The Stepford Wives

by Ira Levin

  ‘It’s the same around here,’ Joanna said. ‘Even at night! And the men all—’

  ‘The Men’s Association!’ Bobbie cried.

  They talked about it – the antiquated sexist unfairness of it, the real injustice, in a town with no women’s organization, not even a League of Women Voters. ‘Believe me, I’ve combed this place,’ Bobbie said. ‘There’s the Garden Club, and a few old-biddy church groups – for which I’m not eligible anyway; “Markowe” is upward-mobile for “Markowitz” – and there’s the very non-sexist Historical Society. Drop in and say hello to them. Corpses in lifelike positions.’

  Dave was in the Men’s Association, and like Walter, thought it could be changed from within. But Bobbie knew better: ‘You’ll see, we’ll have to chain ourselves to the fence before we get any action. How about that fence? You’d think they were refining opium!’

  They talked about the possibility of having a get-together with some of their neighbours, a rap session to wake them to the more active role they could play in the town’s life; but they agreed that the women they had met seemed unlikely to welcome even so small a step toward liberation. They talked about the National Organization for Women, to which they both belonged, and about Joanna’s photography.

  ‘My God, these are great!’ Bobbie said, looking at the four mounted enlargements Joanna had hung in the den. ‘They’re terrific!’

  Joanna thanked her.

  ‘“Avid shutterbug”! I thought that meant Polaroids of the kids! These are marvellous!’

  ‘Now that Kim’s in kindergarten I’m really going to get to work,’ Joanna said.

  She walked Bobbie to her car.

  ‘Damn it, no,’ Bobbie said. ‘We ought to try at least. Let’s talk to these hausfraus; there must be some of them who resent the situation a little. What do you say? Wouldn’t it be great if we could get a group together – maybe even a NOW chapter eventually – and give that Men’s Association a good shaking-up? Dave and Walter are kidding themselves; it’s not going to change unless it’s forced to change; fat-cat organizations never do. What do you say, Joanna? Let’s ask around.’

  Joanna nodded. ‘We should,’ she said. ‘They can’t all be as content as they seem.’

  * * *

  She spoke to Carol Van Sant. ‘Gee, no, Joanna,’ Carol said. ‘That doesn’t sound like the sort of thing that would interest me. Thanks for ay-isking me though.’ She was cleaning the plastic divider in Stacy and Allison’s room, wiping a span of its accordion folds with firm downstrokes of a large yellow sponge.

  ‘It would only be for a couple of hours,’ Joanna said. ‘In the evening, or if it’s more convenient for everybody, sometime during school hours.’

  Carol, crouching to wipe the lower part of the span, said, ‘I’m sorry, but I just don’t have much time for that sort of thing.’

  Joanna watched her for a moment. ‘Doesn’t it bother you,’ she said, ‘that the central organization here in Stepford, the only organization that does anything significant as far as community projects are concerned, is off limits to women? Doesn’t that seem a little archaic to you?’

  ‘“Ar-kay-ic”?’ Carol said, squeezing her sponge in a bucket of sudsy water.

  Joanna looked at her. ‘Out of date, old-fashioned,’ she said.

  Carol squeezed the sponge out above the bucket. ‘No, it doesn’t seem archaic to me,’ she said. She stood up straight and reached the sponge to the top of the next span of folds. ‘Ted’s better equipped for that sort of thing than I am,’ she said, and began wiping the folds with firm downstrokes, each one neatly overlapping the one before. ‘And men need a place where they can relax and have a drink or two,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t women?’

  ‘No, not as much.’ Carol shook her neat red-haired shampoo-commercial head, not turning from her wiping. ‘I’m sorry, Joanna,’ she said, ‘I just don’t have time for a get-together.’

  ‘Okay,’ Joanna said. ‘If you change your mind, let me know.’

  ‘Would you mind if I don’t walk you downstairs?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  She spoke to Barbara Chamalian, on the other side of the Van Sants. ‘Thanks, but I don’t see how I could manage it,’ Barbara said. She was a square-jawed brown-haired woman, in a snug pink dress molding an exceptionally good figure. ‘Lloyd stays in town a lot,’ she said, ‘and the evenings he doesn’t, he likes to go to the Men’s Association. I’d hate to pay a sitter for just—’

  ‘It could be during school hours,’ Joanna said.

  ‘No,’ Barbara said, ‘I think you’d better count me out.’ She smiled, widely and attractively. ‘I’m glad we’ve met though,’ she said. ‘Would you like to come in and sit for a while? I’m ironing.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Joanna said. ‘I want to speak to some of the other women.’

  She spoke to Marge McCormick (‘I honestly don’t think I’d be interested in that’) and Kit Sundersen (‘I’m afraid I haven’t the time; I’m really sorry, Mrs Eberhart’) and Donna Claybrook (‘That’s a nice idea, but I’m so busy these days. Thanks for asking me though’).

  She met Mary Ann Stavros in an aisle in the Centre Market. ‘No, I don’t think I’d have time for anything like that. There’s so much to do around the house. You know.’

  ‘But you go out sometimes, don’t you?’ Joanna said.

  ‘Of course I do,’ Mary Ann said. ‘I’m out now, aren’t I?’

  ‘I mean out. For relaxation.’

  Mary Ann smiled and shook her head, swaying her sheaves of straight blond hair. ‘No, not often.’ she said. ‘I don’t feel much need for relaxation. See you.’ And she went away, pushing her grocery cart; and stopped, took a can from a shelf, looked at it and fitted it down into her cart and went on.

  Joanna looked after her, and into the cart of another woman going slowly past her. My God, she thought, they even fill their carts neatly! She looked into her own: a jumble of boxes and cans and jars. A guilty impulse to put it in order prodded her; but I’m damned if I will! she thought, and grabbed a box from the shelf – Ivory Snow – and tossed it in. Didn’t even need the damn stuff!

  She spoke to the mother of one of Kim’s classmates in Dr Verry’s waiting room; and to Yvonne Weisgalt, on the other side of the Stavroses; and to Jill Burke, in the next house over. All of them turned her down; they either had too little time or too little interest to meet with other women and talk about their shared experiences.

  Bobbie had even worse luck, considering that she spoke to almost twice as many women. ‘One taker,’ she told Joanna. ‘One eighty-five-year-old widow who dragged me through her door and kept me prisoner for a solid hour of close-up saliva spray. Any time we’re ready to storm the Men’s Association, Eda Mae Hamilton is ready and willing.’

  ‘We’d better keep in touch with her,’ Joanna said.

  ‘Oh no, we’re not done yet!’

  They spent a morning calling on women together, on the theory (Bobbie’s) that the two of them, speaking in planned ambiguities, might create the encouraging suggestion of a phalanx of women with room for one more. It didn’t work.

  ‘Jee-zus!’ Bobbie said, ramming her car viciously up Short Ridge Hill. ‘Something fishy is going on here! We’re in the Town That Time Forgot!’

  One afternoon Joanna left Pete and Kim in the care of sixteen-year-old Melinda Stavros and took the train into the city, where she met Walter and their friends Shep and Sylvia Tackover at an Italian restaurant in the theatre district. It was good to see Shep and Sylvia again; they were a bright, homely, energetic couple who had survived several bad blows, including the death by drowning of a four-year-old son. It was good to be in the city again too; Joanna relished the colour and bustle of the busy restaurant.

  She and Walter spoke enthusiastically about Step-ford’s beauty and quiet, and the advantages of living in a house rather than an apartment. She didn’t say anything about how home-centred the Stepford women were, or about the absence of outsid
e-the-home activities. It was vanity, she supposed; an unwillingness to make herself the object of commiseration, even Shep and Sylvia’s. She told them about Bobbie and how amusing she was, and about Stepford’s fine uncrowded schools. Walter didn’t bring up the Men’s Association and neither did she. Sylvia, who was with the city’s Housing and Development Administration, would have had a fit.

  But on the way to the theatre Sylvia gave her a sharp appraising look and said, ‘A tough adjustment?’

  ‘In ways,’ she said.

  ‘You’ll make it,’ Sylvia said, and smiled at her. ‘How’s the photography? It must be great for you up there, coming to everything with a fresh eye.’

  ‘I haven’t done a damn thing,’ she said. ‘Bobbie and I have been running around trying to drum up some Women’s Lib activity. It’s a bit of a backwater, to tell the truth.’

  ‘Running and drumming isn’t your work,’ Sylvia said. ‘Photography is, or ought to be.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a plumber coming in any day now to put in the darkroom sink.’

  ‘Walter looks chipper.’

  ‘He is. It’s a good life really.’

  The play, a musical hit of the previous season, was disappointing. In the train going home, after they had hashed it over for a few minutes, Walter put on his glasses and got out some paperwork, and Joanna skimmed Time and then sat looking out the window and smoking, watching the darkness and the occasional lights riding through it.

  Sylvia was right; photography was her work. To hell with the Stepford women. Except Bobbie, of course.

  Both cars were at the station, so they had to ride home separately. Joanna went first in the station wagon and Walter followed her in the Toyota. The Centre was empty and stage-setty under its three streetlights – yes, she would take pictures there, before the darkroom was finished – and there were headlights and lighted windows up at the Men’s Association house, and a car waiting to pull out of its driveway.

  Melinda Stavros was yawning but smiling, and Pete and Kim were in their beds sound asleep.

  In the family room there were empty milk glasses and plates on the lamp table, and crumpled balls of white paper on the sofa and the floor before it, and an empty ginger ale bottle on the floor among the balls of paper.

  At least they don’t pass it on to their daughters, Joanna thought.

  The third time Walter went to the Men’s Association he called at about nine o’clock and told Joanna he was bringing home the New Projects Committee, to which he had been appointed the time before. Some construction work was being done at the house (she could hear the whine of machinery in the background) and they couldn’t find a quiet place where they could sit and talk.

  ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’m getting the rest of the junk out of the darkroom, so you can have the whole—’

  ‘No, listen,’ he said, ‘stay upstairs with us and get into the conversation. A couple of them are die-hard men-only’s; it won’t do them any harm to hear a woman make intelligent comments. I’m assuming you will.’

  ‘Thanks. Won’t they object?’

  ‘It’s our house.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re not looking for a waitress?’

  He laughed. ‘Oh God, there’s no fooling her,’ he said. ‘Okay, you got me. But an intelligent waitress, all right? Would you? It really might do some good.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Give me fifteen minutes and I’ll even be an intelligent beautiful waitress; how’s that for cooperation?’

  ‘Fantastic. Unbelievable.’

  There were five of them, and one, a cheery little red-faced man of about sixty, with toothpick-ends of waxed moustache, was Ike Mazzard, the magazine illustrator. Joanna, shaking his hand warmly, said, ‘I’m not sure I like you; you blighted my adolescence with those dream girls of yours!’ And he, chuckling, said, ‘You must have matched up pretty well.’

  ‘Would you like to bet on that?’ she said.

  The other four were all late-thirties or early-forties. The tall black-haired one, laxly arrogant, was Dale Coba, the president of the association. He smiled at her with green eyes that disparaged her, and said, ‘Hello, Joanna, it’s a pleasure.’ One of the die-hard men-only’s, she thought; women are to lay. His hand was smooth, without pressure.

  The others were Anselm or Axhelm, Sundersen and Roddenberry. ‘I met your wife,’ she said to Sundersen, who was pale and paunchy, nervous-seeming. ‘If you’re the Sundersens across the way, that is.’

  ‘You did? We are, yes. We’re the only ones in Stepford.’

  ‘I invited her to a get-together, but she couldn’t make it.’

  ‘She’s not very social.’ Sundersen’s eyes looked elsewhere, not at her.

  ‘I’m sorry, I missed your first name,’ she said.

  ‘Herb,’ he said, looking elsewhere.

  She saw them all into the living room and went into the kitchen for ice and soda, and brought them to Walter at the bar cabinet. ‘Intelligent? Beautiful?’ she said, and he grinned at her. She went back into the kitchen and filled bowls with potato chips and peanuts.

  There were no objections from the circle of men when, holding her glass, she said ‘May I?’ and eased into the sofa-end Walter had saved for her. Ike Mazzard and Anselm-or-Axhelm rose, and the others made I’m-thinking-of-rising movements – except Dale Coba, who sat eating peanuts out of his fist, looking across the cocktail table at her with his disparaging green eyes.

  They talked about the Christmas-Toys project and the Preserve-the-Landscape project. Roddenberry’s name was Frank, and he had a pleasant pug-nosed blue-chinned face and a slight stutter; and Coba had a nickname – Diz, which hardly seemed to fit him. They talked about whether this year there shouldn’t be Chanukah lights as well as a crèche in the Centre, now that there were a fair number of Jews in town. They talked about ideas for new projects.

  ‘May I say something?’ she said.

  ‘Sure,’ Frank Roddenberry and Herb Sundersen said. Coba was lying back in his chair looking at the ceiling (disparagingly, no doubt), his hands behind his head, his legs extended.

  ‘Do you think there might be a chance of setting up some evening lectures for adults?’ she asked. ‘Or parent-and-teenager forums? In one of the school auditoriums?’

  ‘On what subject?’ Frank Roddenberry asked.

  ‘On any subject there’s general interest in,’ she said. ‘The drug thing, which we’re all concerned about but which the Chronicle seems to sweep under the rug; what rock music is all about – I don’t know, anything that would get people out and listening and talking to each other.’

  ‘That’s interesting,’ Claude Anselm-or-Axhelm said, leaning forward and crossing his legs, scratching at his temple. He was thin and blond; bright-eyed, restless.

  ‘And maybe it would get the women out too,’ she said. ‘In case you don’t know it, this town is a disaster area for baby-sitters.’

  Everyone laughed, and she felt good and at ease. She offered other possible forum topics, and Walter added a few, and so did Herb Sundersen. Other new-project ideas were brought up; she took part in the talk about them, and the men (except Coba, damn him) paid close attention to her – Ike Mazzard, Frank, Walter, Claude, even Herb looked right at her – and they nodded and agreed with her, or thoughtfully questioned her, and she felt very good indeed, meeting their questions with wit and good sense. Move over, Gloria Steinem!

  She saw, to her surprise and embarrassment, that Ike Mazzard was sketching her. Sitting in his chair (next to still-watching-the-ceiling Dale Coba), he was pecking with a blue pen at a notebook on his dapper-striped knee, looking at her and looking at his pecking.

  Ike Mazzard! Sketching her!

  The men had fallen silent. They looked into their drinks, swirled their ice cubes.

  ‘Hey,’ she said, shifting uncomfortably and smiling, ‘I’m no Ike Mazzard girl.’

  ‘Every girl’s an Ike Mazzard girl,’ Mazzard said, and smiled at her and smiled at his pecking
.

  She looked to Walter; he smiled embarrassedly and shrugged.

  She looked at Mazzard again, and – not moving her head – at the other men. They looked at her and smiled, edgily. ‘Well this is a conversation killer,’ she said.

  ‘Relax, you can move,’ Mazzard said. He turned a page and pecked again.

  Frank said, ‘I don’t think another b-baseball field is all that important.’

  She heard Kim cry ‘Mommy!’ but Walter touched her arm, and putting his glass down, got up and excused himself past Claude.

  The men talked about new projects again. She said a word or two, moving her head but aware all the time of Mazzard looking at her and pecking. Try being Gloria Steinem when Ike Mazzard is drawing you! It was a bit show-offy of him; she wasn’t any once-in-a-lifetime-mustn’t-be-missed, not even in the Pucci loungers. And what were the men so tense about? Their talking seemed forced and gap-ridden. Herb Sundersen was actually blushing.

  She felt suddenly as if she were naked, as if Mazzard were drawing her in obscene poses.

  She crossed her legs; wanted to cross her arms too but didn’t. Jesus, Joanna, he’s a show-offy artist, that’s all. You’re dressed.

  Walter came back and leaned down to her. ‘Just a bad dream,’ he said; and straightening, to the men, ‘Anyone want a refill? Diz? Frank?’

  ‘I’ll take a small one,’ Mazzard said, looking at her, pecking.

  ‘Bathroom down that way?’ Herb asked, getting up.

  The talking went on, more relaxed and casual now.

  New projects.

  Old projects.

  Mazzard tucked his pen into his jacket, smiling.

  She said ‘Whew!’ and fanned herself.

  Coba raised his head, keeping his hands behind it, and chin against chest, looked at the notebook on Mazzard’s knee. Mazzard turned pages, looking at Coba, and Coba nodded and said, ‘You never cease to amaze me.’