Original Sins

by Lisa Alther

  “Honey, Kate was here before you.”

  “Yeah, all right, fine. So why did you move on to me if things weren’t over between you?”

  Maria grimaced.

  “What do you think this is, Maria—Malibu Beach or something?”

  Maria looked at her plate for a long time. When she raised her head, she said, “Look, you’re not working. And Justin and you are doing some weird trip. And you want me to make everything all right. But it’s not within my power, Emily, as dearly as I love you. You don’t need a man like that. You don’t need a woman like that. Women have defined themselves through their relationships with men for so long that the temptation for lesbians is to continue to define ourselves through our relationships. I suppose to break out of this, we have to define ourselves through our work, or our politics, or our furniture or something.”

  The Great Ear couldn’t believe her ears. A woman insisting there were limits to what she could do for others?

  Finally she said, “I feel patronized. I raise an issue regarding you and me, and you give me some theoretical rap. It’s what you Yankees always do—duck behind your political analyses.”

  “Oh, Christ, I’m in trouble now, I’ve just become a ‘Yankee.’”

  “Damn right,” Emily snarled. “So what about Kate?”

  “What about her?”

  “Which is it going to be—her or me?”

  “This is so childishe.”

  “Childish? You’re the one who’s childish. Like a kid in a candy store. You have to take a bite of everything, don’t you? The way you’ve been devouring that poor waitress with your eyes.”

  “I love women. I love their bodies. I love to watch them move. What’s wrong with that? She’s gorgeous.”

  “Jesus!” Emily stared at her. “Is that what women’s liberation means then? We’re free to behave as exploitatively as men traditionally have? Free to turn other women into sex objects? Wonderful.”

  “I’m not exploiting her, I’m admiring her. And if we met and enjoyed each other, we might go to bed. And it might be fun, or it might not. And we might continue for a week, or a month, or for years. All these rules in your head …”

  “You people are sick.”

  “Which people?”

  “You Yankees.”

  “Oh, Christ …”

  “You treat each other like boxes of cereal. And when you go stale, or when you fail to find a prize at the bottom, you toss each other into the garbage.”

  “I think the Southern Baptist in you is overreacting, Emily.”

  “Fuck you!”

  “I mean, sex isn’t that important. It can be just another dimension to a friendship, a way to break down barriers and get closer …”

  “General Foods ought to package it. Instant Intimacy! They’d make a fortune. What’s wrong with you people that you can’t get close without sex? It’s pathetic.”

  “What’s wrong with you people that you think you have to marry for life anyone whose genitals you touch? When are you going to grow up and stop behaving like a romantic adolescent?”

  Emily glared. “When are you going to grow up and realize that just because you have the power to seduce someone doesn’t mean you have to exercise it? I became a lesbian in the first place because I love women. If I wanted to be with someone who behaved like a man, I’d be with a man.”

  “Bullshit!” Maria hissed, bringing her fist down on the table. Silverware clattered to the floor. Heads turned. “Just because men have used sex as a weapon to dominate and degrade women doesn’t mean we have to lock it away. Women can transform it into something sweet and sensual and pleasure-giving and life-affirming. And talk about male attitudes: this exclusivity of yours, regarding another person as a possession and trying to control her behavior. I don’t want anything to do with it.”

  “And I don’t want anything to do with your compulsive womanizing.”

  “So where does that leave us?”

  Emily shoved the keys across the table.

  “So you’re determined to get on your high horse and ride off into the sunset?” Maria asked.

  “I have no choice.”

  “You’re making one. Own it.”

  “What? You can change, or I can change. But why should we?”

  “No reason. Unless we care enough to want to stay together.”

  They gazed at each other. Emily reached across the table for Maria’s hands. Necks craned throughout the restaurant.

  “Let’s think it over,” Maria suggested.

  Justin announced he was moving in with Shelby in the Village, would be filing for divorce, and wanted custody of Matt.

  “Well?” he said. “Say something.”

  “All right I’m upset. And what upsets me most is the discovery that if I won’t let you instruct me, or sleep with me, or ramble on about your problems, you don’t want to be involved with me. If I’m not doing something for you, you ‘have no use’ for me. How do you think that makes me feel?”

  “But I do want a relationship with you, Emily. I’ve been knocking myself out trying to establish one. I simply don’t know how to act with you anymore. If I’m nice, I’m patronizing. If I’m in pain about you and Maria, I’m guilt-tripping you. If I’m firm, I’m a bully. You women are out of your gourds.”

  “Your key word, Justin, is ‘act.’ That’s all it is with you. You’ve been trying to find ways to lure or cajole or scare me back into the same old mold. You’ve got this slot in your head that has to be filled by a woman who’ll service you sexually and domestically. I’d ceased to do this, so some woman who would had to be found. You aren’t interested in what I’m really like, or think about, or might want to do.”

  “Crap,” he said, walking toward the door.

  “Can I have your new phone number? Matt might want to call you.”

  “Yeah.” He pulled out an address book. She handed him pen and paper. The number was listed under “U” for “us.”

  “Thanks. Terrific,” Emily said, her teeth clenched.

  “Bitterness doesn’t become you, Emily.”

  “Who’s bitter?” she asked, laughing bitterly.

  In the following weeks things deteriorated between her and Matt. All the characteristics he’d inherited and copied from Justin stood out in sharp relief and drove her crazy. The way his crew socks drooped. The way he sniffed when he woke up. Once when she asked him to pick up his room, he snapped, “You pick it up. You’re the mommy.” She slapped him hard. He stared at her as a large red handprint appeared on his cheek.

  She swept him into her arms, apologizing frantically.

  Sammie’s daughter, Angela, came over to play one Saturday. They were in Matt’s room preparing to operate on one of his dolls. Emily had given up sleeping and eating by this time, in favor of pacing the living room floor smoking.

  She overheard Matt say, “You can’t be the doctor.”

  “Can too,” Angela announced.

  “Cannot.”

  “Can too.”

  “You have to be the nurse. Nurse, get the patient ready for the operation.”

  “I’m the doctor, Matt.”

  “Are not.”

  “Are too.”

  “Girls can’t be doctors. Girls don’t have penises.”

  Emily raced into Matt’s room and spanked him hard several times, saying through gritted teeth, “I don’t ever want to hear you say that again, Matthew Lawson!”

  Both children stared at her, terrified. She stopped in mid-spank. Matt began howling. Angela joined him.

  Emily closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, honey,” she finally mumbled. “Angela is your guest. If she wants to be doctor, let her. Or take turns.”

  Matt’s makeup was half Justin. He was linked to Justin in a way Emily could never be. And what did it mean if she despised Justin? It meant she was despising half of poor Matt. To earn her approval, he would come to despise half of himself. Maybe she should give him up to Justin without a fight. So that he could
grow up despising instead the half of himself he got from her …

  When Sammie came to pick up Angela, she said, “We’re missing you at meetings, girl. When you coming back?”

  “Ah, God, Sammie, I’m having a bad time.”

  “Why don’t you let us help, child?”

  “I don’t think anyone can help. It’s just a major personality difference between Maria and me.”

  “That’s what I hear.”

  “What’s she been saying?” Maria was probably lining up the entire women’s group on her side.

  “We’ve spent the last couple of meetings arguing over whether or not you got the right to privatize your emotional life like you been doing.”

  “What’s the verdict?”

  “Most says not. But I reckon it’s cause we all miss you, girl, and want you to get your ass back to those meetings.”

  “I’ll be back. Soon as I can bear to see Maria again.”

  “You love her a lot, don’t you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I can tell she loves you too. In her way.”

  “But her way isn’t my way.”

  “And your way ain’t her way, child.”

  Sammie took Matt for the rest of the weekend. Emily stood smoking in the dark living room, watching the lights twinkle across the Hudson at Palisades Amusement Park. Tammy Wynette was singing “Stand by Your Man” on the stereo. Jesus, if only she had. Maria was right: What had started out as a succulent side order of female flesh had become a dinner-sized roast.

  She drew on her cigarette, seeing her life laid out before her like a tarot deck. Justin with Shelby. Matt grown up and off on his own. Maria settled down in polygamous bliss, poaching her brain in some Malibu hot tub. Her parents dead. And Emily here alone in the night. All night, every night. Year after year. Watching the lights at Palisades Amusement Park. Sometimes she’d go visit them. They’d be kind, as though she were a maiden aunt, and impatient for her to leave so they could get on with their lives.

  No one to bring you broth when you were sick. No one to eat Christmas dinner with. No one to file joint tax returns with.

  She hadn’t even spoken on the phone to Maria since their fight. She wasn’t sure she could make the changes necessary to be involved with her—even if she wanted to. Maria: There was nothing she needed Emily for. She was earning her own living. She had other lovers. She could cook and clean as well as Emily. She had a full, complete life without Emily. Apparently she simply liked to be with her. Or used to. The Great Ear couldn’t cope with this. The Great Ear was being loved for herself alone, and not for any services she could render?

  If Maria didn’t need her services, Emily had no hold over her. Maria was free to stay, or to leave as she chose. Emily couldn’t bear it. If only she could cripple Maria and maintain custody of her crutches. If Maria were in an iron lung, she’d need Emily to feed her. She wanted Maria inert, inescapably dependent, unquestionably hers. So that Emily could begin to tire of having responsibility for her, and eventually start feeling contempt for her inability to care for herself. So that Emily’s love could transmute into resentment, then hatred. So that Emily could finally free herself of this awful need to have Maria need her.

  Emily put on her black leather jacket and went down to the Village. Next week she’d find a job. And tonight she’d get laid. She loved Maria. She wanted to be with her. She wanted not to be alone. She would try to play by Maria’s rules.

  Emily picked up an attractive young woman with curly red hair, who wore a blue and white football jersey. They danced, increasingly closely, and Emily bought her some drinks. Eventually, they secured a table. Emily gazed into the young woman’s eyes, and pressed her knee with her own, and touched the woman’s forearm with her fingertips as they talked.

  By the end of the evening, the Great Ear had lent her twenty dollars and was giving her advice about how to deal with her difficult mother.

  The Great Ear went home to bed alone. She couldn’t fuck the youth of America—she had to take care of them. Emily realized what a talent Maria possessed—being able to assume that other people could take care of themselves and didn’t need her to do it for them. She envied Maria her humility.

  Emily devoted the next week to Meeting People. She searched underground newspapers for notices of meetings with compatible women. There was something for almost everyone—Bondage Support Group, Bisexual Biracials. But also, no Cuckolds Anonymous. Gail phoned to urge her to go on the retreat the women’s group was staging at her parents’ vacation house in upstate New York. By now she was so lonely that she would have joined Hitler in his bunker.

  When Emily arrived at the retreat, Maria came over and kissed her. She felt the old desire unhinging her joints one by one. “How’s it going?” asked Maria.

  “Fine.”

  They sat down by the pond, which shimmered in the heat. The others already lay naked in the sun, keeping their distance. Emily cleared her throat. “Look, I’m sorry I accused you of being a sultan in drag, Maria. I tried to join Cuckolds Anonymous this week, but I couldn’t find one.”

  Maria laughed. “If you do, we’ll all have to join.” She added, “But that’s a male concept. Why don’t you drop that term from your vocabulary?”

  “Why?”

  “If you drop the word, maybe you’ll drop the emotions that go with it.”

  “But presumably the word was invented to account for emotions that already existed.”

  “But not every culture has an equivalent word. Look, maybe you and Kate and I should do a threesome tonight.”

  “Huh?”

  “To help you get over this jealousy trip.”

  Emily said nothing.

  “What, you’ve never done a threesome before?”

  Emily nodded no. Apparently there was no end to the adaptations she’d have to make to stay with Maria.

  “Well, think it over,” suggested Maria.

  Emily watched her dive into the water, swim to the dock, and haul herself out. She stood there glistening in the sun, streaming with water. Why had she tried to tame Maria? Emily had resented it so much when Earl tried to do it to her.

  As she and Kate and Maria walked toward the woods carrying sleeping bags, a lantern, a couple of bottles of wine, Emily felt not unlike Marie Antoinette on her way to the guillotine. But if this was what it would take to shed her feelings of possessiveness toward Maria—so that Maria would then want to be with her, and might even consider giving up Kate—by God, she’d do it.

  They spread the sleeping bags on a floor of leaves and took off their clothes. Lying on the bags, they passed the wine, chatted, and touched each other. Kate and Emily, shy and wary. She’d just had a letter from Sally telling about a crafts course she was taking at the high school at night. What would she think about how her older sister spent her spare time? Being unfaithful to Justin would be bad enough in Sally’s eyes. Making love with a woman would be unthinkable. But two women? What would her parents say? Nothing. They’d be speechless. At least no one could accuse her of thoughtlessly conforming to her conditioning.

  Emily was in the middle, and Kate and Maria began stroking her and sucking her nipples. Emily lost track of who was doing what to whom. Although she was making love with Kate and Maria, she was locked into a private fantasy. It was more lonely than being alone. She watched Kate going down on Maria, waiting to be swamped with jealousy. But she felt nothing.

  Once they had all experienced equal orgasms, they lay smoking cigarettes in the dark. Emily felt just as she had after being initiated into Ingenue. She walked back to the house alone. Once again the Great Ear had betrayed her into doing things to please other people. Shit.

  The next morning as she lay by the pond in the sun, Emily contemplated her solitary old age, with no one to sit in the adjoining rocker on the porch of the old age home. At breakfast Maria had asked, “How do you feel about last night?”

  Emily replied, “Well, it worked. I’m not jealous anymore.” Emily hadn’t go
ne on to add she’d probably never make love again, not with Maria, not with anybody.

  The others lay nearby tanning. Maria and Kate were discussing the shape of things to come. In place of isolated couples would be tribes of strong women living on the land, in possession of all the skills necessary for survival apart from the hostile patriarchal world. They’d be family for each other, but extended family voluntarily chosen. They’d guarantee each other’s bank loans, pierce each other’s ears, buy tampons in bulk.

  Emily listened as she lay in the grip of revulsion against all flesh. Including or excluding people on the basis of whether or not they had some bizarre flap of tissue hanging between their legs was about as absurd as including or excluding them on the basis of skin color. The Ingenues had excluded Ina Sue Bascombe because she didn’t shave her legs, for God’s sake.

  The next women’s meeting was at Emily’s. When Susannah came in, she had two black eyes and a stitched-up cut stretching out from the corner of her mouth.

  “God, you look terrible. What happened?” Emily demanded.

  Susannah smiled as much as her wound would let her. “I was raped this week.”

  The room fell silent. Susannah sat on the sofa and told about walking down the street in early afternoon on her way to the Roosevelt in her nurse’s uniform. A van pulled up, and two young black men hopped out, opened the back doors, and dragged her inside. Passers-by continued to pass by. As she struggled, one pointed to her thyroidectomy scar, flicked the blade of his knife on his thumb, and said, “Mama, you don’t lie still you gon be one great big scar.”

  They unloaded her at the foot of a condemned high rise and dragged her upstairs to a room with broken windows. On a moldy mattress they took turns.

  Her voice was matter-of-fact: “All I remember is their eyes. Bloodshot and dilated. Must have been on drugs. They kept up this patter: “Hey, hey, big mama, les you and me play.’ The one with the knife kept flashing it around saying, ‘Gon carve me a big ole piece of this white man’s meat.’ And their cocks coming at me from every direction.