Other Women

by Lisa Alther

  As Joanna and Hannah split a carafe of white wine at a small table in Maude’s Corner Cafe, Joanna kept trying to advise Hannah on how to invest her retirement fund. “Mother, you can’t just let it sit there. You’ve got to manage it.”

  “Why do I?” When Joanna was in high school, she used to advise Hannah on her wardrobe with similar despair.

  “Every day you leave it in those CDs, you lose the extra return you could be earning in the market.”

  Hannah smiled at this earnest young woman who had Hannah’s blue eyes and widow’s peak, and Arthur’s ruddy coloring and long legs. She wore a tweed suit and cowl neck sweater. “Yes, dear, and now tell me how your Boston fiddler is doing. Clark?”

  Joanna frowned, just as she used to when the other kids failed to return books to her library on time. “Mother, this is serious. Over the years, a few dollars of lost interest each week adds up to an enormous sum. Surely you must see that?”

  As Joanna outlined alternatives to CDs, gesturing with her hand, Hannah watched her expression of exasperation and thought about the oldest-daughter syndrome she had just described to Caroline. She herself had coddled Simon and Nigel more. They seemed so frail and vulnerable. She felt sorry for them, knowing they’d have to prove themselves in such a brutal world. Whereas Mona and Joanna seemed more self-contained. Even if they never used their nubile wombs, they had the awesome capacity to bear new life. Nothing the boys could do would compensate them for that lack, and certainly not their funny little nubs of penises. So during the chaotic years, she sometimes leaned on Joanna, who responded with such efficiency and enthusiasm that Hannah had to remind herself that Joanna too needed cuddling and pampering. She probably hadn’t given her enough. Hence her brittleness.

  “What is this, honey?” Hannah finally asked. “My pension is fine the way it is. How’s your modern dance class going?”

  “Fine. But, Mother, somebody’s got to take care of you.” Joanna poured some more wine into her mother’s nearly full glass.

  Hannah smiled, charmed. Everyone else saw her as Brünnhilde. After Nigel and Mona died, Hannah spent a lot of time trying to persuade Joanna the accident wasn’t her fault. One night at supper around the oak pedestal table during Joanna’s own therapy, Joanna screamed, “It wasn’t my fault your precious Mona died, Mother!”

  “Nobody ever said it was,” said Hannah, turning pale.

  “I took good care of them.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I know you wish it were me instead of Mona!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Joanna,” begged Hannah, sweat breaking out on her upper lip….

  “Your father usually does a pretty good job taking care of me,” said Hannah.

  “He won’t always be…“Joanna stopped and looked down to trace the grain of the pine table with her fingertips.

  “He won’t always be here? No, he won’t. But neither will I. Maybe neither you nor I will leave this restaurant alive. So why worry about it?”

  Looking up, Joanna heaved a sigh. “You have an answer for everything, don’t you, Mother?”

  “I appreciate your concern about my pension, Joanna. I’m sorry I don’t share it. I’m sure you’re right.”

  “Well, it’s your lost interest.”

  “That’s right.” She and Joanna often ended up in a stalemate neither of them wanted at this time of year, close to the anniversary of the accident. Usually they had enough sense to stay away from each other until February. “Speaking of your father, I’ve got to get home.”

  Joanna shrugged, gazing into her wine.

  “Take care of yourself, darling.” Hannah stood up and patted Joanna’s padded shoulder.

  “You too, Mother.” Joanna looked up with a strained smile.

  “I love you, you know.”

  “Yes, I know, Mother. Me too.” They exchanged helpless looks.

  Driving up the lakeshore, Hannah thought about how much easier it was to cope with surrogate daughters. They stayed in her office only an hour or two, and she could kick them out as failures if they wouldn’t open up.

  Shrugging, she began thinking about the bizarre folkways of the American high school. Caroline spoke in such life and death terms about those years—the anxiety over whether she was in or out with some teenage tyrant named Rorkie, which was determined by constantly shifting cues like clothing, hairdos, accents, Christmas cards. Maybe Hannah had never felt these pressures because she never fit in anywhere in the first place. Not as a white Australian among aboriginal playmates, not as an Australian among English schoolmates, and not now as Job among the sybarites. She was quite comfortable with being out. In fact, she became uncomfortable whenever there was a hint she might be in.

  At boarding school in Sussex the girls were required to wear identical gym slips, striped ties, and navy blue blazers. Hannah always left her tie unknotted. Most of the girls, who had names like Phillipa, Nicola, and Phoebe, wore headscarves knotted on their chins. They laughed by raising upper lips to uncover teeth, and tossing back their heads like horses whinnying. Hannah used to go bare-headed through the Sussex drizzle. She exaggerated her Australian accent. The other girls politely avoided her, except for her best friend, Carla, from Kenya, who had similar problems.

  She traced that pattern into the present—like Gretel following bread crumbs out of the forest—to the staff meeting that morning, around the large square walnut table in the sunny conference room, at which everyone else had been struggling to find ways to become a more cohesive group. Sylvia, who drove everyone crazy fingering worry beads, suggested a group meditation to harmonize themselves. Mary Beth, flashing her brittle smile, proposed a monthly pot luck supper with spouses. Louis, in his inevitable army surplus camouflage pants and parachutist boots, wanted them to reveal their perceptions of each other’s flaws as a way of feeling closer. Jonathan vented his anger about the lack of salt on the ice in the parking lot, and the others said they heard him, and supported him in owning his anger, and appreciated his sharing with them.

  Leaning forward on his arms on the walnut table, Louis said to Sylvia, who was getting married, “I experience in you a lack of affect in terms of how you’re relating to this marriage, Sylvia, that I find it difficult to deal with. I know you’re hopeful, anticipatory, but is there a part of you that’s excited?”

  Hannah excused herself to go to the bathroom. She actually just stood in the hall and grinned. On the archery range at boarding school, girls had asked, “What pound bow do you pull?” At the kennel where she and Arthur bought their collie, the owner said, “Sometimes this dog’s sire throws undesirable traits.” All these tiny worlds, each with its own language, none of which she fit into. But it was hard to believe a roomful of therapists, whose careers revolved around decoding the private languages of their clients’ worlds, could be so unaware of their own as to speak it with straight faces. Why would I want to harmonize with a bunch of turkeys, she wondered as she composed herself and returned to the staff room.

  As her car hit a pothole and clattered like a New York taxi, she concluded that you never got rid of your tired old patterns. You simply began to recognize them as they cropped up. Some you valued, as she did her inability to fit into groups. Maybe she’d be able to resist joining the current equivalent of the Hitler Youth. The more obnoxious patterns, like her conviction that anyone she became involved with would leave or die, you learned to ignore most of the time. You could fill in potholes until they looked like the rest of the road, but the wound in the asphalt was still there, ready to heave open again in the next hard freeze.

  As she pulled into the driveway, she saw Arthur standing in the greenhouse window in his Mr. Chips sweater, putting a golf ball into a plastic hole on the carpet that flipped the ball back to him whenever he sank a putt. Recently retired, he’d begun cooking supper every night. She felt a surge of emotion that was half pleasure and half pain. Now that he’d finally convinced her, after only thirty-eight years of effort, that he wasn’t going to lea
ve like all the others, he’d be leaving in spite of himself one day soon. Joanna was right. But it wasn’t fair. He got to do everything first—retire, get root canals, draw social security, die. Her conviction that loved ones would vanish—it was based on reality. It was just that it could sometimes take fifty years.

  When she walked in the door, Arthur stood stirring something on the stove with a spoon. “I see I’ve got you right where I want you, Arthur,” she said. “Barefoot and in the kitchen.”

  “But blessedly not pregnant,” he said, putting down the spoon and taking her martini from the refrigerator freezer. “How was your day?” He handed her the martini and put his arm around her.

  “Very much like my other days, thank you. How was yours?” They sauntered from the kitchen across the living room.

  “Wonderful. I stayed in bed reading all morning.”

  “Fucker.” They sank down on the leather couch. Coming home from work to a neat, quiet house and a cooked supper was still a shock. She felt as though she were playing hookey.

  “Your time will come, my darling.”

  “Yes, but will I be alive to enjoy it?” She sipped her martini, looking at him over the rim of her glass.

  “I’d say you’ve got a few good years left, old girl.” He patted her thigh.

  “What is this ‘old girl’ business?” The sky beyond the jungle in the greenhouse window was a luminescent coral.

  “I read it in a British novel last week. I thought it would help you feel less homesick for the motherland.”

  “It’s been about thirty years since I missed that place. I’m just like the rest of you rootless American riffraff now.”

  “If it weren’t for us rootless American riffraff,” said Arthur, “your people would be speaking German right now.”

  She laughed, drinking her gin as dark purple jet trails spread across the coral sky.

  “I just had a drink with Joanna.”

  “How’s she?”

  “Fine, I guess. She wouldn’t tell me anything. Except how to invest my retirement fund.”

  “Can’t complain about that.”

  “But I want the gossip.”

  “You’ll have to rely on your clients for that.”

  “But what’s the point of having grown children if they won’t tell you the dirt?”

  Arthur laughed. “Is that why you had them? A subscription to the National Enquirer would have been cheaper.”

  Hannah gave a pained smile and took his hand in both hers. “No, that’s not why I had them.” She studied Arthur’s freckled hand and recalled how gently he used to hold each newborn baby, one hand under the head and shoulders, the other under the buttocks and thighs, gazing into the dark blue eyes with amazement. He’d take them into the bath with him, his big hands cradling their tiny bodies and rocking them in the water. She would feel stabs of jealousy watching the tenderness on his face. He’d missed out on so much with his first batch—busy with his career, away at war, sneaking around with Hannah—and was determined to do it right the second time around.

  As she patted his hand, she reflected that many clients believed everything would be fine if they could just find the right partner. You had to be with the right partner awhile to discover that was only half the battle. Next you had to learn how to let him go when the time came. She was still in kindergarten on that one.

  • 2 •

  “I’ve made lentil soup and rye bread,” Caroline told Diana over the phone from downstairs. “Want some?” They’d scarcely seen each other since Diana’s return from Poughkeepsie. Except to exchange coy, hostile inquiries about each other’s New Year’s Eve. Diana’s had evidently been a success, which Caroline was sure involved a New York hotel room. She portrayed her evening with Brian as a similar success. And Brian’s phone calls and detours past the ER desk seemed to confirm her story. Today he appeared in light blue scrub clothes, wordlessly handing her a single yellow rose in a specimen bottle. Diana, who was also behind the desk, made a great point of not noticing.

  Diana hesitated. “Do you think we should?”

  “Haven’t we gone cold turkey long enough?” Caroline sat down in the gray plaid easy chair beside the phone table and took a sip of wine.

  “God, I couldn’t bear it if we got back into all that old junk again.”

  “Me either. But let’s assume we won’t.” They’d gone from trying to do everything for each other to doing nothing. Surely there was some happy middle ground. They hadn’t had a meal together in weeks.

  “All right. I’ll come down there. But only if I can bring the salad.”

  “You’re on, babe.”

  The boys and Sharon dipped their rye bread in the soup, making a swamp of the rust-colored homespun tablecloth Caroline had woven when she was living with David Michael in the Somerville commune. Brian’s yellow rose sat in its specimen bottle in the middle of the table, flanked by two beeswax candles. Diana was carefully avoiding acknowledging its existence.

  “There’s chocolate chip ice cream in my freezer,” Diana told the children. She wore a gray sweat suit and green terry cloth headband, just back from losing to Suzanne at racquetball. Her red hair was spiky from dried sweat.

  “Hey neat!” said Jason. They raced upstairs with the thundering of a small earthquake.

  “Anything to get them in a different room from me,” said Diana, pushing back her chair and stretching out her legs.

  “Jesus,” said Caroline, putting her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand. “It’s like living with a dairy herd.”

  Diana smiled sourly. “You’re in a good mood. I bet you saw Hannah today?”

  “Correct.” Caroline ignored the unpleasant edge to Diana’s voice. “Want some coffee?”

  Til make it.” Diana got up.

  “I’ll make it. You’re the guest.”

  “I thought we were going to give this routine a miss.”

  “All right, you make it.” Caroline sank back into her ladder-back chair.

  “So what’s new, stranger?” Diana measured coffee beans.

  “Report cards. Did you see them?”

  “Yeah, pretty dismal. But if we ground them, we’re stuck with them underfoot more than ever.”

  Caroline smiled. “How come nobody ever tells you what parenthood is like beforehand?”

  “The species would go to extinction.” Diana was grinding the beans in the hand grinder.

  “Hannah and I talked about Rorkie today, my friend from high school.” The kettle began whistling like a factory at high noon.

  “Never heard of her,” said Diana, pouring water into the filter.

  “She’d rejected me by the time I met you.”

  “Rejected you?” Diana handed her a tan mug with cats on it.

  “Yeah, my Christmas card was too Protestant, so she and her friends rolled my yard with toilet paper.”

  Diana choked on her coffee. Caroline grinned. But she hadn’t been amused that morning she looked out her bedroom window at the toilet paper woven through the budding elm trees. Spelled out in toilet paper on the front lawn was CITIZENSHIT AWARD. “Rorkie rolled Caroline!” buzzed through the halls at school. Caroline convinced the nurse she was sick. She walked home and spent the afternoon unstringing the toilet paper, like popcorn chains from Christmas trees. It felt like the end of the world. Only gradually did she realize the world didn’t end so easily.

  “Where do you think she is now?” Diana propped her chin on her fist and gazed at Caroline with her green eyes.

  “She’s probably had twelve children and a hysterectomy.”

  “Maybe she runs a toilet paper concession for Boston rest rooms.”

  “Let’s hope she’s profoundly unhappy.” It sounded as though Sharon were beating Jason’s head on the shag carpet upstairs. He was screaming epithets Caroline had never even heard of.

  “How could someone like that be happy? Imagine the kind of mind that gets off on tormenting people.”

  “Yeah. I guess vic
iousness is its own punishment.” Caroline folded her arms across her stomach, remembering Rorkie in study hall one afternoon with a huge purple bruise along one jaw. Caroline passed her a note asking, “What happened to your face?” Rorkie’s reply read, “My father hit me with a Four Roses bottle.” After a while Caroline passed her a note that said, “I’m really sorry.” Rorkie’s reply said, “I’m used to it.” Applying Hannah’s formula, Caroline realized Rorkie treated her classmates as she herself had been treated.

  “I’m starting to feel it’s my fault because I was so privileged and she wasn’t,” said Caroline.

  “That’s the most convoluted logic I’ve ever heard. You must be a real challenge for Hannah.”

  “Probably.” There was that strained timbre to Diana’s voice again. Diana said she was jealous because Hannah cheered Caroline up. But surely Diana couldn’t want her to stay miserable just so she wouldn’t have to feel jealous? Caroline started wondering what Hannah did think of her—that she was a nut? Did Hannah like her as a person, or was she just doing her job?

  “Do you remember the first time we ever saw each other?” asked Diana, as Caroline got up to pour more coffee.

  “Yeah, we were watching Arlene give a bed bath, weren’t we? And she said if a male patient got an erection, to hit it with a spoon.” Caroline chuckled, picturing Arlene, large and solid like the leg of an elephant, a thick braid of hair wound into a bun that sat on her head like a cow pile.

  “Yes, and you and I burst out laughing, and everyone else looked at us like we were criminals.”

  Caroline remembered watching Diana throw back her red head, close her green eyes, and give a husky laugh. And Caroline knew she wanted to be her friend. After class each lingered in the corridor, trying to engineer an encounter. They went for lunch, and Caroline spilled her coffee on the Formica table in the cafeteria, in amusement over the bed bath. Diana held a bunch of green seedless grapes in one hand like a softball. From time to time, she raised the bunch to her mouth and took a grape between her lips. Caroline was enchanted, never having seen grapes eaten like that. “I probably loved you right from that lunch.”