Stepping

by Nancy Thayer

  “Hello, Anthony. Hello, June,” I said, trying to look respectable in my unbuttoned pajamas. “These are old college pajama party pajamas. Excuse me, I’m going to run get dressed, and Charlie, you’d better find Cathy and console her. She ran to her room crying. I tried to make her make toast.”

  “AHA!” Anthony shouted. “The wicked stepmother strikes again!”

  Nearly in tears, I smiled wildly at the Leydens and escaped into the bedroom and shut the door tight behind me. Then I leaned against it and took deep breaths and tried not to cry. I didn’t want to cry; I wanted to be poised. I wanted to be perfect. But it was only eight o’clock in the morning, and already I felt that my day, my week, my summer, had been ruined. I wanted so much for Charlie’s girls and Charlie’s friends to like me, to think I was a good and capable person. And the farm was too dear a place to have unpleasant things happen on it.

  And after all, what had happened? I had appeared before Charlie’s pompous friends in unbuttoned shorty pajamas. I had asked a seven-year-old girl to make toast. Neither of those things was disastrous, I decided; surely I was taking this all too hard. I stopped shaking and got dressed. I brushed my hair and gave myself a quick snappy lecture: You’re a big girl now, I said to myself, and those people out there are after all only human. It’s all going to be fine. I smiled at myself in the mirror. Then I came out of the bedroom, ready to shine.

  Charlie and Anthony were pouring coffee and talking at one end of the big room; June was sitting on the sofa at the other end. She had both Caroline and Cathy snuggled up against her and she was saying, even though neither one was crying, “Don’t cry, sweeties. It will be all right. I know how hard it is for you to be away from your mommy. Remember, if you ever need me, you can call me, anytime. Caroline, you can dial the telephone, can’t you? You’re big enough to find my number in the phone book. We’re the only Leyden listed. L-E-Y-D-E-N.”

  When I entered the room I felt a sudden wave of doubt wash over me, as if I were in the wrong place. At one end of the room were the men; at the other end were the woman and girls; and I didn’t fit in either place. Cathy stared up at me with accusing eyes, like a now safe child looking at a tormentor. No one else had seen our little scene, and it had happened so quickly I could scarcely remember it. It certainly hadn’t seemed momentous enough to prolong in this way. All I did was to ask her to make toast! I wanted to yell. Cut out the drama!

  Instead I tried to smile and walked over to June.

  “There,” I said, “I feel better in jeans. Sorry I wasn’t dressed when you got here. Where are your children, June; did you bring them?”

  “Of course,” June said, not looking at me. “I wouldn’t have them miss seeing Caroline and Cathy for the world. They ran right out to see the horses. Come on, sweetie pies, let’s you and I go out and see Dickie and Dierdre. I can’t wait to see you four darlings all playing together again, just like you did—before.” And June rose, and still without looking at me, took each girl by the hand and led them out the door. Her back was eloquent, stiff, triumphant.

  One thing June had, which Adelaide had also, which compensated for the loss of other things, was a real sense of authority in all things having to do with children. That first year I quivered and wavered, not wanting to come on too strong and frighten the girls. I asked them too often what they wanted to eat or do, and since they were not used to making decisions they only stared and shrank back, and I was frustrated. June was a mother, and a real power emanated from her. I have often wondered if I as a mother appear as firmly confident as she did, a real steamroller of tightness. I don’t feel that way.

  Then I stood there, I don’t know how long, feeling surprised, and in spite of myself, hurt. I couldn’t understand why this woman would want to snub me now. I had been trying my best. I had apologized for not being dressed. I had asked about her children. I had smiled. And she had literally turned her back on me.

  I longed to run to Charlie, to throw my arms around him, to say, “Would you please get that woman out of here, out of this house and off this farm!” But Anthony had already teased me about marrying a father figure. I was determined not to appear weak, not to lean on Charlie. And I did feel infinitely superior to June in spite of her snottiness; I was younger, slimmer, prettier, freer, smarter. Noblesse oblige. I could handle her; then I thought I could handle anything.

  I went outside to the barnyard, where all the children were gathered, hanging on the fence, snapping their fingers and trying to get the horses to notice them.

  “Who would like a ride?” I asked, and immediately June’s two children began to yell:

  “I would!”

  “Me first!”

  I saddled Liza, my horse, and gave first Dickie and then Dierdre rides; I kept the halter on the horse and led with a lead rope. It is not an exciting thing to walk around in huge figure eights and circles inside a barnyard with a strange child kicking frantically and screaming, “Giddy-yap! Giddy-yap!” But I continued to do it, feeling a perverse pleasure at the children’s pleasure. I wanted to stick out my tongue at June and go “Nyaa, nyaa, ha-ha. I can make children happy, too!”

  In a final fit of glory I took the saddle off and put all four children on Liza, and jumped bareback on the other buckskin, and opened the gate, and took the children for a long walk down to the pond and back. They giggled all the way, rolling and clutching each other, and they yelled, “Hi-ho, Silver, away!” and Anthony came out and took pictures, and June was left standing alone. Back at the barn, I gave both horses sugar and apples and felt like kissing them, and did.

  Then Charlie announced that he was getting out the rowboat, and Anthony helped him carry it from the barn to the pond and the four children ran and skipped along behind. June had gone to the car and gotten a plastic sack full of wool and knitting needles and carried that solemnly down to the pond with her. She sat at the bank, primly, knitting and reminding everyone in a voice as tiresomely patient as God’s to please be careful because the children couldn’t swim. Everyone had long boat rides, and Dickie and Dierdre tried to catch a frog and finally succeeded.

  “Look, Mom, we caught a FROG!” Dickie yelled.

  “Oh, wonderful, dear,” June said. “But please put it down now. You might catch something dirty from it.”

  Anthony and Charlie went around in circles in the boat, arguing over some faculty issue, and the children splashed and screeched on the edge of the water and June knitted away righteously, mouth tight, not speaking to me. I sat in the sun watching for a while, then told Charlie I was going back to the house to make lunch.

  I was excited about my lunch. I was eager to serve it. It was my first official lunch-with-guests. I had chosen to serve what the snootiest sorority alums served at their summer luncheon parties: shrimp and avocado salad. Poppyseed rolls and butter. Fresh strawberries and whipped cream. I set the table on the screened porch beautifully, put a bouquet of wildflowers in the middle, and could hardly wait until everyone came up from the pond. I couldn’t have—and wouldn’t have if I could have—produced a baby on the spot to show June my heart was in the right place, but I had fixed a good meal. It seemed a symbolic undertaking, a peacemaking gesture. June would have no choice but to admit that the meal was good. The avocados were perfect and ripe, sitting on beds of crisp lettuce, surrounded by a colorful group of tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, and lemons, all ornately sliced. I wanted to photograph the damned things. There were wineglasses and chilled wine for the adults, 7UP for the children. The rolls were warm in a basket covered with a cloth napkin. The wine rested in a huge stewpot (this was the farm, after all) full of ice. It was the most elegant meal I had yet prepared. It was an offering. I was agreeing to act like a woman, June’s idea of a woman, to cook and serve and decorate, and to do it all with goodwill.

  June came in first, and when I told her that lunch was ready, she marshaled the children into the bathroom to wash their hands and faces. Anthony and Charlie washed up at the kitchen sink, and then came out
onto the porch.

  “Wow!” Charlie said, surprised. “This looks fantastic.” He pulled me into his arms and kissed me. He whispered into my ear, “Zelda, you are the greatest. I love you.”

  I leaned on him, soaking in his warmth and touch. In those early years I was an animal. I loved his touch more than anything else in the world; it meant everything to me. We had petted and kissed and stroked and held and rubbed and snuggled and licked each other day and night for nine months. But with the arrival of the girls, without speaking a word of agreement about it beforehand, we had declared a sort of hands-off moratorium. The only time Charlie held me that summer was when we were safe in bed in the middle of the night; no more ravenous screwing on the living room floor in broad daylight. And even in bed the lovemaking was not the same. We went about it more quietly, as if afraid we might shake the house and frighten the girls. During the day Charlie held Cathy or Caroline, not me. We bounced around and chatted gaily to each other like the very best of good clean friends. I went through the days filled with a sort of gay, rational, tolerable pain; at night my dreams were of being in my husband’s arms.

  So for one minute that Saturday I leaned against Charlie and he leaned against me, and we had to pull back suddenly and grin at each other in helpless acknowledgment of the sexual desire that surged between us.

  As I pulled back from him I saw Cathy, coming onto the porch with her clean face and hands, staring at her father and me. And her eyes flashed an unmistakable message: “That’s my daddy. Hands off. Leave him alone. I hate you. I’m going to get you for this.”

  I reeled back from Charlie, thinking I was going crazy. No seven-year-old could think that way, I thought then, not knowing seven-year-olds. I was surely being melodramatic; she was just a little girl, not something out of The Bad Seed. And I still believe she would not have tried to kill me even then. She just heartily wished I would disappear. Failing that, she wanted to hurt me. It was logical; I had hurt her.

  We all gathered around the table and took our places and I waited for everyone to take the first delicious mouthful, and Cathy burst into tears. Within a minute she was into full-scale, uncontrollable sobbing.

  “Cathy, what’s wrong?” Charlie asked, reaching Cathy and taking her into his arms only a few seconds before June lunged up from her seat and around the table.

  “I hate shrimp!” Cathy cried. “Shrimp has sand in it and bones that taste like glass. And I hate that green thing, too. SHE NEVER FIXES ANYTHING GOOD TO EAT!”

  After a stunned silence, with everyone staring at me in anticipation, I said, as calmly as I could, “Cathy, I fix exactly what your mother wrote me to fix you girls.”

  “Mother never makes us eat liver,” Cathy wailed. “And never yucky old eggs for breakfast. She lets us eat Frosted Flakes or Apple Jacks. And never, never, never shrimp! Never, ever shrimp; it’s yucky, yucky, YUCKY!” Cathy went off into another fit of crying.

  Charlie finally carried Cathy into the other room. Caroline sat miserably looking at her plate, two tears slowly making their way down her cheeks. I later learned that whenever one sister cried the other one did, too.

  June rose, unable to keep the glee from her voice, and said, “I was afraid something like this would happen. I have peanut butter in the car. You do have sandwich bread, don’t you, Zelda?”

  In the face of this woman who actually carried peanut butter in her car I could only acknowledge defeat. I didn’t even have peanut butter in the house. I said yes, I did have bread, and I rose and got it and together we fixed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for all four children. Eventually Charlie got Cathy calmed down and we all ended up at the table again. Charlie and Anthony said, “This is delicious,” and June went so far as to say, “Yes, it’s very nice,” but the luncheon had been spoiled for me, and even the white wine didn’t help. I felt that I’d been had. I felt that Cathy was a brat. I felt that those two rotten minutes had somehow magnified themselves to reflect on and spoil the whole summer, certainly the whole day.

  I wanted to tell Cathy to go away, to get out of my marriage, out of my life, off my farm.

  But of course I didn’t tell her that. One can’t, not to a seven-year-old whom your husband loves. And after a long while I learned what I learned again with my own children: no matter how bad it gets with little children, there is always tomorrow, always another chance. The children are captives. They can’t take back their fraternity pin or divorce you or disinherit you and kick you out of the house. They forgive as easily as they fall asleep, and they expect to be forgiven quickly, too.

  I didn’t know that then. I trudged through the rest of the day, and was delighted to see Anthony and June and their children leave that evening. Charlie and I sat outside with Caroline and Cathy, listening to the night sounds: frogs belching, birds twittering, creatures skittering in the bushes to bed, and the valiant whippoorwill serenading us all. I did dishes while Charlie put the girls to bed, and then I reluctantly went in to say good night.

  Both girls looked so small and sweet in their thin cotton nightgowns, with their gold-stamp baby dolls tucked in bed next to them. I kissed Caroline on the forehead, and then Cathy, as I had done every night they had been with us. The air still seemed heavy, not relaxed, so (saying to myself sternly, You’re the adult; she’s the child!) I said, “I’m very sorry I fix things you don’t like, Cathy. Why don’t you and Caroline help me shop for the groceries from now on? You can tell me what you do like.”

  Cathy stared me in the eye. “Okay,” she said grudgingly, not giving an inch. She didn’t smile. “I want my daddy, not your food,” her stony face seemed to say.

  But Caroline, sitting up in her bed across from Cathy, suddenly volunteered, “Oh, Cathy is always picky about food, even at home. Mother says she’s an exasperating child, and Gram says she’ll never get a husband.”

  I felt as encouraged as if my sternest professor had just interrupted my presentation to say, “Very good point, Mrs. Campbell.” I smiled. I relaxed.

  “Well, I was a picky eater when I was young, too,” I said. I sat down—on the far end—of Cathy’s bed. “I never used to eat pineapple, but I love it now. But I don’t think I’ll ever love sweet potatoes.”

  “I’ll never love spinach!” Caroline said, wriggling her nose and entire body with enthusiastic hate.

  “And I’ll never love onions!” Cathy piped up.

  It seemed I had hit on a favorite topic. We sat for almost an hour that night, the two little girls and I, discussing gleefully turnips and coconut and cod liver oil, and other things that we would never love. I was secretly pleased that neither girl named me.

  Charlie had to come in and break it up and insist that the girls go to sleep. I was glad. They had been getting silly—“I’ll never love poop with mustard!”—but I hadn’t known at that time that sometimes with little kids you have to stop silliness as quickly and firmly as letting down a garage door. For a while, wanting to please, not knowing how to escape, I had been their captive. But as I left the room I was content. At least, I thought, at least we’re all friends now. At least there won’t be any more of this sneaky fighting.

  I had a lot to learn.

  Two

  October third in Helsinki, Finland, and two rather remarkable things have happened. First, it snowed here today. Not heavily enough to cover the still green grass, but enough, with the wind, to make walking the children to the Park Auntie’s very uncomfortable. I felt guilty leaving them there, especially since Lucy has a cold, but they were so glad to be outside, running around, getting dirty, that I had to let them stay. It was best for the children in all ways, I decided: they need to be outside, and I love—thrive on—this short time alone in the apartment. Sometimes I write letters or scribble in these little children’s workbooks which I found at the grocery store, sometimes I do housework, always I do laundry in the tiny machine in the bathroom and hang it to dry on our two-foot-square balcony or on the cords strung above our tub. And always I think, think,
think. When Charlie and Adam and Lucy are here, I shut part of my mind off and act like a good wife and mother. Only when I’m alone do I open that secret door and let my fantasies and desires clash and clatter with my reason.

  The second remarkable thing that happened today is that I received a long-distance phone call. The overseas operator had an accent, and I kept misunderstanding, kept saying, “No, no, Dr. Campbell is not here now,” before I realized with a jolt that the call was for me.

  “Zelda?” It was Stephen’s voice coming as clear as if he were in the next room instead of thousands of miles away. “Zelda? Is that you? Is Charlie there? Can you talk?”

  “Yes, yes,” I cried when I managed to get my breath back. “I mean, yes, it’s me; no, Charlie’s not here; yes, I can talk. Why are you calling? Is something wrong?” And I suddenly had a vision of our beautiful old farmhouse, now rented to a visiting mathematician, in flames.

  “No, no, everything’s all right. Everything’s fine. I just miss you. I miss you terribly. Zelda, this won’t work. It’s all wrong.”

  A surge of joy passed through me at the words, and I felt wonderfully warm, wonderfully happy, And oddly triumphant, too: I hadn’t missed Stephen at all these past three weeks. I had thought about him during the times I unlocked the crazy closet in my mind, but I hadn’t missed him desperately, I hadn’t pined.

  “Oh, Stephen, I miss you, too,” I said. “But we agreed—nine months is not a very long time to think over such a major change in all our lives—”