Other Women

by Lisa Alther

“Why do you say that?”

  “I feel peaceful.” Surely peace couldn’t be this easy—just being grateful for what was present, rather than dwelling on the dead and departed, the diseased and distressed?

  “Don’t worry,” said Pam, pulling on the brim of her eyeshade. “It won’t last.”

  “But I’d like it to. And I always used to think contentment was irresponsible in the world where so much needs changing.”

  “Everyone gets religion in the first weeks of therapy,” said Jenny, poking through her army surplus knapsack on the floor to remove a second deck of cards. “It’s a high having someone listen to you.”

  “I listen to her,” protested Diana.

  “You don’t count. You’re free.” Jenny shuffled the new cards and shoved them in front of Caroline for cutting.

  “What are these?” asked Caroline.

  “Got them in Hong King,” said Jenny, dealing Anaconda.

  When Caroline picked up her cards, she was confronted with seven naked women in obscene poses. She and Diana started laughing.

  “You’re really disgusting,” Pam informed Jenny, studying her hand.

  “Fun, though,” said Jenny.

  “I’m serious. This is really offensive to me.”

  “Even if we remove the ones with men in them?” asked Diana, trying to arrange her cards.

  “I could wrap them in plain brown wrappers,” said Jenny.

  Pam shot them both looks of contempt.

  “Your missionary must have loved this one,” said Caroline, holding out the three of spades, which featured a woman wearing only black stockings and a cross on a gold neck chain.

  Jenny grinned.

  “But I can’t even see what suits they are,” said Diana.

  “Birthday suits,” suggested Caroline.

  “I refuse to play with these cards.” Pam threw hers face down. “I can’t stand seeing women exploited like that.”

  “Oh, all right,” said Jenny, sweeping them up. “But don’t you get bored with being so goddam politically correct all the time, Pam?”

  “Don’t you get bored with your bad-girl act?”

  Jenny pulled down the brim of her Red Army cap and shuffled the old deck without replying.

  Caroline tried to decide whether to feel ashamed for not being as horrified as Pam over Jenny’s cards. Pam was studying Caroline’s stacks of red, white, and blue chips with veiled resentment. “Look, Pam, I can’t help it if I always beat you turkeys,” Caroline said, to break the strained silence.

  Everyone gave a startled laugh. “I think the therapy is already working,” said Pam, tilting back her head to look out from under her eyeshade with malamute eyes. “You’re getting butch.”

  “She’s always been butch,” said Diana. “We both are. It’s why we can’t get along. We try to outbutch each other by outfemming each other.” She reached over to pat Caroline’s forearm.

  “Christ, are you two still squabbling?” said Pam. “Cut it out. Life is too short.”

  Diana’s touch felt like a jolt of electricity. Caroline’s arm twitched so sharply that she dropped the queen of clubs. She and Diana looked at the card, then at each other. Jenny and Pam also exchanged a glance. “Well,” said Jenny briskly, in imitation of June Allyson on some late-night movie, “we must be off. I’m sure you two have a lot to talk about.”

  Diana washed the beer glasses and put away the peanuts while Caroline put the boys to bed. Then they sat down on the sofa by the fire.

  “It’s nice to see you feeling so well,” said Diana.

  “Thanks. It’s nice to feel it.”

  “Hannah Burke must know her stuff.” Her voice sounded stiff.

  “I wouldn’t know. I haven’t been to another shrink.” Their corduroy-clad thighs were touching. Caroline increased the pressure slightly. They both studied the dying fire.

  “The thing is,” said Diana, “I guess I’m jealous. I wish I could have helped you feel better.”

  “But you did. You do.” All Caroline’s attention was focused on the spot where their thighs touched.

  “No, I know I’m part of the problem, rather than the solution. But that isn’t what I want.”

  Caroline couldn’t think what to say. She knew both statements were true. But what did Diana want? “How’s it going with Suzanne?”

  Diana looked at her, green eyes hooded in the firelight. “She and I are just friends, you know.”

  “For now.”

  Diana shrugged irritably and shifted her thigh away from Caroline’s. “She admires me. I like that. I need it right now.”

  “Well, it looks like you’ve got it.”

  “Ah, Caroline, look…” She took Caroline’s face in both hands and kissed her mouth. Caroline kissed her back, and pulled Diana’s body against her own.

  After several minutes of kissing, Diana murmured, “We’re not supposed to be doing this.”

  “Who says?”

  “Me.”

  They resumed kissing. Caroline ran her hands under Diana’s chamois shirt and up her smooth bare back.

  Diana stood up abruptly, combing her scrambled red hair with her fingers. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have started that. Sweet dreams, my lovely friend.”

  As Diana dashed up the steps two at a time, Caroline smiled faintly from where she sprawled on the sofa. Goddam tease. Caroline knew she should feel annoyed or miserable, but the peaceful mood from earlier that evening was still with her, reinforced by the new information that Diana still wanted her. The message was encoded in her body, whatever her silly little mouth insisted on saying. Diana was one ghost who was still very much flesh and blood.

  Caroline went into her room and began experimenting with dyes for the warp of her new landscape shawl. She worked happily into the night, bunching, twisting, tying, and dipping bundles of natural yarn into dye solutions, splattering dye around the room.

  That night she dreamed of sitting in the dark in an overstuffed armchair watching TV. Hannah came on the screen. She was young, with dark hair and a tormented face. She talked in a lackluster voice about the difficulties of being a young mother. At the far end of the room, a door opened. In marched a middle-aged Hannah with graying hair and cheeks flushed from the cold, a vibrant smile and piercing blue eyes like sapphires in the sun. Caroline was pleased to see her and wanted to greet her. But she was unable to stand up. Apparently she had to continue watching the distraught Hannah on TV.

  “Hi. Be with you in a minute, Caroline.” Hannah, sitting at her desk, studied her appointment book. She wrote in one name and erased another.

  Caroline sat down on the tweed couch, crossed her Levi’d legs, and looked out the window to Lake Glass. The snow in the trees in the yard had melted and refrozen, branches gleaming in the bright sunshine like crystal filigree.

  Hannah swiveled around in her chair and smiled. Caroline looked tanned. She must have skied over the weekend. The habitual tightness around her mouth and eyes had relaxed a bit. A slight puffiness to her cheeks was gone. It was astonishing to watch their appearances change as they began to feel better.

  “I dreamed about you the other night,” Caroline said, folding her arms across her stomach.

  “Oh yes? What?” This process never ceased to amaze Hannah. Two people sat talking in a small room for several weeks, and things started happening. They began thinking about each other; one would dream about the other; they copied each other’s mannerisms. What was it really all about? She liked to think she had a firm hold on the reins at all times, but the truth was that often she was just along for the ride.

  “I used to be a harassed housewife,” said Hannah, after hearing the dream. “Four children, no outside work, a husband who was gone a lot.” She propped her feet on the footstool.

  “You?” That was how Caroline had seen Hannah initially. But since then she’d come to see her as a skilled professional. It was hard to fit the two together.

  “Yes. But what do you make of the dream?”

&n
bsp; Caroline hesitated. Hannah was the expert. What was the right answer? “I wondered if I was trying to fit you into the mold of lots of the people around me.”

  “Who are how?”

  “Since I’m a nurse, I’m always surrounded with the sick and depressed.” If she could see Hannah as just another potential patient, she’d know what to do with her.

  “Sounds reasonable. But also in dreams other people usually represent different parts of the dreamer herself. It sounds to me as though you’re trying to move away from that depressed part of yourself.”

  “Huh?”

  “What about the rest of your week? How did it go?” If only it were as easy as just explaining in so many words. Then she could hand clients a list of psychological principles as they walked in the door and send them away as functional human beings.

  “Pretty well. On Saturday I went skiing with the boys and saw this incredible pileated woodpecker. We went home and had a fire. Some friends came over to play cards. And for almost the whole evening I felt—peaceful or something.”

  “How nice.” There was an open, trusting expression on Caroline’s face that Hannah hadn’t seen before.

  “Well, not that nice…”

  Hannah laughed. Caroline’s face had just contracted into its old expression of pained distrust, like a hermit crab withdrawing into its shell. “Come on, it’s nice. Let it alone.” They got scared when they started feeling good, just because it was so unfamiliar. Like chronic prisoners facing release from their cells.

  There was a long silence. Finally Caroline said, “I don’t have a lot to talk about. I’ve been feeling pretty good ever since. Maybe I shouldn’t have come today?”

  “I’m delighted,” said Hannah. “We don’t have to talk about anything. Let’s tell jokes. Or tell me about your friends. I was playing cards Saturday too. What were you playing?” She had to combat the notion that she was interested only in Caroline’s problems. Otherwise Caroline would knock herself out fabricating ever more exotic problems.

  “Poker. You?”

  “Bridge.”

  Caroline looked at her. So she did play bridge. But she didn’t seem like the type anymore. Whatever that meant.

  “Did you win?” asked Hannah.

  “Yes. I usually do.”

  “I can see you would.”

  “How come?”

  “Your face takes on a certain impenetrability when you don’t want people to know what you’re feeling. Especially if they don’t check out your eyes.”

  Caroline was flattered someone had observed her so closely. Her eyes dropped for a moment to Hannah’s bosom, ample under a yellow turtleneck sweater. She felt a longing to rest her head there and feel Hannah’s arms around her. Oh, please God, no.

  “Did you win?” Caroline asked quickly. She searched for something to dislike about Hannah, now that labeling her a bridge-playing housewife carried no clout. She ran around her office in bare feet? But Caroline liked that. She glanced at the towheaded children in the photos on the bulletin board above Hannah’s desk and was swamped with jealousy. The little bastards. They got held in Hannah’s arms.

  “Yes, I always win too. Same impenetrability. That’s probably why I recognize it in you.” She felt the sickening lurch that told her a client was beginning to ingest her. “What are your friends like?”

  “I’ve known them for years. They’re aging hippies. They don’t work if they can avoid it, and they love to hang out.” Hannah’s desk was a mess, Caroline reflected, with books, papers, coffee cups, and sandwich wrappers all over it. She was a slob. But so was Caroline sometimes.

  “The part of yourself you’ve never acted on?”

  “What?”

  “You’ve been so busy taking care of everyone, in hopes they’d then take care of you, that you’ve never done much hanging out, have you?”

  Caroline lowered her eyes. Had she always taken care of everyone? If so, was that her motive, and not disinterested altruism?

  “So you live it out through your choice of friends,” continued Hannah in an offhand fashion, looking out the window as Mary Beth walked past in a chinchilla coat and boots with ridiculously high heels. How did she avoid breaking her neck on the ice? “Like in your dream: Me on TV is that responsible, depressed part of yourself. Your friends are your lazy, fun-loving side. But we’re both actually you.” The orange” Le Car crawled up the street past the office like a particularly unappealing insect.

  Caroline felt her brain sizzle trying to take in more than it could handle. Then it shut down entirely, and she sat in bewildered silence, watching motes drift in the shaft of sunlight that came through the window. When the silence became oppressive, she said, “I thought we were going to tell jokes.”

  “How many therapists does it take to change a light bulb?” Hannah asked. It usually took a while to get someone to see the elements of her life as pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that was her own psyche.

  “How many?”

  “One, but the bulb has to really want to change.”

  Caroline smiled, and Hannah thought about how much she enjoyed helping people feel better. If it took shrinking their heads, fine. If she could do it by telling jokes, so much the better. Applying her formula, she acknowledged that to help other people feel better was to do that for the depressive part of herself.

  “Do you know what’s going on in here, Caroline?” Hannah lit a cigarette.

  Caroline looked up. A cloud of smoke was obscuring Hannah’s eyes. Not much was going on today. Which was just fine with her.

  “You’re getting the acceptance you didn’t get as a baby. And when you’ve had enough, we’ll move on.”

  Caroline felt a stab of indignation. Who said she wasn’t accepted as a baby? Hannah thought she knew everything. Caroline focused righteously on Hannah’s arrogance. “I’ve got only a couple more sessions before two months are up.”

  “We’d better get busy then.”

  “So you’re really going to kick me out in a couple of weeks?” Caroline asked belligerently.

  Hannah looked at her with mock surprise. “As I recall, the original issue was whether you’d be trapped into coming here for the rest of your life. You can come forever if you want. It’s your money.” She reached for Nigel’s stone ashtray.

  Caroline was irritated. Hannah didn’t seem to care one way or the other. But she herself had started to care, she realized with alarm. This was supposed to be a visit to the dentist. She sat in terrified silence. Hannah mattered to her. She wanted to keep coming, wanted to see Hannah every week, wanted Hannah to want to see her. If Hannah found out, she’d go away in disgust. I know what you want and you can’t have it. Caroline would have to play it cool, reveal none of this, do as she was told, or Hannah would withdraw like all the others. She felt her features assemble themselves into the bland mask she used for poker. The photos! She’d done her assignment!

  Reaching into her tote bag, Caroline announced, “I brought you some pictures.”

  “Great,” said Hannah, stubbing out her cigarette and setting the ashtray on the desk. Glancing through the photos, she saw confirmation for her original diagnosis in shot after shot. Obvious to anyone not blinded by the emotions associated with those individual personalities. Two anxious little boys clung to their older sister, whose head was usually turned down as though awaiting a blow. The father was absent or gazing off-camera; the mother was usually turned slightly away from the children, a literal cold shoulder. One photo was of a baby, Caroline presumably, hanging listlessly from a doorjamb in a jump seat. In more recent photos two little boys again clung to Caroline, and a shifting array of men and women stood beside her, turned slightly away.

  “Are these all you have?” asked Hannah.

  “No, I have a whole boxful. Do you want more?”

  “No. Just curious.” Caroline had selected these photos from many to tell her tale. Whether this was the “real” situation from anyone else’s perspective was irrelevant. A different selec
tion would have told a different story. But rejection and abandonment were Caroline’s inner ambience, probably shaped in those first months when Daddy went to war and Mummy went berserk with abandonment and terror. But consciously Caroline knew none of this. And telling her in so many words wouldn’t work.

  “Do you see any patterns in these photos?” asked Hannah, leaning forward to hand them back.

  “Patterns?”

  “Take them home and look at them every now and then.”

  Caroline frowned. She thought the point was for Hannah to picture the people they were discussing. Patterns?

  “What are you doing for Christmas?” asked Hannah.

  “Going to my parents in Boston with my sons.”

  Hannah blinked. The showdown at the OK Corral was coming sooner than she figured. “Will that be fun?”

  “Yes. The boys like lots of activity at Christmas, and there’ll be parties and stuff.” She rubbed the bridge of her nose, then was startled to hear herself say, “I’m scared.”

  “What of?”

  “I’ve been feeling so good lately.”

  “You can’t feel good on a sustained basis by avoiding things that cause you pain. You have to come to terms with them. And you will.” She smiled at herself for sounding so sure.

  “I don’t know why I said that. I get along fine with my parents. Always have. I had a very happy and privileged childhood.”

  Hannah held her face expressionless, remembering the many times Maggie fought to do the same with her.

  “I did,” said Caroline, looking at Hannah defiantly.

  “I wasn’t disagreeing.”

  “You just said they caused me pain.” She stuffed the photos into her tote bag.

  “All right, so they don’t. Fine.”

  “They’ve done a lot of good for a lot of people.” Throughout her childhood clients and neighbors collared her on the street to tell her what wonderful people her parents were. And it was the truth.

  “Great.”

  “Well, they have, damn it!”

  “Whom are you trying to convince, Caroline? Not me. I’ll go along with whatever you tell me. After all, I don’t even know them.”

  They sat in silence. Finally Hannah said, “Call me while you’re down there if you want to.”