Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons

by Lorna Landvik

  “She’s talking with her mouth full again, Mommy.”

  “ ‘Nother biscuit, please,” said Joe.

  AT BOOK CLUB earlier that week, trying to merge two themes, we talked about what teacher we were particularly grateful for.

  “Mrs. Simick was my favorite,” said Audrey, pressing a corner of her false eyelashes with her pinky. “Definitely. She was my fifth-grade teacher, the teacher I went to during recess when I realized that I was bleeding and I hadn’t cut myself.”

  “Your period?” asked Merit, and when Audrey nodded, she asked, “You got your period in the fifth grade?”

  “At recess. I found Mrs. Simick standing by the jungle gym reading a paperback—all the other teachers gathered together to talk, but Mrs. Simick was always off by the jungle gym, reading—anyway, I said really matter-of-factly even though I was panicking, ‘Excuse me, Mrs. Simick, I think I might be dying.’ ”

  “You didn’t know what it was?” I asked.

  In a quick, impatient movement, Audrey lit a cigarette. “I should have,” she said, her voice colored with anger. “I had already started to develop, and you’d think my mother might have wanted to prepare me for what was ahead—but no, I was absolutely without a clue.

  “ ‘You’re not dying, honey,’ said Mrs. Simick, and she cupped my chin with one hand and got a hanky out of her sweater pocket with the other. ‘Wipe your leg with this and then follow me.’

  “She took me into the school, making sure we passed as few people as possible, and then she took me into the nurse’s office. The nurse was at lunch, so Mrs. Simick got me a pad and some pins and told me what was happening. Then she called my mother to come pick me up. The next day she asked me to stay after, and when all the kids had left the room, she pulled a pink box out of her desk drawer and inside were two cupcakes. She put candles in them and said, ‘Some people think when a girl gets her period, it’s a rite of passage to celebrate. I’m one of those people.’ Then she lit the candles and told me to make not one, but two wishes, ‘one for taking your first step toward womanhood and the other for being so brave about it,’ before I blew them out. I remember sitting in that classroom with the afternoon sun shining through the windows we’d just decorated with portraits of the presidents, eating cupcakes with Mrs. Simick and talking about everything from Margaret Truman’s musical talent and how neat it would be to see African violets not growing in a pot but in Africa to what we supposed the world might be like when I got to be Mrs. Simick’s age—which was all of thirty-eight, which of course I thought was as ancient as dawn.” Audrey looked at her cigarette and flicked the ash that had grown long as she talked. “She always made me feel like such a . . . person. Plus she had us sing our multiplication table to ‘Mairzy Doats,’ which made even math fun.”

  “To Mrs. Simick,” I said, raising my shot glass.

  “On the farm we learned about the facts of life pretty early,” said Kari after we had had a reflective moment saluting the good and kind Mrs. Simick. “When I got my period, I knew exactly what it was; in fact, at fourteen, I was getting a little anxious for it.”

  “Me too,” said Faith, “I was thirteen, and all my friends already had theirs. To have your period was a status thing, like getting the right charm for your bracelet on your birthday.”

  Merit shook her head. “When my mother told me about menstruation, I told her I didn’t want to have a period. She laughed and said we didn’t have a choice in the matter. One summer morning when I was twelve, I woke up with my pajamas and sheets all bloody, and I remember crying for three days and then sulking for about a month. I thought it was so unfair that girls didn’t get to do so many things—that was the year I wanted to try out for the school basketball team and was told of course I couldn’t—on top of that, we had to bleed every month.”

  “For some reason, I can’t picture you wanting to play basketball,” I said.

  “I was pretty good,” said Merit with a resigned shrug. “But I gave up athletics after that. It didn’t seem worth all the trouble.”

  “Well, I didn’t get my period until I was sixteen, so I was more than anxious for it—I was sure I was barren,” I said. “I had convinced myself it was okay—I would adopt underprivileged babies from around the world—but when it finally came, I was so thrilled I ran into the living room, where everyone was watching Edward Murrow, and announced, ‘I can have my own children!’ ”

  We all laughed and toasted our menstrual lore, which reminded me of our first toast. “Hey, weren’t we talking about favorite teachers?”

  “Miss Monroe,” said Kari. “My eleventh-grade English teacher. I was in high school during the war, and when all the talk was about the evil Nazis, she had us reading Goethe and Hermann Hesse and Erich Maria Remarque. She said, ‘The Nazis are evil, but that doesn’t mean Germans are.’ She made me think in bigger ways.”

  Faith took her plate of peanut brittle (now it was mandatory that Kari bring her brownies and Faith her peanut brittle to every meeting) off the coffee table and passed it around.

  “I actually had two favorite teachers,” I said. “Miss Gladstone, my first-grade teacher, because she taught me how to read and because she wore open-toed shoes, which I thought were the absolute height of glamour. And then there’s Professor Emory—he teaches the theology class I’m taking at night school—because one day he compared religions to a baseball team, with Catholicism as the catcher, crouched down and willing to take the most punishment, giving secret signals; Baptists as the umpires, always judging who’d erred; Buddhism as the pinch hitter, who would hit a home run if he can just get up to bat, but if he only gets to warm the bench, that’s fine too. And then after he had us laughing over this facile interpretation, he brought in a Zen master who talked to us about quieting our mind, and we spent the rest of class sitting there in absolute silence. His class is like riding a roller coaster—constant thrills and spills.”

  Audrey lifted her glass. “You gotta drink to that.”

  We agreed.

  Faith talked about the home ec teacher who had taught her to make “the very peanut brittle you’re stuffing your faces with now,” and Merit said she had been very grateful for Mr. Marsh, her junior high music teacher.

  “He used to play opera records for the class. He’d sit at his desk with his eyes closed, his hand sort of swooping to the music, and we’d laugh, but he was never bothered by that, and eventually we’d all be quiet and listen to the music too. He really helped me hear more.”

  “I see he meant a lot to you,” said Kari. “You’re getting all teary.”

  Merit’s nostrils flared as she nodded. “He did. He thought I had a nice voice and used to feature me in the choir concerts and . . . I . . . I . . .” Her features crammed together in anger and then shifted slightly into pain. “I just don’t know why he had to kiss me!”

  Audrey perked up for a second—I think any mention of sex, in any context, was like a jolt of adrenaline to her—but her brain seemed to process quickly that this was not a nice story.

  “He did what?” she asked, along with the rest of us.

  “In the band room,” she said, tight little percussive breaths working up her throat. “He was leaving to teach in Nebraska that summer, and I’d come in after school to thank him for all his help, and all of a sudden he just grabbed me, pushed his leg between mine, and kissed me.”

  “Bastard,” I said.

  “I . . . I tried to get away, but he kept telling me I’d been asking for it all year, and he was pushing me up against the desk and I was too scared to scream, and then Jered Johnson—thank God for Jered Johnson—started banging on the door. He’d forgotten his tuba and he’d promised his mother he’d take it home over the weekend.” Merit drew in a deep breath and tried to laugh. “I was saved by a tuba.”

  “Oh, Merit,” said Kari as we all reached out to Merit. “I hope that bastard—Slip’s right; there’s no other word for him—I hope that bastard got fired and never was allowed to teach again
.”

  Merit blew her nose on a tissue Faith passed her. “I never told anyone. For all I know, he’s still teaching.”

  “Merit,” said Audrey, half scolding, half sympathetic.

  “I know I should have told, but then . . . well, I didn’t want to get him in trouble, and since he was moving anyway, I wouldn’t have to see him again. And . . . and I just felt too . . . ashamed.”

  I reached for Merit’s pack of cigarettes on the coffee table and shook out two, lighting one for her and for me. “We should track the bastard down,” I said, squinting against the smoke. “Track him down and file charges.”

  “Oh, Slip,” said Merit with the kind of laugh a dead-broke person musters after getting another bill in the mail. “For kissing a fifteen-year-old-girl who came to wish him goodbye? Who asked for it?”

  I remember thinking, If this was a teacher you were grateful for, what were the other ones like?

  AT THE TABLE as Jerry’s father ranted on about the threat of communism and Jerry’s mother kept warning him to calm down or he’d have a stroke or give her one, as Jerry’s sister explained to Flannery that the man she’d brought to dinner last Thanksgiving was no longer her boyfriend—“Thank God, because he was perfectly happy with his plumbing business while I’ve hitched my star a little higher” (Flan, bless her, asked, “How high?”)—I can’t say I was oozing gratitude either. I’ll bet if there were a national poll taken, ninety percent would answer yes to the question “Would you rather spend Thanksgiving with people other than family members?”

  And every time I thought I might have some fun and start arguing with Jerry’s dad, I thought of my little brother going to Vietnam, and fear, like a draft, would make me shiver, and I’d have to take a bite of mashed potatoes or cranberry sauce, just so no one would hear my teeth chattering.

  It wasn’t until after the table had been cleared that I realized that all through dinner Jerry had kept his hand on my knee, and I felt a deep, Thanksgiving-worthy sense of gratitude for my big solid husband, whose relatives might be crazy but who knew when his wife needed a steadying hand on her knee.

  December 1968

  HOST: MERIT

  BOOK: Slouching Towards Bethlehem by Joan Didion

  REASON CHOSEN: “I thought it had something to do with Christmas.”

  At Kari’s annual Christmas party, as Slip and Audrey did the frug to “Jingle Bell Rock,” Leslie Trottman sidled up to Merit by the punch bowl.

  “Look at those exhibitionists,” she said, sipping at her drink, her pinky extended like an accusation. “And both of them p.g., too.” She shook her head, rattling the mistletoe ornament she had pinned to her red grosgrain headband. “You heard about them flashing me in the tree house, didn’t you? Todd says I should have called the police and had them arrested for indecent exposure.”

  Merit bit her lip, her teeth restraining the smile that wanted to bust loose. She’d been delighted when she heard that story and had hoped desperately that if she had been up in the tree house with them, she would have taken off her top too.

  “Good grief,” said Leslie, noticing the ornamentation on Merit’s dress. “What’s with the buttons?”

  Smiling, Merit looked at the campaign buttons—Pat Paulsen for President, Alfred E. Neuman for Education Secretary, Betty Friedan for Director of Sanity—pinned across her chest. “They’re my Secret Santa gift,” said Merit, smiling. “Although I’m pretty sure these are from Slip.”

  The book club members had gotten to Kari’s house early to open up their anonymous (and preferably jokey) presents from one another.

  “They’re going to leave pin marks all over your dress,” said Leslie.

  “Merit, if you’re pouring, I’ll take some punch, please.”

  Merit released her smile and directed it at Faith, who she thought looked dazzling in her maroon crushed-velvet tunic and bell-bottom pants.

  “Me too,” said Audrey, her face dotted with perspiration. “Why, hello, Leslie.”

  “Girls,” said Leslie with a tight nod toward Faith and Audrey. “I trust you’re keeping your clothes on tonight?”

  Audrey wagged the end of her feather boa, her Secret Santa gift. “I personally don’t make promises I’m not sure I can keep.”

  “Please eat some of these Christmas cookies,” said Kari, holding a plate on which an elaborate pyramid of sugar-dusted and sprinkled cookies was stacked. “There are dozens more in the kitchen.”

  “Oh, my gosh, the baby’s kicking up a storm,” said Slip, holding her abdomen as if it were a basketball she’d just caught. For such a small woman, she had a big pregnancy. “How’s yours, Audrey?”

  “I’m hoping some of this rum punch will calm him down.”

  “Him?” said Leslie. “You think your baby’s going to be a boy?”

  “I don’t think it, I know it.”

  “She’s been right about the other two,” said Paul, standing in a little world of men by the hi-fi.

  “And she was right about mine,” said Merit.

  “Has anyone tried any of this rumaki?” asked Helen Hammond, whose daughter, Jody, was being paid to baby-sit all the children in the finished basement. “It’s delicious.” She offered the tray to Merit. “Say, how’s your book club going?”

  “Great,” said Merit, feeling a blush warm her face; she was so proud to have something so important to talk about. “We just read Joan Didion.”

  Helen shook her head. “I don’t know how you gals do it. Who has time to read these days?”

  “You have to make time,” said Kari, passing the cookies to the men. “You should think about joining, Helen. It’s a lot of fun.”

  “I say you’re smart to stay out of it,” said Paul. “God only knows what goes on there—I think they sit around reading feminist propaganda and bitching about their husbands.”

  “You’re not far off there, sweetie,” said Audrey, and threw him a kiss.

  “Really?” said Eric, his bright smile as perfect and insincere as a catalog model’s. “I thought it was just a bunch of angry housewives sitting around eating bon bons and yakking about love stories.”

  “Sure,” said Paul, laughing, “love stories today, manifestos on how to overthrow the male-dominant government tomorrow.”

  “Or primers on how to think like a lesbo,” offered Todd Trottman.

  As the men laughed heartily and the women offered them courtesy smiles, Bing Crosby started singing about a Hawaiian Christmas, and without asking her, Eric took Merit’s hand and led her to the cleared-away space in the living room that served as a dance floor. Todd and Leslie Trottman followed suit.

  “You look beautiful tonight, darling,” Eric said, taking her in his arms. “Although I don’t know why you have to wear those stupid buttons.”

  “Thank you,” said Merit, choosing to accept the compliment and let his other comment pass. The past few weeks had been festive and happy—last night they’d trimmed the Christmas tree with Reni, propped between pillows on the easy chair, watching wide-eyed—and Merit was luxuriating in the normalcy of her marriage. “You look pretty dashing yourself.”

  He nuzzled her neck. “But what’s up with your friend?”

  “Which one?”

  “Audrey, of course. The indecent one.” Eric looked over by the punch table. “The only pregnant woman I know who thinks it’s okay to wear a miniskirt.”

  Merit looked over at Audrey, who along with her boa was wearing a cream silk shirt over a short red skirt. It was a thrilling departure from the sort of maternity clothes Merit had worn.

  “I think she looks wonderful,” said Merit, and by Eric’s slight frown, she could tell it was the wrong answer.

  “Time to switch partners,” said Leslie Trottman, holding her arms out to Eric.

  “Bye, honey,” said Merit as she took her new partner’s hand.

  A few of the other husbands—Paul and Jerry and Wade—decided to play a game of darts in the basement.

  “You don’t have to ru
n out,” Audrey called after them. “I didn’t want to dance with you anyways.”

  “A bunch of angry housewives,” said Slip with a trace of awe in her voice. “Angry housewives eating bon bons and yakking about love stories.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean anyway?” asked Helen.

  “I think it’s a joke,” said Faith. “Oh, I think old Mr. McDermitt wants you, Helen.”

  “It isn’t a joke,” said Slip, watching Helen Hammond cross the room to continue her rumaki service. “It’s our new name.”

  “Our new name?” said Kari, rubbing a beige smear of French onion dip off a bodice pleat of her navy blue dress.

  “Our new book club name,” said Slip. “We’re Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons. I think it about says it all.”

  “Yeah,” said Faith, nodding. “Since all we do anyway is read feminist propaganda and bitch about our husbands.”

  Audrey grimaced. “I think my dear husband was kidding. At least I hope he was kidding. Now, him,” she said, looking to the dance floor where Eric was dipping Leslie Trottman, “I don’t think he was kidding.”

  “He reminds me of Mr. Moe,” said Kari. “The man who was so upset—and I guess intimidated—by the church women’s club.”

  “So is it agreed?” asked Slip. “Are we Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons?”

  “I love it,” said Audrey, “and we can call it AHEB for short, which sounds sort of like Ahab, which is an appropriate name for an angry housewife.”

  Kari nodded. “Either way, Angry Housewives Eating Bon Bons or AHEB has got a lot more power than the Freesia Court Book Club. You’ve got my vote.”

  Audrey and Faith assented, but then Faith asked, “What about Merit?”

  “Since when has Merit ever had a dissenting vote?” said Slip. “Still, it’s only fair we tell her before we make it official.”

  Meeting later on the stair landing on the way to the bathroom, Slip did tell her.