by Joanna Russ
“We’ve separated,” says Jeannine, untruly.
“Why?” says Mrs. Dadier, her blue eyes opening wide. “What was the matter with him?”
He was impotent, mother. Now how could I say that to such a nice lady? I didn’t.
“Nothing,” says Jeannine. “Where’s Bro?”
“Fishing,” says Mrs. Dadier. Brother often goes out in the early morning and meditates over a fishing line. The ladies don’t. Mrs. Dadier is afraid of his slipping, falling on a rock, and splitting open his head. Jeannine doesn’t like fishing.
“We’re going to have a nice day,” says Mrs. Dadier. “There’s a play tonight and a block dance. There are lots of young people, Jeannine.” With her perpetually fresh smile Mrs. Dadier clears off the table where her daughter-in-law and the two children have breakfasted earlier; Eileen has her hands full with the children.
“Don’t, mother,” says Jeannine, looking down.
“I don’t mind,” says Mrs. Dadier. “Bless you, I’ve done it often enough.” Listless Jeannine pushes her chair back from the table. “You haven’t finished,” observes Mrs. Dadier, mildly surprised. We have to get out of here. “Well, I don’t—I want to find Bro,” says Jeannine, edging out, “I’ll see you,” and she’s gone. Mrs. Dadier doesn’t smile when there’s nobody there. Mother and daughter wear the same face at times like that—calm and deathly tired—Jeannine idly pulling the heads off weeds at the side of the path with an abstract viciousness completely unconnected with anything going on in her head. Mrs. Dadier finishes the dishes and sighs. That’s done. Always to do again. Jeannine comes to the path around the lake, the great vacation feature of the community, and starts round it, but there seems to be nobody nearby. She had hoped she would find her brother, who was always her favorite. ("My big brother") She sits on the rock by the side of the path, Jeannine the baby. Out in the lake there’s a single canoe with two people in it; Jeannine’s gaze, vaguely resentful, fastens on it for a moment, and then drifts off. Her sister-in-law is worried sick about one of the children; one of those children always has something. Jeannine bangs her knuckles idly on the rock. She’s too sour for a romantic reverie and soon she gets up and walks on. Whoever comes to the lake anyway? Maybe Bro is at home. She retraces her steps and takes a fork off the main path, idling along until the lake, with its crowded fringe of trees and brush, disappears behind her. Eileen Dadier’s youngest, the little girl, appears at the upstairs window for a moment and then vanishes. Bro is behind the cottage, cleaning fish, protecting his sports clothes with a rubber lab apron.
“Kiss me,” says Jeannine. “O.K.?” She leans forward with her arms pulled back to avoid getting fish scales on herself, one cheek offered invitingly. Her brother kisses her. Eileen appears around the corner of the house, leading the boy. “Kiss Auntie,” she says. I’m so glad to see you, Jeannie.”
“Jeannine,” says Jeannine (automatically).
“Just think, Bud,” says Eileen. “She must have got in last night. Did you get in last night?” Jeannine nods. Jeannine’s nephew, who doesn’t like anyone but his father, is pulling furiously at Eileen Dadier’s hand, trying seriously to get his fingers out of hers. Bud finishes cleaning the fish. He wipes his hands methodically on a dish towel which Eileen will have to wash by hand to avoid contaminating her laundry, takes off his coat, and takes his knife and cleaver into the house, from whence comes the sound of running water. He comes out again, drying his hands on a towel
“Oh, baby,” says Eileen Dadier reproachfully to her son, “be nice to Auntie.” Jeannine’s brother takes his son’s hand from his wife. The little boy immediately stops wriggling.
“Jeannie,” he says. “It’s nice to see you.
“When did you get in?
“When are you going to get married?”
IV
I found Jeannine on the clubhouse porch that evening, looking at the moon. She had run away from her family.
“They only want what’s good for you,” I said.
She made a face.
“They love you,” I said.
A low, strangled sound. She was prodding the porch-rail with her hand.
“I think you ought to go and rejoin them, Jeannine,” I said. “Your mother’s a wonderful woman who has never raised her voice in anger all the time you’ve known her. And she brought all of you up and got you all through high school, even though she had to work. Your brother’s a firm, steady man who makes a good living for his wife and children, and Eileen wants nothing more in the world than her husband and her little boy and girl. You ought to appreciate them more, Jeannine.”
“I know,” said Jeannine softly and precisely. Or perhaps she said Oh no.
“Jeannine, you’ll never get a good job,” I said. “There aren’t any now. And if there were, they’d never give them to a woman, let alone a grown-up baby like you. Do you think you could hold down a really good job, even if you could get one? They’re all boring anyway, hard and boring. You don’t want to be a dried-up old spinster at forty but that’s what you will be if you go on like this. You’re twenty-nine. You’re getting old. You ought to marry someone who can take care of you, Jeannine.”
“Don’t care,” said she. Or was it Not fair?
“Marry someone who can take care of you,” I went on, for her own good. “It’s all right to do that; you’re a girl. Find somebody like Bud who has a good job, somebody you can respect; marry him. There’s no other life for a woman, Jeannine; do you want never to have children? Never to have a husband? Never to have a house of your own?” (Brief flash of waxed floor, wife in organdie apron, smiling possessively, husband with roses. That’s hers, not mine.)
“Not Cal.” Ah, hell.
“Now, really, what are you waiting for?” (I was getting impatient.) “Here’s Eileen married, and here’s your mother with two children, and all your old school friends, and enough couples here around the lake to fill it up if they all jumped into it at once; do you think you’re any different? Fancy Jeannine! Refined Jeannine! What do you think you’re waiting for?”
“For a man,” said Jeannine. For a plan. My impression that somebody else had been echoing her was confirmed by a brief cough behind me after these words. But it turned out to be Mr. Dadier, come out to fetch his sister. He took her by the arm and pulled her toward the door. “Come on, Jeannie. We’re going to introduce you to someone.”
Only the woman revealed under the light was not Jeannine. A passerby inside saw the substitution through the doorway and gaped. Nobody else seemed to notice. Jeannine is still meditating by the rail: doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, poor man, rich man; maybe he’ll be tall; maybe he’ll make twenty thou a year; maybe he’ll speak three languages’ and be really sophisticated, maybe. Mister Destiny. Janet, who has none of our notion that a good, dignified, ladylike look will recall the worst of scoundrels to a shrinking consciousness of his having insulted A Lady (that’s the general idea, anyway), has gotten out of Bud Dadier’s hold by twisting his thumb. She is the victim of a natural, but ignorant and unjustified alarm; she thinks that being grabbed is not just a gesture but is altogether out of line. Janet’s prepared for blue murder.
“Huh,” says Bro. He’s about to expostulate. “What are you doing here? Who are you?”
Touch me again and I’ll knock your teeth out!
You can see the blood rush to his face, even in this bad light. That’s what comes of being misunderstood. “Keep a civil tongue in your mouth, young lady!”
Janet jeers.
“You just—” Bud Dadier begins, but Janet anticipates him by vanishing like a soap bubble. What do you think Bud stands for—Buddington? Budworthy? Or “Bud” as in “friend"? He passes his hands over his face—the only thing left of Janet is a raucous screech of triumph which nobody else (except the two of us) can hear. The woman in front of the door is Jeannine. Bro, scared out of his wits, as who wouldn’t be, grabs her.
“Oh, Bro!” says Jeannine reproachfully, rubbing her arm.
’I’m sorry,” says Jeannine penitently. “I just wanted to see the moon.”
“Well, you’ve seen it,” says her brother. “You’ve been out here for fifteen minutes. I ought to tell you, Jeannie, Eileen and Mother and I have been talking about you and we all think that you’ve got to do something with your life. You can’t just go on drifting like this. You’re not twenty any more, you know.”
“Oh, Bro—” says Jeannine unhappily. Why are women so unreasonable? “Of course I want to have a good time,” she says.
“Then come inside and have one.” (He straightens his shirt collar.) “You might meet someone, if that’s what you want to do, and you say that’s what you want.”
“I do,” says Jeannine. You too?
“Then act like it, for Heaven’s sake. If you don’t do it soon, you may not have another chance. Now come on.” There are girls with nice brothers and girls with nasty brothers; there was a girl friend of mine who had a strikingly handsome older brother who could lift armchairs by one leg only. I was on a double date once with the two of them and another boy, and my girl friend’s brother indicated the camp counselors’ cottages. “Do you know what those are?
“Menopause Alley!”
We all laughed. I didn’t like it, but not because it was in bad taste. As you have probably concluded by this point (correctly) I don’t have any taste; that is, I don’t know what bad and good taste are. I laughed because I knew I would have an awful fight on my hands if I didn’t. If you don’t like things like that, you’re a prude. Drooping like a slave-girl, Jeannine followed Bro into the clubhouse. If only older brothers could be regularized somehow, so that one knew what to expect! If only all older brothers were younger brothers. “Well, who shall I marry?” said Jeannine, trying to make it into a joke as they entered the building. He said, with complete seriousness:
“Anybody.”
V
The Great Happiness Contest
(this happens a lot)
FIRST WOMAN: I’m perfectly happy. I love my husband and we have two darling children. I certainly don’t need any change in my lot.
SECOND WOMAN: I’m even happier than you are. My husband does the dishes every Wednesday and we have three darling children, each nicer than the last. I’m tremendously happy.
THIRD WOMAN: Neither of you is as happy as I am. I’m fantastically happy. My husband hasn’t looked at another woman in the fifteen years we’ve been married, he helps around the house whenever I ask it, and he wouldn’t mind in the least if I were to go out and get a job. But I’m happiest in fulfilling my responsibilities to him and the children. We have four children.
FOURTH WOMAN: We have six children. (This is too many. A long silence.) I have a part-time job as a clerk in Bloomingdale’s to pay for the children’s skiing lessons, but I really feel I’m expressing myself best when I make a custard or a meringue or decorate the basement.
ME: You miserable nits, I have a Nobel Peace Prize, fourteen published novels, six lovers, a town house, a box at the Metropolitan Opera, I fly a plane, I fix my own car, and I can do eighteen push-ups before breakfast, that is, if you’re interested in numbers.
ALL THE WOMEN: Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill
OR, FOR STARTERS
HE: I can’t stand stupid, vulgar women who read Love Comix and have no intellectual interests.
ME: Oh my, neither can I.
HE: I really admire refined, cultivated, charming women who have careers.
ME: Oh my, so do I.
HE: Why do you think those awful, stupid, vulgar, commonplace women get so awful?
ME: Well, probably, not wishing to give any offense and after considered judgment and all that, and very tentatively, with the hope that you won’t jump on me—I think it’s at least partly your fault.
(Long silence)
HE: You know, on second thought, I think bitchy, castrating, unattractive, neurotic women are even worse. Besides, you’re showing your age. And your figure’s going.
OR
HE: Darling, why must you work part-time as a rug salesman?
SHE: Because I wish to enter the marketplace and prove that in spite of my sex I can take a fruitful part in the life of the community and earn what our culture proposes as the sign and symbol of adult independence—namely money.
HE: But darling, by the time we deduct the cost of a baby-sitter and nursery school, a higher tax bracket, and your box lunches from your pay, it actually costs us money for you to work. So you see, you aren’t making money at all. You can’t make money. Only I can make money. Stop working.
SHE: I won’t. And I hate you.
HE: But darling, why be irrational? It doesn’t matter that you can’t make money because I can make money. And after I’ve made it, I give it to you, because I love you. So you don’t have to make money. Aren’t you glad?
SHE: No. Why can’t you stay home and take care of the baby? Why can’t we deduct all those things from your pay? Why should I be glad because I can’t earn a living? Why —
HE (with dignity): This argument is becoming degraded and ridiculous. I will leave you alone until loneliness, dependence, and a consciousness that I am very much displeased once again turn you into the sweet girl I married. There is no use in arguing with a woman.
OR, LAST OF ALL
HE: Is your dog drinking cold fountain water?
SHE: I guess so.
HE: If your dog drinks cold water, he’ll get colic.
SHE: It’s a she. And I don’t care about the colic. You know, what I really worry about is bringing her out in public when she’s in heat like this. I’m not afraid she’ll get colic, but that she might get pregnant.
HE: They’re the same thing, aren’t they? Har har har.
SHE: Maybe for your mother they were.
(At this point Joanna the Grate swoops down on bat’s wings, lays He low with one mighty swatt, and elevates She and Dog to the constellation of Victoria Femina, where they sparkle forever.)
I know that somewhere, just to give me the lie, lives a beautiful (got to be beautiful), intellectual, gracious, cultivated, charming woman who has eight children, bakes her own bread, cakes, and pies, takes care of her own house, does her own cooking, brings up her own children, holds down a demanding nine-to-five job at the top decision-making level in a man’s field, and is adored by her equally successful husband because although a hard-driving, aggressive business executive with eye of eagle, heart of lion, tongue of adder, and muscles of gorilla (she looks just like Kirk Douglas), she comes home at night, slips into a filmy negligee and a wig, and turns instanter into a Playboy dimwit, thus laughingly dispelling the canard that you cannot be eight people simultaneously with two different sets of values. She has not lost her femininity . And I’m Marie of Rumania.
VI
Jeannine is going to put on her Mommy’s shoes. That caretaker of childhood and feminine companion of men is waiting for her at the end of the road we all must travel. She swam, went for walks, went to dances, had a picnic with another girl; she got books from town; newspapers for her brother, murder mysteries for Mrs. Dadier, and nothing for herself. At twenty-nine you can’t waste your time reading. Either they’re too young or they’re married or they’re bad-looking or there’s something awful about them. Rejects. Jeannine went out a couple of times with the son of a friend of her mother’s and tried to make conversation with him; she decided that he wasn’t really so bad-looking, if only he’d talk more. They went canoeing in the middle of the lake one day and he said:
“I have to tell you something, Jeannine.”
She thought: This is it, and her stomach knotted up.
“I’m married,” he said, taking off his glasses, “but my wife and I are separated. She’s living with her mother in California. She’s emotionally disturbed.”
/> “Oh,” Jeannine said, flustered and not knowing what to say. She hadn’t liked him particularly, but the disappointment was very bad. There is some barrier between Jeannine and real life which can be removed only by a man or by marriage; somehow Jeannine is not in touch with what everybody knows to be real life. He blinked at her with his naked eyes and oh lord, he was fat and plain; but Jeannine managed to smile. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings.
“I knew you’d understand,” he said in a choked voice, nearly crying. He pressed her hand. “I knew you’d understand, Jeannie.” She began reckoning him up again, that swift calculation that was quite automatic by now: the looks, the job, whether he was “romantic,” did he read poetry? whether he could be made to dress better or diet or put on weight (whichever it was), whether his hair could be cut better. She could make herself feel something about him, yes. She could rely on him. After all, his wife might divorce him. He was intelligent. He was promising. “I understand,” she said, against the grain. After all, there wasn’t anything wrong with him exactly; from shore it must really look quite good, the canoe, the pretty girl, the puffy summer clouds, Jeannine’s sun-shade (borrowed from the girl friend she’d had the picnic with). There couldn’t be that much wrong with it. She smiled a little. His contribution is Make me feel good; her contribution is Make me exist . The sun came out over the water and it really was quite nice. And there was this painful stirring of feeling in her, this terrible tenderness or need, so perhaps she was beginning to love him, in her own way.
“Are you busy tonight?” Poor man. She wet her lips and didn’t answer, feeling the sun strike her on all sides, deliciously aware of her bare arms and neck, the picture she made. “Mm?” she said.
“I thought—I thought you might want to go to the play.” He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face with it. He put his glasses back on.