The Wrong Kind of Woman

by Sarah McCraw Crow

  “She’s in history, right? Friend of yours?”

  “Good friend.” She hoped Louise would say the same of her, although that would be expecting too much. “She’s one of the people who’s gotten me through.”

  “Ah,” Henry said. “Sometimes I think it was a mistake for me to come to Clarendon. The college seems to be in the middle of some sort of transition, figuring out what kind of place it wants to be in the future. I think it may get worse before it gets better.”

  In her driveway now, he turned the car off, his hand still on the stick shift. His forearm and wrist, ropy with tendons, poked out of his cuff, and she swallowed, feeling something she shouldn’t. You were right, June, she thought. It was too soon for a date. “I’m glad you came to Clarendon.”

  “And I’m glad you’re here,” he said. The car’s engine made a ticking sound as it cooled. He leaned close, and she did the same, drawn by the nearness of his body, and they kissed, briefly but electrically. Startled, she pulled away from him and opened the car door.

  “Thank you, Henry. I had a lovely time.” She slid out of his car and shut the door as quick as she could, walking away before she could do something even more foolish.

  * * *

  Saturday night, Sam came home early from Lambda Chi’s spring beach party. He hadn’t found a date, and it was painful to hang around a party where everyone else and their dates had concocted creative half-naked costumes. The whole thing was another stupid Clarendon tradition. Plus everyone still thought it was hilarious that Teddy Burnham had knocked him out with one punch. Even now, he and his nose were fodder for more jokes than usual. Worse than that, he felt bad vibes coming from the KA guys whenever he passed one of them on the green or in Commons. Teddy Burnham and a handful of KA guys had gotten suspended for a week, and KA was on indefinite probation, and Sam felt the KA guys’ dirty looks, as if he were responsible for their caveman-like behavior. He couldn’t wait for the term to be over. Except for Elodie. Even after everything, he dropped into daydreams about the two of them on campus, or better yet, New York, walking through Central Park on a hot summer afternoon, entwining themselves on a blanket in the Sheep’s Meadow. Or taking the train out to Long Island for the day, swimming and lying in the sun, skin to skin.

  Someone rapped softly on his door. “Sam? Hey.” It was Hank the senior.

  “Can I sit down?” Hank pulled out Sam’s desk chair and sank onto it. He took in Sam’s room, the wood trim, the lack of posters. “I lived here freshman year,” Hank said. “In one of the corner triples. Sometimes I miss those days, living in a dorm, being a clueless freshman and all that.”

  “I should have lived off campus this year,” Sam said.

  Hank wasn’t listening. He’d bent over, forearms on thighs, staring at the floor—a coach about to tell his team to get their shit together in the second half. He straightened up. “We’re going to change the world, you dig? Even if it’s only a little at a time.”

  “Yeah, sure.” Sam couldn’t bring himself to say, Yeah, man, I dig.

  “We’re refining our thinking. Small is beautiful, too. We’ve got a little money, and I’m heading down to Hooksett to get supplies. Can I get a commitment from you? Elodie hopes—”

  Elodie hoped they could still be friends, or something like that. “Why doesn’t Elodie come tell me what she hopes herself?”

  “She’s—away,” Hank said.

  Sam said nothing.

  “We need your help, Sam. You know how badly a lot of us were treated, when we were only trying to make the administration see reason. They responded with force, and we lost everything. Or have you forgotten that?”

  “Of course I haven’t forgotten it,” Sam said. “I agree, they shouldn’t have called in the National Guard—”

  “They used force on us, and then they made us sit in jail for a month. Then they kicked us out.”

  Hank hadn’t been kicked out, but Sam didn’t quibble. “I know, man. I know. It’s a bad time and the administration guys are all assholes.” Dean Gilbert was an asshole, but was President Weissman? Now then, men, here’s where it gets really interesting, he could hear Weissman saying, deep into the reasoning that underlay one of the ancient ciphers their class had studied. Wasn’t it amazing what they were able to do with their limited understanding of math, he’d say.

  “Meanwhile, the fact remains that you’re already involved, Sam.”

  “‘Political power grows out of a gun, a Molotov,’ and what was the last thing?” Sam said, remembering. “Isn’t that what you said? At the meeting?”

  “Elodie’s counting on you. Thursday night, behind the chapel. Elodie will be there. You can make a difference.” Hank’s voice had gone strangely flat, as if he didn’t believe what he was saying.

  “Are you okay?”

  Hank nodded. “Thursday, 11 pm. Chapel. Be there.” He stood, pushed the chair back under the desk and flashed a peace sign at Sam, but said nothing else. A minute later, Sam heard the dorm’s heavy front door banging shut two floors below.

  Hank’s words rang in Sam’s head: We’re going to change the world, you dig? Hank sounded like the cartoon version of a radical. You dig, man?

  The memory of a bad summer night came to him, a night at the Village Vanguard the summer before he started college. Dad had asked if Sam wanted to go downtown to hear some new guys playing old stuff, had even ordered him a vodka martini, and at first Sam thought this was just Dad deciding to be nice, to treat Sam like an adult. During the set break two musicians came to their table to talk to Dad, one old and fat and white, with a goatee and cap, and the other even older, black, with aviator sunglasses. Sam wasn’t listening to the two old guys because he was trying to make sense of what Dad had told him a few minutes before, that he’d be moving out tomorrow, that this was Mom’s decision, that it was for the best that they separate. Except now he recalled something he’d forgotten: how the old white jazz guy ended every sentence with you dig, man? And Dad kept saying, I dig, man. And how wrong it had sounded, kind of the way Hank had sounded just now.

  * * *

  It was funny how the littlest things made the Paretsky twins happy. The last time Rebecca babysat for them, she’d brought her old plastic bucket of crayons and some notebook paper, and they’d all colored at the Paretskys’ kitchen table. Tonight she’d dragged her old box of Barbies out of the back of her closet, hauling it down the street to the Paretskys’ house. She’d turned the TV to Bewitched and then Mary Tyler Moore, but the girls barely looked at the TV, preferring to make up stories with these old Barbies, introducing their own dolls to these weird older dolls that had even messier hair than their own Barbies. She let each girl pick out a tiny dress and matching plastic heels to keep.

  The night was mild, and on the walk home she thought about summer, and Josh. She’d probably run into him this summer at the town pool, and maybe he’d ask her to hang out, and they’d sit on their towels and talk about whatever high school kids talked about. Mrs. Paretsky had asked if Rebecca wanted to help them out during the summer, be a mother’s helper, and she’d said sure because she liked the twins and they liked her. But she didn’t want to spend her whole entire summer with seven-year-olds. Her thoughts drifted back to Josh. They’d lie on their beach towels next to each other, maybe at an actual beach, Lake Sunapee or Hampton Beach, and he’d turn toward her, putting an arm around her shoulders, and she’d let him kiss her. It would magically be sort of private, and she’d be tan and beautiful. Molly could be somewhere nearby, but not necessary on the scene.

  As she neared home, a strange car idled in the driveway, probably one of Mom’s new friends, Louise or Corinna. Rebecca liked thinking of them by their first names, and the way they talked to her, seriously, but not in the usual annoying way of moms and teachers.

  From the edge of the driveway, she saw that there were people in the car; the light over the garage lit up the car
’s interior, outlining Mom in the passenger seat and a man in the driver’s seat. Mom was saying something, her words indistinct, and then she leaned over to kiss the man. Mom was kissing some strange guy. Mom. In the strange guy’s little car. In their driveway.

  Rebecca needed to do something, but she’d grown paralyzed. The car door opened with a click, and the tiny sound freed her up to move. She dropped the old Barbie box in the grass and ran through the yard, but Mom was in a big hurry and had already gone through the side door. She followed Mom through the mudroom and into the kitchen as the unfamiliar car backed out of the driveway and pulled away.

  “Hi, honey, how were the Paretsky girls?” Mom said, draping her cardigan over a kitchen chair, as if she hadn’t just been kissing some random man.

  All the strangeness that had sloshed around inside for so long spilled out into one giant mess of bad feeling. Missing Dad, missing having a real family, missing the way things used to be. The general yuck of too many things, the friends who weren’t quite friends, of maybe going together with Josh but maybe not. Why did Dad have to die, and not Mom? She hated how full of hatefulness she’d gotten. “What is wrong with you?”

  Mom whirled around. “Excuse me? What did you say?” Mom’s voice had a tone that Rebecca had never heard before.

  “I said ‘what is wrong with you?’” Rebecca had lowered her voice; she knew better than to keep yelling, but she was so angry that her eyes hurt and her face felt like it was on fire. “You’re married to Dad, or have you forgotten him already?”

  “I—oh, no, of course not, Bec, now just hold on there—” Mom stepped forward, getting ready to fold her into a hug.

  No hugs. No more talking. Rebecca took a step backward toward the mudroom, then another. “You’re the worst, you know that?” She ran to the side door, pulled it open and slipped through it, slamming it behind her. She ran back down their driveway and onto the street. But she didn’t know where to go. Molly’s house? Molly’s room in the upstairs back left corner was dark, and she couldn’t face Molly or her parents right now. She had no place to go, so she just let herself run.

  A minute later, a car engine rumbled to life, reversed and lumbered down the street. Mom, coming after her, getting ready to apologize again. She’d lost all respect for Mom, and tears streamed out of her eyes as she ran, blurring her vision and haloing the streetlight ahead.

  She slowed to a jog, debating whether to keep moving along the street or dart off into someone’s yard, cut through backyards to get from one street to another, the way she and Molly used to do. She’d scare Mom more if she just disappeared, but she also wanted to let Mom have it. To yell some more, to let more of that river of bad feeling out, so it wouldn’t be inside anymore.

  The slow-moving car’s headlights illuminated the wet pavement, the pale rhododendron blossoms at the edges of yards, the maples’ branches overhead. A minute later, the car rolled along next to her—this wasn’t their car, it was Mrs. Koslowski’s station wagon. Molly’s sister Kath leaned over and rolled down the window. “Hey, girl, where you running to at this hour?” Kath asked cheerfully. And then she added, “Get in, Bec.”

  Rebecca got in without a word, and as she slid into the seat, a hiccup of a sob escaped. She wasn’t sad, she was furious, so why was she crying?

  “You can keep me company,” Kath said. “I gotta pick up Frankie, that little pest. Senior spring and I’m grounded, can you believe it.” Kath and Lacey were always getting grounded, according to Molly.

  Rebecca wondered if the grounding was because Kath had been hanging out at that frat. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, it’s only for this weekend and next weekend, and I still have a paper to write and one final exam. Not that they care that I passed out of my other four exams. Nooo,” Kath said, her voice rising and falling over the stretched-out word, “that’s not good enough for them. I’m sure your mom would be a lot nicer about it if you got all A’s and A-minuses, huh?”

  Rebecca got all A’s, and Mom never said anything one way or the other. Maybe that was a little better than Molly’s strict parents.

  Kath was talking about next year, how she’d wanted to go to Boston College—“I mean, come on, it’s Jesuit, for God’s sake”—but they were making her go to Gilman Junior College for at least a year. If she got good grades then maybe, maybe, BC after that. “It’s because they think I’ll get knocked up or something if I go to school with guys.”

  “Ah,” Rebecca said. She wished like hell she had something witty to say, a knowing joke about guys, or getting pregnant by holding hands, but everything that flew through her head was far too stupid. “I’m sorry. I’d like to go to BC. It sounds like fun.”

  “It’s not even that fun, to be honest. You have to take theology classes with old priests, for one thing. But it’s basically in Boston and they have amazing football and hockey games. I’m going to get there one way or another.”

  She vowed to have a goal like Kath’s, to care about something like a college so much that she’d talk to a younger neighbor that way. I’m going to get to Clarendon, one way or another, she’d say, as she drove a tearful Paretsky twin through the dark. I’m going to study European history, because that’s what my dad taught. She swallowed another sob, took a breath. “Tell me about KA,” she said. “The frat. What it was like in there. What the guys were like.”

  * * *

  Virginia wiped off her Saturday-night eye makeup with a tissue, and set out for next door: the Koslowskis first, then the neighborhood by car. Surely Rebecca hadn’t gone far; she was probably watching TV right now with Molly. The humid, still night air felt safe and almost welcoming, the way it promised summer. Surely there was nothing to worry about. She knocked on the Koslowskis’ sliding-glass back door, and from the kitchen, Eileen, already in her bathrobe, waved her in. The kitchen held the earthy, garlicky smells of Eileen’s stuffed cabbage, but it was clean, pots and bowls and cutlery put away, counters wiped, and Eileen was ready for bed, her skin shiny with night cream.

  “Hi!” Virginia said, trying for an ordinary tone. “Is Rebecca here? I—uh—” But now she’d have to explain about the date. “We miscommunicated, and I thought she might have come over?”

  “I don’t think so.” Eileen turned to call for Molly. “Molly’s just been home watching TV tonight.”

  Molly entered the kitchen sleepy eyed, messy haired, and dressed as Rebecca had been, in bell-bottoms and a sweatshirt. Molly was taller and more developed than Rebecca, taller than Eileen. The Koslowski girls all had Eileen’s fair coloring, her open face with Paul’s green eyes. Mature-looking girls, Momma would say, judgment in her voice. Oh, Momma, Virginia would answer.

  “Haven’t seen Bec since school yesterday,” Molly said.

  Virginia wasn’t going to cry again. She had to pull herself together.

  “Oh, sweetheart,” Eileen said, folding Virginia into a hug. “We’re fine, Molly. You can go back to the TV.”

  In spurts, Virginia told what had happened, this fiasco of a night, her sort-of date with Henry, and Rebecca blowing up at the idea, and how she’d run out the door. She tried to make the date sound like more of an obligation than a pleasure, and she didn’t mention the kiss. “You know what, I think I’ll just head out and go look for her for a little while.” Her eye-makeup tissue was still in her hand, and she wiped her eyes. “Drive around town a little.”

  “I’ll send Paul out,” Eileen said. “It’ll be fine, don’t worry. And I understand, I do. A woman needs a man, and a man needs a woman. It’s clear that you’ve been off-balance all year. Once you find someone, you’ll get your balance back.”

  Virginia was too surprised to reply. Eileen had just said the most ridiculous thing. And yet, she was off-balance; she was lost. At least Eileen didn’t think worse of Virginia for going on a date, even though she thought Virginia was a women’s libber, a radical, and she’d been qui
etly judging Virginia’s erratic year from next door.

  “Why don’t we call the police, let them know,” Eileen said, brisk now. “If one of them sees her, they’ll bring her right home.” She crossed the kitchen to the phone and picked it up.

  Virginia recalled the security officer at her door and in her living room. “No, I don’t think we need to do that just yet.”

  A door slammed at the front of the house, and the oldest Koslowski daughter entered the kitchen, followed by little Frankie and Rebecca. Rebecca’s nose was red and one of her eyelids had swollen—she’d been crying too. Virginia started toward Rebecca, feeling a huge sigh escape, but Rebecca crossed her arms over her chest and lowered her head, glowering at the floor. Molly returned to the kitchen, sprinting to hug Rebecca, and Virginia tried not to mind.

  “You’re always welcome here, sweetie,” Eileen said to Rebecca, declaring her superior mothering.

  “Thank you, Eileen,” Virginia said, suppressing her irritation, and waiting while Molly whispered something to Rebecca and Rebecca whispered something back. “Let’s go home, Bec.” She half expected Rebecca to refuse, but Rebecca nodded, thanked Kathleen for the ride and went out the door ahead of Virginia.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” Rebecca said, when they were back in their own kitchen, the two of them leaning against opposite counters. “I don’t understand how you could do something like that.”

  Virginia took a breath. “I can see how you might feel that way, but it’s not how you think.”

  “How is it? How is it not how I think?”

  “You just need to be older to understand marriage, and—and—life.” Virginia heard herself. She sounded false, offering some bland, obfuscating truism the way she used to when Rebecca was little, when Rebecca asked question after question about everything and everyone she encountered.