‘Good Christ, the way everybody has them! Accidents, my three little accidents. Christ. What a life.’ She stood up and poured another drink. ‘Actually, I liked them when they were babies. I love babies. You can carry them around and coo at them and they’re warm and helpless and they love you so much. But when they grow up! My mother is the same way. I can’t stand it when they start to talk back, be fresh, all that shit. My mother is the same way.’
‘I certainly don’t feel that way. I like my children better as they get older. They’re more interesting,’ Mira said primly.
Natalie shrugged. ‘Good. Good for you. I don’t happen to feel that way.’
Mira’s mouth began to purse nervously. ‘Well, what do they have to do with not leaving Hamp?’
The tears spilled over onto Natalie’s large cheeks. ‘Oh, God, Mira, what would he do if I left him? He’s helpless; do you know I have to tell him to change his underwear, I have to draw his bathwater? He’s so smart, God, he’s smart – you ought to know, Mira, you’ve talked to him a lot at the parties he really has a good mind, and does he do anything with it? He sits in that damned chair and watches TV. If I left him, he wouldn’t have a job, he wouldn’t have anything.’
Mira was silent.
‘He wouldn’t know when to blow his nose!’ Nat burst out again.
‘You love him,’ Mira said.
‘Love, love,’ Natalie mocked. ‘What is it? Years ago, before the kids were born, we were happy.’ Her voice changed: it went higher and thinner, it sounded like a child’s voice. ‘We used to play. He’d come home and find some dust on something, and he’d spank me. Not hard, you know. He’d pull down my pants and put me over his knee and spank me, real hard, it would hurt. And I’d yell and cry.’ She was smiling. Mira’s face was horrified. ‘He was my daddy and I had to do what he wanted. I was so happy then, so excited all the time. I’d run around all day doing things to please him. I loved doing them. I’d buy all the things he liked to eat and records he liked to hear and I’d buy these real sexy nightgowns, and I’d always have a pitcher of orange blossoms waiting – unless I wanted a spanking.’ She giggled. Her voice and face were entirely given over to the child. She had the dreamy sweet look of a child telling you the story of a book she had just read. ‘And, oh! would he spank me. I’d cry and cling to him.’ She stopped and sipped her drink. ‘I don’t know when it changed. When Lena was born, I guess. I had to grow up then,’ she said bitterly. ‘I had the shitty diapers to clean up. I couldn’t run around buying things, I couldn’t play games so much. And now look. For God’s sake I’m not just the mommy but the daddy too around here. He does nothing.’
‘You grew up.’
Her voice rose. ‘I had to grow up! I had no choice!’
‘He either had to be a tin god or nothing. Sometimes,’ and Mira heard bitterness in her own voice now, and wondered where it came from, ‘sometimes I think that’s all men are. Tin gods. They have to be all or they are nothing.’
‘Nothing, nothing! Right. That’s what that bastard is!’ Natalie had recovered. She wiped her face and stood up and poured herself another drink.
16
Late that night, Mira told Norm the whole story. She was very upset; many things were working in her, but she was unaware of most of them. What dominated her account was shock at Natalie’s adultery. Norm listened impatiently, with a look of disgust on his face. He said Natalie was stupid and a drunken slut. She didn’t matter; she was not to be taken into consideration. Mira should just forget the whole thing; it was unimportant. Natalie was a whore and Paul was a bastard: that was that.
He went to bed. Mira said she would be up soon, but she felt restless; she paced around the downstairs rooms, gazing out at the night, at the moon over the rooftops, at the ominously rustling shrubs. She saw motion, furtive and frightening, everywhere. To calm herself, she poured a little of Norm’s brandy in a juice glass and took it into the living room. She sat there sipping, smoking, meditating. It was the first time she ever did that, and the beginning of a new pattern.
She wanted very much to talk to someone about the whole thing, especially to discover why it was bothering her so much. She considered: Was she jealous? Did she wish it had been she Paul came charging in on? But if Paul had come to her like Marlon Brando, she would have laughed. Was the resentment she had heard in her own voice reflective of her feelings about her own marriage? Was she urging Nat to leave Hamp because she wanted to leave Norm? She didn’t know and couldn’t seem to work it through.
She decided, however, not to tell anyone what Nat had told her. Nat had not enjoined her to silence, but it seemed a point of honor not to talk about it. That meant, though, that she could not discuss with anyone the things about the situation that bothered her. She decided to do some reading in psychology.
Time passed, winter melted into a rainy spring. Theresa bent over her swollen belly to plant a vegetable garden; Don got a job mending roofs. The Foxes finished the extension on their house and threw a party. Adele’s pregnancy was beginning to show. Nat finished redecorating her bathroom and was thinking of finishing the attic. Mira had finished the Jones biography of Freud, and several Freud monographs and was reading various other psychologists. She wanted to read Wilhelm Reich, but the library did not have his books, and when she asked Norm to get one for her at the medical library of the university, he sternly forbade her to read Reich.
It was a slow drippy spring, and everyone was restless. The outside world, with Berlin and Cuba and a faded Joseph McCarthy, seemed far away. Bill got a raise and Bliss was elated: it meant she could hire a babysitter once in a while, so she could go out at night when he was out of town. She enrolled in a bridge course.
Late in May, the sun came out. Nat came down one afternoon for coffee. In the months that had passed, Mira had never referred again to the business with Paul, and neither had Nat. But their relationship had changed: Natalie now told Mira in detail about her daily irritations with Hamp. She would rave against him for three-quarters of an hour, and then go cheerfully on to something else. Mira was bored and irritated; she began to avoid Natalie. And Natalie felt that and was hurt and angry. She stopped just dropping in, but would call once in a while. Mira was usually busy. Natalie failed to understand how reading some books when you weren’t even in school could take precedence over her company. So she stopped calling. But one afternoon in late May, she strolled into Mira’s back door.
‘Hi! Guess what! I bought a house!’
‘Nat! Great! Where?’
‘West End.’
‘West End! Wow! Really moving up!’
Mira poured wine and soda for them. The house, Nat told her, had ten rooms, two and a half baths, two fireplaces, dishwasher, and wall-to-wall carpeting. It backed on the country club golf course, had an acre plot, and they would become automatic members of the club, which Nat was already referring to as simply ‘the club,’ as if she’d been a member all her life.
The thing was beyond even Mira’s envy. ‘When did you decide to do this? Why?’
The Meyersville house was too small, they needed more room, and that meant finishing the attic or putting on an extension and that was expensive and you might not get a return on it when you went to sell. The girls were getting older and they argued all the time and should have their own rooms. ‘Besides, I’m sick of this place. What is there to keep me here?’
Mira felt reproached. Without thinking, she asked. ‘Do you ever see Paul?’
‘Paul? No. Why? Oh! That bastard! No.’ Then she smiled. ‘But I am interested in someone else.’
‘Who?’
‘Lou Mikelson. I’ve known him for years, of course, and I always loved him, but …’ She gave a childlike delighted smile.
‘I thought Evelyn was your best friend.’
‘She is! I love Evvy! Adore her! But she has those two creepy kids, she has no time for Lou.’
‘The oldest one is in an institution, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, bu
t Nancy’s still home. And you know, she’s big, she’s eleven and an awful handful. Still has to have diapers changed, and although she’s been walking for a couple of years now, she’s always bumping into things – she doesn’t see very well. She still has to be fed.’
‘Nightmare. Babyhood protracted into forever.’
‘And Tommy’s no angel either. I mean, at least he’s normal, but he’s always in some kind of trouble. I don’t think Evelyn would mind. She’d probably give me her blessing.’
‘Well, are you actually involved?’
‘No.’ Natalie’s voice lingered over the syllable. ‘It’s in the early stages,’ she smiled. She was very nervous. She kept picking at her hands, which were covered with a rash and peeling skin.
‘Well, that’s great about the house, Nat. I’m glad for you.’
‘Yeah. Of course it needs redecoration. I want to take you over there someday – as soon as the people move out. It has this really nice family room, you know, that I think would look gorgeous if I put in all sliding glass windows …’
She was off. Mira listened to the thousand plans she had for the house, thinking that it was nice, that it was enough to keep her occupied for several years, enough to keep her mind from dwelling too much on the other. Mira did not take seriously the business about Lou. She’d seen Lou and Natalie at parties too often: they always flirted in a friendly, almost familial way. She mentioned Lou to save her pride, which seemed to require that a man find her attractive. But we are all like that, she thought. We all want it, anyway. It doesn’t seem so important to men. Women, victims again. Why should men be so important to us and we not to them? Is that nature too? She sighed and went on reading her male psychologists.
17
Bliss searched the room. Hugh Simpson – ‘Simp’ – came sidling over to her with his glass in his hand.
‘Looking pretty snazzy tonight, eh, Bliss?’ He never made a statement without sounding as if he were intimate with one, and as if the grounds of the intimacy were some shared dirty secret.
‘The old hair going pretty fast there, eh, Bill?’ He had said the same thing at the three preceding parties, and Bliss was annoyed, but she smiled gracefully and said, ‘I’m hoping he gets to look like Yul Brynner.’ She looked at Bill with a loving smile as she said it, and he giggled and patted his bald spot. Bill was regaling Simp with his latest dirty story, which Bliss had heard four times in the past week. She made a face at him, an angry-Momma-scolding-little-boy face and said, Not again, Billy.’ Then she smiled and he grinned a little-boy-is-being-naughty-but-he-knows-Momma-will-forgive grin back at her and said, ‘Just one more time, Blissy.’ She laughed and bent her body lightly, excusing herself, and went into the kitchen.
Paul was standing with Sean near the sink; they were speaking in soft voices and laughing. Bliss approached them with her head cocked to one side, a knowing smile on her face.
‘I can just guess what you two are talking about,’ she said. Paul put his arm out and she walked into it, and he closed it around her gently.
‘We were discussing the ups and downs of the market,’ Sean smiled.
‘It’s unpredictable, you know. You throw a little into many investments, and suddenly one of them pays off.’
‘I see,’ Bliss smiled at Paul. Their faces were close together. ‘You don’t, I take it, have any favorite stock.’
‘Of course.’ Paul nibbled at her ear. ‘But you can never be sure that one will bring a return.’
‘And you’ll accept any return that occurs.’
‘I just love speculating.’
‘Why don’t you speculate me up a drink?’
‘I’d have to take my arm away.’
‘That isn’t irreparable.’
Sean drifted off. Paul moved and poured two drinks.
‘I remember one night you took your whole self away from me,’ Bliss taunted. ‘At least tonight you won’t have to go anywhere.’ The party was at Natalie’s house.
Paul made a face at her. ‘It wasn’t you I left, it was Adele.’
‘I was there.’
‘And offering nothing. A man has to do something with it. If the woman who arouses him won’t come through, he’s got to find someone else.’
She grimaced. ‘That’s the poorest excuse I’ve ever heard for just not having any standards.’ She took the drink from his hand. ‘Of course,’ she added airily, ‘there’s no accounting for tastes.’
‘Some women are sexy and some only act sexy.’
‘Oh? How can you tell?’
‘I can tell.’
‘It’s possible to put it another way: some women have standards.’
He looked at her intensely. During their interchange, smiles had never left their faces. ‘And do I meet yours?’
‘Do you care?’ She arched her body and let it ripple, and walked away.
Norm was in the study alone. He switched the television set off guiltily when Bliss entered. He gave her a naughty-boy look.
‘Just checking the late scores. Mira has a fit if I turn on TV at a party.’
She gave him her mock-scolding look. ‘And I’ll bet you’re afraid to take a walk unless Mira says you can. Aren’t you?’ She touched his nose lightly with her finger. ‘And I’m going to tell on you.’
He cringed comically. ‘Oh, please don’t tell. I’ll do anything!’
‘Okay. I won’t tell if you dance with me.’
He put his hands to the sides of his head. ‘Oh, not that! Not that! Anything but that!’
She kicked him lightly with her instep, and he crumpled, bent, held his leg. ‘Ooh! Ow! She’s lamed me for life. Okay, okay, I give in!’ And followed her, limping, into the big living room.
Natalie had rolled up the carpet in this room so people could dance. This was her farewell to Meyersville, and she had invited sixty people. Her house had more rooms than the others, and could hold such a crowd.
Mira was sitting with Hamp when Norm and Bliss came into the room. She watched them dance; it was a clowning dance, as it was whenever Norm danced with anyone but her.
‘I think Norm would like to have an affair with Bliss,’ she said.
‘Do you care?’ Hamp and Mira had become friends at these parties. If Hamp didn’t read, at least he knew about books, and he provided her with what felt like a safe island. But they had not talked much personally.
‘No,’ she said, shrugging. ‘It might do him some good.’
Hamp looked at her glitteringly. She was not looking at him. She was watching Roger put his possessive arm around Samantha and lead her to the dance floor. She wanted to leap up and protect Samantha, to push him away from her. But Samantha was walking with her little mechanical doll wiggle, and her doll’s face held a wide smile.
‘I feel so out of things,’ she said to Hamp. ‘So out of all the people I know. I guess I’ve always felt out.’
‘You’re too good for them,’ Hamp said, and she turned to him with surprise.
‘What does that mean?’
‘Just what I said.’
‘I don’t see how one person can be better than another. I don’t know what that means.’
Hamp smiled and shrugged. ‘They’re all bums.’
‘Oh, Hamp!’ She felt uncomfortable and tried to think of a way to get away from him politely. ‘I think I’ll get another drink,’ she came up with finally.
She passed Nat in the kitchen talking loudly about the beauties of her new house. She had spoken of nothing else for the past months. Bliss was near the wall with Sean, talking in low voices, smiles on their faces. Bliss was taunting, teasing; Sean, superior, enjoying it, deciding whether or not to pounce. Roger was standing at the sink talking to Simp. He had his back to her, and she heard him say, ‘Cunt is cunt. The only difference in it is some is wet and some is dry.’ She walked to the sink and stood beside him to pour her drink. She did not look at him or greet him. She walked into the small living room. Oriane was sitting with Adele, talking about children
. Oriane was looking almost as harassed as Adele: she had just had a long ordeal in which her two younger children came down in alternate weeks with measles, mumps, and chicken pox and her oldest child, a boy, had nearly ripped his hand off in a bicycling accident. Adele looked purely terrible. Mira sat down with them.
‘You’ve had quite an ordeal,’ she began.
Oriane laughed and rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, it was charming!’ The banter began again: whatever she had been discussing with Adele had been serious, and was now put away in favor of the public mode. Mira remained, restlessly, and got up as soon as she could. She wandered.
‘No, Theresa and Don don’t come to parties anymore. I don’t even know if Nat invited them. Terry says she can’t afford to give one, so she doesn’t want to come. But I think it’s silly to isolate yourself like that, don’t you?’ Paula said.
‘Pride. You have it where you can have it,’ said a firm voice.
Mira turned. She liked the person who said that. It was Martha, a newcomer to the group. Mira walked toward them. ‘Theresa reads a lot,’ Mira said.
18
Bliss flirted mildly with the bridge teacher. He would take her to a bar on nights when Bill was out on a flight, and talk to her about himself, his loneliness, and his marriage. Bliss smiled a lot and teased him. He would drive her back to the shopping center where she parked her car, and they would sit for a few minutes kissing. Finally he asked her to go to a motel with him. She said she had to think it over.
Bliss did not delude herself that her problem was moral. She had been brought up in a hard country, where people acted wild and even savage: Cars full of drunk teenaged boys had contained more than one of her high-school girlfriends. Her aunt, deserted by her husband early in her marriage, had had an unending series of lovers; some even said she made her living that way. Bliss had been too poor to afford the luxury of middle-class morality. She figured that if her aunt had gotten something out of those men, good for her. She had a deep snarling contempt for people who confused an essentially economic situation with a moral one. And the relation between men and women was economic.