Crossings (33 page)

‘He won't though.'

‘How did it happen, Edna, for god's sake.'

‘He said he wouldn't come in me but he did anyway.'

‘It isn't Paul's?' And she gives me a horrified look. ‘Sorry,' I say.

‘No, it's the med student's. I know. God, Vicky, what do you think of me?'

‘Sorry. It's just you said …'

‘That was
before
.'

And she talks about her psychiatrist, who's arranged all this—good doctor, real operating room, nurse in attendance—and says, ‘I'm sort of in love with him. I know it's only transference, but all the same …'

‘You know,' I say, ‘what you said, about him coming in you, how it happened. I don't think anyone's ever told me before. I mean, ever said anything about what really happens. I mean, we never really say, do we? Oh we talk about good or bad or indifferent, or about orgasms, that stuff, but we never really say anything
real.
Like. In books. I mean, if you believed the books, it's all firecrackers. Up like a rocket. Zoom.'

‘That's because men write them.'

‘Yeah. Well. No. I mean Henry James has one line, about white lightning, in
The Portrait,
but that's as close as I've ever come to reading about it, the way it is for us.'

Edna is embarrassed. ‘Well, it's private, I guess.'

‘Yeah, but listen, Edna, if you think about it … I mean, we're really ignorant. Women don't
talk
to each other. I mean did your mother ever really tell you about birth control?'

‘God no!'

‘You see? Or about having more than one. Orgasms. You know?'

‘Do you?'

‘Now I do. Don't you?'

‘Sometimes. I thought I was over-sexed. Sam says I am.'

‘Maybe he's just saying that. Maybe there's a big conspiracy. Tell us we're abnormal if we do, then we'll be guilty. I mean, I've heard women talk about
not
having them. Like Wilma used to say it didn't matter if you loved a man enough, but what about the rest of us? Maybe it's not that we're the different ones, may­be we're in the majority. Only we're too scared to compare notes. Like, did you really know anything about your clitoris?'

Edna laughs.

‘Well, I didn't. Don't. I mean, if you asked me to draw a diagram, I couldn't even now. Where and what happens, and all that. I mean, it's all a big mystery.'

So Edna draws a diagram and I put it in my purse to check it with myself, when I get back home and can use a mirror. ‘I think that's right,' she says.

‘All these years, you and Grace and me, and we've never really
said
anything. We don't know anything really. Like, I could never imagine what you meant when you said I should have trapped Ben. I mean, how could I? But then, I never thought that maybe every man didn't act like Ben. Like, Ben was normal for me, see? I thought that was
everybody.
'

‘It makes me nervous, talking like this,' says Edna.

So we go to bed.

In the middle of the night, she shakes me awake. ‘Vicky!'

‘Hunh?'

‘Hey Vicky.' All embarrassed. And I realize.

‘Oh god,' I say. ‘Oh lord. Edna!'

I've been making love to her leg! Arrrgh.

‘I thought you were Mik,' I say. I've been dreaming of him.

‘Yeah. Well,' she says, and laughs nervously. ‘Too much sex talk, I guess.'

‘I'm sorry.' And we each hang on our respective edges for the rest of the night, terrified we're lesbians.

In the morning, she is white with fear. One of those damn clichés you resent so much when they happen. The original lurid, ghastly pale, gleaming like the outside of my grandma's plum duff when she took it out of the boiling cloth. We walk up to Dean's and order pancakes. But Edna can't eat. She sits there, staring at the blueberries and the whipped butter. I don't know what we were thinking of, trying to eat at all. But that's what we do, order a full course of blueberry pancakes. She gets up suddenly and says she'll go on ahead.

‘No, I'll walk you, for god's sake.'

‘No, you're not finished.'

‘I'll tell them to keep it for me.'

So we pay the bill and walk through the September morning light, up to the exclusive university homes area. Manicured lawns. Manicured lives.

‘Is
that
his house?' We can't believe it. A big rich house. An expensive house.

‘It must be. It's the address.'

And we stand there staring at it.

‘You go back to the apartment. Here. Here's the key.'

I take it. ‘Hey,' I say.

‘Yeah.' She tries to grin. ‘Hey.'

‘Hey.'

‘Hey. Hey, it'll be okay.'

‘Sure. Hey.'

‘Anyway, I'm zonked to the gills,' she says.

‘How many'd you take?'

‘About five.' She giggles. ‘Won't feel a thing.'

And off she goes, up the curving walk past the neat flower beds to the grand front door. I know they're going to kill her.

They haven't kept the pancakes for me so I wander down to a shop and buy the brown pleated skirt and the forest green sweater. It's a beautiful golden day. The sky is blue and the trees have turned. The same sort of day when my father died. As if there were no harmony in the universe at all. Everything bright and fresh and impervious. I'm young and alive and not pregnant. Edna's dying on some illegal table, bleeding to death in a $100,000 house.

I go back to Edna's place and try to wait … Then I start washing dishes. Then I get out the vacuum. Then I clean the stove. I think about Mik and my nipples start up like traitors. Everything's in a conspiracy of life. She's never coming. They've killed her.

God, I say, I'll give Mik up, only let Edna live. Oh please, God, I know I don't believe in you, but just this once.

It's only eleven-thirty when she comes. The doctor has driven her home. She looks wonderful. Because she's breathing. I make her a cup of tea and she gets into bed.

‘You've cleaned up,' she says reproachfully.

‘Had to do something,' I say. I know it drives her mad. I show her the skirt and the sweater. She's shivering. She takes some more pills.

‘It sounded so awful,' she says.

‘Look. Vicky. Understand this. Look. I can only say it to you. Because you'll know. Will you leave me alone?'

‘Sure.'

‘He was nice,' she says, as if this is a surprise. ‘Not what I expected. A nice man. I'm not rejecting you.'

‘I know, for god's sake.'

I don't cry until I'm on the bus. Either.

And on the telephone to the island: ‘It was all sound and fury, signifying nothing.' But he doesn't get it so I say, ‘I'm not pregnant,' and everyone in the cookhouse hears. A radio phone. I've humiliated him.

Mik says, ‘There's a house up here. You come up next Thursday.'

I say, ‘Yes.'

I know. The Nut Lady's going. Maybe I'm doing it on purpose, to punish her. It sounds too easy to be true. It doesn't grab me. I don't feel sick when I say it.

I want him. I want Mik. And I say, ‘Yes.'

I pack up my bags like a lady, nerves shrieking so high that only the mad dogs of the universe can hear. I've said that all before. I am calm. I am going to put myself into his hands. It is irrevocable. It is final. I am committing myself. A woman at last.

 

MAYBE IT'S one huge orgasm, this book. Maybe I just want to remember it once more before I go menopausal. Maybe I just want to feel young again and real and alive. The Victorian era. Repressed lust. But to the girdle do the gods inherit. Down from the waist they are centaurs. The fitchew nor the soiled horse goes to it with a more riotous appetite. The wren goes to it. Let copulation thrive.

Perhaps I shall go mad and run naked down the streets at night, waving my bum behind me like a flag. Perhaps I shall leap on beautiful young men, a moustache on my lip. Oh god, it's not fair to grow old. It's not fair. I hate it. I really do.

 

THAT DAMN PLAY. That damn clever play. I sat there like a zombie, clackety-clacking in the misty mornings in the shadows beside the lagoon. The fire going out. The cats went berserk in the forest. And I wrote a clever little story about civilized people doing uncivilized things to one another. And Mik would come home, and there wouldn't be any supper.

‘I was working, I didn't notice the time.'

We've never talked about the writing. He's never seen me at it. He's never seen me in it. Perhaps he thought it was something cute and feminine I did, like crocheting doilies.

‘For christ sake!' And he bangs around, opening cans of beans.

 

CLACKETY-CLACK. Anna says, ‘Here, I've written a story.'

‘Once upon a time there was a little girl and nobuddy liked her not even at school, the raisin was she alwass said jest a minit.'

‘Who says, “Just a minute”?' But she won't tell me.

‘Sometimes I think that'll happen to
me,
' she says. ‘I'll be writing my stories and I'll say “Just a minute.”'

‘Oh lord, is that
me?
Do I say “Just a minute”?'

 

IN MY DREAM last night: Jocelyn comes in shorts and a very brief top. A red-headed baby on her back in a carrier. She says, ‘The Jaks came over.' I take the baby and hold it against me. It is very hard and solid and it laughs at me. ‘You don't know anything!' Jocelyn says. She is very brown and her hair is caught up in the back with a rubber band. She looks Amazonian. ‘You sound like Francie,' I say, but hate like fire is coming from her mouth.

‘All right, what are the Jaks?'

‘You don't know anything,' Jocelyn says. ‘You live here and you never go out and you think you know everything.'

‘Well,
tell
me then. What are Jaks?'

‘I see,' she sneers. ‘From your great height, you will condescend to ask what are Jaks. I see. They sound the Alert and the Jaks come over and you say, “What are Jaks?”'