Chapter 4
Later that night, Vivian could not sleep. She lay in the twin bed listening to Tim's snuffling, phlegm-filled snores trying to interpret what had happened to her that evening in the motel. If you understood something, you had it half-licked, so psychiatry said. You might not be able to "cure" it, but it could be coped with if you just brought it out into the open.
But if I think about it and remember it, the last twenty years of my life will have been a stupid waste!
She thought about her other lovers. There were two besides Lou Jory; her former private detective and the man who was running against Tim in the primary next month. She particularly enjoyed sex with the latter, it gave her a great thrill to sleep with her husband's political rival. She often dreamed of ruining them both, preferably on a local TV program the night before election, and then leaving town. If only the children were of age she would do it. She would have to wait just a little bit longer....
But suddenly, being on her own did not seem so appealing as it used to. She was afraid of what it might lead to.
The thought of taking the art course at the university frightened her now, too, although she had been looking forward to it so much.
It frightened her because it would put her in the same position she had been in when the world had been at first a bright dream, and then a lurid nightmare....
It was hard enough to get the money together for college tuition without being an art major to boot. Art majors had to spend more; supplies cost money, especially oil paints and big sheets of canvas. But she had to go; she had to.
Vivian had been drawing long before she set foot in any school at all. The first time she remembered drawing a picture was on a bitter cold day when the radiators had steamed up the windows in the house. She was three yers old. She had climbed up on a chair and drawn a dog with her finger on the window pane.
Creating shapes was so important to her. Once, she carved up her mother's laundry soap, making lions and dogs and rabbits with long pointed ears. Her mother had been upset-soap cost money.
The parents were good people, stolid and slow and puzzled by the dazzling talent evinced by their youngest child and only daughter. She seemed not to belong to the family. The boys were lumbering, good-natured oafs who worked as delivery men and plumbers' assistants. On Saturday nights, they slicked down their hair and put on black shirts and white ties-which they thought were the last word in "class." They went out with girls who wore Evening in Paris, chewed gum, and got pregnant in the first month of marriage.
Her father would carefully wipe his black, mechanic's hands before he picked up her latest drawing and gazed at it, furrowing his brow like a patient dog. He seemed pleased and oddly embarrassed.
"The child can draw," he said reverently.
Her talent became known in the family as "it," as if no one dared become too familiar with such a magical, lofty thing.
"I don't know where she gets it....She doesn't get it from my side....it's a wonderful thing, isn't it?"
Even state university costs required a sacrifice but somehow the money was saved, borrowed, and worked overtime for until there was enough. There was no question of going to a private school; the university had to do.
Vivian arrived at school. Clothes didn't matter; she wore smocks to art classes, cut down from her mother's old dresses. As for the other classes, they didn't matter at all. She just had to take them to satisfy the school, and she didn't care how she looked in them. She didn't even buy the textbooks for English and history and science, getting by on her lecture notes alone and spending the book money on tablets and charcoal pencils. Vivian got a part-time job as telephone girl at the dormitory desk which provided her with a free room.
Art was everything. She did not date, or care about it. She did not compare herself to the other girls. They were well-dressed in sweaters, pearls and high heels but she did not notice their sleekness or her own perpetual grubbiness. Her fingers were always smudged with charcoal, and sometimes her face as well. Other students occasionally laughed at her as some kind of campus oddity or grind, but she didn't care. After a while, her dreamy indifference caused them to leave her alone.
Then one day in the campus coffee shop as she lunched on toast and coffee, someone came in who made Vivian painfully conscious of her blackened fingers and smeared sleeves.
It was an older girl, a woman, in a crisp, starched white lab coat. She had short dark red hair clipped close at the neck and a bridge of freckles across her patrician nose. The freckles lent insouciance to an otherwise remote, lofty face.
Vivian stared, not knowing why she was doing so. Suddenly she thought of her father and brothers, and their perpetually dirty hands, with black half-moons under the fingernails. Automatically, she hid her own similar ones in her lap and twisted the napkin in sudden agony.
The woman, with her redhead's pale skin, looked as if she had just been scrubbed. Her nose was shiny and unpowdered, and the lab coat was expertly laundered; there wasn't a crease in the long expanse of glistening white.
How different she was from Pop and the boys!
The woman, by contrast, seemed to remove the whole painful past of grease and poverty from Vivian's mind. She represented the polar opposite of the thing that Vivian feared most-the trap of babies and domestic monotony that had captured her parents and her brothers.
It was crowded in the coffee shop. The woman stepped up to the cashier, handed her some change, and stood looking about for an empty table as she held a cup of coffee and a doughnut.
Her eyes met the wide-staring gaze of the younger girl. They smiled tentatively at each other; Vivian nodded to the chair beside her. It was piled with a portfolio and a box of paints which she hastened to move.
The woman approached, smiling. "May I join you? It's packed at this time of day." She glanced over the assembled students and wrinkled her nose as she saw a group of crew-cut frat boys laughing raucously at a nearby table.
"The draft beer and double entendre set has vacated the premises," she added dryly.
Vivian laughed. It was the perfect description for the type of students who had made fun of her at the beginning of the year.
The woman sat down, apparently appreciative of the response to her quip. She smiled across at Vivian as she stirred her coffee, then glanced at the things the younger girl was piling on the floor.
"You look like an art major. They're always loaded down."
"Yes, I am. And we are, always." Vivian's voice caught hoarsely and she cleared her throat, blushing.
"My name's Louise Fuller. What's yours?" Vivian told her. "What do you do? Are you a science major?" She nodded at the white coat. "I was. I'm in first-year med now."
"Oh...." Vivian's voice was filled with awe. The woman seemed more capable and efficient than ever to her now. She was at a loss for something to say for a moment, then she nodded once again at the coat.
"I love that," she said quickly. "It looks so ... so clean and sharp. It-it fits you." She realized the obvious misinterpretation and hurried to explain her intended meaning. "I mean it suits you."
Louise smiled, nodding in a tactful way. "Thank you. They keep me clean, at any rate."
She tilted her head and surveyed Vivian. "That's one of your problems, too, isn't it? Would you like me to get you a lab coat? They'd make good coveralls for a painter."
For a second, Vivian wanted to cry. It was somehow so touching. For a horrible instant, she thought the tears would come.
"Oh ... would you? I could use it."
"I'll bring it around to your dorm. Where do you live?"
"Harper Hall."
Louise's face darkened, and a look of fear came into her slate-blue eyes. "Old lady Webster's domain, hm? She's a prince among housemothers, as I recall."
"Oh, she's awful, but I don't have any trouble with her because I never go out. She has a hate going for all the girls who date a lot, but...." Vivian laughed nervously and shrugged.
Louise raised a thick, cinnamon-colored eyebrow. "Oh? You don't date?"
"No. I-I don't know why. I just don't want to.
Besides, nobody's asked me anyhow, so...." She shrugged again.
Louise held her glance for an instant, her eyes narrowing. Then she looked away quickly, noticing the portfolio once more.
"Would you mind showing me some of your drawings? Or paintings?"
"Drawings," Vivian said. "The paintings are tacked onto frames. We have to leave those at the studio."
She untied the tapes and picked out her favorite pieces of work. All were nude female models. She watched Louise's face flicker as she looked at them.
"Why, they're lovely. You're good, you know that?"
Vivian warmed to the compliment. It was sincere but casual, lacking the awesome wonder of her parents' appraisals. The feeling she had always had in the family circle, that she was a changeling, different from the rest of them, vanished now. She felt comfortable and equal to the woman who had spoken. Suddenly, she was ashamed of her family's ignorance and low-class origins. How far above them this ... this doctor seemed.
Louise handed back the sketches and drained her coffee, looking apprehensively at her watch. It was a man's, with a thick black leather strap.
"I have to go watch an autopsy, of all things," she said, rising. "I'll bring the coat around to your room tomorrow afternoon. Is that all right?"
They verified a time, and she left.
Vivian stared after her retreating figure, watching the full womanly hips undulate beneath the starched material. The contrast of softness under stiffness fascinated her.
The next afternoon, she brushed her hair vigorously and scrubbed her face until it tingled. She wished she had some perfume, and then stopped, towel held motionless to her cheek for a moment as she wondered why She contented herself with an application of seldom-used lipstick and then began to pace the floor. It seemed somehow like a familiar ritual, but she did not know why it should.
Then it came to her.
This was the way the other girls in the dorm behaved when they were getting ready for dates. Primping in the mirror, and then the nervous waiting....
Fear washed over her, and with it came a delicious sensation, a chill, as though someone had blown softly into her ear.
She jumped at the knock on the door. She stood paralyzed for a moment, then went to open it.
Louise walked in, smiling. She wore a gray skirt and white blouse. Over her arm was the folded coat in a cellophane wrapper from the campus laundry.
"Here you are. Wear it in good health," she said, handing Vivian the package.
Eagerly, Vivian opened the wrapper and slipped the coat on. She admired herself in the mirror with shining eyes, catching the reflection of Louise's pleased face behind her.
"Thank you ... very much. How-how much do I owe you?"
Louise made a deprecating gesture. "Forget it. I have plenty of them. I insist. It's a gift."
Vivian was pleasantly embarrassed for a moment, then nodded her assent. "Thank you." She hesitated, then opened the bureau drawer.
"I got us some wine," she said, carefully removing the bottle. She had spent two dollars on it, and bought two pretty glasses at the dime store. She had exactly five dollars to eat on for the rest of the week.
A look of compassion and tenderness sprang into Louise's eyes. "Wonderful, I'd love some."
"I'm sorry it's not cold."
"That's okay."
They were silent and stiff as they took the first ceremonious sip. Something awkward seemed to capture them both. As though to break the silence, Louise reached over and patted Vivian's arm. She let her palm rest there for an overlong moment, then drew away.
"It's fun to drink under Mother Webster's roof, isn't it?" Louise said with a short laugh. "I used to do it when I lived here."
"-did you?" Vivian said, her voice cracking.
They stared at each other for a moment, then Louise leaned forward, her eyes bright.
"You're such a sweet little thing, you know that?"
Vivian shook as the bridge of freckles grew closer, until she could no longer see them. Her eyes closed; then she tasted the sweetish wine from Louise's opened lips.
"Oh, no...." Louise muttered against her mouth. "Oh, no-not again."
But Vivian stopped the words with a fierce kiss. She moaned with release, a harsh whining sound like a spring that has been suddenly released. Her tongue shot into the woman's mouth and moved in frantic search.
Louise held back for a moment, then put her glass down on the bedside table. She reached for the other one in Vivian's fingers and took it away.
"Wait! My coat!" Vivian cried, struggling out of the woman's arms. The gift was precious, an extension of Louise; she could not muss it. Quickly, she took it off and hung it carefully over the back of the closet door. When she looked back, Louise was stepping out of her skirt.
They stood naked, staring at each other. For a brief instant, Vivian's eye automatically saw light and shadow, line and color, then it all merged into sumptuous white flesh. She sprang forward.
"Lock the door," Louise whispered. Vivian obeyed as Louise reached out and closed the blinds. The room was gray with late winter afternoon as the remaining light fought vainly against the gathering shadows.
They fell down on the bed, their legs entwining like writhing snakes. A firm, insistent knee pressed into the apex of Vivian's thighs.
"You're wet," Louise whispered, her mouth curving into a smile as her eyes closed. She pushed her thigh into the downy valley, moaning softly.
Then Vivian felt herself being forced on her back as Louise's mouth and fingers began to do things to her, shocking, delicious things that she had never dreamed could feel as they did. Her nipples were tweaked and sucked until they stood up like the erasers on a pencil. She felt them, stiff and tingling, red and hard like unripe berries.
There was a swishing sound as Louise moved down the mattress. Her tongue dipped into Vivian's navel and pressed hard, swabbing rhythmically until the excitment spiraled out into her entrails. It was as though the tongue had incised her stomach.
The long, capable fingers that she had stared at when they had been curved about the stem of the wine glass now found their way to the soft flesh of her inner thigh. Louise stroked her, moving closer and closer to the swollen lips of her intimate parts.
Vivian's hips began to move in swiveling circles, rising off the bed, reaching for the hand that was so tantalizingly close.
"Yes ... I know," Louise murmured against her belly.
The fingers dipped into the womanliness and drew a path of shimmering delight through the cloven flesh. Vivian's whole body jerked with unbearable pleasure.
"Oh, right there," she moaned. "Up top ... there."
"I know where," Louise said in a husky whisper. "I won't go inside you-I don't need to, do I? Just right here...."
She touched the erect clitoris, pressing it back into its hooded nest, then revolving the pad of her finger over it in rhythmic swirlings. "The big girl's little prick," Louise said, laughing softly. "That's where it feels good, isn't it?"
She continued the languid manipulation until Vivian's body was heaving violently on the bed and her head tossing from side to side as she groaned out her pleasure.
"Now...." Louise murmured.
Her mouth moved down. She licked the trembling legs, then moved to the crease that was the juncture of thigh and torso. Finally, her tongue touched the weeping coral lips.
"Oh! Oh, my God!"
Vivian twisted; her legs stiffened as she thrust her body up to meet the exploring lingual caress. She felt as though she had been bisected by a live wire. She began to pump vigorously as a wave of current burned through her. The tongue was barely touching her, and yet it was driving her mad.
Then it happened. It felt as though the small of her back had caved in and her hips had turned to jelly.
She jerked and shivered, pressing her knuckles into her mouth to stifle her moans of pleasure. But her violent movements of completion could not escape the insistent mouth. Louise held her thighs tightly, her arms locked about them as her lips clung to the throbbing cunt until Vivian at last collapsed in a tremor.
They lay like that for several minutes. Finally, Louise rose slowly and pressed her wet mouth into Vivian's waist. Her breasts trailed against the girl's stomach, warm cones whose hard tips Vivian savored as they brushed against her flesh.
She struggled up and grasped the peaks in her hands. "Now you," she whispered. "Let me do it to you."
"You don't have to," Louise murmured, her voice weak and tremulous.
"But I want to! Don't you want me to?"
"Yes. Oh, God, yes!"
She rolled to her back and stretched her arms above her head. Her mouth curved into a reluctant grimace of oncoming delight as Vivian rose over her.
They became lovers after that. The only thing that marred their happiness was the tense feeling of insecurity at the idea of being in a dormitory.
Louise was the nervous one. "I lived in Harper Hall as an undergraduate, and I know old lady Webster only too well. She-"
She broke off and looked away for a moment "There was a girl in my sophomore year," she went on more quietly. "She's the one who brought me out into lesbianism. She kind of looked the part.
Not mannish, just boyish," Louise said with a slight smile of reminiscence.
Vivian knew a pang of jealousy which she forced away.
"What happened? Did Webster catch you?"
Louise shook her head. "No, but she suspected. I know she did. She had no reason to; we were very careful. It was just a shot in the dark, but Webster's very good at that sort of thing. The ... other girl was a tomboyish phys ed major, so of course Webster, with her foul and ready mind, assumed that she was gay. Even the Websters of this world are occasionally right, you know," she finished wryly.
As time went on, Vivian noticed that Louise had an unreasoning fear and hatred for the housemother.
"But she likes me," Vivian reassured. "Because I'm always in my room."
"Yes, darling, but if she only knew what you do when you're in your room."
"Well, she thinks I'm studying ... drawing. She approves of drawing," Vivian said, a little helplessly.
"Um-hm," Louise grunted sarcastically. "Based on the theory that no girl was ever seduced by a pencil-though some of them have undoubtedly tried to make do with one when nothing better was available."
"Well, I helped things along the other day," Vivian said. "Her daughter brought the grandchildren around and I sketched the little boy. She's going to frame it. She thinks I'm the greatest thing since night baseball."
"You see? It's starting already," Louise said with disgust, shaking her head.
"What's starting?'
"The process. Girls come Here as freshmen with fairly decent characters, and then they spend four years conning and outwitting the housemothers. They graduate as cunning, deceitful liars. Oh, I don't mean to belittle your drawing of the kid. That's just a thoughtful kind of thing to do for somebody under ordinary conditions, and under ordinary conditions you'd do it in that spirit, I know. What irritates me is that people like Webster make you do nice things for ulterior motives."
Vivian considered this. "I guess, in the back of my mind, I was thinking it would put me on the good side of her."
"Exactly. You see what I mean?"
Vivian frowned. "Why does this subject upset you so?"
"Because the world is full of Websters; they're in the majority, and they hold an awful lot of lives in the palm of their holier-than-thou hands. She's the kind of person who ends up on a jury, you know? This is scary when you're someone who goes against the grain of society-like us, or some other kind of rebel."
"How do they end up on juries?" Vivian asked.
"Because they love to judge people, so they don't try to weasel out of jury duty," Louise sighed. "They're also the only people I've ever met who brag about how dumb they are. Ever notice how she's always saying that she never went beyond high school? And the way she smirks when she says it? How would you like to be judged by somebody who's proud of his ignorance?"
"I guess I know the type you're talking about," Vivian grinned. "There's the story of the lady who went to buy a print of the "Blue Boy" for her grand daughter's room and asked if it came in pink."
"Amen. We understand each other."
Louise posed for her in the nude one day, right after they finished making love.
"It's still damp," Vivian said, pointing to the dark tuft of love hair.
"I can't imagine why."
Vivian looked at the curly triangle. It was a deep brown; out of range of a light, it looked black.
"You're a redhead, but you're dark down there. I wonder why?"
Louise laughed. "That's because it's always darker than the hair on your head-no sun ever gets to it to lighten it." She pointed to herself. "This is the true color of a person's hair. The hair on your head has been bleached by natural causes."
As the year passed, a change came over Vivian. For the first time in her life, she felt a sense of belonging. She had never really belonged to her family; she had been the different one among them for so long. Now, she felt akin to the world she had entered-the world of homosexual women.
She had her hair cut very short, and took to wearing long-sleeved tailored blouses. She had her high school ring made smaller and wore it on her little finger.
Louise noticed the difference and was disturbed by it. "What's with you? Why advertise it? It's not like winning your Brownie pin, you know."
"Your hair is short," Vivian countered.
"It's not shingled. When sure you getting the other things?"
"What other things?"
"The lesbian lunchbox, thermos bottle, book bag, lapel button-oh, and don't forget to learn the secret handshake." Louise spread her palms in a gesture of supplication. "Must you beat the drums?"
"Why not?" Vivian wanted to know. "Why don't you?"
"Because I'm a person who happens to be a homosexual, not a homosexual who happens to be a person. This life is not an isolated cult. There are other parts of me-my work, for example. One of these days I'll be a doctor who happens to be a homosexual. First things first. People who think they're born to screw are also born to lose."
The conversation bothered Vivian. Lately, her interest in art, which she thought nothing could replace, had lessened. Not entirely by any means, but the old intense fire had been banked a little.
One evening near the end of the year they were in Vivian's room. The night was balmy; a sugary smell came through the windows from the new leaves and fresh grass outside.
Vivian rubbed her hand over the full hips as Louise lay stretched out on her stomach. At the touch, the older girl wriggled lazily and moaned.
"You're on my favorite erogenous zone," she murmured.
Vivian continued the caress, tracing the division of the creamy buttocks with her finger. She inserted it into the plump valley and savored the hot skin. Louise's legs opened and spread wide, urging the touch into probing intensity. Her hands gripped the bed spokes as she rose on her knees and jutted her hips in the air.
"Yes. Do it. Go ahead."
Breathing hard, Vivian knelt between the widespread thighs and entered the hot, tight cunt. She felt the clutch of Louise's body as it locked about the invader.
Just then there was a loud knock at the door, an angry pounding that made them freeze in terror, unable to move. What followed was a farrago of shock, panic and hysteria. The housemother's face was a mixture of glee and revenge. A girl in the hall looked into the room for a second and clapped her hand over her mouth.