The Women's Room

by Marilyn French

  ‘His fantasy is enough for you?’ Iso challenged.

  ‘It seems so,’ Val said, puzzled.

  3

  Tad and Val became a togetherness in a way she and Grant had not. People snickered and whispered, but Val really didn’t care. She was aware, because under her assertiveness Val was perceptive, of the tone of people’s remarks about her and Tad. They saw her involvement with him as a descent, whether they blamed her for being a cradle-snatcher or for lowering her intellectual standards. Tad was viewed as a nut by the small circle who knew him.

  But Val came to love Tad, not just because he adored her, but because he was so discriminating, had such high standards for behavior, and although she did not agree with him about much, she admired his attempt to get beyond the narrow needs of what he called ego to a place of larger understanding.

  Everyone was happy that summer. Most people were taking summer courses, trying to get language or seminar requirements out of the way. Iso and Kyla were reading Dante, Mira was reading Spenser, and Val was taking something to do with statistics – hideous but necessary for her degree. Ben was on crate three of his notes.

  The women met for lunch every day. Often they were joined by Clarissa, who was reading Faulkner with a celebrated visiting professor. Others drifted in and out. But it was during this summer that the women really meshed into a group.

  Political action had moved elsewhere: most students and faculty had gone, and the movement went on in basements and attics in New York, Boston, and Chicago. The summer people drifted in and the scent of the reefer was smelled in Holyoke Center. Those were the days of runaways and road people. Some looked very young, some past middle age, but their faces all had a timeless quality, as if things had stopped for them, or rather, as if they lived in an eternally extended now, and had neither past nor future. One or another would be seen sitting against the brick Yard wall along Mass Ave, in front of the Coop, against the wall near the Holyoke Center. Their eyes were both blank and hostile: perhaps those are the same thing.

  The women’s days were exciting, hot, and easy. Their work was fun, their coming together was fun, and since it was summer, and they felt entitled to allow themselves some days off, they would occasionally drive together to the beach. The life of graduate students may sound easy. In fact, most of them worked harder than most people. But because their work was self-generated and self-controlled, they did not have to find relaxation at the water cooler or the food truck, on fifteen minutes – stretched to twenty or thirty – of company time. They could save up their leisure, working for long hours at a stretch, and allowing themselves a day of complete freedom from work every eight or ten days: in the summer, at least.

  Iso’s apartment was nearest the Square, and in the late afternoons they would stop in there, carrying soda or wine. There was always somebody there. Iso shone. She was wearing white shorts and tight white jerseys, and as she grew tanner, her hair fairer, her freckles deeper, she looked more and more like the all-American girl. The women sat around talking about things they never talked about elsewhere, playing games that were not games.

  ‘What games did you like to play when you were little, Clarissa?’

  ‘Oh, hopscotch and jumprope and king of the mountain. I especially liked king of the mountain until I got into football. But football is my all-time favorite.’

  ‘What about you, Mira?’

  ‘After that, you ask me? Memory – it’s a card game. School – I was always the teacher. And Monopoly.’

  Around they would go, laughing at themselves and each other. Iso’s game was softball; Kyla liked racing, tag and taking care of tropical fish; Val didn’t like games, but remembered loving to build an Oriental tent in the backyard and lie on cushions eating her lunch, drinking homemade lemonade with fresh mint leaves in it, and reading and writing novels.

  And on the special day, they would drive up the coast, sometimes with Tad or Ben – Harley and Duke never went with them – to Gloucester or Crane’s beach. They swam, read, played cards; sometimes they packed chicken and salad and beer and eggs and ate on the beach. Such days seemed utter happiness to them: a car was a luxury, a day out of the city was royal magnificence.

  Occasionally, Mira and Ben went off by themselves. They went to Walden and walked around the pond holding hands and swam illegally, out of sight of the beach, in a little cove they pretended was private. They looked at the stone remains of Thoreau’s chimney and tried to imagine what it had been like here a hundred-odd years ago. They visited Concord and Lexington, Salem, Plymouth, traveled with the full satisfaction of people who are excited by each other but who are not totally caught up only in the other. Things are more fun shared if they are shared so.

  In August, most people disappeared. Iso made her annual trip back to California; Kyla and Harley, Clarissa and Duke made their parental visits. Chris returned from visiting her father and went with Val and Tad to a place Val had rented on the Cape. Mira and Ben went down to visit for a few days.

  It was delightful. They went riding, they swam in the mild bay water or drove across to the surf and rolled and dove in that. They sat around late at night giggling and drinking and Indian wrestling and leg wrestling and playing cards. Tad and Ben cooked the meat on the outdoor grill that had come with the cottage and Val and Mira and Chris had a wonderful time making potato salad and coleslaw together. The cottage was on a pleasant street with many trees and they sat outdoors at night, their empty paper plates getting soggy, and listened to the insect noises and watched the sky slowly turn lavender and purple, and smelled the rustling clear summer evening air and spoke idly, in low voices. After Cambridge and its noise and soot, it seemed paradise, at least until the mosquitoes came out. Then they went in and started drinking and got rowdy.

  Mira and Ben just stayed. They mentioned, after two days, that they ought to leave, but Val shouted ‘Why?’ and that was that. They chipped in for food and liquor, but after four days, they began to get apprehensive. ‘We really have to go,’ Mira insisted, not wanting to, one night as they sat in a circle on the floor playing cards.

  ‘Listen, the landlord called me today. The people who were supposed to take this place for the last two weeks of August have pooped out. The landlord has their deposit, of course, and he asked me if I wanted the cottage at a cheaper rate for the rest of the month. I can’t afford it, but why don’t you two take it, and we’ll come down and visit you?’ She looked at them grinning. ‘Just so you won’t get lonely.’

  Mira smiled broadly and reached over and grabbed Val’s arm.

  ‘It wouldn’t have been the same without you all here.’ She sat looking at her friend with love. The four days had been a brief but beautiful experiment in communal living. But the boys were coming up for the last two weeks in August. There was no way they could …

  ‘Great!’ Ben said. ‘How much is it? We can surely scrape up two hundred bucks between us.’

  ‘Mom,’ Chris said in a low voice, but sharply, ‘I thought we were going shopping for clothes for college next week.’

  ‘We will, we will,’ Val smiled, rumpling Chris’s hair. ‘How long can it take to buy a pair of jeans and three tops?’

  ‘And boots.’

  Mira shuffled the cards. They were all sitting on the floor in a circle, playing poker. Ben had looked to Mira when he made his suggestion, and he was still looking at her, but she had not looked back at him. He had made the suggestion that they take the place with joy in his voice, and had expected her radiant smile to meet his, but she was looking down, shuffling.

  ‘You don’t seem too enthused.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t use a nonexistent word, Ben,’ she said sharply.

  ‘What the fuck’s the matter?’ His voice rose.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said with a tight mouth. ‘Nothing at all.’ Then she stood up and went into the toilet. Ben looked at Val. Val shrugged her shoulders. They all looked at each other. The noisy fun they had been having evaporated into silence. They si
pped drinks; the ice clinked in the glasses.

  ‘You think she wants to keep playing?’

  ‘It’s her deal.’

  ‘Well, we’ll wait.’

  ‘Anybody ready for a drink?’ Val rose and went into the kitchen. ‘Tad, is there any more tonic?’

  ‘How should I know? I don’t know.’

  ‘Jesus, the gin is finished.’

  ‘No, I bought more, Val,’ Ben called. ‘It’s under the sink.’

  ‘Mom! And a jacket. A blue denim jacket. And some sweaters. And underwear. And I guess I should get a dress.’

  ‘What in hell for?’ Yelled from the kitchen.

  Chris began to protest. ‘Listen, Mom, how do I know? There may be some college thing I have to go to where I should wear a dress.’

  Val returned with the drinks, smiling broadly at her daughter. Chris looked at her and relaxed. She patted her mother’s hand. ‘A long dress. Real sexy.’

  ‘And a mink stole. What you really need is some pajamas and a robe.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Chris, in some places it is conventional to wear something in bed.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘I don’t live in a dorm …’

  Ben stood up and walked toward the bathroom. The conversation stopped, then Val continued. Ben went into the bathroom and closed the door. Val looked at Tad and Chris.

  ‘How about a slam-bang game of three-handed solitaire?’

  They played hearts. Finally Mira and Ben came out of the bathroom. Mira’s face was swollen and pink. Ben was tense and taciturn. They rejoined the group. Val tried to talk to them, and they answered her, but they did not look at or speak to each other. Finally, Val folded up her cards.

  ‘Mira, did I do something? I know I have a big mouth. What’s wrong? Please tell us.’

  Mira shook her head, biting her lower lip. ‘No,’ she answered tremulously. ‘It’s no one’s fault. It’s me. You just can’t transcend the past, I guess.’ She stood up, her voice a liquid lump in her throat. ‘My taste was bitter, my taste was me,’ she added desolately with the soupy despair that alcohol can bring to the surface. ‘I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back.’ And left.

  They were silent until her footsteps stopped echoing on the flagstone path that led from the front door to the street. Then all of them turned and looked at Ben. He shook his head, looked down at his drink, looked up at them with liquid eyes.

  ‘She says I’m insensitive.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘To her feelings about her sons. She says she could never, not in a million years, stay with me and her sons in the same house. I asked if she had been planning to banish me from her life when they came. She said she expected me to come over for dinner one night: that was it. I said it was nice of her to tell me. I guess I got nasty. I mean, what am I, a sex maniac or something? They’re sixteen and seventeen years old, not exactly ignorant of the facts of life.’ He gulped his drink. He shook his head like a dog that has come in out of the rain. ‘She acts as if she’s ashamed of me.’

  ‘More likely of herself,’ Val murmured.

  ‘She made it sound like a disgusting thing – to have your children and your lover under the same roof.’ He looked up at Val, then at Chris, then blushed. Not in principle, just for her,’ he amended.

  ‘Well, it is a problem,’ Val said, letting him off the hook he thought he was caught on. ‘For all of us, the women who end up with kids. It takes a lot of thought.’

  Chris leaned forward with her chin in her hand, lying across the cards. Did you give it a lot of thought, Mom?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How old was I?’

  ‘About two. I’d been divorced from your father for about a year when I met this guy … there were choices. I mean, I could have gone out to a motel with him. I didn’t have to bring him home.’

  ‘But you did?’

  Val nodded, and Chris laughed, ‘And you’ve been bringing them home ever since.’

  Ben looked at Chris. ‘And how do you feel about that? If it’s not too impolitic a question,’ he added, looking at Val.

  Val spread her hands. ‘That’s up to Chris to say.’

  Chris shrugged. ‘It’s okay. I guess if I had to choose between having Mom home and having her go out, I’d choose the first. I guess maybe I would have liked it if she had decided to become what do you call it?’ She appealed to her mother.

  ‘A nun? A gray-haired grandmotherly type sitting home waiting for you to come home and knitting you long woolen stockings.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Chris grinned. ‘Celibate! You know, devoting her whole life to little old me.’

  ‘Do you have any idea,’ Val said making a fake mean mouth, ‘what I would have charged you for that?’

  ‘Some,’ Chris agreed. ‘Lisa’s mother is divorced and she does that. It’s a heavy trip. Anyway, sometimes it annoys me when there’s somebody around I hardly know, and I have to be sure to close the bathroom door, or to have clothes on when I walk around the apartment, or when I want to talk to Mom and she’s occupied with somebody else. That’s when I walk around slamming doors and other objects. But sometimes it’s nice to have a guy around, even if he is feeble-minded,’ she pushed her face, making slit eyes, toward Tad, who pushed in her nose. ‘It sort of feels like having a family. But the times I really can’t stand it are when I don’t like the guy …’

  ‘Yeah!’ Val leaped in. ‘Some people have trouble with their parents, I have it with my kid! If I invite somebody she doesn’t like, she is so mean and vicious that he doesn’t stay long.’

  ‘I’m always right, aren’t I?’ Chris asked seriously.

  ‘You’re always right in your estimate of them. But you don’t understand me. I mean, sometimes there’s just nobody around who is up to one’s standards, but I, I get lonely, I want to make love. I want to talk to a man – much as I love women, I like some balance – so I bring home a limited creature. After all, everybody can’t be God’s gift to the human race …’

  ‘That’s all academic now,’ Tad said authoritatively. ‘You have me now.’

  Val swung around to him with astonishment. He looked in her face with devotion, and reached out and took her hand. She let him take it, but she turned away looking thoughtful.

  Ben frowned. ‘I don’t know. Mira just kept saying – crying – that it was disgusting. She said it over and over. I asked her if she thought it was disgusting that you lived with Tad – out here, at least – and she said that was different, Chris was just a baby when you got divorced, and that she was a girl and that was different – but then she burst out that she was shocked when she first realized Grant was your lover and stayed with you sometimes.’

  ‘Well,’ Val said wearily, ‘one thing is sure. She loves you.’

  ‘How do you make that out? Love is a blackboard eraser? When I’m inconvenient, she can wipe me out of her life?’

  ‘That’s another thing. But I don’t think she’d be so upset if her feelings for you were not so intense. You know, she hasn’t much of a relationship with her sons. It’s probably all the emotions around that are pulling her apart. She’s thinking about how they would feel, knowing the three of them aren’t that close, seeing her with you … You can understand that, can’t you?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Val sat up and crossed her legs, lotus position. She leaned her head toward Ben. She was a little drunk, and her voice took on the childish tone that was common when she was in that state. ‘Well, now, Ben, I’m serious, and you’d better listen to me.’

  He leaned forward and kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘I’m listening.’

  Tad’s arm jerked, and his head became very erect.

  ‘Oooookay!’ she pronounced, sitting back. ‘Who’s for a slam-bang game of …’ She peered around, counting them slowly. ‘One, two, three … oh, well … oh! I’m four! How about a slam-bang game of bridge?’

  4

  Ben’s suggestion that they rent the cottage had
so appalled Mira that for a time she could not think. It outraged her in some place she never before knew to exist, and was suddenly forced not only to recognize, but also to explore. She walked down toward the beach; the night was warm and the crickets were singing love songs. The sky was dark here, far from the neon-lighted city, and the stars stood out brilliantly against it. She asked herself question after question. Was it because her life had been so sheltered, so normal, so much what popular morality said it was supposed to be, that she had never been forced to make a moral choice, and so was helpless in this terrain? She could remember mentally castigating people who regarded adultery as mortal sin. But she also remembered her shock when she realized that Bliss was actually having an affair with Paul. At the time, she had told herself that what upset her was the betrayal of Adele, who considered Bliss her best friend. She reminded herself that she had not been horrified when Martha got involved with David. But of course, Martha and George were honest with each other, there was no deceit involved.

  But what deceit was involved here? Her sons knew she was divorced, they lived in the same house with their father and his second wife whenever they visited. They would understand that she too … They would have to understand! Who were they to judge her? Was she not entitled to her own life, to a life, to friendship and love?

  She reached the beach. The bay was still, only rippling under the moon. The sand was deserted, although there were some cars parked at its rim, cars with people in them. She averted her head stiffly, and walked down toward the water.

  She could not come up with a single logical reason why she should be so upset by the idea of the boys staying with – no, it was not even that – just knowing about her and Ben. She prodded and poked this area of her mind, this newly discovered territory, and risked pain with each motion, but she could not find answers. She walked and walked. In time, weary and wanting to sleep, she decided to return to the cottage, but by this time, she felt like a walking toothache, and she blamed Ben for her pain. After all, she had lived all these years without ever having to feel precisely this way, without ever having to ask such questions, all these years she had gone her happy calm way without having this dentist’s pick probe at her sore spots. Why couldn’t he understand her delicacy? He was insisting, pushing her, being unconscionable and insensitive.