The Women's Room

by Marilyn French

  ‘Only seeming to,’ Kyla said hardly, sarcastically. ‘Mira did call Harley tonight, didn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Iso said evasively.

  ‘And he wouldn’t come. Well, I suppose because you were there. But why wasn’t Harley at the foot of those steps?’

  Iso looked into her drink.

  ‘So I’m in a bind?’ Kyla grinned and stretched out her legs. ‘The paradoxical seeds of destruction have me in their grip?’

  Iso laughed.

  ‘Come over here and give me a kiss, you doom-monger, you!’

  Iso strode over. ‘Listen,’ she said, smiling, ‘I don’t want to be a substitute. You know – if Harley doesn’t come through, there’s always Iso.’

  Kyla’s face wrenched out of shape. ‘Oh, God. I tried to make it the respectable way! Iso, I love you. I can’t promise anything. But then, can you?’

  Iso laughed and sat on the floor and Kyla slid from her chair and sat with her, and they held each other, and kissed, for a long time.

  14

  ‘It’s hard to keep up,’ Mira said, gazing around Val’s cluttered living room. Everywhere there were papers, piles of mimeographed leaflets, pamphlets. ‘As far as I know, she’s staying at Iso’s, and Harley’s blowing his top. He’s saying some really vicious things. I guess you were right. He didn’t, originally, take it seriously.’

  ‘Men,’ Val said with disgust.

  Mira gazed at her. ‘I haven’t seen Tad for a long time. Is something wrong?’

  Val’s mouth twisted. ‘Oh, that’s over.’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Val puffed on a cigarette. ‘We all seem to be going through the doldrums these days. Hey, what’s the etymology of that, English major? Doldrums.’

  ‘I don’t know. What happened?’

  ‘It isn’t Tad. I mean, I don’t think so. There’s always the possibility I cared about him more than I knew. That’s my problem. Some people’s problem is that they think they care a lot about somebody and they really don’t. Mine is that I always figure I don’t care that much, that I can do fine without them, and discover I love them or need them more than I knew. But I don’t think that’s what it is this time. It’s guilt, it’s letting in the guilt fairy. Once you start to question your actions, once you begin to let yourself think you might have been wrong about something – then everything topples, because one wrong action last week was founded on a choice made fifteen years ago, and you have to question everything, everything.’

  Val laid her head in her hands.

  Mira stared at her in terror. It had never occurred to her that Val might be vulnerable like the rest of the race; she had obviously, unconsciously, been attributing to Val some superhuman impermeability. But here Val was, shaken.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was during Easter break,’ she began.

  Chris had come home for the vacation. It was the first time she and Val had seen each other since Christmas, and they were completely wrapped up in each other. They talked late into the night that Chris arrived. They did not want Tad there, they wanted to talk alone, but Tad insisted on staying. It was awkward, they were annoyed, but Val did not want to hurt him. Finally, about two thirty, he went to bed, and they could talk alone, which they did until morning, kissing and holding each other before they drifted off into different rooms.

  But next day, Tad was angry. The women slept late since they had not gone to bed until seven, and he was awake and adrift until the middle of the afternoon, when they arose. He was angry because of their exclusion of him the night before. And tactlessly, he hit Val with his anger as soon as she got up, before she’d even had her coffee. He glared at her and made a sarcastic remark about her sleeping late. She ignored him, and sat down with her coffee. He was silent then, except for noisily ruffling the sections of The Times he pretended to be reading.

  ‘And you make me feel like a goddamned outsider,’ he said suddenly. ‘Last night, you and Chris didn’t want to talk to me at all. You didn’t talk to me at all. You acted as if I wasn’t even there. You ignored me!’ he said, leaping up and walking to the stove and cursing the empty coffeepot and noisily putting the kettle on the heat. He turned back to Val, glaring, and announced, ‘I’m either a part of this family, or I’m not.’

  Perhaps if Val had been fully awake, she would have handled things differently. As it was, she lifted her eyes up and looked at him sarcastically. ‘Obviously,’ she said in a cool dry voice, ‘you’re not.’

  He acted as if she had slapped him. His whole face flinched, and for a moment she thought he was going to cry. She felt sorry as soon as she saw him. She wanted to run up to him and hold him, and say she was sorry, but it was too late. He stood there unsteadily.

  She tried to modify. ‘At least,’ she said more gently, ‘when it comes to my relation with Chris. After all, she is my child. We are very close, and we haven’t seen each other in a long time. There are times we want to be alone.’ It might perhaps have been all right; she couldn’t tell. She had hurt him, and was going to have to pay a price for that. He might in his head understand, but would not be consoled easily. It might have been all right, yet perversely, as it seemed to her even at the time, she added, ‘In fact, you are a very small part of my life, Tad. You must realize that. I’m almost forty-one, I’ve had a complicated life. You come barging in and decide we should be lovers, and I agree, and you seem to feel that gives you carte blanche to move into my life permanently. Where the hell do you come off? Did you ever ask me if I wanted you as a permanent fixture in my life? You just move in. You are completely insensitive to other people. You either retreat totally or you assert yourself totally, and it never occurs to you how other people are feeling. You act as if we were married or something. You talk as if you expect I would never again have sex with anybody but you. Fat chance!’

  By the time she was finished, Tad’s face was a petrified blank. He looked at her with no expression, and walked out of the kitchen into the living room and just sat holding his head.

  She finished her coffee. She was hot and angry, and surprised. She had not realized she was that angry. ‘Love,’ she muttered to herself. It makes you, she felt, hide your own anger from yourself, out of fear, so that by the time it does come out, it is poisonous. But she was not sorry. She felt just as she had when she was reaming him. Chris stumbled into the kitchen, sleep-eyed and grouchy.

  ‘What’s the matter with Tad?’

  Val told her. ‘Ummm,’ Chris mumbled. Last night she had been annoyed with her mother for not sending Tad away. This morning she felt her mother had been unduly unkind. ‘That was pretty raw, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, it was pretty raw!’ Val exclaimed in exasperation. ‘You think I can manage to do everything perfectly?’

  ‘You act as if you could,’ Chris said, and Val wanted to slap her.

  She fixed some breakfast for Chris and herself, and sent Chris into the living room to ask Tad if he wanted any. He did not. The women ate and read The Times in silence. By this time, both were awake and talking in brief snatches. Val was still angry with Chris, and gave her short answers.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Chris said. ‘It’s just that he looked so miserable. When I came through the living room, I even thought he was crying. I guess I always think that you should be able to kiss every sore and make it well and if you don’t, it’s pure malice on your part.’

  ‘Yes,’ Val said bitterly. ‘And of course, I could have. All I had to do was deny my feelings. That’s what people expect Mother to do!’

  ‘I know, I know! I said I was sorry.’

  ‘Kids. Mothers,’ Val muttered. ‘You’re not supposed to feel your own feelings so that you can be a perpetual bandage to everybody else’s.’

  Chris looked at her. ‘If I didn’t know you better, I’d swear you felt guilty.’

  Val put her head in her hands. ‘I do. Anyway, I feel bad I hurt him.’ She lifted her head up. ‘And what’s more, I wanted to hur
t him. I guess I’ve been feeling more hemmed in than I knew. I’ve wanted to slap out at him for a long time.’

  Late in the afternoon, Val began to get over her anger at Tad. She smelled marijuana from the living room, and knew that he was smoking to dull his feelings. Her heart melted with pity for him: he seemed, in her eyes, so helpless. There was something unforgivable about hitting a helpless person. She went into the living room. She sat down near Tad, but in a different chair.

  ‘Tad, I’m sorry I was cruel,’ she said. ‘I was angry and I guess I’ve been angry for a while without really knowing it. It built up and came out that way. I do feel you are part of my life – if you care now.’

  His head jerked up. ‘Have you had sex with anyone else?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me, Val! Have you been sleeping around?’

  ‘You bitch!’ she was astonished. ‘What the hell business is that of yours?’

  ‘You said it! You said if I thought you wouldn’t, I was crazy. I want to know if you have. I have to know,’ his voice cracked, and her blood pressure went down a little.

  ‘What difference would it make?’

  ‘All the difference. Do you think I’d stay with a whore?’

  She gazed at him coolly now. ‘If that’s the way you see things, you might as well leave now. What do you think I’ve been doing the past twenty years?’

  ‘I don’t care about that. That was before you met me.’

  ‘I see. You’ve broadened yourself enough that you can accept someone who has not always been yours alone, but not enough to accept that once you enter the picture, she does not become your sole property.’

  He did not seem to understand. ‘Have you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered.

  ‘Who?’ He was sitting back against the sofa cushions, his head dejected, his air despairing.

  ‘That is not for you to ask. I would tell you if I wanted to tell you.’

  His face was suddenly intense. ‘Who? I have to know, Val, I have to know!’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sakes!’ She was disgusted. ‘Tim Ryan.’

  Tim Ryan was a member of the peace group, an undergraduate at Tufts.

  ‘Val, he’s eighteen! Eighteen! Younger than Chris!’

  ‘So what? You’re only a few years older than Chris. Since when did that become important?’

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ Tad said between his teeth.

  ‘Oh, for Christ’s sake.’ Val stood up. ‘Go ahead, play every stupid game in the book. But I am sure as hell not going to waste my time playing them with you.’ She left the room, and went into her bedroom, and sat down to work on the prison report. Hours passed. She heard Tad come into the kitchen a few times and pour drinks, but he said nothing to her, and returned to the living room. Around nine, Chris got hungry and prepared dinner. Chris asked Tad if he wanted to eat, but he refused her. But while she and Val were eating, he came into the kitchen twice to pour drinks. He was walking crooked, and almost slipped once. Each time, he said nothing, and returned to the living room.

  Chris raised her eyebrow. ‘Mom, I wanted to go out tonight. Some friends are getting together. They said Bart might be there. I haven’t heard from him in months, and I’d really like to see him.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it, honey, I can handle Tad. What can happen? He’s falling down drunk already. He’ll probably pass out. If worse comes to worst, I can run and he can’t,’ Val laughed.

  They were finishing dinner when Tad staggered into the kitchen again, but this time after he had poured his drink, he staggered past them into Val’s bedroom and fell on the bed. Then he started to speak. He called out, ritually, endlessly, a stream of imprecations. ‘Bitch, whore, slut, cunt, filthy cunt, I believed in you, I thought I loved you, but I tell you, Val, I don’t love you that much, not that much, I’ll never forgive you, you filthy slut, you whore, you bitch …’

  He kept it up. Val stood up and went to the bedroom doorway. ‘Take your filthy perverted values and get out of here,’ she said. But he only yelled louder. She slammed the bedroom door. He rose unsteadily – they could hear him almost fall – and threw it open again, then lay back down in the bed and continued his litany.

  Val shook her head. ‘Funny, the thing he seized on. I can understand his being hurt at my saying he wasn’t part of my life – I would have been hurt if he’d said that to me. But this!’

  They sat looking at each other over coffee. He did not stop. ‘We could throw him out. The two of us,’ Val said. ‘In his condition, we could do it.’

  They looked at each other. It was inconceivable. Throw out on the street a drunk who could not walk straight, who was hurt in the way he was hurt? No. It must be endured. They did not discuss it, they simply dismissed the possibility.

  ‘I could call the police,’ Val said, her eyes on her coffee. Chris did not answer.

  They sat there for a while. Tad never stopped. ‘Whore, filthy whore, cunt, bitch,’ he went on, as if his language could destroy her.

  Suddenly he started to cry. He sobbed for a while, then cried out weakly: ‘Chris! Chrissie!’

  Her head came up and she glanced at her mother.

  ‘Chris, Chrissie, come talk to me, please, please, come to me, will you?’

  Val frowned, puzzled, suspicious, but Chris stood up.

  ‘Chris, come here, please come here.’

  Chris went, ignoring her mother’s vigorous negative shake of head.

  She stood beside the bed, looking down at him. Val could look directly into the bedroom from where she sat.

  ‘Sit down, Chris.’ He patted the bed, and she sat. ‘Come to bed with me Chris, will you? You and me, Chris, don’t pay any attention to the slut in there, just close the door, come and screw me, Chris, I’ve wanted to screw you always, ever since I first saw you. We don’t have to worry about her, she can go find ten other people to screw, come on, Chris, lie down, kiss me.’

  Val did not move. She could see Chris sitting there. Chris did not look angry or frightened. She was smoothing his forehead with her hand. He did not seem to notice that his words were not having effect. He kept repeating them, and he clutched her wrist a few times. She sat there calmly, gazing down at him with pity. After a long time, Chris rose. She bent over him and kissed his forehead. ‘I have to go out,’ she said softly.

  She came into the kitchen. ‘Where are the car keys?’ she asked her mother, her face expressionless.

  Val nodded at her purse. Tad struggled to his feet.

  ‘Okay, bitch, you want me to leave, I’ll leave, I’ll go with Chris, Chrissie and me’ll go out and have a drink.’

  He caromed across the room and staggered out the door. Val stood and followed him. The thing she would get violent about was if he tried to drive the car with Chris in it. She was unsure about Chris, about how much pity she had, about where she would draw the line. She stood in the doorway, out of their sight, watching. Chris had already started the car; when she saw Tad, she rolled down her window. He wanted to drive. He was insisting. He was arguing with her, telling her to slide over. Val did not want to interfere: this was Chris’s scene. But she held her body in readiness, like a runner. If she saw Chris’s arm move to open the door, she would fly out and stop the thing. If she hesitated even a moment then, it might be too long. But she could not hear Chris, only Tad’s voice in tirade, not even what he was saying. It seemed to her that Chris moved, and Val put her hand on the knob and started to open the door. But Chris had rolled up the window. Tad would not let go of the door of the car. Then suddenly, he let go, but before she felt it safe to back up, he had staggered around to the other side and entered the car. Chris turned the motor off. They sat there in the dark car. They were still talking, Val guessed. They sat and sat. Val could not see well: the streetlight illuminated only the outside of the car. Chris’s face was a white blur inside it. Val had to pee, but she stood there watching. It seemed endless, and Val was muttering against Chris under her breath.

 
‘Damned kid. Why does she have to be so delicate?’

  But then the car door opened, and Chris got out and walked up the steps and into the house. Val had by this time retreated inside, not wanting Chris to know how concerned she had been. Chris dropped the car keys on a table.

  ‘I’m going out the back way,’ she said, coldly. ‘I’ll walk.’

  And disappeared before Val could stop her. She worried about Chris walking alone at night in Cambridge, but Chris never understood why she should not. Her friends all did, she said. Val talked about the dangers. Chris shrugged. She believed that if you did not want anything untoward to happen to you, it would not happen. She felt safe, inviolate. In any case, she was gone. Val picked up the keys and hid them, hoping she would remember tomorrow where she hid them tonight. Then she cleaned up the table and began to wash the dinner dishes. In a while, Tad staggered back in, headed for the counter and poured himself a drink, spilling Scotch on counter and floor.

  ‘You’ve had enough Tad,’ Val said curtly. ‘You’ll be sick.’

  ‘Just shut up, you fucking whore,’ Tad managed, but was too exhausted to continue. He aimed his body toward the living room, but it would not turn, and so he followed it, staggering toward the bedroom. He fell on Val’s bed, and lay there with the light on. She finished in the kitchen, locked the doors, leaving the front light on for Chris, and went into the living room. She planned to sit up until Chris was safely in. But she drifted off to sleep in the chair. She was wakened by a bang, and leaped up and ran down the hall. Tad was in the bathroom, vomiting, and there was vomit on the hall floor. She went back to the living room and lighted a cigarette. Tad came out of the bathroom and slipped on his own vomit, cursed, then staggered back to bed. She thought: he’s going to lie down in my bed with vomit all over his clothes; she cursed him, cursed herself, cursed all men. About five, Chris came in softly. Val opened her eyes as Chris came through the living room to her own room, but Chris did not even glance at her.