She said, “I look terrible.” They were around her, hemming her in, assuring her that she looked fine and hadn’t they been through it all? The redhead in pink pants said vehemently, “Moving is hell, isn’t it? There’s coffee in the kitchen, and Jo-Jo brought cups. Paper makes it taste horrible.”
“Besides, we have to use all the plastic we can.”
They’re so friendly, Frances thought, warmed against her will by this show of neighborliness. She followed them into the house, looking into the rooms they passed but getting only an impression of bareness. The kitchen was bare too, but new linoleum and a shining, huge refrigerator brightened it and the overhead light was on. Someone had spread paper on the work counter, and an electric percolator was glugging. The redhead said, “We had the gas and electricity turned on, but you can’t get a telephone before next week. Feel free to use ours—we’re two doors over.”
How friendly would they be if they knew what I used to be? What I still am.
They wouldn’t throw stones at me. Probably wouldn’t even be rude to my face. Just snicker behind my back, and feel sorry for Bill.
She said, “I haven’t had a chance to look the house over yet, but I know our furniture’s going to rattle around in it.”
A freckle-faced blonde said, “We have some good stores here. Interior decorators, too. Besides, it’s only sixty miles to Chicago, and the big stores ship everything out by truck, so you only have to wait one day. Most of us get into Chicago every few weeks, do a little shopping and see a show. My bridge club and painting class both go once in a while.”
Frances took the cup somebody offered her. It was nice and warm in her cold fingers; she shifted it from hand to hand to get the full benefit.
“This would be a good house to do in Victorian. There’s even a bay window in the dining room. Victorian’s very good now.”
Sure. Dark wood, marble-topped tables and funereal footstools in fringed and tasseled velvet. Frances said a little shrilly, “I’m afraid I like contemporary,” and let it lie there. Someone tactfully switched the talk to the new plant—or maybe it wasn’t tact, the conversation kept coming back to plastics—and there was a respectful little huddle around Bill.
Frances stood drinking coffee, leaning against the door-jamb. Some of the furniture was still on the way and the rest sat huddled in the wrong rooms, looking shabbier than she remembered it. She felt that she could use a drink. There would be drinks at parties, she knew, unless one of the top men was ultra-religious, but apparently protocol didn’t permit it at picnics, even indoor picnics. But at least they hadn’t brought over a lot of potato salad.
The redhead was saying, “You’re probably in a hurry to get settled, but we’d love to have you spend the night at our place. I mean, feel free to say yes or no.”
“Thanks,” Bill said, managing not to meet his wife’s eyes. “They’ve got a bed set up and I guess we can find everything we need, but thanks just the same. It’s mighty nice of you.”
The redhead said, “You’ll find this is a nice friendly bunch. We get along pretty well together.”
I just bet they do. Morning coffee together every morning, and shopping trips and PTA committees. Probably just walk in without knocking. Maybe a full-time job, something to get me out of the house?
Bill put his arm around her as they stood in the doorway, seeing the guests off. His face was high colored and his eyes slightly bloodshot from the long drive; he needed a shave. He said cheerfully, “That was nice of the girls, wasn’t it? They seem like nice kids.”
“Sure.”
“You didn’t act too friendly.”
“You know it takes me a while to get acquainted.”
“Yeah. The thing you have to remember is, it makes a big difference in a place like this. People aren’t cold and impersonal in the way they are in a big city. These gals run around together all the time.”
She tried to pull away. “I’m a small-town girl, remember?”
Bill said in a wheedling voice, “Don’t be crabby.” There was no doubt about what was on his mind. She had seen that look too many times before, the fatuous but determined look of a man set on going to bed with his woman.
He said, pressing against her, “Come on upstairs. You haven’t even seen the upstairs yet. There’re four bedrooms and a sewing room, or whatever you want to use it for, and the guy Bowers bought it from is supposed to put all new fixtures in the bathroom. You can pick them out.”
“That’s nice. When it quits raining I’ll bring my suitcase up and have a bath. I’m tired out.”
“You’ll feel better after a good nap. Come on upstairs and lie down for a while.”
“Oh, Christ!”
“Don’t be that way.”
She let herself be led up the stairs, feeling his body solid and urgent against hers. With every intention of being a good wife, even a cooperative wife, she couldn’t relax or smile or even look at him. His self-conscious methods embarrassed her. She let him lead her from room to room, a husbandly arm around her waist; she predicted accurately the moment when his hand would creep up and cup her breast. He left the room with the bed till last, of course.
If he only didn’t act like sex was something to be ashamed of. There had been some good times early in their marriage, not many, but a few, enough to make her feel that all might not be lost—if he would only leave the light on, and take her as though love were a joy and not an embarrassing necessity, like having to go to the bathroom.
Frances saw no reason why she shouldn’t do anything she felt like doing when she was bedded down with someone she loved. And she had tried with Bill, not too long after their reunion. Scared but desperate and determined to salvage what she could for both of them, she had asked him to perform the acts that made her happy. He was so shocked that he sat up in bed. “Where did you find out about such things?” he wanted to know, his voice heavy with suspicion. When she told him of the book she had read, his silence let her know that he thought she was lying. To Bill’s way of thinking there was only one way she could have learned about such goings-on, and he wasn’t going to discuss it.
She had never brought the matter up again.
I guess that takes care of that, she thought, looking dully at the empty sewing room, the large bathroom, the two completely empty rooms that looked small and shabby as empty rooms do, no matter how recently they have been painted and papered. In the two front bedrooms the familiar beds and dressers were standing at all angles, but at least the beds had been set up and the box springs and mattresses pulled into place. Trust Bill to take care of any details that would make him comfortable.
He left his socks on, like a man in a hurry to get it over with and get back to work. She undressed with shaking hands, trying not to feel like a virgin facing defloration. Shut your eyes, she reminded herself. It’s not so bad if you shut your eyes.
He was neither harsh nor tender. It was the same as before, as mechanical as eating or washing dishes. He’d make a wonderful machine operator, she thought, sighing wearily, as he rolled over and lay beside her.
She got up and pulled her clothes on, ignoring him. “What’s the hurry?”
“I’m cold.”
“Well, I ought to get up and go over to the plant for a while anyhow.”
She felt sticky and smeary and she wanted a bath. Instead, she went downstairs, trying to take her mind off what had just happened. Standing beside the dining room window, she looked out on a view almost identical with the one she had left behind on Chicago’s South Side: a brick house next door, a wider expanse of lawn and healthier-looking flowers here, a tricycle forgotten in the rain.
She wondered where Kay was at this moment and what she was doing. And Bake. But that hurt, the thought of Bake and Jane having a rainy Saturday at home. She tried to think about Karla’s instead. If I were there I’d pick somebody up. Anybody. Anybody would be better than this.
But Karla’s was a million miles away and a million years ago. She had made
her choice. The door was shut.
In a few minutes Bill came down, wearing his old jacket and slacks but with his hair neatly combed. “If you don’t care I think I’ll run over to the shop a few minutes—see how they’re making out. We’re running a skeleton crew on Saturdays till we go into full production. You don’t mind staying alone for a while, do you?”
“Of course not.”
He couldn’t look at her. Never could after one of these daytime performances. He said, “I’ll bring back a pizza or something.”
“That’ll be nice.”
The good provider. He would probably let her have a Victorian sofa bristling with red velvet and brass tacks, if she showed any sign of wanting one. Or a mink stole. Anything, except the right to be herself.
When the sound of the car died away she locked the doors and searched methodically through all the cupboards, hoping insanely that someone had left a bottle. They hadn’t, of course. She wandered into the living room and sat down on the sofa (not Victorian, but late Sears Roebuck) and looked out at the dripping rain.
I’m not a good wife, she thought dismally. I’m not even a very good whore. I don’t know what I am.
3 FURNISHING AN EIGHT-ROOM HOUSE IS WORK, BUT it comes to an end eventually. Two weeks after that rainy moving day, Frances backed down off a stepladder and stood looking up at her new curtains. There wasn’t another thing she could do to the place. Not one.
Now what?
Bill was apparently there to stay. He had given her a guided tour of the place, pointing out the solid foundations, hardwood floors and full-size basement and attic. The bathroom and downstairs lavatory were not only tiled with real tile but equipped with copper piping guaranteed to last a lifetime. The roof was fireproof, the siding waterproof. What more could anybody want?
A home-owner’s pride colored his voice when he suggested, “You could make a swell TV room down here. Put in one of those portable bars.”
“Why don’t you mention it to Mr. Bowers?”
His look accused her of treason. “Hell, he’ll never get back to work. He ought to retire and move to Florida or someplace where it’s warm. Be glad if I took the place off his hands.”
She was trapped, then. These were the prison walls closing in around her, decked out in new large-figure wallpaper.
Standing at the foot of the ladder, she wondered bleakly how Kay’s confident prophecy was going to come true. She might take a male lover—what was a little adultery in the executive echelons? But if she made a pass at a girl—wow!
She supposed it happened now and then, in a country where one-tenth of all women were supposed to be gay. But she knew, miserably, that Bill would be suspicious of any friendship she made. His ostentatious forgiveness didn’t stretch that far. And it made her miserable to tell lies.
She couldn’t discuss it with him. He went all tight lipped and gimlet eyed whenever they passed a butch type on the street. It was no use to argue that “the girls” were like everybody else, except in their sex life—and that wasn’t as different as he thought! She couldn’t say, “Look, we’re people too.” He wouldn’t let her bring the subject up.
And yet, according to the law of averages, two or three of the chicks in his office had to belong. Secretary, file clerk, ad writer, switchboard operator.
Thinking about it made her restless. She showered, pulled on a printed blue silk dress with a little ruffle at the neck—a Mrs. William Ollenfield dress, chosen to conform to Bill’s idea of a womanly woman—and doused herself with Je Reviens. She’d go downtown and look at clothes. Have a facial, manicure, hair-tint job, wave and set—hell, why not have her nose pierced too, while she was at it? She might even eat lunch in a tearoom, something squishy in a patty shell, and a fattening dessert. It was what the Wives would do.
Maybe if you did the housewife bit for ten or fifteen years you got used to it. Maybe a fifteen-minute bedding twice a week, without active participation, came to stand for sex. A pretty prospect.
THE CABBIE SAID, “Where you want to go, lady?”
She gave him her best smile. “I don’t know, I’m new in town. Where’s the best place to get my hair done?”
He looked her over carefully, twisting around in the seat. Apparently she qualified. “There’s Shapiro’s. That’s about the best store in town, and they got a regular beauty parlor. They got everything Marshall Field’s has, except the escalator.”
“All right, let’s try Shapiro’s.”
She gave him fifty cents more than the meter said, and he thanked her politely but without enthusiasm and drove away, leaving her standing in a completely strange place, trying to organize her thoughts.
This was Main Street. The sign at the corner said so, and besides it looked like Main Street. Parking meters, stores, banks, traffic lights. Shapiro’s was four stories high. The Waubonsie State Savings and Loan towered five floors above it, on the corner. She already felt at home with the Savings and Loan; a book of its pale-green checks lay alongside the lipstick in her handbag.
Shapiro’s was air-conditioned. She went in, past the display windows with a few summer evening frocks and accessories, past the lady clerks who were surely older than their hair styles and younger than their feet, past the impulse tables of jewelry and gloves, suntan lotion, and dark glasses. In this familiar setting her timidity melted away. She was wafted to the top floor in a slow elevator piloted by a young tan girl in white gloves, and found the beauty salon by the acrid smell of wave lotion. The reception desk was standard and so was the reception: they were booked solid, but they would try to fit her in.
She chose one of a long row of identical metal mesh chairs and looked around at the other waiting women. They all looked married. Business girls, of course, would come in on their lunch hour. Halfway through her second cigarette the receptionist said, “Miss Bernadette will take you now,” and there was Miss Bernadette, plump and pleasant in her yellow nylon uniform. With a wedding ring.
But it seemed to her that surely, if she looked searchingly and didn’t miss anybody, she would find someone. Her hair rinsed and dried and baked into little tight curls, she sat through the boredom of a manicure. The woman at the next table, having her nails tinted a pale silvery mauve, was slim, gray haired, haughty. She returned Frances’s inquiring look with the polite disinterest of one to whom other women are only relatives or neighbors.
I give up, Frances thought. But she was unable to give up. A need she didn’t want to admit sent her through the aisles of the store, looking at the counter displays, buying a box of stationery here and three pairs of sheer nylons there, sizing up the clerks and the women who were desultorily shopping. She knew she was being silly. She and Bake and the others had talked about the wacky idea people have that “you can always tell.” The men in the insurance office had bragged about “knowing one every time,” looking past her as she sat filling out forms. Every woman in the room could be available and it wouldn’t show. “Still,” Kay had insisted, “sometimes you sort of know. It’s not the clothes or the hairdo. I don’t know what it is.” And Bake, flicking out her cigarette, “Pure wishful thinking.”
Frances kept on looking.
It was a hot day. Her back ached from shoving furniture around and her scalp itched from the wave lotion. Her toes pinched. She went out into the torrid street carrying her packages, remembering too late that she had meant to look at dresses.
There were other stores, none so large or up-to-date as Shapiro’s but all carrying familiar brand names. A Sears Roebuck on one corner faced a Steinway on the other corner. Kresge, Woolworth, and Ben Franklin were lined up on the same block. There were jewelry stores with engagement rings in little slotted boxes. She passed a tavern that looked cool and dark, thought about going in for a pre-luncheon martini and realized that she didn’t know the customs in Waubonsie. Maybe nice women didn’t go into bars unescorted. She walked along.
What was she looking for, she wondered, an oriental bazaar with teak and spices and carve
d ivory?
A sign with Chinese characters, red on gold, caught her eye. She moved toward it. And there was her bazaar.
The window was narrow, with a dozen books lying at careless angles. A complete edition of Shakespeare in half calf, open at the Balcony Scene—nice clear print with curly serifs and elegant capitals. Half a dozen remaindered novels. A thin volume that could only be hand-set poetry, jacketed in burlap. Katherine Mansfield’s Journals, both volumes, faded purple. And in the front of the window, flanked by a chunk of uncut rose crystal and a small, flowered bowl, lay a wood carving of a cat done with love and skill, the essence of catness. I’ve got to have that, she decided, entering to a thin tinkle of chimes.
A young man floated forward to meet her. If she had felt baffled about the women in the store, unable to tell which were her own kind, there was no doubt about this boy. The insurance salesmen would have placed him without a second look. His face was pretty rather than handsome, his hair a little too long and too carefully disposed; he came to an elegant stop leaning on the counter. It was shirtsleeve weather, but his narrow striped collar was held by a little gold pin. A little fine-drawn, a little precious; and in this alien land her heart warmed to him. She could have hugged him.
A little nellie, she thought in automatic criticism. And realized, reddening, that he was sizing her up too and what he was seeing was Mrs. William Ollenfield. She was a little angry that he should judge by appearances. The boys are all artistic and the girls are all athletic. Kay, for instance—Kay wouldn’t walk across the street if she had cab fare. She said coldly, “The cat in the window—it’s for sale?”
“It’s nice, isn’t it? I have a friend who carves them. All different and individual—you’ll never see it duplicated.”
She was reluctant to ask what it cost, as though originality could be paid for in money. It didn’t matter anyway. Mrs. William Ollenfield had plenty for little impulsive purchases. Looking around, delaying her commitment to the cat, she saw that the place was really a secondhand store, a little dusty and shabby. But a length of Persian silk in dull reds and blues lay across a small table, there were three or four small water colors on one wall, and a shelf held several pieces of handmade pottery. “The pictures?”
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