When Professor Mark Sullivan allowed himself to be talked into conducting interviews for the survey 'Sexual Habits Of Educated Women In College Towns", he was getting into more than he had bargained for. He was not only having every nubile and passionate female in the area opening the dark doors of her secret sex life to him, but he was finding his job made him a love symbol par excellence. All at once the frustrations of his own love life with Liz faded with the frantic attentions of Frances Durgan, Vera Geiger, Darlene Wilson and ail the other passion-motivated women who anxiously waited their turn to tell all. It had to explode, and one day it did. A bomb of sinful shame....
CHAPTER ONE
A small college town is usually pretty dead during the summer. The routine life of the town goes on, but without the vital spark that keeps it glowing the other nine months of the year. Usually Professor Mark Sullivan disliked summers. He enjoyed teaching, he liked the live-wire college kids with their predictable revolutionary ideas, their cynical optimism and idealism, their ignorantly blase approach. Each kid, he thought, existed in an intellectual vacuum. Each kid, he knew, was a contradiction of the past, and at the same time a good prof could tell almost precisely how each would turn out. People patterns don't change very much.
But this summer was different. Startlingly different, Mark stopped the car along the high bluff overlooking the Wyandot River, and gazed out over the wide expanse of valley, river, corn fields, farm lands, and the small town of Port Ransom sprawled lazily in the midst of the valley. Port Ransom, a nice quiet college town with nice quiet college people.
"I never guessed," he muttered, staring at the familiar scene. "I never guessed. Like a volcano under a quiet sea."
The women. Oh, the women. In less than a week, he had learned that all was not as it seemed for the women in this college town. There was the nice wife of the math prof. She had been, finally, vitriolic about how her husband ignored her. how she had hated him for years. Wow! And the others. Wow again!
Mark fingered the wheel of the. car. He hadn't wanted to do this sex survey at first. His old friend. Professor Arthur Coulson, of Eastern State University, had begged and pleaded with him before he had consented. It was important to him, to the women, to society at large. It would make Coulson famous. He would pay Mark well to help him. Even then, if Kellar College had agreed to give Mark a year's sabbatical leave to finish his book on Principles of Social Change in Contemporary Communities, he wouldn't have given the survey another thought. Sex, thought Mark What an enticing, dangerous, fascinating, explosive little word.
When Kellar College had turned him down saying he was needed to teach Mark had bitterly accepted Coulson's offer. He couldn't do much on his book in a summer. It had reached the stage of needing a long period of intensive thought. So this week, as soon as graduation was over, and the college students had streamed away from town, he had begun the survey, the first of the interviews.
The first woman had been the druggist's wife; she was grimly eager to tell her views about men. She had admitted giving her husband aphrodisiacs to arouse him, apparently without much success. Mark had been afraid to accept any coffee from her after that confession, and had left mopping his brow though the day had not been warm.
The next several women had the usual frustrations-husbands too tired, husbands too interested in other women, husbands grown cold over a long period of married life.
Then there had been Frances Durgan. Mark's hands started to shake. He had begun an interview with attractive Mrs. Frances Smith Durgan at about two this afternoon. He had wondered why this lovely former beauty queen of Kellar College had responded to Arthur Coulson's request, and had written to him to say she was willing to be interviewed. What could lovely Frances Durgan have to say to a sex survey? She had married attractive Bruce Durgan as soon as he graduated from Eastern State University, a football star.
Wow, thought Mark again. He had left Frances after two hours in which she had cried several times on his shoulder. He had told her they would continue the interview tomorrow. Tomorrow. She had told him her husband was impotent, that the marriage had never been consummated. She was so lonely, so frustrated and desperate that she was close to suicide. He had comforted her, and somehow one thing had led to another. He had been surprised to find himself kissing her, but she hadn't resisted at all.
He had torn himself away today, but-tomorrow?
Tomorrow. What would he do? After all, he was only taking a survey of women, not trying to solve their problems. But Frances was desperate. He couldn't stand by and let her commit suicide, could he?
Dimly he heard, mellowed and softened by distance, the college bell striking the hour. Five o'clock. Time to be going home. Liz was on edge this week about the survey. If he was late for supper again, it would give her another excuse for a tirade against "that dreadful guttery survey."
He started the car, let it ease down the narrow path from the top of the hill, then turned into the asphalt highway, and headed back toward town. As he drove, he looked at the streets, the houses, the people, with new critical awareness. It was as though he had seen only dimly for years. Those houses, with white curtains hung at the windows to hide the wretched truths behind them. Those people, with empty smiling faces, and terrible eyes. He shivered in the warm June air. Some of the revelations had been exciting; some had been sickening and dreadful. He hadn't slept much any night this week.
Liz was rushing around the kitchen, setting the table, dashing back to the stove to inspect the meat. It smelled good. He hadn't stopped for lunch.
"Hi, Liz."
"Hi." She was still angry. He went back to the bedroom, and hung up his coat jacket. When he came back, the hot dishes were on the table and Liz was sitting at her place. He sat down, feeling he ought to feel guilty, but feeling only defiant, exhilarated, alive.
"How did it go today?" she asked, after serving his plate.
"Fine. Very interesting."
Frances had brown curly hair, soft and fragrant. Her cheeks had been flushed, silken-soft, her mouth wet and trembling. Liz had red hair drawn back tight from her freckled face, and fastened with a rubber-band into a pony-tail. In the summer, she wore a pony-tail, in the winter a bun. She taught Spanish at Kellar College, two rooms from where he taught Sociology. Liz was a good teacher, a good wife, a good cook, a good intelligent woman.
They had been married six years, and they didn't have any children. Liz wanted a child; she had said so several times. Therefore it must be his fault they didn't have a child.
Frances didn't have a child either; her husband, a big husky football hero, couldn't give her a child. She had cried in Mark's arms...." women talk so readily," Liz was saying vehemently. "I just don't understand why they're so willing to talk to a stranger."
"I'm not a stranger," Mark said as he had said before. "They know me by sight as a professor at the college. Arthur explained all that to them in a letter. And I'm questioning only the women who answered and said they were willing to be interviewed. If they don't want to answer questions, I just say okay, and walk out. They don't have to say a thing."
"That's what I can't understand. All those women, willing to talk all about their private lives. I just can't imagine being so-so-"
"Unlady-like?" suggested Mark, caustically, thinking of some of the women he had interviewed. "I suppose you think it's unlady-like to have a private life at all, thoughts and feelings that aren't proper."
Her face went as red as her hair, and her green eyes blazed. "Really, Mark, that's unfair And it's not true. I have feelings too. I just don't believe in exposing them to public gaze. Any educated woman would feel the same, I think. You won't get a representative group of interviews if you interview only those sexy women. Most educated women-"
All Liz and the other women knew was that Mark was conducting a preliminary sex survey of educated women in a college town. They didn't know that Arthur Coulson, its instigator, believed the findings would show that educated women were much more frustrated in their sex lives than women of less education. Mark gazed at Liz curiously as she went on and on about shameless women. Did Liz feel frustrated? Did she really mind not having a child?
Or were their somewhat infrequent moments of passion enough to satisfy her? His mouth twisted. Moments of Passion. That was a phrase one of the women had used. Liz and he had had very few moments of real passion. They made love in a sort of formal ritualistic way which left Mark feeling dissatisfied and puzzled. He had wondered if this was all there was to it.
Liz was getting angrier. "I wish you'd give up this survey. It's going to make a mess. I know it is. How in the world Arthur Coulson ever talked you into his rabbit-brained idea-"
"It isn't rabbit-brained. It's a terrific idea," Mark protested. "Art has a real head on his shoulders. He's observant. He knows women-"
"So well that he won't condescend to marry one!" said Liz. "What does a bachelor really know about women?"
"Plenty," said Mark. "An observer sees more of the game."
"Piffle."
"Don't underestimate Art. He had read and studied, and he's already interviewed hundreds of women on other projects. That's where he got the idea for this one. He'll be famous some day."
"Notorious, more likely. The best educated professor in any penitentiary."
He shoved back his chair, left the table, and walked outdoors. Really, Liz was unbearable sometimes, so sarcastic and unfeminine. She scarcely listened to what he said; instead she spent all her time while he was talking, thinking up smart cracks to make in reply.
Frances had been different, listening to him with real attention, thoughtfully, depending on his judgment.
He walked off his anger and returned to the house Liz had finished the dishes and was reading the evening paper. She looked up with the funny tilt of her head that meant she felt shy and awkward.
"I'm sorry, Liz," he said.
"I'm sorry too, Mark. I just see red whenever I think of that survey."
"Don't think about it, then. Wait and see how it turns out. It isn't like you to be so prejudiced against a new idea."
Her mouth tightened. "Prejudiced? Well, I guess I am. I don't like the idea at all."
He sat down beside her and took the section of the paper she offered. They read in silence for a while, then Liz turned on the TV. There was a comedian, and they laughed at him, and almost forgot the survey.
By the time they were ready for bed, Mark had forgotten his anger completely. He went over to her twin bed and got in with her. She didn't object, but turned to meet him. He held her for a little while, kissing her. She was different in bed than she was when she was dressed. Her hair was down about her shoulders, and he liked to play with it, crumpling it and stroking it. She seemed softer and smaller in bed also. In her heels, she was almost as tall as he was. But in bed she seemed shorter, perhaps because she curled up against him.
And her face was more vulnerable, her shadowed eyes watching him through half-opened lids, as though she didn't dare close her eyes. He kissed her cheeks, then closed her fearful eyes with his lips. He pressed his hand gently on her breast, smoothing, playing, until she moved uneasily under him. Sometimes she protested at the way he touched her.
The interviews this week had aroused his curiosity. He decided to experiment. He let his hand move down to her waist, and caressed her slowly through the thin nightdress. He kept on kissing her mouth and cheeks so she wouldn't notice what his hand was doing. He lifted the gown carefully, stroking her knee, then her thigh. Then he moved his hand farther up.
She moved sharply, convulsively. "Mark. Don't! Not that way." She twisted herself out of his reach.
He sighed. "All right, honey." He went on kissing her, and presently they were joined in a slow cautious ritual movement, and he satisfied himself. She didn't seem to react at all, lying passively under him.
There didn't seem to be any object in going on. She seemed almost asleep. He left her bed and went back to his own.
He had everything possible that she would allow Yet again he felt the same curiosity and disappointment Was this all? Where was the blazing fire that should flame up between them? Or wasn't there any such fire? Did people imagine such things?
Involuntarily he thought about Frances. How would she react? What would she allow a man to do? He tossed restlessly for a long time.
Liz was sound asleep. But Mark lay awake long after the college bell had tolled midnight.
CHAPTER TWO
The next day was Friday. When Mark awoke, he was feeling excited. He couldn't think for a minute why he anticipated this day. Then he remembered. Frances. He had scheduled a second interview with her for ten o'clock this morning, and he had not scheduled any other interviews for today.
He had told himself it was because he wanted to go over the questionnaires that he had already completed and to study them. But if Frances was willing, if she should want him to make love to her ... She needed love desperately. She was hungry and starved for love. She didn't take it for granted, as Liz did. A ritual that took place not nearly as often as brushing one's teeth, but with about the same emotional reaction.
At breakfast he told Liz he was going to spend most of the day at his office at the college, to do some paper work, of transcribing the questionnaires from his notes.
"What about lunch?"
"I may not stop for lunch, or I may get a sandwich somewhere. Anyway, I won't be home."
"Then I think I'll work on my Spanish records for next year."
"Good idea. No interruptions."
He worked at his office until almost ten o'clock. Then he put the papers back in the small safe Arthur had obtained for him, and locked it. Some of this information was dynamite, as Arthur had warned it would be. He'd have to take good care of it, until he could turn it over to Arthur.
He drove to a street near Frances Durgan's home, and parked about two blocks away. He felt funny doing this, but something told him it was a wise move.
Frances opened the door before he had time to ring the bell. "Come in, Mark," she said. She was smiling nervously, timidly, her brown eyes eager and hopeful. She was wearing something red and silky, a soft bluish red that gave fresh color to her face. And the silk clung to her rounded figure in a way that made him stare.
They sat down on the couch.
"I'm so sorry I cried yesterday," she began. "I felt just awful later when I realized how I cried and cried."
"That's all right," he said. "I imagine this was all rather embarrassing and difficult for you. I'll try to phrase the questions so they won't affect you so much."
"Oh, that's all right. I want to tell you everything. It's probably too late to help me, but maybe some other girl will be warned and not make such a mess of her life as I did." Her lovely eyes filled with tears again, but she blinked them back and smiled.
"That's very good of you. Our purpose, of course, is to help other women-eventually." He cleared his throat and looked at the questionnaire. Most of the questions didn't apply to her, since her husband never slept with her at all. "Ah-before you were married, was your husband affectionate? That is, did he kiss you often?"
"Oh, my, yes. All the time. We'd go out in his car after a football game, and he'd kiss me and kiss me until I was just about crazy."
"Then did he ever try to-ah-have intercourse with you?"
"No. He'd put his hand up there-" She blushed and moved her hands with charming awkwardness. She seemed much younger than her twenty-four years. "Once I even begged him to go on and make love to me. That was after we were engaged. I said it didn't matter whether we made love right away or waited two months till we were married. But he said we'd wait. But he kissed me a lot."
"So you never realized or guessed he was impotent?"
"No. I thought he was waiting till we got married. Then, on our wedding night, he told me." Her eyes filled again. "He knew! He had known all along. He told me he had known for years that he was impotent, but nobody was ever going to know, he said. Nobody was going to laugh at him."
"Did he ever try to make love to you?"
"No. Sometimes he used to kiss me. But he doesn't do that any more. He's-really, he's cold. He doesn't even like me."
How anyone could have done such a thing to this lovely eager young girl was more than Mark could understand. Why hadn't Bruce remained a bachelor? His need for hiding his impotence must have become a mania for him.
The next questions didn't apply. He looked over the list once more. He didn't have any excuse for staying on. But he didn't want to leave. The silence grew awkward.
"Sometimes," she said, at last, "I get so hungry just to be touched the way he used to touch me. In the car, I mean, after a game. He'd put his hands on me, and I'd shiver and react to his hands just as if he were really taking me. But he won't even do that anymore."
Liz hadn't wanted him to touch her with his hands Mark looked at Frances, at her legs and her knees half-revealed by the silken red skirt. To touch her, to touch that softness and watch her react to him-
"Does he pretend to love you? Emotionally, I mean, even though he doesn't physically?"
She shook her head. "I don't know. Sometimes I think he hates me. Other times, I catch him looking at me, and I think he loves me still, and wishes he could do something about it. But he doesn't do anything."
Mark continued writing down her answers in the combination of scrawl and abbreviations that no one could read but himself.
"It wouldn't hurt, would it?" she asked, after a pause.
"What wouldn't hurt?"
"If you just touched me with your hands. Oh, I (know I shouldn't ask. But you've been so kind. And I've been looking at your hands. They're so big and they look so-so exciting." She took one of his hands in hers and smoothed it with her slim soft fingers. He felt a thrill going through him. Then she bent her head, and he felt her mouth on his hand, her moist lips pressing on his palm.
The papers fell to the floor.
He pushed her back against the cushions, and bent over her mouth. Their lips joined, parted, then pressed hotly together again. He opened his mouth for breath, and felt her mouth open also, and her tongue pressed swiftly, deliciously, against his. He groaned without knowing he had uttered a sound.
"Touch me," she whispered. "Touch me with your hands."
He moved his hands down over her breasts. The dress was thin and he felt the heat of her body through the material. She didn't have much on beneath the dress.
"Not there," she moaned. "My legs. Touch my legs."
He sat up, moved her until she lay beside him. His hand touched her bare knees, her thighs. Then he grew bolder.
He would not have been surprised if she had rejected him as Liz had done.
"Mark," she whispered, begging him now. "Mark. Oh, please. Oh, Mark. Oh, please."
His hands shook as he rose and undressed. Then he lay down with her, and found her body wildly, uncontrollably, seeking his.
He wasn't patient or slow with her. He wasn't careful or ritualistic. They joined in a frantic flame of desire that burned him. She was crying out to him and he didn't even listen. Then she was moving with him, responding to him as he had never felt a response before.
He almost blacked out from the violence of the physical peak. When he subsided, he was lying beside her, holding her tightly. She was crying, but in relief.
"Oh, Mark. Oh, Mark. That was so good. I wanted it so much. Oh, Mark. Mark."
He kissed her cheek half-shyly, proudly. He hadn't known he could be such a wild animal. He hadn't been cautious at all. And she had wanted it this way. She had wanted him in this wild primitive reckless mating He held her close for a while, kissing her, until she moved and sat up.
She said, "Mark. In my bedroom. Please. Let's go to bed."
He hesitated, thinking of Bruce.
"He hasn't been there, not for a year."
They went into her bedroom. He stared down at her. She was so beautiful, so pink and white, so silken soft and young and voluptuously curved. She held up her arms and he embraced her.
For a half hour there was nothing gentle in their caresses. She was too starved to hesitate or draw back coyly from him. With half-closed eyes, she gave him kiss for kiss, her hands pulling urgently at his shoulders, slipping to claw at his back. She was a tiger-kitten, he thought, a fierce jungle cat for all her pretty feminine ways. Deliberately he prolonged the embrace, to watch her face as she moved under him, and cried out, and crumpled up helplessly. Liz had never let herself react like that. He took fierce pleasure in forcing a woman to respond to him so uncontrollably.
In the next several hours he experimented with her as Liz had never let him. He kissed her body until she moaned, explored her till she trembled, made her wait while he devised new ways of caressing her until she was wild.
"Oh, Mark, you're so wonderful," she sighed.
"Are you happier now?"
"Oh, yes. So happy. So very happy."
He stroked her back, followed the line of her spine down to her hips, back up to her shoulders, down again. He liked touching a woman, caressing her with his hands. A woman was such a silken warm thing, like a kitten. She didn't seem to mind what he did, how far he went submitting with half-closed eyes, her hands timidly touching him in return.
He sat up presently.
"Mark, you're not going! It's only one o'clock."
"No, I'm not going yet. What time will he be back?"
"Not till six."
"We have lots of time then." And he had a lot of ideas about what to do.
Finally from a distance he heard the college bell chiming. One-two-three-four. "I'd better go," he said. "Not yet. Not yet. Stay."
She kissed him, holding him from rising, teasing him to make love to her again. And in spite of all they had done, he felt fresh desire. Once more, he thought. Just once more.
He bent over her, kissing the soft cheeks and chin, then her breasts, swollen and bruised from his passion.
"I've hurt you," he said.
"I loved it, every bit. When will I see you again?"
"Call me, at the college office. Don't leave a message. I'll try to be there every morning between nine and ten."
"I'll call."
"You won't try anything foolish, will you?" he asked tenderly. "You won't get desperate again?"
"She smiled, and her hands touched his chest as he bent over her. "Not now. You've saved me from despair. I'll always be grateful. You don't know how I felt before, not knowing what it was to be loved."
He had loved her today, all right, he thought. She was covered with bruises. She'd be sore tomorrow and maybe for several days. He told her this, but she didn't seem to care. So he went on caressing her, and rousing her, then teasing her by holding off till she grabbed at him wildly. Then he lunged at her, and they rolled back and forth across the bed, laughing until they stopped abruptly, and he quickly joined her because he couldn't stand waiting any longer.
When he got up, she lay there quietly and watched him dress. She smiled at him. "This has been a wonderful day."
He bent and kissed her mouth, then he left.
The slight breeze outdoors felt good to his flushed face. When he unlocked the car door, his hands were shaking so badly he had trouble fitting the key in the lock. He was abruptly so tired he could scarcely stand He drove over to the college, let himself in and washed his face in the men's room. Then he went to his office and sat at the desk until he felt more calm.
Finally he went home to supper-and Liz, who had spent the day making records in Spanish. She told him her accent was improving. He told her that was fine. And he wondered how Frances felt.
CHAPTER THREE
The next morning Mark could scarcely get out of bed. He felt crippled and drained of all strength. Fortunately it was Saturday, and he didn't have to go interviewing.
He moved his legs to sit up, and groaned aloud. He wasn't used to such exercise, pleasant as it had been.
"What's the matter?" asked Liz. She was sitting at the vanity, brushing her long straight red hair. Where the sun gleamed on it, her hair shone gold. He lay back and watched her with new pleasure. It was a curious thing, that wild love-making to one woman had wakened him to the charms of another, as studying one painting by a master artist helps one see the beauties of other paintings.
"Oh, I don't feel like getting up today," said Mark. "I fed lazy."
"You've had a heavy week," she said. "Why don't you go back to sleep?"
If she only knew how heavy his week had been! He stretched his long body, thinking again about Frances. She had the most beautiful body he had ever seen, with thighs and legs like an Aphrodite statue, yet warm and pliant, not marble cold.
He heard Liz rattling pans out in the kitchen. She had said something about baking a cake. Oh, Lord. Tonight was their night to entertain the gang. They'd all be over, the Reeds, the Kurtz', and the Auchards. The usual once-a-month ritual party, carefully, ritualistically held by each couple in turn.
He'd have to help Liz get ready. The wine to be chilled in the cellar, the living room and hall to be cleaned, the shopping to be done-.
He sighed, thought about Frances again. How soft and silky, how wildly sweet that first time on the couch, his first look at her body-
The supermarket. He found himself in line there half an hour later, in the solemn processional line that rolled past the canned vegetables, the boxed puddings, the frozen pizzas, the packaged meats, the fresh fruits to the cigarettes and checkout counter.
Behind him he heard a familiar voice. "Here we are again, Mark."
He turned. "Hi, Henry. Haven't seen you since marketing last week."
Henry Kurtz took out his pipe to make a simpering smirk. "Dear, dear, we just never get to gossip any more! Ever since the police broke up our marijuana ring-"
Mark laughed. "What are you trying to do, get us arrested?"
"It might be a refreshing change," sighed Henry. "For six years now I've tried all the psychology I can think of to convince myself that I really would rather shop at the grocery on Saturday morning than do anything else, including studying my neglected books on psychology. It doesn't work. Which reminds me-how's your book?"
"Lousy, thanks. How's yours?"
"Lousy. No work at all. Every summer it's the same. I can't convince anyone, including myself, that I am not on vacation."
They had reached the frozen foods, which had its usual bottleneck of customers. Mark glanced over his list again, mentally checking off the items.
"You and Gerry coming over tonight?" he finally asked.
"Sure. We always do, don't we?"
"Faithfully," said Mark. It was funny. They both griped about the monotony of teaching introductory courses at Kellar College, the monotony of never getting any research accomplished, the monotony of doing errands, attending the sami. parties, seeing the same people year after year, but neither of them did anything about it.
"We are intelligent men, aren't we?" Mark said aloud.
Henry said. "I've convinced my wife of the fact. I'm not so sure any more."
Sometimes Henry's wit was more keen than he realized. Mark pushed the cart on to the meats, then to cookies-cakes-and-pies, thinking about men and their wives. Would Henry, for instance, for the sake of breaking the monotony of his life with Gerry, take the chance of an affair with a woman like Frances? Or did Gerry satisfy him completely? At least he had a child, Ted, age four. Was that enough? Was he happy? He was in Psychology. Were men in Psychology more content than men in Sociology?
"I understand a fellow can get brain fever," said Henry. "You know, from thinking too much."
"No danger," said Mark, pushing the cart on to the check-out desk. "See you tonight."
Henry nodded.
He was a nice guy. They were all nice guys in the sang. Henry Kurtz and his wife Gerry. Ralph Auchard, assistant head of Science, 40-ish, and his younger wife Marilyn, a real beauty. Were the}' happy? She was a former beauty queen also, and much younger than Ralph. Went in for amateur theatre, and spent a lot of time away from Ralph. Had her marriage also turned to frustration?
And there were Norman and Elsa Reed. Norm had met Elsa in Germany and married her, a German war-bride, without the war. Elsa never talked much. She let Norm do the talking, and she sat and nodded her head whenever he looked at her. Yet she was a very smart gal, spoke six languages, from German through Russian. Russian was very tough to learn, thought Mark. Yet she let Norm do all the talking.
Did German girls mind being frustrated? Or did they think that was the usual state of matters? Norm and Elsa had two girls. Susan and Florence, close-mouthed and obedient little blonde dolls like their mother. He wished Elsa was on his interview list. He would like to know what went on in that flaxen head behind the china-blue eyes.
Marilyn was on the list. He looked forward to the interview with her, yet dreaded it also. Would he feel the same toward her if she turned out to be a Frances-girl?
He frowned as he turned into the driveway of his home. A Frances-girl. He had slept with Frances one day, and already he thought of her like that. What did she think of him? Her soft red mouth,' her trusting brown eyes, her eager frantic body-
After dinner that evening he found himself staring at his wife and their guests with a new serious appraisal He had taken them for granted all these years nice guys, good company, loads of fun, smart kids, the best of the college lot. Now he found fresh thoughts about them rising in his mind, new questions, new suspicions.
Elsa sat quietly beside Norm, her hands busy knitting a new sweater for one of the girls. Busy all the time, she was, her hands never still though her blonde face was grave her eyes lowered to her work, her mouth quiet, with little expression on the pink lips. She was always sewing, or knitting, or doing things with thread and hooks, something for Norm or for the girls or the Christmas. Did she use her hands because she wasn't allowed to use her head and her tongue? What did a girl think about who could think in six languages yet wasn't allowed to express any opinion diverging from her husband's?
Mark leaned forward. He hadn't heard her speak all evening since the greetings. "Pretty. What is it?" he asked her.
She held up the blue object from her lap. "A sweater, for Susan."
"Very pretty. Lovely. Adorable," said the other wives.
"Susan is growing so fast," said Marilyn. "I saw her in Church last Sunday. She seems so much taller than when I saw her in May."
"Yes. Inches she is growing. All her clothes I have let out for summer."
"She's going to be tall, like Norm," said Gerry.
"She's smart like her dad. too," said Norm proudly. "Got all A's this year."
"Smart like her mother too," said Mark, though Liz scowled heavily at him. "Elsa, when are you going to give in and teach at Kellar? They need a teacher like you."
"My family is first, thank you," said Elsa. She glanced at her husband, who was frowning almost as badly as Liz. "Besides, I do not know languages so well. I only learn a little of each."
Everyone knew this was a bald lie, and everyone knew why she said it. Mark felt a new anger and impatience with the men of his group. Why couldn't they stand a little intellectual competition? Why should Norm hate the thought that his wife was a lot smarter than him?
Mark let the conversation change. Gerry was chattering away and being amusing. Mark caught Henry's indulgent glance over the head of his boyish wife. Gerry was as friendly as a kitten, naive as a baby.
Why had Henry, the witty intellectual, the half-cynical psychologist, married a girl as brainy but gullible as Gerry? What a pair, he thought. Why did some men marry some women? Why, as a matter-of-fact, had he married Lbs?...." your book," Henry was saying in Mark's direction. "I say. let's do something about it. I haven't done anything for two years Why don't we go off on a fishing trip? Neither of us care to fish, so we could spend the time writing."
"Spend the time cooking and making beds and trying to keep warm, you mean," said Norm. "I advise you not to. Better stay around home and let your wives keep you comfortable."
"Besides, Mark isn't working on his book." said Gerry. Henry aimed a smart kick at her foot. "Ouch! What's that for?"
"What are you doing, Mark? I've seen you buzzing around town looking busy," said Norm.
"I'm conducting a preliminary sex survey." said Mark. "We plan to consider whether educated women are more, or less frustrated than women with limited schooling."
There was a heavy silence. The three women looked at each other, then at Liz. The men breathed a little hard, and stirred uncomfortably.
"A-ah-survey?" Ralph Auchard asked mildly.
Mark wondered if he knew his wife would be involved. "Yes. A sex survey of educated women Arthur Coulson's project. Sociologist over at Eastern State."
The gang relaxed visibly "Oh Coulson's. Yes I've heard of him," said Norm. "Has a good reputation, I believe?"
"Very good in his field," said Mark. "The project this summer is to get preliminary findings, try out sets of questions, set up data for a more extensive project."
"Ah. Sounds very-scientific," said Ralph.
"Ha, ha," said Norm, mechanically. "Should be very interesting for the interviewer. I expect the women make up wild stories."
"I should hope not," said Mark, stung. "As a matter-of-fact, most women are extremely honest. Their stories are sometimes shocking, but I've been able to corroborate enough testimony to be convinced they are telling the truth, sometimes for the first time. The truth is what is wild, much wilder than any fictional story."
"Really! Maybe you'll write another book," laughed Gerry.
Liz was serving coffee, apparently paying little attention. But there was a red spot high on each cheekbone that warned Mark he was in for a lecture after the guests departed.
"In this day and age," said Norm, "when women are getting away with murder in the name of feminine rights, I wouldn't think there was a single frustrated woman left in the U. S. A. In fact. I had to go to Germany to find a girl who was willing to consider marriage as a full-time career! Girls nowdays seem to think of marriage as a part-time job."
"Oh, they do not!" said Gerry. "That's not so!"
"Gerry," murmured Henry.
"That's a very interesting statement," Mark said. "The opposite, I believe, is true. It's the men of America who are giving only a small part of themselves to marriage, especially business men involved in making a lot of money, college men absorbed in making a big reputation so they'll become department heads-"
"Ouch," Henry said loudly, trying to provoke a laugh. No one smiled. The women were listening intently even Elsa. forgetting her knitting. , Mark went on boldly with his newly-evolved thesis. "The men of America make damn poor lovers. You know why? Because they are both ignorant and scared. Sex has been taboo in our Puritan society for so long it isn't considered important to learn anything about the needs of women. Men just take their satisfaction and-"
"Mark!" said Liz angrily, the red spots on her cheeks very vivid.
"And the women have to find satisfaction in other ways-like knitting," said Mark, nodding at Elsa She dropped the sweater as though it burned her fingers. "Men think more of money, power prestige success in their careers, than of their primary objective in life."
"Which is-?" asked Henry.
"Men are quite ready to say a woman's prime purpose in life is to have children and take care of a home. They seem to have forgotten that on that same primitive level, a man's prime purpose is also to have children and take care of the home Protection, security Not to make a lot more money than is needed, to achieve a lot more success, to gain much more power and prestige-"
"Hear, hear!" said Henry, waving his pipe. The others seemed too angry or stunned to make any comment.
Marilyn, who had scarcely spoken all evening said quietly "Ralph I believe we'll have to go soon. I have the play tomorrow afternoon."
"Of course," said Ralph, standing, his balding head shining nervously. One by one they all decided they really must leave, and in a few minutes they did. Liz closed the front door and turned on Mark.
"Well, you have really done it!" she said angrily. "Of all the disgusting, childish, tactless, foolish, stupid little scenes to put on! Look at the time! Just look! Ten o'clock! They never go home before twelve! Your friends! How you can do a thing like that to your friends!"
"It was all true," said Mark stubbornly.
"True! What the hell does truth matter!" Liz yelled. "Those were our friends! With friends you're kind, and thoughtful, and you smooth over matters they can't help. Poor Elsa! She'll have a devil of a time with Norm's inferiority complex! And Marilyn! Did you have to say that about children, and their boy dead only a year?"
"I wasn't thinking about that. Liz, I didn't mean...."
"You don't have the brains of a flea. You don't have the tact of a peasant. And you have the gall to talk about husbands being poor lovers! I'd rather be neglected by one decent blundering husband than wooed and chased by any cold-blooded two-timing Romeo!"
"Liz, could I say-"
"No!" she yelled, and went out to the kitchen and slammed the door.
He sank down in his easy chair, crouched over his pipe, and reflected that there was damn good reason for some husbands to neglect their wives.
CHAPTER FOUR
Elizabeth Sullivan often thought of herself as being several different people at the same time There was the boyish efficient Liz, brisk, hard-working who was a darn good Spanish teacher. There was the wife Liz, who appeared as her husband's equal partner the other half of the Sullivan couple.
There was also the bride Elizabeth "I, Elizabeth Melanie, take thee, Mark David-" The white-dressed, panicky bride who had almost walked out on her groom the scared innocent bride gasping to herself "What am I doing? Whit have I done?" She had maneuvered Mark Sullivan into matrimony, had twisted one ol his blundering compliments into a proposal, desperate because they had dated for four years, and he hadn't said "I love you."
So had been created a fourth person, the frightened girl Elizabeth, who had never gotten over being ashamed of tricking a man into marriage, had never stopped fearing the dream would end and Mark would leave. With shadowed eyes, critical detached spirit, this girl Elizabeth watched the love-making of Liz and Mark, watched, judged, found wanting, and feared for the marriage.
It was only by suppressing this fourth person that Liz could go on living with Mark, scolding him for bringing home a can of spaghetti instead of a can of spinach, reminding him to mow the yard, prodding him to get to his classes on time, worrying about him, wondering about him, loving him with a fierceness she never dared to show.
She dreaded losing Mark. She had never felt sure of him. He was so attractive, tall, slender, with his curly black hair, his thoughtful serious grey eyes, the shy warm smile that lit his face when he was happy When he wore his black-rimmed glasses for reading, he looked the perfect young scholar; other times he seemed a businessman, yet with an air of vagueness that meant he was thinking of deeper matters.
How had she won him? More important, how could she keep him? They had been married for six years, yet at times she felt no closer to him than when they were dating. He talked things over with her, relied on her advice, took her seriously when she told him her ideas about classroom matters, college politics, his colleagues. Yet they never tried to discuss more personal subjects, their views on marriage, why they hadn't had a child if each was happy with the other physically and emotionally. She wondered why Was it because she had feared to hear him say he was not happy with her? Had she avoided the subjects, or was it his doing?
Mark seemed to think more highly of her mind than of her body. She grimaced at the bluntness of her thought, but it seemed true to her. Of course, they were both college graduates, college teachers, intellectuals They had both cultivated their minds rigorously trained them intensively. The pleasure of the mind reading, serious music, philosophy, were more real and vivid to them than the pleasures of the body. Neither had gone in for sports or physical amusements, fishing, swimming tennis.
Yet their bodies were important She wanted to look attractive to Mark. He was physically very attractive to her. Yet he rarely praised her appearance or suggested she might look any different Did she please him?
Liz, washing the breakfast dishes, looked out at the June day, and thought about the fourth Elizabeth June was almost over. Roses bloomed in riotous profusion across the kitchen steps and under the kitchen windows This was the summer when Liz had vowed she would change things foT Mark and herself She had wanted to go to Mexico. There away from the college, their friends the peering gossips in the college town, she had planned to force herself out of the cold inhibited sham she lived She wanted Mark to know her real self, to speak to her freely as he really thought She wished to be able to respond to him to love him as fiercely as she dared. How much did he want of her?
She had been afraid to give, ashamed to be naked in her passion; he might not want her that way.
This summer was to have been a new beginning. In Mexico, hot, adventurous, exotic, she had thought they could come to a new understanding of each other.
Instead, Mark had not been interested in going to Mexico, and had involved himself in this sex survey of Arthur Coulson's.
She had felt so disappointed and upset that the meaning of the survey had meant little at first. Then abruptly she had realized what Mark was doing. He was seeing women in their homes, talking to them, asking the most intimate questions about them, hearing their confessions, learning their most secret thoughts and troubles. She had been outraged, angry in the name of all women, that a man should pry like this into women's secrets, learn, perhaps laugh, at what troubled them.
And then also, she realized, she was jealous. Mark never seemed concerned about her problems, except the more obvious ones connected with teaching and housework. He had never inquired as to whether she was happy in their marriage, if she was satisfied to lie in a twin bed while he slept in another. He had never asked if she wanted children, had never hinted he might want children himself. He had never suggested they could do more to make their marriage a better one.
Liz put down the coffee pot with a bang. Jealous. Yes, she was very jealous, that Mark was asking strange women the questions he should have had the love and thoughtfulness to ask her, and her alone.
The telephone rang. She wiped her hands and went to the phone in the living room.
"Liz." It was Arthur Coulson's deep confident voice. "I'm in town. Just had a quick conference with Mark, and I'd like to talk to you too. Mind if I come over?"
She hesitated. She didn't really like Arthur. She felt an instinctive distrust of attractive older bachelors who treated their friends' wives with affectionate interest, and remained bachelors. "Well-all right. I'll make some fresh coffee."
"Fine, fine," he said heartily. "I'll be right over."
He arrived within a few minutes. She had put the cups and coffee pot in the living room, deciding on a more formal note. She didn't care for the thought of entertaining him in the kitchen during Marks absence.
Arthur drank coffee with grace and charm, praising it, noting the room approvingly. "Such a lovely warm room," he commented.
"It's hot today," said Liz.
"No, no, I mean, the colors. Such warmth and gaiety. The Spanish influence. I think."
He had shrewdly hit a weak point. Liz had decorated the house in a modern style, with Spanish and Mexican touches in vases, drapery designs, copper candlesticks, two prints of Diego Rivera paintings. She had hoped this summer to get some Mexican items for the dining room and bedrooms, but there was no hope for that now.
"Yes. Spanish and Mexican,': she answered briefly.
"Color. The reds and off-greens are marvelous."
"Thank you."
After some fifteen minutes of this, and a discussion of interior decorating, he said. "But I must get to the point. You are probably quite busy."
"The housework And I'm preparing Spanish records for my classes this fall."
"Oh, yes. Well, you are always so conscientious."
If he paid her one more compliment, she vowed she would throw the coffee pot at him.
"I was surprised and dismayed as I was talking to Mark this morning to learn that you don't approve of our project."
"No, I don't. I didn't want Mark to do it."
He showed a suave distress, his dark attractive face serious, his black eyebrows raised, making his eyes seem larger and more magnetic. He moved one well-manicured hand caressingly over the smooth cloth of his knee.
"But Liz. You can't realize the importance of this survey or you wouldn't feel this way. Did Mark explain the whole project to you?"
"He tried. I think he was rather confused about it himself. The objectives don't seem to be definite."
"Yes. Well. Perhaps I should explain the full nature of the survey and how it is to operate. And it is important that you understand it. my dear Liz. Mark depends a great deal on your judgment, and when you disapprove, his work is affected."
Now he had hit her again in a weak spot. She quivered. Did Mark really depend on her judgment? Did he care at all what she thought?
"I don't know how much he depends on my judgment," she answered cautiously. "But I am curious. Where did you get the idea? And what do you hope to accomplish?"
He crossed his legs, leaning back. "I know exactly when the idea hit me. I was going to Europe last summer. I was on a liner, and all around me were frustrated women. Yes; I mean that literally. Beautiful, well-educated, cultured women, so frustrated they would take foolish chances to sleep with an attractive officer, a stranger, anyone. A most lovely girl, about twenty-two, told me frankly she was going to Italy to have an affair before she got married. 'I want,' she said, 'to know what love is before I have to settle down to marriage. Tragic, I thought, and so unnecessary. Why do American women go to Europe for love, when I know that American men are just as capable of giving them all they could possibly desire?"
Liz was staring down at her hands. She was stiff with embarrassment. She felt she shouldn't be listening, yet he spoke with a ring of sincerity.
"In Europe, I was shocked again-yes, a sophisticated old cynical bachelor like me was shocked, my dear Liz! The beautiful women running after men, sleeping with anyone, because they were away from home and 'no one would know.' Desperation. Of course, everyone knew. The trouble with Europe these days is there're so many Americans around cluttering up the unspoiled places." He smiled, with a wry whimsicality she rather liked. "I'm a typical American. I like to go to romantic places-where there aren't any Americans like myself."
"I know. In Mexico. I was always running into American school teachers. Loud, enthusiastic, and somewhat gauche. I detested them all:"
"Precisely. When I returned from Europe, I began to read and study, and I finally evolved this questionnaire." He pulled a small leaflet from his pocket, and glanced at it. "I incorporated all the questions I could think of, with the purpose of asking these questions only of women college graduates, both married and unmarried.
What is an intelligent woman's opportunity of finding a proper mate? Does she marry a man with one year of college, two years, or more? How many children does she have? Is she satisfied with the degree of love-making she receives? Sometimes satisfied? Not at all? And so on."
The questionnaire intrigued her. She wanted to see it, but Mark had already told her only he and Arthur read them, asking certain women certain questions.
"For example, you, Liz," said Arthur, as though answering her mental desire. "How many years were you teaching before you and Mark married?"
"Two years. But we had been going together for four years."
Gravely, he pulled out a pencil and marked her answer on the leaflet.
"And you are a college graduate?"
"Yes."
"And how much further education do you have?"
"The equivalent of one year. I got my Master's in four summers."
He wrote that down, then glanced up quizzically. "Shall I go on? It may help show you how this works."
The questions seemed innocuous enough. "Yes go on."
"Your husband is a college graduate?"
"Yes."
"His occupation?"
"College teaching."
He skipped several questions. He could see the pencil skimming down several lines of closely printed type. "Do you share many social activities, some, a few, or none at all?"
"Some."
"Are these in your home, or outside?"
"Both."
"Do you sleep in the same bed?"
She hesitated, but was carried on by a sort of compulsion to answer. "We have twin beds."
"Does your husband have intercourse with you very often, frequently, sometimes, or very rarely?"
She said, "Frequently," flushing. It wasn't really very frequent. Sometimes several weeks passed, and more.
He made no comment on her answers. He seemed to have retreated behind an impassive face and a leaflet and pencil.
"How often do you obtain satisfaction?"
"I beg your pardon?"
He repeated the question. Liz bit her lips. "I'm-not sure what you mean."
"How often do you achieve climax during or after intercourse?"
She was silent. He finally looked up. "Don't you know what I mean?"
Her mind was in a wild chaos of thoughts. Was this something important she had missed? What was it exactly? Why was she so stupid about things like this? Why hadn't Mark told her? And most important, was this why she hadn't had a child?
"I'm--not-sure-"
He stood up, laying aside the leaflet and pencil.
He came over to the couch and sat down beside her. "You poor child, don't you even know what I'm talking about?"
She shook her head.
He took her hands in his. His hands were big and warm and kind. Patiently and explicitly, he told her what it was to obtain satisfaction. "Haven't you ever felt that with Mark?"
"No," she whispered.
He drew her closer to him, and before she could think to resist, he was holding her hard and kissing her mouth. She felt the knowing passion of his lips, and wanted to pull away. He was too experienced for her, too smart with women. But the warmth felt so good; his hands were so expertly cunning in touching and fondling her.
He drew her back among the cushions. "You're so innocent, with all your wonderful qualities," he murmured. "You make a man want you, to teach you what ecstasy is. Let me show you, Liz. Let me love you!"
She must have been mad. For a few wild minutes she lay limp and let him kiss her wildly, and press his body hotly against hers. His hands were swift and sure under her dress. She could feel the weakness stealing away her resistance. Then his one hand touched her intimately.
Mark was always trying to do that, but she never let-Mark! Her whole body stiffened at the thought of her husband. Her will power flooded back. She gave Arthur a violent push that sent him over on the floor. She iumped up off the couch and glared down at him. lying at her feet.
Anger had come to her rescue. So that's what the survey is about!" she said scathingly. "So that's what Mark is supposed to do. No wonder you're both so keen about it! Get out!"
Arthur struggled to his feet, furiously angry, his pride wounded. "Now, look here, Liz-"
"Out-out! Before I call the police!"
"And explain what you were doing, lying on the couch?" Arthur sneered. He grabbed the leaflet and stalked toward the door. Then he turned and delivered a final blow.
"Liz," he said solemnly. "I didn't know it before, but you're just the kind of woman we're trying to help on this survey. I got carried away just now, but really, Liz, you do need help."
He went out to his car. And Liz burst into tears of fury-and frustration. She knew he was quite right. That was why she was so angry.
CHAPTER FIVE
Mark puffed at his pipe, and leaned back in his chair to survey the stacks of interview pages spread on the desk. It was a quiet morning in the college offices, and he had decided to work half a day in study ing the interviews, to see what patterns were emerging.
This was an exciting survey. Mark thought of the women he had met in the past three weeks. He had used to think women were pretty much alike inside. The interviews had changed his mind. Some of the women had faced their problems calmly, thoughtfully and sometimes with their husbands had worked out sensible compromises. Others had struggled for years to work things out, and hadn't succeeded. Still others, neurotic, obsessed (sometimes dangerously, Mark had thought), had blamed everyone but themselves for the insoluble difficulties they refused to face.
And their homes. There were intelligent women with immaculate houses, scrubbed-clean children, who yet found time for activities in the community There were lazy women who grumbled at how much work they had to do, and complained how little money their husbands gave them, and sat in dirty housecoats on dusty chairs to rave about the marvelous jobs they had given up to marry. There were wistful older women in empty houses, women whose children had married and lived a thousand miles away, whose husbands came home only briefly from their all-absorbing work, women who wanted desperately to do something useful, but society had no work for them.
Mark had found that the "volunteer" work that had formerly absorbed these older women was now largely being done by professionals. It was big business, and required business-like employees and techniques.
Some of the women lived in big houses, elaborately furnished, with expensive art objects; some in small houses, cleverly done in washable paints and home-made drapes, some in split-level homes with split-level families, each going off in another direction. He had visited an apartment with a tired girl trying to cope with a crying baby while her student-husband went off to the library to study, and he had visited a mansion with a wife who never saw her husband, because he was a businessman who wanted more power and more money, and had no time for her.
Mark shook his head, in awe, admiration, disgust. incredulity. That there could be so many kinds of women! Some were so courageous he had wanted to pitch in and help with the laundry and groceries and crying babies. Others were so neurotic, so selfish, he had wanted to walk out in despair a few minutes after the interview began.
The one clear point that had emerged was that the problems of no two women were the same. Each had individual problems which each tried to cope with in an individual manner. The more intelligent women seemed to struggle harder; to understand what was wrong and try to figure a solution.
One older woman had gone back to the sophomore class in college, which she had left to marry. "My husband jeers at me," she said frankly, her cheeks flushed. "He's ashamed, too, because he thinks our friends will laugh. But I don't care. I wasted three years of bridge-playing idleness after my younger daughter got married. Now I'm only 44. Do you realize I might live thirty more years? Or more? I couldn't face thirty years of bridge; it made me sick. So I'm studying elementary education. I'm going to teach grade school. And I'll get a Master's degree, too-just watch me!"
"I'll bet you will," said Mark. "You go right to it. You're a wonderful woman, and you'll succeed."
Then he realized he was getting involved emotionally again, giving advice and encouragement. The most difficult job had been to remain neutral, not to show his compassion, his concern, his anger, his sympathy. He had failed completely with Frances.
Frances. He had gone back several times. She was a beautiful woman who learned what he had to teach very rapidly, and was always eager for more lessons.
Yet the situation was dangerous. Bruce was sure to find out. And if Mark went back many more times the neighbors would surely guess he wasn't there on the survey business. He was known in town. And in a small town people inevitably talked.
He tapped his fingers restlessly on the pages To remain the competent disinterested interviewer he should not have become involved with any of the women It hadn't been wise for Arthur to have chosen him tor this job in Port Ransom. At the end of the summer among his recommendations, he'd tell Arthur to be sure to get persons who were not known personally in the college town, so they would not likely become emotionally involved with the women they interviewed.
The phone rang at his desk He jumped nervously. He didn't want to see Frances today. He didn't feel physically up to par, and she made heavy demands on him whenever he visited her.
"Hello?"
"Mr Sullivan," said the secretary from the receptionist's office. "There's a lady here Mrs Vera. Geiger, to see you."
"Who? Oh, yes." Mrs. Geiger was one of the more unpleasant women he had interviewed. Very sorry for herself, vindictive about her husband's shortcomings. "Well-ah-I'll see her."
He hung up the phone, frowning uneasily He hadn't planned on seeing anyone at the college office. Too public. And he had wanted to keep his professor's job strictly separated from his job as an interviewer.
He swept the survey pages together into a large envelope file, put the file into the small safe, and locked it Someone tapped at the door He went to open it.
Mrs. Geiger and the secretary stood there. The secretary, Mrs. Norma Cassady, was working to help her husband through college. She was a thoroughly sensible girl, dressed in a blouse and skirt today. The woman beside her, in contrast, looked like a tragic figure from a 1920 movie, in a black slithery dress, a small hat with a dramatic long black veil, a long strand of black beads almost to her waist.
Norma looked as though she wanted to burst out in a laugh. Her eyes were sparkling with humor Mark scowled at her. "Thank you. Norma. Come in, Mrs. Geiger."
Norma went away, and Mrs. Geiger came in past him. He wrinkled his nose, and opened a window. Her perfume was heavily overpowering, an exotic scent he didn't like at all. He had left the door open.
"Mr. Sullivan, I must talk to you-privately," she murmured.
Mark's eyes narrowed automatically.
"Of course. What is it? Did you wish to change one of the answers you made?" He was deliberately brisk and formal. , "Ah-the door? Couldn't you please shut the door?"
He closed it reluctantly, and felt trapped. He reviewed the interview with her rapidly in his mind, and remembered his diagnosis of her-neurotic, subject to fantasies. Probably close to being psychotic; he'd better be careful.
"You were so kind, the other day, so understanding I must tell you-" she paused, shifted slowly in the chair, her dark eyes watching him with a fascinated interest. She was smiling now, a determined set smile that bothered him.
"Something about the interview?" He tried again to be brisk and formal, reaching for a pad of papei and a pencil. He was grateful that the large desk was between him.
"Yes. I knew after you left that I had been rude. I wanted to apologize-"
"Rude? No, no, you weren't rude."
"Yes, I was. I didn't know anyone could be so kind so sympathetic My husband has taught me distrust of men. But I should not have distrusted you."
"Well. I'm glad," he said confused He knew some thing was wrong, but could he get her to leave? I'm quite busy, working out the correlation of-"
"You're a very brilliant man I couldn't believe that you were interested in me."
"We are-ah-interested in studying women who-"
She rose, and came over to lean against the desk at his side The heavy perfume she wore was stifling He leaned back in his chair with attempted casualness trying to get farther away from her.
"So kind, so sympathetic-" she murmured. Her eyes were black, the pupils enlarged. He wondered if she took dope. She was leaning closer to him "No one has ever been so kind to me. I know you are shy so I felt I must come to you."
"What?" Mark got thoroughly alarmed. "Mrs Geiger, sit down," he said with authority.
She kept smiling at him, a set terrifying smile and plumped herself down on his knees The shock knocked him back, and the chair tilted dangerously
"What-get up-look out-" He was trying to keep his balance and push her away at the same time. She flung her arms around his neck and he felt her fevered mouth against his cheek. He recoiled, and flung her back.
He grabbed at the phone as she reached for him again. "Norma-help-come here-"
The woman was fighting him now. She screamed hoarsely. Her eyes were dilated, staring. He caught her hands as they closed about his neck, but he couldn't pull them away without hurting her. She had twice his strength in her emotional state.
He felt the breath choked in his throat, his lungs burst for air. Her hands were strong, the fingers pressed against his windpipe with demoniac cleverness. He fought her, but he didn't want to hurt her. Handicapped by chivalry, he struggled to free himself..
The door flew open. Norma and one of the teachers, Paula Sprague, burst into the office. Norma halted, shocked. But Paula, an older woman, came over and took hold of Vera's arms.
"Vera!" she said loudly, firmly. "Let go. Vera. Let go!"
Slowly the fingers released him. Vera whimpered. "He said he loved me. He said he loved me."
"No. You were mistaken, Vera. I'll take you home now Come on."
Paula was a tall commanding woman, about 45, with short grey-black hair. She had taught English at Kellar College for fifteen years.
She drew Vers away slowly from Mark. Vera was starting to cry. Mark rubbed his throat. He felt like a drowning man. He coughed violently to try to clear his windpipe, but it hurt.
"Get him a cup of coffee. Norma," said Paula. "'I'll take her home."
"Will she be-all right? Doctor?" Mark wheezed
"No, she won't need a doctor. She's all right now. I'll call her sister to stay with her a while " Paula gave him a brief smile as she led the woman, weeping violently now, out of the office.
Norma came back with a paper cup of hot coffee. Mark sipped at it gratefully.
"She was really crazy, wasn't she?" said Norma wonderingly.
He nodded. "Didn't realize-thought just neurotic."
"Gosh. How about your throat? It's all red." She brought a towel ..oaked in cold water and he pressed it against his throat.
"Thanks a lot Norma," he grimaced-Look-don't talk about this-please? Bad all around "
"Of course I won't. Mr. Sullivan. I'm awfully sorry it happened. I shouldn't have let her come in."
"After this-no visitors here-" he said.
"All right." Her eyes were serious ana sympathetic
"And thanks for the rescue."
"That's all right. I was feeling suspicious about her She looked so awfully queer. As soon as your phone went off the hook and my panel lighted. I plugged you right in. I was kind of on edge about her."
"Grateful," he said His throat was getting more and more tight He decided to go home and let Liz doctor him up.
He left in a few minutes.
Liz was shocked, but listened without a word of censure as he told her briefly what had happened. She applied salve to his throat, and fixed some custard for his lunch. Her only comment was, "She's been like this before, with doctors and other people. She misunderstands their interest and thinks they are in love with her. She's been in and out of the mental hospital near Eastern State for years."
He rested all afternoon. He was tired enough to feel terribly discouraged about the survey. What good would he do, what possible good could he do, if he couldn't recognize a mental patient when he met one? If other women were mentally off, what good would it do to take their answers on questionnaires? Wouldn't that invalidate the whole survey?
He shuddered when he thought of the woman trying to kill him. She wouldn't have succeeded. He would have knocked her down, and apologized later. But still her fingers had closed about his throat; she had wanted to kill. Nobody had ever wanted or tried to kill him before. It made him feel very odd and depressed.
CHAPTER SIX
Mark went ahead with the interviews but now he was more cautious to appear detached.
It was a little shattering to his ego. but he realized most women did not want to become involved emotionally with him as a man. They wanted to pour out their troubles to a psychoanalyst or less extremely to anyone who would listen. It seemed to help them just to talk One woman commented at the end of the interview "I feel much better. I've been bursting to say those things Now I can put up with living a while longer before I'll want to burst out again."
Several wanted to be reassured that no one but the survey members would ever know the full contents of the answered questionnaires, and the identity of the women questioned. "You're sure no one will know? Then I'll tell you something else. This is the way I really feel-"
Sometimes Mark thought ruefully that he was merely a mental masseur giving momentary relief from chronic pain. He wanted to feel he was helping them, yet listening did not change their problems or offer any fresh solutions. The whole picture was much more complex than he had ever imagined.
The experience with Vera Geiger had made him uneasy. He jumped when the phone rang in his office one morning. Put it was Frances.
"Hello, darting," she said. She hadn't called for several days.
"Hello. How are you?"
"Fine. The coast is clear. All day."
"I'll be over."
"Lovely," she sighed.
He smiled as he put down the phone. How wonderful it was to have a relationship so simple and uncomplicated as this. She wanted him, he wanted her. They met, satisfied each other, and parted. If all life could be so simple, if all desires so easily satisfied-
He paused, aware of a problem here. If all desires were so easily satisfied, people would stop working, stop attempting, stop striving. Every good and noble enterprise as well as every low and evil one would cease.
He shrugged, locked up the papers in the safe, and left the office. He drove the short distance to Frances' house, parked a block away, and walked briskly up to the door.
His anticipation was rising swiftly as he thought of the hours ahead. She was so delightful as a love-partner, beautiful, provocative, amenable, insatiable, tender. Everything he wanted in one body.
She opened the door and stood back to let him enter. She was wearing only a thin rose-colored negligee and high-heeled gold slippers. The negligee was transparent.
As soon as she closed the door, he took her in his arms and kissed her hard. Her body was warm and pliant, clinging to his. But she drew back as soon as he lifted his head to take a breath.
"Come and sit down," she urged, drawing him over to the couch. She wanted to talk first. Oh, well the talk never lasted long. She was usually as quick to flame up as he was.
They sat down on the couch. He put one arm around her. and she snuggled to him with a sigh of content. He put his other hand on her breast, casually with purpose.
"Anything wrong?" he asked, slowly caressing her
"Bruce," she said. "He's been unbearable lately I don't think he suspects anything. But he follow me around the house, and kisses me, and wants to sleep with me."
He stifled his quick jealousy. "Well, that's what you wanted, isn't it?"
"Oh Mark' No not any more Not since von came You know. It isn't the same. He can't satisfy me now '
"Um." He frowned. Simple things did have a way of turning complex with time
"What do you think I should do? "If I refuse him very often hell wonder. Because for ages I've been trying to get him to sleep with me and handle me-you know."
He said, "Have you let him?"
She blushed, and put her head down on his shoulder, so he couldn't see her face. "Now, Mark. Don't be silly."
So she was sleeping with him. He was beginning to know her. In a way it was a relief. He didn't want this affair to become known. Yet, she was really his, not Bruce's. He had been the one to initiate her, she had been his bride, she had become a woman in his arms. It had been with him that she had learned what passion meant.
He crushed her against him in an excess of jealous desire.
"What should I do?" she asked again, troubled. "I don't want Bruce to guess about us."
"Put him off," said Mark, the man, rather than Mark, the adviser of women.
"Oh, but if-"
He tipped her head back against his shoulder, and kissed her soft red mouth in a long hard caress. His arms closed more fiercely about her; he pulled her roughly against him.
"Mark-"
"I don't want him to touch you. You belong to me."
"Mark-oh-"
He pushed her down among the cushions and her negligee opened. But for the first time she resisted him, pushed him away.
"Mark, wait. I have to talk to you. and after we start this, we never talk."
He sighed and sat up. He looked at her pink soft body, then looked resolutely away. If he looked. he'd forget to listen.
She swung her feet to the floor and stood up. Her brown eyes were earnest and troubled under the mussed curly brown hair. "Mark. I know that this is wrong and being with Bruce is right. Morally, I mean Because we're mairied. Yet I feel right with you and wrong with him. I get so confused when I think, and I don't know what to do."
The answer was easy, too easy. Mark knew. She should send him away and try to find a solution with Bruce, her husband. Perhaps adopt a child or two. That would absorb all her nervous energies and her time Sublimation. But he didn't want to go away.
She was pacing around the room, the loose negligee swinging about her, half-concealing, half-revealing her body.
"Everything seemed so easy in college. All I worried about was passing my courses. And Bruce was so wonderful. All I wanted was to be with him and later on having children. I've always been crazy about children. They're so sweet and helpless and dependent Then my senior year, when I was queen that was so exciting. I was on top of the world, sitting on my throne with everyone admiring me."
She had stopped pacing, and stood near the door way leading to the dining room her head back, smiling, regal, the queen in a rose negligee.
"It was so wonderful Mark You don't know what it's like, to be just a pretty girl all your life and then suddenly to be the queen! I was so happy. I've never been that happy since."
He smiled at her. pitying her this girl so hungry for admiration and love. He wanted to reassure her, to tell her she could always be his queen. Then he had a sudden playful impulse.
"Did you have a crown, one of those silvery things that they let you keep?"
Her gaze came back to him. "Oh, yes. I have it in my dresser."
"Get it, and we'll have a coronation again. I'll come with you."
He went with her to the bedroom. While she was getting the crown, he began to undress.
She found the crown, and held it up with a loving proud look. "See? It's still good."
He took it from her gently. "Now, stand at the edge of the rug, and turn your back to me."
She stood where he directed. He stood behind her, arranged her negligee so it revealed her breasts and thighs, as though it were a regal robe. Then he said solemnly, "I crown you, queen of love," and set the crown firmly on her hair, pushing it down so it would hold.
Her face was glowing as she turned around. "Now what?" she asked happily. He lay down on the rug, laughing. "Now, oh queen, ascend your throne," he said.
She laughed, looking down at him with bright brown eyes. She cocked her head, but almost lost the crown as it tilted.
"Without losing your erown!" he warned. She raised her head, then stepped one foot across him, one bare foot in its bright gold slipper. Then she crouched down slowly, keeping her torso erect, her head up.
"A little more to the left, forward, a little more," he said. He put out his hands to guide her, holding her knees.
She sank down gracefully, very slowly, to him. He watched her face, the proud laughing look changing to an excited, absorbed, half-fearful expression, then into desire, heavy, hungry.
At the last moment she fell forward onto his chest and the crown rolled off past his shoulder. But by this time she was not aware of it. moaning into his shoulder the rose negligee covering them both.
Later, she lay limp across him for a while. Then she raised up, "I lost my crown," she murmured
"I'll put it back on you, if you'll take your throne again," he offered, teasingly. She smiled at him and bent and brushed her lips slowly across his mouth.
"Not now." she said "Let's lie on the bed "
He got up, and watched her take off the negligee and high-heeled shoes. Then she remembered the crown and knelt to pick it up. This time he bent with her and put a hand on each curving hip. She looked over her shoulder at him. not smiling, her face fierce with desire.
He stayed all morning and afternoon, renewing and satisfying their passion, playing together, teasing, until they were both exhausted.
"Mark." she murmured, as he was leaving.
"Yes?"
"Next time you come let's play the throne same again."
She wasn't much more than a child in some ways, he thought. And he had enjoyed himself. "All right."
"Maybe next time I can keep my crown on. I'll practice balancing."
He bent over her one last time and kissed her shoulder. "Don't practice anything else," he whispered. "All right, darling."
But as he left the house, he wondered if she would keep her word, and not sleep with her husband.
Once he would have believed anything a woman said. He had thought of them as simple, open, honest. Gradually he had learned they didn't always mean what they said, or that the surface meaning was not the true implication of what was said.
He wasn't sure women thought of it as lying. This summer he had come to realize that many women said things ironically, as a subtly sarcastic answer to what seemed an obvious remark. When the man didn't get it, a woman shrugged, and thought him stupid. One couldn't take a woman's remarks literally. They talked in exaggerations, or at the other extreme in underplayed emotions.
"I was rather disappointed," said one survey subject, when her husband forced her on their wedding night, then went off to sleep like a contented child, leaving her to weep alone.
"We don't agree too well," said an older woman, whose husband had had a succession of mistresses masquerading as his secretaries.
"He never cared much for the children," said another, whose husband grossly neglected his family.
When Frances said her husband "never" made love to her. did she mean rather that it wasn't often enough to satisfy her? Mark wondered about that. Why didn't women say precisely what they meant? Why did they talk in such exagerated fashions?
Perhaps that was why women seemed mysteries to men. One had to have the special key to each woman the clue to her and how she meant what she said Without that key, there was no understanding her. She remained an enigma, until and unless a man cared enough to try to find her semantic key.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Although a week had passed since Arthur Coulson had "interviewed" Liz, she was still upset and disturbed. At first she had blamed him entirely for the scene. He was a louse to have led her on, then attacked her. It made her furiously angry every time she thought about him, but she couldn't seem to get him out of her mind.
Then in the middle of the night, several nights later, she woke and realized she had been dreaming about Arthur. He was bending over her on the couch, and he was saying, "I will solve all your problems. I will reveal all the mysteries. Only put yourself in my hands, and I will make you completely happy for the first time in your life."
Awake, she realized that in her dream she had been about to give in to Arthur! The thought made her furious again. But as she lay there, listening to Mark's even breathing, puzzled and concerned about the dream she began to be worried about herself. Had she really wanted to give in to Arthur?
She loved Mark. He was her husband. She distrusted and disliked Arthur. What was the matter with her? Why had she dreamed such a crazy dream?
She worried about it for several days. Mark seemed abstracted and busy. But finally on Saturday afternoon he stretched out on the couch and slept a couple hours When he woke, he said, "No more work this weekend' I'm fed up with working. No more till Monday What do you want to do, Liz, see a movie or something?"
"Gosh, this is so sudden." she said drily. He had paid little attention to her all during June. This was the first week of July, and a very hot day. She didn't feel like dressing up to go out.
"Well, don't say I never ask you."
He looked rather disappointed, standing up and stretching, his hair rumpled. He was younger and less like a scholar in his shorts and tee shirt. She didn't know why she was sometimes afraid of Mark. He was a man, but he had never hurt-
She scrowled. Why was she thinking that? She wasn't afraid of Mark ever, was she?
"What's the matter, Liz?" He came over to where she stood in the doorway. His dark grey eyes were gentle and concerned. "You look all fussed up about something."
"Oh, it's nothing," she began, then as swiftly changed her mind. "Yes, yes, it is something."
"Well, make up your mind!" he said, smiling.
"You know, Arthur came over the other day. He talked about the survey. Then, he-he asked me some questions."
"Questions? You mean, on the questionnaire?"
"Yes. He asked me several questions, and Mark-sometimes I didn't know what he was talking about."
Mark was frowning. "He had no right to do that. What the devil was he up to? He said he was just going to explain the survey to you."
"He said I'd understand better if he demonstrated the interview procedure." Mark had become so cross n'l of a sudden that Liz decided she couldn't risk telling him about Arthur's pass at her. She wasn't at all sure of her own reactions to Arthur. "Then he skipped down through the questionnaire, and he asked-well, about a climax."
"The devil he did!" Mark's face was red.
"I didn't even know what it meant."
"You didn't? Then you haven't felt-" Mark turned and walked away. He fumbled with some books on the table. Liz suddenly wasn't sure if he was angry or bored with the conversation.
"If you still want to go out tonight, why don't we go into town and have dinner someplace? We could decide on a movie later," she said, on an impulse.
"Okay, if you want." He sounded indifferent, but he took a shower and dressed up, and was ready before she was.
They decided on a French restaurant, popular with them both, somewhat informal with red-checked tablecloths, dim lights, cool wine, delicious food. Liz noted there weren't many people eating out that hot July night.
She felt alone with Mark in the corner, and more confident of herself. She was wearing a low-cut green cotton dress, and she had seen Mark staring at her as she was dressing. She had brushed her red hair into a French roll, sleek and cool above her freckled shoulders
"Mark, this interview procedure," she began again, over a third glass of sauterne. "Do you ask each woman all the questions?"
"No. Some questions don't apply. If a woman isn't married, we skip certain ones. If she is married, we skip others."
"And you talk only to women who are college graduates?"
"Yes. Only the ones who answered the letter and said they were willing to be interviewed."
"Then how can you possibly get a representative group of women? Shouldn't you compare results with the answers of a group of non-graduates, for example?"
His lean face lit up with interest. "That's what I've been thinking recently. What kind of results will we get with this procedure? It seems to me that all we'll have is an interesting collection of interviews. There's nothing to test against, no scoring method, no average or control group. I intend to have a serious talk with Arthur along these lines."
"Do you think he jumped into this without proper preparation?" She asked this carefully, her fingers turning the slender stem of the wine glass very slowly.
His eyebrows, black behind his black glasses, moved a little as he started to frown. Then they moved back again to straight lines.
"I think he's doing fine, as far as he has gone. It was a tough job working out the questionnaire. Right now, my opinion is that the job is a lot bigger than he has pictured it. He could well work on this for five years instead of one or two. He ought to interview representative groups of women in several college towns, working out statistics for several age levels, several educational levels, and so on."
"I see. And the questions-do you think they're all right?"
"Yes. Only-I'm beginning to think the interviewer shouldn't be-well, that's not important now The summer, of course, is simply a preliminary survey to test the questions and methods."
"Oh, yes." The waiter came with a tray of desserts. Liz decided on a rich-looking chocolate cake; Mark chose a strawberry tart. "This has been wonderful. We haven't eaten out in ages."
"No."
The waiter left. Mark said abruptly, "When Arthur questioned you, did you resent-or react to-the questions in an unfavorable way?"
She realized he had been trying to ask this question since afternoon. She considered her answer carefully, trying to answer honestly without revealing Arthur's behavior. She didn't want to protect Arthur. She was still confused about her own feelings, and until she had herself figured out, she didn't want to tell Mark anything.
"I was surprised at some of the questions. I was shocked at one when I found out what it meant. What can the answer possibly mean to anyone? Surely, such a personal-"
The waiter came back with coffee. After he had left, Mark said, "Let's go for a drive instead of seeing a movie. It's a hot night."
"All right."
It was cooler in the car than on the hot city streets. There was a slight breeze stirring, and the smell of green trees, green grass; the country odors at night were pleasant. She caught a whiff of clover, of hay, then the coolness of water as they crossed one of the bridges over the Wyandot River. Mark drove up the steep cliff road to the top of the hill where they could look out toward Port Ransom.
It was much cooler up there than in the city.
"Too cool?" asked Mark.
"No. It feels wonderful."
"You were saying the questions seemed too personal. That's what we have to find out, though. The personal answers, the truth behind the polite fronts." Mark lit a cigarette for each of them. She noticed his fingers were shaking as he lit hers. She wondered if it were the wine. She felt a little dizzy herself.
"It's odd, crazy," Mark went on then.
"What?"
"Women. Their answers. You begin to doubt-to wonder-" He stopped, staring off at the distant sky.
She wondered what he was thinking. She shivered a little. The wine had heated her; now she was chilled in the night air.
"You're cold."
"No, just a little too much breeze here."
He took off his jacket.
"No, don't, Mark. I don't need it."
"I'm too warm. Put it around you."
His hands touched her bare shoulders as he put the jacket around her. She could feel the nervous tension in him. Then he bent toward her and his arms went around her. She half-closed her eyes, stiffening, as he kissed her. She watched his face, lean and hard as it came closer again, the face of a stranger.
His hard mouth pressed against her mouth. She felt his body, warm through his thin shirt as he held her. She couldn't move away. He pushed her hard against the back of the seat.
"Liz," he demanded. She didn't know what he wanted or how she could give it to him. He always wanted to know the answers. But she didn't even know the questions. "Liz."
She kissed him, watching his face, but he wasn't satisfied with what she gave. She shivered with a chill and with a fear, that since she couldn't give him what he wanted he would stop asking her and ask someone else.
The wine and the warmth of his body softened her, and she was able to put her arms around him. His kisses were deeper, longer; he couldn't keep watching him. She closed her eyes, yielded, half-frightened of him and more frightened of herself.
"Let's go home," he whispered. He let her go, and she moved to lean against him as he started the car. He glanced down at her and smiled, his face shadowed and puzzling.
... At home she wanted to open windows and lock doors, but he drew her impatiently back to the bedroom. She was still wearing his jacket. He took it from her shoulders and hung it in the closet.
The wine was rising in her head. She stumbled across a chair. "Dizzy," she said.
He came up behind her and unzipped the back of her dress. She stepped out of it, and draped it over a chair. Then she felt his hands on her hips, pulling up the slip.
"I can undress myself," she protested. He paid no attention. He pulled off the slip, the brassiere. She reached for her nightgown.
"You won't need that," he said, taking it out of her hand. He pushed her down gently on her bed and finished undressing her. She felt strange, lying there naked, as he undressed. Did he mean it was too hot tonight to wear anything? But she always wore something.
She struggled to sit up. But by this time he was naked, and came back to her. He pushed her down again, and lay down with her. In a moment his body was pressing against hers, insistently, and his lips were kissing her, not her lips or her face, but her breasts, her waist.
She felt too dizzy and hot to struggle or protest. She lay limp as he caressed her wildly. He had never held her like this before, never touched her like this. His hands moved with slow, sure fierceness over her body, arousing her as she had never been around before. His hands went everywhere, even the places she had forbidden, but she couldn't draw away.
There was a fire in her body, lit by his hands and his lips and his limbs. Her legs felt languid, her thighs troubled, her breasts swollen. If he would only stop kissing her for a while, so she could get her breath. If only he would stop moving his body on hers. If only his hands were not so insistent.
Now his hands were on her hips, holding her firmly so she couldn't move. He was crouched over her, tearing her apart, ripping her to pieces, tormenting her, hurting.
She moaned for the hurt, writhing to try to escape him. He followed relentlessly. He wouldn't stop this time, he wouldn't let her alone. He was here forever, piercing her forever, pushing her too far. It was too far, too deep, too terrible. She lay limp, hoping only it would be over, over soon.
Then he was quiet too, lying on her, not crushing just touching her. His mouth was on her breast, and it was sweet to her. His hands were not hurting now. Her limbs were open wider than ever before, to hold him and it began to feel good. He lay there for a long time. The cool breeze from the window touched their hot bodies.
Finally Mark stirred above her. Holding her with his hands, he moved, slowly, purposefully and forced her to move with him. And the stiffness was gone completely, and she closed her eyes tight, not able to watch him, not wanting to stay on guard.
Something was beginning to ripple through her. a strange, frighteningly pleasant feeling. It seized her before she knew, so she cried out, and clutched at Mark, and crumpled up helplessly. He watched her, she knew, but she couldn't stop what she did; she had to hold him tightly and babble to him and cry out how wonderful it was.
He stayed with her all that night, holding her, making love to her again and again, kissing her as fiercely as he pleased. She could not hold back her response. She felt shaken out of her former limp surrender. He made her answer him, though she didn't know yet what she was doing.
She wakened in early morning from a brief sleep, to find herself held in his arms, her head on his bare shoulder. He must have wakened about the same time. She moved and sat up, pushing her hair out of her eyes. She hadn't taken the pins out of her hair before she went to bed, yet they were out, scattered on the bedside table and on the floor. Mark must have pulled them out. She looked at him over her shoulder as she moved to get out of bed.
He was staring up at her, his grey eyes dazed, wondering. She blushed, and reached for her nightgown on the chair. She put it on hastily, and went to the bathroom.
When she returned, Mark was in his own bed, lying on his back, still watching her. She couldn't think what to say, what to do. She had an impulse to go over to his bed. Yet if he had left hers, it probably meant that he didn't want to sleep with her.
They had always been so reserved with each other that now she had no clue to his thoughts. Did he regret last night? Was he sorry, or was he as embarrassed as she was?
She got into her bed again and pulled up the sheet. She was so tired, so relaxed she fell right off to sleep.
When she wakened a second time, it was almost noon. Mark was still asleep. She lay and watched his dark head on the pillow, the sleeping face of the man she loved.
She wasn't sure what had happened last night. It might have been an impulse that Mark regretted, a wild night that happened once in a lifetime. Or-could it be that was the way it ought to be, always, and Mark had been trying to show her what he wanted?
She wanted to ask him, but reserve had closed in again. When he stirred and opened his eyes, she closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. She was afraid to face him in the daylight.
CHAPTER EIGHT
On a hot morning in mid-July, Liz walked over to the college offices. Her pretext was that she wanted to borrow the car to do some errands. Actually she wanted to see Mark in his office, working on the interview pages, as he had said he was going to do and try to convince herself that her suspicions were unjustified.
She walked slowly in the morning heat, thinking over her vague reasons for suspecting something was wrong. All she really knew was that for years Mark had made love to her in a brief and somewhat embarrassed fashion. Then two weeks ago he had made love to her wildly all night. In the morning he had watched her oddly, seemingly angry or upset; from then on he had virtually ignored her as a woman.
Where had Mark learned to make love like that? And why hadn't he made love to her again, instead of rejecting her existence? It didn't make sense, unless there was some other factor, some other woman. The woman Liz had feared for years might have come, to take Mark away from her.
At the office, Norma Cassady smiled and said, "I haven't seen you all summer, Liz. How have you been?"
"Fine. Hot."
"Aren't we all."
"I came to get the car away, if I can."
Norma laughed. "Mr. Sullivan's in his office."
Liz thought about that as she walked through the hall to Mark's office. The secretaries called her "Liz." and called Mark "Mr. Sullivan." He was a difficult person to know, friendly enough, yet often remote, distant, absorbed in far off interests. Six years of marriage, and yet she didn't know him, she thought as she tapped at his door.
"Come in!"
She opened the door, and stood looking at her husband as at a stranger, his tall lean form as he stood up, his thin, tanned face, his grey eyes slightly altered in appearance by the black-rimmed glasses he wore at times.
"Liz? Anything wrong?"
"I thought I'd borrow the car today if you aren't using it. I need so many groceries to stock up, and also I wanted to look at the new furniture store."
"Oh, sure. I won't need the car today." He fumbled his pocket for the keys. Papers were strewn across his desk. In front of him was spread a large hand-printed chart. Liz was so relieved to see this business-like evidence of his work that she felt slightly giddy.
"Here you are." He handed her the keys.
"Thanks. Will you be home for lunch?"
"No. This is going quite well. I'll work on it all day."
"Mr. Sullivan?" One of the summer students stood at the door. "Are you going to give your course in Marriage next term?"
"This fall, yes." Mark went over to the door. Liz moved out of the way, nearer to the desk.
"I signed up for Criminology, but I got engaged in June, and my girl says I should take Marriage instead because I don't know much."
Liz turned away to conceal a smile from the tall sober boy.
Mark was saying. "You can change it at fall registration, the day the new students are signing up."
The phone rang. Liz picked it up.
"Mark?" said a woman's voice, before she could speak.
"Will you hold the line, please?" said Liz. "It's for you, Mark."
He had left the student abruptly and now he practically grabbed the phone from Liz. His face was flushed.
"Professor Sullivan here," he said sharply. He was staring at Liz.
Her hands were cold in the warm room. She waited, straining her ears, but could not hear the voice on the phone.
"That will be all right," said Mark, and hung up without saying goodbye. "An interview," he said to Liz. "Will you need the car, then?" she asked, stiffly "No. Go ahead."
She smiled at the student as she went past, walking blindly out into the sunshine to the car The sun was streaming through the trees, making golden lanes for the birds who flew in and out of them. She couldn't see the lanes very well as she walked along; they seemed blurred, golden and green patterns against the too vivid blue sky.
She sat in the car until her vision had cleared, then she drove around the block. When she turned the corner, Mark was walking down the long sidewalk from the office building toward town.
The voice had been soft, pretty, eager. "Mark?" And Mark was leaving the all-important papers to have the "interview."
Liz didn't stop to think about it. She drove slowly a block behind Mark, and followed him the several blocks to his destination.
He turned in briskly at the door of a rather new house, brick a one-floor modern house sprawled in lazy comfort across a larger corner lot. Liz parked several houses away and looked with strained attention toward the house. Mark was having an interview. It was quite possible he was having an interview.
But as she watched, the white curtains twitched m a window far from the front door, and someone pulled down the blind.
The bedroom window Liz drew a deep breath out of suddenly cramped lungs. She put her head slowly on the wheel of the car, and tried to think. But she couldn't think beyond the wild rage, the jealous fury that had come over her. Mark-and another woman.
She waited for two hours. Mark didn't come out. She finally drove past the house, noted the number, and parked at the other end of the street. She waited another hour. It was noon.
The blind was still down. Liz was tired of waiting, and she had errands to do. Some rigid obedience to necessity and routine made her drive away at last. She went to the grocery, and stocked up as she had planned, drove home and put things away. Then she went to the furniture store. They didn't have the end tables she wanted.
She drove back to the house. It was three o'clock. The blind was still down. But Mark might have left. She decided to wait till five o'clock.
The minutes crawled by so slowly. She felt foolish, sitting in the car. Children came home from school and stared curiously at her waiting there. Perhaps Mark had left long ago. It might really have been an interview He might have had a difficult time with this woman. Maybe-perhaps.
At four-twenty, the front door of the house opened and Mark came out, shutting the door briskly behind him. He walked down the street back toward home, and Liz watched him go. Her world was falling into small shattered bits with every step he took.
When he had disappeared around a corner, she finally started the car with shaking hands, backed up, and drove home in a round-about way so she wouldn't pass him on the street. By the time Mark came home, she was working in the kitchen, starting dinner.
"Hello, Liz."
She looked at him. "Hello, Mark," she said dully.
His eyes were too bright, glittering with excitement His clothes were mussed, his tie askew, not in the usual precise knot. He had looked like this several times this summer, she realized sharply.
"I'm worn out," he said. "I'm going to lie down for an hour. This heat is really tiring." He started past her toward the kitchen door to the hallway.
She swallowed. "Do all interviews take from nine-thirty to four-twenty, on hot days?" she asked, quietly, precisely.
"What?" He swung around to face her, his face for once clear to read. He was caught off-guard, guilty, embarrassed, surprised.
"I followed you," she said. "I followed you today. You went to the home of Mrs. Bruce Durgan. Is she pretty? Isn't she Frances Smith Durgan, who was Homecoming Queen a few years ago?"
Mark was still staring at her incredulously. "You followed me?"
"Yes." She stared back at him. "Are you having an affair with her, Mark?" She wanted him to deny it, to give her a reasonable explanation for the hours he had spent today. She would have welcomed an honest outburst of healthy anger that she could think such a thing.
"Yes, I am," he said. "I certainly am. She's a wonderful person, warm, alive. She welcomes me when I make love to her. She doesn't say, 'No, Mark, don't do that, Mark. Let me go, Mark.' She's a woman!"
"Liz watched his face with the horrified amazement of a person who is being struck across the face for the first time. "Mark," she whispered. "What are you saying?"
"I'm saying, yes, I'm having an affair. Yes, I'm not ashamed of it. Yes, I'm in love with her! Yes, yes, yes!" He struck the kitchen table with his fist so hard the dishes rattled. She jumped in a nervous reflex. "I'm glad you know. I'm not ashamed of it."
She wet her lips, trying to think what to say, what to do. "I-can't-believe-"
"What did you expect? Six years of marriage, and you still can't climb in bed with me! Six years, and you won't kiss me unless I force you. How long can it man stand an icicle when there are real women around?" He stared around the kitchen as though looking for points to emphasize his disgust with her. He saw the stacks of sugar, flour, canned goods she hadn't yet put away. "Look, look at that. You followed me today. When did you get the groceries?"
"At noon," she whispered.
"At noon. You knew I was in bed with another woman, but you went ahead and got groceries because that was on the schedule for today. Liz, are you a machine? A machine that speaks Spanish records, and fixes food, and does dishes, and washes clothes, but can't do any of the ordinary human loving things a man wants? Look at you. Your hair!"
Her hand went defensively to the long pony tail she wore in summer.
"You can't fix it up to look pretty and feminine. No, you've got to go back like a teacher, an efficient masculine teacher. You never try to curl it, or let it hang loose-"
"Mark, I tried-" She began, then stopped. She had gotten a permament once, and her hair had turned frizzy and unmanageable. The hairdresser had given up, saying her hair was a type that wouldn't curl properly with chemicals.
"And your clothes! How often do you even try to look feminine? Do you have to wear men's shirts all the time?"
She pressed her hand against the blouse. It wasn't very feminine, but she had thought Mark liked her looking smart and tailored. "I thought-"
"You said you wanted children. But we don't have any. You said you'd stop teaching and take care of the house full-time. You said that's what you wanted! Instead we rush from morning to night, cramming your housework into our schedule. I'm fed up with standing in line at supermarkets when I ought to be reading the new books in sociology. I'm sick of doing the laundry while you go to Spanish meetings. I never want to see another dishpan. If you were a real woman, you'd have known this without my telling you. And you'd have done something about it."
"I thought-" she whispered. She had the sensation that she was falling, falling slowly and terribly into a dark bottomless hole. "Mark, I didn't know-"
He leaned against the door frame, wearily. He looked worn and haggard, no longer exhilarated and stimulated. "Liz, I'm just explaining why. Why I turned to a woman like Frances. Why I never should have married you at all."
That was the cruel final blow she had dreaded She heard him walking slowly back toward the bedroom She sank down into a chair because her knees were giving way. She put her head down because she was afraid she would faint. There was a blackness before her eyes, and a roaring in her ears.
All her faults. Her hair. She touched it. hating the straight red thick hair. Why couldn't she have had blonde or brown curls? But she hadn't thought Mark minded. Often at night, he used to play with it before he made love to her. He'd stroke it and put his face down in it. She pulled savagely at the pony tail till her head hurt. But there wasn't much else she could do with it unless she had it cut short and straight-like a boy's.
A boy, she thought. Like a boy, in a shirt. Not even feminine. Not feminine. Not a woman. "Oh, Mark," she thought. "Not a woman? I love you as a woman loves, shyly', fearfully, achingly, hungrily, adoringly. What more do you want?"
She wanted to cry like a woman. But she couldn't cry now. Mark would hear her, Tears had always alarmed him. She couldn't cry now.
There was a heavy thick ache in her throat Slowly she got up, holding onto the table till she could stand alone. She must get dinner, eat. do the dishes get through the evening, get through the night Not crying, not whimpering like a hurt child She must go through it, not crying, not thinking about what Mark had said, because it would hurt too much.
Tomorrow after he left. Tomorrow she would remember, and realize what he had said. And then she would cry, alone, wretchedly with no one to hear and be alarmed.
Her mother had hated tears; they were a sign of weakness she had said She had taught Liz to hide her emotions, to control herself.
Tomorrow she would cry when she was alone. Tomorrow.
Dry-eyed, she fixed dinner, then called Mark. He came.
"You've even fixed dinner for me!" he said, half-contemptuously, half-angrily. "And I bet you never even thought of burning the meat!"
"No," she said quietly.
They ate in silence. She forced the food down past the thickness of her throat. After dinner, as she started to clear the table, he said, rather embarrassed, "I'll help with the dishes."
"No, I can do them," she said, coldly polite.
He hesitated, then went past her to the living room. He read while she did the dishes. She didn't want to see him, or talk to him. She stayed in the kitchen all evening, putting the groceries away, preparing some fresh vegetables for the freezer. By the way he got up and walked around, she knew he was restless and disturbed. Perhaps he regretted what he had said. Or perhaps he had thought of more of her faults. In either case, she was in no mood to listen to him.
About ten o'clock, she realized she was shaking with fatigue. She cleaned up the kitchen and turned out the light. When she went past the living room, Mark looked up from his book.
"Good night," she said.
"Good night, Liz."
She went to bed, crawling in thankfully, shivering even in the heat of the bedroom. She was so tired, so tired, and her body ached. And she couldn't even cry, for Mark would hear.
CHAPTER NINE
Mark went to the office early each morning for the next couple weeks. He felt uneasy about the scene with Liz. At first he had thought she had brushed off the whole thing. She hadn't spoken to him again about Frances; she hadn't said a word in answer to his angry taunts.
But he had soon begun to realize that instead of brushing off the matter, Liz had been deeply hurt She wasn't sleeping well at nights. Several times he had wakened to find her bed empty. He had heard her in the living room at one or two in the morning, the radio playing very softly. Twice when he came home in the evenings her eyes had been red, as though from crying. Yet she didn't say a word to him about the affair. She scarcely spoke to him at all.
He wished she'd fight it out with him. There were other arguments he could have used, other faults he could have thrown at her. This silence was hard to take.
She didn't ask him to do the shopping any more. Instead, she had bought a shopping cart and walked to the grocery with it. He felt guilty about that. But it was her job, wasn't it? He was supposed to earn the living, she was supposed to do the housework. What would happen when school started and she went back to teaching? The double work would probably be too much for her then.
He missed their conversations in the evenings. She worked in the kitchen most of the time, putting up things for the winter. He hadn't realized how much he had depended on talking things over with Liz. She had a fine cool judgment that he valued. Not feminine, he thought, and grimaced.
Liz was still wearing her hair in a pony tail, and wearing the same boyish shirts. It was as though she didn't care what he thought. Oh, well, he shrugged, if she didn't care, Frances did. She was feminine enough for any man, with her thin negligees, her frivolous slippers, her teasing body.
His new life was fascinating. He was learning so much about women, how different they were, what crazy ideas they had, what funny slants they had on life. Love was more important to them than money, and they cared little for power or prestige. Their interests were husbands, children, homes, gossip, clothes, social life-instead of work, pay raises, careers, automobiles, sports.
He laughed when he realized how surprised he had been to discover that men and women were so different Of course they were different! And may they keep on being very different, he thought approvingly.
Toward the end of July, as it turned hot and humid, he got rather restless. The interviews were still exciting, but he was getting tired. Usually he and Liz spent the summer getting ready for classes in the fall (if neither had to teach in summer school), in resting and relaxing. Sometimes they went up to Canada in the hottest weather, saw some Shakespeare, drove around the Great Lakes.
He wouldn't be ready for school when it started. This was a heavy price to pay for an exhilarating summer. But he wouldn't have exchanged it for any quiet peaceful summer he and Liz had had.
One afternoon he was scheduled for an interview with a "Miss Darlene Wilson," aged 23. The name was vaguely familiar to him, and vaguely distasteful. But it didn't connect until he saw her in the doorway of her apartment.
"Miss Wilson?" he asked briskly, trying not to stare at the big blonde girl dressed (or undressed) in a red halter and black shorts. She was tanned all over as far as one could see, and one could see quite far. Mark thought briefly of Liz as he had seen her at noon, m a shirt and cotton skirt and Mexican sandals looking cool and comfortable even in the warm kitchen.
The girl smiled right into his eyes. She was as tall as he was. "Hello, Professor Sullivan!"
Then he remembered her. Darlene, the girl who was always asking questions in Marriage Class, questions that made the girls blush and the boys snicker uneasily. He had blown his top to Liz more than a dozen times that term. Yes, he remembered Darlene, all too well.
"Come in," she said. "It's just a small place, but I'm very comfy."
He refused the seat next to her on the couch, and drew up instead a hard-backed chair. "This won't take long," he began quickly.
"Oh, take as long as you want, Professor! I don't care if it takes all day and all night."
"I'll explain the procedure first, then we'll go through the questions." Mark felt so on edge he was willing to botch the interview and junk it later. This girl reminded him a little of Vera Geiger. There was the same too-bright glitter in her eyes, the same fixed smile. But this girl shouldn't be neurotic. Probably just excited, maybe over-sexed.
He went very rapidly through the preliminaries, aware she was pretending to listen, not really taking in the instructions. She kept staring at him as she leaned back against the couch. She was a buxom girl, heavily built, with a large bust, large legs, a waist so unnaturaly small as to suggest she exercised immoderately to get it that way. Her hair was short and straight, cut in a jagged fashion over her ears, with lighter blonde streaks where the bleach had been unevenly applied. Her greenish-blue eyes were ringed with eye-shadow and mascara.
She was so big he found himself wondering how a man could make love to her. She would be overwhelming. She would have trouble finding a husband. From his experience this summer, he figured that in desperation she would end up marrying a man smaller than she, mousy and dominated, and she would hen-peck him to the intense frustration of both of them. Arthur Coulson had a cynical theory that neurotic people picked the precisely wrong mates for themselves, exactly the ones who would increase their problems.
"Name?"
"Darlene Wilson."
"Age?"
"Twenty-three."
"You are a college graduate?"
She giggled. "Yep! I made it. Graduated a year ago. Everybody said they thought I'd a got married and dropped out long ago."
Under the lashes, her eyes seemed vaguely frightened for a moment, as though she too had wondered why she hadn't gotten married.
He asked several more routine questions, then he had to plunge into the more intimate ones.
"Have you had intercourse with men?"
"Ah-well-yes, I have. Some."
It was too much to hope for that she hadn't He sighed as he went on with the related questions She wiggled on the couch as she answered evidently excited by the words.
"Yes-yes, I have, lots. Sure. That too All the boys wanted that with me. No, not the same ones ever. Mostly just once with each boy. They didn't ask me out again, except a couple guys."
He was perspiring in the warm room. She watched him sharply as he drew out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead.
"Hot today, isn't it?" she said. She got up. "Would you like a beer?"
"No! No, thanks. That makes me hotter."
She was standing near his chair. She towered over him, so that he finally stood up uneasily.
"Perhaps we should continue this another day," he suggested, wanting to get away. She wore a heavy overpowering perfume, a fragrance that lingered in the room. And she was too close.
"I bet you get tired, just asking questions," she suggested. She smiled at him and moved closer. "I bet you'd rather try things out yourself."
"I don't know what you mean," he said, knowing perfectly well what she meant.
"I'll show you. This should answer lots of the questions," she said. She flung her arms around him so suddenly he dropped the leaflets and pencil, and staggered back against the couch. She kissed him on the mouth with her open mouth and pushed against him so heavily he fell down on the couch. She was a big husky girl. When she fell down on top of him, it knocked the breath out of him.
In the time it took him to recover, she had settled herself on top of him and was opening his clothing. "Hey-wait-" he gasped. She ripped off her shorts. She had to sit up to get them off her legs, and he got his strength enough to pull away from her and roll off the couch. He fell on his back on the floor. She flung herself down on top of him and for a wild frantic moment he felt her bare legs and thighs closing on him.
With a tremendous effort he shoved her off and staggered to his feet. She lay, inviting, on her back. "Come on," she gasped. "Come on!" He backed away from her, trying to control a primitive surge of desire that made him want to throw himself down on her and try out this big woman. He had never had a woman like her. She was so passionate, so direct and hungry, that she would probably be a terrific experience.
What was he thinking? He looked away from her and tried to get control of himself. He thought of Liz, so calm, so cool and controlled. He drew a deep breath and straightened his clothes. H. picked up the leaflets and pencil and put them in his pocket.
Then he found he could look at her again, without desire.
"I think this had better conclude our interview," he said, with what dignity he could muster.
She sat up slowly, her bare thighs looking incongruous on the braided rug Her eyes were blazing with shame and anger, her tanned face heavily flushed.
"You don't want me. huh? You don't want me?"
"I'm a married man," he said, gently. She had been hurt by his rejection, her pride hurt and her body frustrated. "I'm sorry, Miss Wilson. Some day you'll marry, someone suitable for you. He'll be a lucky man."
"Get out!" she spat. She stood up wearing only the red halter, looking like an Amazon stripped for battle.
He got out fast, and ran down the steps out of the apartment into the hot Tuly sunshine The clean dry heat outside felt good after the perfume musky heat of the apartment.
He went back to his office but he couldn't work He kept thinking about Darlene and her frustrated body and how. unaccountably without loving her or even liking her he had wanted that body.
Men were a strange lot, he finally admitted ruefully.
He went home and took a cold shower, and felt better. But he couldn't quite get rid of the memory of Darlene's bare legs and lower body, as she had lain, open for him and wanting him.
He thought of all the years he had been shy of women. He had feared a woman would laugh at him if he showed desire, showed that he needed a woman. He had even feared Liz, because she seemed so sure of herself, so in control of herself.
He looked at himself several times in the bathroom mirror, trying to see Mark Sullivan as the world saw him. Not attractive in a movie-star fashion, not handsome. Yet women were attracted to him, wanted him, desired him. Darlene had tried to seduce him, in a very primitive manner, and had almost succeeded. What had she seen in him?
His whole concept of himself was changing. He had thought himself a scholar, a professor, a man with a living to make by his brain, not a man whom women would admire. Yet this summer, a beautiful woman had become his mistress. Now a heavily sexed girl had attempted to seduce him.
He grimaced at his own image in the mirror, to drive away the pleased grin he had discovered on his face.
CHAPTER TEN
Relations continued to be cold between Liz and Mark. He saw Frances often enough to use up all the sexual energies he had. He hadn't even kissed Liz since the day she had discovered his affair with Frances.
He didn't want to admit even to himself that Frances was becoming something of a bore. He had been a dope to begin the "Throne Game," as she called it. Like a child, she persisted in playing it. wanting it each time he came. She drew it out, elaborating the crowning of the queen, the procession, the ascending of the throne. She never seemed to tire of it, whereas he had wearied of it after two or three plays.
And she never had anything to talk about beyond complaining of Bruce's behavior, elaborating on the time she was Homecoming Queen, or praising him for being a wonderful lover. He would have enjoyed the latter topic if she hadn't expected him to keep proving how wonderful he was with new and varied experiments in making love.
Sometimes he wanted simply to hold her in his arms, hug her fiercely, then climb on and finish it. But she didn't like it that way. She would pout and say he wasn't being nice.
She was sweet, though, still curious, agreeable, complaisant, willing to let him do anything his mind could conceive in the way of making love. They had progressed far this summer. Mark had learned as much as Frances had.
The first day of August was a hot humid day, promising even early in the morning to be a scorcher. Henry Kurts parked his car behind Mark's at the college, and walked with him into the comparatively cool stone building where their offices were.
They exchanged remarks about the weather, in general uncomplimentary. Then at the door of Mark's office, Henry said, "Oh, yes. Something to discuss with you."
"Come on in," said Mark. Henry sat down near the desk, crossing his legs easily. Mark opened windows, set down his briefcase, then finally sat at the desk. "The schedule changed for fall?"
"No, not that I know." Henry rubbed his chin, his usually calm boyish face showing a slight distress. "I hate to speak of this, Mark. You know, the survey you're doing-touchy subject."
"Yes, quite." Mark felt rather amused. "Hate to say it, but it's probably the cause of some new gossip making the rounds."
"Oh, what's that?"
Henry shifted in the chair. "It's probably because it's necessary for you to interview the ladies at all different times, but there's getting to be some persistent talk about you and one of the ladies."
"Who?" Mark no longer felt at all amused.
"According to rumor, you're seeing a little too much of a Mrs. Bruce Durgan."
Mark looked into Henry's direct gaze, and the psychologist probably read him quite clearly. Mark looked away first.
"I see. I suppose there'll be all sorts of talk about this summer." He might have guessed people would notice. People always noticed in a small town. He couldn't spend every few days with Frances without people realizing it was too often.
"Oh, all sorts," said Henry. "Touchy subject, that survey."
He probably knew a lot more than he said. Henry Kurtz was a good friend, thought Mark. A lot of men would have let a friend get into serious trouble before daring to mention the gossip.
He'd listen, all right. He'd be careful from now on. There were other ways to see Frances, not nearly so risky as going right to her house.
"Appreciate your mentioning it," said Mark, pleasantly. "You never know what people will say."
Henry got up at once. "Not at all. Did you get a copy of the tentative fall orientation schedule?"
"Yes. I've looked it over, but haven't studied it yet."
"Let me know if you have any suggestions." Henry left, closing the door gently behind him. Henry was a wise and tactful man.
That same day, only two hours later, Miss Paula Sprague tapped at Mark's door. She came in for a minute, and stayed an hour and a half.
"I just came in to gossip a minute, Mark," she said.
He offered her a cigarette, which she accepted. He was grateful to her for the rescue from Vera Geiger, but he had told her that already, and she didn't like repetition, as she told her English classes severely.
Paula was in her mid-forties, her black hair heavily streaked with grey. She was a tall woman, with authority in her appearance and gestures. Some of the men on the faculty were half-afraid of her, and joked behind her back about women who were too mannish. Mark didn't know her very well. She had taught at Kellar College for fifteen years, and had been teaching when Mark came to the faculty. But she kept to herself pretty much.
She smoked the cigarette in short, business-like puffs.
"Hot today," said Mark.
"Extremely humid," she replied. "A summer like this, people do crazy things. I saw in the paper last night that a woman tried to kill her husband. She claimed he opened the refrigerator door too often."
Mark laughed politely. "No kidding." He had seen the item, and had thought how stupid some people were, or how avid for excitement, that they could work up a killing quarrel over a refrigerator.
"Crazy things." Paula said. "Which reminds me of a silly bit of gossip I overheard."
"About me?" asked Mark, stiffening. "Well-yes, it was. I suppose this survey business has people rather churned up."
"What was the gossip?"
"I'm sorry, probably shouldn't have mentioned it. Just that you seemed a little too interested in one or two women. Might be jealousy, you know! You're an attractive man!" She was smiling, but her black eyes were keen and anxious.
"Thanks." He turned to stare out the window. Twice in one morning. The gossip must be really getting around. "I appreciate your telling me. Well, only one more month of the survey, and my part will be finished. I'm only on for the summer, you know."
"That's what I heard. People are very interested in the survey, keenly interested. Aside from the gossip. I've heard several women discussing it-not in public, but in private you realize, when their husbands weren't around, either. And they agreed it could be a good thing."
"Really?" He swung around to face her again. "Was that what they thought?"
"Yes. Women aren't always as content with their husbands and their marriages as they may appear to be, Mark The women seemed to think there was a great deal that could be done to improve relations. But each one said she wasn't going to complain first!"
"That's very interesting." He tapped his fingers on the desk.
"And it isn't only the married women, Mark," Paula went on after a pause. "The unmarried ones, like me, can't talk much about it. Everyone even in this enlightened age, seems to think a spinster is someone who hasn't caught a man because she's too odd and eccentric to attract anyone."
"Oh, I don't think so!" Mark protested. She gave him a wry smile, and he realized suddenly how sensitive she was about this. "If your survey, or some survey would only reveal why men act the way they do, I'd be the first to step in line for a copy, believe me! The crazy, goofy, illogical things they'll do!" She shook her head.
"Such as?" Mark probed, hoping she would say more. Women like Paula were an enigma to him.
"Such as the guy I thought I was going to marry," Paula burst out. Her face began to flush, the black eyes to sparkle with anger. "Maybe you'd like to hear. It might amuse you."
"Women's problems don't amuse me. But they do interest and concern me very much."
She settled back in the chair. "Well. I guess my problems began at home. My sister was married, unhappily, later got a divorce and came back home to live. We took care of our parents till they died. One summer, I was restless. I was about thirty. I'd always thought I'd marry someday, when the right man came along. I thought he would come along and find me, and all I had to do was wait. That summer, I looked around, and woke up to the fact that the right man wasn't in Port Ransom, and no one had come looking. So I thought I'd better go out and find him myself."
She smiled, the wry, self-deprecating smile that meant she was saying things that hurt her inside. "So-you went outside," he prodded gently. "Yes. My excuse-summer school. I went to an eastern university that attracts graduate students, a large proportion men. And sure enough, I found him. Only he was married." She drew a heavy breath. "He was even taller than me, a big man, older, not hand some exactly, but very good features. I noticed him first because he seemed as shy among the other graduate students as I felt. We talked, had coffee between classes. I learned he was married, and had two children Only his wife was in a mental institution."
"Ah."
She looked down at her large strong hands. "I was the usual fool. I slept with him that summer. Most of the time. I was absolutely crazy about him. It seemed to me that we were perfect mates. Our interests were the same, our tastes in music. Would you believe it sometimes he would start a sentence and I would finish it. Or the other way."
"I see."
"But we couldn't marry, because of his wife. I understood that, but we loved each other so much, I kept hoping something would clear the way for us and we could be married. I even prayed. Not for her death but for a release-you know. Something. So we could marry. We wrote to each other for three years One summer we had two weeks together. I thought it was sheer heaven." She smiled, twistedly, again.
Then, one winter, around Thanksgiving, he wrote that his wife had gone out in a storm, had contracted pneumonia, and had died. My heart turned over inside me. I couldn't believe it. I didn't wish the poor woman harm, but it seemed like a miracle. I wrote at once. I wondered to myself how soon he could decently remarry I even planned my wedding dress. There was a dress in a store-a beige taffeta-with a short jacket, and embroidered in gold." She drew a deep heavy breath that was more than a sigh. It was like the dying gasp of faith itself.
"And then-"
"His wife had a sister, who wasn't married. I knew about her. She had taken care of the children while he went to school that summer. She was the children's favorite aunt; they adored her. Just before Christmas, as I was about to buy my wedding dress, he wrote and said he had married his wife's sister soon after the funeral of his wife. Everyone understood, he said, and she had always loved the children."
She twisted her hands fiercely. She added, as an after-thought. "It was years before I could enjoy any part of Christmas again. The smell of pine was nauseating to me, and I hated all those carols, they were so gay."
Mark sat back in his swivel chair. He had gotten so involved in her story, in watching the tormented expressions of her face, that he could have wrung the neck of the man who had betrayed her. "The louse I"
She started. She seemed to have forgotten he was there. She smiled faintly at his vigorous word.
"Oh. It was long ago. I just never understand why that's all. Why did he lead me on? Why did he propose and talk about our married life together when he wasn't free? Then marry another woman-so fast-when he was free? I pride myself on being a logical woman, Mark, and this wasn't logical. All I could believe for years was that he had found me an easy fool."
"A loving woman," Mark corrected. "We all take chances when we love. Fortunately, not every man is out to deceive a loving credulous woman. I suppose he himself couldn't say why he led you on, then married the other woman. Maybe he was ashamed later, maybe very sorry he hadn't married you. a perfect mate for him."
"It's kind of you to put it that way. You know, it was years before I would concede that a man could be kind. Or decent, or honorable. I really had a mental quirk about men. Then my sister remarried, a really nice guy, and I began to get over it. Too late, though. I'll never marry now."
"I don't know about that." Mark was surprised to hear himself say this. "If you'd let the warmth you have inside show through, if you'd let yourself trust again. I think you might finally find the right man, the companion you want. So much seems to depend on how a woman feels about herself. If she's confident of her own worth, she convinces others of it. I'm no psychologist, but I've learned a lot about women this summer And one thing is-the world tends to take a woman at the value she sets on herself. Maybe she's crossed up sometimes, but in general I'd say it was that way."
She listened with an attention that embarrassed him, a hopeful, incredulous, hungry attention. "Do you really think so?"
"Don't put yourself on the shelf."
"I'm there already."
"Then jump off and dust yourself and get ready for some changes. You've lived in the past too long."
She smiled, quickly, her black eyes sparkling with a shy humor. "Maybe I will. Maybe T might do just that. Well, I've bothered you long enough Goodness, it's almost twelve o'clock!" She stood up.
"How about lunch?" Mark stood also.
She gasped, retreating behind her prim manner.
"Why-I-I-"
"I won't bite. And sometimes I meet older men at lunch that I might introduce you to. There are men in Port Ransom, you know! Bachelors, and widowers."
She blushed red. "Good-grief-goodness-" she stammered.
He grinned at her. "Now, I won't be obvious about it. But if I should happen to see men and introduce them to you, no one will talk or gossip. So don't bite their heads off. Be nice, the way you were this morning."
She swallowed, and looked a little frightened. He was amused, and touched, that he had penetrated so far inside her armor. "But-I'm forty-five. Really, Mark, it's too late-"
"Stop making excuses. Come on. There's a nice restaurant on Main Street. Good salads."
He thought as they had lunch together that this summer had changed him more than any five years previously. If anyone had told him he'd take Paula Sprague to lunch and enjoy it, he would have said they were mad. Yet here he was, understanding this touchy, difficult woman, because she had broken down and told him the truth behind her proud face.
He had learned more about women in two months than he had known in his entire life. Frances, Vera Geiger, Darlene, and now Paula Sprague. Women who found it necessary to show a baffling mask to the world.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Frances called several mornings later. Mark told her he'd take her for a drive.
"A drive? Are you crazy?" She sounded startled over the phone.
"Tell you why, when I pick you up. I'll be right over."
"I'm not dressed to go out. Make it half an hour. Mark, are you sure you want-"
"Sure. See you in half an hour then."
They always made their phone conversations short for fear of someone listening in Not that Norma would on purpose, but someone might by accident, and then the gossip would really fly high.
Mark picked up Frances half an hour later. She was stunning in a red and white cotton dress with straps over her tanned shoulders. She was fuming. As soon as they were out of town she began. "What in the world is all this about? Where are we going?"
"Out by the river."
"In the daytime? Mark, what's wrong with you? We can't make love in the car, not the way we want."
"There's been a lot of gossip about my coming to the house. Two people spoke to me about it, people who wouldn't have bothered if it hadn't been serious."
"Oh. Do you suppose Bruce will hear?" She pressed her fist against her mouth and nibbled at her thumb-knuckle. She looked like a worried child.
"I think if Bruce had heard, he'd have told you, all right," said Mark drily. It was like Frances to think of Bruce right away. In spite of their wild love-making, her thoughts returned to her husband at the oddest times. He wondered if that meant she really loved him in spite of his impotence.
Her face cleared. "Of course. Sure, he would. So we're all right. Let's not stay here, Mark. Let's go back home." She slid close to him on the seat and rubbed her leg against his. "Come on, Mark, I want lots of fun today."
His hands shook as he stopped the car on a high bluff overlooking the river. They were out in the open. No one could approach without being seen. He took her in his arms, and kissed her hungrily. She was so temptingly lovely, so hot and quick to respond.
Her mouth opened under his, her head fell back and her body moved under his hands. At home, he would be helping her undress, pushing her down across the bed and falling on her. In the car it was awkward. He fumbled with her dress, pulled it up above her knees.
She sat up impatiently and pushed him away. "Oh, this is silly I don't want it this way. Why can't we go home?"
"I told you. People are talking. I've been at the house too often."
She scowled like an impatient child. "I don't care. Who wants to be careful? This isn't any fun. I want to play the Throne Game, and do all the kissing we like. Don't you want to, Mark?"
"We can do plenty here. Look, I'll show you a new way."
He distracted her from thinking about going home by pulling her on his lap, pulling up her dress She wasn't wearing anything underneath, and it was easy to hold her and pull her closer and closer.
He whispered into her neck," Isn't this fun?"
Her arms clasped convulsively over his arms and she moved her body slowly, heavily, on his as they approached a climax. "Ah," she sighed. "Ah, Mark-Mark!"
But when it was finished, she left his lap, and began the quarrel again. "Why don't we go home? We can't do much more here."
"I told you why, he said shortly. He drew away from her and lit a cigarette. Now that he had what he wanted for the moment, he allowed his real annoyance with her to show. "I can't keep coming to the house. People are talking. They say it isn't just for the survey."
"What about when the survey's over? What will we do then?"
"That's just the point. We've got to figure out some other way to meet."
She thought about that for a while, pulling her skirt down over her knees, arranging the straps where they had fallen down over her arms. He watched her moving her lovely bare arms, her legs, and wondered why he couldn't grab at her and kiss her all over. Was he getting tired of a beautiful girl like Frances? If so, why? She was every bit as lovely, every bit as enticing as when he had first taken her on the couch. Could it be there was something more to love than the ability to please each other on a bed?
"I know I A motel. We could go to a motel."
"During the day? They'd have the police on us in an h r. They watch out for things like that around here, because of the college kids."
Frances pouted. Her mouth was red and sweet. He wanted to touch it again. He leaned toward her, pressed his mouth against hers, hard, and muttered, "We'll figure it out. Some way."
She sighed and relaxed against the seat, and let her mouth open. They teased each other with their tongues and lips, and his hands tightened on her waist. He was beginning to think about taking her home for a hot session, when the voice interrupted.
"All right, all right, this isn't a private parking lot."
Mark jerked upright and stared into the face of a policeman at the car window. It was Jim Mallory.
"Hello, Jim," he said weakly, sitting up straight. Frances jerked her dress over her knees.
Mallory looked surprised. "Mark. Well. Thought it was some kids spooning." His slow look appraised Frances, and the verdict wasn't good. "Just thought I'd warn you. There have been some fellows around, robbing couples in parked cars up here. Isn't safe. Better find some other place to talk."
"Sure, Jim. Thanks. We're just going."
Mark's face felt burned raw, it was so hot. He had known Jim all his life. Jim wouldn't go out of his way to report this incident, but he wouldn't forget it either. His opinion of Mark must have gone down sharply. Mark started the car. Jim stepped back, waved them on.
"You see?" said Frances ominously. "We should have stayed at home. We might have been robbed and killed up here."
"We'll have to be more careful," Mark said. Of all the fool luck, to have Jim see them. Motels were out. Where could they go? He might borrow someone's apartment. But that took arranging, planning.
What he had liked about meeting Frances was it could be so casual, so unplanned and simple. She called, he went over, and in a few minutes they were rolling on the bed and having fun, as she said. Now this would take the fun out of it, all this being cautious and careful, having to plan their meetings and keeping them secret. He felt impatient and cross at the whole idea.
Frances was going on and on, bitterly. "Careful-you're so careful you'll get us in serious trouble. What's so bad about a few people gossiping? They're just jealous. The simplest thing is to meet at home, and have fun there. Nobody knows what we're doing, the police can't break in and spy. It's silly to worry what people will think. Why don't we just keep on as we were?"
They arrived at her house, and she was still going on and on. Mark finally went in the house with her, because people might see them on the street. They undressed and went to bed together, but they kept on quarreling.
"You see?" said Frances, stretching out naked. "This is, much better. We can do what we want."
"Well have to think of something else," Mark persisted stubbornly, even as he turned to meet her. "I can't keep on coming here, especially after the survey is finished. We'll have to be careful-"
"I don't want to be careful," she whispered, and pulled him closer with fierce hands.
He forgot their quarrel for a while. She was sweet and passionate and wild with him. Her hips moved with an abandon that increased his pleasure greatly. In the height of their struggles, they rolled back and forth across the bed, and she moaned against his throat, and gripped him with her sharp fingers.
He held her down at the finish, and in the midst of his own passion he enjoyed watching her face change from intense concentration to lax and helpless surrender. There was nothing halfway in the way she gratified her senses.
When they had rested, she wanted to play the Throne Game again. The request irritated him. "No, not now," he said shortly. "We've got to think what to do."
"Why think now? You can think later. Come on, Mark, be nice."
"No."
"Mark! I want to!" She rolled over on him and straddled him, and coaxed. But he was tired now, and impatient because of the heat and the worry about meeting Jim Mallory.
He pushed her away. "No, I said! We've got to figure out something."
She sat up, crossing her legs, looking like a flushed love goddess with rumpled hair and naked body. "Honestly, Mark, you make me mad. I try and try to find a time to have you over, then when you come, we can't have fun. You have to worry and worry."
"Maybe it's stopped being fun," he said shortly.
Her eyes flared with bright anger. "Oh, it has! You're getting used to me, and I don't please you as much as I did?"
"I didn't mean that."
She flounced off the bed to walk around. He watched her lazily from his resting place. He liked the smooth curves from her waist to her hips. His hands and his lips knew those curves well, but he still wasn't tired of gazing at her. When she walked away from him, he noticed that her hips bounced as she walked.
She flung herself around to speak again. "I think you are getting tired of me. You don't want me as often as you used to."
"Lord, I've got a limit, Frances!" he protested uncomfortably. She didn't realize how much it took out of him each time. He had been starved at first, and had been wild for her.
"You didn't used to have a limit," she said ominously. "You used to go on and on without stopping. You are tired of me."
He got tired of arguing. He got up and started to dress. "Maybe I am," he said shortly.
"Then don't bother to come back!" she blazed. "That's what you really mean, isn't it? You don't care about the gossip. You don't want to be careful! The truth is that you're just sick of me!"
He shrugged, pulling on his trousers. He felt so cross and tired he didn't care what she thought.
"All right, that's the end then!" She was close to tears.
He agreed, it was the end, as far as he was concerned. She had been sweet and wonderful, though. Mark wanted to kiss her goodbye, but Frances took kisses too seriously and he didn't feel like going back to bed.
"Goodbye, Frances. You have been wonderful," he ventured.
She started to cry. He left hastily. As he drove away, he felt an intense surge of relief. Now he wouldn't have to worry about how to meet her and what people were saying. It was over. The talk would die down when he didn't visit her any more.
And she had become a bore, in spite of her passionate love-making. Her mind contained very little to interest and hold him, though her body had contained much of interest.
"You have to have something to talk about, think about, also," he reflected. He went for a long drive by himself, out by the river, to cool off and to think He regretted ending the affair with Frances, because she had been an enchanting love partner, a glorious mistress. But there it was, ended.
And it was for the best.
He was sure of that.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Mark felt good at having given up Frances. It proved to himself that he had self-control. She had been a wonderful mistress, but when it was finished, it was definitely finished. No lingering on to boredom and arguments, making up, more arguments, until both were sick of each other. It was much better this way.
He missed her, sure, but he was glad that it was over. He was tired. The summer had been hot and wearisome, with the extra work of the survey. Sometimes he wondered how he would get through the school year ahead. He hadn't had time to prepare. There were books he should have read; he ought to have revised his lesson plans for Contemporary Social Movements, and his Marriage course needed changes.
He checked over the interview he had yet to make. Another three solid weeks before he could say he was finished. If he hadn't spent so much time with Frances, he might have been finished by this time. He could have moved up the schedule. He grimaced. Oh, well, no regrets. What was done was done.
In checking the interviews he saw that the interview with Marilyn Auchard was coming up in a few days. He was curious, eager, yet felt a strange reluctance to talk with her. If she burst out in a confession of frustration, of rage at his friend Ralph, could he control himself and remain the uninvolved interviewer?
The day he was to see Marilyn, there was a slight break in the hot weather. A cool front had come in from Canada, and the long hot humid spell was broken for a short time.
"Now I can hope that fall will come," sighed Liz gratefully.
"All too soon," Mark told her. "The summers always go too fast."
"This one has dragged," said Liz. "It's been so hot." She went back to the kitchen.
It was always hot in the summers at Port Ransom. Liz hadn't seemed to mind it so much before. His fault, he realized. This Frances business. For the first time he looked at it from Liz's point of view. It must have been rough on her. She probably hadn't realized it was just an affair. He hadn't realized it himself till this past week. Liz was an unusual woman. Anyone else would have ranted and raved, insisted at once on a divorce, and wrecked everything.
Liz had let things ride, let Mark alone, until the brief passion had spent itself. Maybe she had figured it would work out this way. She was a very intelligent woman, often so logical and cool-thinking that she exasperated Mark. But in this case, it had worked for the best.
He was rather nervous when he finally went to see Marilyn. He felt he didn't know her very well, for all the years he had seen her with Ralph and around town. She was cool and calm, offered him a small table to write on, a cup of coffee and cigarettes.
It took him several questions to realize she was a lot more nervous than he was. He saw her hands shaking, and she stuttered a little.
He went more slowly, and took a lot of time to write down her answers. "And you have been married-how long?"
"Five years. Ralph and I were married when I was 23."
"And you had one child." He had meant to skip over this part hastily, because he knew the death of her son had hit her hard.
"Yes. He would have been three in June. Mark may I ask some questions too?"
"Well-" It wasn't usual. "Sure, go ahead."
"What will this survey do? What do you mean to accomplish?"
He laid down the pencil and explained it carefully and at length. "So you see, this is just a preliminary survey, to test the questions, to see what fields we are neglecting, where we should explore further."
"And if it all works out, what then? Will it be published? Will it do some good?"
Mark looked thoughtfully at the darkly dramatic features of this beautiful woman. He dreaded a confession of the type he had gotten from some of the woman. Yet, that was what he was here for, that was his purpose-to know the truth. Truth. How difficult it was to find that simple essential element.
"If we do a good job, we'll publish the results, yes. Of course no names will be mentioned, no interviews quoted, or case histories written. It will be probably a series of charts and summary conclusions on our findings."
She drew a deep breath. "Ralph and I talked it over."
"You did?"
"Yes. I didn't know whether I should tell you-certain things. So we talked it over. Ralph said if I was sure the results would be helpful to other women, I should go ahead and tell you everything. He said he was sure you wouldn't discuss it with anyone."
"No, except with Arthur Coulson. He'll see all the interviews. But no one else will know."
"Then-May I tell you in my own words? I don't know if the question will cover what's happened to me."
"Yes, go ahead."
Marilyn took a sip of cold coffee. "I guess I'll start with college. I was always pretty, always getting elected to things I couldn't handle. It scared me so, being put on committees where I couldn't say one intelligent word. Then I began to realize nobody wanted me to talk. I resented that, Mark, I really did. I'm not a fool. I know some things, but nobody wanted to listen to me. They only liked to look at me. It started long before college, actually. Only it was in college I finally understood what was going on. I even got engaged to a fellow. I thought he understood me, until one evening he and some guys at the frat house got in an argument about the woman's place in the world. I was majoring in Sociology, so I pitched right in." She gave him a wry smile that reminded him suddenly and vividly of Paula Sprague.
"I bet he told you to shut up," said Mark sympathetically.
"How did you know?" She gave him a sudden dazzling smile, and he blinked. "Oh, I was so angry and hurt. He said later I should know enough to keep my mouth shut and look beautiful. That was all anybody expected from me. That was really why I married Ralph later. He not only let me talk out my thoughts, he encouraged me. He said I had a good mind. Me! Nobody had ever said or implied that I had a good mind. Ralph-he's so kind and understanding."
"So you were married."
"Yes. I was so happy when Sonny came. Ralph-I've never seen him so happy. He was older, had almost given up hope for a family. I was all the happier because he was so happy. The following year. I had a miscarriage. The doctor said I mustn't have any more children. I couldn't even have relations; it would be too dangerous. Ralph understood. We slept apart. But Sonny bound us together. We had him."
Her mouth twisted. Her face was full of anguish and pain. "Then he died. He died."
She put her hand over her mouth, until she was under control again.
"I wanted to die too. I was so alone. And Ralph-he was so unhappy. I finally told him to get a divorce, marry someone else. He refused. He said he loved me, and wanted only me. But we couldn't even be together as man and wife. I knew Ralph felt badly frustrated. Because I wanted so much to help him, I began to read books.
"You know, doctors won't talk about this. Not the doctors I knew. I read lots of books. Then I got my nerve up-if it had been anyone but Ralph I wouldn't have dared-and I told Ralph what I thought. So we started sleeping together. We-we don't have intercourse." She was staring at her hands in her lap, and her face was turning crimson, but she went on firmly, in her rich controlled voice.
Mark wanted to look away from her embarrassment, but she was so beautiful and so honest she fascinated him.
"When we want to, we embrace and kiss. Then we touch each other with our hands-it is satisfying, as much as we can satisfy each other. It works. And I'm not alone any more.
"I wanted to get a job. I was restless, and I had too much energy. Ralph suggested instead I should do little theatre work. A job would be too routine, too dull, he said. And he thought I had talent. You know, Mark, if Ralph thought I had the talent to fly to the moon, I'd take off in a minute."
He answered her smile. "I bet you would. It's wonderful to find that rare marriage where two people have such confidence and trust in each other."
"Thank you," she said. "I guess that's it, Mark. I wasn't sure I could tell you. But I thought maybe other women needed to know this. And maybe they have a Ralph who would be kind and loving enough to help them."
He asked her several more questions, but there wasn't much more he needed to know. He went back to the office afterwards, deep in thought.
Here was a loving, intelligent woman, who had tur-mounted grief and obstacles to achieve a good life with her husband. Theirs was not the usual solution; theirs had not been the usual problem.
He sat in his swivel chair and stared out at the brown-tinged grass of the campus. Maybe he and Arthur were wrong on one major premise. Arthur had said that educated women would be even more frustrated than uneducated women. But couldn't the reverse be true for some of them?
Marilyn had used her intelligence and her education to hunt for the solution of the problem she faced. She had found and used an intelligent answer. She was relatively happy. She missed her son, she would have liked normal relations with her husband. But lacking those, she had worked and thought and studied until together with her husband she had evolved a satisfactory sex life, she enjoyed interesting work in the theatre, and she had achieved an unusual understanding of life itself.
"Not so bad. In fact, very good," Mark murmured. He got out the interview charts and forms and studied them in the light of his new perspective. Marilyn had opened his eyes.
Frances had been frustrated. She too had tried to find a solution. She and Bruce might have reached the same conclusion as Marilyn and Ralph, in view of Bruce's impotence. Yet they hadn't. Why? Was it because Frances was incapable of Marilyn's solution? Or because Bruce had refused to accept that as an answer? Mark mused on this for awhile.
He saw now that the interview forms were not adequate. They were woefully inadequate. Arthur Coulson's knowledge of women had caused him to be prejudiced strongly against women's capabilities. They were much more adaptable, much more inventive than he had believed.
Mark drew a pile of blank papers toward him. He began to make a fresh list of questions, writing slowly at first, then more rapidly. He finally stopped when he realized his wrist was tired and stiff. He gathered up the new pages and put them in his portfolio. Then he locked the other material in the safe, and went home.
He and Liz had not talked about anything important since the evening she had confronted him with her knowledge of Frances. But he was bursting to talk to someone, and as soon as he got in the door he began.
"Liz, I've had the most amazing discovery! Oh, it was there all the time. I just didn't see it."
She was fixing dinner, putting the meat on to cook. She gave him a long slow enigmatic look from her green eyes. But she said calmly enough, "What discovery is that?"
He slammed down the portfolio. "That women aren't always frustrated. That they are smart enough to work things out. That Arthur is all wrong when he says educated women are more frustrated than uneducated women! Educated women are more capable of using their intelligence to work out good solutions to their problems."
"On behalf of educated women. I thank you," said Liz drily.
She was sarcastic, but at least she was listening. Mark followed her around the kitchen, earnestly expounding his new theories. He followed her into the dining room as she set the table, then back again to the kitchen.
"So I've decided to revise the interview forms. There are a lot of irrelevant, questions, and I've thought of a lot of new questions. Really, when I think about it, the way I handled the interviews this summer was largely to revise the questions as I went."
She listened intently though she kept on working. She said once, "What about a control group of women who aren't college educated?"
"I've thought about that too," he said eagerly, pleased that she had brought it up. "Lord, I've got to talk to Arthur. There are a hundred changes we've got to make before he can go ahead."
He went to the phone and called Coulson. Arthur said he'd see him on Friday, then abruptly hung up Evidently Arthur had someone in the apartment with him, probably a woman, thought Mark. He went back to Liz.
Dinner was ready, so they sat down to eat Liz was wearing something green, a cotton dress that became her more than the boyish shirts. She was an attractive woman when she bothered to be. he thought. Her hair was brushed to gleaming smoothness, the red-gold shining under the electric lights. Her hair seemed suddenly more beautiful to him in its simplicity than Frances' tousled curls had been. Liz was so clean and simple and intelligent. She never made fusses about anything If she was angry, she told Mark so in concise crisp phrases, and that was that She didn't fume and sulk, and pout, and try to coax him to change his mind. He didn't know but what he preferred Liz's anger to that of Frances.
It was a funny way to love a woman, to prefer her anger to another's, he thought, amused at himself.
Liz was especially attractive tonight. They talked for a long time about the survey, or rather he talked, and she listened and asked intelligent questions that showed she understood and was interested.
It was late when they went to bed. The night was cooler than the previous nights had been. From the open windows there was a breeze that smelled of roses and grass and mysterious night odors.
Lie was ready for bed first. When Mark came to bed, he answered a strong impulse and went over to her. He thought for a moment that she was going to protest. But she said nothing, moving over to make room for him.
For some reason, he wanted her more ardently than ever. His kisses were hungry, compelling her to answer. His hand moved to her breast. She pulled sharply away. "Don't, Liz," he said. "Let me do this."
She wasn't like Frances, aroused so fast and so furiously. She had to be courted caressed and stirred deeply. Mark kissed her for a long time, stroking her body as she lay rigidly still. Finally he felt a break in her stiffness; she sighed softly several times and her body curved toward his.
He didn't change his position. He decided to surprise her. She wouldn't be expecting him to do anything yet. He drew up the nightdress to her waist, lazily caressing her. She let him. He drew her closer yet, pulled her strongly to him. Still she didn't know what he was doing. Only when it was too late did she protest.
"Mark-oh! Mark-oh-"
It was much too late. He held her tight and firm, his hands controlling her when she tried to draw away.
He let her go briefly, then pulled her back, away again, back again.
"Oh," she was gasping. "Mark-oh-this-oh-it's too much-"
It was gratifying to feel her like this, rich and sweet and full, the way he loved. He laughed a little as he let her pull away again. The movements were sheer joy He drew her tight again, whispered, "Fight as much as you want."
He made a rhythm out of her struggles, and forced her to follow the beat of it. Then he realized her body was weakening, crumpling, and he pulled her tight and held her hard against him as she moaned in her fulfillment. Her breath was ragged, her open mouth against his throat. Then he let himself release, gloriously, freely.
He held her for a while afterwards, then let her slide down again on her back. He bent over her, kissed her breasts and throat, in silence. She was so limp, and wasn't used to it. Liz felt things more deeply than-
But he wanted to forget any other woman. Liz was enough; she was the one he loved.
He stayed with her all night, sleeping with her in his arms. In the morning, when he wakened, she was gone. He heard the bathroom door close. He went back to his bed and waited.
When she came out, he watched her face. She was confused. She didn't know what to do. Finally she started toward her empty bed.
"Come here, Liz," he said, and she came slowly to him.
He held up his arms, and she lay down with him, and put her face down on his bare chest. Her arms closed around him timidly. His heart leaped with exultation. He would teach her to come to him, his shy, strange diffident Liz.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Mark went to see Arthur Coulson on Friday afternoon of that week Arthur had an apartment near the Eastern State University campus. Mark felt a sense of shock and a strong impulse to laugh as he walked in the place, which he hadn't seen before.
It was heavily dramatic in coloring-black walls, Chinese red lacquer coffee table, a huge gold-framed mirror over the orange couch, a squat brown figure of a woman as a lamp base another black nude statuette of a female on a table. The apartment said out loud to people, "I am the home of a bachelor who is intensely interested in women."
There was a copy of a sensuous Modigliani nude over the record player, a Titian nude over the television, and-Mark peered through the dim-lit apartment toward the kitchen-yes, a Rubens nude over the kitchen table.
Any woman who walked into that apartment and didn't walk right out again deserved precisely what she got. She couldn't say she hadn't been warned.
Arthur greeted him cordially, and offered him cigarettes and a lighter (in the form of a woman's body, naturally."
"Tell me how you're coming along on the interviews," he began at once, eagerly. "Care for a drink?"
"No. Too hot. I'm coming along fine. Two weeks should finish it."
"You didn't bring the interviews with you, did you?" He looked hopefully toward Mark's briefcase.
"No. These are some charts and things I was working on." Mark emptied out the case, and attempted to sort through the pages.
"Here, spread them out on the card table. This looks fine, great! You've been working hard! What's all this?"
"I'll have to explain first." Mark told him about some of the women he had interviewed, how the questionnaire had proved inadequate. "You see, I'm convinced we need to make a study much deeper and broader than what you had conceived originally. There should be a control group, probably in each college town, of-let's call them-'non-college women. Also we must have a wider and more varied group of college-educated women. We've scarcely touched the unmarried group. That's a whole field in itself. The difficulties of the intelligent spinster, how hard it is for such a woman to find the right husband, her problems when she doesn't marry, psychological problems of having affairs, and so on."
Arthur whistled. "I bet it'll be hard to get them to talk."
"Not if we use the right approach. Not if they're convinced that they can help other women in the same difficulty to avoid the pitfalls they found. That's the whole trouble-there's a ban of silence on these problems. Nice people don't discuss them, good girls don't read books-if there are any adequate books. If we chart this survey correctly and completely, we'll help a million women to find their way out of frustration."
Arthur stared at him, his dark eyes ablaze with enthusiasm. "Say, you've really got some ideas! You know, this will take years to do properly."
"I know." Mark shuffled the papers. "I thought about that. Maybe you don't have the time to give to it. Maybe I'm all wrong-the survey you were working out would be good, and helpful too. Hell, though. The more I talked to women this summer, the more I thought it would be a shame to stop here. So much needs to be done."
"It's easier to do a survey if one strictly limits the subject."
"I suppose." Mark turned to the charts he had begun to form. "Look at these. I gave a numerical value to certain responses-I, 2, 3, 4, 5, according to whether the response was enthusiastic, better than good, adequate, not so good, or terrible. I was able then to chart the answers to certain key questions." He showed Arthur a chart. "This is the chart on sexual satisfaction. Rather an eye-opener, isn't it?"
"Pretty poor performance on their husband's parts, I'd say." Arthur studied it critically, with professional interest.
They talked for some time about the many phases of the survey. Mark showed the new questionnaire he had worked out.
Arthur shook his head. "It looks terrific, Mark, really terrific. But it would take four times, six or eight times as long to work out the program you plan. I don't have the time-unless-" He paused, then added, "Unless I quit my job to give full time to it. I could. I've saved some money, and a great-aunt kindly left me a sum. It might take even five years, but-would it sell! I'd have my choice of jobs-if I ever need to work again."
"I guess so." Mark fingered the charts, rather disappointed in Arthur. He hadn't been thinking about book sales or the money to be earned from the survey. He had been thinking of the dozens of frustrated women he had met this summer. Frances, Vera, Paula, so many intelligent, disappointed women, some of whom wasted years in bitterness at not being able to solve their problems. If such a survey could help them, and thousands, even millions, like them, it would be well worth the time and effort and sacrifice.
"You know, I wish you'd help me on such a project," Arthur said, after a long thoughtful silence.
"Me? I have to teach for a living. No rich great-aunts in my family."
"I mean it. You've got the enthusiasm; you get the confidence of women easily; they trust you. Everyone is suspicious of me-a gay bachelor, frankly uninterested in marriage life for myself. But you, a professor of sociology, married, respectable, likeable-And you have the big ideas. You have the vision. I'm a mercenary critter, looking for the big sales, the fame, and the dough I could make. I'm liable to miss the gold for the glitter."
Mark watched Arthur's cool calculating face with narrowed eyes. Arthur was sometimes honest, even about himself.
"I still wouldn't be able to swing it financially."
"I could. I'd pay you just what you're making at Kellar College, for two years, say. You'd work on the survey full-time, do a lot of the interviewing, find and train several more interviewers. We could use some women interviewers. They'd be good at approaching the shy women. Two years. Both of us working full-time, with office help, a small staff of interviewers Mark we could do it. We could do your whole big project. Pick a dozen college towns, use control groups of women at various educational and age levels-the works. It would be terrific!"
Mark swallowed hard. Excitement was mounting up in him again. Such a project would be worthwhile; it would be the fulfillment of the ambitions he had also. To become famous ... Secretly, he had always hoped that maybe, one day he might become known: Professor Mark Sullivan, the sociologist, author of many books, lecturer.
"God, I don't know if I-"
"Don't make your decision now. Think about it Talk it over with Liz She's got a cool head on her shoulders. I'll think it over also. I'm not committing myself, you understand."
"No, no, oi course not." Mark felt dazed, staggered by the enormity of the step. Quit his solid secure job, venture forth on this project. The rewards if they succeeded would be enormous, in money, prestige.
He had almost forgotten the purpose of the survey-to help women. But of course they would help women. That would be the point of the whole project.
He and Coulson talked most of the afternoon. Arthur was more and more enthusiastic about the possibilities of a large survey. They talked until the phone rang.
Arthur murmured into the phone, "Of course, darling, of course, I haven't forgotten. Very soon now. I'll be right there."
Mark gathered up the charts and papers. "Say, I've been here too long. I'll be late for supper."
Coulson didn't try to detain him. He slapped his shoulder warmly as Mark left. "We'll be famous, Mark! Between us, we'll do a tremendous job!"
Mark went home in high spirits. He told Liz at supper, "I didn't promise I'd do it, of course. In fact, it isn't really a definite offer. We're both thinking it over. It's quite a gamble of time and money."
Liz had listened soberly. "It does sound like a wonderful plan, Mark, much better than the hasty limited survey Arthur was planning. This one would have meaning and purpose. It might help quite a lot. Why, this book could be a very important text in the field of sociology!"
Mark felt a warm glow at her understanding and yraise. "I hope so, Liz. What do you think of the idea of my leaving Kellar College? I'd lose seniority even if they did hire me back later."
They discussed it for quite a while that evening.
Mark was tempted, and Liz seemed to be impressed by the idea. Liz did have a good mind, and she didn't approve of new and rash projects very quickly unless she truly saw fine possibilities in them.
He could scarcely sleep that night. He tossed and turned for hours before he was calm enough to sleep. Then he dreamed, long vivid dreams of tame and prestige.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Saturday morning was as hot and humid as one could imagine a mid-August day to be. Liz put on her most comfortable slacks and a loose-fitting shirt to go to the grocery.
She had left Mark working on his charts at the dining-room table. He had been very excited and keyed up last night after the long talk with Arthur. She didn't know when she had ever known Mark to be so enthusiastic about anything.
She didn't think he was seeing Frances any more. Why he had stopped she didn't know. But he came home for lunch every noon, seemed to have many appointments for interviews with many different women, and was in general so busy she knew he hadn't had time for Frances.
Liz thought to herself that she would never understand Mark. That night he had come to bed with her-she shook her head in wonderment. She had never thought him capable of making love to her like that. And she had never dreamed she would enjoy it so. This summer had made changes in their relationship to each other. She wasn't sure yet that she liked all the changes.
Yet Mark was entitled to one fling in his life, and it did seem to be over. She wished she could be sure it was over, but she wouldn't ask Mark about it. If this was the only time Mark ever lost his head over another woman, she would be lucky. Some women-
"Liz-dreaming?" As though from a great distance, a voice penetrated her thoughts. She raised her head from serious contemplation or a row of canned peaches.
Gerry Kurtz was smiling at her with her usual boyishly friendly grin. "Hi! Haven't seen you in ages."
"No. Hot, isn't it?"
"Awful! I thought the cool wave would last. It sure didn't. Henry took Ted swimming this morning, so I said I'd do the errands."
"Fair enough."
"How's everybody?"
"Fine. How have you been?"
"Fine."
There was a sudden awkward pause. Liz realized she hadn't seen Gerry to talk to since the dreadful evening when Mark had burst out with his views on women They didn't often try to plan evenings together in the summer, especially if it was too hot and humid, but they usually had at least one picnic. Nobody had tried to plan anything this summer.
"How's Mark coming with the survey?"
"Fine!" said Liz. She sounded a little more enthusiastic than she felt. "He's getting some wonderful results. He talked to Arthur Coulson yesterday, and Arthur was very impressed."
"Oh, good," said Gerry. She was too honest to be tactful. "The way he talked that night, it sounded pretty frightful. But I guess that-uh-sort of thing doesn't sound so good when they just talk about it. I know my Henry talks about writing a book, and it sounds so deadly dull I just tell him frankly it'll never sell. I guess I'm not the optimistic type." She giggled, her snub nose crinkling.
Liz wondered if that was why Henry had never completed a book. He had the intelligence and creativity to do a good job. Discouragement from Gerry had probably been enough of a damper to keep him from taking the time and trouble to write. She vowed she would not do that to Mark. It was hard enough for him to work at this survey, in the face of the opposition he had even from his friends.
"So he's coming along good, huh?'
"Yes. He said yesterday it would take about two more weeks of interviews. He's interested in doing a good thorough job of this preliminary work. A lot of the questions need changing; there's a lot to be done before Arthur can go ahead on the major project."
Gerry had been listening intently to all this as she picked out fresh vegetables. "Well, it all sounds just fine, I'm sure. Of course, as I told Henry, the opoortunity to meet women-" She stopped abruptly and flushed.
It wasn't like Gerry not to come right out with something. She had probably heard about Frances. Liz picked out some bananas without asking Gerry what she meant to say.
"Uh-we ought to get together before school starts," Gerry finally said near the checkout counter.
"Oh, do you think we should?" said Liz. "It's so hot. I thought we might wait. Mark and I both have so much yet to do before we're ready for classes. May be after school starts and the first few hectic days are over-"
"Sure," Gerry agreed quickly "Why don't we wait? Maybe right after school starts. I'll call you!"
Liz pushed her cart into the aisle beside a ash register, leaving Gerry with a sense of relief. There would be many bitter after tastes from this summer The loyal silence of friends, the questioning looks from Gerry and Marilyn, the raised eyebrows of others. Would the students know? There had been only a few around this summer. The faculty would all know. The first few faculty affairs would be difficult for Liz. Mark probably wouldn't notice anything. He was so blind and deaf to everything except what he wanted to see and hear. He was lucky.
It might be that Frances had ceased to interest him In that case, he had probably stopped seeing her abruptly, and had turned his attention back to the survey with no more compunction than in the motion with which one closed a completed book and opened another.
She pushed her cart home. It was heavy and the sunshine was so hot. But she would never again ask Mark to get the groceries now that she knew he hated it so. She glanced down at the shirt and slacks. She would gradually start wearing dresses more. She hadn't felt like making herself more attractive while Mark was still seeing Frances. It would have looked like a futile attempt to get Mark's attention away from a beautiful woman.
Liz knew she wasn't beautiful. But she could look more atractive. This fall she would buy several cotton and wool dresses for school-one in green, one in antique gold, one in aqua that looked good with 'her hair. And she would try to find another way to do her hair. She wondered how it would look short and straight. Perhaps one of the new permanents would be all right. She'd see a hairdresser before school started. Maybe short hair, almost straight, with a slight wave and curled ends. She had been studying hair styles in the magazines.
She wanted Mark to be proud of her. She wanted him to keep on loving her, and not leave her for Frances or any other woman. If only she were wise enough to know how to be attractive and to respond to him in bed the way he seemed to want now-
The way home was shorter because of her complicated thoughts. She was surprised to see Mark's car in the driveway. She had thought he was going over to the office later, before she returned from errands.
When she went in the kitchen door, she called, Mark?"
"Yes," he said, from the living room. He sounded so odd, she left the grocery cart in the middle of the kitchen floor and went to see him.
He was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands.
"Mark, are you sick?" She went over to him. "What's wrong?"
He raised his head. His face was so ghastly pale that his tan seemed greenish. His grey eyes were wide and almost black because the pupils were so dilated.
"Liz, I've got to have a divorce."
"What?"
"A divorce. I have to marry Frances. She's pregnant. She's going to have a baby, and it's my fault."
"Baby?" she whispered. She sat down limply on the couch beside him.
"Yes. Mine. She's pregnant. She just called."
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
They quarreled steadily for an hour. The violence of their quarrel made Liz feel sick at her stomach.
"You don't have to marry her. She's married already," she repeated over and over, until the words had a colorless chill of disbelief to them. "She's married. You aren't obligated. You don't have to marry her. I won't let you get a divorce."
"I have to marry her. It's my child. I have to."
"How can you be sure? How can you say that? How can she be certain?"
Finally Mark said, "I know something that no one else is supposed to know: her husband is impotent. They have never had intercourse. It has to be my baby"
Lie didn't believe him at first, and they fought about that too.
"You never believe what I say," he said "You don't even listen to me."
"Yes, I do, I do. But to marry a man who is impotent-did he know he was?"
"That's not our concern," Mark said. "What mat ters is that Frances is going to have a child, and I'm the father. I'm responsible."
"How do you know?" said Liz recklessly. "We've been married for six years, and I haven't had a child."
"Did you ever consider that it might be your fault instead of mine?" he shot back at her.
She felt as though he had struck her in the face "Mark, you know I've tried to be a good wife-"
They fought about that for a while, then returned to the main issue-Frances' child.
"There's no need for you to marry her. She's married already She was taking a chance in having an affair with a married man. She ran out of luck, and she'll have to handle the matter. It isn't up to you. The woman has to pay for the music-that's always the way it is," said Liz bitterly. "If she didn't know what she was risking, then she's an idiot. And how would you like being married to a stupid wife?"
For some reason, that crack hit home with him. She could see him pause to consider it, frowning. She rushed on.
"You always used to say I was important to you. that my judgment meant a great deal to you. And have you thought what it would mean to your career to get a divorce? You'd have to leave Kellar College. Would she be an asset to you in getting a job somewhere else, and keeping it? Will she help you with your work-or hinder it?"
Mark's jaw stuck out like a prizefighter's, and she wanted to hit it. "All those things don't matter now, Liz. The important thing is the child."
"It's too bad you didn't think of the child this summer when you fell into the affair."
"I didn't fall in. I went into it very deliberately, with my eyes open. Frances is a very attractive woman, a very feminine-"
"Nuts! She threw herself at you, and you fell, like a stupid fool!"
"Fool! Fool! Now you're calling me a fool! I seem to recall at the time you proposed to me that you said I was one of the most intelligent men you had ever met!"
Liz felt like crying. They were ripping apart the few tattered remnants left of their marriage. She brushed her hair out of her eyes. She realized she was cold. Her body was covered with perspiration, and now she shook with a chill and nervous tension.
Mark picked up his briefcase and swept into it the papers that had covered the room table. "I'm going over to the office," he said, more quietly. "I've got to think, and you're no help."
He walked out. She heard the car starter several times, as though he wasn't sure what he was doing. Then the car rolled out of the driveway, and he was gone.
She sat on the couch, pushing back her hair, rubbing her face with cold hands, shivering intensely in the warm room.
Mark. A divorce. Frances. A baby. Everything shattered to bits. Nothing left. Everything gone The world in pieces. Their marriage ripped apart. Frances. The baby. A divorce. Mark, Mark. Her husband. No longer her husband. Divorce. Mark.
"No," she said aloud. "No. No. No."
She wouldn't let him. She'd fight the case so long that Frances would have the baby and still be married to that other man. She didn't remember his name A big football player Impotent. A big husky impotent man.
Mark would never be free to marry Frances. She'd fight them to the limit of her endurance. And how far would that be, sensible Liz asked herself ruefully She loved Mark. She'd never stand against what he wanted.
He wanted to marry Frances, and have a child. To be a father Something Liz had never done for him. She hadn't given him a child. And maybe it was her fault. Her fault.
She groaned aloud. She stood up, dazedly and started back to the bedroom. She wanted to cry; she wanted to scream aloud in pain and despair.
The doorbell rang, then rang again furiously. She hesitated. She didn't want to talk to anyone. But maybe it was Mark, coming back.
The doorbell rang again, a long angry ring.
"I'm coming!" she called "Wait a minute."
She flung open the front door, fully expecting to see Mark. The sight of the burly stranger was doubly shocking. She stared up at him. He was so tall she had to look up. He must have been about six feet two or three, and at least 220 pounds. He scowled down at her
"I want to see Mark Sullivan," he demanded, in a husky slurred voice. She caught the raw odor of whiskey on his breath.
"Professor Sullivan isn't here," she said, starting to close the door.
A beefy hand pushed the door wide, and he strode in past her.
"What are you doing?" Liz demanded.
The man stomped heavily through the house looking for Mark. Liz suddenly realized why his chunky face was vaguely familiar. He was Bruce "Bull" Durgan, star football player from Eastern State University, now a coach there. His face had been in the sports pages continuously all during his college years. He had piled up records, plowed down the opposition, and married a beauty queen-Frances Smith.
Bruce Durgan. This man was married to Frances. And he was hunting for Mark.
He came back to Liz. "Where's he? Huh? Where's he hiding?"
"He went out about half an hour ago," she said, trying to be calm. It would never do to send him, raging angry and drunk, to the college offices to talk to Mark.
Liz felt coldly amused at her thoughts. Still protecting Mark's career. The divorce alone would blow it sky-high. Here in the Midwest the conventions were still strictly preserved, at least on the surface.
"When's he coming back? I gotta see him." The man was rocking on his feet.
"I don't know. He didn't say when he'd come back."
The man peered at her, trying to focus bleery eyes. "You know who I am? I'm Bruce Durgan, that's who."
"I know. I saw you in that game against Northwestern. You were terrific." Liz had never tried much flattery on men, but she felt a vague terror of this burly person. He must be appeased, and sent away.
"I'm Durgan. Frances is my wife. You know about that?"
"Mark just told me."
"You're Mrs. Sullivan."
"Yes."
"He raped my wife. Yep. He raped my wife, and she told me she's going to have a baby. A baby. His baby. You know that?"
"He said so."
"Raped her. Poor girl. I was away from home and he raped her."
"Is that what she said?" Liz asked contemptuously.
He scowled. "She's trying to cover up for him. Says her fault. I don't believe her. He must of raped her. You his wife?"
"Yes."
"How'd you like if I raped you? Serve him back, see? How'd you like that?" He took a threatening step toward her.
Liz wanted to scream with terror. Then she remembered Mark had said Bruce Durgan was impotent. She stood her ground.
"I don't believe that would help the situation," she said coldly. "It would just make everything worse. Mark wants me to get a divorce so he can marry Frances. He wants to do what's right."
She saw at once she had said the wrong thing.
"Marry Frances! I'm married to Frances! Nobody but me is going to be married to Frances! What do you mean, marry Frances?"
"I only meant he wanted to help. That's all."
"Help! He raped my wife. You know, it'd serve him right if I paid his wife back. Yeah, it sure would. I could beat you up so nobody'd know what you used to look like."
He swayed toward her. Liz was really terrified now. He was a huge bruiser of a man with ham-like hands. His bullet-head, with a pathetically boyish burr haircut, looked strong enough for a battering ram. She swallowed.
"I don't doubt you could. But I didn't know about this until it was too late to stop him. Do you think I wanted my husband to leave me for another woman? Of course not. I just didn't know what to do about it. If you beat me up, it would hurt only me. My husband wouldn't care a bit, not any more." She had a feeling that her extravagant words were, not far from the truth.
"Wouldn't care, huh? Well, I don't know." He tried to focus his eyes on her again.
The telephone rang. Liz shivered. "I'll have to answer the phone," she said, slowly and calmly. She opened the front door, and stood aside elaborately. "I'll give Professor Sullivan your message."
She wasn't sure it would work. She left him at the open door and went to the living room to answer the insistent ring of the phone.
"Hello? Yes, this is Liz. Hello, Marilyn. Oh. no, we haven't. I told Gerry this morning it was too hot to plan a party-"
She saw Bruce sway uncertainly, then walk out the door, and close it politely and gently behind him. The relief was so great, her knees gave way and she sat down hard on the couch.
"Liz? Liz? Are you still there?"
"Yes. Yes. Go on. I was thinking about the party," she said.
The tears started running down her cheeks and into her mouth while she and Marilyn talked about how hot it had been that summer, and how nice it would be to plan to have something this fall, a nice little party for the gang.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Mark did not return to the house until late that night, long after Liz had gone to bed. She had fully intended to tell him about Bruce Durgan's visit, but Mark was so late returning, and so surly when they got up the next morning, that she decided defiantly not to say a word about her own danger. Mark didn't care about her anyway. He wouldn't have cared if the burly ex-football player had used her for a mop.
"I thought it over," Mark growled at breakfast. Liz was drinking black coffee and felt nauseated at the sight of food. Mark seemed to have quite an appetite, however, and was rapidly consuming bacon and eggs, toast and jam and coffee.
"And what did you decide?" Liz asked, in what she considered a quiet tone.
"To get a divorce right away," Mark said. "You could go to Reno at once, and in six weeks I could marry Frances."
"School starts in three weeks," said Liz. "If I'm going to be divorced against my wishes, I'll have to earn my own living. That means I'll have to stay here and work. As the sinned-against wife, T don't think I'll have any trouble keeping my job."
Mark stared at her as though he had never seen her before. "But Liz, you have to go. I can't take time to get the divorce." It sounded as peevish and trivial as though they were discussing who should go to the grocery.
"I don't have the money for a trip like that. And I'll need my job." The conversation was so distasteful, she stood up abruptly and carried some dishes over to the sink.
"I'll pay for it. You'd need to go soon. I'll look up planes. I'd better call the airport. Let's see, it's Sunday morning-"
"Mark, I am not going! Get that through your head. I was always a good obedient wife," she said ironically. "But you've fired me from being a wife. So I don't feel it necessary to do what you tell me anymore. I-am-not-going to Reno. I'm staving here and teaching. It's my job."
"You're being deliberately disagreeable. You're trying to make it hard for me to marry Frances."
"I certainly am," said Liz shortly. She could feel the temper rising up in her. "You've done a lousy, filthy thing to me, and I don't like it. I'm not going to pay for your fling. If you think I'm going to be a long-suffering patient trampled-on female, you've got another think coming."
That really brought it on. Mark raged at her for acting like a jealous woman. Liz replied that she was a jealous woman, and why shouldn't she act like one? Mark bawled her out for not cooperating in this difficulty. Liz replied it was solely his difficulty and he could get himself out of it, but he would be a damn fool if he married Frances.
Mark catalogued her faults and said it was her fault he had had the affair. Liz said she couldn't help it if most men were created like tomcats. He replied and she counter-replied, until he stamped out of the house.
When he returned, the quarrel was renewed. But Liz had had time to consider seriously what she had to do. If she was to be divorced, she would have to earn her own living. She was too proud to try to get any alimony from Mark, even if the courts allowed it So she would have to hang on to her job. And this would mean she should move out of the house, get a small place of her own, and be prepared when the divorce came.
She told Mark as much. "I'll have to leave you. I have only three more weeks until school starts. I want to get settled, and work on my Spanish records. I'll do it better away from you."
She didn't even wince as she told him this, and watched the stunned, incredulous look on his face. She felt numb, as though nothing could touch or hurt her.
"But Liz, you can't just walk out on me. I need you."
It was ridiculous. "You'll have Frances," she said curtly. "Maybe you could go to Reno together, get your divorces, and get married out there. You might even find a new job out there. I doubt if you'll keep yours here at Kellar."
"But I have to. I have to earn a living."
She shrugged, but already her mind was searching for a solution for him. "How about Arthur's project? Didn't he offer you the job for two years? Why don't you call him?"
Mark considered this. "Well, I might. No, I guess I couldn't now. He wanted me because I was married and settled." He grimaced. "As a divorced man, remarried, I won't be any good on a survey like this. I couldn't set foot inside the doors of most of the women I ought to interview."
"It would have been a good thing if you'd never started this survey, and never set foot inside Frances' door," she said tartly.
"Do you have to keep nagging me? I know what I did, and I'm not especially sorry. At least we've managed to have a child!"
"Congratulations!" she blazed back, and the fight was on again.
By Monday she was fed up. She packed two suitcases and several boxes of books and records, and moved to a small furnished apartment in town. She had to call a taxi to help her move. Mark flatly refused to help, and called her an idiot for going.
The taxi driver was helpful, and very curious He caught enough of the conservation to know Liz was leaving Mark. It would be all over town in an Hour, Liz thought, and decided it would serve Mark right. He deserved to lose his job, have trouble with Bruce Durgan, have to fight for a divorce, have the whole mess dragged out into the open. She didn't feel sorry for him at all.
She had unpacked again by noon. It felt strange to go out to a restaurant for a leisurely lunch instead of scurrying around to fix lunch for Mark. She wondered how he would manage. He couldn't cook. But she didn't care. Let him burn his fingers.
At the restaurant, she saw several people she knew. The elderly registrar of the college came up to her as she was finishing her coffee.
"Mrs. Sullivan, good afternoon."
"Hello, Mr. Blair. Hot today, isn't it?"
"Yes. I was just checking; you'll be teaching five courses this fall as usual, won't you?"
"Yes. My same schedule, except the third year Spanish will be a special projects course, for advanced students only."
"Yes, yes, that's what I have. And your husband?"
Liz' smile froze. "You'll have to ask him about that."
"Perhaps you'll have him call me."
She looked into the wise blue eyes of the older man, and knew he had heard already.
"I don't think I'll be seeing him," she said definitely.
"Ah, I see. Well, thank you. I'll call him."
He went away. Liz sat over her cold coffee, and brooded. Mark would probably be asked to resign. Her job was likely secure, but Mark would have to go. He would have trouble getting a job elsewhere, unless he decided after all to work with Arthur.
But she didn't care. It wasn't her worry anymore Mark would have to figure things out for himself.
She went back to the apartment, and sorted the records, and tried to get them to work on the small old portable record-player she had. But they didn't sound the same as on the big player at home, and she had no way of telling whether they were good enough for classes.
She wasn't hungry in the evening, and didn't feel like going out to eat. She wondered how Mark was getting along. He was completely helpless in a kitchen He couldn't boil water, or even fix coffee. He had probably decided to eat out. Yes, that's what he was doing.
About eight o'clock the doorbell rang, and startled her. Maybe it was the landlady, she thought. She wouldn't want anyone else to see her in her old grey slacks and once-white tee shirt.
She opened the door. "Arthur!"
"Hello, Liz. Mind if I come in for a few minutes?" The smile and charm were turned on full force.
"Well, really, I'd rather not tonight. I'm cleaning the-"
"It won't take long." Somehow he was past her and in the room looking around. "This is going to be lovely," he said enthusiastically. "I can just see the possibilities. A strictly modern style, stark white curtains, black drapes-"
"I don't intend to fix it up," said Liz curtly, closing the door since he seemed to have planned to remain. "This is just temporary until I decide where to live."
"Oh. I see. I talked to Mark today. He is heartbroken at your leaving him."
Liz stiffened. "He's only feeling sorry for himself!"
"Now, Liz. You don't realize how much Mark depends on you, on your wisdom, your judgment-"
"Did he tell you why I left?" Liz cut sharply into the smooth molasses of his flattery.
"He did say he was in some trouble," Arthur admitted reluctantly.
"Trouble, that's a mild word. He's gotten a married woman pregnant. Now he wants a divorce so he can marry her. So I got out. That's the way he wants it-complete freedom. He can have his freedom and her."
Coulson did not seem at all surprised or shocked, so she figured Mark had already told him the facts.
"I don't know why you're concerned," she said, as he frowned into space with his usual calculating look.
"Frankly, Liz, I am very much concerned. Mark called me to say he would continue with the survey only until the end of August. Then he was leaving Port Ransom. When I asked him about my proposition to work on a large survey for two years-you heard about that?-he refused flatly."
"Oh."
"You don't know what a spot I'm in. I have interested someone in the survey, someone very influential and I might say wealthy. But she-that is, the person doesn't feel I am the one to do the actual interviewing. I told her about Mark, what a steady, reliable, idealistic fellow he is, and she was enthusiastic. Now he says he can't possibly take the job."
"I think he feels his reputation will be damaged by the divorce and remarriage."
"But that's the point, Liz!" Arthur leaned toward her earnestly. He was still standing; she didn't offer him a chair. "If you would only be reasonable, all this would go smoothly. There wouldn't be any need-"
"I'm not going to Reno, and that's final! I've got my job, and I have to make a living for myself."
"No, no, no, that isn't what I mean! I mean you ought to go back home to Mark and let things blow over!"
She glared. "Don't you understand? It's Mark's idea to get the divorce! He wants a divorce. He wants to marry Frances!"
"No, he doesn't. He thinks she's an idiot," said Arthur simply.
"Who said so?"
"He said so."
She waved her hands helplessly. "But he said-"
"He thinks he ought to marry her. He doesn't want to. Now, if you would only go back home and let things blow over-"
"I'll let things blow Mark's fool head off!" she cried. "He's got to straighten this out by himself! I've had enough of working things out, of taking his cracks about my appearance and my housekeeping and even my teaching. He doesn't think I'm a good wife! Okay, let him try Frances for a while! I bet she'll be a perfect misfit-in and out of bed. I'll bet she'll give him a merry chase. He's welcome to her."
"Now, Liz, I think you're being unreasonable," Coulson said sharply, reproachfully. "You aren't giving him a chance. Mark is a hard-working man, a serious research sociologist. He's gotten into some difficulties because of his work-"
"Oh, sweet trouble!" she mocked. "I bet Frances wasn't any trouble at all! I bet she fell like an overripe plum-"
"Really, Liz, I can understand why Mark gets angry with you! You're ruining his work, wrecking the survey, all for a jealous rage at another woman. Can't you see how serious you've made the situation? If you had only stayed home where you belonged, he would be able to continue his fine work-"
All Liz could think to say was, "At the rate of one baby per year?"
"His excellent work in the survey. Together we could present to the world a comprehensive survey of frustrated women-"
"And their babies-"
"And help them solve their problems. Don't you see the good we could do, the good we would have done if you hadn't spoiled everything by your rash action."
"I'm not going to have a baby. Frances is!"
"Mark is determined to give up his work. I beg you to return to him, use your fine influence-"
"And let Frances and the baby move in with us?"
His anger showed suddenly.
"You exasperating woman! Mark ought to beat you! Ruining the survey, wrecking everything! I ought to-"
He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her off balance. For a moment, she thought he was going to hit her. Then he put one arm about her hips and pulled her tight against him. His hard mouth closed expertly over hers. She tried to pull away. He locked her body full against his. She felt the heat of him against her, the strong attraction of his sure confident masculinity.
For a long moment as he kissed her, she was near to yielding. His mouth was hot and exciting on hers his body swiftly conquering. She remembered when he had kissed her before, and how it had aroused her.
"Come on, Liz," he muttered "Be sweet to me. I won't be mean to you. I know what a girl likes."
She found some strength. She wrenched herself far enough from him to kick his shin with a sharp blow.
"Ow!" he yelped, letting her go abruptly.
"Get out, and don't come back!" she yelled. "You're a cheap, conniving, loose-living bastard! Get out!"
"All right, Liz," he said with dignity, limping painfully to the door. "But one day you'll be glad to see me come around!"
"If I get real lonesome in hell!" she blazed.
She slammed the door behind him. She locked it with a vicious snap, then went back to her bedroom, went to bed, and cried for hours.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Mark had never really believed Liz would walk out on him. He knew she was very angry and upset, but he hadn't thought she would desert him.
He didn't want to marry Frances. He had wanted Liz to help him figure out some good reason why he should not marry Frances. Instead she had repeated over and over that Frances was already married. Liz hadn't been thoughtful and logical; she had been no help at all.
He hated being shoved into the position of being forced to marry a woman he didn't love. And Frances wasn't very smart. She had become quite boring before he broke off with her. What would she be after years of marriage?
Liz had been very selfish in leaving him to face this problem alone. They were married; the problem was really something for both of them to solve.
He fixed cold cereal for lunch. It was a hot day anyway.
In the afternoon, the registrar called, and wanted to know about his classes for fall.
"Just the same," said Mark impatiently. "I told you all that in the spring."
"Well-" the dry voice drawled slowly. "I wanted to make certain about your plans. I saw Mrs. Sullivan this noon at the restaurant, and she said I'd have to ask you."
"Oh." So Liz had been seen moving into the apartment, and the whole town had jumped to the conclusion she had left him They wouldn't have jumped so fast if the rumor about him and Frances hadn't already gone the rounds. Mark felt a touch of cold panic They wouldn't fire him outright without giving him a chance to explain, would they?
"So I thought I'd call," the registrar's voice insisted.
"I'm not quite sure at this time," Mark said at last. "I'll have to let you know. In a few days, I think."
"I see." There was a significant pause. "I'll wait to hear from you then, Mr. Sullivan."
After he had hung up, Mark realized the registrar had called him "Mister" instead of "Professor." A small point, but it was a deadly one.
Mark walked around the house all day. He was too miserable and confused to try to work. He wished Liz were there to fight with him. He had told Arthur he was leaving Port Ransom. But he didn't want to leave. He wanted to keep his job at the college.
He hated this awful quiet. Maybe if she had stayed, he could have worked things out in his mind. There was something about talking things over with Liz that helped him straighten out his own thinking.
Why had she left? She was an exasperating woman! They had been married six years and he still couldn't figure her out. She never reacted the way he expected her to. She never did what he told her to. Stubborn, perverse woman. She thought too much, that's what was wrong with her. Overeducated, too independent, too much mind of her own.
He decided several times to call her and order her home, then changed his mind. She would think he missed her, and he didn't. It was a relief she had left....
The house was too quiet though. And he was getting hungry. He went out to the kitchen and poked around. He found a jar of instant coffee. He liked his coffee strong and black, so he put three spoonfuls in the cup, turned on the water faucet until it ran hot, and filled the cup.
He took one sip. It was horrible. It didn't taste like coffee at all. He was really hungry. Wasn't there anything in the house to eat?
He looked in the refrigerator. There was a small dish of leftover spaghetti and meatballs. He ate it cold. It didn't taste at all the way it did steaming hot, but at least it was food. There were a few cold peas, some gelatin salad, and a half bottle of milk. Liz had intended to go to the grocery today The bread and milk were almost gone.
Damn. He'd have to start going to the grocery again. He hated that routine. He looked in the cupboards. Lots of canned foods. And Liz had frozen lots of stuff.
He felt happier when he remembered the frozen stuff. He could keep from going to the grocery for weeks. But wait. How did Liz fix the frozen stuff?
He sighed deeply, feeling much abused. Liz should have taught him to cook before she left. It had been a cheap trick to walk out on him like that.
He was still very hungry, so he went out to a drive-in and had two hamburgers, french fries and a milkshake.
He went back to the house. It was terribly empty and quiet. Liz was always home when he was home. He didn't know how to act with the house so quiet.
Damn it, he was lonely for her already. At least she was somebody to argue with, if she was unreasonable. He turned on the TV, but the program he and Liz usually liked so well seemed silly and inane.
The french fries had been heavy and greasy. He took some bicarbonate of soda and hoped he wasn't going to be sick all night. It would serve Liz right if he got deathly sick and had to go to the hospital.
He diverted himself for a short time with the thought of a touching deathbed scene, with Liz sobbing and telling him how sorry she was. But he couldn't picture Liz sobbing. When she had to cry, she waited till he was gone, and cried alone.
That thought made him suddenly uneasy. Sitting on the couch in the quiet living room, he remembered Liz had cried several times that summer, his fault every time. He had given her a rough life this summer. Poor Liz. She just couldn't take any more. She had walked out.
He tried to look at it from her point of view. Had she been upset because her security was threatened, the way the psychology books said? She could earn herself a living as well as he could. And she could cook; she wouldn't starve. Slowly he came to the rueful conclusion that Liz was probably more capable of taking care of herself than he was.
Once he had admitted that, he went further. He was lonely for her already. Liz had always been there when he needed her. He had come to depend on her as he had never been able to depend on his mother. Sitting on the couch, staring into space, he considered serously for the first time what his marriage meant to him.
His father had died when he was so young he scarcely remembered him. His mother had gone to work to support them both, and she was never home during the day. He had been left with neighbors until he had become old enough to go to school. Then he was supposed to be old enough to stay alone until his mother came home at six, tired, silent, rather curt and impatient.
When he had needed something, he had had to pause and try to gauge his mother's mood before he dared ask. The one way he had won her approval had been in school, his high grades, the teachers' words of praise. "That's a good boy, Mark," she would say.
He had gone on to college, subconsciously determined to continue to win her approval. He had planned to support her as soon as he could, to pay back her sacrifices for them both. But she had died before his graduation.
He had drifted until he had met Liz, hard-working. dominating, serious. Sitting there, he considered. Had Liz reminded him of his mother? Did he treat her with affection, then suddenly with callous indifference, to "pay back his mother" for the childhood years?
He wished Henry Kurtz were there to talk it over with him. He rubbed his forehead. He had given Liz a very bad time, he could see that now. He had taken out on her the frustrations and angers he had felt as a child. Poor Liz. It was a wonder she had put up with him this long.
Would she come back? Maybe. She loved him deeply. He knew that somehow, and it was a comfort to him. She was inarticulate about her love, but she did love him.
If only this mess with Frances could be cleared up. Then he could call Liz, or go over and see her. He'd talk her into coming back. He wanted her to come back, soon.
The doorbell rang. Still thinking about Liz, he went to the door and flung it open. A huge man shoved in past him.
"Sullivan?" said the man with a husky voice. "Yes."
The man struck him such a sudden jab on the chin that Mark stumbled backward and fell sprawling on the hardwood floor.
"Get up!" the man commanded, standing over him with fists clenched. Mark stared up at the vaguely familiar face, then struggled to his feet.
"What's this all-" he began. The man knocked him down again.
"I'm Durgan," he said. "You been messing around with my wife."
Mark didn't get up fast enough to suit Durgan. The huge man grabbed him by the shoulder, hauled him up, and held him hard while he slapped his face several times. The force of the blows rocked Mark's head
"Stop-cut that out-"
Durgan knocked him down again. He landed on him and pounded at him with his huge fists.
He knocked the breath out of Mark's body. A fist hit his stomach, hit his chest, pounded his ribs. He groaned, tried to writhe away, but the man was an enraged giant.
Durgan was bellowing at him, almost incoherently. "Wife-rape-bastard-rape-kill you-kill-" He pounded him, knocked his head against the floor, until Mark was close to blacking out.
"The child-" he gasped, avoiding the beefy fist by jerking his head away. "The child-mine-I know-"
"What? What?" The fist paused for a moment.
The words he would say would drive the man away-or make him kill. Mark licked his lips, gathered his courage, gasped, "I know the child-, is mine because-Frances told-me you're-impotent. Can't have a child. Can't be a man. Can't be a husband. And you married her, didn't tell her. Deceived her."
For a moment he chilled with fear. The beefy face blanked with hate. The huge fingers reached for his throat. Mark did not struggle, but lay looking up at the powerful man with all the steady contempt he felt. This burly man, knowing full well his own condition, had deliberately married a trusting woman-and then told her the truth.
Durgan got up. He wiped a huge hand across his sweaty face.
"You-you said-you-" His voice broke. He turned and walked out heavily, his arms hanging at his sides, like a football player ordered out of the game he had hoped to win.
Mark lay still for a while. He felt dizzy and faint Finally he moved his arms and legs. They still worked. He sat up cautiously, then stood. He blacked out, and grabbed for a chair as he fell.
When he came to, he was sprawled in a chair, but had no recollection of reaching it.
He finally recovered enough to slam the front door shut, and to stagger back to the bathroom. He rinsed his face in cold water, letting the water sluice over the soreness. Some dark bruises were showing already. He stripped and examined his body, especially his ribs. He winced several times. The bruises were painful. But he didn't think any bones were broken.
He limped to bed, and collapsed there, so tired he couldn't sleep. His body ached and throbbed. In spite of the heat, he shook as though with a chill. Durgan might have killed him, or crippled him for life.
At one point he blacked out, or perhaps he fell asleep. He was unable later to decide which had been the case. Whatever the circumstances of unconsciousness, however, he had a dream ... a terrible dream filled with steam rollers and huge machines coming at him, prepared to crush him.
Not all the machines looked like Bruce Durgan.
Some of them looked like Life, and some of them looked like Fate, and several of them had the sly, malicious evil look of women-and Mark was never sure if those women were any women, or ones he knew.
Frances? Liz? His interviewees? Who?
He couldn't afford to sleep after that; it was too painful.
He wished, as he lay alone in the darkness, that Liz were here. He wanted her to put medicine on his bruises, to reassure him that he'd be all right. But most of all he wanted her to hold him in her arms and comfort him. He had never felt so hurt and lost and ashamed and alone.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Mark slept uneasily that night, waking often to move uncomfortably in bed. In the morning he felt so stiff and sore he thought for a while he wouldn't be able to get out of bed. He finally made it then groaned to think of fixing his own breakfast.
He decided to go out for breakfast, and ate at an all-night diner where he had bacon (burned), two hard and greasy fried eggs, cold toast with hard blobs of butter on it, and some stale jam. The coffee was hot and black, and he had three cups of it.
He went back home. The house was desolate and silent. He walked around and around. Finally he got out his charts and tried to work on them.
When the phone rang, he jumped. It sounded so shrill and loud in the quiet house. Maybe it was Liz, saying she wanted to come back. She had had all night to think about it.
It was Frances. "I just had to call you, Mark," she said. Her voice sounded muffled, and there were odd noises in the background. "Can you talk?"
"Sure, I can talk. Oh, you mean Liz. No, she left. She's living in an apartment in town."
"Oh, gosh! I'm sorry."
"So am I."
"I'm at the drugstore. Bruce didn't go to work today. He's terribly angry." She sounded rather happy about that.
"I though so too when he beat me up last night," said Mark grimly.
"Beat you up! Oh, my poor darling!" She sounded even more excited and happy. "Oh, this is dreadful! I don't know what to do. I never had men fighting over me like this."
Mark gritted his teeth in exasperation. If he married that woman, he'd be knocking her head against the wall within a month. For the first time since he had begun the survey, he saw the husbands' side of the question. Maybe they had reason to leave their wives for poker games, bowling leagues, and other women.
"I sincerely hope it never happens again," he told her ironically. "But listen, I have to talk to you. We're got to decide what to do. Where can I meet you?"
"I don't know, Mark. I sneaked away today. I just can't see you yet. Bruce is so suspicious of me."
Suspicious. The poor brute had every reason to be suspicious. Mark tapped his fingers impatiently on the telephone table as Frances went on and on.
"I don't know what to do. I don't know when I can see you. We'll have to wait till Bruce goes back to work. If-"
She went babbling on happily. Mark closed his eyes and thought of this summer when the affair had started. How happy, how thoughtlessly happy he had been, with the excitement, the wild lovemaking, the experiments in sex he and Frances had enjoyed. That time seemed a million miles away.
"Oh, someone's coming. I've got to hang up!"
"Wait, Frances, I have to know-"
"Bye, darling," she breathed tenderly, and banged the receiver in his ear.
He hung up, rubbed his ear. and went back to his charts. There really ought to be a place in the survey for the honest reactions of husbands and lovers. No survey on women's frustrations would be complete without that.
He sighed deeply, and stared at the charts until his eyes felt blurred. He got up and washed his face. It was two o'clock in the afternoon. He ought to go out to eat, but the thought of another meal like this morning's made him shudder.
The phone rang again. He jumped for it. If it was Liz, he'd tell her he wanted her back. he loved her madly, he would never have another affair, he would sign a life-long pledge, he would-
"Hello!" he said eagerly.
"Hello. Professor Sullivan! This is Darlene Wilson. Remember me?"
He could have groaned aloud. Darlene the big, over-sexed blonde. The last person in the world he wanted to talk to.
"Oh, yes, Miss Wilson," he said wearily.
"I have something I just have to tell you, Professor. It's terribly important."
"Oh, yes?" He couldn't have cared less.
"It's about the survey. Some people told me some more about it, and I do truly want to help. Could you come over this afternoon?"
"Today?" he asked, trying to think how to get out of going.
"Yes, this afternoon. It's terribly important."
He was weary of his own thoughts. He'd like to get out of the house for a while. But Darlene-she had attacked him before. She knew better now, though, and it was the middle of the day.
"My sister's here too. We both want to talk to you."
That sounded much better. Two women. Darlene wouldn't try to make love to him in front of her own sister.
"All right, I'll come right away, if that's okay with you."
"Okay, Professor! We'll be expecting you! Goodbye!"
She sounded as happy as Frances.
While he was getting ready to go, he kept thinking about Darlene and how she had looked, her big body sprawled out on the floor, her tanned legs raised to him like some pagan offering.
He got a cold drink of water and drank it slowly before he went. He must not think about her that way. Women like that were nitroglycerin.
When he reached the door of her apartment, he rapped briskly, determined to make this interview business-like as possible.
A girl opened the door, but she wasn't Darlene. This girl was young, maybe fifteen or sixteen, with short curly blonde hair, and hard china-blue eyes. She smiled swiftly. "Hello, Professor Sullivan," she said. The smile softened the hard effect of her eyes. Maybe it was the lighting, he thought.
"Hello. Is Miss Wilson here?"
"She's on the telephone. Come on in."
Darlene was murmuring into the phone, but she saw him enter, and waved at him coyly. "Just a minute, Professor!" she called, and went on talking into the phone.
"I'm Sally," said the younger girl.
"Hello, Sally," said Mark. He felt a little uneasy. Darlene wouldn't be able to talk frankly in front of this child. What was it she wanted to say that was "terribly important" that she could say in front of Sally? The girl looked tough enough, but she was young and Darlene ought to know better.
Something from the previous interview bothered him, some fact he couldn't quite remember. He frowned as he tried hard to recall the interview, but it was obscured by the memory of Darlene's attack on him. He should have gone over to his office first, he thought. He should have looked up the interview form and studied the information on it before he came.
He had been so disturbed and confused he hadn't been able to think straight. What was it?
Darlene was still talking on the phone. Sally smiled again at him, and patted the back of a chair. "Do sit down, Professor. I'm sure it won't be long."
"I really can't stay long," said Mark. He had decided he'd better trust his instincts and get out. Something was definitely off-color here. "I think I'd better go, and come back another time." He was privately vowing never to come within a hundred feet of Darlene again.
"She'll be through in a minute." Sally walked over to the telephone. Darlene glanced at her and nodded, then hung up.
"I'm sorry to keep you waiting, Professor," she chirped. He was still standing, and she didn't sit down either.
"It's quite all right. What was it you called me about?"
She glanced at Sally. "Well." she hesitated. She was dressed in a neat cotton dress, and didn't look as brazen as she had the other time, but still Mark felt more and more uneasy. "You've met my sister Sally," she said. "Sally, Prof. Sullivan."
"Yes, she introduced herself. How do you do," he added. "I don't believe we should discuss the project in front of your sister."
"Oh, Sally's all right. She understands. In fact, she's the reason I wanted to talk to you."
"Oh, yes?" Mark looked at Sally, but got only a bland stare from the china-blue eyes. "I'm not a psychologist, or anything like that, you know." He tried to laugh. He glanced back toward the door, but it seemed quite a distance away.
"Oh, I know that. But Sally's having problems with boys, you know. She's very pretty."
"Yes, she is."
"And I wanted you to tell her the trouble she can get into if she fools around. Like an older man, like a father, you know. Our parents are dead-"
Click. The fact came to the front of Mark's brain, the missing fact from the interview. Darlene's parents were dead-and she was alone, because she was an only child. An only child-no sisters, no brothers. No sister Sally.
Mark started to back toward the door, but Sally was abruptly in his path.
"Get him!" said Darlene. Sally jumped at him and knocked an amazingly hard little body into his. He was caught off balance, but struggled valiantly. He would have escaped, if Darlene hadn't taken over.
She knocked him to the floor and straddled him, and tore at his clothes. He was sure she was going to rape him, and fury rose in his brain. Anger gave him strength He heaved up, and Darlene yelled, "Help me, Sally."
Mark twisted his head to stare at Sally. The girl was systematically ripping her dress off her shoulders. Then she leaned over and ripped the dress up from the hem. Then she flung herself on Mark and helped Darlene hold him down.
He felt passion rising in him, despite the hysteria and the insanity of the moment. He had two really attractive girls all over him, the feel of their breasts, their thighs, their hair covering him with a patina of sensation like no other he'd ever felt. If they had perhaps taken it slower, tried to be less like ape-women and more like the stacked, seductive women they appeared, he might easily have fallen down without all the trouble. It wasn't really a bad fate.
But they were like beasts....
He tried to fight them off, while at the same time feeling the hot, smooth flesh of them, all over his body....
The two tramps. What were they after? Not her sister. Sally, not her sister. Two tramps. Mark struggled harder, trying to get out of their determined holds.
"All right, what's going on here?" The stern masculine voice was relief after the shrill cries of the two women.
"Get them off me," Mark panted. But the two vixens had hopped up nimbly and Mark found himself sprawled alone on the floor, his clothes torn half off him, and staring up into the stern face of a policeman. Jim Mallory.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The police offered to let him call his lawyer, but Mark didn't have a lawyer. He had never needed one before.
If Liz hadn't left him, he would have called her. She was always so calm and collected. But he couldn't call her now, not on this charge.
He thought of calling Henry Kurtz, but immediately rejected the thought. This was a bad mess. He'd lose his job over it, and there was no point in endangering Henry's job also.
He sat on a bench in the main office, numbly watching people come and go. Harry Etkins, an older policeman, had said he would talk to Mark later when he had time.
It was about four in the afternoon. The things that could happen in a short time! Mark rubbed his face with his hands, and stared at the people around him. He felt as though he had never seen any of them before. Jim Mallory, stern as Mark had never realized he could be, was scolding a kid in a black leather jacket who had been caught driving 100 miles per hour on the highway. The druggist came in to give a statement about some medicine a woman had taken which she claimed was poisoning her.
Mark wasn't in a jail cell, but he would be soon if he couldn't think of something. He rubbed his head, but it ached too much for thinking. His stomach was growling, and he remembered he hadn't eaten since breakfast. He wasn't hungry, but oh, how he wanted a good cup of coffee. He felt dazed and sick and incredulous because of the crazy horrible thing that had happened.
He was going to jail. On a morals charge? Attempted rape of a sixteen-year-old girl. Darlene had told Jim Mallory that Mark had come to her apartment to see her, and when he found she was out he had attempted to rape her young friend, Sally. (She hadn't tried to tell Jim that Sally was her sister.) Luckily, said Darlene, she had come home just in time to rescue her young innocent friend from the animal who had tried to corrupt her.
Mark shook his head in complete disbelief. Who would believe Darlene could make up such a story just because he had rejected her advances, and work out the plot with such timing so that the police arrived at the right moment? He just couldn't believe she was smart enough for all that.
"Mark." Someone sat down beside him and took his hand in her cool ones.
He turned his head to look, but knew who it was because no one else would touch him like that. "Liz?"
"Oh, Mark, I'm so sorry."
"Liz. How did you know I was here?" His hands closed hard over hers. Oh, blessed Liz, with her calm face, her anxious gentle eyes. He felt better already because she was beside him.
She lowered her voice to a murmur. "Frances called me. She told me Bruce had worked up a plot for revenge, and was so jubilant at its success he couldn't keep from bragging about it."
"Bruce. Of course." That made sense. He must have planned it, gotten Darlene's cooperation and paid the girls to help. All he had to do then was to get a policeman to the scene in time to see the evidence
"What have you planned to do? Do the police believe your story?"
"I haven't told them a story yet," he told her ruefully. Oh, it was good to have Liz there to talk to. Now things were moving into focus. He could think again "I'm supposed to talk to Harry Elkins when he's free. But it's a morals charge, Liz."
"How ridiculous," said Liz calmly. "All you need to do is explain about the survey. You've lived in Port Ransom all your life. Nobody will believe you'd rape a child."
It was comforting to hear her say so with such conviction. Mark gave a great sigh of relief, and started figuring out what to do.
"I guess that's the best thing, to explain about the survey. You see, the reason Darlene Wilson was so mad at me, Liz, was because when I went to interview her, she made a pass and I walked out. She's pretty oversexed."
"They probably realize that. All you need to do is explain what happened. But I think you'd better leave Bruce Durgan and Frances out of it."
Mark was silent. She was quite right.
"I wonder if they'll take my word about the survey. Maybe I'd better get Arthur Coulson over here to explain."
"That's a good idea," Liz approved.
Mark used the public wall phone, but Arthur didn't want to come. He didn't want to get mixed up.
"You're already mixed up in this," Mark said, getting angry. "The survey is your project, remember? Besides, if there's a lot of publicity, it's bound to smash the whole thing. If you get over here and get me out quietly, there's some hope."
"I wouldn't need to go on with it," said Arthur stubbornly. "I could take what you've done so far and publish the results. The publicity would be all the better for sales."
Mark put his hand over the mouthpiece. "He says the publicity it good for sales! He's going to publish the interviews, and let me sink!"
Liz's green eyes blazed fire, then she smiled like an angry cat. "What interviews? Don't you have them locked up in the safe at the office?"
Mark stared at her. He laughed. "Arthur? I've got the interviews locked up. No help for me, no interviews for you. That's final."
"Oh. Well-I expect I'd better come over then." Coulson replied blandly, "What do you want me to say?"
Mark told him explicitly, with whispered assistance from Liz.
"I'll be right over," Coulson promised. Mark and Liz sat down to wait.
It wasn't nearly so bad now with Liz beside him. Mark thought contentedly. Things would work out And Liz had come in spite of everything, the minute she heard he needed her.
Coulson arrived within the hour, and he and Mark talked a few minutes. Then Jim Mallory came over
"We'll talk to you now," he said. He led them over to Harry Elkins' desk, and the five of them sat down.
Mark introduced Arthur, and gave his background "He told me he wanted some preliminary work done here in Port Ransom, among women who were college graduates."
Arthur took over smoothly, and explained his theories, then talked in glowing terms of what Mark had accomplished. The two policemen listened silently. Mark felt uncomfortable and worried when he remembered that Jim Mallory had seen him in the parked car with Frances. Mark hadn't been conducting any survey with Frances, and the policeman knew it. , "So you see, the work Professor Sullivan has been doing is quite important. It's only unfortunate that there were some women who are unduly excitable sexually and mistook his motives to mean an interest in themselves. This has caused serious problems this summer. But you can see from all this that Professor Sullivan was in this case the innocent victim of a plot by a woman who thought she had been scorned."
It sounded good, even to Mark. He looked hopefully at Harry Elkins. The older man's lined face was expressionless.
Elkins asked a number of questions, about the survey, about how often Mark had seen Darlene Wilson, how often Sally.
"That was the first time I had seen Sally. Darlene introduced her as her sister."
"Introduced her? Then Darlene was present?"
"Yes. She was on the phone when I arrived. She was present the entire time." He went on to explain how he became uneasy, how he had decided to leave; they had stopped him, and Sally had rippcu off her clothes. "I was a fool. I didn't see it was a frame-up. I thought they were going to-well-"
"Rape you?" suggested Arthur.
"Yes. That's what I thought."
They discussed it for a while. Jim Mallory stated that Darlene had a record and they were aware of her nature. Sally was on her way to becoming a young Darlene, and was already known at several night clubs just outside town.
Harry Elkins finally said, "In view of the characters of the two women involved, in view of the serious intent of your survey, and also in view of the fact that I've known you since you were a kid, Mark, I'm releasing you. I know you're not one to attack a young girl. However-" He frowned sternly. "I'm giving you a warning. You're not completely innocent in this survey business. Wittingly or not, you've been stirring up trouble around town. We've had some complaints. Maybe the survey's a good thing. I'm not saying it isn't.
But it's been handled badly and it's caused us a lot of trouble. I don't want you to go on with it in Port Ransom. Now I can't stop you legally. All I can do is warn you. But if you go on, and something like this comes up again, or more serious trouble, we won't be so easy on you."
Mark sighed a huge sigh of relief. "I can promise you, I'm not going to continue the survey."
"Just so you don't go on with it in Port Ransom. That's all I care about." said Elkins.
"But it must be continued somewhere," said Arthur earnestly. "This is an important vital survey."
Both policemen eyed him coldly. Jim Mallory said flatly, "That may be, but my advice to you is stay out of this business. It takes a different kind of fellow to handle a risky touchy thing like this. Neither of you is the kind to do it. Better leave it to older more settled fellows, ones who know how to handle it with dignity."
"Well!" said Arthur. "I must say I resent-"
Mark stood up and so did Liz. "Thanks very much," he interrupted Arthur's speech. "I'll take your advice and stay out of it from now on. Come on, Coulson!"
Arthur allowed himself to be dragged away, but outside he was grumpy. "Those two-they know nothing about sociology."
"Yes, they do. They meet it every day," said Liz, very quietly, as a police car drew up to the station and two weary-looking policemen got out with two sullen tough-faced older men.
"Well, what about the interviews? I rescued you. as you blackmailed me into doing. Now. how about the payoff? " Arthur was rapidly becoming more cheerful.
Mark was just as anxious to get rid of the pages. "Let's go over to the college and get them."
"If you have the check, of course," Liz interrupted swiftly.
Mark stared at her blankly.
Arthur said, "What check?"
"The check to pay Mark for his services this summer, plus expenses," said Liz firmly.
"All right," Arthur sighed. "You win, Liz. I always said you had a head on your shoulders."
At the college Mark opened the safe and took out the papers. Coulson riffled through them. Then he sat down at Mark's desk and wrote out the check, signing his name with flourish.
"Now if you'll just sign this receipt," he said, handing Mark a typewritten page, folded from being in his pocket.
Mark would have signed without reading, he was so surprised to get the check. But Liz stopped him. "Read it out loud, Mark."
It was more than a receipt. It was a release of all Mark's rights to the interview pages, and any remuneration that might be earned later.
Liz listened to about half of the form as Mark read. Then she took it out of his hands and ripped it in two, then in two again, and threw the pieces in the waste-basket.
"You cheapskate!" she said to Coulson. "You've got the gall of a snake! You're thinking of publishing this and keeping all the royalties."
Coulson didn't get angry He looked hurt and reproachful. "But Liz, it's my idea. And I'd have the work to do on the book."
"Mark did all the work on the interviews. He's not going to sign any release."
"But I need a receipt for the check."
Liz picked up the check and handed it to Mark. "Your cancelled check is your receipt. And when and if anything gets published, Mark gets half. That's final, Arthur."
"I don't really care," Mark intervened hurriedly. "This is enough-I don't care whether anything gets published. Just be sure not to use any of the actual interviews, Arthur, only general tables of figures."
"Of course, Mark! I wouldn't violate the confidences of any of these ladies."
Mark put the check in his pocket and helped Arthur wrap up the pages. "I'll make out a new contract in a few days," Arthur finally offered. "If you'll finish making out the new questionnaires and let me have the benefit of your experience this summer, I'll give you half the profits on this first book."
"First book?" said Mark.
Arthur's eyes glazed over. "Yes. I can see it clearly. This is going to be the first of a series I'm going to do on the love-life of women of our day. Hey, that's a great title for the series, 'Women of Our Day.' I'll get somebody else to do some more interviews. I'll get people to interview all kinds of women' Then I'll write the books. I'll be famous. Mark. Rich and famous."
"Help yourself. Arthur." said Mark, drily. "Coming, Liz?" He let them out and locked up his office.
He felt as though a tremendous weight had fallen off his shoulders, now that he was rid of those interviews. Finished, over. He was done with it Arthur still wanted more advice from him. He'd give it gladly, but that was the end. No more interviews. No more entanglements with women. He would retreat happily to the unexciting but satisfying and safe world of teaching.
It had been a hectic summer, with rather frightening aspects. He might have lost his job. He had been close to losing his reputation. And he had been so close to losing Liz that the thought of it made him shudder.
Arthur was trying to read the top interview as he walked alone. "This is great, oh, this is really great stuff," he was muttering happily when they left him at his car.
"Well, thanks for the rescue, Arthur," Mark said. Arthur nodded vaguely. "Glad to, anytime," he said, in his detached manner. Liz and Mark went on to their car.
"You know, he's not half-bad," said Mark.
Liz said savagely, "After you've told him about the survey, I don't want you ever to see him again! He'd put a knife in your back as soon as you turned it."
"Well, that's the way he is," Mark shrugged. He felt too relieved and happy to get mad at anybody, even Arthur. "He's still an intelligent and brilliant sociologist."
"Nuts," she-said vigorously. "He's an opportunist."
It was good to talk to Liz again. He drove home. Liz said, at the driveway, "You know I don't live here anymore."
"Aw, Liz," he said plaintively. "I haven't had a decent meal since you left."
"I might have known," she sighed. She came in and fixed him a good hot meal, with a pot of coffee. It tasted like the foods of the gods. And it was even better to sit and talk a long time at the table, and discuss everything that had happened.
He told her Bruce Durgan had beat him up She sympathized, and found the salve for which he had hunted vainly. She did the dishes, then asked him to take her back to the apartment.
"Liz," he said, standing in front of her. I know I've treated you badly this summer. I mean to make it up to you. Better than that. I think I understand you and me more than I ever did before. I want you to come back to me, and let me show you I've changed. But damned if I'll go down on my knees."
He said it with absolute conviction, and she stared at him, trying to ascertain whether this was sham, or her husband's real face, exposed for the first time in their married life. His eyes remained level with hers, as he tried to tell her silently that he had seen depravity and waste and corruption unlike any he had known existed; that he had plumbed the depths of women's secret souls, and for the most part found the substances smoldering there foul and useless. He wanted her to know he respected and admired her as a woman, as a scholar, as a helpmeet ... and perhaps now he even knew the meaning of love ... one of the meanings of love. He tried to tell her all this, without speaking, while she watched.
She thought a minute, looking squarely into his eyes as though to read him through.
"All right, Mark, I'll move back tomorrow," she said mildly. "I have some packing to do, and I'm too tired to do it tonight."
He relaxed, and realized he'd been stiff with fear that she would refuse him. "Good enough," he said, and took her back to the apartment. He kissed her goodnight, but she didn't let him linger, and closed the door firmly in his face.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Mark slept fitfully again that night, and was troubled by nightmares of giant naked women chasing him down the streets of Port Ransom, of prison gates closing on him, of searching and not finding. He was glad to wake in the morning, and to see the sunshine streaming in the windows.
Something smelled good, in fact, wonderful. He sniffed. What was it? Ah, coffee. That was it. And bacon. Liz must be home.
Wonderful Liz. He'd make it all up to her. And never, never again would he run the risk of losing her. She was too valuable a woman. It made him sick when he thought how close he had come to marrying someone else instead of Liz.
He heard her brisk step in the hall. She came in the bedroom. "Mark? Awake?"
"Urn-hum," he yawned, "Do I smell coffee?"
"Yes, breakfast is ready." She smiled at him. "Did you miss my cooking?"
"Among others of your talents," said Mark.
She went back to the kitchen. He got up and dressed. If it hadn't been for Liz, he might be eating breakfast in jail. It was a sobering thought.
All the food tasted so good. He couldn't remember when a breakfast had tasted so wonderful. And the coffee-
"I sure missed your coffee," sighed Mark.
"I really ought to teach you to make coffee," said Liz.
"No. Just promise you won't leave me again."
She didn't answer. He eyed her worriedly over the edge of his cup. Surely she wasn't still thinking about a divorce.
Everything had happened so fast. Here it was, only Wednesday. Liz had moved on Monday, but that seemed weeks ago. This was the third week of August. College would start in less than three weeks. Where had the summer gone? There was so much to do yet.
And Frances. The baby. That wasn't settled yet. And did he still have a job at the college? The weight of all the problems descended on his shoulders again. Nothing was really settled. No decisions had been made. Frances was waiting to hear what he thought she should do.
He wanted to groan aloud. There was Liz sitting across from him, looking fresh and cool and lovable, her yellow cotton dress framing the tall column of her tanned throat, the freckle face, the red-gold hair. And he couldn't touch her because he was still bound to Frances by duty and obligation.
How long would it take to straighten out this mess?
The phone rang. "I'll get it," said Mark, wearily.
He went to the living room and picked up the phone. "Hello."
"Mark?" It was Frances. He sat down on the couch, prepared for a long session.
"Hello, Frances."
"You got out of jail all right, didn't you? I'm glad."
He remembered belatedly that she had phoned Liz. "Yes. Thanks a lot for helping out."
"I was worried. Bruce is just terrible when he gets mad." She sounded proud and happy.
Liz was rattling dishes in the kitchen. He decided she couldn't hear.
"Can you talk now?" he asked cautiously.
"Oh, yes. That's why I called. Bruce has gone to Illinois to see about his new job and a house. So I thought I'd call and say goodbye."
"What are you talking about?"
"Didn't Liz tell you? She called me last night and she had the most marvelous idea! She said Bruce could get a job at another university, and I asked him, and he said yes he had lots of offers and one was especially terrific and we could move right away. Liz said I could keep the baby and nobody would ever know it wasn't Bruce's too and nobody needs to know anything and Bruce was real happy about that and it's all working out so-"
"Wait a minute. Wait-wait-You're moving away?"
"Yes. I told Bruce it was the only thing to do so we could stay married. And he does want to stay married to me. He's crazy about me."
"I gathered that." Under his relief, he felt some chagrin. Frances had never loved Mark; she had just wanted the sexual experiences. She really loved her goofy husband. Well, it would probably work out all right, after all. Frances would have the baby she wanted, and Bruce would have his pride, for no one would ever guess he was impotent, now that his wife was having a child.
Frances was bubbling on. "I'm so grateful to you for everything, Mark. You were just marvelous. I'll never forget you. You saved my marriage. I'm ever so grateful-"
Mark shook his head. It was a crazy world. He managed to say without choking, "You're welcome, Frances. But you know, I wouldn't do that again if I were you."
"Do what?" She sounded blank.
"Have an affair," he said bluntly.
"Oh, I won't do it again! Believe me, I won't. Liz told me next time to try artificial insemination."
"Oh, she did, did she!"
"Yes. Doesn't she have marvelous ideas? You must be crazy about her! Well, I must hang up now. I've got scads of packing to do! Goodbye, Mark! I'll never forget you."
"I'll never forget you, Frances," he said, quite truthfully.
She sounded pleased. "Thank you, darling. I hope you'll be very happy too, as happy as I am."
"Goodbye, Frances."
"Bye, darling!"
He hung up and went back to the kitchen. Liz was finishing the pans, but she looked rather guilty and flushed to his critical eye.
"Women," said Mark grimly.
"Oh, did you talk to Frances?"
"Yes, I did. Is that why you went back to the apartment last night, to call her?"
"Well, yes, and I had packing to do."
"Artificial insemination!" Mark snorted.
"Safer than having an affair," said Liz.
"Do you think all a woman wants is a child? Don't you realize she wants to be loved and have sexual gratification? A woman needs a man to love her!"
Liz flushed even more. She hung up the dish towel and took off her apron. "You've learned a lot about women this summer. But you'd better be prepared to learn even more, if necessary."
"Huh? What do you mean?"
"I want a baby. I've wanted one for several years. And it isn't my fault we don't have one, because I went to a doctor this summer, and he says there's no reason why I can't have one."
"Oh? You don't think it's my fault, do you? What do you think happened to Frances?"
"The doctor said I'd have to go easier, not work so hard. I'm thinking of teaching only half-time the second semester this next school year. I'm going to follow his directions. And the rest is up to you."
It sounded like a challenge, but she couldn't quite meet his gaze. He took a few steps closer and pulled her in his arms. She was stiff and unyielding, he could feel.
But he knew how to handle her now, he was sure of that. With all the new knowledge he had gained this summer, he was confident he had her figured out. He wouldn't be put off by her stiffness or shyness.
"Then let's start right now," he said.
"Oh, Mark, I ought to unpack, and-"
"Come on," he said, and drew her back to the bedroom. He helped her take off her dress, and felt her tremble at his touch. He remembered how Frances had liked for him to undress her, and kiss her body as he did so.
He pushed her gently down on her bed, and kissed her shoulders. Then he drew off the slip, and kissed her waist and arms. By the time he had her brassiere off, she was shaking. He finished undressing her, and stood up to undress himself.
Her body was cool when he lay down beside her. She lay motionless, her doubting eyes only half-shut. Afraid to love, afraid to surrender, afraid to go all the way to meet him.
He kissed her for a long time, slow deep kisses on her mouth. He taught her to open her mouth for his kisses, and tongue touched tongue in shy searching caresses. All the time, he pressed his body against hers, moving heavily against her as he lay at her side, his hand warmly on her thigh.
Then when she was absorbed in the novel kissing, and her body had relaxed to his warmth, he drew her closer, and touched her intimately. She tried to wince away from him. He let her move, then drew her back again.
She was still too stiff and tense. He decided to go farther. He kissed her breasts for a while, playing with the soft tips until they grew rosy and pointed in his mouth. Then he kissed below her breasts, and down to her waist. His hands held her from pulling away as he continued.
Her body was soft against his lips. She was fragrant and exciting. Liz. So strange and complex, so familiar and dear.
She tried to twist away; he held her open and kissed her absorbedly. Her protests became fainter. She lay still, soft now, ready for him.
He moved to her, slowly, easily, waiting for her, then moving on. Her eyes were shut, her hands coming out to search for him. He put her hands on his waist and felt them close with savage tenderness, her long slim fingers clutching him. He went deeper, into the unknown, the exciting unknown of Liz, so hard to find, so difficult to keep.
She moved uneasily. He paused, and kissed her breasts, until she lay quiet again. Then he moved farther, so far he was lost in her depths.
They had never been so close, so united, so bound tight.
He lay with her, watching her lovingly, moving slowly as he wished, watching her face, feeling her hands on his back. Slowly, slowly, coming to know each other. Slowly, slowly, adjust, fit, move, tremble, firmly deeper. Almost lazily like the movement of the sea thrusting against the land, the tide moving higher and higher each time, until the land lay wet and drowning in the fierceness of the oncoming sea, shuddering under the impact of the waves.
Her cries were sweet and wild. She had never said these things to him before, incoherent babblings to her lover. She shivered wildly, frantically, clutching heavily, no time for shyness, no time for retreat.
Complete surrender. No retreat. And before she could recover, and slip away, he was after her, her fierce enemy, her dearest friend, after her to kiss her again, hold her, love her, touch her with possessive hands. There was no chance to slip on any mask, to hide from him, or deny him any part of her. He was there, everywhere, kissing, caressing, murmuring, demanding, and she was enchanted into remaining a prisoner.
He drew her on him, and they came together more easily. His hands directed her; he wanted much of her; he got what he demanded. And still it was not enough.
They sat up on the bed, and he taught her many new things, until she grew weak and weary, slipping from him as he bent over her lovingly.
It was sweet to come to know her this way, he thought later, as she slept in his arms. There was so much to know about Liz, so much more to know than he had ever dreamed before this summer. He had learned much about himself, and about women. He had learned also there was much yet to be learned.
The summer had been a hectic one, and terrible sometimes. Yet he didn't regret Frances (though he would not tell this to Liz). Together he and Frances had learned and been taught a great deal that he had wanted to know. He had enjoyed Frances. But he was glad that affair was over.
Liz would be enough for him. Teaching her to love freely and excitingly would be a long and interesting task. Helping one woman solve her problems and be a happy wife and mother was a big enough job for any man. He would have plently to manage with Liz.
And Liz was the one woman to satisfy him in every way. Lightly he touched her breast with his hand, and smiled as she murmured in her sleep. He loved her mind, he loved her body. And he wanted and needed her as a wife and as a woman. He was restless when she left him, angry if she deserted him, lost without her. He wanted her cool judgment. He desired her warm body.
But this summer-he still had no regrets about the summer. He felt as though he had been a callow immature boy at the beginning of the summer, a boy whose innocent eyes saw only the white lace curtains that hung demurely in the windows of the houses of Port Ransom. Now he was a man who had ripped apart the lace and had seen the naked hunger behind it, the fears, the loves, the wants, the frustrations. He could never again look at any woman and not know something of what she wanted and desired.
He would look with fresh knowledge at the people of this college town, the people he had thought he knew. They would not wear masks to him anymore; he could see behind the masks. The Veras, the Paulas, even the Darlenes would have his new understanding and his compassion.
But it would be for Liz that he would reserve his thoughts and his feelings and his desires. Liz, the mysterious. He would learn to know her, and to love her the more, and to cherish her. For she was all woman, all lover, all mother, all wife, all mistress.
Liz opened her eyes, dazed, and looked up at Mark, bending above her. She was as closed from him, as far away as ever. This time, however, he was not baffled. He had the key to her, and he would unlock the key and open her slowly to him, until finally she learned to love him also with confidence and trust.
And in the time between kissing her and moving her body to adjust to his, he had another thought, new to him, which he saved to explore later.
This summer, for the first time in his life, he had begun to know himself.
