The Women's Room

by Marilyn French

  The three of them, Mira, Val, and Iso, came to be a group. They knew and liked Kyla and Clarissa, but both of them were married, and lived somewhat differently as a result. Other students threaded in and out of parties and coffees, but the three women felt a special kinship. Ava rarely attended any Harvard party, but she would often visit Val or Mira with Iso, and in time, spoke more freely, glanced less surreptitiously, remained longer in the room.

  In time, too, Mira ceased to feel her appearance. She dressed casually, not in jeans, but in pants and soft shirts or sweaters and low-heeled boots; she let her hair grow out to its true darkish blond color; she walked around the streets seeing what was on them instead of searching for images of herself. She felt alone, apart, but it was not a bad feeling. She would have been completely happy if she had only had someone to love.

  She confided this to Val, who did not seem very sympathetic.

  ‘Ummm. You’ve had someone to love?’

  ‘Well, I was married.’

  ‘Yes, but did you actively love him, whatshisface? Norm? I mean did you feel love when you saw him, talked to him? Or was it just habit?’

  ‘It was a sense of security.’

  ‘And you want that again?’

  They were in Val’s kitchen. Mira and Iso – Ava had a dancing lesson – had come for dinner. Val’s apartment was also in a three-decker, but it had high ceilings and long shuttered windows. It was clean and white, and the windows held a jungle of plants, hanging, standing, set on low wicker tables. There were no curtains, only bamboo blinds, but the plants sent a cool green light through the room. There were two low couches covered in brilliant throws and heaped with cushions, some white wicker chairs with cool green and blue cushions, a wall of bookshelves, and many posters, prints, African masks, carved wood figures.

  ‘It’s beautiful, Val,’ Mira said when she arrived. ‘How did you get it to be so beautiful?’

  ‘It was a pigsty when we moved in. But Chrissie and I,’ she put her arm around her daughter’s shoulders, ‘sanded and plastered and sanded and painted. We had fun, huh, Chris?’

  The girl was slight and slender, very pretty but sullen. She pulled gently out of her mother’s embrace.

  ‘Chrissie’s going through a phase: she hates me,’ Val laughed, and the girl blushed.

  ‘Oh, Mom!’ she said, and left the room.

  ‘You sanded and plastered and painted?’

  ‘Sure. It isn’t hard.’

  Mira followed Val into the kitchen. ‘I just have to cut some things up,’ Val apologized.

  Chris was sitting at the kitchen table talking to Iso in low, serious tones. They rose when Val and Mira entered, and walked slowly out of the room. ‘We need privacy for this conversation,’ Iso said, rolling her eyes at Val. She turned back to Chris. ‘Yes, well, for instance, if you compare fifteenth-century Flemish art with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Flemish paintings you can see it. There comes to be an obsession with things, possessions. And his point is that wealth was the mark of the worldly elect, so in a sense Calvinism became secularized, was transformed into capitalism …’ They were gone.

  Val cast a strong amused look toward Mira. ‘My precocious daughter.’

  ‘How old is she?’

  ‘Sixteen. She’ll be seventeen in February. She’s a senior in high school. She is precocious.’

  ‘She’s very pretty.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Val was chopping onions.

  Mira wandered around the kitchen. It too was large and bright; plants stood on the windowsill and hung at the window. The round table was covered with a gaudy striped tablecloth, and there was a large bright rug in front of the sink. One whole four-foot wall was given over to racks of spices, dozens of them, including some Mira had never heard of. Shiny bright canisters lined the counters, plastic-looking things in reds and purples and oranges.

  Another wall had been ‘papered’ with prints. Mira walked over to look at them. They had been cut out of a book or magazine. They were Persian, Indian, or Chinese, and they were all pornographic. Mira pulled her eyes away and walked back to the window and breathed out. ‘How long were you married?’ she asked tightly.

  ‘Too fucking long.’ Val poured wine over simmering meat. ‘Four years. He was a bastard, like all men. I’ve given over hating him, any of them. They can’t help it, they’re trained to be bastards. We’re trained to be angels so they can be bastards. Can’t beat the system. They can’t, anyway,’ she ended, laughing.

  ‘Are you saying,’ Mira began carefully, ‘that you’d never get married again?’

  ‘I can’t imagine why I would,’ Val answered a little absently, involved in measuring some spice in a tiny spoon. She stirred it into the meat, and turned toward Mira. ‘Why, would you?’

  ‘I’ve thought so. I mean, I sort of just assumed I’d get married again. Most divorced people do, don’t they?’ her voice asked a little anxiously.

  ‘I think so. That’s what the statistics say, anyway. But most of the women I know don’t want to be married.’

  Mira sat down.

  ‘I’d think they’d be lonely. Aren’t you? Well, you have Chris, of course.’

  ‘Loneliness is all in the way you look at it. It’s like virginity, a state of mind,’ Val laughed.

  ‘How can you say that?’ Mira’s voice was tinged with sharpness. ‘Loneliness is loneliness.’

  ‘I gather you’re lonely,’ Val smiled at her. ‘But weren’t you often lonely when you were married? And isn’t it nice to be alone sometimes? And sometimes when you are alone, aren’t you feeling sad mostly because society tells you you’re not supposed to be alone? And you imagine someone being there and understanding every motion of your heart and mind. When if someone were there he – or even she – wouldn’t necessarily be doing that at all? And that’s even worse. When somebody is there and not there at the same time. I think if you have a few good friends and good work to do, you don’t feel lonely. I think loneliness is the creation of the image makers. Part of the romantic myth. The other part being, of course, that if you find your dream person, you’ll never feel separate again. Which is a crock.’

  ‘You’re hitting me with that a little too quickly,’ Mira said. ‘I’m not sure I follow it.’

  Isolde came charging into the kitchen, smiling broadly. ‘Jesus, that Chris! She was poking holes in Tawney. I had to tell her to go read him, to fight with the book, not with me. She’s too much!’ She poured more wine in her glass and in Mira’s. ‘How about you, Val?’ Val nodded. She was measuring cream in a glass measuring cup. ‘What do you do to her, anyway?’

  ‘Leave her alone,’ Val said shortly, but with a smile. ‘My theory about children.’ She turned to Mira. ‘I have a theory about almost everything, I’m afraid.’ She gave Mira such a graceful, almost apologetic smile, that Mira almost liked her. ‘Actually, Chris’s problem is shyness. We’ve moved around so much. She has no friends her own age. I’ve urged her to get out a bit – but you know what it’s like to be shy and sixteen.’

  Dinner was served in the kitchen – there was no dining room.

  ‘I hope you like cream of watercress soup,’ Val said.

  Cream of watercress? But it smelled good.

  ‘I can never serve this without remembering a guy I knew once. I was really interested, you know, and things were at the beginning stage and needed a little push from me, you know? They’re always so dense. Anyway things were at that point – I was nervous, and anxious to please, and I thought he was golden boy himself …’

  Chris slipped into her place. ‘Talking about men again?’

  ‘Why not, they’re half the human race, aren’t they?’ her mother snapped.

  ‘Men, men, men,’ Chris said in a hollow mocking voice. ‘I get so sick of women talking about men all the time. Why don’t you talk about capitalism? I might learn something.’

  Iso was giggling, hiding her mouth in a napkin.

  ‘I’ve already taught you everything I know about capital
ism, Chrissie,’ Val said easily. ‘It’s simple, it’s a game, you know? First round, the people who are good at grasping get most of the chips. After that, it’s really simple. The rich keep the poor in line and the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. I’ve even played that game, someplace or other.’

  Chris gave her mother a disgusted look. ‘Some people, Mommy, might accuse you of oversimplification.’

  ‘You got something better to suggest?’ Val gave her a superior look and waved her spoon at Chris. Mira realized they were playing.

  ‘You can read my paper when it’s finished,’ Chris said. ‘It’s for social studies and the teacher’s a real pig. I mean, he thinks the black kids are animals – he even calls them that – and he thinks Joseph McCarthy is a maligned saint.’

  ‘Well, you think he’s an animal too: you called him a pig.’

  Chris made a face at her mother. ‘Touché. Anyway, you might find my paper interesting. He’ll surely give it an F.’

  Val gazed at her daughter and her face looked soft and loving and almost hurt.

  ‘The Cambridge schools are a horror scene,’ she said to Mira. ‘Class squabbles. Lower-class whites trying to keep the niggers down. The black kids are angry, the whites are scared, the place is a bombshell. One of these days … I just hope Chrissie’s out before it explodes.’

  ‘Oooooh?’ Chris quizzed her. ‘I thought you were a good radical.’

  ‘Shit, piss, and corruption,’ Iso said. ‘Your mother might want to throw a bomb herself, but she sure doesn’t want to see you in range of one.’

  ‘I’m a lousy radical,’ Val said. ‘All I am is talk. You ought to know that by now.’

  Chris was pleased. ‘You said it, I didn’t.’

  Val stood to remove the soup bowls. Chris leaped up to help her. Val put more bowls on the table – a salad made of spinach and mushrooms, with cheese dressing in a little bowl, some noodles, and a beautiful fragrant red-brown Bourguignon. Chris helped her mother; they did not speak. They worked together as if each knew what the other would do without speaking. There was French bread, more wine. Chris rinsed the soup bowls under running water and sat down. The meal smelled delicious.

  ‘That soup was terrific,’ Mira said. ‘What were you saying before about preparing it for someone? You said you were really in love with someone …’

  Iso began to giggle. ‘Tell her about love, Val.’

  Chris groaned. ‘Wait until after dessert.’

  Iso’s laugh was quiet, almost under her breath, but it kept coming, like a giggle. ‘Go on,’ she urged, still laughing.

  ‘May I please enjoy my dinner, Mother?’ Chris stormed, sounding serious.

  ‘Go to hell, Chris,’ Val said. ‘What are you so uptight about?’ She turned to Mira. ‘Oh, it was nothing. He threw up. After he ate it, I mean. Not because of the soup; he’d gotten drunk before he arrived. It was one of those nights when you pace the floor because HE, magical HE is coming. You know.’

  ‘I don’t. Really.’

  ‘Love. Being in love. Yuck!’ Val poured more wine in their glasses.

  ‘Val hates love,’ Iso explained, a wicked smile on her face.

  Mira blinked at Val. ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh, shit.’ Val sipped her wine. ‘I mean, it’s one of those things they’ve erected, like the madonna, you know, or the infallibility of the Pope or the divine right of kings. A bunch of nonsense erected – and that’s the crucial word – into Truth by a bunch of intelligent men – another crucial word. What the particular nonsense is, isn’t important. What’s important is why they did it.’

  ‘Come on, Val, skip the theory this time.’

  ‘Well, love is insanity. The ancient Greeks knew that. It is the taking over of a rational and lucid mind by delusion and self-destruction. You lose yourself, you have no power over yourself, you can’t even think straight. That’s the reason I hate it. Not, understand, that I am a rationalist. I think everything is rational; the word irrational simply applies to rationales we don’t totally understand. Nor do I believe that reason is separate from appetite, or any of those neat little fences in the desert that mankind likes to erect. Everything comes from all parts of the self, but we understand or think we understand some parts better than others. But love is an insanity created outside us – by the structure. There are lots of others …’

  ‘Val …’ Iso shook her fork at Val.

  ‘Okay. Love is one of those things you think is supposed to happen, is a fact of life, and if it doesn’t happen to you, you feel cheated. You’re walking around feeling rotten, you know, because it’s never happened to you. So one day you meet this guy, right? And, ZING! He is gorgeous! It doesn’t matter what he’s doing. He may be making a point in a debate, he may be chopping up concrete on a city street, with his shirt off and his back tanned. It doesn’t matter. Even if you’ve met him before and not thought much about him, at some moment you look at him and everything you’ve thought about him before goes straight out of your head. You never really saw him before! You realize that in a split second! You never saw how totally gorgeous he was!

  ‘But you suddenly see it. That back, those arms! The strength in his jaw when he leaned forward to put his opponent down. That brilliance in his eye! What an eye! So careless he is, as he runs his fingers through his hair. What hair!’

  Iso was bent over the table, laughing. Val’s face as she spoke was a complex network of acting: she was full of adoration and mockery.

  ‘His skin, my God, that skin is like satin. You sit there hardly able to contain yourself, you want to get your hand on that skin. And his hands! My God, what hands! Strong, delicate, thick, and powerful, it doesn’t matter what they are, they are gorgeous hands. Every time you look at them you start to sweat, your armpits get soggy …’

  Iso choked on her wine and had to leave the table. She went only as far as the kitchen door, however. Val paid no attention.

  ‘You can’t look at his hands without imagining them on your body. Looking at his hands becomes a forbidden act, an act of lasciviousness. His hands are full of touch and your body is tingling just as if they were on it. And on it in such places! Heavens! You move your eyes away from his hands. But those arms! God, such arms! So strong, so gentle, made to hold, to enclose, to protect and comfort, but they could also break you in half, that’s part of the fun, those arms are unpredictable, they might twist your body, they might be able to turn you into a piece of clay …’

  ‘Tsk, tsk,’ Mira heard her mouth go.

  ‘And his mouth! Oh, that mouth. Sensual and cruel-looking, or full and passionate, he looks as if he could devour you with his mouth. You want that mouth, no matter what it will do to you. You long for even its cruelty. And when he opens it! My God, what pearls! Everything he says has a halo, it radiates brilliance. He is pithy or symbolic; everything he says means a hell of a lot more than the surface. He turns to you and says, “It’s raining out,” and you see a glitter in his eyes, you see him figuring if the two of you are going to be able to get together somehow that night, and you see him devising means, you see passion and desire, you see unconquerable will, and all that will is directed towards you! Or he is talking about politics and everything he says is brilliant, you can’t understand why the other people in the room don’t leap up the way you want to and kiss his feet, the savior. When he turns to you and smiles, you want to curl into a little ball and fall down and snuggle under his feet like a footrest. When he turns away from you, you feel as if the world had just stopped, you want to die, you want to pick up a knife and stab it through your heart, standing up in the room and shouting, “If he doesn’t love me, I don’t want to live!” Any turn of head in another direction devastates you: you are jealous not just of other women, but of men, of walls, of music, of the fucking print hanging over the couch.

  ‘Well, in time, you sort of get together. Your passion is so extreme that no other possibility exists. And someplace you know that. You know that somehow you made this happen. So y
ou don’t trust it. You keep feeling that somehow you got him to ask you out for coffee, or lunch, or dinner, or a chamber music concert, or whatever it is, but that if you lose control for more than a minute, the enchantment will be broken and you’ll lose him forever. So whenever you’re with him, you’re high, you’re brilliant, your eyes look a little mad but very beautiful, you act just right, but the way you’re acting has nothing to do with you, you’re acting, just like someone on a stage, acting the part you think will get him, and you’re terrified because you’re also exhausted and you don’t know how much longer you can keep it up, but every time he appears, you manage.

  ‘Mostly, if you’re female, you smile a lot and listen a lot and cook a lot. You adore him during the whole twelve minutes it takes him to stuff your whole afternoon’s work down his throat. And in time, you get him where you want him, which is in your bed. If you don’t – well that’s a different trip, and I haven’t been on it. I can only tell you what I know. You get him in your bed and for a while, everything’s glorious. You never had sex like that before: he’s the greatest lover you’ve ever had. And in a way, it’s true. The two of you lie in a warm bath of love, you make love and you eat and you talk and you walk together and there’s not much of a dividing line among those things, they all flow together, and it’s all warm and hot and brilliant colors, and it’s all right, you’re floating in it, nothing has ever been so right in your life before. The two of you are one togetherness, one attenuated lovingness, your skins flow into each other, you can feel him get chilly even when he’s in another room. And every time he touches your skin or you touch his, the heat strikes as if you carried lightning around inside you, you were both Zeus.’