Group Sex

by Ann Arensberg

  “You wouldn’t. But maybe he did.” Edie added salt to the mixture and stirred it up. “You’ll lose your apartment. You’ll be put out on the street.”

  Frances had visions of forty-five-point tabloid headlines, picked up by the wires and featured in Cincinnati. She foresaw her ultimate ruin and disgrace: fired from Harwood, shunned by decent people. Edie continued stirring while Frances writhed. She dipped a knife and wiped it. She dipped another.

  “Would you like Paul Treat if he didn’t belong to Madeline?”

  Frances gripped the seat of her chair as if it were sliding. From the back, Edie seemed to have swelled, like a witch or a toad.

  “You took Preston away from Hatsy. In case you’ve forgotten.”

  Frances gathered her wits. Did she know someone called Hatsy? Short for Harriet? Harriet. Braids. Crossed eyes. Scabbed kneecaps. Harriet Day, whose nurse walked her to school. No one else had a nurse by the time they were in fourth grade. Preston was harder to fish from the ooze of memory. Out he came, floating belly upward, with his shirttails torn and his socks around his ankles. She remembered his little rat teeth and his crimpy hair, and his habit of sneaking up and trying to hug her, while he only punched chubby Hatsy in the stomach. Frances began to laugh as she swallowed coffee. The coffee shot up her nose and made her sneeze. Branded for life! Strayed from the path in childhood! The sins of the playground had dogged her all these years.

  Edie stopped cleaning knives and watched her snorting. “You think you can get away with murder, Frances.”

  In spite of her coloring, Frances never blushed, but she felt a wave of heat from top to toe, as if the blush were taking place within her. Edie’s flat stare held all of public opinion, or at least the opinion of the people Frances came from. Was consorting with directors a crime to these good people? Bankers and brokers kissed girls, and so did lawyers. Some of that kissing led to copulation, which often occurred outside the bonds of wedlock. If kissing directors was tantamount to murder, then mating with them was equated with high treason. Mating with directors (or merchants, masseurs, or poets, or clergy of fundamentalist persuasions) was a tribal crime, not punishable by law, but only by ostracism and dismissal.

  Edie had turned her back to wash the knives. She dried them on a linen towel, freshly washed and ironed. Now she was blamelessly tasting a pot of soup, a meatless dish that she made with roots and greens. Frances decided to make a false confession, or, rather, to gratify Edie’s darkest inklings. It would not be the same as telling a flagrant lie, since she, if not Paul, had been guilty in intention. She preferred to be hanged for outright fornication. Kissing was too small an offense to merit banishment. Besides, she enjoyed a chance for deviling Edie. Hill Childs wore pajamas to bed, as well as earplugs.

  “You were right,” said Frances. “We did it. We made the beast.”

  The soup scalded Edie’s tongue. She dropped her spoon.

  “Backwards. And sideways. And sitting in a chair.” Edie was coughing. “Should I hit you on the back?

  “My, yes,” said Frances. “We did forbidden things.” She stretched and yawned. “Do you know what men like best?” Edie raised her spoon. “Of course. You must. You’re married. I’m a rookie at sex. It’s all old hat to you.”

  Edie left the stove and edged a little closer. Frances had hoisted her legs up on the table. Edie pushed Frances’s feet off the tabletop. She rubbed the surface with a towel and checked it for scratches.

  “What kind of chair?” said Edie, who went on rubbing.

  “Armless,” said Frances, patting the chair she was sitting on. “A boudoir chair would be nicer. Lower to the ground.”

  “Who sits where?” asked Edie.

  “Man on chair. Girl on man,” said Frances.

  “Facing the man?” said Edie. “Or turned away?”

  “That’s a thought,” said Frances. “You could try it facing out. Why not?”

  Edie’s neck was red. Her eyebrows met in the middle. She had never asked Frances for pointers of an intimate nature. She had never asked Frances for advice on any subject. Sex, as a topic, was a leveler and an equalizer. Here was Edie, getting down to worm level with Frances. From now on they might communicate as one worm to another.

  Not for long. Edie tucked in her blouse and stood up smartly, routing Frances’s hopeful visions of worms together.

  “People talk,” said Edie. “You need a paying job. You don’t have a private income like your landlady.”

  Frances was ambushed. She searched for some rejoinder. “I might be in love,” she said. “Is that better or worse?”

  “When she kicks you out,” Edie said, “you can have our guest room.”

  “I wish you were on my side. Just once,” said Frances.

  “I do my best,” said Edie. “You always fight me.”

  Frances walked home, or, rather, back to Madeline’s. She took the long way around, going through the park. The day was clear and breezy, but her sails were drooping. Taking the wind out of her sails was Edie’s role. Sometimes Frances got bright ideas and wayward notions. Whenever she did, Edie steered her back in line. Edie saw danger lurking in Frances’s daydreams. A friend had the duty of fostering the good in her friend. Frances wished she could find a friend who would sponsor the worst. Normal friends clapped their hands in glee when a man had kissed you. They asked if he was good at kissing. They asked if he had promised to call again, and when. They offered to lend you their new dress, or their best pearl earrings. Since they loved you, they took it for granted that men would love you. If the man defaulted, they blamed his vision, not your attractions. Where the man saw a worm, they would see a fairy princess. In time, under the kind protection of such friends, you might straighten your spine and pick up your crown and scepter. On the other hand, friends like these might show no judgment. Blinded by love, they might let you aim too high. A worm in a ball gown cuts a foolish figure. Edie would never fasten the hooks and eyes on her ball dress, or powder her shoulders, or pin up stray wisps of hair, but Edie would prevent her from tripping on the sill of the ballroom wearing a pair of glass slippers that were somebody else’s size.

  Frances paused on Madeline’s doorstep and fished out her keys. She opened the door. The house was untidy and empty. The actors had gone, leaving only their caps and sweatshirts. Paul’s Dream was rehearsing on a proper proscenium stage. Paul and Madeline got back very late, often well after midnight. Sometimes Madeline came home first, while Paul gave his notes to the cast. When Paul let himself in, Madeline was already sleeping. That meant Paul was at large in the house, and free to wander. Frances wasted no time. She opened the yellow directory in the kitchen and found the number of a locksmith who answered calls on weekends. She used Madeline’s phone, since the call was in Madeline’s interest. She ordered one dead-bolt lock and a sliding chain lock for her bedroom, and a doorknob containing a button lock for the bathroom. The locksmith in question charged higher fees for emergencies. Frances did not argue. Her case qualified as urgent.

  All that week Frances tried to work but came out losing. Boxes of manuscripts piled up on her bottom shelf. When they numbered fourteen, she stacked them on top of her desk. In order to clear the space, she would have to read them. Panda Wattel came in for her regular Wednesday meeting. Frances let her win several battles without a fight. Panda’s hero would burst into print with a face “famished with anger.” In spite of Frances, his eyes would be “green as locusts whizzing.”

  Frances was late to work, though she stayed after hours. Locks on her bedroom door did not guarantee sleep. She fled from the house in the mornings to avoid Paul Treat, but Wednesday he had loomed up suddenly in the hallway, and cupped one buttock before she could find her keys. Her nerves were shot from dodging Paul and sleeping badly, and hours spent doing expiatory chores. In the evening, when Paul and Madeline were at the theatre, she did the jobs the maid never got around to: sweeping out ashes, scouring the bricks on the hearth, lining the cupboards with paper, polishing shoe
s.

  On Friday morning Frances was even later. Ruthanne gave her a worried look as she hurried in. Ruthanne, who was twenty, thought Frances was middle-aged. Frances had told her her age and Ruthanne had exclaimed, “I hope I look as young as you do when I’m twenty-seven!” Ruthanne protected Frances from whiny phone calls, and stood guard when the office nuisance made his rounds. This morning she had covered Frances’s tardy entrance by telling Ham Griner she was meeting with an agent.

  Ruthanne brought two cups of coffee on a tray. “Are you feeling all right?” she asked, in a sickroom whisper.

  “Well enough,” Frances said, “for a person of my years.”

  “I brought my pad. We ought to do dictation.”

  “Do we have to?” said Frances. “Watch out. The cups are hot.”

  Ruthanne dropped her pad without the least reluctance. She had more on her mind than shorthand and dictation. She had spent twenty-five dollars on a worthless psychic reading. The psychic’s name was Lockheed, like the airplane. The psychic read palms and worked out of a restaurant. Frances normally took pleasure in Ruthanne’s eager chatter. Today she listened, but she could not always claim to hear her. She could hear the odd word, enough to be responsive. At the moment the word she heard was odd indeed.

  “Slow down. He said there were pterodactyls in New Jersey?”

  “Big Foot in New Jersey,” said Ruthanne. “Pterodactyls outside of Houston.”

  “What’s the connection?” said Frances. “Are you going to marry one?”

  “He was full of it,” said Ruthanne. “He was sipping gin. He told me to hug a tree to cure a headache. He said I had broken windows in my apartment.”

  “That’s a hit,” said Frances. “You have two. I remember you told me.”

  “Oh, great, for twenty-five dollars? Plus I’m going to meet an obese person on the subway. And a negative aura around the letter P.”

  “Who’s P in your life?” asked Frances, leaning forward.

  “Not in my life,” said Ruthanne. “In my vicinity.”

  “What sex is P?” said Frances. “Did he mention that?”

  “The king of spades,” said Ruthanne. “He used cards, too. You know what else? It lasted fifteen minutes.”

  Frances was sympathetic to Ruthanne’s pique. The cartomancers Frances had consulted seemed to see her as a pane of glass. One turbaned diviner had read right through her, and picked up facts that pertained to her male companion, who was waiting at the bar while Frances took her turn. Another one had spent the session on her mother, forecasting her coming engagement and remarriage. Frances might be nine-tenths under water, like an iceberg, but psychics were supposed to sound the hidden depths. No one, either sensitive or obtuse, could mistake Ruthanne for a plain, transparent filter, but what if the P in her reading stood for Paul? And not only Edie but the spirits were set against him? Frances had often relished thwarting Edie; she had no training for doing combat with the Fates.

  Maybe the wisest course of action was retreat. She would move out of Madeline’s, leaving a false address. She pictured a small apartment, with a metal fire door and windows barred by heavy folding gates, in a building where all the tenants would be strangers, who passed her in the halls and did not smile or greet her. In her new home she could wear few clothes, or none at all. At Madeline’s, where she had four separate rooms, she did not usually cross the landing unless she was fully covered. Sometimes she peered out the bedroom door to check for traffic, then darted to the bathroom, naked, with her heart in her throat. In her new home she could shed her clothes out in the open, instead of dressing or disrobing behind the closet door. She could loll in the tub and read till the pages wilted, rather than racing through her shower as if she were being clocked. It might be better if her new apartment had no windows, and better still if the apartment had no doors. Paul Treat, that king-size courier of scandal, would never gain entry to her oubliette.

  Ruthanne, who had slipped away to get more coffee, came back to call Frances to the weekly meeting. The editorial meeting was held in the conference room, which resembled the dungeon of Frances’s cloistral reveries, an airless interior room with dark green walls. The editors sat at a showy rectangular table made of walnut veneer that was finished to reveal the burl, or plastic that looked like varnished burly walnut. Mr. Harwood and Brian Coles had gone to Boston, where the Harwood Press had opened another office, leaving a quorum of four, which meant a nice short session.

  Ursula Plumb, who did the “meat and potatoes” books—cookery, needlework, sex, pets, health, and children—always came to these meetings with something to busy her hands. Today she had set a fig plant by her chair, so she could examine its leaves for spider mites and aphids. If Mr. Harwood had been present, she would have brought a smaller plant, her mother-of-thousands or silver-leaf begonia. The editor-in-chief, Hammy Griner, took his seat at the head of the table. Margaret Learned sat on his right and Frances on his left, leaving Ursula quarantined down at the other end. Hammy, who was pink and chubby, was afflicted with allergies. He was apt to swell up from the smallest insect bite. He began to scratch as soon as he crossed the threshold, although Ursula had explained that aphids do not bite people. Neither Margaret nor Frances trusted this explanation.

  “You can’t kill them all,” said Margaret. “They have to go somewhere.”

  “They land on me,” said Hammy, whose eyes were running.

  “I see one,” said Frances, whomping a speck on her notebook.

  “Nonsense,” said Ursula briskly. “I never miss.” As she spoke, she whisked an atomizer out of her handbag, sprayed the leaf she had just been cleaning, and wiped it with a handkerchief, a well-used handkerchief, crumpled and blotted with lipstick.

  Hammy was sneezing and Margaret was growing restless. Margaret ran the meetings, since Hammy had not finished college and she had done all the work for her doctorate except the thesis. Margaret’s credentials were probably a powerful allergen, more vexing to Hammy’s system than Ursula’s aphids.

  “I’m sure you’re familiar with Arvid Korn,” said Margaret. “Arvid is a distinguished Lyman Fellow.” Margaret’s authors were always eminent or distinguished. They were also top men in their fields and seminal influences.

  “Of course. Oh, yes,” said Hammy. “A first-rate mind.”

  “What’s the proposal?” asked Frances, tapping her pencil.

  “‘The Role of the Jews in the Dissident Labor Movement.’”

  “Oh, snore,” said Frances, sinking down in her chair. Margaret took this rude reaction in good part. She dropped an eraser into Frances’s cup of coffee.

  “No more dissident Jews,” said Ursula, who kept informed. “There are two in the stores, and one in the works at Harper’s.”

  “Arvid Korn,” said Hammy, looking a bit more cheerful. “Nephew of Isaiah Berlin on his mother’s side. Married Lionel Trilling’s sister. Or Irving Howe’s. Divorced her for Alfred Kazin’s second cousin.”

  Academic genealogy was Hammy’s passion. He knew family trees on the paternal and distaff sides. He knew the names of department chairmen back to Louis Agassiz. Tenured professors were dukes and earls to Hammy. Poor Hammy. He looked at Margaret for approval. He would have died in bliss if she had stooped to gossip with him. She ignored him by pretending to collate Korn’s proposal. Hammy was not important to Margaret’s career. She did not need his consent to sign an author. She went over his head and appealed to Mr. Harwood, who was more frightened of her erudition than his chief editor.

  Frances had never made grown men quail for any reason, so she rather admired this talent in Margaret Learned. She would have admired it more if Margaret had picked on bullies; Mr. Harwood and Hammy were patient, courteous fellows. Margaret never encroached on Frances’s own domain, though her reasons were hardly flattering to Frances. Margaret was often heard to make the statement that fiction provided no fodder for the brain, since it was full of unsystematic speculation and facts that would not stand up to careful check
ing. Occasionally, Frances had caught her reading fiction: Anna Karenina, Daniel Deronda, and Manon Lescaut. Since each of these novels had proper names for titles, Frances wondered if Margaret thought they were biographies. After clever questioning she had discovered Margaret’s formula: Novels were worthwhile if they were over a hundred years old.

  Ursula had finished grooming the leaves of the ficus, and turned her attention to grooming her skirt and sweater. Hammy held up his handkerchief like a surgical mask. Ursula plucked off lints and flicked them into space, where the breeze from the baseboard ventilator kept them airborne. Hammy flinched as she flicked, as if he were being bombarded. Ursula brushed at the sides of her skirt to raise more lint. As she slapped the fabric, she also raised some dust. Even a pliant soul like Hammy had his limits. He dropped his handkerchief and hunted in his jacket pockets. After rooting around, he came up with his quarry. He displayed four pasteboard cards with printing on them.

  “Oh, no,” said Ursula. She had seen their like before. In consternation, she ate a piece of lint.

  “Tickets,” said Hammy. “For the Dreiser Colony dinner.” His voice was stuffy, but his eyes had a vengeful gleam.

  The Dreiser Colony was a writers’ retreat in Pennsylvania. Every year the board of directors held a benefit, and every year most publishers took a block of tickets. The Harwood table was always filled over loud objections, and Hammy often bartered concessions for attendance, such as excusing Margaret from a sales convention if she promised to drag her husband and two friends.

  Hammy dealt out the cards, face up, around the table.

  “I can’t go,” said Frances. “I’m going to have the flu.”

  Ursula dusted off her ticket as if it, too, had aphids. “Why me?” she said. “I had to go last year. They showed slides of Theodore Dreiser in a rowboat.”

  “And slides of raccoons eating the writers’ box lunches,” said Margaret.

  “And slides of writers eating the coons’ box lunches,” said Frances.

  “Think about it, friends,” said Hammy. “You have a choice. The Dreiser dinner, or Come As Your Muse Night at the Academy.”