Sex Wars

by Marge Piercy

  Now he knew what he must do to his precious Margaret. It would be difficult for them both, but he would be man enough to perform the act. Soon they would have children to carry on the Comstock name, children to gather around him in wonderful family evenings in the parlor of the home they would soon share. Children to rear in Christian values and to protect from all the vicious snares of the city.

  He began to look for a house in earnest. After two weeks, he decided it would be much better for Margaret and for their children to come if he looked in Brooklyn. Ferries crossed the river regularly and many gentlemen traveled to their offices from homes in the city of Brooklyn, which struck him as far more respectable than Manhattan. Trees shaded the streets of family homes and solid brick and brownstone row houses, some quite fine. He had set aside five hundred dollars, free and clear, to put down on a house when he found one that pleased him.

  Over the next three weeks, he looked at fourteen houses without being satisfied by any. Finally, just six days before the wedding, he saw a large two-story yellow house with a porch around three sides, nice carpentry work, a corner tower that included on the second floor a spacious master bedroom. He put his five hundred down on impulse, realizing only afterward that he had not consulted Margaret. Well, it was a bargain, a large and commodious house with excellent wood paneling and wallpaper they would not have to change. They would have to live in a boardinghouse for the first weeks, until they had it furnished, but then they would be in their own home. He told Margaret about it that evening. “It has indoor plumbing—water closets and bathtubs and running water in the kitchen sink. It has central heating, three bedrooms and a maid’s room.”

  “I’m sure it’s perfect, Mr. Comstock. I look forward to seeing our new home.”

  He had the most agreeable wife in the world, he was convinced. He brought her to the house and she admired it. “I will leave the furnishing of it largely to you, my Margaret, so long as you stay within the budget I have established.” It was only recently he had begun to use her given name. He constantly begged her to use his, but she demurred.

  “After we are married. Before then, it wouldn’t be proper.”

  At last the day of their wedding approached. They joined the Clinton Avenue Congregational Church, within easy walking distance of their new house—which should be ready for them in a month.

  Anthony took off three days for a brief honeymoon, all he felt they could afford with their new house and the necessity of furnishing it. Margaret’s uncle in Stone Ridge had helped with the cost of the wedding. They took the steamer to Cape May in New Jersey, where people of influence often went in the summers. A gentleman on the board of the YMCA lent them a cottage on his estate for their honeymoon. Their first night together they were both exhausted and Anthony was content to sleep beside his bride. He did not believe she knew what to expect, for she said nothing and made no untoward gestures.

  The next night he prepared to consummate the marriage. They walked on the beach and briefly bathed, separately, in the areas set up for men and for women. Then they ate supper in a fine restaurant in a local hotel, where they began with oysters, then roast beef, and finished with strawberry pudding. The hotelier, who seemed to guess that they were newlyweds, tried to push alcohol upon them in the form of champagne, but they stuck to water. Finally it was time to go back to the cottage and the four-poster double bed they were to share again tonight.

  “Margaret, do you understand your wifely duty in bed?”

  “I know I am to sleep with you. Didn’t we do so last night?”

  “We slept together side by side, but marriage entails something more. If we don’t carry through on that, we shall have no children.”

  “My mother told me they came from sleeping together.”

  “Not quite.” Her innocence thrilled him. She looked at him with her large pale blue eyes—eyes almost gray—with trust and adoration. He stroked her fine hair from her forehead. “I’ll take care of everything. You must lift up your nightgown, close your eyes and part your limbs.”

  It was difficult to push into her. She cried out in pain. “Patience, my Margaret. We must persist.”

  She bit her hand and turned her face to the side while tears rolled slowly from her eyes. This was true womanhood. He was so proud of her, enduring his onslaught without a word of reproach. He kept hammering at the opening and finally something tore and he could force himself in. He had to rest for several minutes and wait to recover his manhood. He was fearful he would not be able to continue, for the pounding had been painful for him also. He had entirely wilted. Margaret did not move but lay patiently enduring. An image flashed through his mind, an illustration from The Lustful Turk in which a buxom wench was being had by the Turk himself. She clung to a bedpost entirely naked, her voluptuous buttocks outthrust while the Turk, wearing a nightshirt, his member exposed, pushed into her from behind.

  Now he was firm again and could proceed. It was a matter of seconds before he discharged with a groan and withdrew. He kissed her brow, then lay back down beside her, taking her hand in his own. Her hand was chilly in spite of the warmth of the night. “You were very brave, my Maggie.” He felt the need to give her a pet name, now that she was entirely his.

  “Is that it?” she asked. “Or need we do more?”

  “That was sufficient.”

  “Good,” she said, then gently disengaged her hand.

  NINETEEN

  THE COMMODORE WENT off to Saratoga Springs in August, as was his habit, but this time he took Tennie with him to his suite in the so-called cottage wing of the United States Hotel. Its north porch was called the millionaires’ piazza. Tennie cajoled him into inviting Victoria and the Colonel up for a week. The United States Hotel was built around a large garden with a tall plume of fountain in the center, every bench and promenade crowded with ladies in fine muslins or pale lawn carrying parasols among the elm trees. The men lounged about in top hats, some in white velvet or silk suits. Victoria had never seen so much extravagant finery. The ladies seemed to change their dresses on the hour: the morning promenade in one outfit, lunch in another, change for tea, again for dinner, then for an evening concert or dance, plus special outfits for picnics, the races, day excursions. Even strolling under the elms, even taking the waters, ladies wore rubies, diamonds, sapphires, pearls. They glittered as they flitted, daughters on display to make good matches, bored wives hoping for a discreet affair while their husbands were in the city tending to business, rich men’s mistresses almost accepted here and certainly highly visible. Tennie told her women arrived with twenty trunks of clothing. The sisters could not hope to match that elegance, but men did not seem to look at them any the less for their simple attire as they promenaded on Broadway. Every morning, there were open-air concerts where people paid far more attention to each other than to the music. It was a popular time for discussing the horses that were to run in the afternoon, for flirting and arranging assignations.

  James disappeared into the casino, where she could not follow him since women were not permitted past the ornate parlors. However, nothing kept the women from betting on the races every afternoon. Victoria had a sixth sense about horses. She rarely lost. James had off-and-on luck at roulette, but Victoria made money every day at the track. If they were careful, they could return from this vacation with cash they desperately needed. The races were the high point of her day. It was a dusty walk to the track, the road jammed with four-in-hands, phaetons, farouches and every conceivable type of fancy carriage. Often James bought local popcorn for them to nibble on. She liked to watch the thoroughbreds run, but more she liked collecting her winnings and tucking them away. Suppers in the hotel were long and hectic, the dining rooms deafening and overcrowded. Victoria and James ate heartily, for the food was good; even better, it was free: beef à la mode, Cobb ham, turkey with oysters, striped bass with anchovy sauce, ham glacé with champagne sauce, salamis of grouse aux olives, roast partridge with celery sauce, ragout of oxtail with small tu
rnips. They were Vanderbilt’s guests and accorded deferential treatment by the staff.

  Vanderbilt enjoyed racing his own horses on Bloomingdale Road back in Manhattan better than betting on other men’s horses at the track. He took the healing waters regularly and spent a lot of time sending telegrams to his New York office—the hotel had a telegraph line and a ticker-tape machine on which he could keep track of his holdings and the market. It was the first she had ever seen, and he was happy to explain its workings. He found her interest in stocks amusing. “Never met a woman who took an interest. Got one motto, Vickie. Don’t buy what you don’t want and don’t sell what you ain’t got. That sums up my Wall Street strategy.” She doubted his plans were that simple. She apprenticed herself to him, for stocks seemed to be one way to make a lot of money fast in the galloping bull market of the immediate postwar.

  She understood he was advising her against the short selling that Fisk and Gould had as their strategy so often. She saw Jim Fisk with Josie on his arm on Broadway, promenading. It was the first time she had actually laid eyes on Josie’s keeper, Vanderbilt’s nemesis, although as she had advised him through spirit messages, Fisk and Gould had shown up suddenly at his home offering a truce. Jim Fisk was a huge man, as was the Commodore, equally florid, but Fisk was a dandy. He was wearing a fancy officer’s army uniform dripping with gold braid. A diamond stickpin sparkled on his chest. Diamonds glinted on the fob of his gold watch, while Vanderbilt dressed always in the style of thirty years ago, prim and severe and a bit rumpled. Fisk was several decades younger. Women stared from behind fluttering fans as he passed. He was not the sort of man Victoria found attractive, but obviously that was not the case with many of the women eyeing him. He was flamboyant and strutted along the pavement, seeking the attention that surrounded him, followed by a buzz of voices. The world was his stage and he was the principal actor, hero in his own drama. She could understand why Josie thought him a bit of a fool. Yet he did very well for himself. It was said that his father was a simple New England peddler, and that was how he had begun, before the Civil War made his fortune.

  Josie and she exchanged glances without speaking. Their connection was mutually advantageous but not for public consumption. Josie was dressed in magenta silk with a larger than usual bustle and a magenta parasol to match; her underskirt was emerald green. He carried a gold-tipped cane he swung jauntily. They were a procession, followed by men in business attire, some in fancy army uniforms.

  Beside Victoria under the shade of an elm tree, holding her arm in his, James sneered. “Fisk bought himself a regiment of the National Guard, the Ninth. He loves to dress up like an officer, but he’s simply a pig in gold braid,” he muttered in her ear. “I heard he’s brought the whole band here and is treating them to a weekend of drinking, gambling and womanizing. He loves playing soldier. On board his steamships, he wears an admiral’s uniform. What a pretender!”

  She was sorry to return to the heat and filth of Manhattan. She envied Tennie staying in the pleasant tree-filled patio of the hotel, in the large dim rooms Vanderbilt rented or sitting on the porch watching fashionable ladies pass in their gowns of the hour, watching the men watch the ladies. She especially missed the races, and the money she had won at them. Back in New York, she went shopping and improved her wardrobe.

  However, Tennie did not remain long in Saratoga. A week after James and Victoria returned, the Commodore’s wife died. Vanderbilt promptly rushed back to the city to bury her, with his children and their spouses and offspring in attendance, as well as cronies from the Union Club, the stock market, his various railroad and steamship enterprises. He did not encourage the sisters to attend. No matter, Tennie said, sure he would ask her to marry him again, and this time she would accept.

  Victoria was not convinced. True, the Commodore was not overly nice about social matters. She doubted that any of the scandalous doings that could be dug up about Tennie, the Claflins or herself would ruffle Vanderbilt, but she doubted that his family would feel the same way about a young wife they must regard as a fortune-hunter.

  Tennie had met William, his oldest son, whom he had recently decided was not the idiot he had always judged him. The old man was using William now to run one of his railroads and to sit on boards he wanted to keep a sharp eye on. William, in turn, kept a hard watch on what the old man did. Victoria did not think the Commodore was aware how carefully his presumably well-controlled heirs monitored his activities, but she was conscious of their scrutiny. They worried more about Tennie than about her; after all, her relations with Vanderbilt were limited to giving him messages from the spirits. Vanderbilt had bedded governesses for years, but he had never had an official mistress. Tennie was widely seen in that role. He dined with her most nights at Delmonico’s or Niblo’s Garden in the Metropolitan Hotel, with its live shrubs, its statues of nymphs and shepherdesses, its arches illuminated by gaslight. Never had the Commodore dined out so frequently and never with the same woman. Yet it was known that Tennie lived with Victoria, Colonel Blood and Victoria’s family, so it did not seem that the Commodore was keeping her. There was a good deal of gossip about what their arrangement might be. Some said he had already married her, but to Victoria’s regret, that was hardly the case. Tennie reported he was talking marriage again, but not in a pressing way. She was careful not to seem eager. She played the old boy along. “Don’t play him too long,” Victoria warned.

  “Listen, if I seem the slightest bit eager, he’ll toss me off. The less eager I seem, the hotter he is. I have to stay something of a prize, something to be won.” They were dressing to go to the theater with James.

  “I hope you’re right. But we need a second-tier plan, in case he doesn’t marry you.”

  “Maybe he can set us up in some business? I’d just as soon make my own money.” Tennie’s hair crackled as she brushed it, lush and electric. “He was a brute to his wife. He’s a tyrant in his family. I get on with him swimmingly, but he’s no prize aside from the money. If he asks me, I’ll marry the old goat, but I have no illusions as to what he is.”

  “You think he’ll treat you as badly as he did her?”

  “No. She was a breeding machine. He never had much respect for her. He respected his mother. He considered her a shrewd woman with the resources she had available. I strike him as smart and shrewd like his mother. But believe me, if I annoyed him or crossed him, I’d be on the chopping block fast.”

  Victoria and Tennie were playing a difficult game, keeping the rest of the Claflin clan away from the Commodore. Utica was clamoring to meet him, convinced her charms would brush Tennie aside. Roxanne was simply jealous. She had never forgiven James for marrying her daughter, and she thought the sisters spent far too much time with Vanderbilt. She was not the sharpest, but she was loyal and passionate in her devotion to them. Victoria would never hurt or offend her mother if she could avoid it.

  One advantage of her marriage to Canning had been that he had schooled her in the demeanor and voice patterns of a lady. She had taught Tennie. Tennie’s style was more colorful than her own—more in the direction of a successful courtesan perhaps—but Victoria used her own charm and beauty carefully, creating an image of power and reticence. She might appear wellborn—but any public appearance of the Claflins would destroy the impression she painstakingly cultivated.

  The winter passed much as the summer and fall had. They spent a great deal of time with the Commodore, but Victoria was also pursuing acquaintances among writers, both literary and political, among artists. She was slowly coming to know and mingle with a variety of interesting men and women. She was studying the political and intellectual life of New York, always asking questions, always interested, charming whomever she could and collecting information and ideas. She practiced speaking clearly and movingly. After all, as a child she had fascinated audiences with her messages from the spirit world. New York represented a more cynical and sophisticated audience, but one she could impress with her eloquence and passion—when
the time came. A few women had learned to capture an audience. She heard Susan B. Anthony speak and also Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was magnificent and compelling. Both worked the Lyceum circuit, lecturing. There was money to be made there.

  She had the gift of memorization that had stood her so well on the stage, where she had learned to project her voice to an audience. She had learned to endure and even to enjoy all those gazes fixed upon her. She had learned to handle herself before a crowd and to win them over. She studied rhetoric and delivery, standing before the pier mirror in her room. She tried various gestures, noting which seemed fluid and natural and which appeared stagy. All through the winter and spring locked in her room, she practiced her new art.

  James and she had taken separate rooms, for he was troubled by nightmares and often cried aloud or struck out wildly in his sleep. It was also convenient for her, since she could practice oratory without waking him, and when she took a lover she could see him privately She had the gift for taking lovers and letting them go without injuring their pride. A woman trying to make her way to fame and fortune could never have too many friends. She was attracted not by flash or wealth or power, but by knowledge. Every lover was also her mentor, her educator. Her lack of education took a great deal of energy and discipline to overcome. That most women were also ill educated was of no import. She had a role to play in history. She felt a particular interest in politics and economics, fields that she had been told were foreign to women. She had a reform mission she was born for. Sometimes of late she thought it might have to do with women. Stanton’s speeches moved her. Stanton had spoken not only of votes for women but of women’s role in the family, in marriage, in childbearing, in child-rearing, spoken about divorce and contraception. Stanton had spoken sympathetically and movingly about working women; had not Victoria been working since she was little? She would like to meet Stanton, but she did not yet know anyone in her circle. She must make that meeting happen, but there was time. The first step was still money.