by Ira Levin
Sound and movement turned her toward the Van Sant house.
Carol Van Sant, a dark silhouette against the radiance of her kitchen doorway, was pressing the lid down onto a garbage can. She bent to the ground, red hair glinting, and came up with something large and round, a stone; she put it on top of the lid.
‘Hi!’ Joanna called.
Carol straightened and stood facing her, tall and leggy and naked-seeming – but edged by the purple of a lighted-from-behind dress. ‘Who’s there?’ she called.
‘Joanna Eberhart,’ Joanna said. ‘Did I scare you? I’m sorry if I did.’ She went toward the fence that divided her and Walter’s property from the Van Sants’.
‘Hi, Joanna,’ Carol said in her nasal New Englandy voice. ‘No, you didn’t scay-er me. It’s a nice night, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ Joanna said. ‘And I’m done with my unpacking, which makes it even nicer.’ She had to speak loud; Carol had stayed by her doorway, still too far away for comfortable conversation even though she herself was now at the flower bed edging the split-rail fence. ‘Kim had a great time with Allison this afternoon,’ she said. ‘They get along beautifully together.’
‘Kim’s a sweet little girl,’ Carol said. ‘I’m glad Allison has such a nice new friend next door. Goodnight, Joanna.’ She turned to go in.
‘Hey, wait a minute!’ Joanna called.
Carol turned back. ‘Yes?’ she said.
Joanna wished that the flower bed and fence weren’t there, so she could move closer. Or, darn it, that Carol would come to her side of the fence. What was so top-priority-urgent in that fluorescent-lighted copper-pot-hanging kitchen? ‘Walter’s coming over to talk with Ted,’ she said, speaking loud to Carol’s naked-seeming silhouette. ‘When you’ve got the kids down, why don’t you come over and have a cup of coffee with me?’
‘Thanks, I’d like to,’ Carol said, ‘but I have to wax the family-room floor.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Night is the only time to do it, until school starts.’
‘Well can’t it wait? It’s only three more days.’
Carol shook her head. ‘No, I’ve put it off too long as it is,’ she said. ‘It’s all over scuff-marks. And besides, Ted will be going to the Men’s Association later on.’
‘Does he go every night?’
‘Just about.’
Dear God! ‘And you stay home and do housework?’
‘There’s always something or other that has to be done,’ Carol said. ‘You know how it is. I have to finish the kitchen now. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight,’ Joanna said, and watched Carol go – profile of too-big bosom – into her kitchen and close the door. She reappeared almost instantly at the over-the-sink window, adjusting the water lever, taking hold of something and scrubbing it. Her red hair was neat and gleaming; her thin-nosed face looked thoughtful (and, damn it all, intelligent); her big purpled breasts bobbed with her scrubbing.
Joanna went back to the patio. No, she didn’t know how it was, thank God. Not to be like that, a compulsive hausfrau. Who could blame Ted for taking advantage of such an asking-to-be-exploited patsy?
She could blame him, that’s who.
Walter came out of the house in a light jacket. ‘I don’t think I’ll be more than an hour or so,’ he said.
‘That Carol Van Sant is not to be believed,’ she said. ‘She can’t come over for a cup of coffee because she has to wax the family-room floor. Ted goes to the Men’s Association every night and she stays home doing housework.’
‘Jesus,’ Walter said, shaking his head.
‘Next to her,’ she said, ‘my mother is Kate Millett.’
He laughed. ‘See you later,’ he said, and kissed her cheek and went away across the patio.
She took another look at her star, brighter now – Get to work, you, she thought to it – and went into the house.
The four of them went out together Saturday morning, seatbelted into their spotless new station wagon; Joanna and Walter in sunglasses, talking of stores and shopping, and Pete and Kim power-switching their windows down and up and down and up till Walter told them to stop it. The day was vivid and gem-edged, a signal of autumn. They drove to Stepford Centre (white frame Colonial shopfronts, postcard pretty) for discount-slip hardware and pharmaceuticals; then south on Route Nine to a large new shopping mall – discount-slip shoes for Pete and Kim (what a wait!) and a no-discount jungle gym; then east on Eastbridge Road to a McDonald’s (Big Macs, chocolate shakes); and a little farther east for antiques (an octagonal end table, no documents); and then north-south-east-west all over Stepford – Anvil Road, Cold Creek Road, Hunnicutt, Beavertail, Burgess Ridge – to show Pete and Kim (Joanna and Walter had seen it all house-hunting) their new school and the schools they would go to later on, the you’d-never-guess-what-it-is-from-the-outside non-polluting incinerator plant, and the picnic grounds where a community pool was under construction. Joanna sang ‘Good Morning Starshine’ at Pete’s request, and they all did ‘MacNamara’s Band’ with each one imitating a different instrument in the final part, and Kim threw up, but with enough warning for Walter to pull over and stop and get her unbuckled and out of the station wagon in time, thank God.
That quieted things down. They drove back through Stepford Centre – slowly, because Pete said that he might throw up too. Walter pointed out the white frame library, and the Historical Society’s two-hundred-year-old white frame cottage.
Kim, looking upward through her window, lifted a sucked-thin Life Saver from her tongue and said, ‘What’s that big one?’
‘That’s the Men’s Association house,’ Walter said.
Pete leaned to his seatbelt’s limit and ducked and looked. ‘Is that where you’re going tonight?’ he asked.
‘That’s right,’ Walter said.
‘How do you get to it?’
‘There’s a driveway farther up the hill.’
They had come up behind a truck with a man in khakis standing in its open back, his arms stretched to its sides. He had brown hair and a long lean face and wore eyeglasses. ‘That’s Gary Claybrook, isn’t it?’ Joanna said.
Walter pressed a fleeting horn-beep and waved his arm out the window. Their across-the-street neighbour bent to look at them, then smiled and waved and caught hold of the truck. Joanna smiled and waved. Kim yelled, ‘Hello, Mr Claybrook!’ and Pete yelled, ‘Where’s Jeremy?’
‘He can’t hear you,’ Joanna said.
‘I wish I could ride a truck that way!’ Pete said, and Kim said, ‘Me too!’
The truck was creeping and grinding, fighting against the steep left-curving upgrade. Gary Claybrook smiled self-consciously at them. The truck was half filled with small cartons.
‘What’s he doing, moonlighting?’ Joanna asked.
‘Not if he makes as much as Ted says he does,’ Walter said.
‘Oh?’
‘What’s moonlighting?’ Pete asked.
The truck’s brake lights flashed; it stopped, its left-turn signal winking.
Joanna explained what moonlighting was.
A car shot down the hill, and the truck began moving across the left lane. ‘Is that the driveway?’ Pete asked, and Walter nodded and said, ‘Yep, that’s it.’ Kim switched her window farther down, shouting, ‘Hello, Mr Claybrook!’ He waved as they drove past him.
Pete sprung his seatbelt buckle and jumped around onto his knees. ‘Can I go there sometime?’ he asked, looking out the back.
‘Mm-mmn, sorry,’ Walter said. ‘No kids allowed.’
‘Boy, they’ve got a great big fence!’ Pete said. ‘Like in Hogan’s Heroes!’
‘To keep women out,’ Joanna said, looking ahead, a hand to the rim of her sunglasses.
Walter smiled.
‘Really?’ Pete asked. ‘Is that what it’s for?’
‘Pete took his belt off,’ Kim said.
‘Pete—’ Joanna said.
They drove up Norwood Road, then west on Winter Hill Drive.
As a matter of principle she wasn’t going to do any housework. Not that there wasn’t plenty to do, God knows, and some that she actually wanted to do, like getting the living-room bookshelves squared away – but not tonight, no sir. It could darn well wait. She wasn’t Carol Van Sant and she wasn’t Mary Ann Stavros – pushing a vacuum cleaner past a downstairs window when she went to lower Pete’s shade.
No sir. Walter was at the Men’s Association, fine; he had to go there to join, and he’d have to go there once or twice a week to get it changed. But she wasn’t going to do housework while he was there (at least not this first time) any more than he was going to do it when she was out somewhere – which she was going to be on the next clear moonlit night: down in the Centre getting some time exposures of those Colonial shopfronts. (The hardware store’s irregular panes would wobble the moon’s reflection, maybe interestingly.)
So once Pete and Kim were sound asleep she went down to the cellar and did some measuring and planning in the storage room that was going to be her darkroom, and then she went back up, checked Pete and Kim, and made herself a vodka and tonic and took it into the den. She put the radio on to some schmaltzy but nice Richard-Rodgersy stuff, moved Walter’s contracts and things carefully from the centre of the desk, and got out her magnifier and red pencil and the contact sheets of her quick-before-I-leave-the-city pictures. Most of them were a waste of film, as she’d suspected when taking them – she was never any good when she was rushing – but she found one that really excited her, a shot of a well-dressed young black man with an attaché case, glaring venomously at an empty cab that had just passed him. If his expression enlarged well, and if she darkened the background to bring up the blurred cab, it could be an arresting picture – one she was sure the agency would be willing to handle. There were plenty of markets for pictures dramatizing racial tensions.
She red-pencilled an asterisk beside the print and went on looking for others that were good or at least part good but croppable. She remembered her vodka and tonic and sipped it.
At a quarter past eleven she was tired, so she put her things away in her side of the desk, put Walter’s things back where they had been, turned the radio off, and brought her glass into the kitchen and rinsed it. She checked the doors, turned the lights off – except the one in the entrance hall – and went upstairs.
Kim’s elephant was on the floor. She picked it up and tucked it under the blanket beside the pillow; then pulled the blanket up onto Kim’s shoulders and fondled her ringlets very lightly.
Pete was on his back with his mouth open, exactly as he had been when she had checked before. She waited until she saw his chest move, then opened his door wider, switched the hall light off, and went into her and Walter’s room.
She undressed, braided her hair, showered, rubbed in face cream, brushed her teeth, and got into bed.
Twenty of twelve. She turned the lamp off.
Lying on her back, she swung out her right leg and arm. She missed Walter beside her, but the expanse of coolsheet smoothness was pleasant. How many times had she gone to bed alone since they were married? Not many: the nights he’d been out of town on Marburg-Donlevy business; the times she’d been in the hospital with Pete and Kim; the night of the power failure; when she’d gone home for Uncle Bert’s funeral – maybe twenty or twenty-five times in all, in the ten years and a little more. It wasn’t a bad feeling. By God, it made her feel like Joanna Ingalls again. Remember her?
She wondered if Walter was getting bombed. That was liquor on that truck that Gary Claybrook had been riding in (or had the cartons been too small for liquor?). But Walter had gone in Vic Stavros’s car, so let him get bombed. Not that he really was likely to; he hardly ever did. What if Vic Stavros got bombed? The sharp curves on Norwood Road—
Oh nuts. Why worry?
The bed was shaking. She lay in the dark seeing the darker dark of the open bathroom door, and the glint of the dresser’s handles, and the bed kept shaking her in a slow steady rhythm, each shake accompanied by a faint spring-squeak, again and again and again. It was Walter who was shaking! He had a fever! Or the d.t.’s? She spun around and leaned to him on one arm, staring, reaching to find his brow. His eye-whites looked at her and turned instantly away; all of him turned from her, and the tenting of the blanket at his groin was gone as she saw it, replaced by the shape of his hip. The bed became still.
He had been – masturbating?
She didn’t know what to say.
She sat up.
‘I thought you had the d.t.’s,’ she said. ‘Or a fever.’
He lay still. ‘I didn’t want to wake you,’ he said. ‘It’s after two.’
She sat there and caught her breath.
He stayed on his side, not saying anything.
She looked at the room, its windows and furniture dim in the glow from the night light in Pete and Kim’s bathroom. She fixed her braid down straight and rubbed her hand on her midriff.
‘You could have,’ she said. ‘Woke me. I wouldn’t have minded.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘Gee whiz, you don’t have to do that,’ she said.
‘I just didn’t want to wake you,’ he said. ‘You were sound asleep.’
‘Well next time wake me.’
He came over onto his back. No tent.
‘Did you?’ she asked.
‘No,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Well’ – and smiled at him – ‘now I’m up.’ She lay down beside him, turning to him, and held her arm out over him; and he turned to her and they embraced and kissed. He tasted of Scotch. ‘I mean, consideration is fine,’ she said in his ear, ‘but Jesus.’
It turned out to be one of their best times ever – for her, at least. ‘Wow,’ she said, coming back from the bathroom, ‘I’m still weak.’
He smiled at her, sitting in bed and smoking.
She got in with him and settled herself comfortably under his arm, drawing his hand down onto her breast. ‘What did they do,’ she said, ‘show you dirty movies or something?’
He smiled. ‘No such luck,’ he said. He put his cigarette by her lips, and she took a puff of it. ‘They took eight-fifty from me in poker,’ he said, ‘and they chewed my ear off about the Zoning Board’s evil intentions re Eastbridge Road.’
‘I was afraid you were getting bombed.’
‘Me? Two Scotches. They’re not heavy drinkers. What did you do?’
She told him, and about her hopes for the picture of the black man. He told her about some of the men he had met: the pediatrician the Van Sants and the Claybrooks had recommended, the magazine illustrator who was Stepford’s major celebrity, two other lawyers, a psychiatrist, the Police Chief, the manager of the Centre Market.
‘The psychiatrist should be in favour of letting women in,’ she said.
‘He is,’ Walter said. ‘And so is Dr Verry. I didn’t sound out any of the others; I didn’t want to come on as too much of an activist my first time there.’
‘When are you going again?’ she asked – and was suddenly afraid (why?) that he would say tomorrow.
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Listen, I’m not going to make it a way of life the way Ted and Vic do. I’ll go in a week or so, I guess; I don’t know. It’s kind of provincial really.’
She smiled and snuggled closer to him.
She was about a third of the way down the stairs, going by foot-feel, holding the damn laundry basket to her face because of the damn banister, when wouldn’t you know it, the double-damn phone rang.
She couldn’t put the basket down, it would fall, and there wasn’t enough room to turn around with it and go back up; so she kept going slowly down, foot-feeling and thinking Okay, okay to the phone’s answer-me-this-instant ringing.
She made it to the bottom, put the basket down, and stalked to the den desk.
‘Hello,’ she said – the way she felt, with no put-on graciousness.
‘Hi, is this Joanna Eberhart?’ The vo
ice was loud, happy, raspy; Peggy Clavenger-ish. But Peggy Clavenger had been with Par´is-Match the last she’d heard, and wouldn’t even know she was married, let alone where she was living.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Who’s this?’
‘We haven’t been formally introduced,’ the no-not-Peggy-Clavenger voice said, ‘but I’m going to do it right now. Bobbie, I’d like you to meet Joanna Eberhart. Joanna, I’d like you to meet Bobbie Markowe – that’s K, O, W, E. Bobbie has been living here in Ajax Country for five weeks now, and she’d like very much to know an “avid shutterbug with a keen interest in politics and the Women’s Lib movement.” That’s you, Joanna, according to what it says here in the Stepford Chronicle. Or Chronic Ill, depending on your journalistic standards. Have they conveyed an accurate impression of you? Are you really not deeply concerned about whether pink soap pads are better than blue ones or vice versa? Given complete freedom of choice, would you just as soon not squeeze the Charmin? Hello? Are you still there, Joanna? Hello?’
‘Hello,’ Joanna said. ‘Yes, I’m here. And how I’m here! Hello! Son of a gun, it pays to advertise!’
‘What a pleasure to see a messy kitchen!’ Bobbie said. It doesn’t quite come up to mine – you don’t have the little peanut-butter handprints on the cabinets – but it’s good, it’s very good. Congratulations.’
‘I can show you some dull dingy bathrooms if you’d like,’ Joanna said.
‘Thanks. I’ll just take the coffee.’
‘Is instant okay?’
‘You mean there’s something else?’
She was short and heavy-bottomed, in a blue Snoopy sweatshirt and jeans and sandals. Her mouth was big, with unusually white teeth, and she had blue take-in-everything eyes and short dark tufty hair. And small hands and dirty toes. And a husband named Dave who was a stock analyst, and three sons, ten, eight, and six. And an Old English sheepdog and a corgi. She looked a bit younger than Joanna, thirty-two or -three. She drank two cups of coffee and ate a Ring Ding and told Joanna about the women of Fox Hollow Lane.
‘I’m beginning to think there’s a – nationwide contest I haven’t heard about,’ she said, tonguing her chocolated fingertips. ‘A million dollars and – Paul Newman for the cleanest house by next Christmas. I mean, it’s scrub, scrub, scrub; wax, wax, wax—’