The Lives of Women

by Christine Dwyer Hickey

When she says this, she pulls two big handfuls of fat from out over her jeans, then lets them spring back into place.

  As it turns out, Patty is almost nineteen years old, which Rachel says, from the boys’ point of view anyhow, just adds to the attraction.

  Karl Donegan’s spots seem to swell up at the sight of her, and the eyes on Jonathan – as the boy with the tired eyes turns out to be called – glisten with sudden light.

  Paul is forever trying to get her to talk to him, complimenting her New York clothes and asking endless questions about what it’s like to live there.

  She answers his questions like she answers most questions, with a shrug, unless the question is very direct and then she’ll snap it straight back.

  ‘So what about your dad?’ Paul asks her.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Why isn’t he here?’

  ‘They’re divorced.’

  ‘Oh? And where does he live?’

  ‘Right now?’

  ‘Yes, now.’

  ‘New York.’

  ‘And he didn’t always?’

  ‘Didn’t always what?’

  ‘Live there – you said now as if he lived somewhere else.’

  ‘Oh right. California.’

  ‘Is that where you lived before?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  Agatha says, ‘You know, Patty, listening to Paul trying to get you to talk, it’s like he’s following you through a big house and you’re slamming door after door in his face.’

  When she says this Patty just gives one of her half-smiles and shrugs. Then Elaine has to tell Agatha – ‘She smiled and shrugged’ – in case Agatha thinks Patty is ignoring her.

  Patty is the only girl in the neighbourhood who would be allowed to have boys in her house without supervision, but she never asks them inside. When they knock on the front door, she comes out and leans on the door frame. When she gets bored listening to them, she goes back inside.

  Her mother calls out, ‘Would the boys like a Coke or something?’ And she shouts over her shoulder, ‘No, Mom, they’re fine.’

  One day, when there happened to be only Elaine and Patty in the back of the car, Serena said, ‘Oh look, there’s Paul, he looks a bit lonesome, let’s ask him along?’

  And Patty said, ‘Oh nooooo, Mom let’s not.’

  Agatha says: ‘The boys are too young for her that’s why she’s no interest.’

  ‘Too young for her maybe – but what about us!’ Rachel yells and flings herself back on the sofa.

  When the girls are lying on Patty’s back lawn, the boys sometimes come out to Paul’s back garden, next door. First there will be the sound of their voices through the wall. Then a few jokes are lobbed over the top. Paul’s head might appear, followed by his body, and then Karl and Paul and Jonathan will be sitting on top of the wall, swinging their legs and talking down.

  They do this a few times before they begin dropping down into Patty’s garden and sitting on the lawn with the girls.

  One day this happens when Paul is on his own. Patty looks up from the pillow she’s made of her folded arms. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asks him.

  ‘I just…’

  ‘I don’t want you in here right now,’ she says.

  ‘You’re joking?’ he says, his face becoming uncertain and then turning bright red.

  ‘Why would I be joking? If I wanted you here, I would have invited you over.’

  Elaine wonders if that’s what she might expect when she gets to Patty’s age, a sort of sophisticated world weariness.

  ‘You mean a general not give a fuckiness about anyone or anything,’ Agatha says.

  ‘Well, I call it plain ignorance,’ Rachel says. ‘I mean, to speak to Paul like that. It was just awful. We should have all left with him. And I would have done, only I was paralysed with embarrassment. One thing’s for certain, he will never, ever show his face near her again.’

  But the next day, Paul’s face was back again, grinning over the top of the wall.

  Elaine watches Patty and thinks she is like a cat, spending hours on the back lawn, following the heat of the sun with her army sleeping bag which she spreads on the warmest spot in the garden. Sometimes she’ll turn over on her stomach and read and then she might actually move, swinging the lower part of one leg from the knee.

  The sleeping bag belonged to her father when he was young and in the army.

  ‘He fought in the war?’ Paul asks.

  ‘In more than one,’ Patty says.

  ‘Did he kill people?’ Rachel asks.

  ‘What do you think?’ Patty says.

  She never sits at a table and eats a meal like anyone else, but carries her food around with her: a hot dog eaten in her hand as she walks up the road; a sandwich brought up to her bedroom; a bowl of cereal at two in the afternoon as she walks down the back garden. A bag of popcorn sitting on the wall in the evening, when most people are at home eating their dinner. And one Friday night when she was in Elaine’s house, she opened the fridge door and began drinking the Sunday-morning orange juice straight from the carton, nearly giving Elaine’s mother a heart attack.

  Patty really only comes alive when she’s playing tennis or riding a horse. Or when she gets involved in one of her deep, meandering conversations that Elaine can never quite follow. She goes to bed in the middle of the night and gets up in the middle of the day. She often looks like someone who is only seconds away from falling asleep.

  Serena says that’s because of her relaxed disposition.

  Elaine’s mother says it’s because she’s a spoilt, lazy lump.

  Paul says it’s because she’s a really deep thinker.

  Agatha says it’s those dickie cigarettes she’s been smoking with the stable lads in Arlows.

  Sometimes when she’s finished painting for the day, Serena will come to the back door in bare feet. She’ll stand for a while, taking gulps of fresh air as if she’s smoking an invisible cigarette, then call out, ‘I’m going out in ten minutes – be ready or be left behind.’

  If anyone is missing – and it won’t be Elaine – Serena will tell Patty to go call them. ‘I don’t want to leave any of my heartbreakers out,’ is what she’ll say.

  Rachel is absent most because she has to babysit: days when their ‘girl from the country’ is off or when Mrs Shillman has to go to a function or maybe is at the golf course giving Elaine’s mother golf lessons.

  ‘Lessons in how to drink, more like!’ Rachel shouts out one day, making everyone laugh except for Elaine.

  If Elaine’s mother is out with Mrs Shillman then, when they come back from their drive, Elaine will usually call around to keep Rachel company before it’s time to go home.

  Rachel says, ‘You don’t have to feel bad. If it wasn’t your mother she was out with, it would be somebody else. She hates staying in, that’s all. She hates being a housewife. She hates having kids. She thinks we hold her back. There’s no need to look so shocked – that’s just the way she is.’

  Agatha is sometimes missing too – afternoons when she has to go out with her aunt or evenings when she says she’s too tired. But Elaine is a constant. She is there every day of the week from the moment she sees the first sign of life across the road: the front door left open to let in the air and let out the turps; or the first twitch of the curtains on the sitting-room window; or the milk bottles lifted from the porch. And it doesn’t even matter that Patty is still in bed, she’s happy to talk to Serena, and if Serena needs to go out, or wants to go and paint, Elaine will tidy the kitchen and fold the laundry and just hang around until it’s time to call for Agatha, who these days rarely gets up before noon.

  ‘You’ll wear out your welcome in that house,’ her mother says.

  ‘They like me being there. And anyway, I’m not the only one.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know how she puts up with it – all those teenagers hanging about. It would drive me insane.’

  ‘It’s not that kind of house,’ Elaine say
s, ‘and we don’t just hang around, she takes us out places.’

  ‘Well, you might tell her that people around here, we like to know where our children are. Yes, we do. And I’d appreciate it if, in future, you could let me know next time she decides to take you out places.’

  ‘I would let you know, if you were ever here.’

  Elaine likes being with Serena. She likes her almost as much as she likes Agatha and Rachel. Sometimes, she secretly prefers her. Recently, Agatha is often moody. And Rachel only ever wants to talk about Paul Townsend and how she can get off with him – something Elaine thinks is just never going to happen. Serena requires no effort, except that you listen to her, which is almost always a pleasure. When Serena talks to her she never feels stupid. She feels grown up and intelligent and, above all, chosen.

  ‘We’re alike, you and me,’ Serena says, ‘two sensitive, artistic people.’

  Or, ‘Well, you get it, don’t you, Elaine? You understand me – you know what I mean.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Elaine agrees, ‘I do, yes.’

  She tells Elaine how she came to this place ‘of all places’ to find her artistic self. Mrs Osborne was a second cousin of a woman in Serena’s art class and that’s how she heard there was a house for rent. Mrs Osborne then sent her some photographs.

  ‘A place like this, there are no distractions and artistic people are so easily distracted. When I found out about the house, and the big north-facing window in the dining room – the light from the north is so important for us artists, you see – I thought I’d use my savings, allow myself a summer here and if it happens it happens, and if not… Well, then I’m just going to have to go back to New York and get a job. Or something.’

  She tells her about her divorce and her dating life; about the house she grew up in; about her friends in New York: their love affairs, their triumphs and disgraces. Listening to Serena talk so freely, Elaine often thinks, is better than reading a book: the way she wraps a story around you and people you’ve never met become so real, and the rest of the world and everyone in it just doesn’t matter.

  The late night conversations can be less satisfactory if Serena is tired or maybe has had a few drinks. Then, she tends to dip out of the conversation, lowering her voice as if about to reveal a dark secret. But the secret usually turns out to be a let-down: a few hasty half-sentences on a big blank page.

  ‘Patty, you see. Problems. Unsuitable – you know? One boy in particular – well we won’t go there. But. Let me tell you something now. Let me tell you. Her father. Blamed me. Me. I mean, come on! Anyway, say nothing, tell no one. Know what I mean?’

  She loves when they all go out in the car with Serena; the way everyone just knows it’s okay to take off their shoes and place their bare feet up on the dash or across each other’s laps in the back seat.

  And the way they won’t know where they’re going until they get there.

  When she was small she once got sick in her father’s new car.

  They were on their way to church, the breakfast her mother had forced her to eat, the smell of the new leather seats, her father’s aftershave. They hadn’t yet pulled out of the drive when the un -wanted breakfast came rocketing out of her mouth, her mother’s hands held out to catch it, as if it was a ball.

  ‘To this day, I hate the smell of aftershave,’ she tells Serena while she’s helping her to unload the groceries. ‘If I ever get married, it will have to be to a man with a beard.’

  Serena throws back her head and laughs. ‘I swear,’ she says, ‘you are the funniest kid.’

  In the house, Serena can be a vague presence: a voice calling out that ‘there’s food in the icebox, please help yourselves’.

  Or a different sort of voice yelling at a canvas: ‘For Christ’s sake, what’s the matter with you! Honestly, I could just rip you apart with my teeth!’

  She’s a blur crossing an upstairs window. A back view mixing paint on the kitchen counter. A figure bent over a foot on a bathroom stool, painting toenails before a date.

  But in the car, Serena becomes more solid. When she cuts a corner, the bangles on her left arm shudder. When she bends to light a cigarette, her long earrings get caught in her hair and whoever is sitting up front has to release it, which is why Agatha always has to sit in the back.

  As soon as they pull away from the kerb, she slams a music cassette into the player. On the way home, the music stays off and then it’s time to practise what she calls ‘a little light or even meaningful conversation’.

  When she says this, Patty rolls up her eyes and looks out the window.

  Elaine knows that this could easily have been her first summer of sitting on the edge of the green. She knows this for all the summers gone by when she has watched the older girls come out after tea and sit like a row of giggly puppets, watching the boys play football. Sit and wait until the evening sky turns mauve and the boys slow down and gradually begin to drift in their direction. Even someone as beautiful as June Caudwell had once been a ringside puppet before starting secretarial college and finding a proper boyfriend to go on proper dates with in town, and before she became all exotic and went off to work as an au pair in Brussels.

  It had not been something Elaine had been looking forward to, sitting watching the boys for hours at their football. And yet she knows she would probably have ended up doing it anyway – like so much that has happened to her over the past few years such as monthly periods and training bras, she had presumed it was another one of those things she would just have to put up with.

  But when Serena takes the girls out, the boys stop playing football and stand with their mouths open, watching the car pull out of the drive; even the much older boys smoking at the corner near the shops turn their heads and watch them drive by.

  Serena gives the horn a beep, and the girls give a little wave out the window and keep their laughing down to a snigger until they’re out of the village and turned onto the main road. Serena hits the cassette and a big American voice swells into the car. They allow it a few seconds grace – before joining in: ‘You’re so Vain’ or ‘You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere’.

  When this happens Elaine feels something soar up inside her. The music, the movement, the sound of their voices, the sense of belonging. Sometimes it overwhelms her. This is my real family – she thinks then – these are my friends. I would die for any one of them.

  There are other, smaller moments of joy: like when Serena takes them into what she calls ‘the city’ and they go for coffee in a proper café where scenes from Italian life are painted on the wall and the waiter makes jokes to them and people on neighbouring tables say hello and Serena places her cigarettes and lighter on the table and covers her eyes with her hands and says, ‘If anyone wants one – I’m not looking… If anyone asks – I didn’t see a thing.’

  And as they all sit there together, Rachel and Patty smoking with ease, Agatha improving day by day, Elaine just taking one or two drags of Agatha’s cigarette because she still can’t smoke with -out feeling sick, drinking real coffee and eating dark cake, she lifts her head to watch pass by the parade of all the lives she might one day lead: students in cheesecloth, office girls in cotton dresses, women with handbags and high heels.

  On the way home, the light or meaningful conversation.

  Rachel is by far the chattiest. Rachel, followed by Patty who, for all her tutting and eye rolling, will eventually join in and even sometimes take over. Elaine and Agatha sit together on the back seat, Agatha pressing letters onto Elaine’s hand as Serena urges them to join in the conversation. Elaine figuring Agatha’s words out – O. NO. NOT. THIS. FUCKING. OR-DEAL. AGAIN.

  Her mother says: ‘I’m not sure about this mixing of generations. I mean, I don’t know how the other women feel but I certainly don’t want my daughter listening to all that adult conversation.’

  Elaine doesn’t bother to say: I’ve already heard all of your so-called adult conversations, between your shouting on the phone and your roaring in
the Shillmans’ garden in the middle of the night and your shouting in the sitting room with Martha Shillman over your Geee and Teees after-golf. Even from behind closed doors, I’ve already heard them.

  *

  Her mother says it again. This time to Mrs Shillman, who is sitting in their kitchen. ‘I’m not sure about this mixing of generations, Martha, after all…’

  Mrs Shillman is smoking in short, sharp puffs, her right foot is constantly wagging. She says through her teeth, ‘It’s a break from the kids I need. Not a whole bloody afternoon watching my Ps and Qs in case Big Mouth goes back and blabs every word to her father. Do you know what she told him? Do you know what she actually said? She said… I could kill her, I really could. She said that I had a drink problem – now isn’t that lovely, Sara, I ask you? From my own daughter. And of course, he was delighted! Gives him one over on me, you see? As if he’s sipping bloody cocoa every night of the week.’

  ‘Oh now, Martha, that’s just ridiculous, surely he wouldn’t pay any attention to – I mean the very idea! It’s just too ridic—’

  ‘I’ll give them drink problem, all right,’ Martha says.

  She is in Serena’s kitchen making cheese and toast, while Patty writes a letter to her father with her looped wrist and secretive hand. She is listening to Serena on the phone in the hall to a friend she has made at meditation class: ‘Of course, I agree with you, totally, you are so right. Absolutely. That’s okay, sweetie, of course it is. I agree, uh-huh. You did right. Of course, I mean it. Oh, whenever you want. I’m here for you, you know that. I agree, absolutely I do.’

  And she remembers Mrs Shillman, a few weeks ago, saying Serena was ‘very agreeable’. There had been something snide in the way she had said it, although Elaine hadn’t been able to work it out at the time. It occurs to her now that Serena does tend to agree with everyone – no matter what they say. Mrs Shillman probably thinks this is because Serena is some sort of hypocrite. But Elaine knows that’s not true: Serena just wants everyone to feel better. Serena just wants to be kind.