Woman (9 page)

     David exhaled wearily. No
help for it, he thought.

     "Well," he said,
"In the beginning, from jealousy. Of woman's ability to give birth. Her
ability to menstruate."

     "That's one ability I
could do without," Liz said, her features tensing.

     "Amen," Barbara
agreed.

     Val started singing to Candy
with the tune of "Putting On The Ritz." "Puttin'on the rag,
do-ah, do-ah, do-ah."

     "Val.
Enough"
Liz said.

     Val hung his head in mock
sorrow, sobbing quietly. David noticed how uncomfortable Ganine looked. He considered
suggesting to her, that perhaps she'd rather leave than stay.

     "Go
on,
David," Barbara said, almost
ordering him.

     "Very well," David
conceded. "Because of this jealousy, man isolated birth and menstruation
with taboos and rituals designed to handicap women. They couldn't approach
food. Couldn't approach weapons, animals. And, of course, couldn't eat with
their husbands, couldn't socialize with them. In some cases, couldn't even
speak their husband's names aloud. Or any male relative's names."

     Val's voice went falsetto.
"Me bleed, og," he said answering with a guttural tone. "You
goddamn shut mouth, woman!"

     Liz gave her brother a weary
look and spoke. "Then the double standard is based entirely on men's fear
of women," she said.

     David gestured in agreement.

     "They know we can
out-perform them sexually so they've handed us this crap about it being
acceptable for men to fool around but not women. What men
really
fear about feminism is woman's
demand for sexual freedom."

     Val looked at her with a
contrived expression of lust. "I don't fear it," he told her, "I
just wanna get in on it." He bared his teeth in a maniacal grin. "How
about a little incest, kid? Always did wanna get you in the sack. Well, not
when I was eight. Though come to think of it—"

     "Will you please
stop?"
Liz asked him, still more
affectionately chiding than critical.

     "Don't knock it if you
haven't tried it," Val said. He looked at Candy. "Tell everyone about
your Uncle Waldo, sweetie."

     Candy looked genuinely
uncomfortable. "Val, please," she murmured.

     
"David?"
Barbara said in a tight voice. "Ignore the idiot and keep on
talking."

     "Well, now, dearie,
keep in mind that hubby is the head scribe on the
Country
Boy
and I'm the star with
power,"
Val finished in a threatening voice. . .

     Barbara closed her eyes as
though to shut away the sight of him. "Doctor
Harper?"
she said.

     David was about to cut it
all off, stand and insist that they leave. Instead, he went on speaking.
"While it's true that men have always been afraid that women wouldn't be
faithful to them, being natural born polygamists, they projected their feelings
onto women. According to Proverbs—"

     "My favorite
book," Val said.

     '"—the mouth of the
womb' is never satisfied," David finished, ignoring Val.

     "How about a little
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation?" Val said to Candy.

     Liz paid no attention to
him, saying, "I'll tell you what the problem is. Men have always felt
their potency threatened by women."

     Val postured like a queen on
his chair. "Well, that's a lot of poo-poo," he said archly.

     Liz pointed at him, smiling
thinly.
"Right on,
brother dear," she told him. "You think it's a joke but it's the truth.
The increase in homosexuality is taking place because men are fleeing women.
Fleeing masculinity."

     "Who can blame
them?" Max said with a thin, scornful smile.

     "Thinking of joining
them, Max?" Barbara said. He directed an arctic look at her.

     David noticed how uneasy
Ganine was. "Maybe we should stop this," he said.

     Liz had noticed his look at
Ganine.
"The rest of us are interested,
David,"
she said.

     "I know but—"
David started.

     "You were
saying,
Max?" Barbara said in a
cold, demanding tone. My God, David thought, I never knew the two of them were
so completely alienated.

     "I was
saying,"
Max responded in a tone
equally cold, "who can blame men for turning queer? Women aren't women
anymore. They're female men."

     "So why shouldn't men
become male women, is that it?" Liz asked him.

     "That's it, Producer
Lady," Max answered.

     "If that's the exchange
you want," Liz said.

     "It seems to be the one
you
want," he replied.

     "Balls said the Queen.
If I had them I'd be King," Val broke in.

     Liz smiled at her brother.
Not affectionately now. "That idea doesn't bother me either."

     "Liz, I know you don't
believe that," David said, torn by ambivalence. On one hand, he wanted all
of them to leave for the awards. (No matter how tense the limo ride might be).
On the other hand, he couldn't just desert the discussion at this point.

     "If I have to grow
balls to make it in the 'man's' world, I'll do it," Liz said.

     Max's smile at her was
victorious. "You wouldn't be a women then," he said.

     "I'd still have
won,"
Liz told him.

     The smile broadened on Max's
lips. "I think De Sade said it best."

     "You would,"
Barbara said.

     "Whip them asses!"
Val contributed.

     Max ignored them both.
"Woman is a miserable creature," he said "always inferior to
man, less ingenious, lesswise, a creature sick three-quarters of her life, sour
of disposition, cross-grained, imperious, a tyrant if you give her leave and
base and groveling in captivity but always nasty, always dangerous."

     
"Hallelujah!"
Val crowed with revival meeting fervor.

     "What did you do, spend
the last year memorizing that?" Barbara said, scowling.

     "No, it just stayed in
my memory, it's so convincing." He cut her off as she started to speak.
"How about a shorter quote then? Richard Burton. 'They should be
abolished.'"

     Val cackled. "Full
moon! Crazy time!"

     "I think we're going
into this little too deeply," David said.

     But Max was on a roll now.
"Or as Schopenhauer put it: Most men fall in love with a pretty face and
find themselves bound for life to a hateful stranger, alternating—"

     "Well, now we know who
your real target is," Barbara said, trying to disguise the hurt in her
voice.

     David raised his hands.
"Folks"
he said. "This is
supposed to be a fun evening in case you forgot."

     Max went on as though David
hadn't spoken. "Consider the tyranny of the non-working wife," he
said. "I don't know who I'm quoting now."

     "Your
self
?" Barbara said icily.

     "Maybe," Max
responded. "The point is this. The non-working wife seeks status by
driving her husband to higher and higher success and, if he fails, she treats him
with contempt and withdraws all sexual reward."

     
"Who
withdraws it?" Barbara snapped.

     David sighed. Will we ever
make that limo ride? he thought. It seemed less and less likely.

     "This is great!"
Val enthused, "I love it!"

     "In case you're not
aware of it, Max," Liz told him. "In the Western world, women are
more than a third of the working force."

     
"And
the rest of them work at home,"
Barbara said.

     Max laughed scornfully.
"My ass," he replied. "Housesand apartments are so filled with
hired help and labor-saving devices, women never have to lift a goddamn
finger." Again, he cut off Barbara as she began to speak. "If there
ever was an Atlantis, it undoubtedly sank from the weight of household appliances."

     Val cackled again, then,
hissing, clutched at his groin. "Hate to miss a word of this," he
told them, "but I have to take a leak."

     He moved to the bathroom and
knocked on the closed door. "Almost finished, Charlie?" he said.

     "Yeah," Charlie's
voice answered.

     "Well, cut it off, I
gotta piss," Val told him. He started dancing up and down. "Ooh, ooh,
ooh, ooh!" he whimpered.

     "Use our
bathroom," Liz told him.

     "What a good
idea," Val said in a peeping voice. Breathlessly humming "The Dance
of the Hours" he hurried on tiptoe out of the living room.

     "You all right,
Charlie?" David called.

     "Yeah, yeah,"
Charlie answered.

     The tense silence between
Max and Barbara was broken as she spoke to David. "About this war between
the sexes, David," she said, "you said before 'in the beginning.' How
far back does it go?"

     "Our wedding day,"
Max said.

     "Oh, fuck you,"
she snapped.

     "That would be a
novelty," he said.

     "I gather no one cares
if we get to the award show on time," David said, getting impatient now.

     "It's not that late
David," Liz told him, checking her wristwatch.

     All right, to hell with it,
David decided.
I'm
not up for
an award.

     "How far back does it
go?" he began."Heaven only knows. There are, for instance, two
distinct versions of Creation in the Bible. One might be called the 'official'
version. The other is man's. The first refers to male and femalein God's image.
In the second, a mist goes up and man is made out of dust and woman out of
man."