Women Within

by Anne Leigh Parrish

  “You must be a teacher,” Eunice said.

  “A professor.”

  “Oh.”

  “Economics.”

  “Money and stuff?”

  “Yes.”

  Eleanor invited Eunice to sit down. Eunice sat. Eleanor offered her something to drink.

  “Sure. What do you have?” Eunice asked.

  “Everything, really. Except maybe mango juice. Hamilton can’t stand mango juice.”

  “Beer?”

  Eleanor stood still. Clearly, she hadn’t expected to be asked for beer.

  “Or, wine is fine,” Eunice said.

  “I’ll just open what you brought, if you don’t mind.”

  “What it’s here for, right?”

  Eleanor left the room, bottle in hand. Eunice heard her go down a hall, then into another room, no doubt the kitchen. A drawer opened. Eunice considering bolting out into the night, like the imaginary dog. Ham’s miserable face came back to her as he told the story, trying so hard to be brave.

  Eleanor returned with two wine glasses in one hand and the uncorked bottle in the other. She put everything on the coffee table in front of Eunice, on which glossy magazines had been neatly arrayed. The Atlantic Monthly, The Economist, Harper’s, the same stuff that was in the reception area at Lindell.

  As they sipped their wine, Eleanor seemed to relax. Her face softened. She leaned back comfortably in her wing-backed chair. Different music played then, still classical, but newer, more modern.

  “Is Ham running late?” Eunice asked.

  “It’s just you and me this evening. This is our chance to spend a little time together and get to know each other.”

  “I see.”

  Eleanor’s soft gaze grew tight, focused.

  “He’s quite smitten with you, you know. I can’t tell you how long I’ve been hoping that someone older, wiser, would come along and take him under her wing.”

  Eunice put her glass of wine on the coffee table.

  “Look, Eleanor, I think maybe you got the wrong idea about me and Ham. We’re really just friends, see? Nothing more.”

  “You’re taken with him, too, I can tell.”

  What would Grandma Grace say about this poor woman, playing matchmaker for her son?

  Pathetic feeb.

  “Let me be clear. Hamilton hasn’t been well for a while. He had a breakdown a few years ago. He was in love with a woman, and she spurned him, plain and simple. It happens to young men all the time. But Hamilton is quite sensitive. He just couldn’t stand the rejection, poor thing,” Eleanor said.

  Her eyes teared up. She didn’t look like she was acting.

  “Go on,” Eunice said.

  “He tried to kill himself.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, wow.”

  Eleanor drank some wine. Eunice did, too.

  “It was my fault, for not holding on to his father,” Eleanor said.

  Her ex-husband was a research scientist there at the university, she said. He fell in love with one of his lab assistants. He didn’t ask Eleanor for a divorce, hoping that she’d be “modern” in her thinking.

  “It’s what people used to call an ‘open marriage.’ Very popular back in the Seventies.”

  Eunice helped herself to another glass of wine.

  “I told him to get out. Hamilton was only five at the time. He kept asking when Daddy was coming home.”

  Eleanor put her glass down. She’d only had a little of it. Her eyes were troubled.

  “You know, sometimes I believe he hates me. That sounds dire, I know. But, consider that he named an imaginary dog after me. An imaginary dog who died an imaginary death, apparently,” she said.

  She picked up her glass and held it without drinking.

  “But he knows the truth about his father, that he was the one who broke things up, right?” Eunice asked.

  “Truth doesn’t matter much to a young person in pain.”

  “No, maybe not.”

  Eunice wiped her sweaty palms on her blue jeans. Her eyelids itched. The skin under the sweater itched. She wished she’d worn something else. She wished Ham had shown up. She wished she’d eaten more today. She was starving.

  “I’ll come to the point. I want you to take care of Ham. I don’t mean have him move in with you. I mean take an interest in him, spend time with him, build up his confidence. He likes to square dance, obviously. He also loves going to the movies. And the theater. Bring him down to the City; take in a few shows. I’ll pay for it. I’ll pay for everything,” Eleanor said.

  Eleanor excused herself for a moment, and returned with a silver tray loaded with cheese and crackers. She began munching, then noticed that Eunice wasn’t.

  “Won’t you have anything, dear?” she asked.

  “Oh, no thanks. I’m fine until dinner.”

  Eleanor looked confused again.

  “Aren’t we having dinner?” Eunice asked.

  “Well, no, actually. Ham invited you for drinks, didn’t he?”

  “He said dinner. Doesn’t matter.”

  Eleanor shook her head. “That child never could distinguish between the cocktail hour and the dinner hour. Probably because he doesn’t drink.”

  “He did drink, though.”

  “What? No, never, not to my knowledge.”

  Eunice pressed a piece of gooey cheese onto a tiny square cracker and popped the whole thing in her mouth. It was delicious. She had several more. Her appetite faded. She was suffused with a growing sense of well-being. Then she recalled the situation at hand.

  “Look, I’m all for hanging out with Ham, but let’s just see how things go, okay? I mean, he might change his mind; I might change my mind. You know,” she said.

  Eleanor wiped her lips with her napkin.

  “Now you have cold feet,” she said.

  “Well, a little, yes. See, I’m sorta used to making my own arrangements, as it were.”

  “Ham told me you had an independent spirit.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. It’s just I like to decide for myself when it’s time to make a move.”

  As Eunice reflected on the moves she’d made, she had the rotten idea that maybe the best part of her life was already behind her. If that were true, that meant there wasn’t a whole hell of a lot to look forward to.

  “What’s the matter, dear?” Eleanor asked.

  “Nothing.”

  The silence went on. Both women felt uncomfortable.

  “I should get going. It’s been great, really,” Eunice said.

  She was out the door by the time Eleanor had put down her glass of wine and gotten to her feet.

  chapter fifteen

  After Eunice quit the square-dancing class, she enrolled in a fiber arts workshop.

  She sat at a loom and ran the shuttle back and forth. At first, she could do no more than handle two colors—one for the warp, one for the weft. Her warp threads were never taut enough, and the entire blanket or throw tended to sag. Her back also ached. Weaving didn’t seem like a good idea.

  But she made a friend. Moonshine. That wasn’t her given name, she explained. She’d been born Debra and came to hate it early on.

  “My mother was one of the ultra-traditional conservative types. You know. Church on Sunday. No swearing allowed. Liquor was Devil’s work,” she said over a large mug of herbal tea.

  “Polar opposite of my mother.”

  “You’re lucky.”
<
br />   “Hell, you say. My mother drank till she stank.”

  “Great phrase! Though maybe not so much the truth behind it.”

  Moonshine’s long black hair was kinky, out of control—a wild, extravagant mess. She wore ankle-length cotton skirts and peasant blouses. Their puffed sleeves gave her an extra touch of whimsy.

  She lived in a small wooden house at the edge of campus, overlooking a ravine at the bottom of which ran a clear creek that had yielded a number of treasures. She displayed these on a wooden shelf in her kitchen: the head of a china doll, the crystal stem of a broken wine glass, and a ballet slipper that a child must have worn, given how small it was. Eunice was curious about that creek and decided to take a look one of these days.

  Aside from weaving, Moonshine did all sorts of other handcrafts. She quilted, knit, and embroidered. Once, she’d learned how to blow glass at an arts school in North Carolina. The fine arts didn’t particularly appeal to her, she said, which surprised Eunice. A stunning little watercolor of one of Dunston’s gorges hung shyly on the wall with Moonshine’s signature in the lower right corner. Standing before it, Eunice could hear the water rush, feel its delicate spray. She couldn’t believe Moonshine didn’t value what a gift she had.

  “It’s a matter of what makes me happiest,” she said. Tea had been cleared away. Two glasses now held Chardonnay. The summer afternoon filled the room with a light as golden and sweet as the wine itself.

  “And it’s not watercolors,” Eunice said.

  “My hands need to move more.”

  “Makes sense.”

  “I mean, you can’t paint well with busy hands.”

  “Suppose not.”

  “I guess I like building things, in a way.”

  Moonshine looked thoughtful, as if this idea had never occurred to her before. Eunice drank. She enjoyed the wine.

  “I’m too clumsy to make anything,” she said.

  “Just takes practice.”

  Moonshine worked in an arts cooperative on the downtown Commons that sold her stuff and other artists’ too. She had big plans for that store. For one thing, she wanted to buy it and enlarge the space. The problem was being broke.

  “Really? What about this house?”

  “My ex’s.”

  “I didn’t know you’d been married.”

  “Married, kids, the whole thing.”

  The boys had chosen to stay with their father, Moonshine said, which was just as well, because her ex thought she was an unfit mother.

  “Why?” Eunice asked.

  “Pot.”

  “Oh.”

  “As in, smoking.”

  The mention of pot reminded Eunice of Carson. She’d seen him just the other day, driving by with a woman next to him. He’d had one hand on the wheel and his free arm around her.

  Moonshine looked out over the ravine. They were on the deck, with trees everywhere. It was like being suspended in a green tapestry, safe and secure.

  “What’s your ex do?” Eunice asked.

  “Lawyer. Chief Counsel for the university.”

  “Good money.”

  “It is. That’s why I have this house.”

  “You lived here, with your family?”

  “Oh, no. We had a place over in the Heights. He still lives there. This was just an investment—a rental property. We had some weird tenants over the years. One of them left an upside down cross on the bedroom wall. Another one broke a bunch of windows. A real pain to get those all replaced. Anyway, when things went south with us, I moved in.”

  “So, what happened, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  It was the usual story, Moonshine said. They were married too young; she didn’t take to being wifey, keeping the house and cooking the meals. She was restless, sometimes desperate. Her husband didn’t understand why she wasn’t satisfied when he’d given her everything she’d asked for. She explained that her wants had changed. She loved her boys; that was never the problem. She just felt like they were sucking the life out of her, like she couldn’t breathe. She had turned into a cornered animal, fighting for survival.

  “Like a lioness about to eat her own cubs,” she said.

  She never thought she’d do them any actual harm, but she knew something had to give. So, she smoked a lot of pot and calmed down. Then hubby found her stash and freaked. They were heading toward a breakup anyway, pot or no pot. Seems there was also this young law student, and well, Eunice could guess the rest.

  “And when did all this happen?” Eunice asked.

  “Eight years ago. Boys are grown up, at this point. They like me a little more than they used to, no thanks to their father. I suppose I shouldn’t be too hard on him, though. He’s got problems of his own. The law student’s a little loose with her credit cards. He had to take them away from her, apparently.”

  “You still smoke?”

  “Not for a long time.”

  The irony, Moonshine said, was that she lost her boys because she smoked pot, and once they weren’t her responsibility anymore, she didn’t need it. She spoke calmly, warmly, as if praising the splendor of someone’s garden. Only the pause before speaking the last few words showed that it still hurt.

  “When did you change your name?” Eunice asked.

  “Years ago. Before I was married.”

  “Huh.”

  “You’re thinking that if a stuffed shirt like my husband was willing to take on someone named Moonshine, he shouldn’t have been surprised at anything.”

  “Something like that.”

  The breeze came up. It held the scent of water and fresh earth. Eunice enjoyed a rare sense of hope, which quickly passed.

  Moonshine continued talking about buying the arts store. She needed investors. No one would have to put in more than they could afford. What did Eunice think?

  “You asking me to contribute?”

  “No! I was asking if the idea made sense to you.”

  Eunice explained about losing her inheritance to Baxter Bain years before and why money was always a sore subject.

  “I should marry a rich guy,” she said. Until that moment, the thought had never actually occurred to her.

  “That’s what I did. Look how it all turned out.”

  “We wouldn’t have kids.”

  “You might regret that.”

  “I’m too old, anyway.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Forty-one.”

  “Me, too!”

  For a moment, Eunice considered what Moonshine had experienced that she hadn’t, in the same span of time.

  Moonshine suggested they move inside for a while. She felt like crafting. Eunice wasn’t sure she should stay, not that she had to be anywhere. It was Saturday. She usually cleaned house on Saturday.

  To hell with cleaning house.

  Moonshine was making a quilt. She had the pieces all cut into small octagons and spread out on the floor of the small room she used as her studio. She asked Eunice to sort the pieces by color. The fabric was sometimes patterned with leaves, sometimes one solid color, primarily blues and purples with just a few that were tones of ruby red. Moonshine sat in a shabby chair upholstered in a soft green fabric and worked her needle swiftly. Her moving hands seemed to loosen something within, and she spoke much more easily than when they’d been sitting side by side, gazing into the trees.

  Everyone knew that women got a raw deal, she said. Just being born female put you many rungs down on the ladder. She’d tried to instill in her two sons the idea of parity so they’d
grow up to be fair minded, seeking an equality of spirit with the female sex. She was pretty sure she’d failed. How could she make them see that women were just as important when in their very own household that clearly wasn’t the case? The ditzy law student—second wife—didn’t help. Moonshine’s ex treated her like a little girl, which psychologically she probably was. Reflecting on her own marriage, it was only when she’d gotten her feet under her emotionally that her husband wanted out, pot or no pot. He had to call the shots, and wasn’t that a typically male thing?

  Moonshine was absolutely certain that her own mother’s insane piety was really just another form of female subservience. Had Eunice ever noticed how all major religions treated women like dogs? Well, okay, maybe not that bad, but women were always behind the men. And what was this nonsense with Muslim women having to cover their bodies for fear that some random male would suddenly be aflame with uncontrollable lust?

  The trouble was good old Mother Nature. Women got pregnant. Men didn’t. That explained it all, really. Women were vulnerable in the sex act, men weren’t. Until birth control, women were slaves to biology. And ever since the pill became widely available, men had tried to keep women firmly in their place. Oh, she knew it sounded like radical feminism, and maybe it was. But honestly, why couldn’t men just chill out and let women decide when—and if—they wanted children.

  Thank God her husband had left that decision squarely up to her. And what that decision came down to, because she was a pretty dumb bitch at the time, was not getting an abortion after learning she was pregnant. She knew all about birth control and hadn’t bothered. She supposed she was setting herself up, backing herself into a corner. Not that she didn’t want children, mind you, she just hadn’t thought it through.

  Eunice handed Moonshine the pieces she pointed to.

  “Babies are cute,” she said.

  Moonshine stopped sewing for a moment. She looked at Eunice, trying to see inside her.

  “It’s just that someone brought a baby into Lindell the other day. Someone’s great-granddaughter. All the residents—the ones who can still get around, that is—wanted a look.”