“Why did you ditch Juniper Hill, Beebo?” he persisted.
“I—just got into some trouble and ran away. Old story.”
“And your parents disowned you?”
“No. I only have my father—my mother died years ago. My father wanted me to stay. But I’d had it.”
Jack saw her chin tremble and he got up and brought her a box of tissues. “Hell, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m too nosy. I thought it might help to talk it out a little.”
“It might,” she conceded, “but not now.” She sat rigidly, trying to check her emotion. Jack admired her dignity. After a moment she added, “My father—is a damn good man. He loves me and he tries to understand me. He’s the only one who does.”
“You mean the only one in Juniper Hill,” Jack said. “I’m doing my damnedest to understand you too, Beebo.”
She relented a little from her stiff reserve and said, “I don’t know why you should, but—thanks.”
“There must be other people in your life who tried to help, honey,” he said. “Friends, sisters, brothers—”
“One brother,” she said acidly. “Everything I ever did was inside-out, ass-backwards, and dead wrong as far as Jim was concerned. I humiliated him and he hated me for it. Oh, I was no dreamboat. I know that. I deserved a wallop now and then. But not when I was down.”
“That’s the way things go between brothers and sisters,” Jack said. “They’re supposed to fight.”
“You don’t understand the reason.”
“Explain it to me, then.” Jack saw the tremor in her hand when she ditched her cigarette. He let her finish another glassful of schnapps, hoping it might relax her. Then he said, “Tell me the real reason why you left Juniper Hill.”
She answered at last in a dull voice, as if it didn’t matter any more who knew the truth. “I was kicked out of school.”
Jack studied her, perplexed. He would have been gently amused if she hadn’t seemed so stricken by it all. “Well, honey, it only happens to the best and the worst,” he said. “The worst get canned for being too stupid and the best for being too smart. They damn near kicked me out once.… I was one of the best.” He grinned.
“Best, worst, or—or different,” Beebo said. “I was different. I mean, I just didn’t fit in. I wasn’t like the rest. They didn’t want me around. I guess they felt threatened, as if I were a nudist or a vegetarian, or something. People don’t like you to be different. It scares them. They think maybe some of it will rub off on them, and they can’t imagine anything worse.”
“Than becoming a vegetarian?” he said and downed the rest of his beer to drown a chuckle. He set the glass on the floor by the leg of his chair. “Are you a vegetarian, Beebo?” She shook her head. “A nudist?”
“I’m just trying to make you understand,” she said, almost pleading, and there was a real beacon of fear shining through her troubled eyes.
Jack reached out his hand and held it toward her until she gave him one of hers. “Are you afraid to tell me, Beebo?” he said. “Are you ashamed of something? Something you did? Something you are?”
She reclaimed her hand and pulled a piece of tissue from her bag, trying to keep her back straight, her head high. But she folded suddenly around a sob, bending over to hold herself, comfort herself. Jack took her shoulders in his firm hands and said, “Whatever it is, you’ll lick it, honey. I’ll help you if you’ll let me. I’m an old hand at this sort of thing. I’ve been saving people from themselves for years. Sort of a sidewalk Dorothy Dix. I don’t know why, exactly. It just makes me feel good. I like to see somebody I like, learn to like himself. You’re a big, clean, healthy girl, Beebo. You’re handsome as hell. You’re bright and sensitive. I like you, and I’m pretty particular.”
She murmured inarticulately into her hands, trying to thank him, but he shushed her.
“Why don’t you like yourself?” he asked.
After a moment she stopped crying and wiped her face. She threw Jack a quick cautious look, wondering how much of her story she could risk with him. Perversely enough, his very kindness and patience scared her off. She was afraid that the truth would sicken him, alienate him from her. And at this forlorn low point in her life, she needed his friendship more than a bed or a cigarette or even food.
Jack caught something of the conflict going on within her. “Tell me what you can,” he said.
“My dad is a veterinarian,” she began in her low voice. “Everybody in Juniper Hill loved him. Till he started—drinking too much. But that wasn’t for a long time. In the beginning we were all very happy. Even after my mother died, we got along. My brother Jim and I were friends back in grade school.
“Dad taught us about animals. There wasn’t a job he couldn’t trust me with when it came to caring for a sick animal. And the past few years when he’s been—well, drunk so much of the time—I’ve done a lot of the surgery, too. I’m twice the vet my brother’ll ever be. Jim never did like it much. He went along because he was ashamed of his squeamishness. But whenever things got bloody or tough, he ducked out.
“But I got along fine with Dad. The one thing I always wanted was to live a good life for his sake. Be a credit to him. Be something wonderful. Be—a doctor. He was so proud of that. He understood, he helped me all he could.” She drained her glass again. “Some doctor I’ll be now,” she said. “A witch doctor, maybe.” She filled the glass and Jack said anxiously, “Whoa, easy there. You’re a milk drinker, remember?”
She ignored him. “At least I won’t be around to see Dad’s face when he realizes I’ll never make it to medical school,” Beebo said, the corners of her mouth turned down. “I hated to leave him, but I had to do it. It’s one thing to stick it out in a place where they don’t like you. It’s another to let yourself be destroyed.”
“So you think you’ve solved your problems by coming to the big city?” Jack asked her.
“Not all of them!” she retorted. “I’ll have to get work, I’ll have to find a place to live and all that. But I’ve solved the worst one, Jack.”
“Maybe you brought some of them with you,” he said. “You didn’t run as far away from Juniper Hill as you think. People are still people, no matter what the town. And Beebo is still Beebo. Do you think New Yorkers are wiser and better than the people in Juniper Hill, honey? Hell, no. They’re probably worse. The only difference is that here, you have a chance to be anonymous. Back home everybody knew who you were.”
Beebo threw him a sudden smile. “I don’t think there’s a single Jack Mann in all of Juniper Hill,” she said. “It was worth the trip to meet you.”
“Well, I’d like to think I’m that fascinating,” he said. “But you didn’t come to New York City to find Jack Mann, after all. You came to find Beebo Brinker. Yourself. Or are you one of those rare lucky ones who knows all there is to know about themselves by the time they’re seventeen?”
“Eighteen,” she corrected. “No, I’m not one of the lucky ones. Just one of the rare ones.” Inexplicably, it struck both of them funny and they laughed at each other. Beebo felt herself loose and pliable under the influence of the liqueur. It was exhilarating, a floating release that shrouded the pain and confusion of her flight from home and arrival in this cold new place. She was glad for Jack’s company, for his warmth and humor. “You must be good for me,” she told him. “Either you or the schnapps.”
“You’re going pretty heavy on that stuff, friend,” he warned her, nodding at the glass. “There’s more in it than peppermint, you know.”
“But it tastes so good going down,” she said, surprised to find herself still laughing.