Other Women

by Lisa Alther

  “Why would I want to leave?”

  “Don’t you see that if you decide to go, of your own accord, it’ll break your pattern of waiting around to feel rejected?” True, Caroline had left Brian Stone. But she hadn’t been fully engaged with him. She needed to renounce someone who was as dear to her as her own life—and in doing so, to find herself. As Hannah had been forced to do time after time. She’d gotten acquainted with herself by default. At various points there’d been no one else left.

  Caroline looked bewildered. Hannah realized she was going too fast. This talk of anybody’s leaving was frightening her. “How did people in your past react when you told them you cared about them?”

  Caroline couldn’t open her mouth. She was preoccupied with the color of axes.

  “For next week will you please think about that?”

  Caroline nodded.

  “And for today, can we please call it quits? I’m a mess.”

  Caroline nodded again, looking bemused, with glimmers of sympathy around the edges.

  As Hannah sat finishing her cigarette and summoning the energy to drive home, she figured out why old women in other cultures were reputed to be wise: because they were. She’d just realized she felt ghastly today because it was time for her period. Her hormones hadn’t gotten the message after several years that she wasn’t any longer having periods. They continued their monthly polka through the parlor of her emotions. She really ought to see her doctor. But one thing a woman could learn from this ordeal was not to take her emotions too seriously. Hence the wisdom. She only hoped she could survive menopause first.

  Jonathan appeared in her doorway, his face flushed and tense, his impeccable gray Afro tangled and spiky. “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

  “‘Tis the season,” said Hannah, stubbing out her cigarette in Nigel’s stone.

  “Mary Beth’s killed herself.”

  Hannah stared at him.

  “They found her in her apartment a couple of hours ago. In the bathtub with a razor.”

  Lowering her gaze, Hannah said nothing.

  “I guess it was just a question of time. She tried twice before.”

  “Jesus, the perfect end to a perfect week. Sit down, Jonathan. You look frazzled.” She was picturing Mary Beth with her strained smile and nervous patting at her hairdo, her Miss Muffet outfits. A razor? What a messy death for such a neat creature. She visualized her pale bony body sprawled in the bathtub smeared with blood.

  “Several times I heard her yelling at clients,” said Hannah, shaking her head. “I should have done something. At least realized she was falling apart.” She’d been irritated by Mary Beth’s “novice nerves.” She was ashamed.

  “That’s bullshit, lady, and you know it,” said Jonathan, sprawled on the couch. “Her father raped her when she was three. She had all kinds of difficulties that had nothing to do with you. She wasn’t your responsibility.”

  Hannah gave Jonathan a grateful, sheepish look. The same words she was always saying to clients. Usually she could say them to herself as well, but today clearly wasn’t her day. She kept thinking about Medevac helicopters crashing on battlefields. The way she felt today, Mary Beth’s solution to the problems of living had an undeniable appeal. “Probably it was yelling at clients that kept her alive this long,” said Hannah.

  “Probably.” Jonathan stood up wearily. “I’d better go spread this cheery news.”

  Hannah was shaken. It was dangerous, this spelunking in the caverns of the psyche. She lit another cigarette and wondered what her own disowned qualities were, and whether she was foisting them off on her clients similarly. If she was, she’d be the last in town to know, that being the nature of dissociation.

  Oh, do shut up, she snapped at herself. You could tell if you were dissociating by the intensity you brought to a client’s situation. Whenever you felt unusually angry or supportive, you could be pretty sure you had a personal stake. And you’d damn well better drag it out and look at it or you’d join Mary Beth in the bathtub.

  Exhaling with a sigh, Hannah considered her seizure of martyrdom during Caroline’s session. Such an unattractive stance, and one she’d witnessed in herself before. Yet why did it emerge then? She was exhausted, reason enough. But she’d been exhausted all morning. Caroline was accustomed to eliciting irritation from people when she wanted reassurance? Or did she want reassurance? Maybe she wanted what she got—space. Hannah suddenly recalled telling her last week that she cared about her too: You’re right, I do like you best. Evidendy Caroline hadn’t absorbed this. Caroline said she was afraid she’d scared Hannah off. Did their warm exchange scare Caroline off? But maybe it had scared Hannah. Why didn’t she remember it until now? She knew she wasn’t too crazy at the time about having said that. She wasn’t being paid to like clients, she was being paid to shrink their heads. Was there some truth to that remark, or was it just what Caroline needed to hear at the time?

  Oh, fuck it. It was too confusing after a fight, a sleepless night, hot flashes, and a suicide.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to Arthur as she walked into the living room. Arthur stood on the carpet putting a golf ball into the plastic hole.

  “For what?” He looked up, knees bent.

  “For calling you a spendthrift this morning.” She plopped down on the couch.

  “I probably am.”

  “Maybe you are. Maybe you aren’t. Who knows? Who cares? But I’m sorry for being such a raving bitch about it.”

  “You’re not a bitch.” He walked over to the couch and rested his putter against the end table.

  “Liar.”

  He smiled.

  “If you wouldn’t be so damned forgiving, we could make up properly.”

  “Since when have we needed an excuse?” he asked, pulling her by the hand.

  As they strolled across the living room toward the stairs, arms around each other’s waists, Hannah pictured Mary Beth sprawled in her bloody bathtub. She’d tell Arthur later. Meanwhile, she was someone who’d always done her best grieving in a horizontal position.

  • 3 •

  Holding a Dixie cup of rum and Coke, Caroline sat on the smooth red plastic bench watching Brenda in her orange Lake Glass Kennels shirt flex the arm that held her bowling ball. Lucille was telling Barb about the French triceps extension exercises she was doing with five-pound weights at Gloria Stevens to tone up the undersides of her upper arms. “You’d think heaving patients on and off stretchers all day would take care of it,” said Lucille, patting her finger curls. “But you can see for yourself that it doesn’t.” She poked the pale slack flesh that hung from her underarm.

  Munching a powdered doughnut, Caroline was thinking woefully of what happened when she let people know she cared about them. Marsha got run over by a truck. She tried to show her parents via presents. But her father always returned his for a refund, and her mother exchanged hers for something different. She changed Howard’s and Tommy’s diapers and wiped their tears for years. But now they catalogued the times she made them play cannibal to her medical missionary, lynched Howard’s teddy bear, let the air out of their bicycle tires. When she invited Arlene to supper, Arlene told her to get lost. I know what you want and you can’t have it.

  Brenda sat down, elated by her fifth strike. “Hey, how come Dr. Stone is always hanging around your desk?” She punched Caroline lightly in the arm.

  “He isn’t anymore.” Caroline dusted powdered sugar off her orange team shirt. Brian had a new woman, a scrub nurse named Audrey with curly black hair. They sat together at lunch in the cafeteria and during coffee breaks, heads close together. No doubt Brian was regaling her with tales of Irene’s departure. Caroline was grimly amused that he’d recovered from her more quickly than she from him. Evidently Brian, like nature, abhorred a vacuum. And any woman could fill it.

  Brenda glanced at her. “How come he was then?”

  “We dated a few times.”

  “You and Dr. Stone?”

  Car
oline smiled. “I had a brief seizure of respectability last month, but I’ve recovered.”

  “You and Dr. Stone?”

  “Diana and I have been having troubles.”

  “I noticed she was spending a lot of time with that new kid up on the children’s ward.”

  “Kid is right.” Caroline stood up and went over to the return rack.

  As she studied the distant triangle of pins and speculated on the unlikelihood of getting the ball down there in a straight line, she recalled the first time she told Jackson she loved him. During their maiden argument, in the living room of his Back Bay apartment, over whether to leave the cellophane on new record jackets. She accused him of warping the Beaties album she’d given him for his birthday.

  “Well, if I’m so dumb,” he said, “why do you stick around?”

  Realizing she didn’t care if his records were warped, Caroline replied, “Because I love you.”

  He blushed. He tossed his dark hair off his forehead with one hand. He laughed harshly. He glanced around the room like a trapped bird in search of an open window. “You love me? What do you mean? Define your terms.”

  “I don’t know what I mean. Forget it. I’m sorry. I lost my head.”

  “All I asked was what you meant. We may mean different things. You may want more of a commitment than I’m prepared to make.”

  “I didn’t mean anything. It just slipped out.”

  “That’s exactly what I mean about you, Caroline. You’re so goddam…intense, or something.” His pager went off, and he raced out to the hospital, leaving her worrying over how to be more relaxed. If Jackson didn’t like her intensity, he’d leave her. So she’d get rid of it. She’d be still and quiet and good, she promised him silently, as she lay motionless on the carpet.

  Drawing back the ball, Caroline moved forward, sliding to the foul line and releasing the ball with a clunk. It rolled into the gutter and barely made it to the other end of the lane. She’d better concentrate on what she was doing. Last fall she’d been in despair over the idiocy of bowling. Now the idiocy entertained her. Progress?

  After picking off seven pins with her next roll, she sat down and took a drink of rum and Coke, recalling that when she first told David Michael she loved him, his erection melted like a stick of butter at room temperature. He rolled off her and turned his hairy back. The American flags at his windows stirred in the night air leaking around the window frame.

  “What’s wrong?” asked Caroline.

  “Jesus Christ, Caroline, that’s like holding a knife to someone’s throat. You say, ‘I love you, David Michael.’ What can I reply except, ‘I love you too, Caroline.’ And what if I don’t feel like it?”

  Caroline stared at his hunched back in the light from the street. “So don’t say it.”

  “Yeah, and then you get all upset.”

  “You’re the one who’s upset.” Stroking his back, she wondered how to get him to finish what he’d started with her body.

  “You’re the one who made me upset.”

  “But I was just trying to tell you I think you’re a fine person.”

  “So who asked you?”

  “Nobody.”

  “I’m not a fine person, and I get sick of hearing you say it all the time.”

  “Okay, so you’re not a fine person.” She’d say whatever he wanted to hear. If she didn’t, he’d leave.

  “Oh yeah? Why not?” he demanded. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Dr. Stone, huh?” Brenda sat down and draped her beefy arms along the bench back. “You don’t seem like his type.”

  “I wasn’t.”

  “Did you ever meet his wife?”

  “Irene? No. Did you?”

  “Yeah. She’s not at all like you. A real wimp. Phoning him during a thyroidectomy because she’d lost her checkbook. That kind of thing. He ate it like candy.”

  Caroline glanced at Brenda. “Wimp” was one of the words on her list for Hannah last fall. But Hannah didn’t see her like that, and apparently neither did Brenda.

  “So tell me about this kid on the children’s ward,” said Brenda.

  “Suzanne Sanders is her name. She’s always bringing Diana cups of coffee and Reese’s cups. And asking her simple-minded questions, and acting impressed when Diana answers them.”

  Brenda shook her head. “There’s no competing with that stuff. We all love admiration.”

  “I walked into the bathroom today, and Suzanne was standing there looking in the mirror, adjusting her cap. I went into a stall without saying anything. And she said, ‘You know, Caroline, all this would be a lot easier if I could just dislike you. But you seem like a nice woman to me.’”

  Brenda grimaced. “What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘I am a nice woman.’”

  Brenda laughed. “Speaking of the bathroom, would you excuse me?”

  As she got up, Caroline reflected that when she and Diana first acknowledged their love, life together became an arms race, each struggling to find more forceful ways to express devotion. Ever since last week’s Camisole Caper, the arms race was escalating again, as they tried to gloss over their argument like paperhangers concealing gaping cracks in a plaster wall. Diana mailed her a sexy French postcard in a plain brown envelope. So she left a badge on Diana’s dresser that said, “Trust Your Lust.” So Diana put a quart of coffee ice cream in Caroline’s freezer. So Caroline left some shasta daisies in a vase on Diana’s table.

  Brenda plopped down on the plastic bench and unwrapped a Mars bar. Glancing at her, Caroline said, “Brenda, I think you’re a fine person. I like you a lot.”

  Brenda looked down at her half-eaten Mars bar. She reached up and touched the “Plus que hier, moins que demain” medallion at her throat. “Uh, well, I like you too, Caroline.” Her eyes darted around the vast bowling alley. “But I’m really happy with Barb.”

  “That isn’t what I meant.”

  “My turn at the foul line!” Brenda leaped up and raced to the ball return.

  Why did I do that, Caroline wondered, having figured out it scared people off? She wanted to scare them off? But why?

  After leaving Lake Glass Lanes, Caroline stopped in at the mall to shore up her depleted stockpile of treats for Diana. Wandering through the brightly lit shops, she selected silk stockings and the March issue of Penthouse. St. Patrick’s Day was coming, so she bought green eyeshadow and a card that said, “Knock, knock. Who’s there? Irish. Irish who? Irish I hadn’t had that last drink.” In the liquor store she bought some Chartreuse liqueur. At Baskin-Robbins as the clerk hand-packed pistachio ice cream, Caroline flipped open the Penthouse to Miss March, who lay masturbating in black stockings, high heels, and a lacy garter belt. In real life she was an accountant, who attributed her success to her friendly personality. A teenage boy, whose wide leather belt had a silver buckle shaped like New Hampshire with “Live Free or Die” embossed on it, stood next to Caroline. He was also studying Miss March, and Caroline’s own interest in Miss March, so she shut the magazine.

  Glancing over her armful of packages, Caroline suddenly realized: This isn’t love, this is psychosis. Both she and Diana were coming down with another case of Terminal Thoughtfulness. They would pamper each other to death. What was it all about? You feel you have to do nice things to make them love you? Each felt herself inadequate to maintain someone’s interest without showering that person with the entire inventory of several small shops.

  She handed the Penthouse to the startled teenager and left the clerk holding the half-filled carton of ice cream. She dumped all her packages into a Leonard Litter trash can in the corridor like an alcoholic pouring liquor down the drain. If Diana didn’t want her just as she was, without props, then to hell with it.

  Driving back to the cabin, she wondered if anyone would want her unadorned by gifts and services, least of all Diana. Something in her was insisting she find out. But she felt naked and afraid empty-handed.

  She pictured Hannah’s face. But
it was strained and tired, as Hannah had been at their last session. That’s what I’m here for—to be left. To please Hannah she’d have to leave her. Besides, she couldn’t lean on her indefinitely. She’d have to lean elsewhere. But where? Brian was gone. Probably Diana would soon be gone without gifts to hold her. Hannah would be gone.

  Frantically she summoned the gorgeous jungle birds and flowers. The miracle is all around you. The strange feeling of warm gratitude began to creep over her, like the numbness that rose up her legs when she had too much to drink. Was it possible she didn’t need another person to feel happy and safe? That the contents of her own head, which no one could take away, were sufficient? Surely not.

  Caroline sat in her Subaru watching two men in rust-colored ski patrol parkas load a gray metal desk into a small moving van that stood in the parking lot of the therapy center. Maybe Hannah really was going into real estate. Maybe she’d lied last week when she said Caroline would have to do the leaving. But surely she’d give her clients some notice? Caroline’s stomach felt queasy, as it had the day she arrived to find Hannah’s office rearranged. Nothing here was supposed to change. Caroline was the one who was changing.

  “What’s up?” she asked as she walked into Hannah’s intact office.

  “What do you mean?” Hannah swiveled in her chair to look up at Caroline, who stood shifting nervously from boot to boot.

  “Who’s moving out?”

  “Oh. The woman in the next office killed herself. Her parents are clearing out her stuff.”

  Caroline sank down on the couch.

  “Does that distress you?” It could be part of the Great Disillusionment to let Caroline know that therapists sometimes had worse problems than clients. Hannah had been seeing some of Mary Beth’s clients, trying to discourage them from copying Mary Beth’s example. “It makes all my months with her one big joke,” wailed a woman student in a blue jean jacket covered with badges that said things like “Fuck Authority” and “Chaste Makes Waste.” But if Mary Beth helped her, and she apparently had, did it matter how?