The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of Stories Page 35

  “Does this mean you want the vacuum after all?”

  She covered him with hungry kisses. “Shut up and deal.”

  At the next house, he began again. “Good morning, I’m from the Acme Vacuum Cleaner company …”

  “Never mind that. Come in.”

  At the third house, he and the lady of the house grappled in the midst of her unfinished novel, rolling here and there between the unfinished tapestry and the unfinished wire sculpture.

  “If he would let me alone for a minute I would get some of these things done,” she said. “All he ever thinks about is sex.”

  “If you don’t like it, why are we doing this?”

  “To get even,” she said.

  On his second day as a vacuum cleaner salesman, Andy changed his approach. Instead of going into his pitch, he would say, “Want to screw?” By the third day he had refined it to, “My place or yours?”

  Friday his mother died so he was able to turn in his MarvelVac, which he thought was just as well, because he was exhausted and depressed, and, for all his efforts, he had made only one tentative sale, which was contingent upon his picking up the payments in person every week for the next twelve years. Standing over his mother’s coffin, he could not for the life of him understand what had happened to women—not good old Mom, who had more or less liked her family and at any rate had died uncomplaining—but the others, all the women in every condition in all the houses he had gone to this week. Why weren’t any of them happy?

  Up in the hills, sitting around the fire, the women in the vanguard were talking about just that; the vagaries of life, and woman’s condition. They had to think it was only that. If they were going to go on, they would have to be able to decide the problem was X, whatever X was. It had to be something they could name, so that, together, they could do something about it.

  They were of a mind to free themselves. One of the things was to free themselves of the necessity of being thought of as sexual objects, which turned out to mean only that certain obvious concessions, like lipstick and pretty clothes, had by ukase been done away with. Still, there were those who wore their khakis and bandoliers with a difference. Whether or not they shaved their legs and armpits, whether or not they smelled, the pretty ones were still pretty and the others were not; the ones with good bodies walked in an unconscious pride and the others tried to ignore the differences and settled into their flesh, saying: Now, we are all equal.

  There were great disputes as to what they were going to do and which things they would do first. It was fairly well agreed that although the law said that they were equal, nothing much was changed. There was still the monthly bleeding. Dr. Ora Fessenden, the noted gynecologist, had showed them a trick which was supposed to take care of all that, but nothing short of surgery or menopause would halt the process altogether; what man had to undergo such indignities? There was still pregnancy, but the women all agreed they were on top of that problem. That left the rest; men still looked down on them, in part because in the main, women were shorter; they were more or less free to pursue their careers, assuming they could keep a babysitter, but there were still midafternoon depressions, dishes, the wash; despite all the changes, life was much the same. More drastic action was needed.

  They decided to form an army.

  At the time, nobody was agreed on what they were going to do or how they would go about it, but they were all agreed that it was time for a change. Things could not go on as they were; life was often boring, and too hard.

  The youngest housewife watched the smoke, thinking hard. Then she wrote a note:

  Dear Ralph,

  I am running away to realize my full potential. I know you have always said I could do anything I want but what you meant was, I could do anything as long as it didn’t mess you up, which is not exactly the same thing now, is it? Don’t bother to look for me.

  No longer yours,

  Lory

  Then she went to join the women in the hills.

  I would like to go, Suellen thought, but what if they wouldn’t let me have my baby?

  Jolene’s uncle in the country always had a liver-colored setter named Fido. The name remained the same and the dogs were more or less interchangeable. Jolene called all her lovers Mike, and because they were more or less interchangeable, eventually she tired of them and went to join the women in the hills.

  “You’re not going,” Herb Chandler said.

  Annie said, “I am.”

  He grabbed her as she reached the door. “The hell you are, I need you.”

  “You don’t need me, you need a maid.” She slapped the side of his head. “Now let me go.”

  “You’re mine,” he said, aiming a karate chop at her neck. She wriggled and he missed.

  “Just like your ox and your ass, huh.” She had gotten hold of a lamp and she let him have it on top of the head.

  “Ow,” he said, and crumpled to the floor.

  “Nobody owns me,” she said, throwing the vase of flowers she kept on the side table, just for good measure. “I’ll be back when it’s over.” Stepping over him, she went out the door.

  After everybody left that morning, June mooned around the living room, picking up the scattered newspapers, collecting her and Vic’s empty coffee cups and marching out to face the kitchen table, which looked the same way every morning at this time, glossy with spilled milk and clotted cereal, which meant that she had to go through the same motions every morning at this time, feeling more and more like that jerk, whatever his name was, who for eternity kept on pushing the same recalcitrant stone up the hill; he was never going to get it to the top because it kept falling back on him and she was never going to get to the top, wherever that was, because there would always be the kitchen table, and the wash, and the crumbs on the rug, and besides she didn’t know where the top was because she had gotten married right after Sweetbriar and the next minute, bang, there was the kitchen table and, give or take a few babies, give or take a few stabs at night classes in something or other, that seemed to be her life. There it was in the morning, there it was again at noon, there it was at night; when people said, at parties, “What do you do?” she could only move her hands helplessly because there was no answer she could give that would please either herself or them. I clean the kitchen table, she thought, because there was no other way to describe it.

  Occasionally she thought about running away but where would she go, and how would she live? Besides, she would miss Vic and the kids and her favorite chair in the television room. Sometimes she thought she might grab the milkman or the next delivery boy, but she knew she would be too embarrassed, either that or she would start laughing, or the delivery boy would, and even if they didn’t she would never be able to face Vic. She thought she had begun to disappear, like the television or the washing machine; after a while nobody would see her at all. They might complain if she wasn’t working properly, but in the main she was just another household appliance, and so she mooned, wondering if this was all there was ever going to be: herself in the house, the kitchen table.

  JOIN NOW

  It was in the morning mail, hastily mimeographed and addressed to her by name. If she had been in a different mood she might have tossed it out with the rest of the junk mail, or called a few of her friends to see if they’d gotten it too. As it was, she read it through, chewing over certain catchy phrases in this call to arms, surprised to find her blood quickening. Then she packed and wrote her note:

  Dear Vic,

  There are clean sheets on all the beds and three casseroles in the freezer and one in the oven. The veal one should do for two meals. I have done all the wash and a thorough vacuuming. If Sandy’s cough doesn’t get any better you should take him in to see Dr. Weixelbaum, and don’t forget Jimmy is supposed to have his braces tightened on the 12th. Don’t look for me.

  Love,

  June

  Then she went to join the women in the hills.

  Glenda Thompson taught psychology at t
he university; it was the semester break and she thought she might go to the women’s encampment in an open spirit of inquiry. If she liked what they were doing she might chuck Richard, who was only an instructor while she was an assistant professor, and join them. To keep the appearance of objectivity, she would take notes.

  Of course she was going to have to figure out what to do with the children while she was gone. No matter how many hours she and Richard taught, the children were her responsibility, and if they were both working in the house, she had to leave her typewriter and shush the children because of the way Richard got when he was disturbed. None of the sitters she called could come; Mrs. Birdsall, their regular sitter, had taken off without notice again, to see her son the freshman in Miami, and she exhausted the list of student sitters without any luck. She thought briefly of leaving them at Richard’s office, but she couldn’t trust him to remember them at the end of the day. She reflected bitterly that men who wanted to work just got up and went to the office, it had never seemed fair.

  “Oh hell,” she said finally, and because it was easier, she packed Tommy and Bobby and took them along.

  Marva and Patsy and Betts were sitting around in Marva’s room; it was two days before the junior prom and not one of them had a date, or even a nibble, there weren’t even any blind dates to be had.

  “I know what let’s do,” Marva said, “let’s go up to Ferguson’s and join the women’s army.”

  Betts said, “I didn’t know they had an army.”

  “Nobody knows what they have up there,” Patsy said.

  They left a note so Marva’s mother would be sure and call them in case somebody asked for a date at the last minute and they got invited to the prom after all.

  Sally felt a twinge of guilt when she opened the flyer.

  JOIN NOW

  After she read it she went to the window and looked at the smoke column in open disappointment: Oh, so that’s all it is. Yearning after it in the early autumn twilight, she had thought it might represent something more: excitement, escape, but she supposed she should have guessed. There was no great getaway, just a bunch of people who needed more people to help. She knew she probably ought to go up and help out for a while, she could design posters and ads they could never afford if they went to a regular graphics studio. Still, all those women … She couldn’t bring herself to make the first move.

  “I’m not a joiner,” she said aloud, but that wasn’t really it; she had always worked at home, her studio took up one wing of the house and she made her own hours; when she tired of working she could pick at the breakfast dishes or take a nap on the lumpy couch at one end of the studio; when the kids came home she was always there and besides, she didn’t like going places without Zack.

  At the camp, Dr. Ora Fessenden was leading an indoctrination program for new recruits. She herself was in the stirrups, lecturing coolly while everybody filed by.

  One little girl, lifted up by her mother, began to whisper: “Ashphasphazzzzzz-pzz.”

  The mother muttered, “Mumumumumummmmmm … “

  Ellen Ferguson, who was holding the light, turned it on the child for a moment. “Well, what does she want?”

  “She wants to know what a man’s looks like.”

  Dr. Ora Fessenden took hold, barking from the stirrups, “With luck, she’ll never have to see.”

  “Right on,” the butch sisters chorused, but the others began to look at one another in growing discomfiture, which as the weeks passed would ripen into alarm.

  By the time she reached the camp, June was already worried about the casseroles she had left for Vic and the kids. Would the one she had left in the oven go bad at room temperature? Maybe she ought to call Vic and tell him to let it bubble for an extra half hour just in case. Would Vic really keep an eye on Sandy, and if she got worse would he get her to the doctor in time? What about Jimmy’s braces? She almost turned back.

  But she was already at the gate to Ellen Ferguson’s farm, and she was surprised to see a hastily constructed guardhouse, with Ellen herself in khakis, standing with a carbine at the ready and she said, “Don’t shoot, Ellen, it’s me.”

  “For God’s sake, June, I’m not going to shoot you.” Ellen pushed her glasses up on her forehead so she could look into June’s face. “I never thought you’d have the guts.”

  “I guess I needed a change.”

  “Isn’t it thrilling?”

  “I feel funny without the children.” June was trying to remember when she had last seen Ellen: over a bridge table? at Weight Watchers? “How did you get into this?”

  “I needed something to live for,” Ellen said.

  By that time two other women with rifles had impounded her car and then she was in a jeep bouncing up the dirt road to headquarters.

  The women behind the table all had on khakis, but they looked not at all alike in them. One was tall and tawny and called herself Sheena; there was a tough, funny-looking one named Rap and the third was Margy, still redolent of the kitchen sink. Sheena made the welcoming speech, and then Rap took her particulars while Margy wrote everything down.

  She lied a little about her weight, and was already on the defensive when Rap looked at her over her glasses, saying, “Occupation?”

  “Uh, household manager.”

  “Oh shit, another housewife. Skills?”

  “Well, I used to paint a little, and …”

  Rap snorted.

  “I’m pretty good at conversational French.”

  “Kitchen detail,” Rap said to Margy and Margy checked off a box and flipped over to the next sheet.

  “But I’m tired of all that,” June said.

  Rap said, “Next.”

  Oh it was good sitting around the campfire, swapping stories about the men at work and the men at home; every woman had a horror story, because even the men who claimed to be behind them weren’t really behind them, they were playing lip service to avoid a higher price, and even the best among them would make those terrible verbal slips. It was good to talk to other women who were smarter than their husbands and having to pretend they weren’t. It was good to be able to sprawl in front of the fire without having to think about Richard and what time he would be home. The kids were safely stashed down at the day care compound, along with everybody else’s kids, and for the first time in at least eight years Glenda could relax and think about herself. She listened drowsily to that night’s speeches, three examples of wildly diverging cant, and she would have taken notes except that she was full, digesting a dinner she hadn’t had to cook, and for almost the first time in eight years she wasn’t going to have to go out in the kitchen and face the dishes.

  Marva, Patsy and Betts took turns admiring each other in their new uniforms and they sat at the edge of the group, hugging their knees and listening in growing excitement. Why, they didn’t have to worry about what they looked like, what wasn’t going to matter in the new scheme of things. It didn’t matter whether or not they had dates. By the time the new order was established, they weren’t even going to want dates. Although they would rather die than admit it, they all felt a little pang at this. Goodbye hope chest, goodbye wedding trip to Nassau and picture in the papers in the long white veil. Patsy, who wanted to be a corporation lawyer, thought: Why can’t I have it all.

  Now that his mother was dead and he didn’t need to sell vacuum cleaners any more, Andy Ellis was thrown back on his own resources. He spent three hours in the shower and three days sleeping, and on the fourth day he emerged to find out his girl had left him for the koto player across the hall. “Well shit,” he said, and wandered into the street.

  He had only been asleep for three days but everything was subtly different. The people in the corner market were mostly men, stocking up on TV dinners and chunky soups or else buying cooking wines and herbs, kidneys, beef liver and tripe. The usual girl was gone from the checkout counter, the butcher was running the register instead, and when Andy asked about it Freddy the manager said, “She j
oined up.”

  “Are you kidding?”

  “Some girl scout camp up at Ferguson’s. The tails revolt.”

  Just then a Jeep sped by in the street outside, there was a crash and they both hit the floor, rising to their elbows after the object that had shattered the front window did not explode. It was a rock with a note attached. Andy picked his way through the glass to retrieve it. It read:

  WE WILL BURY YOU

  “See?” Freddy said, ugly and vindictive. “See? See?”

  The local hospital admitted several cases of temporary blindness in men who had been attacked by night with women’s deodorant spray.

  All over town the men whose wives remained lay next to them in growing unease. Although they all feigned sleep, they were aware that the stillness was too profound: the women were thinking.

  The women trashed a porn movie house. Among them was the wife of the manager, who said, as she threw an open can of film over the balcony, watching it unroll, “I’m doing this for us.”

  So it had begun. For the time being, Rap and her cadre, who were in charge of the military operation, intended to satisfy themselves with guerrilla tactics; so far, nobody had been able to link the sniping and materiel bombing with the women on the hill, but they all knew it was only a matter of time before the first police cruiser came up to Ellen Ferguson’s gate with a search warrant, and they were going to have to wage open war.

  By this time one of the back pastures had been converted to a rifle range, and even poor June had to spend at least one hour of every day in practice. She began to take an embarrassing pleasure in it, thinking, as she potted away:

  Aha, Vic, there’s a nick in your scalp. Maybe you’ll remember what I look like next time you leave the house for the day.

  OK, kids, I am not the maid.

  All right, Sally, you and your damn career. You’re still only the maid.

  Then, surprisingly, This is for you, Sheena. How dare you go around looking like that, when I have to look like this.