Superior Women (26 page)

Peg’s house is all dark and heavy, with all those antiques from her mother, and from Cameron’s mother, old furniture that now the children have battered with their tricycles and trucks. Her heavy dark house is a weight in Peg’s mind; even with Cornelia to help her, it is such a mess. Especially now that she is sitting here at a Prettyware Party, in such a pretty light bright Early American room. (Is Early American a little too early for antebellum? Peg believes that it is, just as Victorian must be a little late?)

The hostess, whom Peg has not quite met before (Cameron knows her husband, who is also in oil) is Cindy, and she too is light and bright and cute, very small, with big yellow curls and small blue eyes, and a matching blue sweater and skirt, all twirly. “As cute as a button,” Peg’s mother would probably say, approvingly, if she should see Cindy, but her mother would not like this house. Peg’s mother does not like for anything to be new, and even if it is new it must look as though you have always had it, like clothes—especially clothes. But Cindy is certainly cute, and her
house is so, so gay; no wonder it was chosen for the Prettyware Party.

Cindy is the hostess, it is her house, but the girl who is running the party, the Prettyware person, is named Patsy. “Prettyware Patsy,” she said, laughing, as she introduced herself. She has black hair that curls up at the ends, on her shoulders, a dark red mouth and a white sweater, and the most pointed, sticking-out breasts that Peg has ever seen. It is hard not to look at Patsy’s breasts, they are so sharp and high up on her chest, so much more visible than her eyes, where of course you are supposed to be looking.

Peg herself has been meaning to get some new bras, she then remembers. Although it is hard to think of everything.

Peg got here on time, seven thirty, and for a few minutes it was difficult, introducing herself, being introduced to Patsy, having all the Prettyware Prizes pointed out, all that. But quite soon the doorbell rang—it tinkled; it is chimes—and there were two more girls, and then more chimes tinkling, more girls, and now the room is full of girls, who all seem to have been there before. All smiling. Friends.

Patsy is standing by the table in the front of the room, where the Prettyware Prizes are all spread out, pink cannisters and yellow bowls. Not the most fortunate color combination, Peg hears herself thinking, in her mother’s voice. (“It is perfectly normal to think in your mother’s voice, even your father’s,” her doctor told Peg, but then he seemed to think that everything she thought was the craziest was perfectly normal. He seemed actually pleased when she once dreamed that her mother died. Only hostile dreams against your husband and children are bad.)

The picture window is framed in crisp sheer white ruffles, whereas the same window in Peg’s house is draped in dark red velvet, from the attic of her family house in Plainfield. Perfectly good velvet, perfectly normal to have it there.

Cindy passes out pieces of paper and pencils to everyone, as Peg wonders what there will be to eat, later on. Surely, refreshments? Since her illness she is so hungry, so often, but at the same time she has trouble with eating.

Patsy explains the rules of the game they are going to play, in
order to win the Prettyware Prizes. “Now, girls,” she begins, in a mock-severe way, and then she laughs. Everyone laughs too, Peg among them, although she was a little late getting it out.

“Now, girls,” repeats Patsy, “I want you to be ab-so-lute-ly honest. Anyone who cheats will get none of the delicious goodies that little Cindy has made for us.”

Peg quails at that, as though she has already cheated and been deprived of delicious goodies.

“Now,” says Patsy, with a lift of her chest so that her breasts point up even higher. “I’m going to ask you girls some questions that you will answer with a number. It’s really very simple, simple arithmetic.”

Peg feels an instant of sheer terror, which she knows to be unreasonable, not right, not perfectly normal. (What her doctor would have called “inappropriate,” which is the opposite of “perfectly normal.” But she can’t help it, although that is something else that she is not supposed to say, or think, or feel. “Yes, Peg, of course you can help it, you
can,
” the doctor said to her, quite frequently. The nurses said it too.) But she really is afraid of questions, and of numbers, adding, subtracting. She thinks of the nightmare of her checkbook (until she discovered that Cornelia is a whiz with numbers, oh, wonderful Cornelia). But now Peg wonders: if she does cheat, how will they know?

“Now, here goes with the first question. And remember, all these questions apply to this week only. We’re not delving into your
pasts
tonight, girls.” Patsy rolls her eyes, and everyone laughs. Peg laughs too, but was it too loud, her laugh?

“All right: have you ironed your husband’s shirts this week? If you have, write the number ten on your paper. If you haven’t, just don’t write anything. See? I promised this was easy.”

Most of the people—most of the girls seem to be writing something down, but several of them do not. Those who are not writing giggle. One of them, sitting near Peg, says, “Do I get a five for good intentions? I really meant to iron Larry’s shirts.”

Laughs all around.

Relieved, Peg decides that it is okay not to have ironed
Cameron’s shirts, to be writing nothing on her paper. Other people didn’t either.

The next two questions involve waxing the kitchen floor and cleaning out the oven. It is Cornelia who is supposed to wax the floor and clean out the oven, of course, although come to think of it, Cornelia hasn’t done any of those things either, not for quite a while. But Cornelia looks so tired, and she moves so slowly, so saggingly around the house; Peg thinks Cornelia must be unhappy, and often tells her not to bother. She worries about Cornelia. And besides, really, what is the point of a perfectly clean kitchen floor, with four children in the house? And poor Cornelia: why should she be doing those things? She looks as though she had troubles of her own.

However, Peg is holding a blank sheet of paper, undoubtedly the only person in the room with no numbers, not one written down. She is scared: will anyone see? Will they ask for all the papers at the end, with names? If she cheated, how would they know? Would a representative of the company call Cameron, or Cornelia? Well, of course not—or would they?

The next question saves her, or so Peg believes, for a while. Patsy asks, “Have you written to your mother this week?”

And Peg has! She wrote her mother a postcard yesterday, explaining why she hadn’t written before, children home sick with colds, would write soon. But do postcards count? Should she ask? No, of course they count; what Patsy said was, “Written to your mother.” No need to ask. She writes the first number on her paper. Ten.

Then Patsy giggles, so that Peg knows, as everyone must know, that she is going to say something dangerous. “Now, girls,” she says. “Tell me, have you kissed your husband this week? And you do know what I mean when I say kiss. Not some peck at the door.” And again, the dangerous giggle.

Of course Peg knows what she means, of course everyone does, and in the quickest possible upward glance Peg is able to see that everyone in the room is writing down a number, of course they all are, and so does she: how could she not? And in a sensible, appropriate
way, she reassures herself: no one,
no one
could possibly call Cameron on the phone to check on such a thing. “Mr. Sinclair, we’re from Prettyware, and we’re running a check on your wife. Would you mind telling us if it’s true that you and she ‘kissed’ this week? Oh, you didn’t? You don’t, not anymore? Well, that’s quite strange, Mr. Sinclair, she certainly said—well, she’s lied. Your wife has cheated in the Prettyware contest.”

Well, no one could possibly have such a conversation with Cameron, that was ridiculous. Still, as she writes the large TEN, under the other TEN that she got for the postcard to her mother (which very likely she did not deserve either), Peg is chilled with fear. Her stomach does not feel right; she would give a lot to get out of that room, out of all that Early American brightness.

Patsy clears her throat, and she sighs in an audible way, thus announcing that the next question will be innocuous, idle. “Now, girls,” she says, “if any of you have spanked a child this week, and that includes slapping, any hitting at all, you have to take ten points off your score.”

Several sounds of protest arise from certain corners of that room, but they quickly subside as several people mark a line through one of their tens. Peg’s quick look catches them at it, but she can’t tell how many people. It looks like about half the girls there. Less than half hit their children?

And for Peg the question was not innocuous; yesterday she slapped Candy at breakfast—Candy and Carol, her twins, now seven and too old to be slapped; it was terrible, it made her sick all day, sickly waiting for Candy to come home from school, and sick with worry, worrying that Candy might not come home, had been frightened away. It was so unfair; poor Candy had only been whining and saying she didn’t want to go to school. Not eating her breakfast. But the thought of Candy at home all day, whining like that, when there were both baby Kate and Rex already at home with colds, and Cornelia out sick—well, Peg slapped Candy, and said she had to go to school; she was not sick. A light slap, not hard at all; still, it made Candy scream and scream, barely stopping in time to wash her face and get on the school bus. It was terrible—Peg’s hand shakes as she makes a line through the Ten that she
just put down, the lying ten, saying that she and Cameron had “kissed.” So that all she has left is the ten for a card to her mother, just a card, when she should have written a letter.

But if she did not have that ten her score would be a zero, or would it be a minus number? It is hard to figure out, as she knew and feared that it would be. She needs Cornelia.

“
Girls.
” Patsy’s voice is as deep as she can make it, probably. “Now, girls, this last is a
very important question.
So important that I want you all to close your eyes, as you think about your answer. Also, you will not want anyone else to know what you put down. Now girls, have any of you, this week, kissed
someone else’s husband
? And I do not mean your father. If you have, subtract ten points.”

Relief, or perhaps some stranger and stronger emotion makes Peg break out into a sudden and quite uncontrollable laugh; although her eyes are obediently closed she can hear her own laugh, the old loud jolly-Peg laugh that so many people, like Megan, at college, always disliked.

Looking up, Peg sees on Patsy’s face an expression of the very purest dislike, even rage. But then Patsy changes her face back into a smile, almost, as she says, “Well, it takes all kinds, I guess. I’m so glad I was able to amuse you.” It is clear that she thinks that Peg has somehow spoiled the game, and everyone else is looking at Peg as though they thought that too.

It is a horrible moment; Peg feels hot blood flooding up into her face, into her brain, and her stomach also seems to rise. From the top of her throat she manages to say, “I’m sorry, something just struck me.”

But by then no one is looking at her, or listening; they are all looking at Prettyware Patsy, who is explaining that fifty is the top possible score: will everyone with a fifty raise her hand?

Several people do, and if they cheated no one will ever know—Peg is suddenly sure of that. Several more people got forty, all girls who iron their husbands shirts and kiss a lot and do not hit children and write to their mothers, maybe long letters every day, even. Who do not kiss other husbands, or who, if they did, would not think there was anything funny involved.

At last, in the confusion of people going up to the front to get their prizes, no one looking at her anymore, Peg is able to escape; she sneaks out the back of the room, knowing the floor plan as she does, and she finds a hall, leading as she knew it would to an outer door.

She drives home slowly, too early, wondering what there would have been by way of refreshments. What everyone else is eating.

Although she is not sure what she would have expected, Megan is still vastly surprised, arriving at Janet and Adam Marr’s White Plains house. In the first place, she thinks, why White Plains? She has visited them before this in a variety of rented houses (they seem to move a lot; “our wandering Jew complex,” Adam calls it) but in places that seemed somehow more plausible: Wellfleet and Provincetown, Westhampton, Westport. But now they have bought this staggeringly large house in White Plains.

With all Adam’s new money and splashy success, three Broadway hits in two years, Megan would have expected a big house, of course, but this house is remarkably large, even for Adam’s fantasy standards. Set far back from the street (North Broadway: could Adam have chosen a house for its street’s name?) its dark wings spread out onto what can only be called grounds, acres of immaculately tended green lawn (a Henry James, English lawn, thinks Megan) with ancient sweeping trees. In one corner there is a clump of formal shrubbery surrounding a birdbath, and leading up to the house is a formally patterned brick walkway.

Megan now feels silly, walking up all that way, with her suitcase. She had the cabdriver let her out at the entrance, but as she approaches the house she sees that there is a circle in the driveway where he could perfectly well have turned around (where anyone
else’s cab would have driven up and turned around). Drawing closer, walking slowly, she sees too that the “grounds” are far more extensive even than she saw at first; past the porte cochere and the parking circle there are what look to be an orchard and a garden. There must be at least three or four acres, in the middle of this expensive suburb.

The house is fronted with a very long porch; at one end a long swing hangs, with a table and some chairs. But no person is in sight. Megan begins to wonder about the wine she brought, a Beaujolais; in Paris they considered Beaujolais a real step up from their usual
vin ordinaire
—but in White Plains, in this house? Not to mention her clothes: could Adam and Janet, conforming to their house, possibly have begun to dress for dinner?