The Novels of Lisa Alther

by Lisa Alther

  ‘Who? Me?’

  ‘Yes, you are, Ginny.’

  ‘But I’m not, Ira. Really. I just got in with the wrong crowd. I’m not really like that at all,’ I insisted, believing it

  ‘No, living with me must seem very dull after all that.’

  ‘I like it dull. Uh, I mean I don’t think it’s dull at all. I like our life the way it is, Ira. I wouldn’t have married you if I didn’t.’

  ‘So…’ he said, ignoring me, ‘I’ve decided to try to make things more exciting. I so much want you to be as happy with me as I am with you, Ginny.’ He threw off the bedcovers and revealed his gorgeous nude muscled body, pale white below his neckline. But there was some black contraption obscuring his genitals.

  ‘What in the hell?’

  ‘A leather jock strap,’ he said proudly. ‘Go ahead. Feel it.’

  I poked it tentatively.

  ‘Do much for you?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know…’

  ‘Now! For you!’ Out from under the bed he pulled a transparent raincoat and held it up for me to put on. ‘Go ahead! Put it on!’

  I did — and felt like a topless traffic cop.

  ‘What do you think?’ he asked with boyish delight.

  ‘Neat.’

  He turned out the light and embraced me. I crackled like a cellophane toilet paper wrapper. ‘Uh, now what, Ira?’

  He sat up and turned on the light and took a book off his bedside table and consulted the index. ‘Uh, yes, well. I guess we’re just supposed to look at each other. It says some women are turned on by the smell and feel of leather.’

  So Ira and I sat and looked at each other. Then he took off his jock strap, and I slipped out of my transparent raincoat, and he settled his furry head between my tanned legs — a tarantula nested in a bunch of overripe bananas. As Ira amused himself, I pondered the topic of whether to take pot roast or pork liver out of the freezer for supper the next day.

  I didn’t come.

  Ira sat up and marked two X’s in the book over the sections entitled ‘Leather’ and ‘Polyethylene’, saying, ‘Now, don’t be discouraged, Ginny. Each time we’ll try something different.’

  On Memorial Day morning, I stood on Main Street and watched as Ira marched by in his olive National Guard uniform, followed closely by Boy Scouts, Cub Scouts, Brownies, and Girl Scouts. The Stark Mountain Regional High School marching band came next, led by prancing majorettes who were nowhere near as good as I remembered being. Then came the fire department float, featuring a uniformed representative from each National Guard unit in the area. They were saluting a bank of flowers tilted against the truck cab. The flowers were white carnations, some dyed red and blue and densely packed in a wire frame to form an American flag. A hand-printed inscription around the truck bed read, ‘Serving to Keep America Strong and Free.’ Then came some volunteer firemen, in their swept-back hats and raincoats and rubber boots, hanging from the town’s gleaming hook and ladder trucks.

  After the parade, the men and boys had been invited to the General Machine Gun Testing Range — the one Eddie and Atheliah and Mona and I had discovered — to view a new type of mortar launcher to be used in Vietnam. Half the men in town had been working on the project for over a year. They took as much pride in it as their forebears must have taken in their spikes and staples in the 1800’s when General Machine had been a nail factory.

  Meanwhile, the women and girls went to the parish hall for the Women’s Auxiliary fashion show. The fashion coordinator from Sears, Roebuck in St. Johnsbury had outfitted us auxiliary members and had written the script, which Angela was reading:

  ‘Lovely Ginny Bliss waltzes into summer in this…’

  That was my cue. The thought had flickered through my diabolical brain to whisk out attired in my transparent raincoat and Ira’s black leather jock strap. Eddie would have done it. But I was trying hard to forget Eddie. I never allowed myself to think of her. The only time she sneaked up on me was when I was asleep. She would appear in dreams, saying in an accusing voice, ‘You keep thinking I’m, like, dead or something.’ Then I’d reach out to embrace her. And I’d wake up and find myself clinging to Ira, who would interpret this as an invitation to roll on top of me for a tryst, while I choked back sobs of longing for Eddie and tried not to fantasize that Ira’s hands and mouth and tongue moving across my body were hers. I was grateful to Ira for taking me on. If I couldn’t throw myself into sex with him, at least I wouldn’t cuckold him spiritually by pretending that he was someone else.

  I swept out in my backless pink paisley halter-front harem pants. ‘…fetching nylon acetate ensemble. The halter front with its matching fabric tie strings, and the billowing legs of the look-alike pants’ — here I turned and paused to display my fabric tie strings — ‘will make you feel like a pampered slave girl in an opulent harem, when that sultan of yours comes home at night.’

  I took several steps so that my legs would billow.

  ‘Accented with a handsome wide copper bracelet’ — I held up my shackled wrist — ‘and glittering gold sandals — just the thing for a Stark’s Bog back yard barbecue. Or a Bliss family Memorial Day picnic, Ginny?’

  I smiled ingenuously and descended the steps to a thunder of applause. I was pleased. I had finally been accepted, had overcome my Soybean origins. No one knew about my nocturnal lapses.

  After the fashion show, we womenfolk split into our rival clans for family picnics. Almost everyone in town was related to one or more of the five main families, the Blisses being one. The Bliss family picnics were always held at the old homestead — Ira’s and my house- regardless of which hapless relative happened to inhabit it at the time. And this picnic was no exception. I had been up all night chopping potatoes for potato salad. Ira was back from the firing range by the time I got home and had removed the cover from the swimming pool and had tapped a keg of Genesee. His relatives were starting to drift in. I couldn’t tell them apart — they were all solid, well-built people with dark or gray curly hair. Old men kept putting arms around me and whispering, ‘Ira’s a lucky man to have such a lovely bride.’ Ira watched with pride and gratitude: His family had accepted me. I smiled at the old men warmly.

  About a dozen times I had the following conversation, spoken parts interchangeable:

  ‘Hot enough for you?’

  ‘Looks like a nice afternoon for a picnic.’

  ‘Yes, we’re sure as hang lucky. It’s rained all week.’

  ‘Do you think it’ll rain this afternoon?’

  ‘It might. See those dark clouds in the west?’

  ‘Probably not before time to go home, anyhow.’

  ‘Probably not. It was a late mud season, so we’ve earned a pretty summer.’

  ‘A-yup. Well, excuse me, I’d better go for a swim before it clouds up.’

  ‘It might do it.’

  ‘I sure hope not.’

  ‘Me, too.’

  But after all, just because we shared an affection for Ira was no reason to assume that we had anything else in common — other than living under identical cloud cover.

  It was getting dark, and yes, rain clouds were rolling in from the west, by the time the last of the Bliss great-uncles departed. Ira and I sat by the pool among fallen baked beans and guzzled the remaining quarter keg of flat Genesee.

  Then the storm arrived. Huge raindrops splatted on the concrete where we sat. Trees lashed their branches like whips. We were getting soaked. Where was my transparent raincoat now when I needed it? Thunder rolled, and lightning crackled. It was the first storm of the season, a treat in snow country after endless months of silently drifting white fluff. There was something so refreshingly candid about an electrical storm. You knew where you stood. Nature was out to sizzle you alive. Whereas delicate snowflakes crept up on you stealthily and smothered you unawares.

  Rain swept in in sheets. Water ran off our noses in torrents. We giggled like children and raced for the house. Once inside, dripping on the indoor-outdoor ca
rpet in the TV room, Ira turned to me with his special look that indicated that it was 8:30 on a Friday evening, sanctioned by the calendar for sex. He unbuckled his belt.

  ‘You are going to have an orgasm tonight,’ he informed me.

  ‘But really, Ira, I don’t want one.’

  ‘I don’t care what you want. I want you to be happy.’ His dark liquid eyes studied with hunger my breasts and stomach under my clinging wet shirt. ‘If this doesn’t do it, I don’t know what will.’

  ‘If what doesn’t?’ I asked fearfully.

  ‘Stay here.’ He charged upstairs and returned with his manual and a paper bag. As he read the instructions for tonight’s gymnastics, I observed his cock stirring the leg of his madras Bermuda shorts.

  He turned to me, breathing heavily, his nostrils flared. Out of the paper bag he whipped — a pair of handcuffs.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ I moaned. I had been here before — bound to the sleeping platform in the bomb shelter by Clem’s motorcycle chain.

  ‘Really, Ira, I’d rather just do it in bed without a lot of fuss.’

  ‘No, no. I want things to be exciting for you, Ginny. I don’t want you to be bored with me.’

  With a sigh, I removed my clothes as Ira threw off his.

  ‘Now what?’ I asked sullenly, standing nude, damp and chilled, in the middle of the television room floor.

  He led me a few steps by the arm. Then he pulled up two antique ladderback chairs with rush seats. He climbed up on his, indicating to me to climb up on mine. When I had done so, I found myself eye to eye with the huge oak beam that ran the length of the room. Ira unlocked the handcuffs and snapped one side around his right wrist. Then he reached over the beam and snapped the other side onto my left wrist.

  ‘All right, now hold onto the chain with your chained hand, or you’ll hurt yourself.’ When I was doing this correctly, he continued, ‘Now lower yourself slowly off your chair.’

  I did so, and soon we were dangling chest to chest by one arm from the beam, joined by the handcuffs. Ira was very excited. His erection was gouging me in the side like a surgeon’s hand prodding an appendicitis victim.

  ‘What do you think?’ he gasped, bending his head to French kiss my armpit.

  ‘Very nice,’ I assured him, feeling that my handcuffed arm was about to pop out of its socket, like the Major’s ring finger.

  ‘Will this do the trick, do you think?’

  ‘I’m not sure I get the picture…’

  Ira wrapped his free arm around my waist and pulled me to him. ‘All right, now put it in.’

  I stared at him for a moment in disbelief. Then I obligingly raised my dangling legs at different angles, but never the appropriate one for achieving insertion. In the process, I kicked my chair over. I felt like a marionette with tangled strings. Finally, I accomplished the feat of coupling with my husband by wrapping my legs around his waist. But in this suspended entanglement neither of us was capable of moving an inch.

  ‘Did the book say exactly how to do this?’ I asked, suppressing a grimace as my shoulder began aching unbearably.

  ‘Not really. It just said something like “Once hanging together in this fashion, you will have no difficulty discovering delicious new ways to tease each other to climax.”’

  ‘Oh.’

  Shortly I said, ‘Ah, Ira — I think I’d better get down. My arm’s really hurting.’

  Ira sighed, defeated again, his erection starting to wilt inside me. ‘Okay.’ He took the handcuff key, which he’d been holding in his free hand, and reached up to unlock my wrist. As he did so, he dropped the key.

  We looked at each other in horror as the full magnitude of our plight dawned on us. The silver key glittered mockingly on the carpet, while the lightning flashed and the rain drove in sheets against the windowpanes. My shoulder no longer hurt — it was completely numb. But now my wrist was sending messages of agony to the pain centers in my brain. I had rubbed a bracelet of raw flesh by my flying mid-air contortions.

  ‘Ira, if you can stand in your chair, that might lower me enough to pick up the key with my toes.’

  Thinking it worth a try, he searched for his chair with his feet. As he did so, he kicked it over. ‘Jesum Crow,’ he groaned. Reaching up to the beam with his free hand, he did a miraculous one-handed chin-up, which lowered me almost to the rug.

  But not quite. My pointed toes hung one inch above the glittering silver key.

  ‘Lower,’ I said softly.

  ‘I can’t,’ he gasped, through gritted teeth. Just then his bicep gave out, and he fell back down, jerking me up to where I’d been before.

  We looked at each other with despair.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispered.

  ‘You meant well.’

  ‘I just wanted to make you happy.’

  ‘What’s going to become of us? We’ll starve, won’t we? Or will we die of thirst first?’

  ‘Someone will miss me at the office, or at one of my meetings. They’ll come out to check on us and…’

  We glanced at each other, trying to decide whether we’d rather be living or dead when we were discovered by one of his aunts.

  ‘Your Aunt Betty is coming back for her ice cream freezer on Sunday.’

  He nodded yes, his eyes closed and sweat dripping from his handsome high forehead.

  The phone rang. We looked at each other with renewed hope. Mother Bell lived. The phone sat on a table against the wall right under this beam.

  ‘If we throw our arms sideways, Ginny, I think we can scoot toward the wall.’

  The phone stopped ringing. We tried Ira’s plan, and it worked. Each scoot produced an agonized wrenching of my captive shoulder. But, in time, we worked our way to the wall. Ira reached down with his feet and picked up the receiver. He transferred the receiver to his free hand with a movement that even a tree-swinging orangutan would have envied. Then he dialed experimentally with the second toe of his right foot.

  He looked at me blankly. ‘Whom shall we call?’ he asked, pressing the button with his toe to clear the line.

  ‘Uncle Lou?’

  Ira was unamused.

  ‘How about the police?’

  ‘There aren’t any police in Stark’s Bog. You know that.’

  ‘The fire department.’

  ‘Good idea.’ He started dialing. Then he realized that the fire department number was our own, he being fire chief. ‘I know,’ he said, inspired. ‘Rodney.’

  ‘No! I’m not having that macho rapist seeing me naked and at his mercy.’

  ‘Someone’s going to.’

  ‘Not Rodney.’

  ‘Who then?’

  ‘Angela?’

  ‘Are you kidding? It would be all over town in minutes!’

  ‘I know! Mona.’

  ‘Who?

  ‘A woman who lived with me at that cabin.’

  ‘Well, all right. I suppose so,’ he muttered unhappily. ‘What’s her number?’

  He dialed with his toe and handed me the receiver. With relief I heard it ringing. The last time I’d called her commune, their line had been disconnected for failure to pay a bill. A male voice answered. There was much laughter and loud music in the background.

  Atheliah sounded pleased to hear from me. ‘Why don’t you come on out? We’re having a planting festival, a fertility thing.’

  ‘It sounds like fun. But I’m afraid I’m — tied up at the moment. Actually, I’m in a bit of a spot, Atheliah. I hate to ask this of you right in the middle of a party. But could you please come to Ira’s right away and help me out?’

  ‘Now? Tonight?’

  ‘It’s incredibly important, Atheliah, or I wouldn’t dream of asking you. I can’t really explain it to you over the phone. But please.’

  ‘Well, all right, yeah, sure. If I can find some wheels…(Al, can I take your truck to Stark’s Bog? Sure, we can all go!)…I’ll be right there, Ginny.’ She hung up before I had a chance to ask her not to bring her friends.

 
; A few minutes later eight people with pupils in various stages of dilation stumbled through the door. They looked at Ira and me, dangling nude over the telephone, with no more than passing interest.

  Mona came over and gazed up through her purple-tinted goggle lenses and said blowsily, ‘Like, far out, Gin.’

  Atheliah stood beside Mona and looked up at me with affection and said, ‘What can I do for you, Ginny?’

  I nodded to Ira, dangling beside me, and said, ‘Do you remember Ira? Ira, this is Mona and Atheliah, whom I lived with in the cabin the winter before last?’

  ‘How do you do?’ Ira asked, looking down through his hairy armpit. ‘I do remember seeing you around. You were at our wedding, weren’t you?’

  They nodded politely.

  ‘Actually, the reason I called…Do you see that key on the rug over there? Would you mind handing it to Ira? And putting those chairs under our feet? Thanks so much.’

  Ira unlocked us, and we climbed down, rubbing our raw wrists.

  ‘Can I give you a beer?’ Ira offered.

  ‘Sure, thanks,’ Atheliah said. ‘But we really can’t stay. It looks as though the road to the farm is washing out, and we want to be on our side of it when it goes.’

  Ira passed cold Genesee all round.

  ‘Thanks so much for coming, guys,’ I called as they trooped out the door.

  ‘How about lunch next week?’ I asked Mona and Atheliah. ‘Monday, say?’

  ‘Far out,’ Mona replied.

  Two days later Ira left for his two-week army summer camp at Camp Drum, and I was left alone in his cavernous house. His relatives kept appearing to pick up serving dishes from the picnic.

  ‘Where were you Friday night after the picnic?’ his Aunt Betty demanded. ‘I called to see if I’d left my sweater by the pool, but no one answered. I couldn’t imagine where you’d gone.’

  ‘We were tied up right after the picnic,’ I explained, fond of my little pun by now.

  ‘Lovely day we had for the picnic. Weren’t we lucky?’ Aunt Betty demanded.

  ‘Weren’t we, though. But that was quite a storm that evening.’

  ‘Wasn’t that a storm! Goodness, what a storm!’