The little notebook I am writing in is 5½ inches by 7½ inches; the back is turquoise in color, and on the front, framed in the same turquoise, is a color photo of a man, complete with goggles, helmet, racing clothes, and special boots, racing a motorcycle. In the photo it looks as though the man is coming right at me; if the action were to start with a burst of speed and sound, the man on the motorcycle would roar from the picture right over me, right up over my chest and face. Men are dangerous. But all I have to do is to open the little notebook to write in it, and there he is, the motorcycle man, facedown, pressed against the kitchen table. If he came out now he could only smash into the wood, hurting no one but himself. I didn’t choose this particular notebook. It was one in a set of three which I bought wrapped in cellophane at the local grocery store for five Finnmarks, forty pennies. Dear dumb little notebooks, they are like a sort of God to me, or at least an angel: they listen to my confessions and enable me to forgive myself and to understand. I don’t attend church here in Helsinki, although I have gone to hear the cantor minores sing at the Temppeliaukio Church, the church carved out of a rock, and found it a sternly inspiring place to be. But I haven’t attended church anywhere for several years. Since I became an adult I found church too hypocritical a place to feel comfortable in. Now that I am older, things become less sharply delineated, and I see that I am like the others; that I, too, do things wrong and need a sense of forgiveness and love. And metaphors: the church provides metaphors that help one if not understand his own life at least see it embellished, befriended, echoed, transcended. I like metaphors. I need one for myself, and I don’t care how corny it is. The man on the motorcycle on the front of this book does not provide one for me; he is too artificial. I will have to make up my own, I suppose, here, now, in this dumb little, dear little confessional notebook. I will have to create something beautiful and simply structured to help me make some sense out of my life.
It is midnight. Charlie is somewhere in Sweden, sleeping, having delivered a lecture at the University of Lund. Adam and Lucy are in their little room, sleeping, innocent among their covers, faces flushed. Stephen is somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean, in a silver 747 heading for Boston and Logan International. Goodbye, Stephen; thank you and goodbye.
I feel guilty because of Stephen, because of how I was with him, I feel guilty because of the decision I have made about my life, guilty because it will undoubtedly hurt Charlie. I feel guilty because I’ll be taking my children away from their father, at least for a while. But one way or the other I knew I would end up feeling guilty about something; I’m still a Methodist from Kansas. At least I have done it: I have made a decision. Strange how effortless that decision was. And this way, the way I have chosen, I feel least guilty about the most things and happiest about the most things. I think. I must be a very slow person. Meanings come to me after actions, after I have thought things out, as I am thinking them out here in my turquoise motorcycle-man book.
I had quite enough time to make decisions in advance. I had all the time, and all the information available, before I went to the hotel to meet Stephen. I am still amazed at how dazed and undecided I was right up to the moment I knocked on his bedroom door. I spent the days before his arrival, and the very minutes I sat on Bus 90 riding closer and closer to the Rautatientori and the Hotel Vakuuna, frantically asking myself questions. Did I love Stephen? Did I love Charlie? Did I want to sleep with Stephen? Would I sleep with Stephen? Should I sleep with Stephen? What about Ellen—she was my friend—what did I owe her? What about Charlie—he was my husband—what did I owe him? What did I want? How did I feel? What was important? What would I do?
Amazing. Amazing that a supposedly intelligent person could have such a thoroughly muddled mind on such clean-cut subjects.
I certainly acted as if I were going to sleep with Stephen, no matter what I thought I was going to do. I arranged for a babysitter to stay all day, all day, seven long hours, with my children, and I refused to think about the fact that she was an older woman with good recommendations from the American Women’s League in Helsinki, but that I and my children had never seen her before. I took a shower, shaved my arms and legs, put on creams and lotions and perfume, dressed in my most elegant and attractive casual clothes, even bought myself mouthwash and breath mints, like an eager young lover on a television commercial. I wore fresh underwear, my best pair.
When Stephen called from the airport to tell me he had arrived, I told him to go to the Hotal Vakuuna. Other hotels might have been better, certainly less centrally located, farther away from places where I might run into Americans or Finns who knew me. But of course when Stephen called I hadn’t thought of a place for him to stay, I hadn’t found out about any faraway intimate hotels, and the Hotel Vakuuna just popped out when he asked for a suggestion. Later I decided that it was a good choice even though it is so close to the America Center and the United States Information Service, and so on. For one thing, it was easy for me to get to, it didn’t involve time-consuming tram and bus changes or long walks in the cold. It was only a block from the large brick-paved square where the buses stopped. I had only to cut through the large marvelous railway station and cross the taxi island and another small street, and there I was. The other good thing was that the hotel was located next to Sokos, a large department store. If people who knew me saw me in the area, they would assume I was going into Sokos; in fact, on one side of the hotel there was a small door at right angles to a door leading into Sokos. If anyone saw me coming out of the Hotel Vakuuna, I thought I would simply laugh and say that I had gotten confused, had gone in through the wrong door.
But as it turned out, no one saw me.
I went in through the door of the Hotel Vakuuna and up the stairs; Stephen had called when he was settled in the hotel to tell me his room number: 561. The closer I got to his room, the more frantically my thoughts raced, the less sure I was of what I wanted. I felt I owed Stephen something simply because he had pursued me, because he had come, because he was there.
“Hello,” he smiled, opening the door.
“Hello,” I said, and entered the room.
Stephen was wearing a soft blue cotton oxford shirt, and the collar was open, and the sleeves were rolled up. He had apparently just washed and shaved; he looked and smelled clean. He was, there was no denying it, a marvelously handsome man, and I am susceptible to handsome things.
So, of course, after we smiled at each other a moment, we kissed. And kissed, and kissed.
“I need to take my coat and mittens off,” I gasped at last. “I’m getting hot.”
“Look,” Stephen said as he helped me take off my big fur coat, “I ordered up some champagne. Would you like some?”
“Champagne at ten o’clock in the morning!” I laughed. “Of course.”
Stephen crossed the room to the desk, where the ice bucket stood, and it was then, in the way that he lifted the champagne bottle from the bucket and poured it into the glasses, that I knew I still loved Charlie. Charlie is such a big man, but he does small things with a special grace. We have shared many bottles of champagne together, and the image of his large good hands lifting the bottle from its nest is imprinted in my mind. Stephen’s hands were shaking slightly, and they were not as big as Charlie’s; he did not care for the feel of the special bottle or for the sight of the champagne as it bubbled up in the glass. It was something he wanted to get over with, to hurry through, it was not a moment to be graced in itself. I saw in that instant how Stephen would pass over all things, expensive champagne in its rainbow iridescence, his wife, his children, my children, to get to me, to have me; whereas Charlie would not do that, Charlie would slowly treasure and value each thing at its best worth, give his time and attention to each thing, and then come at last to me, having chosen me as the best of all the good things in his life. Charlie is a Methodist from Kansas, too; he feels an obligation to give all things their due, to handle all things with appropriate seriousness. I could see that pouring a glass of champagne on our fourteenth anniversary would be a more significant act to Charlie than pouring a glass of champagne before making love to me for the first time would be to Stephen. Stephen was aimed for the act, the accomplishment; he was first of all an ambitious man.
“Stephen,” I said as I took the glass of champagne, “I want to talk about all this before I get snockered and do something I might regret. I think it’s wildly romantic of you to come to Helsinki to see me, but it’s just not right. It won’t work out. It’s the wrong thing to do.”
“Well, sit down,” Stephen said. “At least sit down for a while.” He smiled at me. He had a gorgeous smile.
I sat down, on the edge of the bed. Stephen pulled a chair from the desk and turned it so that he sat facing me. Our knees did not quite touch.
“Zelda,” he said, “I’m not trying to get you to do anything wrong. I want to marry you, you know, not just have a quick affair. Though God knows I’d love that, too.”
“Oh, Stephen. I can’t have an affair with you or marry you. I just can’t. You’ve come all this way, clear across the Atlantic Ocean—”
“—and the Baltic Sea,” Stephen said, smiling, being charming.
“—and it makes me feel I’m obligated to have an affair with you. And you are the most handsome man I’ve ever seen in my life, and you know, you can tell how I feel when I’m near you, in a way I do want you—”
Stephen’s eyes grew serious as I spoke, and when I said that I did want him he put down his champagne glass and took mine from my hand, and I was so startled by that that I sloshed champagne over both of us, and that didn’t matter; Stephen was next to me, on top of me, and pushing me back down on the bed.
Oh, how pleasurable it was. Everything seemed so mysteriously attractive hidden behind the layers of clothing, and as we rolled and kissed and fondled and pressed against each other I had the same frightened, exhilarating feelings I had had when I was in high school and going steady with my first real boyfriend. We spent so many hours of our lives, Dave and I, in the front seat of his ’56 Chevrolet, kissing, touching, pressing, moaning, longing, and never quite completing the act. We were both Methodists from Kansas. Perhaps it is because of that that I have always found temptation much more exciting than completion. My mother had told me that if I had sex before I married I would go to hell. When I finally did sleep with Charlie, before marriage, it was the most exotic and grandiose gesture of my life, I felt I was giving up all the world, and more than that, all my hope of afterlife. How splendid it was! How doomed I felt, and how proud I was of my love, my love that meant more to me than heaven or eternal damnation. Strange, funny, that I didn’t believe in hell anymore. Or even in the integrity of marriage. Surely, surely, I thought, I have gone this far in deceiving Charlie, surely the act itself does not matter, is not a way of deceiving him more. And yet, of course, to me, the act itself, the completion, did matter, did mean something.
I pushed Stephen away. In doing so I half slid, half fell off the bed. I scrambled to my feet, panting heavily, and backed up against the wall.
“Stephen, please,” I said. “Please let me talk to you. Let me say what I have to say. Just give me a few minutes to talk. Then, I promise, if you still want to sleep with me, I will. But I need to settle some things first.”
Stephen twisted away from me and sat on the edge of the bed, hiding his face in his hands, propping his elbows on his knees. His back was beautiful, heaving still as he tried to control his breath.
“Talk,” he said to me, still not looking at me, still hiding his head in his hands.
“Stephen,” I said, and thought, What am I going to say? What is it that is so important that I have to say? “Stephen, I’m all confused. I’m sorry. I want you physically; God, who wouldn’t want you physically? But all that means something to me, it means more than just screwing around—”
“It means more than that to me, too.”
“Let me finish. Please. Look, maybe I’ve been giving off some signals I wasn’t aware of. Or maybe I was aware of them but didn’t know what they’d lead to. Or whatever. Oh, I’m so sorry, I don’t know what I want to say exactly. Look, I’m over thirty. I have two little children whom I love but who bore me to tears sometimes. I want to teach and I can’t, and that frustrates me unbelievably. I love Charlie and I love our marriage and I want to stay married to Charlie, and I want to do right by him. If I were in my own home, working somewhere, teaching, I wouldn’t even be interested in you at all. Oh, I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It’s just that my life has gotten so far out of control, and things mean so much to me, and if I sleep with you, then I’ll have all that burden of meaning to deal with. And then there’s Ellen. She’s my friend. She’s beautiful. I know you love her, I know you love your children. It’s been fun flirting, I love flirting, but I don’t want to do anything more than that. I’m so flattered that you came all the way to Helsinki, I’m so absolutely delighted that you want me. It’s wonderful, it’s a fantastic ego trip. I’ll live off of it for years and years. But I’m greedy and selfish and bad; I just want the good part, the fun of flirting and the sweet knowledge that you want me. I don’t want the rest of it, the guilt and the hurting of others and the mess. Oh, I don’t know. I can’t even think straight. Am I making any sense to you at all?”
“Zelda,” Stephen said, and turned and stood and looked at me across the bed, “if you could wish for anything right now in your life, what would you wish for?”
“A job,” I said. I smiled. “Isn’t that ridiculous?”
Stephen looked at me a moment. “I have a job for you,” he said.
“You what? You have a job for me?”
“Not in my department. Not at the university. A local community college is looking for a full-time English instructor. Freshman English and some basic literature courses. I’ve already told them about you. If you finished your PhD, and if they liked you, you could get tenure and teach the upper-level courses. It’s made for you. It’s perfect. The only problem is that they need someone starting in January and you and Charlie are supposed to be here till May. Also, the college is located a good thirty-minute drive from your farm.”
“Oh, Stephen,” I said. “Oh, Stephen. Oh, oh, I can’t believe it. You talked to them about me?”
“I gave them a copy of your résumé. I recommended you highly.”
“Maybe they’ve hired someone else by now.”
“No. I know Jim Steele, who’s the chairman there. He’s waiting to hear from me. I told them I’d contact you about the job. I know how much you’ve been wanting one.”
“Well, well, what can we do? I mean, I’ll take the job. I will. Oh, God, it’s like a miracle. Can we call them now and tell them I’ll take the job?”
“Don’t you want to talk it over with Charlie first? Don’t you want to know what the salary is?”
I thought for a moment. “Yes. Yes, I do want to know what the salary is, but that won’t make any difference. And no, no, I don’t want to talk it over with Charlie. I want the job. I’ve followed him around long enough; it’s time I went someplace myself.”
“Then we’ll send them a cable. And as soon as I return to the States I’ll call Jim Steele and reaffirm the cable. And you can do the rest yourself.”
“Can we send the cable now?”
We went to the telephone and sent the cable. Stephen pulled the desk chair out and sat at the desk while he talked on the phone. I paced the room, making plans. I would have to make plane reservations, I would have to pack, I would have to make preschool arrangements for the children, I would have to— Oh, God, I would have to tell Charlie.
When the cable was sent, Stephen turned back to me and looked at me awhile, smiling. Then he said, “You’re really a crazy lady, Zelda, do you know that?”
“But I’m a hell of an English teacher,” I said. I felt high. I hadn’t even finished my glass of champagne, and I felt high, drunk, euphoric.
“That’s what I told the people in Jim Steele’s department,” Stephen said.
“Now I really should sleep with you,” I said, suddenly sobered. “Out of gratitude, if nothing else.”
Stephen stood up, and crossed the room, and took me in his arms. He looked at me for a long time, and then he kissed me and held me against him. “Zelda,” he said, “I don’t want you to sleep with me out of gratitude. Or out of boredom, or out of confusion, or out of anything else than love. I want you to sleep with me because you love me. That’s the only way it will be good for you, so it’s the only way it will be good for me. Listen: I love you. So I’m going to go back home. I’m going to leave you alone. If you want me, you’ll know where to find me.”
“But Stephen,” I said, “you’ve come all the way across the Atlantic Ocean!”
“And the Baltic Sea,” Stephen smiled. “But it was worth it just to see the look on your face when I told you about the job.”
I looked up at Stephen and saw that there were tears in his eyes, and I looked away quickly, but not before the tears came into my eyes.
“Stephen,” I said, speaking into his cotton shirt, “you’re a good person.”
“I know,” Stephen said. “Isn’t it a shame?”
“You’ve changed my life, you know,” I said. “You’ve given me the two things I’ve needed most: a job and the knowledge that someone as great as you are could love me. I can’t ever repay you. How can I ever repay you?”
“Fall in love with me,” Stephen said, and smiled to show he was saying it pleasantly.
“What will you do now?” I asked.
“Me? I’ll go back home and run my department and live with Ellen and the children.”
“Ellen is wonderful. Joe and Carrie are beautiful. Your department has fantastic potential. You could have it worse.”
“I know, I know all that. You don’t have to feel sorry for me. Oh, Zelda, you’re so funny. You’re so happy over a stupid, low-paying, demanding job. Look at you. You’re all wrapped up in it already. You think you’re the luckiest person in the world.”
“I AM the luckiest person in the world. I have everything I’ve always wanted, children, Charlie, and now a job—”
“—and a friend on the side.”
“A friend. Oh, Stephen, oh, Stephen, I do love you.”
We hugged again, and kissed again, and it happened again, the chemistry, the explosion, the desire. I was tormented. I wanted to sleep with Stephen, now for every reason in the world, except for one: my bonds to Charlie. And, having finally made a decision, I felt bound to keep it. I pushed away from Stephen, put on my coat, and went out of his room.
I stood outside Room 561 for a few minutes, simply staring at the walls and the light blue rug. I felt as though I had just stepped off a spaceship. Things had gone too fast for me. Too much had happened, and the meaning was still light-years behind. I was happy, but not satisfied. Something more was needed to confirm and enrich what had just happened.
I turned and knocked on the door again. When Stephen opened it, I said, “Stephen, look, I’ve hired a babysitter for the whole day. You said you were my friend, and you are, you are my friend. Let’s do things that friends do. Let me show you Helsinki. It’s an interesting city, the Ateneum has an exhibit of Russian art, the Café Manta has exquisite pastries. You’ve come all this way, you should at least see the city.”
“What if people see us together?”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I’ll say you’re a friend. And it will be the truth.”
So Stephen washed his face and put on his coat and hat and gloves, and we went out together to spend the day walking around Helsinki. We went to galleries and museums, we walked up and down the beautiful Esplanade, looking in at shopwindows, we sat on the steps of the harbor, leading down to the ocean, and looked at the boats and the ships and the gulls and the curving line of land meeting sea. It was a cold day; we held hands when we walked, and I was amazed that chemistry could be so strong as to zing itself right through his leather gloves and my wool mittens. We ate a late delicious lunch at the Café Manta, and drank beer and then tea, and talked about ourselves. We talked about our pasts, and our hopes, and our problems, and our desires. It was certainly one of the most wonderful afternoons of my life, being with this handsome strange male friend in a handsome strange city, feeling free for a moment of the responsibilities of husband, children, and job, yet knowing that they were all there for me to return to.
Finally I had to go home; I had promised the babysitter I would be there at four. Stephen waited with me for the bus, then stood smiling and waving goodbye as I rode off. I sat on the blue plastic seat of Bus 16 as if I were in a chariot made of pink clouds pulled by blue dragons. I felt as though I were the luckiest woman in the world.
Adam and Lucy were clingy and whiny when I came in the door; the apartment was a mess. I didn’t care. I paid the babysitter and sat down on the floor in my good clothes to hold my children. I let them jump on me, roll on me, fall against me. I kissed them and hugged them and held them and bounced them. I was an angel of patience and good humor. Finally I fed them and bathed them and read them stories and cajoled them into helping me pick up the apartment, and one hour later than their usual bedtime I got them into bed. Then I put on my nightgown and robe, and fixed myself some Maalva rose hip tea, and turned off all the lights but the one here in the kitchen, and sat down at the window to write in this little motorcycle-man book, to think. As I look out the window, I see that it has begun to rain.
And thank you, Helsinki, and thank you, funny little notebook; you’ve given me my metaphor, you’ve made it all come clear. Though it is trite, corny, overused, still I’ve thought of a metaphor for my life. Let’s say, as I sit here, solid and warm and comfortable, still resonating from the pushes and sounds and hugs of my children, let’s say that I am, hilly, solid thing that I am, the earth. Well, we are all that, aren’t we, each person a separate, complete, fascinating sphere, a world composed of inner unfathomed activity and outer layers of beauty or ugliness. We sleep and wake like the earth, we experience seasons of warmth or cold, we revolve through time, we burst forth from our mothers, we grow and erupt, and finally die and dissolve, spinning off into space. The earth metaphor is just fine; it will do. And if I am the earth, then my love for my children is the ocean, deep and wide and endlessly profound. My love for my children washes over me, it composes the greater part of me, it tugs and drags at me, it lifts up gifts to me, it storms and shines at me, it is truly the other half of myself. It is inseparable, undeniable; it has formed me. My love for my children is the ocean, vast, as eternal as any earthly thing can be eternal, beautiful; making me complete.
My love for Charlie then is a river, perhaps all rivers, because my love for him is such a varied thing. My love for my husband is a river, flowing from the heart of me, entering into and sustaining the ocean, a part of me and the ocean. My love for Charlie is a river, a river that has cut itself deep into me, a river that is calm and broad and good. And probably necessary, if I am to grow as well as I can.
And my work is then the rain. My work, teaching English to young college students, is the rain of my life: it is necessary for my existence. It nurtures me, fills me, replenishes me, cleanses me, makes me grow, causes me to remain open and receiving, helps me to give.
That is all true. True, but not perfect. No, it’s not perfect. It won’t work. It won’t hold. It’s a lousy metaphor. I’ve had too much scotch again and am not thinking straight. When I first knew and married Charlie, of course he was the ocean to my earth, and all the rivers and all the rain. It’s not fair to relegate him to one place; he’ll keep changing, and I’ll keep changing, and our relationship will not remain the same. No, it will certainly not remain the same, not after I tell him about my job. My job. Charlie, please understand.
The metaphor breaks down in other places, too: what, if I continue it, are my friends? What are Alice, Linda, Ellen, Rija, Gunnel—Stephen—what are my friends? Perhaps they are the fountains of my life: dazzling, refreshing, delightful, gracing and brightening my life. But then what about Caroline and Cathy? If I cast myself as the earth and everyone else must be some form of water, I guess I can only cast Caroline and Cathy as small lakes in my life, and nothing more. I have supported them, as the earth does support lakes, but I cannot say they are a part of me. I could never say that, and I am sure they would never say that, either. So I’ll have to leave them as lakes, pretty, superficial, sometimes sparkling, sometimes sullied; there.
* * *
Last year, last fall, after the peacemaking summer visit from Charlie’s girls, we received our first unexpected letter from Caroline. It was a long, friendly, chatty letter, written to both of us, telling about Caroline’s new apartment and her three girlfriends and how hard her courses were and whom she was dating. There was no request for money. And the last sentence was: “Hope you two and the children are fine. Love, Caroline.”
Charlie was happy. “I knew this would happen eventually,” he said. “She wants to get back in touch again. She’s grown up a bit. The worst of it is over, thank God.”
He wrote back to Caroline, and after a while, I wrote, too. My letter was shorter, more cautious, and I mentioned Adam and Lucy only briefly. I realized how dull my letter might sound to a college girl; I wrote only about the farm, and our new kittens, and how many apples I had managed to slice and freeze or make into applesauce and apple cider. I longed to say in the letter, “Look, this is just a phase I’m going through, motherhood and calm farm life; it doesn’t make me very interesting, I know, but it makes me quite content. You went through a phase, God knows; I deserve to go through one, too.” As I wrote the letter, I knew that the farm, my children, my gentle, calm, safe plodding life, would not satisfy me much longer.
Caroline wrote back another long, friendly letter. She said that Cathy said hi. We wrote back to Caroline. Several letters were exchanged between us, and suddenly it was Christmas and both girls came up to spend two days of their Christmas vacation with us.
It was a good visit. There were no enthusiastic hugs and kisses, in fact there was no touching at all, and we were all rather reserved, rather careful. But we ate and drank and laughed and talked together. The girls helped me clear off the table without waiting for me to ask. They smiled and said thank you when they opened their presents. They even brought little presents for Adam and Lucy, and although they did not hold either child, they did talk to them a bit, they did smile at them. It was as if a storm were over, as if a nightmare had ended. By the end of their two days there, we were almost comfortable with each other.
In February, Caroline wrote to ask if Charlie and I could come down to New Haven to visit. It was her last year of college, and she wanted to show us her apartment and her roommates before everything changed. She had mentioned that she wanted us to come down during the Christmas visit, but we had thought she was perhaps only being polite. Now she seemed to be seriously, honestly inviting us.
“I can’t go down,” Charlie said. “I just don’t have the time. Why don’t you go?”
“Me? Alone? She doesn’t want me, she wants you, you’re her father, for heaven’s sake,” I said.
But later, when Charlie called Caroline to tell her that he was too busy to go down for even an overnight visit, Caroline said, “Well, then, can Zelda come?”
“Well, then, can Zelda come?”
Those were the words Caroline said, and those five simple words made my heart jump up in my throat and made tears spring to my eyes. “She wants me to come,” I whispered to the air, as if saying it aloud, repeating it, made it more believable, more real. It was then, when I realized how happy I was that Caroline wanted me to come, that I also realized how sad I had been, in some hidden part of my heart, not to be part of her life, not to have her as part of mine.
I went. It was a great trip, for many reasons. It was the first time I had ever been away from Adam and Lucy and Charlie. Charlie and I had managed to squeeze out a weekend here and there to go down to New York to see a play and visit friends, and of course Charlie had gone off to his everlasting conferences many times, leaving me alone with Adam and Lucy. But now it was my turn: I was going on a trip by myself, without husband or children. I packed like a bride, took a new thick juicy paperback to read on the bus down, bought Caroline and Cathy new shirts, and took enough cash to buy plenty of wine and beer.
How free I felt as I stepped off the bus in New Haven! It was intoxicating simply to stand there, without having to lift a baby or push a stroller or answer a high-pitched question. And when I saw Caroline in her jeans and down jacket coming toward me, I felt young again for the first time in years.
That night, Friday night, the girls drove me to the dorm, so that I could see Cathy’s room and meet her roommate, and then we stopped at a liquor store and bought beer, wine, vodka, scotch, tonic, and soda, so that everyone would be happy, and then we went to Caroline’s apartment and had a great drunken dinner party. One roommate had cooked the appetizers, one had done the salad, one the meat, one the desserts. By the time we had gotten to the desserts I was probably too tipsy to taste anything, but even so the food all tasted exquisitely good, perhaps simply because for once I wasn’t fixing it or cleaning up the mess. I did offer to help, but the apartment kitchen was so small that only two people could fit into it at one time, and two of Caroline’s roommates did the dishes, and Caroline and Cathy and I sat and drank.
I loved the apartment. It was like a three-dimensional collage; so many diversely colored and designed pieces were thrown into it by the four roommates to make a bright, gay room. There was the usual cheap ugly green Salvation Army sofa, but it was covered by an afghan knitted by someone’s mother. There was a purple velvet Chippendale chair and a sleek Danish plastic chair and bright yellow beanbag chair. There were plants hanging everywhere in wonderful macramé hangers, and there were paintings and photographs covering every inch of the wall. There were lewd posters of rock stars, and save-the-ecology posters of whales. Even the bathroom walls were covered—with clipped cartoons and jokes about men, vibrators, women’s lib, sex, college life, unemployment. I could have spent hours in the bathroom alone; I never did manage to read all the jokes.
We sat in the living room, drinking, talking, laughing. The talk faded like smoke; the next day I could not remember a word of it. About an hour after dinner Cathy’s date for the evening, a tall sexy blond boy named Chris showed up and took her away. Two of Caroline’s other roommates left with dates, and then there were just the three of us, Caroline, I, and the other roommate, Lynn. Lynn had made us tea, which sobered us up a bit, and we talked about courses, grades, the bad job market, the uncertainty of the future. We sank deeper into our chairs.
Finally I heard myself say, “Is this what you two usually do on a Friday night? Sit at home and get depressed?”
It turned out that no, they didn’t usually sit at home and get depressed, they were sitting at home on my account; usually they had dates or went out to Louie’s.
“Louie’s? What’s Louie’s?” I asked.
Caroline looked mischievous. “You wanna see Louie’s? Hey, you oughta see Louie’s. Come on. It’ll be good for you.”
So we put on lipstick and got into our coats and went off to Louie’s. It turned out to be a big, dark noisy bar where a live band was playing and kids sat crushed elbow to elbow at tiny rickety tables, drinking cheap beer and overpriced mixed drinks. When we entered, the heat and the noise after the cold calm outdoors hit me like a wall and I had to stand still for a few moments to let my eyes get adjusted. It was, I suppose, any typical bar where college kids hang out, only perhaps a little smokier and a little louder, but then again, it was a Friday night.
Caroline and Lynn seemed to know their way around, and led me through a maze of legs and tables and moving bodies to what seemed the only available table in the place, one back in the corner against the wall. As I squeezed and slid my way after the girls I noticed that no one in the bar was over thirty, or even close to it. I shrank a bit inside my clothes, wishing I could hide. I felt old, maternal, out of place. I was out of place; how long had it been—years!—since I had been in a bar without my husband. I was glad we were going to a corner table.
“This is it,” Caroline said to me as we sat down. I chose the chair that was most in the dark. “Look, Lynn,” she went on, “Ed’s over there with Andrea. Can you believe it?”
“I hope John shows tonight,” Lynn said.
I listened to Caroline and Lynn gossip about people I didn’t know, people who were not having babies and working on farms and holding down jobs, but who were breaking up with steadies or flunking upper-level courses or wrecking MG’s or going off skiing for the weekend. The waitress finally showed up at our table, and brought us all beers, which I paid for, and then I sat there, suddenly very happy, very content, to be simply sitting there, at Louie’s, listening to my stepdaughter and her friend talk. Caroline had had her hair cut that fall, in a simple Dutch-girl style with bangs. She was wearing jeans and an unmemorable blue jersey, and small gold pierced earrings. She had put blue shadow on her eyes and blusher on her cheeks, but wore no lipstick. She looked sophisticated and very lovely, completely different from the little bucktoothed girl I had first met, the little girl who had been all angles and sharp, breakable places. I wondered if Adelaide had ever come to Louie’s with Caroline; it didn’t seem like a place to bring one’s mother; in a surge of intuition I knew that Caroline would never bring her mother here, just as Lucy, when she grew up, would never want to show up at a bar with her mother. I felt warmed, special, privileged: I was getting to see a part of Caroline’s life that Charlie and Adelaide couldn’t share. I sat there, drinking, getting drunk again, smiling fondly at Caroline, thinking how lovely she was, wondering if I had had any influence at all in her growth.
“Would you like to dance?”
The boy said it three times before he got my attention and managed to make me realize he was talking to me.
Even so I said, “What?” I couldn’t have been more shocked if a frog had dropped into my lap.
“Would you like to dance?” the boy shouted.
Through the fog of booze I quickly registered: one tall, dark-haired, good-looking boy, slim, perhaps twenty, leaning on the table, looking at me. I also registered the looks of total surprise on Caroline’s and Lynn’s faces.
I didn’t know what to do. I felt totally startled and helpless. I looked at Caroline. “I think he asked me to dance with him,” I said.
“Well, dance with him,” she replied.
“Okay,” I said to the boy. He turned then, and walked out to the dance floor, and I followed, pushing my way through chairs and warm bodies. My heart was suddenly fluttering insanely, my hands were sweating, and I was afraid that my whole body would break out into one great twitchy tic of nervousness. I thought, all at once, in a rush of horror, I can’t dance with this boy! I’m a mother. I live on a farm. (My God, I’m married.) (My God, that’s my husband’s daughter back there, watching me.) I don’t know how to dance. I’ll make a fool of myself. What do I do? How does one dance? How could this person have asked me to dance; can’t he see I’m old and married? What a good-looking boy!
Of course I knew how to dance. Charlie and I had danced at parties, and at dances, and I had played the radio and held my children in my arms and danced with them. I had danced to rock music every day in the winter simply to fight off the boredom. I knew how to dance, but out there on the dance floor with a strange boy and Caroline watching I suddenly felt paralyzed. Every movement and gesture seemed difficult and clumsy. If I hadn’t had so much to drink, I wouldn’t have been able to move.
But I do like to dance. And the music was good and loud, and I had had a lot to drink, and the boy had a super smile, and all of a sudden I was dancing. All of a sudden there I was, wife and mother and farm lady, dancing in a bar in New Haven, Connecticut, with a gorgeous young boy. I was happy. I danced. I loved myself for having worn jeans and a sweater to visit Caroline instead of my dressier slacks.
I had forgotten how good it felt to dance while smiling at a good-looking stranger.
“Thank you,” I said politely when the music ended, and started to go back to the table.
But the boy caught me by my hand; he actually took my hand in his. “Wait,” he said. “They’ll play another in a minute.”
God forgive me, I believe I giggled. I couldn’t believe this boy was holding my hand. “That’s a married hand you’re holding,” I wanted to say, but fortunately the music did start again, right away, and he let go of my married hand, and we danced.
We danced for perhaps a half hour without stopping. The boy had a great long back and long, slim legs and his movements were easy and slow and smooth, not frenetic or wild, like some of the others. He had blue eyes, I began to decide, at least they looked blue in the dim light of the dance floor. At first I found it very difficult to look him in the eyes. I kept looking away, feeling somehow embarrassed and guilty, and then I did look him in the eyes, and he smiled, and I smiled, and once that contact was established it seemed too pleasurable to break.
When the band took intermission they put on some recorded music, but I decided to sit down. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was very much out of breath. The boy followed me back to the table and sat down next to me without being asked. Caroline and Lynn had been dancing, too, and were slowly making their way through the crowd back to the table.
“It’s wild tonight!” Caroline said happily, and sat down. She lifted her hair up off her neck. Her cheeks were flushed from the heat of dancing; she looked terrific.
“What’s your name?” the boy said to me.
“What?” I said. I had heard him, but I couldn’t believe the question. It seemed such an odd thing to ask. Also I wasn’t quite sure what to answer. I knew that “Mrs. Campbell” wouldn’t do.
“Zelda,” I said, and smiled.
“Zelda?” he asked. “No kidding? Zelda? I’ve never met a Zelda before. What a crazy name! Like Fitzgerald’s wife.”
“That’s it,” I said. “Yeah, it is a crazy name. My sister’s name is Audrey. My mother liked strange names.” I didn’t say—why didn’t I say?—“and my daughter’s name is Lucy and my son’s name is Adam, and this girl sitting next to me, my stepdaughter, is named Caroline.”
“My name’s Charles,” the boy said.
“You’re putting me on,” I said.
“No, I’m not,” the boy said. He looked surprised. “What’s wrong with Charles? It’s a perfectly normal name.”
“Does anyone ever call you Charlie?” I asked.
“Nope. And no one ever calls me Chuck, either. I hate nicknames.”
I watched him carefully as he spoke. He wasn’t putting me on. It wasn’t a joke. His name really was Charles.
“This is Caroline,” I said, and motioned toward my stepdaughter, “and this is Lynn.”
“Hi,” they all said, and looked each other over. Suddenly a new fear hit me: that they would all start discussing where they went to college and what year they were, and I would have to reveal what had somehow become a shameful secret: my old marriedness.
“I’ve got to go to the john,” I said to Caroline. “Where is it?”
She told me, and I rose and wound my way toward it. I hoped that by the time I was back the boy Charles would have left the table. Perhaps, I thought, perhaps Caroline would tell Charles who I was, what I was. In the bathroom I began to laugh softly and drunkenly. I was after all having fun. It was after all a good joke, especially on that poor boy. If only he knew how I had to suck in my stretch-marked stomach in order to zip up my jeans! Still, I could see in the dim light of the restroom that I looked good, younger than I really was, with a glow on. I looked happy. I was proud of myself, I admit it, and I was glad that Caroline was there, to see that her boring stepmother was still zippy enough to be asked to dance by a college boy.
I took my time in the john, hoping the boy would be gone when I got back to my table, and when I did get back to it, the boy was still there, and he had ordered beers for all of us. He and Caroline and Lynn were discussing some current New Haven scandal.
I slid into my place and sat back and chugged at my beer, hoping for more courage to get through the crazy night.
“What do you think of Cataloni?” the boy asked, looking at me.
I stared back. I didn’t know whether he was talking about a person or an Italian noodle.
“She’s from out of town,” Caroline said, and went on talking. I realized then that she wasn’t going to give me away, she wasn’t going to say, “She doesn’t know who Cataloni is because she’s my stepmother and she lives on a farm with her husband and children.” I also realized what a great couple Charles and Caroline would make, the two of them so tall and slim, one so dark, one so fair.
The music started and Charles asked me to dance again.
“I’m tired,” I said. “I’d like to finish my beer. Why don’t you dance with Caroline?” There, I thought, I have done my respectable deed. Off you go, you two young lovers.
“I’ll just wait with you,” Charles said. He leaned back and put his arm around the back of my chair. I looked at him, astonished. He looked at me. He was gorgeous. I smiled. He smiled. It was ridiculous. I was sexually attracted to him, right there in front of my husband’s daughter, and I felt as embarrassed and guilty as if I had just wet my pants. I looked away from Charles, although simply taking my eyes away from his ended a warm pleasure I was beginning to feel. I looked at Caroline. Her face was expressionless: she was staring out at the dance floor, watching for someone, absorbed in her thoughts. At least, I thought, she didn’t seem ashamed of me. A boy came through the crowd to ask her to dance, and she smiled when she saw him, and I realized that she wasn’t all that interested in what I was doing.
So I danced again with the boy. I danced all night with the boy. With Charles. Not Charlie, my husband; Charles, my twenty-year-old one-night stand. We danced till two-thirty in the morning. We danced to fast music, and we danced to slow music. He held me quite tightly against him, and I thought I would turn into one long drop of sheer pleasure and puddle onto the floor. It felt so good to be in the slim unfamiliar arms of a strange male. After a while I stopped telling myself that this boy could have been a student of mine, I was old enough to be his teacher, and that my stepdaughter was watching. After a while I stopped telling myself anything. I gave myself over to the experience. How very sweet it was.
The boy held me close when we danced. He smelled good, like pine soap and clean cotton and sweat, and I liked the smells, having been so long conditioned to baby powder and baby poop and disinfectant. I let myself go. I melted against him. I breathed in his smell. I relished the feel of his long, slim body against mine.
“Listen,” the boy said, whispering in my ear and sending chills all over me, “can I take you home?”
Take me home? I thought. Take me home? I live in New Hampshire, I’ve got a husband and children at home. And a stepdaughter here in New Haven.
But I had gone past the joking stage. I could no more say, flippantly, “Oh, I’m staying with my stepdaughter tonight,” than I could have laughed in his face. I didn’t know what to say.
“I—I’m staying with a friend,” I said. “We all came together, Caroline and Lynn and I.”
“Let me take you home,” the boy said. He looked at me. “Please,” he said.
God, it was like old college days, a night full of drinking and dancing and then the desire at the end of the evening, the desire not to go away from the good warm body, the desire to go further into some dark, warm delicious space with the person in your arms. And I had a nice trusty IUD, something I hadn’t had in college.
“I’ll check with Caroline,” I said.
But I couldn’t get to Caroline. She was on the dance floor with the boy she had been with all evening, and Lynn was dancing with someone, too. Charles had followed me, holding my hand, and when I said, helplessly, “I guess we’ll just have to wait till they’re through dancing,” he said, “Let’s sit down and finish our beers.”
We went back to our table and sat down, and I realized then how sleepy I was, how tired, but how sensually pleased. I sipped my beer and gazed out at the dance floor, watching for Caroline, and the boy said:
“Zelda …”
And I looked at him, and he leaned over and quite gently kissed me.
It was surely one of the lovelier kisses in my lifetime, rating right up there with some of Charlie’s better ones, and those of Lucy and Adam. It was a sweet, good, strong kiss, and he put his hands on my shoulders and I could tell he wanted me sexually. And I wanted him.
“Zelda,” someone said, and I looked up into Caroline’s smiling face.
“Are you ready to leave?” I asked. I was surprised to find that I could still speak in a normal tone of voice.
“Yes,” Caroline said, “I’m leaving, but I’m not going back to the apartment. Lynn’s going home, though; she can drive you back now if you want. And Jim will take me back to our apartment in the morning, so I’ll see you then. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. What else could I say?
I watched as Caroline and her boyfriend, whose name I now assumed was Jim, left Louie’s. It was late, and many couples had already left, so Caroline and Jim were able to walk out together, arms wrapped around each other, hips and thighs touching as they walked.
“Hi,” Lynn said, coming up to the table. “Ready to go?” She looked tired and sad.
“Yes, sure,” I told her. “Give me just a minute, will you?”
“Okay,” she said. “I’ve got to go to the john, anyway.”
I turned toward Charles, who had been sitting patiently next to me, his arm resting on the back of my chair, his hand resting on my shoulder.
“I’ve got to go,” I said to him.
He leaned over and kissed me again. “Then go with me,” he said. He smiled. “I don’t think Caroline will miss you tonight.”
The thought stunned me; he was right. Caroline wouldn’t miss me; she didn’t seem to care whether I went off with the boy or not. So I didn’t have to be good for her sake. Still, still, even without an audience, even with the security of secrecy, going off with Charles was something I just could not do.
“Look,” I said, “I can’t go with you. I’m married.”
“So?” the boy said.
“So?” I repeated, amazed. “So I’m married. I mean I’m really married. I mean my husband and I have an agreement; it’s called fidelity. It’s old-fashioned, and at times like this I’m not sure it’s the best thing, but well, there it is. I can’t go with you. But I want to thank you, you have been—beautiful. I’ve had a fantastic evening with you. You can’t imagine what it means to me. I’ll never forget you.”
The boy looked at me for a while. “You’re serious, aren’t you?” he said.
“Well,” he said, “it’s a hell of a shame. But my name is Charles Hall, and I live on Chestnut Street, here in New Haven, and my name’s in the phone book if you ever want to see me again.”
Oh, it was wonderful, it was wonderful to have him tell me that. “I’ll remember,” I said.
We kissed again, and then Lynn was standing there, and I said goodbye to Charles and got up and went out of Louie’s with Lynn. Lynn had apparently had a bad night and was in a bit of a sulk. I tried to talk with her; I asked her what was wrong, but all she would say was, “Oh, boy trouble,” and nothing else. So we rode home in a sleepy silence and went right to bed. In the morning, when I awakened, Caroline was there, wearing the same jeans and sweater from the previous night, curled up in a living room chair, drinking tea.
I wandered around the apartment in my nightgown, enjoying the luxury of a lazy morning without children to feed and diaper and hold.
“Water’s hot if you want some tea,” Caroline said. “I’ll fix you an omelette in a minute.”
I fixed myself some tea, then sat down in the living room with Caroline. It was a sunny morning, and the sun warmed a spot on the old Salvation Army sofa; I sat there and pulled a green afghan over my knees and shoulders.
“Did you have a good night?” I asked Caroline.
“Ummmm,” Caroline smiled.
“Is that a special guy?” I asked. “I mean the guy you went off with.”
“Yeah,” Caroline said. “A very special guy.”
“Do you think you’ll marry him?”
“I know I won’t.”
“But if he’s so special …”
“Oh, Zelda, he is special, I’m in love with him. But he’s so ambitious; he wants to be a lawyer, and he wants a sweet little wife in the background to decorate the house just the right way and to cook just the right meals for the important guests and to wear just the right clothes, all that crap. He’s upward mobile. He wants to be a big somebody someday, and he needs a wife who will dedicate herself to his success. I just can’t do that.”
“I can understand that. You want to dedicate yourself to your own success.”
“No, not even that. I don’t care about success, not the way Jim does. I mean he wants to be a senator someday, he wants lots of money, and his name in the daily newspapers. I don’t want that. I just want to find someone good to live with, and a good job that will mean something to me. I want to go to grad school, I want to see if I can work with the U.S. Forest Service someday. I don’t even care about marriage as long as I can find someone who will be willing to let me live my life the way I want to. I mean I’m willing to share and compromise and all that, but I’m not willing to go under.”
“Do you want children?”
“Children?” Caroline smiled and looked sad at the same time. “Oh, I don’t know. I used to think that I wanted a lot of children. I suppose I still would like to have a child, but not for a long, long time.”
We sat for a moment, in pensive silence, and I tried to think of what I would say if Caroline asked me if I was glad I had had children. Instead she surprised me by saying, “Did you go home with that guy last night?”
“Caroline!” I said. “Of course not. Good grief, I’m married, you know. Why, did you think I would?”
“I didn’t know. I don’t know what kind of arrangements you and Dad have.”
I had to think that one over for a minute. “Would you have cared?” I asked finally. “I mean, would you have thought it was right or wrong?” I was eager to hear her answer.
But at that Caroline’s eyes shifted away and the blank, bored expression of her teenage years slid over her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “I really don’t know.”
“I’m faithful to Charlie,” I said. “I always have been.” We sat there for a moment while I decided whether to deliver a speech on the importance of fidelity in marriage. I decided not to; Caroline was a big girl now. I opted for lightheartedness. “But he sure was cute, wasn’t he?” I smiled.
“He was a real ice cream sundae,” Caroline said. We both laughed.
“You can’t imagine how great it felt to have him ask me to—dance—and so on,” I said. “I mean after all these months of motherhood and farm life. I was beginning to feel boring and ugly.” I paused, waiting for Caroline to tell me that I wasn’t boring and ugly.
But she again didn’t offer me what I wanted. Instead she seemed to have sunk back into some deep, sad mood of hers. She sat for a while, staring into her teacup. Then with a surge of energy she said, “Hey, I’m going to make you that omelette now!”
She made the omelette, which was delicious, thin and light and full of cheese and herbs, and we talked about safer topics, whales and Jacques Cousteau, graduate school and old professors. When it was time for me to go, to get back on the Greyhound bus that would take me back to my farm and my husband and my babies and my everyday life, I felt sad. I wondered if she had any idea what the visit had meant to me. But as we coolly kissed each other’s cheek before I boarded the bus, I realized that she had already sent me on my way, and was not thinking about me and the meanings of my life at all. She had too much to work out with her own. I belonged to her childhood, to her past; she apparently couldn’t use me in working out her future. Still for me it had been a successful visit. I felt we had somehow gone through a barrier and entered a new phase in our lives together. We had been comfortable together, there was that, and we had eaten together, she had fixed my meals, we had sat and talked and laughed together, and that was nice. It seemed that perhaps we might after all be friends. And as I rode back through the snow-covered countryside of New England, I realized that for me it would be very nice, that that was what I wanted: to be friends with the pretty young woman with the long blond hair. Perhaps I had influenced her life, perhaps not, that did not matter. What was important was that I knew her, I cared for her, I liked her. I liked what she had become, and I liked what she wanted to be. Caroline had become interesting, discerning, competent, thoughtful. She was a young woman I was glad to know, to be related to. I liked being connected to her. I was glad, after all, to have a stepdaughter.