Other Women

by Lisa Alther

  “Alone and lonely. Taking care of him when he needed it, but not receiving the same from him.”

  “You’ve had a lot of practice at that.”

  Caroline nodded.

  Hannah looked at her kindly. “That must be painful to see.”

  Caroline nodded again. Then she looked up. “For a while I thought maybe it could be different with Brian if I was aware of the pattern.”

  This came out sounding to Hannah like a question. “It’s possible, but some people just have to stay away from their poison, like an alcoholic from liquor.”

  Caroline was dazed. Hannah was not only not critical, she looked pleased. Her face had softened. She was even implying that Brian was “poison” for her.

  “Are you aware,” asked Hannah, “that you’ve just made a choice? That you’re shaping your life, and not just letting it happen?”

  “Yes.”

  “And are you aware that you’ve been doing that all along? Even though you didn’t know it?”

  Caroline nodded, looking doubtful.

  They sat in silence, Caroline idly studying the mimi spirit on the wall by the desk. She’d actually started to like the hideous little creature with its hollow Orphan Annie eyes. It had begun to look friendly and lively, instead of weird and threatening.

  Hannah was looking outside to a row of icicles that hung like translucent fangs from the window frame. They dripped in the heat of the sun. For the first time Hannah could recall, Caroline wasn’t displacing her inner sense of abandonment onto other people and the world at large. She was leaving Brian, and acknowledging it as her move, rather than his fault.

  “I didn’t think your heart was in that relationship,” said Hannah.

  “You didn’t? Why not?”

  “Something about the way you talked about him. Calling him Mr. Right, for one thing. You always sounded faintly ironic.”

  “I thought I was trying to make it work. But maybe I knew it wouldn’t.”

  “Why did you want it to? You’ve insisted all along you’re a lesbian.”

  Caroline looked at Hannah. “I guess I wanted it to work because I wanted to be like you.”

  Hannah smiled faintly, remembering wanting to be Jewish so she could be more like Maggie. “What stopped you?”

  “Being me.”

  Hannah studied her, then nodded. Caroline grew up with parents bound together like prisoners on a chain gang. No wonder she felt contempt for all that. Whereas Hannah, her mother dead, her father departed, longed for it as a child and clung to it now.

  “Maybe I’d like to be normal and respectable, like you,” said Caroline, “but I’m not. So fuck it.”

  Hannah smiled.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “I don’t know if I can explain,” said Hannah. “It’s just that I’m not sure we’re as unalike as you think. I had an appointment with a friend of yours the other day,” she added, to change the subject. Because Caroline needed to believe in their differences for the moment, honing her sense of who she was by contrasting herself to other people. She pictured Caroline’s friend Jenny with her one dangling silver earring, a raised fist inside a woman’s symbol. Jenny sat on the couch in a belligerent posture, her legs planted firmly apart. “So do you think you can handle me?” Jenny demanded at the end of the hour. “Well, I’m not afraid of you, if that’s what you mean,” Hannah replied, watching as Jenny’s eyes suddenly filled with tears.

  “I know. Jenny told me.”

  “She said you suggested she see me?”

  “Yes.” Jenny was heartbroken over yet another true love who’d returned to her husband, and had spent an evening weeping in Caroline’s arms, her tears causing Caroline’s new red chamois shirt to run all over her T-shirt underneath. Expert that she’d recently become on the human heart, Caroline knew Jenny needed to face her inability to steal Mommy from Daddy, and Hannah would help her do that.

  “Well, please don’t refer anyone else.” Now Caroline was going to start trying to take care of her professionally.

  “Why not?”

  “Why do you think not?”

  Caroline frowned. “I don’t know. I thought you’d be pleased.” Whatever reaction Caroline assumed Hannah would have, she usually had the opposite.

  “I have all the clients I can handle.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to burden you with another.”

  “Don’t be miffed,” said Hannah. “Think about what you’re setting up.” She’d done the same thing to Maggie—referred friends to her, then resented Maggie’s involvement with them. Just like her children, who begged for baby brothers and sisters, then loathed them when they arrived. Just like herself, feeling stabs of jealousy watching Arthur cradle their new babies and gaze besottedly into their eyes.

  Caroline didn’t see why Hannah had to turn everything into some

  Byzantine plot. Some things were as they seemed and nothing more. She imagined what living with her would be like: “Arthur, you may think this is pot roast, but ask yourself what else might be under that gravy.”

  “What’s so funny?” asked Hannah.

  “You are. I just don’t believe everything has all this hidden significance.”

  Hannah smiled, glad Caroline could challenge her pleasantly now, tease her even. “But don’t forget how many times I’ve been through this with other people, Caroline.”

  Caroline felt a stab of jealousy. “Okay. So tell me what I’m setting up.”

  “It registers better if you figure it out yourself. But I can tell by the set to your jaw that you’re stubborn today.” She watched Caroline nod in agreement, while mouthing disclaimers. “If you send me clients, you could see me as replacing you with them. As your mother did you with the younger children. As Arlene did you with what’s-her-name. As Diana has you with Suzanne.”

  Caroline was looking baffled. “I thought it was a compliment that I’d send my friends to you.”

  “It is. But after you’re finished, then send people. Not now.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I think you’re trying to send me a replacement so you can feel rejected. And I don’t believe you really want to be replaced because I know I’m very important to you.”

  Caroline blushed, her eyes meeting Hannah’s. She felt a deep longing for her, in any form she could have her. Therapy, lunch, bridge, bed, anything. She dropped her eyes and said almost in a whisper, “Yes, you are.”

  They sat in silence as Hannah studied the dripping icicles and thought about golf balls. She used to find stray ones among the blackberry bushes on Hampstead Heath. She’d slit open and peel off the tough outer cover to reveal the tangle of cord beneath. Which she’d unravel carefully to expose the small round core, whose smooth surface was scarred like a fossil from the protective cord. Working with a client was similar. You had to penetrate the protective shell, which concealed a maze of vulnerabilities often opposite to what outward appearances would suggest. The bull dykes who arrived on motorcycles and swaggered into the office in full leathers turned out to be frightened little girls. And the Total Women were often as cold and sharp underneath as those icicles out the window.

  But once the core lay bare, as Caroline’s did right now, Hannah felt awe, and a twinge of fear. You tapped gently for signs of life, aware anything too sudden or forceful could unleash a new landslide that might bury forever anyone still alive in there.

  Hannah looked at the photo on the wall over the bookcase, done by an ex-client who was an aerial photographer. At first glance it looked like what it was—patches of snow on a plowed field. But a shift of vision converted the portions of dark field into the silhouette of a veiled woman’s head. Her client, convinced it was the Virgin Mary, experienced a conversion, terminated therapy, and went into the priesthood. Hannah was skeptical about the Virgin Mary bit, but was a true believer in the shift of vision. But this shift would probably frighten Caroline even more than all her dependency, anger, and sexuality. And she did in fact look ter
rified by what she’d just said as she studied her fingernails and tried to appear blasé.

  Caroline was thinking about how important Hannah had become to her. She’d split with Brian. Who knew what Diana was up to? Hannah had become the focus for her emotional life. She thought about her in the night to quell her terrors. She planned her week around these sessions, thinking over what got said at the previous ones and storing up observations for the next. When she drove to the hospital past Hannah’s office, she noticed whether her light was on. When it was, the world felt like a safer place. Here she’d acknowledged Hannah’s importance. And her belief since Pink Blanky and Marsha was that once the gods knew what was important to you, they were obliged to take it away, for reasons understood only by themselves. I know what you want and you can’t have it. Caroline had failed to play it cool. One way or another, Hannah would vanish. Rubbing the bridge of her nose with her fingertips, she felt sweat drench her armpits and stain her white uniform.

  “What are you thinking?” asked Hannah gently, watching sweat stains appear under Caroline’s armpits. Wasn’t Caroline too young for hot flashes?

  To explain, Caroline knew, would only make matters worse. You tried not to draw attention to anything you wished to preserve. Even if it was already too late. “I was just thinking that you’re right about Jenny,” she replied in a shaky voice. “She told me on the phone what a good session she’d had with you. And I said, ‘Well, just remember she likes me best.’”

  Hannah laughed. What a charmer Caroline was. “You’re right. I do,” she heard herself say.

  “You do?”

  Hannah nodded, faintly alarmed by her unprofessional response.

  Caroline studied her. How could Hannah like her after all the crap Caroline had laid on her? Probably this remark was another therapeutic technique. Hannah was always pointing out that she was only doing her job. “What’s that photo you were just looking at?”

  Hannah glanced at it. “It’s a plowed field covered with snow, viewed from an airplane. But if you look at it a certain way, there’s the silhouette of a woman in profile. The man who did it thinks it’s the Virgin Mary.”

  Caroline smiled. “I can’t see her.”

  “Make the white the background.”

  Caroline widened, then narrowed her eyes. “No good.”

  “Keep trying. You’ll get it.”

  As Caroline drove down the lake road through the afternoon sunshine, she could see a large stretch of open water in the middle of the lake, bordered by jagged chunks of softening ice. The ice fishing shanties and the intrepid autos were no longer in evidence.

  The dirt road up to the cabin was soggy and deeply rutted. She and Diana had recently switched from complaining about ice on the road to complaining about mud. Before long, they’d be complaining about the dust that sifted through cracks in the cabin in summer to coat the furniture. Soon snow tires, parkas, and storm windows would come off. Doors and windows would be thrown open. The sun would beat down. The children would lie in the grass and identify shapes in the clouds. She decided summer was her favorite season.

  But what about autumn—the sky over the lake as deep blue as Hannah’s eyes, the air crisp as a bite from a chilled Mcintosh apple? To say nothing of the scarlet maples in the woods beside the cabin. The whole point was the juxtaposition, she concluded. Summer was heavenly because it followed mud season. But if you had scorching sun all the time, the vegetation would burn out and you’d sit in the shade dreaming of snow. Each season was perfect in its own way, and in relation to all the others. The point was to know that, rather than to complain about mud in spring, dust in summer, and ice in winter.

  Jesus, she was turning into as much of a Pollyanna as Hannah. She smiled.

  The smile faded. She’d just admitted to Hannah that she was important to her. Hannah at this very moment was probably feeling burdened. She’d get rid of Caroline in some polite fashion. Caroline felt an overzealous Boy Scout begin to tie sheep shanks with her intestines.

  For God’s sake, she told herself, wait until next week and see what she does. Don’t assume catastrophe before it happens. Meanwhile, she was determined to enjoy this fucking spring. She focused on her dream of tropical birds and felt the knots in her stomach loosen. Anything could happen to Hannah. She could move away, die, go into real estate. She probably would now that Caroline had made her confession. But nobody could take those birds away. Even the pileated woodpecker showed up only when he felt like it. But she could picture the jungle scene any time she liked simply by closing her eyes. And with it came a feeling of warm gratitude—toward what she had no idea—that canceled out the fear and anxiety.

  As she waded through the mud to her door, she looked up and saw Amelia perched on the railing to Diana’s entrance, balancing on a few square inches of wood. Caroline stood still, boots sinking into the mud, gazing at the cat. Amelia turned her head, met Caroline’s gaze, and slowly blinked her yellow-green eyes. Her mouth looked as though it were smiling. Caroline was struck by her gratuitous beauty. Why did such a silly, friendly, aloof, graceful creature exist at all, with her totally unnecessary patches of tan, black, and white? Open your eyes and see what you see when you’re not set to see horror. Amelia was a miracle. Tears formed in Caroline’s eyes.

  Amelia stiffened, head snapping to attention. She pushed off from her perch, leaping in an arc of astonishing grace to pursue a small chipmunk that scurried across the yard.

  “Amelia, stop it, damn it!” yelled Caroline, robbed of Hannah’s vision and plunged into her own. If she’d had Jason’s gun, she’d have shot the damn cat herself. She packed some soggy snow into an icy ball and heaved it at Amelia. It landed with a plop in the patch of snow beside the cat, who leapt sideways, back arching and hair standing on end.

  Caroline’s apartment was silent. Arnold lay snoozing in a patch of sunlight on the hooked rug, flop of a watchdog that he was. The boys and Sharon were at friends’ houses. Leaving her muddy boots by the door, she took a Michelob from the refrigerator and collapsed in the plaid armchair by the phone. Taking a long gulp of beer, she felt her spirits descend like an express elevator. Maybe the miracle was all around, but so was the horror. Which was real, she wondered, the graceful insouciance of Amelia on the railing, or the terror in the chipmunk’s eyes as it caught sight of that great feline hulk? The air took on heaviness as Caroline tried to breathe, and she felt her shoulders begin to tighten.

  As she tossed down the rest of the beer and set the can on the telephone table, she heard Diana moving around upstairs. Each of us is author of her own moods. If she wanted to sit down here being depressed over the rapacious personality of her cat, that was her choice, she reminded herself. There were other options, such as accepting Diana’s invitation from the other night. Suddenly inspired, she jumped up, raced into her bedroom, and removed her white dress, damp with sweat from the therapy session. She also took off her stockings, garter belt, and underpants, leaving on only her lacy Victorian camisole, which Diana loved. Putting on her down bathrobe, she went upstairs.

  “Hi, babe,” said Diana from the couch as she looked out at the melting ice on Lake Glass and knitted on Suzanne’s Icelandic sweater. An empty wine glass sat on the shag carpet beside her. “Have a seat. What are you up to?” She eyed Caroline’s bathrobe.

  “I’m on my way to your bed. Like to join me?”

  Diana smiled, not looking up for a moment. “Does a hog like to root in swill?” She put down her knitting and stood up, stretching languorously, red hair glowing in the sun like embers.

  “God, you’re a gorgeous creature,” murmured Caroline, touching Diana’s familiar face with her fingertips.

  “You’re not so bad yourself.” Diana reached out to undo the belt on Caroline’s robe. “Oh my goodness,” she said as the robe fell open to reveal the camisole. Her green eyes narrowed with lust. “You look good enough to eat.”

  “Be my guest.”

  Diana’s body, so different from Brian’s, so
similar to her own. Caroline supposed lesbianism was the ultimate in narcissism. She knew what Diana was feeling as she touched her, could feel it in herself, to such an extent that eventually she no longer knew who was doing what to whom. If this was narcissism, so be it. What could be wrong with a little self-love?

  Afterwards, as they lay in each other’s arms in the sunlight on the shag carpet, the two Eves in Eden smiling down from Caroline’s tapestry on the wall, Diana asked in an exhausted voice, “What do we do when the kids burst through the door?”

  “I tell them I love you very much, and hope they’re as lucky when they grow up.” Caroline brushed some stray strands of hair off Diana’s forehead and kissed one of her closed eyes.

  “I see. And then you give them gift certificates for visits to Hannah Burke?”

  “Correct.” Caroline wasn’t sure she’d ever been this happy. She felt as though she’d returned home after a long stay in foreign lands. Everything seemed suddenly simple. You just walked away from the painful complications you’d concocted, like a hermit crab from an outgrown shell. Brian was out of the picture. Diana would finally finish Suzanne’s sweater and get rid of her. The kids would soon be gone, and she and Diana would live out their twilight years in each other’s arms and between each other’s legs.

  “Could I ask a favor?” said Diana.

  “Sure. What?” Just then if Diana had wanted Lake Glass siphoned into a thimble, Caroline would have done her best.

  “Would you mind not sleeping with that man in this house?”

  Caroline felt her heart contract into a tight fist. “Bad timing, baby.”

  “Bad timing or not, it’s important to me.”

  “Diana, why bring up all that outside junk when right now is perfect between us.”

  “Because it’s perfect between us. I can’t bear knowing you’re down there doing what we just did with him.”

  “If you sleep with Suzanne here, why shouldn’t I sleep with Brian?” Why not just tell her it was over with Brian? But a principle was at stake. Besides, if Diana knew Caroline had no one but herself, she’d feel burdened and would withdraw. I know what you want and you can’t have it. How in the world had this seemed simple a moment ago?