Journey To A Woman. Ann Bannon

adores her as much as she hates her, and that’s a lot. She can’t get away from her, even though she wants to. In her heart, in her secret thoughts—I don’t know—maybe she has some idea she’s gay. But Mother hates the queers, she’s always poured contempt on them. How can Vega admit, even to herself, that she’s the kind of creature Mother despises?”

      “Your mother doesn’t despise alcoholics, or quacks, or physical wrecks.”

      “Yes, but you see, none of those are queer,” he said earnestly.

      “Oh, Cleve, that word! That ugly, mean, pitiless word!”

      “I’m sorry,” he said, studying her.

      Beth finished her drink with a quiver of excitement and desire and disgust—all the feelings that Vega roused in her.

      “Vega’s going broke,” Cleve said. “That’s why the studio’s so bare. Looks like a barn. She’s had to hock a lot of stuff and return a lot. She used to support Mother and she told me they didn’t want my goddamn charity. Now they’re getting it—they can’t live without it—but they let me know every time I hand them a check that they run right in and wash their hands as soon as it’s deposited at the bank.”

      “Why?” Beth said, shocked.

      “Mother thinks I’m a bastard because I didn’t study medicine like my father. Gramp thinks whatever Mother thinks. And so does Vega.”

      Beth began to see what a tyrannical hold Mrs. Purvis, in spite of her debilities, had on her children.

      “Vega and I understand each other,” Cleve said. “We’re both contemptible.”

      For a moment it seemed like he was begging for sympathy and Beth said, rather sharply, “Oh, you’re not so bad. When you’re tight.”

      Cleve gave a dispirited little laugh. “We know each other better than we know ourselves,” he said. “Someday you’ll understand us, too,” he said, looking into his glass. “If you keep on running around with Vega.” He sounded almost jealous. He sounded almost like a man warning another man away from his wife, not a friend warning another friend of his sister’s emotional quirks.

      Beth cautiously steered him back to finances. “Why is she going broke?” she asked. “She has a nice studio, lots of students.”

      “Not so many, not anymore. Their mothers are worried about them. There was a scandal a couple of years ago.”

      “I never heard about it,” Beth declared, as if that proved it a deliberate fib.

      “You don’t hear about everything in the Purvis family,” he retorted, and silenced her. “One of the girls had an affair with one of the others. Vega knew about it and she didn’t exactly discourage it. And then some of the others found out and told their parents. Vega should have quit then and there and tried somewhere else, but she hates that kid who started it all and she wants to stay here and make a go of it in spite of what happened. Show everybody. Show the girl herself most of all. Damn!” he said, and finished another drink.

      Beth thought suddenly of the strange tough little blonde with no makeup and a cigarette drooping froth her mouth in the caffè espresso place. “Who was the girl?” she asked.

      “P.K. Schaefer is her name. Vega hates everybody but she hates P.K. worse than poison.”

      “Is she sort of a beatnik type? I mean, does she hang out in the coffee houses, does she dress like—”

      “Like a goddamn boy,” he finished for her, with the sound of his mother’s disapproval plain in his voice. “Always has a cigarette hanging out of the corner of her mouth, as if that would make a male of her. As if that would take the place of—oh, hell.” He ordered another drink, staring moodily at the floor.