Other Women

by Lisa Alther

  Remembering the orange and red shawl on her loom, she went into her bedroom, sat down, and tried to work on it, thinking the hypnotic motions might calm her. But her hands and feet moved jerkily. She’d mess it up if she kept on. She jumped up and stalked into the kitchen, looking for something more mindless to do.

  As Caroline cleaned the refrigerator, she decided she wanted to die. Anyone who behaved like that to someone as kind as Hannah deserved to be dead. It’d be a relief to have it over with. She pictured the pill bottles on her closet shelf. Let the boys take their rifles and go live with their wretched father. She’d had it. This afternoon she’d write good-bye notes. Tonight after the boys were asleep she’d swallow every damn pill in the house. She lay face down on the hooked rug in the living room among hockey sticks and skates. The cabin was still. The boys had gone skiing with Diana, and Sharon was locked in the bathroom talking interminably on the phone. Amelia wandered over and purred around Caroline’s head. Caroline was unable to lift a hand to stroke her. Eventually she flicked her tail in Caroline’s face and stalked away.

  The boys burst through the door. Arnold careened over to Caroline, barking and sniffing her Levi’s.

  “Go away,” Caroline muttered, unable to move.

  Diana stood over her wearing brown corduroy knickers, thick knee socks, and a ski sweater she’d knit, her face flushed from the cold. “Nothing is worth turning yourself into a nutcase over,” she said, studying Caroline motionless on the floor. “Please call the woman. What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “Maybe she’s dead,” said Caroline in a dull voice. “Maybe I upset her so much she had a heart attack.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Call her. I bet she’s fine.”

  “What’s it to you if I call her? I thought you were jealous of her. You should be glad I’ve destroyed our relationship.”

  “I care about what’s best for you. It really bugs me when you get all wide-eyed about her. But I don’t want you to be without her. I just want you to have some perspective. Now, tell me her number. I’ll dial it for you.” Diana walked over to the phone.

  “I can’t face her. Not after what I said.”

  “Caroline, you’re turning into a screwball,” said Diana, going up the steps to the safety of her own quarters.

  If Hannah was hospitalized, Caroline realized she could take care of her—give her bed baths, feed her, see that she took her medication, fluff her pillows and water her flowers, answer her call button. This scenario appealed to her: Hannah needing her. She sat up. Then she crawled to the phone stand, put the phone in her lap, and dialed Hannah’s number. Her repulsive husband would answer. She’d find out what hospital Hannah was at. She wouldn’t have to confess that she was the client who was responsible. The phone rang a couple of times. Caroline almost pushed down the button. No one there. They were all at the hospital. Or the funeral home. Her forehead broke out in sweat.

  “Hello?” said Hannah in a cheerful voice.

  Caroline couldn’t speak.

  “Hello?”

  “Uh, hello. It’s Caroline.”

  “Oh, hi. How are you?”

  “Uh, well, okay, I guess. How are you?”

  “Fine, thanks. Drinking a martini and getting ready to cook filet of sole in white wine sauce.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m sorry to interrupt you. You said I could call, but I didn’t know if that still applied.”

  “Sure. Fine. Why wouldn’t it? What’s up?”

  “Well, I was wondering if I could have an extra appointment.” With her thumb she was cracking the knuckles on the same hand time after time.

  “Yes, of course you can. Only I’m pretty booked. So why don’t we go to lunch on Monday? How about picking me up at my office at noon?”

  “What? Oh. Okay. Great. See you then. Enjoy the sole.” She hung up, head falling back against the chair, armpits clammy with sweat. Hannah wasn’t dead. She wasn’t even sick. She was drinking gin. How was this possible? She sounded the same as always—tough and kind. Not only did she not kick Caroline out, she invited her to lunch. It felt like a last-minute pardon on the guillotine.

  Caroline stood up, went to the kitchen cabinet, and filled a Burger King Star Wars glass to the rim with Gordon’s gin. She drank the whole thing in three gulps, then lay on the couch and felt numbing warmth creep up her legs as Jason in his Darth Vader outfit vaporized her with his BB gun.

  When Brian phoned, she could scarcely move her lips.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “Actually I’m drunk.”

  “Do you do this often?”

  “Only on special occasions.” She started giggling.

  Silence from his end.

  “I’m okay really, Brian. I’ll see you at work.” She hung up.

  Hannah gripped the seat with one hand as Caroline wove her Subaru through the traffic on the highway past the mall like a skier down a slalom course. She wished she’d suggested meeting at the restaurant. Caroline wanted to destroy her, but surely she wouldn’t pick kamikaze tactics. Usually a client settled for symbolic destruction. Hadn’t the tirade last week been enough?

  “Did anyone ever tell you that you drive like a truck driver?” asked Hannah.

  Caroline blushed. “Am I frightening you? I’m sorry.” She moved to the outside lane and slowed down. She’d been pleased when Hannah suggested she drive, and here she was screwing things up again.

  Noting the effect of her words, Hannah realized she was being unfair. She didn’t like to hand over control of anything to anyone, so she could maintain the fiction that nothing could take her by surprise. She’d been a nervous wreck when Joanna and Simon got their permits, and sat cowering in the backseat as they drove. “Truck drivers are usually very good drivers,” she said. “I didn’t mean to criticize, just to comment.”

  Caroline glanced at her. She was prepared to acknowledge that Hannah was always right. That Caroline had been insane last week. Yet it sounded as though Hannah was apologizing.

  Hannah was amused observing Caroline’s confusion. She remembered Simon and Joanna as teenagers, calling her a raving bitch, criticizing her fondness for gin, rejecting her meals with contempt—then sidling up to her later in the evening for a guilty good-night hug.

  “Aren’t you cold?” asked Caroline. Hannah wore no coat, only the navy blue pants suit and blouse Caroline had first met her in.

  “No. I have so many hot flashes these days I could probably heat Lake Glass single-handedly. I keep meaning to go to the doctor, but each month I decide I’m finally through menopause.”

  Caroline glanced at her as they pulled into the restaurant parking lot, startled to be reminded that Hannah had her own difficulties.

  Hannah had suggested Dooley’s, which had mediocre food but lots of room between tables, in case Caroline wanted to throw another scene. They sat by a window overlooking the parking lot in rattan peacock chairs, fern tendrils trailing above their heads, and discussed the current angle of the sun to the horizon, the state of the ice on the lake, the imminent return of birds from the south, and the likelihood of another late snowstorm.

  Caroline marveled over Hannah’s apparent good health and good humor as they ordered sandwiches and coffee from a gum-chewing waitress who withdrew her pencil from her French twist. Had Hannah not heard or forgotten all the awful things Caroline said?

  “I suppose you’re wondering why I asked you here today,” Caroline said as the waitress sauntered away.

  “I asked you,” said Hannah, thinking she probably had a better idea than Caroline herself. She was enjoying chatting away when Caroline expected her to be hurt, angry, or aloof. At such times you could almost see the wires in their brains flaring and crackling as they short-circuited.

  “I wanted to apologize for my tantrum the other day.” She played with the prongs on her fork.

  Hannah shrugged. “Why should you apologize for saying what you think?”

  “I didn’t have to say it so forcefu
lly.”

  “You didn’t have to, but you did. And so what? It’s okay. The globe didn’t tilt any farther on its axis.”

  “It felt that way to me.” Caroline jabbed the fork through her paper napkin.

  “Which way?”

  “Disastrous. When I got home, I thought maybe I’d made you sick, or even killed you. That’s really why I called.”

  “I know.”

  Caroline looked at her. “You did?”

  “This is my job. Do you understand that on one level you’d like me to be dead? And that’s why you were terrified I might be?”

  “What?”

  “People don’t like to need other people.” From Caroline’s look of consternation Hannah knew she wasn’t ready to face this yet. “Did you ever get angry with your mother?” Caroline had shredded her napkin with her fork. Hannah wished there were some simple way to let her know everything was all right.

  Caroline sorted through the canceled checks in her memory bank. “I came downstairs one Sunday and said I wasn’t going to church since I didn’t believe in God. Because if God was so great, how come He’d created a world in which so many people were suffering. She said I didn’t know anything about God. I said I could believe whatever I wanted.”

  “What happened?” David Dickson, an ex-client whose poorly tied bow ties had riveted Hannah throughout therapy, walked past their table with a woman who wasn’t his wife. He pretended not to see Hannah, so Hannah pretended not to see him. Though she did wonder if he was getting it up yet.

  “She got upset and went to bed.”

  “How did you feel?”

  Caroline struggled to remember. “I kept trying to bring her tea and food and flowers, and she kept refusing them. I think that was when I broke my nose.,r

  “You what?” The waitress brought their coffee. Struggling to open her cream container, Hannah squirted the cream halfway across the table.

  “Ran into the edge of her door and broke my nose.” Caroline tried to blot the cream with the remains of her napkin, and made a swamp of shredded paper.

  “Here?” asked Hannah, rubbing the bridge of her own nose with thumb and forefinger. Then she tried to wipe up the whole mess with her napkin. They ought to have a sheet of plastic under their table, like the one she spread under the high chair at home while each child was learning to eat.

  Caroline nodded.

  “So that’s why you rub it all the time?”

  “Do I?”

  “You aren’t aware of it?”

  “No.” Caroline copied Hannah’s gesture. It felt familiar.

  “Well, I am, because I’ve picked it up from you.”

  “You have?” Caroline was amazed she had any impact at all on Hannah. She tried to reconcile this with her conviction over the weekend that her anger had killed Hannah.

  “So what happened after you broke your nose?”

  “My mother got out of bed and drove me to the emergency room.”

  “Was she still depressed?”

  “No, she was really nice. She took me out for an ice cream soda, and we joked about how I looked like a pig.” The waitress placed their sandwiches before them, on plates overloaded with potato chips.

  “How did you feel?”

  “Good. My face was all swollen and purple, but I was really happy.”

  “Did your mother go back to bed?” In some ways it was easier to cope with outright child abuse. At least everybody knew what was going on.

  “No. She fixed me ice packs. Read me stories because I couldn’t see with my eyes all putty.” She watched Hannah pick up her BLT and take a bite. Gin, sole, BLTs, hot flashes, a husband. Caroline spent so much time consulting the idealized image of Hannah in her own head that it was odd to realize she had a body, needed food and sleep.

  “Do you see the pattern?”

  “Huh?”

  “You assert yourself. Other people depart or collapse. You get frightened and guilty. The world starts looking like a terrifying place. You punish yourself, or try to get them to—in hopes of regaining their patronage.”

  “What?”

  “Think about it. All right, so you got angry and told me off. Then you got scared. And you worked yourself up into an awful state as an excuse to call me. And what did you discover?”

  “That you were all right. That you were drinking martinis.” Caroline realized she hadn’t touched her egg salad sandwich. She had no appetite. She nibbled halfheartedly at a rippled potato chip.

  “What if I hadn’t been all right? What if I’d been in a bad mood? It still wouldn’t have been your fault. I might have burned the sole or run out of gin. I have a full complicated life, much of which has nothing to do with you. You simply don’t have that much power over me, Caroline. You didn’t over your mother. She used your behavior as an excuse to feel depressed. But each of us is author of her own moods.”

  Caroline knew this was true. She’d been using Hannah to feel better all these months. “Like I used my pink blanket.”

  “Yes. But you can dispense with people and objects, and feel without intermediary the states of mind you’ve assigned to them.”

  “But that doesn’t make sense. If people and events are irrelevant, why would I pick depression?”

  Hannah raised her eyebrows. “Why would you? What did you grow up with?”

  “No, that’s ridiculous. Horrible things go on. It’s no good pretending they don’t.” Caroline remembered the word that set her off last week: Joy. Joy to the world. What a joke.

  “Things go on. Whether you perceive them as horrible is your choice.”

  “Like those Argentine peasants in Sunday’s paper, who raped that girl and sewed a human head inside her?”

  Hannah closed her eyes and returned her sandwich to her plate, suddenly nauseated. “Yes, I saw that too.”

  “You can choose to perceive that as not horrible?”

  Hannah hesitated. She was sounding more sure of herself than she felt. “That was horrible. But all you can do is try to maintain your own peace of mind, with the hope that it can soothe the savagery. The way an experienced rider can calm a skittish horse.” Stepping back from her own revulsion, she realized Caroline was doing her cosmic number again.

  “Did you ever read Middlemarch?” asked Hannah.

  “What’s that?”

  “An English novel I read at boarding school. Anyhow, this one woman tells another character the most important thing she’s learned during her lifetime is the need to spread the skirts of light in the world.”

  “Spread the skirts of light?”

  “Yes.”

  “Dessert?” asked the waitress, cocking one hip and resting a hand on it. Her glasses had small gold script letters down the side of one lens that spelled “babs.”

  “Not for me, thank you,” said Hannah.

  Caroline shook her head no. She said nothing for a long time, staring out the window past the plant tendrils to the traffic through the parking lot. Lighting a brown cigarette, Hannah pictured that infant in her jump seat, so anxious not to offend that she wouldn’t even bounce. “Don’t shut down,” she said gently. “I’m not your mother. You can disagree with me all you want.”

  Caroline looked at her, startled back into the present. “I don’t see how you can sit there feeling serene with horror going on all around. You have to do what you can.”

  “But I do. So do you. We both work very hard. All we can do is our best, which often isn’t enough. Besides, young girls are being raped by idiots, but there are also pileated woodpeckers.”

  “Who’re murdering insects. And waiting to be murdered by cats.”

  Hannah could feel Caroline’s distress massing like floodwaters behind a dam. “Look, you’re a nurse. Think about the human body—the network of neurons that forms the brain. The meshing of the hormones. The miracle is all around you. Stop insisting on loaves and fishes.”

  Caroline rubbed the bridge of her nose. She looked up, eyes clouded with pain. “That diamond
on black velvet stuff. I wish I could believe you.”

  “But you shouldn’t take my word for it in any case. Just open your eyes. See what you see when you’re not set to see horror.”

  “You make it sound easy, but I can’t.”

  “Won’t?” suggested Hannah.

  The waitress brought the check. Caroline reached for it, but Hannah covered it with her hand.

  “I’d like to treat you,” said Caroline.

  “I think we’d better split it.”

  “But I asked you for the extra time.”

  “One of these days you can take me to lunch. But not yet.”

  “Why not? What would that mean?”

  “That you had to pay for people to spend time with you?”

  “But that’s the nature of our relationship,” said Caroline, taking out her checkbook. “It’s your profession.”

  “I don’t have rules for how I conduct my profession, so don’t make any for me. And please put your checkbook away. I went to lunch with you because I wanted to.” Hannah realized this was true. She liked sessions with Caroline. Her hunger to understand dragged words from Hannah that were news to her as well. Caroline was a serious person. Unlike David Dickson, who gave Hannah a perfunctory nod as she caught his eye while passing his table. David went round and round, a squirrel on the wheel of his own neuroses. But Caroline was halfway out of her cage.

  As Caroline drove back to the office, Hannah tried to recall the phase of her own life that was equivalent to Caroline’s. One day she was a suburban housewife and mother of four, preoccupied with her flirtations and the proper placement of Tiffany lamps. The next day the pine cupboard, Nigel, and Mona were gone. Her disillusionment with the chimeras of this world had been brutal and cataclysmic. Caroline’s had been more gradual. But the end result was the same.

  She remembered the months of numb disbelief, during which every cowlicked teenage boy she glimpsed in the street was Nigel, and every plump ten-year-old girl was Mona. Once she found herself changing the sheets on their beds as though they’d be sleeping in them that night.

  Then came the months of fury, in which she searched for someone, anyone, to blame—Arthur, the furnace dealer, the rescue squad, the north wind. Then the months, years maybe, when she turned the blame on herself. Daily she dwelt on the ways she failed Nigel and Mona—the arguments over muddy sneakers, the missed opportunities or kisses and kind words, the motor boat they wanted she refused to buy.