Other Women (44 page)

Maggie nodded without enthusiasm.

“We decided to go to the Cape.”

Maggie said nothing, lips pressed tightly together.

“I discovered once Arthur agreed to go to Maine, I didn’t really care anymore.”

Maggie put on her thick-Tensed glasses.

Hannah couldn’t see her eyes.

“I guess what I really wanted was for Arthur to defer to me?”

Maggie continued to sit in silence.

“What do you think?” asked Hannah, feeling anxious and irritated by Maggie’s sphinx imitation.

Maggie pursed her lips, put an elbow on the table, and rested her chin on her fist. “I think it’s a pity I

an equal.”

“What?”

Maggie turned her head and appeared to look across the lake, where white sails dipped and swooped like gulls.

It began to dawn on Hannah that there was a difference between being Maggie’s client and being her friend. For the rest of the lunch, Hannah confined her conversation to jokes, gossip, and summaries of movie plots, to convey to Maggie that she no longer wanted Mummy, or free therapy. Though she felt sudden anxiety: Not only could she no longer run to Maggie with all her problems, Maggie might even want to run to her.

Over the months, each relaxed into a new way of interacting, until they eventually became real friends.

But then Maggie went and died.

On the whole friendships with clients weren’t worth the effort, although, thought Hannah, she’d done it a few times herself. She had enough people in her life as it was.

In fact she wanted to let go of the old friends who were left, before they could be snatched away like all the others. Some days her heart felt like Flanders Field. She lacked the energy to add new names to her address book.

Putting out her cigarette, she glanced out the window and discov-took a deep breath and said, had over whether to go to can’t just order you to treat me as OTHER

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ered a sunset in progress. She studied the bare white wall above the couch. If she hung Caroline’s shawl there, she could lie in her recliner and watch the sunset out the window, seeing it reflected in the shawl. But was it psychotherapy?

She was suddenly confused. She thought she didn’t like sunsets

anymore.

Diana cut the broccoli quiche she’d made for St. Patrick’s Day and put pieces on everyone’s plate.

“Quiche! Yuck!” said Jason. Caroline glared at him. He met her glare with a look of defiance.

That afternoon Caroline had had a meeting with the guidance counselor at his school, who informed her Jason was throwing erasers in class and getting the shit beaten out of him on the playground.

“What’s going on at home?” asked the burly young man. His desk was cluttered with color photos of his own no doubt well-behaved children.

His mother has been trying to get her head together, she thought. It couldn’t be easy for a kid to have his mother in the same developmental stage as himself. “Nothing much.”

“Try to give him some extra special attention right now,” he suggested in a voice copied from Mr.

Rogers.

The important thing was to get out of that office without revealing anything of significance, so she nodded.

Thinking, have you ever tried to cuddle up to Darth Vader, young man?

“Don’t you think John Travolta’s

gorgeous?” sighed Sharon, prodding her quiche with her fork.

“That fag?” said Jackie.

Diana and Caroline glanced at each other, trying to decide whether to wreck the dinner hour with a lecture on the term “faggot.”

“Don’t you think he’s yummy, Caroline?”

Caroline opened her mouth to say she wasn’t into men, but managed not to. “I like Mick Jagger better.”

“He’s cute,” said Sharon. “But he’s so old.”

Laughing, Diana asked, “Hey, how come you took all my Rolling Stones and Janis Joplin albums?”

“Mother, that’s not your kind of music.”

Diana and Caroline smiled at each other.

“Jackie has a girlfriend,” said Sharon, using the backs of both hands to flip the sides of her hair into the sleek wings fashionable with her set.

Jackie glared at her, fork poised and ready to plunge into recently formed breast. “That’s a lie.”

“He sits next to her on the bus.”

“As least I don’t tongue kiss her in the woods at lunchtime,” Jackie.

not.,

said

Dana and Caroline glanced at each other, trying to figure out

what role to play in the nascent love lives of their heterosexual offCaroline recalled what sweet little children the three had been, prancing through the woods and fields playing elaborate games about being members of a circus troupe. Soon they’d be sweating with lust

and suffering over loss just like their parents.

“I don’t have to listen to this,” said Sharon, getting up and flouncing down the hall in her tight orange-tag Levi’s.

“Sit down and knish your supper, Sharon,” called Diana.

“Forget it!” Sharon slammed her door.

Diana sighed. “She’ll do anything to avoid eating vegetables.”

“If Sharon doesn’t have to eat this shit,” said Jason, “neither do L”

“Jason!” said Caroline. “That’s not very polite when Diana’s cooked you this nice supper.”

“I hate quiche, Mom!”

“Shove it up your ass then,” suggested Jackie.

Jason held up his middle finger. “Rotate, Jackie.”

“Just go downstairs, you two,” said Caroline. “But don’t ask me to fix you something later.”

As they clomped downstairs, Caroline said to quiche is marvelous.”

Diana, “I think the

“I’ve long since ceased to care what those three think about anything. his

“You’d slit your throat if you did.”

“Can you imagine what our parents would have done if we’d behaved like that?” Diana put Sharon’s plate atop her own and started in on Sharon’s quiche.

OTHER

Caroline chuckled. “Instant death.”

“Secretly I like it. They must feel well loved if they think they can afford to be so obnoxious.”

“Agreed,” said Caroline, eating Jason’s quiche. “I always felt I was walking on eggs around my house.”

“Me too. And even so, my mother was never happy with me.”

“You realize we do that with each other?” When she got home from work, Caroline found a St. Patrick’s Day card and a pair of lacy green underpants on her bed. She felt a stab of panic, like a junkie without a syringe: She had nothing to give Diana.

“What?”

“All the gifts and favors. It’s how we behaved with our mothers, and we still do it with each other. I think it’s time to stop.”

“Stay out of my head,” said Diana, putting down her fork.

“Sorry.” They sat in silence. Caroline began absently pulling petals off one of the shasta daisies she’d given Diana, which sat in an earthenware vase between two gold candles.

“Thanks, by the way,” said Diana, “for not having Brian here.”

“It’s required no special effort. I broke up with him several weeks ago.”

Diana looked up, candlelight glancing off her red hair. “What was that fight about then? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It was the principle of the thing.”

“Oh, Jesus, Caroline. What do you think this is-High Noon?”

“Well, it’s lucky someone around here has some principles.” Don’t say that, she said to herself too late.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.” Caroline had just pulled all the petals off the daisy, coming out with a “loves me not.”

“You mean Suzanne?”

“Never mind.”

“What’s unprincipled about that?”

“Other than the fact that she’s nearly Sharon’s age.” Shut up, Caroline, she pleaded.

Diana’s green eyes blazed in the candlelight.

“And Hannah’s your mother’s age. So what?”

“Hannah’s my shrink, not my lover.”

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“No thanks to you. If she were queer and willing, you’d have her in the sack in a minute.”

Caroline considered this remark, unable to deny it.

“What do I

have with Hannah? One hour a week that costs me thirty-five dollars. Big deal.”

“But you think about her all the time. It’s practically the same thing.”

Somehow Diana had turned the tables. They were supposed to be discussing her child bride. “Now you get out of my head.”

“Can you deny it?”

Caroline was suddenly sad and exhausted. “I need her. I need someone I can count on.”

“And you can’t count on me?”

“You’re off with Suzanne half the time. And when we’re together, you’re usually hating me. Like right now.”

“You need someone who thinks you’re wonderful? Because you’re

paying her to?”

Caroline squeezed the brown center of the daisy until it fell to pieces on the butcher block table. Abruptly the image of Hannah shrugging floated into her head. She shrugged and said, “Well, I understand that’s how you see it, Diana.”

Diana sat with her mouth half open, unable to find anything in Caroline’s statement to refute. “You’ve become so remote since you’ve been in therapy,”

she finally said. “Sometimes when we’re together it feels as though you aren’t even here. Maybe I need Suzanne because I can’t get through to you anymore.”

Again Caroline shrugged.

That’s the risk you take if you change: that the people you’ve been involved with won’t like the new you.

“Well?” said Diana.

“Well what?”

“Goddam it, Caroline!” She banged her fist on the table so the dishes clattered. “That just illustrates my point.” She did an

exaggerversion of Caroline’s shrug. “Would you please engage with me? At least Suzanne listens to me and takes me seriously.”

From her months with Hannah, Caroline suspected Diana wasn’t talking to her, she was talking to her own mother. But this wasn’t something you could say to someone else. For one thing, they’d never

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believe you. Cloying, a taker, remote. It had very little to do with Caroline. She sat in a perplexed silence, unable to think of anything to say. Diana was looking at her expectantly. Now that Caroline knew how to fight on the playground of life, she also knew almost nothing was worth fighting about. But she didn’t know what to do instead, and there was no time to call Hannah and ask. So she stood up and walked toward the stairs.

“Jesus Christ,” gasped Diana, “you’re just going to get up and walk away in the middle of a discussion?” A plate went sailing like a Frisbee past Caroline’s left ear and crashed into the wall.

They both stared at the shards on the floor.

Diana and Caroline lay on cushions on the hooked rug in each other’s arms, watching the fire flicker in Caroline’s darkened living room. The children were asleep, and the only sound was the snapping and crackling of the flames. They hadn’t spoken for an hour or mare. Caroline could scarcely feel her own body, although vivid mental images were flashing through her brain like a returned tourist’s slide show.

She was picturing the households she’d been a part of-her parents” in Brookline,

Jackson’s in Newton, David Michael’s in SomIn each case, a house filled with people, possessions, furnishDifferent foods had appeared on different types of plates on different styles of tables. She’d called each variation “lave,” just as she’d been calling this scene with Diana love.

Just as she’d been prepared to call the setup with Brian love. But what she called love wasn’t love-it was survival. Food, shelter, protection, sex, procreation. Hannah suggested love might be what was left after you discarded all that.

But what was left? Nothing, as far as she could see.

She tried erasing from her awareness the cabin, the sleeping kids, the flickering warmth of the fire, the broccoli quiche in her stomach, Diana’s slow-breathing body in its chamois shirt and Levi’s, her own similarly clad body that lay entwined with Diana’s. What was left? Something.

If only the clear sharp awareness from which she’d erased everything else.

Diana stirred in Caroline’s arms, just enough for Caroline to see her face. Her green eyes were wide open, staring into the fire. She’d arrived downstairs an hour earlier, sheepishly bearing a shamrockshaped cake with green frosting.

Caroline shifted her hand slightly so it lay on Diana’s full breast, which rose and fell as Diana breathed. No doubt Diana had within herself an area of empty awareness just like Caroline’s. This area in Diana was connected to its counterpart in Caroline at that very moment. They were one, more now than during lovemaking, when physsensations and sexual fantasies stole the show. This is it, Caroline decided, this current between two patches of empty awareness that made them no longer two. Stop looking for loaves and fishes … .

Diana sat up abruptly, removing Caroline’s hand from her breast. “I can’t go around throwing things at you, Caroline.”

Caroline sat up. “That was my fault, Diana.

I’m sorry. I realized too late I didn’t want to fight, but I didn’t know what to do instead.”

“I’m sorry too, but we may as well face it: It isn’t working anymore.”

Caroline shut her eyes, warding off a blow.

“We’ve got to stop being lovers. If that means one of us moving out, then that’s how it has to be.”

“But I was feeling so close to you just now.”

“Me too, and it scares the shit out of me. Every one of us lashes out.”

“But now that we know that, maybe we can stop. Let’s keep trying, Diana.”

“We’ve tried and tried. I’m sick of trying.

I want some peace. I’m too old for all this agony.” She stood up and went to the steps. “We can discuss what to do tomorrow.”

Caroline lay back down and put her forearm over her eyes as tears seeped between her clenched eyelids. She caused her lover agony. She failed to buy St. Patrick’s Day presents.

She picked fights and walked away in the middle of them. She was a horrible person.

But Hannah saw her as kind and generous, she reminded herself. But she was going to leave Hannah soon.

She blotted out the whole room, and Diana and Hannah with it, envisioning jungle birds until the ache in her heart subsided enough for her to go to bed.

time we get close,