Spring Fire (21 page)

Leda reached for the ash tray and put the cigarette in it. The smoke spiraled up. Her face was wet, and she began to talk faster with the tears coming too. "Maybe you can see me again before you go. When are you going, Mitch?"

"I don't know," Mitch said. "I'm not sure. It's up to the Dean."

"You
—you didn't tell her about me? I wouldn't blame you if you did. I want to know, though. Did you, Mitch?" The edge of her white cloth hospital gown was wet and the tears did not stop.

"No," Mitch said, "I didn't tell her." Please, God, she thought, forgive me for lying to her. There are enough lies.

"I wouldn't blame you, Mitch. I wouldn't blame you if you hated my guts. You do, don't you?"

She began to laugh then, and to cry and sob, her shoulders shaking and her hands covering the wild expression of hysteria. Mitch kept saying, "I don't hate you, Leda. No, I don't hate you at all."

The thick sound from Leda cut into Mitch's words and rang through the room, persistent and hammering. Mitch backed away, her heart throbbing, afraid to go near Leda while it kept up and Leda writhed in the sheets. Momentarily Leda's hand left her face and she stared ahead, quietly, unmoving, but this lasted only a quick second and she lapsed back again, laughing and weeping, her whole body convulsed.

Fear ran through Mitch, and when the nurse opened the door and took the needle over to Leda, Mitch looked back once more, and left the room remembering Leda like that.

Dean Paterson was waiting outside, and her arm went around Mitch's waist as they walked along the hall. Mitch could see the thin figure of Dr. Peters waiting at the end of the corridor, and she could smell the tangy odor of his tobacco.

There was a warm sun that morning, and the air was so cold that the messenger boy could see his breath as he walked up the steps. He pushed the button and shuffled his feet and clapped his hands together after he laid the package beside him on the porch and waited for someone to answer the door.

He could hear an alarm go off somewhere in the house. It was early in Greek Town, eight o'clock, and across the street at the Delta Pi house, the windows on the second and third floors were half open and the shades were down,

A girl in a blue wool robe answered the door and signed for the package. The boy could see other girls through the door, filing lazily into a large dining room, wearing robes like the one this girl had on. He could smell bacon and eggs and hot coffee while he stood there waiting for her to put her signature on his pad. She handed it back to him, and he picked up the package and gave it to her. Then he hurried down the steps to his bicycle, and took off at a good speed.

Bebe Duncan rapped on the door to Nessy’s suite.

"It's a package," she said, "from Kansas City."

Inside, Nessy put the final touch to her dress, the small square-shaped pearl brooch. She was proud of the fact that she
never
ate breakfast in a robe, that she was always dressed for the day by eight o'clock in the morning at the latest. She fluffed her hair and gave one last jab to her nose with the powder puff.

"Coming," she said, sliding the lock back and emerging from the room, her lilac perfume filling the hall where Bebe stood with the package. "We'll bring it into" the breakfast room." She smiled, walking stanchly ahead and leaving Bebe to follow with it.

There was a noisy scraping of chairs as the Tri Eps stood up when Mother Nesselbush entered beaming and walked regally to the head table, where she pushed her fat hips into the chair. They all sat down again, and watched Bebe bring the package and Nessy take a knife to the string.

"I think," she said, "that I know what this is." She looked very secret, with her lips puckered in a cryptic expression of pleasure.

The brown paper fell from the box and Nessy reached into it and pulled out rumpled sheets of white tissue and another box, a red one. She set it on the table and lifted the cover. The Tri Eps gasped and sighed. The silverware looked beautiful and brilliant against the red velvet background.

"Gee," Bebe Duncan said. "With Mitch gone, they might take it back now."

"No," Nessy said, her eyes dazzled with the silver pieces, her mind filled with vivid pictures of intimate gatherings in her suite with the other housemothers, and the way they too would gasp and sigh when they saw it. "After all, we did what was asked. We pledged the girl and gave her a chance."

One by one the Tri Eps came by the table to touch the silver and run their fingers along the magnificent crest. They left their breakfast and hung around the table where the box lay.

"We'll use it for the exchange with Delta Pi next week," Jane Bell said, holding a fork so that it caught the light and gleamed.

"Lord, let's not wait till then. How about Sunday dinner, tomorrow?"

"It isn't even out of the box yet."

"Look at the demitasse spoons!"

"Now all we need is cups."

It was not long after she had opened the box that Mother Nesselbush was called to the phone. She left the girls in the dining room, exclaiming, fondling each piece, planning for its use, Marsha by that time advising all of them that they had better vote on whether to save it for special occasions or to use it every day. When Nessy entered the small phone booth outside the dining room, Marsha was asking for a show of hands.

Mother Nesselbush's face was strangely animated when she reappeared and stood in the entrance. There was a look of grimness, oddly striped with fascination and a secret pleasure at the thought of the shock she was about to introduce to Epsilon Epsilon Epsilon.

"Girls," she said. "Please
—everybody."

They turned and faced her and she waited. She looked down at the tablecloth and the rows of dishes filled with cold eggs and curled pieces of bacon. It was very quiet. She said, "Dr. Peters just called from the University Hospital. Leda Taylor has had a complete nervous breakdown. Her mother arrived late last night, and Leda is completely out of control. Absolutely broken!"

There was silence, and then the noise of the sudden rush of voices, and the fork that fell from Marsha's hand and clattered to the floor. Mother Nesselbush held her hand up for silence. "We are to pack her things. I suggest that Marsha and Kitten come into my apartment immediately to make plans for this."

The three of them left the dining room, and left behind them the gabble of high voices and the low buzz of awed exclamations.

Nessy shut the doors to her apartment and leaned forward, whispering as though her words could be heard through the walls. "I saw it coming," she said. "When I talked to Dean Paterson yesterday I could feel it coming. She'll have to go to an institution."

"Gee," Kitten said. "Leda!"

"I could just read into everything the doctor said when he called. I just know she's a wild woman over there in that hospital. A wild woman!"

"I wonder where she'll be sent?" Marsha said.

Nessy's face was bubbling, and her eyes were shining as though she had fever. "She won't have a thing to do with her mother. There's only one place she could go. An
asylum."
She said the word "asylum" with a heavy tone of dread, and a note of finality for Leda, almost as though she had said "the grave."

"Lord," Kitten said. "Leda in a nut house. Lord!"

Marsha looked away from them and toward the window and the leaves running along the front of the house. She said, "As Tri Epsilons we must do everything we can for her. I wonder," she said dramatically, pausing, her brow wrinkled, "I wonder if
—if insane people can read mail."

* * *

Dr. Peters lingered in the hall near the door as Susan Mitchell buttoned her coat and put her scarf around her head. "Then I'll see you on Tuesday," he said, taking her hand in a friendly good-by, "and have a nice week end, Susan. Any big plans?"

"I'm going on a hay ride tonight. Robin and Tom and Lucifer and me. That's about all I've planned."

He let her hand go and smiled as he held the door open. "Sounds like fun," he answered. "By, Susan."

It was cold and there was a warning of snow in the fresh sweep of the breeze as Mitch walked along the path from the hospital. She had a clean feeling that was there whenever she finished talking with Dr. Peters, and she knew she was whole now. The tower bell struck five times, and distant figures of students carrying books hurried along the far walks, their breaths frosting faintly in the cold air. When she went by the auditorium, she could hear the university choir rehearsing for the Christmas pageant, and the nostalgic strains drifted out to her. Dusk was dressing the campus, and as Mitch walked with the music in her heart, she thought of Leda
—hazily, as though she were someone she had known a long, long time ago.

She knew that if it had been any other way
—if Leda Taylor could have been helped, and could have at that moment walked there too and known the peace in the twilight and the first hints of frost on the grass and bushes surrounding Cranston—Mitch would have wanted that. Because it was true what she had told Leda yesterday. She didn't hate her. She didn't hate her at all, and she knew then that she had never really loved her.

The End