‘Oh, it is! It takes me all day, on and off, to do it, and I have to touch it up every two weeks or the dark roots show.’ She began to explain the process to Mira.
Paul had stopped dancing with Natalie and was now doing a slow fox-trot with Bliss, holding her very close. Hamp was sitting on the couch with Adele. He was telling her about a new book about the Cold War. He hadn’t read it, but it had been reviewed well. Adele was bored, but sat there sympathetically, listening with apparent intentness. She was thinking that his eyes never met anyone else’s, that he looked at people a little awry. He was a nice guy, though, everyone liked him. He never said an unkind thing. But his color was bad.
Natalie had been talking to Evelyn, but stopped abruptly. ‘I need another drink!’ she announced. Her face was splotchy. She staggered a little as she entered the kitchen, where a group of men were talking. She poured her glass almost full of straight rye, and stood there for a moment, but no one spoke to her. ‘You men make me sick!’ she burst out suddenly. ‘All you know anything about is football! God, it’s disgusting!’ Carrying her drink, she stumbled out of the room.
The men glanced at her and went on talking.
She came into the living room, toward the couch where Hamp was sitting. ‘God, you’re as bad as they are. You sit on the couch all night like a lump of lard talking, talking, talking! About books, I suppose! As if you ever read! Why don’t you talk about form letters, or TV? That’s all you know anything about!’
The room hushed. Natalie looked around, embarrassed, and enraged with them for her discomfort. ‘I’m going home! This party stinks!’ And did: not even taking her coat, but still carrying her drink. She walked through the snow in her red satin high heels, slipping all the way down the street and falling twice.
No one said anything. Natalie was known to drink too much on occasion. They shrugged and resumed their conversations. Mira wondered how they were able to write it off that way, as though when people were drunk they were no longer persons, were not to be taken seriously. Of course, Nat would sleep it off; of course, she would probably even forget she’d done it. But meantime there was that anguish in her voice, despair underlying the anger. Where did those come from? Mira glanced at Hamp. He was still talking, unperturbed. He seemed to be a good sort, a bit lethargic, maybe even dull, but most husbands were rather dull, a woman had to find her own interest. And Natalie seemed happy enough during the days.
Paul was whispering in Bliss’s ear; Norm came over and appropriated Mira and they danced awkwardly. He held her close, and her heart sank: she knew he would be feeling erotic later.
Then somebody she barely knew asked her to dance. Roger and Doris were comparative newcomers to the crowd; Roger was attractive, dark, intense looking. He put his arm around her with assurance, something none of the other men did. Paul’s touch was sexual – he was tentative, delicate, questing. Roger touched her as if he had a right to her body, as if she were his to be handled. She felt this instantly, although she could not articulate it until later. But instantly, she resented him. He was a good dancer, though. She did not know what to say, so she held herself stiff and kept talking. She asked him where they lived, how many children they had, how many bedrooms in their house.
‘Don’t you know how to be quiet?’ he said, pulling her closer. He meant it to be romantic, she knew. And in a way, she felt it so. He had a good body, a good smell. But she could not let herself slide into that, accepting his scolding as a child would, accepting, somehow, his terms.
‘I’m quiet when I want to be quiet,’ she said fiercely, pulling away from him.
He looked at her with astonishment for a moment, then his face changed. ‘You know what you need,’ he said contemptuously, ‘a good lay.’
‘Yeah, I saw that game. They lost it on the last down.’
‘The hell they did,’ Simp said. ‘it was that pass Smith threw.’
Hamp grinned. ‘Well, one way or another, they lost it.’
‘Sure, but they were playing better than they are. They should’ve lost that game by twenty points.’
‘I don’t know,’ Roger argued. ‘They always play better at home. All that ass in the stands, cheering for them.’
‘Yes, she crawls now. Which is nice because I can let her out of the playpen. But of course, she’s into everything.’
‘Fleur won’t stay in the playpen at all. She screams if I so much as put her in it.’
‘She’s your first. When you have five, they stay in the playpen.’
‘Did I hear that you’re pregnant again?’
‘Oh, yes! The more the merrier.’
‘You certainly don’t look it.’
‘Oh, it’s only the third month. I blow up like a balloon.’
‘You’ve really kept your figure for having had five kids.’ Samantha’s eyes wandered toward Theresa, who was standing near the wall talking to Mira. She was tall, with a hunched-over back. Her belly literally hung, like a stone-filled sack attached to her body. Her breasts sagged, and her hair was limp and full of gray.
Adele followed Samantha’s glance. ‘Poor Theresa. They’re so poor. It makes everything so hard.’
Samantha leaned toward Adele with wide eyes and whispered. ‘I heard the milkman feels so sorry for them he leaves them his leftover milk free.’
Adele nodded. ‘Don’s been out of work for a year now. He gets odd jobs, part-time or temporary things, but that’s not enough with six kids. Most of the time he just sits around the house. She was trying to get a job as a substitute teacher – she has a college degree – but now she’s pregnant again. I don’t know what they’ll do.’
Samantha looked at Theresa with loathing and fear. It was terrible that a woman could let herself get to look like that. It was terrible what had happened to her. What could you do if a man didn’t work? It was awful. She would never let that happen to her, no way, never. You had to have some control over your life. She turned to Adele. ‘Is she Catholic?’
‘Yes,’ Adele said firmly. ‘And so am I.’
Samantha blushed.
‘I haven’t seen Paul in a while.’
‘Oh, he left.’
Mira turned in surprise. ‘He left? Adele’s still here.’
Bliss laughed. ‘He went after Natalie. Said he felt sorry for her, said he thought she was upset. Adele knows he’s gone. He’ll be back.’
Mira was surprised. She had not thought him that sensitive, that caring about other people. A suspicion curled around the edges of her mind, but she flattened it out. ‘That was nice of him,’ she said seriously. ‘I was concerned about her.’
She wondered at the odd look that Bliss gave her.
Bill was in the kitchen with a small group of laughing people. He had just returned from a flight to California, and he always came back with a packet of obscene funny stories. ‘So the stewardess says, “Is there any more I can get you, Captain?” And he turns around and looks her up and down. And he says, “Yeah, you can get me a little pussy.” And she just stands there and looks at him, cool as a cucumber, and she says, “I can’t help you there, Captain, mine’s as big as a bucket.” And goes off.’
Laughter exploded in the room.
‘I don’t get it.’ Mira looked around appealing for help. ‘Why did he want a cat?’
14
‘He didn’t like women!’ Val cried, and Kyla attacked: ‘Oh, the sophisticate!’ and Clarissa grinned and said, ‘That’s juicy!’ and Isolde shook her head: ‘I can hardly believe it.’ All at once they burst out after Mira had finished telling us about this party.
‘I mean, how could you all have been so … naive?’
‘I’m telling you, Iso, that was the point. That’s the way we were. That’s why I say things are so different now. To Sam, we looked like sophisticates. That was the fifties.’
‘And you, you woman of the world, you!’ Kyla taunted lovingly.
‘Isn’t it awful? I remember feeling so superior and cool, and then I wondered how it ha
d happened, how I had suddenly become this knowing woman of the world when only that morning I was still feeling like a child. And so serious, so earnest, so moral! God! It was all just fun, good for the spirit. I really believed that. It would never have occurred to me to have an affair, so I assumed it would never have occurred to them. They couldn’t! They were – good. God, how I’d internalized sexual morality.’
‘But that Roger fellow,’ Clarissa put in. ‘You had a raised consciousness even then.’
‘I had a raised unconscious,’ Mira corrected her. ‘I couldn’t have articulated it; I had no words to describe what I felt.’
They went over it all, seizing on one person or another, asking about motivation, the feel of their relationships, about consequences. They milked it dry. But Val was unsatisfied.
‘You say this guy – Paul? – liked women. I say he didn’t. He used them. They were just sexual objects to him.’
Mira shook her head back and forth slowly, as if she were debating. ‘I don’t know, Val.’
‘Was he really expecting something to come of all his lines?’ Clarissa suggested. ‘I mean, you said it was just his social posture.’
‘Yeah,’ Mira sighed. ‘I don’t know, you see. Maybe he just sent out lines and didn’t care who caught them. But Samantha stayed friends with Adele and Paul for a long time. And once, when she was having terrible trouble, and they were very kind to her, especially Adele, Paul started pressuring her sexually. She told me about it and I was furious because I thought he was trying to break up her friendship with Adele by introducing jealousy, you know. But she said no. She said he acted sexual because that was the only way he knew how to treat a woman with kindness. He was trying to tell her he was her friend, but couldn’t do it without offering to become her lover. It made sense to me.’
Valerie snorted.
‘At least he tried to talk to women,’ Mira finished sadly.
‘And like a good woman, you were grateful for that,’ Kyla said nastily.
‘Listen,’ Iso started up. ‘Look who’s talking! Whenever Harley puts down his book and looks at you, you practically jump up and down with joy!’
‘I don’t, I don’t,’ Kyla protested, but they were all on her then. ‘Well,’ she surrendered finally, ‘at least I’m a good woman.’
15
Natalie was on the phone to Mira before nine on the Monday morning after the party, but Mira could not get away before the afternoon. Natalie was humming in the kitchen when Mira walked through her back door. She looked different: her eyes were bright and her whole face seemed firmer.
‘How about a drink? No? I’ll make you some instant, okay?’ She fished a stained plastic cup out of the dish-washer that Mira envied every time she looked at it. ‘Boy, I really laid a load on Saturday night. I ruined my dress, tore it all down the side when I fell, ruined the shoes I had dyed to match it, everything’s shot! And I paid ninety dollars for that dress, and seventeen for the shoes.’
Mira gasped. She bought one or two dresses a year and paid ten or fifteen dollars for them. ‘Oh, Natalie! Can’t you salvage them?’
Nat shrugged. ‘No, I threw them out.’
‘Poor Nat,’ Mira said with real feeling.
‘Oh, it was worth it,’ she answered jauntily.
‘Why? I thought you weren’t having a very good time.’
‘I was having a lousy time at the party!’ Natalie laughed and smirked at her suggestively.
Mira just looked at her. She had no idea what Nat was talking about.
Nat rubbed Mira’s face affectionately. ‘You are such an innocent. You’re so cute.’ She sat down across the table from Mira. ‘You didn’t notice that Paul left the party?’
‘Yes. That was kind of him. I was a little concerned myself, and I was glad he’d done that. It surprised me, I never thought him that sensitive …’
‘Oh, he’s very sensitive!’ Natalie was laughing.
Mira stopped. ‘Are you saying …?’
‘Of course! What did you think?’
‘I like to think men and women can be friends without it always being sexual,’ Mira said disapprovingly. ‘I thought he was being a friend.’
‘Friend, schmend, screw that. I don’t need a friend, I’ve got lots of those! Oh, God, it was so romantic! I was stark naked, my dress was on the floor and my underwear on top of it. I’d left the front door open for him. And suddenly he was standing there, right in the doorway: I hadn’t heard him come up. All I had was a sheet over me and I sat up and gasped. I really was surprised. To see him there so suddenly, you know. I hadn’t been sure he’d come. And he just comes toward me, walking slowly with his eyes on me the whole time, like Marlon Brando or something, and he sits down on the bed beside me and pushes me hard back against the headboard and kisses me, oh, God! It was fantastic! Pressing his body against my breasts and then he slid his arm around my waist and held me so hard I could hardly breathe and kept kissing me. Oh, it was great!’ Her voice had risen and her face was ecstatic.
Mira sat stony.
Suddenly Natalie’s face changed. Nasty lines came into it, her voice grew sharp and hard. ‘And that son of a bitch Hamp can just go straight to hell, he can kiss my ass, he can go fuck himself. He doesn’t want to fuck me, I’ll find someone who does, and he can go fuck himself.’
‘He doesn’t sleep with you?’ Mira inquired timidly, some life coming back into her face. If there was a reason, of course, that was different. She had read it often and often: spouses don’t roam unless there is something wrong with the marriage. And if it was Hamp’s fault, why then it was all explainable and with time and patience and discussion, solvable.
‘The son of a bitch hasn’t slept with me in two years. I’ve been going out of my mind. But he can go fuck himself.’
‘Why doesn’t he sleep with you?’
Natalie shrugged and looked away. ‘How should I know? Maybe he can’t. He can’t do anything else, God knows. I asked him to help me paint Deena’s room Sunday and all he did was manage to spill a whole can of paint on the rug. Not only that but he leaves me to clean it up: he retreats back to his chair and the TV set. He’s a child!’ she said scornfully.
Mira pondered.
Nat kept going. ‘He doesn’t even take the garbage out. Probably afraid he’ll fall in the pail and the garbagemen won’t be able to tell him from the rest of the swill. He sits in that chair every night, night after night. He doesn’t talk to the kids, he doesn’t even talk to me. He sits there, drinking himself into oblivion and watching TV. He falls asleep there. One night he almost burned the house down – his cigarette burned a big hole in the cushion, that’s why I have it slipcovered, but I smelled something burning and came down. Look at the rug, look at it! There are cigarette burns all around his chair.’
She made Mira get up and look.
She was into it now, and she kept it up. She had all Hamp’s sins written in blood on her memory. Mira was speechless. Not at Natalie’s revelations: they were familiar enough complaints. Natalie had joked about such behavior before, and all of the women had similar complaints about their husbands. It was that Nat was serious. Mira felt that she was entering a new realm. The women always lamented or complained with humor and lightness. Their personal relations with their husbands had remained private. They were all simply parts of the ongoing American saga of uncontrollable children, inadequate husbands, and brave women wryly admitting failure even as they piled one more sandbag on the dike. But Natalie was making it real, she was moving it from the realm of myth (about which one can do nothing) to the realm of actuality (about which, if one were American, one must do something). The women could joke about marriage and children the way Italians joke about the Church, because it is there, solid, unmovable, unopposable, undefeatable.
‘Maybe I will have a drink.’
As Natalie poured it, Mira said, ‘Why don’t you leave him? If you’re that unhappy with him.’
‘Goddamn bastard, I should leave him. That woul
d really serve him right.’
‘Why don’t you then?’
Natalie gulped down her drink and rose to pour another. Her voice was getting thick. ‘Goddamn bastard, I should.’
‘Your father would give you money. You don’t have to stay with him for that.’
‘Damn straight I don’t! That stupid ass, all he does is dictate form letters all day. If I had to live on what he earned … We’d all starve. Bastard! That would really serve him right, because if I divorced him, my father would fire him on the spot. All he does is dictate form letters all day. My father told me. That’s all he does. Stupid ass.’
Mira was inexorable now. ‘From what you say, the kids aren’t much attached to him.’
‘Of course not! Damned brats. He has nothing to do with them. Once a month he yells “Shut up!” and that’s it. They just walk around him, stepping over that fat slob slumped in that chair. That’s all he is, a fat body. Fat lot of good that fat body does me.’
‘So they probably wouldn’t miss him. They don’t need him, you don’t need him. So why stay?’
Natalie suddenly burst into tears. ‘You know I hate those kids? I hate them! I can’t stand them!’
Mira stiffened with disapproval, not at Natalie’s feelings but her words. She had long noticed Natalie’s behavior with her children. It was not that she abused them physically, but she always disparaged them in speech: they were ‘the brats.’ And she was always trying to get rid of them, to send them outdoors or upstairs, away, away. Anything to be rid of them. Natalie took care of the children’s physical needs: she cooked for them as well as she could, she cleaned their rooms and did their laundry and bought them new underwear when they needed it. She just never wanted to be with them. But to some degree all the women were like that. Still Mira felt it was one thing to feel that way and another to say it. Saying it somehow made it hard and fast. In some dim place in her mind, Mira really believed that if you didn’t say you hated your kids, they would not know it.
‘Why did you have them?’ she asked tightly.
The Women's Room Page 17