Stepping (34 page)

“Stephen,” I said, speaking into his cotton shirt, “you’re a good person.”

“I know,” Stephen said. “Isn’t it a shame?”

“You’ve changed my life, you know,” I said. “You’ve given me the two things I’ve needed most: a job and the knowledge that someone as great as you are could love me. I can’t ever repay you. How can I ever repay you?”

“Fall in love with me,” Stephen said, and smiled to show he was saying it pleasantly.

“What will you do now?” I asked.

“Me? I’ll go back home and run my department and live with Ellen and the children.”

“Ellen is wonderful. Joe and Carrie are beautiful. Your department has fantastic potential. You could have it worse.”

“I know, I know all that. You don’t have to feel sorry for me. Oh, Zelda, you’re so funny. You’re so happy over a stupid, low-paying, demanding job. Look at you. You’re all wrapped up in it already. You think you’re the luckiest person in the world.”

“I AM the luckiest person in the world. I have everything I’ve always wanted, children, Charlie, and now a job—”

“—and a friend on the side.”

“A
friend
. Oh, Stephen, oh, Stephen, I do love you.”

We hugged again, and kissed again, and it happened again, the chemistry, the explosion, the desire. I was tormented. I wanted to sleep with Stephen, now for every reason in the world, except for one: my bonds to Charlie. And, having finally made a decision, I felt bound to keep it. I pushed away from Stephen, put on my coat, and went out of his room.

I stood outside Room 561 for a few minutes, simply staring at the walls and the light blue rug. I felt as though I had just stepped off a spaceship. Things had gone too fast for me. Too much had happened, and the meaning was still light-years behind. I was happy, but not satisfied. Something more was needed to confirm and enrich what had just happened.

I turned and knocked on the door again. When Stephen opened it, I said, “Stephen, look, I’ve hired a babysitter for the whole day. You said you were my friend, and you are, you are my
friend
. Let’s do things that friends do. Let me show you Helsinki. It’s an interesting city, the Ateneum has an exhibit of Russian art, the Café Manta has exquisite pastries. You’ve come all this way, you should at least see the city.”

“What if people see us together?”

“I don’t care,” I said. “I’ll say you’re a friend. And it will be the truth.”

So Stephen washed his face and put on his coat and hat and gloves, and we went out together to spend the day walking around Helsinki. We went to galleries and museums, we walked up and down the beautiful Esplanade, looking in at shopwindows, we sat on the steps of the harbor, leading down to the ocean, and looked at the boats and the ships and the gulls and the curving line of land meeting sea. It was a cold day; we held hands when we walked, and I was amazed that chemistry could be so strong as to zing itself right through his leather gloves and my wool mittens. We ate a late delicious lunch at the Café Manta, and drank beer and then tea, and talked about ourselves. We talked about our pasts, and our hopes, and our problems, and our desires. It was certainly one of the most wonderful afternoons of my life, being with this handsome strange male
friend in a handsome strange city, feeling free for a moment of the responsibilities of husband, children, and job, yet knowing that they were all there for me to return to.

Finally I had to go home; I had promised the babysitter I would be there at four. Stephen waited with me for the bus, then stood smiling and waving goodbye as I rode off. I sat on the blue plastic seat of Bus 16 as if I were in a chariot made of pink clouds pulled by blue dragons. I felt as though I were the luckiest woman in the world.

Adam and Lucy were clingy and whiny when I came in the door; the apartment was a mess. I didn’t care. I paid the babysitter and sat down on the floor in my good clothes to hold my children. I let them jump on me, roll on me, fall against me. I kissed them and hugged them and held them and bounced them. I was an angel of patience and good humor. Finally I fed them and bathed them and read them stories and cajoled them into helping me pick up the apartment, and one hour later than their usual bedtime I got them into bed. Then I put on my nightgown and robe, and fixed myself some Maalva rose hip tea, and turned off all the lights but the one here in the kitchen, and sat down at the window to write in this little motorcycle-man book, to think. As I look out the window, I see that it has begun to rain.

And thank you, Helsinki, and thank you, funny little notebook; you’ve given me my metaphor, you’ve made it all come clear. Though it is trite, corny, overused, still I’ve thought of a metaphor for my life. Let’s say, as I sit here, solid and warm and comfortable, still resonating from the pushes and sounds and hugs of my children, let’s say that I am, hilly, solid thing that I am, the earth. Well, we are all that, aren’t we, each person a separate, complete, fascinating sphere, a world composed of inner unfathomed activity and outer layers of beauty or ugliness. We sleep and wake like the earth, we experience seasons of warmth or cold, we revolve through time, we burst forth from our mothers, we grow and erupt, and finally die and dissolve, spinning off into space. The earth metaphor is just fine; it will do. And if I am the earth, then my love for my children is the ocean, deep and wide and endlessly profound. My love for my children washes over me, it composes the greater part of me, it tugs and drags at me, it lifts up gifts to me, it storms and shines at me, it is truly the other half of myself. It is inseparable, undeniable; it has formed me. My love for my children is the ocean, vast, as eternal as any earthly thing can be eternal, beautiful; making me complete.

My love for Charlie then is a river, perhaps all rivers, because my love for him is such a varied thing. My love for my husband is a river, flowing from the heart of me, entering into and sustaining the ocean, a part of me and the ocean. My love for Charlie is a river, a river that has cut itself deep into me, a river that is calm and broad and good. And probably necessary, if I am to grow as well as I can.

And my work is then the rain. My work, teaching English to young college students, is the rain of my life: it is necessary for my existence. It nurtures me, fills me, replenishes me, cleanses me, makes me grow, causes me to remain open and receiving, helps me to give.

That is all true. True, but not perfect. No, it’s not perfect. It won’t work. It won’t hold. It’s a lousy metaphor. I’ve had too much scotch again and am not thinking straight. When I first knew and married Charlie, of course he was the ocean to my earth, and all the rivers and all the rain. It’s not fair to relegate him to one place; he’ll keep changing, and I’ll keep changing, and our relationship will not remain the same. No, it will certainly not remain the same, not after I tell him about my job.
My job
. Charlie, please understand.

The metaphor breaks down in other places, too: what, if I continue it, are my friends? What are Alice, Linda, Ellen, Rija, Gunnel—Stephen—what are my friends? Perhaps they are the fountains of my life: dazzling, refreshing, delightful, gracing and brightening my life. But then what about Caroline and Cathy? If I cast myself as the earth and everyone else must be some form of water, I guess I can only cast Caroline and Cathy as small lakes in my life, and nothing more. I have supported them, as the earth does support lakes, but I cannot say they are a part of me. I could never say that, and I am sure they would never say that, either. So I’ll have to leave them as lakes, pretty, superficial, sometimes sparkling, sometimes sullied; there.

* * *

Last year, last fall, after the peacemaking summer visit from Charlie’s girls, we received our first unexpected letter from Caroline. It was a long, friendly, chatty letter, written to both of us, telling about Caroline’s new apartment and her three girlfriends and how hard
her courses were and whom she was dating. There was no request for money. And the last sentence was: “Hope you two and the children are fine. Love, Caroline.”

Charlie was happy. “I knew this would happen eventually,” he said. “She wants to get back in touch again. She’s grown up a bit. The worst of it is over, thank God.”

He wrote back to Caroline, and after a while, I wrote, too. My letter was shorter, more cautious, and I mentioned Adam and Lucy only briefly. I realized how dull my letter might sound to a college girl; I wrote only about the farm, and our new kittens, and how many apples I had managed to slice and freeze or make into applesauce and apple cider. I longed to say in the letter, “Look, this is just a phase I’m going through, motherhood and calm farm life; it doesn’t make me very interesting, I know, but it makes me quite content. You went through a phase, God knows; I deserve to go through one, too.” As I wrote the letter, I knew that the farm, my children, my gentle, calm, safe plodding life, would not satisfy me much longer.

Caroline wrote back another long, friendly letter. She said that Cathy said hi. We wrote back to Caroline. Several letters were exchanged between us, and suddenly it was Christmas and both girls came up to spend two days of their Christmas vacation with us.

It was a good visit. There were no enthusiastic hugs and kisses, in fact there was no touching at all, and we were all rather reserved, rather careful. But we ate and drank and laughed and talked together. The girls helped me clear off the table without waiting for me to ask. They smiled and said thank you when they opened their presents. They even brought little presents for Adam and Lucy, and although they did not hold either child, they did talk to them a bit, they did smile at them. It was as if a storm were over, as if a nightmare had ended. By the end of their two days there, we were almost comfortable with each other.

In February, Caroline wrote to ask if Charlie and I could come down to New Haven to visit. It was her last year of college, and she wanted to show us her apartment and her roommates before everything changed. She had mentioned that she wanted us to come down during the Christmas visit, but we had thought she was perhaps only being polite. Now she seemed to be seriously, honestly inviting us.

“I can’t go down,” Charlie said. “I just don’t have the time. Why don’t you go?”

“Me? Alone? She doesn’t want me, she wants you, you’re her father, for heaven’s
sake,” I said.

But later, when Charlie called Caroline to tell her that he was too busy to go down for even an overnight visit, Caroline said, “Well, then, can Zelda come?”

“Well, then, can Zelda come?”

Those were the words Caroline said, and those five simple words made my heart jump up in my throat and made tears spring to my eyes. “She wants me to come,” I whispered to the air, as if saying it aloud, repeating it, made it more believable, more real. It was then, when I realized how happy I was that Caroline wanted me to come, that I also realized how sad I had been, in some hidden part of my heart, not to be part of her life, not to have her as part of mine.

I went. It was a great trip, for many reasons. It was the first time I had ever been away from Adam and Lucy and Charlie. Charlie and I had managed to squeeze out a weekend here and there to go down to New York to see a play and visit friends, and of course Charlie had gone off to his everlasting conferences many times, leaving me alone with Adam and Lucy. But now it was my turn: I was going on a trip by myself, without husband or children. I packed like a bride, took a new thick juicy paperback to read on the bus down, bought Caroline and Cathy new shirts, and took enough cash to buy plenty of wine and beer.

How free I felt as I stepped off the bus in New Haven! It was intoxicating simply to stand there, without having to lift a baby or push a stroller or answer a high-pitched question. And when I saw Caroline in her jeans and down jacket coming toward me, I felt young again for the first time in years.

That night, Friday night, the girls drove me to the dorm, so that I could see Cathy’s room and meet her roommate, and then we stopped at a liquor store and bought beer, wine, vodka, scotch, tonic, and soda, so that everyone would be happy, and then we went to Caroline’s apartment and had a great drunken dinner party. One roommate had cooked the appetizers, one had done the salad, one the meat, one the desserts. By the time we had gotten to the desserts I was probably too tipsy to taste anything, but even so the food all tasted exquisitely good, perhaps simply because for once I wasn’t fixing it or cleaning up the mess. I did offer to help, but the apartment kitchen was so small that only two people could fit into it at one time, and two of Caroline’s roommates did the dishes,
and Caroline and Cathy and I sat and drank.

I loved the apartment. It was like a three-dimensional collage; so many diversely colored and designed pieces were thrown into it by the four roommates to make a bright, gay room. There was the usual cheap ugly green Salvation Army sofa, but it was covered by an afghan knitted by someone’s mother. There was a purple velvet Chippendale chair and a sleek Danish plastic chair and bright yellow beanbag chair. There were plants hanging everywhere in wonderful macramé hangers, and there were paintings and photographs covering every inch of the wall. There were lewd posters of rock stars, and save-the-ecology posters of whales. Even the bathroom walls were covered—with clipped cartoons and jokes about men, vibrators, women’s lib, sex, college life, unemployment. I could have spent hours in the bathroom alone; I never did manage to read all the jokes.

We sat in the living room, drinking, talking, laughing. The talk faded like smoke; the next day I could not remember a word of it. About an hour after dinner Cathy’s date for the evening, a tall sexy blond boy named Chris showed up and took her away. Two of Caroline’s other roommates left with dates, and then there were just the three of us, Caroline, I, and the other roommate, Lynn. Lynn had made us tea, which sobered us up a bit, and we talked about courses, grades, the bad job market, the uncertainty of the future. We sank deeper into our chairs.

Finally I heard myself say, “Is this what you two usually do on a Friday night? Sit at home and get depressed?”