Carrying a manuscript that had burst the clasp on its manila envelope, and a bag containing a leaky carton of milk, Frances put her key in the lock of Madeline’s front door and tried to turn it without making any noise. Inside the door she stood very still and sent out radar. The kitchen was empty and the doors to the garden were closed. There was no handbag on the table in the vestibule, but the door on the parlor-floor landing was halfway open. Frances started to climb the steps, keeping close to the wall because the sections next to the railing were apt to creak. She walked in a zigzag course across the landing; she knew the strengths and weaknesses of every floorboard. She reached the second floor, which was Madeline’s quarters, her bedroom, dressing room, bath, and little study. Each door was shut and each room was an ambush from which Frances could be snared and then detained for hours. From behind a door would come that honeyed hoot, and Madeline would emerge with breathy, pressing business: the menu for an after-theatre supper; a plan for storing her mother’s English china (green tags for Derby, red for Bow, and blue for Worcester). Did Frances want the maid to do her room? Would she like some ivy cuttings from the garden? The florist was coming, or the seamstress, or the cleaner, or the man in the funny top hat who swept the chimneys. Madeline had an appointment. Would Frances answer the doorbell? And make sure to show them out and bolt the door? Madeline was very busy, busier than Frances, who plodded to work at nine, then home at six. Frances had heard her express a wistful kind of envy: “How I wish I could take a lovely steady job; it would be heaven just to relax and follow orders!” Madeline handled more crises than a forest ranger in a drought, or maybe her description of small events was hyperbolic. Her natural style was the opposite of terse and factual: “I was up till nearly dawn with my accountant.” “The windowsills are covered with a foot of filth.” There was a good deal of make-work in Madeline’s schedule. There was even more make-others-work. She lived by an unswerving private maxim: The simpler the task, the more hands are needed to perform it. Frances had often seen Madeline marching through the house followed by a train of minions and recruits—the maid, a neighbor’s child, the window washer (anyone within her beck and call)—on her way to put new fuses in the fuse box, or to attach the sprinkler to the garden hose. Frances had brought up the rear in many of these processions, and had observed that the time required to finish a given task increased in proportion to the number of helpers who had been enlisted.
Frances reached the third floor without surprise or incident. It was safe to assume there was nobody in the house. The third floor, which contained two empty guest rooms, lay like a moat or trench between Frances’s castle and the rest of Madeline’s household—a dry moat and shallow trench, however, easy to ford and attractive to invaders. Madeline thought nothing of climbing two or three flights to have her dress zipped, or to ask Frances to open a jar with a stubborn lid. Her female guests had quickly picked up Madeline’s habit. They saw Frances’s apartment as an all-night drugstore or notions counter, where they could get aspirins, hand lotion, needles and thread, or buttons.
As she passed the open door of the second bedroom, Frances saw an object lying on the floor. There was a lot of Mrs. Tittlemouse in Frances, who picked threads off the carpet in the lobbies of grand hotels. She seized the object and held it up between thumb and forefinger. It was a necktie, which implied the presence of a man. If he had removed his tie, what else had he taken off? Was he still lurking, Pan-like, behind the full-length curtains? Frances inspected their hems; she saw no naked feet. The necktie was narrow and its label read Big Guy Menswear. Did Madeline have a blue-collar lover, and a large one at that? Would he leave sweat stains on her eyelet baby pillows and pick his teeth with the pasteboard corners of her monogrammed matchbooks? Would he break her spirit and make away with her unearned money? Would she lock herself in her room when he finally jilted her, leaving Frances to come and go in perfect freedom? At the thought of Madeline silent and invisible, Frances ran up the last flight of stairs with a gleeful heart.
Frances Girard kept a diary in a schoolchild’s copybook. The diary lived in the drawer of her bedside table. It was entirely covered by a red bandanna folded to overlap the edges of the book by half an inch. On top of the red one was a blue bandanna, folded smaller, and on top of that a pile of paper tissues. The drawer also contained a jar of camphor chest rub, a nasal inhaler, a box of menthol cough drops, and a stick of salve for cracked or chapping lips. Anyone who opened the drawer would conclude that she had a cold, or was preparing for one, and would probably search no further.
Frances used her diary for the sake of mental hygiene, to record bad feelings and to leech them off, or to rewrite a dialogue in which she had been worsted, so that trenchant retorts, undelivered because of cowardice, would not reverberate in her mind for weeks on end. After a day that had contained a two-hour session with Panda, a telephone call from Madeline during a sales meeting, and lunch with Edie, who gave her a list of real-estate agents, Frances felt a need for the fellowship of her diary, which asked no favors and liked her the way she was. She sharpened a pencil and opened the drawer, then drew it wider. She pulled out the drawer and put it on the bed. The tissues on top of the kerchiefs on top of the copybook were crumpled and piled up too far to the left. The lip salve was upside down, the cough drops were spilled, and the inhaler had rolled underneath the red bandanna. She prayed to St. Francis de Sales, who protected editors, that Madeline was not the snooper and tissue-crumpler. But who among her nearest or dearest was a better candidate? Was there anything nice about anybody in her diary? It was a wonder the notebook was not parched or charred from the venom and bile that Frances had spilled on its pages. If she wanted to do an analysis by the numbers, she would have counted more stones thrown at women than at men. Like the scholar who tallied the negative adjectives in Moby Dick and proved that Melville was a pessimistic author, Frances could have added up the carping references to her sisters and been forced to infer that she did not love her sex. Heading the list of female traits, and most repeated, were “slippery,” “controlling,” “erratic,” and “underhanded,” followed by “sidewinding,” “needy,” “entitled,” and “unconscious.” If women were slandered, so was their brand of friendship. April 17, 1970: “I wish that my ears came off; then I could hand one to Sloan and get on with my business.” (Sloan Paddock had gone to work in San Francisco, but her rambling letters brought her back alive: “I am growing within as a woman … my energy is good … I feel centered when I’m wearing yellow … P.S. How are you?”) August 4, 1971: “I am a slop pail for unsolved problems. Or a coin machine. They put in their nickels and I say the right soothing things.” January 31, 1972: “What can you expect of a sex with a hole in the center? Marla the astrologer told Panda that the feminine side was drowning in itself in her chart. Women are like stagnant pond life. The symbols for women are wet or dark or blind. I will never EVER ‘keep track’ of my period. (Panda circles the Date of Onset in red pencil.)” February 4, 1972: “Girls are deeply wormy but I do not worship boys. HOWEVER: boys do not serve up their troubles to chance acquaintances.”
The snooper, if there was a snooper, might have been appeased by the fact that Frances disliked her baneful thoughts. March 26, 1972: “Speaking of worm life, who is the lowliest worm? I don’t have to live on my belly. I could try standing on my hind legs.” April 28th: “I get stepped on because I lie down in their path. Something about the worm attracts the foot.” May 3rd: “Female friendship is like the Tunnel of Love in the amusement park. Creepy spidery wisps reach out suddenly and brush your face. Well, I was the one who picked them. Or did they pick me? It doesn’t matter, since I haven’t bolted. I’ve just stayed picked.”
Frances lifted the drawer and slid it back into the table. She remembered that her cover was blown and opened it again. She pulled out the diary and looked around the room. Should she hide it under the mattress or behind the bookshelves? Should she drop it in the garbage with the eggshells and empty bottles? Instead she
decided to leave it on her desk, not only in plain sight but lying open, with a sharpened pencil protruding from the binding, ready to write the latest entry, May 13th.
Before she could exult in the rashness of her action, Frances heard a little scratching at the door, and a tiny, high-pitched sound, a mouselike bleat. Perhaps there was an animal in the corridor. She hoped it was not hurt enough to bite her. She opened the door and stepped back in surprise. It was two-footed, although it slumped and drooped, and tucked its tiny head against its shoulder. It resembled a wounded bird blown down the chimney, but it wore a robe tied slackly at the waist. “Frances,” said Madeline. “Will you rub my feet?” Frances wondered if she should guide her by the elbow, but Madeline tottered toward the bedroom chair, sank back in a kind of swoon against the cushions, and raised her legs to rest upon the hassock. What Madeline was this, so altered and transported? Where was her jaunty stride, her bold halloo? This waif with the starving eyes was like her shadow, or the ghost of a Madeline called to an early grave. She needed a blood transfusion, not a foot rub. She needed a dish of spinach and raw liver. Frances watched her like an anthropologist who is new to fieldwork. Frances was a serious student of feminine wiles. She suspected that she might be in the presence of a little-known, uncatalogued example. She sat down on the far end of the hassock and hoisted Madeline’s dainty hooves onto her lap. “You look awfully funny, Madeline. Are you sick?”
“Oh, please,” said Madeline. “Can’t you rub with lotion?”
Frances got up to do as she was bidden, dropping Madeline’s feet instead of easing them aside. She went into the bathroom and returned, carrying a hand towel and a bottle of Almond Balm. She spread the towel across her lap and went to work. “Not the tips of the toes,” said Madeline. “My nose stuffs up.” Frances began to rub firmly, both feet at a time, first the spots on the balls of the feet that correspond to the throat, eyes, back of the head, ears, lungs, and shoulders. She massaged the insides of the feet, which relate to the spine; then the centers of the feet, which soothes the larger organs; and, last, the edge of the heels, to relax the thighs. Madeline folded her arms across her chest like a corpse in a coffin, but she made little signs of life, chirps, sighs, and mews, sounds the rubbee makes to urge the rubber on in case she is tiring and feels inclined to quit.
“I am not such an evil person,” Frances was thinking as she creamed and rubbed, stroked, kneaded, pressed, and chafed. “I may be a worm but I’m not a grudging worm. Rubbing Madeline’s feet is a purely generous action. I am not deterred by grime nor scurf nor bunions, nor baby toes so small they look deformed. I do not have to love the owner of these feet, nor any other feet I have in hand. I do not want compensation for my rubbing. I do not want to borrow Madeline’s ermine coat. I do not expect to be rubbed in return. I should know by now they never do rub back.”
Always a rubber, that was Frances’s lot: always a rubber, never a rubbee. Legions of feet had passed between her palms, mostly female feet; men’s feet were tense and ticklish. She had found a Zone Therapy chart in the college bookstore. She practiced on her roommate and then on the girls next door. Her rubs became famous. The word spread from house to house. In the living room (when the housemother was not looking), girls would draw up their chairs and plop their feet into her lap. Some of these feet were savory and some were nasty; many were stockinged, but most of them were naked. Shapely feet waited their turn along with calloused.
Frances liked rubbing as well as any hobby. It gave her a role to play in that small community, like head of the dorm, or fire chief, or editor of the Yearbook Rubbing feet gave her a protective cover; if everyone knew what she did, they would not try to guess who she was. No one asked her personal questions while she was rubbing; no one found out the names of her beaus, or what her grades were. She did not have to own her failures or disclaim her triumphs. As long as she rubbed, she was sure to be left alone.
She was left alone, but she had no time for herself. No one wanted her soul, but they did want the use of her hands. Frances was very busy. She posted her office hours on her dormitory door. Every evening the line of clients stretched down the hallway. Frances would not take payment for her service, although some girls had offered her serious sums of cash. In an effort to reward her, her clients made excessive claims. Jeanne-Marie, who came from Lyons, said the rubs cured her liver; Teresa, from Nicaragua, swore the rubs helped her sleep. Patty (“Keller”) O’Malley passed the word that she had thrown away her glasses. Frances was besieged. Her room, or wherever she sat, became Lourdes or Loreto, though no carvings of miniature limbs were hung over her door. Roxy Grainger, who was failing Czarist Russia, tracked Frances to her cubicle in the stacks and begged her to rub the point that improved the memory. Annah Lehr woke Frances at 4 a.m. imploring, “Where is the point to fix a broken heart?”
Two squirming feet roused Frances from reflection, reminding her that she had been neglectful.
“Do the heart point, Frances,” said Madeline, in a whisper. “What’s wrong with your heart?” asked Frances. “Do you need a doctor?”
“I should call a surgeon. I need my heart cut out.”
Frances narrowed her eyes and rubbed the pituitary point. She knew from experience that this point made Madeline jump.
“I get it. I’m slow tonight. You mean heart as in Cupid.”
“It’s not nice to laugh at me, Frances. I’m losing blood.”
Frances eyed Madeline closely. Her chin was trembling. Her porcelain teeth were biting her lower lip. What was happening, anguish or bad theatre? With Madeline, it was difficult to tell. Perhaps she was priming Frances to run romantic errands, which would be more fun than watering Madeline’s plants.
“Who’s draining your blood?” asked Frances, priming back.
“He’s famous,” said Madeline. “You’d recognize his name.”
“Just give me a hint. U Thant? Truman Capote?”
“Swear you won’t tell. Could you rub the Achilles tendon?”
“Who would I tell? Is he married?”
“He lives with someone.”
Frances was overjoyed. She had struck oil. She rubbed very fast so the gush would not dry up.
“Don’t tickle,” said Madeline. “She’s an actress in his company.”
“What company?” Frances asked. “The People’s Mime Troupe? The Performing Drugstore? The Theatre In Your Head?”
“Did you see Peer Gynt on stilts at Hadley Airport?”
“Paul Treat!” said Frances. “I didn’t see Peer Gynt. But I saw As You Like It with seals in Central Park.”
“He keeps me waiting,” said Madeline. Her feet were rigid. “He says he’ll come and then he doesn’t call. Sometimes he calls and then he doesn’t come.”
Frances cast a wary glance at Madeline. Her eyes were glazed and her voice had no inflection. If she were the heroine of a science-fiction movie, there would be a pea pod from outer space down in the basement sucking her will and making her a zombie. In his newspaper photos Paul Treat looked large and human, but perhaps all directors were kin to zombie-masters.
Madeline made a weak attempt to rise. Holding Frances’s arm, she wobbled to her feet. She could stand by herself, but she could not stand up straight. Love, or infatuation, had cracked her backbone, which had been bent through the years by access to a trust fund.
“Go get some sleep,” said Frances. “Take an aspirin.”
Madeline heard nothing but the sound of her own thoughts. “I put money in his play. You’d think he’d be on time.”
“Maybe he’s a cad and a rotter,” offered Frances.
“I bought ten shares. I should have taken fifty.”
Madeline shuffled out the door and down the staircase, looking feebler than she had when she came in. Frances decided this case had been one of her failures. Unrequited love cannot be cured by foot rubs.
Frances woke up next morning feeling poorly. She sneezed a volley of sneezes and started coughing. She got halfway out of bed, th
en fell back down. Her limbs did not want the job of standing upright. Sometimes during a rub, if she did not keep her guard up, poisons passed through the rubbee’s feet into her system, afflicting her with a kind of shadow illness. If that were the fact, then Madeline had waked up perky, leaving noble dog Frances riddled with her symptoms. Even now, as Frances tossed on her bed of pain, Madeline would be giving orders and writing checks. Perhaps she would pension off Paul Treat’s actress and usurp her place, or bribe Paul Treat to come and live with her. A man in the house might share some of Frances’s duties. Men were better at swiping cobwebs in high corners, moving heavy furniture, and coiling garden hoses. Unfortunately, men were apt to draw the line at rubbing feet and running household errands.
When had she turned from a tenant into a houseguest? When had she decided she was under obligation to straighten the bedspread on the way past Madeline’s bedroom, or clean spots off the entrance-hall tiles with a moistened tissue? Or to barrel down two flights of stairs when she heard the telephone, so that Madeline would not miss a vital message? Was it kindness or fear that prompted these secret favors? Was Frances atoning for her own bad nature? Or for the fact that she had no sympathy for Madeline? “I don’t like her,” thought Frances. “I have to leave her house. I will find a little box in a boxlike building, with a door that locks, and a chain, and a one-way peephole.”
At ten o’clock Frances ventured out of bed. She had slept off Madeline’s glooms and got up hungry. She called Ruthanne to say she would be absent, then put on a robe and went into the kitchen. There were three sprouting onions and a jar of chutney in the icebox. The cupboards were crowded with items like beans and macaroni. Frances marched to the head of the stairs and cocked her ears. She listened long enough to make sure the house was empty. Egged on by her newfound spirit of rebellion, she set off to make a raid on Madeline’s larder.
Group Sex Page 2
