The Women's Room

by Marilyn French

  ‘You don’t mean he literally locks her up!’ Mira exclaimed.

  ‘Well … She lives in a little house in Farmington, miles from stores, and she doesn’t have a car.’

  ‘She must have friends with cars.’

  Lily looked away evasively. ‘Ye-es, I suppose.’

  Geraldine got a strike. She jumped up and down and clapped her hands and turned to Carl with glowing eyes and cried, ‘I’m great, ain’t I, Carlie?’ and hugged him and George, who was standing next to him, and ran over to Sandra and hugged her. She pranced over to the three women and flopped on the bench beside them.

  ‘Did’ja see that?’

  Her warm brown eyes smiled directly at you. She babbled on happily about her poor bowling, her improvement, and watched the others in their turn, crying with joy at a good score, oohing in pity at a poor one. When it was her turn again, she marched to position singing ta-da!

  She was, in fact, the center of more emotions than she knew. Everyone watched her, and everyone responded. Samantha envied Geraldine’s spontaneity and gaiety, but she did not like the way Simp acted with her: ‘She’s desperate, that’s what I think, frantic, you know?’ Sam appealed to Mira and Martha. Mira agreed, but thought she was also innocent. ‘That’s a dangerous combination. I’m a little worried for her.’

  Martha cackled. ‘Christ, what a fool you are! She’s a calculating bitch in heat!’

  ‘Oh, she just likes attention,’ Lily demurred mildly. ‘She’s always been like that. She doesn’t mean any harm.’

  ‘She’s great!’ Martha said. ‘I love her! But she’s still a calculating bitch in heat.’

  The men’s response was not verbal. Simp, seeming not to notice that she acted the same way to everyone, slid beside her and insinuated an arm around her, smiling his intimate smile close to her face. Norm held stiffly aloof from her, but his eyes followed her; Carl, too, was distant, but whenever she came up to him, he smiled and put an arm around her. But Tom watched her gloweringly, and when she hopped up to him, teasing him about something, he spat some words at her and turned away. Harry sat on the bench smiling mildly and sleepily at everything. Whenever she came up to him, she put an arm around him, or hugged him, or touched him in some way. He remained impassive, but smiled at her blankly.

  They finished bowling and went into the restaurant for more drinks and some food. The restaurant was a large blank room with long tables and a jukebox. A bar extended the length of one wall. The place looked poor and not especially clean; only a few teenagers stood at the bar. Norm curled his lip and glared at Mira.

  This is the sort of place your friends frequent, he was saying, silently.

  ‘No husbands next to wives!’ Samantha ordered. It was an old tradition with the friends, adopted in an effort to improve conversation. The group dutifully changed places, although they had been friends for so many years now that the split provided no real novelty. But Tom glowered at Sam. He sat his wife at the end of the table, and himself beside her next to Lily. He spoke to no one. Mira found herself at the end of the table next to Harry, with George on her other side. Geraldine was already on the floor, feeding coins into the jukebox. She danced back to the table.

  ‘Who wants to dance?’

  Simp jumped up. Other couples followed. Norm led Samantha to the dance floor. Tom and Sandra were left at one end of the table, Harry and Mira at the other.

  ‘You’re different, huh?’

  ‘Different?’

  ‘I’m different too.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I live in a sewer. Don’t I look it?’

  She gazed at him disapprovingly.

  ‘I’ll bet your husband is a lousy lover.’

  ‘I beg your pardon!’

  ‘I can tell, I can always tell,’ he said easily, his sleepy eyes sliding around the room searching for the waitress. He signaled for another drink. He turned back to Mira. ‘You don’t have to get on your high horse with me. It ain’t worth it.’

  She sipped her drink. Her words had sounded priggish even in her own ears. She stared down at the table.

  ‘I’m a lousy lover too,’ he continued easily, speaking in a soft foggy voice, barely moving his lips, his face impassive. He was not even looking at her; he seemed to be gazing tiredly into space. ‘Yeah, poor Geraldine, she didn’t know, she married me when she was sixteen, she begged me to marry her so I did, poor kid, she had a father that was always beating up on her, she had to get out of the house. I was twenty-five, I’d known her all her life, on the block, you know? She has three kids now, look at her, you’d never know it, would you? Just a kid herself. But I can’t do nothin’ for her, not anymore. For years now it’s like this. If I’m away from her, I call her up, I come all over the place just talkin’ to her, you know? Just hearin’ her voice. I don’t do anything, it just happens by itself. It pours out all over my pants and down my leg. But when I’m with a woman, I can’t do nothin’. It isn’t just Geraldine. I’ve tried. I can’t do nothin’.’

  The dancers returned when the music changed to rock. Simp asked Mira to dance; she stood up instantly. Geraldine was leading Carl in some combination of lindy and the twist. When the dance ended, Mira pulled a chair over from another table and sat between Martha and Samantha. Harry sat alone at the end of the table, gazing at the wall. Geraldine was riding high. She flew around the room with any partner she could drum up.

  The pizzas arrived, and everyone but Geraldine began to eat.

  ‘Food, food, how can you think of food!’ She danced by herself, hovering near the table. ‘Hey, Harry, come on, sweetie!’

  Harry did not turn to her, but nodded his head no.

  ‘Carlie?’ The music changed to a slow tune. ‘Oh! This is my favorite song!’ Geraldine exclaimed, near tears.

  Sandra gazed at her with love. ‘I’ll dance with you, Dina,’ she said pityingly.

  Tom’s large hand came down swiftly on her midarm, pounced and pulled her back hard into the chair.

  ‘Ow!’ she wailed.

  ‘You SIT!’ he commanded.

  George stood up. ‘I’ll dance with you, baby,’ he said kindly, leaving his half-eaten slice of pizza.

  Geraldine pressed her body into his, and they swayed together. More drinks arrived. When the pizza was gone couples stood to dance. A group of young men in black leather jackets, carrying motorcycle helmets, invaded the room. They gathered at the bar. Norm looked meaningfully at Mira. She ignored his lowering, but prepared herself to leave soon, gathering her cigarettes and lighter from the table, stuffing them in her purse. Geraldine replayed her favorite song. The other couples sat down. She and George remained on the floor boredly moving, swaying, pressed closely together. Martha leaned forward and tried to talk to Sandra, but Sandra could barely raise her eyes. She mumbled brief answers. Every once in a while, Tom would remove his eyes from Geraldine to check on Sandra, the way one might check a prisoner taken earlier in the battle to make sure he did not start something while the fighting was still going on. The prisoner’s hands were tied behind his back and his feet fastened together, and you had thrown him in a corner of the trench, but meanwhile they were shooting at you out there and you had to shoot back and your face was smudged with mud and soot and was furious and watchful, but you had to turn around every once in a while to make sure the prisoner hadn’t loosened his bonds, wasn’t just then struggling to his feet ready to pick up a fallen rifle with bayonet attached and stab you through the back. Although she was looking at the table in front of her, Sandra’s eyes flickered every time he looked at her; she perceived it from a corner of her eye.

  The music changed to a rhumba. Geraldine and George were still dancing close together, but now, instead of simply swaying, they were moving their hips together, bumping each other gently as if they were screwing. Sandra had just mumbled an answer to Martha’s question about her children when suddenly Tom leaped up so fast and hard that his chair fell over, strode across the floor and began to punch George. George put his
hands up over his face. Everyone else leaped up. Carl and Simp tried to grab Tom’s arms. Samantha cried out, ‘Simp! Your teeth! Watch your teeth!’ She grabbed Tom’s jacket; Tom flailed out at Simp, who ducked, then Tom pulled at Simp’s arm and tore the sleeve right out of his jacket. The women crowded in, pummeling Tom and trying to push him away from George, who was now sitting on a barstool with his arms crossed over his crouched head. The bouncer came from behind the bar. He was smaller than Tom, but he was able to grab his arms and propel him toward the door. At the doorway, Tom turned, said something to the bouncer, who did not let go of him. Tom looked back at the table, at Sandra, who was standing paralysed and white.

  ‘Get your ass out here!’ he shouted. Sandra grabbed her bag and coat and scurried out.

  ‘He didn’t even pay for their fucking drinks,’ George said afterward in disgust.

  10

  Norm tightened his mouth, took Mira by the elbow so firmly it hurt, and said good night. She was grateful that the next day, when the phone rang for hours, he was out playing golf. That was it, he had said. He would no longer be involved with such a crude bunch. She argued that it was Tom who was crude and he was not one of their friends. He refused to argue. He would no longer go to parties, invite, or in any way associate with any of them. That was that.

  ‘They’re my friends, Norm!’ Mira protested.

  He looked at her coldly. ‘That’s your problem. They’re not mine.’

  ‘I go to all your boring doctor dinners,’ she said almost in tears.

  ‘My friends are polite and proper. I don’t impose rowdiness and riot on you.’

  ‘If you won’t go to their parties, I’ll go alone,’ she insisted stubbornly.

  ‘You will not,’ he said in a low, grim voice.

  She thought about Sandra’s face when Tom pulled her down, and thought she knew how the woman had felt. There was no way out from them. Just no way out. She would not, of course she would not. He would not permit her to. She was a full-grown woman of thirty-two, but needed permission to do something just as if she were a child. She sat smoldering, feeling helpless.

  But the next day, when the phone rang, full of explanations, interpretations, and compared notes, she felt herself retreat from all of it. It was too gross.

  Samantha bubbled on about it with glee and excitement. She had had only one thought, she admitted giggling: Simp’s new bridgework. He had had all his teeth capped in the past year, and it had cost them fifteen hundred dollars. She was shocked at George’s cowardice, she felt sorry for Martha. And wasn’t that Tom crazy!

  Lily was full of sorrow for Sandra; imagine what her life was like, she said.

  ‘One night, me and her went to a Tupperware party. Oh, it was nothing, stupid, for the stupid housewives, you know, but it was a chance to get out, so I asked her if she wanted to go, and she worked on Tom and finally, she came. I picked her up and drove her to my friend Betty’s, and they had the party, and when it was over and everybody else had gone home, Betty brought out a bottle and we had some drinks. Oh, we had so much fun! We talked and laughed. It felt so good. Anyway, we stayed sort of late; I guess it was around midnight when I took Sandra home. We walked in the house – we were having so much fun, we didn’t want to stop, so Sandra said I had to come in for coffee because I was too drunk to drive – and Tom is sitting there on the couch in front of the TV, and he takes one look at her and leaps up and smacks her across the face so hard he knocked her down. Then he started for me. I ran.’

  ‘He would have hit you?’ Mira was appalled.

  ‘Sure. He’d think he was doing Carl a favor.’

  ‘Lily!’

  ‘Oh, that’s how they are. You don’t know. The old ways, the old neighborhood.’

  Mira told Lily what Harry had said to her. Lily was not surprised.

  ‘Yeah, poor Harry. He’s not a bad guy. We all come out of nothing, you know? Brutality was the way of life. Without it, the men felt like they were nothing, you know?’

  She felt sorry for George, but had a little contempt for him.

  ‘When you’re dealing with people like that, you have to deal in their terms,’ she said with grim strength.

  Sandra and Tom were never heard from again. Harry and Geraldine popped off rather cheerfully once George’s face had been cleaned off, and Lily and Carl continued to see them.

  But Mira was deeply preoccupied by the response of her friends to the event. She mulled it over for weeks. Whatever their opinions, they felt the evening to have been high drama. Something had happened: something true. It was almost as if – she hated to give expression even to the thought – they envied Tom his directness. Their own lives were filled with subtleties: subtle power games, subtle punishments, subtle rewards. This Tom might be a barbarian, but there was something clean and clear about his way of proceeding.

  Only Martha disagreed. Alone of the friends, Martha did not blame George. Geraldine had been coming on strong, George had taken her up on it. He wasn’t pressing her, wasn’t abusing her. That was all natural. So Tom has the hots for Geraldine and punches George in a puritanical projection of his own lust. What is George to do? Tom has seventy pounds and many thicknesses of body over him. He defended himself by protecting himself: the intelligent, the non-violent thing to do.

  Mira hesitantly confessed her confusions to Martha, her sense that most of the women had enjoyed the scene, had found it revitalizing. ‘Why, do you suppose?’

  Martha smiled grimly. ‘Well, you ought to know, Mira,’ she said with sweet acid.

  Mira stared at her.

  ‘They see in the relation of Tom and Sandra the truth about their own, the concrete form of their relations with their husbands. Isn’t that what you see?’

  Mira shook her head. That was ridiculous. Norm would never strike her, nor was she terrified of him. She went home from Martha’s feeling irritable. Norm was right. Her friends had no manners, no grace. Why couldn’t they be more … acceptable! She really felt Norm had a point. She would have to accept his decree. She decided she would see her friends only during the days. But she didn’t want to see Martha for a while. Martha was entirely too bitchy. She would see only Lily and Sam.

  But even that became difficult.

  By the age of six, Lily’s son Carlos was pure monster. He was alternately abusive and almost catatonically timid. When he went to school his timid side showed. He spoke rarely, did not do his work, and would not even answer the teacher when she spoke to him. But once out of school and back on his own block, he taunted the other children, he beat them up, he called names, threw rocks, rang doorbells, and ran away.

  His behavior did not improve with age. By the time he was eight, he was known and labeled in the neighborhood. The children his own age, all of whom were smaller than he, ran away from him at sight. Over the years they had communicated their problem to their older brothers, if they had them. The older children began to retaliate. They would get him on the way to school, for he was always most timid then; they would gang up on him, hit him, throw him down, tear his clothes. He would run home crying; he refused to go to school. Lily, hysterical, ran to the school and asked them to do something about it. She cried to Carl to find a way to stop it. She took to driving Carlos to school and picking him up afterward.

  But sometimes he had to be alone. One afternoon he walked by himself around the corner to a candy store to get an ice-cream cone. A gang of kids saw him and followed him, and when he came out, they surrounded him. Taunting and jeering, they forced him to walk some distance from his house to an empty lot behind a deserted gas station. They smeared the ice cream on his face. They sent one of their number for rope. They waited, still taunting, jeering, threatening. Carlos was hysterical, but they were too many even for his fierce strength. When the rope arrived, they tied a noose around his neck and tried to hang him from the branch of a tree. They had trouble because he was so large and was fighting so hard. The tree branch proved too slender to hold his weight, and they were
unable to climb to a higher one and drag him at the same time. They argued and talked in high angry voices that pierced the dusky light of the autumn afternoon.

  They finally decided to use the edge of the sloping roof of the gas station building. They dragged him over to it, he screaming, punching, kicking. They put the noose around his neck and one of the children climbed up on the roof and fastened the rope around its chimney. He clambered down and they looked. They couldn’t figure out how to make him hang. All the movies they had seen on TV had horses. One decided to run off for a bicycle.

  A woman who lived nearby heard the arguing and crying; she was used to it, glanced out from her front windows and saw only a bunch of kids, arguing as usual. But it kept up, which was not usual. She looked again and saw a child with a noose around his neck standing in front of the abandoned gas station. She called the police. They arrived like the cavalry; the children fled, except for Carlos, who stood there crying hysterically, the loose rope dangling on his body.

  The policemen crouched down, they pulled the rope off him, they tried to calm him and to ask him who he was and where he lived and who had done this to him. But Carlos only cried. They tried to get him into the police car and he kicked them and called them bastards and broke loose and ran. The policemen leaped into their car and followed him. They went up to the house nearest to the yard he had darted into and rang the doorbell. Lily answered it, Andrea standing behind her. Yes, she had a son with blond hair and blue eyes, yes, he was home, yes, he’d just come in – she tried to follow what they were saying. They insisted on coming in to see if he was all right. She led them to Carlos’ room; he looked up when they entered, staring, defiant, outraged. One of the policemen crouched beside the bed on which the child was lying and spoke gently to him. The policeman examined his neck, asked him calmly who the other children were, asked if they had hurt him, if he was all right. Carlos would not open his blue lips.