The Female Man

I

Jeannine wakes from a dream of Whileaway. She has to go to her brother’s this week. Everything suggests to Jeannine something she has lost, although she doesn’t put it to herself this way; what she understands is that everything in the world wears a faint coating of nostalgia, makes her cry, seems to say to her, “You can’t.” She’s fond of not being able to do things; somehow this gives her a right to something. Her eyes fill with tears. Everything’s a cheat. If she gets up right now, she’ll be able to make the early bus; she also wants to get away from the dream that still lingers in the folds of her bedclothes, in the summery smell of her soft old sheets, a smell of herself that Jeannine likes but wouldn’t admit to anybody. The bed is full of dreamy, suspicious hollows. Jeannine yawns, out of a sense of duty. She gets up and makes the bed, then picks paperback books up off the floor (murder mysteries) and puts them away in her bookcase. There are clothes to wash before she goes, clothes to put away, stockings to pair and put in the drawers. She wraps the garbage in newspaper and carries it down three flights to put it in the garbage can. She routs Cal’s socks from behind the bed and shakes them out, leaving them on the kitchen table. There are dishes to wash, soot on the window sills, soaking pots to scour, a dish to put under the radiator in case it goes on during the week (it leaks). Oh . Ugh. Let the windows go, though Cal doesn’t like them dirty. That awful job of scrubbing out the toilet, whisk-brooming the furniture. Clothes to iron. Things always fall off when you straighten other things. She bends and bends. Flour and sugar spill on the shelves over the sink and have to be mopped up; there are stains and spills, rotting radish leaves, and encrustations of ice inside the old refrigerator (it has to be propped open with a chair to defrost itself). Odds and ends of paper, candy, cigarettes, cigarette ashes all over the room. Everything has to be dusted. She decides to do the windows anyway, because it’s nice. They’ll be filthy in a week. Of course nobody else helps. Nothing is the right height. She adds Cal’s socks to her clothes and his clothes that she has to take to the self-service laundry, makes a separate pile of his clothes that have to be mended, and sets the table for herself. She scrapes old food from her cat’s dish into the garbage, washes the dish, and sets out new water and milk. Mr. Frosty doesn’t seem to be around. Under the sink Jeannine finds a dishcloth, hangs it up over the sink, reminds herself to clean out under there later, and pours out cold cereal, tea, toast, orange juice. (The orange juice is a government package of powdered orange-and-grapefruit and tastes awful.) She jumps up to rummage around for the mop head under the sink, and the galvanized pail, also somewhere down in there. Time to mop the bathroom floor and the square of linoleum in front of the sink and stove. First she finishes her tea, leaves half the orange-and-grapefruit juice (making a face) and some of the cereal. Milk goes back in the refrigerator—no, wait a minute, throw it out—she sits down for a moment and writes out a list of groceries to buy on the way back from the bus in a week. Fill the pail, find the soap, give up, mop it anyway with just water. Put everything away. Do the breakfast dishes. She picks up a murder mystery and sits on the couch, riffling through it. Jump up, wash the table, pick up the salt that falls on the rug and brush it up with the whisk-broom. Is that all? No, mend Cal’s clothes and her own. Oh, let them be. She has to pack and make her lunch and Cal’s (although he’s not going with her). That means things coming out of the icebox again and mopping the table again—leaving footprints on the linoleum again. Well, it doesn’t matter. Wash the knife and the plate. Done. She decides to go get the sewing box to do his clothes, then changes her mind. Instead she picks up the murder mystery. Cal will say, “You didn’t sew my clothes.” She goes to get the sewing box out of the back of the closet, stepping over her valises, boxes of stuff, the ironing board, her winter coat and winter clothes. Little hands reach out of Jeannine’s back and pick up what she drops. She sits on her couch, fixing the rip in his summer suit jacket, biting off the thread with her front teeth. You’ll chip the enamel . Buttons. Mending three socks. (The others seem all right.) Rubbing the small of her back. Fastening the lining of a skirt where it’s torn. Inspecting her stockings for runs. Polishing shoes. She pauses and looks at nothing. Then she shakes herself and with an air of extraordinary energy gets her middling-sized valise from the closet and starts laying out her clothes for the week. Cal won’t let me smoke. He really cares about me . With everything cleaned up, she sits and looks at her room. The Post says you should get cobwebs off the ceiling with a rag tied to a broom handle. Well, I can’t see them. Jeannine wishes for the she-doesn’t-know-how-many-times time that she had a real apartment with more than one room, though to decorate it properly would be more than she could afford. There’s a pile of home-decorating magazines in the back of the closet, although that was only a temporary thing; the thought doesn’t really recur to her much. Cal doesn’t understand about such things. Tall, dark, and handsome… She refused her lover… the noble thing to . … mimosa and jasmine… She thinks how it would be to be a mermaid and decorate a merhouse with seaweed and slices of pearl. The Mermaid’s Companion. The Mermaid’s Home Journal. She giggles. She finishes packing her clothes, taking out a pair of shoes to polish them with a bottle of neutral polish, because you have to be careful with the light colors. As soon as they dry, they’ll go back in the valise. Trouble is, though, the valise is bloody well falling apart at the seams. Cal, when he comes, will find her reading Mademoiselle Mermaid about the new fish-scale look for eyes.

Why does she keep having these dreams about Whileaway?

While-away. While. A. Way. To While away the time. That means it’s just a pastime. If she tells Cal about it, he’ll say she’s nattering again; worse still, it would sound pretty silly; you can’t expect a man to listen to everything (as everybody’s Mother said). Jeannine gets dressed in blouse, sweater, and skirt for her brother’s place in the country, while in the valise she puts: a pair of slacks to go berrying in, another blouse, a scarf, underwear, stockings, a jacket (No, I’ll carry it), her hairbrush, her makeup, face cream, sanitary napkins, a raincoat, jewelry for the good dress, hair clips, hair curlers, bathing suit, and a light every-day dress. Oof, too heavy! She sits down again, discouraged. Little things make Jeannine blue. What’s the use of cleaning a place over and over again if you can’t make something of it? The ailanthus tree nods to her from outside the window. (And why won’t Cal protect her against anything? She deserves protection.) Maybe she’ll meet somebody. Nobody knows—O nobody knows really—what’s in Jeannine’s heart (she thinks). But somebody will see. Somebody will understand. Remember the hours in California under the fig tree. Jeannine in her crisp plaid dress, the hint of fall in the air, the blue haze over the hills like smoke. She hauls at the valise again, wondering desperately what it is that other women know and can do that she doesn’t know or can’t do, women in the street, women in the magazines, the ads, married women. Why life doesn’t match the stories. I ought to get married . (But not to Cal!) She’ll meet someone on the bus; she’ll sit next to someone. Who knows why things happen? Jeannine, who sometimes believes in astrology, palmistry, occult signs, who knows that certain things are fated or not fated, knows that men—in spite of everything—have no contact with or understanding of the insides of things. That’s a realm that’s denied them. Women’s magic, women’s intuition rule here, the subtle deftness forbidden to the clumsier sex. Jeannine is on very good terms with her ailanthus tree. Without having to reflect on it, without having to work at it, they both bring into human life the breath of magic and desire. They merely embody. Mr. Frosty, knowing he’s going to be left at a neighbor’s for the week, has been hiding behind the couch; now he crawls out with a piece of dust stuck on his left eye-tuft, looking very miserable. Jeannine has no idea what drove him out “Bad cat!” There was something about her . She watches the blotchy-skinny-cat (as Cal calls him) sneak to his milk dish and while Mr. Frosty laps it up, Jeannine grabs him. She gets the collar around his neck while Mr. Frosty struggles indignantly, and then she snaps the leash on. In a few minutes he’ll forget he’s confined. He’ll take the collar for granted and start daydreaming about sumptuous mice. There was something unforgettable about her… She ties him to a bed post and pauses, catching sight of herself in the wall mirror: flushed, eyes sparkling, her hair swept back as if by some tumultuous storm, her whole face glowing. The lines of her figure are perfect, but who is to use all this loveliness, who is to recognize it, make it public, make it available? Jeannine is not available to Jeannine. She throws her jacket over one arm, more depressed than otherwise. I wish I had money… “Don’t worry,” she tells the cat. “Somebody’s coming for you.” She arranges her jacket, her valise, and her pocketbook, and turns off the light, shutting the door behind her (it latches itself). If only (she thinks) he’ll come and show me to myself .

I’ve been waiting for you so long. How much longer must I wait?

Nights and nights alone. ("You can’t,” says the stairwell. “You can’t,” says the street.) A fragment of old song drifts through her mind and lingers behind her in the stairwell, her thoughts lingering there, too, wishing that she could be a mermaid and float instead of walk, that she were someone else and so could watch herself coming down the stairs, the beautiful girl who composes everything around her to harmony:

Somebody lovely has just passed by.

II

I live between worlds. Half the time I like doing housework, I care a lot about how I look, I warm up to men and flirt beautifully (I mean I really admire them, though I’d die before I took the initiative; that’s men’s business), I don’t press my point in conversations, and I enjoy cooking. I like to do things for other people, especially male people. I sleep well, wake up on the dot, and don’t dream. There’s only one thing wrong with me:

I’m frigid.

In my other incarnation I live out such a plethora of conflict that you wouldn’t think I’d survive, would you, but I do; I wake up enraged, go to sleep in numbed despair, face what I know perfectly well is condescension and abstract contempt, get into quarrels, shout, fret about people I don’t even know, live as if I were the only woman in the world trying to buck it all, work like a pig, strew my whole apartment with notes, articles, manuscripts, books, get frowsty, don’t care, become stridently contentious, sometimes laugh and weep within five minutes together out of pure frustration. It takes me two hours to get to sleep and an hour to wake up. I dream at my desk. I dream all over the place. I’m very badly dressed.

But O how I relish my victuals! And O how I fuck!

III

Jeannine has an older brother who’s a mathematics teacher in a New York high school. Their mother, who stays with him during vacations, was widowed when Jeannine was four. When she was a little baby Jeannine used to practice talking; she would get into a corner by herself and say words over and over again to get them right. Her first full sentence was, “See the moon.” She pressed wildflowers and wrote poems in elementary school. Jeannine’s brother, her sister-in-law, their two children, and her mother live for the summer in two cottages near a lake. Jeannine will stay in the smaller one with her mother. She conies downstairs with me behind her to find Mrs. Dadier arranging flowers in a pickle jar on the kitchenette table. I am behind Jeannine, but Jeannine can’t see me, of course.

“Everyone’s asking about you,” says Mrs. Dadier, giving her daughter a peck on the cheek.

“Mm,” says Jeannine, still sleepy. I duck behind the bookshelves that separate the living room from the kitchenette.

“We thought you might bring that nice young man with you again,” says Mrs. Dadier, setting cereal and milk in front of her daughter. Jeannine retreats into sulky impassivity. I make an awful face, which of course nobody sees.

“We’ve separated,” says Jeannine, untruly.

“Why?” says Mrs. Dadier, her blue eyes opening wide. “What was the matter with him?”

He was impotent, mother. Now how could I say that to such a nice lady? I didn’t.

“Nothing,” says Jeannine. “Where’s Bro?”

“Fishing,” says Mrs. Dadier. Brother often goes out in the early morning and meditates over a fishing line. The ladies don’t. Mrs. Dadier is afraid of his slipping, falling on a rock, and splitting open his head. Jeannine doesn’t like fishing.

“We’re going to have a nice day,” says Mrs. Dadier. “There’s a play tonight and a block dance. There are lots of young people, Jeannine.” With her perpetually fresh smile Mrs. Dadier clears off the table where her daughter-in-law and the two children have breakfasted earlier; Eileen has her hands full with the children.

“Don’t, mother,” says Jeannine, looking down.

“I don’t mind,” says Mrs. Dadier. “Bless you, I’ve done it often enough.” Listless Jeannine pushes her chair back from the table. “You haven’t finished,” observes Mrs. Dadier, mildly surprised. We have to get out of here. “Well, I don’t—I want to find Bro,” says Jeannine, edging out, “I’ll see you,” and she’s gone. Mrs. Dadier doesn’t smile when there’s nobody there. Mother and daughter wear the same face at times like that—calm and deathly tired—Jeannine idly pulling the heads off weeds at the side of the path with an abstract viciousness completely unconnected with anything going on in her head. Mrs. Dadier finishes the dishes and sighs. That’s done. Always to do again. Jeannine comes to the path around the lake, the great vacation feature of the community, and starts round it, but there seems to be nobody nearby. She had hoped she would find her brother, who was always her favorite. ("My big brother") She sits on the rock by the side of the path, Jeannine the baby. Out in the lake there’s a single canoe with two people in it; Jeannine’s gaze, vaguely resentful, fastens on it for a moment, and then drifts off. Her sister-in-law is worried sick about one of the children; one of those children always has something. Jeannine bangs her knuckles idly on the rock. She’s too sour for a romantic reverie and soon she gets up and walks on. Whoever comes to the lake anyway? Maybe Bro is at home. She retraces her steps and takes a fork off the main path, idling along until the lake, with its crowded fringe of trees and brush, disappears behind her. Eileen Dadier’s youngest, the little girl, appears at the upstairs window for a moment and then vanishes. Bro is behind the cottage, cleaning fish, protecting his sports clothes with a rubber lab apron.

“Kiss me,” says Jeannine. “O.K.?” She leans forward with her arms pulled back to avoid getting fish scales on herself, one cheek offered invitingly. Her brother kisses her. Eileen appears around the corner of the house, leading the boy. “Kiss Auntie,” she says. I’m so glad to see you, Jeannie.”

“Jeannine,” says Jeannine (automatically).

“Just think, Bud,” says Eileen. “She must have got in last night. Did you get in last night?” Jeannine nods. Jeannine’s nephew, who doesn’t like anyone but his father, is pulling furiously at Eileen Dadier’s hand, trying seriously to get his fingers out of hers. Bud finishes cleaning the fish. He wipes his hands methodically on a dish towel which Eileen will have to wash by hand to avoid contaminating her laundry, takes off his coat, and takes his knife and cleaver into the house, from whence comes the sound of running water. He comes out again, drying his hands on a towel

“Oh, baby,” says Eileen Dadier reproachfully to her son, “be nice to Auntie.” Jeannine’s brother takes his son’s hand from his wife. The little boy immediately stops wriggling.

“Jeannie,” he says. “It’s nice to see you.

“When did you get in?

“When are you going to get married?”

IV

I found Jeannine on the clubhouse porch that evening, looking at the moon. She had run away from her family.

“They only want what’s good for you,” I said.

She made a face.

“They love you,” I said.

A low, strangled sound. She was prodding the porch-rail with her hand.

“I think you ought to go and rejoin them, Jeannine,” I said. “Your mother’s a wonderful woman who has never raised her voice in anger all the time you’ve known her. And she brought all of you up and got you all through high school, even though she had to work. Your brother’s a firm, steady man who makes a good living for his wife and children, and Eileen wants nothing more in the world than her husband and her little boy and girl. You ought to appreciate them more, Jeannine.”

“I know,” said Jeannine softly and precisely. Or perhaps she said Oh no.

“Jeannine, you’ll never get a good job,” I said. “There aren’t any now. And if there were, they’d never give them to a woman, let alone a grown-up baby like you. Do you think you could hold down a really good job, even if you could get one? They’re all boring anyway, hard and boring. You don’t want to be a dried-up old spinster at forty but that’s what you will be if you go on like this. You’re twenty-nine. You’re getting old. You ought to marry someone who can take care of you, Jeannine.”

“Don’t care,” said she. Or was it Not fair?

“Marry someone who can take care of you,” I went on, for her own good. “It’s all right to do that; you’re a girl. Find somebody like Bud who has a good job, somebody you can respect; marry him. There’s no other life for a woman, Jeannine; do you want never to have children? Never to have a husband? Never to have a house of your own?” (Brief flash of waxed floor, wife in organdie apron, smiling possessively, husband with roses. That’s hers, not mine.)

“Not Cal.” Ah, hell.

“Now, really, what are you waiting for?” (I was getting impatient.) “Here’s Eileen married, and here’s your mother with two children, and all your old school friends, and enough couples here around the lake to fill it up if they all jumped into it at once; do you think you’re any different? Fancy Jeannine! Refined Jeannine! What do you think you’re waiting for?”

“For a man,” said Jeannine. For a plan. My impression that somebody else had been echoing her was confirmed by a brief cough behind me after these words. But it turned out to be Mr. Dadier, come out to fetch his sister. He took her by the arm and pulled her toward the door. “Come on, Jeannie. We’re going to introduce you to someone.”

Only the woman revealed under the light was not Jeannine. A passerby inside saw the substitution through the doorway and gaped. Nobody else seemed to notice. Jeannine is still meditating by the rail: doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, poor man, rich man; maybe he’ll be tall; maybe he’ll make twenty thou a year; maybe he’ll speak three languages’ and be really sophisticated, maybe. Mister Destiny. Janet, who has none of our notion that a good, dignified, ladylike look will recall the worst of scoundrels to a shrinking consciousness of his having insulted A Lady (that’s the general idea, anyway), has gotten out of Bud Dadier’s hold by twisting his thumb. She is the victim of a natural, but ignorant and unjustified alarm; she thinks that being grabbed is not just a gesture but is altogether out of line. Janet’s prepared for blue murder.

“Huh,” says Bro. He’s about to expostulate. “What are you doing here? Who are you?”

Touch me again and I’ll knock your teeth out!

You can see the blood rush to his face, even in this bad light. That’s what comes of being misunderstood. “Keep a civil tongue in your mouth, young lady!”

Janet jeers.

“You just—” Bud Dadier begins, but Janet anticipates him by vanishing like a soap bubble. What do you think Bud stands for—Buddington? Budworthy? Or “Bud” as in “friend"? He passes his hands over his face—the only thing left of Janet is a raucous screech of triumph which nobody else (except the two of us) can hear. The woman in front of the door is Jeannine. Bro, scared out of his wits, as who wouldn’t be, grabs her.

“Oh, Bro!” says Jeannine reproachfully, rubbing her arm.

“You oughtn’t to be out here alone,” says he. “It looks as if you’re not enjoying yourself. Mother went to great trouble to get that extra ticket, you know.”

’I’m sorry,” says Jeannine penitently. “I just wanted to see the moon.”

“Well, you’ve seen it,” says her brother. “You’ve been out here for fifteen minutes. I ought to tell you, Jeannie, Eileen and Mother and I have been talking about you and we all think that you’ve got to do something with your life. You can’t just go on drifting like this. You’re not twenty any more, you know.”

“Oh, Bro—” says Jeannine unhappily. Why are women so unreasonable? “Of course I want to have a good time,” she says.

“Then come inside and have one.” (He straightens his shirt collar.) “You might meet someone, if that’s what you want to do, and you say that’s what you want.”

“I do,” says Jeannine. You too?

“Then act like it, for Heaven’s sake. If you don’t do it soon, you may not have another chance. Now come on.” There are girls with nice brothers and girls with nasty brothers; there was a girl friend of mine who had a strikingly handsome older brother who could lift armchairs by one leg only. I was on a double date once with the two of them and another boy, and my girl friend’s brother indicated the camp counselors’ cottages. “Do you know what those are?

“Menopause Alley!”

We all laughed. I didn’t like it, but not because it was in bad taste. As you have probably concluded by this point (correctly) I don’t have any taste; that is, I don’t know what bad and good taste are. I laughed because I knew I would have an awful fight on my hands if I didn’t. If you don’t like things like that, you’re a prude. Drooping like a slave-girl, Jeannine followed Bro into the clubhouse. If only older brothers could be regularized somehow, so that one knew what to expect! If only all older brothers were younger brothers. “Well, who shall I marry?” said Jeannine, trying to make it into a joke as they entered the building. He said, with complete seriousness:

“Anybody.”

V

The Great Happiness Contest

(this happens a lot)

FIRST WOMAN: I’m perfectly happy. I love my husband and we have two darling children. I certainly don’t need any change in my lot.

SECOND WOMAN: I’m even happier than you are. My husband does the dishes every Wednesday and we have three darling children, each nicer than the last. I’m tremendously happy.

THIRD WOMAN: Neither of you is as happy as I am. I’m fantastically happy. My husband hasn’t looked at another woman in the fifteen years we’ve been married, he helps around the house whenever I ask it, and he wouldn’t mind in the least if I were to go out and get a job. But I’m happiest in fulfilling my responsibilities to him and the children. We have four children.

FOURTH WOMAN: We have six children. (This is too many. A long silence.) I have a part-time job as a clerk in Bloomingdale’s to pay for the children’s skiing lessons, but I really feel I’m expressing myself best when I make a custard or a meringue or decorate the basement.

ME: You miserable nits, I have a Nobel Peace Prize, fourteen published novels, six lovers, a town house, a box at the Metropolitan Opera, I fly a plane, I fix my own car, and I can do eighteen push-ups before breakfast, that is, if you’re interested in numbers.

ALL THE WOMEN: Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

OR, FOR STARTERS

HE: I can’t stand stupid, vulgar women who read Love Comix and have no intellectual interests.

ME: Oh my, neither can I.

HE: I really admire refined, cultivated, charming women who have careers.

ME: Oh my, so do I.

HE: Why do you think those awful, stupid, vulgar, commonplace women get so awful?

ME: Well, probably, not wishing to give any offense and after considered judgment and all that, and very tentatively, with the hope that you won’t jump on me—I think it’s at least partly your fault.

(Long silence)

HE: You know, on second thought, I think bitchy, castrating, unattractive, neurotic women are even worse. Besides, you’re showing your age. And your figure’s going.

OR

HE: Darling, why must you work part-time as a rug salesman?

SHE: Because I wish to enter the marketplace and prove that in spite of my sex I can take a fruitful part in the life of the community and earn what our culture proposes as the sign and symbol of adult independence—namely money.

HE: But darling, by the time we deduct the cost of a baby-sitter and nursery school, a higher tax bracket, and your box lunches from your pay, it actually costs us money for you to work. So you see, you aren’t making money at all. You can’t make money. Only I can make money. Stop working.

SHE: I won’t. And I hate you.

HE: But darling, why be irrational? It doesn’t matter that you can’t make money because I can make money. And after I’ve made it, I give it to you, because I love you. So you don’t have to make money. Aren’t you glad?

SHE: No. Why can’t you stay home and take care of the baby? Why can’t we deduct all those things from your pay? Why should I be glad because I can’t earn a living? Why —

HE (with dignity): This argument is becoming degraded and ridiculous. I will leave you alone until loneliness, dependence, and a consciousness that I am very much displeased once again turn you into the sweet girl I married. There is no use in arguing with a woman.

OR, LAST OF ALL

HE: Is your dog drinking cold fountain water?

SHE: I guess so.

HE: If your dog drinks cold water, he’ll get colic.

SHE: It’s a she. And I don’t care about the colic. You know, what I really worry about is bringing her out in public when she’s in heat like this. I’m not afraid she’ll get colic, but that she might get pregnant.

HE: They’re the same thing, aren’t they? Har har har.

SHE: Maybe for your mother they were.

(At this point Joanna the Grate swoops down on bat’s wings, lays He low with one mighty swatt, and elevates She and Dog to the constellation of Victoria Femina, where they sparkle forever.)

I know that somewhere, just to give me the lie, lives a beautiful (got to be beautiful), intellectual, gracious, cultivated, charming woman who has eight children, bakes her own bread, cakes, and pies, takes care of her own house, does her own cooking, brings up her own children, holds down a demanding nine-to-five job at the top decision-making level in a man’s field, and is adored by her equally successful husband because although a hard-driving, aggressive business executive with eye of eagle, heart of lion, tongue of adder, and muscles of gorilla (she looks just like Kirk Douglas), she comes home at night, slips into a filmy negligee and a wig, and turns instanter into a Playboy dimwit, thus laughingly dispelling the canard that you cannot be eight people simultaneously with two different sets of values. She has not lost her femininity . And I’m Marie of Rumania.

VI

Jeannine is going to put on her Mommy’s shoes. That caretaker of childhood and feminine companion of men is waiting for her at the end of the road we all must travel. She swam, went for walks, went to dances, had a picnic with another girl; she got books from town; newspapers for her brother, murder mysteries for Mrs. Dadier, and nothing for herself. At twenty-nine you can’t waste your time reading. Either they’re too young or they’re married or they’re bad-looking or there’s something awful about them. Rejects. Jeannine went out a couple of times with the son of a friend of her mother’s and tried to make conversation with him; she decided that he wasn’t really so bad-looking, if only he’d talk more. They went canoeing in the middle of the lake one day and he said:

“I have to tell you something, Jeannine.”

She thought: This is it, and her stomach knotted up.

“I’m married,” he said, taking off his glasses, “but my wife and I are separated. She’s living with her mother in California. She’s emotionally disturbed.”

“Oh,” Jeannine said, flustered and not knowing what to say. She hadn’t liked him particularly, but the disappointment was very bad. There is some barrier between Jeannine and real life which can be removed only by a man or by marriage; somehow Jeannine is not in touch with what everybody knows to be real life. He blinked at her with his naked eyes and oh lord, he was fat and plain; but Jeannine managed to smile. She didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“I knew you’d understand,” he said in a choked voice, nearly crying. He pressed her hand. “I knew you’d understand, Jeannie.” She began reckoning him up again, that swift calculation that was quite automatic by now: the looks, the job, whether he was “romantic,” did he read poetry? whether he could be made to dress better or diet or put on weight (whichever it was), whether his hair could be cut better. She could make herself feel something about him, yes. She could rely on him. After all, his wife might divorce him. He was intelligent. He was promising. “I understand,” she said, against the grain. After all, there wasn’t anything wrong with him exactly; from shore it must really look quite good, the canoe, the pretty girl, the puffy summer clouds, Jeannine’s sun-shade (borrowed from the girl friend she’d had the picnic with). There couldn’t be that much wrong with it. She smiled a little. His contribution is Make me feel good; her contribution is Make me exist . The sun came out over the water and it really was quite nice. And there was this painful stirring of feeling in her, this terrible tenderness or need, so perhaps she was beginning to love him, in her own way.

“Are you busy tonight?” Poor man. She wet her lips and didn’t answer, feeling the sun strike her on all sides, deliciously aware of her bare arms and neck, the picture she made. “Mm?” she said.

“I thought—I thought you might want to go to the play.” He took out his handkerchief and wiped his face with it. He put his glasses back on.

“You ought to wear sunglasses,” said Jeannine, imagining how he might look that way. “Yes, Bud and Eileen were going. Would you like to join us?” The surprised gratitude of a man reprieved. I really do like him . He bent closer—this alarmed her for the canoe, as well as disgusted her (Freud says disgust is a prominent expression of the sexual life in civilized people) and she cried out, “Don’t! We’ll fall in!” He righted himself. By degrees. You’ve got to get to know people. She was frightened, almost, by the access of being that came to her from him, frightened at the richness of the whole scene, at how much she felt without feeling it for him, terrified lest the sun might go behind a cloud and withdraw everything from her again.

“What time shall I pick you up?” he said.

VII

That night Jeannine fell in love with an actor. The theatre was a squat, low building finished pink stucco like a summertime movie palace and built in the middle of a grove of pine trees. The audience sat on hard wooden chairs and watched a college group play “Charley’s Aunt.” Jeannine didn’t get up or go out during the intermission but only sat, stupefied, fanning herself with her program and wishing that she had the courage to make some sort of change in her life. She couldn’t take her eyes off the stage. The presence of her brother and sister-in-law irked her unbearably and every time she became aware of her date by her elbow, she wanted to turn in on herself and disappear, or run outside, or scream. It didn’t matter which actor or which character she fell in love with; even Jeannine knew that; it was the unreality of the scene onstage that made her long to be in it or on it or two-dimensional, anything to quiet her unstable heart; I’m not fit to live, she said. There was more pain in it than pleasure; it had been getting worse for some years, until Jeannine now dreaded doing it; I can’t help it, she said. She added, I’m not fit to exist.

I’ll feel better tomorrow. She thought of Bud taking his little girl fishing (that had happened that morning, over Eileen’s protests) and tears rose in her eyes. The pain of it. The painful pleasure. She saw, through a haze of distress, the one figure on stage who mattered to her. She willed it so. Roses and raptures in the dark. She was terrified of the moment when the curtain would fall—in love as in pain, in misery, in trouble. If only you could stay half-dead. Eventually the curtain (a gray velvet one, much worn) did close, and opened again on the troupe’s curtain calls; Jeannine mumbled something about it being too hot and ran outside, shaking with terror; who am I, what am I, what do I want, where do I go, what world is this? One of the neighborhood children was selling lemonade, with a table and chairs pitched on the carpet of dead pine needles under the trees. Jeannine bought some, to color her loneliness; I did, too, and it was awful stuff. (If anybody finds me, I’ll say it was too warm and I wanted a drink.) She walked blindly into the woods and stood a little way from the theatre, leaning her forehead against a tree-trunk. I said Jeannine, why are you unhappy?

I’m not unhappy.

You have everything (I said). What is there that you want and haven’t got?

I want to die.

Do you want to be an airline pilot? Is that it? And they won’t let you? Did you have a talent for mathematics, which they squelched? Did they refuse to let you be a truck driver? What is it?

I want to live.

I will leave you and your imaginary distresses (said I) and go converse with somebody who makes more sense; really, one would think you’d been balked of some vital necessity. Money? You’ve got a job. Love? You’ve been going out with boys since you were thirteen.

I know.

You can’t expect romance to last your life long, Jeannine: candlelight dinners and dances and pretty clothes are nice but they aren’t the whole of life. There comes a time when one has to live the ordinary side of life and romance is a very small part of that. No matter how nice it is to be courted and taken out, eventually you say “I do” and that’s that. It may be a great adventure, but there are fifty or sixty years to fill up afterwards. You can’t do that with romance alone, you know. Think, Jeannine—fifty or sixty years!

I know.

Well?

(Silence)

Well, what do you want?

(She didn’t answer)

I’m trying to talk to you sensibly, Jeannine. You say you don’t want a profession and you don’t want a man—in fact, you just fell in love but you condemn that as silly—so what is it that you want? Well?

Nothing.

That’s not true, dear. Tell me what you want. Come on.

I want love. (She dropped her paper cup of lemonade and covered her face with her hands.)

Go ahead. The world’s full of people.

I can’t.

Can’t? Why not? You’ve got a date here tonight, haven’t you? You’ve never had trouble attracting men’s interest before. So go to it.

Not that way.

“What way?” (said I).

Not the real way.

“What!” (said I).

I want something else, she repeated, something else.

“Well, Jeannine,” said I, “if you don’t like reality and human nature, I don’t know what else you can have,” and I quit her and left her standing on the pine needles in the shadow cast by the trees, away from the crowd and the flood-lights fastened to the outside of the theatre building. Jeannine is very romantic. She’s building a whole philosophy from the cry of the crickets and her heart’s anguish. But that won’t last. She will slowly come back to herself. She’ll return to Bud and Eileen and her job of fascinating the latest X. Jeannine, back in the theatre building with Bud and Eileen, looked in the mirror set up over the ticket window so lady spectators could put on their lipstick, and jumped—“Who’s that!”

“Stop it, Jeannie,” said Bud. “What’s the matter with you?” We all looked and it was Jeannine herself, sure enough, the same graceful slouch and thin figure, the same nervous, oblique glance.

“Why, it’s you, darling,” said Eileen, laughing. Jeannine had been shocked right out of her sorrow. She turned to her sister-in-law and said, with unwonted energy, between her teeth: “What do you want out of life, Eileen? Tell me!”

“Oh honey,” said Eileen, “what should I want? I want just what I’ve got.” X came out of the men’s room. Poor fellow. Poor lay figure.

“Jeannie wants to know what life is all about,” said Bud. “What do you think, Frank? Do you have any words of wisdom for us?”

“I think that you are all awful,” said Jeannine vehemently. X laughed nervously. “Well now, I don’t know,” he said.

That’s my trouble, too. My knowledge was taken away from me.

(She remembered the actor in the play and her throat constricted. It hurt, it hurt. Nobody saw, though.)

“Do you think,” she said very low, to X, “that you could know what you wanted, only after a while—I mean, they don’t mean to do it, but life—people—people could confuse things?”

“I know what I want,” said Eileen brightly. “I want to go home and take the baby from Mama. Okay, honey?”

“I don’t mean—” Jeannine began.

“Oh, Jeannie!” said Eileen affectionately, possibly more for X’s benefit than her sister-in-law’s; “Oh, Jeannie!” and kissed her. Bud gave her a peck on the cheek.

Don’t you touch me!

“Want a drink?” said X, when Bud and Eileen had gone.

“I want to know,” said Jeannine, almost under her breath, “what you want out of life and I’m not moving until you tell me.” He stared.

“Come on,” she said. He smiled nervously.

“Well, I’m going to night school. I’m going to finish my B.A. this winter.” (He’s going to night school. He’s going to finish his B.A. Wowie zowie. I’m not impressed.)

“Really?” said Jeannine, in real awe.

“Really,” he said. Score one. That radiant look of gratitude. Maybe she’ll react the same way when he tells her he can ski. In this loveliest and neatest of social interactions, she admires him, he’s pleased with her admiration, this pleasure lends him warmth and style, he relaxes, he genuinely likes Jeannine; Jeannine sees this and something stirs, something hopes afresh. Is he The One? Can he Change Her Life? (Do you know what you want? No. Then don’t complain.) Fleeing from the unspeakableness of her own wishes—for what happens when you find out you want something that doesn’t exist?—Jeannine lands in the lap of the possible. A drowning woman, she takes X’s willing, merman hands; maybe it’s wanting to get married, maybe she’s just waited too long. There’s love; there’s joy—in marriage, and you must take your chances as they come. They say life without love does strange things to you; maybe you begin to doubt love’s existence.

I shouted at her and beat her on the back and on the head; oh I was an enraged and evil spirit there in the theatre lobby, but she continued holding poor X by the hands—little did he know what hopes hung on him as she continued (I say) to hold on to his hands and look into his flattered eyes. Little did she know that he was a water-dweller and would drown her. Little did she know that there was, attached to his back, a drowning machine issued him in his teens along with his pipe and his tweeds and his ambition and his profession and his father’s mannerisms. Somewhere is The One. The solution. Fulfillment. Fulfilled women. Filled full. My Prince. Come. Come away, Death. She stumbles into her Mommy’s shoes, little girl playing house. I could kick her. And X thinks, poor, deceived bastard, that it’s a tribute to him, of all people—as if he had anything to do with it! (I still don’t know whom she saw or thought she saw in the mirror. Was it Janet? Me?) I want to get married.

VIII

Men succeed. Women get married.

Men fail. Women get married.

Men enter monasteries. Women get married.

Men start wars. Women get married.

Men stop them. Women get married.

Dull, dull. (see below)

IX

Jeannine came around to her brother’s house the next morning, just for fun. She had set her hair and was wearing a swanky scarf over the curlers. Both Mrs. Dadier and Jeannine know that there’s nothing in a breakfast nook to make it intrinsically interesting for thirty years; nonetheless Jeannine giggles and twirls the drinking straw in her breakfast cocoa fancifully this way and that. It’s the kind of straw that has a pleated section in the middle like the bellows of a concertina.

“I always liked these when I was a little girl,” Jeannine says.

“Oh my yes, didn’t you,” says Mrs. Dadier, who is sitting with her second cup of coffee before attacking the dishes.

Jeannine gives way to a fit of hysterics.

“Do you remember—?” she cries. “And do you remember—!”

“Heavens, yes,” says Mrs. Dadier. “Don’t I, though.”

They sit, saying nothing.

“Did Frank call?” This is Mrs. Dadier, carefully keeping her voice neutral because she knows how Jeannine hates interference in her own affairs. Jeannine makes a face and then laughs again. “Oh, give him time, Mother,” she says. “It’s only ten o’clock.” She seems to see the funny side of it more than Mrs. Dadier does. “Bro,” says the latter, “was up at five and Eileen and I got up at eight. I know this is your vacation, Jeannine, but in the country—”

“I did get up at eight,” says Jeannine, aggrieved. (She’s lying.) “I did. I walked around the lake. I don’t know why you keep telling me how late I get up; that may have been true a long time ago but it’s certainly not true now, and I resent your saying so.” The sun has gone in again. When Bud isn’t around, there’s Jeannie to watch out for, Mrs. Dadier tries to anticipate her wishes and not disturb her.

“Well, I keep forgetting,” says Mrs. Dadier. “Your silly old mother! Bud says I wouldn’t remember my head if it wasn’t screwed on.” It doesn’t work. Jeannine, slightly sulky, attacks her toast and jam, cramming a piece into her mouth cater-cornered. Jam drops on the table. Jeannine, implacably convicted of getting up late, is taking it out on the table-cloth. Getting up late is wallowing in sin. It’s unforgivable. It’s improper. Mrs. Dadier, with the misplaced courage of the doomed, chooses to ignore the jam stains and get on with the really important question, viz., is Jeannine going to have a kitchenette of her own (although it will really belong to someone else, won’t it) and is she going to be made to get up early, i.e., Get Married. Mrs. Dadier says very carefully and placatingly:

“Darling, have you ever had any thoughts about—” but this morning, instead of flinging off in a rage, her daughter kisses her on the top of the head and announces, “I’m going to do the dishes.”

“Oh, no,” says Mrs. Dadier deprecatingly; “My goodness, don’t. I don’t mind.” Jeannine winks at her. She feels virtuous (because of the dishes) and daring (because of something else). “Going to make a phone call,” she says, sauntering into the living room. Not doing the dishes . She sits herself down in the rattan chair and twirls the pencil her mother always keeps by the telephone pad. She draws flowers on the pad and the profiles of girls whose eyes are nonetheless in full-face. Should she call X? Should she wait for X to call her? When he calls, should she be effusive or reserved? Comradely or distant? Should she tell X about Cal? If he asks her out for tonight, should she refuse? Where will she go if she does? She can’t possibly call him, of course. But suppose she rings up Mrs. Dadier’s friend with a message? My mother asked me to tell you... Jeannine’s hand is actually on the telephone receiver when she notices that the hand is shaking: a sportswoman’s eagerness for the chase. She laughs under her breath. She picks up the phone, trembling with eagerness, and dials X’s number; it’s happening at last. Everything is going well. Jeannine has almost in her hand the brass ring which will entitle her to everything worthwhile in life. It’s only a question of time before X decides; surely she can keep him at arm’s length until then, keep him fascinated; there’s so much time you can take up with will-she-won’t-she, so that hardly anything else has to be settled at all. She feels something for him, she really does. She wonders when the reality of it begins to hit you. Off in telephone never-never-land someone picks up the receiver, interrupting the last ring, footsteps approach and recede, someone is clearing their throat into the mouthpiece.

“Hello?” (It’s his mother.) Jeannine glibly repeats the fake message she has practiced in her head; X’s mother says, “Here’s Frank. Frank, it’s Jeannine Dadier.” Horror. More footsteps.

“Hello?” says X.

“Oh my, it’s you; I didn’t know you were there,” says Jeannine.

“Hey!” says X, pleased. This is even more than she has a right to expect, according to the rules.

“Oh, I just called to tell your mother something,” says Jeannine, drawing irritable, jagged lines across her doodles on the telephone pad. She keeps trying to think of the night before, but all she can remember is Bud playing with his youngest daughter, the only time she’s ever seen her brother get foolish. He bounces her on his knee and gets red in the face, swinging her about his head while she screams with delight. “Silly Sally went to town! Silly Sally flew a-r-o-o-und!” Eileen usually rescues the baby on the grounds that she’s getting too excited. For some reason this whole memory causes Jeannine great pain and she can hardly keep her mind on what she’s saying.

“I thought you’d already gone,” says Jeannine hastily. He’s going on and on about something or other, the cost of renting boats on the lake or would she like to play tennis.

“Oh, I love tennis,” says Jeannine, who doesn’t even own a racket.

Would she like to come over that afternoon?

She leans away from the telephone to consult an imaginary appointment book, imaginary friends; she allows reluctantly that oh yes, she might have some free time. It would really be fun to brush up on her tennis. Not that she’s really good, she adds hastily. X chuckles. Well, maybe. There are a few more commonplaces and she hangs up, bathed in perspiration and ready to weep. What’s the matter with me? She should be happy, or at least smug, and here she is experiencing the keenest sorrow. What on earth for? She digs her pencil vindictively into the telephone pad as if it were somehow responsible. Damn you. Perversely, images of silly Cal come back to her, not nice ones, either. She has to pick up the phone again, after verifying an imaginary date with an imaginary acquaintance, and tell X yes or no; so Jeannine rearranges the scarf over her curlers, plays with a button on her blouse, stares miserably at her shoes, runs her hands over her knees, and makes up her mind. She’s nervous. Masochistic. It’s that old thing come back again about her not being good enough for good luck. That’s nonsense and she knows it. She picks up the phone, smiling: tennis, drinks, dinner, back in the city a few more dates where he can tell her about school and then one night (hugging her a little extra hard)—“Jeannie, I’m getting my divorce.” My name is Jeannine. The shopping will be fun. I’m twenty-nine, after all. It is with a sense of intense relief that she dials; the new life is beginning. She can do it, too. She’s normal. She’s as good as every other girl. She starts to sing under her breath. The phone bell rings in Telephoneland and somebody comes to pick it up; she hears all the curious background noises of the relays, somebody speaking faintly very far away. She speaks quickly and distinctly, without the slightest hesitation now, remembering all those loveless nights with her knees poking up into the air, how she’s discommoded and almost suffocated, how her leg muscles ache and she can’t get her feet on the surface of the bed. Marriage will cure all that. The scrubbing uncleanably old linoleum and dusting the same awful things, week after week. But he’s going places. She says boldly and decisively:

“Cal, come get me.”

Shocked at her own treachery, she bursts into tears. She hears Cal say “Okay, baby,” and he tells her what bus he’ll be on.

“Cal!” she adds breathlessly; “You know that question you keep asking, sweetheart? Well, the answer is Yes.” She hangs up, much eased. It’ll be so much better once it’s done. Foolish Jeannine, to expect anything else. It’s an uncharted continent, marriage. She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand; X can go to hell. Making conversation is just work. She strolls into the kitchenette where she finds herself alone; Mrs. Dadier is outside in back, weeding a little patch of a garden all the Dadiers own in common; Jeannine takes the screen out of the kitchen window and leans out.

“Mother!” she says in a sudden flood of happiness and excitement, for the importance of what she has just done has suddenly become clear to her, “Mother!” (waving wildly out the window) “Guess what!” Mrs. Dadier, who is on her knees in the carrot bed, straightens up, shading her face with her one hand. “What is it, darling?”

“Mother, I’m getting married!” What comes after this will be very exciting, a sort of dramatic presentation, for Jeannine will have a big wedding. Mrs. Dadier drops her gardening trowel in sheer astonishment. She’ll hurry inside, a tremendous elevation of mood enveloping both women; they will, in fact, embrace and kiss one another, and Jeannine will dance around the kitchen. “Wait ’til Bro hears about this!” Jeannine will exclaim. Both will cry. It’s the first time in Jeannine’s life that she’s managed to do something perfectly O.K. And not too late, either. She thinks that perhaps the lateness of her marriage will be compensated for by a special mellowness; there must be, after all, some reason for all that experimenting, all that reluctance. She imagines the day she will be able to announce even better news: “Mother, I’m going to have a baby.” Cal himself hardly figures in this at all, for Jeannine has forgotten his laconism, his passivity, his strange mournfulness unconnected to any clear emotion, his abruptness, how hard it is to get him to talk about anything. She hugs herself, breathless with joy, waiting for Mrs. Dadier to hurry inside; “My little baby!” Mrs. Dadier will say emotionally, embracing Jeannine. It seems to Jeannine that she has never known anything so solid and beautiful as the kitchen in the morning sunlight, with the walls glowing and everything so delicately outlined in light, so fresh and real. Jeannine, who has almost been killed by an unremitting and drastic discipline not of her own choosing, who has been maimed almost to death by a vigilant self-suppression quite irrelevant to anything she once wanted or loved, here finds her reward. This proves it is all right. Everything is indubitably good and indubitably real. She loves herself, and if I stand like Atropos in the corner, with my arm around the shadow of her dead self, if the other Jeannine (who is desperately tired and knows there is no freedom for her this side the grave) attempts to touch her as she whirls joyfully past, Jeannine does not see or hear it. At one stroke she has amputated her past. She’s going to be fulfilled. She hugs herself and waits. That’s all you have to do if you are a real, first-class Sleeping Beauty. She knows.

I’m so happy.

And there, but for the grace of God, go I.