Other Women

by Lisa Alther

  Caroline studied her. It seemed odd she had this full life Caroline knew almost nothing about. Obscurely threatening. If Caroline had no hold over her, she could come and go as she pleased, even if Caroline happened to need her. She wished she could put her in a freezer, thawing her only as necessary. Then she realized she could, and did, summon Hannah’s image in her head whenever she liked. Hannah’s physical whereabouts was irrelevant. Unlike Pink Blanky, no one could take that image of Hannah away, not even Hannah herself.

  With a faint pleased smile Caroline said, “I went to Boston to leave the boys with their father.” They’d phoned last night, excited because Jackson had tickets to a Celtics game. Jackson got on the phone, sounding as usual like Sergeant Friday on “Dragnet.” Neither he nor Deirdre could drive the boys home on Sunday. Deirdre was going to put them on the bus at Park Square, and Caroline could meet them at her end. They didn’t have to change. They’d be fine.

  Caroline struggled with maternal terror: the bus would wreck; molesters would abuse them en route; they’d get off at a rest stop and get back on the wrong bus; Jackson was a terrible father, and got worse each year. She listened to these thoughts. From her sessions with Hannah she understood she was railing at Jackson in her head for all those years in which she felt neglected by him, which in itself had something or other to do with her own absent father. The boys would be okay. “All right,” she said.

  “What?” said Jackson, left holding the weapons he’d assembled for her attack.

  “I said all right. Fine.” She didn’t want to stand in for his perpetually critical mother anymore.

  “Did you stay in Boston?” asked Hannah.

  Caroline paused, summoning courage. “Only long enough to get laid.” She felt like a cat placing a dead mouse at its owner’s feet. Would Hannah praise her or kick her? Panic tightened her throat. Why had she told her this? Hannah would be bound to be disgusted. She had her wretched marriage.

  “By whom?”

  Caroline’s palms began sweating. Her scalp stung under her Afro. “By a woman I picked up at a sauna,” she said in a low voice, examining the tread on her snowmobile boot.

  “Was it fun?”

  Caroline looked up. Hannah was smiling wryly, evidently not appalled. How was this possible?

  “Yes.”

  Hannah shrugged. “How nice.”

  Caroline sat silent.

  “What shall we talk about today?” asked Hannah, looking out the window to the frozen lake and thinking what a pleasure it was not to have to see that orange Le Car anymore.

  Caroline’s face flushed. If Hannah could pass this off so casually, surely she didn’t get the picture. “The nicest part was that I just walked away afterwards. I don’t even know her name.”

  “Which isn’t how you usually operate?”

  Caroline was startled that Hannah realized there were other ways to operate than monogamous marriage. “How I’ve always operated is to buy my lovers presents, water their plants, walk their dogs, put coins in parking meters for their cars.”

  “To keep them around?”

  Caroline paused. Was this why she’d done it? Not just that she was a nice guy? It hadn’t occurred to her to do anything else. “Yes, to keep them around.”

  “You felt you had to do nice things to make them love you?”

  “Uh, I guess so.” She glanced around for the Kleenex. Where had that damn chest been moved to? Pain was rising to her throat like a creek overflowing its banks. The chest was right beside her. She rested her hand on its familiar polished wood surface.

  “Do you see where that comes from?” asked Hannah, watching Caroline.

  Caroline closed her eyes and nodded. She grabbed a tissue as a tear rolled down her cheek. “Damn it,” she muttered through gritted teeth, blotting the tears, her throat aching from holding them back.

  “It’s all right. Cry if you want to.” As Caroline blew her nose, Hannah thought about the different ways clients did this. Some used the same tissue time after time. Others took a new one for each bout. Some wouldn’t stop once they started, using tears to avoid the issues. Some collapsed on the couch and sobbed; others reached out for her. Almost as revealing as a Rorschach test. Some, like Caroline, ground their teeth and struggled against each tear as though it were a drop of corrosive acid.

  “What did you learn with the woman in Boston?” asked Hannah.

  Caroline looked up, her eyes red and puffy. “Huh?” She expected some sympathy in return for her tears, but Hannah was just sitting there with her irritating expression of patience.

  “I think you can judge whether an experience is worth the effort by what it teaches you.” She glanced out the window to the lake, perfectly still in its straitjacket of ice.

  Caroline tried to decide if she’d learned anything. Mostly it had just felt wonderful after so many months to be touched by another human creature. “I guess I learned I don’t necessarily want to keep someone around. And I also learned I don’t have to do the laundry for them to want me. This woman said I was a marvelous lover.” She flung down the last sentence like a gauntlet.

  Hannah smiled as she lit another cigarette. She enjoyed it when they began feeling their wild adolescent oats, which they hadn’t sown when they should have because they were so busy trying to be “good.” Caroline was looking at her, waiting for her response. Having no idea what that would be, Hannah exhaled smoke, opened her mouth, and heard herself say, “Well, I wouldn’t have any way of verifying that, would I?”

  Caroline looked at her speculatively. You could have, she thought. Hannah had a nice husband. But she’d admitted to bisexual feelings. Maybe she was monogamous by default. Maybe no one else had asked her lately….

  Oh God, thought Hannah. Any minute now Caroline was going to come on to her. She had her eyes fixed on Hannah’s. Hannah liked them to feel good, but not this good. She’d better head her off before the pass. “Does anybody in your family have blue eyes?”

  Caroline looked startled. “Uh, I don’t know. Yes, I guess my mother does.”

  Hannah nodded. “You notice how you always stare at mine?”

  “What?”

  “How did your parents react when you started dating?”

  Caroline frowned, then began talking in a bewildered voice. “They watched out their bedroom window when someone brought me home. If we kissed at the door, they’d be waiting at the top of the stairs with a lecture about career options in human services. If we sat too long in the car, they’d flash the porch lights. When I was in nursing school, they dropped by my dorm at all hours. They always ridiculed my boyfriends, except for a couple who were polite and boring….”

  “And sexless?” asked Hannah, raising her eyebrows.

  “What?”

  “Do you see what’s going on in here?”

  Caroline blinked.

  “For most of your life you’ve damped down all these facets to your personality in an attempt to be acceptable. They’ve been emerging lately, and I’m here to tell you that they’re absolutely fine. You are fine, exactly as you are—sometimes sad and hurt and wanting to be taken care of, sometimes funny and charming, sometimes sexy, sometimes aggressive, sometimes angry. They’re all you, and they’re all fine. Just because they weren’t fine to important people early in your life doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.” Her voice was fierce, reflecting the anger she was feeling at the bullies who ran around telling tiny children how to win approval. Many clients at their first session had virtually no personality. Bland robots, identical, antennae extended only to pick up and obey the wishes of others. Until the suppressed emotions made them ill or exploded all over other people.

  She thought about the flower border along the base of her house, the dozens of varieties, each with its own scent, color, and configuration. Together, they formed a scene so dazzling one could only be struck with wonder at a world in which such variety and intricacy were not only possible, but evident everywhere you looked. She was cert
ain human beings possessed at least as much potential.

  When Nigel was three, she planted the side field above the lake with bulbs—daffodils and yellow tulips. She and Nigel lay in the spring sun amidst the flowers, sniffing, touching, and discussing them. Later that spring Nigel came stumbling up to her, wailing. He clutched a purple hyacinth in one tiny fist. Between outraged sobs he explained, “Mommy, flowers are yellow. Bad flower!” He flung it to the ground and stamped on it….

  “Are you monogamous?” asked Caroline with a defiant tilt to her chin.

  Hannah started, almost dropping her cigarette. “What? Oh. Yes.” Did this really have to be part of her job?

  Caroline felt her shoulders tighten. So, whatever she said, Hannah actually felt critical of Caroline’s promiscuity.

  Hannah watched Caroline’s sullen stare. Apparently she was determined to feel punished. How many times had she been assigned this role of avenging mother, by her own children and by hundreds of clients? Caroline could have gotten it on with the Queen Mother and the Royal Horseguards for all Hannah cared. “It’s not out of great moral conviction. It’s just simpler. And I’m at a time in my life when I value simplicity. I’ve got a lot of other things to think about. Besides, I get to hear about the exotic escapades of my clients.” She smiled whimsically.

  “So you’re a voyeur?”

  “Very probably.” She laughed. If she didn’t engage with the obnoxiousness, sometimes it just fell away, like a discarded stage on a launched rocket. “You know, I can’t keep up with you, Caroline. Last I heard, you were in hot pursuit of a man.”

  Caroline frowned. “Who says I’m not now?” Brian phoned last night after the boys. She had a date with him Saturday night. The boys would still be in Boston. She’d been making going to bed with him a life and death matter. Why not just do it for fun, as she had with the woman in Boston? It didn’t mean they had to spend the rest of their lives together.

  “Okay,” said Hannah, gesturing like a flagger trying to slow down highway traffic. “Just checking.” According to her theory formulated over the lobster in Maine, Caroline should want both men and women, since it sounded as though she hadn’t had much contact with either parent, with Daddy off to war and Mummy in despair, and then with them both out saving the world.

  “This thing in Boston was just a fling. It’s got nothing to do with anything.”

  “Yes, but why did you pick a woman to fling with?” asked Hannah.

  “Why not?” asked Caroline, jutting out her jaw.

  Hannah smiled. “Indeed. I’m not making value judgments, Caroline. I’m just curious.” Now that she had her lake view, she wondered if she could get away with installing a recliner in place of her desk chair. Would it undercut her authority if she issued observations from a supine position with closed eyes?

  “I prefer female bodies aesthetically,” Caroline was surprised to hear herself say. She realized it was true, thinking with distaste of all the hair and hard muscles on Jackson and David Michael, and those ridiculous prongs they were so proud of, that jabbed at you like cattle prods. In contrast to the smooth soft curves and mounds, the warm moist cavities of that head counselor’s body Friday night.

  “Who doesn’t? Why do you think so much pornography and fine art feature women’s bodies?”

  Caroline looked at Hannah. “If you really feel that, why are you with a man?”

  “Because I love Arthur.”

  Caroline blinked, then blushed, then studied her snowmobile boot. “I see.”

  “Choices.”

  “Why choose?” asked Caroline. “Why not have it all?”

  Hannah shook her head. “You must have more time and energy than I do, is all I can say, Caroline.”

  Caroline was awakened from a deep sleep by her ringing phone. Flinging out an arm to her bedside table, she found the receiver. “Hello?”

  A male voice said, “Hello there, darling. I hear you like stiff cock shoved deep into your wet pussy.”

  “Wrong.”

  After a bemused silence, the man hung up.

  “Who was that?” asked Diana, wrapping her arm around Caroline and molding her breast with her hand.

  “Some guy who’d heard I like stiff cock.”

  “Jesus.” She laughed the husky laugh that had made Caroline fall in love with her over the bed bath in nursing school. “You said wrong?

  “From a deep sleep. Without a moment’s hesitation.”

  “God, you’re such a dyke.” She nibbled Caroline’s shoulder.

  “I guess I am.” Caroline was remembering the early months in this cabin, after her arrival from Somerville, as she and Diana tried to convince themselves with locker room language that they both wanted a stiff cock. The unacknowledged sexual tension between them could have blown all the fuses in the cabin. For Caroline, exposing vulnerable parts of her anatomy to a member of the male species, who she’d recently realized performed the violent deeds she spent her career mopping up after, seemed about as appealing as suckling a rattlesnake. She and Diana, fed up with men, were spending a lot of time working at the abortion referral center downtown, sick to death of seeing women bear the brunt of male lust and violence. Pam, Jenny, and several of the other workers were lesbians. Caroline and Diana eyed them uneasily when they sat too close at meetings. “I’m not that kind of girl,” Caroline once said to Pam, who’d hugged her affectionately.

  “Tell me about it,” said Pam, amused.

  Once she and Diana went to lunch at Maude’s with Pam and Jenny. Pam ordered peach cobbler for dessert. When it arrived, Pam picked up the dish and plunged her face into the whipped cream on top. Then she turned to Jenny, who slowly licked off all the cream, gazing into Pam’s malamute eyes. Diana and Caroline looked uneasily at them, at each other, and at their appalled neighbors.

  One night over a bottle of wine on the couch in Diana’s living room, Diana said, “You know, I really resent how Pam and Jenny think every woman they meet is a lesbian.”

  Caroline nodded. “Yeah. I mean, you can be aware of attractions to women without wanting to do anything about it.”

  “Exacdy.”

  Caroline opened another bottle of red wine. “What do you think about that new abortion bill before the legislature?” she asked Diana, filling their glasses for the sixth time.

  “That guy from Nashua who’s sponsoring it is a real hunk,” replied Diana. “You ought to put the make on him.”

  Caroline looked into her wine for a long time, swirling it as though preparing to read tea leaves. “If I were going to put the make on anyone,” said Caroline, “it’d be you.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” She looked up at Diana, who’d blushed a bright scarlet.

  “I guess I did.”

  “Oh, to hell with it.” Caroline began unbuttoning her own chamois shirt.

  “What are you doing?” asked Diana in a panicked voice.

  “You know perfectly well what I’m doing.” Caroline stared into Diana’s green eyes belligerently.

  “Yes, I do actually.” Diana started to unbutton her own shirt. “How come we didn’t think of this before?”

  “I sure have.”

  Caroline sighed with contentment under the down comforter and pressed her back and buttocks more closely against Diana’s front. Stiff cocks indeed. “Why would somebody do without sex for a minute, much less for months?”

  “Because she’s a fool,” said Diana.

  Diana had simply appeared in Caroline’s bed earlier that evening, a gift of the night. As Caroline began to comment on her presence, Diana placed her hand over Caroline’s mouth and said, “Let’s not talk about it. Let’s just do it.” Afterwards, discussion seemed irrelevant. Although she hadn’t told Diana about the woman from the sauna, it seemed as though Diana had picked up the message that Caroline might slip away without some enticement to stay. Whatever Diana’s reason, Caroline liked the results. In the morning she’d call Brian and cancel their date. It wasn’t fair
to lead him on when she was clearly a raving lesbian.

  They settled in to sleep. Out the window past the loom, Caroline saw the edge of the new moon, hanging over the lake like a luminous fingernail paring. She started thinking about stiff cocks and what a lot of trouble they caused. She’d changed thousands of diapers on Howard and Tommy, Jackie and Jason. Their tiny penises sprayed all over her. Her goal was to get them covered up again as quickly as possible. That Freud and most men assumed women coveted them always intrigued her. Probably it was impossible for an older sister of brothers, or the mother of sons, to take men seriously. It took a real leap of the imagination after that to regard a penis as erotic. Probably that was why she was such a dyke. Yet you’d better take men seriously, or you’d find yourself with a knife at your throat and a cock up your ass. Wars were fought over which cock got shoved where. Nuclear missiles had been launched by men who couldn’t get anything up any other way.

  David Michael said his mother used to tell him as a little boy that his cock would fall off if he played with it. Caroline remembered meeting this genius of a mother in her gloomy seaside mansion in Marblehead. She looked like a member of the Addams family, and conveyed about as much warmth.

  All of a sudden Caroline understood that David Michael had spent his entire adult life shoving his cock into every hole he could find to prove it was still there. We have to treat each other with kindness because we’re all laboring under similar disabilities. She felt a stab of remorse that she’d cut off David Michael so abruptly, taking a taxi to the Trailways station with Jackie, Jason, and half a dozen suitcases, without even telling him good-bye.

  As she dozed off, she dreamed about David Michael in his green scrub clothes and Fu Manchu mustache. He and she were standing in his cluttered room at the Somerville commune, the American flags flapping at the windows. He yelled, “You women are all the same. All you care about is stiff cock.” She looked at him. Then she scooped a handful of ashes from his Lincoln Continental hubcap and rubbed them all over his mouth and face, his beard scratching her hand like coarse sandpaper. He looked hurt and confused. Caroline felt awful. She dumped ashes in his hand and knelt at his feet, begging him to rub them into her face.