Most of us got out eventually. Georgina and I kept in touch.
For a while she lived in a women’s commune in north Cambridge. She came over to my apartment one day and terrorized my upstairs neighbor, who was making bread.
“You’re doing that wrong!” Georgina said. She and I were having a cup of tea upstairs while my neighbor kneaded the dough.
“Let me show you,” said Georgina. She pushed my neighbor out of the way and started flinging the dough around on the counter.
My neighbor was a mild-mannered woman who never did anything graceless or rude. Consequently, most people were polite to her.
“You really have to beat it up,” said Georgina, doing so.
“Oh,” said my neighbor. She was about ten years older than Georgina and I, and she’d been making bread for all those years.
After she’d given the bread a good beating, Georgina said she had to leave.
“I have never been treated that way,” said my neighbor. She seemed more astonished than angry.
Then Georgina got involved in a consciousness-raising group. She pestered me to come. “You’ll love it,” she said.
The women made me feel inadequate. They knew how to disassemble car engines and climb mountains. I was the only married one. I could see that Georgina had a certain cachet because of her craziness; somehow, this cachet did not apply to me. But I went often enough to become suspicious of marriage, and of my husband in particular. I picked stupid fights with him. It was hard to find something to fight about. He did the cooking and the shopping, and he did a fair amount of cleaning too. I spent most of my time reading and painting watercolors.
Luckily, Georgina got herself a husband as well and dropped out of the group before I could pick a really destructive fight.
Then we had to go visit their farm in western Massachusetts.
Georgina’s husband was pale and slight and unmemorable. But she had also gotten a goat. Georgina, the husband, and the goat lived in a barn on a few acres of scrub land at the foot of a small mountain. The day we visited was cold, though it was May, and they were busy fitting glazing into their windows. They had six-over-six window frames, so this was quite a chore.
We watched while they puttied and fitted. The goat stood in her room near the door and watched as well. Finally, Georgina said it was time for lunch. She made a pressure cooker full of sweet potatoes. That was lunch. There was some maple syrup for topping. The goat had bananas.
After lunch, Georgina said, “Want to see the goat dance?”
The goat’s name was Darling. She was the color of ginger and had long hairy ears.
Georgina held a sweet potato up in the air. “Dance, Darling,” she said.
The goat stood on her hind legs and chased after the sweet potato, which Georgina kept moving away from her. Her long ears swayed as she hopped, and she pawed the air with her front legs. Her hooves were black and sharp; they looked as though they could do a lot of damage. Indeed, when she lost her footing, which she did a few times, and a hoof grazed the edge of the kitchen counter, it cut a groove in the wood.
“Give it to her,” I said. Something about the goat dancing made me want to cry.
They moved west, to Colorado, where the land was better. Georgina called once or twice from a pay phone. They had no telephone of their own. I don’t know what happened to the goat.
A few years after Georgina went west, I ran into Lisa in Harvard Square. She had a little toast-colored boy with her, about three years old.
I hugged her. “Lisa,” I said, “I’m so happy to see you.”
“This is my kid,” she said. “Isn’t it crazy that I have a kid?” She laughed. “Aaron, say hello.” He didn’t; he put his face behind her leg.
She looked exactly the same: skinny, yellow, cheerful.
“What have you been doing?” I asked.
“The kid,” she said. “That’s all you can do.”
“What about the father?”
“Later for him. I got rid of him.” She put her hand on the boy’s head. “We don’t need him, do we?”
“Where are you living?” I wanted to know everything about her.
“You won’t believe this.” Lisa pulled out a Kool and lit up. “I’m living in Brookline. I’m a suburban matron in Brookline. I’ve got the kid, I take the kid to nursery school, I’ve got an apartment, I’ve got furniture. Fridays we go to temple.”
“Temple!” This amazed me. “Why?”
“I want—” Lisa faltered. I’d never before seen her at a loss for words. “I want us to be a real family, with furniture, and all that. I want him to have a real life. And temple helps. I don’t know why, but it helps.”
I stared at Lisa, trying to imagine her in temple with her dark-skinned son. I noticed she was wearing some jewelry—a ring with two sapphires, a gold chain around her neck.
“What’s with the jewelry?” I asked.
“Presents from Grandma, right?” She addressed this to the kid. “Everything changes when you have children,” she told me.
I didn’t know what to say to that. I’d decided not to have any. And it didn’t look like my marriage was going to last, either.
We were standing in the middle of Harvard Square in front of the subway entrance. Suddenly, Lisa leaned close to me and said, “Wanna see something fantastic?” Her voice had the old quiver of mischief in it. I nodded.
She pulled up her shirt, a T-shirt advertising a bagel shop in Brookline, and grabbed hold of the flesh of her abdomen. Then she pulled. Her skin was like an accordion; it kept expanding, more and more, until she was holding the flap of skin a foot away from her body. She let go and it subsided, somewhat wrinkled at first but then settling back on her bones, looking perfectly normal.
“Wow!” I said.
“Kids,” said Lisa. “That’s what happens.” She laughed. “Say good-bye, Aaron.”
“Bye,” he said, surprising me.
They were going back to Brookline on the subway. At the top of the stairs Lisa turned around toward me again.
“You ever think of those days in there, in that place?” she asked.
“Yes,” I answered. “I do think of them.”
“Me too.” She shook her head. “Oh, well,” she said rather jauntily. Then the two of them went down the stairs, underground.