“You can’t,” Lila said. “It’s not time. We’ll have to wait.”
“I can’t stand it if they send you away. I think I’ll die.”
“You won’t die. You’ll wait. In a few month you’ll be eighteen, and then you can come to me if you wish. In the meanwhile, I’ll prepare for it. Father knows a man who runs a model agency, and he’s promised to take me on. When I leave here, I’ll go to work immediately.”
“Suppose they try to stop me from coming. Do you think they could?”
“Your father and mother? They may try, but there’s a limit to what they can do. They won’t make an open issue of it, you know. They couldn’t bear the disgrace if the truth became known, and so, after all, you will be able to control the situation. As a matter of fact, I suspect, whatever they do or say, that they’ll be relieved to have you go. They’ll pretend afterward that you are dead.”
“How will you let me know when and where to come? It wouldn’t be safe to write.”
“Not here, of course, but I can send it to another address. To someone you know who will pass the letter on to you. Write to me when I get home and let me know where.”
Lila was right in assuming that she would surely be sent away, but it was done indirectly with no open reference to the reason for it, and indeed with the pretension that it was not being done at all. The Reverend Dr. Theodore Galvin, a master of indirection, simply wrote to his brother, Lila’s father, that it had become apparent, for reasons he would prefer not to divulge unless they were specifically requested, that it would be better for everyone concerned if Lila were ordered to come home. The black sheep brother knew his daughter rather well, and he had no wish to know any more than he already did. He wrote Lila to come home and did not ask for reasons. Lila went. She said good-by politely, expressing her regret at having to leave, and the Galvins said good-by just as politely, expressing their regret at having her go, and the pretension was sustained to the end. The Reverend Dr. Galvin drove Lila to the station with her luggage, and Ivy went to her room and lay down on the bed and had for the first time in her life a sincere wish that she would often have later, which was the wish to die quietly and quickly without pain.
The period that followed was an extremely difficult one for Ivy, but she lived it somehow in intervals of days, often certain that Lila would never send for her as she had promised, but finally the letter came that fulfilled the promise. The definitive break, the departure from her home and parents, was accomplished so quietly that its finality was implicit in its quietness.
“Going?” her father said. “Where are you going?”
His face was perplexed and wary.
“I’m going to live with Cousin Lila.”
There was a brittle, defiant note in her voice.
“I forbid you to do so.”
“You may forbid me if you please, but it won’t stop me. I’m going.”
“If you leave against my wishes, I shall consider you dead. You will never be allowed in this house again, or in any house of which I am master.”
At this moment his face was like a stranger’s.
“I expected that. I’m willing to accept it.”
“Very well. Go when you are ready, but don’t speak to me again. I won’t want to say good-by.”
Ivy’s mother stood with the man she adored, and Ivy could not remember afterward a single thing she did or a single word she said, either of reproach or regret, in the time of parting. Everything was understood, but nothing was expressed.
And so began the life of Ivy and Lila together, and for a while it had gone wonderfully, and for a longer while it had gone well, but then it had begun to go bad. One cause of the growing badness was Ivy’s recurring and deepening depression, and another cause was Lila’s duality. Unlike Ivy, she was not wholly committed, and she could be one person in one time and another person in another time, depending on the times and their demands. The night of Ivy’s flight and meeting with Henry, the bad time getting worse had become as bad as it could be, but in the relationship with Henry, although the time was still bad, it was a bad time getting better. Lying in darkness on Henry’s sofa, she believed at last that it would be possible to have with him a saving alliance that would absolve her of the past and secure the future, and there was in her belief a compelling urgency to test it. The possibility was directly contingent, she felt, upon present circumstances, and what could be accomplished here and now and with this man could not be accomplished hereafter in another place with anyone else.
Getting up, she walked through the dark into the bedroom and stood beside the bed on which Henry lay. He was lying on his back on the far side with one arm crossing his chest on top of the covers and the other arm, the near one, stretched out at his side. She could see him only dimly in the dark room, but his breath was drawn and released with the rhythm and depth of sleep.
“Henry,” she said.
He didn’t answer, nor even stir, and there was no break in the rhythm of his breathing. She got into bed and lay beside him, very carefully not touching him until she was entirely ready, and then she reached for his hand and laid it deliberately on her breast. He stirred briefly, making a whimpering sound and Ivy held her breath. She squeezed his hand with hers, placed it more firmly on her breast and felt a surge of strange emotion in her.
Henry grunted and suddenly turned.
“Who is it?” he mumbled.
“Henry... Henry, I... I—” Ivy’s voice broke off in a faint whisper.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded, then in the dim, uncertain predawn light she saw his eyes widen as he became aware of where his hand was resting.
“Do you mind?” she asked.
He laughed uncertainly. “No. Of course, not.”
“Henry, would you like to kiss me?”
Instead of answering her, he turned fully toward her and placed his lips on hers. It was a groping, tentative kiss and Ivy could feel a terrible trembling in her body. She was suddenly cold and she wanted to push Henry away, but she suffered the kiss to go on. Then she felt his hand pressing more firmly on her breast through the thin cloth of the nightgown. After a moment he removed it and put both arms around her, pulling her closer. She resisted momentarily, her body still strangely cold, then yielded. He brought her soft, quaking flesh against his lean hardness and Ivy felt panic begin to blossom deep inside her.
She was mashed against Henry now and he was kissing her, this time not so gently. His mouth was urgent and a little rough and suddenly his hand crept under the nightgown and was caressing the bare flesh of her breasts. His thumb and index finger toyed with the nipple of her lift breast, massaging it gently. A wild current of feeling rode like quicksilver through Ivy’s veins. She wanted to scream and cry. There was a stirring of desire in her — like the remembered delight of the hours spent in Lila’s arms — but there was a difference she couldn’t fathom and she couldn’t fight down the horrible, crawling fear that suddenly clutched at her vitals.
Suddenly, without conscious volition, she arched against him, pushing against his chest with a terrible frenzy. She withdrew slightly and in that moment she lashed out at his face, raking the nails of her left hand across it. Henry cried out in pain, then cursed.
Ivy scrambled out of the bed, clutching her nightgown to her quaking body. Henry got out the other side of the bed and quickly turned on a lamp. Blood was trickling down his cheek from the gashes left by Ivy’s nails. She had hurt him and she was sorry and there was a deep sadness in her for him. She wanted to ask his forgiveness but the fury she saw in his eyes held her back.