Stepping

by Nancy Thayer

  The boy held me close when we danced. He smelled good, like pine soap and clean cotton and sweat, and I liked the smells, having been so long conditioned to baby powder and baby poop and disinfectant. I let myself go. I melted against him. I breathed in his smell. I relished the feel of his long, slim body against mine.

  “Listen,” the boy said, whispering in my ear and sending chills all over me, “can I take you home?”

  Take me home? I thought. Take me home? I live in New Hampshire, I’ve got a husband and children at home. And a stepdaughter here in New Haven.

  But I had gone past the joking stage. I could no more say, flippantly, “Oh, I’m staying with my stepdaughter tonight,” than I could have laughed in his face. I didn’t know what to say.

  “I—I’m staying with a friend,” I said. “We all came together, Caroline and Lynn and I.”

  “Let me take you home,” the boy said. He looked at me. “Please,” he said.

  God, it was like old college days, a night full of drinking and dancing and then the desire at the end of the evening, the desire not to go away from the good warm body, the desire to go further into some dark, warm delicious space with the person in your arms. And I had a nice trusty IUD, something I hadn’t had in college.

  “I’ll check with Caroline,” I said.

  But I couldn’t get to Caroline. She was on the dance floor with the boy she had been with all evening, and Lynn was dancing with someone, too. Charles had followed me, holding my hand, and when I said, helplessly, “I guess we’ll just have to wait till they’re through dancing,” he said, “Let’s sit down and finish our beers.”

  We went back to our table and sat down, and I realized then how sleepy I was, how tired, but how sensually pleased. I sipped my beer and gazed out at the dance floor, watching for Caroline, and the boy said:

  “Zelda …”

  And I looked at him, and he leaned over and quite gently kissed me.

  It was surely one of the lovelier kisses in my lifetime, rating right up there with some of Charlie’s better ones, and those of Lucy and Adam. It was a sweet, good, strong kiss, and he put his hands on my shoulders and I could tell he wanted me sexually. And I wanted him.

  “Zelda,” someone said, and I looked up into Caroline’s smiling face.

  “Are you ready to leave?” I asked. I was surprised to find that I could still speak in a normal tone of voice.

  “Yes,” Caroline said, “I’m leaving, but I’m not going back to the apartment. Lynn’s going home, though; she can drive you back now if you want. And Jim will take me back to our apartment in the morning, so I’ll see you then. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. What else could I say?

  I watched as Caroline and her boyfriend, whose name I now assumed was Jim, left Louie’s. It was late, and many couples had already left, so Caroline and Jim were able to walk out together, arms wrapped around each other, hips and thighs touching as they walked.

  “Hi,” Lynn said, coming up to the table. “Ready to go?” She looked tired and sad.

  “Yes, sure,” I told her. “Give me just a minute, will you?”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ve got to go to the john, anyway.”

  I turned toward Charles, who had been sitting patiently next to me, his arm resting on the back of my chair, his hand resting on my shoulder.

  “I’ve got to go,” I said to him.

  He leaned over and kissed me again. “Then go with me,” he said. He smiled. “I don’t think Caroline will miss you tonight.”

  The thought stunned me; he was right. Caroline wouldn’t miss me; she didn’t seem to care whether I went off with the boy or not. So I didn’t have to be good for her sake. Still, still, even without an audience, even with the security of secrecy, going off with Charles was something I just could not do.

  “Look,” I said, “I can’t go with you. I’m married.”

  “So?” the boy said.

  “So?” I repeated, amazed. “So I’m married. I mean I’m really married. I mean my husband and I have an agreement; it’s called fidelity. It’s old-fashioned, and at times like this I’m not sure it’s the best thing, but well, there it is. I can’t go with you. But I want to thank you, you have been—beautiful. I’ve had a fantastic evening with you. You can’t imagine what it means to me. I’ll never forget you.”

  The boy looked at me for a while. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” he said.

  “I’m serious.”

  “Well,” he said, “it’s a hell of a shame. But my name is Charles Hall, and I live on Chestnut Street, here in New Haven, and my name’s in the phone book if you ever want to see me again.”

  Oh, it was wonderful, it was wonderful to have him tell me that. “I’ll remember,” I said.

  We kissed again, and then Lynn was standing there, and I said goodbye to Charles and got up and went out of Louie’s with Lynn. Lynn had apparently had a bad night and was in a bit of a sulk. I tried to talk with her; I asked her what was wrong, but all she would say was, “Oh, boy trouble,” and nothing else. So we rode home in a sleepy silence and went right to bed. In the morning, when I awakened, Caroline was there, wearing the same jeans and sweater from the previous night, curled up in a living room chair, drinking tea.

  I wandered around the apartment in my nightgown, enjoying the luxury of a lazy morning without children to feed and diaper and hold.

  “Water’s hot if you want some tea,” Caroline said. “I’ll fix you an omelette in a minute.”

  I fixed myself some tea, then sat down in the living room with Caroline. It was a sunny morning, and the sun warmed a spot on the old Salvation Army sofa; I sat there and pulled a green afghan over my knees and shoulders.

  “Did you have a good night?” I asked Caroline.

  “Ummmm,” Caroline smiled.

  “Is that a special guy?” I asked. “I mean the guy you went off with.”

  “Yeah,” Caroline said. “A very special guy.”

  “Do you think you’ll marry him?”

  “I know I won’t.”

  “But if he’s so special …”

  “Oh, Zelda, he is special, I’m in love with him. But he’s so ambitious; he wants to be a lawyer, and he wants a sweet little wife in the background to decorate the house just the right way and to cook just the right meals for the important guests and to wear just the right clothes, all that crap. He’s upward mobile. He wants to be a big somebody someday, and he needs a wife who will dedicate herself to his success. I just can’t do that.”

  “I can understand that. You want to dedicate yourself to your own success.”

  “No, not even that. I don’t care about success, not the way Jim does. I mean he wants to be a senator someday, he wants lots of money, and his name in the daily newspapers. I don’t want that. I just want to find someone good to live with, and a good job that will mean something to me. I want to go to grad school, I want to see if I can work with the U.S. Forest Service someday. I don’t even care about marriage as long as I can find someone who will be willing to let me live my life the way I want to. I mean I’m willing to share and compromise and all that, but I’m not willing to go under.”

  “Do you want children?”

  “Children?” Caroline smiled and looked sad at the same time. “Oh, I don’t know. I used to think that I wanted a lot of children. I suppose I still would like to have a child, but not for a long, long time.”

  We sat for a moment, in pensive silence, and I tried to think of what I would say if Caroline asked me if I was glad I had had children. Instead she surprised me by saying, “Did you go home with that guy last night?”

  “Caroline!” I said. “Of course not. Good grief, I’m married, you know. Why, did you think I would?”

  “I didn’t know. I don’t know what kind of arrangements you and Dad have.”

  I had to think that one over for a minute. “Would you have cared?” I asked finally. “I mean, would you have thought it was right or wrong?” I was eager
to hear her answer.

  But at that Caroline’s eyes shifted away and the blank, bored expression of her teenage years slid over her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t know.”

  “I’m faithful to Charlie,” I said. “I always have been.” We sat there for a moment while I decided whether to deliver a speech on the importance of fidelity in marriage. I decided not to; Caroline was a big girl now. I opted for lightheartedness. “But he sure was cute, wasn’t he?” I smiled.

  “He was a real ice cream sundae,” Caroline said. We both laughed.

  “You can’t imagine how great it felt to have him ask me to—dance—and so on,” I said. “I mean after all these months of motherhood and farm life. I was beginning to feel boring and ugly.” I paused, waiting for Caroline to tell me that I wasn’t boring and ugly.

  But she again didn’t offer me what I wanted. Instead she seemed to have sunk back into some deep, sad mood of hers. She sat for a while, staring into her teacup. Then with a surge of energy she said, “Hey, I’m going to make you that omelette now!”

  She made the omelette, which was delicious, thin and light and full of cheese and herbs, and we talked about safer topics, whales and Jacques Cousteau, graduate school and old professors. When it was time for me to go, to get back on the Greyhound bus that would take me back to my farm and my husband and my babies and my everyday life, I felt sad. I wondered if she had any idea what the visit had meant to me. But as we coolly kissed each other’s cheek before I boarded the bus, I realized that she had already sent me on my way, and was not thinking about me and the meanings of my life at all. She had too much to work out with her own. I belonged to her childhood, to her past; she apparently couldn’t use me in working out her future. Still for me it had been a successful visit. I felt we had somehow gone through a barrier and entered a new phase in our lives together. We had been comfortable together, there was that, and we had eaten together, she had fixed my meals, we had sat and talked and laughed together, and that was nice. It seemed that perhaps we might after all be friends. And as I rode back through the snow-covered countryside of New England, I realized that for me it would be very nice, that that was what I wanted: to be friends with the pretty young woman with the long blond hair. Perhaps I had influenced her life, perhaps not, that did not matter. What was important was that I knew her, I cared for her, I liked her. I liked what she had become, and I liked what she wanted to be. Caroline had become interesting, discerning, competent, thoughtful. She was a young woman I was glad to know, to be related to. I liked being connected to her. I was glad, after all, to have a stepdaughter.

  Nine

  Joy and frustration.

  Frustration and joy.

  It is Christmas here in Helsinki, and that brings the joy. But Lucy has the chicken pox, and that brings the frustration.

  Having children is like giving hostages to Fate; one can never relax, never let down the guard. And meanings get mixed up, confused: pleasure becomes a source of worry because it could cause pain. I must always think: If I am happy now, will this somehow, on some weird universal scale, cause my children to suffer later? If I suffer now, will this protect me and my children from suffering later? Does Lucy have the chicken pox because I almost had an affair with Stephen, because I am leaving my husband for a job?

  They came at the same time, Christmas and the chicken pox. Adam picked them up from his school where there was a sudden outbreak of chicken pox, and was sick with them ten days before Christmas exactly, so I knew what to expect. However Adam’s had been a light and easy case, only seven tiny pox marks, and no fever, and although I kept him in the apartment for five days straight I could tell it wasn’t necessary; he was bursting with energy. I gave him several cornstarch baths, but they were unnecessary; he said he did not itch. With Lucy, however, it is different. Poor little girl, it is quite different. She has a fever, and she feels fussy and cranky and she itches everywhere, and she is irrationally afraid of the bath now and won’t let me rinse her with the cornstarch water that is supposed to soothe her. The baby book says, “Do not let the child scratch the pox.” It sounds reasonable enough, but is an almost impossible thing to do: she itches, she has to scratch. I’ve cut her nails, and hold her and entertain her constantly to distract her from the itching, but still she scratches. A few pox are turning red, perhaps they are infected. Oh, my baby, poor baby, how awful for you. I empathize with her so much that I itch all over, behind my ear, under my breast, on my cheek. I refuse to scratch anywhere, as if tolerating these little irritations will make Lucy’s illness easier for her.

  And yet, through it all, bad mother that I am, I keep thinking, Oh, PLEASE, Lucy, get well, get it over with. I want to go home, and I can’t get on a plane until all her pox are crusty and dry. Good Lord, if all these pox get crusty and dry, they probably won’t let us on a plane, they’ll probably want to quarantine us somewhere. The baby book says that the pox are not contagious or dangerous after they have crusted, but what a terrible sight it will be. What a terrible sight it is now, my daughter’s perfect face and body, covered with these ugly spots. They are round and red at the base, and white and pimply at the top, and I hate them. I sit rocking Lucy, saying I hate them, I hate these bad ol’ chicken pox.

  At least there is the tree to look at. Dear Gunnel, our landlady, and her husband, Klaus, went to their summer home up in the middle part of Finland and brought us back a Christmas tree. It is exquisitely shaped, perfectly triangular, with branches that lilt gracefully down like ballerina’s arms. I almost cried with delight when I saw it, and smelled it: the fresh pine fragrance freshened these gray rooms remarkably. Adam had made cardboard and foil and construction-paper decorations at his little school and brought them home, and when we hung them on the tree they looked so charming that we decided not to buy any other decorations this year, but make all our own. The house looks like a trash basket now, for I have ignored cleaning it so that I could hold and comfort Lucy and occupy Adam by making more decorations. We have cut and glued and colored and pasted and sprinkled gold and silver sparkles on angels’ wings and paper candy canes. Red and green odds and ends and scraps have piled up around the kitchen table like a crazy gay enormous dust. We tried to make a popcorn chain, but it was such difficult work, what with Lucy sitting on my lap, making it hard for me to reach around her to push the needle through the popcorn without stabbing her or myself, that I gave it up and we ate it all instead of stringing it. And now the tree stands there, in the corner of our apartment, like a bit of magic in the midst of the everyday world. I miss having sparkling lights, but not very much. The tree seems so right somehow, this way, so primitive, childish, natural, merry. The Finns do not celebrate Valentine’s Day, and they used red hearts as Christmas decorations everywhere, and we have hung some on our tree, too, and they seem right, those symbols of love, dangling from the tree next to the stars and bells. I will use hearts again next year, I know; there are some things I am learning here that I will keep with me always.

  Two sets of friends—acquaintances?—friends—have surprised us by stopping by with gifts for us and the children. Bright solid painted wooden toys for Adam and Lucy, pictures of Finland for Charles, jewelry from Arikka for me. Charlie and I were surprised and touched, and felt bad that we had nothing here to offer them in return. But really, it is strange. One couple we have seen only two times in the four months we have been here. They are shy and quiet and distant, and although they have always said that we were to call them if we ever needed anything, we have never really gotten to know them. And here they were, ringing our doorbell, arms full of presents. Perhaps they are, as the travel guides say, basically a warm people, the Finns. Certainly one could never accuse them of being greasily, insincerely overquick to friendship. Perhaps it has something to do with faces; their faces are by and large attractive, but do not have the easy mobility I am used to. They seem expressionless, passionless, and really rather dull, but apparently underneath it all there is a thought
fulness and generosity that runs deep and true. At one of the formal cocktail parties we went to, where we all sat with our backs straight, balancing our plates and glasses on our knees and solemnly discussing income tax and education, I happened to compliment another guest on her striking metal and wooden necklace. We discussed the shop where she had bought it, and Finnish jewelry in general, and I had thought that was the end of it; but here, in a small elegant brown box, was the necklace for me, a gift from the hostess of the party. I had not known she had even heard, but she had, and remembered. In comparison it seems that Americans seem to talk incessantly and intimately; we have fun with our words, we don’t take the spending of them seriously. The Finns on the other hand seem to weigh and measure each word; their conversation seems heavy, but it is a heaviness of good value.

  Last Sunday we went as a family to our host family’s home for the traditional Finnish Christmas dinner. It was beautifully done. The house was full of flowers, poinsettias and hyacinths, and candles were lighted everywhere, and a small fire was burning in the square corner fireplace. The meal was enormous and delicious: the first course was herring served in seven different ways with a marvelous sill-salad of beets and herring and potatoes and sour cream. There were potato casseroles and sweet potato casseroles, ham, peas, a green salad, a dessert of homemade tarts smothered in whipped cream. And lots and lots of booze: glogg, wine, cloudberry liqueur. The warmth of the sweet, spicy glogg filled me before the dinner started, and so I was able to float, suspended in the insulation of alcohol, through the rest of the time, when I had to help my children act like human beings through the meal. The food interested them only moderately, and since there were no other children or toys around, they found themselves bored rather quickly. I had the sense to bring a box of building bricks, and they played fairly happily for a while with them. Oh, children make so many things difficult—marriages, foreign countries, elegant dinners. Still, I will remember the Christmas dinner in the warm Finnish home, and I think my children will too. I am glad they were there. After the meal our host, a high-level government official, took Lucy on his knee and sang her a Finnish children’s song and bounced her. I was surprised, pleased. Perhaps my children will take something warming away with them from this sojourn in a cold land. Perhaps we have all learned something, Charlie and the children and I, about making it through the tough times with a bit of persistence and grace.