“Found a couple more words you wouldn’t know,” she said, flushing with pleasure. He didn’t believe there was any special language among women, or for them. She was beginning not to believe it herself, but she loved the haggling. “This one I frankly never heard before, myself. ‘To biggen.’”
“What’s that mean?”
“Look it up.”
He loved to. His forefinger pored down the big dictionary. “Ha. To recover strength after confinement. 1674.’ What do you know. Ever since then.” His eyes crinkled. “Whatever did they do before?”
“Ah I know—” she sighed, making all one word of it. “—you think I need words to confirm my actions.” He’s said it. “But words are still so new to me—their powers, I mean. And you’ve dealt with them most of your life.”
And where’s it got me?—another man might say. Not Hoppe. He’s like a crab, both scuttling the sea-bottom and niched. Who if asked in some Aesop-tale to consider why it is itself, would reply “Because I am Crab.” To him, his backwater’s no boundary, but part of the sea. He’s convincing because he’s convinced.
To have a small station in life, she thought—and yet know it to be an outpost. That’s it. That would be enough.
“And what’s your other word?”
“Oh, that one’s just from the female glossary. Not even a word that every one of us would know. Just the kind we would. This one’s from something my mother and I happened to look at quite often, that’s all. And my daughters could. None of us really noticing.”
She stared at her hands as sewing-women do, down at those shuttles weaving of their own volition, separate. “Like a man would get used to seeing the manufacturer’s name on the barrel of his gun. Equipment words. But there’re others. Clothing words. Product ones. You know. A man and wife might live together their whole lives and never really know—the other’s glossary.”
“You know, Lexie, you’re like some—no, not a child—some pre-girl. Who hasn’t been told about the differences between the sexes yet. After four children. Maybe that’s your charm.”
“And that’s your language. Not ours.”
“So maybe we do have differing ones. Accept it. It’s interesting.”
“I do. I just want the world to accept mine.”
They’ve never before flashed and quivered at each other like this. She sits tight. Not wanting any other part of him but the words.
“What is it with you girls and the world?” He got up to scrabble at his desk—a camouflage, since everything there was neat as an artillery range—or as she imagined one to be. A thousand items ready on their pins. He handed her one. “Goes in next Monday, in the social column. Between St. Peter’s Sodality benefit and the Veterans of Foreign Wars picnic at Bear Mountain.”
She reads it. The Woman’s Center committee on rape is establishing a telephone number, to be manned by trained advisers, where rape victims may call between the hours of ten to twelve, mornings, and evenings six to ten. “Jesus. What if you get raped after hours? Or in the afternoon?”
It’s grown dark in the room. The two streets parallel to this one, each of which leads down to the river, shine ghostly, as streets of white houses do, before the houses are lit. These were closed for business and would not light, except for here.
“Afternoons?” His voice is small. “No, that’s for the city.”
He knows about hers, he means. Her afternoons.
“We have rapes here, Lexie. Not in your town, maybe. Come to think of it, I’ve never heard of one there. You’re our aristocrats, too refined. Down there it goes by consent.”
She got up and turned on a dim lamp. “But you’ll print that notice. Nice of you.”
“I go with the times. And the subscription list.”
She leaned back in her chair, an oldfashioned one which revolves if you pedal it, and picked up yesterday’s paper. “Especially nice of you. In a paper which also prints this.” She reads from a syndicated column called Idolene’s Ideas: “Dear Idolene: I recently found myself without a large piece of nylon-net and with a bowl of soup—broth to clear. I put it in the freezer to partially congeal, then thought of a freshly laundered sleep-cap, complete with flowers and a chinstrap. It was made of three layers of the net and fit over the bowl perfectly. Result: I lost a sleep-cap, but have the prettiest, most efficient strainer in town.”
“Okay, okay. To partially congeal. But we get a lot of mail on that column.”
“That all you see in it—a split infinitive?”
“Maybe not.” Against the waning windowlight, his silhouette waits. The head in penumbra, with the wens half-invisible, is rather fine.
“Listen, Hoppe. That letter’s from all of us.”
He pedals his chair.
“Oh yes it is. It’s from me. Look at me.”
He’s looking.
“Okay, I’ve never been raped.” She swallows. “There’re a lot of us who’ll never be murdered, only married. Or not. Never commit a crime of passion.” She grins at him. “And we don’t want to murder the men; we’re too late for it. On the other hand—I’ve never used a sleep-cap in my life. Don’t know anyone who does. But all of us any age—even the ones who can’t cook, the rich ones who won’t need to … There isn’t a woman in the country who wouldn’t understand about that woman’s soup.” She chokes. “And why she wrote you—about her accomplishment.”
She leans forward. Is it our talent or our curse, she wants to ask him—that we transliterate? But she’s afraid to ask. He may be the enemy. Why does she herself feel enmity, for the first time openly? To him of all people—who might have been her friend?
“So you’ve never seen a sleep-cap.” The wen on his chin twists to one side.
“You have?”
No answer.
On his mother? Or the wife? She leans back. These chairs could become a ballet in time, she thinks. If I stay. “What do your initials stand for, J. J.?”
He’s relighting his pipe. “My parents were radical dreamers. Before they came here. Swiss irredentists from Locarno, if you can imagine anything more unreal. I was named for Rousseau.”
She can’t imagine any of it. Except Locarno. “So? But what’s J.J. then?”
“Rousseau.” Hoppe can’t believe she has never heard of him. Convinced, he even takes her hands, drops them quickly. The two chairs remain near. “But it’s unbelievable. You’re so smart.”
“I’m self-read. There are gaps.” She grinds back her chair. “College guides you, that’s all. I’m not all that sure I want that trip.” Lowering her eyes, she hears those excusing “alls” fall like rain. She can smell his breath. “Were your parents—vegetarians too?”
“No. My father had a passion for dried fruit, though. Which I inherit. Though he never shared any of his fruit with us. A real passion. My mother took to carrying a tray after him. For the pips.”
“My father did the same with his travel,” she said. “He only gave us the talk … So I know about Locarno.”
“Travel? You want that? … What do you want?”
Her eyes half-close. What does she want to extract out of this shuttered red-dark? “I want to voyage into the interior. Mine. Like an anthropologist. And someday, J. J.—maybe I can spell it out.”
“Lexie. Open your eyes.”
I’ll see the wens. She opened them. While she was intent upon her dark, he’d turned down the light. So he knows that about her, and his wens. He’s come no nearer.
“Come on, what’s your second word? That we wouldn’t know.”
“Belding’s Corticelli.” She says it slyly.
For he knows so much. About her village, for instance. She can imagine how the whole county’s underside looks to him by now, rough and ugly, pink with coarse, blocked feeling, like a sow’s sore tits. All ending up in his newsprint morgue. But he shan’t get this dainty detail of hers that easily. This foolish necessary. Of our ten-thousand-and-one.
“Sounds like an ointment … No? Pretty, though. Too pr
etty. Like those words people are always saying are the most musical in the language … Halcyon … Anemone—I could never go for them.”
“What do you go for?”
“Old or Middle English ones. Grit. Moil. Bast. All the four-letter monosyllables aren’t obscene. Cull. Airt.”
“Nice. What’s it mean—airt?”
“As a noun—a height or a direction. One-quarter of the compass. As a verb—‘to guide.’”
“How come you know so much about them?”
“Did my thesis on them.”
“I did a paper once. On Roger Bacon.”
“Oh yes, the alchemist … You seem to go for whatever begins with A, Lexie. Anthropologist.”
“My brother, he wanted to be an astronomer.” She bent to scan the column she’d been dummying, trying to peer at her watch. From the sky, the hour must be after eight. Every night a little later. This conversation’s like lovemaking. That last exhausted rollover when one’s not making it.
“Belding’s Corticelli.” He’s followed her gaze. “That’s it of course. From astronomy, isn’t it.”
She felt heavy, ashamed, knowing why she chose this out of all her treasury of detail. For that sewing wife of his, coolly never mentioned. For the other wife. What strange unities are forced upon us. For his face is brighter, relieved to think that this secret word which she sets such store by, comes to her after all via a brother. From them.
“That’s it, Lex, isn’t it. It’s the name of a star.”
And in the end they’re always more romantic than us.
“No. Not a star.” From her tone, she might be speaking to Charlie. Or little Royal.
“What, then?”
She saw into her sewing-box, inherited like his newspapers, like his dried fruit. Stared into absently by one, two, three successive women, each in her turn on her spindle like the spools down there in the box, each spool identified by its circle of faded black print. Maybe they don’t even make that brand anymore. From how far back do the spools, the spindled women come?
“Thread,” she says. “Thread.”
“Thread? Ordinary sewing-thread?” He’s aghast. And yes, he knows what the county knows about him. He sees her trust.
“Maybe not ordinary, J. J. Silk.”
How smart he is. And yes, he’s the enemy.
“Not J. J.,” he says, with a smile so deep that chin-wen and forehead-wen move toward each other. Cracking her life like a nut. “Jean-Jacques. Jean-Jacques.”
Driving home, the faintly lit river-road hangs like a bridge through the black. Always like this before the full moon, during which cycle the trees will be drugged with mauve light—halcyon. Yes, he’s the enemy, all the more because one can talk to him. And yes, we were making love.
A patch of fog hides the curve of her driveway. The tall house above glows through shakily, like a chandelier, seen by a glaucoma’ed eye. As pictured in the ophthalmologist’s office of her first job. The old river below creaks like the joists of a floor. Old veteran, old floor—we still have our pact. But Christ, what jobs I get.
Out there, far beyond this water, is there still an incoming ripple—Ray?
The three older children are in the kitchen, at the long table centered under the hanging lamp. “Must do something about that oldfashioned globe,” she says walking in on them. Really must. When it can make the youngest face look drear. “Hi.”
“We didn’t save supper.” Charles. “It’s after nine.”
The table’s oddly bare. Of the usual ransackings. They can’t have had much.
“That’s all right; I’ll get myself something … Not a neon light though, that would be worse. And not with that ceiling.”
Of cherished patterned tin, from one corner of which the paint keeps flaking. She smiles, for the year Charles was tall enough to help Ray repaint. For the year he said, in a newly deep voice: I’m afraid we have rust. “When we have to repaint, we’ll shop for a light.” Lightly running off at the mouth, she has taken up her pattern with them.
“We were selfish.” Maureen, quivering. Under that straining middy there are breasts.
“No, I should’ve called. We were dummying Saturday’s paper. That place is run like nineteen-forty, not a thing is mechanized.”
Chess’ long fingers move as if she’s tatting. But she’s not. Or not anything except silence. When she speaks it’ll be from silence, and silence will follow after. That’s her difference, which we’ve learned to accept. And that’s what frightens me—not Chess. Our difference. That we accept.
“That Hoppe—he has a face like a witch.” Chess tucks her head in quickly, in her usual shame over being herself, with her kind of images. “We thought maybe you were having dinner with him.” Her face is mild. She’ll say the sharpest, most inconvenient thing, always: you can depend on her. The other kind of silence, the willed one, she doesn’t have. There are people who don’t understand the ordinary. It’s as if Chess had never heard of it.
“No… Where’s Roy?”
“Upstairs. Asleep.” Charles won’t add that it’s time enough for the youngest to be asleep. He’s imperially gaunt, even aging, with the strain of stretching into a man. Behind him are the back stairs, up which, from the age of seven, he used to trot if scolded, so as not to be seen to cry.
“Yes, we are, we are.” Maureen, screaming it. Under the blouse, the body strains with revolution. “Selfish!” She bursts into tears. “But why’d you have to take a job?”
“Maureen, Maureen.” Lexie cradles her. Yes, yes, people don’t enough. “You’re selfish, I’m selfish.” She makes a rocking song of it. “Everybody, sometimes.” And people don’t cradle you enough.
The two others look on, peculiarly satisfied.
“No, you fool. She has to. I want to, too. Lexie—if you go to the city for a job, will you take me for one too?”
No, Chess never addresses her as Ma anymore; she’s always called her father “Ray.” The psychiatrist to whom Chess went all last year—and quite suddenly wouldn’t go to—had asked her whether she was afraid of her father. At just about that time.
She’s never liked Ray to touch her—that’s true. Nor anyone, possibly. How I would love to have her in my lap.
“Yah, what kind of job could you do.” Royal’s coming down the back stairs at his hopalong jog, while they all hold their breath; the steps are narrow triangles thinning to nothing, and have no banister. Usually he only goes up them.
But not to cry. When has anyone last seen Royal cry?
“I wasn’t neither asleep. I heard everything you said.”
“I could be a model,” Chess says. “I could show them those pics Charles took.” And so she could be, with those glassy bones striking the lens in all their fine catalepsy, that swoon-of-mind which is so bizarrely chic in the right clothing. When Chess dares, she can do anything, and in the craziest hat. When she droops, the pimples come, the down in her nostrils obtrudes its black fur; she swells hand-in-hand with her own ugliness—its twin. While the outer world shivers her. “I’m seventeen!”
What, what has given her this confidence?
“Well looka you!” Royal elbows Maureen, there on his mother’s lap. His lap. “Off!”
Obediently Maureen slides down. Lexie stays her with a hand, wards Royal from her lap, eyes the two older ones. “What’s happened here? Somebody been?”
Or not been? Ray’s letter’s late.
Charles speaks for them. “Uncle James is back. He stopped by.”
“Oh? Wouldn’t he wait?”
The other three speak as one.
“He says—call him.”
“He says the black community where he’s been is a totally—” Maureen.
“Matri… matri—” Royal.
“—archal, dope.” Chess.
“Ci-vi-zation.”
They crowd her, a bevy, the last being Royal. Usually she adores this choral style of theirs, moving her arms to conduct, applauding the end result like a song. And if Ch
ess joins in, all’s right with the world.
Charles hasn’t. Joined in. “James says—”
“Yes, Charles? What did James say?” Once, not two years ago, she’d smacked in the face this faithful father-defending boy of hers, this hoarder of itineraries, for flinging an obscenity after his uncle. Her fist, shooting out in allegiance to a pre-family long gone, had hit her own boy in the face; she hasn’t forgiven it yet.
“He says—” A grimace seizes him, like a claw from behind. “He says—Dad isn’t coming back.”
“He said we must prepare ourselves.” Maureen middy swelling, is ready to.
And Chess? Is smiling inward. Tatting strength. “We can get along without him. Can’t we, Lexie.”
Chess said her father tried to molest her sexually once, Mrs.—the psychiatrist said. Could that be true? The man could never remember the family name. A natural alienation. No, doctor, impossible. But her father’s clumsy at showing affection. I’ve seen him make an awkward try… Afterwards, scrutinizing Ray, mild Ray; they say, the mild ones. No. Impossible.
Royal, subdued, has managed to slide into her lap.
Three pairs of eyes approve of him there. He speaks for them.
“Come here. All of you.” She gathers them in. “Chessie, come. Charlie, you too.” He comes, reluctantly. He has to kneel, his head close to Royal’s. Chess, even in the circle is fastidious, only coolly there.
“Listen to me.” How collective eyes can be. When they’re yearning to be. “Your father’s coming back.”
And it’s true, she can feel he is. Though not how he’ll come. In what—shape.
“Just before one comes back, the last days, one doesn’t bother to write, that’s all. Because one is coming back. Remember when we went to Uruguay?” She falters. They telephoned, though, just before leaving. “Hepatitis is a depressing disease.” And marriage can be—should she tell them that? “Don’t blame him.” Ray loves you his way; I love you mine. Though my arms too are slipping from your circle; they aren’t really long enough. She tightens them. “Marriages change, sometimes. But families remain. They only grow.”
Now she should tell them. That they won’t be deserted. Her lips stick to her teeth. “Look. Look—” Her voice comes out a rough grumble. Her real voice. Even though she’s never heard it before. “Birth. Giving birth, or getting born from somebody. You have to learn about it yourself.” How sacred are the eyes of young persons—is that from a psalm? “Keep asking me things. Just keep asking me. I need you to. But I’m not going to tell you any more trash fact.”
On Keeping Women Page 10