by Alison Lurie
Sally, Sally Waters,
Sitting in a saucer,
Rise, Sally, rise.
Bow to the east,
Bow to the west,
Kiss the one you love the best.”
Jeanne’s voice rose in the tune, thin but pure. “Then the girl in the center would choose someone else to be It next. Of course I always chose Eileen. You were supposed to kiss them on the cheek, but I’d get as close to her mouth as I dared, even partly on it, pretending it was sort of a mistake. When anyone else picked Eileen I’d watch them furiously. If I thought they gave her a real kiss, I wanted to kill them. I imagined doing it in different ways; or sometimes I imagined a truck running over them in the parochial school driveway, and their blood being squeezed out over the blacktop, like an oil slick.”
“Really?” Polly said, adding brown sugar to her oatmeal. “Kids’ imaginations are violent, aren’t they?”
“I didn’t know what it all meant then. I couldn’t have explained that I was in love. That’s one of the dreadful things about being a child: you feel everything just as strongly, but you don’t have a name for it.”
“I know what you mean,” Polly said. “It can be awful.” What she saw was not a playground, but a booth in a coffee shop in Mamaroneck, and her father’s face turned away from her toward friends who had just joined them.
“You always understand.” Jeanne smiled, then sighed. “Well, anyhow. I thought after breakfast we might walk across the park, it seems to be a nice morning. And I told Ida and Cathy we might stop in. Then of course there’s that new film in the Women Directors series downtown at two. What do you think?”
“You go, if you like,” Polly said. “I have to transcribe two more interviews.” She stood up.
“Not on Sunday, surely?”
“I do, though. I’ve got to review them before I go to Wellfleet tomorrow; they could be important.” Polly sat down at her desk and turned on the tape. “There are a lot of assholes and climbers in the art world,” it said in a self-assertive female voice, hardly proving Polly’s point.
“But it’s only ten thirty. You have all the time in the world.”
“Nobody has all the time in the world,” Polly said stubbornly. She swung her chair around and typed the sentence they had just heard.
“Good heavens. You know that’s simply a manner of speaking. What’s the matter with you today?”
“Nothing’s the matter with me,” Polly protested, wondering why she was so out of humor. “I’m concerned about my book, that’s all.” She heard how pompous this sounded, and added: “I’ll tell you what. You go and see Ida and Cathy this morning, and I’ll meet you all afterward at the film.”
“Don’t you want to see Ida and Cathy?” Jeanne asked.
“Sure I do,” Polly said, though in fact she was sometimes uncomfortable when she was with Jeanne’s friends and noticed that everyone else present was gay. “I just haven’t got the time today.”
“But they invited you, too. If you don’t come, they’ll think it’s, well, rather strange.”
“They’ll think I’m working, that’s all.”
“Well, maybe.” Jeanne’s mild, caressing manner had begun to fray slightly. “But they’ll think you’re working, you know, on purpose. They’re already not sure you really like them.”
“I like them all right,” Polly said; in fact she cared less for Ida and Cathy than for Jeanne’s other friends.
“They feel you as a rather hostile presence, you know. Ida especially.”
“Why should they feel that, for God’s sake?” Polly shoved the typewriter back and set her elbows square on the desk. “I’ve always been perfectly nice to them. I’m not a hostile presence.”
“I know. But that’s how they feel.”
Polly almost groaned. “If they think I’m hostile, they should be glad I’m not coming.”
“Yes, but if you came, they wouldn’t —”
“Anyhow, the question is academic,” Polly interrupted, remembering too late that Jeanne was an academic. “I’m not leaving this room till I get these interviews typed. I keep having this fantasy of Lorin Jones, how she’s waiting for me to start writing.”
“Really?” Now Jeanne smiled indulgently; she was in favor of all sorts of visionary experience.
“Yes. I imagine her standing somewhere up to her knees in moving gray and white clouds, like one of her own pictures, with all her long dark hair blowing around, looking down at me, wondering why I’m not getting on with it faster. Sometimes she gives me a little wave.”
“Really,” Jeanne said again, but this time her expression was more thoughtful. “You know what I think?” she added. “I think you are becoming just a bit obsessed. I think you’re falling in love with your subject.” She smiled.
Polly turned and looked up at Jeanne. She ought to be joking, of course, but maybe she wasn’t. “You think I’m in love with a woman who died in nineteen-sixty-nine?”
“I’m uneasy about your feeling for her, that’s all. It just, well, doesn’t seem absolutely healthy to me. All you think about lately is Lorin Jones.”
“I’m writing a book about her, for God’s sake,” Polly explained, trying to keep her voice calm and not succeeding.
“I know that,” Jeanne said, with a sigh of resignation. “And I know you want to get those interviews typed. You don’t have to come to Ida and Cathy’s with me unless you like.”
You’re damn right I don’t, Polly thought, but did not say.
“They’ll have to understand that I’m living with a workaholic, that’s all.” Jeanne laughed gaily. “I’ll tell them you’ll phone as soon as you’re finished, all right?”
Alone in the apartment, Polly continued typing for ten minutes, then stopped to reheat her coffee. For the first time she felt the disadvantages of having become Jeanne’s roommate. She didn’t like being blamed for not wanting to visit Ida and Cathy, who weren’t really her friends, and would probably be happier if she didn’t come, so they could analyze her character the way they always did with people who weren’t there. They talked in a kind of catty way, even in a bitchy way —
Polly scowled, catching herself in a lapse of language. Jeanne, among others, had often pointed out how unfair it was that when women were compared to animals it was always unfavorably: catty, bitch, cow, henpecked. While for men the comparison was usually positive: gay dog, strong as a bull, cock of the walk.
She turned on the tape recorder again and typed another page, then stopped, thinking of Jeanne again. She didn’t like being called a workaholic, even affectionately. She didn’t like being given permission not to see people she didn’t want to see. It was, yes, as if she were a child, with a managing, overprotective mother.
Of course, when she really was a child, Polly never had an overprotective mother. Bea was only twenty when her daughter was born, and she’d had trouble enough protecting herself. She looked out for Polly the way an older sister or a baby-sitter might have done, without anxiety, encouraging her to become independent as fast as possible. Later, when Polly’s half brothers came along, Bea had showed impulses toward overprotection, but her husband frustrated them; he didn’t want his sons “made into sissies.”
According to Elsa, Polly’s former shrink, any close relationship between women could revive one’s first and profoundest attachment, to one’s mother. Physically, of course, Jeanne was nothing like Polly’s mother — Bea Milner was much smaller, for one thing. But to a child all grown women are large. And psychologically there were similarities: Jeanne, like Bea, was soft and feminine in manner, and given to gently chiding Polly for her impulsiveness, hot temper, and lack of tact. Elsa’s view had been that Polly needed Jeanne to play this role because she hadn’t had enough “good mothering” as a child, and that Jeanne needed to play it because she was a highly maternal woman without children.
But I’m not a child anymore, Polly thought. I don’t want mothering. Anyhow, I’m four years older than Jeanne, the whole
idea is stupid. She poured her coffee and added less sugar than usual.
Again she started typing and stopped. Something else Jeanne had said was bothering her. What?
Yes. Jeanne had accused her of being in love with Lorin Jones. That was ridiculous, realistically. But if love meant admiring someone, thinking about her all the time, speculating about the tiniest details of her life, wanting to know everything she’d ever done, talking about her to everyone —
Yes, and staring at her photograph, imagining impossible scenarios in which they might meet. ... In the latest one, it turned out that Lorin Jones wasn’t really dead; it was someone else who had died in Key West, and Lorin had been living and painting on a tiny island off Cape Cod for fifteen years. Polly would somehow discover this when she went to Wellfleet (of course, Garrett Jones and his wife wouldn’t know it themselves).
She would hire a motorboat to take her to the island, and land on a tiny pebble beach just as the sun was setting over the water. She would walk up a narrow sandy path through scrub oak and juniper, and there would be an old gray shingled house half-concealed by blackberry brambles. The door to the big studio in back would be open. Inside a tall slim woman in her late fifties, still beautiful, though her long dark hair was streaked with gray, would be standing at an easel. At first she would be distressed that she’d been discovered, but Polly would reassure her: she would look into Lorin’s fringed dark eyes and promise never to reveal her secret.
Soap-opera stuff, Polly thought, giving an angry shake of her head. But she had to admit it suggested that there might be something in what Jeanne had said. It hadn’t occurred to Polly before that she might be in love with Lorin Jones, not only because she was dead, but because she was a woman; but naturally it had occurred to Jeanne.
In Jeanne’s view, love and sympathy between women was natural and beautiful; it was heterosexual relationships that made trouble. It couldn’t help being that way, she said, because women and men were emotionally incompatible, and even sexually incompatible except in the most mechanistic sense. The male’s natural instinct was for a quick, anonymous squirt of seed; the female’s for a long, tender cherishing. That was why she and Betsy were so peaceful and happy together.
It was probably true, Polly thought, that when people were of different sexes it was harder for them not to misunderstand and hurt each other. I’ve had many more women friends than men. And felt more comfortable with them, and trusted them more.
Except for Stevie. And at this thought, a familiar desolation and anxiety rolled over Polly like a cold smelly mist. She still missed her son awfully. She called him every week, but that almost made it worse. Usually the connection to Denver was good, and her son’s voice so loud that he could have been in his room at home, talking on the toy telephone he’d got for his eighth birthday and strung along the hallway of the apartment.
What agreeable conversations they used to have, Polly on the kitchen stool, and Stevie lying on the bunk bed in his room, pretending to be in the jungle, or on a space station. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he used to whisper sometimes; and Polly would learn something he hadn’t been able to say to her face. “It was me that ate the rest of the mint chip ice cream, but I’m sorry.” “This is Captain Mercury 5000 calling. I don’t like Miss MacGregor at all, and none of the other kids do either.” Sometimes he would say, “Tell me a secret, Mommy.”
Now the distance was real, but they didn’t really talk.
— Stevie?
— Hi, Mom.
— How are you, pal?
— I’m okay.
— And how’s everything in Denver? How are you liking your school?
— It’s all right.
— Did you get your allergy shots this week?
— Uh-huh.
— And how were they? Did they hurt?
— They were okay. You know.
— So what’s happening out there?
— Nothing much. I got a new video game, it’s called Space Lords.
— Space Lords?
— Yeah, it’s really keen, Mom. It’s got seven skill levels. There’s this computer-generated monster, see...
In these conversations, almost the only time Stevie became expansive was in describing his latest acquisitions: video games, hiking shoes, tapes, classic comics, a battery-operated pencil sharpener, an elaborate backpack with a frame, a sleeping bag, a new sort of tennis racket. His life seemed to Polly to be filling up with these things; she imagined him in the spare bedroom of Jim’s house in Denver (which she’d never seen) surrounded by more and more objects. Objects, most often, that she couldn’t have afforded to buy for Stevie and that he would have no use for in New York.
The idea of all these objects made Polly so angry that last week she had asked to speak to Jim and protested, complaining that he was spoiling Stevie and buying his affection. Jim had replied in the calm infuriating voice that she knew so well, the voice of someone dealing with a totally irrational person. Everyone in Stevie’s school had these things, he explained; all the kids played tennis and went hiking and camped out. If Stevie didn’t have the right equipment he couldn’t join in his friends’ activities; he’d be a kind of outcast.
What Stevie said most often on the phone was “Don’t worry. Mom. I’m having an okay time.” Naturally this made Polly worry. Maybe it meant that he was unhappy but wasn’t telling her because he didn’t want to hurt Jim’s feelings; maybe it meant that he was happy but didn’t want to hurt hers. If he was unhappy enough — or happy enough — he might return to New York psychologically damaged, or alternatively he might want to stay in Denver forever. And there was no way of knowing for sure until he got home.
— But you’re not telling me anything, pal! Polly often wanted to scream at him over the phone. Only she knew she mustn’t do that; it could turn Stevie off totally.
Polly had tried to talk about these worries to Jeanne, who was very sympathetic but not reassuring. Yes, maybe Stevie wasn’t communicating his real feelings, she had said. Of course that must make Polly feel bad. But that was how boys were once they began to mature — it was hard, but she’d probably have to get used to it.
Polly was at the kitchen counter that evening eating a slice of Jeanne’s lighter-than-air confetti angel food cake and idly paging through the New York Times travel section when she heard her friend come home from her meeting with Betsy. She knew something was wrong at once, because it was still so early, and then because for the first time in their acquaintance Jeanne looked completely disarranged, almost distracted. Her bouncy blonde hair hung in uncombed shreds, and her pale blue down coat was buttoned wrong.
“Would you like supper?” Polly asked. “There’s some tomato soup on the stove.”
“I couldn’t eat anything.” Jeanne started to walk about the kitchen aimlessly.
“What’s the matter, is something the matter?”
“Yes, it is.” Jeanne opened a cupboard door and slammed it shut. “She didn’t tell him.”
“Betsy still didn’t tell her husband about you?”
“That’s right.” Jeanne tried without energy or success to unbutton her puffy coat.
“Oh hell. I’m sorry.” Polly got up and went to put her arms around her friend. Because of the coat, it felt like embracing a half-inflated balloon.
“I can’t stand it, I just can’t!” Inside the balloon, Jeanne collapsed onto Polly, weeping. “It’s so unfair.”
“Yeah. ... There, there.”
“She says she can’t bear to hurt him. So I said, ‘I suppose you think it’s all right to hurt me,’ and she said, ‘No, but you’re stronger than he is.” Jeanne gave a choked sob.
“There, there,” Polly repeated, feeling helpless and indignant.
“She swears she’s going to tell him soon, but this wasn’t the right moment. So I said, ‘When is the right moment?’ ” Jeanne stood back on her own feet shakily, and wiped her wet powder-streaked face with the side of her hand, not improving its appearance.
“And what did Betsy say?”
“She said she just didn’t know. I think that’s a lot of C-R-A-P. I think she’s never going to tell him.” Jeanne tried again to unfasten her coat, but her hands were still shaking. “It was awful, Polly — I got so upset — I threw my plate on the floor, everybody was looking at me —” She choked on a sob. “Veal parmigiana.”
“What?”
“That was what I was eating. It went all over the restaurant floor.” Jeanne gave a miserable laugh. “It was so stupid and embarrassing, destroying innocent crockery.”
“I guess you have to, sometimes,” Polly said.
“No. It was awful; I was awful.” Jeanne finally succeeded in taking off her coat, and let it slump to the floor, something Polly had never seen her do. “The thing is, as long as Betsy’s husband doesn’t know what our relationship is, I’m in a completely false position.”
“Mm,” Polly agreed.
“I think he must know.” Jeanne bent to retrieve the coat, and dropped it on a stool from which it at once slid off. “Unconsciously, at least. Only he won’t admit it to himself.” She began to wander around the room again. “But maybe he’s too stupid. At least he knows Betsy doesn’t love him anymore. If she ever did.” She fell into a chair and looked around distractedly. “Is there any coffee left?”
“Sure.” Polly turned on the flame under the pot.
“I think maybe he knows, or suspects anyhow. Because whenever I come over he sulks and slams things around, and shouts for Betsy to hurry up and make lunch or something.”
“He sounds like a pig.” Polly set the coffee in front of her friend, together with a carton of the heavy cream she preferred.
“He is. A complete pig.” Jeanne nodded miserably. “She’s afraid of him, that’s what it is,” she added, dumping in sugar. “She says not, but I know she must be. After all, he’s already hit her once.”
“Betsy’s husband hit her?”
“Yes. He struck her in the face with a plastic flyswatter. He said afterward it was a mistake, he meant to swat a fly. I know those sorts of mistakes. My brother used to make them all the time.” Jeanne lifted her mug. “Thanks. That tastes good.”
