Pay the Piper

by Joan Williams

  “You’re a writer. You’ll know. You can teach twice a week for one hour. Or once a week for two hours. I believe twice a week gives more continuity.”

  “Absolutely,” she said, based on no authority. For her, twice a week meant two days with somewhere to go.

  Gladly she told her class the only instruction she was given. They had to turn in fifty pages in the semester to be considered for an A. Then she dawdled over roll call and talked about learning their names. She looked at two girls she had overheard talking in the hallway about a class one was not prepared for. “Open the top button of your blouse and lean way over him. He likes that,” the other girl had said.

  Much in the world would never change. She studied the high heels girls wore with blue jeans, and their eye makeup. She wondered if she could be like them. She wondered if young men in the class could look at her with interest. “Who is your favorite writer?” she asked a girl in the first row.

  “Stephen King. To write like him would be my idea of heaven.”

  Laurel had never heard of Stephen King and would have assumed him to be a rock star. This was a Catholic university and she read them a story of Flannery O’Connor’s, glancing always at the clock. How long could an hour be? She had no idea how to make general small talk. Once they turned in work, time could go faster. She finished reading “A Good Man Is Hard to Find” and asked what religious symbolism the students saw. No one said anything. She did not know any religious symbolism either. She read O’Connor because of her Southernness. She would let them go early—a practice that ought to ensure the students’ liking her. She lifted her hands and cried out to them, “You’re all my children,” the way the grandmother in the story cried it out. They left laughing, at least.

  She sat at the desk and looked at the book with the remainder of the afternoon to go home in, with the night to come. She would eat at a diner on the way home and hear the click of other people’s silverware. In hiring her, the professor said since she was a part-time teacher she was not required to attend meetings or take part in anything beyond her class. He spoke with envy. She had only been sorry.

  It was hard to think that after Hal moved she was overcome with worry about him. He wouldn’t know how to take care of himself, he didn’t know how to cook. Living alone, he would drink himself into oblivion. She had overheard him tell the driver where to deliver his furniture. The second night after he moved, she phoned his house. She would cry out, Oh, let me come and see about you! Doreen had answered.

  To know what had been going on behind her back for so long, the plotting and the planning, was humiliating. While she was doing this, that, the other, Doreen was packing her belongings. While her life fell apart, Doreen’s began in an unimaginably better fashion. As she miserably watched Hal’s van depart, leaving her to darkness and solitude, Doreen’s van left too. The vans met to unload in the night, the lovers united at last. The witch was smart; they soon married. Hal had not sense enough to keep the upper hand. Married for the fourth time, he had gone directly from one marriage to another one and never been alone a moment in his life. Yet three women were out in the world by themselves because of him.

  Her alimony checks arrived from a small rural town farther north. Not the chic part where writers lived, she consoled herself. In loneliness amounting to rage, she phoned him at night sometimes to see if he was sitting at home, if he had somewhere to go. If she phoned so late as ten at night, Doreen answered and said, “Hello, Laurel.”

  What kind of witch was it who walked into her house in huffiness and took her husband away before her eyes? What life did they lead that no one phoned so late, and was Hal drunk?

  When she went home from the university and ate in the diner, she stayed as long as possible, but no single man came in she might engage in a hopeful conversation.

  For six years in the house she and Hal bought, she was aware that somewhere around a bend in the road there was a Unitarian church where the most famous singles group in the Northeast met. On Sundays, she had heard the church’s booming bell. She had never thought she’d be going there. But she had to take some step into the world when Hal left. There was the inner hall of the church with several hundred people milling about, as many men as women. It would turn out, of course, that some of these men were married. She bought a ticket, she made a name tag. She stared about at people in groups; how did you go up and start talking to them? She stood about drinking weak coffee and keeping back tears. She had been given a number, and at a certain time, people filed down to appointed Sunday school rooms. Children’s drawings were on the walls. Discussions were advertised as being part of the singles’ nights. She had come thinking at least that was a way to spend the evening—talking of foreign affairs or whatever. In a semicircle they sat. The evening’s discussion topic was: Should We Kiss on the First Date? She thought back to being in the tenth grade and wondering the same thing.

  Afterward, they went upstairs for wine and cheese. Eventually, as weeks passed, faces became familiar. A man asked her out to a nice dinner. She offered to pay half, but he refused. From then on, he expected her to cook. He had worked for a shipping company for twenty years and made twenty thousand dollars a year. She told him he ought to ask for a raise. He had been thinking about it. He thought finally it would be a good idea if they bought a house together out of Fairfield County and moved their mothers in with them. They drifted apart.

  All around the county, churches held similar groups. She went from one to another one, through dark roads and towns, never expecting to find her way. Finding it. All events were the same. They began by standing around for a get-acquainted hour. Hi, name tags read. My name is——; fill in the blank. She was fearful of ever catching a man’s eye; he would think her too eager. Never say you are a writer; men don’t like women with brains. Don’t drink too much cheap wine, or you’ll be sick. Eat. Cheddar cheese on a cracker; but then her mouth was too dry to speak. Men never started conversations first. She had to do it. “Hi! What town do you live in?” She wanted to cry out, I had a life once. I only don’t have one anymore.

  Always after the first hour, there were round table discussions. “Tonight’s topic is, What Kind of Movies Should We Singles See?” a moderator said. When it was her turn, Laurel said, “Movies like anybody else, I guess.”

  She would have to go on and on pushing herself outward, adopting a personality that did not fit. She made phone calls. “Hi. I met you at International Singles last week. We were talking about skiing. A friend is sick, and I have an extra ticket to—” Maybe the double standard would always exist. It seemed better to wait for a man to call her. Too often, she heard the same reply: “Sorry, but I’ve just connected to someone.” At least no one saw her face burn at refusals. Men spent the night. Sometimes she scarcely remembered their names.

  She read every issue of The New York Review of Books, not for the erudite literary commentary but because of the singles listings in the back. She ran her finger down the listings looking at numbers. Numbers were what counted. Would like to meet female not over 40.… Gentleman in 60s looking for woman between 25–35.… Younger than Reagan, began a man’s ad. How much younger? It didn’t matter. She had a couple of desultory lunches this way. She put in her own little ad: Writer would like to meet.… There were letters, usually strange. A man analyzed her through all her books. I wish I could have read them in manuscript, he wrote. I could have helped you make them so much better.

  She read flyers and went to meetings. A nonsmoking clinic. BRING YOUR CIGARETTES, the announcement said. She bought a package, hoping she did not take up smoking. No one to connect to. She sent her name to a correspondence list. LET US HELP YOU MEET THAT SPECIAL SOMEONE. Letters followed:

  Dear Laurel:

  I got your name from a list one of my friends who locks across the hall from me has. I hope you’re not mad at me for writing. Not too much happens here at Attica.…

  #81c858

  Hello, Laurel,

  I hope these few
words reach you at your best; as for myself, my situation leaves a lot to be desired. I got your name from a list. I’m presently incarcerated and I hope this fact alone will not turn you off against embracing my offer of friendship. Here in Indiana—

  #18692

  Saw your advertisement. I’m a man in prison who receives little mail and have been in Dannemora for—

  #28695

  I’d like to be the man in your life. I’ll be getting out of Parchman in—

  #45050

  She was foolish enough to accept a collect telephone call one night. A prisoner would like to make her rich. He could put her on his visiting list and gradually she could bring in cocaine in a little sack stuffed up her vagina. It was done all the time. She went to a dating service in Soundport and filled out a long questionnaire. Her name would be sent to compatible men, and she would receive a list of names. “Don’t wait for the man to call. Take the initiative,” the dating counselor advised. She met a man at a dockside restaurant who lived on a small boat in South Norwalk harbor. He rowed her out through the night to see it. “No, don’t worry about my high heels,” she had said. They climbed aboard. He had nothing else in mind. He rowed her back to shore. She sang through the trip under her breath, “Row, row, row your boat.” She had dinner with a man who moved furniture, and several other “compatible” people. She fell away from being able to cook for herself. She ate Lean Cuisine dinners. In the mornings, she sometimes found those little self-contained aluminum pans sitting in her kitchen without remembering having eaten the contents. In the middle of nights, she woke up sweating and restless with the worry, Is this my life forever? She might get up and cook a whole can of popcorn and eat it drowned in butter. She didn’t know whether she ought to be getting fat or thin from what she ate.

  Men somehow surfaced; there were adventures. When a younger man picked her up on the train when she was coming out from New York, she had to be flattered. He worked in the city but she was never certain doing what. He spent a lot of time fishing and brought lobsters to her house to cook. She always thought of him as “the lobster man”; he called her “doll.” In her living room, the first time he visited, he suddenly stripped to show her what he liked to use, a cock ring. It was black and ugly and made her think he might pull out a black whip. He explained the cock ring stopped blood flowing to his veins. “Women like it,” he said. She got up and drew the living room blinds. He told her where she might buy a “little leather outfit.” He wanted her to try another favorite of women, cutting a condom off and rolling it and fitting it snugly around the base of his cock. She told him their relationship was going to be to eat lobsters. She was tired of going to bed with men in whom she had no interest, though his ideas were intriguing.

  During her middle-aged singles years, she fulfilled what was supposedly her hidden Southern desire. She went to bed with a black man. He taught a Black History course she took during her Master’s. In bed one afternoon, he wanted to know if she thought about his being black. Her only different reaction to him had been surprise at how dark his organ was. She could tell him truthfully, “No.” However, she said, “Just don’t tell my daddy.” The professor thought about her whiteness, he said. He was from the South, and they had a rapport. He went away on business and called her from Chicago.

  “You in nigger heaven,” she said.

  “Have you been thinking of me?”

  To flatter his male ego, she must say, “Yes.”

  “What did you think?”

  She sought something to say. “That I like to kiss you.”

  “That’s all? What else?”

  She was not cut out for this kind of thing, Laurel realized. “That I like your penis.” This would be what a man wanted to hear.

  “Penis. That’s what you call it?”

  “When I call it anything,” she said. She had trouble saying that word; she had wanted to call it “your thing.” “What do you call it?”

  “My dick.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “What do you like about it?”

  “It’s big.” She went on giving required answers.

  “It’s nine inches. Six inches is average.”

  “I wasn’t aware of that statistic.”

  “I’ve got a surprise for you when I see you next.”

  She was sorry never to have experienced the girl he was going to bring along. Before that time could take place, she had moved to Delton.

  By the time she returned home from jogging on the beach, she decided her life would come down to Chris and a few other men who took her out to dinner or whom she cooked for. She would continue with the singles group that went to the Hartford Symphony, despite the dreary cheese and wine gatherings afterward. She had joined PEN: Poets, Essayists, and Novelists. She did not know why she hadn’t joined years before. She could volunteer for a committee. Despite their gatherings being downtown in Manhattan at night, she would keep going. No matter that she had gone in to readings and turned around and come directly back to Connecticut never having said a word to anyone, because she did not know how to start up conversations at such a gathering where she knew no one. She would never recover from all that had happened to her. She went off with a singles cross-country skiing group and got frostbitten. Her toes were never going to be the same. She rubbed them, taking off her jogging shoes. The day, while exhilarating, had been frightening. She had never been cross-country skiing in her life and took off with the group on a five-mile tour. When she went back to her car, she could not open the door, her fingers were so stiff. Her toes were frozen in her boots. She stood helplessly off in New York State. Suppose something devastating happened requiring medical attention. Family to call? There was no one but her mother. She was no one to any of the other people, already in their cars and driving away through a frozen afternoon. A long while she stood trying to unlock her car, finding herself in a parking lot alone, until she could move her fingers.

  Driving alone again through nighttime suburban streets, Laurel told herself this was the last new event. She had found out about Adult Children of Alcoholics by running a finger down the alphabetical list of clubs in the biweekly Soundport paper. Not only singles seemed to be looking for companionship. Beekeepers. Computer lovers. Gravestone lovers. Whatever got you through the night, she supposed. Jim Beam bottle collectors. Rabbits. Whales. And she went back to point A.

  She supposed she was going to be late because she really did not want to go. She went around through Soundport’s dark but familiar streets and on to a neighboring town, to a Catholic church. There was always something so hushed and holy about them, she dreaded entering. But the church itself was dark. There were lights in a basement room, and she could see people sitting in rows of chairs. Another entrance; another room full of strangers. She might have been less conspicuous had she arrived on time; at the door, she wavered and finally went in.

  “Come in.”

  A priest stopped speaking and nodded.

  A woman patted an empty seat in a circle of chairs, and she sat down. She thought of an old child’s game in kindergarten where she skipped around a circle of chairs to the teacher’s playing of a yellowed piano. A chair was removed, and when the music stopped, there was a scramble for the chairs remaining. Someone had to be left out. She remembered standing there with nowhere to sit, feeling personally rejected. She was never able to scramble for a seat, being an only child and not used to fighting for something. She remembered how in her own house she had shrunk from Doreen.

  “A child in an alcoholic environment grows up with a sense of rescuing,” the priest had continued. “Technical rescuing, it’s called. In such homes children take responsibility for the drinking. They grow up with a poor self-image. I am not worth love, a child thinks. I must merit it. In such families, the children take on varying roles. There is the lost child. There is the rescuer who is the hero. There is the wit, the entertaining one. There is the nurturer.” The priest stopped and smiled. “That’s why you find
among Irish Catholic families so many children become nuns and priests.”

  “Suppose you were an only child?”

  Laurel was surprised by her daring. But in three years as a single, she had come out of herself. She had to, facing classrooms of students, facing strangers.

  “Then you played all the roles,” the priest said.

  Among other people in the room, there were sighs or soft muttered comments. “I always tried to make my parents happy,” a woman said.

  “Tried,” the priest said. “But we can’t make anyone happy but ourselves.”

  Yes, she had been silent trying never to be trouble, Laurel thought; wouldn’t she then be loved? Often she did assume blame for her parents’ bitterness and their quarreling. All along their lives had been their own. Never to share feelings meant looking elsewhere for things to be better. She had gone about seeking love, escaping even to Mama, who wrote lovely letters before Hal was out of prison, and who she thought would be a mother unlike her own. I went over the rainbow, Laurel thought, but never got back home like Dorothy, though I tried and tried.

  “There is a wall of isolation in alcoholic families,” the priest was saying. “It’s difficult to break the conspiracy of silence that goes on. No one must know what is happening inside the walls of the house. The inhabitants don’t talk about it to one another.”

  A woman spoke in tears. “I was always so afraid to bring friends home. I never knew when my mother would be lying out on the floor drunk.”

  “I was always trying to figure out what normal was.” A man looked inward. “It led to a lot of erratic behavior in my life, to a lot of moving.”