The Women's Room (16 page)

This may sound foolish, but in fact, the parties were terribly innocent; terribly because innocence is terrible. A little flirtation was good for them. Both the men and the women had lived for years in worlds bounded by their own genders, and by their own occupations. If the women found it difficult to talk about things in the large, outer world, the men found it difficult to talk about anything but their work. They might move to the neutral zones of cars and games and even politics, but they could not talk personally, humanely, knew nothing of others except gossip and nothing of themselves except external image. And each group was ignorant of the other.

Was it wrong if at the end of the evening eyes were brilliant and cheeks were pink? Was it sinful if talking to someone else’s spouse brought out charm and humor one had not known one possessed? Or if the affection born of finding oneself attractive to someone else began to flow over all of them like icing on a cake? They may have looked like the sophisticates in
Vogue
, but most of them were as innocent as they had been at fourteen. Sex had been tried, children engendered, but still they knew nothing. Sex was for most of the men and all of the women a disappointment they never mentioned. Sex, after all, was THE thing that came naturally, and if it didn’t – if it wasn’t for them worth anywhere near all the furtiveness and dirty jokes and pinup calendars and ‘men’s’ magazines, all the shock and renunciation of hundreds of heroines in hundreds of books – why then it was they who were inadequate. For the men, sex was strangely lacking: it was a physical
event that felt good, but when it was over they felt alone, unloving, spent. For the women, it was a tiresome duty. Why then did they so much enjoy the fluidities and poundings that a party aroused?

Probably because most people have an extremely limited sexual experience, it is easy for them, when things are wrong, to place the blame on their partner. It would be different if, instead of graying Theresa with her sagging breasts, her womb hanging low from having held six children, Don were in bed with – Marilyn Monroe, say. Or even Bliss. And Bliss might feel that Sean, since he was experienced with women, would excite her more than Bill did, and would know what to do to keep her excited. Nowadays, there are so many manuals and guidebooks on do-it-yourself sex, maybe things are different. But in those days, we looked outward: the problem was not in our ignorance, but in having the wrong partner. That deduction seems to be borne out: the excitement of a new partner in sex is often great enough to cover flaws in performance, and not until the affair has become custom do the flaws again stand out.

But all the sexual energy and discontent were below the surface for the women. They spoke merely of having parties. They planned them, did the work of giving them. The men came behind their wives like shadows. They had less color, less distinctiveness, less personality. They were like the males in pornographic movies: the film is written, directed, and produced by them, includes male figures, and is intended for them, intended to please men. But the whole film focuses on the female, upon her body, her joy as semen spurts all over her face or she is penetrated through her anus. Twentieth-century pornography, Iso said once, was like Greek tragedy, and situates emotion in the woman. So there.

The men did not complain about the parties; they were even willing to add an extra twenty dollars to the household allowance to help pay for them. They allowed the women to plan, shop, cook, clean, make a new dress or buy one. They stood in the kitchen every time, and every time had to be pried out. They came into the living room reluctantly, making jokes about the ‘girls.’ They allowed the women to ask them to dance and smiled with pleasure at the praise of their dancing style that was invariably offered. They were shy virgins at adultery and the women were the horny ones (or the cavey ones, as Val used to say). They were being wooed. They lapped it up.

8

I have been lumping together the eight or ten couples that made up these parties, but each of them was quite different. Theirs are some of the voices I hear.

Natalie: She was always up early. She had to drive Hamp to the station and get the older kids off to school. After the chaos of early morning, after bathing Deena and putting her into the playpen, she’d make a cup of instant coffee in the stained plastic cup she always used, and sit down at the cluttered kitchen table, planning her day.

Natalie was a large woman, generously built, with great physical energy. She loved to work with her hands: she painted and wallpapered, refinished furniture, and washed and waxed her own floors not out of economic necessity but because her body needed to be used. Her consuming interest was in her house. It was her pride and it always looked almost like a house in one of the home magazines – almost, because Natalie was never finished. She would end one project only to begin another, so the house was always in disarray.

She had married young and her parents had sighed with relief. She had been a wild one. Now she had three children; her husband worked in her father’s company, in a highly placed position protected from contact with anything or anybody important. Hamp was a loser, but they both knew that Daddy would never fire him, and the salary checks were so good these days that Nat was thinking of moving to a larger house.

She liked her days. She liked putting her feet up on the table and sipping her coffee and planning what to do with her morning. There was wallpaper to be bought, and while she was there, she would look at Mr Johnstone’s patterns for a new paper for the bathroom, which was starting to look shabby. She would stop at Carver’s and see if the new pink glass lampshade had arrived. They needed rye; something for dinner. Then she would come home and start in on the study. She was papering one wall with a velvety red design that would warm up the paneling on the others.

She slipped sandals on her feet, a jacket over her shirt, packed the baby up, and slid her into the car seat. She had perfect body ease, Natalie; no matter how she dressed, she looked as if she were somebody, as if she belonged. She raced from shop to shop, bantering
just a little suggestively with all the shopkeepers, was home by ten thirty, and by two had finished the wall, cleaned up the paste, and stood leaning on the cutting table, admiring her work.

She had unending patience and unerring taste: it was very nice. Luxuriously, she stretched, gave the baby some crackers and cheese and put her in for a nap, and poured herself a rye and soda. Then she went into her bathroom for a shower. She was the only one in the neighborhood with two bathrooms: she couldn’t understand what was wrong with the others. Who wants to take a shower in a bathroom stinky with diapers? It wasn’t expensive, less than a thousand.

She dressed, cleaned up the kitchen, and checked her watch. It was almost three. The kids – blah! – would be home soon. She phoned Adele. But Adele couldn’t come – she could never come.

‘What’s the matter with you, anyway?’ Natalie taunted her, and grimaced as one of Adele’s many excuses followed: somebody had to go to the dentist, somebody to Cub Scouts, somebody was sick. ‘It’s really disgusting that you have so many kids,’ Nat concluded, not worried about the sensitivities of others. Money is a great armorer; and Natalie had always been wealthy. She did not have to worry about people’s feelings because she gave the best parties, and was generous to her friends, giving them something if they admired it.

She dialed Mira, who as usual was reading. Clark was still napping and Normie was not yet back from the kindergarten. And it was raining out, they would have to be indoors. Natalie grimaced but she was desperate: ‘Sure, bring the kids. Come when Clark wakes up. Sure it’s okay.’

So Mira came over at three thirty and Lena and Rena arrived home, had some peanut butter and jelly, and the four children, who did not play together because their ages were too different, sat in front of the TV in the newly papered study. Later, Evelyn stopped in with her two, who swelled the TV crowd. The women sat in the kitchen, drinking rye. The children were whiny; they kept coming in for cookies or ice cream, which were liberally offered, although Mira’s brow wrinkled. ‘No more, now, Normie, you won’t eat dinner.’

‘What a worrywart you are,’ Nat grinned. ‘Who cares if they eat dinner?’

Everyone left by four thirty, and Nat felt let down. Lena came into the kitchen for another peanut butter and jelly sandwich and Nat snapped at her.

‘I’m going to do homework, and I need energy,’ the child replied coolly, ignoring her mother.

Rena looked out and saw it had stopped raining. She rushed about, ferreted in the kitchen for her skate key, and ran out. Only Deena was left, sitting like a lump in the playpen. Natalie bent over her.

‘Did dose bad sisters go away and weave wittoo Deena all alone? Bad sisters. Momma take.’ She picked the child up and carried her to the kitchen and set her on the floor to crawl.

Dinner, Nat thought with sinking heart. She hated this time of day, she hated to cook. For herself, she would have been content with a cheese sandwich. She had picked up some pork chops, though and rummaged through the cookbook, looking for an interesting way to serve them. She found a casserole made with lima beans and tomato sauce, and carefully, trying to follow directions precisely, prepared it. Rena came in again, disgusted with the returned rain, and turned on the TV set. Deena was cranky, and was clattering pots on the kitchen floor and whimpering at the same time. At quarter to six, Nat picked up her coat and set Deena in the playpen, cautioning Rena to watch her. She drove to the station to pick up Hamp, who as soon as he got home poured a double shot of rye into a glass, and took a can of beer out of the refrigerator. He settled himself in ‘his’ chair in the study, before the TV set.

‘How do you like the wall?’ Natalie asked enthusiastically.

‘Nice, hon, really nice.’ His voice was lifeless.

Natalie put Deena in the high chair and heated some jars of baby food, and fed her. The casserole was bubbling in the oven, and she thought it smelled good. She poured another rye. The house was chaotic, as always in the evening. Lena and Rena were fighting about something, the baby was cranky, the TV set was blaring – and Hamp was sitting like a lump in his easy chair, drinking and reading the paper or watching some stupid cowboy program.

‘Can’t you shut those kids up, Nat?’ he called in.

‘Goddamn!’ Nat picked Deena out of the high chair and carried her upstairs. ‘You kids shut up, now, you hear me? You’re bothering your father!’

Rena came crying into the baby’s room as Nat prepared her for bed. ‘Lena took my pad! She says it’s hers! But it’s my pad!’

‘Let her use it, she needs it for homework.’

High wailing.

‘I’ll buy you another one tomorrow.’

Resentment and contentment warred for a moment. Rena wanted the new pad, but she didn’t want to give in too easily, or to make it appear that she was not completely sensible of the wrong done her. Sniffling and murmuring about injustice, she went back into the room she shared with her older sister.

‘You’re mean, Lena, and I don’t like you. And Mommy’s going to buy me a whole new pad, nyaahhh!’

‘Oh, shut up, Rena. She’ll buy me one too.’

‘She will not! She’s just buying one for me.’

‘She will too!’

‘She will not!’

Lena leaped up and came into the baby’s room. ‘Aren’t you going to buy me a pad too, Mom?’ Furious eyes, demanding mouth.

‘Will you shut up, Lena? The baby’s trying to get to sleep.’ Natalie turned out the light, and closed the door.

Lena stood staring at her in the hallway. ‘You are going to buy me one, aren’t you?’

‘If you need one, I’ll buy you one.’

‘I do.’

Rena was standing just inside the doorway to her bedroom, and as soon as she heard her mother’s ‘Okay,’ she bounded out.

‘That’s not fair! She takes my pad and she gets a new one! It isn’t fair!’

Lena turned swiftly on her sister: ‘
I
need it to do homework, baby! I don’t just scribble on it like you!’

Rena was crying again.

‘SHUT UP!’ a voice blasted from downstairs. The girls quieted. The baby began to scream.

‘Jesus H. Christ,’ Nat murmured, and went in to soothe the baby. The girls went into their room and sat glaring at each other.

The casserole was terrible, dry and thick, and no one would eat it. They filled up on cookies and ice cream, and Hamp had a peanut butter sandwich. Natalie shouted the girls into baths and bed, cleaned up the kitchen, and around nine, joined Hamp in the study with a drink.

A show was just going off, and Hamp looked up at her as she came in. She smiled.

‘How was your day?’

‘Okay.’ He answered her sleepily: since he’d been home, he’d had four double shots and beers.

‘Doesn’t the wall really look great?’ She was delighted with herself.

‘Yeah, hon, I told you. Looks really good.’

‘Mira and Evelyn came over this afternoon.’

He perked up a bit. ‘Oh, yeah?’

‘Evelyn came from the doctor’s. Tommy fell down and had to have three stitches in his lip. And Clark whimpered the whole time Mira was here. God, she spoils that kid.’

He stared at the TV.

‘I stopped at Carver’s, but the shade wasn’t in yet.’

‘Umm.’

She smiled at him coyly. ‘Mr Carver said every time he looks at me he wishes he were twenty years younger. Isn’t he cute?’

‘Adorable.’

‘Well, you’re as interesting as a book with blank pages.’

‘Maybe that’s what I am.’

‘I don’t doubt it. Daddy says he pays you to dictate form letters.’

‘Really!’ He turned to look at her. ‘And when did His Eminence say that?’

‘When we were out on the yacht. Last month.’

‘Why doesn’t he say it to me?’

She shrugged.

He turned back to stare at the TV, but he was not watching it. ‘Would you like me to quit? Is that the point?’

‘Oh, Hampy, I want you to do what you want. You know I think you’re really smart.’ Her voice was coddling and her smile coy. She moved toward his chair, and settled herself on the floor beside it, smiling up at him. ‘Remember you started that course in – oh, whatever it was? You’re an engineer, you could get another job.’