Odd Girl Out

Beth had called a halt to their work early in the evening.

“We’ve done enough, Laura,” she had said, dropping down on the studio couch. “We’ve even done too much.”

“It was wonderful of you to help me, Beth.”

“Oh, I know. I’m wonderful as all hell. I only did it because I had to.” She grinned at Laura, who smiled self-consciously back. Beth liked to tease her for being too polite and it made Laura uncomfortable. She would have gone to almost any length to please Beth, and yet she could not abandon her good manners. They struck her as one of her best features, and it puzzled her that Beth should needle her about them. She knew Beth could carry off a courtesy beautifully at the right moment; Laura had seen her do it. But Beth was much less formal than her new roommate, and furthermore she liked to swear, which Laura thought extremely unmannerly. Beth made Laura squirm with discomfort. And in self-defense Laura tried to build a wall of politeness between them, to admire Beth from far away.

There was a vague, strange feeling in the younger girl that to get too close to Beth was to worship her, and to worship was to get hurt. As yet, Beth made no sense to her, she fit no mold, and Laura wanted to keep herself at an emotional distance from her. She had never met or read or dreamed a Beth before and until she could understand her she would be afraid of her.

Laura had been thinking about this that afternoon while she filled the drawers of her new dresser with underwear and sweaters and scarves and socks, and had resolved right then that she must always be on her guard with Beth. She didn’t know what she was trying to shield herself from; she only felt that she needed protection somehow.

Beth had suddenly put an arm around her shoulders, shaking the thoughts out of her head, and said with a laugh, “For God’s sake, Laur, how many pairs of panties do you have? Look at ’em all, Emmy.”

And Emily had looked up and laughed pleasantly. Laura couldn’t tell if she was laughing at the underwear or at Beth or at the look on Laura’s face, for Laura looked as surprised as she was. She stood there for a minute, feeling only the weight and pull of Beth’s arm and not the necessity to answer.

In a faint voice Laura answered, “My mother buys all my underwear. She gets it at Field’s.”

“Well, she must’ve cleaned them out this time,” said Beth, smiling at the luxurious drawerful. “I’ll bet they put in an emergency order for undies when she leaves the store.”

Emily laughed again and Laura shut the drawer with a smack and cleared her throat. She hated to talk about lingerie. She hated to undress in front of anyone. She even hated to wash her underwear because she had to hang it on the drying racks in the john or in the laundry room where everyone could see it. It was no comfort to her that everybody else did the same thing.

“Of course, I don’t believe in underwear myself,” said Beth airily. “Never wear any.” She swept a stack of sweaters theatrically off the table and handed them to Laura, who gazed at her in dismay, reaching mechanically for the sweaters. Beth laughed. “I’m pretty wicked, Laur.”

“Don’t you really wear any—any underwear?” Her whole upbringing revolted at this. “You must wear some.”

Beth shook her head, enjoying Laura’s distress and surprised at how little it took to shock her. Laura looked at her with growing outrage until she burst out laughing and Emily intervened sympathetically.

“Beth, you’re going to make your poor little roommate think she’s fallen in with a couple of queers,” she said with a giggle.

Beth grinned at Laura and the younger girl felt strangely as if the bottom had fallen out of her stomach.

“She has,” said Beth with emphatic cheerfulness. “She ought to know the dreadful truth. We’re characters, Laura. Desirable characters, of course, but still characters. Are you with us?”

Laura wished for a moment that she were all alone in a vacuum. She didn’t know whether to take Beth seriously or not; she felt as if Beth were testing her, challenging her, and she didn’t know how to meet the challenge. She transferred a sweater nervously from one hand to the other and tried to answer. Nobody was a more rigid conformist, farther from a character, than Laura Landon. But the bothersome need to please Beth prompted her to say weakly, “Yes.”

She put the sweater in a drawer, turning away from Beth and Emily as she did so, and silently and secretly scraped the white undersides of her forearms. It was an old gesture. Whenever she was disappointed with herself she bruised herself physically. The sad red lines she raised on her skin were her expiation, a way of squaring with herself.

Beth, who could see she had gone far enough, confined herself for a while to friendly suggestions and answering questions. It was a great relief to Laura. She was almost herself again when Beth suggested a tour of the sorority house.

The two girls went first up to the dormitory on the third floor, where everybody but the housemother and the household help slept.

“Does anyone ever sleep in the rooms?” Laura asked as they mounted the stairs.

“Oh, once in a while. In the winter, when the dorm is really cold, some of the kids sleep in their rooms. The studio couches unfold into double beds. They can sleep two.”

They had entered the big quiet dorm with its dozens of iron bunks beds smothered in comforters and down pillows and bright blankets. Laura shivered in the chill while Beth pointed out her unmade bed to her.

“We’ll have to come back and make it up later,” she said.

Beth had then led Laura down to the basement. She was enjoying this new role of guide and guardian, enjoying even more Laura’s unquestioning acceptance of it. They found themselves playing a pleasant little game without ever having to refer to the rules: when they reached the door to the back stairs together, Laura stopped, as if automatically, and let Beth hold the door for her. Laura, who tried almost instinctively to be more polite than anybody else, readily gave up all the small faintly masculine courtesies to Beth, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, as if Beth expected it of her. There was no hint that such an agreeable little game could turn fast and wild and lawless.

In the basement Beth showed her the luggage room, shelved to the ceiling and crowded with all manner of plaid and plastic and leather cases. In the rear of the room was a closed door.

Beth turned around to go out and bumped softly into Laura, who had been waiting for an explanation of the closed door.

Laura jumped back and Beth smiled slowly and said, “I won’t eat you, Laur.”

Laura felt a crazy wish to turn and run, but she held her ground, unable to answer.

Beth put her hands gently on Laura’s shoulders. “Are you afraid of me, Laur?” she said. There was a long, terribly bright and searching silence.

“I wondered what the door in back was to,” Laura faltered. Her sentence seemed to hang suspended, without a period.

Beth let her hands drop. “That’s the chapter room,” she said. “Verboten. Until you’re initiated, of course.”

“Oh,” said Laura, and she walked out of the luggage room with Beth’s strange smile wreaking havoc in the pit of her stomach.

On the way upstairs they met Mary Lou Baker, the president of Alpha Beta. She came down the stairs toward them, towing a bulging bundle of laundry which bumped dutifully down the stairs behind her. She smiled at them and said, “Hi there. How’s the unpacking coming, Laura?”

“Fine, thank you.” Laura watched Mary Lou retreat into the basement, impressed with her importance.

“She likes you,” said Beth as they headed back up to their room.

“She does?” Laura smiled, pleasantly surprised.

“Um-hm,” Beth answered. “Usually she has nothing to say to newcomers for a few weeks. If she notices you right away it’s a good sign. At least it is if you’re interested in her approval.” She said this rather disparagingly.

Walking down the hall behind her, Laura smiled.

And now here they were in the calm of a Sunday night, alone in their room, curious and shy at the same time. Beth finished her Coke and set the bottle down on a glass-topped coffee table in front of the studio couch. The clack of glass on glass startled Laura and the pledge manual slipped from her hands to the floor.

“Want to go make your bed up now?” Beth said. Her voice was soft, as if she were rather tired.

“Oh, yes. I guess I’d better.”

“I’ll help you.” Beth sat up, swinging her long legs to the floor. She sat still for a minute as if getting her bearings, looking at her feet. Then she lit a cigarette. “Come on, let’s go do it,” she said finally with a sudden brightness.

“I’ll do it, Beth,” said Laura firmly. “You’ve done so much for me today, I just hate to have you do any more.”

Beth blew smoke over the table top. “Laura, if you don’t stop thanking me for everything you’re going to wear me out,” she said. “Or turn my head.” She said this good-naturedly, to tease more than to scold. But then she saw that she had hurt Laura and she wanted instantly to reach out with comfort and reassurance. She was not impatient with Laura’s hypersensitivity, only unused to it. She never knew when she might scrape against it and cause pain.

Laura’s mouth tightened and she gripped the cover of her pledge manual in an effort to calm herself.

“Laura,” Beth said in a gentle voice, and she got up and went over to her. Laura drew back in surprise as Beth dropped to her knees in front of the chair, putting a hand on Laura’s knees and smiling up at her. Laura was too startled to pretend composure.

“Laur, have I hurt your feelings, honey? I have, haven’t I? Answer me.”

Laura said helplessly, “No, Beth, really—”