Other Women (33 page)

“I doubt if she noticed anything but that lump in Simon’s trousers all evening long.”

Hannah sat down beside him and lit a cigarette.

“Well, I thought she was charming.”

Hannah glanced at him. “You think any female under forty is charming.”

“Who said anything about under forty?”

“But you’ve always gone after chicken, my darling.”

“Just once. And it was the smartest move of my life.”

Hannah smiled and put her hand on the wide-wale corduroy that covered his thigh. “Well, I didn’t like Estelle.”

Arthur smiled. “You never do, my dear. But that hasn’t stopped Simon yet.”

“I am predictable, aren’t I?”

“You’re just a lioness who can’t accept that her cubs are bigger than she is now.”

“I accept it. I just don’t like it sometimes.”

Smiling, Arthur shook open his paper. As Hannah watched the open fire in the stone fireplace and listened to waves pound the lakeshe recalled sitting in a deck chair holding the sleeping baby Simon as ocean swells on the North Atlantic lifted the gray troop ship to the sky. The wind swirled, tugging at her head scarf. She sat there knowing at any moment a torpedo from a German U-boat could send them spiraling to the ocean floor. The indifferent gray sea surging on all sides would register no more than a few bubbles. When she focused on Hitler, torpedoes, and ocean floors littered with ship wreckage, terror flooded her. And if she kept it up, Simon would wake up, feed on her terror, and whine fitfully. With deliberation she focused on Arthur’s smiling face, the bottle of wine they’d soon be splitting, and the sensation of his flesh moving insistently in hers. Panic gradually transmuted into warm wellbeing. Then she erased Arthur from the chalkboard of her mind and retained the soothing warmth. In that

WOMEN

frame of mind, it made very little difference to her whether they wound up on the ocean floor or in port at Bayonne, New Jersey.

As he turned the page of his paper, Arthur leaned over to kiss the side of her neck. She patted his thigh, realizing this was what she tried to convey to clients-that they could. use her to achieve tranquillity, but that they then had to recognize the achievement as their own. A plaster cast could allow a broken bone to heal, but if you left it on too long, the leg muscle began to deteriorate.

Exhaling cigarette smoke, Hannah recalled that she’d made it to Bayonne. All happened as she imagined-the wine and the flesh, and the pleasure in both. What wasn’t as she imagined was Washington, D.c., where the friends of Arthur and his former wife snubbed her. His children loathed her. His ex-wife was having a histrionic nervous breakdown for which both Hannah and Arthur felt responsible. His colleagues disapproved of the whole scene.

Arthur quit his post with the Department of War and opened a law practice in Lake Glass, his New Hampshire hometown. His parents tried to appear understanding, despite the fact that they couldn’t unhow their beloved son could behave so badly. Arthur paraded her in front of them just as Simon had paraded Estelle. Hannah, in an orgy of North Woods loneliness, began her career of baby production, with torrid cocktail party flirtations with Arthur’s old friends between pregnancies. After the horrors and heroics of losing Colin in battle, watching the Luftwaffe from Hampstead Heath, evading torpeon the North Atlantic, and enduring ostracism by the entire U. S.

diplomatic community, simply living and loving with one man in sylvan serenity seemed insupportable.

What a fool she was, she reflected. And yet no different from most people. Humans were problem-solving creatures, and where no problems existed, they created some so they’d have something to solve with their much-vaunted brains. Because if they didn’t, they were forced to confront the echoing stillness beneath all the hubbub, which was terrifying because it was unfamiliar. It seemed like emptiness at first. Only gradually did you realize it was everything.

Arthur put down his paper and smiled. Sometimes she felt like a hot-air balloon straining skyward.

All the ropes had been cut except

OTHER

one-this white-haired man on the leather couch beside her, who’d just taken her hand. When he was gone, what could hold her here?

“Time to hit the sack?” asked Arthur.

“Sounds good to me.” She flipped her cigarette into the fire as she stood up.

Caroline sat on the tweed couch looking out at the parking lot, arms folded across her chest and one ankle resting on the other knee. Hanstudied her with narrowed eyes, wondering what would go on today. Her job required that she take whatever a client dished out. The client didn’t usually realize Hannah was the cook.

Caroline was in full-blown adolescence, testing to discover how to control Hannah. Loaves of bread hadn’t worked. Now, like a physician poking an abdomen for sore spots, Caroline was looking for ways to earn Mummy’s displeasure. Casual sex had been a flop. What would be next? At some point Hannah hoped there would be an angry clash.

Maybe today. There was belligerence to the jut of Caroline’s jaw and the way she held her shoulders.

“So what’s happening?” asked Hannah, propping up her stocking feet and resting her arms long the chair arms.

“Diana and I went to bed together Friday night,”

announced Caroline, uncertain whether to add the news about Brian as well.

“Oh yes? Was it nice?”

“For us it was.”

“What does that mean?”

“What?”

“For us it was.

“Well, I know it’s incomprehensible to you that two women could prefer each other to men.”

Hannah smiled faintly. “It’s not remotely incomprehensible to me. There’ve been several women I’ve felt very close to.” If she were thirty years younger and hadn’t met Arthur, maybe she’d have gone Caroline’s route herself. Who could say?

Caroline looked at her ironically. She spouted a liberal line, but lived a safe, respectable life. She didn’t know what she was talking WOMEN

about when it came to sexual passion between women.

Once you felt it in all its fierce poignancy, it was hard to see how you could do without it, whatever the price. Could she herself do without it, was the question she’d been asking all week.

“Do you want to talk about that relationship today?”

“It’s not something I feel comfortable discussing with a heterosexThere was always the implication hets were doing you a favor, accepting you despite your infirmity.

Fuck them. She didn’t want her love for women labeled a neurotic symptom that needed treatment.

Hannah shrugged and rested her chin on her chest, thinking what prigs clients could be.

Caroline was still struggling with the part of herself that disapproved of lesbianism, and she was calling that part “Hannah.” Carefully Hannah focused on Caroline as she’d be in a few months, once she gathered together, Bo Peep-like, all the lost black sheep of her own personality. If Hannah managed not to kill her first.

“How are your sons handling all this?”

“t111 what?”

“Well, your love life seems in flux lately. Does that unnerve them?”

“My sons are fine. Don’t unload your issues on me.” Caroline glanced at the blue-eyed children on the bulletin board.

Touche, thought Hannah, feeling herself turn a bit pale.

“Maybe you worry about my kids,” continued Caroline, “because you feel like a flop as a mother.”

There was a long pause. “You may be right, Caroline. God knows I’m not perfect. If you want to poke holes in me, we can do that all day long. Or we could do what we’re here for: talk about what’s going on with you.”

“How can you help me if you’ve got your own problems?”

Hannah was beginning to feel keyed up, as she did when important things started happening. “I have my blind spots like everyone else.”

“And you don’t like me noticing them, do you?”

Hannah laughed. “Not much. But what you say may be valid. Now do you want to get something done today or not?”

“Now you’re angry,” Caroline said hopefully.

zzz

OTHER

“Taken aback maybe. Not angry.” Actually she was a bit excited, and struggling not to let it show.

It was a propitious sign when a meek client turned into a brat.

“I almost canceled today.” At lunch with Brian in the hospital cafeteria, as Diana sat across the room laughing with Suzanne, the pressure to make sense of her life seemed too great. She didn’t know what she was doing. To explain it to Hannah was impossible.

“It’s not too late.”

“As long as I’m here, I may as well stay.”

“It’s up to you.” Hannah gazed out the window to the frozen lake, which was covered with a deep new snowfall that sparkled in the sun.

Caroline glared at her. “I’d like to talk some more about Jackson. And about David Michael, the man I left him for.” If she could figure out what went wrong with them, maybe she’d know whether somecd work with Brian. And whether she wanted something to work.

The tug of security, simplicity,

respectability was strong. Especially if Diana was going to perform will-o’-the-wisp maneuvers indefThe tug of Brian’s empty stone house was even stronger, if she really had to find new living quarters.

“Fine. Shoot,” said Hannah with a gesture of her hand.

“The boys are just back from Jackson’s, as a matter of fact.”

“How did it go?”

“As usual. He had tickets to a Celtics game, but he had an emergency at the last minute.”

“Does that sound familiar?”

does.”

“Like my own father, you mean? Yes, I’m starting to realize it

“Good.” Hannah nodded.

“Do you know what he did to make it up to them? Bought them BB guns. Yesterday Jason shot the cat.

I was so upset I called Jackson and said, “Here you spend half your life removing bullets from people’s chests, and you give your sons guns?”’ He said, “Really, Caroline, do you have to be so hysterical all the time?”’ his

“Tell me some more about your life with him.”

As Caroline described her standard suburban marriage, and her standard countercultural muddle of an affair, Hannah focused less on the predictable details than on Caroline’s aggrieved tone of voice.

WOMEN

These two men had ignored, neglected, and betrayed her in all the usual ways. But Caroline’s tone of voice indicated a complicated interhad gone on, that the men in question would have different versions. The closer a client’s account was to “objectivity,”

the more detached the tone of voice.

was … I’ve been over this shit a lot lately,” Caroline was saying, “and it’s like a trip to the morgue to identify corpses. I’ve wasted my life being miserable over idiots.”

“But how nice,” said Hannah, “to have the rest of your life ahead of you, idiot-free. And

misery-free.”

Caroline looked up from her study of her boot tread.

“You’ve experienced the misery for years. Now you can experience the joy by simply letting go of all that junk you’ve used to keep yourself feeling shitty.”

“You think I chase to waste all those years feeling shitty?” Caroline glared at her.

“Yes, I do. Not that you knew it. Feeling shitty was comfortable. You were used to it. It was familiar. But now can you face the terror of feeling good?”

The corners of Caroline’s mouth were twitching.

“You keep talking about how all these terrible people failed you,” said Hannah. “Your pink blanket was destroyed, and Marsha was run aver by a truck. But it sounds to me as though you left the others. They did things you chose to regard as rejections and betrayals, but you were ready to go. You took on new strength, and they couldn’t cope because they wanted someone they could dominate. They failed you. But in their terms, you failed them: you didn’t remain submissive and adoring.” Hannah loved summarizing clients”

disasters from a different perspective. A judo throw, using their own momentum to turn the tables.

“This pile of corpses you talk about,” she continued, “you could instead see it as a compost pile. Ask yourself what you learned from each person that allowed you to develop into the fantastic woman you are today. Your parents gave you their sensitivity to human suffering.

Arlene helped you become good at your work.

Jackson gave you babies and belongings. David Michael taught you about poli… .” The whole point, it seemed to her, was to figure out that none of these was enough to give life meaning.

zzq

OTHER

“Joy?” sneered Caroline, that word finally registering.

Hannah noted that her entire speech had washed over Caroline unabsorbed. She wasn’t ready to see herself as anything other than a pathetic, wronged victim.

“Yes. Joy.” Snow slid off the roof, blotting out the sun through the window for an instant and landing with a thud.

“Joy? While millions of people are starving to death?”

Caroline uncrossed her legs abruptly and leaned forward.

“Oh, for God’s sake. Look, this life is like a diamond on black velvet. One aspect defines the other. You know the black velvet from every angle. Now allow yourself to see the diamond.”

“Diamonds? Garbage! You’re just talking a lot of elitist crap! How much joy do you think someone in a Chilean jail feels? How about the baby I saw in the ER yesterday, whose mother stuffed her in a rural route mailbox because she couldn’t afford to keep her? Joy, my ass!” Caroline realized she’d sold out again, sitting here being lulled into passive acceptance of the status quo by this suburban matron, while the world continued to careen toward destruction. Deciding to copy Hannah’s example and subside into domestic serenity with Brian Stone while the Chinese swept into Vietnam. While entire towns in Utah were perishing of leukemia from fallout in the fifties.

Hannah shrugged and studied her mimi spirit. It was one thing to prod a mimi spirit out from a rock ledge.

It was something else again to teach it to dance and make love, instead of tearing the place apart. There was enormous tension in the room. Hannah felt very much on edge. To feed Caroline’s flames she said in a bland voice, “Do you realize every time you feel threatened, you launch into this cosmic number?”