The Women's Room (65 page)

By nine thirty, Mira’s head ached. She longed for ten o’clock, when the Wards would turn on the news, after which they would go to bed. She was no longer really listening. Tomorrow was Christmas Eve; she had a few little things to buy, gifts to wrap, and in the afternoon the boys would arrive. They would stay overnight and into the afternoon of Christmas Day, when they would go to their father’s house. Then there would be a second Christmas dinner, then there would be cleaning up to do, talk about the gifts. She would have to stay only one day after that. The Wards would not be too unhappy to see her go. They could air out the house, polish the brandy snifter and return it to the back shelf of the china closet. She was trying to figure if she could leave even earlier, unlistening to the calamity that had befallen Mr Whitcomb’s second cousin’s liver, when suddenly her mother stopped talking.

The silence brought Mira’s head up. Mrs Ward was sitting in a straight-backed chair near a low, dim lamp. Her mother’s knotted hands lay very still, lightly clasped in her lap.

‘We’ll all be dead soon,’ she said.

Mira looked at her with shock. Mrs Ward did not look old. Her hair was gray, but it had been gray since she was in her late twenties. She was a brisk, energetic woman; she ran around the house cleaning it in high heels and earrings. Her movements were quicker than Mira’s. Her father had always been slower, and since his retirement he slumped more. He broke rules to the point of wearing carpet slippers around the house at least until dinnertime. He spent his time now pottering: he insisted there was plenty to do around here.

She looked at them. They were not old, no older than they had ever been. They had always been old. She could not remember them any other way. She recalled a photograph of her mother, taken before she was married. She had been dark-haired and very beautiful: she looked like Gloria Swanson. In the picture, she was wearing a floppy, wide-brimmed hat, and holding it on her head with one hand. Her hair was blowing. It must have been windy. And she was smiling, and her eyes were brilliant and alive, her smile was vibrant, she looked full of energy and joy. And there was one of her father too, taken in his World War I uniform, before he had gone overseas. He was slender and fair; she imagined him pink-cheeked, much like Clark now. He had longing eyes, was shy and delicate looking, like a Romantic poet.

What had happened to those people? Surely they were not now in this room, encased in this utterly different flesh, the vibrant triumphant girl, the yearning sensitive boy. All of life had constricted for them into a mortgage payment. Was that it? Had simple physical survival been so difficult for them that any other kind was a luxury? Was she, who felt herself to be miraculously still living, simply luckier? There was no question that survival of the spirit depended upon survival of the flesh: but hardship did not kill all its victims. Or did it? Was their hardship
so
hard? Was it perhaps the way they had conceived of life, of their duty, of their expectations? Yet, going over in her mind what their acts had been, and the space they had to move in, she could fault them on nothing. They had not had enough room. And now, it was not just what they had become that was oppressive, but that they would not allow that anyone could become anything else. That’s the price, she could hear Val saying, that’s the price they exact for having paid too much themselves. What had they wanted? To serve tea from a silver pot on an embroidered cloth just as nice as Mrs Carrington’s of the Bellview Carringtons? The silver tea set was covered with plastic, standing unused inside the china closet. To rise in society. Yes. Which required certain objects, certain manners. They had risen. They had reached the heights. They were now the old society of Bellview, the Carringtons and their friends having long since left it for Paris, Palm Beach, Sutton Place. The old Carrington mansion was now a private school, the Miller place a home for the aged.

Her parents rose the moment the news reporter said, ‘Good night,’ and turned off the set and turned to her and said, ‘Good night, Mira.’ And she stood too and embraced them, really embraced them, not giving the usual polite peck of a kiss. They were surprised, and both of them stiffened a little. They smiled at her, her father shyly, sweetly, her mother with a certain vividness. But her mother could only say, ‘Don’t stay up too late now, will you, dear?’ and her father, ‘You’ll remember to turn the thermostat down, won’t you, Mira?’ Then they went up to their dreams.

8

The Wards had always ‘had Christmas’ early Christmas morning: a quick unwrapping which was followed by Mrs Ward’s wild flurries in the kitchen aimed at producing a dinner by midafternoon. Later everyone would sit, stuffed and lethargic, in the living room. Some man or other – it could only be a man – might snooze for a while. The others would chat until eight, when turkey sandwiches and coffee would be brought out, food taking up the slack in the conversation. Mira’s divorce and the necessity of splitting the boys with their father on the holidays had caused a break in this tradition, a break her parents had not yet accepted and which never went unremarked.

Now they had a little party on Christmas Eve, inviting part of the family ‘so the boys will at least
know
their family,’ Mrs Ward would say, swallowing her pain. The boys would leave before midafternoon the next day and so miss Mrs Ward’s Christmas dinner. She invited the rest of the family to come then to help her get through the unnatural event.

Mira met the boys at the bus station. They understood the decorum, and were combed, jacketed, and tied, although their hair was getting a little long. They were lively enough in the car, but as soon as they walked into the Ward house, they became more subdued, even stiff. Pecked kisses all around, exchange of traffic information, weather reports, polite inquiries about school. They settled down with Cokes
in
the living room, and Mira said, ‘Wait till you see what I bought!’

She ran upstairs and dressed quickly. With Val’s help, she had bought a brilliant green and blue dashiki. She slipped it over her pants, neglecting to wear a bra. She laid brilliant blue eye shadow on her upper lids, making her eyes even bluer, and she hung enormous gold dangling earrings from her ears. They hurt, but she gritted her teeth. I want to tell them something, she said fiercely to herself. I want to tell them who I am. For the family, she knew, would be dressed as usual: the men in dark suits, white shirts, and red and blue, or red and gold, or blue and gold striped silk ties; the women in three-piece knit suits and teased, sprayed hair, and high heels matching their purses. A daring one might appear in a knit pantsuit.

She came down the steps as if she were making an appearance, and stood, grinning, before her sons. They grinned back. ‘You look nice,’
Clark said. ‘Where’d you get that thing, anyway?’ Norm asked, sounding irritated, and when she did not answer, he pursued it. ‘Did you get it at that little store on Mass Ave near the place that sells bowls? On Brattle Street?’ He really wanted to know. ‘Why?’ she asked him finally. He looked shamefaced. ‘Well, they have them for guys too, don’t they?’

‘You mean you want one?’

He shrugged. ‘Well, maybe.’

Mrs Ward’s eyebrows went up as she surveyed her daughter, but then she smiled a little. ‘Well, it’s different,’ she admitted. Mr Ward said something about Mira looking as if she had come from Africa, but after shaking his head a little, he subsided.

The Wards’ small house had a narrow porch in the front, separated from the living room by folding glass doors. To keep the mess down, they stood the artificial Christmas tree out there, placing it on a wooden settee that stood beneath the front windows. The presents were strewn on the settee around the tree. The room held only the settee and a slant-doored secretary. The living room sparkled with wax and clean ashtrays, so when Mira wanted to talk to the boys, she led them out to the porch, carrying an ashtray, and they all sat on the floor. Mira called out to her mother that she would do all the vegetables in an hour, after she’d visited with her sons. But Mrs Ward, tight-lipped, stood in the kitchen peeling and chopping. Mr Ward had gone down to the basement to ready the whoopee room (as they called it) for visitors. Mira knew that this, this sitting on the floor filling the rooms with cigarette smoke before company was expected, was an act of defiance, and angered them. But she refused to give in.

Norm and Clark seemed much older than they had in the summer. They talked easily now, telling her about someone’s funny error in a soccer game, a martinet math teacher, some guys who sneaked beer into the dorm. Norm said he wanted to have a long talk with her about college: his father insisted he go to a good pre-med school, and become a doctor. But he didn’t want to be a doctor. The problem was he wasn’t sure whether he didn’t want to be a doctor because he didn’t want to be a doctor or because his father wanted him to be a doctor. Mira laughed and said he probably wouldn’t find out the answer to that in time. Clark wanted to tell Mira about an argument with his father that had confused him. As she listened, it became clear that Clark was perturbed because he’d shouted at his father. ‘He was yelling at me,’ he concluded sulkily. ‘I guess you’re allowed to have a temper too,’ Mira said, patting him. ‘Everybody else does.’ Norm had had an encounter with a Girl at a
prep school mixer. He wanted to know if Girls were always like that. Mira got up and poured herself a gin and tonic.

‘Really, Mother, the boys and I will do the rest,’ she said, but Mrs Ward went on grimly peeling and chopping. Mrs Ward hated to cook and blamed the world for the necessity of her doing it.

She returned to the porch and the three of them talked and laughed. She told them about the parties; she told them about the change in Iso. They were fascinated, they asked question after question. They wanted to know, clamorously, what women did with women, men with men. They told her rumors at school about fags; they told her jokes and stories they had heard but did not understand. They asked, a little warily, how one could tell if one was gay. Mira had never seen them as interested in anything before, and she pondered the subject’s fascination.

‘Val thinks everybody’s gay and straight, but that we get conditioned, most of us, to be one or the other early in life. Iso thinks that’s not true, that she was always only gay. I don’t know, I don’t think anybody knows. When you think about it, it doesn’t seem terribly important – I mean, what does it matter who you love? Except that I guess it causes identity problems. But that happens anyway, doesn’t it?’

They were mystified.

‘Well, you are both so fascinated by this. You’re wondering what you’re like, aren’t you?’

‘Well, there’s this guy, Bob Murphy, Murph, and he’s really a great guy, he’s a terrific soccer player and just a great kid, you know, and everybody likes him a lot, and I do too, sometimes my heart fills up looking at him, and everybody’s always touching him, you know, in the locker room and all? Always patting him on the back or poking him in the arm. He just laughs, but one day some guy – a real jerk, Dick his name is, said we were a bunch of queers. Do you think that’s true?’

‘I think you all love him. Do you think it’s peculiar that I love Val and Iso?’

‘No, but you’re a lady.’

‘Do you think ladies and men have different feelings?’

They shrugged. ‘Do they?’ Norm asked suspiciously.

‘I doubt it,’ she smiled and got to her feet. ‘Come on.’ Mrs Ward had given up trying to make them feel guilty and had gone upstairs to dress. Mira and the boys went into the kitchen. She made herself another drink, offered them one – which led to hysterical giggling – and they talked on. She peeled and chopped while they set the table,
fished down platters from high shelves, stirred the cream sauce, fetched vinegar from the pantry, laughed, talked.

‘The older guys in my class – some of them are older, and some of them just seem older, you know? They’re always talking about booze and broads, booze and broads,’ Norm imitated a deep male voice. ‘You think they really do those things?’

‘What things?’

‘Oh, you know, with girls and all.’

‘I don’t know, Norm, what do they say they do?’

‘Well, screwing and all,’ he said with a red face. The tension in the kitchen was high. She could hear them waiting for her answer.

‘Maybe some of them do,’ she said slowly. ‘And some of them probably make it up.’

‘That’s what I think!’ Norm exploded. ‘It’s just all lies.’

‘That could be. But say some of them are really screwing.’ Mira heard her father’s step descending the staircase. ‘You have to figure they don’t know much about what they’re doing, and are just as scared and uptight as you are. They’re no doubt clumsy. To hear Val talk, a lot of them stay clumsy.’

Mr Ward was in the hall leading to the kitchen.

‘They say girls like it,’ Norm frowned. ‘They say girls want to.’

‘Maybe some of them do. But most of the them are probably pretending. Sex doesn’t come naturally to many of us. Not in this world. Maybe back when people lived on farms, I don’t know.’

Mr Ward’s step veered quickly in the other direction and disappeared into the living room rug.

The boys glanced toward the hall, then at their mother. They blushed, they giggled silently, holding their hands over their mouths. Mira stood smiling at them, yet grave.

‘Which is not to say that people aren’t sexual early,’ she continued imperturbably, turning back to peel a carrot. ‘I remember masturbating when I was fourteen.’

They were silent at that, and she was standing at the sink with her back to them and could not see their faces. Norm came over to her and laid his hand lightly on her back. ‘Do you want me to pour the water out of the onions, Mom?’

The family arrived at six on the dot, all of them at once. There were Mrs Ward’s sister and brother and their three grown children and two spouses and five grandchildren, and Mr Ward’s brother and his wife and one of their grown children with her husband and their three
kids. After the briefest of greetings, the small children were shunted downstairs to the whoopee room, which Mr Ward had built for these occasions alone, to watch TV or play Ping-Pong or darts. The adults crowded into the living room and Mr Ward served them manhattans. Only Mira drank anything else. Clark and Norm went downstairs for a while, but came back up within half an hour and sat on the fringes of the room. No one seemed to notice, but it did not matter. The conversation was entirely proper: sex was not mentioned once.