TOWARD THE BEGINNING

Novel by Veronica Cas

E-Published by GLB Publishers San Francisco              

SECOND EDITION Copyright © 2001 by Rita Sasiene
All rights reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper or broadcast.

Published in the United States by
GLB Publishers
P.O. Box 78212
San Francisco, CA 94107 USA

Cover by W. L. Warner

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN 1-879194-87-2

Library of Congress Catalog Number 00-111889

An e-Book Edition produced for Internet downloading and for printing

INTRODUCTION:

       To tell the truth, I didn't remember her at all when she first walked through the door, took a look around, and immediately headed for me at my usual spot. There have been a lot of women in my life during the last fifty-plus years, beautiful ones, plain ones, lean and heavy, fem and butch. The younger ones were usually hesitant but developed courage after a while when they realized that this was their place, where they could be themselves without hassles. This was one of the first lesbian bars in Los Angeles after the war, and I've been tending bar here or perched on this stool for all those years.
     When she started to talk the memories began slowly flooding back. When Phyllis first showed up here, I finally remembered, it was not long after World War II, and many women were just beginning to realize that there were other choices possible besides the simple marriage with husband and kids to fill her time. In those days it was risque for women to wear slacks, despite the transient "Rosie-The-Riveter" mood of a few years earlier. The term "gay" was new and some wouldn't use it. Even the bar, really the only lesbian bar in town, had kept the remnants of the masculine artifacts left by the previous owner, just for show, of course. Like the fish nets hanging from the ceiling. When the cops came in, swinging their billy clubs and sneering at the women trying not to look at them, it was difficult for them to believe that the customers there were immune to the virile symbols all around.
     As I thought more about those days, I had to admit that it was frightening sometimes. Families and friends deserted you unless you conformed to the norm. Landlords evicted you if they found out you were lesbian, and strangers stared and laughed or made rude sounds if they spotted you as different.
     It wasn't that most lesbians hated men (though a few did), but many just felt uncomfortable around them, what we now call "in their space," I guess. Some, the more masculine ones, had men as closest friends, felt they had much in common, and enjoyed their company as long as dating and sex were not expected.
     When Phyllis mentioned her bus trip to town, which was the usual method of long distance transportation in those days, it brought back memories of huge, smelly machines fresh from country roads and city outskirts, when there were outskirts to Los Angeles. Those highways, then perfumed by orange groves and clover fields, now stink of diesel exhaust and hot rubber. In those days there were even street cars in L.A. And when she mentioned some of the other characters who played roles in her life, I got flashes of memories, scenes that meant little to me at the time, to fill in the gaps in her story.
     But enough nostalgia; this is Phyllis' story and, after she finally settled down with a drink, this is the way she told it to me.

---------------------

BOOK ONE


CHAPTER 1


     They looked at the bus on platform 52; they looked at one another. A momentary silence seemed larger than all of the noise in the crowded Chicago bus depot. Rusty watched tears roll down her friends' freckled face. "It takes more courage to go back than it does to go," she said with sympathy.
     "But if you had waited--just one more week."
     "We would never have gone."
     "I was all set to go until yesterday, then Mama cried, and the job won't be available until October, and--"
     "Oh Phyl," Rusty sighed, "You're a born procrastinator."
     "I'll come soon."
     "I know, but only if I go now."
     They stood together in the midst of a wonder, a terror, and a pleasure comparable to those which had whirled them through their first days in kindergarten, involved with the same excitement and arrogance with which they had encountered their first moments as girl scouts, warmed, thrilled, delighted by the numerous unnamed compulsions that had driven them to discover new books, new places, new ideas, and new dreams, numbed by the remnants of insecurity that had grasped them on that day last week, when they graduated from the university.
     "God," Rusty said excitedly, "I don't believe it. Am I really going? Am I really running off to a strange city, millions of miles from home, just because you met Lory there? And came home and inspired me with your love for her? Your longings to go back?"
     "Rus, be careful. It's a strange world, unlike any I've managed to put into words."
     "Los Angeles," Rusty said clearly, deliberately.
     "If you can walk out--oh Rus, if we can walk out on everyone and everything that's been, on a whole beautiful meaningful reality, then isn't it possible that we'll always be able to walk out--and--"
     TICKETS PLEASE.
     They rushed into each other's arms, and they kissed, and when they parted, Rusty got into the long gray and silver bus. She hurried to a seat near where Phyllis waited outside. They were still waving when the large metal door closed and, with a gush of sparkle and noise, backed out of platform 52.
     Phyllis watched the bus desert the depot--hurriedly, as if it knew that it carried a dreamer to a dream.
     The memory of that summer, that bar, that love, and that fear, filled her with all of its usual intensity, and none of its usual gentleness. The love, the fear, the pain had created within her a dream so vivid, so compelling that when she had shared it with her best friend, it had become Rusty's dream too. And now Rusty had gone to pursue it. Phyllis stood alone in the terminal, in a Chicago that had never seemed so big, so small, so involved with her life, and so beside the point, so superfluous and so out of proportion.
     She looked around as if to reestablish the reality of the moment. There were tickets on the floor--used, discarded bus tickets. She picked one up and she recalled a time when they had just left the theater. Phyllis had saved the program and the ticket stub as usual, and as usual, Rusty had thrown them both away.
     "Don't you ever save reminders of things that you've enjoyed?" Phyllis asked, as if the question was new and not the reverberation of hundreds of attempts and decisions not to put it into words.
"You can't keep a thing alive by gathering its ashes in a covered box at the bottom of a hardly-ever-opened drawer," Rusty replied. And the recall of the old stationery box, pushed under the ragged, bottomless grey cardigan at the bottom of her dresser drawer drew more tears.
     "And do you keep it alive by discarding the fragments that can forever take you back to where and when?" Phyllis asked.
     "I don't need to go back; where and when are with me for as long as I resist making a ritual of the end."
     A ritual of the end--the memory of those words put her back into now, back into the realization that their mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers were waiting, probably impatiently, to hear that Rusty had boarded the bus, that she hadn't forgotten her suitcase, that she had sent her love to all of them, and regretted, at the last moment, that they hadn't all come to see her off. That the bus was air conditioned, that it had departed on time-- Suddenly she turned and rushed from the depot, as if she were driven by the recall of the party, their waiting, and not by the agony of the discarded tickets on the cement floor and the departed friend on the already vanished bus.
     But once the terminal lay behind her, she knew that she had run from it, not toward them. She walked more slowly as each of the several blocks to the train station passed under her feet. She walked as if against a force, as if into a wind, until finally even the last block was gone and the train that would take her home was there in front of her.
     She walked through their neighborhood streets, past the lamppost, the iron gates, the wooden fences and the barricades of shrubbery that were familiar to their friendship.
          The moonlight found her, followed her. As she watched it settle on her front porch, she doubted that the moonlight was liquid and dusty anyplace else in the world. She tiptoed into the center of it; on the other side of the sheer white curtains, her parents and Rusty's parents and crowds of sisters and brothers were still eating hors d'oeuvres and ice cream and drinking soda pop.
     "Who wants the last deviled egg?"
     "Not Mama, she's on a diet."
     Then her mother's words tore her from out of the anonymity that was the gift of the moonlight.
     "I don't want her to go."
     "She'll be all right," her father said. "She'll be with Rusty. They're good girls, and California isn't Europe. They'll be back, both of them, you'll see."
     "How do you know they'll be back?"
     "They'll be back."
     "How do you know?"
     Phyllis closed her eyes. Then she forced them open again. The diaphanous curtains swayed; the people on the other side flowed in and out of one another--the sound of them was diffident and grotesque.
     "She forgot the sandwiches."
     "The bus stops--she'll get plenty to eat."
     "A kid in my school says the water tastes like raw fish."
     "In California?"
     "No in Wyoming, but it's not far."
     "And the plums and the peaches, they were in the bag with the sandwiches."
     "Phyllis should be home by now."
     "Maybe the bus was late."
     "They'll miss each other. They haven't been separated for years."
     "Since Phyllis went to California."
     She turned to look at the moon behind the moonlight; then she dared the sight and the sound of the people inside--again. It was suddenly like the world was from the top of the roller coaster in Santa Monica.
     "I got a hole in my sock."
     "Hey, Ma, can I have another sour pickle?"
     "Ma, he's sitting on my doll."
     She had never been on a roller coaster with anyone but Lory.
     "I'll call downtown. I'll see if they left on time."
     Her father's anxiety compelled her to enter the house. She was determined to appear happy, as unmoved as she wished now that she were.
     "It's Phyllis!" Her brother shouted.
     "Where? Where?" Phyllis asked excitedly, and everyone laughed.
    "Did she remember her sweater?" Rusty's mother asked timidly. "It gets cold on the bus at night."
     "She wore one over her shoulders and she's got two more in the suitcase."
     She approached Rusty's mother. "We--she was sorry that you weren't there."
     "Oh, we understand," Rusty's father said, taking his wife's hand and squeezing it gently. "You girls are close--it's good to have friends, families, mothers, fathers; sometimes it's better--"
     "She forgot the sandwiches," a little sister interrupted.
     Phyllis turned her eyes toward the child. "We bought cheese and crackers and candy bars at the terminal--she'll be all right."
     "Did she really want to go? Didn't she change her mind, even once?" Rusty's brother asked.
     Phyllis moved further into the crowded room; she sat on the sofa.
     "Come, Mama, Papa, everybody, come; I'll tell you all about everything from the moment we sneaked away until the bus left." She recounted the words, the events of those last hours with an amazing, forced vivacity. She told them everything, everything but the truth--and then her self control began to fade, her melancholy to return. She begged to be excused and climbed the steps to her room under the burdensome glances of their irrelevant sympathies.
     As she closed the door behind her, she smiled because the moonlight was here too; it was scattered over the bed, the chair, the carved metal table, the desk, and it was brightest where the letter had been put down. She read the letter hurriedly, as if time were scared; then she read it again, slowly, carefully, as if she had not read it this morning. She caressed the fragments of the child that it delivered into her room--the child, the blind little girl in Indiana about whom she never spoke; the little girl to whom she sent letters and Easter bunnies, Birthday cards and Christmas gifts; the little girl about whom she had told no one--Lory's little girl, the daughter she deserted because one of them was blind--and one of them was gay. And though the letters from the child were ropes that bound her to Lory, they were, too, provoking interferences, successful irritants that stayed between her and her desire to be with Lory.
     Lory; tonight she was here more entirely than she had ever been before. Tonight the memory of that summer exploded to a size larger than reality, bigger than bearable. She sat in the cane chair beside the desk; she leaned her elbow on Agee's "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" (stayed, somehow too important to be put on the shelf; stayed, as if she and Rusty had not finished reading it--together--last night). She leaned her head on her hand and remembered when Lory had told her of the daughter. And she remembered how the words "deserted her" and "blind," and her own desire to be a mother, and the realization that gay marriages don't produce children, all collided and made her feel sick, and how, even as she vowed never to tell Lory's secret, she hated her more than she had ever thought she could hate anyone, more than she had ever wanted to believe herself capable of hating. Suddenly, it was almost four years ago and almost two thousand miles away.
It was hot; the Los Angeles drugstores had been crowded so Phyllis decided to have a coke at a bar. She hesitated before several, and then walked on. She had never been in a bar, but it was afternoon, and she was on vacation, and she was on her own for the first time in her life--and she was old enough to see what the rest of the world was like.
     She gathered all of the courage she could manage, and entered the next bar. In a moment her eyes adjusted to the darkness; then they saw the fish nets hanging from the ceiling and the bottles of boats on the walls. She took a few more steps and she hesitated again.
     "Come on in, we don't bite," said a woman bartender. The blonde woman behind the bar worn heavy make-up, suggesting an out-of-work movie star in the back lot of Hollywood.
     Everyone in the almost deserted barroom turned to look at her, and then they turned away. She saw two girls holding hands and two girls dancing. There were three girls at the bar seated far apart from one another. She instinctively knew the sort of place that it was, but in spite of her urge to run, she walked in. She moved slowly, sat at the bar, and ordered a coke.
     "Never been here before?" The bartender half asked, half announced. Phyllis shook her head.   Curiosity turned her gaze toward the others at the bar. Two sets of eyes responded with gentle smiles, the third turned away. Then she noticed the leather strap on the third girls wrist, and she made a mental note to tell Rusty--to suggest that Rusty get one, so that the next time she sprained her wrist playing handball, she could avoid those clumsy bandages. She looked from the leather strap to the unlit cigarette that the stranger held, and then she noticed the pink concoction she drank; she wondered what it was.
     "Did you sell it?" The bartender asked. The stranger nodded. "Bravo, the next drink is on me."      The girl behind the pink concoction smiled.
     "Sell what?" Phyllis wondered. Though a self consciousness moved inside her, her eyes, her curiosity were no longer in control; they wouldn't move from the stranger. She contemplated the long ponytail, the short brown bangs, the sunburned face, the sleeveless tan shirt, and the white cotton trousers. Her clothes were apparently revealing.
     "Either she's seen you before or she wants to meet you," the bartender said. Lory's eyes turned toward Phyllis; Phyllis blushed and turned away. Suddenly, Lory was beside her, asking her to dance.
     When Lory's arms surrounded her, it was as if she had never danced before--except alone--the way it felt when she danced with a boy. This was something that two people did together, like singing by a winter fire or walking in a summer rain, or eating hot dogs and drinking coke after a Sunday matinee. Then Lory pulled her closer; it seemed as if she pulled her close in anger, and when Phyllis, from out of too much confusion, neglected to move away, it seemed as if Lory's eyes were trying to make her feel ashamed.
     When the music stopped, still holding her hand, Lory took Phyllis back to the bar. "Thank you," she said with sarcasm; then she let the hand go. She glanced at the antique watch that hung around her neck, "I've got to go--I have an appointment," and suddenly Lory was gone.
     Phyllis stayed in her seat for a little while; then she got up, and as she left, she heard the bartender say, "Come on back tomorrow. She'll be here then." She spoke around a lipstick-smudged cigarette dangling from her lips.
     On the following afternoon, with more will and more fear and more hesitation, she returned to the bar. Lory sat in the same seat, over the same pink concoction, but this time clad entirely in navy blue, and this time smoking her white cigarette. They danced together again--and again--and again. Phyllis wasn't sure of Lory's intentions, nor did she want to know her own. They were strangers, and yet if this afternoon she could have chosen to be in the most beautiful place in the world, she would have chosen to be here, dancing, with Lory's arms surrounding her. Time went by while "As Time Goes By" played over and over on the juke box.
     They scarcely spoke while they danced, but only their names, and that it would be convenient for each of them to return to the bar tomorrow night. When the dancing was over, Lory had escorted her back to her seat and said, "I have to go--see you tomorrow." She left the dark barroom for the sunlit streets outside.
     "She works around the corner," the bartender said. "Mostly she works at home." Phyllis wanted to ask, "Where around the corner--what sort of work?" But she said, "Oh" instead, and she paid for her coke and left. The bartender looked after her with a knowing smile as she left.
     Tomorrow night they shared a small corner table and a large steak dinner. They danced, but not as close as they had before; they talked, but carefully, as if they feared disclosing themselves to one another.
     Phyllis returned to the bar every afternoon and evening to wait for Lory to appear. She danced with no one--she spoke with no one--she merely sat, sipping her coke, watching the door, growing depressed, even outraged at Lory's absence. She was aware of the bartender's eyes on her frequently.
     Then, one night, Lory appeared. She approached Phyllis as if they were old friends. She kissed her cheek, casually, but with affection. She ordered her a fresh coke, but before her drink arrived she said, "Come, let's get out of here--let's go for a drive." Phyllis followed the commandment and the commander as if she were hypnotized.
     They drove through Los Angles to Santa Monica, along the emptied beach. Finally Lory stopped the car. She turned to look at Phyllis.
     "Who are you?"
     "What do you mean, who am I?"
     "Who the devil are you?" Lory asked with a brazen insistence.
     Phyllis melted into a crowded [cowed?] silence. "Who am I? --I knew until you asked--I still know, of course I know--"
     "Well?" Lory said with exasperation, "I'm waiting for an answer."
     ('I know--but I can't say--not exactly--not to you--I could tell a truth that would be as impressive as it would be evasive--but even then you might not--' she thought.)
     "Who are you?" Lory flung into the stubborn silence that filled the automobile.
     "I'm a collection of all that I have been; I have been rather lucky, rather courageous, and rather difficult. I'm without faults or virtues, unless the roots of a tree are its faults, and its branches of leaves its virtues." There was another brief uncomfortable silence in the automobile; then Phyllis asked, "Who are you?"
     Lory frowned but remained silent.
     "What do you do?"
     "I write."
     "Why do you write?"
     "Because through words I receive others and through words I can give myself to others--usually. Now suppose you tell me who the devil you are."
     Phyllis bit her lip. She was pleased with Lory's reverence for words. She had always thought them the wildernesses and the roads toward truth, the gatherers, the revelers, the containers, and the retainers of life.
     "That first afternoon," Lory said, "I thought you were a tourist looking for kicks."
     Phyllis shook her head.
     "Where are you from? What are you doing here?"
     "Chicago. I'm on vacation," Phyllis replied uncomfortably.
     "Why in California?"
     "Because a distant but wealthy aunt sent me a round-trip ticket--a gift--I graduated in June."
     "What were you doing in that bar?"
     "What do people do in gay bars?" Phyllis managed to ask with more audacity than was real.
     "They drink, dance, talk--" Lory interrupted herself long enough to light a cigarette. She didn't offer one to Phyllis. Phyllis sighed as a gentle anger swayed inside of her, though she didn't smoke, and though she wasn't sure that she hadn't said so--perhaps after dinner that night.
     "They pick up girls," Lory said too clearly.
     "I didn't go there to pick up a girl," Phyllis flung back at the second assault.
     "Oh?--Well that's too bad; I did."
     Phyllis lowered her head. "I've never been in a place like that before."
     "Well, you've been there now--look at me; I'm talking to you."
    Phyllis looked at her.
     "How old are you?"
     "Almost 18."
     "Are you gay?"
     "I think so."
     "What do you mean--you think so?"
     "Yes, I am."
     "How do you know?"
     "I read a book."
     "You - read - a - book," Lory repeated slowly--almost without voice [inflection?].
     "Rusty--she's my best friend--she and I read a book. It was as if we'd never known ourselves before; things that had been impossible to live with, became bearable, even precious--all because--quite by accident--we read a book."
     "The Well?"
     "No, Diane. We read The Well afterwards."
     "If you had read it first, you would have run for your lives."
     "No, we wouldn't have--we would have been more afraid, but--"
     "And so you became lovers."
     "No."
     "No?"
     "We've talked of love, we've tried to imagine what it will be like. I think we wanted to love each other, (we've been so close all of our lives) but something--our friendship is deep and real, but--"
     "Then you've never been in love?"
     "With books, trees, songs and even people, but never with just one--well I had a bad crush once, no--it was too intense to be a crush--. It was love. She was my counselor at camp.
     "Did you--did she?"
     "She never knew. I was only15; she was 21. I was sure that I was in love, but it made no sense--women didn't love other women."
     "So you've never been with anyone?" Lory asked as she moved her eyes away and then back to the hazel eyes that blinked nervously.
     "No, never."
     "What will you do when the summer's over?"
     "Rusty and I will begin college in the fall."
     Lory turned on the ignition switch. "Where do you live?"
     "In Chicago."
     "Where do you live in Los Angeles?" She asked with annoyance.
     "Downtown, in a hotel. Why?"
     "I'll take you home."
     "So early?"
     "So early."
     "But--"
     "And I never want to see you in that bar again--Don't turn away! Look at me! I'm talking to you! Never again, do you hear?"
     "But--"
     "I don't know what the law is in Chicago, but in this town you had better not be caught in any bar, not even over a coke, until you're 21," Lory sighed. "Go back to the bars in those books until you're old enough to begin living your life."
     Phyllis was quiet. Those words, the ones about the law, had negated the thrust of sweet pain that the assertive command had caused, and they had recalled, even magnified, the anger that had come with the unoffered cigarette.
     "You mean until I--until I'm willing to let someone, anyone--is that what being gay is? Being picked up in a bar?"
     "No."
     "But you said--"
     "It wasn't true; that's not why I go to the bar. I like Pink Ladies; and you can't get into a straight bar in slacks; and if you drink alone in a straight bar, the men annoy you."
     "Then--
     "Being gay," Lory explained, "is daring to have a gay relationship without having a door--a way out at the other end."
     "I don't understand. What has that got--?"
     "You're going back to Chicago when the summer's over. You're just playing in Los Angeles. Don't play in gay bars; you'll get hurt; you'll hurt others."
     "But Chicago's my home."
     "I know. If it weren't, if there were no way out of this summer, you would never have gone into that bar."
     "That's not so."
     "It is--don't let me see you there again--ever."
     Lory stepped on the accelerator, "Now suppose you tell me where that hotel is."
     Phyllis told her--the rest of their trip in the car was in silence. Even when Phyllis left the automobile, there were no good-byes--nothing. She watched Lory drive away, and she succumbed to a desire to cry that she neither understood nor wanted to question.
     On the following evening, propelled by compulsion made of the remnants of anger and sweet pain, Phyllis returned to the bar. She sat where Lory could see her, and she tried, unsuccessfully, to appear content with Lory's apparent determination to ignore her. Lory resisted the new confrontation for as long as it took to smoke four cigarettes. Then she succumbed to a provoking desire to look at Phyllis, and the new confrontation was inevitable. Lory came toward her slowly. Phyllis swallowed some coke, ate a pretzel rapidly, and looked to see if there were any more buried under the nuts and raisins in the dish on the bar.
     "I was right; you are a tourist."
     "What?"
     "Perhaps not a straight one, but a tourist nevertheless."
     "I--"
     "Come on--let's go."
     "Where?"
     "Well it appears that if someone doesn't take you in hand, you'll spend the entire summer darting back and forth between that hotel room and this bar. So first we'll get your belongings -- I have an extra bed -- and then we'll start seeing Los Angeles. You're about to stop concentrating on your sexual aspirations and to start enjoying the summer that your wealthy aunt sent you here to enjoy; and when it's over, I'll send you home to Chicago, to college, still a virgin."
     Suddenly the summer was a fantastic carnival of places and things, of dances and talks and candle-lit dinners, of theaters and concerts and pizzas at midnight; and once, only once, tasting like corn on the cob and cotton candy, and whirling over the steepest incline on the Santa Monica roller coaster, they kissed. . . .
     She had never been kissed before; it felt so good, it was terrifying. The desires provoked by the kiss were too immense--too clearly homosexual. For the first time since she and Rusty had discovered that book and read it, she doubted that she was, that she needed to be-- that way. It was as if she had never, not even in the bar, not even while they danced together, considered herself totally, irretrievably--gay. And surely she had never considered the difficulties, the consequences of living that way forever.
     When, on an occasion after that kiss, Lory seemed to reach for more, Phyllis said lightly, as if she were not trembling inside, "Remember, you promised to send me home a virgin." And Lory turned away, and the matter was settled.
     Phyllis felt like a rubber band stretched between a longing for Lory to touch her and the growing anxiety for the summer to end--for the escape back to Chicago.
     It was a cool, dark night. The beach was deserted, only the sand and water, waves and waves of water, a few stars in the black above them, and the motorcycle they had rented in L.A., were there with them.
     "Don't go back to Chicago!" Lory half asked, half demanded.
     "I must."
     "Why?"
     "Because my family is there, I'm starting college in the fall; because I love children and gay lovers can't have children."
     "I had a family once--and a child--"
     "A child?" Phyllis was startled.
     "I left both--I had to. I wonder how they are? Hey Phyl," Lory said jestingly, "you could stop in Indiana and see them. See if they're okay. We're out of touch," she said more seriously. "They don't know where I am, or my new name."
     "But how could you--I could never. . ."
     "Never say never, Phyl. Life happens."
     "Don't you miss them?"
     "Of course I do--so will you stop on your way home?" She wasn't jesting now.
     "Sure, sure," Phyllis answered, and she wondered what she had promised, and why.
Lory wrote a name and address on a slip of paper. Phyllis put it into her pocket.
On the way back to L.A., the night, the wind, the silence was beautiful, and then into the quiet Lory said, "She's blind."
     "Who?"
     "My daughter."
     "Oh."
     And it was dark and windy and quiet again.
     The summer went on--there were more motorcycle rides, more nights at the beach, but they never spoke of Indiana again. It was like a lump between them that they each longed to push away, but dared not touch lest it become bigger.
     It was the day before the bus was to take Phyllis home. They walked the streets that they had walked before.
     "I've been avoiding people like you," Lory said suddenly.
     "Why?" Phyllis asked, startled by the verbal proclamation--even in spite of her own total awareness of the constant restraint, endeavors to maintain a distance between them, that had permeated their most intimate moments, that had stayed like an ominous yet protective umbrella over all of the just-departed summer.
     "I don't want to get involved."
     There was a brief, staggering moment; a policeman blew a whistle, a child stuck a pin in a balloon and it burst; a woman passed by, laughing.
     "I don't want to fall in love," Lory continued. "I'm a writer; I'm working on my first novel; that takes time, concentration, dedication. Love is distracting, demanding, destructive. Writing requires a self-absorption that's incompatible with love--a self awareness that intrudes upon one's awareness of--" She stopped talking; she stood still. Phyllis stood still also. They turned to look at one another. Lory took her hand, and in the midst of traffic noises and the sounds of strangers passing by, she said, "Phyl, I love you."
     "No."
     "I love you. I'm going to Europe in the fall to write, to study; come with me?"
     "No, I can't."
     "Then I won't go; we'll stay here."
     "No--no."
     "I love you; I want to live with you. I'll love you and live with you forever."
Phyllis took her hand from Lory's. They proceeded down the broad avenue. Lory looked at the lines that made squares on the pale, gray pavement; Phyllis looked at the palm trees, naked almost to their tops, and she felt handled, closed in, pushed aside by the strange, wide city.
     "I've got to go home."
     "You've got to stay here, with me."
     "I don't love you---not that way."
     "You do, you do love me--that way."
     "No, I can't. There's school, and my family, and Rusty, and--I can't--I can't be a--a lesbian."      Lory stared at her.
     "I'm going through a stage. It will all go away. I couldn't be anything that would make my parents ashamed of me."
     "What about the book you read? The self it helped you to discover? What about the weeks, the months just ending? What about the way you feel when we dance together?"
     "Oh, Lory, dearest Lory, it can't be; it must not be."
     "It is--I love you and you love me, and what is living all about? What is it all for if not love?"
They stopped and turned to look at one another. The tears that collected in the hazel eyes failed to obliterate the terror behind them--but Lory went on. "And what about the way you felt when we kissed?"
       "Oh Lory, don't remind me."
     "Because you wanted more!"
     "Because I hated myself for wanting more," Phyllis snapped indignantly.
     Lory was still staring at her and, only half-aware of what she was saying, she formed the words--"Go--get out of my sight--get out of this city or I swear I'll tear you to pieces and throw you away."
     Phyllis turned and left. She went to the apartment. She sat alone for hours, wanting Lory to come home and relieved because Lory didn't. All night she vacillated between decisions to stay and decisions to go. In the morning, she prepared their breakfast, but it remained uneaten. When it was afternoon and Lory had not yet come, Phyllis left the apartment, the neighborhood, the city, the love.
Two months went by after her return to Chicago and then a letter arrived. She held it close for a long, long moment before she dared to read words inside. She held it close and she said out loud, for the first time since she had met Lory, "I love you; I know that now. And I'm not afraid of being gay, not any more."
      Then she opened it and read, "I watched you go; your bent head, your dangling arms, the love in your heart, the guilt in the pit of your stomach, the agony that consumed you whenever they collided. All of my own being seemed to fall from me. I stood motionless, emptied, like a shell, brittle and breakable--if I had touched you, if I had touched you, if I had ignored your protests and taken you--oh God--would you, could you have walked away?" The letter had continued--"The crickets are calling; once you cried when the crickets called. The night is black and cold and hard. The stars are specks of startling white, the same stars we once called candlelight. The thunder is a terrible noise; the rain is a blanket that covers the past; the air, once a handful of loveliness, is but to breathe and to forget.--Everything has changed. Sweet longings have become lust, desire the tired child of necessity. I am lonely; I am useless because you have left me, my heart; I am heartless.--Love, Lory."
     Phyllis had folded the letter carefully, and she had thought, 'Wait for me; after I graduate--- not now; Mama and Papa are so proud that I'm going to college. And after graduation, Rusty will come too. I know that she will. We've talked, and she's said that she wants to leave home before her parents discover she's gay and reproach themselves for it and wade in the self pity that comes with having a child that the rest of the world calls abnormal, sick, immoral--'
     Phyllis got up from the chair beside her desk. The memories of that summer, that letter, and of Rusty's departure this evening collided in her head and made it ache. She went to the windows, drew the curtains, and replaced the scattered moonlight with the hard, grylow electricity.
She opened the dresser drawer and the stationery box to look at the bundle of letters from Lory, folded, tied together, not one of them ever answered. She had often planned to send a reply. She had often begun to write that letter. But not enough--or too much--or too soon or too late, promises mingled with fears, desires gone mad, or not nearly mad enough, were all that flowed from her pen, and so inarticulately; and so she had thrown every attempt away. Once, though, last year, about seven months after Lory's letters had stopped coming and a frantic anxiety had begun to grow inside of Phyllis, she had sent a note. It had asked, "Are you there?" It had said, "I meant--I mean still to answer your letters--Love, Phyl."
     It had come back stamped, "Party unknown at this address."
     'Four years ago, four years of longing, regretting, pretending--four years and all the time, and even now, only two days and two nights from the bus depot downtown---but if Lory isn't there--or if she is and she doesn't want me--. Well, you've thought of that before, hundreds of times, and you've decided to go anyway, just in case; and because you can't be gay in Chicago. Why can't I be gay here? I could be careful. Mama and Papa needn't find out. They wouldn't believe it anyway. I could find a job here. Why was Rusty so insistent? Does she really believe that I'll find Lory? She may not even like California. Surely I should stay until I know that Rusty isn't coming back. I could look for a job here for both of us. Oh Rusty, oh God, there you are, on your way to goodness knows what, and all because of me--do I owe it to you to leave as soon as possible? Or to stay? In case you want to come back. Should I--'
     There was a sudden, timid knock on her bedroom door.
     "Come in."
     "I brought some coffee and apple strudel," her mother said, almost apologetically. "When will you go?" She asked as she entered the room and put the small tray on the carved metal table. Phyllis was overcome by the bravery that must have allowed her mother to ask that question. "Don't put the cup on the desk; it marks the furniture," the small, chubby woman added.
     Phyllis leaped across the shaggy throw rug that stayed between them. She took her mother in her arms. She rested her head in the mass of dark ringlets and she said, "I don't know, Mama. I should go soon. Rusty will be lonely."
     "Drink--while it's hot." She moved from her daughter's arms and left the room before the tears in her eyes could fall out.
     "Oh, Mama," Phyllis said to the closed door. "Maybe I won't go."

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