Before the Fall

by Orna Ross

  Meanwhile, I slinked out of my clothes and let her lead the way back to the pool. I held my head up and managed not to use my hands to cover myself. I wasn't normally prudish, but the artificiality of the situation, the weighing of our nakedness with meaning, made me want to grab the nearest towel and run.

  One after each other, we slid into the pool. Everyone else's breasts were held above the water line so I let mine do the same. The water bubbled and the underlying drone of the pump was soothing, but my thighs clutched the smooth plastic of the seat, unable to relax. Dolores opened the session by introducing and welcoming me, then outlining the rules of the coming conversation. We must suspend judgement. We must listen with respect, seeking to understand rather than persuade. We must speak freely and with sincerity of what has personal heart and meaning. The topic for today would be our experiences with the medical profession.

  "Before we get started," said Arlene, "I just thought y'all might like to know that I did it."

  "Way hey, girl!" cackled Susan. "And did you find what you went looking for?"

  "Tell us everything, Arlene," says Dolores. "Everything. Did you buy the hand mirror?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "And you took it to your bedroom?"

  "Bathroom."

  "Ran a bath?"

  "Mmm."

  "Lit candles?"

  "Yes."

  "Good," said Dolores. "Candles are good. Low, gentle light."

  "Arlene is — or looks like we can finally say was — a masturbation virgin," Susan explained to me.

  "Oh," I said.

  Arlene reclaimed the conversation, told how she had also bought — she quivered at her daring — some female erotica. And then she...you know...um...down there...

  "Not 'down there', Arlene," said Dolores. "Come on now."

  'Touched my...vagina," Arlene whispered.

  Dolores clapped her hands. "Well done, Arlene." Gloria and Zoe joined in.

  Susan was unimpressed. "Can we be a bit more specific?" she asked, melting Arlene's expression of triumph. "It wasn't your 'vagina' you were aiming at, was it?"

  Furrows erupted on Arlene's forehead. She began to bite her lower lip.

  "Christ, girl! Ain't you ever going to say cunt?" said Susan.

  "I don't want to say that word, I've told you."

  "Now, Arlene, we've discussed this," said Dolores. "We have to embrace all the words. We have to reclaim our bodies, especially our sexual organs, from patriarchal disfigurement. We have to own ourselves and love ourselves."

  "Well, I can't help it," Arlene said. "I just hate that word."

  Dolores reached across, put a hand on her shoulder. "You've been conditioned to hate it, remember? Remember last week, when we talked about the word 'country'?"

  Arlene nodded.

  "You don't hate that word, do you?"

  She shook her head.

  "It's only a collection of letters, Arlene. If you hate it, what you're feeling is hatred of women. You have to break that in yourself."

  "I used to be the same, Arlene," said Zoe. "But now I'm totally able to say any of 'em. Pussy! Vagina!"

  "Labia!" said Gloria, cupping handfuls of water and throwing them in the air. "Vulva!"

  "Men have plenty of names for their genitalia, Arlene," Dolores said. "And none of them is vague."

  "Too right," said Susan. "No fear of them mixing up their prick and their balls. 'Down there'? I mean, Jesus! It's the 1980s."

  "Hold on," said Zoe. "She did say 'vagina'."

  "Don't any of you want to hear," Arlene said, pulling herself up into the dignity of her years, "what happened?"

  Dolores was contrite. "Of course we do. Come on, everybody, this is Arlene's time to talk."

  "But, honey," said Susan, "until she starts naming names, we can't even be sure what she's talking about." She laughed so hard she swallowed some jacuzzi water, while Arlene looked like she might cry.

  "It's okay, Arlene," said Gloria. "You take your time. You'll say it in a minute, won't you? When you're ready?"

  But she didn't. And afterwards, I found myself beside her in the dressing room while Susan and Dolores were showering. She said to me: "This is your first time here, isn't it?"

  I nodded.

  "I hope you weren't offended by that talk earlier."

  "No." I shook my head. "No, I wasn't offended."

  "It's hard at the beginning. After my first time, I was so shocked I stayed away for weeks, but something made me come back."

  I dried between my toes.

  "I'm still a bit overwhelmed, as you've probably gathered," she went on. "I sometimes have to fight myself not to put my hands over my ears."

  "I'm not surprised," I say, with feeling.

  "Oh, I'm so glad to hear you say that, I always feel like it's just me."

  "Definitely not." I said, smiling back. "Just don't report me to Susan."

  "She's formidable, isn't she? But kind too, very kind. I've seen that in her." She zips open her bag, starts to put on her underwear beneath her towel. "But you know, I wish they hadn't gone on about the words again. They didn't give me a chance to tell them how grateful I feel."

  "Grateful?"

  "To have found it." She beams a smile so beatific you'd think it was God she'd found. "After sixty-three years of being ignored, there it was. And still...still in working order."

  We are both smiling now.

  "I knew it must be something, from the way you young people are always going on. But, oh my!"

  "1923," I find myself saying.

  "I beg your pardon?"

  "You were born in 1923?"

  "Yes, that's right, dear. You must be very good at math."

  "No, it's just...You're the same age as my mother."

  "Is that so? You must bring her along next time."

  "Oh, no," I say and the way she looks at me tells me I've been over-vehement. "I can't. She lives in Ireland."

  "That's a pity. But maybe she's more advanced than me?"

  "Oh, no," I say again. "She's Irish."

  "Then bring her when she comes to visit you. Tell her what happens here. Tell her about me: sixty-three years old and..." She drops her voice to a whisper. "...I can't get enough of myself."

  Richard loves this story when I bring it home to him, but he doesn't like much else about the group. Whenever I ever try to get him to acknowledge the links between gays and women, he ostentatiously yawns. "Don't be a bore, Squirrel," he'll say. Or "I've told you before, political is so not your colour."

  This is ironic, because in the group I am considered not political enough. Susan, in particular, thinks me hopeless: I wear short skirts, I defuzz my armpits — I teach aerobics, for pity's sake. She wrinkles her nose at all this, and implies that she would probably find it unacceptable in anybody else. Mostly I ignore this unasked-for indulgence — Susan needs her convictions, I am glad to have lost mine.

  But I don't like when she starts on Richard. "He's a woman-hater," she says. "Can't you see that?"

  "He doesn't hate me. And I am a woman, am I not?"

  To him I say, "Susan says I'm a fag hag."

  "At least she didn't say fruit fly."

  "She says gay men despise women."

  "That's her idea of a chat-up line, Squirrel. She thinks you find it seductive."

  "No, she doesn't. She knows I'm straight."

  Though she thinks I shouldn't be. For Susan, lesbianism is political choice as well as a sexual preference. Men fragment female unity, she says, and heterosex always puts men first. I take her point, but I won't be taking it any further. I shrink from real breasts, smooth faces, soft skin. Men are easily pleased, but don't women always find each other wanting?

  So I call my sexual orientation straight and refuse to choose between Susan and Richard. In my new, busy life, I want them both and all the people they bring with them and the other friends I am making in work and other places and the dear companionship of the city itself, its parks full of the rolling beat of bongo
s, its head shops selling drug paraphernalia, its kaleidoscopic street murals, its pride marches and street demos, the blue theatre of its bay. Still now, three years on, walking across Golden Gate Bridge at sundown thrills me: the glowing, pink-white buildings undulating against the hills down to the sea.

  I know as I walk that I am on the "Bridge of Sighs", the "Golden Leap", the best-known suicide site in the Western World, where more than a thousand named people have jumped to their deaths, and countless more have jumped unrecorded, at night or through fog, into the strong current that runs oceanward beneath, into the sharks feeding there and beyond.

  I know the homeless in the streets and parks are as broken here as anywhere else, but still. Still, for me, the tourist cliché of this city viewed from the bridge, or this bridge viewed from the city, is a wondrous sight.

  But now my sister is coming here to see it. Why do I feel that once she does, its light will dim in me?

  1995

  It is my week for visitors. At four in the afternoon, I look up from my desk and find Rory's wife is standing at the door looking in at me. A thought jumps into my head: You're too late. Too late by one day.

  "I'm sorry to be doing this to you," she says.

  Then don't, I think. Don't do it.

  Her face is impassive, but I can read embarrassment, though she is not blushing. She doesn't have the complexion for blushing.

  "Can I...er, come in?"

  I want to say no, but I push my chair back instead, bring her through to the back to sit on the grass where Maeve and I went before. She is better looking than I realised: hair highlighted blonde, body exercised and groomed, good clothes. Not unlike my sister, in fact. For the first time this summer, I feel scruffy in my shorts and T-shirt.

  I take Hilde's chair. "Pregnancy privilege," I say, waving at the rug.

  "Of course," she agrees, awkwardly folding herself down. "How are you feeling?" A polite enquiry, woman to woman.

  "Fine, never better actually. Just tired of looking like a baby elephant."

  "What stage are you at?"

  "Six months."

  "You don't look it at all. That's probably from the jogging, is it?"

  "I've no idea."

  The conversation dries. After the interval grows too, too awkward, I say: "You better tell me why you're here."

  She opens her mouth, falters, takes a deep breath, tries again. When she still can't find the right words, she shakes her head. "I'm beginning to think I shouldn't have come."

  You shouldn't, I say in my head. You really shouldn't. What a thing to do to us all.

  Eventually she says, "I've come because I want to know the answer to two questions and it seems like you're the only one who can give them to me." But she stops again, trying not to cry.

  Well, I'm not going to be the one to speak. I don't have to. I plead fifth amendment.

  The silence stretches and stretches until it feels like it's going to snap, then she says in a rush: "What I want to ask you is...Is your baby Rory's?"

  "No!" Whatever I'd expected, it wasn't that. "How could it be?"

  Her shoulders slump and I see how tension has been holding her rigid.

  "I'm almost seven months pregnant. You must know I've only been here since May."

  "He was away for a few days in February, on a golf trip. I thought maybe...?"

  "The day we met at my mother's funeral was the first time I saw Rory in twenty years."

  Things must be bad between them if that's what she thought. And things must have been bad before I came along. A golf trip: I try not to shudder. She is making me part of something detestable.

  "Your other question?" Let's get this over with, let's get her gone.

  This one takes even longer to dredge up and out. "Do you want him?"

  "Want him?" I echo, foolishly.

  "Yes. I need to know. How serious is it? How far has it gone?"

  I look at her, aghast. Oh no, my dear, that is a question for your husband, not me. She looks back at me, and whatever she sees makes her face fall into her hands.

  "Oh God!" she says through splayed fingers. "It's true."

  "Listen, this isn't fair —"

  "Are you serious about him?" she asks, in a small and broken voice. "Or is this just a fling for you?"

  "Now see here —"

  "Please, you must tell me. I need to know. Do you want him for good or do you intend to move on?"

  I don't like her categories. To listen to her, you wouldn't know that we existed before she ever came along.

  "Rory and I have a history," I say, in a voice that surprises me with its calm.

  "I know all about that."

  "No," I say, stung by her tone, "What you know is Rory's version of our history. Just like I know his version of your marriage."

  She winces and the sick look on her face dissolves my scorn. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said that," I say. "He hardly talks about you, to tell the truth."

  I am trying to make amends but that doesn't sound much better. I love him, is what I want to scream. I love him. He was mine first. Go away.

  "I don't suppose he does." She looks at me and a lighter look, not quite a smile, comes swimming into her misery. "He talks about himself, right?"

  That surprises me. I look fully at her for the first time and, in our exchanged expressions, Rory shrinks a little. Suddenly, her questions seem to be for me, as well as her. We both sit quiet, thinking our thoughts, until she says: "I do want him."

  "You've got to tell him that, not me. I just —"

  She frowns. "I know, I know that. But before talking to him, it would help if I knew your plans. Are you going to stay here?"

  "No."

  "I don't mean here," she says, indicating the shed. "Obviously you can't go on living here."

  "I knew what you meant."

  "So you're leaving Ireland?"

  "I think so. Probably. Yes."

  "When?"

  "Soon."

  "Before the baby?"

  I resent her questions, questions I wouldn't answer from anybody else. So what bond between us makes me answer her?

  "No, not until afterwards. It costs a fortune to have a child in the States."

  She hangs her head. "If you want him, he'll go with you."

  "I wouldn't be so sure."

  She nods, her face miserably certain. "I'm too available. I should go off and have an affair myself, shake him up."

  That is how she persists in seeing me: the affair. And I suppose that is what I am. She and the children are his base. Having them allows him the luxury of thinking he wants more.

  I look away from her resentful face, out to sea. The sun shines and the cloud clusters are light and fleecy, but yesterday's rainstorm changed the weather. It's a few degrees lower today and something in the light says that the best is over for this year. Tonight, it will get dark earlier than last night, and tomorrow earlier again. I gaze, trying to imprint the sea's serenity on my brain, trying to calm the emotions this woman is stirring with her audacity.

  "It's nice here," she says, following my eyes. "Sitting here, I can see what attracted you."

  "It was what I needed at this time."

  "Are you over the worst?"

  I look at her, puzzled.

  "Your mother's death," she says.

  "Yes, I'm over the worst of that," I say.

  "It's a pity you didn't get to see her, before she died."

  In other circumstances, we might have been able to have a real talk. She has listener's eyes and I'm beginning to see that she is not as insipid as she looks, as she has trained herself to be. But I cannot let us connect. Already we have gone too far.

  "I'd better go," she says, realising it too. She stands, pulls her jeans straight. "Look, I'm sorry for coming here...for doing this." She's not able to look at me. "You must think I'm like that desperate woman in that country-and-western song: 'I'm beggin' of you, pleeeez don't take my man.'"

  "I don't think that."


  "I am that pathetic, I know I am. But —" She breaks off, looks wretched. "He won't talk to me any more. This seemed to be the only way I could find out...anything." Tears rise. "Oh, God, no, I'm sorry." She fumbles in her bag. "I should never have done this. I'm sorry." By the time she's found a tissue, she has got control and no longer needs it. She holds it helplessly, reluctant to leave. "I feel like such a fool."

  The sea turns over, wave after wave. Go, I think. Please. Just go.

  "We were happy...If we don't...It's the children, more than anything..."

  I say, "Talk to him."

  She nods into her tissue, blows her nose, then brings her eyes up to mine. "How did you get to be so strong?" she asks.

  "Me? Strong?"

  "I thought at the beginning, when you came first, that you must be half crazy to be holing yourself up here, like this. But you're not, you..." She lets the words trail off. "Once upon a time I was strong," she says. "It was a word my mother always used to use to describe me."

  I look at her jagged face, the fingers grasping at frayed tissue. Maybe, I think, but you are also fragile. As am I. And Rory too.

  We are all, all of us, so fragile.

  1986

  It's September when Maeve comes to stay. The wind blows from the north and the light of the city is so clear that she says she feels her eyes ping whenever she looks out at the shimmery bay. Both she and Donal love San Francisco and are awed by my loft apartment with its grey industrial carpet, its steel racks and track lighting. Relying on Richard, I decide my tactic will be to play up my difference. So I put them sleeping on a futon, feed them sushi and noodles, make little jokes about the Irish way of doing things.

  It's petty — and I hate myself while I'm doing it — but I can't help it. I want Maeve to be impressed. I want her to see that there is more than one way to be.