Odd Girl Out

Laura sighed with exasperation over her father’s ideas of friendship; if it weren’t useful somehow it just wasn’t friendship, only a waste of time.

“By the way,” he continued, “Cliff Ayers’s son Charlie is in school down there. I’d like you to give him a call—he’d like to hear from you, I’m sure.”

Sure, thought Laura with resentment. He’d like to hear from Marilyn Monroe. But who’s Laura Landon? He won’t even remember the name.

“Cliff says Charlie looks just like him, which means there’s probably a line of girls ahead of you.”

Is that supposed to encourage me? Laura wondered bitterly. If Charlie Ayers wants to hear from me, which I doubt, he can call me himself.

“I understand that your mother has found herself a nice apartment. You will spend half the holidays with her and half with me, of course. I must say, Laura, you took the divorce pretty well, though of course I expected you to.”

Laura crushed the letter with angry hands and threw it into the wastebasket by the desk. Then she put her head down and wept, until she heard Beth and Emily coming down the hall. They found her dusting the already spotless coffee table and smiling at the job.

Beth looked at her oddly for a moment and then picked up a manila envelope and hurried out of the room. She would be at a committee meeting all evening long and left Laura and Emily to study in an embarrassed silence. Both of them wished rather uncomfortably that Beth would come back and mediate for them. After a while the dearth of words between them began to pall and they were both suddenly conscious that they would be roommates together for the rest of the year. It seemed an interminable length of time.

Emily could usually chatter easily with people. She was natural with them and they responded naturally to her. But every word and gesture of Laura’s seemed to her to be rehearsed, calculated to please, and it threw Emmy completely. She got the feeling that she could smash a bottle over Laura’s head and Laura would say, very calmly, “Thank you.”

There was plenty of room for Laura on the couch beside Emily, but she wouldn’t sit there, simply because Emily got there first. She sat down in the butterfly chair with a sigh. It defied her, as usual, and her narrow skirt made the problem worse. She shifted unhappily and Emily, trying to be helpful, suggested, “Why don’t you put your p.j.’s on, Laura? Much more comfortable. Besides, nobody studies in their clothes.”

Laura couldn’t think of an excuse to keep her clothes on and she got up to change, wondering if Emily just wanted to watch her undress. She performed the operation with determined casualness. Her set teeth wouldn’t show, but her manner would. Emily watched her on the sly, wondering why Laura was so embarrassed and self-conscious about herself.

“Hey, Laur, what a pretty bra!” she exclaimed spontaneously as Laura pulled it out from under her pajama shirt. “Let’s see it,” said Emily, reaching out a hand.

Laura gave it a jerky toss.

“Gee, nylon,” said Emmy. “They make ’em up just like this only padded, you know,” she added. “They’re terrific. Ever try ’em?”

“Falsies, you mean?” said Laura. The word struck her as mildly obscene.

“Yeah.”

“No, I never did.”

“You should,” said Emmy realistically. “They’re terrific, really. Nobody knows the difference. Unless you’re dancing awful close,” she amended.

“I guess my busts are kind of small,” said Laura.

Emily smiled at her, wondering at the pathetic modesty that made it impossible for Laura to call the parts of her body by their right names.

Laura’s small breasts bothered her. She would fold her arms over them as much to conceal their presence as to conceal their size. She wished that they were more glamorous, more obviously there. In their present shape they seemed only an afterthought.

She sat down with her book again when she was safely into her pajamas and Emily sat and toyed with things to say; she had made a start and she wanted to keep the communication line open. At nine o’clock she snapped her book shut and said, “How ‘bout some coffee, Laur?”

“No thanks,” said Laura, looking up from her book.

“Oh, come on. It won’t keep you awake. We’ve got a big jar of Sanka.” She pulled open Beth’s bottom dresser drawer and took out the jar, and Laura noted with displeasure her familiarity with Beth’s things. “Come on,” she said again. “I hate to go down alone.”

Laura gave in. She followed Emily down the back stairs to the kitchen.

“We have a coffee break almost every night,” said Emily tentatively. She lighted a cigarette and cast about for something new to say. Her perplexity made her pretty face quite appealing.

“Say, Laur,” she said cheerfully, “have you got a date this Saturday?” Emily was ready to be friends with Laura; she was willing to be friends with almost anybody. The best turn she could do Laura, as she saw it, was to fix her up with an acceptable male. Emmy knew dozens of them.

“No,” said Laura doubtfully. “But in pledge meeting they said something about getting me a date.” She thought with fleeting guiltiness of Charlie Ayers, and knew she would never call him; she hadn’t the guts and she hadn’t the desire.

“Oh. Well, they haven’t done it yet, have they?”

“Well, no, but—”

“Listen, Laura, there’s a terrific guy I’m thinking of—a fraternity brother of Bud’s. I could fix you up with him. Jim’s a junior, real tall.” And she went on to describe an irresistible young man. They are always irresistible until you’re face to face with them. Laura let Emmy talk her into it. She didn’t know any men and it seemed a good idea to let Emmy take care of the problem.

“Bud and I will be along the first time out,” said Emily, making plans. “It’s much easier to have somebody else along for moral support.” She laughed and Laura smiled with her. What she said was true enough. It might not be so bad.

“That sounds terrific,” she said, borrowing Emmy’s favorite adjective to amplify her gratitude. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble for you.”

“Oh, Lord, no,” said Emily. She set one cup into another thoughtfully and went on, “Gee, I wish I could talk Beth into going out.”

Laura was suddenly alert. She turned and looked at Emily. “Doesn’t she go out?”

“Nope. Crazy girl.”

“Not at all?” Laura thought it was a requisite for sorority girls.

“No.” Emily stared quizzically at her sudden show of interest.

“I just thought—” Laura looked away in confusion. “I mean, she’s so popular and everything. I just naturally thought—well—” If a girl didn’t date was there anything wrong with her?

“Oh, she used to,” said Emmy, taking the steaming water from the burner and pouring it over the little mountains of dry coffee in the cups she had set out. “She used to go out a lot the first couple of years she was down here. But nothing ever happened, you know? Every time she got interested—sugar?”

Laura was so absorbed that it took her a minute to collect her wits and answer, “Yes, please.”

Emmy dropped it in and handed Laura her cup. “There’s no cream. There’s Pream, though. Want some?”

Laura wanted to shake Beth’s story out of her. “No, thanks,” she said briefly. “This is fine.” She was hungry for any crumb of information about Beth without stopping to wonder where her appetite came from. She was concerned only with satisfying it at this point.

Emily dipped into the Pream can with a spoon and sprinkled the white powder into her coffee. “You get used to it,” she said. “I didn’t used to like it, either.”

“Well, what happened?” said Laura in a voice that was urgent yet soft, as if the volume might excuse the words. She didn’t want to look interested.

“Oh … well,” Emmy stirred her concoction. “Nothing happened, really. In fact, that was the whole trouble. Nothing did happen.” She looked cautiously at Laura, as if trying to determine just how much she could be confided in. Laura’s face was a picture of sympathetic concern. “She’d find somebody she liked,” Emmy went on, “and they’d go together for a couple of months, and just when it seemed as if everything was going to be terrific, it was all over. I mean, Beth just called it off. She always did that,” she said musingly, “just when we all thought she was really falling in love. All of a sudden she’d call it quits.”

“Why?” said Laura.

Emily shrugged. “If you ask me, I think she just got scared. I think she’s afraid to fall in love, or something. It’s the only thing I can think of. Otherwise it just doesn’t make sense.”

“Were they nice boys?” Laura asked.

“Terrific boys! Some of them, anyway.”