The Stories Of Mary Gordon Part 27

We try to look at pictures, but it is no good, the baby cries incessantly. Besides, we really do not want to be together anymore. He puts me in a taxi and tries to embrace me, but the baby is strapped to me and all he can manage is a chaste and distant kiss on the cheek. It is the first time I have disappointed him; and I feel the failure all the way home. The baby falls asleep the minute she gets on the bus; she was crying from exhaustion. I do not know what I was thinking of, making this expedition. Or I know precisely what I had been thinking of, and cannot now believe I was so foolish.

IV.

It is evening. My husband and I are going to dinner at our favorite restaurant. The girl who is taking care of the baby is a girl I love. Seventeen, she is the daughter of a friend, a woman I love and admire, a woman of accomplishment whose children are accomplished and who love her. E is beautiful, a beauty which would be a bit inhuman if she under stood its power, and were it not tempered by her sweetness and her modesty. I know her well; she lived with us in the summer. I was relieved to be unable to a.s.sume a maternal role with her; I believed, and still believe, that she sees me as a slatternly older sister, good at heart but scarcely in control. She plays the flute; she gets my jokes; she speaks perfect French; she does the dishes without being asked. The baby adores her. We can leave telling her nothing but the phone number of the restaurant. She knows everything she needs to know.

It is not a good dinner. I want to tell my husband about M but cannot. It is not his business; spouses should never be able to image their fears of their beloved's being desired by another. And I may want to see M again. I am distracted, and my husband knows me well enough to know it. We are both disappointed for we do not have much time alone.

We do not linger over after-dinner drinks, but come home early to find E in the dark, crying. My husband leaves her to me; he has always said that a woman, however young, does not want to be seen in tears by a man who is not her lover. In the car, I ask her what is wrong.

"It's R," she says, her first boyfriend, with whom I know she has broken up. "It's awful to see him every day, and not be able to talk to him."

"Mm," I say, looking at the dark road.

"It's just so awful. He used to be the person in the world I most wanted to see, most wanted to talk to, and now I rush out of cla.s.ses so I don't have to pa.s.s him in the halls."

"It's hard."

"Was it like that for you? First loving someone, then running away from the sight of them?"

"Yes, it happened to me a lot." I conjure in my mind the faces of ten men once loved.

"Do you think people can ever be friends when they fall out of love with each other?"

"I suppose so. I've never been able to do it. Some people can."

She looks at me with anguish in the dark, cold car. "It's such a terrible waste. I can't bear it, I don't think. Do you think it's all worth it?"

"I don't think there's an alternative," I say.

"What a relief it must be that it's all over for you."

So this is how she sees me: finished, tame, bereft of possibilities. I kiss her good night, feeling like that German woman with thick legs. Lightly, E runs through the beam of the headlights over the gra.s.s to her house. I wait to see that she is in the door.

Her urgent face is in my mind as I drive home, and M's face and the face of ten loved men. I realize that I am old to E, or middle-aged, and that is worse. The touch of M's hand on my breast gave me no pleasure. That has never happened to me before.

I have never thought of myself as old; rather I fear that I am so young-seeming that I lack authority in the outside world. I feel the burdens of both youth and age. I am no longer dangerous, by reason of excitement, possibility- but I cannot yet compel by fear. I feel as if the light had been drained from my hair and skin. I walk into the house, low to the ground, dun-colored, like a moorhen.

My husband is in bed when I return. I look in at the baby. Under her yellow blanket her body falls and rises with her breath. I wash my face and get into my nightgown. It is purple cotton, striped; it could belong to a nun. I think of the nightwear of women in films whose bodies glow with danger: Garbo, Dietrich, Crawford. Faye Dunaway, who has a baby and is not much older than 1.1 see my husband is not yet asleep. He takes me in his arms. I ask, "Do you ever think of me as dangerous?"

He laughs. "Let me try to guess what you've been reading. Anna KareninaZ Madame Bovaryi Vanity Fair?'

"I'm serious. I'll bet you never think of me as dangerous."

He holds me closer. "If I thought of you as dangerous, I'd have to think of myself as unsafe."

I pull him toward me. I can feel his heart beating against my breast. Safe, of course he must be safe with me. He and the baby. Were they unsafe, I could not live a moment without terror for myself. I know that I must live my life now knowing it is not my own. I can keep them from so little; it must be the shape of my life to keep them at least from the danger I could bring them.

In a few hours, the baby will awaken, needing to be fed again. My husband takes my nightgown off.

The Dancing Party.

"I know why you're in this mood," says the angry wife, "I just wish you'd admit it."

They drive in darkness on the sandy road; she has no confidence that he will find the house, which they have only seen in daylight. And she half wishes he would get a wheel stuck in the sand. She would be pleased to see him foolish.

"I'm in a bad mood for one reason," says the husband. "Because you said to me: Shape up. No one should say that to someone: Shape up."

"I could tell by your face how you were planning to be. That way that makes the other people at a party want to cut their throats."

"Must I sparkle to be allowed among my kind?"

"And I know why you're like that. Don't think I don't. It's because you watched the children while I swam. For once."

"Yes, it's true, the day was shaped by your desires. But I'm not resentful. Not at all. You must believe me."

"But I don't believe you."

"Then where do we go?"

"We go, now, to the party. But I beg you: Please don't go in with your face like that. It's such a wonderful idea, a dancing party."

The house is built atop the largest dune. In daylight you can see the ocean clearly from the screened-in porch. The married couple climb the dune, not looking at each other, walking far apart. When they come to the door, they see the hostess dancing with her brother.

How I love my brother, thinks the hostess. There are no men in the world like him.

The hostess's brother has just been divorced. His sister's house is where he comes, the house right on the ocean, the house she was given when her husband left her for someone else. Her brother comes here for consolation, for she has called it "my consolation prize." And it has been a consolation, and still is, though she is now, at forty-five, successful. She can leave her store to her a.s.sistants, take a month off in the summer, and come here. She earns more money than her ex-husband, who feels, by this alone, betrayed. She comes, each morning, to the screened-in porch and catches in the distance the blue glimpse of sea, the barest hint, out in the distance, longed for, but in reach. She'd brought her daughters here for the long, exhausting summers of the single mother. Watched their feuds, exclusions, the sh.o.r.e life of children on long holiday, so br.i.m.m.i.n.g and so cruel. But they are grown now, and remarkably, they both have jobs, working in the city. One is here, now, for the weekend only. Sunday night, tomorrow, like the other grown-ups, she will leave. The daughter will be in her car, stuck in the line of traffic, that reptilian creature that will take her in its coils. Exhausted, she will arrive in her apartment in Long Island City. She will wait till morning to return her rented car.

I will not be like my mother, thinks the daughter of the hostess. I will not live as she lives. How beautiful she is, and how I love her. But I will not live like that.

She lifts an angry shoulder at the poor young man, her partner, who does not know why. She is saying: I will not serve you or your kind. I will not be susceptible.

She sees her mother, dancing, not with her brother any longer, but with another man. She sees her mother's shoulder curving toward him. Sees her mother's head bent back. Susceptible. Will this be one more error of susceptibility? Oh, no, my mother, beautiful and still so young, do not.

Sh.o.r.e up and guard yourself. As I have. Do not fall once more into those arms that seem strong but will leave you. Do not fall.

The daughter leaves the young man now to dance with the best friend of her mother. This woman has no husband and a child of two. The mother with no husband and a child of two dreams of her lover as she dances with the daughter of the hostess. She thinks: I have known this girl since she was five. How can it be? I have a child of two; my best friend has a daughter who lifts her angry shoulder and will drive away on Sunday to the working world. Do not be angry at your mother, the mother with no husband wants to say. She is young, she is beautiful, she needs a man in her bed. The mother with no husband thinks of her own lover, who is someone else's husband and the father of the two-year-old child. Someday, she thinks, it is just possible that we will live together, raise together this boy of ours, now only mine. She longs for her lover; she spends, she thinks in anger, too much life on longing. But she chose that. Now she thinks about his hair, his rib cage, the feel of his bones when she runs her fingers up his back, the shape of his ear when she can see him in the distance. She thinks: He is torn, always. When the child was conceived she said, being nearly forty: I will have it. There is nothing you need do. He said: I will stand with you. He came on the first day of their son's life and visits weekly- uncle? friend?- and puts, each month, three hundred dollars in a small account and in a trust fund for college. Says: I cannot leave my wife. The mother with no husband longs sometimes to be with her lover in a public place, dancing, simply, like the married couple, without fear among the others of their kind.

The scientist has come without her lover. He has said: Oh, go alone. You know I hate to dance. She phoned her friend, a man in love with other men. Come dancing with me. Yes, of course, he says. He is glad to be with her; he too is a scientist. They work together; they study the habits of night birds. They are great friends. The lover of the scientist is brilliant, difficult. In ten years she has left him twice. She thinks now she will never leave him.

The daughter of the hostess puts on music that the angry wife, the mother with no husband, and the scientist don't like. So they sit down. Three friends, they sit together on the bench that rests against the wall. They look out the large window; they can see the moon and a newly lit square white patch of sea. They like each other; they are fortyish; they are successful. For a month each summer they live here by the ocean, a mile apart. The angry wife is a ba.s.soonist of renown. The mother with no husband writes studies of women in the ancient world. These women, all of them, have said to each other: What a pleasure we are, good at what we do. And people know it. The angry wife has said: You know you are successful when you realize how many people hope that you will fail.

And how are you? they ask each other. Tired, say the two, the angry wife, the mother with no husband, who have young children. I would like to have a child, the scientist says. Of course you must, say the two who are mothers. Now they think with pleasure of the soft flesh of their children, of their faces when they sleep. Oh, have a child, they tell the scientist. Nothing is better in the world.

Yes, have a child, the hostess says. Look at my daughter. See how wonderful. The daughter of the hostess has forgotten, for a time, her anger and is laughing with the young man. Asks him: Are you going back on Sunday? Would you like a ride? The hostess thinks: Good, good. My daughter will not drive alone. And maybe he will love her.

I am afraid of being tired, says the scientist to her three friends.

You will be tired if you have a child, they say to her. There is no getting around it. You will be tired all the time.

And what about my work?

You will do far less work. We must tell you the truth.

I am afraid, then, says the scientist.

The widow sits beside them. And they say to her, for she is old now: What do you think our friend should do?

The widow says: Two things in the world you never regret: a swim in the ocean, the birth of a child.

She says things like this; it is why they come to her, these four women near the age of forty. She has Russian blood; it makes her feel free to be aphoristic. She can say: To cross a field is not to live a life. To drink tea is not to hew wood. Often she is wrong. They know that, and it doesn't matter. She sits before them, shining, like a bowl of water colored, just for pleasure, blue. They would sit at her feet forever; they would listen to her all night long. She says: I think that I have made mistakes.

But they do not believe her.

She says: In my day we served men. We did not divorce. I do not think then we knew how to be good to our children and love men at the same time. We had wonderful affairs. Affairs are fine, but you must never fall in love. You must be in love only with your husband.

But only one of them has a husband. He is sitting, drinking, talking to another man. His wife would like to say: Look at the moon, don't turn your back to it. But she is tired of her voice tonight, the voice that speaks to him so cruelly, more cruelly than he deserves. She would like to say: Let's dance now. But she doesn't want to dance with him. Will I get over being angry, she wonders, before the party ends? She hopes she will and fears that she will not.

The widow greets her friend across the room. They have both understood the history of clothes. And so they watched, in the late 1960s, the sensitive and decorative march of vivid-colored trousers and light, large-sleeved printed shirts, of dresses made of Indian material, of flat, bright, cotton shoes. So, in their seventies, they greet each other wearing purple and magenta. As they kiss, the gauzy full sleeves of their blouses touch. Tonight to be absurd, the widow's friend has worn a feather boa. Her husband, her fifth husband, stands beside her, gallant and solicitous for her and for her friend.

The widow says to her old friend, pointing to the four women sitting on the bench: I think they've got it right. Their lovely work.

The friend says: But look, they are so tired, and so angry.

The widow says: But we are tired at that age, and angry. They will have something to show.

Who knows, the widow's friend says, turning to her husband. Dance with me, she says, I think this one's a waltz.

He kisses her, for she has made him laugh. They dance, they are the only ones now dancing with the hostess's daughter and her friends. The music has gone angular and mean, it seems to the four women on the bench. The hostess's daughter thinks: Perhaps, then, I should marry a rich man. I am not ambitious, but I like nice things.

The mother without a husband thinks about her lover. Of his mouth, his forearms, his way of standing with his knees always a little bent, the black hairs on the backs of his small hands.

The hostess thinks: Perhaps I will ask this new man to stay.

The scientist thinks: I will live forever with a man who hates to dance.

The daughter of the hostess thinks: I love my mother, but I will not live like her.

The widow thinks: How wonderful their lives are. I must tell them so that they will know.

Her friend thinks: If this man dies I will be once more alone.

The angry wife wishes she were not angry.

Suddenly a funny song comes on. It has a name that makes them laugh, "Girls Just Want to Have Fun." The daughter of the hostess claps her hands and says: No men. The women, all of them: the hostess and her daughter, the scientist, the mother with no husband, the angry wife, the widow and her friend, stand in a circle, kick their legs in unison, and laugh. And they can see outside the circle all the men, ironical or bored-looking, the kindly ones amused. They all look shiftless there, and unreliable, like vagabonds. The two old women cannot bear it, that the men should be unhappy as the women dance. The widow's friend is first to break the circle. She takes her husband's hand and leads him to the center of the room. The widow dances with the handsomest young man. The daughter of the hostess walks away. But the four women near to forty sit down on the bench. The angry wife can see her husband's back. His back is turned against her; he is looking at the moon.

Violation.

I suppose that in a forty-five-year life, I should feel grateful to have experienced only two instances of s.e.xual violation. Neither of them left me physically damaged and I cannot in truth say they have destroyed my joy of men. I have been happily married for fifteen years before which I had several blissful and some ordinary disappointing times with lovers. In addition, I am the mother of two sons, my pa.s.sion for whom causes me to draw inward, away, when I hear the indiscriminate castigation of all males, so common and so understandable within the circles I frequent. I rarely think of my two experiences, and I'm grateful for that, for I don't like what they suggest to me about a world which I must, after all, go on inhabiting. And I don't like it when I start to feel in danger in my house, the Federalist house we've been so careful in restoring, in the town not far from Hartford where we've lived now for ten years, and when I wonder if, perhaps, safety is a feeling open to men alone. It is then, especially, that I am glad to be the mother only of sons.

I am thinking of all that now as I stand at the wooden counter cutting celery, carrots, water chestnuts, so unvegetative in their texture, radishes that willingly compose themselves in slices decorative as sh.e.l.ls. Courageously, we've kept the kitchen faithful to its period: We have not replaced the small windows by large sheets of gla.s.s that would allow a brightness our ancestors would have shunned. Leaves make a border at the windows; farther out- beech, locust- they become a net that breaks up the white sky. I arrange the vegetables, green, orange white, white circled by a ring of red on the dark wood of the chopping board, as if I had to make decisions like a painter, purely on the basis of looks. As I handle the slices of vegetable, cool and admirably dry, I think about myself as a young woman, traveling abroad or "overseas" as my parents then called it, truly away from home for the first time.

At twenty-two, I must have thought myself poetical. This is the only thing I can surmise when I look at the itinerary of that trip- my parents' present to me after college graduation- that I took with my college roommate and best friend. Lydia had majored in economics like me, although like me she had adopted it as a practical measure, rejecting a first love (for her it had been art history, for me English). But we both prided ourselves on being tough-minded and realistic; we knew the value of a comfortable life, and we didn't want to feel we had to be dependent on a lucky marriage to achieve it. We'd both got jobs, through our fathers' connections, at large Manhattan banks; we'd take them up in the fall, and the knowledge of this gave us a sense of safety. We could be daring and adventurous all summer, have experiences, talk to people (men) we never would have talked to at home, reap the rewards of our secret devotion to the art and poetry we hadn't quite the confidence to give our lives to. We considered ourselves in the great line of student pilgrims admiring ourselves for our self-denial, traveling as we did with backpacks and hostel cards and a few volumes of poetry. Not for a moment did we understand the luxury of a journey made on money we had never had to earn, and that the line we followed was that of young people on the grand tour: a look at the best pictures, the best buildings, some introduction to Continental manners, the collision of which with our young natures would rub off the rough edges but leave our idealism smooth. We would return then to the place that had been held for us in the real life that had been going on without us, not forgetting us, but not requiring us yet.

Our plane landed in Amsterdam. We saw the Rembrandts and Vermeers, and the Van Goghs my friend thought, by comparison, jejune, and then we took an all-night train to Florence. We stayed in a cheap pensione with marble floors and huge mirrors and painted ceilings above the iron cots that were our beds. And in Piazzole Michelangelo, I met Giovanni, who sold Electrolux vacuum cleaners. Poor Italian, he was overmastered by the consonants of his employer's name and p.r.o.nounced his product E-LAY-TRO-LOO. Luckily, he worked all day so my friend and I could see the Ufizzi, the Palazzo Pitti, the Duomo, the Museo San Marco, and I need leave her alone only at night when Giovanni drove me around Florence at breakneck speed and snuck me into his pensione until midnight, then miraculously got me back into mine. (Now I see he must have bribed the concierge.) He agreed to drive us to Ravenna, where I could do homage to Dante and my friend to the mosaics, but even after he'd done this nice thing for the both of us and paid for both our lunches, my friend was put out with me. She felt that I'd abandoned her for a man. She hadn't met anybody possible, the friends that Giovanni had introduced her to were coa.r.s.e, she said, and she was afraid to go out alone at night, she was always being followed by soldiers. It wasn't her idea of a vacation, she said, sitting in her room reading Kenneth Clark. Punitively, she suggested that when we got to England, where we both could speak the language, we should split up and travel alone. It would open us up to experiences, she said. Clearly she felt she hadn't had hers yet, and I'd had more than my share.

I left Giovanni tearfully, vowing to write. He bought us chocolates and bottles of acqua minerale for the train. Then we were off, heartlessly, to our next adventure. We were both sick crossing the Channel; it made us tenderer to each other as we parted at Dover and hugged each other earnestly, awkward in our backpacks. She would go to Scotland, I to Ireland; in two weeks we would meet in London, stay there for a week, then travel home.

I decided to cross the Irish Sea from Wales, the home of poets. I would spend the day in Swansea and cross over at Fishguard to Rosslare. From Dylan Thomas's home, I would proceed on a pilgrimage to Yeats's. I felt enn.o.bled but a bit lonely. It might be a long time, I knew, before I found someone to talk to.

Swansea was one of the least prepossessing cities I had ever seen: it might, despite the hints left by the poets, have been someplace in Indiana or worse, Ohio, where I was from. I decided to look for a pub where Thomas must have got his inspiration. I found one that looked appropriate, ordered bread and sausages and beer, and read my Yeats.

So I was not entirely surprised to hear an Irish voice ask if it could join me, and was pleased to look up and see a red-haired sailor standing with a pint of beer. I was abroad, after all, for experience, to do things I wouldn't do at home. I would never have spoken to a sailor in Cleveland, but then he wouldn't have been Irish. I thought he'd noticed me because he saw that I was reading Yeats.

"Yer American, then," he said.

"Yes."

"Great place, America. What yer doin' in this part of the world?"

"I'm traveling," I said.

"On yer own?"

"Yes."

"Brave, aren't ye?"

"No, not especially," I said. "I just don't see that much to be afraid of. And an awful lot that's fun and exciting. I'd hate to think I'd let fear hold me back."

"It's a great att.i.tude. Great. Ye have people over here in Swansea?"

"No."

"What brings ye here?"

"Dylan Thomas, the poet. You've heard of him?"