Lilith by J. R. Salamanca

purest and finest members of the human race. I would do anything in the world to ease the suffering of young people. There is nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to ease their pain.” She put out her hand and laid it against my cheek. “And I think you have suffered greatly,” she said. “I think you’re a very sensitive young man, and it grieves me to know that you’ve been introduced to sorrow so soon in your life. I wish there was something I could do to ease your pain.”
    Moved by some monstrous, inexorable impulse that was composed, I suppose, partly of indignation toward Laura, partly of gratitude toward this wonderfully sympathetic woman, partly of raw desire, I lunged out of the chair and found myself kneeling at her feet clutching her to me, as half an hour before I had knelt before Laura and clutched her rigidly unwilling body to my face. She set down the wine glass and stroked my hair.
    “Now, don’t grieve, Vincent,” she said. “You’re such a beautiful boy. It’s just not right that such a beautiful young man should be so unhappy. Why don’t you come upstairs with me and I’ll see if I can ease your suffering a little. I think you deserve a little comfort. Now you get up and take my hand, and I’ll try to prove to you that the world is not full of only terrible things. Now get up, sweetheart.”
    I stood up and took her hand, gazing down with a kind of strengthless submission at the flowered carpet. I took her hand and she led me gently through the arch of the living room and up the carpeted stairs to the open door of her bedroom, where she turned to put her arms around me and kiss me on the mouth.
    I remember that as I left her house, carrying with me indelibly its odors of wine, furniture polish, perfumed sheets, and Mrs. Hallworth’s moist and powdered flesh, I was, for the first time since my mother’s death, crying softly and soundlessly. I don’t think I would have been aware of my tears but for the sudden coolness of the evening air against my wet cheeks.
    But however bewildered, however confusedly vindictive I may have felt toward Laura at that moment, it was not for that reason that the bitterness of which I’ve spoken earlier grew between us. After a period of reasonable reflection I could understand the revulsion she must have felt at the suddenness, shamelessness, and violence of my behavior, and I felt a growingly urgent obligation to apologize for it. But the thing for which I’ve never been able to forgive her, the thing whose peculiar and subtle cruelty I’ve brooded on for years, is what she said to me a few days later when I went again to her house to apologize.
    I have said a few days—I think it must have been nearer to a few weeks, for I remember that as the weather was much warmer we sat in the steel-and-canvased glider in her back yard and that the wistaria tree above us had begun to bloom, opening its great purple blossoms softly and standing in that dark and mournful beauty which only these trees have. In all this time I had seen Laura only occasionally and distantly at school; she had not telephoned, or made any effort to see me, and I had begun to miss her greatly. In addition, I was beset with a growing feeling of remorse: I became convinced that I had shocked and offended her acutely and that I must make some effort to repair her wounded sensibilities. But however distressed Laura may have been at my behavior, she gave no indication of it; she greeted me with her usual composure at the front door and suggested that we sit out in the glider because it was such a nice evening. She had, in spite of my protest, washed out and ironed my soiled shirt, and she said that it was all ready, if I had changed my mind about accepting it.
    “It would be a terrible waste to throw away a perfectly good shirt like that,” she said.
    “All right. Thank you very much, Laura.”
    “I was going to give it to the Salvation Army if you didn’t come back to get it.”
    I stared