Superior Women (9 page)

Thinking of Adam Marr, and wondering if she should have stayed on and talked to him, Megan goes over to the wall of pigeonholes, where the mail is distributed.

In her box are a letter from her mother (that too familiar hand, small and rounded, reaching forward) and a postcard, in a hand that she also recognizes instantly, although she has seen it only once before, on another card. It is George’s writing, and with a swift closing of her heart, like a fist, Megan knows that what it says will cause her pain.

“Guess what?” the postcard begins; as on the postcard in which he wished her a Merry Christmas, there is no salutation. “It seems I’m going to be married, in June. Girl name of Connie. Then probably OCS. Hope you’re well and happy. All best wishes. George Wharton.”

“Men are very different from women, you have to remember that,” says Lavinia to Megan, that afternoon. Megan has been crying, in a messy, uncontrolled way; she still is, off and on.

“Actually,” Lavinia continues kindly, “I had heard something from Potter Cobb, about a girl named Connie, and George
Wharton. But you know how people talk, it could have meant absolutely nothing. She could have been just some skiing pal, or something. And I knew if I said anything you’d be upset. Honestly, Megan—”

“But Christ,” Megan then gets out, between large gulped sobs, “what did he think we were doing? What was all that about?”

Cool Lavinia, in what has come to seem her habitual white, looks speculatively at Megan. “Now Megan, you’re not going to tell me—”

It is quite clear what she has meant, and so Megan answers, “No, of course we didn’t. But you know, almost. I just don’t see how he could.”

“Men are different,” Lavinia repeats, with emphasis. Her gray eyes are serious, and genuinely pained. She still suffers, thinking of Gordon Shaughnessey, although she is less pained by his death than by his previous defection (it has even occurred to her that if he had not died he might have married
Marge
); but fortunately no one, not even Peg, or Potter, knows how things were between them, at the end.

“I guess,” sniffs Megan.

“My old pal Kitty always says that the best cure for one man is to go out and neck with another,” says Lavinia, smiling wanly.

“Oh, maybe. But I really don’t feel like doing that. And I hardly know anyone else,” Megan accurately says. “But do you think that’s true? I mean, have you ever?”

“No, but I’m sure thinking about it.” Lavinia’s smile, which tearful Megan does not quite see, is both bitter and determined. It is high time that she gave up this pretense of mourning for Gordon’s death, Lavinia thinks, and next she thinks, Well, how about Potter, who is really in love with her, and rich? Her father would like Potter, very much.

“Janet Cohen’s going to fix me up with her brother, he’s at MIT,” says Megan, a little later, thoughtlessly having forgotten Lavinia’s not liking Janet.

And so Lavinia frowns. “Now Megan, you know that Janet is all very well, I’m sure she’s perfectly nice. But I’ve told you,
you must not start going out with Jews. What you don’t know is, if you go out with one of them, all his friends will be after you.”

“But what’s wrong with that?” Megan has a sudden, vastly cheering image of herself, pursued by a host of Jewish men, all dark and brilliant and mysterious. And sexy, all of them: no problems there with zippers, no more ingrown virginity, her own virginity broken through into wholeness. And everyone knows that Jewish boys are smarter; they have to be if they get into Harvard, what with quotas. And often they like music, even poetry.

A quick side thought distracts her then: Megan wonders, Does Irish Adam Marr have this same view of Jewish girls? Is Janet sexy for Adam, in a way that an Irish girl could never be?

“You really don’t understand about Jews,” Lavinia is saying. “It may be different in California. But if you’d ever lived in a big Eastern city, you’d know what they’re like.”

Megan begins to cry again.

After a couple of weeks, although occasionally a poem or certain music (Janet Cohen playing Beethoven quartets, on her record player) can still move Megan to tears, and although she still ascribes that emotion, that sense of loss and yearning, to the loss of George Wharton, in another way Megan feels considerably better for having digested his cruel announcement. She is given, really, neither to excessive mourning nor to self-pity, and she grasps at her sense of relief, at no longer jumping at the sound of the phone, or staying in the dorm and hoping he will call (well, she never did too much of that). Now she is free to do anything that anyone suggests.

Unfortunately, though, for a while, no one makes an interesting or plausible suggestion. It somehow does not work out for her to meet Janet Cohen’s brother, who is involved with a girl at Wellesley, or somewhere.

As she walks across the Yard, and in and out of classrooms, walks around the Square, Megan stares at the numerous handsome men and boys, and she thinks, Why is it that no one sees how available I am? Why isn’t it clear that I don’t
choose
to be an ingrown virgin?

She takes to wearing more makeup, pancake and mascara, and darker lipstick, even to classes, until Lavinia tells her to stop. “Megan, it isn’t you, you look kind of scary like that, and a little cheap.” Which was very likely true.

It is also possible, Megan later considers, that sheer need shows on her face, which could well be frightening, especially to boys as inexperienced as she herself is. She washes off her face, and she concentrates on a carefree look, a happy person who does not need anyone. She works on losing weight.

There is a man, though, who seems to be following her around. He is an instructor in her survey philosophy course, at Harvard what is called a section man. Mr. Jacoby, Simon Jacoby, who is at least ten years older than Megan. But everywhere she turns, there he is: in the poetry section of the book department at the Coop; in St. Clair’s; back and forth across the Yard—there he is, slyly ducking his head, saying, “Oh, Miss Greene. Good morning.”

Well, it can’t be an accident, can it? this always being where she is? Megan decides that in some way she will confront him; well, what the hell, she thinks. And so, late one morning in the Coop, in front of the few shelves of new poetry, new thin volumes of Auden and Spender and Delmore Schwartz, she says, “Oh, good morning, Mr. Jacoby,” with a very wide, blue-eyed California smile.

“Oh, Miss Greene, how are you? It’s, uh, really spring now, isn’t it?”

Megan agrees, having planned to agree to almost anything. She offers suggestively, “It’s really hard to study in this weather, though.”

He smiles and shrugs, his gesture saying, Yes, how true, how very right you are. “I live out near Concord,” he tells her. “I keep
all the windows open and the country smells are, uh, really terrific. But very distracting. I’m from New York City,” he adds.

You are really terrific, and very distracting, is what Megan understands is really being said to her. And so she only smiles, in a pleased, receptive way. So that he has to continue.

“I don’t suppose,” he begins, “uh, would you ever be interested in a drive out there? Out to Concord?”

If you’ll promise to take me to bed, take off all my clothes, and really make love to me. These words occur to Megan, who does not say them, of course, but they make her smile instead—perhaps seductively. “Oh, I’d love to,” she says, quite possibly with more fervor than Simon Jacoby had expected.

“Well, um, are you busy this afternoon?”

She is not, and twenty minutes later—after a brief stop at Barnard Hall, ostensibly for Megan to pick up a sweater, but during which she actually changes from an ugly panty girdle to the silk pants originally bought for George’s ineptly probing hands—twenty minutes later they are racing along, over the wide highways, the broad and gentle hills that lead out to Concord.

Simon’s car is an impressively long, open, dark gray convertible, with red leather lining, smelling new. To Megan it is an exciting, almost an erotic smell, and it is reassuring to her that Simon Jacoby should turn out to be rich, as well as Jewish and interested in poetry, probably music. And maybe sex.

The true countryside, soon reached in that heavy, powerful car, is alive with spring: in steep meadows the long gray-brown grasses, beaten down all winter by the snow, now seem visibly to rise. White water leaps up from the swollen, rushing brooks, and on fruit trees the newest, palest boughs of blossoms sway very gently in the breeze.

Simon’s house is an odd box of glass and steel, set up on what look like stilts, at the edge of some thick dark woods. “I know, it’s terribly Bauhaus,” he explains (to Megan, incomprehensibly) as they leave the car and approach this structure. “Some students of Breuer’s did it for kicks, I guess. But the price is right—some friends of my parents own it. I like the privacy and the isolation. Sometimes.”

“There’s a Frank Lloyd Wright house on the Stanford campus,” Megan offers. “It’s really odd.”

Going up the steps Simon takes her arm, and at that very slight touch Megan thinks, Ah, good.

There is not much furniture inside, just bookcases lining the one wall not made of glass, a big desk, a record-playing machine, and records. On the floor there is a wide, wide mattress, covered over with bright wool rugs. Nowhere to sit but on that mattress, and so Megan does sit there; she perches rather primly, and crosses her legs.

Simon hovers about her; this host-guest phase of their time together was not quite anticipated by either of them. Nervously, Simon says, “I didn’t even ask, are you hungry? I always keep a lot of snacks around.”

Megan has never been less hungry in her life, and so she can assure him, “Actually not.” And, in a nice-guest way she remarks, “It’s really pretty here. The woods.”

“It was wonderful last winter,” he tells her. “The snow. Little animals.” And then, still an uneasy host and a not-quite-experienced seducer, “Well, maybe some wine? We can eat something later, if you want.”

“Okay. Swell.”

He goes into another room, as Megan thinks, This is extremely interesting—I am perfectly happy, I am having a good time, and it’s less than a month since I got the postcard from George. Am I shallow? or what?

Simon comes back with a tall green bottle on a silver tray, two glasses, a small dish of peanuts. He opens the bottle and pours, and hands Megan a pale yellow glass. He says, Cheers.

Megan sips. It is cold and a little sour, but she smiles, and is about to say, What delicious wine, when Simon leans toward her. “You’ll have to put down your glass,” he tells her. “I can’t wait another minute to kiss you.”

At some moment, after they have made love for the third or perhaps the fourth time (their passages together tend to continue, or to
merge), Simon begins to talk; he is naked, they both are, between fine sheets, beneath dark blankets. “I have to tell you, Megan,” he says, raised up on an elbow, looking down at her, “you are the most terrifically amazing woman. You really are. I mean, you come the minute I do, or before. You’re a living sexual fantasy, you know that? And you feel so smooth and slick, oh, beautiful! Do you have any idea how extraordinary you are? Most women—well, you’re really exceptional.”

In a dazed, pleased way Megan smiles up at him; evidently he could not tell that she was a virgin, which she is sure is just as well. He may even think she has spent a lot of afternoons like this, with men she picks up in bookstores (which is, come to think of it, exactly where she also met George Wharton, in the Stanford Bookstore). Curiously, it is perfectly all right with her if he does make these assumptions. If only there were something good to eat she would be perfectly happy, Megan thinks.

“I haven’t even let you drink your wine,” exclaims Simon, just then. And, telepathically—or perhaps he too is hungry?—“Couldn’t you eat something now? Let me fix us a snack.”

“Oh, sure,” politely agrees Megan. “That would be great.” She watches with interest as he emerges from under the bedclothes (on the way in, as it were, they were both too hurried to look at each other). Now she observes his thin dark muscular back, flat buttocks, black line between buttocks, black pubic hair. He has bent over to look for something on the floor, which he does not find. He mutters, Shit, and then, standing up, he turns to her. “I seem to have lost my shorts,” he tells her.

It
is pointing straight up, pointing toward her. Dark red, with an interesting tulip-shaped head. Simon looks down at himself, and he smiles as he says, “You see? You’re a witch. A sex witch.”

He gets back into bed with her, and they do it again.

A little later he says, “Oh, here’re my shorts. No wonder.”

Getting up, he puts them on, and this time he makes it into the next room, which must be the kitchen.

Lying there alone, still somewhat dazed, Megan considers what he has told her: Could it be true, that she is in some way amazing? some sexual way? Certainly, if all women experienced what she
just has, they would do it all the time, every chance they got. Instead of so often pretending not to want to. In the phrase then current, playing hard to get. And so, she, Megan, must be different, in this way?

Simon comes back with some cold sliced meats and cheeses, butter and dark bread, on paper plates. Satisfied love has made him less formal, as well as more loquacious.

“But maybe in a way I always knew what you would be like,” he now tells Megan. “I could never keep my eyes off you. I guess you noticed?”

“Sort of.” Megan is concentrating on the food, which is mildly exotic to her. Delicious, she thinks, biting the dark sour bread, chewing, savoring.

That afternoon marks the beginning of a relationship that is, for Megan, somewhat exotic in itself; it falls into none of the categories that she has ever heard or read about. Certainly it cannot be described by any of the phrases current with college girls in those rigidly romantic times—even if Megan felt the need to describe it to anyone.

Surely one of the things that it is not is a great love affair: Simon continuously praises her in bed, he says that her body is beautiful, that he loves to look at her, as well as to touch, but he has never said that he loves her, nor ever asked her how she feels about him. He likes her, Megan is certain of that. He always behaves affectionately toward her, he even seems interested in her literary opinions. He is pleased by her enthusiasm for her poetry course, for Donne and Auden.