Superior Women (33 page)

“No, I didn’t. Actually.”

“Really? I thought you had.”

He asks a question about her work, and Megan tells him a couple of very short anecdotes about writers he has heard of (anyone would have).

They agree on the beauty of Amy, daughter of Lavinia and Potter.

They do not talk about Connie, not at all, although surely George must know that Megan knows something of that chapter in his history?

Nor do they reminisce, in any way, about their own past connection, whatever it was. And Megan inwardly concludes that there is not much to say about it: what can you make of some beery evenings that later included a lot of sexual mauling? She can vividly remember, still, the hardness of the riverbank where they lay and thrashed about, under some bridge, in the cold. The dirt
and grass stains on her clothes; she remembers all that, and how she thought of him with such passionate intensity, all the time.

He looks rather badly, George does, a gray ghost of the dashing boy she knew. His skin, always tan from all that sailing, is grayish white, and his blue eyes have also grayed. All his facial muscles seem to have tightened up, and the skin is tight across his bony nose, his big jaw. In that taut face his teeth look too large—or, perhaps this is how he has always looked, a heavy-jawed, rather large-nosed man, whom she perceived as radiantly handsome?

Their conversation is in fact so sketchy, so impersonal that for a moment Megan crazily wonders if he is really sure who she is. Does he know just when and where he knew her?

But then he asks an almost personal question. “Do you ever go back there to, uh, California? To see your parents?”

“I did go about four years ago, in fact. To see my parents and a college friend of mine who lives out there now. Cathy Barnes. I guess you never met her.”

“Uh, I guess not. And actually I don’t think I met your parents.”

“No, you didn’t.” Moved then by an impulse which she does not entirely understand—perhaps just to get his attention?—Megan decides to tell George the story of Cathy. “It was quite an extraordinary visit, all around,” she begins, and then plunges ahead. “Cathy and I went to Carmel together,” she says, in a rush, “and she told me that she was pregnant. She looked awful.”

Giving some evidence of attention, George comments, “Not married, I suppose.”

Why does he suppose that? Megan wonders. Am I the sort of person, in his mind, whose unmarried friends would turn up pregnant? Quite probably; no wonder I didn’t meet his parents—and he’s quite right, of course. She looks at him. “No, she wasn’t married. But she’s a Catholic, and so, no abortion. And then it turned out that the father of the baby is a priest.”

George is frowning—less from shock, Megan sees (and surely she had meant to shock him?) than from sheer distaste: she has
told him something quite unpleasant, involving people he would not at all care to know. “Well, priests,” he mutters.

Almost angrily, Megan continues. “She was going to give the baby up for adoption, it was all settled, and then a couple of months after that she wrote me that she’d decided to keep it. I thought that was really brave. And she did keep him. A little boy, Stephen. They live in San Francisco. She’s an economist with some firm out there, and her mother moved out to live with them. I guess she mostly takes care of the baby. Little boy.”

George has not been listening quite, but then with an effort he brings himself back, to ask, “What happened to the priest?”

“I don’t know. She never mentions him. She never did mention him, actually. Would you like another drink?”

“Uh, well, yes. I would.”

Over the next drink they talk about Adam Marr, who by now is so public a figure, so famous, that everyone knows almost everything he does. He has divorced beautiful black Sheila and married a very tall Chinese lady, Fusai, who in two years has already borne him two children. He is frequently in gossip columns, being given to well-publicized drunken fights, as well as to multiple affairs. “The man’s liver will wear out before he’s fifty,” is George’s prediction.

Megan has just remembered a minor coincidence. “Actually his former wife is an intern at your hospital,” she tells George. “Do you know her, Janet Marr? Dr. Janet Cohen Marr?”

“We’ve got quite a lot of interns, but not too many of them ladies. Naturally. But I think I do remember a Janet Marr, though. Rather on the small side, and rather dark? Uh, Jewish?”

“Yes, she is small and dark. And Jewish.”

“Considered very able, I believe. Well, where would we be without the Jews? In medicine, I mean. And the Scots, of course.”

Megan sighs. “I have no idea.”

“So, our Dr. Marr used to be married to that playwright fellow. Well, poor little woman.”

He has said this so feelingly that Megan laughs, as she thinks how Janet would dislike hearing herself so described. Poor little woman indeed.

But there must be, mustn’t there? something behind this mask of silliness and pomposity that George presents. Megan senses that he is extremely shy, all hidden.

Perhaps for that reason, kindliness toward him, at a certain point she says, “Look, everything’s so crowded at this hour, in restaurants. We’d have to wait. Suppose I scramble some eggs? And there’s cheese, and onions. Unless you’re terrifically hungry?”

George looks grateful, almost happy; Megan hopes that this is not only because, as she now remembers, he is rather tight. Happily he next says, “But you’ll let me get some wine? Otherwise that sounds terrific. It really does. But I insist on the wine.”

Megan directs him to the wine shop on 8th Street, and in his absence she peels and slices onions and potatoes; she is working toward an Italian omelette that Biff has taught her.

George returns with a good Beaujolais, as Megan is beating up the eggs. She has forgotten to put on an apron. “This is awfully good of you,” says George, with more feeling than he has revealed all evening. “Restaurants, they all seem so much alike. You can get so tired.”

She asks, “You eat out a lot?”

“Well, yes I do, since—” And that unfilled blank is his first and only reference to the departure of his wife.

A bit of egg has of course spattered onto Megan’s red silk shirt, but nevertheless, over dinner George remarks, “I must say, you are looking really great. First-rate,” and then he looks down, as though he has gone too far, conversationally.

Megan understands then that she was silly not to have recognized before, which is that later they will (of course: what else has all this been about?) go to bed together. What else, besides sex, did they have in common, ever? George has known this all along; very likely this knowledge has been one factor in his shyness.

And now, shy herself, Megan looks across at him; for a split second their glances lock, before he looks down, and away.

But their going to bed will be all wrong, Megan knows. It is in every sense too late for that, and besides, she does not really want to.
George helps her clean up the kitchen. “You’re getting that terrific blouse all wet,” he accurately notes.

Obediently she ties a dishcloth around her neck.

George says, “I would give anything not to have to go home right now,” and he puts his arms around her.

His words had less the sound of a question than of a plea, and so it is from sheer kindness that Megan tells him, “Well, you really don’t.”

She was right, though, that it would be a mistake. Nothing works, at all.

In the concealing dark, George tells her, “Well, uh, I guess I’m not quite as fit as I thought I was.”

“George, please don’t worry. It’s okay.” Megan herself is exhausted with the efforts she has made in “helping” him, lengthy and unavailing.

He asks, “But can I see you again? I’d really like to take you out.”

Megan kisses his mouth, considerately holding her body away from his—the scene of his failure. She says, “Of course.”

“Actually, I’m probably more tired than I think. In fact, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll just push on home. Get some rest.” All this has come out in a jerky rush.

Relieved (breakfast with George would have been as impossible as sex with him turned out to be), Megan tells him, “Of course.” Not saying, In fact I’m really just as tired as you are. Intending a small joke, she then asks, “You’ll forgive my not seeing you to the door?”

“Oh, absolutely. You mustn’t think of it. But can I, uh, get you anything?”

“No. But thanks.”

Very hurriedly he dresses, and after an awkward, hurried kiss he is gone.

•     •     •

Waiting for sleep, as she lies there Megan reflects that if the situation had been somehow reversed, if it had been she, a woman, who had failed to respond in a sexual way to a man, in bed, he would very likely have chosen not to see her again, and almost surely he would not have worried about the effect of that decision on her ego, her “feelings.”

But as it is, Megan feels that for the sake of George’s male ego she will have to see him again, and she believes that most women would react in just that way.

And what does this mean, she wonders? Are women nicer than men? stronger, more protective? Although she stays awake, unwillingly, for hours, Megan comes to no conclusions.

“Do you know, we haven’t seen that nice Father Mallory since he dropped in that afternoon, and it was Stephen’s second birthday?” remarks Cathy’s mother, with a look up from her knitting.

“I guess that’s right.” Cathy does not look up from her book.

“Such a nice person. I always thought we should have asked him for dinner. He took a real interest in Stephen, I thought.”

Cathy does not answer, but this is not in itself unusual; many of her mother’s small remarks, her little questions float out into the space between them, like soap bubbles, in the small square living room. Once Stephen is in bed Cathy has to use the time for her reading, journals of economics, mostly; her mother, widowed Mrs. Barnes, understands that, but she is by nature a chatty person, small and warm-spirited, a plump little sparrow of a woman, and sometimes things come to her mind and she says them aloud. Now she sighs and says, “I guess I miss knowing priests in a social way. You know we always did, back home.”

Cathy looks up from her book. “Father Mallory has left the
priesthood, someone told me,” she says in her usual dry voice, as though this were not a remarkable statement.

Mrs. Barnes stops her knitting. “Well! I know a lot of them are these days, but it always seems so—so surprising, especially someone you’ve met. And he seemed so—so—”

“I believe he’s getting married,” brings out Cathy, relentlessly.

“Getting married! Well! Well, I suppose that’s a reason to stop being a priest, all right.” Mrs. Barnes tries to laugh.

“I guess it is.” Cathy closes her book. “I think I’ll go up to bed.”

“That’s right, darling. You look really tired tonight.”

Cathy and her mother and Stephen, now four, live in a small house in the Richmond district of San Francisco, an unfashionable and vast area of mostly older houses, in the western segment of the city. Theirs is a cottage, with an actual white picket fence around it, which Cathy, in her sardonic way, finds quite funny. “I’m living with my bastard son, surrounded by white pickets,” she once wrote to Megan. But the house has a nice yard for Stephen and Stephen’s dog, Arrow, and Stephen goes to a local public kindergarten, quite nearby. Mrs. Barnes markets and cooks and cleans; sometimes she has a neighbor in for a cup of coffee, during the day. Her maiden name was Mulcahy, and that is the name that Cathy chose for Stephen; he was christened Stephen Mulcahy. The neighbors are told that Mr. Mulcahy, Cathy’s husband, died in some unspecified sad way; they assume some form of cancer, and that is what Stephen has been and will continue to be told: his father is dead.

Mrs. Barnes was told, and believes, that Cathy had a love affair, became pregnant, and (a good Catholic girl) she chose to keep the child. And how Mrs. Barnes rejoices that Cathy made that choice! She is crazy about Stephen, a winsome, handsome, dark-haired child. Her private idea is that the man was married; an extremely reticent family, she and her daughter do not discuss intimate matters, no more than she and her husband ever did; she would not have expected details. She would never, literally never in a million years have dreamed of a priest as the father of her
grandson, any more than at first Megan would have, as the lover of her friend.

Megan has been instructed by Cathy to present the same story of the departed lover to Lavinia and to Peg; it is always possible that one of them might show up in San Francisco. “Everyone seems to, sooner or later,” Cathy remarks. “And I can’t exactly pass off Stephen as just some kid I’m taking care of.”

Cathy Barnes and Thomas Mallory have not been lovers since Stephen’s birth, or since a couple of months before.

Heavily pregnant, infinitely weary, she told him, “I can’t. Not now. Probably not anymore. Ever.”

“But I love you more than ever. You’re more beautiful.” Even he could see that actually Cathy looked terrible, swollen and blotched, she was not in fact more beautiful, but he did love her more. He was besotted with love for her, and crazed with guilt and anguish. “I’ll do anything,” he said wildly, but meaning it. “I’ll, uh,
leave
—leave the priesthood. I mean, quit. Not be a priest. I could teach. We could get married.”

“No.” With her small dark eyes Cathy regarded him coldly, and clearly.

In a low, defeated voice he asked her, “Can I see the child?”

“I’ll see.” Her regard was pitiless (he felt). She added, “There’s my mother to think about.”

He left, and she burst into tears.

The birth of Stephen (Mulcahy) in January 1957 was prolonged, and difficult. At some point, during her fourteen hours of labor, a kindly, very likely Irish, red-haired nurse said to Cathy, “Your priest has stopped by to see you. Now, isn’t that thoughtful?”

“I don’t want to see him.”

The nurse registered disbelief: no one refuses to see her priest. “But, a minute?”

“No.”

•     •     •

Mrs. Barnes arrived the following day, in time to do everything that Cathy had neglected to do, in terms of readying the nursery for Stephen (which turned out to be quite a lot), and in time to bring them home from the hospital, her daughter and her new grandson, Stephen Mulcahy.