the door with its frosted glass panel blocking out the view. She breathed in deeply and then went in, glancing to her right into a glass-enclosed cubicle.
A young woman was standing at the desk, her back to Hazel. The latter tapped on the door, and the woman turned. The woman was in her early thirties, and she wore eyeglasses with gold rims. Despite the spectacles she was an attractive woman, and her elegant, old-fashioned clothes suited her perfectly. She knew the type she was and dressed accordingly, her costume being outmoded yet quite appropriate to her. Her hair was a lustrous brown, and she had beautiful violet-blue eyes that slanted just a trifle.
"Something I can do for you?" the woman asked Hazel courteously.
"I hope so," Hazel said, carefully choosing her words. "I have to see about a girl who might be a juvenile delinquent."
"Oh?" The social worker elevated her eyebrows questioningly.
"I don't know who to see about it."
"Perhaps I'm the one you'd want to see," the woman said.
"I'm Miss Cassidy." She waved Hazel to a chair. "Will you sit down, please?"
Hazel took the indicated chair. Miss Cassidy was a social worker of long standing and she was looking at Hazel in a disconcerting way, as if she were not a person at all but a sexless entity labeled Problem.
Hazel cleared her throat. "It's my daughter Willa." Hazel made herself speak more steadily as she gave her own name and told the story to Miss Cassidy, who listened patiently. "Really, the whole thing's stupid," she blurted out, after she had finished. "But nowadays life is stupid. I just don't know what the whole world's comin' to."
"The world is what we make it," Miss Cassidy observed sagely.
Hazel took the implied criticism in good grace. "I asked for that," she said with a faint smile. "I'm bound to admit the whole thing's awkward. But I'm really worried over my daughter. I thought you might be able to help me with her."
Miss Cassidy rolled the eraser end of a pencil across her lips in a thoughtful attitude. "Did your daughter ever have any business with the bureau before?"
Hazel felt a lump forming in her throat as she said falteringly, "Yeah ... about five years ago she was hailed into Children's Court for...."
"Just a minute, please," the social worker broke in, and walked rapidly out of the office and down the hall. Hazel had time to reflect that Miss Cassidy wasn't even approaching middle age, with that unlined skin and her eyes. Inadvertently she read the address of a letter tucked into the desk blotter. Her first name was Ethel.
Miss Cassidy returned with a bulging folder. She shut the door behind her and sat down, her eyes already devouring line after line of a typewritten case history.
"You'll excuse me if I read this?" she said, briefly glancing up. "The worker who handled the case five years ago isn't with the bureau any longer."
Hazel said that it was quite all right, to go right ahead. She had never in her life met with such devastating politeness as was practiced by this woman, even when she was making light of her apprehensions.
Miss Cassidy finished reading. She put the sheets of paper on the desk, meticulously evening the edges. "Mrs. Keyes, are you sure your daughter is misbehaving again as she did when she was before the Children's Court five years ago?"
"No-o...." Hazel paused, pursing her lips and wrinkling her brows uncertainly. "I can't say, for sure. I've heard it ... and it sounds to me more'n likely. I could be all wet, and I hope to God I am, but ... Well, the fact remains, she goes on keepin' bad company."
"What kind of bad company, Mrs. Keyes?"
"That I can't tell you, Miss Cassidy, because I don't really know. I'm just repeatin' what's been told me."
"Oh, I see."
"Poor Willa, she's kinda helpless. And I'm afraid it's all my fault. I should have run her life more."
Miss Cassidy shook her head with a frown.
Hazel misinterpreted her gesture. "Don't shake your head like that. It's true."
"I didn't say it wasn't." Miss Cassidy suppressed a smile. "But those rumors you just mentioned, they may be nothing more than malicious gossip."
"That's why I'm talkin' to you, Miss Cassidy," Hazel said with an impatient shrug. "That's why I come here to ask your advice. The rumors. The talk."
Miss Cassidy put in, "The best way to stop rumors is to ignore them."
Hazel let that pass. She said in a low, worried tone, "I'm so desperate, Miss Cassidy. Don't you realize I wouldn't have come here to total strangers if I wasn't?"
Miss Cassidy made a helpless gesture. "If I can do anything at all, which I doubt...."
With a despairing wave of her hand, Hazel broke in, "I'm sorry for breakin' in on you like this, Miss Cassidy. What I want to say, in strictest confidence, is that I'm afraid you can't do anything. Nobody can. It's too late, I'm afraid."
Miss Cassidy frowned again. "Mrs. Keyes, it's never too late.
The juvenile authorities may seem slow at times, their methods may appear even top-heavy, but they're not stupid. It's the person who thinks they are who makes a mistake. If you want to save Willa from further trouble, we might possibly be able to help you."
Hazel nodded vigorously. "You're honest, and I like you for it."
"Thanks."
"I know you'll use every word I say ... and quite right, too. Don't think I mind. I've no reason to be scared ... for myself."
"Anything else?" Miss Cassidy was serious and very patient.
Hazel looked at her warily. "Yes," she said, and swallowed. "Willa stays away nights. All last night I worried about it. So I says to myself it's high time somethin' was done about it. Which is why I came here."
"You did quite right," Miss Cassidy assured her.
Hazel made a face, "Willa won't listen to me no more. If only I could convince myself I'm all wet, I'd feel easier in my mind. Please understand I don't want to cause no trouble for Willa. She's my daughter, and...."
"Mrs. Keyes," Miss Cassidy said, a little impatiently, "please don't apologize so much. Just tell me the facts and let me decide for myself whether they're worth consideration."
"Oh, sure. Of course. Those are all the facts I have."
The impersonal gaze did not alter. "Just a minute. You have given me only rumors. Her staying away at night is a fact, to be sure. But you don't know for sure that she's not staying with a girl friend, as she claims, and behaving herself properly."
Hazel mulled that over. "That ... that might be possible." But she did not sound as though she believed it.
"We could investigate this friend of hers with whom she stays, if you want us to, Mrs. Keyes."
Without thinking, Hazel said quickly, "I want you to, Miss Cassidy."
"Good! What is her name and address?" The social worker's pencil was poised in midair.
Hazel had not thought that far ahead. She looked at Miss Cassidy and frowned a little in deliberation. Finally she said, "I don't know if I ought to give it to you."
"Who is she, Mrs. Keyes?" Miss Cassidy's mouth tightened. "I presume you didn't come down here to volunteer this information with the intention of withholding part of it?"
Hazel's eyes dropped. She said in a troubled voice, "Maybe you'd better forget the whole thing. I wouldn't want to cause that woman any trouble if she's innocent of any wrong-doing. Maybe I'd better make an investigation myself first. If my suspicions are right, then I'll come back and lay it in your lap."
"I see," Miss Cassidy said quietly. "Suit yourself."
"That's just what I'll do," Hazel said.
Miss Cassidy arranged the sheets of the case history once more. She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. "There isn't a great deal to go on," she said at last, "but it so happens there are one or two points of interest for this bureau in this report of yours."
Hazel looked at her again, silently.
The social worker went on, "You see, although Willa's case was closed five years ago, she's still a juvenile, and if she's committing acts of moral turpitude we're anxious to correct her before she goes completely out of hand and becomes a serious public menace."
Hazel nodded understandingly. "That's quite a point," she murmured. "I promise you that if my suspicions are right, I'll notify you."
"If you're worried about us mistreating your daughter, forget it. There's a new method of treating incorrigible girls...."
"Maybe you're right," Hazel said with a grudging smile. "But I'm afraid it's too late with my Willa."
"She could change. After all, she's not yet seventeen."
Hazel shook her head in disbelief. "I'm afraid not. It's too late. I get more scared about her every day."
Miss Cassidy folded her arms across her breasts. "I still think you'd be wise to let us investigate. I wonder if you'd reconsider and tell us this friend's name."
From a welter of disturbing thoughts, Hazel expressed only one. "No," she said firmly, already picturing Willa confined to a reformatory.
Miss Cassidy looked up from her desk. "No ... what?"
"No, I don't want you to go investigatin' ... yet, I don't want to get Willa's friend in dutch if she's innocent. I've had this talk with you, and now I want to go home."
"Could I ask why?"
Hazel got up, ready to leave. She said, "No reason. Only a silly feelin' I may be all wrong. And now...." Hazel broke off and swallowed hard. "You might as well know it. I feel I'm to blame for Willa actin' the way she does."
"Many mothers are," Miss Cassidy said calmly.
"Well!" It had cost her pride a great deal to make that admission. But I asked for it, Hazel told herself as she said good-bye. What did I expect her to say? 'Oh, no, hardly you.'"
5
Willa was sitting alone in Patsy's living room, reading the Brooklyn Eagle. Her reading diet generally was limited to love-story magazines and pornographic novels illustrated with all the French postcard variations. Patsy had managed to obtain them from some of the sailors with whom she had bedded.
Occasionally, however, Willa would glance through the local newspaper. It happened that upon this particular day an item sparked her interest and brought a frown of dismay to her brow. Greta Lyons picked up by the cops as a street-walker? Impossible! Why, Greta was no more a street-walker than she was. She'd have to discuss the matter with Patsy when she returned from her trip upstate.
The more Willa thought about what had happened to Greta, the more uneasy she became. She had a feeling she was walking deeper and deeper into a nightmare in which familiar characters had unfamiliar faces and nothing quite made sense. Besides this sensation, she carried with her a determination not to do or say anything rash until she found out more about the sinister web which was obviously weaving itself around her, and how far she was already entangled in its spreading meshes.
I, said the spider to the fly ... And if she was the fly, Patsy was the spider. If she could find out enough about this Greta Lyons mess, she might have an argument strong enough to convince herself she should break off with Patsy.
She heard the key turning in the front door, and looked up in surprise at Patsy, who came strolling into the room.
"Hi, kid," Patsy greeted her cheerfully.
"Hi, Pat. Didn't know you'd got back."
"I got back this mornin'." Patsy threw herself into a chair and puffed in relief. "Kid, am I pooped?"
"How was the trip?"
Patsy shrugged. "So-so."
For a long while they were silent. Perhaps if Willa buttered up the older woman a little it might help her to find out what she wanted to know.
She exchanged a few pleasantries with Patsy, and then figured the time was ripe to show Patsy the newspaper item that had caught her attention earlier.
"Queer company we keep, huh, Pat?" Willa observed while Patsy read the article.
Patsy tossed the paper aside indifferently and lighted a cigarette. "Looks that way, don't it?" was her only comment.
Willa felt shocked at Patsy's casualness. "What does it mean, Pat?" she asked.
"Just what it says."
"Just what's the lowdown on Greta?"
"Lowdown?" Patsy seemed puzzled. "Oh," she said. "I forgot you never believe that truth is truth. You're always lookin' for a lowdown."
"I was just wonderin', Pat. Greta used to hang around with us. She never sold the stuff, far as I know. She just wanted a good time, the way I do."
Patsy tossed her head knowingly. "Who don't?"
Willa shook her head uncertainly. "Poor Greta. I wish I knew what to do to help her out of the mess she's in."
Patsy smiled unpleasantly. "We can't help Greta any by mopin' around. Just let things ride as they are. You worry too much over nothin'. Let's have a Utile beer. I'm thirsty." She got up and went to the icebox, returning with two bottles and handed one to Willa.
Willa drank out of the bottles. She said, "Guess maybe I do worry too much over nothin'. My imagination's always playin' tricks on me."
Patsy eyed her curiously over her beer bottle. "It don't pay to have too much imagination, Willa. And you got nothin' to worry over so long as you got mama Patsy watchin' over you."
"Pat...." Willa cleared her throat nervously. "I been wantin' to talk to you for a long time now about...." She checked herself, uncertain whether to go on.
Patsy pushed up her eyebrows suspiciously, sensing something disturbing in Willa's manner. "What about?" she asked quickly.
"I'm still worried about the way Greta was picked up by the cops."
Patsy smiled wryly. "Don't worry none about Greta. She'll be all right."
Grim-lipped, Willa said, "So that's how it's goin' to be, is it?"
Patsy acted surprised. "I don't get it, Willa. What's Greta got to do with me?"
Willa said, in a rasping tone, "Greta's in jail, ain't she?"
"So I read in the paper you showed me." Patsy smiled indulgently.
Willa stared at her searchingly. "You wouldn't know how it happened she started to walk the streets, would you?"
"You kiddin', Willa?" Patsy leaned back in her chair.
Willa took a deep breath. "No, I ain't. I want to know. I got to know. I got to know if you started her out to sell her love." There was desperation in her tone.
Patsy frowned. "Look, kid, you're doin' a lot of talkin' without comin' to the point."
Again Willa cleared her throat. "I've heard talk you're a whore, Pat, and that you act as a madam...."
"Really, kid?" Patsy pushed up her eyebrows indifferently. "So there's been talk. So what? There'll always be talk. But that don't mean it's true."
"So I don't like it," Willa said uneasily. "I got in with you, Pat, because I liked the way you had fun. But I do it for the kicks I get out of it. It's not nice to sell it to the boys. It's ... it's dirty that way."
"Well, how do you like that?" Patsy said, with a sigh of exasperation. "Willa, I've tried to tell you I don't know nothin' about Greta sellin' her stuff."
"That all you got to say?" Willa was still not satisfied. Patsy's lips curled. "Why should I say anything more? You won't believe me, anyhow. I'm surprised at you, kid. I don't see what you got to be upset about."
"Oh, no? Wouldn't you consider whorin' to be an upsettin' thing? And being picked up by the cops for street-walkin'?"
"Not at all." Patsy gave a little shrug of annoyance. Willa leaned forward. "All I want to know is the truth, Pat."
"How nice of you to tell me," Patsy sneered, her arms akimbo, her voice turning icy. "Quit your kiddin', Willa. You know this ain't no Sunday School picnic. I know what I'm doin'. You like to have fun, don't you?"
"Why, sure."
"Well, you got to be tough to take some fun out of life. No place in this world for weaklings. The survival of the fittest, that's the rule you live by, whether you like it or not."
"But whorin', Pat...."
There was an edge of contempt to Patsy's voice as she said, "That's an old gag of yours, Willa, shiftin' the responsibility for what you do to others. You're in on this as much as I am."
Willa laughed bitterly. "That's funny."
"What's so funny?" Patsy scowled at her.
"So I was right. You are a whore. And you did get Greta to walk the streets."
Patsy's scowl deepened. "What's Greta got to do with all this?"
Willa became irate. "Plenty! I got principles, and I ain't never welshed. Greta's in trouble, and we ought to help her."
Patsy waved a disparaging hand. "You're nuts, kid."
"Nuts ain't the word for it," Willa mumbled bitterly. "I never thought of it that way before."
"Never thought of what?"
"That I gotta jump when you crack the whip."
Patsy furrowed her forehead deeply. "Better think of it now, kid. When I tell you to do somethin', do it pronto."
Willa got to her feet, reddening. "Look, Pat, let's get one thing straight. If you think I'm goin' to play whore for you, you're nuts. Any idea you might have of me sellin' my love's out, understand?"
Patsy's face turned red. "Out? The hell you say! Why do you think I been lettin' you sponge on me all this time? Because I like you? Get wise, kid. You'll earn your keep when I say so!"
Willa tried to reason with her. "Pat, you lose the fun when you sell it. I don't think...."
The older woman broke in scornfully. "Listen to who's preachin' now! The clumsy kid I picked up out of the gutter and tried to make a woman out of. Save it, kid. Get hep the game's played out. From now on it's strictly business or nothin' at all." She reached out suddenly and caught Willa by her shoulders, shaking her. "Let's cut out the double-talk, Willa. The plain fact is...."
Willa wrenched herself free. "Keep your filthy hands off me!"
"You're askin' for a smack on the kisser, kid, and I'm the dame to give it to you, damn it!" Patsy suited the action to the word, hitting Willa hard on her chin.
Willa stepped back, rubbing her chin. "Who do you think you are, Pat, to set about controllin' my life?" she shrilled, sitting down.
Patsy relented a little, gaining control of her temper. "Look, Willa, I didn't want to hit you. But you got me sore. I kinda like you. Which is why I took you in. I been like a big sister to you. You was just footloose when I took you in. I got you boys who didn't mind spendin' money for a good time. I gave you a kind of second home where you can have fun."
Willa trembled perceptibly. Patsy had talked the fight out of her. "Okay, Pat," she said submissively. "You're right. I've made a mess again. Let's leave it at that."
Willa's thoughts were not too pleasant after Patsy went away. So that was Patsy's racket. Well, she had to give her credit for one thing, anyhow. Patsy had been smart enough to get away with it. But the point was, would she be dumb enough to allow Patsy to keep on getting away with it.
The answer to that question was a turning point for Willa.
She undressed and climbed into bed, trying to cool off. The summer heat had lingered on into late September. After a while she propped herself up on an elbow and lit a cigarette. The sweat poured down over her eyes and blinded her. She made no further effort to relieve the discomfort. She thought of Jed Bailey coming to call on her that night.
Patsy placed a friendly hand on her shoulder. "Let's forget this little squabble, kid, make like it had never happened."
Willa made a brave effort at a smile. "It's forgotten already, Pat. Everything's just like it was before it started."
"Now you're talkin' sense, kid. Look, Willa, I got to be runnin' along. Got a date with one of the boys. What're you goin' to do?"
"Jed Bailey's comin' around to see me tonight."
"Be nice to him, will you kid? He likes you."
"That jerk!" Willa screwed up her face in a grimace of distaste. "Oh, all right. I'll be nice to him." As Patsy started to leave, she called after her. "One thing more, Pat, before you go."
Patsy turned, frowning a little. "I'm in a hurry, kid."
"Just to satisfy my curiosity, Pat, tell me if the boys pay you for me being nice to them."
Patsy teetered for a moment between anger and uncertainty, disturbed by the tenor of the question. "No, of course not," she said testily. "Don't you think I'd have given you your share if they had?"
Both were silent for a moment.
Patsy broke the silence, saying, "You got to believe me, Willa."
Willa said unconvincingly, "Uh-huh. I believe you, Pat." Patsy smiled. "See you later, kid."
I'm not going through with it, she thought.
A horsefly landed on her stomach and trembled on its slender legs, crawling. She waited until the last agonizing moment and then brought her palm down on the insect with a sharp, slapping sound. All that blood, she thought. Imagine a little thing like that holding so much blood.
She flicked the squashed insect from her stomach and reached up for the light switch. The days were getting shorter and twilight was approaching. The sudden illumination spotlighted the filthy walls of the room: dirty white plaster with hanging patches of wallpaper, floral and striped designs, in" every condition of decay.
The phone rang four times before Willa summoned enough courage to lift the receiver.
"Hello," she said cautiously in to the receiver.
"Jed Bailey speakin'. That you, Willa?"
"Who in hell you think it is?" Willa asked in an annoyed tone.
"What took you so long to get to the phone? Sleepin' with another guy?"
"Uh-huh," she said. "You're half right. I was fast asleep, but there ain't no guy here."
"Well, wake up, kid. Open your eyes and start livin'. I'll be around in a few minutes to give you a little lovin'. Patsy says you been actin' kinda funny lately. She says you won't even go down to the Navy Yard with her no more."
"Look," Willa said petulantly, "I don't need no pep talk."
Jed said, "No use gettin' yourself all hopped up. I was only tellin' you what Patsy said."
"Tell Pat for me she knows what she can do with her pep talks."
"Tell her yourself. You're her sidekick."
For a few seconds Willa said nothing. She realized that she had spoken out of turn, and she didn't want to make matters any worse than they were already.
"You still there, Willa?" Jed asked.
"Huh?"
"Say, what's eatin' you today? Got a sailor-boy in bed with you or somethin'?"
"I'm okay," Willa said fretfully. "I told you I didn't have nobody in bed with me."
"You don't sound okay."
"I'm okay!"
"Must be a lousy connection. I'll be over in less than half an hour. Better be there, Willa. You just better be there."
The phone at the other end of the wired connection clicked off. Willa hung up. Her mouth felt dry. She poured herself a glassful of ice water, sipped it slowly, then stretched out on the bed.
Why does it have to be so hot? she thought. In winter you pray for it to be warm. In summer you want it to be cold. But this horrible heat, you never pray for it, you never want it You never even dream a day could be like this. God's gone goofy, she said to herself. That's it. He wants to see if he can melt me.
Then she remembered that Jed Bailey was on his way over. I'm not going through with it, she thought again. The thought brought no measure of relief, so she said it aloud, "I'm not going through with it." The words echoed in the air without conviction. I'm not! I'm not! She pounded her fist into the wall. Not going through with it. Not! Not! Not! She drew back her fist and again hit the wall with all the force of her body behind the blow. A sudden pain shot through her fingers and darted into her elbow in a series of sharp, electric shocks, the pain finally giving way to an over-all numbness.
If she would hurry, slip on her clothes, and take a powder, she could get out of there before Jed Bailey arrived. It was obvious that she couldn't trust Patsy any longer. She'd have to strike out on her own, become independent, if she wanted to be able to live with herself.
Quickly she jumped out of bed and threw on her clothes, as if she were running a race against time.
And she was. It was a sprint to freedom from Patsy.
With the sharpness of a razor blade, Willa cut her ties with Patsy Dunn. The severance left a deep wound, an aching void of loneliness. After she fled Patsy's apartment to avoid encountering Jed Bailey, she rushed straight home. She found her mother sitting in the living room, reading the newspaper.
Willa hurried past the living room door without saying hello to her mother, who looked up in surprise to see her daughter come home so unexpectedly.
The first thing Willa did, after shutting the bedroom door, was to fling herself upon the bed without bothering to take off her clothes. She thought back over the many times she had been with Patsy. She couldn't forget the too casual manner in which Patsy had dismissed her disapproval of prostitution.
Willa had scruples, though they might appear to be crazy to other people, and she was furious by the way she had been bamboozled by Patsy. Gradually the fury gave way to uncertainty, to perplexity, to baffled irritation.
It was evident, now that her eyes were open, that Patsy had intended to use her as one of her stable of whores to make money from her. More maddening still was the fact that, unknown to her, she had been functioning all the while as a prostitute, with Patsy pocketing all the proceeds from her professional lovemaking.
What a fool she'd been! Willa swore out loud, and then tried to sleep. She lay awake for over an hour with no sign of drowsiness whatever, and later, when she did sleep, there was no division between her dreams and her waking thoughts. A jumble of faces and voices and disembodied questions seethed through the byways of her brain. And always, at the center, stood the figure of Gene Kohler ... a figure without arms, or with arms where the legs should have been, a figure with no head or with a battered head, bleeding and ghastly, a figure that smiled or frowned menacingly, with eyes glaring, dissolved and sightless. Funny, how Gene's memory should intrude upon her thoughts at this time. Perhaps it was because she felt that, at the bottom of it all, he had been her only hope for happiness, and he had disappeared out of her life at a time when she needed him so badly. Gene was a fine man, so warm and generous, so exciting to be with. He had turned her heart and, among her many lovers, he was the only one whom she truly regretted losing, the only one she really missed.
Dear God, why did it have to happen that Nick Lucas should appear on the scene at a time when Gene was ready to marry me? I know everything would have turned out all right if Nick hadn't come around that night.
She was still pondering this when her door opened and her mother came in, bearing a tray of sandwiches and coffee. "Willa...."
But Willa made no response, giving no indication that she was aware of her mother's presence. She was lying on the bed, face down.
Hazel said, in a gentle tone, "I thought you might be hungry, honey, so I brought you some food."
Willa turned over and looked at her. Hazel had half-expected her face to be blotchy with weeping, but she had misjudged her daughter; it was ravaged by a grief more bitter than tears.
"Willa honey, is ... is anything ... the matter?" Willa regarded her mother. "No, Mom, I'm all right. Just a little tired."
"You look tired, baby."
Willa started to say something, but her mother held up a hand to prevent the girl from speaking. "No, you don't have to tell me what's the matter. I won't say I'm not curious. I am. But you'd only tell me a pack of lies, anyhow. I know how you feel about me pryin' into your secrets."
"Oh, all right. Have it your way." Willa flung herself back onto the pillow.
Hazel asked, "Well, ain't you gonna eat this good food. The coffee'll get cold."
Willa said nothing, but her back was very eloquent. It moved her mother to deep pity. But since she did not know the cause for Willa's unhappiness, she couldn't do or say anything to help her.
Hazel put the tray on the bedside table and said, "I don't know what's eatin' you, Willa. It's no good me offerin' you sympathy, because that don't help ... not to people like you and me. Some people seem to like...." She left that sentence dangling in mid-air.
"Oh, Gene, Gene...." Willa muttered.
Hazel was caught by surprise. "Gene ... Willa, do you mean to say you're still moonin' over him after all this time?"
"Uh-huh."
"I thought you'd forgotten him long ago."
Willa turned over and looked up. She said, "I thought I'd made it clear to you that I loved Gene Kohler, really loved him. You can't switch off love like ... like an electric light."
"I'm not talkin' about love," Hazel said fiercely. "I'm talkin' about truth. Gene's been out of the picture for quite a while now. I know you, Willa. You don't grieve too long over spilled milk. Somethin' else is botherin' you."
Oddly enough, though touched by her mother's concern, Willa became angrier, the resentment she felt towards Hazel swimming up inside of her.
"So?" Willa faced her now, her eyes blazing and faint color touching her cheekbones.
"So I'm worried about you. Ain't that a good enough reason?"
Willa's fists clenched now. "Leave me alone, will you?"
It was then on the tip of her tongue to tell her mother the truth about the split between her and Patsy, but she held herself in check. She shut her mouth tight, and bent every nerve to control the temper that pounded inside her. For a long time she sat there on the bed, tense and strained, confronting her mother in a struggle for decision. And she won the battle. Her mother shrugged in acknowledgement of her defeat, turned, and walked out of the room.
Willa swung her legs off the bed, stood up, and moved over to the dressing table. She sat down and examined her face in the mirror dispassionately, with an expression of utter boredom.
In a few days Willa was over her hurt about splitting up with Patsy. She felt relief in being freed of the older woman, now that Willa knew the truth about her. True, she missed the warmth and hospitality of Patsy's apartment and the wild orgies she had enjoyed there, but she was able to generate her own fun, operate independently.
One day Willa picked up a husky sailor around the Navy Yard. He was Marty Wolcott, and he was a lot of fun. A few nights after she met him for the first time, he hired a car and drove her out to a roadhouse on the Long Island Highway. There was nothing fancy about it except the sign that said Angelini's Steak and Chops. It was a real log cabin job, with a big fireplace on the bar side. Judging from the number of cars in the driveway, business was booming.
Inside a rhumba band picked up the beat and a lot of patrons started whistling at something happening on the dance floor. Marty said hello to a few people, got a big hello from Angelini himself, and introduced Willa to the proprietor with a half-hearted wave.
Willa said, "Hello."
Angelini, a fat, swarthy man, smiled down at her. "You like Marty?"
Willa smiled back. "I love him, Angelini."
The restaurateur gave her a big smile and patted his protruding paunch contentedly.
Marty winked at him. "Willa's good stuff. The best."
Again Angelini looked at her. "So true. Very nice girl. Now, Marty, you and your girl like to eat?"
Marty said, "Sure, Angelini. Get us a couple of steaks, but bring a drink first. We'll be over at the corner table."
They sat down. Willa glanced around. "You seem to know everybody here, Marty. This a regular hangout of yours?"
He nodded. "A guy gets awful sick of a ship's mess sometimes. The chow's good here. Angelini's got a first-class chef.
Believe you me, the steaks here are somethin' special, out of this world."
He wasn't kidding. They were very special. She hadn't known how hungry she was until she had worked around the large plate and only a big shiny T-bone was left in the middle of it.
They ate in silence, casually listening to two sailors at the next table arguing the usual naval topic of conversation, women. One was saying, "Dames make more trouble'n they're worth. First, they let you lay 'em and then they lay it right into you for all you're worth."
"Some do, some don't," the other said. "I could trust my old lady with Charlie Boyer."
The first man said, 'That cheap whore sure made a difference to old Brewster, though."
The other man spat, and said, "Greg had no right to interfere with his woman."
"His woman?" The taller sailor laughed raucously.
Willa's interest in their conversation died as she drained her coffee cup. Marty pulled out a cigarette and sat back to enjoy it. He studied Willa closely.
"I like you, Willa."
She laughed deep down in her throat. "That all, Marty? Not love?"
He also laughed. "You love a guy to death, honey."
"I'm made that way," she said, gazing adoringly at him.
Again he laughed. "One thing's sure. You don't fight a guy off. That's what I like about you. When I have to fight a dame for what I want, I'll call it quits."
She propped her chin on her hand and smiled all over her face. He saw that it was a pretty face with eyes that were all sex and mouth to match.
She said, "You're nice, Marty."
"Say it better," he grinned.
"I like big guys like you, Marty. I like men beefed up and smart lookin' so they don't have to wear no paddin' in their clothes to make them look like men should look. I go for a guy who can slap a guy around, like that feller you did it to the other day."
Marty beamed at the memory. "He was a good guy to kick the crap out of, huh?"
"You bet. He was a stinker."
He reached over for her hand. "You're quite a hot number, baby."
She smiled. "You ain't too hard to take yourself, Marty."
They left the roadhouse, and Marty drove back to Brooklyn. He braked the car in front of a hotel. "Let's shack up here for the night, kid," he suggested.
"I'm game, Marty."
The Logan was a small, two-storied hotel, and for its class had standard equipment. The lobby was carpeted, the walls were painted, and the pay telephone booth in the corner left enough room for two overstuffed divans and two more or less easy chairs. The short narrow registry desk was made of paneled plywood, stained a dark color. It crowded the clerk a little, but he didn't seem to mind too much.
He had an underpaid look about him ... a worn-out suit of lightweight material and a half-empty pack of cigarettes. He was fishing around in the pack with a stubby finger when Willa and Marty came in the front door and walked up to the desk to register.
The clerk didn't have any questions to ask. If he did, he forgot to ask them as his cigarette began burning and he drew in a lungful of smoke and held it. He blew the smoke out through his wide nostrils, and the look in his eyes was a disinterested one. It didn't make any difference to him if a couple was married or not. In his business he had to shut his eyes to a lot of things.
But he couldn't avoid noticing Willa as she moved away from the desk and started up the carpeted stairway. Her tweed overcoat was draped carelessly over her shoulders, the pin-stripe grey skirt was exactly the right length, and the suit jacket bulged where it should have bulged. The whole effect would have made him turn for a retake as she ran lightly up the stairs. The faint scent of perfume that she left behind hf r would have made it mandatory. She must have had a reason for flipping a pair of scared eyes in his direction as she looked back. Then she pulled her glance around and ducked behind Marty.
At the top of the stairway they spotted a long hall with the inevitable window at the rear and the red light burning over the fire-escape entryway. All of the overhead and maintenance budget had obviously gone into maintaining the lobby downstairs. A long time ago the upper floor walls had been papered. Not so long ago the paper had been painted, and a faint acrid smell hung in the stale air.
There was nothing stale about the girl as Marty opened the door of Room 214, her perfume lingering faintly in the hall. Marty pushed the door open and stepped aside to let Willa enter in front of him. The room was stuffy. Willa crossed to the window and opened it, looking out into the alley where she saw two garbage cans and a parked car. In the adjoining room a muted radio droned out some popular tune.
After they had made themselves at home, Willa noticed a radio and went over to it, dialing a station that had dance music. She danced over to Marty, who was sitting in the easy chair, and pulled him up.
"Let's wrestle, Marty."
"Okay, baby."
They started to dance. The dance band finished with a flourish. They stopped, puffing from exertion.
Marty said with a laugh, "A dead heat."
Willa laughed with him. "A photo finish."
The band started another number. Willa said, "That's ours, Marty."
"Wait till I get my sea legs unwound again," he said.
They talked small talk as they whirled around the room. There was something in her voice that was all honey and butter. His hand reached down and pulled her face close to his until her mouth was against his, full and ripe, and he tasted it hungrily, feeling the hot lance of her tongue before she stiffened and jerked away.
"What's the matter, Willa honey?"
"Marty...."
She stopped dancing, went over to the radio and switched it off. She smiled, then pulled off her clothes and danced sensuously in front of him. It was a tantalizing performance. She was lithe and graceful, with sharply rising breasts that swelled at every breath she took, the muscles of her stomach a predatory ripple, quivering and dancing above the taper of her legs.
Then he was undressed, too, and the light was gone. He could hear her moving towards him in the darkness.
"I like you, Marty," she said, her voice warm and intimate, charged with an overpowering, desperate longing. She was using every ounce of her charm, the whole weight of her sexual magnetism. "Now I'll show you what a hot woman's really like. In style, of course."
"Of course," he said, and his voice sounded uncertain.
She showed him.
7
Willa was up to her old tricks again, Hazel thought glumly on that early October night. She and her daughter were having coffee in the kitchen prior to Willa going out. Hazel was astonished by Willa's resiliency, her ability to bounce back into old depraved habits after getting smacked down because of them.
Hazel looked at Willa, wondering what was in the girl's thoughts as she sat at the table, nonchalantly drinking her coffee. "You goin' out again tonight, Willa? she asked.
Willa hesitated before replying. "I might," she said finally.
"Where?"
"I haven't decided yet."
Hazel said in a hurt tone, "You don't trust me at all, do you?"
Willa straightened in her chair. She pushed up her eyebrows disdainfully. "We agreed to disagree, didn't we? I told you I'm gonna live my own life, and I meant what I said. I know you don't approve of it."
"How could I?" her mother said bitterly.
"I'm sorry you don't. But that won't stop me."
"No," Hazel said, shaking her head sadly. "You wouldn't let that stop you, ever." She seemed fairly dejected. "It's not just the personal angle, honey. There's more to it than that."
"Really?" Willa said scornfully.
"I don't know just what you're up to, but somethin' ... somethin' dirty's gonna happen if you keep on stayin' out nights. I can feel it in my bones."
"Oh, Mom," Willa laughed, "Be yourself. You're always wrapped up in them wet-blanket feelin's."
Hazel looked rather helpless all of a sudden, caught up in the horrible thing she could feel but couldn't express in words. For a long time she watched Willa in silence. Then with positive conviction in her voice, she said, "You're headin' for trouble, Willa. Do you know that?"
Willa shrugged. "Maybe. If it comes, I can take it."
"You ought to confide in me. I'm your mother. But you don't trust me one bit."
"No." Willa met her gaze in a straight stare. "You're dead right. I can't talk to you about myself. I'm goin' to keep on doin' what I want and I don't want you at my elbow whisperin' to me all the time to stop."
"You're too hard-headed," Hazel said.
She watched Willa redden at this and she decided to shut up.
Shortly afterwards Willa went out to meet Marty Wolcott. They made the rounds of the saloons and dives until their funds were exhausted, then they went out into the cold night air and started down Joralemon Street.
She was drunk. She knew that she was drunk and gloried in the fact. She said airily, in a somewhat sluggish voice, "Hi, old stickin-the-mud."
"Hi, mud," he grinned at her.
He shivered from the cold night air. "Brrr ... I'm cold. Baby, it's cold outside."
She giggled and lurched down the street alongside of him. "What of it?" she said. "You been havin' fun, ain't you?" Again he shivered. "Sure, but it's real cold tonight."
"So what?"
"So I'm cold," he said irritably.
"We can go someplace and shack up. Got any money, Marty?"
He shook his head. "Nope, Willa. I'm flat broke. The last dive cleaned me out. The hell of it is payday's two weeks off."
Willa expressed her disappointment. "Ah, hell. That's too damn bad. I'm broke, too. And I figured we could get a room in some hotel and shack up tonight."
"Sorry, kid. Some other night."
"Tonight's as good a night as any other night," she said resentfully.
"Full of spit, ain't you?"
"I want you, Marty," she said in a pleading tone. "I want you bad."
"Sorry, kid," he repeated. "Not tonight."
They were passing the post office building. A sudden idea struck Willa, and she stopped. "How about in there, Marty?" she said, indicating the large post office with a nod.
He looked at her as if he thought she were crazy. "What? In the post office? You must be nuts!"
"Sure," she said, shrugging defiantly. "That's as good a place as any, since we don't have the scratch to put up in a hotel room. Ain't nobody in there now. We can find us a spot where nobody can see us, and we could have a lot of fun together." Her voice was pleading now.
He shook his head uncertainly. "I don't know, baby."
She looked up at him. "Ain't yellow, are you?"
That did it. He braced his shoulders. "Okay, baby. You asked for it. Let's go."
Cautiously he followed Willa into the post office building. It was deserted. They found a spot at the rear of the building which seemed secluded, and they laid down together. They were there for quite a while, and were on the verge of embracing once more when approaching footsteps caused them to jerk apart. But it was too late. The cop on the beat, investigating the building while making his rounds, had spotted them. He appeared in the corridor of the building at the rear, bland face blank, hat pushed back on his head, his nightstick raised.
The cop said roughly. "All right, you two! Get up from there!" They got up sheepishly. A flicker of fear ran up Willa's spine and caressed the back of her neck. Knots were in her stomach and cold spaghetti in her legs. The cop swore out loud and took a step forward. Only one step. He was halted by something strange and terrible. The girl was trembling, and tears were in her eyes.
Willa looked at Marty. Their eyes met
"Looks like we're in for it, Willa," Marty said in a low voice. "Caught in the act."
"Oh, Marty," she said. "Oh, Marty."
She knew suddenly that there was no way out, no escape from this hell of her own making. She was sober, sickly sober. Why did I have to open my big yap and let myself get into this mess? She thought. And why did I get poor Marty into it?
Marty likes you, she kept saying to herself. He likes you fine. He thinks you fill the bill. You think so, too. You tell Marty you think so. And now you'll probably wind up in jail like any ordinary whore.
Marty said to the law custodian. "What you goin' to do with us, copper?"
"Take you to the pokey," the cop growled harshly, "and book you on a morals charge. What the hell you think?"
"But...." Willa began weakly, then checked herself because she was unable to get out what she wanted to say. She swallowed hard. What would be the use of saying anything, anyhow? Her goose was cooked already.
The cop looked at her, aware of the fact she was trying to say something difficult, perhaps even humiliating. However, she failed. The light died in her face, and she shrugged, suddenly weary again.
She walked out of the post office meekly. The cop was sandwiched in between the two culprits, and they gave him no trouble.
The judge before whom Willa appeared the next day in court had the power to remand Willa either to the Juvenile Court or the Criminal Court. He chose the former.
Before her trial, Willa was interviewed by Miss Cassidy, the social worker. Miss Cassidy, while waiting for Willa to be brought to the office, was discussing the case with her supervisor, an obese woman by the name of Elaine Daugherty.
"She comes from an economically and emotionally impoverished family, Miss Daugherty," the case worker said, holding Willa's file folder in her hand. "Her father was killed in a drunken brawl when she was ten. Her mother is a sot." Miss Daugherty fingered her second chin. "How old is she?"
"Not quite seventeen."
The supervisor clucked her tongue. 'Too bad. And she looks so mature, so hard. The poor girl!"
Miss Cassidy tried to enlighten her. "The girl's been in trouble before. Her case dates back to the time she was twelve. We have here a long list of delinquencies of which she was guilty."
"Let me see that folder, Miss Cassidy."
The supervisor took the folder from the social worker and started to glance through the pages. It didn't make pretty reading.
Finally she snapped the folder shut and handed it back to Miss Cassidy. She said, "We shall have to question her, of course."
"Of course," Miss Cassidy echoed.
"Though, I must say, the case against her is cut and dried. She was caught in a ... well, a very compromising situation." She reddened as she said this.
Miss Cassidy sighed with pity. "Can't we do something for her other than have her committed to a reformatory, Miss Daugherty?' There was a plea of sincerity in her tone as she looked questioningly at the supervisor.
Miss Daugherty raised her shoulder haughtily. "We don't want to obstruct justice, Miss Cassidy." It was half-statement, half-question.
Miss Cassidy colored a little. "No, we don't. But I thought...."
Miss Daugherty broke in, "Besides, we must try to explain to her that it is not a reformatory, but a training school...."
A training school? Miss Cassidy found it difficult to suppress a bitter smile. As a result of ten years of social service experience, she had developed a respect for the power to distinguish between the word and the deed. New words were to old activities what perfume had been to the unbathed bodies of the Elizabethan court. The philosophy that institutions for child delinquents should be places of reform and rehabilitation rather than places for punishment was a good one. Modern slogans and catch-phrases symbolizing this trend had become increasingly popular: "There's no such thing as a bad child."
"You can't beat badness out of a boy." So the reformatories became industrial schools, agricultural schools, and training schools. Words, all words. They called them training schools, but she wondered what they trained for ... when upwards of 70 per cent of their inmates were graduated into adult crime. In many respects they were not even reform schools but rather juvenile prisons.
And this girl, Willa Keyes, was about to be committed to one. Poor kid. She wondered what was to blame. The sexy movies? The blood-curdling radio serials? The crime-alluring comic books? The latest teen-age clothing fad? The latest dance craze? Or broken homes? Or no-good parents? All of those, of course, and more besides. It was the kind of world in which children are raised. A world whose sense of values was distorted by the eagerness to make money and possess material things. In was teen-age smoking and drinking and reefer-jags. It was slums and poolrooms. It was emotional insecurity. It was economic want. It was lack of religion. It was lack of supervised recreation.
Those ... all of those.
Miss Cassidy returned her attention to Miss Daugherty. She swallowed hard, then said, "I admit she had sex relations with men. She...." She broke off, then said anxiously, "Why, may I ask, should she have to go to the reformatory? Couldn't we put her on probation and give her some guidance? Couldn't...." Again she broke off, as if her own words had bitten her.
Her supervisor sneered. "You're wasting your sympathy, talking like that, Miss Cassidy." She got up to go. "I'll recommend the training school for her."
Miss Daugherty went out of the office. Miss Cassidy jerked her hand forward and extended it. She performed the same motion twice, both times unconscious of it. Soon it would be time for her to talk to Willa Keyes. What good would such a talk do? Probably none. For Willa it would mean that she'd be told she would spend the next few years in a training school. There would undoubtedly be the slight, temporary silence as the almost perceptible temperature of bitterness rose in Willa until it spilled over finally in angry words.
The time was now. Footsteps were approaching the office. Miss Cassidy looked up. There in the doorway, flanked between two stalwart policewomen and shrinking back as if from a whipping rain, Willa Keyes was almost a misty figure, her face in shadow. She kept gazing around the office, anxiously still, as if trying by sheer force of will to create a means of escape.
Miss Cassidy, in her quick appraisal, saw other details: the girl's flaming red hair that was beautiful in a tidy chignon; eyes blue, restless, ceaselessly searching; face a thin oval, fine-featured and now very sad, as if she had been born lonely. Her dress was a plain dark color. Her legs were better than average. Five feet five inches of her added up to a spare one hundred and five pounds. With so little insulation on her frame it was surprising how much warmth she exuded.
Willa's eyes kept darting around like frightened rabbits. She was frightened, and with good reason. Soon she would find out the terrible years she could look forward to. Miss Cassidy squirmed at her desk, not enjoying the prospect of having to tell her.
The social worker forced a smile. "Come in, Willa, and sit down over here," she invited with a wave of her hand.
Willa sat down in the chair indicated and fidgeted uneasily while waiting for the inquisition to begin. Already so many questions had been fired at her since she was picked up by the cop in the post office, that her brain was in a mad whirl of confusion.
Miss Cassidy tried to set her at ease. "We want to help you, Willa," she said in a kindly voice.
"Do you, really?" Willa asked, and there was deep skepticism in her tone.
"Tell me what's on your mind, Willa. Don't bottle it up. Air your troubles. I never turn a deaf ear to a girl who wants to talk to me. Letting a girl talk things out helps her and I learn her needs and personality. Whatever you say, no matter how unimportant it might seem, is not trivial to me. It's important to you, and that's all that matters. I'm sure you're not really bad, but you just haven't been taught how to behave properly. It gets you into trouble."
"I'm in trouble all right, that's for sure," Willa said bitterly.
"Do you hate me, Willa?"
"I don't hate anyone."
"That's a good girl. Now we can talk things over. You know, of course, what you're accused of, Willa. Do you want to deny it?"
Willa said surlily, "I don't like the way you run things here. I don't intend to say a damn word."
One of the policewomen said threateningly, "Try to cut corners, girlie, and you'll like the way we run things much less. The accusation has been made that you were found in the post office building in a position of intimacy with a sailor by the name of Martin Wolcott. Do you deny that?"
Willa looked up at her and said, "I ain't makin' no statement."
Miss Cassidy succeeded in calming her down, and finally managed to get Willa to talk about her boyfriends. Willa spoke of the time she and a girl friend visited an old shack furnished only with two ancient mattresses, and invited two boys at a time. The two girls would exchange partners. Willa admitted she had never had a legal husband, and went on to confess to having been intimate with 25 sailors during the past two months.
Willa evidenced no feeling of guilt. "I'm too passionate," she explained to Miss Cassidy. "I've shacked up in most every kind of place."
Yet she was proud to say she had never practiced prostitution commercially, neither asking nor receiving payment for services rendered.
Warmed up by the talk, Willa asked anxiously, "Miss Cassidy, what do you think they'll do to me?"
Miss Cassidy blanched as she replied, "As you know, Willa, you'll be tried in Juvenile Court."
"Yeah, I know. The judge said so."
"I'm afraid I have bad news for you. My supervisor's going to recommend that you be sent to a girl's training school."
Willa jumped to her feet, outraged. "You mean reform school, don't you? Goddamn it, tell them they're welcome to do what they want with me. They can shut me up if they want to. And a fat lot of good it'll do them."
Miss Cassidy tried to calm her. "But, Willa, you can get out soon ... on good behavior."
"To hell with them, the bastards, the stinkin' no-good bastards!" She was so enraged that she made a move towards the door. One of the policewomen ran after her and grabbed her roughly by an arm.
"Oh, no, you don't!" She said. "I ain't lettin' you get away!"
Willa gritted her teeth at her. "Who wants to get away? I got no friends. Guess this is the right kind of end for me. I met a guy once. Gene, his name was. I thought I could make a life for myself with him. But he found out what I'd been, and that was the end of that." She added bitterly, "That was the end of me, too."
Each of the policewomen took one of Willa's arms, spun her forward, and propelled her out of the door. The door slammed behind them in an ominous bang.
The following day Hazel went to the Juvenile Bureau to visit Willa. She sat abjectly in Miss Cassidy's office waiting for Willa to be brought into the room.
Hazel's eyes were red-rimmed from crying. She looked at Miss Cassidy and asked, "What can I do?"
Miss Cassidy shrugged. "Nothing now, I'm afraid. You should have done things long ago."
Hazel swallowed hard. "You mean ... it's too late?"
The social worker shook her head noncommittally. "Well, I wouldn't say that, exactly. But it's too late for you-now. You should have let us investigate the first time you came here, Mrs. Keyes."
The mildly chiding tone didn't discourage Hazel. "But I'm worried about what's goin' to be done with my daughter," she said. "I don't want her to go to reform school. The stories they tell about reform schools is enough to make a nervous wreck out of me."
The social worker asked what stories Hazel had heard.
Hazel considered this for a moment, with her lips pursed and her brows knitted. She decided not to discuss reform schools. She decided, instead, to make a plea for Willa's freedom.
She said, "I know they say my Willa's loose with men."
Miss Cassidy said, "I'm afraid it's more than just a rumor, Mrs. Keyes. Her private life is too public."
"She was free to do as she pleased," Hazel said desperately. "I don't approve of her friends, and I know she keeps havin' relations with men, but that ain't nothing to be alarmed about."
"Isn't it?" A scornful note now entered Miss Cassidy's voice.
"Don't talk like that to me, Miss Cassidy," Hazel begged, wringing her hands. "What I need is help, not scorn."
Miss Cassidy studied Mrs. Keyes thoughtfully. The woman evidently did not understand her daughter. But she was like too many other parents who didn't understand themselves, so how could they be expected to understand their children. Some of them, in fact, did not even care what happened to their children, were actually happy to get rid of them. She thought of the girls who had been reported by their parents. Thinking all these thoughts, she sighed.
Hazel looked at her questioningly. "Did you say something, Miss Cassidy?" she asked.
In a voice that was low but reaching, the social worker said, "Please be assured, Mrs. Keyes, that we'll do everything in our power to make things easier for Willa. But she needs rehabilitation, and the school on the Hudson will be just the thing for her. You needn't think of it as a reform school, Mrs. Keyes. Believe me, she'll be a lot better off there." Miss Cassidy felt like biting her tongue for having said that, knowing very well that it wasn't true.
Hazel shook herself like an agonized dog. She said hoarsely, "God help me, I can't do a thing. And when I could, she wouldn't let me. She didn't confide in me." And then, in a desperate plea, she added, "But she's a good girl at heart. She had no temper. She hates nobody. You can ask anybody...."
Miss Cassidy raised a hand to stem the flow of words. The telephone was more successful. The social worker choked it in its first insistent ring.
"Hello ... Yes, bring her in, please."
She hung up. For a moment the two women sat silently, and soon Willa was led into the office by the two policewomen. For an instant Willa's face was quite pretty, a little smile curving her mouth. Then she saw her mother and her face hardened.
She turned angrily to Miss Cassidy. "I won't have you bringin' my mother into this!" she snapped, and then averted her face.
Hazel made no comment. She turned red as Miss Cassidy turned to her and dropped her eyes.
Miss Cassidy said, "Do you suppose the poor girl really thinks we dragged you into this, Mrs. Keyes? Shouldn't we tell her that she herself dragged you into it?"
Hazel did not answer. She got to her feet.
"Willa." Her mother came slowly towards her, her eyes fixed on her. "Are you all right?"
"Uh-huh." Only then did Willa turn her head ... slowly, as if forcing it around against her will ... to look at Hazel. For a fleeting moment they stared at each other.
The dead unreality of a dream had returned, and Miss Cassidy found herself caught up in it. Neither Willa nor Hazel said anything, but the social worker sensed that in their stare they were reliving a whole lifetime of intimate moments. The thought rocked her, but she knew that she must not break their silence that was so fraught with deep emotion. She knew that in this moment something was surely dying inside the mother, dying a slow cruel death. Her face was very pale, and she could not conceal the anguish she was feeling.
Willa saw this, too. Warmth suddenly crept into her eyes; she leaned forward and began to speak gently, urgently. "Mom," she said. "Don't worry about me. I'll be okay."
Hazel came closer to her and reached out to embrace her. "My baby...." she began in a choked-up voice.
Willa pushed her away. "Forget me, Mom," she said. "You don't want me, really. Nobody wants me. I don't even want myself."
Hazel recoiled from the words as if they were asps. The horror of it lay in the fact that Hazel, knowing all she knew, trembled and paled even more before this verbal assault. For one hideous moment Miss Cassidy thought that Mrs. Keyes would collapse.
But she underestimated Mrs. Keyes, who controlled herself by a visible violent effort. Gradually the trembling ceased, her face hardened, and in a dead husk of her real voice she said, "Oh, take her away. She's a bad girl."
To Willa her tone was clearly a slap in the face; she looked almost absurdly surprised. She turned to the policewomen, and at a nod from Miss Cassidy they led her out of the office.
The following day, brought before Girls Term, Willa was committed to the girls' training school on the Hudson. She was given the stamp of Wayward Minor and sent to Bellevue for observation. They didn't find her psychotic, but she was weak and easily influenced. The report from Bellevue read: "Willa would benefit from the atmosphere of a happy family, ideally.
But, because of her age and experience, this would be be unreasonable. Most of her delinquent behavior could be traced to her sense of sexual inadequacy."
Sexual inadequacy? Willa smiled bitterly as she thought back to the beginning of it all. She must have hated her mother without knowing it, and she had loved her father too much for her own good. She thought back over the host of men she had associated with, and lingered regretfully over the memory of Gene Kohler.
A few days later her train pulled out of Grand Central Station. Willa stiffened in the coach seat beside the hard-faced matron in whose custody she had been placed, and bit her under lip, bewildered at the turn of events. She was on the way to her new home, but she didn't want to go there. She hadn't chosen it.
The train stopped, and the hard-faced woman nudged Willa. "Here we are," the matron said. "End of the journey."
Willa got up, trembling. She wondered how things would shape up for her in the reformatory. She looked around. At first sight her new home appeared to be a modern boarding school for girls. It was pleasantly located in the country a few miles from the city of Hudson, and it overlooked a wide and lovely sweep of the Hudson River Valley. Willa saw acres upon acres of spacious lawns, tree-lined walks, and two huge quadrangles of handsome redbrick buildings.
The matron told her that fifteen of the buildings were residential cottages housing the girl students. The iron grilles and stone walls along the road leading to the New York State Training School for delinquent girls were so well appointed that they looked like decorations rather than institutional fences, and a large area surrounding the school had no fences at all.
So Willa took up her residence there, and she soon learned that Nick Lucas had been right. On the outside the school looked good, but inside it was bad, very bad. It wasn't long before she knew that she wasn't going to have any fun in the school, and she reached the point where she felt there was no sense in living.
One day she had an argument with another girl. As punishment she was confined for 41 days in a disciplinary cottage, only allowed out in the corridor to occasionally scrub the floor. For the first ten days of her confinement she was given a diet of only bread and milk for two of her three daily meals. Breakfast was the only regular meal. If a girl remained defiant, the bread-and-milk diet was extended for even longer periods.
One day Willa wrote a letter to her mother. She broke down crying as she wrote, "I'm feeling lower'n the lowest thing on earth, and I think you should have something on your conscience, too. How would you feel if your own Mom and Pop acted as if they didn't love you? Believe me, I loved both of you with all my heart when I was a kid, but you never gave me a chance to show it. Instead you fought each other and wouldn't even sit in the same room together. And when I was little, Mom, you'd chase me out. So I hunted for love elsewhere, and got it in my own way. That's what I miss most out here-love. When your freedom's taken away, the way mine was, and you're cooped up till you're sick to death of life, it makes you want love even more. I keep remembering how good it felt to love. If I had another chance I'd keep happy and buy lots of pretty clothes. I'd have a free, bubbly feeling inside me, like I used to have. Mostly I got it from men. They flirted with me, was nice to me, picked me up, and I loved it. I'm nuts about men, and miss them here more than anything else in the world. I can't help it if I'm made that way. Maybe it was better that I didn't get to marry Gene Kohler. Marriage wouldn't make me happy. I'm a girl who loves all the way and who don't want to get smothered under responsibilities. And because I'm what I am, because I loved, I'm stuck up here in this hell-hole on a bread and milk diet, in solitary confinement."
She concluded the letter on a bitter note, "You should be here, Mom, not me."
It had waited too long, but at last the Big City had taken charge of the Little Girl.
