A Round-Heeled Woman (15 page)

Sometimes, though, I explain to my student teachers, you just lose it, like when a kid blurted out, “Why is this class so boring?” and I answered, “Because you're in it.”

Juniors and seniors are more savvy and much bolder. To wit: fifth period came after lunch. In my fifth-period class, a class of juniors, were two lovers: Brian and Maxi. Brian was putting in his time until the Marines would agree to take him once he developed his upper body and came regularly to class, the Marines having insisted on both. Maxi was just Maxi. They came to class almost every day late, having spent the lunch hour in Brian's empty apartment, having themselves a nooner. Every day, they entered class, arms around each other, sat down in chairs next to each other, sometimes in the same chair, and entwined. Legs, arms, lips, amazing. The rest of us were open-mouthed, some in amazement, some in lust. I would order Brian and Maxi to cease and desist, and they would—for five minutes—then back at it. Finally, I said to them, “This isn't fair to the rest of us. How do you think we feel sitting here without our significant other?” This they understood; they paused momentarily and looked around at the rest of us in sympathy. “So I don't think you can sit together,” I said. “You are just magnets, you are.” They understood this, too. “You, Brian,” I said, “stay where you are, and you, Maxi, sit over there.” I knew I would not be able to move Brian, he being majorly buff by then, if he chose not to be moved. Maxi, on the other hand . . . She moved. From that time on, they did not touch each other. They sat across the room from each other and talked with their tongues. Out, around, in, mouth way open, halfway closed, eyes slits, heads back, Maxi's throat arched like some damn bird in heat. Brian and Maxi taught the rest of us that sex is not to be denied.

See why I miss all this?

I tell all my college students this stuff. They are learning to be teachers and are interested in real-life school. I tell them especially my notion, shared by others more notable than I, that controversial issues belong in the classroom. I tell them why and I tell them that they must be very, very careful, that perhaps they will need to wait until they get tenure before they risk losing their jobs over teaching kids to think.

I tell them about Discussion Day in my high school classes. What do we want kids to do? I ask. Read, write, listen, and talk. All these are vehicles for thinking, but we don't need to broadcast that. So, on Fridays or Tuesdays or on whatever day kids choose, we have Discussion Day. We have worked out the procedures for making Discussion Day work: no obscenities; no hitting; no name-calling; no getting out of your seat. Ten minutes before the end of class, we write about what we talked about. The last is mine, can you tell? The topics for discussion will come from the kids. They are free to put a slip of paper with a topic on it into the Discussion Basket right up until Discussion Day. We have agreed that no topic will be censored and that everything said in our class stays in our class. My college students are seeing that this is risky business. “You let them talk about anything they want?” asks one of my future teachers. “I encourage it,” I say.

I wish I had done some kind of statistical count of the topics so that I could tell you exactly what proportion concerned sex. It was high. Here is ninth grade: The student designated to draw from the basket holds up the piece of paper and reads, “Condoms.” Incidentally, I am not in this. At first, I moderate; as the year goes on, students moderate. Progress. At first, “Condoms” is greeted with silence. And then Jeremy says—Jeremy is bold—“My brother said if you use twelve condoms you're safe.” Well, this does it. “Seven,” says Cal. “Are you guys nuts?” says Sue, and begins to form the word “asshole” when a stern glance from the moderator silences her. Now, it's very hard for me, middle-aged demi-virgin that I am, not to interject information here. But I don't. Information is not what this is all about. Still, maybe I can take Jeremy aside . . . Next topic: “Penis.” Oh, god. “Girls have a penis, too,” says Mike. “Huh-uh,” says Amy. Ought I not to intervene? “Yes, they do,” says Mike, “it's just real little.” That pretty much does it for that. We proceed to the next, “Milk.”

In my senior class, the topic is “Breasts.” Those with large breasts say nothing, those with small are equally silent. No boy makes a sound. Finally, Shannon, medium breasts, says, “What I hate is when a teacher is talking to you and his eyes drift down . . . and I try to make eye contact . . .” “You mean there's more than one teacher?” asks Brad. “Oh, yeah,” says Jennifer. “Since seventh grade,” says Laurie. We are quiet all of us, the boys embarrassed for their sex, me embarrassed for my profession, the girls embarrassed for us all. The next topic is “Shit.” “I vote we skip this,” says Rob. He draws again. “Cafeteria food.” We exhale.

Why is the saying “Sex rears its ugly head”? Sex isn't ugly, it's just sex. But rear it did, and this time I did not escape unscarred. In the mid-seventies, at my high school, I taught an elective course called Women in Literature. It was a first for the school, a first for me, a first for the kids—thirty-two “women” and two boys. It was great fun. To supplement the curriculum, which included
Jane Eyre, Pride and Prejudice,
and Kate Chopin's
The
Awakening , I ordered Ms. magazine to be delivered to the school library. One day one of the “women” in the class took
Ms.
magazine home with her. Her mother found it. It had sex ads in the back and a story with the word
fuck
in it and not just once either. She stormed into my principal's office, dirty magazine in hand. My principal ordered it removed from the library. He summoned me to his office.

Thoreau says somewhere that in every man's life there is a line beyond which he will not go. When I read that all those years ago, I wondered to myself if a line would appear in my life and if I would refuse to go beyond it. This was the line.

For now, things had gotten way out of hand. A group of moms, all of them from an organization that wanted to change the name of our district, Mount Diablo, to Valley of the Kings, got busy. They demanded that
Ms.
be removed from all libraries in all eight high schools. A special school-board meeting was called. I went. So did four hundred other people. One after another, people from the audience went to the microphone and spoke ardently against children being exposed to the filth wrought by that dreadful woman, Gloria Steinem. At the end of the meeting, the board voted unanimously to rid the schools of
Ms.
Meeting adjourned. On her way out, one of the board members muttered to herself, “We're going to get the pants sued off us.” Yes, indeedy.

So the chairman of our history department, two parents, two students, and I sued. The ACLU handled the case and we won. The magazine went back in. The editorial staff of
Ms.,
where I called frequently to report on events, was jubilant and the ACLU threw us a party with guest of honor Gloria Steinem her own self, who came all the way from New York and was nice to me. When she accused me of heroic behavior, I denied the charge, explaining that never had I feared I might lose my job. “You're like Rosa Parks,” she said. Me and Rosa Parks!

Fortunately, nobody ever found out that in this same Women in Literature class, we looked at
Hustler, Playgirl, Playboy,
and
Penthouse,
too, along with
Ladies' Home Journal, Good Housekeeping,
and
Vogue.
We wanted to find out how women were presented in these magazines, how these women looked, and, omigod, is this a split beaver shot? Nobody ratted on us. Kids are cool.

We talk about all this, my college students and I, in the weeks following my return from New York. What would they think, I wonder, if they knew what I had been up to? Some would enjoy it, others not. Definitely, the college would not. Besides, knowing about my sex life would not make them good teachers, which is what we're about here.

ON MY E-MAIL is a note from Robert: “I anticipate with pleasure
spending your birthday with you. Come stay with me.”

I have been miserable without Robert. I have tried very hard not to write to him; I have made myself put down the phone before it rings in New York. I have been so unhappy that I don't stop to remember scouring his bathroom, hearing him call Sylvia my name—“sweetie.” And now those two elegant sentences on my screen. Why does he write? Why does he invite me? Maybe he got lonely for a pal; I'm sure he knew that, without an implied promise of lovemaking, I wouldn't come. I shouldn't go, but I don't care; I get to be in love again; I get to imagine his hands and his mouth on me; I get to start all over.

My department chair agrees to take my seminar. My TAs agree to teach my prison class. When I explain my upcoming absence to my students at the prison—it is my birthday and I am going to celebrate in New York—they smile back at my foolish grin. At the end of class every single one of them pauses on his way out, shakes my hand, and says happy birthday, have a fine time, don't forget to come back. Steve is the last. Steve is very serious, very, still trying mightily, he has told me, to develop a sense of humor. He takes my hand and looks very, very seriously into my eyes and says, “You be careful. New York will chew you up and spit you out in little pieces.” He is a prophet. Except it's not New York I need to fear.

TWELVE

Sex at the Morgan

I am notably solvent.

—SIDNEY

Robert's third wonderful sentence read,
“Happy Valentine's
Day, sweetie, from the man who misses you.”
How could I go? How much pain am I up for or maybe in need of ? How eroded by my own lust is my common sense? How selective is my memory? It selected this: “Lie on your side, sweetie,” Robert would say as we lay next to each other in his bed. He would trace me then, with the tip of his finger, the entire length of me, tip to toe, slowly, a most exquisite touching. How could I not go?

I land at JFK at four P.M., EDT, on March 7, my very birthday, in the year 2000. This time, being the New York girl I have become, I take a cab alone to Robert's apartment building and the elevator all the way up to his floor. The elevator door opens and there stands Robert, smiling, arms open wide. Inside his apartment, he wraps me up and kisses me, and while I am feeling that in his arms is absolutely where I belong, I sense that something is different, and I don't know what it is, but I don't like it.

We dine that evening at Café des Artistes. As an enthusiastic resident of what has come to be called the Gourmet Ghetto, the Berkeley birthplace of California Cuisine, I have not been impressed with the food in New York, except for the hot dogs and the knishes and the roasted nuts waiting for me on the street corners. But this restaurant is just about, no, it is, the classiest place I have ever been to; San Francisco's eateries, by comparison, seem
sooo
nouveau. Café des Artistes is famous for its murals, painted in the twenties, of naked nymphs cavorting daintily with one another, so it appears, in pastels and lots of chiffon.
Sooooo
romantic, so sweet, so pretty, just like me I am pretending as Robert guides me gently by the elbow into a booth—a booth! Privacy for lovers, that's us. And I don't know, but this place ought to be famous for its service: our waiter was lots more sophisticated than I and, at the same time, helpful and charming and not one whit condescending. In San Francisco, it seemed to me that too often the waitperson who came my way was less interested in waiting than in auditioning en route to my table for the part that would take him far and forever away from persons like me. On the other hand, somebody had told waitpersons they were supposed to be friendly—“Hi, I'm Ken, I'll be your . . .” And, this being America, they were equal, which meant they could get pissed at you if you didn't behave as a patron should; many of them let you know that, were justice to prevail, they would be the ones seated at the table and you the one serving. To be fair, let me say that, in recent years, since waiting tables has become so lucrative, waitpersons exhibit a much higher degree of professionalism. Like in New York, in this
salle à manger magnifique
where I swear there was not one tourist, except me, and by now, of course, I had progressed way beyond ogling. “Sweetie,” said Robert, “take a look at the menu.”

“Don't look now,” I tell him, “but when you can do it inconspicuously, look at the woman at the far end of the bar.” She was a regular here, you could tell. Ever so thin, chic in black and gray jacket, skirt to match, hair dark, streaked with gray and pulled into an honest-to-god chignon away from her face, which someone, probably she, had made up subtly and utterly correctly, she sipped her martini (I can learn) from a glass smoky with cold. She would have two, smile at the bartender, who bowed (yes!) slightly, and walk steadily on high heels out of the bar. She was me as I would be in twenty, maybe fifteen, omigod, ten, years, dignified and just a little drunk. How old was I anyway? “Thank you, Robert, this has been a wonderful birthday.”

On the walk home, I take his arm and he says, “I don't like that. Please don't take my arm. It makes me feel like a possession.” If he had struck me with the back of his hand, it wouldn't have hurt any more. I stuff my hands in my pockets.

Back in the apartment, in Robert's great big bed with Central Park outside my window, I turn to kiss him and hear, “Oh, now, sweetie, really . . .” He goes on to explain: “Our passions simply do not match. You have no equivalent of Sylvia in your life, so you come to me needy.” Can't argue with that or with the terrible, terrible dark weight that has taken possession of me. It began with a thud in my midsection with Robert's “Oh, now . . .” and spread quickly to every part of me. I am stunned. “Why did you invite me to come stay with you? Why did you tell me you loved me?” I lie rigid on the bed. Next to me, Robert says, “I admit, I may have sent you a few mixed messages. I value your friendship very much.” “Mixed messages!” I rolled myself far away from him, as close to Central Park as I could get. What was I going to do?

Next day, after a sleepless night, I call Sidney from Robert's closet and make plans to meet. “I am going to the Morgan Library today,” I say to Sidney. “I'll be there at two. Can you be there, too?” It's damn hot in this closet, though perhaps my brow is damp from frustration. Sidney hems and haws and says something about his apartment being painted and on and on. “Look,” I say, “I'll be at the Morgan at two.”

“How will I know you?” Sidney wants to know.

“I sent you a photograph.”

“I lost it.” He sounds like a little boy, appealing.

“I will be wearing a red knit hat. And I'm short.”

“I feel silly,” he says. “I have a Band-Aid on my nose. I was cleaning out the closet—you know, one of those Fibber McGee closets everyone has—and something fell on me, this was just yesterday and . . .” His voice is gravelly, his accent New York–sexy.

This Band-Aid of Sidney's is good, for I have managed to manufacture a pimple just below my eye, at the bottom of my left eye bag, something I grew in preparation for coming to New York to impress Robert. Over time it had reddened, swelled, popped, and was trying to heal except I fiddled with it, and now it is bleeding, it's a goddamn open wound. If I smile, it pulses. If I frown, it throbs.

“At two, then,” I say. What the hell. This man is on my list. I am going to meet him. He is not going to escape. Fine with Robert. He is kind and puts his arms around me. “Look at me,” he says from way high above me. “You are under no obligation to this man. You can leave anytime you want to.” He pats my pimple, where it is oozing a bit, with his handkerchief. “You know where to get the crosstown bus.” I nod. He kisses me. “Don't forget your key.” I am all mixed up.

This is Sunday in New York. It is raining pell-mell and, beneath Robert's umbrella, which, by the end of the day, I will lose, I am off to one of the most wonderful libraries in the world. In fact, I won't see the library at all. I'll just see Sidney. Because he shows up. Right at two.

The Morgan Library is a serious building. It stands on the corner of East Thirty-sixth and Madison and occupies half a block in the heart of New York. It had been the home of Pier-pont Morgan, a serious man, whose collection “was to rival the great libraries of Europe.” It is a no-nonsense building: its stern façade and dark-paneled interior brook no frivolity, no levity, from those who enter. The Morgan Library on this particular Sunday in New York says, “Sit up straight, speak only when spoken to, and, this above all, Keep Your Hands to Yourself.” My grandmother would have been right at home in the Morgan.

Sidney has directed me to meet him in the restaurant of the library. I go there. I am early. I loiter. I should be arrested and taken to a holding cell, except who would post bail? Robert? Maybe, maybe not. My mouth is dry. Again. I think about how little I know of this man, yet this is a public place, lots of people, he won't kill me here. I am so hot in this coat, which I absolutely do not plan to remove because the static electricity in this city will glue my sweater to me, my usual big, baggy sweater, which did so well for me when I met Walter. Why am I so intent on meeting this man? I could have stayed home with Robert, not so appealing to either of us at the moment. “Notably solvent,” Sidney had described himself in his first letter. I never met a man who was that. I don't know anyone, man or woman, who is that. Is he rich? Could be. And then he just says it, not that he's “comfortable,” which is what most of the men in their letters claim to be. I am just so curious.

I see him. I walk toward him, my red knit hat ablaze, like my pimple. Later, Sidney will refer not at all to my pimple but to “that funny red hat you were wearing.” His Band-Aid is tiny, as discreet as a Band-Aid on the bridge of a nose can be. In our imperfections, we are a pair. I pretend to be confident. I extend my hand in introduction, with the other take off my hat, and my hair, electrified by New York City, sweeps up high above my face, making me look like a broom upside down. I capture most of it. Sidney smiles and says, “Shall we?” and, bending slightly from the waist, he sweeps an arm toward the café. I am in love. No, not really, but god, he is so New York. He is wearing a vest.

His hair is dark, rough, shot with gray, lots of it sticking out from under his broad-brimmed hat, which he removes as I come toward him. He smiles shyly with what I will come to believe is the sexiest mouth on the North American continent. His glasses, probably bifocals, they must be, he is sixty-eight, have no line across the lenses as mine do, and behind them his eyes are dark and they are gray. I have never known anyone with gray eyes. And where are the lines in his face? Hard as I look, his skin is smooth as a baby's. He is notably attractive. But it is his clothes that fire me up.

All my life I have loved men's clothes. My father loved men's clothes, too, and spent a lot of money on his. My father looked like Scott Fitzgerald except tall. Athletic, like my mother, he moved with grace and style. He was not the picture of a small-town doctor, as his father—medium height, sweetly rumpled— had been. No, my dad in his Sulka ties, his dark navy pinstripes, wing tips polished and buffed, was the acme, the zenith, of men's fashion. Sartorially splendid he was. I loved looking at my dad. Everybody did.

When I first lived in San Francisco, forty years ago, he came to the American College of Surgeons meeting. I met him in the bar of the Clift Hotel after my day as a medical secretary (a career my father approved of) was over. Here, in this redwood-paneled, lushly carpeted room, doctors stood along the bar, elegant in their male finery, or sat at tables, now and then crossing one expensively adorned leg over the other. I wanted to rub my fingers along their lapels, run my hand up and down the smooth backs of their jackets and along their shoulders. I would never have dared, any more than I would have dared to touch my father. Now here, in the Morgan Library in New York City, was a man wearing utterly delicious clothes. Finally, I was going to get to feel the goods.

Sidney holds my chair, waiting for me to sit, and I become a tramp. I take off my coat. Slowly. And as I do, I stretch ever so slightly, feeling my sweater snuggle up to my breasts. Shameless hussy. I drop my coat on the floor. Not intentionally. “Let me get that for you,” says Sidney, amused and unimpressed.

I look across the table at him, rather at his clothes: the rich blue, lightweight wool of his shirt, the dark green wool of his tie, the muted gold of his vest, and the brown and black checks of his jacket. No Brooks Brothers there, a conglomeration, you say. Still, in current lingo, it works. He looks good enough to eat.

Sidney orders coffee and I remember that, along with presenting himself as notably solvent, he had written that he did not drink. I order wine. When it comes, I raise my glass and say gaily, I'm almost sure, “To meetings.”

Sidney leans toward me, leading with his right ear, a sure sign of hearing loss. He joins my toast with his coffee cup and says, “You have wonderful breasts.” Shades of Walter. Gee, maybe I do.

“Sshhh,” I say, looking around at the nearby tables, all of them filled; it is, after all, a rainy Sunday in New York. On the far side of the room is my grandmother, looking meaningfully at me while she shakes her finger at my mother, who nods a cool hello to my sister-in-law, who nods back from her seat right smack in the middle of all the women in my entire life who know better and are watching me behave badly.

“Move your chair closer,” Sidney says.

I do.

He takes my hands and pulls them across the table toward him. He begins to rub the spaces between my thumbs and forefingers and up along my wrists. I go dizzy from the sudden warmth. “I want you to know I think what you're doing is wonderful,” he says. His voice is full of gravel, his accent Morning-side Heights with Columbia thrown in.

“What?” Again, my snappy repartee.

“The ad, meeting men.” And then, suddenly, he says, “You have a kind face. You look kind.”

“I am.”

“Put your breasts on the table.”

I do.

“Oh,” he says, “you have big breasts, they're so soft.” He is touching them!

This is outrageous. I heave my breasts back onto my side of the table and, having located my voice, say, “This is a public place, Sidney.” I look neither to the right nor to the left, afraid of what I might see. I can hear, though, two people speaking what I am sure is Norwegian, very fast, and then some Scandinavian giggling.

“This is New York, nobody pays attention,” he says.

“This is New York with tourists,” I say back. “Everybody pays attention.”

He takes my hands again. “Tell me about growing up in Ohio.”

So I do. I tell him the story about waiting tables at a resort in New Hampshire during my sophomore year of college, about the customer who looked at me and said, “So that's what the Midwest looks like.”

Sidney laughs, grows serious, and says, “I don't see any judgment in your face; you are so warm, so accepting.”