Beebo Brinker

Her face, sensitive and striped with tears, was in many ways the face of a boy. Her stance was boyish and her low voice too was like a boy’s, balanced on the brink of maturity. And there it would stay all her life, never to plumb the true depth of a man’s.

She became aware of Jack’s eyes on her and turned to pick up her glass, but bumped against a corner of a table and nearly fell. Jack reached her in two big steps and pulled her straight again while she put both hands to her temples. “I feel as if I’m dreaming,” she murmured. “Am I?” She looked quizzically at him.

“You’re not, but I am,” he said, taking her elbow and steering her toward the bedroom. “I’m a dream walking. I’m dreaming and you’re in my dream. When I wake up, you’ll cease to exist.”

“That would solve everything, wouldn’t it?” she said, leaning on him more than she realized. She tried to stop him in the center of the room to get her liqueur, but he kept pushing till she gave up.

“Come on, let Uncle Jack bed you down,” he said. He took one of her arms across his shoulder, the better to balance them both, pulled her into the bedroom, and unloaded her on his double bed. Beebo spread-eagled herself into all four corners with a sigh, and it wasn’t till Jack had all her clothes off but the underwear that she came to and tried to protest. Jack removed her socks with a yank.

“Why, you lousy man,” she said, staring at him. But when he smelled the socks, she laughed.

“God, what an exciting creature you are,” he grimaced, surveying her muscular angles with all the ardor of an old hen.

“So I’m not your type,” she said, getting to her feet. “I can still take off my own underwear.” She tried it, lost her balance, and sat down summarily on the bed.

Jack tossed her a nightshirt from his dresser. It was scarlet and orange cotton flannel. “I like flashy sleepers,” he explained.

She put it on while he washed in the bathroom. But when he returned he found her leaning on the dresser, dizzily close to losing the schnapps.

Jack guided her to the bathroom and got her to the washbowl before it came up.

“I had no idea there was so much in the bottle,” Jack said when she had gotten the last of it out. At last she straightened up to look in the mirror. “By God, Beebo, you were the same color as the schnapps for a minute there.”

He made her rinse her mouth and then dragged her back to bed, where he washed her unconscious face and hands. He sat and gazed at her before he turned out the light, speculating about her. Asleep, she looked younger, adolescent: still a child, with a child’s purity; soon an adult, with adult desires. Did she know already what those desires would be? And was that why she fled from Juniper Hill? The knowledge that her desires and her adult self would shock the town, shock her father, shock even herself?

Jack thought so. He thought she knew what it was that troubled her so deeply, even though she might not know the name for it. It wasn’t just being “different” that she hated. It was the kind of differentness. Jack wanted to comfort her, to explain that she wasn’t alone in the world, that other people were different in the same way she was. But he couldn’t speak of it to her until she admitted it first to him.

He smoothed the hair off her forehead, admiring her features and her flawless skin without the least taint of physicality. He felt sorry for her, and scoffed at himself for wishing she were the boy she resembled at that moment. Then he lay down beside her and went to sleep.

Beebo slept for fourteen hours. She wakened with a glaring square of sunshine astride her face. When she rolled over to escape it, she felt a new sensation: the beginning beat of the long rhythm of a hangover—her first.

The thought of the peppermint schnapps nauseated her for a few moments. She looked around the room to forget it and clear her head, and found a note pinned to the pillow next to hers. It gave her a start to realize Jack had spent the night in bed with her. And then it made her laugh and the laugh sent aching echoes through her head.

The note said, “I’m at work. Home around 5:30. Plenty of feed in refrig. You don’t want it but you NEED it. White pills in medicine chest for head. Take two and LIVE. You’re a devil in bed. Jack.”

She smiled, and lifted herself with gingerly care from the bed. It was two-thirty in the afternoon.

When Jack came home with a brown bag full of groceries, she was smoking quietly and reading the paper in his kitchen.

“How are you?” he said, smiling.

“Fine.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Well, I’m clean, and you can believe that. I took a bath.”

“On you it looks good,” he said, putting food away.

Beebo shook her head a little. “I was just thinking … you’re about the only friend I have, Jack. I’ve been kicking myself all day for not thanking you. I mean, you listened to me for hours. You’ve been damn nice about my problems.”

“That’s my style,” he said, but he was flattered. “Besides, us frustrated doctors have to stick together. It’s nice to come home to a welcoming committee that thinks I’m the greatest guy in the world.”

“You must have a lot of friends down here,” she said, curious about him. Beebo had done all the talking since they met. But who was Jack Mann, the guy who did all the listening? Just a good-hearted young man in a strange town who gave her a drink and a bed, and was about to give her some dinner.

“Oh, plenty of friends,” he said, lighting the oven.

“You made me feel safe and—and human last night, Jack. If that doesn’t sound too silly.”

“Did you think you weren’t?” He put the ready-cooked food in the stove to warm.

“I’m grateful. I wanted you to know.”

“Marry me and prove it,” he said.

She looked at him with her mouth open, astonished. “You’re kidding!” she said.

“Nope. I always wanted a dozen kids.”

Beebo began to laugh. “I’d make a lousy mother, I’m afraid,” she said.

“You’d make a dandy mother, honey. Nice girls always like kids.”

“Is that why you want to get married? Just to have kids?”

“When I was in the Navy, I was always the sucker who put on the whiskers and passed out the popsicles on Christmas Day in the Islands. Hot? Mamma mia! I nearly passed out myself. Melted almost as fast as the goo I was giving away. But I loved those kids.”

“Then why aren’t you married? Why don’t you have some kids of your own?” she prodded. It seemed peculiar to her that so affable a man, especially one who liked children, should be single.

“Beebo, my ravishing love, why don’t you get married and have some kids?” he countered, disconcerting her.

“A woman has to do the having,” she said. “All a man has to do is get her pregnant.”

“All,” Jack repeated, rolling his eyes.

“Besides, I don’t want to get married,” she added, her eyes veiled and troubled.

“Hell, everybody gets married,” Jack said, watching her closely. Maybe she would open up a bit now and talk about what really mattered.

“Everybody but you,” she said.

He hunched his shoulders and grinned. “Touché,” he said. Then he opened the oven door to squint at the bubbling ravioli, and drew it out with a potholder, spooning it onto their plates.

They sat down at the table and Jack told her, “This is the greatest Italian food you’ll ever eat. Pasquini on Thompson Street makes it up.” He glanced up and found Beebo studying him. “What’s the matter? Don’t like pasta?”

“Jack, have you ever been in love?” she said.

Jack smiled and swallowed a forkful of food before he answered. She was asking him, as circuitously as possible, to tell her about life. She didn’t want him to guess it, but that was what she wanted.