Stepping

by Nancy Thayer

  I put my head down on my desk and cried. For ten minutes. Then I got up, fixed up my face, and went off to do a slam-bang, cork-popping class for my cute little freshmen.

  And I haven’t slept with Stephen yet. I’m not sure why. Probably because the perfect opportunity hasn’t presented itself again. No more hotel bedroom doors have fallen open for us. We have seen each other several times—six times, exactly, and I could quote every word we said to each other. We have lingered together over coffee and papers in the lounge after the other professors and instructors discussed this text or that student and then, one by one, left. We have had tea together in the school cafeteria. Each time I’ve been with Stephen I’ve felt guilty, ashamed, knowing that what I was doing was not as bad or immoral as it was false and hypocritical. I do not love Stephen. But I have loved being loved. Nothing is as entrancing as hearing all of one’s best qualities named by someone who has never seen one’s stretch marks or heard one screech at the children. Each session with Stephen left me feeling as punch-drunk and gay as the first time I practiced control breathing in Lamaze class and hyperventilated.

  Once we stayed after hours in his office and began to embrace. I don’t know if I would have said no again or not. I didn’t especially want to make love with Stephen, but it was so delightful to have him right there, wanting to make love with me. Fortunately a student, the stupid fool, came wandering right in, without knocking, opening the closed door, looking for the psychology department. He didn’t seem to know who we were, in spite of the fact that the door he had just opened read, “Stephen Hunter, Chairman.”

  Another time when Charlie was out of town lecturing, Stephen came by, and we stood in the back hall, wrestling between the freezer and the basement steps.

  “Not here,” I cried. “Not here. This is Charlie’s home. You can’t come in.”

  Perhaps Stephen took heart because I said “Not here” instead of “I won’t.”

  At the beginning of the summer, when I was sure we were going to Helsinki, I went to the English department to clean out my desk for someone else to use the next year. I took down my posters, clippings, cartoons, and signs from the board behind my desk. I threw most of the stuff in the wastebasket and put the rest of it into a small briefcase I had borrowed from Charlie. I was sad; very, very sad. I didn’t want to go to Helsinki, to live on the 60th parallel. I wanted to stay on our New Hampshire farm, I wanted to teach. I wanted to teach. I was thirty-four. I was tired of following Charlie around the world. Stephen came in, and because it was a Saturday morning no one was around, and he simply walked into my office and stood there looking at me until I stopped shuffling papers and looked at him.

  “I don’t want you to go to Finland,” he said. He looked as though he hadn’t slept for weeks. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “I want you to marry me.”

  I didn’t blink. I didn’t skip a beat. “If I marry you, will you let me teach?” I asked.

  “Let me check the nepotism rules here,” he said, and turned to go down the hall to his office.

  I threw everything else in my desk—rubber bands, paper clips, little pink broken stubs of eraser, into my—Charlie’s—briefcase, and I ran. I was as frightened as I had ever been in my life. I didn’t think Stephen would hear me, but he did. He ran out of his inner office, through the secretary’s room, and down the hall after me. Perhaps I wasn’t running as fast as I could have—I should have taken my light summer sandals off—but he caught me. And shoved me into a classroom and shut the door.

  I was already shaky enough emotionally, I was secretly furious at Charlie for getting the Fulbright and dragging me off just when I was starting my own career again. I was feeling very sorry for myself. And here was the man with all the answers in his hands, trying to give them to me. Except that I knew he didn’t really have all the answers.

  We went into each other’s arms. We were on the second floor of the building, and no one could see us through the windows. It was Saturday, before the start of summer classes; the campus was bare. The classroom was as good as a motel room, with the one notable exception of a nice big bed. I was being thoroughly unrealistic. Perhaps everyone gets to be that way every thirteen years, just once. I encouraged Stephen when he kissed me—probably because I knew he’d never risk getting caught screwing another professor’s wife in a campus classroom. He was still, after all, ambitious. I encouraged him when he talked to me; I needed to hear his words. He sounded like a fairy godfather, offering me the dress and the coach and the ball. I did not say I loved him. I did say I’d go to bed with him, the first opportunity we had. “No one gets married anymore without sleeping together first,” I laughed. I asked him to please keep things normal, for a while, for my sake. I suppose I thought we were playing a game, one I needed to play, something light and refreshing, something without scorecards or goals. I suppose I wasn’t in my right mind. I didn’t realize how serious Stephen was. I didn’t want to think he was serious.

  For the sake of normality he and Ellen and the kids went back to Nantucket for the summer and came home just a week before we left for Helsinki. There was never, in the rush of our packing and his gearing up for a new semester, an opportunity for us to make love. At a farewell dinner that Ellen cooked for us, we risked one drunken kiss in the kitchen; it made me feel nearly sick with guilt. Even so, it was quite a kiss. All I have to do now, sitting at my orange-and-white checked tablecloth in my dreary Helsinki kitchen, is to place my fingertips lightly to my lips and I feel that kiss again, with all its eagerness and promise, and tears spring to my eyes, and I jump up and pace the room.

  Now he says he’s coming here.

  I can’t believe he loves me. In spite of all he’s said. I have it all figured out: he’s handsome and charming and cool, and I am probably the only woman in his life who hasn’t hopped into bed with him on request. He doesn’t really want to marry me. He merely wants to make love to me, to satisfy his masculine vanity. If he comes here, I should sleep with him. Then he’ll go home and I won’t have any problems anymore.

  I want to sleep with him, I really do. Perhaps it’s just because we’ve had rain for ten days straight now, so the children weren’t able to go to the Park Auntie’s and have stayed here in this small gray apartment chewing at my heels for entertainment. Perhaps it’s just because all the people we meet say, “Oh, Dr. Campbell, what an honor to meet you,” while I sit quietly beside him trying to look appropriately proud. Perhaps I’m just bored and jealous.

  I wonder, how does one find out about hotels here? Shall I call the America Center across from the Rautatientori and ask them to recommend a nice, clean, reasonable hotel, reachable by bus from Kulosaari, a discreet hotel, for lovers to meet?

  * * *

  I have to stop daydreaming. I’ve wasted the whole morning. I haven’t written a letter or vacuumed my gray linoleum floor and its pitiful patches of greasy rugs with the cute little Hoover that came with the apartment. It is a short, squat creature, the European Hoover, resembling quite a bit R2-D2 in Star Wars, though it’s not nearly so helpful. I haven’t washed the clothes in the small Hoover 1200 washing machine that takes up so much space in the bathroom that we have to squeeze between it and the sink to brush our teeth or climb over it to get into the bathtub. I haven’t even made the cookies I started. I had poured flour and butter and molasses into a bowl and was looking among the spices which the former tenant had left for the vanilla. And found only vaniljan sokeri. I looked it up in my Fulbright list of foods—vanilla sugar is all that is available here. No real vanilla in Finland. I wonder why. Could it be because the Finns have an alcoholism problem and real vanilla has alcohol in it? It sounds ridiculous, but one quart of vodka costs around twenty dollars here, which might make it worth some yearning soul’s while to buy seventeen bottles of real vanilla and drink it all right down. I had been standing in my tiny gray kitchen, thinking about vanilla and how I might easily start swigging it myself if I had it, given all this constant rain and gloom. Then
the phone rang, and it was Stephen, and I sat at the table thinking, and now it’s time to get Adam and Lucy and feed them lunch.

  Perhaps parents wealthy enough to have nannies are able to get respect from their children. Perhaps even at four the children of the rich know enough to walk in politely when invited, curtsy and count to ten in French, then sit quietly and adoringly, knowing that otherwise they wouldn’t get to see their parents at all. Perhaps the mother need say only, “The child whined, Nanny, take him away,” and the child would never, ever, whine again in his mother’s presence.

  But we’re not wealthy. I’ve got the Park Auntie on good mornings, but only until eleven-thirty. Then my children are mine again. It always makes my heart leap to see them, and I’d throw myself in front of a truck or moving train to save their lives, but I wish like crazy they’d respect me a bit more. They’re giving me an identity crisis.

  They don’t say, “Oh, look, here comes our darling mommy, who is so clever. She could be teaching at a university or writing a critical paper for a national literary review, but instead she’s here, full of smiles, to take care of us. Hi, there, you good ol’ mom!”

  No, they say, “You didn’t put Vaseline on my lips this morning and now they’re all chapped,” and, “I did poo-poo in my diaper; take it off, take it off NOW!” Or else they cry all the way home because on this early October morning I have dressed them in only an undershirt and turtleneck shirt and sweatshirt and underpants and woolen tights and rain pants and overcoat with hood and rubber boots and mittens and they were cold. The Park Auntie scolds me through a reluctant Finnish mother interpreter, tells me I must put three pairs of woolen socks on my daughter’s feet. My children do not say, “That’s okay, Mommy, you’ve got more important things to think about.” They snivel and whine all the way home. They judge me only by their comforts.

  Of course, they do not respect their father any more than they do me, which sometimes irritates me and sometimes makes me glad. If anything, they respect me more—no, not respect, they simply choose me more. My husband’s professional vita is over fifty pages long; mine is a page and a half. I suppose I could lengthen it by adding:

  Diapers changed 14,600, 1973–1977

  Boo-boos kissed 1,700, 1974–1977

  Shoelaces tied 6,923, 1974–1977

  Noses blown and wiped 1,784, 1973–1977*

  The funny thing is that Charlie actually feels offended and rejected when Lucy or Adam cries, “NO! I want Mommy to wipe my bum!” Some jobs, such as boo-boo kissing, are more rewarding than others, and I’m glad the children choose me. But I know their choice of me does not indicate respect. It’s simply a matter of habit. I am beginning to come to terms with the fact that my children will probably never know me, at least not for a long, long time. It’s in the nature of the beast. We all want someone there to take care of us all the time, and when we’re little we have to have it to survive, and we get it. There must have been days when Jesus cried, “Mommy, kiss my boo-boo!” and when Mary answered, “Okay, sweetie, come here and let me kiss it. And don’t play with the hammer anymore, okay? You’re giving me a headache.” And if God had bellowed, “I’LL KISS YOUR BOO-BOO!,” Jesus would have whined, “No. Let Mommy do it.”

  I know all that now. I see it happen every day, I see Adam and Lucy treat Charlie in ways a man of his reputation shouldn’t have to stand, and feel them treat me in ways that make me want to scream. (Why does it drive them crazy, for example, when I go into the bathroom and lock the door? Why must they then always fall against a chest and bruise their heads? Why do they climb my leg when I try to talk on the phone? Why won’t they eat their food properly when Charlie tells them to eat their food properly?) We put up with things from our little children that would make us punch a stranger in the nose, and we don’t hate or even dislike them for it. We know they are children, they are trying. We can see the pieces coming together; each day they do a little better than the day before. We love our children even when we hate them, and sometimes when they fix us with a particularly nasty sulky glare, we grab them and squeeze them against us and blow kisses under their chins and onto their tummies until they squeal with laughter.

  * * *

  But in 1965, when Caroline was ten and Cathy was seven, and I had no children and didn’t want any, I didn’t have an inkling of any of this. And the women who were my friends didn’t have children, and the women I knew who had children weren’t my friends and never discussed the subject. I honestly thought the women who were mothers were all placidly, smugly, properly happy. I thought that other women were capable of finding instantly a pure, unadulterated happiness merely from being with children. I, on the other hand, still found children boring and bothersome. I was afraid there was something wrong with me, something missing, I was glad Charlie and I had agreed to have no children of our own. I was already quite sure that his two girls would be more than enough.

  It was in the sixth week of that first summer when the girls first stayed with us that Charlie said to me, “Come outside. I’d like to talk with you a minute.”

  It was midmorning. I had finished breakfast—bacon, sweet cereal, toast, honey, cocoa, orange juice, and no yucky eggs—and Caroline and Cathy were watching some ridiculous comedy show on television, and I had just done the dishes. I was thrilled to be invited to a private conversation with Charlie; we hadn’t had one, except whispered bedroom ones, for weeks.

  I poured myself another cup of coffee and went out the back door into the sunshine. It was a weekday, and we were back in Kansas City so that Charlie could work on his projects. The backyard of our little house was small, but lovely, with a brick patio enclosing a small lily pond with a bench by it under a lyre tree. Grass and flowers. Birds singing. It was August, a hot, humid Missouri day, and I was wearing shorts and a halter top. I sank into a lounge chair and closed my eyes. For a moment I relaxed. I was happy. The sun made me expand; I felt sexy; and then Charlie sat down next to me, pushing against my legs. I sat up and pulled him to me and kissed him. I hadn’t kissed him in the daytime for weeks.

  Charlie pulled away. “It’s bad news, trooper,” he said. Before I could guess, he continued, “I’m not going to the party. The girls don’t want to be left with a sitter.”

  I gaped. The party was for me the highlight, the Christmas present, the coup, of the summer. A famous woman intellectual and writer was coming to the university to give a lecture, and afterward the chancellor of the university was holding a small reception-cocktail party in her honor. Only forty people out of the whole faculty had been invited, and “Dr. and Mrs. Charles Everett Campbell” were two of them. Not even Anthony had been invited. I was longing to just look at the famous intellectual woman up close, to see whether she was real, to hear her speak in her own voice, impromptu, instead of off a printed page. I had planned to wear something brown and drab so that she would see instantly that I was a serious student and not just a flighty cutesy girl. I was hoping she would look at me, talk to me, say just a few words, contact me, touch me, pass something on.

  “What?” I asked Charlie when I could get my mind to work.

  “I’m not going to the party. I’m sorry. I’ve just had a little talk with the girls. They really don’t want to be left with a sitter. It’s understandable. They’ve been here only a short while. They’ve only barely learned to trust us. As Caroline put it, if I wanted to see them so badly this summer, how come I want to go off and leave them with a sitter? And poor little Cathy just broke down and cried.” Charlie stopped and took his hand off my arm, and stared away into the grass, looking miserable.

  It was the “poor little Cathy” that got to me more than anything else. Poor little Cathy had cold, hard metal faucets in her head, and she could turn her tears on and off at will. I’ve never seen anything like it except in a bathroom sink. After two or three weeks with us the girls had suddenly seemed to decide they could trust us. At the very least it was obvious that they weren’t getting hit or screamed at or neglected, and
they were getting lots of toys and clothes and games and treats. But that didn’t mean we were all jolly friends forevermore. They seemed to have a score to settle now, a revenge to continually wreak. Caroline, already out of the baby stage and not cute anyway because of those awful buckteeth, chose the intellectual’s role of cold-shouldering and cool-mouthing. She had perfected a marvelously steady nihilistic stare; Sartre would have loved her. “Well, then,” she would say, “if we don’t go tonight, we’ll probably never get a chance to go again, at least not with you, Dad.” She would never, ever, hold anyone’s hand, and she sat on Charlie’s lap as rigidly as if her backbone were made of metal.

  But it was soft little, sweet little, pretty little, poor little Cathy who was the one to watch out for. She was such a darling girl, all big eyes and innocence, so cuddly and eager to please. But she knew what she wanted, and she knew how to get it. She knew how to handle Charlie like a baker making himself a pie. It wasn’t something she obviously worked at, it just came to her naturally; she was born with it. She knew even at seven how to get what she wanted from men. It came to her as easily and surely as a talent for swimming or singing or taming animals comes to others. Perhaps all girls who are especially winsome when little develop this special art. Caroline didn’t have it. She used to stare at Cathy with as much awe and amazement as I did. Even now when she compares herself to her sister, she has to laugh. For Christmas last year Cathy received a complete set of ski gear—boots, skis, bindings, and poles—from one boyfriend and a portable stereo for her dorm room from another. “With my luck, I always seem to break up with my boyfriends just before Christmas,” Caroline laughed, and I laughed with her. Caroline feels no awe of Cathy anymore, and no envy. She is a smart girl; she will buy her own skis, her own stereo. And perhaps she’ll be able to have a better relationship with a man, when all is said and done, than Cathy will. Who can say? Perhaps one can use men and still establish a good mutual love. Certainly Charlie loves Cathy.