Other Women

by Lisa Alther

  “I wish you’d stop calling them loonies. They’re sad troubled people with nowhere to go.”

  Hannah shrugged, pleased Caroline was feeling enough better to get irritated. That corpse imitation was unnerving. “Maybe they should get together and set up a fund for the neglected offspring of servants of humanity. Might give them a sense of purpose.”

  Caroline’s face began to twitch. Hannah tried to think of something even more obnoxious. What would it take to get Caroline angry at someone besides herself? She felt like a banderillero planting darts in a sluggish bull.

  “Something I’ve just realized,” said Caroline. “Maybe it’s not just me who’s crazy. Maybe it’s them too.”

  Bravo, called Hannah silently. “Scapegoats always feel whatever goes wrong is their fault.” She drew on her cigarette and waited to see if Caroline would accept this label.

  Caroline blinked. Scapegoat? That didn’t sound right. Those were people who got stoned or crucified or something. The worst that had happened to her was that she hadn’t gotten her fill of turkey.

  “When my two children died from carbon monoxide poisoning,” said Hannah, lowering her gaze to a spot on the carpet damp from Caroline’s boots, “there were even a few friends who implied it was my fault. People need to believe in cause and effect. Random disaster is too scary.” She watched this information sink in.

  “Your children died?” Caroline stared at the photos on the bulletin board of the towheaded children with missing teeth and Hannah’s eyes. Jesus.

  “A while back. From a faulty exhaust on our furnace.”

  “I’m sorry.” Caroline felt suddenly sheepish. She was unloading her troubles on someone who’d been through something like that? She remembered the trips to the Salvation Army. You think you’ve got problems? She glanced at the children on the bulletin board and felt guilty for hating them so much.

  “Thank you. But the point is, awful things happen. You can’t control that. But you can control how you respond.” With a lot of practice and effort, she added silently, remembering her seizure of despair last night, and all the years of numbness and nightmares. Hannah rubbed the bridge of her nose. Then she noticed what she was doing—plagiarizing Caroline’s stress gesture. This modeling process worked both ways. Just as long as she didn’t pick up sodomy with young boys or heroin addiction.

  Caroline studied Hannah’s face as though seeing it for the first time—the patina of wrinkles like a piece of fired pottery, the curly gray hair and sharp, clear eyes. If Hannah could get through the death of her children, presumably Caroline could get through a failed dinner party with her parents.

  “How do you feel?” Hannah didn’t want to send someone back out on the street for another week feeling as bad as Caroline looked when she came in.

  “Better,” said Caroline, realizing it was true. The funk had lifted like the lid of a coffin. She drew a deep breath, her first in several days.

  “And one of these days you won’t even need the example of someone with more to cope with than yourself to feel better.”

  • PART TWO •

  • 1 •

  Brian ushered Caroline into the Eliots’ house, a low-slung natural wood structure with lots of glass, furnished with what looked like the latest in dental chairs. Chrome gleamed in lights that seemed too bright. Sitting on a hill overlooking Lake Glass, the house could have been featured in House Beautiful. Randy Eliot owned the local Peugeot dealership out on the highway next to Lake Glass Lanes. For Christmas his wife, Connie, had given him silicone implants in her breasts. Connie wore a low-cut red satin gown that served up her amplified breasts like cheese balls. Caroline tried not to stare at them as Connie shook her hand and took her coat.

  Caroline had been anxious all day over what to wear and how to act. It had been years since she’d been to a party involving anything other than women in Levi’s and running shoes. In the back of her closet she found an emerald-green velvet cocktail dress from her days with Jackson, so outmoded it was just coming back into style. She couldn’t imagine how she’d had the foresight to save it. Wedging herself into it, she hoped her body would conform to its coverings and replicate proper dinner party behavior.

  Brian brought her a Scotch and water, and she clinked the ice cubes in her glass and nodded as he discussed the fuel ratio in the carburetor of the new model Peugeot with Randy Eliot and a Nationwide Insurance man in a bow tie named Curtis. Randy, Curtis, and Brian were evidently in a racquetball league together, and they moved on from Peugeots to three-wall serves.

  A tall man in a red blazer with an elaborate college crest on the pocket walked up to Caroline and murmured in her ear, “Smashing dress.” A button on his lapel read “Beer Drinkers Get More Head.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

  Probably I gave you an enema the last time you were in the hospital, thought Caroline. “Have you?”

  “I’ve got it.” He was studying her cleavage thoughtfully. “Weren’t you in the finals of that tennis tournament at the club last summer?”

  “No.” Was this for real, or was it a come-on? She simply couldn’t remember how to play these games. She felt as out of it as if she’d been dumped in Tibet without a translator.

  “I could have sworn it was you. In the doubles semifinals with Betsy Burns.”

  “Nope.”

  “I haven’t been able to take my eyes off you since you walked in the room,” he said in a low voice with a guilty glance in Randy’s direction.

  “Who, me? Look, would you excuse me? I have to find the…ah, powder room.” Did this man know there was a famine in Chad? That a woman had been carried into the ER last night with the initials of the six men who’d raped her carved on her thighs?

  “I love your house,” Caroline told Connie as they stood beside a chrome and glass table spearing shrimp on toothpicks.

  “Thank you. How do you know Brian?”

  “I work with him at the hospital.” Caroline was concentrating on looking directly into Connie’s eyes and ignoring the reports of her peripheral vision on Randy’s Christmas gifts, which were swelling out of Connie’s red satin bodice.

  “So you’re a nurse?”

  “Right. I work in the emergency room.”

  “How interesting.”

  “Yes, it is.” Caroline searched for something to say. She’d really forgotten how to do this.

  “Randy and I think Brian’s pretty special.”

  “Yes, he certainly is.” Caroline speared a shrimp and dipped it in cocktail sauce.

  “We’ve partied with him for years.”

  Caroline nodded as she raised the shrimp to her mouth. It fell off the toothpick and landed on Connie’s left breast, the sauce splattering across the smooth brown flesh. Caroline stood still, holding her empty toothpick in midair as though conducting a symphony with a miniature wand.

  “I’m sorry,” Caroline finally thought to murmur. She reached out to pick up the shrimp, then thought better of it and retracted her hand.

  Connie plucked the shrimp off her breast, and popped it into Caroline’s mouth.

  “Uh, shall I…” Caroline gestured with her cocktail napkin, which read, “Old Sailors Never Die, They Just Get a Little Dinghy.”

  “Here, I’ll do it.” Connie took the napkin and blotted her breast, giving Caroline a frank, amused smile.

  Caroline reminded herself that flirting with the hostess wasn’t acceptable cocktail party behavior for a woman. Evidently she couldn’t rely on her automatic pilot. She looked around for Brian, thinking she’d better sleep with somebody soon or she’d be a menace to polite society. Murmuring to Connie about the powder room, she escaped into the hallway.

  Next to the bathroom was a coat closet. A powder-blue Princess phone sat on a stand between the two doorways. Looking around, she grabbed the phone and retreated into the closet, closing the door behind her and settling down among the boots, a Persian lamb coat hanging in her face.
She considered phoning Hannah for some hints on how to resume being respectable. After all, she hadn’t called her from Boston in the middle of the night, so Hannah owed her one.

  Instead she dialed Jenny.

  “Why, I do believe it’s Saint Celibate,” said Jenny. “Listen, I can’t talk right now. Pam and I are watching ‘Dallas.’ J.R. and Sue Ellen are having a terrible fight. Can I call you back?”

  “No, you can’t,” said Caroline, shifting her head to get the coat out of her face. “I’m sitting in a Peugeot dealer’s closet.”

  “What?”

  “I’m at a party.”

  “At a Peugeot dealer’s?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How come?”

  “This guy at work invited me, and it seemed like a good idea at the time. But I haven’t spent much time lately with people who have joint checking accounts, and I’ve forgotten how to act.”

  Jenny didn’t reply. Caroline could hear J.R. yelling in the background. Was Jenny’s silence disapproval of Peugeot dealers, or absorption in “Dallas”?

  “Where’s Diana?” Jenny asked, sounding distracted.

  “Probably in some New York hotel screwing her child nurse.”

  “Jesus, I wouldn’t mess with you, Caroline. You’ll do anything for revenge.”

  Caroline considered whether this was her motive for being at the Eliots’. Diana had certainly been upset, flouncing around the cabin hurling Sharon’s scattered belongings into her bedroom. But also Caroline liked Brian. He was a nice man. She just didn’t like respectable heterosexual parties. “Well, don’t worry. It’s taking its toll. These people are insane.”

  “Look, do you want me to come pick you up? You could catch the tail end of ‘Dallas.’”

  “No thanks, Jenny, I just want some sympathy.”

  “Well, you’re not getting any from me, darling. Anyone who goes out with a man when she should know better deserves whatever she gets.”

  “Thanks a lot,” laughed Caroline. “It’s nice to have a friend to count on in troubled times.”

  “You think you’ve got troubles? You should see the mess J.R.’s gotten himself into.”

  “See you, Jenny. Say hi to Pam. Happy New Year to you both.”

  “Bye, sweetie. And stay out of those closets. They’re not good for you.

  Caroline emerged from the closet as the guests were filing toward the dinner table.

  “So tell me about your sons,” said Brian as they ate salmon, spinach mousse, and scalloped potatoes off Limoges china with enough silverware beside each plate to perform a hysterectomy. Brian had met Jackie and Jason when he picked her up at the cabin. They’d rolled up the hooked rug and were hitting a hockey puck around the living room, bouncing it off the walls and furniture. They paused to inspect Brian. A potential Gabriel Kotter?

  “There’s not a lot to say. They’re healthy young boys. I like them a lot.”

  “The older one, Jackie, looks like you.” He flaked his salmon with delicate scalpel-like movements of his knife.

  “So everyone tells me.”

  “Does Jason look like his father, or what?”

  “More like my father. What about your kids? Do you see them much?” The man in the red blazer, on her right, was trying to catch her eye, so she gazed resolutely at her crystal goblet, and listened as Brian described the arrangement with Irene in which he hosted his children every other weekend and on assorted holidays. His voice was low and pained.

  This could work, Caroline realized. Brian liked children, her sons wanted a father, she could use a husband’s help. He was a pleasant man, gentle and thoughtful. Why the hell not? Her hand trembled as she raised her wine glass to her lips.

  Just before midnight Connie turned on the TV, and they watched the crowd at Times Square as the ball descended. At midnight, as Times Square erupted like bees swarming, Brian put his arm around her and kissed her on the lips, and she felt a stirring in her abdomen that was unmistakably lust. The other guests, who’d welcomed in many New Years together, embraced and kissed with abandon. Most pecked her on the cheek or squeezed her arm. Red Blazer tried to grind his hips into hers, but she stepped sideways, leaving him to lurch forward of his own momentum. Connie enfolded Caroline in her arms, rubbing her large breasts against Caroline’s. Caroline’s twinge of desire from Brian’s kiss became a major spasm. Connie’s eyes narrowed with amusement, as though she was aware of what she was doing. But maybe this was just good hostess behavior. Caroline couldn’t recall from the days when she and Jackson used to conduct such functions in Newton.

  As Brian drove the babysitter home, Caroline sank into the couch, eyeing her hockey rink of a living room and trying to decide what to do. The boys were asleep. Sharon was in Poughkeepsie with Diana’s mother. Diana was in New York with Suzanne. She and Brian could go upstairs and make love in Diana’s own bed, if Caroline wished to stoop so low. It was a luxury having someone to drive the babysitter home. If she played her cards right, Brian would stick around, shovel the steps, change the faucet washers, prepare the tax returns. Life would be easier with a man. The roles were defined: Brian would bring home the bacon, and she’d make the BLTs. Jackie and Jason would be ecstatic to have a live-in dad. Her parents would be pleased. With two salaries she and Brian would have money for trips, nice clothes, Peugeots.

  She realized she had no birth control. It had been years since she’d thought about pills, coils, loops, foams, creams, caps. Except to mop up the side effects in the ER. As she was counting days in her cycle, Brian walked in, his face flushed from the cold. He stumbled over a hockey stick.

  “Would you like a drink?” she asked in a subdued voice, as Brian regained his balance and removed his fur-lined gloves. “Or some coffee?”

  He sat down on the sofa beside her. Caroline realized she should have built a fire, if she were really into the scenario she’d just mapped out.

  “I’d rather kiss you,” he replied.

  He took her in his arms hesitantly, waiting to be stopped. She leaned against his chest with a feeling of relief. Just take care of me, she thought. His mouth found hers. His hands, which moved with such precision during operations, moved delicately across her neck and face. It would be so easy just to let it all happen. She was probably fertile. She’d get pregnant. She could quit her job, stay home with a new baby, raise her children and his, make their home a haven in a threatening world….

  Abruptly she pulled away and sat up straight. She’d already done this trip with Jackson. It was like trying to cram herself into this green velvet cocktail dress. Any minute now the damn thing would come apart at the seams. Brian looked startled and hurt. “You’re a very attractive man, Brian. But there’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

  “I know all I need to.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t know that my lover for the past five years has been a woman.”

  He frowned and looked down at his elegant hands.

  “I should have told you sooner. I guess maybe I wished it weren’t so.”

  “But you’re so attractive.” He spread his hands palms up in a gesture of bewilderment.

  “Thanks. But please don’t insist on saying the wrong things, because I don’t want to stop liking you.”

  “I mean, maybe you just never met the right man.”

  “Maybe you never met the right man,” she said, standing up in her too-tight dress, hoping it would hold together long enough to get him out the door.

  “But you seem so normal,” he said in a dazed voice, also standing.

  “Trust me, Brian: I’m not.”

  He looked at her as though seeing her for the first time. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you.”

  “It’s okay. I’m used to it.”

  “Look,” he said, taking her hands with both of his, “there’s a strong attraction between us. I know you feel it too. I’m not giving up.

  Caroline pulled her hands away, unable to decide if this was true. She walked to the door. “D
o yourself a favor and find another woman.”

  “No,” he said with a stubborn set to his jaw, “I’ve rushed you. You just need more time.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said with a sigh, opening the door and letting in a blast of icy air. She closed the door behind him, leaned against it and heaved a sigh that caused some stitches in the side seams of her dress to break. So much for respectability. In high school she had an Irish Catholic boyfriend named Kevin with whom she necked and petted in the balcony of the RKO and in the parking lot behind the Stop ’n Shop every Saturday night. Obligatory behavior for every member of Rorkie’s gang, along with Bass Weejuns and Villager shirtwaists. But she didn’t have to do obligatory sex anymore because Rorkie was long gone. And there had to be an easier way to torment Diana.

  An image of Diana’s and Suzanne’s naked bodies, sweaty limbs entangled across a bed, floated through her head. Her stomach clenched. How could she compete with a nineteen-year-old body, splitting the seams of her dress as she was?

  She went into her room, sat at her loom, and inspected her new shawl, which was nearly finished. With bands of white, gray, blue, and purple fading into each other, it really did resemble the view from the hill above the cabin of Lake Glass, the White Mountains, and the sky. She pushed at the weft with her fingertips. How could a five-year-old romance compete with a brand-new one? It couldn’t. Several times she herself had experienced the incomparable thrill of breaking down the barriers, one by one, with an unfamiliar person—the looks, the remarks, the touches, the kisses, the caresses, the sucking and writhing and thrusting and moaning.

  Grabbing the beater, Caroline began pedaling her loom. Diana had a new playmate. It was as painful as when Rorkie kicked her out of the Girls’ League and picked Mandy Carrigan to sit beside her in the lunchroom.

  In time, she remembered the thud of the beater would wake the boys. She stood up and struggled out of her cocktail dress like a scuba diver removing a wet suit. She shrugged on her flannel nightgown, climbed into bed, and picked up the list of adjectives for Hannah on her nightstand. Kind, gentle, generous, mean, devious, malicious… Taking a pencil, she scrawled, “lonely.” Then “horny.” And “cuckolded.” But she was supposed to be dividing the list into categories, not expanding it into incoherence. She turned it over and upside down, trying to discover what pattern Hannah had seen. Finally she plunked it down on the stand and turned out the light.