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Authors: Valerie Taylor
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legs stopped wobbling she walked quickly to the car and got in, dragging her suitcase after her.
By the time you are thirty-six, if you have any sense at all and a reasonable experience of people, you know trouble when you see it. If you've been a dean of women for ten years you learn to sort out the different kinds before a sick, or crying, or sullen girl can get her mouth open. By the time she turned the ignition key, Edith Bannister knew that Joyce wasn't hung over or carsick, or coming down with anything. Traumatic experience, she thought in the jargon of Teachers' College. She drove quickly to the campus.
Joyce stumbled up the stairs after her. Neither of them said a word. Edith Bannister shut the study door and turned the key. Sunshine streamed over the thinly painted bookcase, the neat desk. She took off Joyce's hat and laid it beside the African figurine, and put a hand on her shoulder. The touch brought release. Joyce burst into tears and then, her face swollen and pale from lack of sleep, into words.
Chapter 6
The radium-dial clock on the bedside stand said eleven-twenty. Joyce rolled over, feeling the muscles in her legs crack, and squinted at its face until the numbers came into focus. Eleven-twenty, and the sounds that drifted into Edith Bannister's apartment were those of the dorm settling down for the night. Where had the afternoon and evening gone?
Footsteps tiptoed down the front stairs; that would be somebody sneaking out for a late date, leaving a roommate who would come down later to spring the Yale lock. Radio music trickled through a tissue-stuffed keyhole where some girl was getting at her books after loafing for two weeks, or hanging up nylons and slips illegally rinsed out in the bathroom. A drift of voices from the lounge suggested that the House Council, presided over by Bitsy, was still in session. Joyce lay listening, but not really caring.
She tried to account for the hours that had passed since the train pulled in at Henderson that morning. Let's see, she figured, it got in at nine-something. That's fourteen hours. She remembered bawling like a baby—shame flickered through her at the memory of her collapse, and something like wonder at the memory of Edith Bannister's arms warm and comforting around her, the way a mother holds a crying child.
Then I took that little white pill, she reminded herself, but it didn't work for ages and I was lying here looking at the sun on the door wishing I could go to sleep. She shook her aching head.
The next thing was the afternoon light getting duller, the way it does around six, and Edith Bannister was standing beside the bed with some dishes on a tray. She didn't know whether she had eaten anything or not; she couldn't remember what was on the tray so perhaps she hadn't. She had no awareness of time's passing, either; it was like the time she was given ether when she had had her appendix out. I'm tired, she decided with some astonishment, really tired. She gave up thinking and lay unmoving for a while, looking vaguely at the dim square that was the curtained window.
The late-night freight clanked across the corner of the campus and the pigeons perched on Colonel Henderson's statue complained softly. Light cut across the trees and reached into a clump of bushes where the redheaded freshman snuggled against her date, a boy from Ace Hardware. They hushed their whispering and stood rigid for a moment, until the train passed and the shadows were deep again. "Do that again," the boy said; "touch me like that again."
The rhythmic clanking on the rails roused Joyce. This time her head felt clearer. She lay unmoving, aware of the sore places, and thought back over the day with more coherence than she had been capable of before. The ride from Chicago, gathering tension and terror with each mile that passed. The dizziness. The wonderful, heavenly relief of spilling everything, no matter if they threw her out in disgrace or told everybody. Afterwards the air
By the time you are thirty-six, if you have any sense at all and a reasonable experience of people, you know trouble when you see it. If you've been a dean of women for ten years you learn to sort out the different kinds before a sick, or crying, or sullen girl can get her mouth open. By the time she turned the ignition key, Edith Bannister knew that Joyce wasn't hung over or carsick, or coming down with anything. Traumatic experience, she thought in the jargon of Teachers' College. She drove quickly to the campus.
Joyce stumbled up the stairs after her. Neither of them said a word. Edith Bannister shut the study door and turned the key. Sunshine streamed over the thinly painted bookcase, the neat desk. She took off Joyce's hat and laid it beside the African figurine, and put a hand on her shoulder. The touch brought release. Joyce burst into tears and then, her face swollen and pale from lack of sleep, into words.
Chapter 6
The radium-dial clock on the bedside stand said eleven-twenty. Joyce rolled over, feeling the muscles in her legs crack, and squinted at its face until the numbers came into focus. Eleven-twenty, and the sounds that drifted into Edith Bannister's apartment were those of the dorm settling down for the night. Where had the afternoon and evening gone?
Footsteps tiptoed down the front stairs; that would be somebody sneaking out for a late date, leaving a roommate who would come down later to spring the Yale lock. Radio music trickled through a tissue-stuffed keyhole where some girl was getting at her books after loafing for two weeks, or hanging up nylons and slips illegally rinsed out in the bathroom. A drift of voices from the lounge suggested that the House Council, presided over by Bitsy, was still in session. Joyce lay listening, but not really caring.
She tried to account for the hours that had passed since the train pulled in at Henderson that morning. Let's see, she figured, it got in at nine-something. That's fourteen hours. She remembered bawling like a baby—shame flickered through her at the memory of her collapse, and something like wonder at the memory of Edith Bannister's arms warm and comforting around her, the way a mother holds a crying child.
Then I took that little white pill, she reminded herself, but it didn't work for ages and I was lying here looking at the sun on the door wishing I could go to sleep. She shook her aching head.
The next thing was the afternoon light getting duller, the way it does around six, and Edith Bannister was standing beside the bed with some dishes on a tray. She didn't know whether she had eaten anything or not; she couldn't remember what was on the tray so perhaps she hadn't. She had no awareness of time's passing, either; it was like the time she was given ether when she had had her appendix out. I'm tired, she decided with some astonishment, really tired. She gave up thinking and lay unmoving for a while, looking vaguely at the dim square that was the curtained window.
The late-night freight clanked across the corner of the campus and the pigeons perched on Colonel Henderson's statue complained softly. Light cut across the trees and reached into a clump of bushes where the redheaded freshman snuggled against her date, a boy from Ace Hardware. They hushed their whispering and stood rigid for a moment, until the train passed and the shadows were deep again. "Do that again," the boy said; "touch me like that again."
The rhythmic clanking on the rails roused Joyce. This time her head felt clearer. She lay unmoving, aware of the sore places, and thought back over the day with more coherence than she had been capable of before. The ride from Chicago, gathering tension and terror with each mile that passed. The dizziness. The wonderful, heavenly relief of spilling everything, no matter if they threw her out in disgrace or told everybody. Afterwards the air
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