She slipped a satin peignoir over her nightgown, pulled open the drapes—which she had instructed Browning to close at night, as they had been when she was a child—and carried her handbag over to the chaise. She pulled out her box of hash and rolled a joint. Getting low, have to do something soon. Have to cash a check. Maybe Elizabeth would advance her some cash. …
She inhaled deeply and leaned back against the chaise arm, put her feet up, gazed out into the blackness. Moon gone but lots of stars tonight. Have to do something about this feeling, can’t stand it, all squooshy inside, everything felt wrong. It was so unjust! She wanted to shriek with it, suddenly understood people who scrawled messages on sheets and hung them out their windows, INJUSTICE! UNFAIR!
How could they talk to her the way they did, talk about her the way they did, call her names. Prostitute, whore, that other word! When she had never, not once in her life, had sex outside of marriage, she never fooled around even though god knows there were plenty of chances even now, men still desired her. When she was young, she had been the belle of every ball.
True, she loved to flirt, but it was just fun, she never ever went further.
So how could they …?
Well of course, that one’s a lesbian, bitter, she couldn’t ever get a man, just look at her, well her face is pretty enough I guess, striking, those blue eyes and that brown skin, she could be pretty if she had even a rudimentary understanding of cosmetics but not an iota of charm what man would want that and the way she dresses … And Elizabeth a dried-up spinster, probably still a virgin that Clare didn’t look like he had a working instrument, and he was the only one, the only one she ever brought home anyway. Bitter jealous shrew. Jealous of my looks, my style, the way men crumple at the sight of me, look at that Dr. Stamp, look at Hollis. Even Aldo watches me longingly, he thinks I don’t notice of course I’d never let on I do, a servant. Even that reporter in the brown jacket, his eyes were hanging out of their sockets looking at my chest. That’s power, real power for a woman, bringing men to their knees, making them do whatever you want. Everyone knows that. Men may rule the world but women rule men.
Besides, a woman needs a man. It’s obvious, women were made for marriage and children and you have to have a man for that, someone to support you. A woman needs an escort! Otherwise she could never go anywhere at night, never travel except on those hideous tours, buses filled with dried-up old women all desperate for a man. Without a man, you live all alone like Elizabeth, lonely old age.
. …
Well, I won’t be alone long! I just need to get on my feet, a few hundred thou would put things in order. If Father hadn’t fallen ill, I was going to come up and ask him. If he dies, I should be all right. Alberto’s fault, the bastard. Then Don but that had to be, could not not be. …
It isn’t true I married for money. So UNFAIR! Lizzie should know, I wrote her. Still corresponded in those days, well I did anyway, and she wrote once in a while, wrote that time to crow, so proud of herself getting into that fancy English school. Oh how I cried when she went away, I was brokenhearted, it was awful when she wasn’t here, worse, even though Amelia was here with Alex. I needed her so, she must have known, I wrote her. Please don’t go and leave me, Lizzie! She never even answered. Came home for the Fourth of July party and then left, never came back, never. Left me alone here.
So of course as soon as I could I got married, what else could I do? He would never have let me live someplace else on my own, he wouldn’t have given me the money, besides I would have been terrified, I didn’t know how to do anything, manage a household, servants. And Harry was so sweet, fatherly, well he was the same age as Father, but that didn’t matter to me I told him it made me love him more, so sweet, he took care of me better than Father ever did, gave me my own charge accounts and didn’t quibble about the bills like Father, gave me a household allowance, never questioned the amounts, we ate well, he liked that. He even went with me to the fashion shows, liked to see me looking splendid. Holding me on his lap like a baby, well I was one really, wasn’t I, only nineteen. Thought I was so grown up of course. Looked so grown up to myself in strapless gowns, my hair swept up, black stockings and high heels.
Harry was like a father to me, took care of everything, I didn’t have to worry about anything except managing servants, he hired that housekeeper, Mrs. Brundage, because I was so young when my mother died. She taught me to arrange menus, oversee the housekeeping, talk to servants like a grown-up.
He was kind, patient, never got angry like Father, of course he was different with his children. But who can blame him, they were a terrible lot. Dealing with them wasn’t much fun, many’s the time they made me cry, they were older than I, it wasn’t my fault Harry adored me. When they called me names I told Father, he bought me a Jag for a wedding present, threw that gigantic wedding, that stopped them. No poor little gold digger seduced their father. Harry pursued me, came at me the same Fourth of July party Elizabeth came to before she left. Serendipity. Father’s best friend but he came after me anyway, that showed how much passion he had. Father embarrassed, tried to stop it. Said I’d elope if he didn’t give me permission, embarrass him even more. Willful little vixen, he said. Looked at me with his eyes skewed up, sometimes when he did that I thought he hated me. In the end he gave in, gave me that beautiful wedding, the tents, three orchestras, a dance floor built out over the lawn, oysters and champagne—I looked so gorgeous then, picture still on my table. …
It wasn’t my fault Harry died, he was fifty-eight after all, those kids of his saying I wore him out. Of course Father’s still going at eighty-two. But that was absurd. We didn’t even do it that much after the first year, once I got pregnant and then after I had Marty, he couldn’t. … Sometimes I had the feeling he was seeing someone else but by then I didn’t care. It’s fun having someone crazy in love with you but sex was overrated it seemed to me. Really a bore.
Until Don.
But even if he was seeing someone else I had to stay married to him, I had a child, his son, true Marty was his fourth son, third family, he wasn’t exactly thrilled. But I didn’t care what he did on the side, I didn’t want a divorce, I wanted to be a wife, I wanted to walk into parties with my husband, be Mrs. Somebody. I didn’t want to be on my own like these young women today, to hear them talk you’d think it was fun to have to worry about money and how much you spend on clothes and have to find your own apartment and order your own telephone and pay all the bills by yourself and run things all by yourself. Worry about your cars, insurance, garages, repairs, chauffeurs. Just as well I can’t afford them anymore. … Still I do miss it, hate taking cabs, surly drivers who can’t speak English, who expect you to tell them how to get where you’re going, hot smell of their bodies penetrating the cab, nauseating. …
When he died thank god it was at the Athletic Club playing squash not in another woman’s bed, that would have been so humiliating. Humiliating as it was, his children suing as if he hadn’t already given them huge annuities, so greedy, all that money he left me tied up for years, then most of it entailed to Martin, my son richer than I, really unfair that judge. How was I supposed to keep up the apartment and the house in Vail on three million dollars? How far does that go? Probably punishing me for marrying Alberto, my lawyer warned me to wait, judge’s revenge, he had the hots for me that judge I saw it. But I couldn’t wait, five years it took to settle, I was so lonely, stuck in that apartment with a baby, and Alberto was so gorgeous and a nobleman, so glamorous, he’d dated Rita Hayworth, Ava Gardner, and he wanted me. But he drained me dry that bastard, put hardly a penny into the kitty, and for all his ardor he was worse in bed than Harry, leaping on me from behind, humping me like a dog. Paid practically no attention when I gave him a son. Then humiliating me that way, all the papers full of it, Nina Newton and Alberto on the beach on the Riviera, both nearly naked, made me feel like an old stay-at-home, fat and pregnant and old, the two of them gold in the sun, their bodies still slim and muscular. …
Only twenty-eight and alone with three kids, well two and a half, Marty was eight, Bertie two, Marie-Laure about to be born. And nearly broke, that bastard lived it up at my expense, that was another irony, the papers full of this huge settlement I got from Alberto, not a penny of that did I ever see, he had nothing, Nina Newton supported him until she got tired of it and threw him out. He married the virgin daughter of some Italian industrialist who wanted to buy his little girl a title, all Alberto had to offer. Still he probably demanded she undergo a virginity test like Princess Diana.
I was getting old, a bit plump, had three kids to support and was nearly broke. I had to get back in circulation fast, find a husband, I had no choice. I disciplined myself. People think looks are an accident of birth, they don’t know the work it takes. Went on a strict diet after I weaned Marie-Laure, lost twenty pounds. Exercised to get my skin looking good again. I had to marry the first eligible man who came along, lucky Paul wasn’t repellent and he didn’t mind that I had small children as long as he didn’t have to have anything to do with them, made me sign a prenuptial agreement not to have any more not to claim more than—how much was it?—in case of divorce. God knows he was rich enough, if I had just waited for him to die I wouldn’t have had to worry the rest of my life, but Jesus he’s still alive, his own airplane, the chateau in the Loire Valley, the villa in Gstaad, one in Costa Rica, Capri. …
Oh that house on Capri. The only thing Paul had that I miss. Bougainvillea mounting the hills, cerise and lavender, orange, red, uncontainable flowers pouring out of the warm earth. Everything green, leaves on stone, gray stone roads, stone walls, white houses with red tile roofs. The villa surrounded by lilies and hibiscus, hidden by vines and tulip trees but from upstairs you could see water, the Bay of Naples the color of Don’s eyes, water all around, as far as you could see. Donkey bells, old women in black trudging up the hillsides bent under their loads, the servants quiet, knew their place. Downstairs rooms cool and dark however hot the sun, white walls with sienna tile floors, I’d play Debussy, I could still play then, feel the music float out into the morning. Better when he wasn’t there: he didn’t like Debussy. Or Mozart or Beethoven or Bach. Complaining, do you have to play that muck? Only Chopin he liked. That was okay I suppose, I got so I could almost play the Ballades well.
Gone now. Fingers weak. So caught up with Don, grief, I never play. Maybe try to get it back.
Sex a duty. He liked it that way, liked me still and taut, liked to hurt me, twist my wrists, bite my breasts, hear me cry out. That look on his face afterwards, triumphant, scornful. Me something bought and paid for, owned.
She stood suddenly, the roach still between her fingertips, and stared at the window as if a ghost stood there.
Bought and paid for. That’s what they mean.
She lowered herself slowly to the chaise.
But it’s not fair! I gave it all up, oh what a pleasure to tell him I was leaving him, the look on his face, oooh! what a triumph, my triumph that time, you won’t get a penny from me you know that, bitch.
I didn’t care. Nothing mattered but Don, Don, my darling Don. The minute our eyes connected, electric, unbreakable connection, had to touch, had to hold each other. …
Anyway, I thought the prenuptial thingy said I was to get so many hundred thousand a year in case of divorce. I didn’t realize that was only if he wanted the divorce. My lawyer didn’t explain that. Men stick together. Cut me off with nothing.
I didn’t care what it cost me. Then. Don’t care now. Couldn’t stand near Don without my blood rushing from my head, vacating fingertips, toes, lips, all pumping away flooding my heart. Couldn’t speak. That first time, that party at the Swedish embassy: blue eyes piercing mine as if they’d discovered a miracle, finally found what they needed. Direct line to my heart and I thought, oh my god, this is it what I’ve wanted. Always. I wanted to walk into his arms but I didn’t even know his name, he was just a man standing in a group at a cocktail party. Eyes the color of the sea, the bay, aquamarine, piercing, penetrating me, skin, bone, muscle, wanting me, wanting to take my bones in his hands, control my body. I would have let him break them, me. Take me. Do what you want with me.
Day we had a picnic in the Rockies, I still had my house in Vail then, Paul thought I’d gone out there alone, he didn’t care, he was in Brussels doing one of his superimportant things. Don bought lunch in a picnic basket, wine and cheese and pâté and bread and grapes and apples and we drove out and spread a blanket and ate and made love in a wide gully full of wildflowers. And fell asleep with our arms entwined—never before had I done that—and when I woke up he was gone and I was terrified for a moment until I saw him it looked as if he were rising up out of the earth, he was coming back over the edge of the gully, had gone to pee probably. And he looked like a giant, huge, his arms thick-muscled shapely strong to work the earth, to work machines, to exert control, to work, to use on me, a Man’s arms meant, built to hold me, embrace me, own me, Woman, lying there white and soft and silky and his, oh his, only his. Forever.
Mary wept, rubbing her clitoris in her intolerable need.
7
WHEN MARY HEARD THAT Ronnie was planning to go to Boston after the hospital visit on Tuesday, she made some phone calls, then announced she would go too and that Aldo would drive them. Ronnie, surprised and relieved, then surprised at her own relief, puzzled over it: Do I really care that much? What they think, how they act to me? At the same time, she dreaded the drive there and back with the sister most hostile to her. Would it be a long silent ride, bristling with unspoken hate? Better to take the train. There’s no possibility that we can talk to each other agreeably—she hates me, hates my color, my background, my bastardy, my existence. If I tried to be agreeable, would I be acting with admirable restraint or corrupt complicity? Would I be an Auntie Tom?
For the first quarter hour, Mary spoke only to Aldo, commenting on the changes in the landscape from her girlhood. Aldo, in tones of deep devotion, agreed readily with everything she said. Still the quiet hum of the heavy car was becoming unbearable and Mary was examining her hands, her white gloves in her lap, when Ronnie decided to plunge in.
“I notice you read a lot of poetry,” she said.
Mary’s body swelled subtly like a dried fruit dropped into water. “Yes. How … nice of you … to notice.” She fanned herself with her purse. “Elizabeth thinks I’m a dunce. I guess I imagine everybody does.”
“I saw you reading W. S. Merwin. I’m very fond of him too.”
“Really!” Mary looked at Ronnie strangely. “Whom else do you like?”
They discussed favorites for a time, until Ronnie mentioned Adrienne Rich.
“Feminism seems to me so stupid,” Mary said. “You can’t fight nature after all. As long as women have the babies they will need protection.”
“From who?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Who do they need protection from?”
“Really, Ronnie, your grammar. …”
“Fuck my grammar, Mary. Why do women need protection? They wouldn’t need protection if men didn’t attack them, would they.”
“They need support!”
“They wouldn’t need support if men hadn’t grabbed all the property and resources of the world, would they.”
Mary gazed at her. “But that’s the nature of the male, isn’t it. To be predatory, aggressive.”
“I can’t believe nature created a species in which one sex systematically preys on the other.”
Mary considered this, frowning. “But how else could it be? All through history …”
“History is men’s version of what happened in the last five thousand years. They have every reason to tell the story to make it seem that their predation is a natural fact.”
“You must be a feminist,” Mary concluded.
“Damn straight.”
“Well, I can’t argue with you about the past. I don’t know anything about it. All I know is women
have to survive as they can, in any way they can. And the surest and safest way is to attach themselves to a man.”
“Through marriage without possibility of divorce.”
“Men just have to be forced to support their children. Of course then I … well, I just would have run away,” she ended mysteriously.
“Or abortion?”
Mary shrugged. “Oh I don’t care about that. But women and children need to be protected. It’s terrible what’s happening to all these single girls with babies and middle-aged women thrown out on the refuse heap. My friend Marge Germaine was fifty-two when her husband decided he wanted to marry a twenty-five-year-old chippie. He cut her off with nothing through some legal manipulations and now she’s destitute. Her children have to support her.” She shuddered. “Horrible!”
“At least her children can support her,” Ronnie could not resist saying. “Unlike some.”
“I suppose,” Mary offered vaguely.
“For a nonfeminist, you have a very political view of marriage,” Ronnie commented.
Mary dismissed this. “Anyone with brains knows that marriage is a political affair. Life is a political affair, for godsake,” she added. “Feminists are not the only women with brains, you know.”
“So I see,” Ronnie smiled.
Mary’s heart gave a little lurch. She smiled at the back of Aldo’s head.
They dropped Ronnie at Boston University, then Aldo drove Mary to the Ritz, where she was meeting her old friend Christina for lunch.
Ronnie visited Professor Madrick at BU and arranged to get a research assistant’s library card. The paper-work took forever and she didn’t have time to eat lunch. She went to the polls, then hopped the T to Cambridge to shop at the Coop. Aldo was to pick her up in front of it at four-thirty.
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