I heard a door open inside the darkened house, and I saw Janine come forward from the gloom, tightening a belted robe around her waist. “I meant to tell you, Rosalie. I’m going to the hospital.”
“Nothing serious, I hope?”
She wrinkled her nose and managed an embarrassed smile. “Female troubles.”
“Enough to go to the hospital?”
“They’re taking out the parts that don’t work.”
“Oh Janine, I’m so sorry.” She was so young, and she looked so well. I looked down at Tommy, who was glancing up at Janine’s face and at mine, trying to decide whether he should be bothered by our conversation. I tried to smile and sound happy for her. “When you come out, you’ll feel so much more energetic.”
“That’s what they say.”
I started to go, then turned back. “Tommy can come over any time. If I’ve never said that before, I should have.” Never mind what John thought about Janine’s mothering or about Tommy’s behavior and his influence on our sons.
She paused a moment before saying, “He’ll be at his Grandma’s for most of it. But thank you. Really.” Then: “I wish I could be more like you, sometimes.”
“What do you mean?”
“You seem to handle everything so well, compared to all the other women in this neighborhood—including me.” She tried to laugh. “You just—you know—seem to stick it out. Life, the kids. Everything. You don’t seem to need anyone.”
On the walk back to my house, every step was an effort of will. It was hotter even this day than the day before. It was hard even to breathe.
Back home, I made up a list, and immediately crossed off the first name. Helen Resor and I had never gotten to know each other, after all. She’d be too busy. And though it was possible that she was aware of and unbothered by my husband’s extracurriculars, it was equally possible that our family name had become a bitter pill for her, if she knew her husband and my own were running around together.
The next two names on the list were from college: Bee and Vanessa. I gathered up my courage and telephoned them at their apartments in Manhattan. One number was disconnected. At the other, a roommate answered, and told me Vanessa had moved to Seattle, for a job. Two years ago. Hadn’t I known?
I swallowed my pride—as well as the drink I’d just poured—and telephoned Mary Cover Jones at her lab. To my surprise, she was at her desk and answered on the second ring.
“A play?” she asked, baffled. “But why?”
“It’s been too long. I thought it would be fun.”
“But I don’t go to many plays.”
“That’s why I thought of you first.”
She puzzled over the details—she and Harold had a baby nurse for the day, but she’d have to find someone for an evening engagement, and this was short notice.
“There’s only one extra ticket, unfortunately. I’m sorry. Couldn’t Harold watch Barbara?” I knew their daughter would be about two years old now, a year younger than Billy.
“He’s great with Barbara. But Lesley’s still nursing.”
“Lesley?”
“Our other daughter. Didn’t John tell you? She’s two months old. The truth is, Rosalie, I hate that I spend so much time apart from her, as it is. I bring her to the lab sometimes, but I don’t suppose I can bring her to a play.”
“No. Probably not.”
A second daughter. I made a mental note to pick out a gift the next time I was in a department store, and to chasten John, if we were talking about everyday things anytime soon.
There weren’t too many names left on the list. At the bottom was Evelyn. Second from the bottom was my own mother, who immediately asked, “What’s wrong? Are the boys ill?”
“The boys are perfectly healthy.”
“Are you sure? How is Billy’s stomach?”
Why had I ever confessed Billy’s stomach troubles to her? Now she’d never let it alone.
“He’s fine.”
She said, with a little too much eagerness, “Are you and John fighting?”
“Why would you assume that, Mother?”
It was harder to reach Evelyn, and when she finally returned my call, near dinnertime, she sounded exhausted and apprehensive. We had a good chat, long and honest. It was the first time she admitted that she resented my having gone to Vassar, because she hadn’t, nor had college even been emphasized much in her time, which was probably true—we were practically of a different generation. She thought Mother and Father had always favored me, and she had gotten tired long ago of hearing about my interests and publications and glamorous life, which made me feel sad, considering I’d never thought our parents were pleased with me and my choices at all. But there was no convincing her. There was no way she could travel several hours to Manhattan for a play. I pressed for a longer visit. She could stay in our house. The night out would be only one part of it. She finally had seen Billy—once—but she’d never seen Jimmy. Why did it take a year or more to schedule every visit?
“Because we’re practically strangers, Rosalie,” she said.
“I don’t want to be.”
“It’s a little late, don’t you think?”
•••
When John came home that night, I had nothing to throw back in his face, nor the desire to confide my own vulnerability. The last thing I wanted him to know was that I was friendless. When he came up the drive at 9 p.m., I met him at the door, smartly dressed, neatly coiffed, concealer painted heavily under my eyes to hide the fact that I’d made them sore with rubbing, and with a drink ready in my hand. I wore the new smile I had practiced since the end of my telephone call with Evelyn: impervious.
“So you’re taking me out on Friday,” I said, handing him the fresh drink. “It’s about time.”
This next part I can’t explain. But it was a tense autumn, and I was losing my husband, or thought I was. John felt our differences had been settled by the evening out and several more like it—restaurant dinners, and a private party at a client’s where I watched John flirt with a tall redhead in a green dress (ridiculous how she had to bend down, breasts practically spilling from her dress, to accept a light for her cigarette). Later, he watched me flirt with the same woman’s sixty-year-old laundry-soap-magnate husband. We came home from that party and made love twice—once savagely, the second time more tenderly. Far from proving the damaging effects of jealousy, our joint improprieties were only convincing John that jealousy and the occasional argument might have its place, reminding each partner of the other’s passion and desirability. He liked to see me flirt or be flirted with, in other words. I can’t say the reverse was true.
Yet jealousy still could have its damaging side, he conceded. It was certainly still worth studying, he—never I—insisted.
Twice more he asked me to repeat our little staged fight in front of Billy. The first time had thrown him off, with its unintended eruption of truth. The next two times were more mechanical, and each of these next times John played the aggressor, now that he was convinced that it was pointless playing the victim, because Billy would never come to his defense. I didn’t have to do or say much. I just had to stand there and let John shout in my face, loom over me, grab me by the wrists—was this exciting for him, as my sham flirtations with strangers were?—and take note of Billy’s reactions, so that John and I could compare notes later. Each time, Billy reacted instantly, showing clear signs of being greatly disturbed. Eyes wide. Hands over his ears. Mouth open, with tears spilling down his red cheeks. The first time, he ran to my aid, a desperate defense that lasted only a moment before he backed away. The second time, he ran to the next room and from there, shouted for John to stop. The third time, he only stood in the corner, arms up against his ears and hands over his head, twisting back and forth as he wailed for me, “Mama! Mama!” But when I broke away from John’s grasp and ran to Billy, finally,
he would not let me touch him. His wail had gone quiet, but his mouth was still open. He couldn’t seem to get a breath.
John stood at the far end of the room, hands on his own hips, hair sprung loose from its crèmed style, catching his own breath, observing.
“He can’t breathe,” I said, turning to see John’s calm expression, knowing he’d tell me that Billy was fine, that I needed to back away and just observe, to see what came next. But I couldn’t take it anymore.
“Go,” I shouted, though this was a Sunday morning, not a workday, and there’d be no car horn to break the spell and save us from the simulated conflict, which was no less disturbing for its falseness. “I need to be alone with him. Go!”
“Now, Rosalie . . .” John started to say.
“Never again. Never another damaging experiment on our own boys, or I’m leaving with them, and you’ll never see any of us again, no matter how far I need to go.”
“It’s for a good reason.”
“I don’t care!”
“You’re not being objective . . .”
“Of course I’m not! And if I have to choose between them and you, I’m choosing them, John. My only regret is that I didn’t choose sooner.”
“All right,” he said, and followed my pointing finger, slowly backing toward the door.
That all right felt like a tremendous victory. Which felt like the beginning of an entirely new chapter in our lives. Which was tainted only by this afterthought, after he left the house and the boys went off to their naps and I had only my own regrets for company: I could have done it sooner. He wasn’t an irredeemable bully. He might even have craved resistance—another opinion, spirited refusal.
Consider the years of evidence: his joy over antagonistic epistolary relationships; his respect for other men who had publicly disagreed with him; his mentorship of Mary Cover Jones, a woman who asked far more questions than I ever had; his pleasure in working with men and women who interrupted, argued, and teased. He’d given me the clues since the first day I met him. He’d come out and said it many times: Find your spine. Don’t just sit there like a scared rabbit. Our happiest and most passionate moments had come when I’d spoken up, not when I’d submitted. What on earth was wrong with me, that I’d let things go this far?
I could have stood up to him more. I should have. How would I deal with my life now, knowing that?
Part III
Not So High a Wall
The past ten years have seen a growing tendency—but one combatted at every point by the old line philosopher—on the part of the “mental sciences” to crawl over the stone wall that separates them from behaviorism.
—John Watson, Behaviorism, 1930
Chapter 29
To be witty, you can’t be worrying who in the crowd gathered around you will laugh or smile, judge or sneer. To flirt, you can’t have too much riding on whether your targeted gentleman flirts back. To be a flapper, you have to swing your hips and laugh with your head back, throat bared, and drink like a fish.
It all works best if you don’t care too much, and I didn’t.
It all works best if you have money, too. We had some—far more than John had ever managed to earn in our Hopkins days—but it was never enough, given that John had an ex-wife and a former family to support and expensive tastes of his own (shirts ordered from a London tailor, only the best suits and shoes, the new boat with its requisite harbor and shore-club fees). So there was always an air of desperation, pushing us to write the next book, the all-important parenting guide, which had to be a smash.
Even though I played some of John’s games, and he in turn learned not to violate at least some of my limits where the boys were involved; even though our sex life found its post-baby rhythms again, and he kept his promise of taking me out more than he’d taken me when Billy and Jimmy were very small, it didn’t suffice. Not for him. In 1926, John was fired from the last part-time teaching position he would ever hold, at the New School. The day he found the nerve to tell me, he tried spinning an elaborate conspiracy about warring scientific theories and irreconcilable departmental personalities and budget dilemmas. But it had been so sudden. And John’s reputation—a boon for that hotbed of progressive ideas—was golden. Dismissals at the New School were unheard of.
“Who did you sleep with?” I finally asked, bored, rising to put away a half-finished casserole.
When he didn’t answer, I said, “Must have been a student, not a faculty member.”
No answer.
I asked, “Or plural? Students?”
Still no answer.
“They’re a tolerant bunch,” I said, sounding as cool as the banana cream pie I started to slide out of the icebox, and then put back, reconsidering. Gin went better alone. And I had a figure to watch. “I’m guessing they gave you multiple warnings and permission to apologize. But no, that’s right. You don’t apologize, do you?”
Many months had passed since the firing when Mary Cover Jones invited me to lunch, but still I thought she was inviting me to go over the sordid New School details or to issue some wise, sisterly warning. I wanted none of it. I still remembered her and Harold trying to warn me away from John, all those years ago. I had a hunch, fair or not, that she would also press on the wounds of my continuing absence from an active, public career in psychology.
On the date of our scheduled lunch, Mary nearly had to cancel, which—given the state of my hangover from a Long Island party John and I had attended the night before—didn’t seem like the worst thing. She asked if I wanted to come over to her apartment with both children, so that my sons, ages six and three, could play with her daughters, ages five and two. I assured her that Billy was off to summer camp, and Jimmy had his own routines at home with Cora and our new cook, Jeanette. Mary took that comment in stride, agreeing that it was a treat to have a women’s date out, worrying neither about work nor children. But then something else came up, and Mary telephoned back to ask, again, if I wouldn’t mind tea at her place. I told her I couldn’t bear making that much work for her. It was a childless lunch out on the town or nothing.
Lucky me, I thought, when the first step into sunlight made my head throb. But then I took in a few deep breaths and realized I was being silly. It was a beautiful day for driving into the city. Chin up and all that.
We met at a sidewalk bistro just off Central Park. The trees were in sticky full bloom, exhaling green freshness toward us, and the paths were crowded with strolling city dwellers enjoying the summer weather. I knew what I wanted to eat and I handed back the menu within a moment, while Mary continued to puzzle, the menu propped two inches from her face. The waiter came back to take our order, and I went first, but Mary still wasn’t ready. The waiter was prepared to leave and come back a third time but I put a firm hand on his soft white sleeve, offering my most charming smile, refusing to let him leave.
“The trout, really?” Mary said. “I’m not sure. With fish you can’t be too careful.”
“Oh, but you can be too careful. You really can be.”
I told the confused waiter to bring us two of everything and to get me a soda water before I went into the kitchen and got it myself. Then I lit a cigarette and listened to my old school friend worry aloud, making mountains of molehills.
“I don’t know where the time goes,” she said. “When Lesley said her first word, that’s when it hit me that a year had passed since you’d called, and I’d always meant to find time to see you. We’re not living our mothers’ lives, are we? They had time for suffragette meetings and rallies and Sunday church suppers, and I have trouble finding a clean blouse to wear in the morning.”
“We’ve achieved the lives they wanted for us,” I said, pressing a finger into my temple, still wishing for a stronger drink. “You certainly have, anyway.”
I don’t think she even heard the second part of my statement, which had cost me some effort to
make. She was squinting across the street, toward the park, where an elegant woman was walking, wearing a simple white suit with an unstructured cardigan jacket edged in black, with gold buttons down the front. A small ball of canine fluff, breed unknown, hurried along on a thin leash just behind her, drawing attention to the woman’s slim ankles and high heels.
“Chanel,” I remarked with appreciation.
“Is that what you call that breed?”
“Not the dog, Mary.” I laughed. “The designer of the suit! Really, you’re too much.”
I expected her to laugh, too, I really did, but instead she looked taken aback. “Of course I’ve heard of Chanel. I just misheard you.” She recovered quickly, pushing her glasses back up her nose. “I can’t keep up with that, but maybe I won’t have to,” she said. “I hear that fashion isn’t so up-to-the-minute in California.”
“Unfashionable? Los Angeles?”
“Northern California, I meant.”
“Is Harold looking at an academic job there?”
She paused, frowning. “We both are. They may have a position for me at Berkeley.”
“Mary, that’s wonderful. Congratulations.”
I had been reluctant to meet with her, and now she was leaving, which was perhaps for the best.
With every passing year there was less chance of running into someone who knew the old me: the Vassar college girl with academic ambitions, or the briefly scandal-plagued young paramour, or even the nervous young mother. It was so easy to remake oneself these days. No one’s memory lasted very long, especially if you stopped giving them reminders. Anyway, it was, perhaps, as John had always said: we are simply our present behaviors. My own behaviors lately had not been so virtuous, but my expectations and standards had declined as well. Had we really thought we could make humans happier, healthier, perfect? I was settling, now, for getting through each day. If I seemed brittle, or embittered, perhaps I was.
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