“Years. As I said.”
“How come? Your Lover unaffectionate? The strong silent type?”
He’s really prying under the joking surface. Wants to know what the competition is. Would he be happier having some or not having some? Having some. Less responsibility.
“I’ve been celibate. For several years.”
He put down his cup and stared at her. “Why? In the name of heaven, why?”
She laughed. “You know, the new American sin is nonsexuality, even though we haven’t yet got rid of the old one, which is sexuality.”
“I’m serious, Lorie.”
Lorie?
“Well, I don’t know exactly. I had a bad time with a man I was madly in love with. Or thought I was madly in love with. I guess I was a little raw afterwards, for quite a while.
“And just about then I began work on my second book, which was about images of women in Renaissance literature, and the moral and political meaning of those images. I was very caught up in it and I kept getting angry. Angrier and angrier at what had been done to women. And besides, the book took up all my time—all the time I wasn’t spending teaching, taking care of my kids, who were teenagers then, taking care of the house, cleaning, cooking … you know. I didn’t really have time for anything else. I just drifted into celibacy.”
“And never came out.” He acted incredulous.
She shrugged.
“He must have been something, that guy.”
She looked at him. Damn, if he isn’t like all the rest after all.
“It wasn’t just Marsh. You’re married, you don’t realize what it’s like to be a single woman with children. You have a wife to take care of all your needs, to take care of your children. When you’re busy with a project, you don’t have to spend time and energy with your wife. You know she’ll understand. I had to do all of that by myself. And I had only so much time and energy.”
“Yes. But to turn you off in the first place. And so strongly that even though your kids are grown you haven’t …”
I do not seek consolation in yet another pair of male arms, is that what distresses you? And when did I ever find it there?
“You know,” she turned to him smiling, intending to be light, to joke, “you really want to believe that Marsh hurt me terribly. It pleases you to think that. I’ve never understood that, how men love to hear tales of women’s abuse by other men. Especially if they can imagine the woman crying, bruised, beat up. I’ve never been able to figure that.” She could hear the irritation in her voice, but she couldn’t control it. “I don’t know if they like to hear terrible stories because that is the only way they can feel good about themselves, comparatively, or whether imagining a woman pushed around titillates them.”
“Women are the same way,” he said defensively. “They love to hear that another woman has treated a man badly. They ooze sympathy; they coo and ooh. They stand with open arms.” His face was tight and he was staring at her.
Her back got very stiff.
“And women really enjoy hearing a man criticize another woman. They really draw you out if you do that. Really, they say, she doesn’t? Oh! Really? You poor dear. And the suggestion is ever so subtle, or maybe not subtle at all, that they have exactly what the other doesn’t have to offer.”
“Well, not me!” She threw her napkin down on the table. “And I’m not going to sit here and listen to you malign women!”
“What is it around here, you can’t say anything about women, even if it’s true?”
“You can’t say anything about women because you don’t know anything about them!”
“Well, it seems to me you started this. And you said you didn’t understand men.”
“I don’t understand male insanity. But I know men. And you don’t know women.”
He leaned back in his chair, his face very composed, his voice very controlled. She imagined this would be how he’d look at a business meeting, in an argument. He’d never raise his voice, he’d never sound really angry.
“I would suspect that my experience with women has been about equal to yours with men.”
“I doubt it. Men tell women things, personal things. And so do other women. And women don’t tell men everything.”
“So no man can know either men or women as well as any woman?”
“No man knows either men or women as well as I do.”
He pushed back his chair. “You are saying you are an infallible authority and my experience is simply invalid?”
Yes. That’s what I’m saying. Just as men say about hundreds of things to women.
They stared at each other. The air was cold between them. She pondered. Logically, he was right. But there was something wrong with logic, something wrong with comparing the behavior of men and women. As if they were equals. So often she got into arguments like this. What was it that was wrong with his reasoning?
“I guess you’re right,” she said, coolly. He did not relax. He was looking at her from a distance. Well, so much for that. I’ve driven him away. Well, it wasn’t supposed to be more than a casual screw anyway, was it? And if that little disagreement is enough to send him reeling off, good riddance.
But her voice was a little thick. “It’s just that I have a thing,” she said. He leaned forward. “I can’t abide to hear men criticize women. I can’t stand it. Oh, if you were to say, ‘Alice does this, Betty does that, and I don’t like it’: I’d be able to accept that. Not that I wouldn’t be sympathetic to Alice and Betty. But I could accept your saying that. But I can’t tolerate men making sweeping statements about women: Women do this, Women do that. Which men constantly do.”
He smiled at her, shaking his head. “Do you hear yourself?”
“I hear myself.” She turned away from him, and her face was a little wrenched, her mouth was trembling. “I can’t help it. It’s rooted in conviction.” She turned back to him. “I suffer from deformation of character. It’s a result of my past. I lost a fin in the war and now I swim at a list.”
He was watching her intently. He reached across the table and took her hand, gently. “I think you swim just fine. And I’m sorry, not for pointing out your logical error,” he smiled broadly, “but for defending men by attacking women. Cheap shot.”
Her face softened.
“Truce?”
She nodded.
“I’d say armistice,” he added, rising to clear the table, “except I suspect it ain’t one.”
3
AFTER ALL HER PANIC, her long-standing fear of being encroached upon, invaded, crowded, imposed upon, she could not bear it when he dressed to leave.
“Stay!, stay!” she urged. Thinking she would take half her clothes out of the tiny closet and store them in a suitcase under the bed. Thinking she would have to buy a few more glasses, perhaps some cups. Wondering how she could make room for his things in the small bathroom and deciding to buy a cardboard dresser and jam it between the sink and the tub. They’d have to buy him a bike, so the two of them could ride together on fine days.
“I can’t. There’s a room booked for me at the Randolph, there are people expecting me, probably messages. And I have an appointment early in the morning.”
You could go and check in at the Randolph, get your messages, and come back here and spend the night with me. We could set the alarm to wake us up early tomorrow morning.
No. I won’t say it. I won’t beg. He could do it if he wanted to, he’d see it if he wanted to see it. The hell with him. He wants to go? Go!
He walked from bedroom to bath, dressing, combing his hair, finding his watch and his wallet under the bed where they’d tumbled. He was all business. She might as well not have been there. She could tell that he would just as soon she weren’t there because he didn’t need her now, didn’t want her now. And he’d just as soon also not have to worry about her clinging or sulking at his departure. So, he dismissed her, although not in words. He blanked her out.
I will not say: When will I see you again? No, I will
not say it. The hell with him.
She stood in the kitchen looking at the greasy frying pan, bacon fat solidified in it. The air in the small room was smoky and bacony, and she opened the window. It was chilly out, but she put her head out a little and breathed the fresh cold air. She gazed at the slate roofs, shiny in moonlight, the old chimney pots, black and homey against the blue-grey sky. She was holding her mouth severely together.
He came up behind her and put a light hand on her shoulder. “I have to go.”
She turned around. He kissed her lightly on the cheek. Her body was stiff, her lips tight. He did not seem to notice. He pulled a card out of a leather case—a business card!—and wrote Randolph Hotel on the back and laid it on the table.
“I don’t know the number there, but I’m sure it’s in the book. You can reach me there if you need me.”
Does he think I’m an idiot and can’t remember the Randolph?
He went out into the hall. She stood in the kitchen, arms crossed, rubbing her hands on her forearms. After a few minutes, he reappeared with his suitcase, wearing his raincoat. He was energetic, brisk. He seemed quite happy.
“I’ll call you,” he said, and kissed her forehead. “Don’t bother to come down. I’ll make sure the downstairs door is locked.” And left the kitchen and went out into the hall and opened her front door and went through it without looking back.
Look not behind thee, lest thou be consumed.
And the upstairs door closed behind him and she could hear his footsteps on the stairs and then the bang of the front door of the house.
She stood in the kitchen.
Then she charged out into the hall. She pulled open the upper front door and slammed it again, slammed it so hard the dishes on the kitchen shelves rattled. Then she locked it. Came back in and turned the radio up to full volume. Lucky thing Mary wasn’t home.
She looked around the kitchen at the dirty dishes on the table, dirty pans on the stove, coffeepot still half full. She lunged at the table and swept off an armful of dishes, hurling them to the floor.
“Damn! Damn! Goddamn!” she screamed, but what came out was only a whisper.
4
DOLORES WAS DOWN ON her knees wiping up tiny shards of glass the broom wouldn’t catch, bits of egg, cold coffee, and cursing with every breath: Damn him, the fucker!
Can’t even get angry if you’re a woman because you always have to clean up your own mess. Damned fucker! She’d have to buy some new dishes tomorrow, an expense she hadn’t budgeted. The flat had been only sparsely provided, and Mary Jenkins would miss what was broken. Women always end up paying.
She threw—not hard enough to break them—the dishes that had remained whole into the hot soapy water in the sink, along with the skillet. She scrubbed until her hands were red and swollen and rinsed with boiling water. She heated the fat in the bacon pan and poured it off carefully, this being one thing she didn’t want to happen, a fat burn, yes….Then she scrubbed the skillet, which was still hot and burned her middle finger slightly. But she paid no attention to that.
She stormed into the bedroom ripped the sheets off the bed, and remade it with clean sheets. She stuffed the used linen into the hamper, pounding it down as if she would crush it to ashes. Finally, she ran a bath and got in it and sat there and it was then she let tears come into her eyes, but as always, they came and stood for a moment, and then went back where they came from.
When will you learn? Will you ever learn? You were fine as you were, you were perfectly happy. Happy ever after. You let him in, you opened the door, you stupid! How could you let yourself forget that they never fail to hurt you? All women, they do it to all women. How could you let yourself fall again into the delusion that you can live in any kind of peace with a man? How could you forget that men are fuckers in all senses of the word?
Life was peaceful, no tumult. I didn’t have a bleeding heart. “Dolores, honey, don’t be a damned bleeding heart! Can’t you see that Stevenson is a weak-kneed shillyshallyer? We need someone tough, someone who knows how to win.” “Win what, Anthony?” “Stevenson’s an ass, Dolores.” “And you’re full of shit, Anthony.”
But he wasn’t, about her, anyway. A bleeding heart, that’s what she was, although not the way he meant it. Maybe the way he meant it too. But, God, what could you do? If you were one, you were one. Your only alternative was to avoid situations that would draw the blood.
“You can reach me there if you need me.” Indeed! The way men assuage their guilt. They abandon you, but leave a phone number. What on earth could she need him for? To wash the dishes? To make the bed? No, it was in case you find yourself pregnant. Better find it out hurryupquick, baby, he may leave town tomorrow.
Was there a London phone number on that card?
Probably. She hadn’t even glanced at it when she ripped it up and threw it out. Well, anyway. He hadn’t even told her how long he was staying, hadn’t asked how long she was. Just: I’ll call you. Oh, he probably will call if he’s here for a few days. He’ll call late at night, a little high after a rousing time with the boys at dinner, finding himself suddenly alone and not sleepy in his dull hotel room. Men can’t stand to be alone. He’ll want to come over for a quickie. Not because he’s so horny: at his age he isn’t. No, just because he gets the heebie-jeebies being alone in bed, alone in the dark. He’ll come over and talk for a little while over a drink, rush us into bed, and leap up and pull his pants back on and rush back to the hotel to fall asleep quickly, before the relaxation wears off.
Damn.
Acting so emotional. Acting, talking even, as if it mattered! As if I mattered, we mattered. Why did he have to do that? I would have accepted it the other way, but no, he had to say things, act ways to make me think to make me feel to seduce not just my body but my feelings and why? Just so he could make me feel rotten afterwards, having led me to think it might matter, it might be something more than the usual casual screw. Oh god I hate men.
She got out of the tub and scrubbed it hard, then tied her hair back and put her robe on. It was chilly in the apartment, but she walked barefoot, not caring if she was cold, walked barefoot into the kitchen, not caring if she stepped on a sliver of glass. She hated herself even more than she hated him. She poured some jug wine into a chipped goblet, found her eyeglasses, went into the sitting room and opened her briefcase, spreading more papers on the round table.
The hell with him.
She began to code the notes she’d taken the past two days at the British Museum. But her mind wouldn’t work, it fought her. After an hour, she sighed, closed her file, righted a cigar, and moved herself with her wine to a comfortable chair.
What was it with men, that they could switch feeling off and on? As if they had separate selves, pieces not essentially connected to each other except by the fact that they inhabited the same body. One was full of desire and tenderness; it was vulnerable, needy, wanting. Another full of rage, vented at the slightest provocation. And another that was dressed in shirt, suit, and tie, and sometimes even a vest, crisp and ready for action. Body and mind in uniform.
They have compartments for things. Work. Buddies. Women. Sports. And they could act different in each room.
Whereas she had only one room. She was the same whatever she did. She was popular with students because she was a person with them, not a disembodied “teacher,” an Authority. Her books had been called humane, which in her field, and because she was a woman, meant that they were taken less seriously than books one could never suspect of harboring such a quality. Oh, if she’d had a class to go to, an appointment, she’d have left, of course. But first she would have hedged him round with embraces, assurances of love, of her sorrow at leaving him, of her guilt….
That was it, damn it.
No, it wasn’t. It went beyond guilt. It came from thinking about others, not all the time or before herself, but thinking of them at all. Which was what men never did. She would have known, let herself know, that it hurts to be left un
der any circumstances, and would have reassured him of her return, complete with time and place down to the minute. And the whole time she was away, she’d have been anxious that she might be late returning to him at the time she had set. She’d rush back to the apartment. And he wouldn’t be there. Not himself worrying much about deadlines, he would not expect her to keep hers. He might even have forgotten what she had said. He’d be gone for a stroll in the park, to pick up some milk, having a beer with a neighbor.
She put down her cigar. It was a rotten way to be, the way she was.
And what can you do about that?
She picked up the cigar again and puffed furiously. Well, maybe it wasn’t such a great way to be, but at least it was a kind way to be. There was no excuse at all for the way he was, turning himself off as if he were an electric light. Acting as if he didn’t even know her, as if she were a prostitute and he’d paid the bill.
Was it true that love was the core of women’s lives and not of men’s? It wasn’t the core of hers, hadn’t been for years and years. Yes, but the moment she did let herself feel even a little she was back in the same old morass. Men did things so that they protected themselves; women did things so that they protected others. It was grossly unfair, but all she had to do was stop doing it
But I don’t know how. Besides, I’m not sure I want to. What I want is for men to be like women.
Yes. Years ago—before I was celibate? Probably—Bruce Watler. An MLA meeting it was. So attractive, vibrant and dark, wrongheaded of course, but wonderfully so. We’d met before, we were on a panel at Perm. Intelligent. Sensitive. Didn’t bother with academic nit-picking. Listed on the program as giving a paper on Elizabethan pastoral, a subject she was interested in, so she went to hear him.
Good paper, not pedantic: it showed feeling as well as thought. And she rather loved him for it: the prodigal son is always loved more than the dutiful daughter. She loved him, she was grateful to him because he was a man and sensitive. Whereas she would simply have expected sensitivity of a woman—not that one always got it. So she overlooked his receding hairline, his thick middle, his very large front teeth, and concentrated on his graceful hands, the elegance of his facial expressions, and the sensitivity of his gestures and vocabulary. She was seduced, finally, by his intelligence, which wasn’t the brilliant firework variety bright men usually have, but a wholeness, an integration of feeling and thought. She sat through his paper and the deadly others in the hot smoky Hilton seminar room, and afterwards, she went up to say hello and compliment him on the paper. Her admiration no doubt showed as she praised him. In any case, she was not surprised when he asked her to have a drink with him later, at five, in the lounge in the lobby.