Edwin hung up the telephone and passed us, frowning, his mind on something else. I felt the movement of air along my arm as he passed; it was as close as I could come at that moment to touching him. He went down the stairs to the basement.
“Edwin makes a funny little smile when he hears your name,” Flora said.
“Does he?”
She fingered her coffee cup. “I know if there was anything between you, you’d think of me. You wouldn’t let it get serious.”
After a while, she got up to stir the spaghetti sauce. Looking at the way she tied her calico apron, tightly around her small waist, I tried half-heartedly to believe that she loved Edwin and that she would suffer if she lost him. She was entirely lacking in overt affection—never touched him, kissed him, smiled at him, teased him, or asked after his comfort, and might have scorned all such outward shows as either vulgar or hypocritical. It was easy for me to believe that they used each other only as social commodities, escorts at dinner parties, partners in anxiety and planning. I had always discounted the strength of that kind of bond because I disapproved of it.
Our neighbor and friend Helena came suddenly into the kitchen. I had forgotten her and now her presence seemed irrelevant, an intrusion. “Can I put some of these things in your fridge?” she asked, her arms full of groceries, which she dropped on the table before kissing Flora’s cheek and then, in the same motion, mine. Without waiting for permission, she began to unpack the bags, slamming meat, milk, and butter into the refrigerator. Dark, small, lively, she reminded me of a skittering field mouse as she darted back and forth. Her five minutes seemed to last the whole day. “It’s so much cheaper to do the whole week’s shopping at the A&P,” she explained as she saw that we were watching. “We came straight from there, and we’re going straight from here to the city Sunday night.”
She reminded me of our shared satisfaction, our triumph even, when we returned to the city from a weekend in the country; everything that needed fixing in our old houses fixed, and the children packed rosy and exhausted in the back seats of our cars.
Flora got up to help.
“How do you keep the frozen stuff from defrosting in the car?” I asked.
“I never buy frozen things. Not at this time of year when fresh produce on the stands is so cheap.”
They talked for a bit about prices, a subject I had always been able to ignore. Flora looked at me and laughed. “Look at her—she’s off in her daze again.”
I got up and took an egg carton to show that I was involved. There was no room for it in the packed refrigerator. “I was thinking about all the telephone calls I’ll have to make when we get back to the city Sunday,” I lied. “They pile up over the weekend.”
“Well, if you insist on doing all your ordering over the telephone … what do you expect? Doesn’t money matter to you at all?” Flora teased.
“Oh, I like it,” I said to make them laugh.
“Wait till you have to learn fifteen different ways of cooking cabbage,” Helena said. “I like figuring it all out, adding and subtracting, keeping track of what I spend—but when I have to come down to dealing with what I’ve bought … cabbages … and all the other boring vegetables. I’m the only meat-eater in the family now.”
“You should join my co-op,” Flora said. “They give us more potatoes than cabbages.”
Both women lived on the Upper West Side, although they seldom saw each other in the city. Their apartments seemed identical, long rows of brown rooms high above West End Avenue. My pale-yellow co-op on East Eighty-Ninth Street was an expensive luxury, by comparison.
Charles, Helena’s husband, a short, stout man in his early forties, passed rapidly through the kitchen, kissing us all on his way, even his own wife. Flora and I glanced at each other at that. Charles went down to the basement where Edwin was powering up the electric saw. It squealed like a shot rabbit. Flora grimaced, threw her hands up, and slammed the basement door.
David came in from checking on the children. He kissed Helena affectionately, held her off to admire her face, and then began to rearrange the packed refrigerator. He did not need to be told what Flora wanted because he had a great sensitivity to domestic arrangement and could always be counted on to help. After the shelves were ordered, David offered to pick the last of the tomatoes in the vegetable patch and Helena, very pleased, followed him.
Flora peered out of the kitchen window, her hand expertly twitching the curtain aside. “Are those two having a thing?”
“I’m afraid not.” It was easy for me to imitate her jaunty tone.
“It would be good for David if they did have a thing,” Flora observed. “Good for his self-confidence generally.” She began to scrape the breakfast plates, now and then snatching a morsel of bacon or solidified egg and cramming it into her mouth. I had never seen her eat, except at dinner parties or off her children’s plates. “You wouldn’t mind if they were having a thing, would you?”
“I’d be delighted.”
“That’s the way I feel. It doesn’t mean anything after all. It doesn’t take anything away from me. Why should I object?”
“No reason at all.”
This time she didn’t quite believe me. “It’s the age, I think,” she said quietly. “Forty-five and these men still don’t have what they want.”
“Do we know what we want?”
Flora shrugged, “Edwin’s been trying to finish his book on hyperactive children. He’s been trying to finish it for five years. He has the notes and the outline—he finished those last summer when he was alone in the city—but he can’t seem to get started on the book.”
“He doesn’t seem very concerned about it.”
“You’re right, he’s not desperate. He’s perfectly comfortable,” she said crisply. “It’s only boredom that drives him to other women. We call them his fuckees. He never wants to see them again after it’s all over. I say to him, ‘So-and-so’s in town. Shall we invite her to dinner?’ But he never wants me to.”
I could hardly swallow. “He tells you about them?”
“Of course. That’s part of our arrangement. He doesn’t tell me at first. He waits until he thinks I’m ready.”
“And are you?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Don’t you ever mind, Flora?”
“No, why should I mind? They don’t mean anything to him.” She loaded the last plate into the dishwasher. I did not try to help, knowing from experience that Flora would wave me aside. “It would be different if they communicated—had a relationship.”
“Why does he do it,” I said, not making it a question because I was terrified by her assurance.
“Oh, he does it for a little adventure, a little excitement.” She began to fill the silverware basket. “It makes our life together better actually, especially in bed.”
I stood up abruptly. My chair fell over. “I’m going out to see about the children.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“Don’t bother.” I went out, knowing she would be too wary to follow.
Outside the door, I looked at the flower bed which Edwin had dug last October and filled with chrysanthemums for Flora—Flora, who did not like flowers and was embarrassed by the gesture. I clenched my fists, feeling my own lack of strength in the delicate imprint of my nails in my palms. I would have liked to ram them through. Flora, Edwin’s mouthpiece, speaking the truth which I was resisting with every muscle and every fiber, but also with wishfulness, the child’s insistence: I will not have it this way because I do not want it this way. I began to summon up arguments for my own case, drawn from thirty-eight years of speculation, denial, of avoiding my own needs and the lengths to which I would go, once aware, to satisfy them. Sweat ran down the insides of my arms, my shirt was sticking to my back. It occurred to me that I was not going to be able to stand this rage. “Get out of this situation,” I said aloud. “Get out, just get out.” The command seemed simple, and yet it had no force. When I was seven, my uncle threw
me up in the air, throwing me again and again and catching me again and again, until I seemed to sail, lost, freed, my body limp as a petal. When Edwin lifted me in his arms, I flew again. Yet what did the connection mean? I wanted to believe it was love, but that meant love has no consequences.
I saw my children up at the swings. They seemed very far away, and I could not interpret their dodging and darting, their particular cries. Pain or joy? Edwin’s two oldest boys detached themselves and began to throw a ball back and forth, and I wondered what they, edging into adolescence, thought of this thick hot atmosphere, or were they even aware of it? What did they question, what did they conclude? They looked at me now, sideways, curious and wary, with their father’s light gray eyes. Perhaps the most terrible consequence of it all was the danger of losing their trust. They were fed by our lies, which negated their own observations. “I think you like Edwin,” Jeff said to me once, long ago, on the way to nursery school. “You kiss him a lot.” I told him that he was mistaken, and he looked up at me, his face clouded.
David and Helena were walking toward me from the car; they were in deep conversation. I called, “What are you talking about?”
“You,” Helena said soothingly.
“Don’t you have anything better?”
“Now, don’t get irritated. We’ve all been concerned about you this fall—that was what David was telling me. We love you, you know, we all love you, and you seem so hectic.”
In spite of myself, I was flattered. She had sensed my flourishing disorder, getting rid of my cleaning woman at an hour’s notice, with a handful of bills, stripping the bed and remaking it with fresh sheets, and then standing by the front door waiting for Edwin to ring the bell.
“I’ve been waiting a good time,” I said.
Helena looked at me with suspicion. “Well, I hope you know what you’re getting into. I hope you don’t wear yourself out. You look very thin.”
“Don’t worry,” I said.
“She can take care of herself,” David offered and went into the house.
“I’m afraid I’ve offended you.” Helena began rapidly to apologize, “I’ve been so busy this fall I haven’t had time to think—the legal aid, and then Sheila is a handful right now. She’s going through something—I must talk to Edwin about it—she’s up at night. I’ve lost track of my friends. I’m sorry. We must get together in the city and have lunch and a good talk.”
Nothing could have been further from what I wanted: no one was going to touch my secret life. “I just saw you last weekend,” I reminded her, turning toward the house.
“The weekends … somehow they don’t seem to count.” Still asking for forgiveness, Helena trailed behind me. “David asked me to talk to you. You know that’s the only reason I said anything. He thought you’d find it easier to communicate with a woman-friend.” She said it ironically, twisting the phrase as we never twisted other hard-used terms—daughter, son, husband, lover. “I promised him I’d try, and now I’m sorry.”
“Try what?” Before she could answer, I went on. “How can women be friends or even women-friends as long they are mouth-pieces for men?” Seeing her face, I was ashamed. It was too easy to loose my anger on Helena. “Never mind. I’m in a bad mood—I’m starved. I wish Flora would dish out some food.”
Let off, Helena began to clown. She pretended to pull out a pad and pen. “Madam, as the married mother of three children, could you give us your opinion of the nude men currently displayed in the centerfold of a certain woman’s magazine?”
I looked at her disdainfully, pressing down a laugh.
Humbled, she confided, “I sometimes think I’m the only woman in this country who isn’t turned on by the sight of the male sex. I always think of Sylvia Plath: turkey neck and gizzards.”
I did not answer.
“Don’t avoid the subject,” she pleaded. “I was tactless, I guess, but I was just trying to get you and David to talk. Charles and I both feel that once you stop—”
“You all have so much faith in talking.”
“Well, words are our only tools.”
“If words are our only tools, we’re crippled. What about touching? What about tasting or smelling? Don’t you draw any conclusions from that? Have you ever smelled a man when he’s afraid?”
“I wouldn’t want to,” she said, wrinkling her nose.
“You’re right. It’s a terrible smell. Do you need words on top of that to understand?”
“They are our only tools,” she repeated.
“If you mean for power …”
Edwin burst out of the house with the other two men at his heels. He stared at me, suspicious of my closeness to Helena; I stepped back. He passed, lugging the orange chainsaw. “We’re going to cut firewood,” David explained.
Edwin glanced back, “Come on!” He looked gleeful, stealing the advantage—taking my husband away up the hill. Charles followed along at the tail like a younger brother.
I watched them go: Edwin strode as though he was wearing a gilt paper crown. “A leader of men,” I murmured to Helena, “or at least of women.” He had had her too, three years before, in the back of a Volvo station wagon, a fact I usually tried to forget. “That was the act of a desperate man,” Flora said when she heard.
Alarmed, Helena went into the house. The screen door closed behind her with a snuffle. I knew she would tell Flora in the kitchen that I was in a bad mood, and they would search out the causes. Later, Flora would reprimand me privately for making Helena feel even more of an outsider, and we would smile at one another covertly, ashamed of the pride we took in our inner circle. Flora and I had been to the same East Coast college, and we could fill out each other’s stories with details from debutant parties, heartless families, and the petty desperation of living in a dormitory. Helena had grown up in the South and would never share our polish and dash. She made a specialty of her provincialism, exaggerating her accent and her plainness. Flora knew, however, that Helena often felt excluded, snubbed by Charles’s law partners and merely tolerated by their wives for whom she cooked “down-home” meals which would have put her mother to shame: cornbread, black-eyed peas—“Nigger food,” Helena herself called it once, sweeping away in one stroke all her attempts to hide her authenticity.
The chainsaw began to shriek at the top of the hill. I looked up in time to see the children running toward their fathers. There would be no pats on the back, no conversation other than jokes. The links between the three men were provided by the women. They had nothing else in common after five years of shared weekends and holidays and were as wary of each other as they had been at the beginning when we had all used the same contractor to refurbish our newly purchased country houses. Then, I had thought the men were suspicious of each other because the contractor favored Edwin, giving him lower prices for the same jobs—Edwin always worked along with him. The suspicions had not faded when the work was done. Even when drunk, the men did not discuss their jobs, their incomes, their wives, or anything else that might pertain. They clung to the fringes—movies, a new book. David and Charles both admired Edwin, who never talked about himself, never complained. Edwin’s pride, like Flora’s, held the group together.
Watching from a safe distance, I thought there was something ludicrous about the intense way the men were bending over the chainsaw. Even the children noticed it and, impressed, withdrew giggling. Edwin was the only one who was actually handling the machine. Charles and David were both city boys, fast risers from low beginnings, without the country skills that Edwin possessed as though by birthright. They were frightened of the chainsaw. Edwin’s ability to tear down, repair, and rebuild had less to do with his strength and dexterity than with the fact that his father had made a good deal of money by patenting the kind of nylon tubing used in lawn furniture. So, he had been able to buy a house outside Toronto when his son was born—a real farm, equipped with machinery and animals and a farmer who knew how to deal with both. The only baby picture of Edwin I had seen sh
owed him at four or five, grinning as he steered a tractor.
Helena came out of the house, her conversation with Flora as fresh as a blush on her face. “Flora is so good,” she said with a long, quivering sigh. “She never seems to get tired of hearing me complain, and she always gives me such good advice.”
“That’s why she herself never has to complain.”
“Well, you know, she has her life in shape. She and Edwin know exactly what they want, they know each other’s goals, and they accept each other.” She spoke with the fervor of a convert. “Now that Flora is teaching full-time, she’s become so well organized. She’s pleased about her job, and the children are fine. They don’t seem to have many problems”—Helena finished quickly and pressed on before I could question—“I mean, problems they can’t handle. Flora says they talk everything out in the morning when they take their bath together.” She must have seen me wince. “It is amazing, isn’t it?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said. She was silent, and I realized she was about to offer some ill-timed consolation. “Why are those three men not friends after all this time?” I asked, gesturing toward the racket on the hill.
“I suppose they’re more cautious than we are. They take longer to get started.”
“I don’t believe they’ll ever get started. They have their chainsaws and their wheelbarrows and their rakes and shovels, though.”
“And children,” Helena reminded me.
“Yes, the children do seem to be theirs as well.”
“Edwin even takes them to the dentist.”
There was a shout from the hill: it was Chrissy; the heavy swing seat had crashed into her head. The men were still absorbed in their commotion: not a head turned. And the other children stood staring helplessly. Helena rushed off and snatched up the big long-legged girl and pressed her to her breast, covering her with kisses. As she squatted in the grass holding the child, I decided that the crisis had passed. Even the children were turning away. Yet I could not take my eyes from the tight knot of Helena’s arms around Chrissy. There was so little contact between the rest of us that she looked potent, almost erotic.
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