The Women's Room

by Marilyn French

  ‘I don’t think I’ve met your husband,’ Mira said, looking around.

  ‘Oh, he’s not here. He’s a physicist, and he’s finishing up his dissertation. He’s down at the lab almost every night. Do you think I have the right to ask anything of him? I know he’s busy.’

  ‘Of course,’ Mira heard herself say. ‘Of course you do.’

  Kyla looked at her.

  ‘You might as well,’ Mira laughed grimly. ‘If you ask nothing you’ll get nothing. You may get nothing anyway, but at least you will have tried.’

  ‘Oh, thank you!’ Kyla cried out, and hugged Mira, spilling some of her wine on Mira’s blouse. Mira was touched and embarrassed.

  ‘What did I do?’ she laughed.

  ‘You told me what I had to do!’ Kyla exclaimed, as if it should have been obvious.

  ‘You told yourself,’ Mira corrected her.

  ‘Maybe. But you helped me to figure what I had to do. Can I come over and see you someday?’

  ‘Of course,’ Mira said, bewildered.

  Someone came to the table and tapped Kyla on the shoulder. It was Martin Bell, a silent, intense, dark young man.

  ‘Want to dance?’

  Kyla put her glass down. ‘Sure, fine.’ As she was leaving, she turned to Mira. ‘Remember, I’m coming over someday,’ she said, and Mira smiled and nodded.

  Mira wandered again. She stood near a few groups that went on talking without looking at her; she stood near a few that looked around and admitted her to conversations about how terrible it was at Harvard. She went for her coat. In the hall, she brushed past Howard Perkins, who was talking to a beautiful young woman dressed in a long, multicolored skirt and gypsy beads. As soon as Howard touched Mira’s sleeve, the young woman turned and walked away.

  ‘Mira, you’re going? Listen, would you mind if I came over and talked to you someday? Some night, maybe? Would it be okay?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She left shaking her head. She felt as if she had suddenly become the Old Wise Woman of Cambridge, when all the while she knew nothing, nothing.

  15

  Howard Perkins knocked on her door the next afternoon. He slumped, slouched in, and hung his body over a chair.

  ‘I’m really depressed. I need somebody to talk to. I hope you don’t mind.’

  She murmured something and offered him coffee.

  ‘I never drink it. It’s poison. I’ll have tea, though, if you have good tea, not that American mold in teabags.’

  ‘Sorry, that’s all I have.’

  ‘Nothing then.’ He rearranged a limb. Mira lighted a cigarette and sat down across from him. ‘I really can’t stand it anymore, this place, this paper world. I really sort of hope I get drafted. I wouldn’t kill anyone, I’d refuse to do that, but at least I’d be out of this cocoon.’

  ‘You’d rather endure ordeal by combat than ordeal by paper.’

  ‘Nothing could be worse than this.’

  ‘What about working on an assembly line? Collecting quarters at a toll booth? Cutting wheat with a scythe?’

  ‘At least you’d be out in the real world.’

  She wondered what he would do with his body in the ‘real world.’ Many of the male grad students were like him, bodiless, as if they did not live inside their flesh, but hovered somewhere above it, as if it were a garment necessary to put on when going out in public, but which they removed at night when they returned to their dark little apartments. Body was a social necessity, like the white gloves she used to wear to formal occasions. How did they look when they were alone? Ectoplasm ranging awkwardly around an apartment, reaching for the supper can of soup, sprawled on a daybed reading, draped around a chair; no joints to impede its suppleness, no matter to impede its progress through walls, chairs, windows.

  Howard was talking about the Romantics seminar. He was particularly bitter about Kyla, whom he called ‘a little, tight-assed bitch.’

  ‘Did she give a paper recently?’ Mira asked shrewdly.

  ‘Oh, sure. Christ! Typical! She wrote about the plays written by the Romantic poets. Can you imagine? I never even knew they’d written plays. And who cares? Morrison, of course, loved her paper: it was full of disgusting forgotten details that deserve their oblivion. But some termite had to drag them out into the light of day.’

  ‘Kyla’s very bright.’

  ‘She’s good at that crap. Is that what we’re here for? The world is falling apart and we’re haggling about Hugh of St Victor’s comments on Chalcidius’ commentary on Plato!’ His voice was outraged, his arms flailed about.

  Mira laughed.

  ‘I can see it now! The bomb goes off, the sky lights up, and Kyla Forrester and Richard Bernstein swing into arguments about whether that precise information was predicted by St Stanislaus of the Steamy Sump, or in the adaptation made by Pynne of Pynne Head. L. Morrison listens with sober attention, undiverted by the flames which are consuming Boston, and finally interrupts gravely: “Very interesting,” he says, “but both of you are overlooking a little known but interesting tract by a great scholar, famous in his own time, Dr Asininum Scholasticum Claus of Sancta Claus, which modifies the final apocalypse described by Pynne by adding a spreading flower in the shape of Agaricus campestris, the common mushroom, a shape very like that we see before us. I refer you to Part III, article 72, A1 – I believe. It may be A2.” Forrester and Bernstein quickly scribble the reference down, and as the flames reach Cambridge, Morrison is quietly continuing his monologue about Claus, including publication dates of every copy of every manuscript of his ever published.’

  ‘At that point, why not? It’s as good an occupation as any for last moments.’

  ‘Maybe. But only for last moments.’

  Mira stood up. ‘I think I’ll have a drink. Do you want one? Or some wine?’

  He took the wine.

  Mira was bored and irritated. ‘It seems to me that you’re frightened of failure and are just being nasty about people you think might be better than you are.’ She said this a little nervously. She had never intentionally attacked someone this way.

  ‘Of course I’m frightened. And you’re probably right about my nastiness. But still I think what Forrester and Morrison do sucks. It’s useless, parasitical work.’

  She was surprised by the calmness of his response, and decided to go further.

  ‘Then why are you here trying to do it?’

  ‘That’s what I’m asking you. Why am I here?’

  ‘Oh, Christ!’ She did not try to keep the disgust out of her voice. ‘All of you! It’s really outrageous! You are all impressed as hell with Harvard; you all would like nothing better than a life like Morrison’s. All this soul-searching is just protection for yourselves in case you don’t make it.’

  He crumbled. ‘It’s true,’ he mumbled. He looked up at her. ‘Don’t you think it’s disgusting – to have goals like that?’

  ‘No,’ she said quietly. ‘What’s so wrong? You enjoy using your mind, you want the approbation of society, you want a pleasant life. Why does everyone seem to think the only proper goal is to mortify the spirit?’

  ‘Well, I think it’s disgusting. I hate myself for it. I just hate myself period. Do you know I’m twenty-three years old and still a virgin?’

  ‘No,’ she answered gravely, switching on the lamp on the table beside her. Dusk was falling outside; the streetlights switched on.

  ‘Well, it’s true. I guess you think I’m some sort of freak.’

  ‘Not at all. I’m sure there are many others like you.’

  ‘What do you mean, like me?’ he shot at her swiftly, suspiciously.

  She shrugged. ‘Virgins at twenty-three. Or -four, or -five. Or thirty.’

  ‘You think so?’ He watched her carefully, untrusting.

  ‘I know so,’ she said firmly, wondering what data she possessed to support her statement. But she did know it, somehow.

  He sat back, his ectoplasm curling into the seat cushion. He talked on about
his deficiency, and Mira began to realize he was placing a demand on her. She felt a mounting resentment. How dare he ask this of her without giving anything of himself? Even if he had come to her with passion, she would feel reluctant. But he gave nothing. He expected her to do all of it. She was to make a miracle, to create not only the experience but also the desire for it. I could dance naked, she thought, and suddenly understood a whole set of things that had previously bewildered her, bunnies and strip houses and skin flicks and other strange arrangements between men and women. I could wear a black halter and garter belt and come through the door with a rose between my teeth like some woman in a novel by Saul Bellow. Arouse the erection so that you may have the pleasure of satisfying it. My God.

  He talked on, seemingly rambling, but there was, she sensed, a center he was circling around, not hitting on. She listened hard to what was not being said. Suddenly she had it.

  ‘So you think you might be gay.’

  He stopped dead. His eyes were sharp and focused on her. ‘Do you think I’m gay?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  He relaxed a little. ‘How can you tell?’ his voice trembled out.

  She stared at him. ‘About yourself, you mean?’ she faltered.

  ‘Yes. Or about anybody. How do you know if you are or aren’t?’

  Mira was shocked. She did not know how to answer him. She realized, at that instant, that her closest ties had always been with women, that it was women she loved, not men. ‘I don’t know, Howard,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t even know about myself.’

  ‘Oh, you gay?’ he laughed. ‘That’s crazy!’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Are you?’ He looked horrified.

  She laughed. ‘I told you, I don’t know.’

  ‘How can you laugh about a thing like that!’ He was outraged.

  ‘Oh, Howard! At my time of life, you don’t worry about what you are, you only worry about being able to go on being it.’

  ‘I think that’s pretty cynical, Mira. I think that’s gross. I think that’s disgusting.’

  ‘And that,’ she leaned forward nastily, ‘is why you are in trouble.’

  Again, he crumbled. He had, she thought, nothing whatever to hold him up. ‘You think so?’ he asked anxiously.

  ‘You’re afraid of what you might be, so you can’t be anything at all.’

  He sat stunned, rambling on with half his mind, staring around the room as if he were looking for something. She watched him anxiously; she had gone too far, she had said things she should not. She had only spoken the truth, though, part of her protested. And who are you to know the truth? the other argued. She searched her mind for something consoling, something that could mollify what she had said. But he was rambling out some excuse, was rising. He wanted to run; she couldn’t blame him. She felt very guilty. She rose too. At the door, he turned, and looked directly at her.

  ‘Listen, thanks. It’s been great. Really. I’ve never said things like this to anyone before. Thank you. You’ve been great.’

  And his ectoplasm wound around the door.

  Mira immediately telephoned Valerie.

  ‘I’ll come over there,’ Val shouted. ‘Chris has half of Cambridge here and the place is a madhouse.’ Rock music was pounding in the background.

  ‘God, I’m glad you called,’ she announced whirling in ten minutes later. ‘From now on I’m spending Sunday in a nice quiet church somewhere. Damned libraries are closed. Did you ever try to read Poly-Olbion over Revolution? I wanted Chris to make friends but this is ridiculous. And when those kids leave, I have to sweep the floors and I pick up – no exaggeration – three-quarters of a dustpan full of dirt. You’d think they were farm kids. It’s because they walk so much, I guess. Of course, they’re all getting stoned.’

  ‘You let them smoke in your house? You could get in trouble.’

  ‘They’re going to smoke someplace. They might as well be warm and comfortable.’

  She settled herself in the same chair Howard had occupied. The contrast was startling. There was so much body to Val: she filled the chair, she overflowed it. And she was inside her body, her body was her. She was wearing one of her flowing dashiki-type things. Mira wondered where she found them. Beneath it, in the summer, she wore nothing at all. The thought made Mira uncomfortable, made her feel wet and floppy. Val kicked her sandals off.

  ‘Val,’ Mira burst out, ‘how can you tell if you’re gay?’

  Val laughed. ‘Have you had a proposition?’

  ‘Yes. Not that kind.’ She told Val about her conversation with Howard. When she was finished, she leaned forward earnestly. ‘You see, it made me wonder about myself. Maybe I am gay, maybe that’s why I never enjoyed sex with Norm.’

  ‘From what you say, that was Norm’s fault, not yours. But it could be, of course. I don’t know. A friend of mine says you can tell by the way your heart beats when someone walks into the room. If it beats harder for women, you’re gay.’

  ‘But what do you think?’

  Val shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I think we’re all bisexual, in the ideal. But only in the ideal. People do seem to develop strong preferences one way or another. It’s something we don’t know anything about: there’s been too much ought for us to find is.’

  ‘Have you ever …?’

  ‘Screwed a woman? Yes.’

  ‘What was it like?’ Mira was fascinated.

  Val shrugged. ‘Nothing much. Neither of us got much out of it. We loved each other, but we had no passion for each other. We still laugh about it – or did, last time I saw her. She lives in Mississippi. I met her when I was doing civil rights stuff down there.’

  Mira sat back, perplexed.

  ‘If you’re so fascinated, why don’t you try it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mira said in a small voice. ‘But you can’t just do that, can you? Just go out and experiment.’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s right.’ She looked directly at Valerie. ‘Sex is too important, it touches us too closely. You haven’t the right to do that to someone else, just use them that way.’

  Val smiled at her.

  ‘I couldn’t, anyway,’ Mira finished. ‘You could because you don’t think of it that way. Sex isn’t important to you.’

  ‘Oh, it’s important. It just isn’t sacred.’

  ‘It isn’t sacred to me either!’ Mira protested.

  ‘Sure it is,’ Val smiled.

  16

  To this day I feel uncomfortable about Valerie. I don’t know if she was simply the greatest egotist I ever knew, or whether her operations came out of a high energy level and as she said, a Messianic drive. She had everything organized in her head, as if she and she alone possessed secret knowledge about how and what things are. She could tick life off on her fingers like a laundry list. And I not only can’t do that, I don’t even believe life is open to such an organization. Still, I find the things she said coming back to me all the time. A situation will occur and Val’s comment on something that happened in the past returns to comment upon what is happening now. Her way of seeing did make sense.

  But Mira somewhat resented her because she always thought she was right, she never seemed to feel unsure, and she expressed things so loudly that she was like a tidal wave coming at you. Every one of her experiences had been transformed into a theory: she was full of ideas. You had the choice of running or getting drowned in ideas. Yet it isn’t true that she never felt unsure. After she broke up with Tad, she went into a depression for a while, and sometimes when she drank too much, she would start to cry. She said the thing she was most afraid of was ending up like Judy Garland or Stella Dallas.

  ‘Oh, God! I’ll never forget that last scene, when her daughter is being married inside the big house with the high iron fence around it and she’s standing out there – I can’t even remember who it was, I saw it all when I was a little girl, and I may not even be remembering it right. But I’m remembering it – it made a tremen
dous impression on me – anyway, maybe it was Barbara Stanwyck. She’s standing there and it’s cold and raining and she’s wearing a thin little coat and shivering, and the rain is coming down on her poor head and streaming down her face with the tears, and she stands there watching the lights and hearing the music and then she just drifts away. How they got us to consent to our own eradication! I didn’t just feel pity for her; I felt that shock of recognition – you know, when you see what you sense is your own destiny up there on the screen or on the stage. You might say I’ve spent my whole life trying to arrange a different destiny!’

  But she often made Mira feel as if she were some female Pope, and Mira just a child being given the Word. For instance, a few days after their conversation about Howard, Mira brought up the subject of sex again. They were having lunch at the Toga, just the two of them, and Mira was loosened, having had two Dubonnets.

  ‘You know what we were saying the other day. I don’t mean to argue with you, you have much more experience than I do, but I think you put too much emphasis on sex.’

  ‘Not true. We spend half our lives thinking about sex. Say that the two mainsprings are sexuality and aggression. I don’t think that’s what they are, but say it’s true.’

  ‘What do you think they are?’ Mira interrupted.

  ‘Fear and desire for pleasure. Aggressiveness comes out of fear, predominantly, and sexuality predominantly out of the other. But they mix in the middle. Anyway, both of these impulses can destroy order, which comes out of both drives, and which is another human need I haven’t yet fit into my scheme. So both have to be controlled. But in fact, despite religious commands to the contrary, aggressiveness has never really been condemned. It’s been exalted, from the Bible through Homer and Virgil right down to Humbert Hemingway. Have you ever heard of a John Wayne movie being censored? Did you ever see them take war books off the bookstands? They leave the genitals off Barbie and Ken, but they manufacture every kind of war toy. Because sex is more threatening to us than aggression. There have been strict rules about sex since the beginning of written rules, and even before, if we can believe myth. I think that’s because it’s in sex that men feel most vulnerable. In war they can hype themselves up, or they have a weapon. Sex means being literally naked and exposing your feelings. And that’s more terrifying to most men than the risk of dying while fighting a bear or a soldier. Look at the rules! You can have sex if you’re married, and you have to marry a person of the opposite gender, the same color and religion, an age close to your own, of the right social and economic background, even the right height, for God’s sake, or else everybody gets up in arms, they disinherit you or threaten not to come to the wedding or they make nasty cracks behind your back. Or worse, if you cross color or gender lines. And once you’re married, you’re supposed to do only certain things when you make love: the others all have nasty names. When after all, sex itself, in itself, is harmless, and aggression is harmful. Sex never hurt anyone.’