It was a perfect evening for the picnic, Daphne thought, for the college had been in session for two weeks now and the satisfying routine of a term under way was established. The weather, which had been mostly cool and rainy and cloudy, fall-like, keeping them in the mood to beaver away indoors, had changed just today. The sun had come out and the humidity had disappeared and the evening was blue and gold and warm.
Marcia Johannsen, who was in charge of the faculty-club affairs, had set the bar up on the wide side porch of the club. She’d put tables and chairs there too, so that the older and more ramrod faculty could keep their dignity and reserve. This unfortunately had the effect of dividing the faculty and the members of the faculty club into the old guard and the new peons. Those who had chairs and sat above, looking down, and those who had to squat, humbly, on blankets on the grass, being looked down upon. Well, there really wasn’t any way around it, Daphne and Marcia agreed, standing off to the side, talking in low voices. The old guard was, after all, old, many of them, dignified and revered scholars and professors, with arthritis or some ailment that made it difficult to lower themselves all the way to the ground. Hudson, who was not so old, sat among them, partly because of his status, partly because his wife, Claire, with her bad back, chose to sit there.
Then, too, the new faculty were the ones with the little children, who did somersaults down the hill and chased each other around the faculty club. The youngest children lay on blankets, sucking bottles or their thumbs, or happily mashing up potato chips. Here these younger professors were parents first, of necessity, and they had worn slacks and skirts and dresses that could easily be washed, unlike the older faculty, who shone in their white linen trousers and blue blazers and silk flowered sundresses.
Daphne was wearing a blue cotton dress, one of her favorite warm-weather dresses. She had on low heels, respectable enough for the porch, sensible enough for the grass. She was—and always would be—an “in-between” person; because she was only a secretary, she’d never be able to sit on the porch even when she was old. Well, maybe they’d let her sit there when she was really old and infirm and had become an “institution.” There were enough people here (all on the porch) who remembered her as the wife of a professor and therefore deserving of a certain amount of respect, although that group was gradually shrinking and that memory fading. But she was popular, in general, with everyone; she was a good secretary, she didn’t play games, she didn’t gossip, she didn’t try to sleep with any of her bosses, and she was nice. The only people who snubbed Daphne were two or three very old faculty wives who had been here from the time when the college was for men only and who needed to snub somebody to keep their feeling of superiority in a world where they’d lost their looks, and their husbands were losing their power; and some of the youngest faculty and their spouses who wanted it made clear to everyone that as professors (even untenured), they ranked higher on the ladder of respect than a mere secretary. The older group snubbed Daphne by nodding and looking away without smiling; the younger group simply looked away, fast, almost terrified to make contact, afraid someone would think they were friends with a secretary.
She knew the new young untenured history teacher, of course, because that was her department, but there were several other new families out on the lawn who were unfamiliar to her. Marcia pointed them out: chemistry, poly sci, art. The new English professor, Jack Hamilton, and his family, hadn’t arrived yet. But it wasn’t too late, the faculty-club chef was only now putting the hamburgers and hot dogs on the charcoal grill while the rest of his staff, pudgy women in white uniforms, carried out plastic-covered bowls and set them on the long paper-tablecloth-covered tables.
Daphne walked across the grass, a glass of white wine in her hand, and sank down on the blanket with Pauline and Douglas White. She would always be welcome with them; Pauline was her age and her good friend. Pauline had taught in the English department since before Daphne began as a secretary, and Douglas had been David’s best friend. And, long ago, they had both known Daphne and Joe in a social way.
“How do you like Jack Hamilton?” Daphne asked.
“Oh, he’s just fine,” Pauline said. Pauline had gone a bit square (she was shorter than Daphne) and let the gray thread through her dark hair. Tonight she was wearing a plaid shirtwaist that made her look even squatter and thicker than usual, but Daphne had given up trying to get Pauline to dress better. Pauline was through with vanity. “He’s so energetic, you know, as we all are when we’re new. I’ve seen him in his office, in the halls. He lets the students talk to him endlessly—they’re just eating up his time.”
“Oh, he wants to be popular with them!” Daphne said.
“We had dinner with Claire and Hudson last night. Daphne, it was awful. Claire is becoming wicked, I really believe it. All that elegant restraint we used to admire her for has become twisted, hardened, and I think she’s proud of it. She’s getting so … isolated. She relies on Hudson for everything, but treats him as if he were some kind of servant. She watches him like a hawk. I could be spilling government secrets to her and she’d turn away in the middle of our conversation if she saw that Hudson was involved in a conversation with someone else. You know, really involved, talking about something that interested him or made him smile. ‘Oh, Hudson,’ she says, ‘would you get my pills?’ Then she says, ‘I know it’s awful that Hudson has to help me so much, but if I were at home in England I’d have relatives around. Instead …’ Then she sighs and tries to look like a martyred saint. It makes me shudder. Why does he stay with her? And when do you suppose was the last time poor Hudson got laid?”
Daphne laughed, feeling terribly sad at the same time. “From what I’ve gathered, I think he’s just decided to forget about all that,” she began, but then her attention was diverted by a rustle that passed through the picnickers.
“Oh, God,” Pauline said.
Daphne turned her gaze in the direction it seemed that now almost everyone else at the picnic was looking. Jack Hamilton, his cute little daughter on his shoulders, was striding down the lawn from the parking lot. Carey Ann was walking along beside him. Jack had on khakis, a red-and-blue-striped cotton sweater, and leather loafers without socks; he looked casual yet decorous.
Carey Ann was wearing thin sandals that crisscrossed and tied around her slender ankles with pink ribbons, and her legs flashed bare and sleek all the way up to her very short pink shorts. Tied at her shoulders with pink bows was a tiny white top so short that as Carey Ann walked, it rose and dipped, rose and dipped, teasingly exposing a flash of her flat silky waist. She was not wearing a bra. Her shimmery blond hair flew out around her and she looked totally beautiful, intensely sexy, and completely inappropriate. She looked ready to attend the Indianapolis 500, not an Ivy League college affair.
The Hamiltons had come halfway down the hill before Carey Ann realized her mistake. By that time Daphne was muttering a silent rapid prayer: Oh, dear God, don’t let her notice. But Carey Ann noticed. As her big blue eyes swept over the lawn and porch and she saw the women in dresses, skirts and blouses, or at least long, loose silk or cotton slacks, her face took on a look of panic, a rosy glow spreading from her forehead down to the little top.
People were still laughing and talking, but most were frozen, watching, knowing they were witnessing a faux pas that would be remembered and discussed for years. And who was going to jump up and welcome the Hamiltons, talk to them? Not many wives there would forgive Carey Ann for being so stunningly, movie-star beautiful. They would have no mercy—and would not let their husbands show any. And the younger faculty did not want to appear guilty by association.
“God damn him, God damn him!” Daphne said. “Why didn’t he tell her? What is the matter with him?”
“He didn’t know, Daphne,” Pauline whispered. “He still doesn’t know. He doesn’t know about women’s clothes. Look at his face, he’s completely unaware.”
“He’s stupid,” Daphne said. “Pauline, go get them. Bring them here. I would, but you’d be better, you’re faculty.”
But while Pauline was still struggling to rise from the blanket, another senior faculty member came down from the porch, hands held out, to greet the Hamiltons. He could not have been more welcoming or jovial. It was Hudson, and he brought the Hamiltons up onto the porch to greet the old guard seated there.
“Oh!” Pauline said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Oh, bless his heart. Oh, God bless him. Daphne, you ought to sleep with him for that.”
“You know, you’re obsessed with Hudson’s sex life!” Daphne said, laughing. “I think you want to sleep with him!”
“Oh, I don’t, not really, but I do care for Hudson, and I’d like to see him happy. He’s such a good man. And I know how his face gets when he looks at you, Daphne. He’s loved you for years.”
“And you and I have discussed this for years. He’s married, Pauline. He’s an honorable man. For that matter, I’m an honorable woman. Oh, let’s eat,” Daphne said, jumping up from the blanket in her sudden impatience.
After the meal everyone relaxed as the sky paled and then darkened with the deepening night, and the babies fell asleep on their blankets. The oldest of the old guard tottered home, and the adults that were left moved among each other, talking, having another drink, one last drink. The end of summer was in the air. Tomorrow there were duties, tomorrow they must face classrooms full of rampant youth who had the world before them, while they, the professors, had already used up a good part of their lives and were entrenched in marriages or relationships that they cherished, or didn’t cherish, but had chosen and must get on with. But tonight they were outdoors, and the stars came out, more and more of them; tonight was expansive—and kind, and warm. They lingered.
Daphne, another glass of white wine in her hand, approached the Hamiltons, who were sitting on a blanket with Robert Butler. Butler was in the chemistry department, a nice man, but almost astonishingly boring, and once he found someone who would listen to him for a minute, he clung for hours. Jack was nodding and responding politely, but Carey Ann’s eyes were glazing over, and Alexandra had fallen asleep in her lap.
“Hello, everyone,” Daphne said. “No, don’t get up, please. Carey Ann, I thought you might want to come with me and let me introduce you to some of the women who have children Alexandra’s age. They could tell you about play groups and preschools and pediatricians and all that sort of thing.”
In response, Carey Ann looked miserable. “Well,” she said hesitantly, “Alexandra’s sleeping …”
“I’ll hold her,” Jack said, and before his wife could reply, he reached over and took his daughter from her. Alexandra sighed, a singing little sound, nestled against her father’s shirtfront, and stuck her thumb in her mouth.
Warily Carey Ann rose to her feet. She and Daphne had not seen each other since the day Alexandra crawled across the piano.
“Do you want another glass of wine?” Daphne asked, thinking: Why don’t you have three or four, maybe you’d relax.
“Well …” Carey Ann said, uncertain.
Daphne took her gently by the arm then—it was the only way, she decided, like leading a timid beast, perhaps one of those quivering, gorgeous, skinny Afghan hounds with lots of messy blond hair (one had to take gentle but firm control)—and half-pulled her to the bar. Daphne chatted the entire way about the mothers Carey Ann would meet, and their children, and finally got Carey Ann to the blanket where the young mothers were gathered, some with babes in arms. Daphne knew some of these women, not all, and she remembered how it had been to be one of these women, with life passionately, messily, almost insanely centered on one tiny human being. She introduced Carey Ann and then excused herself to get more wine—she felt that Carey Ann would be more relaxed without her around, and indeed, that probably all those women would. She could remember how she had felt when she was in her twenties and early thirties—women over forty seemed antediluvian.
When she reached the wine table, she realized she really didn’t want any more wine. She was tired. Now she felt her singleness and it weighed her down. When she and Joe had divorced, her friends had at first rallied round her and made her join them on their forays to the faculty-club affairs. At first she had been a “cause” for her friends, and after all that died down, she felt comfortable enough to brave the affairs on her own. She had known so many people. Then she started working for the history department and had her own membership. For a long time she had come with David. And now, again, she came alone. When she had been younger, divorced, it took courage, real determination, to walk by herself into a room crowded with couples, but now that was the easy part, for there were so many people who were glad to see her. It was the leaving that was difficult—not awkward, for no one noticed, but simply painful, because she was alone and had no one to gossip with about the evening, no one to ride with through the dark night: no one to cuddle up with in bed.
Daphne found her straw summer purse where she’d left it on a blanket. Everyone else, in couples or groups, was engaged in intense conversation, it seemed. Pauline and Douglas had already left. There was no one for her to call or wave good-bye to. She left the party in silence, trailing up the lawn past all the people like someone unseen, like a ghost.
Ghosts. They were everywhere. They materialized all over: from a piece of jewelry or a piece of furniture or a wisp of song curling from a radio or a nightmare. They sprang up like geysers, right out of the top of Daphne’s head, and spilled down all around her, enclosing her in their falling fluid silvery sheen so that she became a ghost herself, trapped in the past, in her past.
Daphne, in her teens and early twenties, had lived in a dream world. She had been held back. Hindered, indeed, by her times, by her parents, by her religion, and by the nature of her own personality. Slowed down, and, later, demented.
If she were to tell Cynthia, her sixteen-year-old daughter, who had friends taking the pill (who might even now herself be taking the pill out there in fast-paced, action-packed California, for all Daphne knew), that she had been a virgin at twenty-three, Cynthia would fall off the sofa with laughter. Or, more likely, these days, when Cynthia was so bound and determined that she and Daphne would not get along, Cynthia would seriously, with the deadly earnest patience of a true martyr, point out that this was just one more sign of the difference between mother and daughter, the proof that there was no way Daphne could ever understand Cynthia, ever come close to understanding Cynthia.
But the twenty-three-year-old Daphne, still a virgin, had been a happy one—actually, an oblivious one—drifting along in a world all her very own. Since then she had seldom been as happy, certainly not as peaceful.
She had been an English major. She had finished her bachelor’s degree and was working on her master’s, with every intention of going on for her doctorate in medieval literature. Her body made the necessary motions of going through ordinary life in the town of Amherst, where she was a student at the University of Massachusetts, but her soul and mind and imagination belonged to the literature of the Middle Ages. It was 1962, and her world was peopled with knights and faeries and dragons and sorcerers and love stories of mythic dimensions. The legends of King Arthur and the Round Table. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Aucassin and Nicolette. Tristan and Isolt! What in modern life could compare with the romances of ancient times, especially those romances with pure and noble and faithful and chaste and yearning lovers?
While her friends were lying in their apartments listening to Johnny Mathis, Daphne lay on her bed truly lost in another world, swooning as she read for the fiftieth time the poem The Nut-Brown Maid. While her friends were twisting to Chubby Checker, Daphne’s mind was full of medieval ballads sung in a high clear voice, accompanied by lute.
She was, really, just a little bit nuts. Something in her then longed for the romantic, the epic, the impossible, wanted love in the twentieth century to be like love in the Middle Ages. She wanted a knight, she wanted true, pure, superior love.
Her wish had come true, as wishes sometimes have a way of doing. Oddly enough—humorously enough—it had been a cock that had brought her love, true love. It had been her naive and romantic handling, so to speak, of a cock, that had brought her romance and love and marriage.
While working on her master’s degree, Daphne held a teaching assistantship. She was paid an insignificant sum of money to teach beginning literature to freshman students. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning at eight o’clock and again at nine o’clock (while the professors with tenure slept late) she taught poetry, essays, and short stories to freshman students who were not especially interested, but who were required to take basic English in order to get a degree in anything at all. She went into her teaching determined to make her students love the language, determined to open to her students the ethereal, majestic, magical world of fiction.
The poetry in the fat text chosen by powers above her was arranged chronologically. The first poem she chose from the text was one written in the fifteenth century. It was brief, and very easy to read. And, as Daphne told her class, it was wonderfully subtle and clever! She read it aloud:
I have a noble cock,
Who croweth in the day.
He maketh me rise early,
My matins for to say.
I have a noble cock,
Whose breed is nothing low.
His comb is of red coral,
His tail of indigo.
His eyes are shining crystal,
Rimmed all around with amber;
And every night he perches
Within my lady’s chamber.
“You see how devious the poet is,” Daphne (enraptured by her own sensitivity and by anything written in the fifteenth century) said to her students. “Now, what does he say in the first stanza that the cock does? Why, he wakes his master up. Of course that is what a rooster does, but we can imagine this as a pet rooster, a beautiful bird with a comb of coral and an indigo tail, who crows in the morning and wakes up his master. Why does he love his rooster so much? Why is this rooster so special, so noble? What is the poet trying to tell us by innuendo? What does the poet tell us in the last stanza? Where does the rooster go to sleep at night? ‘In my lady’s chamber’! So you see, the poet is subtly, inventively, telling us that he is sleeping in the bedroom of his ladylove—the rooster who wakes him in the morning goes to sleep at night in ‘his lady’s chamber.’ It is the indirectness of poetry, the clever sidestepping of it, the sneakiness of it, if you will, that often gives poetry its power. The poet is writing a love poem to his lady, but instead of praising her, he is praising an object that is related to her and to the fact that he is sleeping in her room.”
On and on she went, while her students stared down at their books, strangely quiet that day. She began to wonder if she had embarrassed them, because they said nothing. She went on from that poem to other love poems by Donne and Shakespeare, and was just beginning Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress when the hour was up. She taught the next period—the same subject, the same poetry (with the same strangely numbed reaction on her students’ part)—and then, when her class was over, she walked down the long hallway to the private lounge where the faculty and staff, including the lowly T.A.s, gathered for coffee and quiet conversation.
She was just outside the door to the lounge when she heard such an explosion of laughter that she paused. If the room was full of men, and only men, she wouldn’t go in. There were only three other female T.A.s, and she often felt timid around the male T.A.s when they were in their group, laughing with their low voices, gesturing extravagantly, bellowing out their opinions, fighting over their explication of The Waste Land like bulls butting for territory. She listened for the sound of any moderating female voice. What she heard was:
“… Gawd, I stood outside the door for fifteen minutes without taking a breath. I couldn’t believe my ears! ‘I have a noble cock’! I have a noble cock, and she thinks he’s talking about a rooster! Those kids must have peed down their legs with laughter when they got out of there.” The speaker (Daphne thought it was George Dobbs, a freckled red-haired arrogant Mark Twain specialist) paused to cackle. “She tells these freshmen, who are, you know, the horniest people on God’s green earth, that ‘in my lady’s chamber’ means the bedroom. She thinks that a cock in a lady’s chamber is a rooster in a bedroom! Haw haw haw haw …” The laughter rose, billowed, burst. “Dear Christ, how can one woman be so dumb! How can they let her teach freshman literature? She should be teaching first grade, maybe kindergarten!”
Daphne felt her entire being shrinking, collapsing into herself, like a star falling inward and becoming a cold void. Not until this very moment had it occurred to her that there might be more earthy interpretations to that poem. And now she saw how wrong she had been—how unbelievably ignorant and naive. Her students must be laughing at her. And now that Dobbs was telling everyone else, how would she ever face her colleagues? They would all think she was a fool. And she was, she really was. Oh, dear God, her life was ruined. She wasn’t a teacher, she was a little idiot.
Suddenly another voice imposed itself upon her panicked mind, and to her amazement, she heard a man saying, “Oh, George, you are such a mental slob. Just because you read vulgarity into everything you see doesn’t mean that everyone else does. Now, how do you know that the poet was talking about his cock and not a pet bird? Huh? How do you know? And even so, do you expect a beautiful classy female like Daphne Lowell to stand in front of a class of horny freshmen and talk about penises? I’m sure she can be sexy when she wants, but a woman teaching freshmen can hardly choose to be lewd. And we’re supposed to be teaching poetry, don’t forget, you know, we’re supposed to be trying to introduce the sublime, the majestic, the angelic—‘the music of the soul, and above all of great and feeling souls’—to these poor earthbound clods. What a crud you are to make fun of that elegant woman just because your own vision is so crass.”
Now Daphne really couldn’t breathe. She clutched her books to her breast, truly nearly fainting: my God, she had suddenly become a damsel in distress overhearing her knight in shining armor rallying to her defense. She was weak with astonishment.
“Jesus, Joe, you should be studying debate, not English literature!” George Dobbs said, laughing. “Give me a break—you sleeping with her, or what?”
“I haven’t even spoken to her, you asshole!” Daphne’s hero said, and then Dr. Frazier, the Shakespeare professor, came down the hall and caught Daphne standing outside the door, rigid with shock.
“Are you going in, Miss Lowell?” Dr. Frazier asked, and before she could move, he had pulled the door back, intending to allow her to pass through before him, unintentionally exposing Daphne to the lounge full of English T.A.s.
Daphne stared—and saw one person, Joe Miller. And he was seeing only her. She turned—she fled. She ran from the building and across campus and down nameless streets until she came to her apartment. Not until she was safely inside, in her bedroom with the door locked, on her bed, did she feel safe.
Daphne lay there and caught her breath, and replayed the entire morning in her head—and began to smile, and could not stop.
She had longed to have a knight, a hero, and she had one. She had been defended. She had been praised. It was obvious, it was undeniable—she was loved from afar! She felt radiant, ethereal, she felt like Guinevere reincarnated. And in her mind from that moment on, she thought of herself and Joe in impossibly romantic ways, like Tristan and Isolt, like Aucassin and Nicolette.
Finally she came around to thinking about Joe himself, Joe Miller, her knight. She hadn’t really thought about him before, ever, had seldom seen him—there were, after all, twenty-three T.A.s in the department, and scores of other Ph.D. and master’s candidates.
She summoned up a vision of Joe in her mind: he was blond, with thick hair that he wore longer than most men these days, and he had blue eyes and a straight nose and a great smile—why, he was handsome! Why hadn’t she noticed that before? He wasn’t very tall, unfortunately, and perhaps that was why she hadn’t paid much attention to him; Daphne was tall for a woman, five-eight, and slender, but big-boned, and she was attracted to very tall big men. Joe was probably the same height she was. Probably the same weight, too, though she’d never tell him so—but could he pick her up? Could he carry her in his arms? He was the serious type, she remembered, very serious, even fierce, and competitive, and, now she remembered, he was rumored to be quite brilliant. Well, wow! How wonderful. How romantic. A brilliant man had come to her defense. Had proved that the age of chivalry was not dead.
When the phone rang, she knew it would be Joe, and it was.
“Hi,” he said. “I think that after this morning it might be nice if we could get together.”
And so they did.
It really had been a wonderful thing that Joe had done for Daphne. She had told Cynthia about the way they met, because the psychology books said to tell the child of a divorce about the time when her parents loved one another. She told Cynthia how after just three months of going together they were married, and how they laughed together and understood each other and shared everything, told each other everything. They were the dearest friends, but they were husband and wife too. She did not tell Cynthia in exact words, but let her understand that sexually the marriage had been fine and rich: it was a treasure. (She did not tell Cynthia about the time that she finally said, laughing, wet all over her body from different bodily moistures—sweat and kisses and sex and tears: “Oh, Joe, you have a noble cock!” How they had laughed, so pleased with themselves.)
And who could take that away from Daphne now? What could make it change, what could make it false? Because Joe had betrayed her and left her for another woman, did that mean he did not truly love her then, in those young years? This was the mystery of life, not how death transforms us, but how life transforms us, even our memories, even our most radiant memories—if what Joe gave Daphne in their youth was golden, did his later betrayals tarnish it, demean it, debase it? So that the gold fell away, a lie, leaving only base metal, leaving a cheap pretense, tin?
Daphne sat alone in her cottage, wrapped in a light summer quilt, rocking in the curved wicker rocking chair in which she had rocked Cynthia when Cynthia was newly born. Daphne had put the chair here, by the long window looking out at the field and forest, just so she could sit this way, and look, and think, and remember, and be calmed by the way the lawn slanted and the woods stood firm, guardians of her realm. So long ago, she had been romantic. She could still be romantic. In fact, she was. Some of her friends, especially her new friends, saw her life as a sort of cliché, a cautionary tale to younger women: Look at what poor (foolish) Daphne Miller did with her life! Such potential, such a brilliant student—and she threw it all away, by trusting a man, by falling in love. They would say she had been duped and even robbed, and in a way that was true, for when she married Joe, she had stopped taking courses, had stopped working toward her doctorate. Joe was poor, and two years older, and was closer to finishing his doctorate than she. So she had worked for four years as a secretary in the chemistry department so that they could pay the rent on a little apartment and eat and wear clothes. Then he had gotten a teaching position at this prestigious college—wonderful for him, but what was Daphne to do? For their plan was that when he had gotten his doctorate and had a teaching position and was earning money, then she would go back to school. But this small college gave only undergraduate degrees; she could not get her doctorate here. The only thing for her to have done was make a long commute, an hour-and-a-half drive over treacherous mountain roads, back to U. Mass. at Amherst. She would have done that—but she got pregnant with Cynthia. So her life had become a perfect feminist tract: the woman who gave up her career to support a husband who then left her with a small child and little money. She had to work as a secretary to support herself and Cynthia (Joe paid child support, but college professors didn’t earn much); there was no way she could work and take care of a small child and study for a Ph.D. Now here she was, forty-six years old, a woman who had been a brilliant student with a promising career—and she was a secretary, just a secretary! If the feminists knew about her, they would take her like a dog-and-pony show around the country to show her off to young women as an example of promise denied.
But it was not the teaching that she missed now. It was not a career that she yearned for. If she could have what she wanted right now, on this starry end-of-summer night, she would simply wish to be loved. To be held right now by a man she loved who loved her in return. Oh, well, she was still a romantic, still hopelessly mushy. She supposed she always would be. She wished David were still alive. She had cared for him so deeply, even when she was furious at his drinking. And he had loved her. His arms … his embrace. David had been a huge man and his body had been a kind of shelter for Daphne, but more, and terribly, it had been a shelter for his disease. He had died, as everyone feared he would, of cirrhosis of the liver, when he was only forty-seven, just two years ago.
She had not been held by a man for two years. There was Hudson to talk to, and she knew he cared for her. They had a kind of silent communing, a caring and affection that were expressed tenderly and obliquely, as if they were together in a pool of life, and although they did not actually touch one another, their feelings caused life to lap at them like gentle waves, giving them soft sensual satisfaction. But it was not the same as making love, as being held in a man’s arms. Daphne missed that. She often thought of trying to seduce Hudson, because she knew they could give each other pleasure and comfort and even joy, but no, there was Claire.
And really, most of all, Daphne missed her daughter. She missed Cynthia terribly. She had lived her life around her daughter as if around a glowing fire, and she had spent all her time bringing fuel to that fire, feeding that fire, tending it, watching it flourish and flame, and standing back in amazement sometimes at how brightly it burned, how high it flared! And now Cynthia was gone. Daphne was left with a void, a hole where the fire had been.
She ached, missing her daughter. Not being loved by a man did not defeat her, but this did. Not having Cynthia in the house defeated her. She could understand why Joe had left her, and she could bear that. She could understand why her daughter had left her, but she could not bear that. It hurt to think of it. It was as if her heart had been torn from her body, and nothing in the world would stanch that wound.
Daphne huddled in her chair and cried. The old release. She was a lonely woman, a woman who had been left and left again, a woman who was growing old. She was a lonely woman wrapped in a cotton quilt sitting in a rocking chair crying in the moonlight, and no one heard her cry. And never, not even in all the romances she had ever read, did someone come to the rescue of such as she.
Down the road in their A-frame, Jack and Carey Ann were fighting. Again. Still. It had started in the car, when Jack had asked pleasantly (hopefully), “Well, did you have a good time?”
“Oh, sure,” Carey Ann had replied, her voice low with sarcasm.
Jack sighed. He hated it when Carey Ann’s voice got like that. “What does that mean?”
“What do you think it means?” Carey Ann replied, and before he could answer, she had said, “Let’s just be quiet till we get home, okay? Alexandra’s just about asleep and I don’t want to wake her up.”
So they had ridden home in silence, silently fighting every mile of the way. Carey Ann had hunched over against the door, as if afraid his arm might touch hers, inflicting injury or disease. Her face was stony. When they came to the house, she didn’t wait for Jack to come open the door and help her and Alexandra out, which he usually did, which he enjoyed doing. She awkwardly nudged the door open with her elbow, then kicked it open the rest of the way, crawled out, and walked past him into the house.
Jack poured himself a beer and one for Carey Ann too while she put the baby into her crib. He was sitting on the sofa in the living room when she came out. “Here,” he said, indicating with his hand the beer, the cushion next to him. “Sit down. Let’s talk.”
Carey Ann picked up the beer but didn’t sit down next to him. She chose the chair across the room next to the stone fireplace. She sat down and crossed her legs and swigged her beer and swung her leg back and forth in a maddening little rhythm and stared into space as if she were all by herself riding on a subway.
“All right,” Jack said finally, “now tell me, what’s wrong? What didn’t you like? Who didn’t you like?”
“What didn’t I like?” Carey Ann asked, turning to look at him—to glare at him. “Who didn’t I like? Everything, everyone, that’s what, that’s who!”
“Well, I thought there were a lot of nice people there—” Jack began.
“Fuddy-duddies!” Carey Ann said. “Jack, they were all fuddy-duddies!”
“Well, I know some of the older ones—”
“Oh, I’m not talking about the older ones,” Carey Ann said. “I don’t care about them. I’m talking about the ones our age. That Madeline Spencer. For example.”
“She seemed very nice. And her little boy is just Alexandra’s age,” Jack said, wondering what on earth Carey Ann could have against Madeline Spencer, who seemed to him to be an awfully nice woman.
“Well, did you notice her hair? Did you even notice it? How it just hangs there on each side of her head? It’s just so limp, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup and she had on horrid shoes like retarded people wear, and her little boy wouldn’t let Alexandra play with the teddy bear—”
“Madeline did say it was his special bear,” Jack said. “You know, like a blanket, a security thing.” When Carey Ann went silent, he said, “I thought the two of you were getting along fine.”
“Oh, she wasn’t so bad, but the others with her. You didn’t hear them, you were talking to the men. ‘And what do you do, Carey Ann?’ ” she mimicked. “And when I said I took care of Alexandra, they said, ‘I mean what do you really do?’ Like being married and having a family isn’t really anything. They’re all so serious, Jack, talking about how hard it is to be a faculty wife here and not be able to ‘pursue their interests,’ and making cookies for the students during exam week, and hospital committees and stuff. They’re so earnest.”
Jack looked at his wife, feeling hopeless. What could he say? How could he defend his colleagues and their spouses? In fact, they were a pretty earnest bunch. They had had to be to get their Ph.D.’s and be asked to teach by this college. He could see, too, how they might look pretty drab to his wife, all his colleagues with their thinning hair and horn-rimmed glasses and pimples and pipes. They were all like he was, riddled with worry and concern: how to support a family on a minuscule amount of money, teach a bunch of aggressively bright students who were paying a fortune to be taught by them, and write profoundly original essays that would bring critical praise—and tenure.
“… doesn’t anyone here know how to have fun?”
“Well, Carey Ann, maybe when we get to know some of these people a little better—you know, this was a faculty affair at the college, so everyone had to be on good behavior.”
“Oh!” Carey Ann wailed. “I don’t want to get to know any of them! And they don’t want to get to know me!” She took a deep breath, and then, to Jack’s dismay, she burst into tears and crumpled in the chair. “Oh, Jack, I’m not blind. I may be pretty but that doesn’t mean I’m a complete fool. I saw the way some of those women looked at me, and I know I was underdressed, but at least I looked pretty, and women out here don’t care anything about looking pretty. I can’t imagine ever talking to them about … oh, my hair, or what kind of dress to buy, or anything at all! Do you know what one woman said? I went up to her because she had a little baby and I thought we could talk about babies, but she started telling me all about how her husband was studying ‘quarks.’ What the fuck is a quark? I thought she was joking so I laughed and she got such a stuck-up look on her face like she was so much better than I am. Oh, Jack, are there such things as quarks?”
Jack rose then and went over and put his arms around her. He brought her with him back to the sofa and sat and held her while she cried. “It will get better. You’ll make friends. I know you will. You’ll be a great faculty wife, you’ll see.”
“A great faculty wife?” Carey Ann raised her head and stared at Jack in dismay. “You want me to be a great faculty wife? Oh, Jack, sometimes I don’t think you know me at all.”
“What do you mean?” He was trying to be careful.
“I mean, I don’t want to be a faculty wife! I know you, and no matter what you think you feel, if I get all old and limp-haired and saggy and intelligent, you’ll stop being in love with me.”
Jack thought a moment, racking his brain for the perfect answer. “No. I would be in love with you even if you were old and limp-haired and saggy and intelligent,” he said.
Carey Ann was quiet for a moment and Jack thought she was trying to decide whether she had just been insulted or complimented. “Oh, honey,” she said at last, and hugged him. “Sometimes … sometimes I just feel so … young or something. Like I don’t know what to do around those people. Jack, I try, I want you to know that, I really am trying. Like I was really polite to that Daphne Miller tonight even though she insulted me and Alexandra.”
“I told you, Carey Ann, she—”
“Oh, let’s not go into that again, I don’t want to talk about that again, I’m trying to say something here,” Carey Ann said. She reached up and put her hand, gently, softly, over his mouth. At the same time she kept her arm around his waist and leaned her hips in against his. “All my life I never had to change,” she said. “Then I met you and all I seem to have to do is change. Get married, get pregnant and all fat and swollen, have a baby, move halfway around the world from all my friends … oh, Jack, and now you say you want me to be a faculty wife.”
“Well, I am a member of the faculty. And you are my wife.”
“You know Daddy always said he’d support us so you could write.”
“And you know I’ve got more pride and sense than to accept that offer.”
“Yes, I know.” Carey Ann sighed. “Men.”
Jack moved his hands down her back to rest on her buttocks. “Women,” he replied.
They were kissing when Alexandra began to cry. Honestly, Jack thought, does that child have some kind of built-in sensory device?
“Let her cry,” he said. “She’ll cry herself back to sleep.”
“Jack! I couldn’t let the poor little thing do that!” Carey Ann said. “Let me go just a minute. I’ll just rock her back to sleep.” She pulled away from him.
Jack watched some late news, waiting for his wife, but when she didn’t come down, he took off his shoes and tiptoed up the stairs to their room. The hall light shone on their queen-size bed, where Carey Ann lay in one of her lacy nightgowns, and Lexi lay in the curve of her arm, crooning softly to herself, trying to ward off sleep, fighting to stay awake. When Lexi saw her father enter the room, she grinned mischievously. Looking at Carey Ann, reclining, made Jack desire her terribly, and feel base for this desire, and feel wretched because he could tell that tonight his desire would not be fulfilled—and because she did not equally desire him. He could almost feel his penis shrinking into his body, unloved, rejected, disappointed. As he went into the bathroom to wash up for bed, he felt his sex against him, a small bobbing sack laden with displeasure and resentment and frustrated desires, like some heavy symbolic object in an ominous ancient tale.