by Nancy Thayer
I went home around six, when I expected Grady to arrive, and he was already there, in the kitchen, wading around through jagged plastic and metal, trying to fix drinks.
“Don’t come in,” he said. “It’s dangerous in here. You might cut your ankles.”
He brought the drinks into the living room, and we sat there, sipping them slowly. They were unattractive drinks, because with the demise of the ice crusher, Grady had had to resort to dropping in plain cubes of ice.
“Shall we kill the plants now?” he said after a while.
I looked around the room. “No,” I said, “I don’t think so. They don’t seem as threatening—as militant—as those appliances. Besides, no matter how you pull off their little green fingers and arms and pinch their little pink heads, they’ve still got those creepy roots sneaking around down under the soil. I can just hear them growing. No, you can’t kill plants by ripping them apart.”
“Well,” Grady said, “then let’s just not water them. If we stop watering them, they’ll die eventually, won’t they?”
“That’s brilliant, Grady,” I said. “God, you’re smart. And sexy. I love you.”
Grady and I went out to dinner that night, and for the next week we managed to struggle along without ever going into the kitchen. It was hard getting out the door in the morning without coffee, but we had smashed the coffeepot, and kicked the stomach out of the teakettle, so we couldn’t even boil water. Every night for a week we went out to dinner. It was just too depressing living in that house with those dead metal things and those dying plants. I tried not to look at them, but they seemed to stretch their limp brown arms out to me in supplication. I had to call the housecleaning lady to tell her not to come, because I couldn’t think of a reasonable explanation for the way the house looked. Housecleaning ladies impose their own sense of duty, and I just wasn’t up to it.
One morning about ten days after we’d destroyed the kitchen, just as I was going out the door a friend of my mother’s came up the walk with a coffee cake in her hand.
“What are you doing here at this hour of the morning?” I asked in alarm.
“Liza, have you forgotten?” the woman asked. “I was afraid that you had. I’ve been calling you all week, but there’s been no answer. The Ladies’ Hospital Auxiliary is meeting at your house this month. Don’t you remember? We arranged it last month. I told you I’d be here early to help you set up the coffee. You newlyweds, I can’t imagine what’s on your mind!” She laughed, pleased with her wit, and tried to elbow past me into the house.
“You can’t go in there,” I said.
“Whyever not?” she asked.
It was that very Thursday morning, standing on the slate sidewalk of my luscious well-groomed front lawn in a suburb of a wealthy city in the middle of the United States, that I realized that I could never be what I had intended. I could never be a housewife. No matter how much you guard against it, people will come into your house. The thought of having to live out the rest of my life explaining myself to people like this dear charitable lady was enough to make something in me snap.
“Everything’s in a dreadful mess in there,” I said. “Grady and I got in a fight and threw things at each other. I’m just on my way to a lawyer now to start divorce proceedings. You’ll have to have your meeting elsewhere.”
I burst into tears and ran down the walk and got into my car. But as I looked up at that poor bewildered woman, I felt no sense of guilt. I might have inconvenienced her by refusing to let her have the meeting in my house, but I had given her the most marvelous new piece of gossip! And she was the first to have it. An exclusive. “Imagine,” she would say to all the Hospital Auxiliary ladies, “Grady and Liza are getting divorced, and they’ve been married only four months. I wonder what’s happened.” Oh, how happy all those women would be!
I drove down to Grady’s office and asked if we could talk privately. We went out to a little bar and sat in a padded booth and talked. We felt we had given it a good try. But neither of us was cut out for marriage. We could still be friends and lovers, of course. We felt so tender toward each other that we went to a hotel and made love. We ended up living there for three weeks, while we went to a lawyer and started the divorce. We shared a lawyer—we each kept our own money, and agreed to split down the middle the proceeds from the sale of the house. Grady packed his clothes and silver cigarette box and moved into a men’s club; I packed my clothes and silver cigarette box and went to France. My only regret, as I slipped out the door of that house for the last time, was that I hadn’t thought to take a knife to the sagging belly of the vacuum cleaner.
In France, after a time, I realized I was pregnant. It’s funny how babies are made: I don’t think the system is very sensible. I can understand the nine months of growing the baby, because that’s necessary to make a whole child, and to help the mother come to terms with the fact of this new life. It’s the bit about conception that’s so ridiculous, because there seems to be no connection between the act and its consequence. No woman ever gets a choice at the actual time; it’s always a sort of ambush. I often think of the Virgin Mary—how it must have happened, if it really happened. If Mary was a flesh-and-blood person, not a religious fiction, and if that angel was real and not a hallucination, well, poor Mary. I don’t think she knelt before that angel and said, “Well, tell God thanks.” I think she got up and stomped around the room and cried. I think she said, “Look, I don’t even know if you are real, fluttering around up on my ceiling like some kind of science-fiction moth, but if you are, and if what you are saying is true, well, I don’t like it. Listen I just got engaged to this real nice man, and if you’re an angel, you know how this society is, it’s a righteous, vengeful place we’re living in these days. Women are supposed to be pure and chaste. Well, hell, I am pure and chaste. Now you come along and tell me I’m pregnant? That’s not fair! Why can’t you wait till after I get married? I like kids, I’ll be glad to have children, but I need to be married first, or I’ll be ostracized. Do you think anyone’s going to believe me when I say, ‘God put a baby in my stomach but I’m still a virgin’? I’ll sound like a fool and no one will believe me. Joseph will probably leave me, and I’ll be disgraced. It’s just not fair that I don’t get any choice in this matter.”
It still isn’t fair that women get no choice in the matter. Mary was lucky, apparently, because Joseph stuck by her, and she had the baby, and some other children, too, and a more or less normal life, considering her connections. I envision her as a pretty, young, rather flaky woman, who walked around muttering to herself a lot. I can just see her in some wheat field, beating out the chaff, and stopping to catch her breath, to look up at the bland sky. “No angel this time, huh, God?” she’d ask the sky, and the other women in the field would look at one another and smile: there goes Mary, talking to herself again. But poor Mary would have to talk to herself to stay sane. It’s God who’s insane—He’s perverse. I can’t figure it out. Here He gave human beings this delightful, fun thing they can do with each other, something as necessary to life as breathing or eating, something that is so much more impressive than breathing or eating. Sex. Then He attaches this sneaky, underhanded consequence, and says: If you have sex, you might make a baby, and you won’t know you’re making a baby while you’re having sex, but if you do make a baby while you’re having sex and you don’t want to be making a baby, then you’re bad.
I’ve seen women walking around town with slogans on their T-shirts indicating they believe God is a woman. I’ve never believed that for a minute, and I don’t know how anyone else can, either. If there’s anything real that people can observe on this earth, it is that women have the raw deal in reproduction: they’re the ones who get pregnant, who ruin their reputations, who bear the pain, who end up with skin that looks like a plow’s passed over it, and who get blamed for everything the child ever does that’s bad. Sex for men is like some wad of bubble gum they can casually chew and blow and pop; but for women sex is a
lways some kind of seed; once they conceive, they’ve got to carry a baby, or a grief, or a burden of guilt, all their lives.
When I married Grady, I thought in an optimistic, offhanded way that I might have children. I would have a house, an electric can opener, and some children. But never once when we were in bed together, rubbing our bodies like two giant matches, wanting our friction to provide that sudden wild flare of pleasure, did we think: Now we’re making a child. No. We didn’t think at all. I chose to leave that house, that can opener, even that delicious man, and it was not fair—I will never think it was fair!—that when I left I inadvertently carried a child within me. Grady left, too, and carried nothing with him. Why should he have gone away more free than I?
Oh, poor baby, your body was jelly and twigs, but your new spirit I think of as trembling white wisps which I blew away like a dandelion puff. I swear that the moment the doctor shoveled into me, I felt something—your human spirit—escape from me with the ease of a dandelion seed spinning off into a spring night. Life is lighter-hearted than we like to think. I knew you were only miffed, and would float off to land and burrow into someone else’s life. I could almost hear you laughing, chiding, teasing, as you spun away. I’m sure someone else has gotten you by now, you happy-hearted child, and anyone else in the world would be a better mother than I. I’m meant to be a tramp in many senses of the word. If I did not have the money my parents had left me, I would still ramble about the world, and I’d make my way as a prostitute, and I’d be just as happy as can be. The way I live is not a mistake I made, but a philosophical choice. I do not want children cramming themselves into my body and my life; men can, because their entrance and residence is transient.
After my divorce from Grady and my seed-baby, I went back home to my generous midwestern city, intending to have some fun. Instead I almost fell in love.
What a grim, heartless business love is, provoking so much need. Love has no decency. When I was younger, I used to be puzzled by the section in Corinthians that goes: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.” What about love, for heaven’s sake! I used to think. But now I know that what is extended to another person when a marriage is made is not love, but charity. Love is too fickle; it changes shapes, like a devil. It is that agreement to be charitable all of one’s life to one other person that provides the real bond we call marriage. I found that “being in love” was just like being in a crowded disco with throbbing music and flickering strobe lights; everything becomes distorted, exaggerated, grotesque. Lust, jealousy, possessiveness, need, desire, hunger, hurt all come thumping at you like a relentless beating of drums—it is so exhausting that it threatens life. But charity is as cleansing and renewing as a hot bath; it slows our blood and makes us mild again.
When I awoke in that hotel room in Bermuda and saw Mitchell Howard there on top of the other bed in his three-piece suit, I felt like a wanderer must feel when he stumbles through miles of jungle and discovers a Christian church. There was such a quality of kindness about him, and before we had said ten words to each other, I knew that I wanted this man to enclose his life about me like a great soft cape. How good he was. If he had been rich or poor, it would not have mattered. I would have married him. If he had lived in New Zealand or Alaska, I would have gone with him. If he had been married, I would have been his mistress, but since he was widowed, I was able to be his wife. He needed me, too, for all the things older men need younger women for—my looks, my laughter, my pretty flesh. I offered my glowing body to him like a votive candle.
And no one understood.
Society is a conspiracy with secret rules. I suppose we’ve learned all those devious double-binds from God. No one ever came out and openly accused me of marrying Mitchell for his money, so I could never come out and openly tell them that it was not the truth. If I’ve ever cared for any man—extended him charity, fidelity, and trust—I cared for Mitchell. We had fun together. We took our sex with each other as casually and sporadically as afternoon tea. We were both tired. He had three grown children, a dead first wife, a flourishing business, and a demanding community. He wanted constant civil company from me, and while that does not seem like a lot to ask for, it is actually quite rare. In the three years I was married to him, I had sex with him perhaps twenty times. Not even as often as once a month. He was so afraid for his heart, and the sputtering tumult of breath and blood and juices that sex calls up inspired in him more terror than ecstasy. I suppose I cannot expect the town to be aware of that—and I’m not sure that it would help matters any if they knew that Mitchell had not married me for whatever youthful sexual delights I could provide. Well, the town would think, if she didn’t marry him for his money and he didn’t marry her for sex, then why did they marry? No one would believe that we married for sheer cordiality. We liked to watch the television news and read newspapers and magazines and laugh about the gossip; we liked to eat and drink together, to travel, to plan little pleasures. We were as comfortable with each other as a pair of ten-year-olds spending the week with Grandma. He had a housekeeper at his huge home in Londonton, and a gardener, so I didn’t ever have to face the threat of incarceration by any mechanical household devices. Often we traveled and lived in hotels. We read books and played golf and went to plays and concerts and galleries.
I’m not sure why I didn’t miss having sex. Perhaps it was that my brush with love just before I met Mitchell had redefined the meaning of sex so harshly for me that I found the absence of it a relief. In any case, there were no temptations for me in Londonton. I hadn’t met Johnny; he was still away at college. The husbands whom I met at parties were terrified of me—so many people are terrified of physical sexual beauty; that’s why men and women of all ages, shapes, and sizes squeeze themselves into asexual navy blue blazers. It’s the unspoken costume of the Anti-Lust League. It took me a while to come to such a drastic conclusion, but I haven’t been proved wrong yet. At any rate, I lived in this town for three years without once desiring another man. I was as happy in Mitchell’s company as a child with Santa Claus, and though he provided me with all the things that money could buy, those gifts were not the ones that bound me to him. He was quite simply a good and beautiful man. I had not come across that before—few people, I believe, have—and it was a constant balm. I saw the world through the filter of his presence, and for a while I believed that the world could be good.
And yet—the people in this town believe I helped him toward his death; that I did not love him, that I wanted him dead. Being good New Englanders, so proud of their reticence and reserve, they have not said aloud such things to me—but they do not call on me socially, they did not speak to me in shops, they will not meet my eyes.
After every church service, I go to Friendship Hall, with everyone else, and take a cup of coffee and walk around. Well, at first, right after Mitchell’s death, I used to walk around. Now I saunter. I’m aware now of what these people expect of me, and I don’t mind giving it to them. After all, it is such a boring town—honestly, they’ll miss me when I’m gone. Every town needs its pariah. Still, one would think that in a church—well, never mind. During coffee hour after the sermon, I talk to the little old men and women who huddle at the sides of the room on folding chairs, who are too infirm to escape me. I talk to Wilbur Wilson, who is old, but not infirm, who could walk away, but does not. He at least seems to offer me genuine friendship, which is strange, because he is so unsophisticated. Why should he like me? I smile at the husbands who come over to talk to me about the weather while looking down my blouse. I am obliging now: I dress so that they have something to see. The women do not come to speak to me; but they never did. They bustle by me, pretending to be headed toward something or someone on the other side of the room. The most magnanimous throw me a brief, condescending smile. Women have no scruples at all.
I come to this church because it is the only company of humans in this town into which I am allowed.
I le
arned long ago, even before I came here, the most important lesson of my life: being a whore is a way of being a nun. It is a way of taking on the social trappings of isolation and exemption from human responsibility. No one can really touch you; and you can hurt no one, being bound to vows of self-chosen ostracism. My mistake was to make myself vulnerable to society. For a few weeks I suffered: I lost Mitchell, whom I had in my way loved, and I undeservedly gained the hostility of this town. I spent a few weeks—twenty-two days, to be exact—lying in that huge house, in one small bedroom crying; pain stretched himself out beside me like a lover and embraced me with his poison arms and pierced me with relentless energy—pain has constant strength.
But one morning I awoke and thought: Where’s my sense of humor? What am I doing here? If I’m to have a lover so soon after Mitchell’s death, it might as well be a living man! If I’m to be judged and sentenced, I might as well commit the crime. I got out of my bed of self-pity and bathed and perfumed myself and as I dressed I wondered just how long it would take me to get one of Londonton’s pompous fathers into my bed.
It took three days. Ron Bennett was the first. I went to his office to discuss some papers Mitchell had left regarding his trust to the Londonton Recreation Center. I cried; Ron took me home; I said I was so sad and lonely. I said I would soon be leaving town. I pressed myself against him, and said, “Please hold me. Help me. I’m so frightened and alone.”
That’s all it took. I was not the first affair for him; he was certainly not the only one for me. It must make the men sitting around me in this church nervous to have me sitting here. I often think, as I sit in church, of jumping to my feet and shouting out that one man has a scar on his left thigh, and one man has an odd tail-like swirl of hair at the base of his spine, and one man cries out “NO!” when he comes, and another prefers to turn me on my stomach so that he can pretend I am a boy. When I stand to sing the hymns, I gaze around the room, and visions of bellies and testicles dance in my head. But I will return them like for like: if these good New Englanders insulted me with silence, I’ll do the same. I’ll let these men I’ve slept with stew in their own guilty knowledge until the skin of their spirit pops open and the truth spurts out. The most I will do is to walk toward them during coffee hour in such a way that the sensitive wives read a message in the movement of my hips.
