She would offer food, but he was never hungry. He would pour
himself a rye – Canadian Club – or a brandy, and sit across from her with the light turned on.
‘How was your day?’
‘Okay,’ he’d sigh. His collar button was undone, his tie pulled loose, and he looked tired. That burn case was coming along better; that case of hives was more serious than they’d thought – it was internal now. Poor Mrs Waterhouse, whom he’d sent over to Bob, had CA, it had spread, there was no hope. They could give radiation treatments, but that would only prolong the agony. Her children wanted to do it, however. He’d explained, and so had Bob, that it was a great expense and could do little but prolong. But they insisted: they wanted to feel that they had done everything possible.
‘They feel guilty because they want her to die.’
He burst out in exasperation. ‘Why do you say a thing like that? That’s ridiculous! You don’t even know these people and you say a thing like that! They just want to feel they’ve done all they can for her, left no stone unturned. She’s their mother, for God sakes!’
Mira had formed a habit of making little nonsense rhymes in her head. She never wrote them down; she was hardly even conscious she did it. She did it now.
Some birds fly and some birds sink and some birds don’t know how to think
. She said, ‘Because they know it can’t help. So the only reason they would want it is to alleviate guilt. And the obvious guilt is their wish for her to die.’
‘Mira, that’s ridiculous,’ he said in disgust. ‘You know, some people aren’t like you, they have simple motives, they just want to do everything they can for someone they love.’
Love, love, heavens above, we all destroy in the name of love
.
Norm changed the subject when she was silent. ‘Maurie Sprat was in, remember him? I guess he was two years ahead of you. I knew him because his brother was in my class, great basketball player, Lennie. Maurie says he’s vice-president of an aluminium company now, sells house siding or something.’ He laughed. ‘God, I can’t picture that! Skinny Lennie Sprat a successful businessman, that really gets me. Maurie came into the clinic for what he calls a scalp condition – a scalp condition! He’s completely bald, can you picture it? Bald as a billiard ball. Funny! He works for a soft-drink company, gave me a good tip: Sunshine is going to merge with Transcontinental Can company, put out soft drinks in cans. I may plunge a little.’
‘Plunge?’
‘Buy some stock.’
‘Oh.’
Silence.
‘And what about you? What did you do all day?’
‘I cleaned – in here. Doesn’t it look shiny?’
He looked around. ‘I didn’t really notice.’
‘And I planted some flowers.’
‘Oh, good,’ he smiled at her benevolently. She had such a simple, sweet life: She could do things like plant flowers and get pleasure from it. Because he provided her the means.
What do you do with yourself all day
,
Said little man to little maid
,
You have nothing to do but play
Move about dust and tea on a tray
And sing aloud to your heart’s content
,
While I’m out struggling to pay the rent
.
She cleared her throat and launched into what in her mind she called her column of Family Notes:
‘Normie broke a window playing baseball this afternoon.’
‘I hope you told him he’d have to pay for it out of his allowance!’
‘He didn’t mean to do it.’
‘I don’t care. He’s got to learn responsibility!’
‘All right, Norm. I’ll tell him you said …’
‘Why do you always have to make me the heavy? I’d think you’d be just as interested in his getting a little sense of responsibility! That kid thinks money grows on trees.’
In my yard is a little money tree;
It flowers and it flowers, but none of it’s for me
.
I rake and hoe and water to keep the tree in health
,
And all the neighbor women envy me my wealth
.
But all the little dollars growing on that tree
Belong to Norm the Doctor, none of them to me
.
‘Yes, Norm. And Clark got an A on a math test.’
‘Good, good.’ He rose. He sighed. He was tired. He put his glass down on the wooden tabletop. ‘I’m going to bed,’ he said. ‘Big day tomorrow.’
Big day tomorrow. She heard him finish in the bathroom, was aware of the bedroom light being turned off. She rose and picked up his glass. She rubbed the table with the sleeve of her robe, drying it and erasing the watermark. She carried his glass into the kitchen, returned, poured herself another brandy, and turned off the light. She never went to bed when he did if she could help it.
8
Big day tomorrow: she wondered what that felt like. All her tomorrows were big days – tomorrow, for instance, she would tackle the living room. Yet they were not big days. What would that be like, a big day? The only way she could envision such a thing was to imagine going out early, just getting in the car and driving – oh, driving anywhere, to Manhattan, say, and going to – oh, a museum, or on a boat ride around the island. Just not doing her work, letting it go. Not coming home on time, leaving the kids, letting them fend for themselves. Coming home late, as late as Norm, a little drunk, maybe.
No, of course she would not do such a thing. She did not even want to. The kids would be worried, frightened. Norm did his part, she would do hers. She did.
Some nights, the conversation ran differently. Norm would come home perhaps a little earlier; he would be in a gay mood. She always recognized, with a little heart-fall, the occasion. Then, after she’d asked him about his day, he would turn to her with a special sweet smile on his face and say, ‘And what did the little mother do today?’
Mira knew that Norm thought she was a wonderful mother. Not that he said so to her, but she’d heard him say it to other people, and he frequently mentioned it when he was scolding the boys: ‘Why did you do something like that to worry your mother, when you know what a wonderful mother she is?’ He himself had no patience with them. They always seemed to spill the milk when he was sitting at the lunch table with them; they always came home crying about some childhood tragedy on days when he was there to lay contempt on them for it. But somehow, whenever Norm asked her this question, her insides curled up. And he always had that same smile on his face, coy and fatherly at the same time, a smile you would use on a little girl who had just climbed up into your lap. It always made Mira blush, or at least feel hot in the face. And she’d stammer out something about the
price of loin lamb chops or meeting Mrs Stillman at the dry cleaner or the vote to buy Christmas trees for each classroom taken by today’s meeting of the PTA. Whatever she said she would stammer out with the high color and tongue-tripping of the novice adulteress. But he never seemed to notice. Perhaps he expected her to be nervous when he interrogated her, like the string of young receptionists continually being hired and fired at the office, or like the young women who consulted him whispering about vaginal rash and who were breathless, blushing, and soft-spoken in response to his shot-out questions.
He would listen, patiently, tolerantly to her trivialities, wanting to show his affection, waiting for her to finish. Then he would gaze at her kindly, stretch a little, and say, ‘Coming to bed?’ as if it were a question. Sometimes she would say, ‘I think I’ll look at the paper first,’ or ‘I’m not really tired yet,’ but he would simply put his hand out to her and she knew, she knew she had to stand up, to take his hand, to go to bed with him. She had no other choice. She knew it: so did he. It was an unwritten law. Maybe it was even a written law: he had rights over her body even when she did not want him to. Dutifully she would rise, but something inside her squirmed and squealed. She felt like a peasant girl commandeered by a noble in the
droit de seigneur
. She felt bought and paid for, and it was all of a piece; the house, the furniture, she, all were his, it said so on some piece of paper. He’d check lights and locks as she stood there, then come back and put his arm around her and gently propel her up the stairs and into the bedroom. Her reluctance seemed to please him.
And she would feel her body moving differently from usual. Sometimes she would see a woman in the beauty shop, sometimes in the street, who moved the way she felt she was moving, as if their hips and arms and necks were borrowed pieces of porcelain that had to be taken special care of, as if they were jewels that belonged to someone else, as if movement did not arise in muscle and bone but was dictated by some outer music. Such bodies were not connections of bone and muscle, fat and nerve. Like slave girls brought in to dance for the sheik, they were soft tender skin oiled in warm baths and perfumed: for him. Their bodies existed only in the eye and hand of the owner even when he was not present. She remembered seeing Bliss move this way in the days when she had started to sing all the time. Mira had thought Bliss was moving to the music she sang. She did not know how her own movements looked, but they felt like that.
Norm always insisted she come into his bed, and he always insisted
on using rubbers. Her diaphragm lay drying in a box in her bed table. She would lie there waiting for him to get it on – he always had trouble with them – already feeling helpless and violated. Then he would lie down and lean toward her and take her nipple in his mouth and suck it until it hurt and she would push his head away. He assumed that meant she was ready, and he entered her, came in a few seconds, head thrown back, eyes shut, hands on her body but mind a thousand miles away, and she would lie there watching him with grim sarcasm, wondering what he was thinking about, what movie star or patient’s body, or perhaps just a color or scent, he was imagining. It was over fast and he never looked at her. He got right up and went into the bathroom and cleaned himself thoroughly. By the time he returned she had gone to her own bed and closed her eyes and was soothing her genitals into relaxation. He would say, ‘Good night, sweetie,’ get in bed and fall instantly to sleep. She would lie there soothing herself for a half hour or longer until she became aroused, then masturbate for fifteen or twenty minutes until she came and when she came she would cry, hard, bitter tears that she did not understand, for at the moment of orgasm the thing she felt besides relief was emptiness, an agonizing, cruel, and hopeless vacuum.
Over the years, Mira had picked up a little sexual knowledge. She had, for some months, tried to get Norm to make love in a somewhat more tender way, but he was totally resistant to change. He believed that anything other than what he did impeded his pleasure, and that seemed to him wrong, unnatural. The only other act he was willing to perform was fellatio, and that Mira firmly vetoed. On the whole, Norm probably felt that what was pleasant for him was pleasant for her, or if it were not, it was because like so many women, she was frigid. Mira gave up her attempts to change him, but she sought other ways to make the whole thing less wretched for her. She would try to think of other things, to let him do what he wanted and keep her mind elsewhere. But she was never successful at this because the moment his head came down on her breast, she was so full of rage that she could not concentrate on anything else. And no matter how short it was, she felt violated and used and will-less, and every month, every year, this feeling grew. She dreaded the least sign of desire in him. Fortunately, these signs appeared less and less often.
9
Things were changing for Mira’s friends. Paula and Brett were divorced and Paula remarried a man remarkably like Brett, only a shade more alive and considerably better off. Roger and Doris were divorced and Doris was grim and bitter, working in a state office typing out forms all day. Samantha had announced gaily that she was bored and was getting a job. Mira was appalled: the baby, Hughie, was only three, and even Fleur was still really a baby at six. She put it down to greed. Samantha no longer had dyed hair, and her cheek color was her own, but she still walked like a mechanical doll. And things kept happening: Fleur was taken sick at school while Sam was at work, and a neighbor had to care for the child, who was running a high fever. Hughie, whom Sam left all day with the same neighbor, fell out of a tree house and broke his wrist and was languishing for hours in the hospital emergency room before Sam could get there and sign the permission to treat him. Mira pressed her lips together at such news. It was all because Sam wasn’t home that these things happened. If she had been home with her children as she should have been, things wouldn’t have been so bad, and they might not have happened at all. She, Mira, would certainly never have allowed a three-year-old son of hers to play in a tree house. Mira was cool and disapproving whenever Sam called with the latest catastrophe.
Sean and Oriane had moved to the Bahamas and bought a boat and were living, according to her letters, the paradisal life of the rich on Sean’s inheritance from his father. And Martha had gone back to school. She started part-time, and when she did well, matriculated as a full-time student. She wanted, she said, to be a lawyer. Mira pressed her lips at that too. It was absurd. Norm agreed. By the time Martha finished all her training, she would be thirty-seven or -eight. Who was going to hire a middle-aged, novice female lawyer? She wouldn’t even get into law school, Norm assured Mira. Mira believed it. All she had to do was look around her to know it was true. ‘Well, if it amuses her,’ Mira would say finally, brushing past the real reason for her unhappiness. For few of her friends were available anymore: everybody was at work, at school, at study, or just gone. She saw them mostly at an occasional evening get-together. Then something happened to end that.