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  “It’s a part of love,” Frances said stubbornly. “It can be the beginning. At least you don’t hate me, do you?”

  “I’m attracted to you.” Erika’s best smile flashed out. “Do you think I’d let you in my room if you were only a trick? Sooner I’d stay alone all my life. Also, I trust you.”

  Frances said in a hurt voice, “That’s something.”

  “How about you? Do you love someone?”

  “Not anymore. Not unless it’s you.”

  “Maybe you should get up and go away now. I’d like to have you stay forever, but that’s being sentimental. Also there are things I have to think about.”

  “Yes, of course.” Frances looked at the cheap alarm clock on the dresser. It was almost two. She said uneasily, “I don’t have any money. I didn’t plan to come here—I went for a walk, and suddenly I had to see you.”

  “I have some.” Erika unzipped the clutch bag and emptied its contents on the sleazy pink spread. A penny rolled to the floor. Comb, lipstick, a couple of dollar bills and some change, a little notebook—that was all. It was the bag of a woman without vanity and with few distractions, who had stripped her life bare of trivial things. It frightened Frances, who took the bill Erika handed her, then put it down again. “I’ll pay you back when I see you. When can I see you?”

  “When you want to. Call the store, Vince always knows. There is a telephone here, but unless somebody happens to be in the hall, no one answers. Besides, the landlady listens. But I see Vince often.”

  “You think a lot of him, don’t you?”

  “I love him. I wish I could find someone for him to love, someone good and kind. He deserves to be happy.”

  Frances got out of bed, unwilling to leave the warmth of Erika’s body and the light scent of her clean hair. Her clothes lay neatly folded over the back of a chair, where Erika had put them. She remembered how she and Bake had dropped their things to the floor, how she and Bake had never need to look away from each other and busy their hands while they gathered courage. None of this tentative touching, this searching of faces in the harsh light to gauge the other’s willingness. Bake loved me, Frances thought forlornly. This girl will probably hate me as soon as I’m out of sight.

  Already sorry she let me stay, probably.

  “What are you thinking about with your face so serious?”

  “How nice you are.”

  Erika’s smile was that of a kind mother who takes her hands out of the dishpan to accept a bunch of dandelions. “Don’t make me compliments. It’s not necessary.”

  “I mean it.” And suddenly it was true. Misgivings, frustrations and all, she felt relaxed and happy for the first time in months. The body, she reminded herself, trying to capture Erika’s light scorn as she pulled on her panties and reached behind to hook her bra. Do this, do that, and the fulfilled body moves and purrs like a stroked kitten. But she was unable to minimize it. Even her skin felt good.

  She put on her skirt and zipped it up, tucked in her blouse and found her soft brown loafers under the bed where they were lying sociably side by side with Erika’s Capezios. From the mirror an awakened face smiled back at her. She remembered, sharply, the first time she had turned to Bake’s dressing table after love, the new beauty that shone out of her. A sharp pang thrust her through. Never, never again, no matter who came into her life from this time on. There can only be one first love.

  Erika said, “You’re thinking about someone.”

  “Not really.”

  “Try not to. That’s not jealousy; if it made you happy to remember I would be glad for you. When I find Kate’s name in a book or someone says it—ah, it’s no good.” Tears came to Erika’s eyes. She turned her face away. “I can’t breathe. Maybe it goes away some time, I hope so, because on these terms who can live?”

  “I envy the boys. They never seem to get involved the way we do, they just go from person to person. It must be easier.”

  “Yes. Only sometimes it matters more than they admit. And I have to tell you, Frances, you matter to me. I’m not going from person to person. I have to say this.”

  “I know.”

  They kissed briefly, like friends. Erika picked up the dollar and held it out to her. “The telephone is at the foot of the stairs, on a table, and the cab number is written on the wall. I don’t know who wrote it there. Try not to wake Mrs. Agnoff,” she said, but smiling as though it didn’t matter. “If you were a man it would shock her to see you leave so late, but this, I don’t think she knows about it.” Her smile wavered. “Do you hate me? Will you call me, or come back again?”

  “Of course I will.”

  “Don’t let me say no to you. I get scared, but I do truly like you very much.”

  Well, Frances thought dryly, that’s something. She waved goodbye from the bedroom door and tiptoed downstairs, stopping every time a step creaked. No one else seemed to be awake. She found the telephone and the cab company’s number (scrawled on dirty plaster) and dialed the number.

  A door opened two inches. A metal curler caught the light. “Is anything the matter?”

  She smothered a giggle. “No, I’m just calling a cab.”

  “Well, wait outside. You don’t have to wake everybody up.”

  She stood on the long porch, looking around. The town was still. A single car passed, then another; then a cluster of young girls in party dresses, talking in low voices. Here and there a lighted window framed groups playing cards or the unearthly glow of a television screen.

  It would be nice, she thought, to spend a whole night with someone she loved, curled up together with the rest of the world shut out. The thought brought back an unwelcome thought of Bake asleep, her face drowned in moonlight from the open window, her warm solid body fitted against Frances as though even in sleep she couldn’t bear for them to be apart. Bake, that was all she knew of woman’s tenderness. And Bill? She grimaced.

  She had been touched and a little frightened by Erika’s thinness, her white skin and the delicacy of her bones. She looked like a boy just entering adolescence, but in bed she was heart-shakingly feminine: small shoulders, the slightest of breasts, a body whittled down to bare bone and muscle. Little bird bones, Frances thought tenderly. And now her own body remembered sharply not only the fragility of Erika’s body but the intensity with which Erika moved when she aroused to love.

  She had never seen the outside of her own house this late at night. It looked strange, all its bulk massed differently. The downstairs windows were lit. She paid the driver and walked slowly up the walk while he waited to make sure she got safely inside.

  The door was unlocked. She walked in coolly, dangling her keychain from a finger. Bill was up, still dressed, sitting in a chair reading US News and World Report. He looked relieved, then annoyed, then sulky. She turned her face away from him, remembering the alive warmth Erika’s mirror had reflected. “I went to the late show and took a taxi home.”

  “Why didn’t you call?”

  “Why should I? I figured you were asleep.”

  “Well I’m not. I’d have come after you.”

  This was alarming. She had expected—almost hoped for—a renewal of the quarrel. Now she saw that his expression was fatuous. He was waiting up for her, not because he was angry or anxious, but because the desire he resented but couldn’t control had taken hold of him again. She had seen it happen before, after a quarrel. He was in the mood for making love.

  I can’t bear to have him touch me tonight, she thought. Tomorrow if I have to, all right, but not tonight. She said coldly, hating herself—why do women lie with such ease?—“I have a headache. I’m going to take a sedative and go right to sleep.”

  “Maybe you’d feel better if you took an aspirin. Or an Alka-Seltzer.” He closed his magazine and laid it on the table. “How about a drink? Let’s both have one.”

  “Thanks, all I want is to sleep. I’m dead.”

  He stood there, uncertain. She went quickly upstairs.

 
She had told herself a dozen times that intercourse was a chore, like washing dishes. Nothing you would choose if you had a choice, but no more than bothersome. If she felt guilty about this, she was also upheld by the knowledge that countless other wives felt the same way. For all the books and magazine articles that were supposed to teach you how to be happy in marriage, all the feeling of security that was supposed to come from being able to regulate conception, she knew from office gossip and books that many women felt nothing at all, or were wakeful and dissatisfied after love. It had nothing to do with loving men or loving women; it was universal.

  But at some time during this night she had crossed the line that divides indifference from revulsion. I can’t bear it, she thought wildly. I can’t let him touch me. (Swallowing her little pill and drinking half a glass of tepid water, frowning.) Maybe later I can figure out the answer. Not tonight.

  She got into bed and pulled the sheet right up to her chin, although it was a sultry night and Bill had forgotten to turn on the air-conditioner. Closing her eyes, she tries to recall every detail of the time she spent in Erika’s bed.

  It was incredible, it was crazy, but in the excitement she had forgotten Bill. He might never have existed, so completely had he dropped out of her mind from the moment she tapped on Erika’s door until she reentered her own house. There might have been nothing between Erika and herself except the sweet hurting memory of two other women, one dead, one engrossed in a new love.

  How could I? She asked herself, stricken. And knew the answer. Bill didn’t matter anymore, except as an obstacle.

  The pill was beginning to blur her thoughts. She gave in to it gratefully. Her mind shifted from image to image, without continuity.

  I might love her, she thought solemnly. Anyway it’s a reasonable facsimile. She might even love me, give her time. It’s too complicated. She pressed her hands against her breasts. They felt full and sensitive. The nipples rose full and hard under her fingers. On her arm a dark spot showed, a bruise of love. She smiled, remembering. She heard Bill come to the foot of the stairs. The house was quiet. After a moment he went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard door.

  Poor guy, she thought, trying to open her eyes and finding the lids too heavy. She turned over and went to sleep.

  11 “THE CHIEF VALUE OF SUCH AN INTERVIEW OR series of interviews,” the family relations editor of Our Home explained in ten-point italic, “is that it gives each of the marital partners an opportunity to discuss his or her problem with a sympathetic but impartial listener. Thus, the rejected wife in our case history was able to explain her frustrations to a trained counselor who could evaluate her problem from a rational standpoint. By making a real effort to understand the factors that led to their estrangement, both Joe and Sandra developed a clearer understanding of their relationship and a deeper appreciation of their marriage partner. Their marriage is now rated as ‘highly successful,’ and the case records are closed.”

  Sounds easy, Frances thought, lifting a shaky hand to ring the doorbell and finding herself unable to do so. At two in the morning, trying to get her mind off Bill’s fumbling lovemaking, she had followed the problems of Joe and Sandra with interest—especially the part about discussing the problems with a sympathetic pastor if trained counseling was not available. She certainly couldn’t discuss them with the Wives! And Bill’s viewpoint was so reasonable as to rule out argument: a man has a right to go to bed with his own wife. So far, she hadn’t found any counterargument.

  She suspected that Joe and Sandra were of a piece with the other contents of Our Home: the saccharine stories of your married love in the higher-priced suburbs, the Technicolor recipes, the advice on how to buy a new electric ironer. Somebody makes the whole thing up, she told herself, looking fixedly at the well-polished brass plate that said “Dr. Daniel S. Powell, Rector.” She rang the bell.

  Her knees were rubbery, her mouth dry, but as long as she was here she was going through with it. Maybe he would be out.

  The door opened. A thin, youngish man in paint-spotted work clothes smiled at her. “Come on in. I’m making coffee.”

  At least he didn’t have the unctuous look of young preachers. Been at it long enough to relax, maybe. She said shakily, “Maybe I shouldn’t have called. I’m not a member of your church.”

  “Then I won’t have to treat you like one,” Dr. Powell said pleasantly. “Why don’t you come in and have coffee, anyway?” He led the way into a long, light room, stopping to pat a fluffy cat lying in a rocking chair. “I don’t know why anyone goes to a minister for advice, anyway. We don’t know more than other people, and we have an unhappy tendency to be sanctimonious.”

  Frances laughed. “It’s cheaper than going to an analyst, and not as painful as shock treatment. They wouldn’t come if you charged twenty dollars an hour.”

  “I don’t mind. It’s the masochist in me.” His voice was cheerful, but he had a melancholy face; American Gothic, and he was older than she had thought at first. And where was Mrs. Powell? Anyway, she thought, he’s safe with me. Is he ever safe with me!

  “Do you like kitchens? I can bring our coffee into the living room if you like, but I have a pretty good kitchen and it’s handy for refills.”

  It was a good kitchen, with a teeming Breughel print tacked up over the sink and a spreading maple tree beyond the windows. A pleasant clutter prevailed. “Whoever does your housework has a nice place for it,” she told him, and caught the amused gleam in his eyes. “I do my own housework, except for a lady who comes in two mornings a week to pick up after me. I think I’m pretty handy, but she doesn’t seem to think so—but then, she’s Pennsylvania Dutch.” He offered cream and sugar in bright pottery, but seemed pleased when she refused both. “I take mine black too. It has more wallop that way.”

  “Hot coffee’s the best thing on a summer day.”

  “Would you like a drink? I have some good Irish whiskey.”

  “This is fine.”

  He sat down on a high stool, swinging a foot. There was paint on his moccasins too. He said, “I’ve been painting the upstairs study and working out an exchange plan for preachers—let everybody go to a stranger for advice and then attend Sunday services in his own church. Or vice versa. That way, people can keep their own pastors thinking well of them. They always feel they have to put their best foot forward with the minister, and it’s an awful drag.”

  “I don’t go to church at all.”

  “I wouldn’t either if I didn’t have to. It’s pretty hard to listen to most sermons and retain any faith in God, even if the sermons are kept down to twenty minutes.” He eyed her over the rim of his cup. “How did you pick me, from the phone book?”

  “I liked the looks for your church. The old ones mostly look like something out of the Middle Ages and the new ones are all plastic and anodized aluminum.” She hesitated. “Then I was going by one day and you were out talking to a crabby-looking old woman. She was yelling at five or six little kids for playing on the church steps, and you came out and gave her hell. I mean—”

  Dan Powell’s lips quirked. “If you could just forget I’m a preacher and pretend I’m a human being, maybe you could tell me what’s bothering you. I don’t have any magic for solving problems, you know. Why don’t you just mutter an incantation and turn me into a friend?”

  “Well, if you’re not married—”

  “I do know the facts of life. I’ve even read Kinsey. And Reich. I think they both underestimate the role of emotion, but I guess their findings are fairly accurate.”

  “Well.” She looked at him. He sounded all right, but this wasn’t one of those usual problems like being in love with another man or not wanting a baby or having an unfaithful husband. He would probably think it was a neurosis. They were always harping on that: retarded development, parental rejection, childhood trauma, inherited tendency. As if straight people didn’t have all the same things to cope with.

  Maybe she could make up something plausible. She didn
’t look butch.

  “What’s the matter, don’t you know where to begin? Tell me something about yourself. Anything. Any birthmarks? Allergies?”

  She took a deep breath. “Well, I’m almost forty and I’ve been married since I was nineteen. My husband is manager of a plastics factory—I hate plastics too. I have a son, nineteen, who’s a freshman at Urbana. He’s married and they expect a baby in February.”

  She stopped, aghast at the picture she was drawing. This was Mrs. William Ollenfield with her seams straight and her hair freshly set. She said, “I’m not like that at all.”

  “I don’t believe you are. Do you work? Do you do something you’re interested in?”

  “No. I had an office job for a while, but it was just a way to get out of the house. Most jobs are.”

  Dr. Powell said, “Why don’t you pretend I’m a reporter for Confidential and you’re being interviewed?”

  “You look more like an explorer. Not that I know what explorers look like.”

  He laughed. “I look like a man who’s painting the upstairs study. Go ahead. Who’ve you killed?”

  She said desperately, “I’m a lesbian.”

  “What am I supposed to do, drop dead?”

  She stared. He said, “Every tenth woman in the United States is a homosexual. Every sixth man. Always happens when you get a civilization growing rapidly decadent. You’ve got a lot of company.”

  “You’re not shocked?”

  “I’ve known about it since I was maybe fourteen. I can see how you might be upset if you just found out, of course.”

  “No. It’s been quite a while.”

  “Doing anything about it?”

  “You mean therapy?”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.”

  “Oh. Well, I’m not sure, things are a little confused right now. I have hopes, you might say.” She stared at him. “Doesn’t your seminary tell you what to do in cases like this?”

  Dr. Powell smiled, “I think I’m supposed to recommend that twenty-dollar analyst.” He fitted his fingertips together and adjusted imaginary glasses. “With therapy, Mrs. Ollenfield, you can be restored to a useful role in society.”